Taylor Swift’s music has long been branded “confessional.” When people call Taylor’s work “confessional,” they might mean that her music is emotionally confessional. But when it comes to Taylor Swift, this belief that her music is emotionally confessional is closely tied to the belief that she is delivering an autobiographical accounting of her life through her lyrics. Her music is perceived as grounded in real events and real people, peppered with “clues” that, if followed, will lead you to the True Story she is telling.
Interesting to consider in light of TTPD, the term “confessional” as applied to art actually has its roots in poetry. The confessional poets were a small group in the late 1950s-1960s who changed the face of American poetry, shifting towards a much more personal, autobiographical style. They included Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and most well-known today, Sylvia Plath - amongst others. The central breakthrough of their work was in “removing the mask” that had previously hidden the poet from view in their work. The confessional poets grounded their work in their own personal experiences and laid bare the most intimate details of their inner lives, delving into “taboo” subjects like mental illness and childhood trauma. This was seen as a major change for poetry to be so grounded in the poet’s interior life and personal history as the explicit subject. These poets became literary celebrities with much attention paid to the details of their personal lives - or in Plath’s case, her death.
After falling down a rabbit hole learning about the confessional poets, I believe that Taylor drew inspiration from this group on TTPD and crafted the album, at least in part, as a meditation on the concept of “confession.” I think her treatment of confession on TTPD is multi-layered - simultaneously pulling back the curtain towards a sincere unveiling of inner truth, while also, on a more meta level, examining what it means to create confessional art and, more broadly, what it means to confess. I’d argue that TTPD is all at once a personal act of confession, a performance of confession complete with a clue package so on-the-nose People Magazine only needed a day to crack it, and - if you’re keeping an ear out for those red herrings - a subversion of the expectations for confessional art. Which, as it turns out, is not so different from what the confessional poets themselves did.
After examining TTPD through this lens, I also revisited Midnights - and I hear the beginnings of this confessional journey stirring on that album, laying the groundwork for TTPD. Within the 321 “exile ends” countdown theory, this means that she began this confessional journey at 3 (Midnights) and ramped it up at 2 (TTPD). Where do we go from here? She just might be on the road to confessing her truth in swooping, sloping, cursive letters.
So, my fellow Gaylors, if you’d like to join me down this rabbit hole - I stand before you with a summary of long-ass dissertation on my findings!
Disclaimers:

• I was inspired to do this research based on initial connections between TTPD and Sylvia Plath I've seen percolating (i.e., these posts), plus the Ted Hughes poem, Red, that Florence posted as "recommended by Taylor.”
• I am not an expert on the confessional poetry movement. I learned a lot through my research for this post, and I'm sure I've still barely scratched the surface of this rabbit hole, so I'd welcome anyone with more expertise who can build on these connections!
• My main goal in this post is to analyze Midnights and TTPD through this confessional lens. When drawing connections to the confessional poetry movement, I’m going to deal with the movement broadly and focus on how this work was collectively understood, perceived, and talked about - both by the literary establishment and by these poets themselves. Dealing in broad strokes means I’ll be missing nuance in the specifics of each poet, and it is not my intention to mischaracterize any of their work. It’s just the only way to keep the post manageable.

What is confessional poetry?

The term "confessional" was first used to describe Robert Lowell's Life Studies, which was considered a "tell-all" on his troubled youth and ongoing mental health struggles. In his review of Life Studies, M.L. Rosenthal defined confession as an act of “removing the mask.” He wrote, “[Lowell’s] speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honor-bound not to reveal.” (Source)
Robert Lowell became the top literary celebrity of his time, and the confessional genre the most popular genre of poetry. Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were Lowell’s students at Boston University and this group all drew inspiration from one another. While the trope of the tortured artist certainly predates this group, it’s notable that, for these poets, “tortured” was and is a central part of how the public understood their identities as artists. Interestingly, Lowell, Plath, and Sexton were all hospitalized (repeatedly) at the same psychiatric hospital, McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and wrote about their experiences. Plath wrote of her experiences there in her famous novel The Bell Jar. One of Lowell’s most famous poems, Waking in the Blue, was written based on his experience at McLean. McLean was described as “America’s most literary hospital” in this article from The Atlantic titled "The Mad Poets Society."
There is a complicated legacy to the term “confessional” in art, beginning with these poets. Most of them absolutely hated the term. There was a sense that it reduced their art to a mere regurgitation of feelings without craft. There was a tendency to treat their work as very literal autobiography, to reduce it to a reporting of facts, though these poets themselves repeatedly said that, while their work was grounded in personal truths, it was not necessarily always literally factual. There came to be a mythos around these artists - not on the same scale as the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, but the parallels are there.
At the same time as artists resisted the word, the public is undoubtedly hungry for these personal confessions. Today, we need only look at Taylor Swift’s massive star power to see the draw of so-called confessional art.
Note before we move on: I’m going to use the word “confessional” throughout this post because, right or wrong, it’s the word that is commonly used to describe this type of art, and I also think Taylor is specifically playing with different meanings of the word. I don’t mean any disrespect towards the poets who didn’t like the term.

