#...hey

Well, THAT was a horrifying opening scene.

The vibes keep toggling between “reality show gone wrong” and “aliens,” but it’s never aliens in this universe, so I guess that part was just to mess with us.

Also, witchcraft fueled by her tears.

WHY are the Men in Black here?? Is this a giant government experiment??

Okay, so the Men in Black are under her control. That’s... not good.

Ezekiel can add love-potions to the list of “personality-altering magic he’s immune to.” Good for him. I don’t buy the textual explanation, just like I didn’t with the Apple of Discord, but good for him.

...And he can also add phone videos of bewitched Flynn and Jacob bewailing their lost love to his blackmail stash.

Jenkins: “Ezekiel’s so self-obsessed the love potion doesn’t work on him” Ezekiel: *immediately proceeds to show genuine empathy to the villain and teach her about the nature of love*

Also, BACKSTORY. Very basic backstory, but still there!

Good illustration of love vs. obsession, incidentally; love makes you want the other person’s well-being, but obsession just makes you want them. At which point they’re not a person, just a thing you want.

Ezekiel Jones came out with “you don’t heal by being loved, you heal by finding people to love.” I. was honestly not expecting that from him.

I don’t buy Jacob’s explanation for the immunity either (apart form anything else, if Ezekiel already had feelings for the girl he wouldn’t have struggled so long to remember who she was), but I like that he considered an alternate explanation.

(I am personally just guessing Ezekiel has some Jack Archetype Powers that give him a degree of unaffectedness.)

with reputation out and me loving it so much, i keep getting really nostalgic and astonished by how long i’ve been a fan of taylor’s and al the things she has accompanied me through. so i felt like posting a little reflection thing, feel free to ignore totally :D

like a lot of people Love Story was the first song of hers I heard. i was on the bus home with one of my friends and she let me listen to it. i was so young back then, oh my god. (like 12?) i think i found it catchy, but didn’t think much about it afterwards until two people had a presentation on taylor in music class. (we were all supposed to introduce our favorite artists). they played some more songs from fearless, and i can’t recall exactly what my reaction was but i know i wanted the album. i asked the presentation people if i could borrow it, and i remember looking through the booklet thinking how beautiful it was. i think even back then when i was so young i sort of intuitively understood what an amazing songwriter taylor was and how much work and effort she puts into everything she does.

fearless was for me very much an escapism record. i listened to it to enter this realm of magic and fairytales and dancing in the rain that was so far away from my everyday life and issues. i could never really apply her love songs to my life in a direct way, but i still felt like they were relatable for me, in a more abstract way - the feeling that came with them, a sort of freedom and passion, was how i felt in my happiest moments, when i didn’t feel inhibited by fear and doubt as i often did. and her nostalgic and sad moments i could relate to my own nostalgia as well. 

my mom bought me the fanbook for christmas, and that’s when i started being interested in taylor as a person as well., and how she sort of became my role model. i read about her childhood and the way she tried to achieve her dream so hard until she succeeeded. about how she wasn’t afraid to put herself out there, to open herself up completely in her songs. i admired how she put kindness above all else, how in touch she was with her fans, but also how intelligent she was and how all of her decisions in her career were her own, how she didn’t let anyone else take control over what her life or ‘image’ to the public should be. all of those things and values i took to heart and tried to live them in my own life as much as possible. looking back now i couldn’t be happier with my choice of a role model. taylor helped guide me through some years that were difficult, as they are for pretty much every teenager i guess. ‘fearless is living in spite of the things that scare you to death’ was the motto i needed so much in my life, because i was very much defined and trapped by my fears in my teenage years - of social interaction, of taking risks, of failure.. taylor’s music was something i could always turn back to to give me strength.

i remember when speak now was announced, i was excited out of my mind. i wrote the tracklist down onto my computer and kept looking at it. i loved all the released singles so much and listened to them for days on end. i painted 13s onto my hands and danced around the living room. that is one of the main things that comes to my mind when i think of happy teenage memories: this image of me dancing to a taylor swift song. 

speak now was an album that completely blew me away. i loved every single track from the first listen. it is still so incredible to me how she wrote that album completely by herself at 19; how talented she is with lyrics and melodies that completely fit together. i had some fan account back then on twitter and didnt shut up about taylor ever. 

