#writing letters addressed to the fire*

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

My brain is on fire same I can’t sleep and am thinking of this:

The way she writes about marriage/family/commitment through these different situations across the album is soooooooooo interesting.

You have a very intense first experience of it in “The Manuscript,” where it is first dangled in front of her/the narrator’s young, impressionable self as shorthand for real love in a situation that ended up being smoke and mirrors. She’s being told everything she wants to hear by someone who basically thinks it’s just foreplay. In the end, when it’s clear that the other person has no intention of actually making a life with her, it makes her feel used, but she forces herself to recalibrate and become the girl she thinks he and all the other hes want her to be. Easy breezy cool. But there’s a sense of loss in realizing those hopes were merely banter to the other.

You have the “grown up” version of it alluded to in “So Long, London” and “How Did It End?”, the years of putting in work to save a relationship and the “deflation of our dreaming leaving [her] bereft and reeling” leading to them “calling it all off.” The implication is clearly that they built a home together with plans for next steps at a point in time, but the commitment is shattered. (Obviously to me it sounds like marriage.) She’s bitter at spending her “prime” years with someone who ultimately didn’t want to be there, even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it himself.

She felt like she did everything she was supposed to, but they were learning the right steps to different dances at as it were. Those dreams were at one point shared, but in the end they weren’t right for each other and she admits that, though bitterly (“I founded the club she’s heard great things about” eg the years she put in for him to help him grow up will end up benefiting his new lover, “but I’m not the one,” “you’ll find someone,” etc.). Mixed in with all this of her resentment of him wasting her youth (sacrificing herself at the altar), and his resentment of her for reasons less defined, and insinuations of betrayal in the shadows. The fantasy of the whole package disappears into the ether, yet she still has no answers as to how they got there.

Then in comes the wolf in sheep’s clothing in many of the rest of the songs, the one who promises her all those things she’s dreamed of since she was a kid instantly. After years of moulding herself to other men’s desires, someone comes in and tells her exactly what she wants to hear at the most vulnerable time of her life, as though the universe is answering her prayers, like some sort of cosmic payback for all she’s suffered, and it’s the most intoxicating drug of all. She’s gone from her wish for a family life feeling like she’s in a way being used for her body, to it being used as a chain to a relationship gone sour, to having someone put a metaphorical ring on her finger and tell her he wants to have babies with her, fuck those other guys.

In her grief and stupor, it’s too good to be true, which is exactly why she falls for it. But of course, it’s all an illusion, because this wolf is an amalgamation of the worst of all the men who came before him. He tells her everything she wants to hear not to make her dreams come true, but to make his. He takes the worst parts of these scenarios to make his move: he’ll stand by her, he’ll commit, he’ll do it out in the open under the spotlight’s glare (all things desperately lacking in her last relationship), but after he beds her he stabs her in the back in private and leaves her. He got what he wanted at the expense of her losing everything she wanted, this time as her world caved in seemingly for good. She feels like she gave up everything she thought she might have had for a chance that this is where the universe has been point her all along, only to be left broken for good (you represent the loss of my life as I knew it).

Then there are two sort of codas to this. In “But Daddy I Love Him” we get a sassier reimagining of “Love Story,” where the girl with the scarlet letter is mouthy and crass and tells everyone to go fuck themselves for cursing her in the first place, choosing her love above all else. And no, those haters can’t come to her wedding. Her daddy may have come around, but they sure can’t. Finally it seems someone is choosing her and will someday give her these things, and she’ll be able to show all the naysayers. (Also interestingly one of the more fictionally-veiled songs which ends happily vs the diaristic ones that don’t.)

Then of course there’s “So High School,” our first glimpse into what the future holds. Probably the only unabashedly happy (nay… electric?) song on the album, it’s all about reclaiming the buzz of youth (which is a whole other post) with a new lover. “Are you gonna marry, kiss or kill me? It’s just a game but really, I’m betting on all three for us two.” It’s, er, a direct nod to a certain now-infamous interview, but again, she’s staking her claim on her future, if not certain then at least hopeful again. This time the prospect doesn’t come with a “but.” It’s not, we’ll be pushing strollers but actually you’re too young. It’s not, we had these dreams for our future but actually I can’t move forward. It’s not, I’m going to promise you a ring and a baby but only until my needs are met and then I’m out. It’s, I know what I wanted and I’m not leaving, and thanks to that now she stays too.

