I've always been a girl who loves animals, and now that I have two pet rabbits, both adoped within the last year, I am extra excited about the return of Nui Cobalt's Critters collection! This collection isn't entirely sweet cuddly woodland creatures, but it does have a lot of those, including three of my all-time favorite Nui Cobalts: Little Brown Rabbit, Little White Rabbit, and Lilac Rabbit. When Forest posted in the Facebook group asking which Critters we'd like to see return, or which animals we'd love to see emerge as new Critters, I waxed rhapsodic about the Rabbits and suggested a bunch of other colorings of rabbits that could become amazing perfumes... so I'm hopeful that we might even get a new Rabbit this year. I would just about die of happiness if she really did make a Blue Otter Rabbit after my sweet bun Hazel. She also teased a Ladybug scent for this year, which would be SO CUTE!
Anyway, the Critters are due back this Friday, with the newsletter announcing them on Thursday, and I am excited. As usual, I thought I'd post my thoughts on all the past Critters I've tried in case that might help you formulate your wishlist. And if you've tried any of these, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Was your experience similar to mine?
My preferences: I especially love snuggly scents, incense, golden amber, cardamom, black tea, beeswax, non-gourmand vanillas, and white florals (particularly tiare, honeysuckle and tuberose; sadly I am allergic to lilies and jasmine doesn’t work on me). I don't like hay, overly sweet gourmands, excessive musk, dragon’s blood, leather, patchouli, labdanum, or any really dark scents in general. To my great devastation, Nui Cobalt’s apricot and pear notes don’t tend to work on me, though I haven’t given up hope and I continue to try new blends with those notes occasionally.
Most of these perfumes were provided as press samples by Nui Cobalt in exchange for an honest review.
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Rabbits

Little Brown Rabbit [Nutmeg and tonka bean nuzzle up against fluffy marshmallow, cottonflower, pink pepper, and a trace of carrot seed] (this perfume is so popular that it is also in the Continuous Collection and available all year 'round!) - This is one of my absolute top perfume oils. It comforts me on hard days, it cozies me on laid-back evenings, it cheers me on rainy days. My husband recognizes it immediately and honestly I think he finds it cuddly too when I'm wearing it, and it's also his primary frame of reference when he sniffs a new sample I'm trying - "that smells a bit like Little Brown Rabbit" is high praise from him. Wet, it's very strongly nutmeg and caramel, almost mapley, but also with just a bit of pepperish bite from the carrot seed - this is as gourmand as I'm willing to get. Once it dries, the caramel dissipates and it becomes the most marvelously snuggly scent. Having a bad day? Little Brown Rabbit can cheer you up. Having a cozy day? Little Brown Rabbit will make it that much better. Wanting to unwind in the evening? Little Brown Rabbit is my go-to snuggly evening scent. And I think it's the absolute must-try from Nui Cobalt.
Little White Rabbit [Nutmeg and tonka bean nuzzle up against cottonflower, white peppercorn, clove, vanilla marshmallow creme, pale blue cashmere, carrot seed, and honeyed almond] - When the news broke that NCD was releasing a new little rabbit variant two years ago, I was SO excited (little did I know that it would seemingly become an annual thing!), and I blind-bought a full-size (something I never do). Especially because Little White Rabbit adds that wonderful cashmere note to Little Brown Rabbit, this one was a no-brainer for me, and my trust was easily rewarded. Nui Cobalt has outdone themselves with this, their most snuggly of perfumes. I expected this to be a lot like LBR only less mapley and perhaps more cashmere-y (and yes, it is both of these things), but truly, LWR feels even more like it's built on a base of Spidersilk vanilla (Starlight and Spidersilk: [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, and tiny black vanilla beans]), with some of the LBR spices (the peppercorn and carrot seed, but I don't sense any cloves) plus the comforting warmth of the cashmere and almond of Silver Fox (see below), another favorite of mine. And then finally, the marshmallow ties it all together into a pillowy cloud of coziness. It's frankly astonishing. Love at first sniff even just from the vial, and on my skin it blossoms into the most comforting scent. Do I love it even more than LBR? I still can't tell, even years later. I love them both. One final note that may be helpful to some of you: the cottonflower is pretty strong with this one, which is part of why it reminds me so much of the Spidersilk vanilla, but if you're not so much a fan of "clean" laundry-like scents, this one might not be quite your cup of tea - go for LBR instead.
Lilac Rabbit [Nutmeg and tonka bean nuzzle up against toasted marshmallow, carrot seed, summerweight cotton, allspice, and pale lilac in a smooth fur accord] - Oh friends, I hoped and pleaded for another new Rabbit last year, and the universe (and Nui Cobalt) answered! I'm not actually all that fond of lilac and I think I have ended up destashing all of my perfumes with lilac notes, but I was willing to risk it for the chance of a floral Rabbit. Lilac Rabbit is gorgeous - but really, did you expect it to be anything else? I get primarily marshmallow, allspice, and cotton. It sits exactly halfway between the other two Rabbits, with the allspice and peppery carrot seed spices of Little Brown Rabbit (but without the maple quality), and also with the silky, slightly soapy fabric aspect of Little White Rabbit. There is perhaps just a touch of musky lilac, but it doesn't really read to me like a floral perfume. Lilac Rabbit is comfortable. The closest metaphor I can think of is a day when you're wearing a new outfit, one that fits perfectly and really suits you, but it's also completely comfy, with no itchy spots or seams that dig in, and it moves with you. It's like a day where you feel perfectly yourself, fully at ease, and completely put-together. This new Rabbit is everything I could have possibly dreamed of, and it immediately became one of my favorite spring & summer scents.

Squirrels

In past years, they've offered a complete set of all the Squirrels, which was how I tried them all a few years ago. (They've since been discontinued, but sometimes discontinued things return again, or perhaps you might run into one in the swaps, so I'll include all my Squirrel reviews here.) All of the Squirrels are built on the same base of almond + apricot + benzoin, and then each one has different additional notes. Like the Spidersilk variants (all built on the same Spidersilk vanilla base but with different additional notes - my reviews HERE), the Squirrels each have an entirely different vibe. Interestingly, the actual proportion of almond to apricot also seems to vary by Squirrel, perhaps because of the interactions with the different added notes, or perhaps because they actually use different proportions in the Squirrel base for each one. It means that they don't feel anything like near-exact copies of each other, but each have a really distinct identity.
Black Squirrel [A playful blend of almond and spiced apricot, grounded in rich benzoin and copaiba balsam, deepened by black oak, black currant, vanilla bean, and myrrh] - When I first put it on, it's very strongly and exclusively almond - a warm almond that reminds me of baking almond cookies, and it must be the vanilla that helps to make that association. The almond veers slightly towards cherry. As the oil warms on my skin, the apricot emerges and then overtakes the almond. It's apricot skin, soft and velvety, rather than the fleshy fruit of the apricot. These two notes, paired with the woodiness of the balsam and (presumably) black oak, makes this a very bookish scent, perfect for the dark academia aesthetic of my wardrobe in autumn. It's not really an incense-heavy perfume; the myrrh just grounds it and gives it a beautiful dark richness. On me it's not terribly fruity (though I know some folks get mostly dark stone fruits; isn't skin chemistry fascinating!) It's the longest-lasting of the Squirrels, too - the second time I wore it, its throw was a bit too high at bedtime so I washed my wrists, and even so, I could still smell Black Squirrel the next morning!
Flying Squirrel [Raw almond, spiced apricot, and rich benzoin borne aloft by lavender, cotton flower, and tart kumquat] - This one reminds me a lot of Napping in a Flower [Tender ripe apricot, Bulgarian lavender, spiced summer honey, plum blossom, daylily, honeysuckle, and ylang], which makes perfect sense since they share a lot of the same notes, but without the honey and honeysuckle that made Napping too candle-y on me. Husband said this reminds him strongly of Little White Rabbit - he said it's the spices that make that association for him, and I suspect he was also picking up on the shared cotton flower and almond notes. I'm finding it easier to compare Flying Squirrel to other NCD scents than to describe it on its own; its combination of notes feels quite erratic and the concept doesn't feel terribly unified. I couldn't classify this as a "cozy" perfume even though it does have a strong cotton flower note, nor is it citrusy enough for me to think of it as a fruity perfume (even though it has the strongest apricot of all the Squirrels), or herbal enough for it to go in my lavender section (in fact, I'm hoping that some aging brings out the lavender more). If you like Napping in a Flower or Little White Rabbit - two perfumes that are really nothing alike! - you'd probably enjoy this one too.
Grey Squirrel [A playful blend of almond and spiced apricot, grounded in rich benzoin and copaiba balsam, softened with cotton flower, cashmere, and teakwood] - This one gives the effect of eating an almond cookie while snuggled in a wool blanket. This one is super cozy - the autumn cousin of my beloved wintertime snuggly scents (Silver Fox, Snow Cat, Chionophilia, all of which also feature almond and fabric notes - see their full notes lists and my comparative reviews HERE). Grey Squirrel stays pretty static, not morphing like Black Squirrel, and the apricot is only barely present.
Red Squirrel [A playful blend of almond and spiced apricot, grounded in rich benzoin and copaiba balsam, warmed with red musk, red sandalwood, and smoldering amber] - This one is pretty heavy on the red musk, and was in fact partly responsible for me finally figuring out that I don't personally enjoy red musk. The almond, apricot, and sandalwood combination does give this a rather gourmand-adjacent feel to it, more so than the other Squirrels. It's a very rich and warm perfume. It's funny how actually "red" this scent feels - it feels like the experience of watching a bonfire die down, even though there's no smoke note at all. "Smoldering" indeed.
White Squirrel [A playful blend of almond and spiced apricot, grounded in rich benzoin and copaiba balsam, cooled with aloe, white musk, and smooth white amber] - Even without looking at the notes, it was easy to identify the white amber in this one, even though Nui Cobalt only infrequently uses white amber as a note. White Squirrel is very like Grey Squirrel, equally cozy but lighter and airier, with that white amber instead of cashmere. White Squirrel is cooler, more standoffish than Grey Squirrel - that "cool" effect must be the aloe - more a wintertime snuggly scent rather than an autumnal cozy scent. Even the now-familiar almond + apricot base feels daintier and even less foody here in White Squirrel.
Overall--

• Grey Squirrel and White Squirrel are the snuggly ones. Wear Grey Squirrel for cozy blanket vibes, and White Squirrel to be even daintier.
• Wear Red Squirrel for sexy outdoorsy gourmandy vibes (is that a thing? I think Red Squirrel makes it a thing)
• Black Squirrel is the dark academia sibling, and Flying Squirrel is the playful cousin

All the other Critters

Akhal-Teke [Fine ecru suede, raw silk, pearl musk, white amber, precious Hawaiian sandalwood, and creamy pistachio] - As someone put it, "super shiny horse". Silky yet fuzzy and soft, sophisticated yet snuggly. I recognize that pearl musk + sandalwood combination from Cancer [Cotton flower, steamed rice, soft sandalwood, vanilla orchid, coconut milk, and pearl musk] and I love it here too. All of these notes, suede + silk + pearl musk + white amber + sandalwood together, are gentle and just the epitome of softness, yet with just enough body and presence to be soft-on-purpose, assertively soft if that makes sense. This is not a wallflower scent. On to more specifics about the literal smell. At first, the nutty pistachio is pretty present, but it melds beautifully with the gentle suede. The silk and white amber give an elegance. I also definitely get the pearl musk and sandalwood, which take more prominence in the drydown when the pistachio dissipates a bit. This is my favorite stage - just soft, gentle, creamy, and absolutely lovely. Akhal-Teke has low throw but high longevity. I should note that after a year of aging, the pistachio amped quite a lot, overpowering that gorgeous pearl musk/sandalwood base that I loved so much. I'm hoping someday Forest might make one that's basically just pearl musk and sandalwood, without any gourmand elements!
Black-Capped Chickadee [Dogwood saplings, cedar resin, the tang of young stone fruits: still tiny and green, sugar maple, pine nuts, and barely-thawed soil] - I'm not one for dirt notes, so I completely passed this one up for several years, but enough really glowing reviews finally convinced me to try it. In the vial, it smells of wood, honeyed fruits, and hay. On my skin, it's soil, slightly nutty and incensey, with plush fruit and some very cedar-forward wood notes - and yet it's surprisingly dainty, and a perfect encapsulation of a black-capped chickadee. There's something about this scent that reminds me of snow-covered pebbles, and also of Shakespeare's poem "The cloud-capp'd towers" from The Tempest. After much sniffing and pondering, I finally figured out why I made that snowy association - the fruits read to me like cranberry, making this feel like a wintery scent. As for "The cloud-capp'd towers," I think I'm getting that Shakespearean reference from the combination of daintiness and dirt.
Blossom Bat [Humid rainforest blossoms laden with nectar, dense moss, passionfruit, black fig, and bamboo] - This was an order freebie that I wouldn't have picked out for myself, but it's so fun, and it went straight into my "Aloe and dewy" section of my summer perfumes, next to Waimea Mist and Aloha from the Big Island summer collection. Blossom Bat is velvety flower petals against a lush background of aquatic notes. I don't often enjoy moss notes (they often turn into honeydew melon on my skin), but here the moss contributes to the especially verdant feeling.
Blue Jay [Sturdy blue spruce and young oak support the bold elegance of white peony, angelica, blackberry bramble, and rhubarb] - In the vial, it's extremely fruity with a hint of trees. On my skin, it matches the description much more closely: evergreens and forest floor, brightened by fruity sweetness and a hint of floral. If you loved None of Your Beeswax [Thorny brambles of blackberry, elderflower, violet, fennel seed, sacred benzoin, and unfiltered honey] from the Bees collection, do give this one a try - Blue Jay is like None of Your Beeswax's summer cousin. I once wore this to a community theater production of Into the Woods and it was perfect.
Copper Fox [Warm chai with steamed almond milk nestled in sumptuous cashmere, crimson musk, sarsaparilla, and budding birch] - I once went on a quest to find the perfect chai perfume, and of course I had to try Copper Fox! Immediately on application, Copper Fox is root beer, spicy root beer - there's that sarsaparilla in a big way. As it quickly dries, the overwhelmingly root beer-ness of it backs off somewhat, and it becomes much more chai spices + the woody birch (and still with an undercurrent of root beer). Chai latte this is not - it's all the spices of chai (cinnamon and black pepper especially, and probably a bit of ginger as well) without any sweetness or milky creaminess. I should note that at this point my skin has a slight reaction to this perfume; this perfume ended up being part of my discovery that like many others, I too have a slight skin reaction to cinnamon. It didn't hurt a bit and the redness went away fairly quickly, but be forewarned, if you're a person that has a reaction to cinnamon, this might be a blend worth steering away from, or at least planning to wear in a scent locket or in your hair instead of on your skin. Finally, several hours later, Copper Fox has a third stage, and to me the most lovely: chai spices backed by gentle almond and cozy cashmere (and at this stage it's clearly a "Fox" like Silver Fox).
Elf Owl [A bright concoction of liatrix, yellow sandalwood, beach-tumbled teak, solar musk, crushed coriander, and a scant pinch of pale cinnamon] - With the teak and cinnamon, and of course the obvious cue of the "solar musk", I was expecting this to be in the same family as Nui Cobalt's Sun, Heliophilia (Love of Sun), and Sunrise on Spidersilk (comparative review HERE!). Those sun-themed perfumes can be a bit too sharp and masculine on me (I tend to prefer snuggly scents or white florals), but as a great lover of owls (and a huge fan of Nui Cobalt's Snowy Owl [Dried coconut flakes, pale woods, frozen tuberose, vanilla orchid, and fluffy feather musk], with which it admittedly shares not a single note), I absolutely could not pass up Elf Owl. I'm so glad I didn't. This actually isn't in the sun-themed family, nor, of course, does it match the highly white-floral Snowy Owl. Instead, Elf Owl turns out to be much closer to Squash Blossom [Cocobolo wood, orris root, carrot seed, sunflower petals, mandarin zest, and acorn squash baked with brown sugar] from the Autumn 1 collection, though much less vegetal. It's a very well-blended perfume and nothing in particular stands out. The overall effect is gentle: gently floral and slightly vegetal, with vanilla and baking spices but without any sugary sweetness. (Liatrix, for anyone who doesn't know what that note is--I had to look it up myself!--is a "sweet, coumarinic, herbal, tobacco-like floral and offers a pleasant vanilla-like scent".)
Fennec Fox [Blush sandalwood, amber resin, antique Egyptian cotton touched with saffron, spiced peach preserves, and sweet cedar resin] - It's gentle, warm, and spiced, with that snuggly feeling that you get with anything that has NCD's cotton note. If you really look, you can distinguish the wood, saffron, and peach, but they meld together extremely well. Surprisingly, I actually get quite a lot of the same sand note as in Flying South [Pink lemonade, warm sand, tiare blossoms, and a flowy cotton sundress] even though sand is not listed. I wear Fennec Fox in autumn on days when I don't feel like a pumpkin.
Glasswing Butterfly [A diaphanous veil of coconut water, elderflower, moonlit gardenia, silver musk, green lavender, and a slender twist of lime] - Nelophilia (Love of Glass) [Elderflower, silver musk, coconut water, cardamom, silk tree, lime blossom, and smooth hinoki wood] is one of my favorites from the Valentine's collection, but it's been discontinued for some time. So I was delighted to see this one because its notes read like a combination of Nelophilia and Queen Bee [Creamy white gardenia and fluffy whipped honey], both among my favorite NCD perfumes. It's not quite - it's not the same almost-spicy gardenia as in Queen Bee - but it is absolutely divine. Glasswing Butterfly is basically Nelophilia with all its smooth, cool, rainy, white floral nature, but here the cardamom is more present (YES! I love cardamom), and with a bit more floral. After a year of aging, it became quite a LOT more white floral; the heady gardenia came out with a KICK, and it's nearly but not quite indolic.
Honey Badger [Black amber, raw honey, smoked maple wood, and cardamom-infused cream] - I mean, duh, I had to try this one just for the cardamom cream. This is somehow so recognizably a NCD scent. Honey straight from the comb, dripping and golden, rich and sweet, backed by maple wood (but not really maple syrup) and a whiff of cardamom spice. Not nearly enough cardamom for my taste - but then, we all know what I'm like! I'm so glad I tried this one. Since its notes list starts with "black amber," I expected this to be quite a dark scent, but while it's quite rich, it's not ominously dark. Husband really likes this one, which is always a special success.
Hummingbird [Darting from oleander to orange blossom with ripe nectarine, hibiscus tea, and traces of tuberose] - White florals with orange and nectarine fruit notes, chirpy and cheerful. It's a juicy but not sugary scent. I love it for warm spring days - it's an absolute staple of my springtime perfumes - though I find it a little cloying in very hot weather.
Opossum [A bold nocturnal potion of Hatian amyris, soft black suede, red patchouli, freshly-turned earth, copal resin, and Peru balsam] - I get suede, red musk, and brown patchouli; meanwhile Husband, sniffing my wrist, gets pine and petrichor. Yet the combination of all these things is surprisingly gentle, not a shouty, in-your-face kind of scent. Absolutely none of the notes we're picking up on are my thing, but just about all of them very much are Husband's thing, so guess what - he immediately snaffled this one.
Orchid Mantis [Ripe Philippine mango, dragon fruit, tamarind, Indonesian teak, clove bud, sandalwood, tuberose, and a touch of ylang] - This one is bit too sweet for me on application - at first it's all sugary mango - but as it warms on my skin, the other notes creep in: more fruit (but less sugar), a bit of sharp clove for balance, and hints of woodiness and florals. As it dries, those hints of clove and woodiness amp further (and at this point, all my husband smells is cinnamony clove). For some reason, this is one of the very strongest of my NCD scents, with high longevity and even higher throw.
Raccoon [Sepia cashmere, guaiac wood, Egyptian amber, Copaiba balsam, golden musk, a twinkle of coriander, blonde oudh, resinous Himalayan cedar, and myrrh] - It's so well-blended that I can't pick out a single note individually, but something about this feels so quintessentially NCD. Right on application, it makes me think of Cheat Code [Windswept teakwood, cedar, coriander and tea are grounded in black tonka with a hint of fine leather], another one I had trouble describing, and it has a similar level of elegance and polish. Meanwhile, Husband smelled a bit of cola or sarsparilla, and noted an almost chocolatey undertone. As it dries, the cashmere and musk come forward, quite woolly and plush and just a touch animalistic. It seems a similar cashmere musk as in Arctic Fox [Soft amber nestled in sumptuous cashmere, steamed rice milk, winter white musk, and snow-covered fir trees]. If Arctic Fox worked for you, you absolutely must try Raccoon. Since Arctic Fox doesn't work on me (my skin amps that cashmere to unpleasant levels), Raccoon ultimately won't win a place in my collection either - which is a bummer because that opening is so pretty. I'll have to stick with Cheat Code for my polished, sophisticated vibes.
Robin's Egg [Dainty forget-me-nots and lily of the valley, a dollop of whipped blueberry creme, and a cozy birch nest tucked into a flowering dogwood tree] - This one has the same amazing blueberry as Grey Cat [Dry smoked vanilla, fluffy marshmallow creme, fresh blueberries, the gentlest touch of lavender and a warm cup of Earl Grey], House of Transcendence [Top notes of wild blueberry and morning fog, a heart of pale lilac and cashmere, with a base of orris and white amber], and Choreophilia [Wild violets, warm Earl Grey, Dominican blue amber, orris root, a handful of blueberries, and a touch of lime marmalade]. This iteration of the blueberry note is juicy and floral. After a few years of aging, Robin's Egg has become even more gorgeous and creamy, with that stunning blueberry and a vision of dainty blue flowers. This one is discontinued and I'm really sad about that (but you could maybe find some in the swaps if you ask around).
Silver Fox [White tea with honey and rice milk, almond macaron, soft grey cashmere and cool woodland musk] (this perfume is so popular that it is also in the Continuous Collection and available all year 'round) - Stunning. Sophisticated yet snuggly. The cashmere is the most prominent, followed by fir, the sweetness of white amber, and NCD's gentle whipped honey note. I also wouldn't have been surprised to read that copal was a note - there's just that little bit of resinous almost-smoke. When it dries, the sweetness goes away and the fir comes forward. This was a freebie with one of my orders - I hadn't actually bought a sample of this for myself, worried that I wouldn't like the rice milk (which, as it turns out, I don't actually smell), but it has since become one of my favorite wintertime scents.
Sugar Glider [Raw cotton, sugar cane, flannel flower, macadamia nut, pearblossom, palest musk, and dandelion puff] - So here's the thing, I'm wary of gourmands (in fact I always sit out most of the April Fool's gourmand collection). Sugar is listed in the notes description in the very second place, but I am a sucker for cute woodland animals, so that's how I ended up with this sample. After a first sniff in the vial, I got a little nervous about it, because it smelled very sugary, but I figured I'd wear it once, review it for you all, and then in a worst-case scenario, destash it to someone who does love sugary dessert scents. But wait! There's something strangely intoxicating about this one, and it's not really a gourmand. Immediately when I put it on, it reminded me a bit of the Sweettart-ness of my beloved Somniphilia (Love of Sleep) [Lamb's wool accord, orange blossom, barely-budding lavender, melissa, green fig, clary, cloud musk, and weightless vanilla marshmallow meringue]. I was pleasantly surprised that Sugar Glider is not at all dessert, instead more sugar + wood, and really rather cuddly. And then when it dries down, it reminds me so strongly of the blue raspberry note in Dewdrops on Spidersilk [Cerulean strands of cotton flower bejeweled with dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, frozen blue raspberry, and gentle incense], except it's not "blue" (nor is it raspberry, but neither is "blue raspberry"). How did they achieve this effect? I have no idea, but it's so addictive: such a delicate, cheerful, springtime scent. It really does remind me of the experience of picking a perfect white fluffy dandelion and making a wish as you blow it. Definitely a springtime favorite.
White-Tailed Deer [Soft brown suede, golden musk, wild forest berries, and roasted chestnuts dusted with maple sugar] - I am always hesitant about suede, but was very happy when this was included as a free sample because I'd heard lovely things about it but wouldn't have purchased it for myself. It's an interesting one because my experience is of it is very different depending on distance. When I'm just smelling it as it wafts around me, it's such a warm, cozy scent, the suede mingling with chestnut and brown sugar. When I bring my wrist directly up to my nose to sniff, the suede does get a bit overwhelmingly leathery, and overtakes the other notes. Once it dries, though, that unpleasantly smoky leatheriness dissipates (even right up under my nose), leaving only the highly autumnal coziness behind. It is indeed very "golden" - or maybe a really rich, warm brown. I don't get any berries at all. It reminds me of the very stylized acorns and hedgehogs that fellow autumn-lovers love to idolize. (And for some reason, Husband gets saffron!)

Personally...

Robin's Egg, Sugar Glider, and Elf Owl are some of my TOP favorite perfumes for spring; Fennec Fox for fall; and Silver Fox for winter. Black Squirrel is my favorite of the Squirrels (in fact I ended up destashing all the others since I continue to have some issues with NCD's apricot note) - it's so beautifully dark-academia. And in my opinion, the three Rabbits are absolute must-tries (and I hold so much hope for a new Rabbit this year!). If you try nothing else from this collection, try whichever of the three Rabbits most calls your name - they're all different but all absolutely stunning.
What are you hoping for this year? Any particular animals you're keeping fingers crossed for? Do we think it'll be mostly woodland creatures this year, or perhaps we'll get some oceanic or other Critters too?

Some of the songs on the denial playlist came as no surprise to gaylors, e.g. Lover, but there were some that puzzled me so I went digging back into the lyrics, and realized most of them are quite obviously about denial if you're looking for it and viewing through that lens.
Before jumping into lyrics, I want to give some thoughts on her intro to set the stage.

“This is a list of songs about getting so caught up in the idea of something that you have a hard time seeing the red flags possibly resulting in moments of denial and maybe a little bit of delusion… results may vary.”

I did a thought-ramble on this here where I was parsing through this statement and considering if she knew the song was about denial and delusion when she wrote it versus if she was realizing it later when putting the playlist together, and I'm basically 100% convinced it's the former, especially after digging into lyrics. There are so many lines that make it quite obvious she - the songwriter - was cognizant of the denial during the songwriting process. But there's also a distinction to be made between the songwriter and the narrator. The songwriter is the one who's aware of the denial, even if the narrator may not be.
I chose just a smattering of lyrics for each one to talk about the denial and delusion. Each could probably be its own post, but this became way too long too fast, so it's mostly an overview of all the songs on the list rather than going too deeply into any one in particular.
Lavender Haze

I just wanna stay in that lavender haze

The central line here could be interpreted as straightforward denial. "I just want to stay in this place even though I know I can't or shouldn't." I personally see the lavender haze as a euphemism for the closet. So the narrator wants to stay in there where it's safe, but the songwriter knows this might not be possible (especially given all the flagging she does).
Snow On The Beach (More Lana Version)

Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful
You wanting me tonight feels impossible

"flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful" is pure delusion.

I (I) can't (can't) speak afraid to jinx it
I (I) don't (don't) even dare to wish it
But your eyes are flying saucers from another planet
Now I'm all for you like Janet
Can this be a real thing? Can it?

This is all fraught with anxiety and like a bubble she's afraid is about to burst, but the narrator still asks (anxiously ofc) if it can still be a real thing despite that reality.
Sweet Nothing
This one was a little less obvious and maybe someone else has thoughts on the denial here, but here's what's caught my interest:

I find myself running home to your sweet nothings
Outside, they're push and shoving
You're in the kitchen humming
All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing

Others have pointed out that the common phrase is "sweet nothings" (meaning words of affection between lovers), but the title of the song is "sweet nothing" without the s. And in the chorus, she uses both of these.
So she runs home to words of affection and their home is a little bubble and respite from the chaos outside, but in the end she says "all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing". There's certainly more than one way to interpret this but the way I see this is that you can drop the "sweet" and the sentence can still work (just like argumentative antithetical dream girl). So it could be "all that you ever wanted from me was nothing." Which is a very different sentiment from the first part of the chorus. This lover says nice things to her but then doesn't really want anything from her. And if you want to add the "sweet" back into that phrase, it could be interpreted as she's glad that this person doesn't want anything from her; it's a relief that she doesn't have to give any part of herself to that person. This is perhaps the denial part that the songwriter is aware of.
Glitch

I think there's been a glitch, oh, yeah
Five seconds later, I'm fastening myself to you with a stitch, oh, yeah
And I'm not even sorry
Nights are so starry, blood moonlit
It must be counterfeit

Describing a scene so fantastical that the songwriter describes it as counterfeit, i.e. fake.

