What if the love story in folklore is either Taylor spending time with Matty in a Joe intermission, or Joe doing something similar.
It adds meaning to the “he wasn’t a fool” convo from long pond between Jack and Taylor. If Jack is saying Taylor wasn’t a fool to spend time with him at a point when things were over. It also links with Taylor’s songs with MH being about being children.
Though there might also be something to Betty’s “show up at my party”, and “crashed my party in your rental car”.
Teenage love triangle needs revisiting!
so taylor says "my husband is cheating" and "We learned thе right steps to different dancеs, And fell victim to interlopers' glances" on the album about joe so I definitely think our long-running suspicion that joe cheated on taylor is confirmed but I think taylor also owns up to her OWN missteps and I think the folklore love triangle is a comment on all of that, not JUST taylor's affair with matty.
i don't think you can just one for one fill in the characters of the love triangle with three concrete people (like for example I've seen people say betty is taylor, halsey is august, james is matty or something like that)
i think they're all vibey songs- cardigan is taylor's perspective of what it's like to have someone from your past come back to you and make you feel better. i do think this song, in general, according to taylor, is about matty showing back up while joe was letting her down if we're going to believe what she said on eras tour (this is about you, you know who you are, I love you).
but i do think betty is taylor and joe talking to each other, both apologizing for cheating.
and i think august is ALSO taylor's perspective perhaps talking about how she felt about being the other woman to matty's partner (fka twigs?) but also I think she may have been trying to take into consideration the feelings of whoever joe cheated on her with.
remember, taylor's team confirmed that taylor and joe were on and off for a long time and had broken up before the big confirmed break up in April of 2023 and I've of course had tea confirming they broke up many times as well. i think one of these iterations was over quarantine (I have heard they got couples counseling in 2020). hence them writing songs like betty, exile, ch probs, and coney island together! and of course, taylor writing songs like illicit affairs and ivy along with the love triangle songs (and also tolerate it and happiness IMO were just about struggles with joe).
i think one of these breakups had to do with matty and also perhaps infidelity on joe's part but they worked it out and wrote songs together to cope and taylor wrote a bunch of songs about infidelity to process and understand it all.
the way the house in ivy burns down at the end and then taylor lights the lover house on fire and burns it down on eras tour to me is just chef's kiss. and it just ALL comes together on ttpd don't get me started on matty's matches in loml ("your arson's match your somber eyes") and all the other connections to folkmore/the love triangle.
i think most of folkmore is about these affairs and the failures of taylor and joe's relationship (while still trying to come back together and heal it with songs like evermore and willow and long story short). you can't really blame her for hiding it all in a fictional setting given how the public would have commented on the drama esp if she and joe were trying to work it out!
i comment a lot on all of this in my Learning the Lore of TTPD series part I is here on spotify and here on apple podcasts!
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for some strange reason I feel the need to apologize for Taylor's decision to mash these two up, as if I had any say in her doing this, so to all the Ivy and WCS stans I give you my condolences
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