“Client” being my dads new gf asked for a baby shower cake for her daughter, theme was Winnie the Pooh but wanted something simple! Attached are my photos and reference photo! I’m still learning so any tips or constructive criticism is welcome

Idk if this warrants a whole post, but it’s too hard to share photos in the mega threads.
I was watching underthepink’s tiktok about the song Robin and someone in the comments mentioned Christopher Robin (from Winnie the Pooh) which got me thinking about the “way to go tiger” line, so I went looking for more info on Christopher Robin and the Wikipedia page is kinda wild. There are a lot of things that reminded me of Taylor and TTPD’s overall theme so I thought I’d share.
Highlighted parts

1. “A long time coming” - miss American and the heartbreak prince
2. Mention of fortnight and the connection and separation of two people
3. Self-deprecation about intellect - “we’re modern idiots”
4. The Rosemary that I wasn’t - A girl name Girl, Taylor’s unpublished book about her parents wanting a boy.
5. Going from loving fame to having a love-hate relationship with it
6. We know Taylor’s parents and dad in particular did whatever it took to make her famous which in turn very much benefited them
7. TTPD, to me, is very much about real Taylor confronting Pop star Taylor and her tearing down that image similar to Christopher Milne wanting to climb out from under Christopher Robin’s shadow

There seem to be quite a few references to other tales, stories, movies etc in this album. Peter Pan in Peter, the album name being connected to Dead Poets Society, “so high school” reminding us of all the terrible movies we used to watch in the 90s/early 2000s and possibly this connection. It makes me wonder if there are other references that we haven’t connected yet.
I know that these are mostly likely coincidences but I thought it was interesting enough, along with the connection to the other stories, to share 🤠

Need a name for this good boy! We have 1 cat already who’s name is Winnie and she’s gonna make a great big sister but we are struggling to come up with good names. I like unique and quirky names, and so far we have Goose and Walter on our list. It would be cool to have something that’s on theme with our first cat who’s named after Winnie the Pooh so anything storybook or fairytale related is a bonus!

Hi Everyone! I’m making my best friend a custom doorables advent calendar for this year so in doing so I need 50 doorables! I’m looking for a mix across all series and trying to find the following themes/ specific pieces Looking for the following themes Stitch & Lilo, Emperors New Groove, Winnie the Pooh, Snow White Prince, Hercules, Mulan Pocahontas, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast or cute ones. Please let me know what you have and prices she has a lot but I will try and get back to everyone as quick as possible! She does not know I’m doing this so wish me luck!

