#*unstoppable forces

[taylortruther]

so much of taylor's discography is expressing the idea that love is so powerful that she's defenseless against it... and that's where we get all of the metaphors about fate, forces of nature like avalanches and gravity and ivy or wisteria, the cosmos, but it's also where we get all the metaphors about cages, prisons, jails... needing to break down walls, needing to escape...

[taylortruther]

I think I probably wrote my question in a confusing way, maybe because it’s a confuse thought in my head too!

I kinda meant, she admitted that she ghosted and “swindled” partners in the past and she had her reasons of her course, but that’s the same thing she accuses Matty of, but in his case she tells him that he is what he’s done, in her case it’s glossed over as a “clever” and “girlboss-y” (not my words, I read them used here and on twitter). Isn’t it a bit hypocritical, for lack of a better adjective, to condemn this type of behaviour when she admitted that she did it in the past?

so just to be clear (because i know i'd get a sassy anon otherwise), i don't think leaving a relationship by way of getaway car is "girl bossy" djdksjs i don't think empowerment in relationships means not caring about hurting people. it means knowing when to leave and how to look out for yourself. but taylor (just like any of us) is just trying to leave her life, she's not dating and breaking up AS an icon of feminism or whatever. like, she's a person. her actions will not always be logical or pure or even good.

so that said, i don't think it's very productive to say "you did this once, you're not allowed to feel hurt when the tables are turned." i think we can look forward to ts12+ and see what she says about those patterns, though! i mean, i for one have said a few times i'd love even more songs about her motivations, or what parts of herself lead her to engage in these specific patterns (getaway cars, people pleasing, and so on.)

like, in the bolter, she reiterated how she skips town on men and it feels freeing. but she's also written many songs about how she thinks she must've been better as an idea, because men leave her in the dust. so which is it? was she in control or was she not? these are questions she asks herself in her last few albums: the archer comes to mind, where she's saying she knows she has an issue with bolting and hurting people close to her - she wants to change. in wcs, she asserts she wasn't poison, she was young and naive, but then why can't she let it go? is it because she enjoyed some of it? in mastermind, she says she's driven by a need to be loved and implies she doesn't deserve it unless she tries tries tries, it's now part of who she is. and in the manuscript, she says she was young, and this guy who was older and so much more mature (as she knows now, given she's in her 30s now too) thinks he did nothing wrong. and maybe it wasn't wrong (or was it?)... but it set her on a path she didn't choose, and she had to find meaning in it to move on and regain control over it. and ttpd is a reflection of that lesson: how you can be led by emotion and superstition and constructs like luck or fate, but these are also traps, because you can use them to escape reality and construct a fantasy that can burn down your whole life.

and taylor has said she's hurt people, switched out men, ghosted. maybe she hasn't sung enough about it to your liking besides quippy one liners, but i also think the explanation for that behavior is clearly described. she's afraid people will leave her and betray her so she searches for reasons to bolt! think of that EVERYONE WILL BETRAY YOU sign in the anti hero mv, and "this is how the world works: you gotta leave before you get left" in idsb, and the reputation poem about caging herself in with her own extreme sense of justice; think about how she sings she "shoots to kill when she's mad," "why do i break what i love so much?" "help me hold onto you" and "my reputations never been worse so you must like me for me" and he "loves her like she's brand new" and how essential that would be for someone who NEEDS to be liked in the midst of a massive public cancellation. how easily that turns into handcuffing yourself to a spell, to the idea that this is the only person she can be with. like, this is a very similar story to say, calvin, but the stakes were lower. but she was still trying to choose the right relationship in the most of a lot of public bullshit.

and then think about how, if you handcuffed yourself to an idea of love, if that love stops being enough, you might struggle to figure out how to end it. i mean, anyone who's ever had to initiate a breakup in a ltr can tell you how you don't break up the first time it occurs to you. you pick fights, resentment builds up, you have doubts you'll find someone else, you go on breaks, you try to make it work, you go into denial.

and ultimately, choosing yourself and your own happiness is so rarely a clean decision. people WILL get hurt in the process, sometimes in avoidable ways. it's just life. ghosting or ending things badly is often a result of not wanting to hurt someone or have a confrontation. which isn't always the best way to handle things, but, well, that doesn't mean you can't be hurt later lmao.

anyway, she wanted to tell a specific story (three stories, really) in ttpd and maybe later she'll talk about her own so-called hypocrisy. or not.

[taylortruther]

why is the way i loved you lowkey a prophecy (lol) for the entire story of this album (i just listened to it and im… kinda mind blown, the girl really knows herself unfortunately) 💀💀

I KNOW. like, taylor wrote all of those songs and she has her own personal patterns in relationships, so they show up over and over again! she loves to feel that out of control unbridled passion in love - which is an observation, not a judgment. sometimes that passion is healthy, often it is not, at least from what we see in her discography. but lots to say about how our culture makes you think love should make you feel out of control, confused, etc. and how that makes it hard to tell the difference between unhealthy and healthy passion.

