#also the joe/matty parallels are paralleling

[backtodecembertv]

the renegade/ttpd (song)/my boy only breaks his favorite toys/so long, london parallels. you fire off missiles cause you hate yourself, but do you know you’re demolishing me? get your shit together so i can love you. you’re in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road, but i’ve seen this episode and still loved the show. who’s gonna hold you like me? i knew too much, there was danger in the heat of my touch, he saw forever so he smashed it up. just how low did you think i’d go before i’d self implode, before i’d have to go be free? you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days. the progression from “he’s self destructive and it’s hurting me too, but i can help him through it” to “he’s self destructive, he’s willing to wreck us both, and there’s nothing i can do but leave and put myself back together.”

[dorotheado]

listen like when you drink someone under the table they are also drinking. so when he shit talked her under the table she is both saying that she was being love bombed / told lies while also acknowledging the bullshit that she was spouting ("he's the one i want" / "i can fix him" / "i've seen this episode and still loved the show" / "it was legendary" / "you're the love of my life"). and that just sucks like it sucks so hard

[blusocket]

I've seen some people express some confusion about what Fortnight is about, why it opens the album, what's happening in the video, etc, so here's my attempt at an analysis. For the most part I'll be referring to the characters in the video with the names of the people playing them (Taylor and Post) but at times I'm going to be making direct reference to the events of Taylor's personal life and referring to the muses by their names (Joe and Matty) for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

The song itself uses the suburbia conceit as an extended metaphor for the beginning of her relationship with Matty (he's the neighbor she runs away to Florida with, Joe is the cheating husband.) For more eloquent and detailed thoughts on the narrative of the song you can check out Jaime @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes's post here.

The video is really dense, and I'm not 100% confident in every aspect of my interpretation, but I feel pretty sure that it's making extensive use of visual metaphor in order to tell roughly the same story as the song, just in a different setting. To start, Taylor wakes up chained to a bed in a white dress.

To me this suggests that she's been driven mad by being left at the altar, and is now trapped, surveilled and controlled, in a type of asylum. This represents the end of her relationship with Joe--waiting for a marriage that never came, feeling trapped, mentally unwell etc.

She then takes 'forget him' pills which reveal Post's tattoos on her face when she looks in the mirror.

This represents Matty (the "miracle move-on drug") and shows that he made a mark on her while she was still in the asylum--that is, still in her relationship with Joe. Additionally, in the wide shot where we see the mirror, its size and shape are very reminiscent of a one-way mirror, often seen in interrogation rooms and psychological experiments, further reinforcing the idea that Taylor is imprisoned here.

She then is able to go to the typewriter room and do her work, creating art about how she's feeling, shown by her repeatedly typing "I love you, it's ruining my life" on the typewriter. She's still in pain and feeling trapped. While there, she encounters Post and they create art together, which creates beauty and color in her life. The blue and gold obviously reference her writing about Joe, but the fact that her work is gold and Post's is blue may be a deliberate choice to draw parallels between Matty and Joe, as she does on numerous songs throughout TTPD.

The next scene, where Taylor's hair is down and she and Post are wearing the same black coat and pants, takes place inside her head (symbolized by the shape of the papers they're laying on.) She is dreaming about them being free and creating art together, represented by the papers surrounding them and book she's holding, which has the word "us" written on the cover. She's writing their story before it's begun.

She then reaches for his hand in her fantasy, accepting and asking for this relationship

Then we see that she's being studied and experimented on--the results of the lie detector test read "I love you, it's ruining my life." Her pain is an object of fascination.

Interestingly, Post is part of the group experimenting on her, but when the experiments begin to cause her pain, he liberates her.

This inspires Taylor to destroy the place where she's been trapped, which we see through her opening the filing cabinets that cover the walls and destroying the mirror. I also find the shot of her standing still while papers burn around her interesting and significant; I interpret this as Taylor destroying her own work about Joe. By choosing to leave, she is metaphorically burning--rejecting--the story she wrote about them.

Finally, Taylor and Post enter the dangerous outside world together; the rain echoes the lyric "I chose this cyclone with you" on the album's title track. While I do feel the meaning of Post being in the phone booth is somewhat ambiguous, the framing and the accompanying lyric--"I've been calling ya but you won't pick up" suggest that he's attempting to communicate with her but can't reach her. They are free of her prison, but still separated.

Then, he hangs up the phone and reaches for her hand, and she takes it. The final shot of the video is a close up on their linked hands, presenting us with a cautiously optimistic ending--they are lost and vulnerable in the middle of a storm, but they have each other.

I feel this is a somewhat less sinister, for lack of a better word, portrayal of the start of Matty and Taylor's relationship than is suggested elsewhere on the record, though I believe Post's character being part of the group experimenting on her is significant and the editing creates some ambiguity about exactly when and why she decides to break free. But I hope this clarifies how the video sets up the beginning of this story, the fallout of which is then chronicled over the course of the rest of TTPD.

[the-cards-she-wont-show]

TTPD Twin Storylines weaved together & double meanings throughout! ✌️👯‍♀️💕

Attention ALL Swifties (particularly Gaylors) and associates of the Tortured Poets department

PLEASE READ!! (and read with an open mind!!)🤍

Listening to the amazing TTPD on repeat this past week, I am certain that I have made an important discovery that I haven't seen talked about anywhere else yet and would like to get the coversation going, in hopes that Taylor will see that we are all finally listening to her! I'm still piecing everything together, as there is so much to unravel and am far from calling myself an expert on her exact timelines and dates, so am looking forward to hearing thoughts from others that are more knowledgable in her history.