I'd go back to wanting dudes who give nothing

She knows they give nothing and says she'd go back to them anyways.
Betty

The worst thing that I ever did was what I did to you
But if I just showed up at your party
Would you have me? Would you want me?
Would you tell me to go straight to hell?
Or lead me to the garden?

So James (we're gonna say James is a girl because James is a girl) cheats on Betty, acknowledges that that was the worst thing she ever did, and then has the sheer audacity to wonder that if she shows up to the party, if Betty would still want her and if she'd kiss James on the porch in front of everyone. The height of delusion, let's be real.
Willow
Willow has always felt like such a riddle to me so I need help with this one.
One possibility is the way she has to keep saying "that's my man" like she's trying to convince us of it.
My initial knee-jerk reaction to seeing this on the denial list was that it felt less likely that Willow was about Tree (which I go back and forth on anyways). But some commenters in the other thread made some interesting points:
"Y’all… denial as in … plausible deniability- which is tree’s main job !!!" from u/Primary-Teach3689
"could still be about tree. she can be in awe of tree while simultabeously being in denial about the costs of the inauthenticity of hiding behind a beard, despite its obvious business benefits." from u/amazona_auropalliata.
Cruel Summer

What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

No matter how difficult it gets, she still wants this girl more and more.

I'm drunk in the back of the car
And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (oh)
Said, "I'm fine, " but it wasn't true
I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you

Denying that she's okay with this messed up secret love sitch, and knowing at the same time that's bullshit.
Lover

Can I go where you go?
Can we always be this close forever and ever?

This whole song is riddled with anxiety, which gaylors have talked about many times before this. These lines really embody it. They're coming from an insecure, anxiously-attached place, desperately trying to hold on to this person, and denying that this relationship is falling apart.
Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince
The term "the heartbreak prince" alone carries some delusion. A heartbreaker is someone who's going to break your heart.

And now the storm is coming, but
It's you and me, that's my whole world
...
It's you and me, there's nothing like this
Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince

Miss Americana is wrapped up in a relationship that's basically doomed (because the other one is the heartbreak prince). Many have pointed out before that Taylor (or the narrator at least) has to be the heartbreak prince because of the order of "you and me" and "Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince"
Interested to hear other ideas on this one.
False God

We were crazy to think
Crazy to think that this could work
Remember how I said I'd die for you?

Right off the bat, acknowledging this is delusional.

And you can't talk to me when I'm like this
Daring you to leave me just so I can try and scare you

What a healthy relationship dynamic.

But we might just get away with it

Still in denial.
Style

And I should just tell you to leave 'cause I
Know exactly where it leads, but I
Watch us go 'round and 'round each time

Knowing she should tell the other person to leave because she knows how it's all going to go down, but she keeps coming back anyways. The songwriter sees the delusion, but the narrator is caught up in it.
Wildest Dreams
Let's start with the fact that delusion is right there in the title.

I thought Heaven can't help me now
Nothing lasts forever
But this is gonna take me down

Feeling helpless to stop even while knowing it's going to destroy her.

Say you'll remember me
Standing in a nice dress
Staring at the sunset, babe
Red lips and rosy cheeks
Say you'll see me again
Even if it's just in your wildest dreams

Delulu central. I love it, but it's crazy. "Wildest dreams" are the most fantastical, most impossible things one can imagine. This is the place she wants her muse to keep and remember her.
Treacherous

And I'll do anything you say
If you say it with your hands
And I'd be smart to walk away
But you're quicksand

Similar to Style and Wildest Dreams, she knows she should leave but feels helpless not to.

I can't decide if it's a choice
Getting swept away
I hear the sound of my own voice
Asking you to stay

The narrator is so caught up in it that she's lost all rationality.
Untouchable

In the middle of the night, when I'm in this dream
It's like a million little stars spelling out your name

Any time she's describing something as a dream, it's practically by definition delusional.
That’s When

You said, "I know"
When I said, "I need some time, need some space
To think about all of this"...And I said, "When can I come back?"
...
I said, "I know"
When you said, "I did you wrong, made mistakes
And put you through all of this" (through all of this)

So let me get this straight. He did her wrong. She says she needs space to think about things, then immediately asks him, "When can I come back?" Like, cmon. She's so far in denial she's lost her backbone.
Ours
This is the one song on the list that feels like it might be an exception to what I said up top. There's so much earnestness in the song. I'm not convinced that Taylor the songwriter knew that there were red flags in this relationship when the song was written. And from a gaylor perspective, a lot of these lines come off as being protective of a gay relationship that some people would disapprove of:

Seems like there's always someone who disapproves
They'll judge it like they know about me and you
...
And it's not theirs to speculate
If it's wrong

Curious if others have a different opinion on this one. I know some have speculated this one is about JM (I'm not convinced that was ever a real relationship) or Martin Johnson, and that the red flags came later but she was too caught up in the love bubble to see it. But I don't see any evidence that either the songwriter or the narrator was cognizant of this.
Superman

Something in his deep brown eyes has me singing
He's not all bad like his reputation

Oh taylor.

And I can't hear one single word they said
And you leave, got places to be and I'll be okay
I always forget to tell you I love you

Yeah, sure, you'll be okay even though this dude is always leaving you and has a terrible rep.

And I watch you fly around the world
And I hope you don't save some other girl
Don't forget, don't forget about me
I'm far away but I'll never let you go

This is such a sad song. Bordering on pathetic. Big delusion and denial from the narrator. But it's so obvious that I have to think that the songwriter was aware of this. Hopefully.
Bejeweled

Baby love, I think I've been a little too kind
Didn't notice you walking all over my peace of mind

Right from the start saying she was in denial about what was going on.
*****
This is already way too long, sorry for the novel. Gonna end it here. Pls rip it apart in the comments.
Edited to fix the line breaks bc reddit sucks with pasted lyrics.

I have learned so much here and I realised why I was such a lost cause at one point since I was raised by mammies and my dad as well as raised in a BM worshipping culture. However I realised cutting out these things has helped me so much on my journey. I did these things prior to starting my divestment journey and I did not know these things was negatively affecting me but when I did, I felt better in my life. I still have much to learn but I embrace it fully.
1) Celebrity worship- My mom got me into it because she is a HUGE Rihanna fan, wr used to go on the PC when I was small to see any updates. I remember thinking Rihanna was so amazing, that is until she wore that bejeweled dress and sometimes she would be mean to people for no reason. I stopped looking at her as I got older because I realised that celebrity worship is so 2000s. Other BW celebrities I would look up too but when I was in my late teens I started to notice all of them had to be near naked. It made me uncomfortable because I was looking for different fashions but everyone looked the same. I used to listen to SZA at 21 but it put me in a horribleee mindspace and made me act desperate , I cringe looking back at how in awe I was at with celebrities.
2) Watching Pro black channels/ Migrating to Africa subs, my ex is why I stopped believing in these things and getting a look at how women hater their culture is. I am so happy I saw the truth and I keep educating myself on why that culture should not be upheld so I never ever fall for that again.
3) CUTTING OUT SOCA/ BASHMEMT SOCA AND DANCEHALL
I remember when I was 11 Mr Vegas- Bruk it down came out and girls would be in the class shaking ass, it was just our culture, I saw this at Crop Over and I noticed over the last 10 years wukking up and gyrating got more vulgar and the costumes got worse. I listened to so much vulgar music to fit in, people used to hate the music I listened to so I figured if I was more culturally intune I would be well liked. I partied, I dressed skimpy, I wanted to wuk up but deep down I was ashamed of myself and by 19 I cut it all out. I realised I dislike music genres that sexualise BW, encourage pdomiscuity , LYRICAL SEX, explicit lyrics and encouraging of side chicks and cheating on your man is a good thing.
4) Natural Hair videos, I hated the way ladies would insult or sneak diss their hair, product junkie and not doing many natural hairstyles but would use extentions constantly. I wanted to see afros, undefined and EDGES ALL THE TIME. I still cringe that I used to do mine as a teen I was obsessed with swoops. sigh
5) Baddie style, I remember when this style first emerged I was so desperate to follow it, I wanted a big butt, I wore tight clothes, wore lashes, hoops , crop tops, weave, bundles, synthetic hair, mind you I am a TEENAGER wearing these things 😬. I also did my makeup and I knew about it but I hatedddd the 2016 makeup look, I still dislike it to this day. Now I am grown, I realised I outgrew that style and I found my own in my 20s. I also realised when I wore these clothes dusties will look at me or they would insult me and say how ugly I look because I was skinny. (That impacted my self image because I was desperste to be curvy to avoid getting bullied)
6) CUTTING EVERYONE OFF
Most of my friends were BM or mammies and I dumped them all at 19. I felt a shift like I was growing up and none of my friends progressed in life. I also stopped talking to childhood friends because we were different. The peace was unreal since I made that descision and I do not regret it.

Since we're speculating about what will happen to the setlist of the Eras Tour once TTPD is released, I thought it would be fun to hear what your dream setlist would be, based on the structure and sequence of the show so far.
Which songs would you switch out? Would you add a debut era? Would you skip songs entirely and make one era shorter, so that there's time to add songs to another era?
Bonus question: where in the show would you add TTPD, if you wanted to? (ofc based on the very little info we have about the album, hahah)
​
My dream setlist would look like this:
Lover

1. opening sequence and Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince
2. Cruel Summer
3. The Man I Think He Knows - while I love the whole choreo/theatre vibe that The Man has, I'm not that bothered about the actual song (sorry!!!) and I LOOOVE ITHK, so I would love to see a similar dance-y performance of it!
4. Lover
5. The Archer Death By A Thousand Cuts - I love The Archer but screaming the DBATC bridge in a stadium full of swifties is a need

Fearless

1. Fearless in full - please Taylor, I want to sing 'in this moment now, capture it, remember it'!
2. You Belong With Me & Mr. Perfectly Fine mash up - because it slaps!
3. Love Story

Evermore

1. 'tis the damn season gold rush - it's my favourite so I had to add it
2. willow
3. marjorie
4. champagne problems
5. tolerite it

Reputation

1. .... Ready for it?
2. Delicate
3. Don't Blame Me & Look What You Made Me DO mash up - maybe this is cheating, but obviously I want to keep the iconic transition between DBM & LWYMMD
4. Getaway Car - it's a crime against swifties that this is not on the setlist imo

Speak Now

1. Enchanted
2. Sparks Fly - because I want to see Taylor dance and toss her hair in one of those beatiful ball gowns!
3. Long Live

Red

1. 22
2. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together & I Knew You Were Trouble mash up - similar change as the rep set, the songs are fun and iconic so I would like to keep them, but maybe not in full
3. Holy Ground & State of Grace mashup - to represent the 'other side' of Red and because they are personal faves
4. All Too Well 10

Folklore

1. the 1
2. betty
3. the last great amrican dynasty mirrorball - I need to know how Taylor would stage a full production of this song and I just know it would be amazing so I'm adding it!
4. august & illicit affairs outro
5. my tears ricochet
6. cardigan - on the fence about this one, but I'm adding things elsewhere so she's on the chopping block

1989

1. Style
2. Blank Space
3. Shake it Off
4. Wildest Dreams
5. Bad Blood Out Of The Woods - I do enjoy Bad Blood but OOTW not being on the setlist is another crime imo

surprise songs & short debut era
I'm imagining a short rotating setlist of debut songs, like one or two that Taylor could perform before or after the surprise songs. I'm envisioning the vibes of 'friday night beneath the stars, in a field behind your yard', like Taylor's sitting by a lake, a late summer evening and she's singing some country songs for us! It also adds to her diving into the stage, like diving into the water of the lake :)
Midnights

1. Lavender Haze & Maroon mash up - in my head this makes sense sound-wise, and they are also bookends to a relationship: the hazy beginnings and the end
2. Anti Hero
3. Midnight Rain
4. Vigilante Shit - sorry everyone, no more chairs
5. Bejeweled
6. You're On Your Own, Kid - no need to explain this one, I think <3
7. Karma

​

Hello folks, I'm back with a new pre-collection-release post! Nui Cobalt's Bees collection will be returning this Friday, February 23. 🐝🐝🐝
In my humble opinion, the Bees collection is one of Nui Cobalt's very best (that and Yule, I think). Each year I literally count down the days to its release - it represents the start of spring for me with its delicacy, airiness, honey-sweetness, and, of course, its stunning florals. For anybody who is newish to indies, Nui Cobalt's Bees collection features honey in various different forms (whipped, spiced, floral blossom-tinged) and I can say from experience that even if honey notes from other houses don't work on you, it's very well worth giving these a try. Honey can be a difficult note in perfume, often smelling like cat pee (with which it shares several chemical compounds), but NCD's don't have that problem. They've said outright that they create "fantasy" honey accords that evoke the smell and idea of honey but without the urine-like elements. Personally their white whipped honey is my favorite! But all of their honey accords - and they have at least four or five different ones - are all really special. And along with the Bees comes the smaller partner collection, Nui's Favorite Things.
This review post surveys all 29 of the Bees and Favorite Things that I've been delighted to try. Sadly, some of them have been discontinued (I live in hope that Honeymoon Suite may someday recur!) but I'll still list all that I've tried here, to make this a more helpfully comprehensive resource in case if you find any older Bees in the swaps and are curious to read some thoughts on them. I'd love to hear if any of these catch your eye - what are you most hoping will return this year?
Many of these were provided as press samples in past years in exchange for honest reviews.

Bees

Ancient Apiary [Deadfall draped in oakmoss, wild pink roses, honeycomb bursting from frail brood boxes and pouring gold from every cell] - When applied, something about the combination of "deadfall" and "brood boxes" with honey veritably screams "COLA!" How interesting, I haven't fallen prey to the cola effect before this. (It actually made me mistakenly think there was frankincense in this blend, which there isn't, at least not among the listed notes.) Happily, as soon as it begins drying (so, like, 2 minutes later) the almost-incensey woody notes and the honey disentangle, bringing in a faint undertone of roses and the dusty, almost mossy green of the oakmoss. This perfume feels lush but also vintage, almost like a sepia-toned photograph.
Bee Kind To Yourself [White copal, blooming peony, honeyed tea, pink amber, and sheer summer-weight cashmere] - First off, I absolutely have to give credit to our very own, amazing u/propheticperfumes, who suggested this scent to Nui Cobalt. It's a stunner both in its concept and execution (and it quickly became a crowd favorite here at IMAM). On application, it's a delicately floral-tinged honey; and definitely a liquid golden honey rather than the airier, whiter whipped honey of Queen Bee. I get a lot of honey and an overlay of pink peony at this stage. Once Bee Kind To Yourself reaches its full expression, it's gorgeous. As it dries, the copal smoke and musky woolly cashmere emerge to join the honey and peony, and if I look for it, I can even find a hint of tea. I had thought this would be a summer perfume for me (though the musk is a little too heavy for summer, when I prefer more freshness and lightness), but by happy chance, I happened to wear it for yoga one day - it was phenomenal as a yoga perfume and I still have no idea why, but it has remained in the yoga section of my perfume collection ever since.
Bee You Tiful [Honey-roasted pistachio and chestnut, pink magnolia, and sweet apple blossom] - Honeyed-salty-toasty nuts harmonizing with the florals, particularly the apple blossom. Nui Cobalt has a gorgeous apple blossom note; see also Pixie [An apple orchard in bloom, spring grasses alive with an unearthly glow, vanilla bean offertory cakes, and sparkling honey mead] and Venus Amica [Sun-warmed wildflowers, olivewood, apple blossom, light amber, moringa leaf, and sacred benzoin]. The honey, pistachio, and faint apple combine in Bee You Tiful to be reminiscent of some sort of delightful pastry - is a pistachio-apple galette a thing? And yet this isn't a realistic gourmand, especially with the wafting florals making it much more atmospheric. The overall impression is of a garden party. Many hours later, the top-note florals are gone, but the gentle nuts remain. If you like the pistachio in Akhal-Teke [Fine ecru suede, raw silk, pearl musk, white amber, precious Hawaiian sandalwood, and creamy pistachio], you should definitely try this one.
The Beekeeper's Funeral [This comforting blend opens with gentle Bulgarian lavender and petrichor, then blooms with Casablanca lily, honeysuckle, and wet grass, and settles at last into a pillow of fluffy whipped honey] - A very pretty, understated floral-aquatic. I get white florals (but not too bold), an herbal lavender, grass, and rain - this petrichor is more the smell of the watery rain itself rather than wet pavement. Oddly enough for this being a Bee, I actually don't get any honey, though there is a little bit of sweetness that reminds me of the white amber in Mirror [Pale amber and white tea are accented by dry coconut, angelica, and cooling rain], in part because of the shared rain note.
Bees' Cotillion [Succulent pears simmering in spring honey with the gentlest breeze of lily carried in a homespun infusion of honeysuckle flowers] - This one makes me depressed because my skin chemistry is the actual worst and turns this beautiful notes list into straight-up craft store candle. I really can't wear NCD's pear, apricot notes, or honeysuckle notes. Other glowing reviews say this scent is just lovely, but on me it goes straight Yankee Candle.
The Bees' Carnival [Cotton candy spun from crystallized honey, fresh leaves of lemon verbena, blue raspberry drizzle, and a grounding smolder of sweet myrrh] - This one shouts COTTON CANDY and a lot of honey, with only mere hints of the lemon and blue raspberry. If you love the cotton candy of Nephophilia [A fluffy melange of pink cotton candy, ivory cashmere, silk tree blossoms, blush suede, and steamed vanilla] but wanted it to have even more cotton candy, The Bees' Carnival is for you! Other scents in this family are Scoundrel: Blue Cotton Candy [Our blue cotton candy accord is spun from silken tonka, Mexican vanilla bean, sparkling sugar, marshmallow fluff, preserved Damson plum, and barely a twinkle of unripe bergamot] (which isn't so much "blue raspberry"), and Land of Sweets [Sugared rose petals, blue cotton candy, miniature marshmallows, pistachio ice cream, and a drizzle of white chocolate] (which is mostly sugared rose on a bed of gourmand sweets). I always expect a more distinct blue raspberry note in The Bees' Carnival, but happily I do have Blue Moon [A diaphanous lunar musk entwines living honeysuckle and sugared blue raspberry] and Dewdrops on Spidersilk [Cerulean strands of cotton flower bejeweled with dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, frozen blue raspberry, and gentle incense] to scratch that itch. The herbal quality of the lemon verbena and the slight earthiness of the myrrh come out in the drydown, keeping the really golden nature of this honey from becoming too cloying.
The Bees' High Tea [Delicate vanilla cakes with rose petal preserves, elderflower wine, and Earl Grey tea with a dainty drop of spring harvest honey] - This one is so much fun: a grapey rose jam and fizzy champagne, with a hint of vanilla coming out as it dries. Wearing it makes me feel like I'm attending an elegant summer brunch, or perhaps I'm a picnicker with Emma Woodhouse on Box Hill. It is lovely, feminine and playful. If you've tried Pixie [An apple orchard in bloom, spring grasses alive with an unearthly glow, vanilla bean offertory cakes, and sparkling honey mead], Bees' High Tea is quite similar with its vanilla cake and slightly fizzy aspect, but with honey instead of Pixie's yeasty mead, and with elderflower instead of apple blossom. The grapey elderberry also reminds me of Achievement Unlocked [A bold blend of Mahogany and Merlot with tart elderberry and a single long-stemmed rose].
Bees Love Blue [Forget-me-not blossoms, imperial iris, blue lotus, delphinium, dwarf lilac, and hidcote lavender on a cloud of whipped white honey] - This one is delicately floral and very much light purplish-blue in its scent color. Of the many flowers present here, I particularly get the iris (less musky here than in several other iris-centered perfumes I've tried) and the delicate, feminine forget-me-not (reminiscent of Robin's Egg [Dainty forget-me-nots and lily of the valley, a dollop of whipped blueberry creme, and a cozy birch nest tucked into a flowering dogwood tree]). Bees Love Blue has astonishing longevity; this is one of the NCD perfumes that will last all day on me. I adore this one, though you do have to like florals to enjoy it, because it's gorgeous florals and light airy honey and nothing else.
Bees on the Bayou [Vines heavy with honeysuckle entwined with Easter lily, linden blossom, and neroli over a sweet foundation of pipe tobacco, pralines, and creamed honey] - The pralines and tobacco together make me smell a sort of milk chocolate note, but that's secondary to the truly lovely white florals, the velvety kind rather than the brash in-your-face sort. NCD's honeysuckle often doesn't work for me, but here combined with the plush lily and slightly greenish, airy linden blossom the florals are altogether gorgeous. Husband agrees, saying that he truly enjoys smelling that waft of flower petals from my wrist, but on closer inspection he says he gets a sort of artificial blueberry note (??? yet again, what's up with his nose?). We both seem to agree, though, that this one is gorgeous florals accented by the more gourmand notes.
Busy Bee [A blend of Oolong and Tibetan black tea with peach blossom honey, cardamom, and clove, sharpened with pink peppercorn and dry oakwood] - Tea, honey, and warm spices. Unlike the other Bees, many of which tend to be spring and summer perfumes for me, I wear this one exclusively in fall. It is such a fantastic autumn perfume for days when you don't want apple or pumpkin or overwhelming chai spices. Sadly discontinued! I made sure to get a backup before it disappeared.
Dancing Bee [Peach trees barely budding, dewy white violet, honeysuckle, angelica and orris roots, frankincense, allspice, and spring harvest honey] - Skin chem strikes again: I really can't wear NCD's honeysuckle; I just seem to amp honeysuckle to the exclusion of all other notes. At least here the frankincense is giving it a bit of a run for its money, so I do get a slightly cola-ish incense behind that candley honeysuckle. Where's my peach tree, violet, angelica, and orris root? Boo. If NCD's honeysuckle note works for you - and it seems like I'm quite unusual in it not working for me - do give Dancing Bee a try. I have seen reviews praising the delicacy of its floral notes and I'm just so jealous.
Emotional Support Bee [Ivory-blush rose petals, orange blossom honey, apple blossoms, melissa leaf, silken shea, sacred benzoin, and just a hint of calming clary sage] - This was one that I picked up on the strength of many IMAM rave reviews - I couldn't resist the chance to try it myself! I get primarily rose, honey, and clary sage, with orange blossom and shea butter there if I look for them. This is a very pretty and calming scent. It is recognizably similar to Somniphilia [Lamb's wool accord, orange blossom, barely-budding lavender, melissa, green fig, clary, cloud musk, and weightless vanilla marshmallow meringue] but without the sugary and airy vanilla that makes Somniphilia candy-like; the honey here in Emotional Support Bee is more a syrupy, golden richness rather than sweetness. When dry, it has a certain brown-sugary, Little Brown Rabbit-esque note, and Husband especially likes it at this stage.
Hive in the Wild [Budding maple trees beside a swift stream, snowdrops nodding over vernal pools, and dewy dogwoods offer a trove of nectar to fill a fledgeling hive] - Why was I so excited to try this one, even though I'm not really one for woody perfumes? The snowdrops. All the cottagecore folks on Instagram always post photos of snowdrops starting in mid-February in celebration of the coming of spring. I was a little skittish because the notes description is mostly woods, but then it turns out to be mostly maple syrup, not maple trees, with a snowdrop that is more green and fresh than flowery.
Honey, I'm Home [Snowdrops and fresh nectar from their first petals unfurled, golden sunlight, yellow crocus, and warmed honeycomb] - This one is GORGEOUS, one of my top two favorites from the new Bees last year. It's the light-golden warmth of an early spring day. After an initial burst of warm but airy honey, the honey blends in with the flowers, which really are yellow in their scent color. There's nothing grassy about these florals but they remind me of chamomile nonetheless - chamomile and daisies perhaps, they're just so cheerful and happy. This is the springtime sibling to Yellow Leaves [Blooming moringa, olivewood, coriander, oakmoss, tangerine, and helichrysum], the most perfect autumnal floral. After its initial burst of honey, this scent dries down to cling quite closely to my skin, a private little bubble of buoyancy and optimism. If you liked the recently-released Fey Touched [Sunflower petals, honeyed almond, yuzu, sacred benzoin, and prismatic mist from woodland stream dappled in sunlight], you should definitely try this one; it shares the same warm, glowing, carefree vibe.
Honeymoon Suite [Santorini olivewood, Caribbean teak, St. Simons peach groves, and 1000 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets with traces of tuberose, sea glass, and wild honey] - I love love love this one! It's been discontinued, just tragic. It goes on strong but immediately dries down to a soft and lovely perfume without much throw: a gentle peach paired with a light-colored and ever-so-slightly floral honey, with the teak, cotton, and aquatic "sea glass" notes combining to make this a "spa-like" scent--but an unusually delicate and pretty one. I've been rationing my sample ever since.
It's Hive Code [Spring harvest honey, a faithful accord of rare Ghost Orchid, neroli and bergamot hand lotion, and a dark base of melted fudge] - I got this sample because most of these notes sounded absolutely heavenly. Honey, orchid, neroli, and bergamot? Count me in - that sounds amazingly light and springy. I kept my fingers crossed that the fudge would be minimal. In the vial, it's a base of honey and chocolate fudge, with the light citrus and floral above, and on my skin, it continues to be a fight between the gorgeous, breezy springtime floral and the heavier, waxy (almost tootsie roll-ish) chocolate. And it's so strange, because up close, the chocolate is so much less obvious that it really almost is the scent I wanted it to be. Personally, I just really wish it didn't have the fudge - I think all of the other notes are just perfect! All in all, It's Hive Code is much more atmospheric than springtime. Like the the several NCD blends that pair caramel with wildly different notes (Mad Scientist, Glass Pumpkin, Venus Verticordia), this one is a thoroughly unexpected combination. My approach to it is also slightly hampered by the fact that I haven't seen the Netflix show (Wednesday) that it's an homage to.
Like Bees to Honey [Four fabulous vanillas swirled with Tupelo honey, mangosteen, saffron, pink grapefruit, Egyptian musk, ivory amber, cardamom, Grains of Paradise, and Queen Elizabeth root] - This one features the sweetness of vanilla and honey, cut with a hint of bitter citrus peel and almost rose-like spices. From a distance, it's a complex brown sugar. It's definitely in the same family as my beloved Little Brown Rabbit [Nutmeg and tonka bean nuzzle up against fluffy marshmallow, cottonflower, pink pepper, and a trace of carrot seed], and while I wouldn't necessarily call Like Bees to Honey "snuggly," it is an extremely "warm" perfume.
Napping in a Flower [Tender ripe apricot, Bulgarian lavender, spiced summer honey, plum blossom, daylily, honeysuckle, and ylang] - First off, how cute is the name? Unfortunately, that apricot note just won't work on me, and on my skin this perfume smells like a fall candle and spiced nuts. Meanwhile, Husband smells florals when he sniffs my wrist, specifically lilac. Dry, the honey note becomes individually discernable, and it is rich and golden. I wanted this one to work on me so badly but even after a year of aging it wouldn't, so I destashed it.
None of Your Beeswax [Thorny brambles of blackberry, elderflower, violet, fennel seed, sacred benzoin, and unfiltered honey] - This one is bit fruity in a purplish sense, a bit woody, and a bit floral. It's well-blended and none of the individual elements stands out too much. It reminds me of Blue Jay [Sturdy blue spruce and young oak support the bold elegance of white peony, angelica, blackberry bramble, and rhubarb], another woody-fruity-floral perfume that also features blackberry bramble specifically, but perhaps in a more unassuming way - None of Your Beeswax is the shyer springtime cousin of the more summery Blue Jay.
Queen Bee [Creamy white gardenia and fluffy whipped honey] - This one is stunning in its simplicity: the gardenia is fragrant and almost spicy, and the honey is sharp and sweet. In the first year I owned it, there was an undertone of sharp spearmint, but that smoothed out by the second spring. Now I can't stop wearing it constantly every spring, and it has actually shot up above Bees Love Blue as my favorite Bee.
She Stopped to Pet a Bumblebee [Cocoa butter and shea, cotton flower, silk tree, apple blossom, wildflower honey, bee balm, and heliotrope] - Another adorable name! When I first apply it, I get quasi-Yankee candle vibes like Napping in a Flower and Bees' Cotillion, which is odd because it doesn't share any notes with them. As it dries though, any candle association goes away and it becomes the most lovely, intimate, and expensive lotion, soft and skin-musky. This is definitely a "my skin but better" perfume.
Wasp [Fresh linen, crisp chardonnay, and a rain-quenched herb garden edged with impeccable boxwood topiaries] - Another stunner, evoking the feeling of a summer garden without any earthy or vegetal notes (which I personally really appreciate, since soil notes are not my thing). The chardonnay is most prominent, and it's more elderflower than aldehyde, with a crisp, clean linen note blowing behind it, and herbs that are more mossy than sharp. Funny how this Bee doesn't contain any honey! But it doesn't need it; it's perfect just as it is. Another one that has been tragically discontinued.
Witches' Apiary [Peru balsam, almond shells, mahogany, olive wood, and dark, viscous honey conjured from the blossoms of blackberry brambles] - This one is woody and resinous, with a strong and unexpected predominance of coconut husk (not in the notes, but that's definitely what it smells like on me). I only get the woody, dry husk part, though Husband smells coconut flesh as well. This scent reminds me of Aphrodite Chrysea [Sacred benzoin, amber and copal resins, Moroccan cashmere, pink sandalwood, osmanthus, guava, and coconut milk chai] and it would be a great summertime scent for folks who like dry woodsy scents. (This does not describe me or my perfume tastes. So I destashed it.)
Wretched Hive of Scum & Villainy [Portrait of an extraterrestrial desert and its elusive denizens: dry white sandalwood, Tunisian tea, cracked coriander, cassia bark, amber resin, raw cotton, and combs full of precious honey that few will ever taste] - Friends, Nui Cobalt has done it again: another spectacular black tea scent! This one is black tea spiced with coriander and cinnamon, gently sweetened with honey, and with some very subtle nuances of cotton flower and sandalwood (making it a much more rainy-day-cozy scent than the perfume's name might suggest). This tea note is more incensey than Blarney: Irish Breakfast Tea [The warm, tannic comfort of a proper Cuppa sweetened with a touch of raw honey and smoothed with fresh cream], more like the black tea in Unbought & Unbossed: A Tribute to Shirley Chisholm [The fragrance inspired by her is a strong and sophisticated spiced tea with raw honey and Barbados sugar sipped among the sunlit roses of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden] and Cloak of Evergreens [Snow-covered spruce, iced cedar tips, golden pine sap, icicle musk, and the fading memory of tea by the fireside]. I'm a big fan.

