“It’s all right. You’re with me.”
This struck me immediately. She wakes up in a car and feels wonky because of all the drugs in her system. More than that, Joel’s not in her field of view, and I think she panics for a second because “where is he?”
But even beyond that, they’re used to this. He is used to her waking up in a panic and having to reassure her to bring her back. He doesn’t even think about saying this because he’s probably woken up most mornings to her scared or reliving her nightmares in Winter. Or maybe he’s had to wake her up on the road from her nightmares. He’s become so accustomed to reassuring her through moments like this that he doesn’t even think about it when they’re in the car. “You’re with me,” “it’s me,” “I’m here,” “it’s just me,” it’s all she needs to hear to bring her back and calm her down
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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…
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I wish I could get dreams about DR characters cuddling. Literally last night my brain decided to make me dream about walking home after school but for some reason not being able to remember how to cross the street even though I already graduated a little while ago and woke up anxious as hell. I want to dream about cuddling instead! PLEASE
I always dream so much, sometimes i get lucky and it's something fun or sweet (or cinematic) but i do also get extreme nightmares lol
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the outfit to the left would look better if octavia had short hair smh
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How is it that Game of Thrones of all shows has one of the best mottos about disability that I've ever heard:
"Some people will always need help. Doesn't mean they aren't worth helping."
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