aftaylorglow

[aftaylorglow]

sometimes i think abt making a tiktok and being like “put a finger down if one time u ran a fan account for taylor swift on tumblr dot com and she saw your post so she invited u to her house and you need to calm down had just come out so u thought “maybe i’ll give her a bracelet thats purple blue and and pink that says proud and u can tell her how much yntcd meant to u” and so you show up to her house with said bracelet and hide it in ur shirt because you dont want taylor’s team to see that you have two identical bracelets- one for you and one for her- and take one because u were told u cant give her anything. and then after security you take it out of ur bra and put it on ur wrist. and then when u get to have ur one-on-one moment w her u give her ur bracelet. and then you go home and it was the best say ever and you wake up and 2 hrs later she posts a picture of all the friendship bracelets she got from all the fans at her house. and then you go online and everyone and their mother is speculating that its proof that shes bi and she actually planted the bracelet so she could subtly come out. there’s several articles written about it and people go viral on twitter speculating abt the bracelet. but in reality u were the one who gave her the bracelet and now the fact that she probably sees people’s posts abt that bracelet has haunted u every day since august 5, 2019” and then i put a finger down

[aftaylorglow]

The Eras Tour by Dara Feller

[aftaylorglow]

Good day Mr Flanagan. please what does "the rest is confetti" mean to you and in the context it was used in hill house??

Okay, here we go. Buckle up for a long read.

To answer this, I've got to explain a little bit about what was happening and where I was when I sat down to write episode 10 of The Haunting of Hill House.

Hill House was not a fun shoot. The picture above is from very early in production, when I was still chubby and happy.

It was my first foray into television. I was absolutely terrified that I'd mess it up. So I'd opted to direct all of the episodes myself, figuring that - if nothing else - I'd have no one else to blame if it went south.

It was the most grueling professional experience of my career. The shoot was by no means a smooth one, every day was an uphill battle from a budgetary perspective, and between the three giant production entities involved with the production, I spent a lot of time fighting over the creative and logistical elements of the series.

I began losing weight. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

By the end of the shoot, I had dropped almost 40 lbs.

I was very depressed. Every day was a battle, and for the first time in my career, I wasn't excited to go to work in the morning. We were fighting for basic resources, fighting for the show we wanted, and even fighting amongst ourselves by the end. It was grueling.

We hadn't written all of the scripts when we started production. I believe we had finished through episode 7, but the rest of the scripts had to be finished while we were already shooting.

We'd mapped everything out in the writers room, and I had great support on the other episodes, but I was writing the finale solo. I'd thought I'd be able to juggle it with everything else. I quickly fell behind.

I finally got to the script about halfway through production. I'd work on it between takes at the monitor, and then get home to our tiny rental house in Atlanta, where Kate was waiting with our baby son. (One of the rare bright spots of this shoot came when Kate found out she was pregnant about halfway through production. We even named our daughter Theodora, in honor of her origins.)

I'd typically fall down from exhaustion when I got home, but I had to push through it and work on the script. My weekends were spent shotlisting and prepping for upcoming episodes. We didn't have enough time to stay ahead of prep, so every available day was used for that... I went three months without a single day off at one point.

I'd sit up late staring at the script. I was in a dark, dark place. Overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling like I lived in an eternal present. Each day bled into the next and it didn't feel like there was an end in sight. That feeling of unreality was heightened because we kept returning to the same sets, same locations, and even the same scenes throughout the 100 shooting-day production. Stepping back into the exact room we had shot in days or weeks or even months ago made the whole thing feel absolutely surreal. Making movies is always an non-linear experience, but this one felt particularly so... it was like the days of our lives were happening to us all out of order.

I remember feeling something like despair creeping into my daily experience on the show. And I remember dwelling on that when I got into the scene work of episode 10.

