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katyagrayce · 3 days

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If I had the time, and the resources, I would write an entire PhD about how Taylor Swift’s relationship with her fans has been variably represented through her songs, and how that representation has in turn shaped that relationship. And I have neither of those two things, but I do have the next-best options – a free evening and a Tumblr account. So here we go. As far as I can remember, there are only six songs where Taylor directly addresses her fans: Long Live, mirrorball, Dear Reader, and now But Daddy I Love Him, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? and I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. I could be missing a few, because the woman does have a 20-year career. But even so, I think it’s telling that those are the six songs that come to mind: one huge feel-good ballad released when she first made it really big; then nothing for 10 years; then two quiet songs buried in their respective albums; and then, out of the blue, three loud, unforgettable bops released at the same time. From that alone, it’s pretty clear that Taylor has something that she wants to tell her fans – whether consciously or not, something about her relationship with them is increasingly weighing on her mind. And it doesn’t take much to figure out that said relationship is changing.

In Long Live, the fans are addressed mostly as a ‘we’ – a part of a collective that also includes Taylor, her band and her team, all of them with equal status and common goals. ‘Long live the mountains we moved / I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.’ Later, those dragons are further described, are established as factions of the general public whom the fans stand separate from, in opposition to – ‘The cynics were outraged / Saying “this is absurd”.’ Basically, Taylor’s fans are shown to be fighting for her like an army ‘on the history book page’, which is not an uncommon metaphor in pop culture. But this is where things get interesting. Because, although Taylor creates that image of the army, she doesn’t structure it in the traditional way. Her fans are not footsoldiers defending her throne – they too are ‘the kings and the queens’, the ‘heroes’, hearing their names read out and holding up trophies. And because of that – because they stand equal with Taylor – they don’t look up to her even in victory, and she doesn’t claim to be anything more than a member of their bedraggled mob. Even at their pinnacle, all that they are is ‘a band of thieves in ripped-up jeans [who] got to rule the world.’

There’s only one point in Long Live where this total equality fractures – where the ‘we’ splits into a ‘me’ and a ‘you.’ And it’s in the bridge, where, for just a moment, Taylor steps outside of the present – she imagines herself and her fans growing up in the future. ‘Promise me this / That you’ll stand by me forever / But if, God forbid, fate should step in / And force us into a goodbye / If you have children someday / When they point to the pictures / Please tell them my name.’ This is usually the part of the song where you see audiences crying, and it’s easy to tell why – because even when Taylor separates herself from the fans, even when she doesn’t explicitly share her title of ‘queen’ with them, she still portrays them as the ones with the power. She asks them to stand by her, then to remember her. Scratch that, she pleads for them to do it. She’s expressing that she needs her fans, deeply. They’re not looking to her for guidance – it’s the other way around.

Fast forward 12 years, to Dear Reader, and you wonder how the hell did we get here?

Dear Reader is the exact opposite of Long Live. The fans are never part of a ‘we’ – in fact, they don’t play an active role in the song at all. All that they are is an omnipresent but silent entity, the titular ‘readers’, who hover offscreen as Taylor sings verse after verse of advice, then spends the chorus telling them not to follow it. This is Taylor as the long-crowned queen in the history book – the ex-thief, the grown-up revolutionary, who realised at some point that no matter how equally you fought alongside your people, no matter how young and inexperienced you all were, at some point they will need a ruler and then they will all look to you. Inch by inch, you will find yourself climbing up onto the throne, and you will be alone up there. The words you speak will fall down on the subjects sitting by your feet, and their power will be absolute, even when you didn’t mean them that way – even when they don’t have any conscious meaning, are just ‘desperate prayers of a cursed man / spilling out to you for free.’ And in the end – just like before – all you can do to rebalance the power is plead. ‘Darling, darling, please / You wouldn’t take my word for it / If you knew who was talking.’

And of course, this plea is interesting in itself, because it’s also the exact opposite of the plea in Long Live. In Long Live, Taylor is asking her fans to immortalise her in the future, to pass on her memory – the underlying assumption is that they can do this because they were there with her, they know her. But here, Taylor says that her fans wouldn’t listen ‘if they knew who was talking’, which implies – well, they don’t know. They don’t know the person behind the words. Despite all the mountains they moved – all the magic they made. Despite all the games they played together, the secret sessions, the Easter eggs, the friendship bracelets. Despite the songs spilled out like confessions. Despite it, or because of it. They don’t know her. They don’t know Taylor Swift.

