nevertoolatetobebrandnew13

[nevertoolatetobebrandnew13]

what I love about cassandra is that it has so many different interpretations. because as dark as it is, most women experience that feeling. the feeling of being absolutely alone despite being right. the desperation that comes with having your voice silenced. the witch hunt that ensues when you dare speak your mind.

“when it’s ‘burn the bitch’, they’re shrieking / when the truth comes out it’s quiet” is such an amazing line for this reason. everyone would rather jump to the conclusion that a woman is a manipulator and a liar because it’s easier than holding an awful man accountable. and when it comes out that she’s right, because it almost always does, people go on with the tails tucked between their legs, too proud to admit they were wrong.

women are repeatedly sacrificed at the altar of men’s reputations and were expected to sit there and take it with a stiff lip and a smile. that’s what this song is about and that’s why it’s top 5 on the album for me.

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ttpd is like... this fucking sucked... it was my fault... fuck joe... this also fucking sucked... fuck matty... i thought i was gonna die... straight up commit me to an asylum... FUCK matty... fuck joe... no one knows me... fuck kim kardashian... i created every problem and every consequence i have to face... please see me as human... i am exposing my flaws so you see me as a real person... fuck jake gyllenhaal... if you're gonna be so up my business you better realize how fucked up my business is... also hi killatrav ily... there is nothing redeeming about this chapter of my life... hi mom ily... this ALSO fucking sucked... there may be good in the world... here is every sin i have ever committed... i was promised love and forever repeatedly and no one ever delivered... my reaction to trauma was awful... i made so many bad decisions... if you're gonna crucify me do it for good reasons... are you not entertained?

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spotted @thisisctrying

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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 !!!!!!!

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‘and sometimes it gets me when crossing your jet stream, we both did the best we could do underneath the same moon in different galaxies’ is so fucking devastating bc not only does it allude to call it what you want, but also all of the references across her work implying that what they had was fate, sent to her by the universe, divine intervention. all the imagery of ‘starry eyes sparkling up my darkest night’ and ‘once upon a time the planets and the fates and all the stars aligned’ and ‘he’s passing by rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky’ come crashing down into the reality that they were always just outside of each other’s orbit

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the manuscript ending the album on the utter jawdrop moment that neither of the muses of the actual album were the first men to fuck her up with promises of marriage and babies, and that first heartbreak so long ago laid the scene for the woman she would become and the ways she would approach love and how we all watched her life like scenes in a show but she kept coming back to the manuscript of the first torrid affair that ruined her, to bookend an album about two love affairs that destroyed her utterly in almost the exact same way, because all her muses are acquired like bruises........ it's bone-chilling

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I want very badly for her to release a version of this song ft. Stevie nicks and Sabrina carpenter bc it’s like three musical generations of blonde bangs songwriters and I think it would hit home and be beautiful?

You look like Taylor Swift in this light, we're lovin' it, you've got edge, she never did, the future's bright, dazzling

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This album is about how two men broke her heart just months apart and how she was quite literally going through a mental breakdown while trying to put on a front while performing for millions of people on a world tour but you wouldn’t know that because you’re either so caught up in trying to figure out who each song is about or your so caught up in your hate for her that you’d rather make fun of her in her most vulnerable, raw, and honest state just to make yourself feel better

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Something must’ve happened between the folklore Grammys speech where she thanked him so profusely and you’re losing me. I feel gross even talking about this anymore after ttpd in a way. But it seems like that year was a big turning point. And evermore and midnights esp I think are a LOT of the dissolution of the relationship channeled through other vessels.

Also- if Taylor had broken up with joe, then released midnights, then gone on tour, like. The parasocial frenzy that would’ve been? It would’ve completely altered the way people received midnights and how people responded to analyzed those first few weeks of tour. I am NOT saying she stayed for that reason. But I think when we discuss how the parasocial aspects of this fandom influence public perception of her art, that’s a really big one. I think that relationship was also a big safety net for her creativity in ways. She’s mentioned feeling creatively freer recently, but I think with freedom sometimes comes a bit of uncertainty and anxiety. There was kind of this veil before that if Taylor wrote about something sad or heartbreaking that it couldn’t possible be ABOUT her bc she was happy (even tho I think folklore and evermore are much less fictional than we give them credit for). And when she lost Joe she kind of lost that insulating barrier of what’s real and what’s fiction in her storytelling. And it’s not that she can’t still tell stories that way, but her fandom attributed that art choice a bit to her relationship I think and it let her go undetected for a while or at least slip some things under some noses. And sans that, also knowing everyone’s gonna come back through midnights and folklore and evermore and try to piece apart what you were feeling and when like. There was so much unhappiness and uncertainty but there was also stability and a safety net and comfort and the devil you know.