[taylortruther]

Thots NOW (if and when you have time ofc)

out of context this sounds like you're just politely demanding more sex fjadskl.

so, ciwyw is a cute song because it was her saying that anyone on the outside could call her and joe what they wanted - fake, too soon, crazy, doomed, nonsensical, a bad idea, whatever - because she knew it was real, it was love. (side note: i love that the essence of the song is that people can call their relationship whatever they want, but what it actually is, she never explicitly names. just a fun little artistic device!)

ciwyw also always reminded me of that line in don't blame me: "my name is whatever you decide, i'm just gonna call you mine." i always took this as her basically saying i'm so in love with you, i don't care if/when you call me your wife, even your girlfriend, but you're my one and only. (it's only recently i learned people think that line was about marriage oop.)

and this love is telling a story of a person who isn't a permanent fixture in her life, they come and go just like the tide; however, this person left such a deep mark on her, she welcomes them back, even when they've both tried to move on. the implication is that it's special and rare. this love is good, it's bad, so call it what you want, but it's real.

tldr i kinda thought ciwyw was subtly hinting at the games they were playing at the beginning, the back and forth, the uncertainty, etc.

[taylortruther]

read my sentence out loud kinda reminds me of midnight rain. like he wanted it comfortable i wanted that pain, the life i gave away, i guess sometimes we all get just what we wanted. it's like reflecting on a life choice, what we gain from it and what we lose. sad she thought of their life as a prison and their house as cursed expecially considering "barefoot in the kitchen sacred new beginnings that became my religion" :(

i don't know if i agree that she's describing the relationship feeling like a prison... i took it more as a different way of saying, "i'm with you, even if it makes me blue" "ain't no other shade of blue, but you, no other sadness in the world would do" mixed with "there was nowhere for me to stay, but i stayed anyway"... like, there is pain and darkness here, but she's choosing it, because she thinks they can get through it.

also imo curse ties into taylor's affinity for using big forces of nature - fate, avalanches, time - to describe love and the way it's out of her control. so, similar to this idea of a cage or prison, but not quite a prison.

[taylortruther]

She does say in Mastermind that they "ended up in the same room, at the same time" and I'd like to think fate brought them together but she pulled the strings to keep him closer. I think Taylor believes in fate to an extent. Like she knows it's kind of silly and unrealstic, but isn't it just so pretty to think so?

yeah i agree and tbh this is why invisible string is one of my favorite songs.

as a matter of fact, invisible string and all of the girls and mastermind are like this trio of beautiful songs about fate and belonging together.

parallel lines, stars all aligned, they intertwined...

[taylortruther]

I’ve personally always taken the fire vs water imagery from Eras tour as sort of Taylor being like ‘everything burned down around me, I burned some of it down myself, the waters of grief nearly drowned me, the waters of that grief cleansed me as well, and in the chaos of it all, here I am, celebrating everything I lost and everything I gained, etc’ The eras tour is very obviously a celebration of creation (Taylor’s vast catalogue, her relationship with her audience, etc) but it’s also an acknowledgment of the destruction that has gone hand in hand with the creation for pretty much her entire career.

Also, i know that we all complain about swifties lacking nuance on the internet, but it truly does do such a disservice to the artistry of the live performances to try to narrow everything down to one meaning (I mean this generally, I do not think you are guilty of this fyi!!). Like the fire burning behind her, the water raging around her, it’s both something she caused and something that was done to her by others. It’s simultaneously about destroying and grieving and suffering and also about celebrating and rebuilding and succeeding, etc. She primarily choose Fire and Water for the tour visuals at emotional heights of the concert. Fire destroys but it also creates room for new, stronger growth. Water cleanses/nourishes/gives life but it also destroys.

I haven’t fully articulated my thoughts on all of the tour imagery (particularly the visuals based around natural extremes) so this is the most I can spit out right now, but I do think the natural extremes (fire and water) shes chooses are very intentional and that they really lean into feelings associated with the high and lows of her music and career overall.

no you're so right and she's used fire and water to indicate both of those things - rage, death, rebirth - throughout her career! (it's also an extremely common metaphor in general.)

when i was drowning that's when i could finally breathe ... i am finally clean -> drowning but finding herself by the ocean in the ootw mv.

cardigan's mv, where she uses music to literally stay afloat in her despair, and she's a different person when she returns to her cabin.

i'm a fire and i'll keep your brittle heart warm, i am ash from your fire, i'm getting tired even for a phoenix, etc.

also, fire and water are unstoppable forces, stronger than her. she's carried away by water, unable to stop it - fire consumes and takes over things quickly.

she's been burned but she's also a protective fire. she's drowned and been unmoored, but she can also take down ships and find herself below the current.

and these symbols in particular - fire and water - are so common and pervasive in myths, stories, the shared human consciousness, that they always have various meanings. so to your point: yes, they have multiple meanings!

[taylortruther]

I'm having a hard time articulating this (and I really need to be more productive this afternoon than I've been), but your last anon has me thinking about the role fate has played in Taylor's songs. The push-and-pull of the mastermind.

is she the mastermind or was it fate or was it both???????