As I worked through the draft, I recall that despair coloring a lot of what was on the page. My filter was breaking down. There's a monologue at the beginning of the episode where Steven's wife Leigh (played by my dear friend Samantha Sloyan) spews out a torrent of eviscerating insults about Steve's value as a writer. That is just me vomiting onto myself. She was voicing all of my deepest insecurities about myself at the time, and of what I was doing with this series.

She says "Is anything real before you write it, Steve? The things you write about, they're real. Those people are real, their feelings are real, their pain is real - but not to you, is it. Not until you chew it up, digest it, and shit it out onto a piece of paper and even then, it's a pale imitation at best."

This was the mindset I was in for a lot of the shoot. The writing became a reflection of a lot of that turmoil, and I knew who I was referring to in that monologue - I was talking about my family. I was talking about how much of their lives I'd used as building material for this show. I was talking about the fact that I'd lost two loved ones to suicide, and seen what it had done to my mother in particular. And I knew I was using - possibly even exploiting - those people for this series.

There's a lot of despair in this episode. The Red Room, as we conceived it, was a place that would feed upon those emotions. Grief, sadness, loss... those were the real ghosts of our series, and where our characters find themselves at the start of the finale. They're being slowly digested - eaten alive - by those feelings.

So finally, it came time to write Nell's final scene with her siblings. I knew from the outline we'd constructed in the writers room what this was supposed to accomplish - she was supposed to be their salvation. She was supposed to take all of these feelings that we'd been wrestling with and finally provide catharsis... finally say something that would free everyone.

I remember sitting with a blinking cursor for a long time. The Crain siblings had just turned and seen Nellie standing by the door, and suddenly were able to hear her speak. But what should she say? What would I say? What would I want someone to say to me?

What she ultimately says lays bare a lot of what I was thinking about when it comes to grief. It exists outside of linear time, much as I felt I existed at the time. That sense of eternal present, that sense of a nonlinear eternity of moments and memories - it all came out in her speech to her brothers and sisters.

I remember feeling, looking at my insane present and looking back at my past, how strangely overwhelmed I was by memories. That I wasn't experiencing time in a straight line, and hadn't been for a while - for the better part of a year, I'd felt more like I was standing in a whirlwind of moments. "Our moments fall around us like..." Nell said, and I recall sitting back and trying to find the words.

"Rain," for certain, but there was something too uniform about that. The moments of life as I experienced them weren't that orderly, they weren't that small. They didn't fall the same way. Some sailed by, fast and unremarkable, while others lingered in front of me, twisting and stretching. So it was a good word, but not the right word. I left it on the page though.

"Snow" was my next attempt. Better, in that I imagined the snow blowing in the wind, swirling and dancing and feeling more organic. More chaotic. More like life. But for some reason, the word that stuck with me, the word I felt Nell Crain would connect with was...

"Confetti."

And that was because I was thinking not of Victoria Pedretti at this point, but of Violet McGraw.

Violet played Young Nell, and I wondered what she might have said if she experienced time this way. As an adult, Nell was despairing. Nell was overwhelmed. But as a child... there was an innocence to the word. There was a joy to the word.

I imagined moments falling around her, this little girl with the big smile and the wide eyes. Her moments would be colorful. They would be of different shapes and sizes, some falling fast and some falling slow, flipping and turning and dancing in the air, independent of the others. Sparkling, whirling, doing lazy summersaults as they sauntered down to Earth.

I thought of myself, and of the members of my family. I thought of those we'd lost. I realized what I hoped for them, and for us all, in the end... was to look upon that mosaic of experience, that avalanche of days and minutes and moments... and to smile with some of the joy we had as children.

And this, I thought, was something that gave me hope. This gave me a glimpse of some kind of salvation for them. This was also how I hoped my life might seem if I was a ghost - a cascade of color and light and shape and movement, something I could dance in.

So Nell smiled and said... "or confetti."

It stuck with me. The rest of her monologue gets heavy again, and gets to the real point of the show - the point of the whole series, if I'm honest - and that's forgiveness.