In Dear Reader, this concept is portrayed as tragic. There is a lot of sadness in that image of Taylor alone above the crowd, a perceived ‘guiding light’ that is actually so lonely and broken in the way it shines – which is a good segue back to an earlier song on our list, mirrorball. The metaphor there was very similar to in Dear Reader, but the plea Taylor made was more in tune with Long Live – she begged for her fans to keep standing by her, keep listening to her. ‘When they called off the circus, burnt the disco down / When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns / I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything / To keep you looking at me.’ Basically, in mirrorball, she begs her fans to stay with her despite the new gap growing between them; in Dear Reader, she begs them to either take a step back or take a step forward, but not to leave things as they are. And then, we get to the songs of The Tortured Poets Department. And Taylor isn’t begging anymore. If anything, she is screaming.

TTPD was marketed as Taylor’s saddest album, but to me, it’s more obviously her angriest. Rage is not a new concept in her songs, but it’s previously always been directed at very specific people – Kanye West in Look What You Made Me Do, the haters and bigots in You Need to Calm Down, Jake Gyllenhaal in We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and I Bet You Think About Me and All Too Well (10 Minute Version). Alternatively, it’s been couched in fiction, like how the story of Rebekah Harkness couches mad woman. But in TTPD, there is no couching – the very marketing leans into how personal each song is for Taylor – and nobody is safe. For the first time, Taylor’s fans are not represented as a separate entity protecting her against the rest of the world – they themselves are a part of that roiling mass who she needs protection from. That message becomes very pointed in the third line of But Daddy I Love Him, ‘I just learnt these people only raise you / To cage you.’ That line flags the entire song as directed not towards strangers, but towards the people who have surrounded Taylor since she was 16, who have shaped her career, who claim to care about her – the army of Long Live, the audience of mirrorball, the listeners of Dear Reader. Those people are the ‘Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls, sighing “what a mess.”’ And that makes sense when you remember that it was Taylor’s fans who were most critical of her relationship with Matty Healy, and even with Travis Kelce. But it doesn’t make the song any less uncomfortable to listen to. For the first time, the ‘you’ Taylor is yelling at is actually you, and maybe that’s why she’s so unguarded and vicious in her choice of words – ‘I’ll tell you something right now / I’d rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.’ It also brings a new dimension to the lyrics ‘Time, doesn’t it give some perspective? / And no, you’re not coming to the wedding’. Because of course, when things are going well in Taylor’s relationships, it’s her fans who want to share in that – her fans who want to hear updates from her, like her social media posts, listen out for wedding bells. And with those lyrics, Taylor’s taking that away from them. No, you don’t get to be there for the good parts. You haven’t earnt it. You didn’t respect me when I needed it. You don’t know me that well.

And that leads, of course, to the ultimate song about Taylor’s fans not knowing her – I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. Arguably, the song doesn’t quite belong on this list, because Taylor never directly addresses her fans either as a ‘you’ or as a ‘we’. But that’s telling in itself, because it’s a song where the fans play an active role in the narrative, and yet where they only appear as a foreign, menacing entity – the crowd that sees Taylor’s ‘broken pieces shattered’ and responds by ‘chanting “more.”’ There’s been a lot of debate online about whether this song will ever be performed live, and personally, I think that it’ll be just too uncomfortable an experience. Because this song is mirrorball without the plea in it. This song is so self-reflexive, its light burns your eyes. Every single syllable of this song is designed to say what you see is not who I am, and you don’t know me, and what you think is love is killing me. And how can a crowd cheer during a performance when that’s what their cheering means? I love you, you’re falling apart for me. I love you, it’s ruining your life.

Of course, the song was written about a very specific time in Taylor’s life, and I think that’s worth emphasising for every song on this list – they all capture a specific moment, immortalise a specific emotion like fixing a bug in amber, whereas in the real world, emotions come and go. The fact that Taylor felt like this about her fans at one stage doesn’t mean she always feels Iike this about them. The fact that she was hurt and furious doesn’t mean she can’t also be grateful and warm. But what angry songs do is disrupt the assumption that everything’s okay, form a crack in the glass, introduce doubt behind every smile. You only need to see through someone once to never take them at face value again. And when that experience is immortalised in a song, it’s even harder to forget it. What angry songs do is become self-fulfilling prophecies, echoing in the fans’ heads every time they see Taylor until, eventually, some distrust is inevitable. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – to be more aware of how the mirrorball turns, the illusion of light, the real person underneath. But it’s a change. It’s a change, and even by singing about it, Taylor is ironically making it happen.