I have been of the belief for a while now that Mastermind and Dear Reader were foretelling of her future, and also that the album title had a double meaning (evidenced by the lack of apostrophe in 'poets'). That the tortured poet would be departing. Note that I am also a believer that she has been closeted by those closest to her and is preparing to ruin her name and perceived reputation, give up the false public version of herself and come into her own true self. Everything as we know it will be destroyed and it is all playing out now, coming together as part of her plan.

Falling in line with all of the two's - the double album, the double meaning in the album name, the two sides of taylor etc, I have found that there are two intertwining stories told throughout her tracklist, AND that all songs also have a double meaning!! None of which are about the perceived muses of Travis, Matty or Joe. The 'evidence' for those relationships are all red herrings (for example 'putting narcotics into all of my songs' - but only in the songs with obvious reference to her beards), to make it seem ambiguous and open to interpretation of who the songs may be about, which is seen often throughout her discography. She uses an incredible amount of metaphors and we must look beyond those to decipher her lyrics - do not take anything at face level with Taylor. Most should realise that she is so much smarter than making obvious songs about whichever male muse she is 'dating' at the time. She has always played into that public view to cover her true self. Many songs have themes of secret and hidden love, which juxtaposes with the public 'relationships' she is seen as having.

She tells us in 'The Manuscript' that "lookin' backwards might be the only way to move forward". Therefore we must listen to TTPD in reverse, from track 31 (13 reversed!) to track 1. I believe The Manuscript also acts as a bookend for both of her stories and should be listened to as a closer after the last song of the story 'Fortnight' ends, to get a complete picture. Once we have listened to the album in reverse order, can we see so plainly that each song tells a different story of a period/situation/muse/love/heartbreak in her life - beginning at her parents meeting in The Manuscript, to current day. I think the songs may also actually have a sister song from the corresponding album/period in time, with similar sound, lyrics or theme that connects them. I believe that each song also has a double meaning and can be interpreted as messages to her fans about things that have happened to her over the years or that are about to happen, and she is trying to communicate her feelings of being trapped, which is honestly so heartbreaking. Many relate to her being caged and forced to hide her true self, in particular by one person closest to her - her father. It is devastating to listen to.

The really brilliant part I discovered next, is that The Anthology tracks also have another hidden storyline being told which intertwines and intersects in the exact right place to fit in with her life story. It includes all of the "THE" songs and is in reverse order from the parallel life story and vinyl variants order of issue (but chronological track list order).

The Tortured Poets Department

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

The Alchemy

The Black Dog

The Albatross

The Prophecy

The Bolter

The Manuscript

Rather than presenting my interpretation of the timeline and each story told in every song, I urge everyone to listen to both stories, in these exact orders, with an open mind as to what she could possibly be describing! My mind was completely blown when I figured this out!! Her mind is incredible, there is no other way to describe the album, other than a masterpiece! I feel so much for the pain she has gone through. This album explains her feelings and reasons for hiding her true self over the years for any fans that will inevitably be feeling upset and deceived. We all need to show compassion for everything Taylor has sacrificed and give her what she needs. She truly deserves love, honesty, happiness and peace. ✌️💜

I'm in the process of creating a document trying to piece all of the hidden connections together just to wrap my head around this amazing body of work, so may possibly link this when I have it completed, otherwise I will add it to this post for anyone that might be interested.

I have a couple of extra personal thoughts, theories and hopes for anyone still reading…

The manuscript of her life story may possibly be the manuscript for a future book/film.

I think one meaning of "Fortnight" is a foretelling message to the fans that havent been noticing any of her many hair pin drops - she has been trying to get the message across but they aren't listening. For the fans she loses when she comes out - she touched them with this album for only a fortnight, before she lost them. She loves the fans but staying in the closet is ruining her life. I think something big could be happening a fortnight after release? Friday 3rd May is International Sun Day. ☀️ Karlie Kloss was always 'sunshine' to Taylor. According to Karlie, their first meeting was at the 2011 Met Gala on May 2, however, there is a possibility that they could have met at the afterparty - after midnight, making the anniversary May 3! 2024 Met Gala is a few days later, could they both make an appearance? If nothing big occurs, perhaps some seeds of doubt will be planted on the 3rd? Or.. It could also be a surprise rep TV (with or without Karma and Debut - surprise triple drop?) with wlw vault tracks?! Who really knows.. I honestly have no idea, but whatever happens, I know Taylor has it all meticulously planned out and everything will happen when it is supposed to.

Taylor is chairman of the Tortured Poets department - the leader of the mass coming out we are about to see. As Chely Wright put - 'we need someone at the top' to come out and pave the way for others to do the same, and to stop the forced closeting in the celebrity world. I think Travis and the majority of her former beards are also queer and there will be many more 'tortured poets' that will join 'the department'.

Karma will be album 1 (TS12) in the 3,2,1 countdown, TS13 is 0 - the album in which she gets all of her full colour back, reclaims her glitter gel pens and finally can sing her truth proudly! She has destroyed her own name and reputation, burnt down the lover house and all her former selves.

Last of all, PLEASE BE KIND! If anyone has made it to the end of this and doesnt agree, I'd love for you to have a listen to the songs in the orders above before commenting. If not, lets just agree to disagree! We all have our own personal takes on Taylor's lyricism and I would never dream of being unkind to another just for having a difference of opinion. 🫶

For Taylor - if you somehow happen to see this - please know you are truly a mastermind, you are loved and we've got you!

