Brains: Let's Use 'Em!!!

Rolling Stone gives ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ a 5 out of 5 star rating.

Unqualified white men could put in the effort to gain the knowledge/expertise/trust, but they would rather stay bottom feeders, vote for MAGA, stay super unserious/mediocre, and play identity politics.

no yes so i think that’s what it was referring to on the surface level. the squad. it’s that one story beat she has referred to interviews over the years about how she didn’t get to have a lot of friends growing up because she was bullied or because she grew up on the road and how with 1989 she was enjoying the girlhood and girl friend experience that she never had. like, mid 2010’s taylor and her model friends were a hot button topic of public conversation and the media that drives it: all these articles about how taylor’s new friends are too hot, too skinny, too rich, not diverse, she’s not country anymore, it’s cliquey, etc.

but because this is the taylor swift fan community everybody is trained to look beyond this first layer and see extra meaning. and in the case of gaylor (umbrella term) stuff, and kaylor stuff, when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail. swifties attack gaylors, gaylors attack kaylors, etc, you know the drill

at the same time, when you go one layer deeper, i don’t think people can fully say taylor had no idea what she was implying or how it would be received by some people. so one begins to wonder if it’s intentional in some way.

so a few layers down the discourse becomes distilled into something more meta: “why does taylor throw us under the bus again and again” which is a sort of fandom meta truth. but, i often think the intentions are a few layers up from this, where we are not the focus, and that it’s up to us to see how the benefits for her outweigh our collective peace. like when she does something that leads to fandom drama, she’s also often pushing the entire conversation around her work or persona forward in some aspects that are strategic or meaningful. often times that become more clear as time goes on.

april 16, 2024

sorry, this got a bit long, I just don't understand the appeal or the reasoning for lsk's because taylor has indicated so many times that they are over, she's been mourning her relationship with karlie quite publicly since 2019 (wearing all black during the lover era) so yeah

hi! i don’t usually respond to these but i’m not sensing any ill will so i’ve decided to give a reply a go.

first off, for me, i kinda just interpret her wearing black in the back end of lover era because her masters had gotten bought by scooter. and maybe the fact that she decided to not come out. there can be other reasons, but i really do not think that her breaking up with karlie has to be one of them.

another thing i can’t shake is the fact that it was a very notorious troll/manipulative person on tumblr who spread the first rumor that they broke up in 2019, a fact that is well understood by a lot of OG’s, and this troll got in the head of a few popular kaylor and gaylor swift accounts at the time and in doing so she got a lot of people to fold. she then went on to write all this progressively unhinged fanfiction about taylor and karlie trying to make one another jealous and sleeping with all these women, presented with the same level of seriousness with which she pushed the breakup agenda. even to this day, i see present day gaylors talk about stuff that stems from narratives this account and a few other power hungry accounts spread around many years ago and it honestly just goes to show how a lot of well known gaylors may be platformmed up but that don’t really know what they’re talking about.. i only write this because the troll deactivated about a year ago (maybe they’re lurking on platforms with more malleable minds—once a troll always a troll—but at least they’ve left here), they were a really dangerous person.. and several have wild receipts to prove it.

anyways sorry i recognize that’s a tangent, i guess what i mean to say by it is, a lot of the sentiment surrounding the idea of a 2019 breakup and the reinforcement of the narrative by a gaylor community none the wiser stems from the work of someone with disingenuous intentions. a lot of “masterposts” or “realistic timelines” draw from what this person made up and it’s gone through enough filters for it to seem like credible sentiment but like, if you were there and you read all of what she wrote you know how silly it all sounded and how incoherently it was all written.

okay so to circle back to more of a content-centric angle, in my interpretation of the events that gave us folklore, evermore, and midnights, taylor had so much to be sad about. her mom had been very sick, the pandemic arrived and she had to cancel lover fest, she had to come to terms with scott b having sold her work to her sworn enemy… songs on midnights and folklore, and on her lover era apple music playlist allude to certain other things that may have had her in a mournful mood. things were bad! and i don’t doubt that her and karlie have been through a lot. but for me, when you’ve got a ride or die love, you don’t just break up. this has been something frustrating for me and others, i think, to see so many people treat a relationship as either being all systems go or broken up, as if long term partners can’t experience sadness together, difficulty together, even heartbreak together.

i don’t like getting in to touchy subjects so much but there’s just been too much pointing towards what i consider to be a rather simple narrative that is a natural progression for people committed and in love. how did the lover music video begin and end? whats a randomly specific word in a song she performed at the grammys minutes after someone was announced to the world? what about taylor’s envisioned future stands out about the anti hero music video? i think i’ll stop here but idk man 😆 poke around my archive if you feel like wasting a few days of your life… there’s just been a consistent flow of the same kind of hijinks that we’ve seen from them for years, and i’d say that there are many songs that back up everything i’d want in order to stay invested in seeing if what i believe is true.

now, i know i just wrote what reads like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to people not following kaylor. but im okay with that. i’ve accepted that. and i know that the whole patterns and koincidences and twinning and symbolism beat isn’t for everyone and so i respect people’s decisions to believe they aren’t together, but in closing i’ll just say im sometimes at a loss to see time and time again people suggest that kaylors believe in kaylor because they find it appealing or because they want to ship it. when it’s literally not that— it just makes the most sense to a lot of us!

also, does this look like the face of someone mourning?

Tracy Chapman is a legend

I was riveted by the agonizing beauty and perfection of this song from the moment I heard her voice way back in 1988

She hasn’t sung this song live in several years

The obviously deep respect for - and utter deference to - LC embodies towards Ms. Chapman (and her song) is a balm to my crusty ol’ soul

HER SMILE COULD HEAL US ALL!!!