Nui's Favorite Things

All Dolled Up [Spiced apricot preserves, almond blossom, pink peony, Hawaiian and Australian sandalwoods, balsam of Peru, and sunlit amber] - Despite the notes list starting off with apricot and almond, All Dolled Up does NOT read like a Squirrel (which all start with the same base: "A playful blend of almond and spiced apricot, grounded in rich benzoin and copaiba balsam"). Instead, it reminds me strongly of Rose Gold Sky [Fuzzy apricot, amber resin, styrax, pink sandalwood, clove bud, melissa, and blush rose], but lighter and more warm-weather. When I first tried this, I didn't have the notes list in front of me (and I didn't remember it), so my impression that this scent is pink amber + apricot + clove (see the connection to Rose Gold Sky?) was completely independent of the actual official notes. Then seeing the notes list a little later in the day, I could also easily make out the peony (a very "pink" floral), which is a big part of why this reads as more summery than Rose Gold Sky.
Blanket Fort [Cotton flower, grey suede, warm amber, green fig, tumbled teakwood, and raw vanilla bean] - This scent is a suede blanket, soft and heavy, a comforting weight draped over your legs, and maybe you're nuzzling your nose against a corner because it's so silky. I honestly don't get any other distinct notes besides "suede blanket," and the NCD cotton flower note is definitely more on the "fabric" than "soapy" side. And it is an unmistakably grey scent. Honestly, Blanket Fort reminds me of nothing so much as a stuffed-animal seal, with the thick warm rubberiness of a sealskin transformed into soft cuddly fabric.
Candlelight [Molten vanilla caramel, Egyptian musk, mahogany, honey amber, black tea, cathedral incense, a pinch of galangal, and a glimmer of white grapefruit] - Caramel and honey, thick and rich and luscious, backed by golden amber, a touch of grapefruit to cut the molten sweetness, and a whole lot of very expensive-smelling Egyptian musk. There are some indistinct spices too, which is perhaps how my nose is reading the black tea and incense. (This is a bummer, because I LOVE Nui Cobalt's black tea + incense combo, but this scent doesn't really feature them.) It's a heavy, luxurious scent, a sister to Ailurophilia (Love of Cats) [Egyptian musk, tonka, and dulce de leche wrapped in luxuriant cashmere, soft suede, wisps of sandalwood and copal smoke]. Its dark, honeyed quality is also reminiscent of Arcana Snug [The scent of staying in to watch the snow fall: dark honey amber, marshmallow, and the glow of beeswax candles], but with caramel instead of beeswax. This one has tremendous throw, much stronger than most Nui Cobalts, and (based on a conversation with a colleague who smelled "pancakes" from across the room when I wore it) to an untrained nose, apparently smells extremely (and solely) like maple syrup! To me, though, it's not nearly as similar to the mapley Little Brown Rabbit as it is to the caramel of Ailurophilia.
Fairy Garden [Cool dewdrops cupped in clover leaves, early purple orchid, a porcelain thimble of green tea with oat milk, and frosted almond cakes served in an acorn cap] - It goes on more gourmand than I was expecting, primarily oat milk, green tea, and sugary frosting. Behind these are a bit of acorn earthiness (I recognize a similar acorn note to Deep Midnight Wildwood [Pumpkin Bread, Incense, Acorns, Dried Apple and Orange Peels, Fading Bonfire], the only other place I've experienced an acorn accord) and a touch of floral. At first (and to my surprise, based on the order of the notes list), I don't get any aquatic dewdrop nor any grassy clover but as the scent dries, these start to emerge as the sweetness of the frosting recedes. Eventually, all these notes combine to create a very detailed scent portrait not just of a fairy garden, but of the fairies holding a fancy tea party among the flowers. It's sort of in the same family as Poesie Green Girl [Pistachio, wildflower honey, oatmilk matcha latte, heliotrope blossoms, marshmallow musk], and a similar Poesie-style whimsicality.
Parisian Pink [Peony petals, a suede settee, osmanthus, silk tree, spun sugar, Margaret Merril roses, pink grapefruit, and antique sandalwood] - Without looking at the notes, several of my first impressions were spot-on...and for some reason (maybe the combination of peony + grapefruit?) I also get strawberries! On my skin when first applied, this perfume is strawberry, suede, silk, and an overwhelming aura of PINK! It's gorgeous and makes me feel like a pretty pretty princess. As it dries, the distinctly strawberry note subsides, and it becomes a little more nonspecifically floral and sweet, still with those lovely NCD fabric notes of suede and silk. I have worn this several times to the ballet, actually - it's perfect for the occasion. If you like the recent Switch [Champagne, Lady's Slipper orchid, Egyptian cotton, kudzu, pomegranate, and pink larkspur], which to me is very "pink strawberry soda" (full review post coming soon!), you should definitely try Parisian Pink.

Personally...

My favorites of the florals are Queen Bee and Bees Love Blue. Forest has also teased that the new Bees released this year will have a floral theme, so I'm really excited to see what new honeyed florals are coming our way!
My favorite distinctly seasonal scents in this collection are Honey, I'm Home for early spring, The Bees' High Tea for spring leading into summer, Honeymoon Suite and Wasp for high summer, and Busy Bee for fall.
Bee Kind To Yourself is one of NCD's truly iconic scents, and not to be missed - especially because it was inspired by a member of this community!
Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy stands alongside Cheat Code and Blarney: Irish Breakfast Tea as one of my favorite all-purpose NCD tea scents.
And if you're looking for gentle, delicate, my-skin-but-better scents, try Emotional Support Bee and She Stopped to Pet a Bumblebee.

"In this chapter, we establish how everyone at Leidenfrost Manor is spending their time. Then, after Gabriel mentions that the phones have stopped working, news from outside arrives in the form of Agent Saint and her team. The world beyond is on the brink of an apocalypse, as a multitude of unchecked monsters begin their rampage and revenge.
As to Silverbell, Agent Saint recognizes her and is surprised to see her, because she had already helped her return home. Since it never happened, Agent Saint suspects that the veil between worlds is weakening.
Penelope and Persephone follow strange music into the mists between worlds. Cory sees them do so and tells me and I rush after them. I manage to find them in the Golden City, where masked revelers are celebrating the arrival of the Hooded God. We learn that the god will release everyone from life upon arrival, and could arrive at any moment. The city is like a shifting maze, with staircases that defy gravity and buildings of impossible geometry.
Just when we realize we cannot escape, Silverbell finds us and leads us along an unseen alleyway, back to our own world, just as the celebrations of the city become as agonized screams of terror that then fall silent."
I wrote in my notes. I had started to compile a volume of the things I had seen and done. I did not yet know my role in all things, nor how much of a story there would be by the end, but I did know it had reached a point where I could see I did indeed have a role in a much larger story. I thought it was over, and had no idea it had only just begun.
It is true that those things happened, but my indulgence of words has grown significantly over the span of time I have seen since those days. And as before, I shall compose it as an adventure, an episode, in the style of my thoughts and perceptions of those days, except it is about this time that I became aware of my daughter's abilities, and so there is more to this chapter than perhaps there would be if I had written it then. I shall now, from hindsight, tell the full story, and know in my words what she knew, at least as it pertains to the Hooded God and the events of the Golden City that we participated in, merely by our intrusion.
First of all, consider that this might be too horrifying of a perspective, and that you already know the important parts of the chapter. Secondly, consider I shall again visit the preliminary stages of my daughter's developments in magical abilities in further chapters. Finally, consider that in this one episode, I have cheated and told the story from my own concepts that I have now, and not with the mystery that shrouded my perceptions on that day or even as I reflected and wrote about what had happened.
Everyone in Leidenfrost Manor was living quietly and knowingly that all our peace and tranquility was each moment a blessing. Instead of boredom, there was a kind of absorbing of the atmosphere of orderliness.
We spent our time gardening and husbanding wild chickens we'd caught. We build a corral and managed to lure sheep and cows and pigs into it, building pens and learning how to care for them. The woods were full of stray farm animals, and danger. I thought I saw an ettercap, and mentioned it to Silverbell, who said again:
"White Nettle, this is revenge." And she'd spit, a glistening and oddly bitter smelling droplet that was sticky and would become like an amber. These she hung around the windowsills on spider's threads she would politely harvest for her uses. She had assured me that the spiders in the manor were under her spells and would never scare anyone, let alone bite. In exchange, they were promised nobody would harm them when they were discovered, nor wipe away their hidden nests.
Dr. Leidenfrost was our leader, administered to everyone's requisitions and in exchange we had an economy of freely exchanged favors, everyone contributing their handy skills and talents to our common comfort and security. She often told me I was her inspiration or asked me for advice or just confided her insecurities to me. As her spouse, I was her singular support, except when she picked on Isidore. Anyway, our family flourished and we also had a village, and that flourished too.
Gabriel and Clide Brown were the only ones who really got out and saw the collapse first-hand. The rest of us stayed near the house and grounds. We farmed and crafted and just lived our lives in peace.
Gabriel reported to us what they had seen, but it was often the lack of information that conveyed the most impression that I had, that there was nothing out there. There were no more phones at some point, but there's no sense in correlating that with the arrival of Agent Saint's party. They had promised they would come, but we had lost contact with them much earlier. I think the point was that they couldn't call us and tell us they were coming, but even before there were no phones there was no phone service. Slightly different problems.
It was easy to lose contact when there was no phone service, no signal. You couldn't just dial someone's number, you needed a switchboard. For a while there were smaller phone companies, scavenged from the wreckage of civilization. What I really should say is that the months, the years, had passed the last of such attempts at rebuilding a civilized society.
Agent Saint had my brother and nephew and Detective Winters with her. It was a very joyful reunion, as I had not seen any of them in a long time. They had many adventures and assured us they had come from the same world I had, and thus Agent Saint's reaction to Silverbell is so significant:
"I am surprised you are not in Fairy Land" Agent Saint told her.
"White Nettle destroyed the spokes of the wheel of worlds. You know this is all there is, and think, where you come in, that is where White Nettle took me key, dressed in your eyes. It is her glamor, that you thought she was Silverbell. But I am me, right here. And you should see what she has done to my home. Ettercaps everywhere! It is an atrocity!"
"And that is what I learned, along the way. So, it is true. My abilities, they have faded somewhat." Agent Saint told us.
"Why is that?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked her teasingly. My wife was aware of Agent Saint's virginity, and that it was apportioned to her ability of prophecy.
"I bathed in the House of Jher. I assure you it was not my first choice for resolving that adventure!" Agent Saint blushed.
We had no idea what she meant, and I'll tell you later what we learned when she explained it to us. It was not as erotic as it sounds, but never-the-less Agent Saint felt tainted by the whole experience right to her very soul and it affected her confidence in her ability to have visions of the future. Mostly, because she had learned the secret of how visions were born.
I was hoeing a patch to plant carrots, beets and potatoes when Cory came and landed on the scarecrow in the tall wheat near me, behind the oak fence. He squawked in alarm, and I stood up, he had my attention.
"What is it?"
"My Daughters have followed piping into the mists lingering!" Cory said clearly. I had no idea what he had just said.
"Are you talking about Persephone and Penelope?" I asked "In danger?"
"Follow me, my Lord!" Cory flew off as a crow flies and I had to scramble over fences and traverse wheat to get to his mist and piping.
Indeed, a sweet bagpipe sound was emanating from the mist and the stuff was like a thick white smoke, and I could see nothing in it.
"What is this?" I asked Cory.
"My Lord will need a staff, pouch and wife-stone of sorcery, as he has with a word he knows." Cory glanced at me.
"I only need my friend." I held my arm for my crow.
"Then take the kit for his sake." Cory flitted to my arm and looked me in my eye, causing me to flinch at the dark depths of his soul. I could see the specter of death reflected behind me, and recalled well not to look him in his beady little eye when he tilted his gaze at me so.
"Esc." I charmed my kit to my person. After a moment my staff, with its runic carvings like wormed bark, my flax pouch full of cantrips, the emerald of Circe around my neck, all began to feel real again, instead of away from me. The relics were real, but their otherworldly properties left them in dreams, unless I called them to awaken in my hands.
"My Lord knows a very clever spell." Cory complimented.
"It's nothing compared to someone who can craft such as this." I held up Circe's emerald. "I'm an amateur."
"I think my Lord is past amateur, even if he must learn much before becoming skilled in magic." Cory judged me. "I've seen my Lord cast spells with proper effect on a number of occasions. What happens when an amateur casts spells?"
"Well, I suppose I could have gotten it wrong. I did that much more often than got it right." I realized. "These are mine, though, it feels right to have them by my side."
"So it is." Cory agreed.
We walked into the mist, stalling no longer. I did feel a sense of urgency that I am not mentioning in contrast to our conversation and preparations. There was also a current of underlying terror, for ourselves, despite my valiance at going in there to rescue my daughters, I admit I hesitated, so great was my fear of that unknown mist and the uncertainty that they could even be rescued at all.
I actually ignored those feelings, in favor of a confused and distracted focus on the precise thing at-hand. That-is, until we stepped into that musical white fog.
We walked right through it, like a curtain, and it was gone. We were alone in a crowd of masked revelers. They wore many costumes, mostly with huge frilled collars and masquerade-styled domino masks, most of them grotesque and bejeweled. The crowds were dancing and partying like puppets, repeating their motions endlessly and without meaning.
We moved among them, and I looked around at the adobe buildings, adorned in paper lights and lit by strange stars and a sky that looked too low somehow. The shifting sands around the city formed strange pillars, swirling like dust devils in one place.
Around them, the buildings shifted and twisted as though contorted through a lense. Cory said that when he looked away and looked again they would shift. With Circe's emerald I needed not look away for the effect to transpire. I watched as the streets and alleys and facades shifted places as though mere illusions, their colors bleeding and shimmering into position past each other, trading places almost instantly. It happened in the blink of an eye, and I could see how it watched the eyes of everyone, with a thousand eyes of its own. A spell with eyes, I was fascinated.
When nobody was looking, it would change any section of the city that was unobserved. In this way, there was no escape from the ever-shifting maze. Everyone who was in the city could not escape. I saw through the magic to its roots, that somehow all of this was happening in one single instant, the spark of an even greater magic.
I could not see what it was, I was somehow repelled from looking at the source of the enchantment. I felt it in my soul, somehow depleting me just for looking at it. And I couldn't see it anyway, so I looked away. I exhausted the emerald of Circe, concealing myself from its gaze as it looked back at me, and saw only a humble reveler, no different than the others. At least I hoped that is all it saw.
"What is this place, my Lord?" Cory clicked in Corvin.
"It is the clutches of something that is - keeping it this way." I described what I had seen, as best as I understood it.
"What have we here?" Cory asked a reveler in a crow mask. To my astonishment she responded to him, saying:
"I am unpaired, or I was. Would sir dance with me, and be my match in the festivities?" She asked.
"Could you help me find two missing girls? They are like me and have no mask." I said to her.
"I am Ysildra. Dance with me, play with me, there is no time to waste before the Hooded God releases us all from life. We are to rejoice!" Ysildra tried to embrace me but our bodies were like smoke mixing, untouched by the other.
"We're not quite here yet." I sighed in relief. "Maybe they aren't either. Maybe we can escape."
"My love, what are you?" Ysildra looked perplexed and disturbed. She took off her mask, her eyes watering. "You're not for me, are you?"
"I'm sorry, but I am not for you. Could you help me anyway?" I asked.
"I still love you. I will try to help." Ysildra promised. She seemed to be struggling to break free from her position, and after she walked away, shifted blurrily back to where she was and tried again, then she was walking beside us.
"We must, to the chapel, away. They might baptize you before the image of the Hooded God." Ysildra told me. She tried to take my arm, but her hand passed through my elbow and I saw this frightened her and hurt her feelings, for it struck a tear from her.
"I can't do that. I've got to find my girls." I told her.
"See that?" Ysildra pointed to something. I gazed but saw nothing.
"What are we looking at?"
"It is like a princess with wings and glowing and tiny. She flits from place to place, obeying the corners and not the passages. She knows her way, hard to spot her." Ysildra told me.
"Does she see us?" I asked.
"I don't think so, we are in the shadows, my lover, and how we sit still amid the chaos." Ysildra gazed at me with broken longing, like she had waited a thousand lifetimes for me and only to be denied. Perhaps she had.
"How can we get her attention?" I asked.
"There is something about you than makes you, unseeable." Ysildra told me.
"Then how do you see me?" I asked her.
"I do not." Ysildra said, tears running across her cheeks as she painfully confessed. "I only feel you, and how it feels, I know you by that sensation. And how I hear you, for I bow to your will, my love." Ysildra knelt.
I took off the emerald. "Now you should see and hear me."
"I do. And even more beautiful." Ysildra told me. "And to feel the touch of the Hooded God will be an even sweeter desire, as soon as the stars swing round and round again, to the beginning of the song, endlessly repeated."
"Yeah, we are trying to get out of here before that happens." I said.
"Leave the Golden City?" Ysildra looked confused and almost like she would laugh, it was absurd to her. She stood and danced a little, unable to hold still for very long.
"Lord!" Silverbell flew up to us.
"I'm glad to see you, Sylvia. I can't solve this maze." I told her.
"It is easy. You follow me now." Silverbell told me. We followed her, Ysildra in tow and located the girls.
Oddly enough, I sometimes remember finding the girls and then meeting up with Silverbell. Sometimes we met Ysildra only as we left. There were times I recall finding our skeletal remains on the streets of the dead city, the only ones without party hats. Part of the magic was a timelessness, a lack of sequence, the rules of time and space meaning only the whim of the Hooded God, dreaming in madness of a conquered city he couldn't touch, trapped forever.
The girls were fascinated, and with her eyes glowing my daughter Penelope spoke to me saying:
"Father, this is the sum of all those dreams I had of your adventures." Penelope told me, with her left eye glowing purple and her right eye glowing gold. Her voice sounded too old for my little girl, and I realized she was not as I had last seen her. She and her sister had wandered the aeons, and their minds were only intact through their respective natures.
I considered that death had already tasted Persephone. Persephone lived with the blessing of a powerful goddess, her life belonging to a living energy that had sworn her into existence. Whatever happened to her had to become a part of that charmed reality, obeying the narrative of the goddess. Wandering an enchanted maze was not dangerous for her, merely satisfying the curious compulsion of her patron.
Penelope was far more complicated. She was born with the capacity of her mother for intelligence and logic and my ability to cultivate magic and the secrets of our old world. This adventure had demonstrated what she was capable of. She had harnessed the magical energy she had needed to shield herself and her sister, by instinct. Even with that commendable achievement, she had activated the depths of her soul to reinforce her sorcery. Her oldest and wisest part had risen from her timeless self and kept her safe from the endless darkness, the shifting sands, the realm of the Hooded God.
We reached the center of the maze, its exit. The white fog was like a bubbling gruel on the surface of a sloped building. Colored smoke issued from its chimney. Cory flew through it, clicking for us to follow quickly.
Persephone knew the sound of the crow when he did that and ran after him. Penelope looked at me and I saw the oldness in her eyes fading, her scowl leaving and her normal face returning. Then she followed her older sister through. Silverbell left me there.
I looked at Ysildra. "Thank you."
"I would come with you if I could." Ysildra hid her emotions. She trembled. She knew I was leaving and instead of throwing herself at me, she tried to make it a sweet goodbye.
"You'd be welcome. I appreciate your friendship. I'm not sure we would have made it through this without you."
"Yes. You're welcome. Just go, I think. Please." Ysildra's eyes were watering, but she refused to blink and cry, she was holding back her heartbreak. "I had to love you. I'm glad you were worth me being the wheel of this city. You know, like a third wheel, but out of everyone."
"I don't see why. You're so beautiful, and you've proven to be the kind of person anyone would want for a friend." I told her honestly. I knew she'd live in hell, so it was the least I could leave her with.
"Would you have kissed me goodbye, if we could touch?" Ysildra asked me. I thought about it and nodded.
"Sure, I would. My wife would actually be disappointed if I told her this day ended with me refusing to kiss you at the end on account of her. She's very romantic."
"Then, tell her to receive my kiss, on my behalf." Ysildra said, her voice sounding a little high, and then she started crying and turned and fled.
I was free to go, so I did.
"The stars are weird, in that place." Penelope told me when we were home. She sounded normal again. I forgot the sorceress who had resided in her, protecting her. She was no different, yet somehow changed. It was because she knew, or thought she knew, what she was capable of.
"Don't go into places like that." I admonished her.
"Why not, it's what you do!" Penelope protested. I'd never seen her tween before and I was a little startled. Then she frowned and apologized. "I'm sorry, Dad. I heard the music. It sounded alright."
"It's fine." I shrugged. I'd realized she was just as scared as I was that we'd never escape.
I went and found Silverbell where she was drawing a map of the city in some spilled sugar.
"What can I help you with?" Silverbell asked me.
"I wanted to thank you for coming in after us." I said. "And saving us."
"I made that look easy, I bet." Silverbell kept playing with the sugar. She stopped and looked at me. "The Hooded God wanted you there."
"Why is that?"
"I think it was personal." Silverbell told me. "See this?"
I looked at the sugar. I saw nothing but an elaborate maze.
"No, what am I supposed to be seeing?" I asked.
"It is a pattern. I recognized it right away. That's how I made that rescue look easy. It is hard to explain." Silverbell told me.
"Give me a try." I said.
"Well, when White Nettle took Fairy Land, it was the maneuver of an opportunist. This is because the four pillars that compose the world are gone. It's like when Mum brings out the projector and slide show. Slides atop each other, like worlds, smeared into one world. Hmmm, maybe I am not explaining it right?"
"I get it. The pillars kept the world layers separate. They're gone and the worlds are as one world, self-collapsed." I said.
"Sort of." Silverbell frowned. "Anyway, the point is that something else is like that here. With no place to go, this Hooded God needs to be known, to exist. It is in their collective consciousness, the fabric of their world. The Hooded God is nowhere else, this pattern, it is its mind, do you see how the streets form the canals of dreaming?"
"I don't see that. It is something you are familiar with that I've never heard of." I said.
"Well, nevermind that. Think - is there anyone who you would forget, who cannot die, who exists between worlds, outside of time, as a mere thought, a dream?" Silverbell asked.
I realized she was talking about Aureus and I thought about anything else and said: "Nope."
"That's good. Let us then leave this pattern as so much spilled sugar, and forget what it spells out. All for the better." Silverbell scattered the sugar by swirling her wings.