Which brings us, finally, to possibly the angriest song Taylor’s ever written – the last song I’m going to be talking about, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? At first glance, this song isn’t necessarily directed at Taylor’s fans. It reuses a lot of imagery from my tears ricochet and mad woman, and it’s easy to write it off as also being about Big Machine Records or her detractors in the general public. But some of the lyrics in the bridge are very, very telling. The most obvious is ‘Put narcotics into all of my songs / And that’s why you’re still singing along.’ Then there are all the veiled references to obsessive people trying to get closer than they should be, closer than any stranger is allowed – ‘So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs,’ ‘I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn.’ Elsewhere in the song, we also see the circus imagery of mirrorball turned threatening – ‘I was tame, I was gentle till the circus life made me mean’ – and the opening lines of But Daddy I Love Him come back, ‘You caged me and then you called me crazy / I am what I am because you trained me.’ This song has all the evolving messages about Taylor’s fans rolled into one – you don’t know me, you don’t own me, you’re ruining my life, you have no right to criticise. And then, for the first time, she says it in black-and-white – ‘You hurt me.’ No metaphors. No frills. It’s only three words, but it says volumes – You hurt me. You were meant to be on my side. We were meant to be fighting together. But, somehow, we’ve been split apart. You broke the promise I asked of you when I was 19 years old. You turned on me. And it hurts.

