The fact that I still haven’t seen a single person even mention the hallway scene… like yes they didn’t speak but they didn’t HAVE TO, THEY BOTH UNDERSTOOD WORDLESSLY THAT THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION BUT FOR THEM TO PART WAYS. The tension between them, and Goncharov reaching out to meet Andrey’s hand, neither of them looking at the other??? Breathing each others SMOKE?? Such an underrated scene, im so sad this moment gets overlooked :(

My favorites from Midnights

god rest my soul i miss who i used to be the tomb wont close stained glass windows in my mind i regret you all the time

TAYLOR SWIFT HEADERS

like if u save/use or credit @evrllarks on tt

Just a collage of the vibes in midnights

my sister, a swiftie: you listen to Midnights? me, not a swiftie but gained most of my insight from gif makers who use taylor swift lyrics: i know only a couple songs, they're very compelling

The sexual tension between me and all the Taylor Swift tracks I want to write song fics to.

Lavender Haze vs Midnight Rain

Longwinded Cornelia Street and the 1 TimeWarp Theory Revisited

So awhile back I made this post where I posited that the 1 was an alternate timeline branch from the turning point in Cornelia Street because they share a similar time warp sound. And since the 1 opened the album folklore I went on to posit that it opened up room for a “what if” storyline on that album where at the end all the roads still lead back to that one person.

While I was listening to Midnights I realized Taylor did the time warping sound again on Midnight Rain. Moreover, she specifically references time travel in the lyrics and it made me want to expand this alternate timeline theory more to highlight Taylor’s use of production as well as lyrics to develop what I feel is this cool story arc.

I am going to focus on the lyric and sonic connections between Cornelia Street, Midnight Rain, and the 1.

Cornelia Street:

Sounds: the reverb sound in the background; in the second verse the time warp sound is introduced when she says “windows flung right open.” Then it gets fuller before the turning point in the song “but then you called” (see my other post linked above)

Lyrics: the time warp changes the trajectory of the relationship. The person comes back and they work it out. As I said in my other post, the 1 felt like it opened up an alternate world where they didn’t come back and the regrets that come from that choice. In Midnight Rain we get a similar vibe of late night thoughts of roads not taken. I’ll discuss it further below.

the 1

Sounds: the time warp sound from Cornelia Street repeats throughout.

Lyrics: she is singing about pretending to be okay with how things are but in the end admitting that she still wonders if one thing had been different would I be the one doing all of this life stuff with you. We get this similarly in Midnight Rain.

Midnight Rain

Sounds: the entire song production is a time warp

Lyrics: she includes the lyrics: “So I peered through a window A deep portal, time travel. All the love we unravel. And the life I gave away. 'Cause he was sunshine, I was midnight rain.” These lyrics are so interesting because of her use of past and present tense in the same stanza. She “peered through a window. A deep portal, time travel. All the love we unravel and the life I gave away.” It just reads like she is saying she is unraveling the love that currently exists and the life she gave away that she currently has to watch from the outside. The fact that this verse starts with it came like a postcard. Like she ignores it or suppresses it until midnights like this come and take her back to the what if alternate life she had to give up.

Analysis

If we take my theory from the original post that folklore was an alternate timeline, Midnight Rain fits in neatly within that allusion. All of Midnights does, but Midnight Rain tells you that it is happening. It’s Taylor’s use of windows from Lover to Midnights as a portal. And the evolution of her position relative to that window. During Lover era we get open windows in Cornelia Street that then become boarded up in DBATC where Taylor is on the outside looking in at the light flickering inside. The love still exists but they hide it inside the house. Then during folklore we have Taylor leaving that house in exile on the outside looking in then transitioning into being in a new location (a cabin in the woods) safe inside. Then in evermore she escapes to find her other half and bring them to this new safe location so they can leave together. Think of the end of the lakes and then the end of the willow music video. Then in Midnights we get constant imagery of going places in her mind because they cannot physically go there yet. Taylor during the lakes discussion with Jack in the LPSS explains the lakes as a place that she goes to because she can’t physically go there at the moment. Paris does the same thing.

In Midnights she oscillates between time traveling back to the past in her mind at night when she can’t sleep and plotting through the process of getting her past back (ITTG) so that she can get to Daylight. This fits with what I felt she did with folklore.

Conclusion

Midnight Rain specifically highlights all of the themes I felt appeared on folklore and evermore and discussed in my other post. Themes of losing a piece of yourself, being trapped in limbo, and replaying the moment everything changed over and over and hoping you can get another chance to make the right choice. “He stayed the same all of me changed like midnight…”

To me these songs create such a cool story arc of how she created this detour that unravels her love story as it was but gives her back the life she was forced or chose to give away.

The fact that she says “meet me at midnight…” and then “all of me changed like midnight…” and “I never think of him except on midnights like this…” makes it feel like her true self is always thinking of this life she gave away. The me you meet at midnight is trying to get her life back so she can get to Daylight.

All in all, this is just my thoughts. And it’s still a fun extension of my alternate time line theory.

Taylor Swift's Midnights healed my soul

LET ME BE CLEAR

you're on your own kid - Steve harrington

anti hero - eleven

question - stancy and jancy

labyrinth - steddie

midnight rain - lumax

if you don't agree argue with the wall

Just thinking about how the alteration of Taylor's voice on midnight rain and labyrinth symbolizes how her and her partner are sharing the same impression/feeling at the same time, in the first it's the realization of how different they are and the second of how they're made for each other and are falling at the same time (like snow on the beach, I can't) and it makes me feel strong things

The Taylor Swift Song Tournament day 8:

Your daily song duel goes into it's second week. Today I have Midnight Rain against You're On Your Own, Kid for you. Yesterday it was again a very clear win for one of the two songs, and that winning song was You're Losing Me (From The Vault), Glitch got eliminated in the first round.

As always I'll repost what this is all about and how it works for everyone who hasn't voted in this yet. Everyone who already knows it can go directly to the voting.

How it works:

Over the next weeks I will do votings, giving you the choice between two songs and the song that gets more votes will advance to the next round. So in some weeks we will have the most popular Taylor Swift song as the winner of this tournament.

We will start with the songs from the Midnights album. I had drawn the pairings with the help of random.org, so it's totally random how they are paired up, because of the fact that we have an odd number of songs, the last song that got drawn gets a free ticket to the next round, that song was Karma.