We were so incredibly on point that day when we discussed that their relationship came to a massive turning point in 2021 and never recovered. Taylor overstayed the entirety of 2022 and has a lot of regret that she did. Perhaps if she hadn’t stayed hoping a cure would come through, she wouldn't have exited the relationship in the fashion she did and the entire manic episode could've been avoided? Making an entire album focussed on Joe would be like going after a dead man/beating a dead horse. She shares that he neglected her, resented her, preferred spending time with other women, and basically left her devoid of any love and affection - she’s explicit about these problems/his behaviour, but none of this is a focus of any one song or songs directed at him. Their intimacy was catalysed by arguments which was mostly caused by her fighting for the relationship, trying to keep it (and him) alive.

She's clearly cognizant of his mental health which so adds an extra layer to this. She even expresses her uncertainty with how it ultimately ended - because these were all issues in the relationship while still ongoing: cheating happened and they remained together; he neglected her and they remained together; he resented her and her success and they remained together. It was the totality of all of this that of course meant it had to end. But because it all was accepted until it wasn’t, it’s confusing even to her how it finally did (How Did it End).

So the story of them can be found throughout the album for the listener to pick up and it's by using a much shorter but also incredibly painful relationship as a vessel. This might just be the biggest feat she's ever accomplished as a songwriter and I applaud her for succeeding so wonderfully.

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everyone is talking about taylor’s relationship with us and im just like. she hates us because we analyze her, but she loves us because we see her. it’s a contradiction she can’t escape. on eras tour, she literally talks about how sharing her feelings with us helps her heal, and then in TTPD, she says how the curiosity and opinions feel stifling. i think it’s just one of those things. she hates blurring the lines of our relationship because of what it does to her, and she’s valid in inserting herself in the space that discusses her and being mad, but she also can’t have us without sharing herself and opening herself to the scrutiny. and this is not me abstaining fans of being invasive, but rather just making a point.

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the amount of times taylor was promised a future with marriage and kids, from a older man who is societally at that stage in life (but she wasn’t good enough), to someone who wanted it so bad (in the wrong way) that he almost trapped her, to someone she grew up with for years and thought would love to be with her but that wasn’t true, to someone who came back in her life for a few weeks and promised her everything at her lowest and then ghosted her… built and broken down from the same high, promised what she wants the most and had it taken away repeatedly, and that leading into the prophecy and how she is fated to be left alone forever is just heartbreaking. i think one of the things i feel most in TTPD is resentment of these men making false promises, her hating herself because she always believes them and goes crazy when they leave.

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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.

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i believe there is a direct correlation between how you view and value taylor’s humanity and your reaction to ttpd

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I’m so struck by how Taylor has retold the story of 2016 so many times and I’m so many ways because as time passes and things happen and things change it reframes and reframes and reframes in her mind because the pain never goes away, the way it looks just changes with the light

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singing about three different men carelessly promising her marriage and babies with no intention to follow through and then having a song begging the universe to change the prophecy that she’s doomed to be alone with no soul mate I …. *deep breathe*

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having so many thoughts about the nature of storytelling right now. about how the story of a girl driven to insanity is more compelling and less palatable than a story of someone scorned and heartbroken. about how public perception of art bleeds into the life of the artist. about living for the record instead of recording about the life. about what makes a good album and how that intersects and conflicts with what makes a happy human. about the toll that takes on a woman who, at the end of the day, just wants to be heard and understood, but feels terrified to let anyone down with the truth. IDK YOU GUYS

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The breath of fresh air that loveable, clear intentioned, public facing but respectful doofus must have been for her. Who openly talks about wanting a family and whose family adores her. What a safe place to land after this. Holy shit.

I don't know how she went to travis after all that. Like, she went after him after the podcast thing and say hey I'm healing but I we could be something if you respect my timing

i don’t think she said we can be something. i think she said hi. i think he said, “we can be something. trust me. i won’t let you down.” no grand gestures or big promises. just that.