What Makes Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department Confessional Works

MIDNIGHTS: "Meet Me At Midnight"
A return to autobiographical writing was a central part of the sales pitch for Midnights. She wove this message into promotional appearances, for example the Jimmy Fallon interview where she describes Midnights as her “first directly autobiographical work in a while.” The album announcement branded Midnights “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” She closes the announcement with “Meet me at midnight.” This return to direct, explicit autobiography, combined with the promise of personal revelations implied in “Meet me at midnight,” places us squarely within the confessional mode.
This messaging is especially interesting when we consider that Taylor’s previous work, with the exception of folklore/evermore, is widely considered to be a faithful autobiographical recounting of events from her life. Fans receiving this invitation to meet her at midnight might ask themselves: But haven’t we already met you? Haven’t you already revealed your innermost feelings and the private details of your life in your songwriting for years? The implication seems to be: no, you haven’t met me yet, but you will. The implication is that she is on the road to revealing herself in some new way that will invite us to truly meet her. This calls to mind the imagery of “removing the mask” from Rosenthal’s review of Life Studies, pulling back the veneer to reveal what is underneath. Pulling back the curtain, perhaps?
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Importantly, it’s not just us, the public, who are implied to have not met Taylor. It’s also implied that she is estranged from herself: “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.” Midnights represents her first step down the road towards meeting herself - and an invitation for us to join her.
While we did not meet her on Midnights, the songs on this album did begin to pull back the curtain. The entire concept of this album, exploring things that keep her up in the middle of the night, suggests a new kind of vulnerability. Taylor herself said of Anti-Hero: “I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before…this song is a real guided tour through all the things I tend to hate about myself…I like Anti-Hero a lot because I think it’s really honest.” (Source) We also have Maroon and Hits Different - the two most obviously sapphic songs she’s released that she herself classified as “autobiography.” We have Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, a searing exploration of lost girlhood.
Towards the end of the album and into the 3AM edition, she starts to explicitly grapple with the concept of confession. Interestingly, Taylor has not used the word “confess” that often in her discography. Midnights contains two mentions of the word, the most of any TS album at the time of release.
The first mention comes in Mastermind when she says: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless / This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess.”
Mastermind closes the standard edition of Midnights on this note - that this is the first time she’s felt the need to confess, signaling a new type of revelation. In this context, she is playing with legal imagery. She’s been scheming like a criminal, and now she is confessing to the “crime” of masterminding her career to make everyone love her.
Then we transition into the 3AM edition, which contains even more themes of confession. We get our second use of the word on Paris, where she longs to confess her truth: “I want to transport you to somewhere the culture’s clever / Confess my truth in swooping, sloping cursive letters.”
Finally, the 3AM edition closes on Dear Reader. While she does not explicitly use the word “confess” here, she is very much operating in the confessional mode. The bridge, in particular, recontextualizes the entire album as an act of confession. She describes the songs on Midnights (“these nights” that she wanders through) as the “desperate prayers of a cursed man spilling out to you for free.” She is spilling confessions out to us on this album in the form of desperate prayers. And then she makes a further confession - “you wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking.” She begs her audience not to take her at her word, to instead hear her “desperate prayers” and see what she is “hiding in plain sight.” Dear Reader is arguably the most confessional song on the album - and it tees us up perfectly for TTPD, where she will take these confessions even further.
THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
“Confession” is a word with several meanings. I believe that Taylor is exploring all these different meanings of the word on TTPD:

• Most broadly, a personal intimate revelation
• A religious sacrament: the confession of sins
• A legal statement: confessing to a crime

It’s apt, then, that the term “confessional” was first applied to Lowell because he existed at the intersection of all definitions of the word. His struggles with mental illness were well-known in the literary community. He was a Catholic convert. And he was well-known for having served time as a conscientious objector to WWII. The other poets who came to be dubbed “confessional” tended to share some of these traits with him - a lengthy public struggle with mental illness, a preoccupation with religion, and/or brushes with the law. These subjects were explored in the confessional poets’ work.
I’m going to focus below mainly on how TTPD is exploring these different facets of confession. There are layers to the treatment of confession on this album. I would argue that TTPD is all at once a sincere act of confession; a performance of confession, targeted to the public; and a subversion of that performance in the form of “red herrings.”
She is so productive, it’s an art! Let’s dive in.
CONFESSION AS “REMOVING THE MASK”
The confessional poets pushed the boundaries of what you could say in a poem. Particularly at the time, the topics they were known for writing about were considered quite taboo and improper - and this was part of what made this “breakthrough” new and exciting. Consider this quote from Sylvia Plath, then an up-and-coming poet, and how she describes Lowell and Sexton’s work:

I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this intense breakthrough into very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partly taboo. Robert Lowell's poems about his experience in a mental hospital, for example, interested me very much. These peculiar, private and taboo subjects…I think particularly the poetess Anne Sexton, who writes about her experiences as a mother, as a mother who has had a nervous breakdown, is an extremely emotional and feeling young woman and her poems are wonderfully craftsmanlike poems and yet they have a kind of emotional and psychological depth which I think is something perhaps quite new, quite exciting. (Source)

On TTPD, Taylor is similarly pushing the boundaries of what you can say in a song - and she is certainly pushing the boundaries past what she has previously said in a song. She is delving deeper into the most intimate and painful elements of her interior life, evoking imagery and subject matters the confessional poets are known for with lyrics like:

• “I was supposed to be sent away / but they forgot to come and get me / I was a functioning alcoholic / til nobody noticed my new aesthetic”
• “If I can’t have him / I might just die, it would make no difference”
• “Stitches undone / two graves, one gun”
• “I want to snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”
• “The hospital was a drag / worst sleep that I ever had”

