theswift-effect

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Thinking a lot about how Taylor writes about fathers on TS TTPD (particularly in comparison to ways she has in the past). In But Daddy I Love Him, she starts out defiant but her dream is for her dad to come around and support her and her wild boy and fuck the rest of the world. And in The Bolter her father is the only one who adores her. Add that to the way she talked about dads during the seven speech last year while she making the record, and it feels like Scott may have been one her best friends last year. Just a fountain, so to speak, while everything else was draining her.

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my interpretation of the mv (apparently unpopular):

> the mv starts with her locked in a hospital (her then relationship). the dress she is wearing resembles a wedding dress (i died on the altar waiting for the proof);

> she takes the “miracle move on drug” and removes the makeup over her tattoos (marks of an old affair). the “miracle move on drug” she takes to get over her long-term partner is her getting emotionally involved with someone from the past. she enters a room with typewriters in a black victorian dress - could mean her mourning her relationship while she was still in it. she starts writing to her old affair (post with tattoos (the same marks she had when she took off her makeup in the hospital)) while he does the same. it’s a mutual pining;

(for me the following scenes of post without tattoos are supposed to be her long-term partner. these are flashbacks of her relationship)

> they are happy until they are not. suddenly they are looking at each other with resentment (while she sings “my husband is cheating”);

> cuts to an experiment laboratory. she is about to be electrocuted, lobotomized, whatever so she can get over that partner;

> the old affair sees that she is in pain - could mean that she had someone there for her emotionally while her partner emotionally neglected her - and stops that. implies that even if he had good intentions, bc of him she actually couldn’t properly get over that partner and just put on a temporary bandaid (her feelings for the old affair). he didn’t let her process that breakup properly;

> in the next take she’s in the rain (could mean the end of her long-term relationship or at least the final stages of it) and he’s calling her. she is ignoring him;

> cuts to shots of her again in that black dress that represents the mourning of her long-term relationship. she is a mess. there are papers floating all over the room - could be the songs she wrote about that long-term partner over the years and their story (so long, london’s spotify canvas is from this part of the video);

> he (the old affair) can finally reach her in person. she finally accepts him.

i suppose that’s where the narrative she tells on the album would begin.

I think you're very close with this interpretation and it shouldn't be an unpopular opinion

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Something about the theme of growing up precocious and then being stunted: “sometimes growing up precocious means not growing up at all”; “I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere”; precocious child references on I Hate it Here and The Bolter; compared with Dear Reader - “never take advice from someone who’s falling apart”; “you wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking”; “you should find another guiding light.” The world’s wise older sister, who has hand held a generation of through their heartbreaks and their comings of age forcing us to reckon with the truth that every wise older sister offering advice and lessons learned is still just a person who is still figuring her own life out.

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The analogy of Matty as a “forget him” pill in the Fortnight video and “I took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary” is the heart of it I feel. If you had to have an extremely painful surgery and could choose to go medicated or not, what would you pick? She had to end things with Joe but she couldn’t bring herself to do it for years because she knew the pain of actually losing him would be too much to bear, and along comes this person peddling that he can take away all the pain. He sells her a story about how he is the great love of her life, that he’s never forgotten her all this time, that it was supposed to be them all along. He can give her everything she can’t bear to let go of. And who wouldn’t want to believe that, when the alternative is … the love that you thought was forever just ends and there’s nothing and no one? So she does it, she takes the pill, she has the surgery, only to find he was selling not just snake oil but poison that leaves her far worse off than she was in the beginning. She feels all the pain of the surgery and the side effects of the drug in one fell swoop.

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this album genuinely shifted something in me like I know that sounds parasocial and unhinged but it truly did... and somehow for the better... like even though it is such a dark album I think just the fact that it illustrates that very bad things can just happen and they don't have to be defining characteristics of your life? you can just... quietly decide to keep living and see where that takes you... even if you're not 100% healed or 100% ok... there also doesn't need to be a huge celebration/salvation to make up for what you've lost... you can just be

i think there's so much quiet power in this. i posted this the first night and we never came back to it, but despite all the guilt and loathing and self-hatred, there's SO much self-respect all over this record. something can happen to you, and you can move forward. it doesn't have to be a big thing. you can just choose yourself and choose to be healthy and chase it.