🌈💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛🌈

❤️ gerimegs

[shitswiftiessay]

so taylor has put out another hit piece against joe (who’s surprised)

after buying winning the TIME person of the year award 2023, and having a gushing puff piece that’s supposed to paint her as this trailblazer for women and feminist icon…

she made sure to dedicate a significant portion of it to talking about her boyfriends. 🙄

so here are the cringeworthy excerpts where she’s talking about her latest victim boyfriend.

“Football is awesome, it turns out. I’ve been missing out my whole life.”

I love how she single handedly debunked the claim that swifties have been making, that taylor ALWAYS loved football and was a huge eagle fan (just bc she had an eagles shirt). now it’s basically confirmed that this football shit is just taylor’s newest PERSONALITY that she’s gonna wear for a few months, until she gets bored of it, and then she’ll throw travis under the bus and she’ll start siccing her fans against him.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell.”

god, someone bring me a BARF BUCKET please. 🪣 🤮 and since when is it “adorable” for a guy to PUT YOU ON BLAST because you wouldn’t go out with him or take his number?? that’s… very weird. i’m sure she wouldn’t find it “adorable” if she wasn’t interested in the guy. but anyway, i’m pretty sure she just saw an opportunity here and she took it. she can’t handle being single for more than a month, she needed a new man to make people forget about her matty healy era. and she’s LOVING the good press she’s getting for being “America’s royal couple” as her fans are calling them. but does she actually LOVE HIM? that, I remain yet to be convinced about.

and I love this part. “We would never be psychotic enough to hard-launch a first date.”

yeah, taylor’s not CRAZY you guys, it’s not like she said “I love you” to matty healy on stage back in may before breaking up with him 2 weeks later. nah. it’s not like she immediately bought a house next to her teenage boyfriend connor kennedy who was STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL when she started dating him. nah. that would be CRAZY. PSYCHOTIC even!!

and here comes the part where she starts passive aggressively smearing joe and we all know she’s on a smear campaign against joe now but it’s kind of pathetic that even while winning PERSON OF THE YEAR she has to make it about that.

so taylor obviously has a lot to say about her new relationship, and how proud they are of each other. but you know what I DON’T hear her saying? “I’m in love” or “I’m happy with him.”

and personally, i think that speaks volumes. if she was truly HAPPY with her new man she wouldn’t be doing all this shit. if you were around when taylor broke up with calvin and then immediately started hard-launching hiddleswift, taking pap photo after pap photo and being extremely “happy” she was and meeting his mom and all that shit…. and if you don’t see the parallels between what she’s doing NOW with travis, you’re either a blind fan or just flat out stupid.

because at least when she started dating joe she actually left her exes alone (at least for a little while), she was like “I forget their names now.” and you can tell she was happy without having to make a big show of it- “nobody’s heard from me for months, I’m doing better than I ever was.”

but now she’s acting like it’s the worst thing ever that she was “locking herself in her house for a lot of years,” and she KNOWS that her fans are going to take that and blame joe for it.

JUST LOOK at the quotes and replies of this tweet and this tweet to see how those insane fucking swifties are acting over this. EVERYTHING she does now is an incitement against joe and she knows it, it’s deliberate, it’s calculated.

and i guess she’s gotta bury him while she continues hanging out with a sexual abuse apologist so she can look like she has some kind of moral high ground.

also, the way she’s trying to erase the fact that 11 of the 15 songs on reputation were LOVE SONGS about joe, not “a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure.”

this woman is just narcissistic and straight up DELUSIONAL at this point. she’s so far up her own ass it’s nauseating. but i really hope that she keeps on talking. because the more she talks, the more people realise what a narcissistic clown she is. 🤡

[taylortruther]

Who do we think The Black Dog is about? It could be Joe but that would go against the popular theory that both major Joe songs on TTPD are the track 5s on the main album and anthology.

Also the "you said I needed a brave man, then proceeded to play him until I believed it too" is VERY "the coward claimed he was a lion" and "you didn't measure up to any measure of a man" coded.

Also she seems to go easier on Joe in songs...so the whole bitter and scathing "I hope it's shitty in the black dog" sticks out like a sore thumb. But if it's Matty then why does the song reference a long term relationship with password sharing and old habits (if Taylor and Matty were mostly on and off).

What about the "six weeks of breathing clean air, I still miss the smoke" parallel with Daylight? TBD is my favorite off of TTPD but I can't for the life of me interpret who it's about.

idk! i go back and forth and generally land on the idea that, like other songs, joe being the cause and matty being the effect, mean they're both swirled together. i had a big brain thought about this that i'll explain what i mean at the end of this post. but first, here are my thoughts:

agree that the bitter scathing songs feel very matty-coded - but the thing is, she's clearly angry about joe, it's just more in the background. she's said in other songs that she was angry about joe wasting her youth, claiming he loved her but not showing it. it stands to reason she'd be in disbelief, and hurt, that he just... moved on, post break-up.

long-term relationship habits: tbh, i don't think location-sharing and showering together are a smoking gun for a ltr. you can easily do those things with someone you're down bad for, no matter how little time has passed. could go either way.

the starting line is, apparently, a matty thing?

i don't think "i still miss the smoke" is necessarily a daylight parallel. it could be! it bring to mind lavender haze, missing the "haze" that clouded your judgment, but it also harkens back to clean, and not wanting to fall into a harmful addiction again, which then leads me to, "one slip and falling back into the hedge maze" where you're lost and out of control. the hedge maze could be matty, but it could also be a habit of, idk, love ending.