PART II... Ok I know I promised part two from this post and it took me AWHILE with work and shit and dissecting/mulling this absolute behemoth, this CHONK of a work.
Y’all I fear we may be dissecting this album for a LONG time. But I’ve been ruminating over this part II for days and I think I might have cracked the double album meaning. It’s a double album. IT’S A DOUBLE. ALBUM. As in a double agent. Or a double entendre. I think the answers to analyzing this thing boil down to the most obvious questions. For the first part I theorized that the question was what IS the Tortured Poets Department, and the second question being why a double album? Not a TTPD 2am version, but an anthology. A double. I think she’s asking us to employ the most basic literary analysis by asking why and a lot of us (*cough* Hetlors *cough*) are still failing what should be English Lit 101.
Alright so double album, double meaning, lets get into it. This concept is perfectly opened by closing the first part of the album with The Black Dog. The Black Dog is one of the songs on the first part of the album that is one of the hardest to analyze because it appears so… surface level. In fact, in my first go around one of the lyric sites had quotation marks around “How you don’t miss me in The Black Dog when someone plays The Starting Line, and you jump up, ‘But she’s too young to know this song!’”… (thank you to those who pointed it out!) and I had initially thought this was a reference to someone like an older exec being patronizing to her. But missing the quotation marks around but she’s too young to know this song changes that meaning and directs it back to the speaker, Taylor, saying that. I went back to the drawing board on it and was thinking ok… what am I missing here? There was such a clear message on Midnights with ending it on Mastermind and then Dear Reader for 3am.
Then I saw someone’s post (credited here) theorizing about how they think the Black Dog version was deliberately leaked, and a lightbulb went off. I was OVERANALYZING Black Dog. Sometimes, the curtains are just blue. She gave us a specific location, with specific references (Starting Line), to make Black Dog VERY CLEARLY HETERO. And then pulls a classic bait and switch with opening on Imgonnagetyouback. And the more I contemplated it, the more it made sense that she WOULD close an album where the main thesis is the problem of celebrity on a song that is meant to directly fit that celebrity narrative. Only to launch into the double album, the mirror, the twin, with clear references to what we have been screaming about for many a year.
So as I listened, one thing I noticed about the anthology is that it is LITTERED with literature and classic media references in a way that I don’t think the first part is. There are media and lit references in part I to be sure, but they’re overt. They’re in your face. (BDILH, Clara Bow). The ones in the Anthology are much more subtle. I think this is on purpose… one phrase that kept bouncing around in my head while I was listening was “As above, so below.” It’s the iceberg where part I is about the problem of celebrity, and part II is the hidden life. Part II is the Secret Garden. And we quite literally dive below the surface with a song that is ostensibly about (imo) Dianna or Zoe. At the very least, the muse appears to be a woman with the line “Once you fix your face I’m going in.” (I’m not sure what the Hetlors reasoning for that line is, but I’m not sure I want to know…) “Whether I’m gonna flip you off or pull you INTO the closet, I haven’t decided yet” makes me think it’s a Dianna or Zoe song, not Karlie. Homegirl is already living in Narnia, Taylor can’t pull her into a place she’s already at lol.
Moving straight from Imgonnagetyouback to The Albatross…man. She is throwing it BACK with this literary reference. I mean throwing it all the way back to the 1700s. The image of the albatross as guilt (or the phrase “having an albatross around your neck”) dates back to a poem titled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written in 1798 by Samuel Coleridge. Honestly, if we were to analyze The Albatross as it relates to the text of Mariner, we would be here for HOURS. But here’s the sparknotes- plot revolves around a mariner who shoots an albatross while he is stuck in the Antarctic on a sailing vessel. The crew are angry at first with the mariner for shooting the bird, then they change their mind and decide it was evil, then they change their minds AGAIN and decide their misfortune is due to him killing it. They end up hanging the albatross around the mariner’s neck, until they encounter Death and Life-in-Death who gamble for all their souls. Death wins the crew, they die. Life-in-Death wins the mariner, who lives, but is forced to watch the crew die, makes it back to his homeland, and now has to wander the earth telling his story as penance for shooting the albatross.
WHEW. *John Mulaney voice* Now we don’t have time to unpack ALL OF THAT. But we’ll start with the most surface level shit, namely that the Albatross is not there to harm anyone. The Albatross is not responsible for the mariner and crew’s misfortune, they are silly little humans who killed one of God’s creatures for their silly little superstitions. Likewise in the song, the Albatross is not there to destroy anyone. IF the albatross destroys anyone, it is going to be through the guilt of them slaying an innocent, not the creature itself. If you listen to the narrator (or the mariner) that the albatross is evil, you’re going to fall into the same trap and the albatross around your neck will be the remorse you have for heeding those baseless superstitions.
Moving on to How Did It End? Ok hear me out on some of these, because like I said at the start I think some of these literary references are subtle (and certainly up for debate). I am very much getting A Christmas Carol vibes from this song. The repeated references to death, the repeated references to hindsight and viewing things through the lens of someone who is unseen (almost like she is Scrooge walking with Ghost of Christmas Future)… “Come one, come all” definitely evokes that Dickens language vibe, “Walking in circles like she was lost” is reminiscent of when Scrooge is stumbling through the streets, “How the death rattle breathing silenced as the soul was leaving, the deflation of our dreaming, leaving me beret and reeling, my beloved ghost and me sitting in a tree, D-Y-I-N-G.” I mean. Come on, if that doesn’t paint a picture of someone standing next to the Grim ReapeChristmas Future, I don’t know what does. (But I don’t think this is the last classic Christmas media reference and ties in later).