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Alright, reblog with your top 3 tracks from TTPD as of rn

#down bad #who’s afraid of little old me #the black dog

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this album is how i imagine she would have written about john and jake if she was more unfiltered back then. it’s crazy how much those relationships fucked up her perception of herself and what she deserves. she’s spent her whole adulthood (until now) chasing emotionally unavailable guys and i think to some degree trying to ‘finally get it right’, like repeating the cycle until she gets it right. thank god she stopped that

This is a very interesting take and my initial reaction is that I agree

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I think it’s funny that each faction of the fandom is pointing fingers at the speak up now people because of daddy I love him, but the Him there is literally interchangeable because people do a version of this with every person she dates. Matty just had it worst (for good reason) and served as a good example because as she said in the epilogue she writes the worst men best. Listening to all the songs with that lens on is enlightening. On surface level a lot may seem to be about him, but only because his flaws were so glaring. He’s the perfect red herring.

I'm so happy you sent this ask because I have been struggling to word this and you nailed it

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I don’t have enough brain cells to understand who/what fortnight is about… the neighbor and husband references?

okay, so like taylor said, fortnight is sort of a prologue to the entire album. it references a lot of other songs (down bad, florida!!!, peter, guilty as sin?) there are a few different ways that it could be read, and i may not stick to this interpretation, but the below is where i landed.

fortnight sets the scene for the entire album and the events that are about to unfold by telling a story about an alternate reality about the future she was headed to in which she and joe ignore their problems, stay together, and build the life they're planning. she's in need of psychiatric help, she's drinking, she's depressed. but the other guy has re-entered her orbit. they're going to keep crossing paths. she feels insane. he's right there. she is insane. her husband cheats on her; she's enraged at him. the other guy is married to someone great; she's enraged at her too. she feels insane. she is insane, because she's fully consumed with the anger of following the bad path instead of taking the risk.

so at the end of the song, she decides she has to run for it. she has to move to america. she has to go to florida and start over. she has to buy the car and let him touch her instead of just daydreaming about it. because if she doesn't scratch the itch, if she doesn't see what happens, if she doesn't chase the guy that's been her "what else?" then well, how will she ever know? and the rest of the record is her realizing that maybe she wishes she hadn't.

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i have an essay in my head and i can’t decide if it’s worth irritating people to type it out

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the manuscript is last, i think, because of how we changed all too well (the previous most painful story of her life) for her and all the doors it opened. she hopes one day this will become that too.

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i think someone else said this but basically what joe promised over 6 years was exactly what happened with Matty as well but within like 6 weeks of them properly dating. That is why so many songs confuse us if it's joe or Matty because they were basically the same story(like what happened) but with wildly different time frames.

if that makes any sense

I agree lol.

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I’m too tired to do this but How Did It End really is the story from beginning to end. The mutual suffering from mental illness, her retreat from the spotlight, trying to make themselves fit into each other’s lives, the attempts to play grown up, the intrusion of fame/celebrity, the breaks, the insinuation of infidelity, the gossip, the maybe allusion to a certain life event, the pulling away from each other, the prying eyes all around hunting for all the details…

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i know a lot of people are going to think the takeaway from TTPD is that we know nothing to begin with and that’s how she wants it, but am i crazy to think the opposite? that she’s begging people to understand her and see her and know her? love her even when she isn’t what she seems? relate to her even when she’s messy and wrong and guilty? it’s like she’s bleeding on the page, even when it’s scary and bad and weird and embarrassing, all for us. always for us.

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Fuck joe for making her so love starved and fuck matty healy for taking advantage of that and love bombing her fuck jake gyllenhall for saying he would’ve married her and had babies with her if she was good at sex (She was fucking 21?!!!!!!!!)

Anyways guys stream ttpd!

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I feel so icky about how much she gave him and how little he gave her in return. Left her reeling so hard and so starved for love she landed in that opportunists arms who knew how badly she wanted lasting love and used it to get her only to turn around and ghost her