the line that pops out to me at each listen is "all of those best laid plans" though - it reminds me so much of "my best laid plan, your sleight of hand" in hoax, and "i'm begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans" in willow.

and "do you hate me?" feels like something you might wonder about an ex you left. but "was it hazing for a cruel fraternity" feels like the smallest man, was it a joke? a game? were you a spy? was it hazing?

but then you think about the meaning of the rest of the line: "was it hazing for a cruel fraternity? i pledged and i still mean it, old habits die screaming."

she pledged herself to the relationship, and maybe it was a sick joke. but imo this is also a broader statement: if love is a joke, i still pledged, i still believe(d) in it. if all these men played a trick on me, if i am cursed to be alone forever, i want to change the prophecy. which, again, leads me to the explanation that - if the top story is about matty, it's still about all those experiences, primarily joe, that brought her to that choice.

[9w1ft]

You know, one thing I'm insanely curious about is who came up with the whole "Matty/Tatty mirroring Karlie/Kaylor" idea, like did Taylor one day have an epiphany where she was like "Holy shit, Matty is actually the closest thing to a perfect stand-in for you, Kar!" and was Karlie like "What do you mean that the man who eats enough raw meat on stage to give himself plenty of brain-worms is the closest thing to a perfect stand-in for me?!" or what? Like I really, really, really want to know how that whole thing went down lol 🙈

i think it’s also a bit of a sliding doors situation because one could make the argument that taylor may have had plans to beard with matty in 2015 but that it got derailed because kissgate happened during the very process of teeing that up, so like in a way there were probably parallels found and taken into consideration already, back in the day

as for adding him in in 2023, i think the biggest draw would have been being able to write songs about someone from taylor’s past, and have that match up with a lot of kaylor not covered by the parallels afforded by joe. and because matty intersects literally with a lot of kaylor lore, it just opened up a ton of interesting possibilities i bet in terms of referencing locale and themes and such. so i think it’s more the situations that are the parallels and less of the content of character.

but yeah 😆 i wonder if, once he started really acting out and people started pulling up stuff from the past and such, if it didn’t turn into a bit of a lemonade from lemons situation. how the shunning or cancellation could work as a new parallel as well. like maybe it was by design for him to get cancelled from the start but i don’t like to think so or assume so.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Ooh would love to hear your thoughts on Down Bad after hearing it live!

ok so I first want to caveat that I don't think this was necessarily the intention of the song. (But maybe wasn't not the intention lmao.) And it's not just like, the live of it all, I don't know. But I think seeing the performance of it in the middle of the set -- even though the set is clearly mainly about one story -- taken with the rest of it made me consider it in other ways.

(I know that made no sense 😂)

What I'm trying to say is: yes, I accept that it's mostly about the, er, microwave relationship. I 100% understand that intellectually and textually.

But listening to it in the show, absorbing it that way, it also made me realize how many parallels there are to the oven relationship, too. It's such a similar situation, just over a longer period of time.

Meeting Joe and following him into his world in London did pull her out of the life she'd been leading back in the US, and London became a respite from everything she'd been experiencing in NY/LA. (Like another planet, just for the two of them.) And through the life they built together she saw a whole new future for herself with plans on the horizon (the world was bigger than her/them), and seemed to have every indication that it was real, until the rug was pulled out from under her in some way (e.g. hoax, YLM, SLL). So the "fuck it if I can't have us" is also relevant, because that was the life they had been crafting at one point, and she's mad that it's gone up in smoke.

And even the "down bad crying at the gym" part kind of gave me a sad chuckle because it seemed like the death throes of the relationship were happening just as she was ramping up training for Eras.

So I guess my point is that while I objectively know that the song is about Matty and the love bombing and ghosting, it's another "all breakups are the same" situation because she did create this whole other world in her head for herself and Joe where she deluded herself into thinking they could work, only for him to figuratively leave her until she actually left him. Which is just the longer, and arguably more painful, way of how she deluded herself into believing Matty was the right escape hatch to the life she wanted.

Or, it may be a case where the song is more swirly than it's given credit for. And/or that the microwave happened because it was a copycat of the life she'd shared with the oven. (lol this is getting weird)

Idk, Down Bad just made me surprisingly reflective/emotional on the first night and I'm not sure why, except that like most songs on TTPD it's just SO sad if you think about it with any kind of depth.

[anatrik]

First thoughts TTPD:

What a lana x folklore girlie win this issss!

1.Fortnight is about matty?? HAHAHAHA also why did this make me think of when holt was going running with the ladies when he was in witness protection??? Crying. Fav line has to be they were supposed to take me away but they forgot to come and get me. So sad but also so cool in relation to her cancellation/return. 10/10

2. TTPD- not so hahahaha anymore IS THIS ACTUALLY A FUCKING MATTY HEALY ALBUM??? There was a typewriter at the 1975 show she performed anti-hero at? Unless its somehow about harry? Who else is tattooed on her roster??? Or is this about herself? Kinda feel like modern idiots/who’s going to decode is directed at us lol😂 9/10?