I figured the only thing that would let the Crain children out of the Red Room was to be forgiven. I thought of the losses in my own family, and I thought of what I wished for my mother and for my aunts and uncles and cousins and I tried to pour that into her final words.

"I loved you completely, and you loved me the same," she said, "that's all." And this was the point I wanted the most to make. That at the end of our life, if we can say this about each other, the rest doesn't matter. The rest is that rainstorm, or that blizzard, that fell around this one central truth, and maybe built itself in piles around it, to the point we lost sight of it along the way.

And I thought again of that little girl, and almost as an afterthought, wrote "The rest is confetti."

I liked the way it sounded, but I was insecure about the line. I almost took it out, in fact. I remember asking Kate to read the scene and talking about that last line with her. "Is it too cute?" I wondered. She was on the fence. "Depends on how it's acted," she said, and I figured she was right. We could always take it out if it didn't work. The scene could end with "I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That's all."

Why not shoot it and see what happened.

I turned in the script, we published it quickly so that we could start breaking it down and prepping it. And the next morning I was back on set. I'd deal with episode 10 when it came down the pipe again, sometime in the coming months. We had a lot of shooting to get through before I had to worry about it.

I recall Netflix asking me to cut a lot of that monologue, and I remember them also having questions about the "confetti" line. I pointed out that it didn't cost us any extra to shoot it all, it was only words, and fought to keep the script intact.

Ultimately, they insisted I make a series of cuts on the page. I begrudgingly agreed, but left Nell's speech alone. I made superficial cuts around it, throughout the draft, and even considered changing the font size to fool them into thinking it had gotten shorter (I ultimately was told I wouldn't fool anyone and not to risk starting a war). But Nellie's final goodbye stayed intact.

It must be said - Victoria Pedretti SLAUGHTERED this scene.

By the time we got around to filming it, things had never been worse for the production. There was almost nothing left for a lot of us. Tensions were sky-high, resources had been exhausted completely, and we were all ready to give up.

Filming in the mold-ridden Red Room was depressing, morose, and led to a lot of arguments and unpleasantness. The room itself just felt gross, always, and we were in there for days at a time. The last thing we had to shoot in there was Nellie's goodbye.

Victoria came to set having to push through pages of monologue, and she did so with captivating bravado. I recall being teary-eyed at the monitor watching her work. And when we finally made it to the last line, I watched her deliver it with... a smile. A sincere, innocent, longing, joyful smile. A smile informed by the sadness, grief, and loss of her own situation, of her own life... but a smile that finds forgiveness and grace after all. Pedretti knew how to say the line, and how that word would work.

And as she said it, I knew it would stay in the show.

Over the years, that sentence has become something of a tagline for The Haunting of Hill House. I'm always a bit mystified and touched when I see people approach me with the line on T-shirts, or even tattooed on their bodies.

I started signing it with autographs back in 2020 after enough fans asked me to. Now it's my go-to when I sign anything related to Hill House.

The line, for me, represents a lot of things.

It's about the insane, chaotic, non-linear experience of making that show. It's about trying to find and hold onto joy, even in the grips of despair.

It's about the way the moments of our lives aren't linear, not really, and how we may be unable to understand them as we exist in their flurry. It's about finding hope, innocence and forgiveness in the final reckoning.

And it's about how, outside of our love for each other, the rest is just... well, it's fleeting. It's colorful. It's overwhelming. It's blinding. It's dancing. And, if we look at it right, it's beautiful. But it's also light. It's tinsel. It flits and dances and falls and fades, it's as light as air.

The rest is the stuff that falls around us, and flits away into nothing.

It's the love that stays.