The album dealt with the theme not at all in the way I expected, but is absolutely fascinating.

#writing letters addressed to the fire #me thinking too hard about Taylor lyrics #the tortured poets department #i have many thoughts #No brain power

[thewavesfadetogrey]

Buried beneath the shore 

There's the weight of the flood I used to own 

The hand that held the cold spiral on my skin

Now swindles like a faithful whisper staring down at the sea

And she is marvelous

A dwelling string of light

And I fear I'd be burned, in spite of what I hide 

Because she'll never be at peace 

As long as the flood is near

The air has been stale

And I glower as I fade

Our smiles are hidden in the waves

I should've weilded the light she spread

I no longer know who's to blame 

I've let her drown in everything I have 

Gashes of the flood I tried to shred

They whisper all around 

It seems like they could be brave

The sand keeps howling through my soul 

I'm not sure if I could come back

If I ever leave the shore 

My heart is shattered by those strings of light

And I can't help but wonder if I truly died that night 

As my vision is blue

And my heart still bruised 

We'll never admire the sea again.

#writing letters addressed to the fire #my poetry #spilled ink

[stillabeliever]

and i was catching my breath

staring out an open window catching my death

#in honor of people's breath catching #evermore is about the van scene it turns out #writing letters addressed to the fire #byler #taylor swift

[liesyousoldme]

seven sentence sunday

listen i've got a cold AND i had chemo on tuesday so yes i have slept the large majority of the last 3 days BUT i promised seven sentences on sunday and i'm pretty sure it's sunday so here is this Thing from this New Thing i'm doing. it's part high school au, part epistolary in the middle, kind of follows canon??? anyway it's the one inspired heavily by folklore so go into it with that knowledge here's idk how many sentences and then i'm probably going back to sleep (i'm high on nyquil right now) i love you all

Dear Eddie, he writes, then huffs and presses the lead of his pencil into the paper until it breaks. He rubs a hand up and down his face, glances back at his computer screen as though it might’ve changed in the last hour he’s had Eddie’s Facebook profile pulled up.

It’s not something he checks often – it’s not something that Eddie ever even updates himself. But he knows Eddie’s the type to browse his feed just to see what people are up to (at least he hopes Eddie still does it, because he feels like sometimes the only reason he posts anything is in hopes that Eddie or Maddie sees it) so he still uses the site. It had been a shock today, to see Eddie, tagged in a celebratory post.

A wedding. With Shannon.

It fills him with such mixed emotions he wants to puke with it.

He’s written so many letters that he’s crumpled into balls and tossed into trashcan fires. Written her name exactly zero times, and Eddie’s a thousand. He wonders if he’ll ever write this new combination down.

Shannon Diaz.

Dear Eddie, he thinks, but can’t bring himself to sharpen his broken pencil to actually write it, I hope you’re happy with the girl you chose over me, I hope you’re happy I hope you’re happy I hope you’re happy because I'm not, I still thought maybe one day it would be me and you, that I’d come back to Texas after graduation and you wouldn’t have your parents looking over your shoulder anymore and maybe we could go to college together or find stupid jobs like we'd talked about, and how are you married when I can still remember the taste of your lips and I haven't even kissed anyone else and -

#(yells and then runs away) #writing letters addressed to the fire

[ivyflowers13]

I catch a glimpse of her in a passing car

She has dark circles under her eyes

She has gained (more than) a few pounds

She looks drained

She has lost the glint on her eyes

She has lost interest in her favorite things

I look at her

I can no longer recognize her

———

She’s right where her teenage self wanted to be.

She has accomplished what everyone told her she couldn’t.

———

I see my reflection in a passing car

I cannot recognize myself

I do not know it it was worth it

———

I don’t know her

She does not know me

#self reflection #writing letters addressed to the fire #thoughts

[sillybadger]

i believe in parallel universes and invisible strings and prophetic dreams and spilling as many words out as possible and keeping a little toy in your pocket as a good luck charm and making decisions with a hello kitty magic 8 ball

#writing letters addressed to the fire

[wickedwitchofthesouth]

Listen I know the whole "do you Journal Dean?" "Ever since I was a little girl" joke makes it look like Dean does not unfact journal BUT WHAT IF!!! what if he DOES journal because John journaled because let's be honest other than drinking and breaking things that's the only other (non-violent) way he knows how to cope.