3.My boy only breaks his favourite toys- went in expecting mad woman rage. Pleasantly surprised. king of my heart to queen of sandcastles he destroys….DESTROYED ME. Are you fucking kidding me rn? Im caling it. Best song. Im crying at 7.30 am this is not funny anymore. Also THANK YOU FOR NOT SLANDERING DAD. I knew you wouldnt let us down like that. Also the chorus sounds like long story short😭 oh this is so sad. Once i fix me hes going to miss me? He was my best friend?😭 he runs because he loves me? Stopp😭😭 1000000/10

4.Down bad- ….aaaand we’re back to MATTY AGAIN? He does not deserve this spotlight but why are all the song so goood😭😭😭 is this why artists love to date problematic men? It unlocks some extraordinary potential? Crazy crazy girl😭 also stay down (bad) 🤌🏾 shes done it again 10/10 also for personal reasons i will be believing this is about joe in that Tom/Joe/met gala overlap period when she was photographed going to the gym a lot and that this is about all that yearning please let it be about that plesplesplesplesplesples also down bad waking up in blood staring at the sky…like i lost a twin is giving bigger than the whole sky🥺

5. So long, london- so so long long, lon-don DONE? ok miss girl😭 the hoax parallels😭 dont be undoing the song i was going to play at my weddddding what is wrong with you😭 my only one my smoking gun to two graves one gun youll find someone??? Also reminds me of la la land :/ how much sad did you think I had in me? You wrote hoax so a lot ok leave us alone. crying again. 10000000000000000/10 oh lol its a track 5 ofc it is😂

6. But daddy I love him- she really said if you ever liked, shared or even LOOKED at the ‘vivaa las vegas’ memes you cant come to the wedding and shes so real for it. Lfgggg. Ubothered unhinged uhmazing. Growing up precocious sometimes means you still hold on to that princess/quarterback wattpad fantasy AS IS YOUR RIGHT QUEEN GO THE FUCK OFF🥳 100000/10 calling out toxic fandom for the first time and we love to see it🫡 this is suchhhh a happy songggg you deserve ALL the chaos and revelry.

7. Fresh out the slammer- god she gets it. Like sure he was great and he is still my biological father and everything but as a decidedly melancholy person myself who has constantly had atleast one close friend in a deep depression I can see how all that heavy lifting can just get heavy at some point especially when youre a partner and their sole lighthouse in wtv storms be out there buffeting their mental health. Its not for everyone and thats so fair and so valid but so sad as well. 10/10 for the honesty.

8. Florida- she really said girlrot summer🫡 this is the lanaest song ever. So lucky one/nothing new coded. This will be the First song I repeat and then so long london. Aaaghhh how i love a self aware melancholic anxious little superstar. 90283749292/10 thank you for giving florence an entire verse whew. Little did you know your home’s really only a town you’re just a guest in is soooo going on my body forever

9. Guilty as sin?- honestly just fuck if it means we dont have to hear about how desirable ratty healy is man ffs. IThe only reason he looks so hot is bc hes forbidden. You have to trust me on this. He’s sooo mid JESUS. U cant be writing hozier lyrics about a man that hasn’t met a shower😭 1000000/10 writing. -16392992/10 content. Unrequited love/lust truly is the greatest weapon in a poets arsenal bc where is this energy in the joe songs binch?😭 this is such a teen in love with a 26 yo creep who called me so mature for my age mom you just dont get ittt anthem😂😂

10. Who’s afraid of little old me?- is a warning 😂 im so here for it. Like yes I still hate matty with all my heart and soul but yes I agree fans should not be allowed so much of an opinion on another persons life and yes I should be afraid (I am). She said aight love letter era over I AM WRITING YOU ALL HATE MAIL AND I’M HAND DELIVERING IT. Shes sooo done pretending to be the relatable girl next door when she’s anything but and is now reminding us of it and yes yes yessss girl OWN ITTTTTTTT. I’ve been saying for agesssss that there is a darkness under all that sunshine from where she clawed her way to the top and this is sooo vindicating. 10000000000000/10 favourite song ever. Mad woman wishes she was who’s afraid of little old me. I am unwell. I am in love. This is the Taylor Swift i stan. The marketing genius the calculating business woman the puppet master with narcotics in her songs thats why we sing along🫡 she so can handle a dangerous man

11. I can fix him (no really I can)- you cant.

12. loml- ofc. OFC. Its the saddest song of all time. OFC. Fuck offf ughhhh. 😭😭😭😭😭 its giving happiness. Its giving divorce. i am a child of a broken home now and my parents still love each other and hold so much regret still. What do i do with thissss? Im just a little girl taylorrr! 1002380292011010101/10 soo so gooood.

13. I can do it with a broken heart- first of all track 13. Love it. Second of all the upbeat barbieness of it all. Third of all I FINALLY PLACED IT. Shes in her unrelatable era. She is not your girl next door. You will never understand her life. She is as much a phenomenon as a person and we literally only see as much as she allows us to and honestly if i have to get put in my place theres noooo better way to have it done. Im having such a great time actually. 10 BILLION TRILLION OUT OF 10 you tellll em girl you FUCKING TELL EM.

14. Smallest man who ever lived- not going to speculate on who it is bc they clearly had a serious problem and its not a joke but damn :/ thats so sad :/ hope they get help? Didnt expect this to be what the song was about at all?

15. The alchemy- she said TRAVIS IS MY BOY WITH HER WHOLE CHEST😌 10/10

16. Clara bow- did she just name drop herself ? I was so right about unrelatable era. Also the Subtle nod to olivia/sabrina noted and appreciated. Lucky one/castles crumbling (mature version) fr fr. Solid legacy song.

