#musing manuscripts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

neverbesokind · 15 days

Text

Oh my god it's The Alchemy day I have SO many thoughts about this song so I'm gonna try and condense them.

First of all, the song starts and ends with "This happens once every few lifetimes," which is a statement filled to the BRIM with irony, in my view. The entire album up to this point has been concerned with two romances, both of which Taylor states she felt were destined and fated and "storybook" in their own ways. The entirety of TTPD is exploring how these fated, destined, storybook romances could actually crumble, and with it, her faith and belief in the existence of fate and destiny and storybook love.

But THEN... almost at the end of the standard run of the album, Taylor states that she's getting back from recovering from this tragedy - "I'm back / The hospital was a drag / Worst sleep that I ever had". She gets back from the messy process of healing from the events described on the album, and despite everything finds herself falling in love again.

This is why the title is significant, too. Alchemy is the pseudoscience of making a material into something more valuable. And this reflects the emotional process of Taylor falling in love again - she felt like the past two tragedies took the shine off of everything, killed her belief that love could ever work. But then, despite everything, she falls in love again and the normal, even tragic world she lived in before is transformed into something golden.

And then the first line repeats again, to reflect the cyclical nature of what she has experienced. Obviously, "this" doesn't happen once every few lifetimes, it's happened twice before on the album and is happening again in this song. She's falling in love, she's finding something beautiful and fated, and she can't help but find it gorgeous and meaningful, even if she's been shown again and again that she might be proven wrong in the end. And it feels so special that even if it's obvious that it isn't a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it feels that rare and that precious.

In this song, love is the alchemy, the process of turning normalcy into meaning and beauty, and she can't help it.

#GOD this song is so good #taylor swift #ttpd #the alchemy #shh gilly #don't even get me started on the way she obscures the muse on this song too like #we see all the football references but also these echoes of the past two relationships as well #and you can't help but see the darkness in that #that these two terrible tragedies reflect in the new #but that's part of the alchemy too #she sees the old in the new but despite all that she can't help but fall in love again #the alchemy transforms her sadness and heartbreak into something valuable #which is a theme that also comes up again in the manuscript btw #ttpdminutes

68 notes · View notes

serendipminie · 28 days

Text

After so much plotting and deliberation...

It may just be time for me to start writing my Aventio secret agent AU.

In that case!

#lovely mutuals #for my mutuals #minie's manuscripts #minie's musings #aventio #ratiorine #golden ratio #aventurine stone #aventurine #aventurine hsr #starrailposting #aventurine x dr ratio #dr ratio #my polls #hsr #honkai star rail

56 notes · View notes

octaviasdread · 1 month

Text

I hereby conduct this tortured poets society album meeting in all of its mania and sorrowful blues as I move from unhinged impressions to unhinged first-listen analysis because I am incapable of saying less.

(and to all the Aimees i’m so sorry but that’s on Kim)

This Anthology is taking me so long to process, but nothing feels like the first jarring moments of I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - the cacophony and flashes of a birthday breakdown bopping to 80s arcade game synth. It's crumbled cake and mascara streaks when Bejewelled is actually a delusional Mirrorball,

and The Secret Garden reference in I Hate It Here, oh god, she’s so me:

I hate it here so I will go to / secret gardens in my mind / people need a key to get to / the only one is mine / i read about it in a book when I was a precocious child

I need to come back to that. But the whirlwind of Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? Plans cancelled. IM THE ONE barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, actually. It's me chained-up in that poor things victorian mourning dress shrieking elegies in my tortured nightingale screams.

She's Grammys Taylor looking at the crowd of her peers rolling their eyes, she's the litany of snide jokes diminishing her success, and the children, sisters, friends, and girlfriends of those who wronged her loudly singing her songs.

so i leap from the gallows and i levitate down your street / crash the party like a record scratch as I scream / who’s afraid of little old me

i was tame i was gentle til the circus made me mean / don’t you worry folks we took out all her teeth

ohhh, the throwback to Speak Now and the significance of MEAN. The song and its titular word show how childish language encapsulates that pointless spite and the bone deep hurt mean behaviour breeds - but now she’s a phoenix risen, and they hurl her youth and her downfall back in her face - word for word, surprised face - its the dark side the The Lucky One, of not escaping the cage of fame games.

you lured me and you hurt me and you taught me / you caged me and then you called me crazy

i wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / so all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs / i’m always drunk on my own tears isn’t that what they all said?

PUT NARCOTICS IN MY SONG took me out. This album is funny in the most sardonic and absurdly humorous ways,

like the classic cowboy western guitar strings in her crime songs (I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can - pistols drawn), but especially the ones leading into Fresh Out The Slammer. Fucking genius, and to follow on with static sounds at 2:26ish to the house where you still wait up, is exactly the kinda detail I adore.

