#*ghosts

MLMay 2024: 100 Slash (Double) Drabbles

At this point we can all agree that nearly every song on TTPD is about two people...so my theory for loml is that it's about Matty and Harry.

Okay, so the Matty references are obvious. Now putting aside the obvious point that Harry has a song called 'love of my life' already, I still have other reasons to believe it's about him.

Firstly Taylor seems to attribute many songs se has written bout someone at first to another person later. I get the feeling she did that with many 1989 songs, relating them to Matty after she met him. I think while revisiting what went wrong with Matty, she was taken back to the 1989 "era", if you will, and found some inspiration.

Also, in loml, she talks about "waltzing back into rekindled flames", a very "when we go crashing down we come back every time" esque lyric. Obviously it can apply to Matty as well, but I just wanted to point that out.

Also the "we were just kids, babe" line rubs me the wrong way because Taylor or Matty or Joe were NOT kids when any of them met.

Harry was 18 and Taylor was 23 when they dated though. They made mistakes and got back together and so on and so forth.

The ghosts/phantoms/cemetary references remind me of Two Ghosts, the song Harry famously wrote about Taylor. Also, "Mr Steal Your Girl" and One Direction has a song called Steal My Girl.

Also, I feel like loml has a lot of the same themes as Question..?, which imo is also a song that's about both Harry and Matty? Like her most famous "kiss in a crowded place" was the NYE one with Harry? Also the glaring callbacks to OOTW is always so confusing to me. Like the song is to be interpreted as a Matty song because of the dickhead guy line, but then why so many 1989 references?

Maybe because those two relationships in her life were so close together and both very quickfire, fleeting yet impactful...so she tends to intermix both at times.

Again, I'm not a haylor and OH GOD NEVER a maylor...this is just my theory. I mean she references past players in her life like Jake and Kim and even Calvin if you consider the 'bully' lyric in Chloe et al...so it got me thinking thoughts.

mmm i am not convinced. i mean, anything is possible, sure, and inspiration can have many sources. but... what is the broader implication of these callbacks that you think she's making to harry? do you think he is the love or loss of her life? does this return anywhere else on this album? why do you think she might want to reflect on that, when the epilogue makes it clear this album is about her feeling a "restricted humanity" that led her to making specific decisions that were "self harm"?

i do think you're picking up on how taylor revisits themes throughout her discography, though.

she's been singing about ghosts (bad blood, cardigan), being haunted (sparks fly, haunted), wanting to haunt people (tim mcgraw, wildest dreams), memories torturing her (the "what if" in chloe et al for example but also all too well!) for her entire career - but especially later, because, well, the older she's gotten the more memories she's made or regretted.

imo this is one of the reasons why i look in people's windows is so poignant. "i'm afflicted by the not knowing, i'm addicted to the 'if only'" - this idea, concept, theme, motif, whatever, appears in her entire discography.

buzzfeed unsolved sentences .

     ❛     grandfather ,  please .   this is not a hasty - made decision .   i have thought ,  and anguished ,  over this decision ;   but i cannot think of any other way .     ❜     lucina rubbed her hands over her cheeks .   there was no mistaking it ,  it was robin who had killed her father .   as a child ,  she had wanted to 𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙮 it ...   there had never been any solid proof ,  and robin ,  though no body had been found ,  had been presumed dead as well .   even now ,  the thought of it ...  the pieces falling slowly together ...   she felt her hand clutch at the pendent covering her heart ,  as if it were her 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝 ,  when all she wanted to do was rip it out .