Okay maybe he doesn't have a little diary where he writes all his deepest darkest little secrets but I like to think that maybe when he moved in with Lisa and Ben, he also started going to therapy? Obviously it was impossiblely hard to convince him and sure he only agreed to go once a month and to be honest, now that he looks back on it didn't really do shit but the one thing that seemed to help him the most was writing. He does not journal! but maybe he writes letters to everyone. Letters he'll never send, letters filled to the brim with words he'll never say

In the beginning most of his letters were addressed to Sammy, is baby brother, the only reason he even wanted to hunt. To protect his brother, to allow him to live in a world where nothing goes bump in the night.

And after Sammys first death, nothing was easy, but the letters helped. more than Ben and Lisa more than the few and far between calls he'd pick up from bobby. The letters were the only place where he didn't feel the need to pretend.

But after Sammy came back the letters stopped. Dean convinced himself that Sam was the only reason he felt this empty pit in his heart and once he came back he didn't need the letters anymore. Even if he wanted to write, where would he even get the time or privacy.

They'd stopped, but Dean still carried them around like stolen momentous that he constantly told himself he needed to get rid of (and conveniently forget to)

The second time the letters start is when he loses Cas to the leviathan. He's angry, he hates what Cas did to them... what he did to himself. 'Fuck this! fuck you and fuck every other prissy angel out there! I shouldve never trusted you i hate you. i hate you for leaving us more fucked over than the last 2 apocalypses, i hate you for leaving with your tail tucked between your legs. I hate you just for leaving at all, so come back so i can yell at you to your face, you coward! Just come back'

Every thought in his head that he can't bring himself to yell out loud, he tells the parchment with his pen as the vessel.

'Shit is getting fucking harder, we need you cas we cant do this without you' 'I can't do this without you"

When Cas comes back the letters stopped again. Dean finds a place to hide them so well that half the time he forgets they're even there

And thats just how the cycle goes, he writes when talking takes more energy than he has left to give. One for each person he's ever lost. 10 for Sam, 20 for Cas.

Sometimes he just writes when he's angry at someone. 20 for Sam, 30 for Cas

Sometimes he just writes for the sake of it, unspoken words he's too scared to confess out loud. 50 for Cas, 100 for Cas, all for Cas

When Dean dies, Sam finds the stash of letters stowed away in a dusty old shoebox on the roof of Dean's cupboard. He sees the letters addressed to him. Something in him is begging him not to read them, but his curiosity gets the better of him.

He should've listened to that something because for the rest of the day after that Sam finds himself reading through letter after letter that was written to him but never sent. He cries like a baby, the kind of sob that Dean would've made fun of him for when they were kids. Gosh what he'd give just to hear Dean give him a snarky remark now.

Sam doesn't read the letters addressed to other people, he doesn't have the heart too anymore. So the next day he makes it a mission to take the letters to everyone Dean has ever written too

Two letters left where they'd spread Charlie's Ashes, One at Kevin's, four for Dad, four for mom, one for crowley, three for Jack, and on it goes

Until the only things left are the unread letters addressed to Castiel. Even after taking out all the other ones it still feels like the box is over flowing, but cas is the only one left.

He leaves them in the flower feild where Dean had spread Cas' ashes. Sam knew that it wasn't where Cas was layed to rest, because truth be told Sam had no idea what had even happened to Cas. Dean refused to talk about it and Sam was too distraught by the awful expression on Dean's face every time Cas became a topic to bring it up over and over again.

So he let the letters go in a place where he thought Cas would appreciate. Wherever he was, Sam hoped that it would bring him peace - the thought that Dean would have wanted him to rest in a place as beautiful as the flower field over looking the mountains.

#i was listening to ever more and when the line #“writing letters addressed to the fire” #came up it was like an inspiration lightbulb moment #dean writes i know does trust me im the pen #swiftie dean winchester #swiftnatural #supernatural #castiel #dean winchester #sam winchester #spn #destiel #evermore #taylor swift #spn headcanon

[itspileofgoodthings]

I make posts and then delete them because the making them is purging the thoughts from my system and the deleting them is my good manners reasserting themselves and it’s a constant delicate balance to be maintained in the itspileofgoodthings ecosystem.