17. The black dog- shared your secrets with and location is the same whiplash as a red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground with no one around to tweet it🤌🏾 joe songs hit so so different 😭😭😭 1000000000/10

18. imgonnagetyouback- the valiant roar was not so valiant and more of a mew i guess. 7/10

19. The albatross- oh this is the ONE. The album defining song for sureeee. Mad woman on coke. A rose by any other name is a scandal???? Thats my religion right there. Little last great American dynasty twist there at the end! Fuck yea. She does reallly try to warn the men in her life have to give her that. One gazillion/10

20. Clearly god has favourites and they are the ppl called chloe or sam or sophia or marcus😭 ALSO this song is about joe for sure. The internet starlet hasss to be delaney rowe!!!! It HAS TO BE. 10/10

21. How did it end?- shes back for the fans😂 plot twist the breakup is with yall🤌🏾 but yesss say it louder! One gasp and then how did it end. So good. 100/10

22. So high school- lmao aristotle grand theft auto ONLYY taylor swift man😭😂 you know what you want and boy you got her🫡🫡 11/10

23. I hate it here- mother’s having a mental breakdown kids yk the drill🤌🏾 10/10

24. ThanK you aIMiee- what better way to say fuck you to a hater than to thank her for jumpstarting your legacy my god!!! She is insane for this. The capitalisation is a bit petty tho ngl. 8/10

25. I look in peoples windows- once again I thank you for the kindness and respect shown to joe. Never doubted you but thank you nevertheless. 10/10 short as nice to have a friend but it didnt need to be longer.

26. The prophecy- its so sad and humbling to see even a woman at where she is having to beg for love bc that literally is the nature of love. Something humiliating, to have to beg for 🤷‍♀️ cards playing out like fools in a fable cursed like eve got bitten. No one writes like her damn. 10/10

27. Cassandra- very madeline miller on this one. Love love loveee modern takes on tragic greek women. 100/10

28. Peter- ah fuck. This one is going to hurt (it did). 1000000/10 my ribs get the feeling she did😭 all her joe related aches are so bone deeeep ugh. Promises oceans deep but never to keep😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 oh god it hurtsss it hurts it hurtss

29. The bolter- curious child ever reviled except by her father wow.

30. Robin- OMG! I needed this song growing up sooo bad. That way to go tiger felt so so warm like running into a kitchen after a day of being in the mud and u tell ur mum the silly things u did and shes genuinely interested and impressed by your smol victories. A bajillion/10

31. The manuscript- postmortem of every ex ever🤌🏾 love it.

[likeadevils]

What are your thoughts about Peter? At the beginning I thought it was a very Matty coded song, but on further reflection I think it got the mbobhft treatment, starting about one muse and then including also the other. I’m not saying that because I’m denial of it being Matty coded, I arrived to that conclusion because if she wanted to be more direct like she was in other songs throughout the album she would’ve done that, instead Peter has references that I believe could be applied to both Joe and Matty.

One last thing: I know that people use the argument of her telling him that she was waiting for him to comeback because he was only 25 when they met, but if we bring Chloe et al into the equation, a song that I consider very Matty coded, then the 2 songs would sorta tell a different and contradictory story imho (if tu want I can explain myself in a longer ask about this topic)

so i think peter is pretty simple— the first verse is about matty, the second is about joe

as for the 25 detail, they were both 25 when she met them! which is just crazy. i also don’t think the bridge is saying she wanted him back, i think it’s more expressing a desire for him to be okay. “i hoped you’d return with your feet on the ground, tell me all that you’d learned, cause loves never lost when perspective is earned” speaks to me more as her wanting/wanted him to be safe and healthy, and not be consumed by their various struggles. i also don’t think it’s out of the question for matty, in response to her breaking up with him, to respond by saying something along the lines of ‘im going to clean up and win you back’, or when they reconnected for him to have promised her that he had cleaned himself up and was going to win her back, only to love bomb her and sink in stoned oblivion once again

but anyways onto a dissection of verse one and verse two being about two separate scenarios

verse one:

my lost fearless leader

“the coward claimed he was a lion”— loml

“you said i need a brave man, then proceeded to play him until i believed it too”— the black dog

and just as a funny aside, mattys favorite song of hers is hey stephen, a song on fearless

preserved from when we were just kids

“he was my best friend down at the sandlot”— my boy only breaks his favorite toys

“at the park where we used to sit on children’s swings”— fresh out the slammer

“we embroidered the memories of when i was away, stitching ‘we were just kids’”— loml

is it something i did?

there is way to many lyrics questioning of why matty left her on ttpd than i can reference here, but the biggies are on the smallest man and the black dog

i didn’t wanna come down

it’s a textual parallel to pretty much the entirety of down bad

also saying that she didn’t want the relationship to end

i thought it was just goodbye for now

i think this is a pretty direct reference to him ghosting her

verse two:

are you still a mind reader, a natural scene stealer?

“you should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong”— gorgeous

“and i’m highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you”— lover

“i was playing around with the idea of quiet confidence. there’s something so sick about […] somebody who, they’re not arrogant, they’re not cocky […] but there are certain people who just walk in and they don’t need to be arrogant because there’s something beaming from within them. and when you meet a person like this, you’re like, ‘why do i want to walk over there and talk to this person?’”— taylor talking about i think he knows for iheartradio

joe is an actor harhar

when crossing your jet stream

“my baby’s fly like a jet stream”— call it what you want

we both did the best we could do underneath the same moon, in different galaxies

“nights are so starry, blood moon lit”— glitch

“we learned the right steps to different dances”— how did it end

“resentment rotting away/ galaxies we created/ stars places and glued/ meticulously by hand/ next to the ceiling fan/ tried wishing on comets./ tried dimming the shine./ tried to orbit his planet./ some stars never align.”— ttpd epilogue, 'in conclusion'

i didn’t want to hang around

“i didn’t opt in to be your odd man out”— so long london

“my white knuckle dying grip holding tight to your quiet resentment”— so long london