TTPD is an incredibly, incredibly angry album. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? is an incredibly, incredibly angry song. But they are also both incredibly, incredibly sad. Taylor sings ‘You should be [afraid of me]’, when, 15 years earlier, she was singing ‘I’m not afraid / We will be remembered.’ And yes, a song is just a moment in time, but a series of songs – that’s a story. It’s a life. You can play through Taylor Swift’s discography, and you’ll hear the story of a 16-year-old girl whose trust was slowly destroyed. Sure, that might be the story of most 16-year-old girls. But most of them don’t go through it in the public eye. Most of them don’t have to balance being honest against perpetuating the cycle. And most of them listen to sad songs to get them through, instead of being the one putting those sad songs out into the world. ‘You don’t get to tell me about sad,’ Taylor sings, because of course she does. We don’t have to tell her about sad. For our generation, she is one of the people who defined what it means.

~~~

(Disclaimer: This essay is not intended to deal with the actual content of any criticism Taylor received from her fans, or the question of whether that criticism was justified. I’m leaving that discourse to other people. My aim was just to explore how Taylor’s writing about her fans has changed over time, and what that tells us about their relationship and her career as a whole).

#music #taylor swift #the tortured poets department #long live #mirrorball #dear reader #but daddy i love him #i can do it with a broken heart #who’s afraid of little old me?#fandom essay #original post #sorry for the long post #but i’m really really proud of it tbh

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bundrops-n-fluffytops · 1 year

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Welcome Home Ship Fic- Love Flutters High, So Don’t Fly Without Me

Characters: Eddie Dear, Frank Frankly

Setting: Butterfly Garden

Premise: Eddie surprises his boyfriend Frank with a trip to a butterfly garden. Little does he know that Eddie has more planned than just a visit.

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With all the time they had spent together, Frank Frankly had discovered that the resident mailman Eddie Dear - who just so happened to be his boyfriend of 3 years - was not great at surprises.

Granted, he himself was quick to notice a change in his behavior whenever he had something planned for him. Most of the time he would point it out, but other times he kept quiet just to see the mailman’s excitement in “surprising” him. While he was never good at keeping secrets, he sure was thoughtful about the surprise itself, and Frank cherished that thoughtfulness.

So it came no surprise to him that Eddie had saved up enough to go to a rather well-off butterfly garden out of town.

The garden itself was a large, open sanctuary that consisted of only the rarest, most visually-pleasing butterflies and insects that would grace the trees and plants and flowers around them. Colors such as crimson, turquoise, mauve, fawn, terracotta danced and fluttered around the garden, as the sun hit against the Earth gracing it with its radiance.

“I’m quite surprised you managed to save up so much just for this garden, Eddie,” the entomologist said, hiding his giddy excitement under a smug and sarcastic tone, “It’s quite the bargain to even make the drive.” Eddie chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Ahh, it’s nothin’, love,” the redhead replied, “Ah know how much you love these lil’ critters, it’s only fair to let ya see ‘em up close!” Frank smiled, leaning in and planting a chaste kiss on the redhead’s rosy cheek. It quickly dusted a dark shade of crimson, making the grey fellow giggle a bit.

“Well, let’s not dilly-daddle any longer, dear. This trip won’t be wasted a second more!” Frank gripped Eddie’s larger hand in his lanky grey grasp, leading him quickly to the nearest enclosure of butterflies he could find.

The day really consisted solely on Frank chattering and jabbering about the insects he saw, providing any information and facts about them when they both saw them, as Eddie stood listening intently and occasionally bumping in to question about something. The southerner knew how much this trip meant for his usually sour partner, and he loved seeing him so invested in something they both knew he loved.

This recounted quite the memories for the both of them.

The two had met the same day that Eddie first moved into the town of Welcome Home, with the redhead accidentally tripping over and falling atop the bookworm. At first, the grumpy fellow detested the constant and almost infectious positivity from the mailman, seeing it as more of a nuisance than something to look forward to. As the weeks went by, however, Frank began to feel comfort and content with seeing the rosy-cheeked redhead almost every day, and even looked forward to seeing him. Hell, even on days that he didn’t receive mail, he would make it a point in speaking with him at least once, even if it was a simple hello. It made him feel at peace.

Soon enough, they had become quite close, almost best friends if Julie wasn’t in the picture. Months went by and soon enough Frank had realized that he had developed quite the crush on Eddie Dear, to which he was mortified about at first. Of all the people he had met, why as he the one that caught his attention? It took a lot of self-affirmation and love counseling from Julie to affirm that he needed to confess his feelings to him before it became a problem.

And so, he did. Wouldn’t ya know it, Eddie had felt almost the exact same way towards him! That nauseous, fluttery feeling in his chest and stomach, the fear of knowing that this was a thing, et cetera. To say that the entomologist was shocked was an understatement, but to say he was happy about it was much more of an underwhelming assumption than he was shocked.

They started dating not long afterwards, their relationship as public as can be. Chatting turned into hand-holding, which turned into hugging, which turned into cuddling, which turned into kissing. It was no surprise to the rest of the town, of course, with everyone and their grandmas finding out about them as quick as a wink. They didn’t mind it, as long as it didn’t interfere with their personal lives, and had stayed quite happy since then.

They both cherished each and every moment together, with every sneaky little tease one would whisper in the other’s ear - sending them into a flustered frenzy every time - to each and every tear wiped away when they needed it. It was a delicate, gentle but also raw and authentic love they had not been familiar with before, but loved every second of. Every day felt like they were still in their “dorky crush” phase. It was an adventure every day they were together, and neither of them wanted it to stop any time soon.

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Soon enough, the exhibits for each insect began to dwindle, as the day sun shifted into a pleasant afternoon. Bright orange and pink painted the sky as it quickly shifted into dusk. Eddie and Frank were visiting the last exhibit both were comfortable with ending the day on before making their way back to town. It centered around a gorgeous species of butterfly, an “Inachis Io” or “peacock butterfly”. Its wings shown with vibrant shades of orange and black, with light accents of pale yellow and blue on the tips. Frank was almost vibrating at the sight, babbling at anything that came to mind that he knew about the beautiful creature as he flapped his hands with joy. His back was turned towards the exhibit the entire time.