Naively, I thought Florence was done with me after Florida!!! It's a lyrical meme for single 20 & 30 somethings who moved away from home,

my friends all smell of like weed or little babies / and the city reeks of driving myself crazy / little did you know your home’s really only / a town you’re just a guest in

and the haunting morphs from the ghost of your girlhood into the catalogue of decisions and delusions which get you through adulthood. Yet it feels almost like an interlude within the song when

me and my ghosts we’ve had a hell of a time / yes i’m haunted but i’m feeling fine / all my girls got their lace and their crimes / and your cheating husband disappeared/ well no one asks questions here

appears like an alternative pov for No Body, No Crime with the girls and their ghosts and their pacts made over wine. Every Action has an Equal Reaction. Run away to Florida, or Texas, and lose yourself to lose the heartbreak. Its self-destruction, it's trauma-healing, bonding, and its breaking.

(what a song for an angsty girl collab, problematic girl in hand with problematic girl, lyrically and thematically, maybe the real love story is the friends we make along the way.)

And that wasn't even the last of it. It's Florence 2.0 with B side Cassandra, but instead of Dance Fever, its Taylor’s glorious mythology with all the allusions, parallels, intertextual and lyrical ruining of my mind:

when the first stone’s thrown they’re screaming / when its burn the bitch they’re shrieking / when the truth comes out its quiet

so they killed cassandra first cus she feared the worst / and tried to tell the town / so they filled my cell with snakes i regret to say / do you believe me now?

No apologies anymore. A girl given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, the GOD OF POETRY, is cursed with her prophecy never being believed: Burning all the witches even if you aren't one, indeed. She saw the truth of the Trojan horse, and the Trojans insulted her. Rep snake branding and the current cultural view of KK and Ye. I don't need to say anything else.

i was in the tower weaving nightmares / twisting all my smiles into snarls

the family the pure greed the christian chrous line / bloods thick but nothing like a payroll / bet they never spared a prayer for my soul

I literally played that THREE times before I got over it enough to finish my first listen,

and i’m still thinking about Clara Bow and that Stevie Nicks tambourine we collectively freaked over from the Spotify installation, and all the silent movie speculation from the track title release.

you look like Clara Bow in this light - you look like Stevie Nicks in '75 - you look like Taylor Swift

Three women whose public profession became entangled with their pain. Silver Springs. Boyfriend songs. The jokes. Clara Bow.

Clara feared being left behind by 'talkies.' Miss Americana. The fear of 30 bringing death to a woman's Hollywood/Musical career,

beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more / only when your girlish glow flickers just so / do they let you know?

Three women who beat the odds - three women whose talent, craft, and popularity carried them through.

But there's something more to unpack here with cycles and patterns - of the past endlessly repeating. It's the transient nature of fame and our fleeting view of beauty mapped out in the untouchable, ever-changing, and culturally worshiped moon.

It's a body of physical craters, a natural body we call discovered, and fight to claim. We project emotions and create rituals of worship - you're the new god we're worshipping. Endless stories are told about her, but we can never fully see the moon with human eyes. Eclipses, shadows, - 'half moonshinе, a full eclipse' - half-truths and half-moons:

this town is fake but you're the real thing / breath of fresh air through smoke rings / take the glory, give everything / promise to be dazzling

There's a play on light and a play on words in the repetition of Dazzling, shining so bright so blindingly bright. Who is dazzled? Who is doing the dazzling? There's an instability between Director - Public - Star. It's Hollywood lights, No one in my small town thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan / No one in my small town thought I'd meet these suits in LA.

She beat the 'War Big Machine' - but for me, there's ambivalence and illusion on all sides of the final lyrics, you've got edge, she never did / the future's bright, dazzling.

(and ‘Edge’ is particularly ironic when you consider the songs on this album…)

Moving again into the B Side, it's Taylor's departure from Invisible string, red strings of fate, and golden threads à la the golden chain of fate in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities that strikes me.