This is a longgg, detailed deep dive into why I believe the album Evermore is about the failed coming out attempt in 2019.
In this sub, it is pretty well accepted that Taylor was planning to come out in 2019, yet in the 3 subsequent albums that she has released, there are very few songs that people seem to attribute to this event. As much as the ending of a long-term relationship can amount to enough pain to write the dozens of pain-laced songs we’ve heard since 2019, the expectation that she could finally come out, but having that ripped away at the last minute, would be a more intense pain than solely losing a relationship. She lost everything she had worked for the past 2 decades, her entire discography, her perfectly curated coming out plan, and finally showing her fans her true self. I think her frustration in the 1989 prologue does not stem from queer interpretations of her lyrics, but that even Gaylors want to tie everything to a specific muse and relationship. So, maybe more of her music is about HER experiences, rather than just her romantic relationships. Thus, I wanted to explore the (arguably) queerest album she has released, Evermore, without focussing so much on romantic relationships. She did say that when she’s on her vigilante shit “I don’t dress for women, I don’t dress for men, lately I’ve been dressing for revenge”
I recently realized that Evermore (the song) seems to be about the failed coming out plan. Being that it is the title track, I wondered if that was the topic of the entire album. I re-listened to the album with the perspective that she created fictional stories that mirrored various aspects of the coming out plan, and I think it’s very plausible that this entire album is about the failed coming out. From planning, to closeting, to bearding, to betrayal, to anxiety, to loss, pain and acceptance, this album has it all. So, I am going to break down some of my thoughts for each song on the album, some more in-depth, and some more generally. From Willow to Evermore, the story is recounted, and the deluxe tracks offer two alternate endings, one where she stays in the restaurant forever dropping hairpins, and one where she finally pays her tab and decides to leave.
Analyzing the album in this way has drawn me to some interesting possible conclusions. One being, Midnights (standard edition) was previously written and planned to be released as a sister album to Lover (Originally supposed to be titled Daylight) as a part of her original coming out plan, day vs night, light vs dark, closet vs being out. I think that the songs on the 3am version are songs that she has written since the failed coming out. It is called the 3am version because we were originally supposed to have heard the album after Lover, but we’re hearing it 3 hours/albums later (og “Meet me at Midnight” planned after lover, but was put on hold for Folklore=1am, Evermore=2am, Midnights=3am). This explains why Aaron Dessner worked only on songs on the 3am version as they would have been written and recorded during the Folkmore process, whereas Taylor and Jack wrote the songs on the standard edition pre-2020. The way that night/ darkness is used in this album seems to have some sort of link between the coming out plan and Midnights.
Disclaimer before we begin, I run on the assumption that in the lyrics, there is a separation between Taylor Swift the brand, and Taylor the person. The brand is solely worried about the bottom line, the brand is not necessarily against coming out, but it must be handled carefully as to ensure mainstream popularity is maintained. Taylor the person is queer and in pain from the closet and wants out. The brand values business, the person values honesty regarding sexuality. I think both sides aim to align so that they may coexist together as a brand that has embraced queerness, but only if possible financially. Also, disclaimer that I still believe Taylor is planning to come out, I know a lot of people in this sub have gotten quite jaded recently due to the wild era we are currently in, but I personally just still think it is possibly in the cards. If not, the NYT article gave her the perfect opportunity to politely clarify she is straight, instead it is only a matter of time before something like that happens again. In my opinion, the closet is unsustainable for the long haul at this point. It seems likely that continuing down this capitalist queen route will result in an inevitable downfall, this overexposure does not appear to make much business sense in the rocky global political sphere. So, lets dive into how Evermore details her plan to come out, and the failing of this plan.
Willow- I recently came across a comment that suggested that Willow could be about Tree, which made this song make more sense than ever before. It is also the perfect Track 1/starting place, as her hiring Tree was likely the first step of this long-term plan to come out. I assume that when she was looking to hire publicists, she was looking for someone who was on board with concealing her personal relationships, as they worked toward an eventual coming out.
Verse 1- She was navigating rough, stormy waters when she hired Tree, but Tree was able to cut through like a knife and offer viable PR strategies. When she asked Tree about creating this plan, Tree likely knew this would be a tough battle “If this was an open/shut case, I never would have known from the look on your face”, but they continued down this path.
Chorus- The further along in this plan that they go, the less it feels like Taylor knows where it’s going, yet whenever it seems like Tree is straying from the plan, Taylor is following with faith. Her life is wlw, bending to the wind of Trees PR strategies.
Verse 2- I see the “you” of this verse as the queer version of Taylor slowly sneaking its way into the brand. The queer Taylor is the mythical thing, like a big queer unicorn. It is what she desires, it is the ultimate prize for which she would cheat for, and by cheat I assume it refers to the dishonesty and secrecy of her plan.
Bridge- “They count me out time and time again, but I come back stronger than a 90’s trend.” This could relate to the idea that people behind the scenes have done some shady things to keep her closeted, thinking she will give up or lose mass appeal. Possibly referring to things like the cancellation and Masters Heist, but each time she has come back better, bouncing back from cancellation with Rep, then bouncing back from the Masters Heist/ failed coming out with Folklore. I don’t think is farfetched to believe there are powerful people who do not want her to come out, especially with the close link that exists between her and Trump via the Kushners. Plus, in Miss Americana there is a scene where Tree warned Taylor that outspoken political action could result in retaliation from Trump. Her coming out is arguably more of a threat to the right wing than her backing the candidate in Tennessee, so I believe it is possible that ulterior political motives were a factor in the failed coming out. Yet, after all the shit that has happened, she still finds herself bending to Tree’s PR plan
Verse 3- “Wait for the signal and I’ll meet you after dark, show me the places where the others gave you scars.” This seems to possibly reference Midnights. After dark, showing her scars, this sounds very reminiscent of Midnights being about 13 sleepless nights. Maybe suggesting that now Midnights is the next step on her new plan to come out. She then says “NOW this is an open/shut case” finally she sees an ending in sight. Then, “Every bait and switch was a work of art” I had to look up the literal definition of this phrase, which is essentially advertising goods with an intention of providing inferiounwanted goods, basically dishonest business practices. Almost like marketing her songs that are about her queer relationships as being about a famous male celebrity. So, she is saying every PR move was a work of art in itself, which is fitting in a song about her publicist. The repetition of “that’s my man” alongside the bait and switch line highlights that the bait and switch IS her man.
So, I think this song is dedicated to Tree and the PR strategies that have taken them from “Baby let the games begin” in Rep, to being counted out after the failed coming out, to a new plan that we are very likely watching unfold in real time right now.
Champagne Problems- I agree that this could very well be about a relationship that ended around the failed coming out, but its also possible that Taylor is both parties in this song. Taylor, the person, purposes a coming out plan, and Taylor Swift the brand, ends it due to Champagne Problems/ rich people problems.
“You booked the night for a reason so you could sit there in this hurt” possibly again referencing Midnights, the next chapter where she remains in the pain of not coming out.
But also, if this is about coming out, it has an interesting parallel to The Archer where she says, “I jumped from the train, I ride off alone”. So, after she jumped from the train in the Lover era, she has now booked the night train instead. Willow also mentions trains “You know that my train can take you home, anywhere else is hollow.”
Being about coming out, she “couldn’t give a reason” to the people who were anticipating it, like gaylors who picked up on the hints, because it was “rich people problems” if the reason was for business/ financial reasons. These reasons did not likely feel valid enough.
“One for the money, two for the show, I never was ready so I watch you go”, this could be her supposed reasons for not being ready, one being for the money, and one for the show of wanting to climb a little bit higher, and be a little bit bigger before she does this. So, she kept Joe for the money, he can be the “muse” for a couple more albums while she creates a plan to reclaim her stolen work to ensure she profits off the coming out. Then she finds a new beard, Travis, for the show, to take her popularity even higher before coming out. This possible “show” with Travis has taken her popularity to a level where her and her relationship is a focal point for one of the most watched sporting events in the world, the Superbowl. Cementing her at the center of not only pop culture, but the sport world as well. To add to this idea, the night Travis showed up on tour she sang End Game and Is It Over Now/ OOTW, is this her endgame? Is the bearding over now? Is she out of the woods?
Here is a link to another post that helped me break away from the marriage proposal idea presented. https://www.reddit.com/GaylorSwift/comments/1836fgn/champagne_problems_about_a_failed_coming_out/
Gold Rush- A dreamlike song about her wishful thinking, fantasizing about coming out, only to realize that it was not going to happen. The idealistic thought fades away as her plan has been ruined.
“Gold rush” could be coming out and the whole world finally connecting all the queer (gold) connections through her work. Her face is in a red flush because even though her lyrics have always been diaristic, without the veil of a beard, people would be seeing her like never before, which is nerve wracking. She worries as fans and media begin to make connection after connection as they fall down the rabbit hole.
I think the “sought after” person that she is dreaming about is the version where she is out. The most prominent line in this song that suggests Taylor is the muse is “my mind turns your life into folklore, I can’t dare to dream about you anymore” There are many stories and muses woven throughout Folklore, but they are all related to Taylor’s life, her queer stories create Folklore. This cannot be referencing another muse as there are many songs like Seven, TLGAD, Hoax, Peace, MTR, TIMT, Mad Woman and even the entire trilogy (among others), that are clearly derived from her own experiences.
But as her coming out plan failed, her dreams and anxiety about being out fade away.
TTDS-
This is the song I struggle most with in how it connects with this story, maybe it is just about an ex where the relationship ended due to different perspectives on coming out vs staying closeted
[Edit- this song is the inverse of Dorothea, so if Dorothea is narrated by the queer side of Taylor, this song is narrated by the brand.
We get lyrics like “there’s an ache in you put there by the ache in me” meaning this is the side causing the problems. “You could call me babe for the weekend” they can be back together for a brief period of time, this album is the brief time they can be subtly back together.
We also get the line “messy as the mud on your truck tires” which may relate to NBNC where the husband bought brand new tires after killing Este.]
Tolerate It- Fear of coming out, people will only tolerate her after she has done so much to people please. Possibly also about various people, such as her dad/ business associates who only tolerate this coming out plan even though she has spent so much time and effort ensuring it is a viable plan, or her fans who tolerated her allyship and would not celebrate her queer identity, or to Taylor Swift the brand, for tolerating and hiding queerness instead of accepting and embracing it.
This song is an amalgamation of how unfairly it feels that her sexuality has been simply tolerated, that people have seen her sexuality as a burden that should be concealed. I think the part that is directed at Taylor Swift the brand is specifically the bridge. “Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life, drawing hearts in the byline, always taking up too much space or time” The queer Taylor is literally begging for footnotes in her own life, the only place she exists is in the footnotes of our theories, the references to niche queer history noted in Gaylor theories is her begging to be seen and appreciated, this is absolutely devastating to think about, her life is a well-documented story, and her queerhood exists only in footnotes. Also she is covering her queerness up drawing hearts in the by-line, WB kinda looks like a heart if you twist the “W” sideways, that way she can hide the true writer, and make it straight. But, what if she breaks free, leaving ruins, and finally removes the dagger that has been bleeding her out for years. “Gain the weight of you and lose it” because she has to gain the weight of being out, but loses the weight of the closet
I also wonder what the implications of Tolerate It on the Eras Tour being set at a dinner table is, when compared to being left at the restaurant in RWYLM. Maybe there was a dinner where her coming out plan became hopeless? She was not celebrated and embraced as she hoped. She was left in the restaurant.
NBNC- I find this a really interesting addition to the story cause I had never connected any parts of this fictional story to her life before, but maybe it is a murder mystery as of the queer version that has been killed?
In the beginning, she says “Este’s been losing sleep” is this a reference to sleepless nights again? Midnights? The following few lines seem to have connections to Midnights. “Her husbands acting different, and it smells like infidelity” -High Infidelity. “That ain’t my merlot on his mouth” -Maroon, lips so scarlet they were maroon. “That ain’t my jewelry on our joint account” -Bejeweled.
Then in the bridge, “Good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen”- since the Master’s Heist there’s been a strong water motif in Folkmore, as seen in Cardigan MV where she’s stranded out at sea. With the… interesting emails from her father, this could be alluding to the idea that she’s been navigating these homophobic/ closeting waters since she was a teenager, so she knows what to do. “And I’ve cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene”- she’s been cleaning her image with straight narratives long enough to know that she will be able to cover this up too. “Good thing Estes sisters gunna swear she was with me”- I think this could be about Joe, the alibi. She’s in a happy relationship with Joe, of course she didn’t almost come out as queer.
The characters could go in a few possible directions but what makes the most sense to me is:
Este- The queer side of Taylor. “Este’s a friend of mine” friend of Dorothy/Dorothea? The original person whose murder starts the story.
Husband- Whoever Taylor blames for the failed coming out, possibly Taylor Swift the brand, Scooter, Josh Kushner etc. The person who she feels killed Este.
Mistress- Could be KK. “They think she did it but they just can’t prove it” Her fans blame Karlie’s betrayal for the Masters Heist.
Narrator- Taylor Swift the brand, who has cleaned up the big gay mess.
Este’s sister- Joe. “Good thing Este’s sisters gunna swear she was with me” Joe is the alibi to cover it up.
I think it is convoluted and confusing because we are likely missing a lot of details as to what exactly happened, but I wonder if this song is the story put into a murder mystery.
Happiness- She starts this song with “when I’m above the trees I see this for what it is, but now I’m right down in it” I think this suggests that this song is written about the period right after she could not come out. She reflects that when she has taken a step back to see the bigger picture, she understands what happened, but the beginning is reflecting on the moment when she didn’t have the hindsight perspective and only felt the devastation, pain, confusion and frustration from being so close and losing it. All the years and albums she’s given is now being split up as she “divorced” her old label to allow herself the opportunity to be honest, but her masters are stolen. After this, she can’t even begin to imagine what her next era would be, she can’t reinvent herself again. I think she reflects both on the closeted straight persona of herself, and the short lived queer persona with “there will be happiness after you, but there was happiness because of you”.
The end seems more hopeful, maybe she has started to think about another way out. She says, “there is a glorious sunrise from the dress I wore at midnight leave it all behind”. This is very reminiscent of the dress she wore to announce Midnights, maybe suggesting that Midnights is the next step in her plan to leave it all behind?
When did all our lessons- acceptance and equality in Lover era, Begin to look like weapons- “ew gaylors are so weird no way she’s gay she said she’s an ally” Pointed at my deepest hurt- the fear that she will not be accepted if she comes out
Dorothea- I think this song is essentially the person Taylor speaking to the brand. So, I think Dorothea is Taylor Swift the brand, meaning that the narrator, is the queer Taylor, the friend of Dorothea. She starts by reflecting back to childhood, playing in the park having some lighthearted fun to escape the misery of the closet. But “This place is the same as it ever was”, she’s still in the same place of misery. She acknowledges that everyone loves the brand and her famous friends, but if she gets tired of being known for knowing all these famous people, or “dating” all these famous men, she’s still got [me], the friend of Dorothea. You’ve got this big business you can sell anything, but do you ever stop and think about [me]. She can always come back to this side, even if you’re worried about all these materialistic things like money and status, the queer version is still waiting to be embraced.
​
Right now this sub is not very fun, I think we are all feeling tired of watching Dorothea play all-American, ignorant football girlfriend, when the friend of Dorothea feels so close, yet so far.
Coney Island- This song begins with “Break my soul in two, looking for you but your right here”, seemingly acknowledging that she has been separated into two separate parts.
She fears that she may be stuck in the closet forever “If this is the long haul, how’d we get here so soon?” “Did I close my fist around something delicate did I shatter you?” She calls back to Rep, the delicate plan she set out has been ruined.
She finds herself wondering where she lost everything, again, as if it is predictable and had happened before. In the disappointment she closes her eyes. But now, when the sun goes down, it feels colder and colder. She closes her eyes, but now nighttime just feels cold.
Is this life of breaking records and achieving new heights worth it if she spends it in pain?
“Do you miss the rogue who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?” The version that thought this plan was possible, but now is stranded.
“Were you waiting at our old spot in the tree line by the gold clock?” This makes me think Midnights was part of the original coming out plan, as Lover’s sister album. The old spot at the tree line, finally out of the woods, waiting at the GOLD clock, as it strikes Midnight. But when she goes up to the podium, she didn’t complete the plan.
Taylor said this song came from a place where someone has been in a relationship for decades and realizes they’ve taken their partner for granted. Maybe the relationship between Taylor the person vs the brand? Feeling like The Brand has taken the person for granted? The queer side was never made the centerfold, so it feels colder when the sun goes down.
Ivy- Here she illustrates living in this lifeless house grieving for the living. All the queer references and flagging grows on her Lover house like Ivy. I think she reflects back to preparing to come out in the Lover era “clover blooms in the fields, spring breaks loose the time is near”. I think this referring to spring of 2019, in preparation to come out. But then she says, “spring breaks loose, but so does fear, he’s gunna burn this house to the ground”. The anticipation and fear that the house will finally be burnt down.
Then I think she reflects that the plan did not happen, “how’s one to know, I’d live and die for moments that we stole on begged and borrowed time”. Her queer identity lived and died in the stolen moment of the Lover rollout. She goes back into the chorus, and then reflects on the current time period. “So yeah, it’s a fire, it’s a goddamn base in the dark and you started it.” Now it’s too late, the fire is ablaze, even if the house is still standing it is slowly being burnt down, as she does twice on tour. She didn’t get to burn it all down, but her soft launches started a small fire that will continue to grow. She notes this in The Archer with “The room is on fire, invisible smoke”, as the fire as started, but it is so far undetectable.
“So yeah, it’s a war, it’s the goddamn fight of my life and you started it.” The idea that this is a war is a directly referenced in The Great War, which seems to tell a similar story of this long war she is in as she attempts to come out. In The Great War, she also says “that bloodshed crimson clover”, meaning the blooming clover fields she talks about in Ivy, are now stained red with blood. This is a 3am track, so written after the failed coming out, it is referencing Ivy because they both discuss the planning and failure of her attempt to come out.
Cowboy Like Me- Not much explanation needed here, I feel like we all relate this song to bearding. It could be directed at male beards, or female partners who will always be hidden. After the failed coming out, she fears that she will be bearding for the rest of her career, “forever is the sweetest con”.
LSS- She tried to pick her battles, but the battle picked her, that battle being to challenge the life of closeting and to break the Hollywood blender, which did not go well. She was at the precipice, she was so close, but then she was knocked off. She fell down the rabbit hole into flagging and queer coding as Easter eggs for the fans who do see her. Now the most important thing is “you”. The you could mean she’s in a relationship after the failed coming out that she wants to prioritize. Or the ‘you’ could potentially be Gaylors? She can’t come out right now, but she can still laden her work with queer nuggets for us to decipher and can lay out a storyline for us that differs from the PR storyline that the mainstream focussed on. This feels unlikely with the way current events have gone, but there always seems to be queer nuggets she tries to leave us. Either way, Long story short, she had a bad time.
Marjorie- With Evermore stories focussing on endings, it was a perfect opportunity to release a personal song about a family member who meant a lot to her. I don’t think this is necessarily apart of the coming out story, with that being said, there could possibly be double meanings about her grieving the death of the public queer version of herself.
Closure- So, I’m not big on muse speculation but I think this could very well be about Karlie, which seems to be the most generally accepted interpretation of this song.
The beginning “it’s been a long time and seeing the shape of your name still spells out pain” seems poignant because ‘spells out pain’ really feels like a possible reference to Tree Paine? Taylor and Karlie had some sort of contractual relationship, set up by Tree, and if Karlie had a hand in the heist, which is possible considering the Kushners helped fund it, this song could be about her anger at having a PR (and/or real) relationship with Karlie. I don’t claim to know what their relationship was, but there was certainly an element of PR to it. This feels like a spiteful response to someone who’s betrayal may have impacted her coming out plan.
Evermore- This song is the stepping back to really assess and accept what happened and describes her feelings in the wake of the failed coming out.
Gray November I've been down since July Motion capture Put me in a bad light
It begins by referencing being down since July, which is because the Masters Heist happened at the very end of June. The motion capture is likely the Miss Americana documentary that was supposed to be a coming out documentary.
I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone Trying to find the one where I went wrong Writing letters Addressed to the fire
She retraces her steps in an attempt to determine which part of the plan caused it to ruin. Now, assuming she was planning to burn down her image, she’s stuck writing songs addressed to the fire that burned her instead. Fire/ burning down the Lover House has long been assumed to be related to coming out, as depicted on the Eras Tour.
And I was catching my breath Staring out an open window Catching my death And I couldn't be sure I had a feeling so peculiar That this pain would be for Evermore
She was ‘catching her death’, as she watched her queer self die in real time. She felt like she would be stuck in the pain of the closet forever. This plan failing feels like the end of her fighting to get out.
Hey December Guess I'm feeling unmoored Can't remember What I used to fight for I rewind the tape but all it does is pause On the very moment all was lost Sending signals To be double crossed Now, the next month, she feels lost and confused about what is next. She continues to rewind the tape, but it always stops in the same place where it was all stolen from her. She was sending signals so that her fans would pick up what she was doing and catch on as it was happening, but instead those signs were noticed by people with malicious intentions. And I was catching my breath Barefoot in the wildest winter Catching my death And I couldn't be sure I had a feeling so peculiar That this pain would be for Evermore
Now she finds herself in a dark, cold winter just catching her breath after the fight. She still feels like this pain will exist forever.
Can't not think of all the cost And the things that will be lost Oh, can we just get a pause? To be certain we'll be tall again Whether weather be the frost Or the violence of the dog days I'm on waves, out being tossed Is there a line that I could just go cross?
She finds herself thinking of the cost, the pain she endured to end up still in the closet. The ideas, the queer flags and symbolism that will be lost. She is desperate for a time-out to build herself back up. Whether she is stuck in this brutal winter, or living through a cruel, cruel summer, she is being uncontrollably tossed around, pleading to reach a safe point.
And when I was shipwrecked (can't think of all the cost) I thought of you (all the things that will be lost now) In the cracks of light (can we just get a pause?) I dreamed of you (to be certain we'll be tall again) (If you think of all the costs) It was real enough (whether weather be the frost) To get me through (or the violence of the dog days) (Out on waves being tossed) But I swear (is there a line that we could just go cross?) You were there
I understand this bridge section as being a back and forth between the brand Taylor Swift, and the person Taylor, with the queer Taylor’s part sung by Bon Iver. When her elaborate plan was shipwrecked, she thought of [you] [the queer side of herself]. As she saw the cracks of Daylight emerging in her 20-year dark night, she dreamed of being out. Even that brief time the queer side of Taylor was aligned with the brand, was enough happiness to get her through, she swears that the queer side was there in the public eye.
And I was catching my breath Floors of a cabin creaking under my step And I couldn't be sure I had a feeling so peculiar This pain wouldn't be for Evermore Evermore (evermore) Evermore This pain wouldn't be for evermore (evermore) Evermore After the loss, she is catching her breath in a cabin, which I presume to be the Folkmore cabin. She is living in this cabin instead of the Lover House, and here she finally sees that this pain won’t last forevermore.
This is a beautiful close to end an album that details the pain and process of the failed coming out attempt. From what I gather from this album, she hates being in the closet, and the failed coming out was extremely painful, which is why I personally don’t see her completely abandoning that hope to solely achieve ultra famous levels of her career instead. Even though I am certainly in the minority opinion in this sub, I do think (hope) that she plans to come out in the future. I understand the idea that she would decide not to be this “hero”, but from what I gather of her discography, this has been an extremely long battle, that I don’t think is finished. She is walking a thin line, and when the currently popular, white-washed feminism is finally called out, she will be the obvious, large target to receive the majority of hate. I would think Taylor and Tree know this and would not decide to put her in such a publicized position without some sort of a plan. Maybe this is hopeful dreaming but its better than the alternative so the tin foil hat is on.
BUTTT after this closer, there are two deluxe tracks that show the possible next steps, the ending is not yet determined. RWYLM- She stays in the closet, only dropping hairpins.
Things change and move on, yet she’s in the same place. Matches burn, to start a fire that burns her image down, but she’s still there, striking matches, as seen on the cover of Midnights. She’s still stuck waiting there at the restaurant and the moment she knew her plan stopped, she heard a hairpin drop, knowing she could only flag for the time being, so she’s still sitting there with her pinned up hair.
She’s still stuck inside a fantasy from 23. Which is as she was transitioning from country to pop. I do assume that she’s been told her whole career that she can come out when circumstances are right, part of that being that she is well established in pop music, to ensure a more accepting fan base. She always thought it was just a little bit further, but she now sees that it was a fantasy that no one wanted her to achieve.
It’s Time To Go- She leaves the closet. Picking up in the restaurant, she is ready to pay her tab and leave. After all of the pain she has been through, she finally is able to exit the closet.
Thanks for reading this long analysis, let me know what you think, or any other relevant points that could add to this idea!

