shegavemeroses

[shegavemeroses]

✒ TTPD ✒ TS ✒

#the tortured poets department album

[shegavemeroses]

Cuddly Chubby Maria

[shegavemeroses]

hi all!! i’m an lgbt bracelet maker specializing in lgbt flag designs! on top of over 40 flag designs, i have solid color, tie-dye, taylor swift “eras” bracelets, and many more. all bracelets are $5+ shipping! i’m currently unemployed unexpectedly so any bit helps!

etsy here

[shegavemeroses]

#the tortured poets department album

[shegavemeroses]

favourite 2024 albums → THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY by Taylor Swift

"An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it."

#ellaaaaaaaaaaa ilove these edits so much #i love when an artist we both like drops a new album #bc i know i'll get to see one of these masterpieces #the tortured poets department album

[shegavemeroses]

I can’t take credit for this thought because J suggested it while we were watching Chats & Reacts but I interpreted “your Jehovah’s Witness suit” as just like, you look stupid. BUT the way he showed up on her doorstep unsolicited and sold her a fairytale and she traded her belief system for it !!!!!!!

#the smallest man who ever lived

[shegavemeroses]

religion is one of the most prominent recurring themes on the album, and it has been present in some capacity for quite a few records now. taylor previously compared love to religion: her saving grace, her belief system, and a fated divine intervention (false god, cornelia street, and cruel summer are the best examples of this). ‘sacred new beginnings that became my religion’ and ‘we’d still worship this love even if it’s a false god’ are two of the defining statements about her philosophy on the lover album.

taylor doesn’t want to leave all of that behind on ttpd, at least not at the beginning. the first supernatural force she mentions is the spaceship on down bad, which she compares to a skylight of freedom in the epilogue. *something* has finally come to save her from her life of suffering. she doesn’t care if it’s a force of good at first; if anything, she’s just fine being taken away by aliens. she views this man as her destiny. it isn’t until guilty as sin? that taylor starts to ponder the moral implications of what she’s doing. is she guilty as sin for wanting to leave her previous religion and relationship behind? she comes to the conclusion that, even if she rolls the stone away and gets resurrected/redeemed, she cannot avoid the fallout. she is okay with the thought of having to wait, as long as both lovers vow to be together forever, just as she once did with someone else in false god. ‘I choose you and me religiously’ finishes the bridge of the song in a direct callback to cornelia street.

the next mention of religion has murkier imagery. she claims that she does not need the Lord’s help to save this man. she sees the halo that he has, and she can fix him herself. now that she feels free of her prior cage, she isn’t looking for divine intervention anymore. she wants control. she is their route to salvation.

when the relationship falls apart, she retreats back into the position of a believer rather than a divine figure. she compares him to a Holy Ghost who promised to save her and take her to heaven. instead, she is in hell in every sense of the word: she’s down bad and feels guilty for digging up the grave. he was a jehovah’s witness who promised that she could break free of the cage imposed by love without changing her religion altogether; she would’ve just had to switch denominations. she could still have a marriage and kids! she could still have a blue tortured poet! the man was different, but not the dreams they had together. the story of the first part of the album ends here. her faith has been broken, and she has only found any semblance of sanity by refusing to mention these belief systems altogether.

side b/the anthology blends the christian imagery of side a with goddesses, sorcerers, and prophecies. she bargains with these powers to let her have the future she wants (the prophecy). she doesn’t sound like someone believing in salvation. if anything, she feels cursed. she decides that the concept of divinely ordained timing will never work in certain relationships (‘the goddess of timing once found us beguiling / she said she was trying / peter, was she lying?’). this disdain extends onto her perception of other people’s faith (‘bet they never spared a prayer for my soul’). she does position herself as a prophet in cassandra, but even then, she admits that the role has hurt her. perhaps the pain in thank you aimee was meant to be, or perhaps she was just strong enough to build a legacy in spite of it, boulder by boulder. is she a martyr? does she want to be? or did she save herself?

the only real love song on this half of the album makes no mention of fate or any divine forces. it wasn’t meant to be. it’s not a supernatural invisible string or lightning in a bottle. she is just in love.

the album ends with the manuscript, which revisits an old story of a defining, formative heartbreak. as she sings ‘at last, she knew what the agony had been for’ while describing the legacy of her writing, she seems to revert to thinking about the purpose of trauma. the only exception is that, in this case, she is the one who found meaning in her pain by turning it into a manuscript. writing is her belief system now, and she proselytizes by telling her stories and thus giving up the manuscript.

ultimately, her belief in destiny has chewed her up and spat her out. she so desperately clung to her existing belief systems that she was fooled by a conman, which left her feeling cursed. religion is supposed to be with someone even in their darkest moments, but the album explains that taylor often felt abandoned. the only constant in her life was, well, herself. she’ll be okay, but her pen will be her saving grace.