First, I thought her writing was a complete departure from the themes of destiny and fate, but then, The Prophecy:

cards on thе table / Mine play out like fools in a fablе

it isn't an absent symbol; it transformed. It's the evermore forest amped to the max. Witches, folklore, fairy-tale and fable - a homeric epic. Its the hero's journey distilled as she opens the song with a move from 'full throttle' adventure, to slowing down 'Hand on the Throttle' to appeal for Supernatural aid at the hero's transformative fall.

and it was written / I got cursed like eve got bitten / a greater woman wouldn't beg / but I looked at the sky and said / please I've been on my knees / change the prophecy

Lover asking Traffic Lights becomes spending my last coin so someone will tell me, and this might be the most slept-on heartbreaking line. Her search for reassurance can't be framed as an arbitrary musing anymore. It can't be dismissed as a mere thought on her drive home, or something triggered throughout the day - its intent. It's a quest for answers, a plea, a last-ditch hope difficult to deny.

and I sound like an infant / feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen/ a greater woman stays cool/ but I howl like a wolf at the moon / and I look unstable /

gathered with a coven 'round a sorceress' table / a greater woman has faith But even statues crumble if they're made to wait / i'm so afraid I sealed my fate / no sign of soulmates

She's asking for a gift from the Gods, and when the God's won't answer, she plunges straight down from heaven or Olympus into the self seizure of power in witchcraft. And when it fails, she descends further - Spending my last coin so someone will tell me it'll be okay - paying mortal fortune tellers, even if they lie.

The song leans on figures without redemption, on the Eve's, on the women cursed and punished, and those who scream like infants rather than enduring burdens and pain in silence. She's poisoned, infected like Aurora from the wound of the pricked hand with dreams of him. Is this a punishment?

She's infected, cursed like Eve got bitten, [lyric of all time!!!!] but does a monster always do monstrous things? Who is the monster? Who is the folkloric, the literary Mad Woman? Perhaps she's written from the desperate, the scarred, and the wronged.

and the transition into another tale with Peter? As in Peter losing Wendy? Is it an epilogue to the Betty trilogy? or a different use of the metaphor?

and I didn't wanna hang around / we said it was just goodbye for now /said you were gonna grow up / then you were gonna come find me / words from the mouths of babes / promises oceans deep / but never to keep

The triangle is echoed in love's never lost when perspective is earned, reflecting the different povs of Betty, August, and James, and placing Peter as the new conclusion - the shelf life of those fantasies has expired / lost to the lost boys chapter of your life/ the woman who sits by the window/ has turned out the (porch?) light.

Promises wear out. Wendy's window closes, and so does this chapter in her life.

my lost fearless leader / in closets like cedar / preserved from when we were just kids / is it something I did? / the goddess of timing / once found us beguiling

is also - intentionally or not - Narnia coded. Is the storybook collecting dust in her closet? Or is the closet still holding a portal to another fairytale land accessible only in youth, another home you can't return to (and another folklore parallel with mtr, anywhere I want just not home).

Side B is so harmonious with ttpd being the end of a chapter as the anthology moves through all the seven stages (or Taylor playlists) of grief.

The Manuscript, the signing of the autopsy, is the Death of the Author. It's the Roland Barthes realisation of All Too Well reborn in joy and fan culture, the story isn't mine anymore, of the Eras - 'I hope you hear these songs and think of this night' - Tour. She knew what the agony had been for - art. connection. - and its these things that create the hope lost in ttpd's journey through mania, disorientation, loss and despair. It all leads to healing, nothing left but a manuscript.

So many thoughts from listen no.1 and they’ll probably change, but i’m so exhausted from this 31 song rollercoaster that I'm just gonna let this sit. death of the author, I guess.

33 notes · View notes

breakbleheavens · 1 month

Text

I’M DONEEEE WITH TTPD on first listen, the bolter, who’s afraid of little old me and I can do it with a broken heart are top 3 in some order (also shoutout to I hate it here which hit too close to home and left me in tears lol)

#I will now be getting the bolter cd instead of the manuscript one that I was gonna get haha #also that top 3 is likely to change I just need to banish the muse from my brain first #ttpd #album reactions

10 notes · View notes

tombwontclxse · 1 month

Text

“and couldn’t sleep unless it was in her mother’s bed” oh too real.

#molly’s musings #taylor swift #the manuscript #ttpd

4 notes · View notes

serethespider · 1 year

Text

hello all currently it's 4am and i'm trying to find out what all the plants illustrated in the voynich manuscript are. wish me luck

#original #personal #short #musings #voynich manuscript #botany #?#research #plants

14 notes · View notes

ofgentleresolve · 1 year

Text

eight more pages to proofread/edit....and then i'm FINALLY gonna submit mi manuscript to agents for publication 🥰

#that would be truly wonderful ( ooc. )#using mana's pic bc the manuscript's starring her <3 #changed her name though in it #she was my very first muse and w/o her i wouldn't be here....or even writing in general :'DDDD #five years....FIVE YEARS I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS....and i'm so ready to be done jfskldjfsldkjf #also hello ppl!! i know i haven't done replies in like....weeks :'D #just haven't been feeling much motivation atm #but i'll get it back sooner or later....#for now i'll be reading and watching things!! helps with inspo too <3 #i'll probably do a few hc posts tho...and get to ppl with the hc q's <3 #i hope you're doing well in the meanwhile too!!

