I know itâs been a tough couple of days. But youâre the person I send these to, and even if Taylor uses us, I donât feel used by you.
I am thinking of her favourite narratives. Tragedies. Romances. Fairy tales.
Fairy tales, which are often both. Fairy tales which are actually lessons, warnings.
I am thinking of Taylor and Travis and Hansel and Gretel. Siblings of the LGBT.
Sourdough, San Francisco, gold rushes and breadcrumbs. Witches in cake houses that shove you into ovens and finding your way home after cooking the witch, burning her, tearing her house down.
Toy Story is a modern Fairy Tale.
Not the Disney paint brush of self actualisation. But the Grimm collection, the anthology, of fantastical settings and conflicts, identity and danger, loss and innocence.
Hansel and Gretel is a dynamic of one sibling fattened with sweets and the other made subservient to him. Gretel is the mastermind who breaks them out of hell. Hansel is the muscle.
Taylor sings of colours and oceans and of buildings. The buildings are not just a setting, they are a gothic motif. They are an identity and a cage.
Taylor lived within the candy house so long she started becoming the witch.
The real question is, has Taylor burned the real one? The circus, is it for the big reveal or is there still another layer we donât see? Another set of eyes sheâs trying to deceive?
Are Hansel and Gretel escaping?
The tale is spun again and again.
Taylor is locked somewhere and trying to escape.
We are now in a place wondering if that too is part of the show. But I still believe in the story I am being told: Taylor is locked somewhere and trying to escape.
She is on an island, in a dungeon, in a witches hut, in a tower, in a fishbowl, in a labyrinth. She is trying to get out.
If that truth is true, then what is the story after Gretel gets away? Does she leave us all in the dust? Are we a cost sheâs willing to pay?
How brave is our cowardly lion? Does she learn? Does she change? Does Peter grow up? Does Taylor finish her hero arc?
Maybe itâs all just storytelling.
Maybe there is no lesson.
But I have thoughts and I still wish to think them.
Spade, I am thinking the children of a tree cutter.
I am thinking of a house in the middle of a concrete jungle built to lure you in. Black gift boxes like tiny little caskets. Burnings. Distractions.
Is she the witch? Is she pretending to be? By the time we find out, will it have made any difference?
2/2 This is 13 stories written by Emma Donoghue. I thought the colour of the cover was interesting given Karlieâs Paris look.
We donât have to believe in goodness winning or anything, but I still see the signs.
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