#writing letters addressed to the fire etc. #also sometimes when a few people like the post I feel seen and validated and I know it has served its purpose #so thank you for that lol

[familiarache]

"Megane boy turns into megane girl!" steal his glasses and puts them on. (ishida)

"i--" the expeditious efficiency she manages to snatch his glasses off catches his breath; cheeks flushing in moments as he quickly straightens his back. whilst his hand reaches to press the bridge further on his nose in nervousness; force of habit brought quickly down seeing as they were on her eyes rather than his. effort to keep cool, he instead moves to brush his own hair back; lip quirking into a smirk.

whilst vision isn't horrid without them, most everything does prove to be deeply blurred. though, he can feel the blush gracing his skin; hopeful she doesn't notice. "ah. though unfortunate we can't all have perfect vision-- does the style at least interest you, inoue-san?"

#𖥸 ─ meme reply. #. . ˚ . writing letters addressed to the fire ✦ ・ ★ ask replies #auburniivenus

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

To continue riffing on the marriage/tradition stuff because that’s one of the themes I’m obsessed with in her discography, it’s fascinating because it would be easy to reduce it to, “she’s adhering to patriarchal societal norms in chasing the traditional nuclear family and that’s why she throws herself into these relationships,” but it’s just so reductive to well, how human beings exist in the world. Just because it’s a societal pressure doesn’t mean some people don’t genuinely want to get married or have families.

Yes, she’s been singing about it right back to her first album when she as 16. Yes, her view on it has evolved, from marrying the sweet neighbor boy to the princess fairytale early on (debut/fearless), to the disillusionment that increasingly pushed it out of the narrative (speak now/red/1989), to slowly letting herself believe in forever again (rep), to seemingly actually committed (lover), to questioning what that means (folklore/evermore) to trying to reconcile what it means for her current life (midnights). Every relationship she experienced throughout those periods informed those views and how *she* pursued it.

I think what makes it so interesting on TTPD is that it is EVERYWHERE, as I mentioned in my previous post about it. And it’s unsettling because it’s not just in the setting we expect it to be — e.g. a long term partner she’d previously indicated she was ready to marry — but also in songs about a man who swooped in to save her when she was low only to break her apart, in thinly-veiled fantasies about strange bedfellow neighbours, another thinly-veiled story about marrying the person you want consequences be damned, in taunting your on again/off again partner in a bar (e.g. i want to smash your bike or be your wife).

And it’d be easy to chalk it up to, well she’s in her 30s and the clock is ticking, she’s just obsessive! And there’s a nugget there about women and their bodies and both the lauding and weaponization thereof and everything that personally I’m dying to talk about at some point. But when it comes down to it, I’m willing to bet that the reason why it’s everywhere is because THAT WAS HER LIFE. That was the plan she’d taken for granted for so long — and I don’t just mean in a general sense as a girl in the world — but in the very real, very tangible way she was living her life and in the circumstances that led to what would be written about in TTPD. By working out all these scenarios through her songs (and tbh in whatever she was doing IRL that inspired them), she was grappling with and grieving the loss of the life she thought was ahead of her. We’ve talked about how pervasive grief has been on her recent albums, in all kinds of forms, and I think this is kind of the culmination of all of those worries.

She’s not the girl with the paper ring and all’s well did not end well to end up with him. She’s not the girl who has his midnights after cleaning up bottles on New Year’s Day. She couldn’t give him her wild or a child because it wasn’t enough. She may have even been the self-fulfilling prophecy of the girl who is fucked in the head, but feels more like the one left out on the landing.

So in TTPD, she is all of these things. She’s the neglected wife whose husband cheats on her so she runs off with an old flame. She’s the one who gets the jewel on her ring finger and talks about babies because he says it’s love. She’s the woman whose partner once made a promise but never followed through. She’s the hell-raiser who follows love in a different kind of getaway car while the town calls her mad, consequences be damned, but joke’s on them because she gets the wedding in the end anyway. She’s the wife who feeds her cheating husband to the swamps of Florida. She gets swept off her feet by an old flame to run down the aisle. SHE’S the one who gets to decide if she’s gonna marry him or decimate him (be his wife or smash his bike). She’s the girl who didn’t become the wife while she watches the one that got away marry his. She’s the woman scorned who has to call the whole thing off. She’s the saucy girl who bets her new lover is gonna marry her for real. She’s sold off as chattel to the highest bidder in an arranged marriage. She’s the young girl starry-eyed with the dreams she grew up with only to have them go up in flames, leaving only her pen behind to turn it into art.