[aftaylorglow]

#SwiftiesForPalestine

Raffle of Taylor merch in exchange for donations

I am doing a raffle of taylor merch in exchange for donations to this teenager in Gaza. Whadi has stomach cancer and urgently needs funds for medication. He has been verified by the Instagram collective @ beesandwatermelons and is #11 on their spreadsheet but if you would like to speak to him yourself, he is fine to be contacted by his number +972 59-340-4739 or Instagram @ wdy_qnw. Please donate via his organiser's PayPal if you have it so the funds can be received quicker, but if you don't have PayPal there is a GoFundMe too. Entries will be £5 as that is the minimum donation that GFM allows, please send me proof of donation to enter. You can be entered more than once, for example, donating £15 will get your name entered three times. The prizes are listed under the cut.

Beautiful Eyes EP CD

Blue and Pink Lover Vinyl

Fearless International Edition CD

Speak Now Deluxe Edition CD

Speak Now World Tour Live CD and DVD

RED CD

reputation CD and posters

Lover CD

folklore CD

evermore CD

Fearless (Taylor's Version) CD

RED (Taylor's Version) CD

Wonderstruck perfume 30ml

Wonderstruck perfume 100ml

Wonderstruck Enchanted perfume 50ml

Incredible Things perfume 30ml

Speak Now scarf

1989 sheet music booklet

1989 mug

Eras Tour tote bag

Eras Tour posters

Eras Tour postcards

Unfortunately tumblr only allows up to 10 photos a post so I did not add any but if anyone wants a picture of a certain piece of merch just message me and I will happily send it.

Eras Tour broach, lanyard and fake tickets.

Please share widely and donate what you can.

[aftaylorglow]

and fuck neil gaiman

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sorry i can’t even begin to fully unpack the absolute disconnected, warped, maybe even soulless line of thinking for a billionaire to ignore people saying that we need her help raising money for families to evacuate a life or death situation.. and then two days later release another copy of a cd that we all already bought because god knows she apparently needs more money. like im just staring at that email from taylornation and asking what the fuck

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“you’re always jumping to criticize her. you’re not a real fan at all” you’ve caught me! for the past 16 years i have been masquerading as a swiftie, biding my time in the shadows, buying merch and attending concerts, hacking into spotify to make it look like she was my number one song and artist every year, telling everyone i know how much i love her, blogging about her all day every day, all the while waiting for a moment to strike. and i would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for these walking superiority complexes

[aftaylorglow]

“you’re always jumping to criticize her. you’re not a real fan at all” you’ve caught me! for the past 16 years i have been masquerading as a swiftie, biding my time in the shadows, buying merch and attending concerts, hacking into spotify to make it look like she was my number one song and artist every year, telling everyone i know how much i love her, blogging about her all day every day, all the while waiting for a moment to strike. and i would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for these walking superiority complexes

[aftaylorglow]

i have no issue with her music and how she markets her album like it’s not new to me that she’s chart obsessed bcs i know she’s vindictive and wanted to prove that she can still do it despite her perceived “haters” trying to bring her down but

back in my day, taylor swift used to do very personally charitable shit like buying a house for a pregnant fan and paying $30,000 for a fan’s college tuition. venue employees used to say that she would leave aside extra tickets for people who had accidentally bought scam/fake tickets. her albums used to be complete pieces of art and not cash grabs that you had to buy 10+ versions of to get every track from the album

[aftaylorglow]

the thing about taylor not posting on twitter because people are criticizing her there is that it’s not just pathetic that she won’t talk about palestine. it’s pathetic that she’s so averse to criticism she will leave whole social media platforms to avoid it. it’s cowardly - if you’re going to be silent about genocide, own it. but this inability to even be confident in that silence speaks volumes. did we say something way too honest that made you run and hide like a scared little girl?

[aftaylorglow]

the thing about taylor not posting on twitter because people are criticizing her there is that it’s not just pathetic that she won’t talk about palestine. it’s pathetic that she’s so averse to criticism she will leave whole social media platforms to avoid it. it’s cowardly - if you’re going to be silent about genocide, own it. but this inability to even be confident in that silence speaks volumes. did we say something way too honest that made you run and hide like a scared little girl?

