Rebekah Harkness- We All Know Her From Folklore Album.

sometimes the universe

...just says it shall be...

i mean seriously... can you believe this pic of karlie existed back in... august 2012?? with a gold heart covering over the other side of her face??? like...?!?! between this and the sweet escape coincidence unearthed by @daydreamlibertine i am truly beside myself

thanks to @blogbeautiffulthings for this truly hidden gem!! i can’t believe i’ve never seen it.

here’s more from the photoshoot that it is from:

karlie seems to be wearing her jennifer meyer initial necklace in this shoot as well.

really i’m just enamored by karlie showing off some very rare left-side eye 😂 and also like, it’s at such a particularly good angle...

...so naturally 🙈 i took the liberty of flipping it, zapping the saturation, and overlapping:

what a fit!

also it kind of reminded me of something

a taymoji of taylor in a hoodie, oddly misplaced within the I Did Something Bad pack

hark...!

is that a crack of the knuckles over a keyboard that i do hear? why yes concerned reader, i am aware this hoodie references a particular preexisting look of taylor’s. no, concerned reader, i am not aiming to say that this taymoji is meant to reference this one time back in 2012 when karlie modeled a black hoodie. after all this is a taymoji quite squarely of the:

BLIND FOR LOVE

gucci look from the lwymmd video.

that’s right.

blind 👁

for love 💛

♪♬♩♫♪♬♩♫

*postscript*

also like, in rewatching the behind the scenes for this scene why does taylor go out of her way to make a scene out of one of the guys that has a hole cut out of his tie?

🤨hmm?? 🤨🤨🤨 hmmmmm???

Remember that time…

KK tagged TS as a Daisy, then TS said that she is the love of her life’s daisy, and then drew a picture of the daisy in her liner notes, where she historically gives clues about who her songs are about?

guys there are so many parallels to her other songs in mr. perfectly fine

all too well: “so casually cruel in the name of being honest”

mr. perfectly fine: “mr. casually cruel”

last kiss: “you told me you loved so why did you go away?”

mr. perfectly fine: “mr. looked me in the eye and told me you’d never go away”

how you get the girl: “when you left her all alone and never told her why”

mr. perfectly fine: “mr. never told me why”

I knew you were trouble: “no apologies, he’ll never see you cry”

mr. perfectly fine: “mr. never had to see me cry”

dear John: “long were the nights when my days once revolved around you”

mr. perfectly fine: “mr. everything revolves around you”

the story of us: “I used to know my spot next to you, now I’m searching the room for an empty seat”

mr. perfectly fine: “sashay your way to your seat. it’s the best seat in the best room”

white horse: “it’s too late for you and your white horse to catch me now”

mr. perfectly fine: “someday maybe you’ll miss me but by then you’ll be mr. too late”

“New Romantics” is the queer anthem we need right now.

One of Taylor’s best songs ever is also one of her gayest: “New Romantics” employs some of her most brilliant lyrical tricks to construct a narrative that’s clever, moving, and, for lack of a better phrase, hella hella gay. First, let’s talk about the structure of the lyrics: The verses all end in couplets (ABABCC rhyme structure as opposed to the pre-chorus and chorus, which are both ABAB) – in poetry, you use a couplet to draw attention to something, to emphasize a point. Let’s see what she has to say: We’re all bored We’re all so tired of everything We wait for Trains that just aren’t coming

When Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone named this the second best song of 2014, he called boredom “the least Tay of emotions.” But if this is a song about breaking the cycle of bearding – as Taylor did in 2014 – this verse sets up the dreary monotony of being in the closet, pretending to be someone you’re not. She brings the point home in the couplet:

We show off our different scarlet letters Trust me, mine is better

What’s Tay’s scarlet letter? Her love ‘em and leave ‘em inability to keep a man? No – that’s the character she parodies in “Blank Space.” This song is about her real scarlet letter, the one we don’t know about: her queerness and all the lies that come with it. Let’s skip ahead to the third verse to see why:

We’re all here The lights and boys are blinding We hang back It’s all in the timing

Something is already off here: The rhyme structure is broken. Instead of the perfect ABABCC of every other verse, verse 3 gives us ABCBDD. This could just be sloppy writing, but that’s not Taylor – this verse is meant to undermine our sense of stability in the song, to prick up our ears. This works in the context of the lyrics – Taylor being blinded by the boys and lights (presumably media attention/camera flashes?) – but it also serves to make us pay close attention to her next couplet:

It’s poker, he can’t see it in my face But I’m about to play my Ace

What’s her Ace? Her scarlet letter, of course – her bright red A, the Ace of Hearts. And she’s about to tell us exactly what it is:

We need love But all we want is danger We team up Then switch sides like a record changer

“We need love, but all we want is danger” can read like she wants danger instead of love, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. What if we read the line like this instead: “We need love, but everything we want is dangerous.” That fits thematically with Taylor’s other work in songs like “Treacherous” and “Style,” and it also makes sense in the context of the next line. What exactly does it mean to “switch sides like record changer”? What even is a record changer? There’s a vague allusion to turning over a record on a turntable here, but Taylor is making up words because she’s telling us something else: that she’s teaming up with someone to change the record about her dangerous love life. And “record” here is a triple meaning – it also alludes to the songs on this record, which can literally change sides as you flip the LP over, but can also change sides in terms of who she’s singing about depending on whether you know the truth about her scarlet letter, her Ace.