She navigates all these scenarios because in the end, she isn’t any of them and she is all of them. She’s mourning what she gave up, mourning what she’s already lost, mourning the time she feels she wasted and could have started over. She’s mourning any number of women she could have been if she’d just tried something else, but also mourning that ultimately much of this was out of her hands. She’s grappling with a past that can’t change and a future that doesn’t exist. Every one of these scenarios is a way her life could have gone with any number of different decisions, but in the end, none of that matters, because she is who she is and what happened happened.

Obviously there’s a lot more going on in the album; she’s not just processing the end of relationships, she’s processing her fame and career and health and harassment and trauma and struggles and misogyny and any number of things in frankly shocking ways. But, I think there’s also no denying that this very important thing — the step many young adults expect to take in their lives — precipitated a whole lot of what went on, and may have even had a domino effect on all the other issues explored. It’s raw and vulnerable and ugly and funny and human.

Anyway apparently I’m back and thinking.

#maybe i should not sleep more often #the tortured poets department #writing letters addressed to the fire

[wondcrstrucks]

☆ –– ( tessa thompson, she/her, cis woman) who is DAISY ST. JAMES anyways? ew. you don’t know about HER, we’ll bet you want to. they’re feeling 40 and STARGAZING feels like a perfect night to them. rumor has it they’re ASSERTIVE and MACHIAVELLIAN because they care, but they’re also AMBITIOUS and CHARISMATIC in the best way. SHE work to make a little money as a(n) AUTHOR. they’ve rented a place on cornelia street in the form of STUDIO APARTMENT. MARJORIE (A) & 'TIS THE DAMN SEASON (B) is the song they could dance to the beat of forevermore.

STATS !

birth name : daisy mae st. james shannon crawford nick name : n/a birth date : october 3rd sexuality: demisexual biromantic currently residing : daylight studio apartment 102 occupation : best selling author of queer books

family : evelyn claremont (adopted grandmother), _____ st. james (adopted father), ______ st. james (adopted mother), ______ st. james (adopted silbing), ______ st. james (adopted silbing), remy st. james (adopted sibling) pets : a white black cat named binx relationship status: singleish? notable past relationships: 'tis the damn season muse a (joanna torres); wanted connection on main hair color : black eye color : brown height : 5'4" noticeable scars: three scars along her belly from surgery piercings : two in each ear tattoos: music notes on left wrist,

HISTORY !

daisy mae's life starts off in panema, a town she barely remembers with a younger sibling and parents who seem like dreams rather than real people. she knows she was loved so much by her parents and the rest of her family, but that's the only reminds she has of her first home. her parents are taken from the world after a car accident and she's taken to america by an aunt that thought the siblings would do better there than in panema. she's given up for adoption and never sees her younger sibling again.

at least that's what the st. james family tells her when she first asks about where she's really from and why none of her siblings look the same. she was adopted by a family that couldn't have children but had more than enough love to spare for anyone that needed it. so she stops asking questions and accepts the st. jameses as her own real family.

growing up, daisy was a difficult child. she needed things done a certain way, usually her way, and it lead to her siblings and her fighting more often than not. she was given things by her parents before she even knew she wanted them and it lead to her being very spoiled. her parents tried insisting that it should keep her grateful but daisy eventually began to expect the finer things in life.

daisy immediately fell in love with writing short stories in school, constantly dreaming up new worlds and characters and working her way through real life problems by writing them out. creative writing was her way of expressing her emotions and her parents supported her completely.

the bright lights of new york seemed like a lighthouse guiding her home, and she fell in love with the way the city was full of various people with different stories.

school was a means to get to where she needed to be, and she didn't really struggle with it that much. her shining achievement was winning a creative writing contest and showing herself that other people liked her writing.

college was an easy choice, double majoring in creative writing and english was an even easier choice. she grew into herself, letting herself realize she was queer and exploring that side of herself.

her first book was the coming out story of a girl who had been in love with her best friend but couldn't have her. it was a personal story she pretended that was just inpiration from a song and it was a hit among the best selling list. lately she's been making a living as a writer of queer books.

WANTED !

friends: daisy might be difficult, but she deserves to have at least one person who can put up with her (other than her siblings). best friend/ex spouse: after johanna got married, daisy's entire world felt like it shattered. she was heartbroken and didn't want to do much of anything anymore and this muse slowly got her out of her funk and back into the world. they might have fallen in love (platonically or romantically) and decided to get married because who better to get married to than your best friend? cat sitter: glinda is daisy's child so she has to have someone to come watch her when she's busy with work.