In addition, Taylor delivers some of her most explicit lyrics on Guilty as Sin. We have unbridled rage in Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, even the way she calls out “the most judgmental creeps” on But Daddy I Love Him. We also have a healthy dose of homicidal ideation with lyrics like: “Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her” and “I did my best to lay to rest / all of the bodies that have ever been on my body / and in my mind, they sink into the swamp.” “Is that a bad thing to say in a song?” she asks. She says it anyway. The mask is off.
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CONFESSION AS A RELIGIOUS SACRAMENT
Art as a Sacred Catharsis: “This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”
The word “confession” calls to mind the religious confessional, where one confesses their sins to be absolved of them. In the Catholic tradition, it’s only through confession that one can be free of their sins, achieve holiness, and re-establish communion with God. Sin constitutes a separation from God; confession allows for “wholeness.”
The above excerpt from Taylor’s post about TTPD evokes this religious imagery, where writing music is the act of confession. Our tears become holy when we shed them as ink on a page; when we confess our saddest story, we are free of it. TTPD is that act of confession - a sacred catharsis.
She spells this out on the album’s concluding track, The Manuscript, where she describes the catharsis of channeling agony into art. Once she’s confessed this story, she is free of it. It isn’t hers anymore.
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In this religious context, TTPD as an act of confession implies the existence of a sin to be confessed. She explores this theme heavily on the album - what it means to be guilty as sin and what it means to be holy.
Love as Holiness: “What if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”
The true nature of holiness and sin is a major theme on TTPD - contrasting traditional notions of holiness and sin against how the author defines these words for herself. While this theme is absolutely rampant on TTPD, it’s not the first time a TS album has asked these questions. This theme blossomed on Lover before reaching new heights on TTPD.
On Lover, her love is positioned as sacred. She sings on Cornelia Street: “Sacred new beginnings that became my religion.” False God expands on this theme by drawing a contrast between this sacred love and the concept of a “false god” - an act of idolatry, a sin. She seems to say: even if they consider this love to be a sin, WE will still worship this love. We will still make this love our religion. “Confession” on False God is the act of making amends with her lover, re-establishing communion between them. “Got the wine for you” calls to mind the act of receiving holy communion, the body and blood of Christ - which, according to Catholic tradition, you are not allowed to receive when in a state of mortal sin. You must first receive the sacrament of confession before you can partake in communion. On False God, this love is her God - and they make confessions to break down the separation between them and achieve oneness.
This contrast from False God - between how others perceive her love as sinful, while she considers it her true religion - carries forward onto TTPD. On Guilty as Sin, she contrasts the “long-suffering propriety” they want from her with “the way you hold me” - and she insists this is actually what’s holy. She takes it a step further on But Daddy I Love Him. Here, she points an accusing finger back at those who would accuse her of sinfulness. She casts the Sarahs and Hannahs as the guilty ones - guilty of hatred, raising you to cage you, “vipers in empaths’ clothing.” They don’t need to pray for her because she is not the sinner. They are. This condemnation carries forward onto Cassandra, where she castigates the pure greed of the “Christian chorus line” who “never spared a prayer for [her] soul.” On The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, this man wears a “Jehovah’s Witness suit” - a predator peddling a false idea of holiness.
What began on Lover as honoring the holiness of her love transforms on TTPD into a castigation of those who would say it’s a sin. Lover is reverence; TTPD is a righteous fire of judgment sent to engulf a fallen world, a la the End Times.
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So, we know what TTPD doesn’t consider to be her sin. The question remains - if she is confessing, then what is she confessing to? What sin is she seeking absolution for?
The Original Sin: “Forgive me, Peter.”
Peter is the only song on the album where we hear her ask for forgiveness: “Forgive me, Peter.” This evokes the words you would say in a confessional: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
What is her sin? Leaving Peter behind - her “lost fearless leader in closets like cedar.” Preserved in the closet where she left him. She asks Peter to forgive her because she didn’t truly want to leave him there: “I didn’t want to come down / I thought it was just goodbye for now.” She believed that Peter would grow up and come find her, that they would be reunited - but it hasn’t happened.
The second and final time she asks Peter for forgiveness comes at the end of the song. She asks his forgiveness for turning out the light: “Forgive me, Peter / Please know that I tried to hold on to the days when you were mine / But the woman who waits by the window has turned out the light.” Here, turning out the light symbolizes giving up hope for Peter’s return.
Her sin, then, is two-fold: leaving Peter behind and then giving up hope that they could be reunited. And I’d argue that this is no ordinary sin - this separation from Peter is the original sin of the TTPD universe, akin to the original sin of Adam and Eve that separates mankind from God - the root of all suffering. On Peter, she compares herself to Adam, missing a rib: “The goddess of timing once found us beguiling / She said she was trying / Peter, was she lying? / My ribs get the feeling she did.” The implication is that Peter is the Eve to her Adam, carved out from her rib - and, in their separation, she feels the hollowness of this missing part of her. The Prophecy evokes this same Adam and Eve imagery: “I got cursed like Eve got bitten. Was it punishment?” This is a direct reference to the concept of original sin and the punishment that followed. The punishment is exile - being cast out of the garden. She can only return there in her mind (“secret gardens in my mind”).
This all gets very interesting and poignant if we posit that she is singing to a lost part of herself on Peter - that she is in exile from herself. (There have been a number of great analyses of this song through that lens; i.e., this one.) Her original sin of denying herself created this rift within her, which caused her suffering. She confesses in order to return to communion with herself. To become whole again. “Forgive me, Peter.”
This calls back to the Midnights foreword, the sense of estrangement from herself and the search to find herself: “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.”
Importantly, in the Christian tradition, the crucifixion/resurrection was God’s answer to original sin, building a bridge for humanity to once again be one with God. So, these lyrics from Guilty as Sin are quite relevant here: “What if I roll the stone away? They’re gonna crucify me anyway.” The willingness to be crucified in the name of rolling the stone away - revealing this reborn version of herself - is the answer to original sin. Rolling the stone away is how she meets herself. And, in this context, rolling the stone away is, in essence, confession. It’s removing the mask, revealing what lies underneath. It’s exiting her tomb of silence.
Is TTPD the act of confession that will bring her back to herself and allow her to return to the garden? God, I hope so.
CONFESSION AS A LEGAL STATEMENT
I said earlier that while I think TTPD is a sincere piece of confessional art, I also think that it is intentionally crafted as a performance of confession. By this I mean - TTPD is crafted to give the people what they want and expect from confessional art, particularly Taylor Swift’s confessional art. And what do the people want? They want the scoop. The gory details of her personal life. They want her to name names and tell them exactly what went down. In other words, they want to trace the evidence.
The performance of confession on TTPD hinges on the evidence she feeds the audience and how she directs us to use it. To understand this performance, we have to explore how TTPD navigates the third definition of the word “confession.” It’s time to go to court.
The Hearing: “At this hearing, I stand before my fellow members of The Tortured Poets Department with a summary of my findings.”
Since announcing TTPD, Taylor has been teasing the concept of this album as a hearing. She spoke of “entering into evidence.” She presented the artifacts. And now here she is, standing before the public, making a “plea of temporary insanity.”
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This imagery introduces yet another layer to the concept of this album as “confessional.” Here, we are in a courtroom, and she is confessing to a crime. She is presenting us with the evidence to support her plea.
I think there are two layers to the courtroom imagery. The first is the defendant herself trying to make sense of the losses she has sustained, sorting through the evidence. Hits Different off Midnights introduces this language: “I trace the evidence, make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” This language continues onto TTPD - i.e., in So Long London, she asks, “You swore that you loved me, but where was the proof?” This is in line with how Taylor has spoken about using music to make sense of her life.