10 notes · View notes

secret-engima · 2 years

Link

*tiptoes in*. hi. I uh. Did a *thing*. You know. If you want to see what happens when I let the muses out of their boxes without a fandom to restrain them. *vibrates excitedly*.

...

“Excuse me, are you Garland Roundtree?”

The broad shouldered older man looked up from his work in surprise, “Aye, that’s me, and you are…?”

He smiled back, clutching nervously at his journal despite himself, “Elden Fullbright, I’m a former student from High Tower’s University of Magic-.”

Roundtree’s face split into a smile, “Oh, you’re Lilith’s boy! The student she took under her wing a few years back. The one with the insatiable curiosity about Otherlanders, correct? She sent a letter saying to expect you. Said you wanted to … eh… study Otherlanders, right?”

Elden nodded, surprised but relieved that his mentor had written ahead, “I-, yes. I had hoped you would answer a few questions for me…?”

Roundtree waved a hand, “I’ll do you one better! If you want to observe and record the antics of Otherlanders first hand, there’s no better place for you than right here. You work for me for a few months and you’ll soon be up to your elbows in things to write about them. Get some first hand experience dealing with them.”

#Secret Engima Rambles #Melodies and Manuscripts #original story #patreon #HI I HAVE A PATREON #MAYBE COME GIVE MY MUSES MONTHLY CHOCOLATE MONEY

12 notes · View notes

charlesreeza · 2 years

Photo

The Very Richly Decorated Hours of the Duke of Berry (Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry) is the most famous and admired masterpiece in the Château de Chantilly’s collection of books and manuscripts. It is a book of hours created between 1412 and 1416 by the brothers Herman, Paul, and Johan Limbourg, famous Dutch miniature painters from the city of Nijmegen. These pages show the Journey of the Magi, and the Adoration of the Magi.

#illuminated manuscript #international gothic style #medieval art #prayer book #Musee Conde #Chantilly #Oise #France

28 notes · View notes

bluest-planet · 2 months

Text

Tigre

Theres a tiger cub on the ground crawling and crying

Immediately i pick her up in my own big paws, careful not to hurt her with my overgrown claws

Shes so skinny, so pale, sleepless and tiny. Why would someone leave you put here, in the cold?

I'm scared she wont make it, that the little tigress is too far gone. Its really cruel, everyone else sees a beast, a monster. People see stripes, orange, and all that signals is danger.

But that's mean. Its really fucking mean. She just wants to live, and you're all put here, starving her of everything just because of what she might be.

I don't care if she bites, if she claws, if she screams. Maybe its a little annoying at first, a little frustrating, but only because I know that if anyone else were to walk near, they'd put her to death for good. Just for daring to be a nuisance.

People have no compassion for useless, annoying things. At least, most people cant appreciate anything pass its usefulness because of this god awful rat race.

On one hand, i get why. I technically shouldn't blame them.

But i still dont forgive them, i dont care anymore. You're all too blinded by survival to care about anything inconvenient, but whats the point in surviving in the face of such indifference?

Its mean. Its horrific, what neglect and apathy can do. Far more dangerous than any fangs or claws.

So its just me and the cub, sitting isolated in a single room- no, a cage with vitriolic steel bars. They burn me like they do fairies. All brand new stripes.

Pacing makes the mind feel as if it is being productive, but all I'm doing is a futile task. I'm just slowing down the atrophie.

So i give up, not on the cub, but myself. Im tired of the visitors, of the constant having to get up and pace 'one more time' just to feel real. Eventually, you'll die from blood loss if you never let the wound heal. Never eat. Never sleep. Never rest. You can't regain the energy needed.

The bars melt away into a steel door; some privacy, for once. but i can still see light flickering under the crack. Its a light ive admired before. Laying my ear against the door just to hear the others living just behind it so i can soothe myself to finally sleep.

A few visitors know that story, only before the door was a warm oak not a cold steel.

My stomach is growling, exactly like the cubs. Shes gone quiet, in my way to big, blood covered claws. Im sorry. I'm sorry i couldn't keep you warm, and that no one even noticed your tiny thin body's disappearence, they accepted a changeling without a second glance to see if what they had was the real one.

The only one who noticed was your own changeling; me. Only, neither of us got the life we expected getting swapped.

Id say i love you, even if it was a lie, just to comfort you but it wouldn't mean anything coming from our own mouth. Just another truth of neglect.