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reblogging this because almost six months later and there’s still not a peep from her and now that more swifties have been begging her to speak up, she’s taken to not posting on twitter entirely lol.

i can’t say i’m surprised but i am disappointed in ways i can’t put into words. ariana grande, nicola coughlan, paramore—her tour mates!!—and other admirable women who do not have even a quarter of the reach she has, have done significant things for palestinians. why can’t she?

the most common “defense” that swifties say about this is because of “security” and “safety” which is just insanely laughable. has kehlani been physically harmed? has macklemore? these artists, vocal about their support for palestinian liberation and against israeli apartheid, who are also performing in public, have significantly less security than taylor does. and they’re completely fine and safe.

israel and its zionist army are too busy making sure not one single palestinian survives to follow taylor swift across europe.

so really, she has no excuse. she is choosing to be silent. and at this point, and frankly from the start, silence is complicity. you either explicitly denounce genocide or you support it.

i want so badly for taylor swift to speak out against israel and the genocide this apartheid state is committing in palestine. im so proud of her and everything she has achieved this year, starting from the eras tour to her successful rerecords. it’s not a surprise she’s on top of many year-end most influential/best of the best lists.

but what then? what use is her ever-growing influence? it’s ridiculous to say but she’s the only one who has enough of a sway to make people actually pay attention to something. just look at how the voter registration in the US spiked again when she posted about it a few months ago. how the NFL had boosted views for the simple fact that she was attending the games. can you imagine how much the tides would change if she denounced israel’s atrocities? if she rallied for support for palestinians? the legions of swifties would actually listen and pay attention. because right now only a very small fraction of us care, truly care, about what’s happening. the rest are too busy fishing for a taylor nation notice.

yes, taylor swift cannot end wars. no, it’s not taylor swift’s job to make life better for an oppressed population. but she has the platform, the momentum, and the voice to bring all these issues to light.

this is not to mention how the apartheid state has been using her pictures, her lyrics, even the friendship bracelets to further their propaganda. did taylor not fervently oppose the n@zis who were calling her an aryan goddess a few years ago? even if this is all she does now, ask them not to use her for their propaganda, it would already do so much.

instead she’s silent. when her influence is needed the most, she’s not there.

the sad thing is, we all know she’ll live and thrive if she chooses to stay silent. hell, i have tickets to see her next year. she’ll continue to be successful and she will put out more albums and she’ll earn more money and she’ll be safe and happy. palestinians have none of any of this. some of them are dying under the rubble after their house is hit with b0mbs that israel is dropping as im typing this.

but if she uses her influence? if she puts pressure on the government, on joe biden whom she proudly endorsed, there’s a chance that she could tip the scales. and even if it doesn’t work, isn’t it better to have at least tried? even selfishly, will your conscience not feel lighter knowing you did something instead of nothing?

taylor, you have a ton of resources at your disposal. i hope you use them, and i hope you use your influence to help the palestinian people.

[aftaylorglow]

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY

merch concept - a patch/magnet for every track (click for full quality)

[aftaylorglow]

me screaming along to but daddy i love him knowing damn well i was one of the sarah’s and hannah’s begging her to come to her senses

[aftaylorglow]

i know this has been talked about a lot but i can’t believe taylor put out nineteen songs where she turns herself inside out, reveals all of her trauma to her listener, and ultimately concludes that she found someone who accepts all of her scheming and even appreciates it, before ending an alternate edition of the album with ‘yeah so I’m a liar. I’ve been an unreliable narrator the entire time. you wouldn’t believe any of my stories if you actually knew who I was. I’m actually too broken to understand. i’m all alone and I can’t be helped.’

[aftaylorglow]

this time next week i’d be on the way to the airport to see taylor wtf

[aftaylorglow]

swifties making up different, super far-fetched “connections” between random things and calling them easter eggs is indicative of why and how they’ve found ways to twist every ~valid~ criticism against taylor and defend her for not speaking up about anything.