But the second layer is that this isn’t just Taylor trying to make sense of things on her own. She is confessing directly to an audience - her fellow members of the tortured poets department, the public. She is again breaking the fourth wall, like on Dear Reader.
Importantly, this courtroom imagery bookends the listener’s experience of the album. It served as the audience’s first introduction to the album at the start of the promotional cycle. And she closes the album with this imagery via the epilogue poem. The whole album is framed as a court hearing.
This is fascinating within the context of the Taylor-verse because this framing directly parallels the way the public engages with her music. Her lyrics are treated as a factual, autobiographical accounting of her life (particularly her love life), which the public scours for evidence in an investigative mission to uncover the True Story she is telling vis-a-vis what we know of her personal life. And her music is, in fact, often reduced to an investigation into her love life. To most media outlets and fans, analysis of a Taylor Swift song seems to mean examining which man the song is about. The lyrics serve as evidence, rather than art.
So, when Taylor tells her audience that she is entering something into evidence, we are primed; we know what to do. Time to pull out the magnifying glass and every pap photo of Taylor taken in the last two years. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that she gave us so much “evidence” to work with over the course of the last year? So many public sightings of her to expertly match up with the lyrics on TTPD. Not to mention the Eras Tour as an opportunity for non-stop Easter egging. She presented her information-hungry audience with a veritable buffet of evidence to pick through and match up with the album.
And the album itself is chock-full of “clues” linking lyrics back to real-life figures in the TSCU. She already knows that her audience will follow those clues; it’s what happens every album cycle. But this time she doesn’t just lay the bait and wait for everyone to take it. She lays the bait and tells us to take it. She says that she is entering this evidence for us to review. She stands before us with a summary of her findings. She directs us to conduct the post-mortem.
When was the last time she so brazenly invited speculation? I’d argue that this brings us right back to the beginning of her career, hiding secret messages in the liner notes and directing her audience to decode the messages to find out who or what the song was about. She said she wanted people to read her lyrics. But the end result was that people read her lyrics without really reading them. Her lyrics that she was so proud of were not treated as art. They were reduced to clues, evidence linking the song to this man or that. And we need only read the Reputation prologue to know how she came to feel about that:
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So, it begs the question - Why is she directing her audience to follow the trail of evidence she laid out? Why evoke the language of the courtroom if she doesn’t want her music to be paternity tested in the court of public opinion? Why enact this performance of confession that seems to play directly into the public’s worst impulses?
Well, you know what they say: if it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Red Herrings: “And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms; my muses, acquired like bruises…”
Along with teasing the concept of TTPD as a court hearing from the very beginning, Taylor also introduced the suggestion of “red herrings” the same day she announced the album. This is no coincidence. A “red herring” is both a literary device AND a rhetorical device used in legal settings to distract or divert attention away from the main issues of the case. (Source) So, red herrings are a perfect fit for an album that centers on confession, playing in sandboxes both literary and legal.
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If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely believe that Taylor has been using red herrings in her work for quite some time as a tool to obscure and distract from her real-life muses. Naming a song “Style” is a perfect example of how she might very overtly hint at a public-facing muse in order to distract from the true inspiration. But, importantly, no matter how obvious we think these past red herrings were, TTPD marks a first: the first time she has explicitly pointed to red herrings in an album as part of the promotional cycle. The Rep prologue took us halfway there with the assertion that everyone who tried to paternity test the songs would be wrong. But now she’s saying: I am entering this evidence for you to review, but the evidence itself contains red herrings. I am planting evidence that is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion. Again: If it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.
Why do this? Why intentionally misdirect and then TELL us that’s what she’s doing? I can only assume that she wants us to see it. If she directs her audience to trace the evidence and tells us there are red herrings - well, then we will look for the red herrings. Or at least some of us will. And if we look closely enough, we’ll find them.
thanK you aIMee is a perfect example. There are three layers here: First, we have the subject of the song identified as Aimee. Then we have an old-school Taylor “hidden clue” in the title of the song - capitalizing letters to spell out Kim. Everyone sees that very obvious “clue” and pats themselves on the back for “solving the case”: the song is about Kim Kardashian. But then we have this line in the song: “I changed your name and any real defining clues / and one day, your kid comes home singin’ / a song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” Seems a bit contradictory, huh? She says she changed any real defining clues, but surely capitalizing letters in the song title to spell out someone’s name is a pretty defining clue. I smell a red herring. It could be that the capitalized letters are a red herring. It could be that the line in the song about not leaving any defining clues is a cheeky misdirection meant to cast doubt on the “clue” she left. I’d argue it’s probably both. Either way, the obvious contradiction built into this particular song serves to cast doubt on the history of Easter egging song subjects in the TSCU. This song takes us right back to the early days of Easter egging, capitalizing letters in lyric books to spell out secret messages. If this is a misdirection, who's to say there weren't misdirections built into the Easter eggs from the beginning?
The Alchemy is another example. This song falls near the end of the album, the final “muse-coded” song of the standard edition of TTPD. And if you’ve been tracing the evidence through the songs up until now, you’ll find matching “clues” in this song that seem to point at Matty Healy: themes of returning to a lost love, drug references in “heroin but this time with an E.” But wait - now she’s using a bunch of football references? There’s beer sticking to the floor while your friends lift you up over their heads because you just won the big game? The football imagery is so heavy-handed that it took very little time for every entertainment media outlet in creation to post a carousel of TayloTravis images along with lyrics to the song. But if you can keep yourself from getting distracted by the “Tayvis” fanfare, you might ask yourself - what the heck is going on in this song? Is it about Matty or Travis? Is it about both of them? The inherent contradictions point to another red herring, “clues” planted to mislead. And, well, if there are misdirections about the identities of her romantic muses built into this song…then who’s to say there aren’t misdirections built into the others? Who’s to say that anything you think you “know” about the identities of her muses is true, even if she’s the one who planted the evidence? Who’s to say that she is telling you the truth?
This line of questioning cracks open the entire foundation of muse-driven Easter egging in the TSCU. Following the trail of evidence to the red herrings she planted about muse identities will lead you to question the entire enterprise of following the evidence in the first place. And I think that’s precisely the point. You’re in a trap, and she wants you to know it. Because this practice of attaching public-facing male muses to all of her work has Taylor in a trap, too. As she says in Mastermind, she’s spent her whole career “scheming like a criminal to make them love [her] and make it seem effortless.” This is the first time she’s felt the need to confess. She’s copping to the scheming, pointing us to the red herrings. She’s asking us to accept her plea of temporary insanity on account of her restricted humanity. Asking that we understand the plight of the caged beast, driven to do the most curious things.
And if we’re going to understand, then we must understand this: we’re all in a trap. If her fans are going to embrace her rolling the stone away, they have to first see that tomb of silence for what it was: a trap ensnaring us all, limiting her artistic expression, and preventing her audience from hearing the core truth in her music.
https://preview.redd.it/exlv6veusv2d1.png?width=518&format=png&auto=webp&s=660f3e680f1a8403a6406205f9e346e19c63abd1

