I Really Do Believe That A Lot Of Folklore, Evermore, & Midnights Is A Blend Of Her Present And Past

I really do believe that a lot of folklore, evermore, & midnights is a blend of her present and past experiences/emotions inspired by her going back and revisiting her earlier songs for the re-recordings

Like tolerate it, for instance?? Really strikes me as a combination of inspiration from her previous time in an age-gap relationship and her realizing that she was feeling a lot of the same things in her present relationship

“I polish plates until they gleam and glisten” reminds me of the all too well 10 min short film

But “I made you my temple, my mural, my sky, but now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life” really feels like it was about the relationship where she changed her whole life to suit his wants/needs and made him her muse for YEARS

“Where’s that man who threw blankets over my barbed wire?” = Where’s the man I fell in love with? Also a callback to “something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire”

Currently thinking about ‘guilty as sin?’

Maybe it’s her reckoning with how much she blamed herself for their problems and fights in past songs (e.g., afterglow “it’s all me in my head / I’m the one who burned us down”)

And she’s finally acknowledging that not all of the guilt she felt in the past was justified and it wasn’t all her fault

So it’s “guilty as sin?” because she’s questioning it (or being sarcastic about it) like ‘oh was it really all my fault?’ (Also probs ‘oh was I really just too much to handle? Was there really no one in the world who could take it? Or could you just not take it??’)

“Don't let what he wants eclipse what you need. He's very dreamy, but he's not the sun. You are!" -greys anatomy

🥲 Taylor babe listen up

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys (thoughts and ideas)

- This title hints at Joe being potentially destructive

- And the source of that destruction being his ‘favourite toys’

- What might those be? Perhaps the people and things he holds nearest and dearest are the ones that face his wrath most of all

- This kind of behaviour suggests someone who is their own worst enemy: ‘breaking’ (hurting and destroying) the very things they claim to want/love

- Keeping this in mind while considering some of the issues they were likely dealing with, it’s easy to see how this might have manifested within the private/public struggle, the marriage struggle, him using depression as a crutch to lash out at and blame her, her success vs his lack thereof, him not seeing how sick the relationship was making her (YLM), etc.

- It could be lashing out and blaming her for his shortcomings as is suggested within Renegade

- Renegade: his damage damaged her; he fired missiles because he hated himself and it demolished her; then squeezed her hand as she was about to leave (love bombing which she references in the album note?).

- It could also be more insidious and less overt: stringing her along on the marriage issue, making her feel her success and fame were the source of his pain, ignoring her struggles and sickness, making her feel her pain was an imposition (YLM) and her issues weren’t as important as his

- Basically all the ways he contributed to making the relationship a toxic one and hurting her/making her question herself and her own pain and issues, etc.

- This explains how and directly leads into Down Bad

- there is a saying: misery loves company for a reason

- ⁠also: hurt people hurt people

- ⁠essentially what these common phrases tell us is that people who are broke and hurting want to share in that and commiserate with others, particularly those closest to them; or they want to make others feel what they’re feeling as a way to alleviate some of their own hurt

- ⁠either way, they end up making others (often those they care most for) hurt as much as they do in the end

- ⁠and as Taylor has talked about before: those you are closest to know the exact buttons to push and ways to hurt you the most

- screams of convincing yourself that he's only toxic and hurting you because he loves you...it says "he only does these things because he loves me / he only treats me this way because he comfortable to not be okay around me" etc. so might be a reflection on that. Cardigan - "And when I felt like I was an old cardigan / Under someone's bed / You put me on and said I was your favourite". X

- The placement of the song on the tracklist makes it a potential first single which might suggest that these heavy topics might be counter balances with an earworm melody/catchy beat that will mask just how dark it is (Anti-hero).

You need to draw and make art or else all the images will stay in your head and you'll get sick