"In this chapter, we establish how everyone at Leidenfrost Manor is spending their time. Then, after Gabriel mentions that the phones have stopped working, news from outside arrives in the form of Agent Saint and her team. The world beyond is on the brink of an apocalypse, as a multitude of unchecked monsters begin their rampage and revenge.
As to Silverbell, Agent Saint recognizes her and is surprised to see her, because she had already helped her return home. Since it never happened, Agent Saint suspects that the veil between worlds is weakening.
Penelope and Persephone follow strange music into the mists between worlds. Cory sees them do so and tells me and I rush after them. I manage to find them in the Golden City, where masked revelers are celebrating the arrival of the Hooded God. We learn that the god will release everyone from life upon arrival, and could arrive at any moment. The city is like a shifting maze, with staircases that defy gravity and buildings of impossible geometry.
Just when we realize we cannot escape, Silverbell finds us and leads us along an unseen alleyway, back to our own world, just as the celebrations of the city become as agonized screams of terror that then fall silent."
I wrote in my notes. I had started to compile a volume of the things I had seen and done. I did not yet know my role in all things, nor how much of a story there would be by the end, but I did know it had reached a point where I could see I did indeed have a role in a much larger story. I thought it was over, and had no idea it had only just begun.
It is true that those things happened, but my indulgence of words has grown significantly over the span of time I have seen since those days. And as before, I shall compose it as an adventure, an episode, in the style of my thoughts and perceptions of those days, except it is about this time that I became aware of my daughter's abilities, and so there is more to this chapter than perhaps there would be if I had written it then. I shall now, from hindsight, tell the full story, and know in my words what she knew, at least as it pertains to the Hooded God and the events of the Golden City that we participated in, merely by our intrusion.
First of all, consider that this might be too horrifying of a perspective, and that you already know the important parts of the chapter. Secondly, consider I shall again visit the preliminary stages of my daughter's developments in magical abilities in further chapters. Finally, consider that in this one episode, I have cheated and told the story from my own concepts that I have now, and not with the mystery that shrouded my perceptions on that day or even as I reflected and wrote about what had happened.
Everyone in Leidenfrost Manor was living quietly and knowingly that all our peace and tranquility was each moment a blessing. Instead of boredom, there was a kind of absorbing of the atmosphere of orderliness.
We spent our time gardening and husbanding wild chickens we'd caught. We build a corral and managed to lure sheep and cows and pigs into it, building pens and learning how to care for them. The woods were full of stray farm animals, and danger. I thought I saw an ettercap, and mentioned it to Silverbell, who said again:
"White Nettle, this is revenge." And she'd spit, a glistening and oddly bitter smelling droplet that was sticky and would become like an amber. These she hung around the windowsills on spider's threads she would politely harvest for her uses. She had assured me that the spiders in the manor were under her spells and would never scare anyone, let alone bite. In exchange, they were promised nobody would harm them when they were discovered, nor wipe away their hidden nests.
Dr. Leidenfrost was our leader, administered to everyone's requisitions and in exchange we had an economy of freely exchanged favors, everyone contributing their handy skills and talents to our common comfort and security. She often told me I was her inspiration or asked me for advice or just confided her insecurities to me. As her spouse, I was her singular support, except when she picked on Isidore. Anyway, our family flourished and we also had a village, and that flourished too.
Gabriel and Clide Brown were the only ones who really got out and saw the collapse first-hand. The rest of us stayed near the house and grounds. We farmed and crafted and just lived our lives in peace.
Gabriel reported to us what they had seen, but it was often the lack of information that conveyed the most impression that I had, that there was nothing out there. There were no more phones at some point, but there's no sense in correlating that with the arrival of Agent Saint's party. They had promised they would come, but we had lost contact with them much earlier. I think the point was that they couldn't call us and tell us they were coming, but even before there were no phones there was no phone service. Slightly different problems.
It was easy to lose contact when there was no phone service, no signal. You couldn't just dial someone's number, you needed a switchboard. For a while there were smaller phone companies, scavenged from the wreckage of civilization. What I really should say is that the months, the years, had passed the last of such attempts at rebuilding a civilized society.
Agent Saint had my brother and nephew and Detective Winters with her. It was a very joyful reunion, as I had not seen any of them in a long time. They had many adventures and assured us they had come from the same world I had, and thus Agent Saint's reaction to Silverbell is so significant:
"I am surprised you are not in Fairy Land" Agent Saint told her.
"White Nettle destroyed the spokes of the wheel of worlds. You know this is all there is, and think, where you come in, that is where White Nettle took me key, dressed in your eyes. It is her glamor, that you thought she was Silverbell. But I am me, right here. And you should see what she has done to my home. Ettercaps everywhere! It is an atrocity!"
"And that is what I learned, along the way. So, it is true. My abilities, they have faded somewhat." Agent Saint told us.
"Why is that?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked her teasingly. My wife was aware of Agent Saint's virginity, and that it was apportioned to her ability of prophecy.
"I bathed in the House of Jher. I assure you it was not my first choice for resolving that adventure!" Agent Saint blushed.
We had no idea what she meant, and I'll tell you later what we learned when she explained it to us. It was not as erotic as it sounds, but never-the-less Agent Saint felt tainted by the whole experience right to her very soul and it affected her confidence in her ability to have visions of the future. Mostly, because she had learned the secret of how visions were born.
I was hoeing a patch to plant carrots, beets and potatoes when Cory came and landed on the scarecrow in the tall wheat near me, behind the oak fence. He squawked in alarm, and I stood up, he had my attention.
"What is it?"
"My Daughters have followed piping into the mists lingering!" Cory said clearly. I had no idea what he had just said.
"Are you talking about Persephone and Penelope?" I asked "In danger?"
"Follow me, my Lord!" Cory flew off as a crow flies and I had to scramble over fences and traverse wheat to get to his mist and piping.
Indeed, a sweet bagpipe sound was emanating from the mist and the stuff was like a thick white smoke, and I could see nothing in it.
"What is this?" I asked Cory.
"My Lord will need a staff, pouch and wife-stone of sorcery, as he has with a word he knows." Cory glanced at me.
"I only need my friend." I held my arm for my crow.
"Then take the kit for his sake." Cory flitted to my arm and looked me in my eye, causing me to flinch at the dark depths of his soul. I could see the specter of death reflected behind me, and recalled well not to look him in his beady little eye when he tilted his gaze at me so.
"Esc." I charmed my kit to my person. After a moment my staff, with its runic carvings like wormed bark, my flax pouch full of cantrips, the emerald of Circe around my neck, all began to feel real again, instead of away from me. The relics were real, but their otherworldly properties left them in dreams, unless I called them to awaken in my hands.
"My Lord knows a very clever spell." Cory complimented.
"It's nothing compared to someone who can craft such as this." I held up Circe's emerald. "I'm an amateur."
"I think my Lord is past amateur, even if he must learn much before becoming skilled in magic." Cory judged me. "I've seen my Lord cast spells with proper effect on a number of occasions. What happens when an amateur casts spells?"
"Well, I suppose I could have gotten it wrong. I did that much more often than got it right." I realized. "These are mine, though, it feels right to have them by my side."
"So it is." Cory agreed.
We walked into the mist, stalling no longer. I did feel a sense of urgency that I am not mentioning in contrast to our conversation and preparations. There was also a current of underlying terror, for ourselves, despite my valiance at going in there to rescue my daughters, I admit I hesitated, so great was my fear of that unknown mist and the uncertainty that they could even be rescued at all.
I actually ignored those feelings, in favor of a confused and distracted focus on the precise thing at-hand. That-is, until we stepped into that musical white fog.
We walked right through it, like a curtain, and it was gone. We were alone in a crowd of masked revelers. They wore many costumes, mostly with huge frilled collars and masquerade-styled domino masks, most of them grotesque and bejeweled. The crowds were dancing and partying like puppets, repeating their motions endlessly and without meaning.
We moved among them, and I looked around at the adobe buildings, adorned in paper lights and lit by strange stars and a sky that looked too low somehow. The shifting sands around the city formed strange pillars, swirling like dust devils in one place.
Around them, the buildings shifted and twisted as though contorted through a lense. Cory said that when he looked away and looked again they would shift. With Circe's emerald I needed not look away for the effect to transpire. I watched as the streets and alleys and facades shifted places as though mere illusions, their colors bleeding and shimmering into position past each other, trading places almost instantly. It happened in the blink of an eye, and I could see how it watched the eyes of everyone, with a thousand eyes of its own. A spell with eyes, I was fascinated.
When nobody was looking, it would change any section of the city that was unobserved. In this way, there was no escape from the ever-shifting maze. Everyone who was in the city could not escape. I saw through the magic to its roots, that somehow all of this was happening in one single instant, the spark of an even greater magic.
I could not see what it was, I was somehow repelled from looking at the source of the enchantment. I felt it in my soul, somehow depleting me just for looking at it. And I couldn't see it anyway, so I looked away. I exhausted the emerald of Circe, concealing myself from its gaze as it looked back at me, and saw only a humble reveler, no different than the others. At least I hoped that is all it saw.
"What is this place, my Lord?" Cory clicked in Corvin.
"It is the clutches of something that is - keeping it this way." I described what I had seen, as best as I understood it.
"What have we here?" Cory asked a reveler in a crow mask. To my astonishment she responded to him, saying:
"I am unpaired, or I was. Would sir dance with me, and be my match in the festivities?" She asked.
"Could you help me find two missing girls? They are like me and have no mask." I said to her.
"I am Ysildra. Dance with me, play with me, there is no time to waste before the Hooded God releases us all from life. We are to rejoice!" Ysildra tried to embrace me but our bodies were like smoke mixing, untouched by the other.
"We're not quite here yet." I sighed in relief. "Maybe they aren't either. Maybe we can escape."
"My love, what are you?" Ysildra looked perplexed and disturbed. She took off her mask, her eyes watering. "You're not for me, are you?"
"I'm sorry, but I am not for you. Could you help me anyway?" I asked.
"I still love you. I will try to help." Ysildra promised. She seemed to be struggling to break free from her position, and after she walked away, shifted blurrily back to where she was and tried again, then she was walking beside us.
"We must, to the chapel, away. They might baptize you before the image of the Hooded God." Ysildra told me. She tried to take my arm, but her hand passed through my elbow and I saw this frightened her and hurt her feelings, for it struck a tear from her.
"I can't do that. I've got to find my girls." I told her.
"See that?" Ysildra pointed to something. I gazed but saw nothing.
"What are we looking at?"
"It is like a princess with wings and glowing and tiny. She flits from place to place, obeying the corners and not the passages. She knows her way, hard to spot her." Ysildra told me.
"Does she see us?" I asked.
"I don't think so, we are in the shadows, my lover, and how we sit still amid the chaos." Ysildra gazed at me with broken longing, like she had waited a thousand lifetimes for me and only to be denied. Perhaps she had.
"How can we get her attention?" I asked.
"There is something about you than makes you, unseeable." Ysildra told me.
"Then how do you see me?" I asked her.
"I do not." Ysildra said, tears running across her cheeks as she painfully confessed. "I only feel you, and how it feels, I know you by that sensation. And how I hear you, for I bow to your will, my love." Ysildra knelt.
I took off the emerald. "Now you should see and hear me."
"I do. And even more beautiful." Ysildra told me. "And to feel the touch of the Hooded God will be an even sweeter desire, as soon as the stars swing round and round again, to the beginning of the song, endlessly repeated."
"Yeah, we are trying to get out of here before that happens." I said.
"Leave the Golden City?" Ysildra looked confused and almost like she would laugh, it was absurd to her. She stood and danced a little, unable to hold still for very long.
"Lord!" Silverbell flew up to us.
"I'm glad to see you, Sylvia. I can't solve this maze." I told her.
"It is easy. You follow me now." Silverbell told me. We followed her, Ysildra in tow and located the girls.
Oddly enough, I sometimes remember finding the girls and then meeting up with Silverbell. Sometimes we met Ysildra only as we left. There were times I recall finding our skeletal remains on the streets of the dead city, the only ones without party hats. Part of the magic was a timelessness, a lack of sequence, the rules of time and space meaning only the whim of the Hooded God, dreaming in madness of a conquered city he couldn't touch, trapped forever.
The girls were fascinated, and with her eyes glowing my daughter Penelope spoke to me saying:
"Father, this is the sum of all those dreams I had of your adventures." Penelope told me, with her left eye glowing purple and her right eye glowing gold. Her voice sounded too old for my little girl, and I realized she was not as I had last seen her. She and her sister had wandered the aeons, and their minds were only intact through their respective natures.
I considered that death had already tasted Persephone. Persephone lived with the blessing of a powerful goddess, her life belonging to a living energy that had sworn her into existence. Whatever happened to her had to become a part of that charmed reality, obeying the narrative of the goddess. Wandering an enchanted maze was not dangerous for her, merely satisfying the curious compulsion of her patron.
Penelope was far more complicated. She was born with the capacity of her mother for intelligence and logic and my ability to cultivate magic and the secrets of our old world. This adventure had demonstrated what she was capable of. She had harnessed the magical energy she had needed to shield herself and her sister, by instinct. Even with that commendable achievement, she had activated the depths of her soul to reinforce her sorcery. Her oldest and wisest part had risen from her timeless self and kept her safe from the endless darkness, the shifting sands, the realm of the Hooded God.
We reached the center of the maze, its exit. The white fog was like a bubbling gruel on the surface of a sloped building. Colored smoke issued from its chimney. Cory flew through it, clicking for us to follow quickly.
Persephone knew the sound of the crow when he did that and ran after him. Penelope looked at me and I saw the oldness in her eyes fading, her scowl leaving and her normal face returning. Then she followed her older sister through. Silverbell left me there.
I looked at Ysildra. "Thank you."
"I would come with you if I could." Ysildra hid her emotions. She trembled. She knew I was leaving and instead of throwing herself at me, she tried to make it a sweet goodbye.
"You'd be welcome. I appreciate your friendship. I'm not sure we would have made it through this without you."
"Yes. You're welcome. Just go, I think. Please." Ysildra's eyes were watering, but she refused to blink and cry, she was holding back her heartbreak. "I had to love you. I'm glad you were worth me being the wheel of this city. You know, like a third wheel, but out of everyone."
"I don't see why. You're so beautiful, and you've proven to be the kind of person anyone would want for a friend." I told her honestly. I knew she'd live in hell, so it was the least I could leave her with.
"Would you have kissed me goodbye, if we could touch?" Ysildra asked me. I thought about it and nodded.
"Sure, I would. My wife would actually be disappointed if I told her this day ended with me refusing to kiss you at the end on account of her. She's very romantic."
"Then, tell her to receive my kiss, on my behalf." Ysildra said, her voice sounding a little high, and then she started crying and turned and fled.
I was free to go, so I did.
"The stars are weird, in that place." Penelope told me when we were home. She sounded normal again. I forgot the sorceress who had resided in her, protecting her. She was no different, yet somehow changed. It was because she knew, or thought she knew, what she was capable of.
"Don't go into places like that." I admonished her.
"Why not, it's what you do!" Penelope protested. I'd never seen her tween before and I was a little startled. Then she frowned and apologized. "I'm sorry, Dad. I heard the music. It sounded alright."
"It's fine." I shrugged. I'd realized she was just as scared as I was that we'd never escape.
I went and found Silverbell where she was drawing a map of the city in some spilled sugar.
"What can I help you with?" Silverbell asked me.
"I wanted to thank you for coming in after us." I said. "And saving us."
"I made that look easy, I bet." Silverbell kept playing with the sugar. She stopped and looked at me. "The Hooded God wanted you there."
"Why is that?"
"I think it was personal." Silverbell told me. "See this?"
I looked at the sugar. I saw nothing but an elaborate maze.
"No, what am I supposed to be seeing?" I asked.
"It is a pattern. I recognized it right away. That's how I made that rescue look easy. It is hard to explain." Silverbell told me.
"Give me a try." I said.
"Well, when White Nettle took Fairy Land, it was the maneuver of an opportunist. This is because the four pillars that compose the world are gone. It's like when Mum brings out the projector and slide show. Slides atop each other, like worlds, smeared into one world. Hmmm, maybe I am not explaining it right?"
"I get it. The pillars kept the world layers separate. They're gone and the worlds are as one world, self-collapsed." I said.
"Sort of." Silverbell frowned. "Anyway, the point is that something else is like that here. With no place to go, this Hooded God needs to be known, to exist. It is in their collective consciousness, the fabric of their world. The Hooded God is nowhere else, this pattern, it is its mind, do you see how the streets form the canals of dreaming?"
"I don't see that. It is something you are familiar with that I've never heard of." I said.
"Well, nevermind that. Think - is there anyone who you would forget, who cannot die, who exists between worlds, outside of time, as a mere thought, a dream?" Silverbell asked.
I realized she was talking about Aureus and I thought about anything else and said: "Nope."
"That's good. Let us then leave this pattern as so much spilled sugar, and forget what it spells out. All for the better." Silverbell scattered the sugar by swirling her wings.

"In this chapter, we establish how everyone at Leidenfrost Manor is spending their time. Then, after Gabriel mentions that the phones have stopped working, news from outside arrives in the form of Agent Saint and her team. The world beyond is on the brink of an apocalypse, as a multitude of unchecked monsters begin their rampage and revenge.
As to Silverbell, Agent Saint recognizes her and is surprised to see her, because she had already helped her return home. Since it never happened, Agent Saint suspects that the veil between worlds is weakening.
Penelope and Persephone follow strange music into the mists between worlds. Cory sees them do so and tells me and I rush after them. I manage to find them in the Golden City, where masked revelers are celebrating the arrival of the Hooded God. We learn that the god will release everyone from life upon arrival, and could arrive at any moment. The city is like a shifting maze, with staircases that defy gravity and buildings of impossible geometry.
Just when we realize we cannot escape, Silverbell finds us and leads us along an unseen alleyway, back to our own world, just as the celebrations of the city become as agonized screams of terror that then fall silent."
I wrote in my notes. I had started to compile a volume of the things I had seen and done. I did not yet know my role in all things, nor how much of a story there would be by the end, but I did know it had reached a point where I could see I did indeed have a role in a much larger story. I thought it was over, and had no idea it had only just begun.
It is true that those things happened, but my indulgence of words has grown significantly over the span of time I have seen since those days. And as before, I shall compose it as an adventure, an episode, in the style of my thoughts and perceptions of those days, except it is about this time that I became aware of my daughter's abilities, and so there is more to this chapter than perhaps there would be if I had written it then. I shall now, from hindsight, tell the full story, and know in my words what she knew, at least as it pertains to the Hooded God and the events of the Golden City that we participated in, merely by our intrusion.
First of all, consider that this might be too horrifying of a perspective, and that you already know the important parts of the chapter. Secondly, consider I shall again visit the preliminary stages of my daughter's developments in magical abilities in further chapters. Finally, consider that in this one episode, I have cheated and told the story from my own concepts that I have now, and not with the mystery that shrouded my perceptions on that day or even as I reflected and wrote about what had happened.
Everyone in Leidenfrost Manor was living quietly and knowingly that all our peace and tranquility was each moment a blessing. Instead of boredom, there was a kind of absorbing of the atmosphere of orderliness.
We spent our time gardening and husbanding wild chickens we'd caught. We build a corral and managed to lure sheep and cows and pigs into it, building pens and learning how to care for them. The woods were full of stray farm animals, and danger. I thought I saw an ettercap, and mentioned it to Silverbell, who said again:
"White Nettle, this is revenge." And she'd spit, a glistening and oddly bitter smelling droplet that was sticky and would become like an amber. These she hung around the windowsills on spider's threads she would politely harvest for her uses. She had assured me that the spiders in the manor were under her spells and would never scare anyone, let alone bite. In exchange, they were promised nobody would harm them when they were discovered, nor wipe away their hidden nests.
Dr. Leidenfrost was our leader, administered to everyone's requisitions and in exchange we had an economy of freely exchanged favors, everyone contributing their handy skills and talents to our common comfort and security. She often told me I was her inspiration or asked me for advice or just confided her insecurities to me. As her spouse, I was her singular support, except when she picked on Isidore. Anyway, our family flourished and we also had a village, and that flourished too.
Gabriel and Clide Brown were the only ones who really got out and saw the collapse first-hand. The rest of us stayed near the house and grounds. We farmed and crafted and just lived our lives in peace.
Gabriel reported to us what they had seen, but it was often the lack of information that conveyed the most impression that I had, that there was nothing out there. There were no more phones at some point, but there's no sense in correlating that with the arrival of Agent Saint's party. They had promised they would come, but we had lost contact with them much earlier. I think the point was that they couldn't call us and tell us they were coming, but even before there were no phones there was no phone service. Slightly different problems.
It was easy to lose contact when there was no phone service, no signal. You couldn't just dial someone's number, you needed a switchboard. For a while there were smaller phone companies, scavenged from the wreckage of civilization. What I really should say is that the months, the years, had passed the last of such attempts at rebuilding a civilized society.
Agent Saint had my brother and nephew and Detective Winters with her. It was a very joyful reunion, as I had not seen any of them in a long time. They had many adventures and assured us they had come from the same world I had, and thus Agent Saint's reaction to Silverbell is so significant:
"I am surprised you are not in Fairy Land" Agent Saint told her.
"White Nettle destroyed the spokes of the wheel of worlds. You know this is all there is, and think, where you come in, that is where White Nettle took me key, dressed in your eyes. It is her glamor, that you thought she was Silverbell. But I am me, right here. And you should see what she has done to my home. Ettercaps everywhere! It is an atrocity!"
"And that is what I learned, along the way. So, it is true. My abilities, they have faded somewhat." Agent Saint told us.
"Why is that?" Dr. Leidenfrost asked her teasingly. My wife was aware of Agent Saint's virginity, and that it was apportioned to her ability of prophecy.
"I bathed in the House of Jher. I assure you it was not my first choice for resolving that adventure!" Agent Saint blushed.
We had no idea what she meant, and I'll tell you later what we learned when she explained it to us. It was not as erotic as it sounds, but never-the-less Agent Saint felt tainted by the whole experience right to her very soul and it affected her confidence in her ability to have visions of the future. Mostly, because she had learned the secret of how visions were born.
I was hoeing a patch to plant carrots, beets and potatoes when Cory came and landed on the scarecrow in the tall wheat near me, behind the oak fence. He squawked in alarm, and I stood up, he had my attention.
"What is it?"
"My Daughters have followed piping into the mists lingering!" Cory said clearly. I had no idea what he had just said.
"Are you talking about Persephone and Penelope?" I asked "In danger?"
"Follow me, my Lord!" Cory flew off as a crow flies and I had to scramble over fences and traverse wheat to get to his mist and piping.
Indeed, a sweet bagpipe sound was emanating from the mist and the stuff was like a thick white smoke, and I could see nothing in it.
"What is this?" I asked Cory.
"My Lord will need a staff, pouch and wife-stone of sorcery, as he has with a word he knows." Cory glanced at me.
"I only need my friend." I held my arm for my crow.
"Then take the kit for his sake." Cory flitted to my arm and looked me in my eye, causing me to flinch at the dark depths of his soul. I could see the specter of death reflected behind me, and recalled well not to look him in his beady little eye when he tilted his gaze at me so.
"Esc." I charmed my kit to my person. After a moment my staff, with its runic carvings like wormed bark, my flax pouch full of cantrips, the emerald of Circe around my neck, all began to feel real again, instead of away from me. The relics were real, but their otherworldly properties left them in dreams, unless I called them to awaken in my hands.
"My Lord knows a very clever spell." Cory complimented.
"It's nothing compared to someone who can craft such as this." I held up Circe's emerald. "I'm an amateur."
"I think my Lord is past amateur, even if he must learn much before becoming skilled in magic." Cory judged me. "I've seen my Lord cast spells with proper effect on a number of occasions. What happens when an amateur casts spells?"
"Well, I suppose I could have gotten it wrong. I did that much more often than got it right." I realized. "These are mine, though, it feels right to have them by my side."
"So it is." Cory agreed.
We walked into the mist, stalling no longer. I did feel a sense of urgency that I am not mentioning in contrast to our conversation and preparations. There was also a current of underlying terror, for ourselves, despite my valiance at going in there to rescue my daughters, I admit I hesitated, so great was my fear of that unknown mist and the uncertainty that they could even be rescued at all.
I actually ignored those feelings, in favor of a confused and distracted focus on the precise thing at-hand. That-is, until we stepped into that musical white fog.
We walked right through it, like a curtain, and it was gone. We were alone in a crowd of masked revelers. They wore many costumes, mostly with huge frilled collars and masquerade-styled domino masks, most of them grotesque and bejeweled. The crowds were dancing and partying like puppets, repeating their motions endlessly and without meaning.
We moved among them, and I looked around at the adobe buildings, adorned in paper lights and lit by strange stars and a sky that looked too low somehow. The shifting sands around the city formed strange pillars, swirling like dust devils in one place.
Around them, the buildings shifted and twisted as though contorted through a lense. Cory said that when he looked away and looked again they would shift. With Circe's emerald I needed not look away for the effect to transpire. I watched as the streets and alleys and facades shifted places as though mere illusions, their colors bleeding and shimmering into position past each other, trading places almost instantly. It happened in the blink of an eye, and I could see how it watched the eyes of everyone, with a thousand eyes of its own. A spell with eyes, I was fascinated.
When nobody was looking, it would change any section of the city that was unobserved. In this way, there was no escape from the ever-shifting maze. Everyone who was in the city could not escape. I saw through the magic to its roots, that somehow all of this was happening in one single instant, the spark of an even greater magic.
I could not see what it was, I was somehow repelled from looking at the source of the enchantment. I felt it in my soul, somehow depleting me just for looking at it. And I couldn't see it anyway, so I looked away. I exhausted the emerald of Circe, concealing myself from its gaze as it looked back at me, and saw only a humble reveler, no different than the others. At least I hoped that is all it saw.
"What is this place, my Lord?" Cory clicked in Corvin.
"It is the clutches of something that is - keeping it this way." I described what I had seen, as best as I understood it.
"What have we here?" Cory asked a reveler in a crow mask. To my astonishment she responded to him, saying:
"I am unpaired, or I was. Would sir dance with me, and be my match in the festivities?" She asked.
"Could you help me find two missing girls? They are like me and have no mask." I said to her.
"I am Ysildra. Dance with me, play with me, there is no time to waste before the Hooded God releases us all from life. We are to rejoice!" Ysildra tried to embrace me but our bodies were like smoke mixing, untouched by the other.
"We're not quite here yet." I sighed in relief. "Maybe they aren't either. Maybe we can escape."
"My love, what are you?" Ysildra looked perplexed and disturbed. She took off her mask, her eyes watering. "You're not for me, are you?"
"I'm sorry, but I am not for you. Could you help me anyway?" I asked.
"I still love you. I will try to help." Ysildra promised. She seemed to be struggling to break free from her position, and after she walked away, shifted blurrily back to where she was and tried again, then she was walking beside us.
"We must, to the chapel, away. They might baptize you before the image of the Hooded God." Ysildra told me. She tried to take my arm, but her hand passed through my elbow and I saw this frightened her and hurt her feelings, for it struck a tear from her.
"I can't do that. I've got to find my girls." I told her.
"See that?" Ysildra pointed to something. I gazed but saw nothing.
"What are we looking at?"
"It is like a princess with wings and glowing and tiny. She flits from place to place, obeying the corners and not the passages. She knows her way, hard to spot her." Ysildra told me.
"Does she see us?" I asked.
"I don't think so, we are in the shadows, my lover, and how we sit still amid the chaos." Ysildra gazed at me with broken longing, like she had waited a thousand lifetimes for me and only to be denied. Perhaps she had.
"How can we get her attention?" I asked.
"There is something about you than makes you, unseeable." Ysildra told me.
"Then how do you see me?" I asked her.
"I do not." Ysildra said, tears running across her cheeks as she painfully confessed. "I only feel you, and how it feels, I know you by that sensation. And how I hear you, for I bow to your will, my love." Ysildra knelt.
I took off the emerald. "Now you should see and hear me."
"I do. And even more beautiful." Ysildra told me. "And to feel the touch of the Hooded God will be an even sweeter desire, as soon as the stars swing round and round again, to the beginning of the song, endlessly repeated."
"Yeah, we are trying to get out of here before that happens." I said.
"Leave the Golden City?" Ysildra looked confused and almost like she would laugh, it was absurd to her. She stood and danced a little, unable to hold still for very long.
"Lord!" Silverbell flew up to us.
"I'm glad to see you, Sylvia. I can't solve this maze." I told her.
"It is easy. You follow me now." Silverbell told me. We followed her, Ysildra in tow and located the girls.
Oddly enough, I sometimes remember finding the girls and then meeting up with Silverbell. Sometimes we met Ysildra only as we left. There were times I recall finding our skeletal remains on the streets of the dead city, the only ones without party hats. Part of the magic was a timelessness, a lack of sequence, the rules of time and space meaning only the whim of the Hooded God, dreaming in madness of a conquered city he couldn't touch, trapped forever.
The girls were fascinated, and with her eyes glowing my daughter Penelope spoke to me saying:
"Father, this is the sum of all those dreams I had of your adventures." Penelope told me, with her left eye glowing purple and her right eye glowing gold. Her voice sounded too old for my little girl, and I realized she was not as I had last seen her. She and her sister had wandered the aeons, and their minds were only intact through their respective natures.
I considered that death had already tasted Persephone. Persephone lived with the blessing of a powerful goddess, her life belonging to a living energy that had sworn her into existence. Whatever happened to her had to become a part of that charmed reality, obeying the narrative of the goddess. Wandering an enchanted maze was not dangerous for her, merely satisfying the curious compulsion of her patron.
Penelope was far more complicated. She was born with the capacity of her mother for intelligence and logic and my ability to cultivate magic and the secrets of our old world. This adventure had demonstrated what she was capable of. She had harnessed the magical energy she had needed to shield herself and her sister, by instinct. Even with that commendable achievement, she had activated the depths of her soul to reinforce her sorcery. Her oldest and wisest part had risen from her timeless self and kept her safe from the endless darkness, the shifting sands, the realm of the Hooded God.
We reached the center of the maze, its exit. The white fog was like a bubbling gruel on the surface of a sloped building. Colored smoke issued from its chimney. Cory flew through it, clicking for us to follow quickly.
Persephone knew the sound of the crow when he did that and ran after him. Penelope looked at me and I saw the oldness in her eyes fading, her scowl leaving and her normal face returning. Then she followed her older sister through. Silverbell left me there.
I looked at Ysildra. "Thank you."
"I would come with you if I could." Ysildra hid her emotions. She trembled. She knew I was leaving and instead of throwing herself at me, she tried to make it a sweet goodbye.
"You'd be welcome. I appreciate your friendship. I'm not sure we would have made it through this without you."
"Yes. You're welcome. Just go, I think. Please." Ysildra's eyes were watering, but she refused to blink and cry, she was holding back her heartbreak. "I had to love you. I'm glad you were worth me being the wheel of this city. You know, like a third wheel, but out of everyone."
"I don't see why. You're so beautiful, and you've proven to be the kind of person anyone would want for a friend." I told her honestly. I knew she'd live in hell, so it was the least I could leave her with.
"Would you have kissed me goodbye, if we could touch?" Ysildra asked me. I thought about it and nodded.
"Sure, I would. My wife would actually be disappointed if I told her this day ended with me refusing to kiss you at the end on account of her. She's very romantic."
"Then, tell her to receive my kiss, on my behalf." Ysildra said, her voice sounding a little high, and then she started crying and turned and fled.
I was free to go, so I did.
"The stars are weird, in that place." Penelope told me when we were home. She sounded normal again. I forgot the sorceress who had resided in her, protecting her. She was no different, yet somehow changed. It was because she knew, or thought she knew, what she was capable of.
"Don't go into places like that." I admonished her.
"Why not, it's what you do!" Penelope protested. I'd never seen her tween before and I was a little startled. Then she frowned and apologized. "I'm sorry, Dad. I heard the music. It sounded alright."
"It's fine." I shrugged. I'd realized she was just as scared as I was that we'd never escape.
I went and found Silverbell where she was drawing a map of the city in some spilled sugar.
"What can I help you with?" Silverbell asked me.
"I wanted to thank you for coming in after us." I said. "And saving us."
"I made that look easy, I bet." Silverbell kept playing with the sugar. She stopped and looked at me. "The Hooded God wanted you there."
"Why is that?"
"I think it was personal." Silverbell told me. "See this?"
I looked at the sugar. I saw nothing but an elaborate maze.
"No, what am I supposed to be seeing?" I asked.
"It is a pattern. I recognized it right away. That's how I made that rescue look easy. It is hard to explain." Silverbell told me.
"Give me a try." I said.
"Well, when White Nettle took Fairy Land, it was the maneuver of an opportunist. This is because the four pillars that compose the world are gone. It's like when Mum brings out the projector and slide show. Slides atop each other, like worlds, smeared into one world. Hmmm, maybe I am not explaining it right?"
"I get it. The pillars kept the world layers separate. They're gone and the worlds are as one world, self-collapsed." I said.
"Sort of." Silverbell frowned. "Anyway, the point is that something else is like that here. With no place to go, this Hooded God needs to be known, to exist. It is in their collective consciousness, the fabric of their world. The Hooded God is nowhere else, this pattern, it is its mind, do you see how the streets form the canals of dreaming?"
"I don't see that. It is something you are familiar with that I've never heard of." I said.
"Well, nevermind that. Think - is there anyone who you would forget, who cannot die, who exists between worlds, outside of time, as a mere thought, a dream?" Silverbell asked.
I realized she was talking about Aureus and I thought about anything else and said: "Nope."
"That's good. Let us then leave this pattern as so much spilled sugar, and forget what it spells out. All for the better." Silverbell scattered the sugar by swirling her wings.