#( &. writing letters addressed to the fire: daisy ) #( &. intro: daisy ) #have an updated daisy :)

[feuerfliegen]

@dutyxbound

"Aunt Jade", his voice was a mere whisper as he turned towards her. This was not supposed to happen. Owain had memorized the guard's schedules, scouted out the quickest and least busy ways in and out of the castle, bribed a stable boy into giving him his clothes, and now it was his aunt - of all people - who caught him sneaking out of Tir Asleen at night? Owain cleared his throat and adjusted his stance to seem as if he felt he had the right to be here, in the middle of the night. Nothing suspicious to see. "What a coincidence to meet you out here, couldn't sleep either?" Please don't tell my parents.

#x and I write letters addressed to the fire x Owain Danan #dutyxbound #auntie jade gets the first owain starter ♥ #he's baby and he's in trouble

[thousandflame]

Fact: Logan goes through the 5 stages of grief when he can’t just pop off on someone who has deeply angered him

fact: despite the stereotype that fire mages are inherently hotheaded and prone to emotional outbursts, cymbie is very much resent and remember. she bides her time. often, when she feels offended, she files it away for later reference and seems perfectly fine more or less immediately after. however---those who know her well know that this silence is dangerous. it will come back at an inopportune time for the person who angered her to begin with.

#001. ╱ about: meme. writing letters addressed to the fire. #lightrallies

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Randomly thinking about “tolerate it” (narrator voice: it was not random) and how under the cloak of fiction it is ostensibly inspired by works like “Rebecca” (which Taylor said she read during the 2020 lockdowns I believe?), with the line of “you’re so much older and wiser” indicating that the speaker is significantly younger and inexperienced compared to the person she’s speaking to and a pretty direct reference to the plot of the book.

But I saw something somewhere once that stuck with me about how it might not be referring to relative age between the characters but chronological age as in the passage of time in a relationship. And that made me think about how in a contemporary context, it might not necessarily be referencing an actual age gap between the two characters, but rather a sarcastic or cynical response to the man’s claims that he has matured (“you’re so much older and wiser [than you were before/than you were when we met/etc.]”), which then made me think about that line in relation to the woman. And that it could be taken like, “you act like you’ve matured so much in our time together and like you know everything, while I’m supposedly still stuck as the girl I was when we first met.”

Which then made me think of the “right where you left me” of it all and did you ever hear about the girl who got frozen time went on for everyone else she won’t know it and the bit in Miss Americana where she talks about how celebrities get frozen at the age at which they got famous, and how she’s had to play catch up in a lot of ways not just in her emotional growth but kind of in general. (Which also made me wonder if she’s ever been called out for immaturity/lack of curiosity/lack of education about things in her life…)

Which then made me think about the rest of the song, and @taylortruther’s posts yesterday about “seven” and “Daylight” and the way Taylor idealizes her youth yet contrasts it with an almost sinister reality in its wake, and the line, “I sit by the door like I’m just a kid,” because the discussion raised that her relationship let her recapture some of the childlike joy and wonder she’d lost. So this line is a double-edged sword: the speaker sits by the door with childlike hope that the person will come home and cherish her, but on the darker side, feels like the child dealing with the monsters she doesn’t have names for yet and the feelings of isolation she felt as she aged.

I’m not saying the song is necessarily autobiographical; like most of the songs on folkmore, it’s clearly a fictionalized story based on media she’d consumed and created, but we know a lot of the fictional songs were infused with her own feelings and experiences and… This idea swirling in my head picked up steam and now I kind of can’t stop thinking about it. Sorry but I’m a little obsessed now.

Like maybe it might start to shed light on why she identified so strongly with the novel in the first place…

#the third eye has been opened #😵‍💫 #like tolerate it was always a difficult song #even when we learned it was based on Rebecca it obviously took on new meaning post-joever #and especially in light of ttpd #but the thought spiral i went on last night when i started thinking about all these connections #and the evermore of it all #I’m Charlie at the conspiracy board again #writing letters addressed to the fire #me thinking too hard about Taylor lyrics #evermore my beloved #tolerate it #i kinda gave myself the ick with all this 😵‍💫 #because of the ttpd of it all coming up #and i feel like i remember interviews where Taylor said joe was so well-read especially about like world events and politics and stuff #and supported her when she wanted to start speaking up (not getting into that) #but just based on ~vibes now I wonder if that was like a sore point too at some point #which again i have no proof of but just like… experience with pretentious millennial art bros lol #oh man oh man oh man #this feels like some sort of huge revelation at 1:00 am #when i started writing this lol #eta: when I queued this in the middle of the night i didn't see all the excellent discussion about the seven/folklore posts #so all of you who have been posting about them this morning consider yourselves tagged too!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The thing about her musings on her youth in this album is not just about the spending her “prime” years with someone who ultimately couldn’t give her what she thought they both wanted (family, but also in general sense the happiness you get when you’re young and your whole lives are ahead of you).