Confessional Art: How much is confession? How much is art?

So, we’ve established these core precepts of the TTPD Universe: TTPD is a sincerely confessional album, representing a continuation of our anti-hero’s journey towards “meet me at midnight.” At the same time, TTPD is not necessarily based in literal, factual truths - and Dr. Swift has confessed that to us, too.
Is that a contradiction? Do the red herrings she planted exist in opposition to confessional art? I would argue, no, they do not.
The public’s foundational understanding of confessional art is that it is faithfully, literally autobiographical. It tells us the factual truth about the author. But just how true is that? For the confessional poets, when it came to truth in art, facts were besides the point. Consider this quote from Robert Lowell about his artistic process (emphasis mine):

“They're not always factually true. There's a good deal of tinkering with fact. You leave out a lot, and emphasize this and not that. Your actual experience is a complete flux. I've invented facts and changed things, and the whole balance of the poem was something invented. So there's a lot of artistry, I hope, in the poems. Yet there's this thing: if a poem is autobiographical—and this is true of any kind of autobiographical writing and of historical writing, you want the reader to say, “This is true.” In something like Macaulay's History of England, you think you're really getting William III. That's as good as a good plot in a novel. And so there was always that standard of truth which you wouldn't ordinarily have in poetry—the reader was to believe he was getting the real Robert Lowell.” (Source)

Here, Lowell seems to say that a core part of his artistic mission was to write poetry that would be experienced as true. He crafted his poems to deliver the experience and impression of the “real Robert Lowell.” And this is separate and distinct from delivering factual truth. In fact, he “tinkered with fact” as part of this artistic choice - to create a poem that would be experienced as true, even if it technically was not in the strictest sense of the term.
Anne Sexton made similar comments about her poems - that she did not always adhere to literal facts. In one interview, she described these untruths as “little escape hatches” so she would “always have an out.” She goes on to say: “I can tell more truth than I have to admit to because I can tell the truth and say, after all, ‘This was a lie’ or ‘Of course not all of my poems are true.’” These escape hatches, then, opened up room for her to tell more truth. Perhaps not always the literal kind, but the sincere core truth that audiences recognize and respond to as “true.”
The use of “red herrings,” then, is not in opposition to the confessional mode. Red herrings can actually enhance confessional art when changing factual details allows room for the author to share pieces of themselves that they otherwise would not. And, further, the experience of truth for the audience does not hinge on strict adherence to literal facts. The audience needs to feel that they are getting the real Robert Lowell. The real Taylor Swift.
Maybe we haven't met the real Taylor Swift yet. But I think TTPD brought us several steps closer.