around that time, my parents and i were planning this huge vacation in Calfornia that would turn out to be one of my best - perhaps THE best experience of my teenage years, and we figured out that a the time we wanted to go, the Speak Now tour was in LA. my parents agreed to get tickets because they knew how much it meant to me, and also because they were lowkey fans themselves:D you can’t imagine how happy i was. it was my first concert ever, and the fact that i got to experience it in that huuuge location with so so many other people, it was like a dream. i was pretty far away from the stage at the side, but it was perfect for me - i think the huge crowd would have overwhelmed me. i was completely enthralled by the huge setup, the stage aesthetics, the costume changes, just how big and well planned it all was. i ended up thinking all concerts were like this, but i remember my dad saying that artists usually don’t talk that much during concerts. but taylor told the stories behind her songs, universal experiences that people could relate to, inspirational messages she wanted to get out to her fans. she really cared so much about connecting with all of us. when she was in the love story cage thing flying around the arena she even waved in the direction of our seating area even though we were so far up! 

my favorite song from speak now was always long live, and i had desperately wanted her to play the song for the entire night. i loved all the rest, obviously, but i was telling myself not to be disappointed if it would be cut out. but then, almost at the end, she did play it! you can imagine small!me standing there almost crying quietly singing along in a state of absolute happiness. the memory makes me tear up right now ahhh, it was such an amazing moment. 

then came up the red era, and i remember staying up til super late to watch the announcement of the new album. the thing is...to make it short, red simply came too early for me. i was not ready, and not being able to fully comprehend and appreciate, the emotional maturity and sheer genius of the red album. i did not really like wanegbt at first. when red came out i did listen to it a lot and like it, but like i said, i could not fully appreciate it. hearing the general fandom discussions i feel like a lot of people had a similar experience, because red was such a leap from speak now in terms of the tone of the writing. im also gonna be honest here, i was influenced by the negative portrayal of taylor in the media that kinda reached its first peak back then, and even though i didnt buy into what they said about her because i knew better, it still influenced me like subconsciously, you know? i was also a bit sceptical at her direction towards pop music. so overall, i became a bit distanced from taylor. i felt like i needed to ‘outgrow’ her. a lot of it also had to do with the fact that it was my Edgy Phase where i thought being normal was a bad thing and i wanted to be as Special and Grownup as possible. (i think everyone has that cringeworthy phase sometime in their life but i hate remembering it:D). 

but the thing is, i think i needed that kind of alienation to eventually realize that taylor had grown up just like i had, but that didn’t mean we had to grow apart. by the time 1989 was announced i had actually done a great leap in maturity and had outgrown this thing where you idealize celebrities, and was able to see taylor as a person, with flaws and insecurities like everyone else, and that this didnt diminish her incredible talent of what a kind and wonderful person she is. 

i was not the biggest fan of 1989 itself (multiple reasons; i still liked it though, just didnt love it), but paradoxically, I felt closer to taylor again during the new era than during red. i kinda missed the red era now and regretted that i wasnt more involved when it was there (i still do). but i loved taylor’s new attitude, i was glad she had found happiness in independence and relying on herself. i loved the cat videos and the polaroids and the voice memos that gave insight into the creation of the songs. also, blank space was my jam and still is. since that ive been a huge fan of this super smart move of hers of taking all the things people throw at her and embodying it ironically. iconic!!

so since i was a bit more involved again (though clearly not as much as in my early swiftie days) i wanted to see the 1989 tour, and did! throughout the show i realized how much had changed, but also everything - the important things - that stayed the same (her interactions with the fans, the speeches, etc.) and i had tons of fun. it was like a giant party with strangers - which is obviously a very different feel to speak now, but loved it :D

i was worried that taylor would go into hiatus after 1989 because she always talked about how it was her best work yet, and it broke so many records and won so many awards, that i thought she might be scared she couldnt top it, and taylor always wants to top herself. i ended up being right, though the hiatus was more about all the drama and accusations because people just cant stop being awful. they cant take the idea of a smart talented woman who also shows vulnerability. 

but ive been awaiting a new album all this time, because generally i thought taylor doing pop had so much potential, i just wasnt completely a fan of the general direction of 1989. however....i never would have imagined loving the album as much as i do. i wrote a separate review about it, but basically - i totally love how reputation is big and confident but also super up close, intimate and deep at the same time. it’s darker, but it’s a powerful and sensitive sort of dark at the same time, if that makes sense. i can totally vibe to the general mood of the album because i think i can relate it to how i feel about my life right now a lot. also loving how taylor has truly found a place of happiness and trust after having been let down by ...the world?...so harshly. i love the aesthetic of the magazines and the poems, just everything about this era.

so basically, this album has completely pulled me back again to stanning taylor, and i think it’s kinda beautiful how i’ve come ‘full circle’ and am now back to hyping her music again as i used to :) i connect some of my most life defining and most precious memories with taylor, and i am glad i somehow found back to her and her music as i start off my twenties.