BRAVO

• So Chic, Very Chic: Shield Glasses Anonymous (Joan Summers for PAPER Magazine)
• 25 Songs From The Real Housewives Universe, Ranked (Jake Viswanath for Bustle)
• 10 minute video: Bethenny Frankel and other "Real Housewives" stars talk about reckoning for industry (ABC News YouTube)
• ‘Married to Medicine’ Star Dr. Simone Whitmore Says Bravo Show Helped Save Her Marriage (Scott Fishman for TV Insider)
• ‘Married To Medicine’ Newbie Lateasha ‘Sweet Tea’ Lunceford Says Co-Star Dr. Heavenly Is Messy & Wants To ‘Keep The Heat Off Of Her Own Marriage’ (The Jasmine Brand)
• Tom Sandoval Shares Why He Didn’t Join in Ariana & Lala Hookup, Talks Living Situation With Ariana, and Schwartz & Sandy’s Update, Plus Why He Cheated on Her and Denies “Self-Righteous” Claims (Reality Blurb)
• Tom Sandoval Explains Why He Harbors Resentment Towards Ariana Madix (Heavy)
• Ariana Madix says upcoming season of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ is ‘going to be weird’ (TODAY)
• Lala Kent Gives Rachel Leviss Advice Ahead of Podcast Premiere (Heavy)
• James Kennedy and Ally Lewber Visited the "Cutest Little Town" During Their Holiday Trip to England (Bravo Style & Living)
• Find Out the Unexpected Reason Katie Maloney Just Issued an Apology (Bravo Style & Living)
• Have a Look at the Southern Charm Season 9 Reunion Seating Chart (Bravo's The Daily Dish)
• Summer House’s Paige DeSorbo Talks “Biggest Fights” With Craig Conover, Defends Kyle Cooke Over Claims He Caused Lindsay & Carl’s Split (Reality Blurb)
• Kathryn Dennis Just Had a Major Southern Charm Reunion: “Love My Boys” (Bravo's The Daily Dish)
• 'Southern Hospitality' Season 2: Maddi Reese teases relationships ending in heated new season (Yahoo Canada)
• Southern Hospitality’s Maddi Reese Reveals Whether She’s Dating After Trevor Stokes Cheating Scandal (US Weekly exclusive)
• ‘Southern Hospitality’ Stars Reflect on the ‘Shocking’ Cheating Allegations Against Maddi Reese’s Boyfriend Trevor Stokes (The Messenger exclusive)
• 'Southern Hospitality': Mia Alario Reveals She's 'in Love' With a New Guy (PopCulture exclusive)
• Mia Alario Was ‘100%’ Prepared To Be Fired After That Confrontation With Leva Bonaparte on ‘Southern Hospitality’ (The Messenger exclusive)
• Lucía Peña Found Out She Was Fired From Republic Via ‘Southern Hospitality’ Co-Star’s Text Message (The Messenger exclusive)
• 'Southern Hospitality' Newcomer Oisin O'Neill Promises to 'Break Some Hearts' and 'Spill Some Milk' (PopCulture exclusive)
• Who Are The Most Generous Tippers In The ‘Southern Charm’ Cast? The Stars Of ‘Southern Hospitality’ Reveal The Answer (Karen Kemmerle for Decider)

SALT LAKE CITY

• Angie Katsanevas' Bejeweled Manicure & Lisa Barlow's Bling: a Closer Look at RHOSLC Reunion Glam (Bravo Style & Living)

BEVERLY HILLS

• How Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky Put on a United Front for Their Kids Amid Separation (E! exclusive)
• Morgan Wade responds after Dorit Kemsley claimed the musician's relationship with Kyle Richards caused the RHOBH castmates' friendship to suffer (Daily Mail)
• Kathy Hilton Stands Up for Sister Kim Richards After New Holiday Photo Emerges (Heavy)
• Teddi Mellencamp Accuses LVP of Trying to “Produce” Her Off-Camera & Talks Their Short-Lived Reconciliation, Plus Says She Wouldn’t Return to RHOBH in “Limited Capacity” (Reality Blurb)

NEW JERSEY

• Gia Giudice Insists She 'Could Definitely Hold Her Own' as a Real Housewife: 'We'll See What the Future Holds' (OK! Magazine exclusive)

ORANGE COUNTY

• The RHOC 'Wives Reveal Where They Stand Today During a Stylish Holiday Girls' Night (Bravo Style & Living)

NEW YORK

• Luann de Lesseps powers through mic mishap at Atlanta cabaret tour stop: ‘The show must go on!’ (Page Six exclusive)

DALLAS

• D’Andra Simmons on Real Housewives of Dallas: ‘The Most Work I’ve Ever Done’ (Candy's Dirt)

SYDNEY

• Meet the newest star of The Real Housewives of Sydney, Dr Kate Adams (New Idea exclusive)

Links to this week's episode discussion posts:

• RHOP S8E6 🌸
• M2M S10E6 🩺
• RHOBH S13E7 💎
• RHOM S6E6 🍹
• RHOSLC S4E13 ❄️

I (40M) am a new widower, raising two young daughters (5 and 7) on my own. It’s been a rough ten months since my wife died in December after a four year battle with metastatic breast cancer. Plus I lost my mom to cancer the year before. But something unexpected has helped my girls and I cope and bring us closer – we've become Swifties.
I was actually on the lookout months ago for new music because all of the music I listen to reminds me of my wife. We met at the age of 16 and were together for 22 years, so we have a long history and went to a lot of concerts together.
A few months ago, we became obsessed with Anti-Hero, and would listen to it at least once a day. Karma was our next obsession. Then my seven year old started telling Alexa to play Taylor Swift, and we’d listen to her top songs for like an hour and a half, and I started to realize how amazing she is.
On our road trip from Virginia to Massachusetts at the end of the summer we listened to the This Is Taylor Swift playlist on Spotify every time we got in the car, for hours sometimes. (And of course, as soon as we got through the Lincoln Tunnel we blasted Welcome to New York.)
We talk about our favorite songs, watch her music videos together, and it's become an amazing way to connect with my daughters.
We even made a bunch of friendship bracelets and went to the Eras Tour movie on opening weekend.
My kids love the songs like …Ready For It and Look What You Made Me Do, as do I, but I’m almost more drawn to the emotional songs.
I don’t know all of her songs yet but here are a few that hit close to home for me:
Lover - I cried to this song every day for a week. The line “can I go where you go? Can we always be this close?” just wrecks me. And leaving the Christmas lights up, and “this is our place.” Also the mention of twenty years, and “I want them all.” Sobbing.
All Too Well - I’ve never gone through a bad breakup, but I do feel heartbroken after losing my wife, and this song gets me emotional in a different way. “And there we are again” flashes me back to dancing in the kitchen with my wife. Plus the anguish and emotion in Taylor’s voice.
Betty - my wife and I met over the summer and I would drive to her house all the time my senior year of high school when I was seventeen. I didn’t cheat on her but this song brings me back to being a teenager and kissing in the car. Oh and the “I miss you.” Weeping.
You’re On Your Own Kid - after listening to this for weeks I suddenly burst into tears during this one. I think it just hit me at that moment how I feel totally on my own.
Cornelia Street - the live version from Paris got me into this song, and the part that resonates most to me as I listen to it in the car is how “this city screams your name.”
Mirrorball - I recently discovered this song and absolutely bawled to it several times already. It’s so beautiful and sad.
Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve - again maybe it’s a breakup song but I miss my wife every day and the life I used to have, so “the wound won’t close” and “I keep on waiting for a sign” do it for me.
More songs I/we love - Ivy, Hits Different, The 1, Champagne Problems, Style, Cruel Summer, New Romantics, Bejeweled, Out of the Woods, and so many more
Taylor’s lyrics express so many emotions that I can't put into words, and it’s incredible how much her music has helped bond my kids and I together through this difficult transition. Her songs have given us a shared language for grief, joy, and everything in between. It's our soundtrack for healing.
I’m curious, are there any other Swifties out there going through a similar experience? Which songs do you relate to the most?

Nui Cobalt's Autumn 2 collection is coming back tomorrow! And we can expect the newsletter announcing the new and returning scents later today - are we excited? Yesterday their Facebook page teased a photo of some of the new releases, and we can look forward to Candy Catapult, The Poisoner’s Garden, Hex Appeal, Orb Weaver, and Demon Lover. (Any idea what the notes or vibes might be??)
As I like to do for each collection, here are my thoughts on all of the Autumn 2s I've tried - some of these have been discontinued, but you never know when something might come back, or perhaps you might find one in the swaps and be looking for a review. Autumn 2 also includes most of the Spidersilk variants - all of them except for September Spidersilk (in Autumn 1) and Snowflakes and Spidersilk (in Yule). I really can't gush enough about Dewdrops on Spidersilk and Sunrise on Spidersilk, they're just so pretty!
(I should also say: normally I try to space out my review posts more and I'm sorry if it feels like I'm taking up too much space yesterday and today what with my review post of the new Autumn 1s last night. I'm hoping that getting these two posts out in rapid succession right before the new release is helpful rather than attention-hogging. It's been a really busy - very fulfilling! - start to my fall semester, including teaching an entirely new course with all the attendant prep, so it's been harder to find enough quiet time to write these up.)
A note about my preferences: I especially love snuggly scents, incense, golden amber, cardamom, beeswax, non-gourmand vanillas, and white florals (though sadly I am allergic to lilies and in my admittedly limited experience, jasmine doesn’t work on me). I don't like hay, overly sweet gourmands, excessive musk, dragon’s blood, leather, patchouli, labdanum, or any really dark scents in general. To my great devastation, Nui Cobalt’s apricot, pear, and honeysuckle notes don’t tend to work on me, though I haven’t given up hope and I continue to try new blends with those notes occasionally.
Some of these were provided as press samples in exchange for honest reviews.
​
Au Bal Masque [Nepalese virgin cashmere, cotton flower, vanilla spun sugar, labdanum, and the wafting memory of white funeral lilies] - I get more cotton than cashmere - this is a very clean scent rather than a cozy scent - and it's quite floral, the funeral lilies reminding me strongly of Pale as Death [see below] although Au Bal Masque is significantly less powdery. There's something deeply unearthly about this one. It feels fragile and delicate ("spun sugar" is a perfect descriptor) but also with something slightly unsettling lurking underneath. (Which is absolutely the labdanum. I can take labdanum in very small amounts or as part of a very warm, golden amber accord. I tend to find labdanum awfully sinister in other contexts!) You know the ball scene in Labyrinth? Sarah in her big floofy gown, the sumptuousness of the ball, the haughty, fairy-like people around her, and the growing undertone of goblin menace? This perfume is that.
Awaken the Witch [Leather bound grimoires on mahogany shelves. A cup of hot tea, subtly sweetened with vanilla bean and honey. Sandalwood incense mingling with black patchouli, cardamom, and coriander] - I approached this scent with great trepidation. Some notes are automatic no's for me - labdanum, hay, leather, patchouli, for example. Sometimes if it's clearly only a background note, I might still order a sample of something with one of these notes, like Morari Day After Halloween [Tootsie roll accord, coumarin, hay absolute, ambrette, soft musk] with its hay note, or Arcana Eir [A sheer veil of gentle Roman chamomile tea, wild lavender buds, vanilla bean, warm flannel, ivory patchouli, and fresh coconut milk infused with petals of tuberose and magnolia] with its ivory patchouli (and both of those scents ended up being huge hits for me!). But Awaken the Witch was an experimental choice for sure because it seems to feature several of the notes I usually shy away from! Leather and black patchouli don't look like background notes; they look like front-and-center notes. But as I was making my wishlist for Nui Cobalt's Autumn 2 release last year, I went looking for reviews, and enough people raved about its beautiful black tea that I just had to try it. I’m so glad that I did. Nui Cobalt has the most glorious tea note. Awaken the Witch is Blarney [The warm, tannic comfort of a proper Cuppa sweetened with a touch of raw honey and smoothed with fresh cream] - a perfect cup of lightly-sweetened black tea – but the other notes, the leather, mahogany, incense, patchouli, and spices, swirl around it and coalesce into the most magical scent of witchy confidence. A little dark, a little earthy, but nothing harsh or screeching. It’s absolute perfection. If, like me, you’re skittish of leather or patch, this is a really phenomenal one to try because it’s so well-blended and honestly it would be a poorer scent without those notes. I remain really startled by how much I like this.
Canoodling in a Crypt [Dead leaves, black amber, iced chai, cathedral incense, graveyard dirt, and languid Egyptian musk] - This is the icy, vampiric brother to the other Canoodling scents, without the warmth of Canoodling in a Leaf Pile [Warm chai, vermilion musk, copal resin, the subtle hint of a campfire] or Canoodling in the Library [Brittle pages bound in leather, tall mahogany shelves, blushing leaves fallen upon ancient stone stairs, amber resin, warm skin musk, and vetiver] or the warm-weather aquatic aspect of Canoodling in a Cove [Salty skin, aquatic musk, Nag Champa, tiare, blue amber, and still-warm sand]. There is little warmth to Canoodling in a Crypt, only an icy sophistication. This scent smells mad expensive due to the Egyptian musk (which does get slightly soapy over time as it sits on my skin), and it's backed by chai spices (here stripped of their warmth but with the fiercely autumnal aspect still remaining) and that glorious NCD cathedral incense note. The dead leaves and dirt add just a hint of earthiness that literally serves to bring this scent down to earth, keeping it from being solely moody and unearthly.
Crone's Cottage [Oatmeal cookies still warm from the oven, beeswax candles on the windowsill, a warm cup of strong black tea with milk, and a generous dollop of honey] - This one is beeswax and oatmeal cookies, and just a hint of cinnamon. The tea is nowhere to be found when first applied, but steadily makes its presence known, though it remains a background player. On the drydown, it's oats and honey with a backdrop of beeswax and tea. Personally, I sort of wish the balance of the notes was reversed (more beeswax and tea, and less oats and honey), but that's just because I love NCD's black tea and beeswax notes so much. Crone's Cottage is such a cozy autumnal scent.
Crown of Hekate 2021 [Moonflower and myrrh over shining white amber on a pillow of sheer vanilla.] - This perfume is one of those frustrating ones that smells so amazing in the vial and then my skin just kills it. In the vial it's the most gorgeous white floral + white amber + vanilla, but on my skin, the myrrh takes over and gives the scent an overpowering earthiness. Even wearing it in my hair doesn't quite tone down the myrrh enough for the unearthly beauty of the moonflower to come through.
Entombed [Cemetery stones enshrouded in mist, wild English lavender, rain, and freshly turned earth] - With its lavender and stone, it smells very similar to Gargoyle [Rain-drenched lavender, cathedral incense, beeswax candles, and ancient stone]. The "earth" in Entombed note smells almost faintly like smoke to me - like the smoke from lighting real-life incense but without much of the incense smell itself, or the whiff of a blown-out match but without the sulfur. As in Gargoyle, this lavender note is herbal and pungent and so true-to-life. I've seen reviews recommending this as a sleep scent, and I completely see what they're getting at, but for me this is a little too dark and ominous to be comfortable for sleep. I always find myself sniffing this and wishing, for a sleep scent, that it were lighter and sweeter, maybe with some vanilla. But if you're into darker scents, or wishing for an earthy herbal lavender, this is absolutely one to try.
Ghost Train [Stark white copal, cedarwood, coal dust, grey cashmere, cardamom, toasted marshmallow, and shining steel] - Very atmospheric! On me it's primarily toasted marshmallow, with that hint of burnt caramelization, backed by a light scattering of copal smoke and ash. Interestingly, the smoke and ash notes don't make the scent feel like "burned marshmallow" but instead it's very distinctly toasted marshmallow + ash. I don't get cardamom (but then, with the notable exception of Thriving [Opening with cardamom and wild violet, it reveals a heart of Australian sandalwood and Himalayan cedar, then simmers down into molten gold amber and suede], I've never really gotten cardamom from any NCD perfumes, even when it's a listed note), but there is a bit of snuggly cashmere. That ash note, while gentle, is very atmospheric, so this won't be an everyday perfume for me. I ended up wearing it to see Hadestown when it came through my city, and it was perfect given how much the train features in that musical - and how slightly uneasy the vibe of that show is. Several later it becomes a cozy but not too sweet marshmallow, with the faint memory of the cashmere, smoke, and ash notes. This one's notes may sound a little weird but it is such a great perfume.
Glass Pumpkin [Spiced pumpkin puree, a drizzle of hot caramel, coconut flakes, lime zest, hinoki wood, elderflower, and icy dark musk] - As soon as this was announced, I had to know what it's like. Pumpkin and caramel plus (most of the notes of) my beloved (and discontinued!) Nelophilia (Love of Glass) [Elderflower, silver musk, coconut water, cardamom, silk tree, lime blossom, and smooth hinoki wood]? Sign me up! In the vial, the two aspects really fight with each other: warm, caramely, spiced pumpkin at war with the cooler, smooth and standoffish, almost aquatic Nelophilia. On my skin, though, it really kind of works! Glass Pumpkin goes on with a short-lived blast of nutmeg (I couldn't smell anything else for about 30 seconds), and then settles into a seriously interesting scent. Sometimes I get caramel + pumpkin, and on alternate sniffs I get straight-up just plain Nelophilia, but the most fascinating sniffs are every third one or so, when I get both. As in the vial, it's still a mix of warmth and coolness, but on my skin they meld into a fairly harmonious whole. At least for a while; the Nelophilia notes are definitely the top notes, and they disappear long before the creamy caramel, which lasts well into the afternoon. Does it represent a "glass pumpkin"? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm also totally taken in by this scent.
Mad Scientist [A shape-shifting Jekyll and Hyde of a scent. It begins with acid green top notes of Mexican and Persian limes spiked with piquant cardamom. Then a total transformation occurs, revealing blackest vanilla and smooth salted caramel] - Nothing but caramel in the vial, but it becomes a whole journey on my skin. At first, it's luxurious caramel with an acid-green lime. That lime is stunning; it's vibrant and zingy and unapologetically buoyant. After it begins to dry down, the cardamom starts to emerge, starting as mere vague baking spices but developing into a slightly muted rather than spicy cardamom. With the lime receding at this stage, it becomes more gourmand - now it's more caramel + cardamom with a baking of lime zest, rather than the stunning opening of "I am lime, let's get things done!" The description as "shape-shifting" is 100% exactly right. It dries down into a caramely vanilla (strongly reminiscent of Ailurophilia (Love of Cats) [Egyptian musk, tonka, and dulce de leche wrapped in luxuriant cashmere, soft suede, wisps of sandalwood and copal smoke]) with a hint of cardamom. The lime is gone but that was always going to be a flashy and short-lived top note.
Ouija Board [Aged cedar and teakwood, the glow of a dozen beeswax candles, incense drifting in the shadows of a dusty attic] - It goes on as headshoppy nag champa, then quickly becomes root beecola-ish frankincense (and in truth I don't really like either of these early stages), but then it settles into the cathedral incense we know and love from Gargoyle [Rain-drenched lavender, cathedral incense, beeswax candles, and ancient stone] and The Mentor [Ancient sandalwood, well-worn linen, olive leaf, oakmoss, Earl Grey tea, and sacred temple incense], against a very dusty background ("dusty attic" feels exactly right). In the drydown, a vanillic beeswax emerges, offering just enough sweetness to really smooth and round out the scent.
Pale as Death [Funeral lilies, datura accord, luna moths on cotton flowers, and white clover along a graveyard path] - This one is so pretty and so clean. It smells "white," but not a flat white, a complex white with depth and richness to it, some shadows and texture. It is primarily that wonderful Nui Cobalt cotton flower note, but unlike in the Spidersilks, this is cotton flower without any added sweetness. Instead, it is paired with a soft, furred musk (the "luna moths"?) and perhaps the faintest hint of the grassy almost-floral of the clover. To my surprise, I don't smell lilies, or any other floral, at all. My closest match is their Roll Initiative [Egyptian cotton, pale driftwood, white pepper, green cardamom, and a slender wisp of copal smoke], which is also mostly cotton without any sugar or vanilla. However, I could never find the right situation to wear it - I tried it in a couple of different seasons and it was never quite right for me - so I ended up destashing it.
Purple People Eater [Candied violets, blackberry bramble, kudzu vine, vanilla bean, ginger, star anise, and marshmallow fluff] - It goes on with a blast of MAPLE, then within a matter of moments, the once-shy candied violets emerge and the spread to fill the entire perfume. It becomes a deeply purple perfume: candied violets with a strong maple undertone, but enough gentle woody elements to keep it from being too much like sugary candy. If I sniff my wrist up close, I can find the ginger, anise, and vanilla (in that order), but those notes aren't really obvious from farther away. In fact, this perfume reminds of nothing so much as Hive in the Wild [Budding maple trees beside a swift stream, snowdrops nodding over vernal pools, and dewy dogwoods offer a trove of nectar to fill a fledgeling hive] from this year's Bees collection, which is interesting because the two don't share many notes, but given the intense mapley-ness of Purple People Eater, they end up sharing a combination of maple + floral + a woody/viney aspect.
Sinister Mist [Young teakwood, fresh cut leaves of eucalyptus and spearmint, a scant twist of lime, copal smoke clinging to cashmere, dry white vanilla, and chilled crepuscular musk] -It's eucalyptus and mint, with a powdery undertone that my husband likens to Necco wafers. There's something genuinely sinister rather than spa-like about this, or perhaps just "cold"-smelling.
Tasseomancy [Black tea spritzed with orange, decades of incense smoke clinging to heavy velvet curtains, fireplace embers, cinnamon, and clove] - Nui Cobalt does really phenomenal tea notes - see for example Blarney (Irish Breakfast Tea) [The warm, tannic comfort of a proper Cuppa sweetened with a touch of raw honey and smoothed with fresh cream] being my favorite, but also Cheat Code [Windswept teakwood, cedar, coriander and tea are grounded in black tonka with a hint of fine leather] and Wretched Hive of Scum & Villainy [Portrait of an extraterrestrial desert and its elusive denizens: dry white sandalwood, Tunisian tea, cracked coriander, cassia bark, amber resin, raw cotton, and combs full of precious honey that few will ever taste]; Unbought & Unbossed: A Tribute to Shirley Chisholm [The fragrance inspired by her is a strong and sophisticated spiced tea with raw honey and Barbados sugar sipped among the sunlit roses of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden], my favorite tea-in-summer scent; and Cloak of Evergreens [Snow-covered spruce, iced cedar tips, golden pine sap, icicle musk, and the fading memory of tea by the fireside], my favorite tea-in-winter scent. And Tasseomancy is my favorite tea-in-autumn scent! Tasseomancy is black tea first and foremost, with a burst of orange citrus for vibrancy, and the "fireplace embers" making it feel like a smoky black tea, such as a lapsang souchong (rather than feeling more atmospheric, like "drinking tea outside by a fire"). The incense, spice, and velvet notes make this a darker and heavier scent, one I likely won't wear outside of fall, but my goodness is it perfect for the autumnal season!
Vengeful Spirit [A screeching spectre of diaphanous cotton flower, cardamom, cashmere, bitter almond, storm-washed teak, and white sandalwood] - I really think this one was misnamed, especially the "Wear this…" part of its notes description: "Wear to invoke the fury of the Unseen to exact swift justice upon the guilty." There's nothing vengeful or screechy or furious about it. I adore Nui Cobalt's fabric notes, and this scent has not one but two: a slightly soapy cotton flower and a surprisingly not-cuddly cashmere. I don't really get any of the other notes (cardamom, bitter almond, teak, sandalwood) on their own - it's a really well-blended scent - but together they combine to create a stunningly sophisticated scent that feels expensive and a little standoffish.

Spidersilk Variants

First, I'll offer my perspective on Starlight and Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, and tiny black vanilla beans], the original on which all others are based. (Starlight and Spidersilk is part of the Continuous Collection and available all year 'round.) It's a cool vanilla tinged with butter and salt, and Nui Cobalt's comforting and intimate cotton note. Throw and longevity are surprisingly high. It is lovely on its own (and I wear it a lot! it's an especially great perfume for work events) but it's also easy to see how it can serve as a gorgeous base for these other blends.
Dewdrops on Spidersilk [Cerulean strands of cotton flower bejeweled with dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, frozen blue raspberry, and gentle incense] - This one is grown-up Sweettarts. It smells like extremely sugary candy in the vial, but on my skin it mellows out considerably and isn't overly sweet. I don't get the incense specifically (which is a bummer since I love NCD's incense), but it definitely makes Dewdrops more rounded. Dewdrops dries with an almost powdery light-blue-ish effect that is reminiscent of NCD's Bees Love Blue [Forget-me-not blossoms, imperial iris, blue lotus, delphinium, dwarf lilac, and hidcote lavender on a cloud of whipped white honey]. This and Sunrise on Spidersilk became surprise favorite Spidersilk variants. You can also find this blue raspberry note in Blue Moon [A diaphanous lunar musk entwines living honeysuckle and sugared blue raspberry].
Incense and Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, light and dark amber, copal, nag champa, frankincense, and myrrh] - This is the churchy incense scent I always wanted in a perfume, and interestingly enough, more so than the ones that deliberately try to be churchy (anybody's "Midnight Mass" variations, for example). The combination of the different incenses smooths out the nag champa note that I find to be just a little rough in Meditation [Smoldering frankincense and myrrh, copal, nag champa, white sandalwood, golden amber, a trace of Buddha wood and a wisp of oudh]. When first applied and very wet, Incense and Spidersilk smells a bit soapy (my husband is careful to clarify: "it smells like really fancy soap") but as soon as it starts drying, it's nothing but incense. I don't get any vanilla or amber (although I imagine they contribute to the very smooth, well-blended effect); this is just a gorgeous, rich incense that brings up a lot of scent memories for me. I'm a professional church musician, and one of the churches at which I used to sing used an incense very much like this.
Pumpkins and Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, pumpkin chai, hot cinnamon rolls, nutmeg, clove, allspice, and a scant drop of honey] - This is the one I was most excited for when I bought the sampler set, since I'm in a perpetual state of ALL THE AUTUMN THINGS. Pumpkins and Spidersilk turned out to be less "pumpkin pie" than I was expecting, which has honestly made it fill a really important spot in my autumnal perfume collection. Its creamy, quite vegetal pumpkin combines beautifully with the cool Spidersilk vanilla, and in truth I get almost none of the spices - they appear very faintly, only if I stick my nose very close and really look for them. For me, this is actually that rare thing: an autumnal pumpkin perfume without much pumpkin spice. (I should note, though, that several other folks have reported to me that this is a very heavily spiced perfume on them, so it's clearly due at least in part to my skin chemistry!)
Shadow and Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, myrrh, black agarwood, tea-stained linen, tobacco, and clove] - This is lighter and more perfumey than I was expecting - I anticipated something stronger and darker. But it makes sense: shadows are softer and more diffuse than true darkness. Unlike my favorite NCD black tea + incense blends (The Mentor, Gargoyle, Sacred Space), this one is incense + spices with only an undercurrent of tea, as well as something almost bitter (the agarwood? turns out--I had to Google this--agarwood is oud), on a base of that cool Spidersilk vanilla. By the way, this one is awesome layered with Pumpkins and Spidersilk. I didn't love this the first few times I wore it, but it has grown on me immensely and now I hoard my little sample because it has sadly been discontinued.
Spectral Spidersilk [Translucent strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, ivory suede, Queen Elizabeth root, and cathedral frankincense] - This one is ethereal and haunting, almost a clean-laundry scent but with an undercurrent of elegance and mystery. It's a bit hard to describe. It leans in the aquatic direction but isn't, but nor is it vanilla-y or incense-y (to my nose; my husband does get incense). As it dries, there's a warmth (thankfully without a leather note) from the suede. A few hours later, all that's left is the faint suede. It's not super different in overall vibe from Shadow and Spidersilk (though I love Shadow much more).
Stories and Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, cold crystalline musk, tiny black vanilla beans, aging leather-bound books, pipe tobacco, and towering wooden shelves] - Let me preface this review by saying that leather is really not my thing, so I was nervous about this one but willing to give it a shot. The Spidersilk vanilla makes this more dainty and feminine than I was expecting, and there's a sweetness from the tobacco that mellows the leather. However, for my taste the leather is too prominent, along with too much musky tobacco.Don't take this as an indictment of the perfume, which is fuzzy and almost cozy in a warm, musky kind of way. This is entirely my own personal opposition to leather notes. It's similar to Bibliophilia [The vanillic scent of aging paper, the tang of fresh ink, venerable bookshelves of oak and mahogany, a sweet trace of pipe tobacco, an undercurrent of faded leather], which has (for me) a nicer balance of leather to other notes.
Sunrise on Spidersilk [Sunlit strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, amber musk, tiny black vanilla beans, fresh ginger, clove, frankincense, and a touch of tangerine] - Lovely and warm. The amber and tangerine transform the cool Spidersilk vanilla into a warm but non-gourmand vanilla, and the soft spices are also more atmospheric than gourmand. This isn't the bright, forthright spices of "Christmas baking", but does invoke the feel of a warm blanket on one of the first chilly mornings as winter approaches, with the faint and still far-off excitement of the holidays in view. The tangerine is a supporting player that adds to the luminous quality of the perfume rather than standing out on its own. In fact, nothing really stands out sharply, but together these notes manage to create thermal magic, cool vanilla becoming positively snug. On my husband's recommendation, I categorized this as a transition perfume from fall to winter and I wear it constantly in November and December.
Sylvan Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, emerald musk, tiny black vanilla beans, Himalayan cedar, sandalwood, and mahogany] - This one is definitely wood, not the heady aroma of green trees, nor is it resinous tree sap. It's the warm and reassuring solidity of wooden planks - especially that reddish mahogany; goodness I love NCD's mahogany note so much! See also Vienna Waltz [Richly polished mahogany, pink peony, Peru balsam, diamond musk and a swish of silk shantung]. That shining, textured wood is paired with the cool, clean Spidersilk vanilla, with some added sandalwood for extra creaminess. However, for me the combination of very gourmandy vanilla with the woodshoppy woods turned my stomach a bit, so I added it to my destash.
Veil of Spidersilk [Slender strands of cotton flower hung with trembling dewdrops, pale pink musk, tiny black vanilla beans, Margaret Merril rose, lily of the valley, neroli, honeysuckle, and non-indolic jasmine] - This perfume, as soon as it was announced, seemed completely inevitable. How hadn't we had a floral Spidersilk variant before? Veil of Spidersilk fills that gap and adds another bold white floral to Nui Cobalt's catalog. It's that gorgeous Spidersilk vanilla paired with a surprisingly punchy bouquet ("gently accented by flowers" this is not) that nonetheless doesn't overpower the Spidersilk vanilla but uplifts it. Rose and a slightly jasmine are the primary flowers here, and before looking at the notes list I suspected there might be some gardenia too. I personally am not a huge fan of either rose or jasmine; I prefer gentler white florals, especially tiare and tuberose. As a result, this scent is a little less diaphanous than the floral scents I love most. I would call this less a wedding veil and more a wedding bouquet, and the Spidersilk vanilla makes it shimmery and frosted.