“every breath feels like rarest air when you’re not sure if he wants to be there”— so long london

implies she was willing to leave

we said it was just goodbye for now

there is somewhat of a timeline anomaly in articles about joever— some point to a breakup in february, and some in late march. there are more articles that mention them having gone on breaks before, and how their friends were expecting them to get back together before the big breakup was announced. looking at the articles (with a grain of salt because idk the accuracy of any one article), i think taylor and joe went on a break in february, and then taylor made it permanent in late march, and this line would be consistent with that

[midnightsslut]

I feel like eras also did something to her brain with processing emotions, which writing arranging and performing have always been part of! And like watching her life story play out every night, specifically watching the depths of your imagination and witchcraft as a showman burst into life on the world’s biggest stage. I keep thinking about the tolerate it visuals of the world freezing over and turning gray and how she rehearsed and excersized the demons of past relationships to that visual, only to be left with the same feeling and visual for her current partner. It’s kind of like eras tour was Pandora’s box but like in a good way that was very weird and confusing and bad for a while

i think the re-recordings fit your description of tolerate it as well: a Pandora’s box of old wounds that healed years ago but left some scars. I don’t think tolerate it started out as a song about joe. it just doesn’t fit him. for one, he’s not older than her lol. she did end up feeling that way, though, which is why there are so many parallels between the calvin/joe story and the joe/matty story (the debate around bejeweled is a great example of this). I keep thinking about this one anecdote from the reputation secret sessions where taylor said that she thought she had experienced love before, but she now knew that it was all child’s play compared to this (paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look it up rn but I will if any of you don’t know about this). she genuinely believed that to be the case for years! she thought she had healed and stepped into the daylight and let it go and whatnot. that’s why I was reluctant to assign songs from folklore and midnights to other muses at first. feelings aren’t that simple, though, and new relationships can awaken parts of yourself that you buried a long time ago, especially when those parts were hidden away when you were still so raw and malleable. eras is all about embracing all of that. like her POTY interviewer said, it’s radical self acceptance.

[pevensiechase]

Hi Lexi!!

*finger gun 👉* *attempt at a threatening voice*: this is a robbery, hand over your thoughts about TTPD. (pls 🥺)

I wanna know what you thought of it, what was your favourite song? Most hated song? Theories about lore? Blorbo connections? General impressions?

Oh gosh, I have THOUGHTS

Favorite song: I Can Do It With A Broken Heart and Peter

;alskdfja;lskjf;las;k

ICDIWABH is just so...I love it. Such a mood. Also very sad. My favorite part is "I cry a lot, but I am so productive. It's an art." Also, I LOVE how they have the counting from her in-ears to symbolize The Eras Tour.

AND PETER. It's so bittersweet. And also makes me think of Jason Todd. It gave me a fic idea, and it's been on brainrot rotate for a few days.

Most hated song:

I really don't like doing this, but probably Guilty as Sin? Idk, the biblical references/heresy and innuendos just kinda make me uncomfortable.

Theories about lore:

Idk if this is lore but in How Did It End? Okay, so this one is people asking how it ended (assuming her relationship with Joe), but I also hear it as she's asking herself and Joe how? Like, how could it end? How could it have ended? They were going so well, how could it have ended? Because she thought he was her forever.

And I can't stop thinking about how much she wanted to get married. Like, were they engaged? Did he break it off?

Also, idc what people say, I can't believe that Down Bad is about Matty Healy. He doesn't deserve a heartbroken love song like that to be about him.

Blorbo connections:

I've already connected Peter to Jason in my head. Cassandra as Cass Cain, and Robin as all the Robins. I saw a post saying "don't listen to Robin and imagine Dick singing it to Jason" so that made me sad.

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? reminds me of Dick because there are a lot of mirrorball parallels.

General Impressions:

Don't @ me, I'm gonna tear it apart a little bit.

I'm so sick of Jack Antonoff's synth.

A lot of Midnights, 1989 Vault, and TTPD sound THE SAME. And I know, I know, Taylor knows what she is doing, and she trusts Jack, but I'm tired of that freakin' synth. Jack is good, but can bro change it up a bit?

I listened to it all the way through with my friends, so I didn't really have a lot of time to unpack everything *insert John Mulaney "now we don't have time to unpack all that" meme*

But, a lot of them just...didn't make an impression on me. I thought I was gonna like Florida!!! because I like Florence + the Machine, but it just...idk, Flo's voice didn't feel right to me.

I have no memory of the first three songs.

THE BABY LINE IN But Daddy I Love Him. Oh my gosh, that took me out.

I like the Anthology better than the original release.

Overall, the witchy/biblical references kinda weirded me out a bit.

I honestly feel bad for her. She's going through it. The songs are kind of all over the place, and I feel like that kinda represents her mental state. It's a bit unsettling though.

Idk, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, but there are a few songs that stood out.

[rainbowdaisy13]

One of my mutuals in another social just came to the "realization" that some songs from rep could never be about Joe and is also making parallels with songs from folkmore, that gaylors made years ago obviously, and coming to the conclusion that these songs were about Matty the whole time, Taylor knew exactly what she was doing, and it's funny to see how swifties are so easy to fool.

We are all easy to fool!! We have all been convinced that she has been secretly writing songs about ______for the better part of a fucking decade

[bisluthq]

Taylor is like... weird when it comes to ending relationships. Per The Bolter she has the habit of running head first Fearless from her relationships (whether that be solo or not) even back to the Drew of it all (Mr. Midnight Rain himself).