There’s SO much about her youth in general here, and how the demons of the past have raised and broken her. How each of these experiences have chipped away at her youth. This whole album is give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.

It’s all the things she’s talking about had are part of the same big trauma of the loss of that youth and innocence. It’s snakegate and how Kim K and her lackeys deliberately set out to destroy Taylor’s reputation for sport, which ripped out Taylor’s last few grasps of that young adulthood freedom without her consent. It’s mulling the price she’s paid for spending her entire youth in the spotlight and becoming a commodity instead of a person. It’s looking at a friend’s child and wishing she could protect them from the world the way she wishes she could have been had she known. It’s putting your trust in your first love who ripped the rug out from under you and your faith along with it. It’s spending your time pining for your younger days in the haze of unspeakable loss. It’s carving off parts of yourself as you grow up to make yourself palatable to your peers and your partners and as a result not knowing what parts of you are left. It’s revisiting a love from your past when you still had it all, and after the initial frenzy realizing its hollow. And yes, it’s pouring your heart and soul into a relationship you think is forever and with each passing year the light in the window flickering dimmer and dimmer, only to realize the light wasn’t coming from your home after all, and you may lose your chance to find it again before it’s too late and the dreams you so desperately cling to vanish for good.

And that’s what the end message I think ends up being in So High School: she’s reclaiming the land as it were. All these things that were taken from her and that she gave up are up for a redo. And it’s not rewriting the past, it’s coming to the realization that all those parts are still within her but so is the good. That the freedom she gave up when she released her first album is still found in the backseat of a boy’s car all these years later. That she’s older and wiser and battleworn but that doesn’t mean she can’t find that joy and lightness. “I feel so high school when I look at you” is kind of a loaded statement from someone who didn’t really get to go to high school (both actually and metaphorically). “Bittersweet sixteen suddenly” (love that wordplay btw) because again— she’s been through so much that the feelings of new love that make her giddy like a girl are tinged because she’s been here before and also never been here before because she was never that kid.

(There’s also a whole tangent there comparing Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince to So High School and how fraught the first is vs the lightness of this one.)

That’s why this isn’t just a breakup album. It’s why she dredges up 2016 and Jake and Aaron’s son and childhood and high school and any other number of things. Because she has spent her entire youth and adulthood grappling with the issues that came to roost in TTPD, and while this whole experience underscores that you can never know what’s going on with someone (least of all Taylor, a stranger to us all), I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that she has stressed how much healthier and whole she is now. That is why this whole album is a bloodletting, but it’s not just about a broken relationship. It’s about a whole belief system that has stolen girlhood from her and she’s determined to piece back together in the aftermath of the autopsy.

#this was supposed to be one paragraph lol oops #the tortured poets department #writing letters addressed to the fire #as usual wcs comes in as one of the cornerstones of her discography

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The thing that struck me about the bargaining playlist starting with “The Great War” and ending with “Renegade” is that it starts with her fighting with him and in the end fighting for him.

In “The Great War,” she’s lashing out at him and he’s the one reaching out for her; she takes his hand before she loses him for good and she vows that from then on she’ll stand by his side. In other words, she got angry and hurt him, he offers her help and she learns to trust him and his presence. She’s made the ultimate commitment.

“Renegade” flips the script, with him now the one firing off missiles at her, but unlike in “The Great War,” he refuses to take her hand (e.g. her offer for help and more) and instead chooses to stay in the tomb that she climbed out of in TGW. Whereas the first song ends with her waking up just in time, stopping herself before she does something she’ll regret and dropping her sword to instead join him by his side, the last one ends on a much more uncertain note; she’s all alone and is drawing a conclusion that while she vowed to always be his, he may not want to do the same for her.

It really is kind of the cliff notes version of the breakdown of a relationship.

#the tortured poets department #the great war #renegade #me thinking too hard about Taylor lyrics #writing letters addressed to the fire #ttpd playlists