Personally...

For me the must-haves are Awaken the Witch, Ghost Train, Ouija Board, and Tasseomancy (the latter three of which were new releases last year - last year's new ones really knocked it out of the park). Here's hoping they all return this year! Vengeful Spirit for sophistication (I keep forgetting how much I like it; this is a good reminder to pull it out again!). As for Spidersilks, I think the prettiest of them all are Dewdrops, and Sunrise, and of course I adore Incense, with an honorable mention to the dearly-departed Shadow.

Where these landed in my collection

• Tasseomancy, Canoodling in a Crypt, Awaken the Witch, Ouija Board, and Mad Scientist are in my "Fall" section, and specifically in the "Not pumpkin" subsection
• Ghost Train and Crone's Cottage are in my "Fall" section, and specifically in the "Cozy" subsection
• Glass Pumpkin and Pumpkins and Spidersilk are in my "Fall" section, and specifically in the "Pumpkins" subsection
• Spectral Spidersilk is in my "Fall" section, and specifically in the "Dark academia" subsection
• Sunrise on Spidersilk is in my "Transition from autumn to winter" section
• Dewdrops on Spidersilk is in my "Transition from winter to spring" section
• Au Bal Masque is in my "Florals" section
• Entombed is in my "Lavender" section
• Incense and Spidersilk and Shadow and Spidersilk are in my "Incense" section
• Sinister Mist and Vengeful Spirit are in my "Cotton & clean" section
• Crown of Hekate, Pale as Death, Purple People Eater, Stories and Spidersilk, Sylvan Spidersilk, and Veil of Spidersilk are on my destash list or have been destashed

One question that pops up incredibly often on this sub once high temperatures hit is how to make warm weather wear looks…interesting. The disconnect seems to occur because for fall/winter dressing, there is more texture and more layering to play with, so it’s easier to create an “outfit” rather than just “clothes”. When you’re only wearing one layer, that becomes more difficult and the outfit you’re trying to put together can leave something to be desired, as it’s plain and stripped back.
But you don’t have to layer 3 types of clothes in order to maintain style going into the warmer months. Warm weather has endless opportunities for fashionable dressing, and in the glorious absence of a big coat that covers up all your hard work, you’re free to show off an outfit that plays with colors, proportions, textures, patterns, or interesting accessories.
I know summer is technically on its way out, but a lot of us still have at least a month or two of hot weather to go, so let’s take a look at putting together some cool summer outfits.

Color

Perhaps more than anything else, warm weather is an excellent opportunity to enjoy color. While no one’s stopping you from wearing colorful clothes in the winter, it’s clear that cold weather tends to be a sad mass of black - mostly for practical reasons.
But when the sun is shining and there are no coats covering up your outfit, you can bring out the yellows, the pinks, the greens - and they can be the key to taking your attire from just “clothes” to an “outfit”.

color blocking

Color blocking is a tried and true method to add visual interest. Color in an outfit always brings it up a step, but color blocking requires more skill, and more attention paid to silhouette, as well as color pairings. You can opt for colors opposite on the color wheel, or just colors that feel right to you - there are no rules, as long as you love the result.
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pop of color

Opting for just a pop of color can be a great way to make your outfit more fun, but without the difficulty of pairing colors together. The easiest way to do it is to add a colorful bag to an otherwise neutral outfit. A lavender bag can give a little contrast to a basic white dress and elevate it to an outfit. Especially if you’re also pairing it with a colorful pair of shoes. Matching shoes are fine, but an even more interesting choice is a pair of shoes in a complementary color.
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monochrome

Probably a lot of us have worn all-black before, but how many have tried the same in a different color? What is boring and safe in black becomes infinitely more stylish and interesting in a bold color that goes great with a tan. Think about an all pink outfit and what a statement it makes. It’s still really easy to put together - you’re only using one color - and yet, it’s anything but boring.
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tonal dressing

Pairing colors together can be tricky and it’s often a barrier of entry to fashion for the regular person. But there are easy, somewhat prescriptive ways to do it, like tonal dressing. Not quite monochrome, tonal dressing is more about picking different shades of the same base color or color palette. Adjacent colors, if you will. Both a step above monochrome, and easier than finding identical shades to match, tonal dressing is more visually exciting than a monochromatic outfit, while still being a subtle way to do color.
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Pattern

Perhaps an obvious suggestion, pattern pulls an outfit right out of its boring, solid color nothingness and gives it purpose, it gives it oomph, it gives it visual interest. Where things really get interesting is when you pattern match - or clash. But that’s a somewhat “advanced” lesson. For now, even something as simple as choosing a floral skirt instead of a solid colored one can make your clothes an “outfit”.

floral

Yes, yes, florals for spring are not groundbreaking. But we have to walk before we can run. Florals are common, and they’re easy. A very seasonally-appropriate pattern for spring-summer, it adds a touch of whimsy and femininity to an otherwise simple outfit.
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polka dots & stripes

Polka dots and stripes are other classic patterns you can’t really go wrong with. They typically still come in neutral colors, for the most part, but you can also find them in more fun colors if you don’t want to stick to boring black and white.
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abstract

Then, of course, we’ve got the cooler, more modern abstract prints. Paint splotches, random shapes, approximations of faces - anything goes. Why wear a basic white shirt, when you can wear an interesting one?
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gingham

Gingham is a classic summer staple. Casual and light, it’s a quintessential “picnic” print. Black and white gingham is a good neutral option, but if you want something more fun, any pastel color + white is very summery while still maintaining visual interest.
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pattern clashing

Of course, the ultimate way to wear pattern is to clash it against more pattern. A higher difficulty task, but with a big visual reward, pattern clashing can make even the most boring, basic outfit look elevated.
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Texture

When you’ve not got many pieces to work with for an outfit, those pieces have to work much harder to be interesting, to stand out, to be “worthy”. In comes texture. An outfit that’s cotton from top to bottom is not much of an outfit. It’s plain, flat, and boring. Mixing silk and organza, however, becomes an event.

linen/cotton

Linen and cotton are the fabrics of choice for many during the summer. It’s easy to see why - they keep you cool, they feel nice, and they’re easy to find on the highstreet at decent prices. Plus, they tend to last - if slightly discolored from the sun. A good basis that you can add to.
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sheer (tulle, gauze, organza)

Sheer is having a huge moment, and now is the time to take full advantage. Despite it being mainly synthetic fabrics, the thinness, sheerness, volume and lightweight quality of these fabrics means they can be easily worn during the height of summer without fear of heatstroke. Beautiful, diaphanous, and eminently special, a sheer element can bring the whimsy you need for a wedding outfit, the femininity to a date outfit, or that special je n’est ce quoi to a simple brunch outfit.
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silk

Silk is in no way as fanciful as it’s touted to be, and it has the excellent advantage of being a great light-weight option for hot weather. Especially if you need something special or formal, there’s nothing better than silk. It looks amazing, it’s cool, and it packs small.
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seersucker

A quintessential summer fabric if there ever was one, seersucker is great for a variety of clothes. Since it’s so light, it allows you to wear more formal or covered up garments, such as an elegant seersucker suit that would be hot in any other fabric.
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muslin

With a slightly “crinkled” texture, muslin is casual in nature, and it brings visual interest all on its own. Sure, it may not be ideal for a sleek outfit, but it’s perfect for a billowy sleeveless dress when it’s too hot to put anything else on, but you still want it to look ~interesting~.
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Proportions & silhouette

My personal favorite, playing with proportion and silhouette is a subtle and sophisticated way to create An Outfit if you’re not into accessorizing or it’s too hot to pile on the necklaces. Structural and sleek, this type of outfit allows shapes to speak for themselves and become the main event, with minimal other distractions.

loose on loose

There is no better season to do loose on loose than summer, especially if you prefer not to show skin. As cute as tight dresses are, this is not the time to pull them out. Instead, a pair of cropped wide leg pants can work surprisingly well with a boxy shirt with billowy sleeves. The silhouette is interesting on its own, you don’t have fabric touching your skin, and you’re not getting sunburned. All in all, 10/10 summer outfit.
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tight on loose

That isn’t to say that we can’t do tight + loose in hot weather, you just have to be more strategic about it. It’s still a visually interesting silhouette, but in the summer, the tight element should be the top, paired with a looser skirt or pair of pants. A bodycon tanktop or crop top with a pair of high-waisted linen shorts is as elegant as it is cooling.
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structural/architectural detailing

Sometimes, a single piece with strong architectural detailing can bring all the pizzazz you need. In recent years, with the ushering in of maximalist tendencies, there’s been no shortage of interesting structural details on summer clothes. A short, but wonderfully voluminous dress is both a statement and a clever way to stay cool. Same with very wide pants, a long column silhouette, intense pleating on a skirt, or an interesting neckline. Unexpected accessories like very chunky shoes paired with a very short dress or a very small purse with a voluminous outfit can also provide that extra kick.
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Interesting details

Seemingly small details can go a long way in elevating a piece, so don’t discount the power that beading can have, straps, buckles, or even buttons. Some of these details will work better for evening than daytime, but it entire depends on your style, the type of embellishment, and the occasion. Daytime sequins are acceptable outside of Vegas now, I’m just saying.

embellishment

Simple shapes can still look amazing, if you add a little bling. The addition of sequins, rhinestones, or intricate beading can turn a forgettable dress into something special. The best part is that this can be DIY-ed, especially if you have a dress you’re a little tired of or that is a tad boring. You can be as restrained or as crazy as you want with your embellishments. Pearl straps, bejeweled necklines, or full sequinned pieces - they’re always a show-stopper.
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straps

With enough sunscreen, or a disregard for unconventional tan lines, something as simple as strap placement can make an outfit more interesting. Very strappy tops are very in right now, as are tops and dresses with open backs with special detailing, like tie-backs, bows, or cut-outs in different shapes.
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buckles, knots, pleating, buttons

Other distinct visual details that can also be utilitarian also help draw the eye, add some contrast, and zuzh up your outfit. Whether it’s a simple row of contrasting buttons, some statement hardware in the form of a special belt buckle, or gorgeous pleating, these details can say a lot without trying too hard.
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Accessories

Sometimes, the easiest way to do it is just to add accessories. It requires less fussing, and you don’t have to think as much about them. The biggest bonus here is that accessories rarely make you hotter, but they can still have a huge visual impact and totally “make” an outfit.

textured/colorful/big or small bag

A bag should never be an afterthought, but that’s especially important to remember when putting together summer outfits. Because you have fewer elements to play with, each of them becomes more important and “weighs” more in the overall structure of your look.
A very big or very small bag is a tried and true way to bring the unexpected, but you can also achieve a similar effect if you pick a bag that is colorful, or that’s textured. Consider giving your black leather bags a rest, and instead, enjoying wicker baskets, wooden bags, braided bags, and other unique textures or shapes. Summer is the time for the novelty bag to shine.
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interesting shoes - size, color, heel shape, embellishments

Of course, shoes are also essential. Not just because you literally cannot create an outfit without them, but because they can also weigh heavily in the balance of your outfit. Luckily for us, statement shoes are in, and there’s plenty to play with in terms of features. Chunky shoes are du jour, but there are also very strappy shoes out there, interesting heel shapes, high platforms, shiny embellishments, and shockingly neon colors.
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hats

If you’ve ever wished you could wear hats, but were afraid you’d look like an asshole, now is your time. You have plausible deniability, hats are not just stylish, but they’re useful, or even necessary, if you live somewhere where the sun is particularly oppressive. Shout out to Australia, the skin cancer capital of the world.
A straw hat can complete an outfit or push it towards a certain vibe. Chic Gondolier with a breton tee and black shorts? Add a hat. Jungle Adventurer dressed head to toe in new-wave Banana Republic? Add a hat. Baptist Church Lady-core with a ruffly floral dress? Add a hat.
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Third Piece

The third piece is, of course, a basic “rule” for outfit creation, but hot weather makes it just a little bit more difficult, when even one layer of clothing feels like too much to bear. Thankfully, you can “cheat” and still add your third piece, but without adding extra bulk on top of an outfit you’re already overheating in.

linen blazer

For evenings and A/C environments, a linen blazer is very versatile and makes almost any outfit better. It works great with little dresses, shorts, wide leg linen pants - it flatters elegant outfits and beautifully contrasts more casual ones. You really can’t go wrong, and you also can’t overheat.
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vests

A more summer-y version of the blazer, the vest is not just very fashionable at the moment, it’s also the perfect layering piece. Adding minimal bulk, but maximum visual interest, a vest can be paired with anything, from dresses to shirts & shorts, to wearing it by itself as a top. The vest + shorts or vest + pleated pants combo reigns supreme for the spring/summer season; it’s sophisticated, a little masculine, and a nice departure from typical summer outfits.
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fanny pack/cross body

Any bag can make a good third piece, as we’ve discussed, but a fanny pack worn crossbody is more visible, in many ways, it’s very cool, and it can be very flattering. Worn on top of a straighter, looser, or more billowy top or dress, it creates some necessary shaping, while still maintaining the casual vibe. Wear it in a contrasting color or interesting texture for maximum effect.
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maximalist jewelry

Jewelry may be the easy way out, but one cannot deny the effect of a truly big-ass pair of earrings with an otherwise simple outfit. Necklaces, rings, and bracelets are not to be ignored, and can also work beautifully to accent an outfit or your great tan, but earrings have the advantage of not touching your skin and they also bring attention to your face, and look great with your hair up - a must, in hot weather.
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What's the bottom line?

Summer dressing can be just as fun as dressing for cooler weather, just in a different way. Layering is not the only way to create something that feels like An Outfit, and sophistication and visual interest are completely achievable in hot weather, even while remaining cool. The examples shown here aren’t meant to be a rulebook to follow, but serve more as inspiration for your own wardrobe and can hopefully give you some ideas on ways to fall in love with your summer wardrobe.
If this helped, check out my other guides:
https://www.reddit.com/femalefashionadvice/comments/11cp9nb/your_wardrobe_is_outdated_what_now_step_1_skinny/
https://www.reddit.com/femalefashionadvice/comments/11m7yxupdating_an_outdated_wardrobe_part_2_office_wea

Listen on Spotify here
Inspired by this post about chapters in their relationship, but the OP didn't quite make sense to me, even after putting it altogether. So I've compiled my own version into that playlist linked above (except for You're Losing Me and Need... Taylor pls).
​
Chapter 1. Loving Him Was...

• Teardrops On My Guitar
• The Way I Loved You
• Forever & Always
• Last Kiss
• Red
• All Too Well (10 Minute Version)
• All You Had To Do Was Stay
• Midnight Rain

​
Chapter 2. The Mess That You Wanted

• Blank Space
• New Romantics
• Bejeweled
• Gorgeous
• High Infidelity
• Getaway Car
• Dancing With Our Hands Tied
• ivy
• Cruel Summer

​
Chapter 3. Baby, Let The Games Begin

• I Think He Knows
• King Of My Heart
• So It Goes...
• Dress
• Need
• Don't Blame Me
• ...Ready For It?

​
Chapter 4. I Could Never Give You Peace

• Delicate
• The Archer
• gold rush
• peace
• Call It What You Want
• the lakes
• The Joker And The Queen (with Ed Sheeran)
• evermore (feat. Bon Iver)

​
Chapter 5. Now I'm All About You

• Snow On The Beach (feat. More Lana Del Rey)
• September (Earth, Wind, & Fire Cover)
• willow
• New Year's Day
• Daylight
• invisible string
• long story short
• Sweet Nothing
• All Of The Girls You Loved Before

​
[Interlude] Karma Is My Boyfriend

• I Forgot That You Existed
• Karma
• End Game

​
Chapter 6. In That Lavender Haze

• Lavender Haze
• London Boy
• Paper Rings
• Paris
• Lover
• Mastermind
• Glitch

​
Chapter 7. We Might Just Get Away With It

• ME! (feat. Brendon Urie)
• Afterglow
• False God
• Cornelia Street
• Labyrinth
• Renegade (with Big Red Machine)
• The Great War

​
[Interlude] I Didn't Like The Ending (How Long Can We Be A Sad Song?)

• exile (feat. Bon Iver)
• champagne problems
• Coney Island (feat. The National)

​
Chapter 8. If One Thing Had Been Different...

• hoax
• The Alcott (with The National)
• You're Losing Me
• Maroon
• Death by a Thousand Cuts
• Hits Different
• the 1

​
Some of my favorite connections in her songs and some reasoning on the chapters:

• I didn't put Dear John/WCS in the first chapter because I feel like that's more trauma that she's processed than how she views/deals with heartbreak in relationships
• I added songs from 1989 that I thought would frame her best to transition to her mess chapter
• "25 years old, how were you to know?" from DWOHT and "How's one to know?" in ivy - I wrote a whole thesis on it here and how it all ties with High Infidelity
• Bejeweled at the start of her "mess era" and how "a diamond's gotta shine" up till the end in Maroon with "the rubies that I gave up"
• Chapter 3 is just her being horny lol
• The songs in Ch.4 are the ones that I think address her anxiety in the relationship more, as opposed to more concrete conflicts in Ch.7
• In willow where she stresses "there was one prize I'd cheat to win" and you know she cheated to be with him
• Ch.6 I wanted some kind of transitions between Lavender Haze where she claims she doesn't want to be pressured into being his bride, to Paper Rings, to Lover (where it is obviously a wedding theme), so London Boy and Paris are between those songs
• I was considering putting ME! in Ch.6 vs Ch.7 just because of how happy it sounds, but when you look at the lyrics it's really more of "I know it's sometimes bad, but it can still be good" kind of situation, it's really bargaining - "You'll never find another like me"
• I didn't put the sad songs they wrote together as its own chapter, but instead as an interlude because... I felt like it was too short lol, and they were supposedly fiction
• In Ch.8 I kept with what Aaron said about hoax and the 1 being bookends of folklore, so it just made sense for me to keep them as is
• Ch.8 You're Losing Me vs Maroon with the "I chose you, I lost you" theme
• Ch.8, I know DBATC wasn't written with their breakup, but it still matches very well especially when you compare it with Cornelia Street: "as if the streetlights pointed in an arrowhead leading us home" vs "I ask the traffic lights if it'll be alright, they say I don't know"

​
Let me know what you guys think! I will update the playlist if there are comments/suggestions and when the TV of other songs have been released. Which is your favorite chapter of their relationship?

I played this game quite a few Times and one of them was a Cheats on Playthrough with access to all the Items in the game. These Included Crowns, 500k Costing different versions of the same outfit and etc. And they all tend to look really cool. Now We all know Some of them are Accessible by Marrying a Noble wearing them like Bejewelled Legionary from Imperial Nobles but some Items like Literal Crowns, Royal Outfits/Dresses, Plumed hats etc. Are Nowhere to be found (At least from my experience) Now I know that Reuniting or Destroying Calradia should be my priority but what Does it matter if I do it with no drip? If I'm going to be Emperor or Khan of the Realms I don't want to wear a Merchant Outfit and a Hat with ear flaps while my wife basically wears leather armour. How to obtain these Cool Looking items? Cost doesn't matter.