#the tortured poets department album

[shegavemeroses]

As for “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” Swift revealed that she wrote the tune “alone, sitting at the piano in one of those moments when I felt bitter about just all the things we do to our artists as a society and as a culture.” “There’s a lot about this particular concept on ‘The Tortured Poets Department,'” she added. “What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.”

Taylor on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” (Variety)

#who's afraid of little old me

[shegavemeroses]

JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS  SEASON 1, EPISODE 1

#julie and the phantoms

[shegavemeroses]

“I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these architypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”

— Taylor on Clara Bow

#clara bow

[shegavemeroses]

CALL YOUR BOY LIBRARY BOOKS THE WAY IM CHECKING HIM OUT

[shegavemeroses]

my “The Tortured Poets Department”-inspired sketches…

Hope you like it. @taylorswift

🤍🪶

#clara bow

[shegavemeroses]

I don’t care about it at all (I have carried its weight around like a rock on my chest since the very day it happened)

[shegavemeroses]

is this the end of all the endings? … come one come all it’s happening again… hand on the throttle thought i caught lightning in a bottle oh but it’s gone again… how did it end? ……… he’s got my heartbeat skipping down sixteenth avenue… i can’t find a pulse my heart won’t start anymore for you… stopped CPR after all it’s no use….. clearing the air i breathed in the smoke… six weeks of breathing clean air i still miss the smoke……. i want to teach you how forever feels… you and me forevermore… he saw forever so he smashed it up…….. your integrity makes me seem small you paint dreamscapes on the wall… when your impressionist paintings of heaven turned out to be fakes well you took me to hell too………. but i’m a fire and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm if your cascade ocean wave blues come… don’t want no other shade of blue but you… you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days……… all’s well that ends well to end up with you… and i’ll still see it until i die you’re the loss of my life…………….

#the tortured poets department album

[shegavemeroses]

does anyone know how the cardigans are made?

#basically i know very little about fiber arts #unless we’re talking macrame lmao #like are they crocheted? #if so does the price point indicate they’re fairly made? #are they knitted? #can that be machine done?

[shegavemeroses]

WAIT @cardsharksplayingames was talking about the albatross and it made me look at the lyrics again and...it's. it's peace.

the songs talk about the trials of the relationship and the challenges they face and with peace the main fear is that she can never give him a peaceful life because of her fame but she'll die for him in secret, she'll sit with him in the trenches, she'll choose his family as hers. and with the albatross it's about how everyone's warning him about her and how he's in terrible danger and then everyone will turn on him, he will be in terrible danger (either because society turns on everyone or because of his association with her, it isn't clear) but she'll protect him because she's been here before. and it ends the same way as peace, "you're in terrible danger" "i could never give you peace" but she will give you so much more!!!!!! she will also protect you from the danger!!!!!!

#the albatross #peace

[shegavemeroses]

for me, it keeps coming back the now deleted scene in anti-hero where taylor first openly used art about something that directly impacted her mental health. and i get why it would be triggering and uncomfortable to see a thin woman portray herself as "fat" on a scale. i understand the "problematic" edge to it. and yet... i still hate y'all for thinkpiecing her into deleting the scene. it was art about something that directly impacted HER mental health and folks felt entitled to tell her how she could make art about something that impacts HER. that HER MENTAL HEALTH was distressing them, could she pretty please censor it so it would stop triggering them.

like fuck y'all. i hope she never feels the need to censor herself again to cater to you fuck ass bitches. some of you DO need to be told you're being overbearing and entitled, sorry! you don't get to censor art just because you don't like who's making it or feel the person who made it isn't allowed to use art the way they used it.

#anti hero mv #i feel like this is a large part of the reason #she's so open about mental illness on tortured poets #but doens't mention her ed