#The Manuscript

[lyricsilove]

[whiskeyswifty]

Without getting too much into it, the most heartbreaking line in the manuscript to me is “She knew what the agony had been for” because all the time she didn’t even realize what had happened to her. She’d clearly denied it, dismissed it, insisted that no it wasn’t like that, she was an adult! She was capable of making her own choices! Maybe she didn’t want to taint happy memories. He was just a shitty boyfriend and they broke down and broke up like all couples do. She knew what it looked like but no no, she was fine in that regard. He never… no she wasn’t a victim like that. And yet…. She couldn’t move past it, couldn’t lay it to rest. Wondering why she agonized over it, felt sick over it, went over it again and again, haunted by it unlike other breakups. It took all those years and making the short film and seeing 20 year old Sadie Sink in that room with adults and fighting with an adult man to realize oh…. She’s a child. They were right. That is what happened to me. I was a child. And the deluge of pain that comes with finally confronting that. The song drops off after that, the pain unspeakable, and skips to the present, where after exorcising that demon finally, “all that’s left is the manuscript.” And she can finally close the book on that story in her life and not have it define her anymore. But that line really just hits home how long she had been carrying the burden of that unspoken and unresolved truth, buried under denial, slowly festering and poisoning her for some 10 years. God damn.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Many of the songs on TTPD are about both one muse and all the muses because the through line is that they all hurt her in very specific ways. The All Too Well of it all of The Manuscript is the original sin, the first act that broke her by someone she loved*. Once you finish the album with The Manuscript, it reframes the rest of the album, because you realize that first betrayal of her trust and her faith has informed the way she’s moved through life since — and why the lines between these muses/situations are so blurry. Because the actions are specific to people, but the betrayal and the outcomes are rote; they repeat themselves over and over in different places and times. It’d almost be funny how completely predictable these men are if it weren’t so utterly devastating and earth shattering.

The story of The Manuscript hangs like a spectre throughout the entire album, illuminating why the things she felt and wanted were so painful to lose beyond the obvious, and why she felt like she had to keep settling or hurting herself in the aftermath. So TTPD is about each of them and all of them and they cannot be disentangled. What a tangled web we weave indeed.

[godofsmallthings]

i just keep coming back to the manuscript as an album closer and "and at last, she knew what the agony had been for" and feeling like, after the emotional intensity on the album, it feels almost platitudinous? like, i think so much of the way ttpd delivers on its premise is through its subtextual interaction with the idea of taylor's public persona the listener is assumed to have (whether that's a "good" thing or not is something i don't feel equipped to objectively comment on because, well, i'm the target audience and i really like it, so!!) so the actual process she's talking about--the act of writing her pain into song and having it transformed through the release & performance of it--is starting now, after the release of the record. it's obvious that the way songs like all too well have taken on this second, joyful meaning is something she's seeking by releasing this (see eras tour lover speeches), but will the end justify the means? her pain being a vessel for others' entertainment is a theme that crops up several times on the album, and i think the emotional turmoil she went through while making it doesn't allow that lyric to feel like a triumph. at the end of the day, taylor the person still has to sit with her pain and trauma, even if the work taylor the artist does to process helps to take away its teeth. and i think, implicitly, this is the question she's asking by writing it.

[new-york-no-shoes]

The manuscript is about writing all too well ten !!! And the second to last verse is directing the video !! I want to die!! I need my therapist NOW !

[coastaltowned]

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

[florida3exclamationpoints]

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

[cademygod]

i can picture john mayer one hour and fifty nine minutes into tortured poets. he’s about to let out a sigh of relief. he hears taylor singing about his french press.

[taylornation]

TS TTPD official memorandum: Our Chairman’s manuscript will be released in just 13 days. Tortured poets, please make any necessary preparations and pre-order now.🤍📖

[stillgotscars]

the manuscript - taylor swift

[sheisobvious]

the tortured poets department ♡

[piecesintoplaces]

now and then she rereads the manuscript.

[midnightsslut]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[swiftieinbrazil]

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT + all editions

[sombrewoodlandfairy]

the tortured poets department wallpapers

part 1 | part 2

[4ktaylor]

The Tortured Poet Department Variants