No, my title is not a typo. I believe that, not only do strongholds: the main way you go to the End need to be updated, but also Nether fortresses, as they’re how you obtain blaze powder for eyes of Ender.
This post will tie into my stronghold revamp post, so I’d suggest reading that if you haven’t already:
https://www.reddit.com/minecraftsuggestions/comments/1cnei5m/revamping_strongholds_for_an_end_update/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
With Mojang’s current annual update speed, I honestly think it may be better for them to create “two” End updates: one that fixes the “pre End”, mainly through fixing “castles” (strongholds and fortresses) as well as adding a few other new additions to the Nether, which I’ll detail in my Nether archaeology post, and one that actually fixes the End dimension, which I’ll do more write ups on. (So far, I’ve already done a write up on my concept for a “melodic forest” biome.)
https://www.reddit.com/minecraftsuggestions/comments/1ct1w47/the_melodic_forest_concept_for_an_end_biome/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I have some very basic concept art to share for this post, most of which is admittedly basic retextures or hue shifts of current items.
Anyways, my plan is to turn the Nether fortresses into a Nether version of trial chambers, only slightly easier to make up for how they’re mandatory for game progression. The structures will still be given the same name, but go through several major changes to be more current, while still keeping major features like blazes, wither skeletons, and Nether wart intact.
So, I want to go over some new building blocks that these renovated fortresses could be made out of, or that you could use yourself for new Nether themed builds.
Polished Netherrack
Can be crafted by putting a 2x2 of netherrack in a crafting table. Basically, just smooth netherrack in a grid.
Can then be smelted into smooth polished netherrack, giving it a dark purplish red color akin to Nether brick, still with the smooth grid texture.
Both blocks can be made into slabs, stairs, and walls.
Nether Brick Fence Gate
No reason this shouldn’t be in the game already. Would simply be added for parity with all the other fence types.
Red Nether Brick Fences and Fence Gates
Similar story to Nether brick fence gates, but with red Nether brick.
Cracked and Chiseled Red Nether Bricks
Do I need to explain this one?
Blue Nether Bricks
Ideally, I think red Nether bricks should be renamed to crimson Nether bricks, and these should be called warped Nether bricks, but I’ll just go for calling them red and blue.
They’d be crafted like this with a new item called warped wart, which I’ll go into later when I get into loot.
https://preview.redd.it/0vl9g0alku2d1.png?width=484&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5e9e6b423a81e3277663755a85549cdaba156ff
Here’s some concept textures from u/Mystjc101 that show off how normal, red, and blue Nether bricks could look. Although, I still do think fences and fence gates should be added along with them, as well as my proposition for smooth polished Netherrack. Also, this technically isn’t the original picture, as I edited the blue Nether bricks to look tealer.
https://preview.redd.it/vv2t4kzoku2d1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=c102690c13dded863dfe5cda492c2ba535233428
And, one other variant, actually…
Weeping Red and Twisting Blue Nether Bricks
Essentially, mossy Nether bricks for the red and blue variant.
They’d be crafted with the corresponding brick’s vine, like such:
Not sure how to make a block model yet, so text is the best I can do for now.
Using weeping red Nether bricks as an example, you could then make:
-Weeping red Nether brick slabs
-Weeping red Nether brick stairs
-Weeping red Nether brick walls
-Weeping red Nether brick fences
-Weeping red Nether brick fence gates
Likewise, just replace “weeping red” with “twisting blue” for the blue variants.
Having the moss/vines match the color of the bricks is intentional. Having, say weeping moss over blue Nether bricks would clog the game with too many blocks that I think would be too niche in the long run, especially when I want things like fences to get variants.
Crimson and Warped Caps
A rename for the Nether wart and warped wart blocks we already have. They’d be renamed to caps, because they’re part of the caps of Nether fungi. Functionality would remain the same.
Crimson and Warped Wart Blocks
These’d be textured differently from the caps to look more “pebbly”, I guess, to signify the individual warts making up the block. Both can be crafted with 9 of their corresponding warts, still.
Since they would no longer make up the caps of giant Nether fungi, they can be crafted back into 9 warts.
Nether Flower and Decorated Pots
I’ve seen a lot of people ask for colored pots, so this seems like the next best option. Clay and netherrack are the only items you need to first smelt into brick items before making individual brick blocks, so Mojang should embrace that and let us make pottery with both of them, giving us 2 pot colors.
The recipes would be as you’d expect.
https://preview.redd.it/v8r9rv87lu2d1.png?width=484&format=png&auto=webp&s=4059ec9994f232c68e209445ea4fe1c0d4cabd88
https://preview.redd.it/4xiv87b9lu2d1.png?width=484&format=png&auto=webp&s=e19a2613097861ea147e87f4134a5583c3fa7543
Nether decorated pots would be able to carry a stack of any one item, just like their Overworld counterparts. In my Nether archaeology post, I’ll go more in depth with my idea of Nether pottery sherds.
Withered Bone Block
Can be crafted with one bone block, and two coal, like this:
https://preview.redd.it/lgvatd7hlu2d1.png?width=484&format=png&auto=webp&s=d8771f0997bb9470ec332387737036d9dc87ba25
Can’t be crafted back into anything, since it’s made with two things. Wouldn’t have much use beyond being a black pillar block to go with Nether builds. Although, they will surround the base of Wither skeleton trial spawners.
More Magma Blocks
I don’t see these fitting into my fortress rework, but they’d be neat to have for players.
I’ll just list them off, because their recipes should be self-explanatory.
-Magma block stair
-Magma block slab