I Hate It Here coming in hot with the Secret Garden references. I mean… the fact that she references the Secret Garden and states that she has the key would seem that she’s referencing herself to be Mary, but given the context of the lyrics and how this Secret Garden is not necessarily a good or healthy thing, I don’t think she’s Mary. I think she’s Archibald Craven. Mary is the one to open the garden back up, who draws Archibald and Colin out of their respective bubbles of grief, where they were living and rotting away. Mary is the one to bring them back to reality. She’s not Mary, she’s Archibald, who cannot move on and cannot bring herself to open this garden back up and bring herself back to the living.
Not much to say about thanK you aIMee, other than yeah I think it’s about Karlie and it would fit perfectly into the double meaning/iceberg theory of all of this if a song that is at first glance about Kim Kardashian is actually about KK.
The Prophecy/Cassandra… ok first of all, the fact that The Prophecy is right in front of Cassandra. Come on, Tay. You ain’t slick. But I think we’ve got double mythology meaning here, in line with our double anthem. The Prophecy could obviously be about Cassandra given she is the goddess of prophecy (goddess, priestess, the mythology varies) however… this song has BIG Circe vibes. BIIIIIG Circe vibes. And by that I mean yes I think this song is rooted in mythology BUT I think it more directly references the novel Circe by Madeline Miller. In Greek mythology, Circe is mentioned as a goddess of witchcraft, or of sorcery (“Gathered with a coven round a sorceress’ table), who also is surrounded by wolves (“But I howl like a wolf at the moon”) but what caught my attention is the theme of loneliness. Some of the mythology varies, but in the novel Circe is directly exiled to the island by Zeus for practicing witchcraft (“Hand on the throttle, thought I caught lightning in a bottle, oh but it’s gone again and it was written, I got cursed like Eve got bitten”). TLDR, Circe is consumed with guilt and loneliness throughout the book because she used her witchcraft to turn another woman into a monster and because everyone who comes to her island either leaves or abuses her. Kind of like The Albatross, if we were to delve into the full text of the novel, we’d be here ALL DAMN DAY.
Peter is pretty self explanatory, we’re moving on to what I think is one of the most interesting songs on the album and one of the more subtle media references- The Bolter. Remember how I said How Did It End wasn’t her only classic Christmas reference? Ok folks, well that’s because The Bolter is one long reference to It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s A Wonderful Life is based on a short story called “The Greatest Gift,” which is a loose retelling of a Christmas Carol. BOOM FULL CIRCLE. Now I can’t find any evidence that she almost drowned when she was a kid, but you know who definitely did almost drown in frigid water? George Bailey. And I can DEFINITELY see Blondie relating to George. What is George’s consistent trait throughout the movie? The man is constantly trying to flee. He plans a world tour before college, whoops dad dies and he’s stuck. Wants to leave when his brother graduates, whoops bro took a different job. Wants to go on his honeymoon with Mary, now there’s a run on the bank. George is CONSTANTLY wanting to bolt, only to be thwarted. And I don’t have to tell you what happens next- “All his (her) fucking lives, flashed before his (her) eyes, it feels like the time he (she) fell through the ice, then came out alive.” Thanks to Clarence, that is.
I don’t think there’s much to Robin as I think the theory of it being about Aaron Dessner’s kid is right, other than it fits neatly in with the idea that it is about what is under the surface, what is under the celebrity in her life. And that includes her close friends’ children. It IS giving me big Winnie the Pooh energy though. Christopher Robin, the child fantasy world, the repeated mentions of a tiger (although Aaron’s from Cincinnati, could be a Bengals reference too if he’s a fan and is passing that fandom down to his little tiger).
Ending on The Manuscript, which has the opening notes of All Too Well, and ends with “but the story isn’t mine anymore.” For a double album where the first half is about the problems in her life within the cage of fame, moving on to a second half representing her rich inner life that is littered with literary and media references. There has been plenty of discourse over the last week about just how good this album is, whether or not it’s too bloated or too wordy, whether she is getting sloppy or lazy with some of what she is putting out. If this album is a manuscript, it means it is not yet finished. It’s flawed and messy and hasn’t been edited. This isn’t the final publication. The final story, the polished product, are the past albums. What this was, was her writing process. You have the story that isn’t hers with All Too Well, and the mainstream success/subsequent albums that started with Red. Songs and albums that were probably repeatedly buffed and polished until they only resembled a shadow of what WAS her story. Fans kept screaming that they wanted answers and they wanted lore, well now you get the unfinished Manuscript… don’t get mad if it’s not as slick as you’re used to. For my part, I’m unsure where this fits within the ranking of her discography, because I don’t think it’s meant to be there. It’s an island unto itself, and like I said at the start, I think we’ll be analyzing it for months and years to come.
K NOW I HAVE TO ACTUALLY GO DO WORK I SPENT WAY TOO LONG ON THIS BYEEEEEEE.
https://preview.redd.it/drz3d5aar9wc1.jpg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c696ec8b02ee1df0634bc02369f6409e965a84a3