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THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT + literary references

(sources: cassandra, who's afraid of little old me, peter, the prophecy)

#taylor swift

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clara

#WOW #taylor swift #art

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I absolutely adore the (thinly-veiled) story in "Fortnight" because as I said on album release day, it's like "ivy" but in the suburbs.

I love the conceit of some sort of sanitized, suburban wasteland being a veneer for the seedy underbelly of these unhappy couples, acting out their secret fantasies as a cover for how unsatisfying their pristine lives are. It feels so "Desperate Housewives" turned on its head.

The narrator is drinking away her troubles, but nobody notices because everyone else is just as miserable and doing the same thing. (Or don't care.) The love interest moves in to the house behind hers, captivating her across the fence line. His wife upkeeps the perfect suburban duties, tending to her garden, and it drives the narrator crazy because her own home is in shambles on the inside. How dare she make something so beautiful that hides something so ugly? How dare she be happy when she has the one thing the narrator thinks she wants?

The would-be lovers circle each other, make pleasantries like good neighbours always do, sublimating their desires for each other over idle chit chat, which only highlights how that spark has gone out with her husband. And the image of their presumed perfect marriage to their neighbours is also a lie, because while she's feeding these fantasies about the other man in her mind, her husband is openly unfaithful. And the fuck of it all is that she knows and she isn't doing anything about it. The implied reading of "my husband is cheating, I want to kill him," to me is that this is an ongoing affair, but she's just put up with it, letting the resentment build but continuing to play the role of dutiful wife. (After all, good wives always know.)

The story is suburban gothic. The pressures of up keeping the day to day of the British? American dream do nothing but kill the spirit of the people inside them when they can't admit that it's wrong. The call is coming from inside the house: the danger isn't from some monster lurking in the shadows invading their neighbourhood, but quite literally in their own backyards. The only options are to stay stuck in the mundane reality of day to day in this sterile cage, or to break free and escape to Florida, the bastion of evading the law and lovers and time. You can buy the car (or the house or the boat or whatever), but it won't fill the hole inside you if you can't admit what's wrong and follow through.

I could soooooo see this playing out as a movie or TV show and I freaking love it. (I mean, it already has, it's a whole genre lol.) There's the whole ~real life~ situation filtering through these characters, being used as a cautionary tale that would probably veer a shade too far into speculation for another post. But I do love me some storytelling about the dark side of suburbia as a foil to people's darker impulses and psychological breakdowns.

#yessss #i enjoy fortnight so much as a concept #and it's almost a prologue to the rest of the album #it's the reason she made the choices she did #and then the rest of the album is her realising she wishes she'd left it alone #she needed to leave the husband but the neighbour was not what she thought #text

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Taylor Swift presents… Slut!

#taylor swift

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Do you think any of Taylor's old songs are actually about MH? I thought NO and part of the whole point was that he was saying "we're meant to be together we've been pining over each other for years... I know your songs are about me ;)" and she wanted him and she wanted to believe they were actually a fated second chance romance so she was scrambling like "uh YEAH totally... *dedicates cardigan and question? to him even tho they were not about him*"

That's also how I see "swirled you into all of my poems" like she's telling herself he was mixed into all of them even tho he wasn't the main ingredient

i am 100% with you anon. cardigan and question...? imo were never about him, she just retconned them later to help her build her little fantasy that it was meant to be

#EXACTLY #text

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jaime please could you explain the conversations/sex/strollers line?

i can! basically she's telling a story about how she's seeing this guy (jake, but that's only important in the larger context of why the manuscript closes the album) who is much older than she is. after wooing her, and having banter, he basically tells her that if the sex is anywhere near as good as their general chemistry, they'll have babies together. and then it ends, implying that it either wasn't or that he didn't mean it. she feels that both of these realizations shattered her irreparably and set her on the trajectory that ended in summer 2023.