-Magma block wall
-Magma bricks
-Magma brick stair
-Magma brick slab
-Magma brick wall
-Chiseled magma brick (could maybe use a magma cube head in the middle)
Yes, these’d all still hurt you without the normal protections, and all full block variants would generate downward bubble columns.
General Structural Changes to Nether Fortresses
As I mentioned before, I want Nether fortresses to have trial spawners and vaults worked into them, But I've decided to keep the structure’s name the same to reference their castle-like build.
There’d still be both indoor and outdoor sections of the fortresses to explore, but perhaps with more unique rooms.
Also, you’ll now find two variants of fortresses: crimson fortresses made primarily of red Nether bricks, and warped fortresses made primarily of blue Nether bricks. Crimson fortresses can be found in Nether wastes and crimson forests, and warped fortresses can be found in soul sand valleys and warped forests. You could find neither in basalt deltas. Standard Nether brick would be used in these structures as an accent much like copper is used to accent tuff in trial chambers, mainly being used as a floor and ceiling material.
Mobs
According to the Wiki, 10 unique mobs spawn in trial chambers via trial spawners, or 11 if you count baby zombies. Other mobs also don’t spawn around trial chambers, regardless of light level, so I think fortresses should be treated the same.
Now, this does not mean a nearby ghast can’t attack you, but at least extra mobs won’t spawn inside the structure, unless they come from spawners.
So, here are my ideas for what could come out of trial spawners in fortresses: as well as a picture showing off what each of their spawner bases would look like. (Using Nether wart blocks as a replacement for chiseled red Nether bricks, bones with coal over them to represent my idea for Withered bones, and gray concrete to represent ash, a new block I’ll detail in my Nether archaeology post.)
Trial spawners are depicted as just the normal ones, since I didn’t feel like switching over to snapshots just for one picture.
https://preview.redd.it/6j14pgo9mu2d1.png?width=1308&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca2aba94d3f15eaeb15c2837114add8dc0ec43bf
Shnats
Yes, that last mob on the list is my own idea. Their name is meant to be a fusion of “ash gnat”. Here’s some rough concept art for what I imagine them looking like, beig roughly the size of chickens:
Would take on the shape of a square, unlike bees' more rectangular body
I’m only going to go over their attack methods here, because, in my Nether archaeology post, I want to detail the other main place (a new Nether biome) you can find them in, as well as their uses.
A shnat would fly about, much like a bee or ghast. When they spot you, they’ll chase you until they crash into you, or a wall, at which point, they’ll kamikaze into a plume of ash. (Kind of like how squid will ink you when attacked.) So, they’re kind of like creepers, but, instead of griefing nearby blocks, shnats will simply explode into an obtrusive particle effect. If they die by kamikaze, like creepers, they won’t drop anything, but they will of course do a bit of damage.
If you outrun a shnat while it’s chasing you, it’ll lose interest and go back to default, no longer homing in to kill itself.
Yes, gnats are arthropods, so shnats will be affected by bane of arthropods.
In fortresses, in order to get loot from shnat spawners, you have to kill all schnats normally, not letting any of them kamikaze. If any of them die by kamikaze, the trial spawner will spawn in a backup shnat until you can kill it properly.
Blaze and Wither Skeleton Rooms
At least one of these will spawn with every fortress, coming with one blaze or Wither skeleton spawner, as well as murals for the corresponding mobs.
Because trial spawners can only spawn in so many mobs at once, these rooms would contain normal, infinite mob spawners. That way, anyone that wants to make traditional farms for these two to grind on rods or skulls can do so.
Nether Decorated Pots
Can be occasionally found in some rooms in fortresses, regardless of the variant. Their faces will come with several sherds unique to fortresses.
-Inferno (depicts a blaze)
-Bushel (depicts a bundle of Nether wart)
-Boss (depicts the Wither)
As well as a Nether sherd equivalent of the burn (fire) sherd. In my Nether archaeology post, I’ll explain how both pot types will have unique sherds, but share sherds like the fire, heart, and potion sherds.
This’d also be a good way for them to add a new music disc (probably by Lena) that you’d need to break a pot to get.
Gardens
Relatively small indoor gardens/farms. Again, at least one would come in every fortress. Crimson fortress gardens would come with large crimson fungi and empty soul sand patches, and warped fortress gardens would come with large warped fungi and empty soul sand patches.
I should mention that I don’t want trial keys to be compatible with both chambers and fortresses. Otherwise, you could just go to a trial chamber to open fortress vaults, or vice versa.
Instead, here’s a quick mockup of fortress keys: normal and ominous. I recolored them to look like the main materials used in fortresses, like how trial keys look like they're made out of tuff and copper.
https://preview.redd.it/wtxppjxknu2d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=1aae896ebaba0e934f74d4b4d5ce0aca052a0bca
Gardens would come with one standard vault, which will always have a chance of giving you crimson or warped wart, depending on the fortress variant. The empty soul sand patches could then be where you try to grow Nether wart. I think soul torches or lanterns should spawn in the gardens, and a new feature should be added where Nether wart grows faster if next to a soul light source, maybe once every four blocks like with Overworld crops and water.
Also, Mojang should get rid of the chance of finding Nether wart in bastions to make fortresses a bit more unique.
Warped Wart
As already mentioned, can be found from opening vaults in gardens in warped fortresses.
https://preview.redd.it/48ubvtlvnu2d1.png?width=160&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd6b6b855666b2b217ccc35b5ff6e0b62c14a60b