Sometimes it feels like im headless. Maybe then it would be better, so i could slip out of the iron collar around my neck. But thats a just a daydream to savour, its umami.

Its tough to be a tiger.

#Turquoise Manuscripts #blue speaks #had a friend argue what i did was poetry #maybe it is. theyre just musings.#vent post #i guess.#might move these to smth else someday #i cant sleep #i really want to sleep.#not being able to do that is its own special hell

1 note · View note

paladinquest · 4 months

Text

tag rehaul: medieval edition!

#a message from the liege (asks)#tales from the castle (thread)#woven tapestries and stained glass (aes)#admire the craftsmanship (art)#court jester (crack)#trading stories in the mead hall (musings)#the scribe's manuscript (drabble)#jousting competition (rp meme)#sit by the fire for a spell (queue)#it says so on the scroll (dash commentary)#i can shout the loudest (ic ; lark)#call of the herald (ooc)#living legends (headcanons)#lend me your wisdom (insp)#it is a knight's duty [v: the soldier]#sheath the blade [v: the hidden]#destiny calls you home [v: the returned]#it is written in the stars [v: i.swm]#that is the happy trails way [v: a.hwm]

0 notes

sassmill · 1 year

Text

Hm. Don’t like that.

#reading an unfinished manuscript of a memoir of working in the theatre in the 1910s #this man (boy he was 16-18 years old when this happened this BOY)#was clearly taken advantage of by this prominent producer #it’s not written in a way that explicitly says it but it’s making me sick to my stomach #because it aligns with similar incidences #and one quick google search told me that said producer likely did the same thing with a number of boys/young men #and this is the 1900s-1910s #so #same shit different year #and the other thing is I know exactly what it was like #i remember this kind of shit happening #it happened to me #not in exactly the same way #but in all the ways that matter #and this my friends is why AEA is important #because guess what this memoir also includes the 1919 actors strike #past life #what do you do with a ba in theatre #museum musings

1 note · View note

kechiwrites · 2 months

Text

boom, recluse erotica writer simon and avid fan reader who gets to meet their idol in person.

His assistant leaves the two of you alone, and the silence is stifling. You fidget with the book in your hands, the one you wanted signed. It's well worn, spine broken at least ten times over, pages dried wavy from a beach trip two years ago. a tear at the corner of the trade paperback's cover. You'd wanted to get a new copy, but they'd been out of print everywhere.

You drag your toe back and forth over scratchy carpet and listen to the sound of his faucet dripping. What noise his pencil makes as it scratches over paper. He doesn't look at you, just continues to work like you're not even there. He's huge. Bigger than you'd thought he be, and blond. Broad shoulders and pale, inked skin hunched over a work desk that seems just a little too small for a man with his build. From what you can see, a laptop lies to the right of him, bulky and humming with life, only recently snapped shut, fast enough that the author hadn't the time to shut it down properly.

Despite the awkwardness, the silence, excited butterflies bat back and forth in your stomach when you think about what the outdated device stores; half finished manuscripts, character or plot charts, his inner musings?

The sensation, the curiousity, goads you into speaking. Finally.

"Mr. Spectre? I'm a huge fan." You sound breathless, kind of desperate. but you were. you are. He's your favourite author. His books are your constant companion. And yeah, it's smut. But it's good. His prose makes your skin tingle from phantom touch, makes your pulse rage, your insides clench.

"D'you touch yourself to my books?" He must've turned around while you were staring at the floor, because when you whip your head up at the intrusive, inappropriate question, L.T. Spectre is staring at you.

"Pardon?" You sputter in disbelief.

And he rolls his eyes.

"Y'said you were a fan. Do you touch yourself to my books?" He enunciates the question clearly, Iike he thinks you're stupid. His accent is thick, gruff. An unexpected but near-perfect compliment to the pitch of his voice.

"Wh-what?" Your brain stutters and stalls like an engine past it's prime, unable to speak the truth but refusing to lie too.

"Which ones?" His black honey eyes are sharp, poring, behind his rectangle wire glasses. His gaze sweeps over you, head to toe and back again, lingering on the novel clutched tightly in your hands, before he turns back to his work, sniffing once.

"It's the ones with praise, huh? You seem like the type to need it."

nasty, nasty man probably dangles drafts and manuscripts over your nose in exchange for a few hours of you under his desk.

#simon riley smut #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #simon riley #simon ghost riley x gender neutral reader #simon riley x black reader #ghost x black reader #simon riley x you #ghost imagine #kechiwrites #cod x reader #ghost call of duty

768 notes · View notes