Inside the boundless expanse of Loria Online, Guspy the elven mage drained the last of his mana vaporizing a Vickerbite. It was his third hour of grinding this particular mob, and he was getting tired.
“What’s the drop rate on this thing again?” he asked Collins.
Collins cleaved another Vickerbite with his greataxe. “0.02% or something. Getting bored?”
Guspy was indeed getting bored. Despite their grotesque appearance (they looked like flying crocodile heads with mosquito feet), Vickerbites were pushovers.
“Yeah, I might only have a few minutes’ more patience for this.”
Collins slammed his axe into the ground, causing a shockwave that killed another three. “That’s ok, we’ve been playing for a while. It just kind of feels like wasted time if we quit now, though.”
“Are you getting close to leveling?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither.”
A Vickerbite burst when he swatted it with his staff. A loot bag dropped onto the rust colored dirt.
Probably another Vicker Tongue or leg or something, Guspy thought. He almost didn’t bother to check. But when he did, he found what he and Collins had been seeking for so long.
“I got it! The belt dropped!”
“Thank God, let’s get out of here,” Collins said, regrouping with the mage he protected.
Guspy read the item description for The Belt of Endurance.
The Belt of Endurance Slot: Belt Rarity: Very Rare Earth Resistance: %%0 Air Resistance: %%0 Fire Resistance: %%0 Water Resistance: %%0 Physical Resistance: %%0 Magic Resistance: %%0 Debuff Resistance: %%0
“What the hell?” Guspy said.
“What’s wrong? Is it the wrong belt?” Collins casually swatted two final Vickerbites.
“The stats are glitched or something. It’s supposed to be 5% resistance to everything, right?”
“The BoE? Yeah, 5% resist all. Is it not?”
“It shows ‘percent percent zero’.”
Collins shrugged. “Put it on, see what happens.”
Guspy equipped the belt and checked his character’s stats. “Ha, that’s so weird. All of my resistances show backslash, open parenthesis, ‘N’, close parenthesis.”
Collins used the Warrior’s Assessment ability on Guspy. “Huh. When I analyze you, I see hashtag ‘null’.”
“That’s either really good or really bad,” said Guspy.
Collins raised his sword and struck Guspy on the shoulder.
Collins attacks you for 0 damage
“There are safer ways to check!” Guspy said.
“It didn’t hurt you, weird. Mind if I use a little Fire Fan scroll on you?” Collins asked with a toothy grin.
“You have one? Aren’t you a little over leveled for that?” Fire Fan produced a tiny cone of flame that did very little damage.
“I’m a hoarder. So, can I?” Collins wiggled the scroll between his fingers.
Guspy agreed.
Collins casts Fire Fan for 0 fire damage
“Guspy, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think that belt makes you invincible,” said Collins.
Guspy began to bounce up and down in excitement. “Oh man, think of the possibilities! I can solo raid a guild hall. The Nighthawks deserve that kind of ass whupping,” he said, referring their rival guild in Loria. “Or I can loot an end-game dungeon! We’re not far from The Death Pit.”
Collins looked into Guspy’s eyes and gave him the smile a parent gives a child when they ask where rainbows end.
“Oh, you asshole!” said Guspy.
“I think you should turn it in,” said Collins.
“Why?! Why would I do that?! The Nighthawks have been bullying us for months now. With this, I could walk right in their guild hall, wipe them out, and tear the whole thing down. They wouldn’t be able to stop me! You can’t tell me they don’t deserve it.”
“Not saying they don’t,” said Collins.
Guspy pressed, “I can farm The Death Pit for Soulflayers. Everyone in our guild could have a Soulflayer, even the newbies. They’d finally be tough enough to join us on raids. You know how they’ve been dying to play with us in high level zones. Think how happy they would be!”
“Oh, they’d be awfully happy,” said Collins.
Guspy unleashed his coup de grace. “And! I can go to Fort Murder, stroll through it without a care in the world, kill the general, and not have to split the loot with anyone. That means I would get a Headsman’s Axe, which I would of course donate to my dear friend Collins. Wouldn’t you like a Headsman’s Axe?”
“I absolutely would,” said Collins.
“Ok, good. So, I’ll just—"
“Turn it in, Guspy,” said Collins.
Guspy stamped his feet in frustration. “Why though? You just said you were on board with the Nighthawks and the Soulflayer and the axe!”
“Oh, I am. The Nighthawks need to get taught. Having the newbies be tough enough to join us would be great. I’ve been dying for a Headsman for months now. But you’d be cheating. Momma didn’t raise no cheater, and daddy didn’t raise no troll,” said Collins.
“That’s so backward. You know the Nighthawks would do that to us if they got it,” said Guspy.
“Sure enough. But we can’t control what they do, and I can’t control what you do. I just want you to remember what I’ve said before: there’s a person on the other end of that character. A person just like you. I can only imagine how tilted you’d get if someone cheated to become invincible and killed you. Or farmed their whole guild ultra-rares and used them on you. I’m just asking you, as a friend, to turn it in. Please.”
Guilt. He’s put the guilt in me, thought Guspy. What an asshole.
“Fine, I’ll head to Pokate and turn it in,” said Guspy, pouting and kicking an errant stone.
“Thanks, Gusp. I promise I’ll help you find a legit one. I gotta go, though. Play later?”
“You know it,” said Guspy, and he watched Collin’s avatar dissipate.
Guspy walked back to Pokate City, the largest player hub in the area. The journey was a particularly hazardous one. Wild beast attacks, an assassin, a rockslide, even an errant fireball from an ongoing battle, all harmless in the face of his perfect resistance. He crossed into the city proper, whitewashed buildings that held little shops and extra dimensional guildhalls. Pokate Palace loomed over all of this like a resplendent sundial. The stained-glass windows shimmered in the sunlight.
Guspy approached a beggar in the street. The beggar’s body was gaunt. His dirty rags and matted beard spoke of hungry days and cruel nights. The beggars of Loria Online were portals to moderator attention. Speaking to a beggar cued a request. A moderator would eventually take control of the beggar and offer assistance.
Guspy knelt before the beggar.
“I’d like to speak with a moderator, please.”
“All in good time, my boy,” the beggar wheezed.
Guspy felt an itch in his legs. There was still time to run wild, to reap the rewards of his lottery ticket. He cursed Collins for guilting him and attempted to distract himself. Guspy admired the features on the beggar. His eyes traced cavernous wrinkled flesh. Saw the tiny movements of lice in the filthy thick beard. Saw the faintest deposits of salt in two long tracks leading down from the cloudy blue eyes.
The beggar had been crying. Why would they include such a heartbreaking detail? Why haven’t I ever noticed this before? Guspy thought.
The clouds in the beggar’s eyes parted, revealing a bright blue sky. “Thank you for waiting, this is Raymond. How can I help you?” A voice as crisp as autumn wind now spoke through the beggar.
“Uhh, hi. I’ve got a problem with an item I found?” Guspy spoke at the mouth of the beggar.
“Sure thing! Is it an item you have equipped right now?”
“Yeah, The Belt of Endurance. The values look wonky, and It makes me immune to every element. I’m immune to physical and magic damage now too.”
There was a long pause, the beggar’s eye fluttered. “You’re reporting that an item is broken in your favor?”
Guspy winced. “Umm, yes sir? It basically makes me immortal.”
Guspy waited patiently. The moderator was using his tools to see Guspy’s menu screens, something that was normally private.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” the beggar said. “It’s a null shunt error.”
“A null shunt error?”
“Yeah. Sometimes during a drop-roll, the system shunts over a clipped value that…sometimes it breaks.”
“Ah.”
“They’re a bitch to fix. Thankfully very rare. This one is particularly bad, and I’m at the end of my shift.” The mod let out a sigh that prophesized an exhausting tedious future.
“Well…thank you for your honesty! Usually when an item glitches in a player’s favor, they keep it a secret for as long as they can. Then they have a temper tantrum when we take it away. Alright, Guspy, I’m on morning shift tomorrow. I don’t want to deal with this right now. I’m giving you eight hours of god mode. Can I trust you not to make me regret it?”
Guspy was stunned. A mod was allowing immortality for eight hours? Trusting him? Why?
“You can trust me,” Guspy said.
“I hope so. I’ll fix this in the morning, don’t take the belt off or you’ll have negative infinite resistance and die from a sunburn.” The beggar’s eyes clouded back over.
Guspy threw a gold piece into the beggar’s bowl, a good luck ritual that even the highest level raiders did before a dangerous run.
He was in the clear. A mod had okayed him having god mode. Anything I do is the mod’s fault now! Guspy thought, but the thought gave him a queasy feeling the moment it passed through his mind. He was being trusted. He had promised to not make the mod regret it.
What was the mod’s name? Randy? He remembered Collins's words about there being real people on the other end of the game. He supposed that meant Randy too. He imagined telling someone to their face that his actions were their fault, like trust somehow absolved him of responsibility. He imagined someone else doing that to him. Or doing that to his little sister…
He spent a fair amount of gold on fast travel scrolls, valuable, single-use items that would transport the player anywhere in Loria. Guspy now stood on the craggy lip of Salamander’s Eye. The massive active volcano dominated the primordial jungle landscape. A vast column of ebony smoke rose from the lava pit, the birthplace of thunderclouds. Guspy spread his arms wide and fell into the heat, letting simulated gravity carry him downward to the roiling floor of liquid earth.
At the last moment he reflexively raised his hands to shield himself. Lava was instant death in Loria, doing an infinite amount of damage per second. Guspy was now sinking slowly in this most dangerous of elements unharmed. He raised his hand in a thumbs up as he sank beneath the surface.
Whorls of incandescent crimson, brown, and orange materialized and dispersed endlessly. It was like looking into the fickle furnace of creation, so eager to invent but too chaotic to design.
Guspy wondered if he’d fall forever. At last, his feet settled on something solid. He was the first player to set foot here. A unique accomplishment, one he could keep. He moved through the lava as though it was water. Must not have been a very important thing to program considering you die as soon as you touch it, he thought.
Guspy explored the floor of the volcano. It was perfectly smooth and without texture, an entire volcano held up on a pane of glass. But then he found something. A deformity in the bottom of the world. He explored it with his hand. It felt like a solid bubble sticking up out of the flat plane beneath him. It moved a little.
It’s a doorknob! Guspy realized. He turned it and felt it fall away beneath him. He sank further and dropped into a vast open room, the lava didn’t follow past the entry. Guspy cast a series of Light spells, banishing the darkness to the black obsidian of the walls and floor.
A giant floating sign that hung suspended in midair grabbed Guspy’s attention.
“IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET HERE.”
“Shows what you know, sign,” Guspy said, and began to explore.
In the secret chamber Guspy found dozens of monster models from the surrounding area, frozen in the sterile T-position. He took the time inspect them in the minutest detail. He saw the way salamander skin glittered with the luster of countless ruby gemstones. He watched the dancing flames of fire elementals, and discovered their heat rose above the limitation of their hitbox. He looked deep into the eyes of a stone golem and saw that they were prisms. They split the blue glow of the golem’s magical core into a frigid winter sunset, whites and blues dancing and concealing a secret whisper of deep red.
I don’t think I ever really looked at the models before, he thought. Even now he couldn’t recall any specific details of any monster he had fought. They were all colored blurs in his mind, faceless values and blocks of information.
Despite his immortality, he still froze in fear when his spell illuminated a colossus of steel tucked away in a corner of the room. It was a broad suit of cold iron armor, bereft of adornment and pockmarked with the careless ministrations of a thousand hammers beating the metal into shape. In one clenched fist it carried a wicked looking cleaver, one that belonged in a giant’s butcher shop, used to crack the toughest dragon bones and partition the choicest bits.
Guspy had never seen or heard of this creature in his life.
You must not have made it into the final game. At least not yet, thought Guspy. Despite its beastly ugliness, Guspy felt a pang of remorse. Someone worked to design every aspect of this monstrosity to evoke the feelings of fear and disgust, and they had been very successful. But it had gone unused and unseen since the game’s inception.
I remember the Christmas ornament I made in middle school. A Christmas light made to look like a reindeer, googly eyes and fuzzy brown pipe cleaners for antlers. I was so proud. But when Christmas came, they didn’t want to put it on the tree. They thought it looked too silly.
Guspy left a gold coin at its feet, alms for unsung effort.
He was preparing to depart when he noticed an unadorned chest had appeared beneath the presumptive sign. Guspy was certain it hadn’t been there before. He approached, circling the chest, before reaching out and lightly tapping it. He may invulnerable, but this was a developer’s world. Who knows what treachery could hide here? He lifted the lid, tilting his head and peeking at its contents with one eye shut. Inside was a billiard sized ball of translucent glass. Guspy recognized a Title Sphere. These rare items would grant a moniker to the character’s name. It was a single use item worth tens of thousands of gold. Too curious to resist learning what it would bestow, he shattered the sphere in his palm. Red dust flowed between his fingers like Martian sand. His name had changed from Guspy to Guspy the Wanderer.
Guspy used his next scroll and teleported to the shipwreck of the Soothsayers Doom. A brig suspended above the ocean on a monstrous coral bed, the ship itself was a mid-level dungeon. Players could fight their way from deck to deck, battling undead crewmen that fired grapeshot salvos into crowded rooms, shredding players into bloody clouds. The Captain was the boss of the dungeon, and part of his loot was a map that would send players on a quest line that eventually led players to the halls of the merfolk king, an extremely high-level dungeon at the bottom of the ocean.
Being immortal, Guspy took what players called the ‘express route’, swimming directly downward from the open sea. It was suicide. Besides suffocation, players had to contend with titanic carcharodons, giant squid, invisible water elementals, and elite merfolk guard. These creatures had mastery of the terrain, and few players were accustomed to attacks that could come from any direction.
Beneath him, the phosphorescent glow of the Coral Castle overpowered the distant sun for dominion of the depths. Guspy slipped into a castle window, ignoring the tridents of the pursuing Knights of Pearl. The Castle was a dungeon that needed to be completed quickly, lest the player’s water breathing magic wear off. That made it the perfect sight-seeing location for someone who didn’t need to breathe. Guspy examined the meticulously decorated royal bedrooms. The books in Loria were filled with open source stories from the real world. Players spent hours in this fantasy world engrossed in the prose of Tom Sawyer and Paradise Lost. But yellowed letters fell from between the pages like autumn leaves.
Never whole without you, my beloved Jennifer,
B.C.
Guspy didn’t know the merfolk princess even had a name. Neither had he any idea who B.C was, or if these pages were part of some fetch quest he had never come across.
Deeper in the palace he found the throne room of the merfolk king. The king was gigantic, of course, all raid bosses were. The king was also an enemy that demanded constant focus and attention to defeat. He cycled seamlessly through attack patterns, buffs, and stage activations. Missing the tell-tale signs would leave you a step behind the dance and doomed to failure.
Guspy now had a unique opportunity. He ignored the king completely. The throne room was heaped with chests of gold and artifacts plundered from sunken ships. But they were only decorative, ersatz décor designed to regale the room with the trappings of wealth and luxury. Being worthless, players ignored them. Guspy took the time to closely inspect the mountains of coins and bejeweled quillions that rose from the coin piles. Ignoring the world-shaking bolts of lightning, magical rays, and great sweeps of the merfolk king’s trident, he crouched to the level of a single coin.
There, in the face of the coin, were three smiling children. The normal relief of Empress Aubrianna, a mythical figure in Origin’s history, was replaced with a picture of a family. The normal Latin phrase, “A solis ortu usque ad occasum”, had been replaced with, “Jason, Melody, Brock”. He moved from one coin to the next. Families, pets, and selfies looked back at him. Some had names written, others messages, “Thx Mel, my rock <3” “Joe & Cara 4 eva” “We did it!”
Guspy wondered if any player had ever seen these. Maybe, but he hadn’t, and that made it special to him. He wondered what he would put on his own coin. Me, Collins, and Becca at the beach, he thought. A picture that had been his desktop background for years. The only evidence of a perfect day.
Having taken his fill of the throne room, Guspy pulled out another scroll and teleported away.
Hogglerock dungeon was an aberration. Most dungeons tried to evoke a sense of awe or fear, but Hogglerock was just gross. Its entrance was at the center of a mud-smothered swamp. Poisonous insects and carnivorous slugs roamed the wastes searching for carrion to strip or making their own if none could be found.
To descend into the putrid depths of Hogglerock, you entered the mouth of a great saurian beast. It was long since dead, its flesh in a perpetual state of decay. Down its mucus-caked throat, you entered a dungeon that had been created from the offal that remained of its digestive system. Noxious acid pools, monstrous parasites, and bloated scavengers challenged players that came to plunder the carcass.
Guspy had to stop and think before entering the sixth stomach of the beast. He had no idea if his plan would work, or even made sense. Guspy removed all his armor and weapons, save for the Belt of Endurance. He entered the dungeon’s final room, aggroing a great bipedal minotaur and its bovine kin. Guspy sat and crossed his legs. He closed his eyes and focused on slowing his breath and his heart. Aggro in Loria was based on a series of factors: proximity, source of damage or debuff, equipment levels, class, movement, and supposedly even biometric data the VR rig was able to obtain.
The monsters were instantly aggroed when the rubbery sphincter of the sixth stomach was touched, converging on their only target. Guspy’s lack of equipment, aggression, and stillness would reduce his aggro over time. He waited and he watched. In time the monsters lost interest, ceasing their attacks and wandering back to their starting positions. Guspy continued to watch. For a time, they only bobbed in place, replaying idle animations and howling blistering war cries. But, in time, Guspy saw a strange behavior begin. One smaller minotaur creature pulled out a hunk of meat, clutching it by the pure white protruding bone. It chomped a piece and munched in contentment, eyes closed in blissful indulgence. The giant boss minotaur began to sniff the air, and a game of keep away began. The smaller minotaurs tossed the meat between themselves as the boss zeroed in on the source of the smell.
Who is this for? wondered Guspy. Who was meant to see this? And how? Why hide it? How many monsters of Loria Online had these little secrets? Tiny moments of humor buried in terabytes of code, only visible in a state of extreme passivity. Once the capering script had completed, the bovines returned to their normal places and continued to cycle basic idle motions.
It’s for me. Since I’m the one watching it, that means it’s for me, thought Guspy.
Guspy pulled out his final scroll, completing the spell just before he was beset again.
Guspy the Wanderer appeared back in Pokate City. His new title drew lingering looks from other players who searched their memories. Guspy’s time was running low, and fatigue massaged his mind and eyes. There was more he could search for. He could run down the hours until the mod logged back on and set things to rights. But he didn’t want the last moments of such an enlightening day to be a race against the clock. It would spoil the sense of calm and contemplation he had cultivated. Instead he sat down next to a beggar and composed a message to Collins.
“I won’t be joining you today, Collins, but I’ve got so much to tell you about when I do.”
He had seen beyond the veil. He witnessed tiny miracles of creation hidden from mortal sight. Sparks of love that flickered once more when observed. For a precious few hours, he was blessed with a peace that allowed him to fall in love with the game all over again, to appreciate its creation like a benevolent god.
Collins and Guspy returned to the red rock canyon. Guspy admired the visible strata of the walls. Simulated eons left perfect layers of color stacked like the pages of a book. Little details, so insignificant yet so engrossing. He appreciated the work that went into this game. The efforts of artists always caught his notice.

Obviously YLM has left most of us confused and trying to unpack our current view of her and Joe's relationship. What are some of your interpretations that you have reconsidered with this new perspective?
I think "All of the Girls You Loved Before" was released post-breakup as as "I wish you well" message. The idea of the song is that all of your past breakups make you who you are, and I think Taylor is acknowledging that she's now become one of "the girls you loved before."
While I think "Hoax" is still complex and not about a singular situation, but know that she saw cracks in her relationship Joe makes it make more sense that there's references to "no other shade of blue but you" amidst all the other "blue" references to Joe in other songs.
"Champagne Problems" gives me a lot of pause due to the "I wouldn't wanna marry me either" line in YLM, and knowing that she and Joe wrote it together. I don't think there's anything direct autobiographical about it, but I could see the idea of unrequited desires for marriage being some inspiration for it. This also explains why she got emotional playing it on tour right after the breakup.
Same goes for "Tolerate It," "Right Where You Left Me," and "It's Time To Go." I don't think we can say they're explicitly autobiographical, but I could see why experiencing similar emotions to what those songs talked about could lead you to take that feeling and draw it out in a full narrative. She might have created her own world, but they came from personal emotions, like most fictional stories are
The "lost you" in "Maroon" makes much more sense now and the bridge "I wake with your memory over me" is much more haunting.
"Midnight Rain" likely has parallels with her feeling like she's too much to be with someone with a normal life, but it's projected on the idea of a lover from her hometown instead of directly on Joe.
"Bejeweled" feels pretty straightforwardly about Joe now.
I'll say that "Sweet Nothing" expresses similar energy to "You don't really read into my melancholia" from Lavender Haze. The thing that drew her to Joe in the first place, his passivity and normalcy, was what drew a wedge in the end. "All you ever wanted from me was nothing" could actually be read pretty dark once you know how it ended.
I wont speculate on whether there was cheating involved, but the line "There's many different ways that you can kill the one you love / The slowest way is never loving them enough," feels like it has to be drawn from the same perspective of YLM.

Now that it's loud and clear that they've broken up, and after You're Losing Me, it's becoming clear for me that their relationship was much more troubling than what she let us know. Midnights as a whole for me now feels like the realization and road to the break up, instead of a celebration and maturing reminiscence of old albums and relationships as I previously thought it was, and I think it'll be good to revisit the album with that in mind. Beware: huge wall of text and overanalyzing ahead!

Track 1: Lavender Haze and Track 12: Sweet Nothing

In my interpretation, Lavender Haze feels more like Taylor was trying to pretend that they were in their strongest and that she was getting used to the things he wanted (a.k.a not getting married), while they were actually breaking apart silently. "I just wanna stay in that lavender haze" now feels more like she was trying to feel that again and stay at that level of loving, and trying to save their love. "All they keep asking me is if I'm gonna be your bride" and "No deal, the 1950s shit they want from me" was she pretending not to care that she wasn't getting a proposal anytime soon, while in true she actually did want to get married with him (Paper Rings, Lover), but HE didn't, which becomes explicit as a real pain to her in You're Losing Me ("And I wouldn't want to marry me either").
She also talks about him not paying full attention to her, which I will talk more about in this write up, and is explicit at "Starin' at the ceilin' with you, oh, you don't ever say too much, and you don't really read into my melancholia", which is why I think this song deeply connects to Sweet Nothing, another song about their relationship and how complex it was. At she same time, all he ever wanted from her was nothing, which is the sweetest con, because, while she appreciated that, maybe she wanted everything from him. Those aspects, in both of these songs, shows how bittersweet this all was to her.

Track 2: Maroon and Track 17: High Infidelity

Maroon, which I previously thought to be about Jake Gyllenhal, a more mature reinterpretation of Red (Maroon = a darker shade of Red), and even though it's definitely a callback, actually fits with Joe more, and I think this is about one of their many break ups ("And I wake with your memory over me, that's a real fucking legacy to leave" in Maroon), and to clarify it Joe was the only guy that Taylor dated that had a roommate IIRC ("Your roommate's cheap-ass screw-top rosé, that's how"), showing that this was a troubling relationship just like she had with Jake, but this time even darker, even more heart wrenching.
The lyrics "And I chose you the one I was dancin' with in New York" could be compared to High Infidelity ("I was dancing around in high infidelity"), which seems to be about going out with Joe while dating Calvin (from Gorgeous "And I got a boyfriend, he's older than us he's in the club doing, I don't know what" and "And you should think about the consequence of you touching my hand in the darkened room", which tells she was with Calvin, a boyfriend she didn't really care about, and got involved with Joe and Tom Hiddleston in the middle of it).

Tracks 3 - 5: Anti-Hero, Snow on the Beach and You're On Your Own, Kid

I put these together since they don't reveal too much on this whole story, Anti-Hero and YOYOK are mostly about herself and her story, HOWEVER there are a couple of interesting lines in these songs. In Anti-Hero she thinks about losing him ("I wake up screaming from dreaming, one day I'll watch as you're leaving 'cause you got tired of my scheming for the last time"; and some lyrics in YOYOK ("I wait patiently he's gonna notice me, it's okay, we're the best of friends anyway") could be referring to Joe not paying too much attention to her, something she explicitly wanted him to do as seen in YLM ("Fighting in only your army, frontlines, don't you ignore me " and "Do something, babe, say something").
Snow on the Beach nevertheless seems to be about the beginning of their relationship, "Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful, you wanting me tonight feels impossible, but it's comin' down, no sound, it's all around", which is cohesive with Gorgeous, a song that it's about wanting and thinking about him. This song is also quite interesting since she is remembering the more peaceful times in their relationship, which is a recurring subject in this album.

Tracks 6, 7 and 19: Midnight Rain, Question...? and Would've Could've Should've

These are songs I don't think are about Joe, but it's interesting to notice how she's reminiscing about old relationships in the album. I interpret this as, while she falls out of love with him, maybe even during a break up, she thought about her exes a lot on midnights like that. In Question...? she seems to be talking about the same person she sang in The 1, an old relationship that left unfinished matters and that she often thinks about ("Did you wish you'd put up more of a fight? When she said it was too much? Do you wish you could still touch her? It's just a question")

Track 9: Bejeweled

Now this is a big one. The whole song, which I thought to be about Calvin, I now definitely think it's about Joe, and it makes much more sense. She wasn't out of the top of the world during her relationship with Calvin, it was during 2015 and 2016, which was literally her peak at the time, she was in the 1989 era, and definitely didn't stop shining for that. "Sapphire tears on my face, sadness became my whole sky" seems to be about a relationship she deeply cared about, which I don't think the Calvin one was.
This also says about he not paying much attention to her again ("Don't put me in the basement when I want the penthouse of your heart"). But the core of the song is, after getting off the pandemic, and being in a very private relationship and hiding her personal life (which seems to be something that really mattered for Joe) she wanted to shine again. And she wouldn't let him keep that from her. " You can try to change my mind, but you might have to wait in line. What's a girl gonna do? A diamond's gotta shine".

Track 10: Labyrinth

I think this one is definitely a song that explains the core of their relationship: she deeply loved him, was terrified of losing him and they were very on and off. I think this is about all of their break ups ("It only hurts this much right now, was what I was thinking the whole time", "I'll be getting over you my whole life"), their come backs together ("I thought the plane was going down, how'd you turn it right around") and the fear that it might not last forever ("Never trust it if it rises fast, it can't last").
Unfortunately, it came to it's end when coming back wasn't an option, and after all this roller coaster of a relationship, it finally worn out when she didn't love him enough to try to keep this going ("How long could we be a sad song? Till we were too far gone to bring back to life?" in You're Losing Me).

Track 14: The Great War

This song, that seems to be about the same story she told in Afterglow, is about a time in their relationship in which she felt really paranoid that he was cheating on her, and about their biggest fight. "You drew up some good faith treaties, I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone. You said I have to trust more freely, but diesel is desire, you were playin' with fire" in The Great War x "I blew things out of proportion, now you're blue, put you in jail for something you didn't do. I pinned your hands behind your back, thought I had reason to attack, but no" in Afterglow.
In both songs she holds herself accountable, but there are a couple key differences. In Afterglow she poses herself as the causer of everything and apologizes ("It's all me in my head, I'm the one who burned us down, but it's not what I meant. I'm sorry that I hurt you"), while in The Great War she tries to understand why she reacted like that and caused all that ("Maybe it's the past that's talking, screaming from the crypt, telling me to punish you for things you never did"), a more mature interpretation of those events. There's not much to digress on it. Maybe he did cheat and it was all justified, maybe he didn't and she was just paranoid, but we'll never know. What matters is that at the end of it all, they didn't win the Great War.

The Sleepless Nights and Track 20: Dear Reader

Now this is one of the songs I don't think it's ABOUT Joe but about how she FELT about him when things turned dark, and at the same time obviously a tell to the fans about who she actually is, and how we shouldn't put her up in a pedestal. I think this song, as much as other Midnights song, has a double meaning (Mastermind also could be both about her relationship to Joe while being about her relationship with us, the fans).
"Dear reader, if it feels like a trap, you're already in one. Dear reader, Get out your map, pick somewhere and just run" seems to be her realizing the realization might not last, and she should just call it quits, but then she relapses back to him, because she herself doesn't think she's reliable: "You wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking, if you knew where I was walking. To a house, not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there" and "You should find another guiding light".
Now I think we could also interpret this as the reverse point of view from This Is Me Trying. In that song she sang "Pouring out my heart to a stranger, but I didn't pour the whiskey", and in Dear Reader she sings about "My fourth drink in my hand, these desperate prayers of a cursed man spilling out to you for free" which are very very similar.
Now I want to call us back to the very first announcement of the Midnights album and the text she wrote about it. "We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears, we stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t — right this minute — about to make some fateful life-altering mistake. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve … we’ll meet ourselves."
Now that's quite dramatic for this little pop album isn't it Taylor? Well no, maybe it isn't. "We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears" they were on and off a lot, love and sadness mend a lot during the relationship. "This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams" the music was written in the middle of the nights they were broken up, and the journey through terrors and sweet dreams is the actual relationship, it's Taylor literally defining the relationship and, thus, this album, since I believe Midnights is simply and purely the pure essence of all they went through..
Honestly I never got the concept, but now with all that we know about the relationship this makes so much sense. These were sleepless nights through her life, through her relationship, cementing the core of the album in Dear Reader (the original 3.A.M. closing track): "So I wander through these nights, I prefer hiding in plain sight". It tells us how at the end, she really felt like she was lost. She was sleepless and troubled with the relationship, felt lost in life and had to find her way to safety, to find a guiding light. And that was when she realized, he was losing her.

From The Vault: You're Losing Me

The big and extremely sad conclusion to this whole album and relationship. It follows all of the themes of the album, and cements it as the road to the break up. This is not the break up, this is the final realization that it's over, a song that tells about everything that led her to breaking up with him.
"You say: I don't understand, and I say: I know you don't" is about how she realizing they are not quite right for each other, his way of loving is different from what she wants, which is a natural conclusion to Lavender Haze and Sweet Nothing.
"We thought a cure would come through in time, now, I fear it won't. Remember looking at this room, we loved it 'cause of the ligh. Now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it's time. Do I throw out everything we built or keep it? I'm getting tired, even for a phoenix, always rising from the ashes, mending all her gashes. You might just have dealt the final blow. Stop, you're losing me. I can't find a pulse, my heart won't start anymore for you" refers to themes she wrote throughout the album, they broke up and got together many times, but this time they didn't. It was already too far gone, she had no strength in her to put it back together.
"Every morning, I glared at you with storms in my eyes, how can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying? I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick. My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick. And the air is thick with loss and indecision." tells about how she tried to tell him how she couldn't handle it anymore, she wanted more attention from him, she wanted to be in the penthouse of his heart, but he didn't understand it. He loved her the way he could, and didn't understand why she felt like that, there's no way they could mend it now.
"And I wouldn't marry me either, a pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her". It all goes back to Lavender Haze and Sweet Nothing. She wanted more than he could give. She wanted a marriage, he didn't. She wanted him to read through her melancholia, her deep feelings, but he didn't. "Do something, babe, say something, lose something, babe, risk something, choose something, babe, I got nothing to believe, unless you're choosing me" remember all of those photos of Taylor waiting for the phone to ring in the Midnights photoshoots? That was her waiting for him to say something, for him to do something, and, at the end, he didn't.

Conclusion: it hit different

In conclusion: their relationship was a troubling one, they weren't right for each other as it seemed, she wanted more from him and he didn't gave her. Hits Different is the song that talks about the aftermath of the end, and how she felt about it. I'm not going to talk about it more, because it's pretty self explanatory. It was the love time could never mend, and the one that hurt the most.
Midnights talks about the whole relationship, from the beginning, through their good and bad moments, their big fights, the fading out of their love and the how she felt about it, and it shows how much more personal this as an album is as we once thought. The album is as troubling as the relationship, with misguided lyrics (like how she tried to fool herself on the issues), double meanings (paralleling the Joe relationship with past relationships) and, at the end, a happy pop album that is actually the saddest of them all, the carnations we once thought of roses, that was them.
I left a few songs out (Karma, Vigilante Shit, BTTHS, etc.) since they aren't essentially about the relationship, and, while a few are (Glitch and Paris), they're about their good moments together, something I talked about previously. Anyways, thanks everyone who read until here!
Edit: One bit of info that I'd like to add is that this line in Hoax ("You knew the hero died, so what's the movie for?") seems to have a callback in Hits Different ("This is why they shouldn't kill of the main guy"), explaining how hard it is for Taylor to understand how to "make it make some sense" that this relationship that went for so long and really felt like THE ONE ultimately didn't last. Honestly there are so many callbacks from past songs from Folklore and Evermore ("I gave so many signs" in Exile x "I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick" in YLM) that could grant it's own post.
Edit 2: Sleepless Nights and Dear Reader section added.
Edit 3: Guys be sure to read the comments, there are so many great insights people made in here! I'd also like to add that the 3AM tracks now make much more sense. The original 13 tracks end with Mastermind, a happy closing to the album and relationship, while the 3AM edition ends with Dear Reader, the sad realization about everything, symbolizing her change in thinking that they could mend it back together in the OG album to the relationship fading away in the 3AM tracks (that have many songs talking about old relationships) and eventually ending it in the 'Till Dawn/Late Night tracks, paralleling her process of thought (break up > get back together > rebound > rinse and repeat until she realize it's really over), explaining why the album is so full with initially dissonant tracks.

I've been going over Taylor's recent actions re: Joe & MH, and looking at the lyrics of her most recent albums to sort of see if anything jumped out at me in hindsight (because as much as I absolutely hate to admit it, this cannot possibly be a PR situation. No sane person would think this is a good idea. It has to be real on some level, or the most convoluted mastermind scheme ever.)
Since hearing about how Taylor & MH do have history - that they've been friends, that they've had connections with their music in the past, possibly acknowledged each other musically & admired each other, etc, I had the most horrible thought - what if a lot of the lyrics that we attribute to her talking about being closeted and having a forbidden/taboo relationship in a WLW sense are just ... her talking about being unfaithful or wanting to be in a relationship with someone she knows her fans & the general public won't approve of?
High Infidelity makes sense if feelings started before she and Joe officially ended things.
Bejeweled makes sense in that way too. (The Band aka MH from 1975 ask if she has a man?? I don't remember - because he was on his way out anyway?)
Even some of her reputation & folkmore stuff make sense through a lens like that. I would fall from grace just to touch your face... They'll say she's gone too far this time. I always attributed that to her singing about a WLW relationship, because how would that song make sense about Joe Alwyn? Well, not him ... but it could make sense about Matty, especially if she had considered dating him before but decided not to, or developed feelings for him while with Joe? A lot of that song is eerily prescient.
Glitch? That could totally be about her friendship with MH that turned into mutual feelings while still with Joe.
I don't know. Like I do seriously hope I'm wrong because I was 1000% on the Gaylor train, and I still am - I mean I definitely think she has had Pbeards in the past, and Joe def seems like one of them, and the queer themes in her music seem absolutely undeniable, like it has to be intentional. But now in light of all this stuff, I'm like "Oh my God, what if all that stuff I attributed to queerness and closeting was just her singing about a relationship that the public wouldn't approve of, or cheating on a stable/boring guy with someone exciting and "bad"?
The facts that MH has zero PR potential and is actively bad for her image points to it being real. The astronomically quick speed with which she started seeing MH after ending a 6yr relationship - even a PR one - opens the question of if the feelings started before the last relationship was over? Also her description of cheating has changed significantly in her last few albums. Like compare the scathing way she described "Should've Said No" vs the more rueful nuance in illicit affairs and High Infidelity, even Gorgeous or Bejeweled. She's not glamorizing cheating or being drawn to someone while you're in a relationship, but it's not shown as purely bad anymore. Some of it could be just maturing but all of this stuff altogether is just incredibly upsetting to me and has me rethinking a lot of the ways I've heard her music.
Any opinions? Like i said I HOPE TO FUCK I'm wrong and if I'm proven wrong I will be the first person to admit it and wish I had had more faith in her. I'll be sad if she really is the person who takes LGBT culture and language and experiences and just uses them 1) for performative allyship and 2) to describe her hetero cheating experience with a shit guy.
But Im just wondering. (Although there are definitely songs that I so strongly identify with as queer and see so clearly through a queer lens that I'm not ever letting it go - I don't care if tomorrow she personally tells me she wrote "Ivy" about Matt Healy or anyone else, that is a WLW song forever for me for example.) This is a super long rant I know it's just been bouncing around my head and I wanted to see if anyone else was considering the same things. Don't get mad at me if you don't agree! I could totally be completely wrong and I'm not a hetlor by any means lol.