MIDNIGHTS — OCT 21

I feel so sorry for Taylor as she had to cut and censor this scene from Apple. It’s actually so sad that people are invalidating her ED. It is a subject she’s bravely talked about, underlining the pressure and the obscure thoughts she’s been through for all these years. Just because a person doesn’t represent a certain type of standard for YOU, doesn’t mean that you have to invalidate their suffering! I just wish I could give her one massive hug! We understand, valide and recognize the meaning of this scene and profoundly admire your bravery! 🫶🏻

i think "he brought me back to life" most likely refers to her feeling dead inside during her relationship with C*lvin and feeling reawakened when meeting Tom or Joe? As a less heavy interpretation.

ohhhhh that makes sense too actually

When You Were Sleeping immediately became one of my favorite Christmas-y movies because it is cozy, romantic and beautiful to look at (hiii Miss Bullock <3) AND, more importantly, because Bill Pullman is so attractive in it. How does he do it??? Love to see that you enjoyed it as well

genuinely thought my day was going a waste until i watched the movie.. Lucy was so relatable and that really flavoured the film for me. Sandra Bullock is way too pretty and i loved her bangs (true poetic cinema). THEE chemistry like it didn’t feel like a movie to me, it was too real. kind of ridiculous of how bill pullman was 42 here? and he made FURNITURE (this had me blushing like a teenage girl cause i am one but yeah) the family is so sweet and yeah overall a very cozy movie, had me chanting “i love love” throughout.

Top 5 opening lines! (can be from a book/a poem/a song)

this is such a good question.

'happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' from anna karenina by leo tolstoy. everyone knows this line. i cannot stress how much everyone knows this line. i mean, i introduced this book to a class of high school students last year in a russian lit seminar i was running, and everyone knew this line. it's the thesis statement for all of anna karenina. it's a succinct statement about the world. i think we've discussed how good this opening line is before, but there's a reason i kept trying to read the damn book (and eventually actually managed, ha!). the opening line is so so good.

'jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine' from gloria (in excelsis deo) by patti smith, which i think is the strongest opening line to an album ever. as patti herself says it's about freedom! it's about not owing anyone the consequences for your life! which is really what rock music (at its best) is all about.

'nothing's serious when you're seventeen' from romance by arthur rimabud (my french is not exceptional, but the original 'on n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans' is beautiful.) the poem is about how sharply romance can touch you when you're young and i just find this effervescent, unassuming little line such a key part of it.

'i am a sick man… i am a spiteful man. i am an unpleasant man.' from notes from underground by fyodor dostoyevsky. my mum bought me a mug with famous first lines from literature on it for christmas and this is by far my favourite. it immediately lets you know the tone/energy of the story, but entrances you into reading. dostoyevsky's style is literally incomparable.

'if you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.' from the bad beginning by lemony snicket. which has the exact same energy as notes from underground, come to think of it.

not to mention midnights is a terribly boring album title like if it had been called anything else i maybe wouldn't dunk on it so much

Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one who hated the new cover lmao

you and i are not the only ones but DEFINITELY in the minority. i'll say i don't hate it, and i like a lot of the components! the photo obviously is so striking. how happy she is, mid laugh and hair in the wind. curly hair!! it's a great photo that makes me grin when i see it. i also really love the sharpie-style typography! i think it's a really clever way to stay within the aesthetic, but avoid the copyright infringement of doing it in her original sharpie handwriting. very rough and ready, diy, with the look of a Hand Crafted Human Touch, which is a very interesting way to visually portray a very synth heavy album lol. i love that contrast and that insistence that despite it's pop genre, it's a very raw and open album.

its the technical execution of it that really rubs me the wrong way. simple things like the light on the seagulls comes from the top right, and the light on her face comes from the bottom left. thats like.... art composition 101 shit. not to mention the very odd seagull photoshop job where seagulls are in focus way more than they should be for how proportionate they are to her. they should be much blurrier for how far they are, especially given the grain. and then the general composition is just.... awful. she's both too big and too small at the same time, and the album title is also too big and too small. it's this weird noncommittal size that covers her a little bit? but it's crowding the cover and fighting for real estate and attention with her photo, which is a layout issue. it creates a tension that is really frustrating. it's okay to give some more of that blue negative space for it to breathe so it has the breezy look the cover is trying to evoke.

I think the components actually look awesome in other formats, like the IG story and here:

this is nice and balanced here, her and the title of equal height and we got a thirds situation going on, with the title occupying 2/3, as it should since it's the point of interest. and then she occupies 1/3 as she should as the complimentary image. soooooo pleasing to the eye and very legible design, you know where to go first and then second.

i love so much of it's individual pieces, i'm just soooo frustrated with it's layout choices. i totally get that i'm just being super nit-picky with it and most swifties don't care at all and that's totally fine. 2 of my friends texted me this morning to gush how much they love it and that's great! I'm just really picky when it comes to this stuff, but it's nice to know that me and some of my other buddies on here share the same frustrations with it!

you making that Idol post after I just had an extended internal monologue about how WEIRD it is that female pop stars whose output and persona were largely controlled by their label are shamed and dehumanized for making "lesser" art without ever receiving any pity for the insane structures they grew up in..... Brain connection moment. I think #freebritney changed this a bit but we still have miles to go when it comes to recognizing how destructive and plain evil these "men in suits mold a girl to their liking" machineries are. And it's spitting into the face of all these women to make a show that essentially says "omg women are held back from being sexy :(" SUFFER. We can talk all day about how the Disney purity machine messed with the sexual expression of their young stars but i have the suspicion that this is also not a convo mr. Levinson would be interested in.