Can be used to craft warped wart blocks or blue Nether bricks, but its main use would be to brew up a pugnacious potion.
A pugnacious potion acts like an awkward potion, but, instead of having a consistent status effect, any entity affected with an effect brewed with a pugnacious potion will do something upon death, or when hit.
1.21 is adding four of these already: weaving, wind charging, oozing, and infested. With pugnacious potions, you’d now need to brew up these four potions with a pugnacious potion, not an awkward potion.
To compensate, however, I say more “pugnacious effects” should be added.
Ominous Fortress Trials, and Pugnacious Effects
These’d work pretty similarly to ominous chamber trials. Zombified piglins, skeletons, and Wither skeletons will all get a chance of spawning with upgraded gear with trims (including some new ones) that you could find in fortresses, and random lingering potions will be thrown from spawners.
That includes some new ones that you can make yourself:
Fire Charged
Can be brewed with a blaze rod. When used, any mob with the effect that’s killed will produce a pile of fire in the nearby vicinity after they die.
Molten
Can be brewed with a chiseled magma brick. When used, any mob killed with the effect will spawn two medium magma cubes. Great for gathering froglights in the Overworld
And, some extra effects that wouldn’t spawn during fortress ominous trials, but may have interesting implications.
Blossoming
Can be brewed with a spore blossom. Upon death, a mob with this effect will produce a trailing particle effect that reaches to the ceiling directly above them, planting a spore blossom there. If the trail can't reach a ceiling (Ex: only the sky is above you), it'll drop the blossom on the ground as an item.
Like how weaving is the only way to reproduce cobwebs, this seems like an inteeresting option to renew spore blossoms.
Catalyzing
Can be brewed with a sculk catalyst. Any mob killed with the effect will drop no XP, instead leaving behind a pile of sculk, regardless of if there’s a catalyst nearby.
Other Loot Ideas
So, of course, fortresses would come with some of the “standard” unique loot:
-A new trim or two (one based off the blaze for sure, like how there’s going to be a breeze trim)
-1-3 new discs
-A new banner pattern or two (ones that depicts a flame, and another depicting a blaze)
-The warts that I already went over
But, I think more needs to be added than that, obviously. So, I’ll briefly go over some possible ideas.
Netherite Horse Armor
I'd love to credit the original maker of this sprite, but they deleted their Reddit account.
The “lazy” but obvious add to fortresses, and that should remain an exclusive drop to help them stick out from bastions. Maybe they’d be an ominous exclusive drop.
But, beyond that, why not rework horse armor entirely? Such as by:
-Giving it durability, making it work more like wolf or standard armor.
-Giving it the ability to be trimmed (using the same trim items for player armor)
-Giving you the ability to enchant it
I found that u/butdamnthisisbetter did a pretty great writeup of how horse armor enchantments should work, so I’m not even going to try to come up with better ideas when I agree with almost everything they’re saying:
https://www.reddit.com/minecraftsuggestions/comments/1cvr6xb/enchantable_horse_armo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Only suggestion I’d add to that here is to add horse armor books to the fortress loot tables.
Golden Sledges
I just tweaked the golden hammer from the Fabric Hammers mod to have a crimson stick handle.
A new tool that can’t be crafted, like a trident. A golden mallet, pretty much, but I’m calling it a sledge to not have it be confused with the mace.
It’d be more common than the mace, but still be rather useful. It can be used to not break blocks, but rather “break down” blocks. My current ideas:
-Turns stone bricks into cracked stone bricks without needing a furnace
-Turns concrete back into concrete powder
Maybe adding this would open the doors for us to crack even more blocks, like regular clay bricks, ice, or glass?
Soul Pearls
Not an item exclusive to fortresses, but you could find them here, by bartering, or from “creating them” yourself.
As per my rough concept art here, they’d be Ender pearls covered in soul sand.
The soul sand buries the core/\"eye\" of the pearl.
My logic here is that mollusks produce pearls by “purifying” unwanted sand that gets into them. Considering shulkers already exist in the End, I am going to elaborate in my End biome write ups that I’d like the Ender pearl lore to be better established and traced back to mollusk mobs (including several new ones of mine), because I don’t see how Endermen produced them themselves.
Aside from fortresses and bartering, you can also get soul pearls from throwing an Ender pearl on a soul sand block. After 1 minute, it’ll convert to a soul pearl. This is to reference how real pearls can take up to a year to form, but still way more fair and fast for Minecraft.
When throwing a soul pearl, you’ll still get damaged, but, if you’re by any sculk items, you won’t cause vibrations. So, you can use them to occlude sculk while traversing the deep dark.
Admittedly, a niche use on its own, which is why I want them to replace Ender pearls in the eye of Ender recipe.
This would also entail a retexture of the eye of Ender, which I think should now incorporate a soul flame considering its new recipe.
Apologies if my eye of Ender retexture mockup is terrible. The eye's supposed to look like it's burning, like a mini soul flame sun.
Yes, that means End portal frames and Ender chests would need a retexture, too.
I think it’s a reasonable, realistic change that would help make progression more interesting. In retrospect, having magical fire power turn a pearl to an eye doesn’t make much sense, so having it burn souls into an eye at least sounds a morsel more interesting and realistic.
11 pages in my Google Docs on this. I should probably stop, but my next post will be on my ideas for Nether archaeology, and will have a link to this one.

This has been bugging me for months