maroon is gay and so am i 🌼

@milelarissa-blog gave a beautiful interpretation of the song to me that hopefully she can share here, but in the meantime, I’ll give you just this one thing on its own that shows it’s from Karlie’s POV (which Taylor has done a lot over the years, IMO):

“Who uses typewriters anyway?” is absolutely not something Taylor would say.

“You’re in self sabotage mode” is something Taylor has sung about for herself so many times.

“Who else deCODES you?” HELLO?!

1) Taylor was the one who forgot her typewriter at kk's house.

2) Tay is the one who goes into self-sabotage mode (she herself has told us this a few times in several of her songs).

3) Kar is the one who chose to "this cyclone with you" (Tay also questioned several times if Karlie will regret this difficult choice at some point in the future in her songs... "peace" for example) and the only one who can hug and understand Tay like she always has.

Taylor has been known for years for loving antiques and you can see this in the presence of many old objects in the decoration of all of her homes that we know of. So, among the girls, Tay is the most likely to own a typewriter. After all, she is the president of The Tortured Poets Department. 😉✍️🏻📜🕯

"You're not Dylan Thomas (oh), I'm not Patti Smith (oh)"

I know another woman who was also born in Chicago. 😏

And as @kwyw noted after I talked about some of these points...

"Who else deCODES you?"

https://twitter.com/TheSwiftSociety/status/1781083651976905067

The inspiration behind ‘Don’t blame me’, aka she is obsessed.

“Echoes, love your name inside my mind/ Halo, hiding my obsession”

Unfreakingreal how blatant she was with so many songs, but especially this one.

first off the song and beat sounds so similar to mastermind and gold rush. particularly mastermind. listen to the opening seconds back to back! she sings through a lot of it similarly in my opinion

and it has some of the similar mechanics of mastermind in that it leads you to believe the song is going one way but then pulls a switcheroo on you at the end and the swell in the music aids that at the end which makes it a really sweet and emotional listening experience. i’ll get to that in a second.

i think at the beginning of taylor knowing or being aware of karlie (so like, your kitchen or mine times), this was very much the situation. karlie is in her peripheral vision (on her radar) but just as taylor described in gold rush, karlie seemed like something utterly unattainable. in lover as well we get the line “i’m highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you” and i think this fits with this description of karlie.

i didn’t come here to make friends echoes their entire conceit of mastermind, and a lot of the kaylor discography that uses the word ‘friend’ — another way to say “i don’t want you like a best friend” etc

also this is a sort of throwaway point but “i didn’t come here to make friends” was a 2000’s reality tv phrase that came into popularity via the show America’s Next Top Model. it was iconic and soon every competitive reality tv show under the sun had contestants saying it.. but it’s origins are from a show about models! of which karlie is one.

more importantly, the “you kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever” is like the follow up to the gold rush “eyes like sinking ships on waters so inviting i almost jump in” language. it’s cruel summer’s “snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate” because falling in love with karlie lead to taylor wanting her complications too

mismatched star signs works because fire signs traditionally match best with air signs. also visually, stars mismatched fits in with mastermind’s “the planets and the fates and all the stars aligned” — things that weren’t in alignment coming into alignment.

there’s a bunch of story page chapter stuff throughout taylor’s discography, some of which makes its way into kaylor but i’d probably write for way too long so i’m just gonna skip over that for now

this part might be a bit tricky but i sort of blame it on many kaylors not talking that much about really early kaylor possibilities out of (a sort of unearned) respect and the one way street principle of staying in our lane but the idea of taylor saying “i know that when you told me we’d get back together and kissed me that you remember[ed] we were born to be national treasures” isn’t that too wild of a statement if you imagine them as maybe briefly connecting or talking at some point before taylor made her plans to make karlie hers. indeed, we know their paths crossed several times before they were first connected at the 2013 vs fashion show.

*for posterity, i included the apple music lyrics as the genius lyrics appear to be worded partially incorrectly

this is the part of the song which i just think is so beautifully done. in particular i love the “you don’t knock anymore” of it all

at first it sounds like she’s saying karlie doesn’t knock anymore because she come around anymore, or this idea of there having been a breakup or a period of not being together or something sad, which is matched by the tone of how she sings it for the first time. the waves crashing to the shore feels like a storm.

but at the end of the repetition her voice becomes more upbeat and it dawns on you, you’re like, oh wait karlie doesn’t knock anymore because she doesn’t need to knock anymore, she has a key! (“is that your key in the door?” anyone?)

and suddenly the waves meeting the shore is a pleasant image of unification and happiness. she closes with the thought “you don’t knock anymore and i always knew it” which makes it feel a bit more like mastermind’s “you knew the entire time, and now you’re mine” — always knowing they would get together, taylor always knowing karlie was the one. “and my life had been ruined” is sung in a sort of sweet resignation, one that i find throughout a lot of kaylor music, the idea that she knows its complicated but that its what she chose.

Also, to add to it… 🙈

You can’t “end” an idea.

Of course I found the prologue excerpt hurtful. I think a lot of us did. Hurtful, disheartening, unfair even. It will and already has put a target on our backs, which has happened quite often as it is. But I see a lot of anonymous folks going around to various blogs and saying that Taylor “ended” Kaylor, and I’m sorry, but…no. No she did not.

This community is not going anywhere. Kaylor itself is not going anywhere. And even if Taylor never comes out and the online community dwindles thinner than it is now, Kaylor will not have ended. That’s not how this works.

For me, Kaylor will never end. That’s because a couple of paragraphs do not suddenly nullify years of documented facts, koincidences, photos/videos, and actual song lyrics directly from Taylor herself. If this prologue was her way of saying she’s not ready to come out or never will be, that’s okay. It is! But it doesn’t change what I believe to be true.

What the people sending those smug little anons are missing is that we in the community are not hurt because the prologue has diminished our belief in Kaylor. The belief has not ended. If I were to stop talking about Kaylor altogether, it would be because I felt like Taylor wanted me to stop, not because I stopped believing. At this point, nothing can change what I already know to be true.

Why she chooses to do these things, I may not ever know. But I try very hard to make peace with the fact that she may never do things the way that I would. The best thing for my mental health is to simply be along for the ride—because I can’t “unknow” Kaylor. And to be honest, I don’t even want to. Whatever is to come, I’m glad for this community; having this group of people to talk to, complain with, and laugh with is perhaps the best part of Kaylor. I wouldn’t want to give that up, even when times get frustrating.

All of us are what Kaylor is, and I have a sneaking suspicion that those anons will find us years from now, still existing together on the web, talking about eyeballs and jewelry and undeniably queer themes in song lyrics, and it will not have ended.

She ended kaylor today, for good

uhhh ma’am eye wholeheartedly disagree 😆 and i’ve only kept this bit up with such fervent dedication because it would seem taylor and karlie enjoy it

i do hope it leads to introspection for two groups:

celebrity gossip influencers and the people that treat it like gospel spreading what comes off sounding like privileged information (because it feels like nobody learned from kissgate or the new generation of people haven’t thought about it seriously yet, and people are running down the path that leads to exposure)