#:( #text

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THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT + literary references (part 2)

(sources: loml, I hate it here, the albatross, so high school, thank you aimee, clara bow)

#LOVE THIS #taylor swift

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I meant to post about this back when TTPD was released and never got around to it, but it's so touching to me that Taylor has peppered so many British-isms into the album, and not just in a jokey kind of way like in "London Boy" back in the Lover days.

It's such a beautiful, subtle nod to how much that was her life for years, and to the marks the city and the muse(s) left on her. Because isn't that true of any of us when we've been around a person for so long, or live in a place we've made into our home? You start picking up their speech patterns until they become second nature. (For instance, one of my best friends moved abroad for university, and before long she started dropping in words like "fortnight," "lorry,""shops" (vs. stores) into conversation when we'd speak, which only got stronger along with her accent shifting as the years went by and she stayed there.) Kind of a love language code switching.

It’s sprinkled throughout the album. “For a fortnight” in “Fortnight,” “blokes” on “The Alchemy,” “the shops,”* in “How Did It End?” I think my favourite use of it is in “The Bolter,” because it’s such a classic twangy yeehaw Taylor song, but she’s got these tiny turns of phrase that point to where she spent a large portion of her adult life. (E.g. “best mates,” “out the drive,”* “wish he wouldn’t be sore,”*)(*yes I know these aren’t like, specifically not-American, but as someone who has grown up with North American English in the same generation as Taylor, these definitely feel anachronistic/foreign. Like if I hear someone say “the shops” instead of “the store,” “drive” instead of driveway or “sore” meaning upset, I’m thinking they either watch a lot of 1950s movies or they’re from the UK. And yes I know it’s to make everything rhyme BUT THAT’S THE POINT SHE IS MAKING THEM RHYME ON PURPOSE ok I’m stopping now before the linguistics nerd in me jumps out) It’s such a cool merging of influences, much like the album as a whole fuses together experiences and muses and sounds.

And that gets back to the “I love this place for so long,”of it all. The place is the city, the place is her home, the place is the person, and they are all part of her. To me, these are part of the subtext of the album, of the big love she once felt for all of it, and how it changed her. And, why it hurt so much to leave it all behind. So she’s starting over back home in America, but she’s taking a little bit of London with her for its curtain call on TTPD.

#i hope she can love this place unreservedly again someday #text

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THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY | My Personal Top 5

#cute #taylor swift

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WHO'S AFRAID OF LITTLE OLD ME // EASIER THAN LYING

#SO GLAD SOMEONE'S CLOCKED THIS!!! #taylor swift #halsey

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If you could choose five songs from Debut for the Eras Tour set list, what would they be?

#our song / tim mcgraw / tomg / should've said no / iomwiwy as my own personal wish ik it's not realistic #cold as you is a fav but i don't think it would vibe the right way #i also think a place in this world could be good #i'm rambling #text

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Taylor Swift | Animals Over the Years

#LOVE THIS #taylor swift #faves

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while thank you aimee is a lot of lingering resentment over what kim did to her, “but when i count the scars, there’s a moment of truth: that there wouldn’t be this if there hadn’t been you” is a really mature lyric that i think gives us a lot of perspective on how she views 2016 (and maybe a little bit about her perspective on the sale of her masters). had 2016 never happened, reputation and its tour wouldn’t have ever happened, she wouldn’t have been pushed into healing after the absolute insanity that 1989 was, etc etc etc you all get it

#not her writing the thank you note #taylor swift

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Taylor Swift | My Favorite Album Openers ↳ Fearless (2008), The 1 (2020), Ready For It (2017), Willow (2020), State of Grace (2012)

#taylor swift

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#stevie verse was for me personally <3

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#the black dog

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The Tortured Poets Department is a great reminder that women don't owe the world pretty. Taylor Swift doesn't owe anyone an easily digestible pretty pop album wrapped in a bow with short songs you can make TikToks to. She's allowed to present something raw, uncomfortable, and vulnerable to the world.

#YES #text