The rumors are terrible and cruel, But honey, most of them are true

Taylor punctuates this verse with a wink to those of us who’ve heard the rumors about her: She’s heard them too, and she wants to tell us they’re true. 

This brings us to the second pre-chorus and chorus, and to the essential question of the song: Who is “we”? Is this a platonic song about Taylor and her girlfriends (and, by extension, single people everywhere), or is this a romantic song about Taylor and her girlfriend (and, by extension, queer people everywhere)? 

Baby, we’re the new romantics Come on, come along with me Heartbreak is the national anthem We sing it proudly We are too busy dancing To get knocked off our feet Baby, we’re the new romantics The best people in life are free

We’re too busy going out with our friends to fall in love, we sing proudly about our heartbreaks, the best people in life are single. Yep, that works! But it ignores the broader context of the song – let’s take a look at the bridge, where everything slows down a LOT (again, Taylor is telling us to pay attention):

Please take my hand and Please take me dancing and Please leave me stranded It’s so romantic

The rhyme structure here (AAAA with lots of word repetition and proximate rhyme, a trick often used by noted lesbian Emily Dickinson) is like a big flashing sign: HEY, THIS IS WHAT THE SONG IS ABOUT. And it doesn’t sound platonic at all – it sounds like dancing with your girlfriend in public, only to have her leave you alone lest she confirm those terribly cruel rumors. (This bridge is also a prelude to “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” as surely as “Every day is like a battle, but every night with us is like a dream” is a prelude to “…Ready for it?”.)

The song is called “New Romantics.” She’s telling us, as clearly as she can, that this is a song about romance. Taylor has taken all the bricks people have thrown at her – at this point, still largely about how boy-crazy she is – and built a castle where she can be free with her girlfriend. Read this way, we can see a new meaning for the first verse of “Call It What You Want”:

My castle crumbled overnight I brought a knife to a gunfight They took the crown but it’s all right

This verse reads like it’s about the Kimye controversy, but I think it’s also about kissgate. Taylor built a glass castle of safety for herself and Karlie, and when it collapsed, her crown (i.e. the king of her heart) was taken from her. They had to go back into hiding (“nobody’s heard from me for months”), but they found a deeper, truer love all on their own.

“New Romantics” is one of Taylor’s best songs ever – not just because the melody is amazing and the lyrics are killer, but because it takes the language of heartbreak and turns it into an anthem of strength for Taylor and for every queer person who has ever had to hide who we are. She opens 1989 by telling us we can want who we want, and she closes it by telling us the same thing: The best people in life are free. 

…so was this a fifth tear easter egg? 😂

It’s the “askew” AND “raining lipsticks” that’s a neon sign for me. 🤭

in conclusion, enchanted is about emma stone

evermore by taylor swift / Taylor Swift: The Rolling Stone Interview (2019) / Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’, The Guardian (2019) / Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself, Vogue US (2019)

I don’t like a gold rush, gold rush

I don’t like anticipating my face in a red flush

I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch

Everybody wants you, everybody wonders what it would be like to love you

Walk past

Quick brush

I don’t like slow motion, double vision in rose blush

I don’t like that falling feels like flying

‘Til the bone crush

Everybody wants you

But I don’t like a gold rush

a few age related observations & easter egg clownery

So first, Taylor's current age is 31.

In All Too Well (The Short Film), Taylor highlights being 21 years old. Then, later in the film, we cut to 13 years later.

21 + 13 = 34 years old

ATW10 book release Taylor was 34 years old

And then, we got this detail from Jimmy Fallon where Taylor mentions hinting at something 3 years in advance.

Remember Taylor today is 31.

31 + 3 = 34 years old

Taylor also mentions in this interview that she actively sought to incentivize fan to read her lyrics with her coded messages. And that her lyrics, her words, are what she is most proud of in her career.

We've been seeing certain hints toward Speak Now as of late.

I must also remind you of this very important line from the Speak Now prologue. (I had this in a draft on November 1st and should've posted it then!)

Furthermore, I saw it suggested somewhere that the very title cards throughout the short film were chapter titles to ATW10 Taylor's book.

Long story short, I unabashedly in full clownery predict Taylor is planning on releasing a tell-all memoir like the ATW10 version of herself did. Furthermore, with the various Speak Now easter eggs we've seen lately, I also predict that Speak Now will be coming soon and that this "book millions might read someday" will be in our hands in about 3 years time

I believe this is something she's been planning for a while. And I can't wait to hear what she's been waiting to say!