brain connection moment !! i've been kind of stuck thinking about this cause , lol , the other day i was looking for pictures of hozier and taylor at victoria's secret, and i mean, this is soooo basic so idk why, when i saw a picture of them with the models and the other performers, with ed sheeran also in a suit and ariana also in lingerie it just made me sooooo mad. honestly i wasn't even thinking about how both taylor and ariana have been in the public eye since they were so young, and like, this is not to say or minimize how boys in the entertainment industry are also sexualized and objectified for adult audiences, it's just that those specific pictures at the vsfs made the difference in expectations so stark it made me SO mad. and then THIS fucking show.

i'm not 100% sure i understand specifically what you're referring to (and if you feel like typing up some of your monologue i WOULD like to read it. as much as i'm fascinated by this stuff it also freaks me out too look at it too closely myself haha so i always love to read your thoughts) but yeah there is like an endless pool of interesting directions you can take the relationship between popstars - who are selling an image - their team - who needs to find a balance between taking care of them (out of genuine concern or just for the sake of them Performing) and creating an image that sells - and their art - cause good art doesn't necessarily = the art you want to make isn't necessarily = what makes money or reaches audiences. and artists that are directed into making a specific thing that Sells but are then ridiculed for this - for giving the people what they want. and like you mention the disney purity thing - it's obviously very complicated and needs to be explored with sensitivity and care, and, you know, over longform such as a six hours miniseries, but lol. out of EVERYTHING to choose these angles. the fucking nerve. how revealing it is about the way you view women in the industry. and a plot twist (?) about how she was in control the entire time (??) when indeed this show specifically was supposed to be directed by a woman who allegedly was both set to fail by the studio and fired after almost finishing the show. ok.

This isn't really what your latest post was about, but it nonetheless reminded me of why I find a lot of the debate about celebrity sexuality conspiracies rather unhelpful: A lot of it is strictly related to how it makes the celebrity feel instead of looking at the effects it has on the people actually involved in the spheres. Obviously there still is a point to be made about how speculating about someone' sexuality on a big scale is invasive (people, including Taylor, have spoken up about this!), but I feel like the harm it can cause to especially younger people is not really talked about as much. The spreading of skewed information to spread a narrative can lead to a warped sense of media literacy relating to issues much more "serious" than whether or not person xy is gay, and I personally also find the image of queerness that is prominent in many of those conspiracies limiting to downright harmful, plus the whole thing encourages an extra level of parasocial attachment (talking as somebody who has been there, done that). It is not that serious for many people and it bears repeating that having your own version of a celebrity in your mind based on what you look for from them is, to some extent (!), simply part of being a fan, but there are a lot of people who have "skin in the game" so to speak and I don't think that's really. Healthy. And demonizing them only leads to the creation of groups that are like echo chambers and gives people who want power in fandom the ability to attain that (which we have seen time and time again). Sadly, I think we are at a point where it is very hard to ever get away from this intense attachment to the artist and thus inability to seperate queer analysis from making assumptions about the artist's sexuality (this goes both ways - for those making the analysis and thise reacting to it), especially in the Taylor Swift fandom... One can only hope.

you are absolutely right and this articulated a lot of thoughts I've been having lately extremely well. Thank you for sending this it's really fantastic

Successful day (managed to draw my wife)

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN KID (redesign) — inspired by The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan - front / back

TAYLOR SWIFT'S LOVER as a disco album heavily inspired by @bybdolan and link in source

I’ve re-imagined Midnights album cover by using booklet photos. What do you guys think? I’m actually obsessed!

song 17! (Because of Sam <3)

ty!!! it's all too well (10 min version) haha

What are your Top 5 Taylor lyrics? 👀

“Back when you fit my poems like a perfect rhyme” in Holy Ground, “you know I left a part of me back in New York / you know the hero died so what’s the movie for” in Hoax, “These are the hands of fate / you are my Achilles heel / This is the golden age of something good and right and real” in State of Grace, very simply put “When I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone’s bed / you put me on and said I was your favourite” in Cardigan and this entire verse of Sad Beautiful Tragic.

Obligatory mention cause it’s my post: “All those other girls well they’re beautiful, but would they write a song for you?” in Hey Stephen.

so.... Thoughts on midnights? 👀

it was definitely not what i was expecting! and it was surprising in a way that i never expected to be by a taylor swift album: i was really disappointed by a lot of the lyricism on the album. i feel like she's trying so hard to reach a level of openness/vulnerability that she's constantly apologizing for or covering up with jokes. there are so many genuinely good concepts and even stellar lyrics buried beneath this constant refusal to open herself up more than the surface level. and let me be clear, i'm not saying that she owes it to us to open up more. i'm saying that on an album which constantly promises more depth than it delivers, it's jarring to never be taken beyond the most basic idea behind a song.

anyway, i do not love it (although the photoshoot is my favourite photoshoot she's ever done). i liked a few tracks, though: maroon, you're on your own, kid, and question...?. those were standouts for me, if not to the degree that songs have been standouts on other albums. folklore will never be beaten for me, i think. that was the album tailored to what i like (taylored, if you will). i'm sure midnights will grow on me but as of now? not a fan (although it is so goddamn catchy).