She had dreams she had to pursue. He had a simple life he wanted to live and was perfectly suited for. They broke up because they were heading in different directions (literally. Man was fully moving away for college) but she seems to feel as if like, she was at fault because she wanted to pursue a career in music and had she not they would've "worked out" (just ignore that had she not wanted to be a musician she wouldn't have moved to Hendersonville, and they wouldn't have met😭).

Then you've got the Taylor situation where she not only ditches him for being nice but (mainly), for someone else entirely. Then Matty 1.0 who she... ditched. Then Calvin who she ditched both for someone else and because he was "holding her back" ala Drew. Then Tom who she again ditched, specifically for someone else (also cause he's weird). Then Joe who she... ditched both for someone else and because the trajetory and pace of their relationship was no longer meeting her personal goals (and because he wasn't equipped to handle the New Heights of her career's trajectory). Which then leads to Matty who... ditched her, which I think highlights another key pattern in her discography - her deepest heartbreaks come from two scenarios: when she HAD to bolt, and when the other person beat her to it (or worse, both!)

Sam Sam Sam cheated, leaving her no choice but to bolt. In turn he got like 90% of the Fearless breakup songs. Joe J just dipped, leading her to drag his name through the mud. John seemingly just like... got bored and stop calling (effectively bolting), which evidently gave her the clarity to realise she needed to bolt (not pick up his calls when they eventually started coming back through).

Jake was so flippy-floppy that despite him being the one to "bolt" initially, she was the one who had to tell him to keep running and also run herself (interesting parallel between "running scared" and "the bravest thing I ever did was run"). Harry was back and forth, but it seems like HE was the one to "end things" (though like Jake he did come crawling back). And with Matty, she has the guilt of leaving him the first time, and then the betrayal of him leaving HER the second time, after she fucked up her life for him😭😭

This got VERY ranty. My apologies for that. Anyway, in conclusion, girl is MESSY, and it makes her simultaneously endearing and frustrating.

THE GIRL IS SO MESSY AND THIS IS VERY ON POINT THO. You know your lore lol. You do know your lore.

[hollowingearth]

I know it sours the song a bit for y'all because the fandom still hates his ass but The Alchemy is definetly supposed to be just as ambiguous about Travis/Matty as some other songs are about Matty/Joe

In bdilh she's singing "thinking it can change the beat/ of my heart when he touches me/ and counteract the chemistry/ and undo the destiny" which parallels "this happens once every few lifetimes/ these chemicals hit me like white wine"

There's also many references that don't seem to properly fit Travis too. At the start of the song Taylor is singing about being back and waking up from a hospital/long sleep, which could easily be read as her period of 'public inactivity' and the start of the tour. Sure, one could maybe argue that refers to romantic life too, but from all we know when she met Travis things were everything if not completely chaotic for her.

Furthermore, she sings "'cause the sign on your heart said it's still reserved for me" which clearly implies someone she had a previous relationship with some time before 'coming back'. The same with the heroin joke, it's heroin but THIS TIME with an e, so the person making the joke seems to have at least a previous experience with heroin.

And then again, the picture she's creating at the end of the song (of floors sticky with beer, someone being lift up shirtless) is at first glance of a football match but are all descriptors easily applied to festivals and concerts.

Ok, my point in all of this is to say that the more I listen to this album the muddier the muses become and I feel that's exactly the thesis of the whole album.

[cynthia39100]

Humans (TV) S2

Finally watched the second season.

I was quite into it in the first half, but then it just... cooled off. I think there were too many storylines paralleling and the scenes were too fractured, so the emotion couldn't build up properly. Also, some themes and character development seemed repetitive. In the end, not much problem was solved, which was disappointing.

Throughout the season I kept yelling at Leo " Don't do that!!" It's really frustrating. He wasn't out of character I guess, but I just felt so sad seeing him go astray. And the plotline of him and Hester saving other synths annoyed me a lot. He shouldn't have left Max. Max was still the sweetest character.

I Love Mattie's intelligence and proactive actions. Also happy to see Leo and her had more time working together. I hope the storyline of her and Odie wasn't so rushed though. It felt like she picked a stray dog and then just left him alone. Not what I want to see. I really like the scene where she found Odie's "suicide" note, but it should be longer and more nuanced. It could be more heartbreaking.

Karen and Peter's story became my favourite in this season. They were really lovely together, and there was a lot of communication between human and synth going on. A lot for the audience to think about.

I was quite surprised that I enjoyed Niska's storyline. I didn't like her very much in season one, but she kept learning and experiencing the world and was willing to try different things.

Tobby, Raine and Joe, Sophie showed an interesting perspective. I didn't see it coming when Raine showed her true self. Tobby started to grow on me. I could relate to Joe a lot in this season as well. Sophie's change was seriously unnerving. Sadly nothing came out of this storyline at the end.

Laura was awesome in this season, being a supportive adult for the conscious synths. Mia in turn was confusing. Her motive kept flipping and it's frustrating. (kind of hope Mattie let her die in the end instead of causing worldwide chaos... sorry)

Athena and Milo's relationship was actually interesting. I enjoyed the conflict of their respective goal and sense of value. But then Milo disappeared for quite a while...

All in all, I still like the characters a lot, as well as the cast (everyone's pronunciation, and the way they delivered the lines just hit my sweet spot and I love all of them!!) , but the story interests me less and less in this season.

S1