“These beautiful creatures are absolutely stunning! They’re named after the large eye spots on their wings, reflecting the appearance of peacock feathers. Those same insects also have a wingspan of up to 55 millimeters, which is quite egregious to think about, really. Oh, and the males are incredibly territorial, defending their meal and nesting areas with quite the energy, it’s amazing!” Eddie was almost lost at the amount of information that Frank was babbling to him. However, his heart still fluttered seeing his boyfriend talk so passionately about his interest. He would go into such long tangents about them, to the point he would get distracted with just talking any them.

In this situation, this came in handy for Eddie.

As Frank began to wrap up his long, long, long self-rehearsed documentary about the titular butterfly, he began to turn back towards his boyfriend, expecting him to look almost frazzled at the bombardment of new information. For him, he expected nothing less, and nothing new.

When Frank turned back, however, what he didn’t expect was to see that same predictably loving man down on one knee.

Frank was stunned silent.

Eddie took a deep breath, and smiled towards him. He lifted his hand to hold his lover’s in his hold, cupping them together.

“Listen. I’ll be quiet frank with you - and that don’t mean I’m not Eddie either, heh - but the past few years we’ve been together have been the best I’ve had in mah whole life. Every day I can’t wait to wake up to you brewin’ the two of us a cup o’ joe, and every night I wait until I know you’re asleep to whisper ‘I love you’ without you knowin’. I learn something new almost every day, and I always get so damn excited to hear what you have to say next. It feels like a theater play but the genre changes every line, and I have to check the fliers to make sure I’m watching the right show, haha! And even then, it feels like every time I look at you, and I see that smile of yours, it’s brand new. I feel like my younger self that just met you every day, like I just tripped and fell on ya when I moved in. I fell in love with you that very moment, and by God do I still love you. From every little thing that makes ya tick to the most obvious details, every single part of you is something that I want to keep my whole life. Which, of course, is why I’m here, down on one knee, wanting to ask you something incredibly important.”

Frank had been reduced to a silently sobbing mess, with hot tears streaming down his now flushed cheeks. His free hand had occupied the space over his mouth, trying and failing to keep himself from openly crying.

Eddie reached to his left pocket, pulling out a small velvet box. He popped it open towards him, revealing a golden band with a large gem embellished on the middle sitting on a white cushion.

“Frank Frankly… will you make this lovesick fool a huge promise, and please marry me?”

That done it.

The titular Frank collapsed onto his knees, both hands covering his face as he sobbed loudly in front of his boyfriend. He leaned in towards the kneeling mailman, resting his head against his chest. Said mailman quickly fumbled with the box, closing it and putting in near him before wrapping his arms around his near inconsolable boyfriend.

“A-ah, Frank!? Are you alright, did I scare ya? Hold on, did I do this wrong, was it supposed to be here or-“

Eddie didn’t get to finish his worrying before a pair of lips crashed into his. Frank quickly wrapped his arms around the southern’s neck, gripping tightly as he melted into the kiss. Eddie soon joined him in the passionate embrace, resting one hand on his back and another cradling the back of his lover’s head. He could feel himself tear up alongside his lover, but as to why the hell he would care he couldn’t find a reason. They both sat there, melding and kissing each other in the tangerine and rose dusk, the sun radiating what light left onto the embracing couple.

They soon very hesitantly broke off the kiss, and rested each other’s foreheads against each other, breathing heavily. They stared longingly into each others’ tear-filled gazes, their loving smiles almost glued to each other. They stayed in that position for quite a while, simply basking in the moment they had together, before Eddie broke the silence.

“So, uhh… is that a yes?” Eddie sheepishly asked, chuckling as he did so.

“Oh, criminy Eddie Dear, of course I’ll marry you,” the grey fellow answered, “do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for you to ask me?” They both laughed, voices strained and out of breath from crying and staying in such a passionate kiss.

Eddie reached down beside him to pick the velvet box back up, popping it open once more and carefully removing the ring. He gently held his now-fiancé’s left hand and slid the ring on his finger until it hit the base. The titular fiancé stayed and admired the ring as it sat on his hand for a while, turning it and gawking at its edges and gleams as it reflected from the sun behind them.

They soon returned to their kiss, slowly standing up as they held each other close in their embrace. Eddie cradled his fiancé’s tear-stained face gently in his hands, while the other wrapped theirs behind his neck. They stayed once more in their passionate kiss, never wanting to break apart from such an important moment. They then split apart slowly before falling into a tight hug, resting each other’s heads on the others shoulder. It felt so surreal and dreamlike, yet it was so absolute and pure and… real.

They were really getting married.

Three years together and they were going to get married.

Frank broke the comfortable silence this time after a long moment in each others arms.

“My god, Eddie, think of the wedding! The venue will be outside and the sun will be shining and there will be the prettiest insects flying in the great blue sky, it’ll be perfect!” Frank giddily rambled about the future wedding, Eddie chuckling at the excitement he showed. Frank lifted his gaze towards the mailman, a beautiful smile plastered on his face.

“I can’t believe I’m finally going to get married to you, Eddie,” he wistfully said. Eddie wiped any stray tears falling down his cheeks, laughing lovingly with him. He pulled him towards himself and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“Well, let’s not wait a second longer! Might as well get planning before the moment dies out!”, Eddie quickly said. He suddenly lifted his fiancé off from the ground, holding him in a bridal carry as he laughed heartily alongside him. They quickly made their way to the exit of the garden, more than ready to start planning the wedding.

Whatever was going to happen to them a, they were more than prepared to face it now that they were getting married. It may not be predictable, but it sure was something they could do together.

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#omg look a dumgum fic that isn’t regression based #anyways EDDIE AND FRANK PROPOSAL #I’m super proud of this tbh so I really hope y’all like it #welcome home arg #welcome home #welcome home puppet show #welcome home frank #frank frankly #welcome home eddie #eddie dear #proposal #marriage proposal #writing #fic writing #gummunity fics

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