#household conversations

[panickedpansexualprincess]

Me, staring at Simeon's outfit front and back: How does Simeon's clothing even work? My partner: Magic. Me: I'm pretty sure it's a LEOTARD with pants over it. My Partner, sagely nodding: MAGIC. Me: 😆😆😆😂🤣

[specter-dollhouse]

Making new friends comes pretty easy to Stella, but only when there are interesting people around. This town seems so much smaller to her than where she grew up.

[waterfallofspace]

Anyone else not able to say 'bless you', either because it feels too personal, embarrassing, slightly erotic or a mixture of all of the above-

Buuuuuut also whenever an event interrupts the conversation, you feel so much more awkward not saying anything/commenting on it at all, and so you wish you could just... say that phrase, or have some other thing that makes sense to say to just- shrug it off???

[nitrozem]

Thanks for the help, Kenji!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[lionsenpai]

fangrai nation thank you for showing up on my slurs on pulse comic. in exchange for your contributions to the CAUSE can I interest you in lightning happy trail derangement

i get it girl. i fucking get it.

[active-mind-15]

Another baby Akashi scenario I just thought of

Imagine the first time he ever loses a tooth. I bet when he feels it wobble for the first time, he goes to tell his mother, who then tells him about the tooth fairy and how when his tooth comes out, he should leave it under his pillow, and then when he wakes up the next day, there will be money.

Masaomi later expresses his disapproval to Shiori privately because the tooth fairy is just "fairytale nonsense", but she is adamant about letting their son believe in it because he already doesn't get much time to be a kid as is.

For the next few days, baby Akashi constantly jiggled his tooth back and forth to see if it would come out, and his father had to tell him to leave his tooth alone multiple times. It isn't until one day during dinner time, baby Akashi is eating, and while he's chewing something, he feels a weird tugging sensation and then he opens his mouth and pulls out his tooth.

He drops everything to run over to his parents' chairs and announce that his tooth finally came loose, and Shiori reminds him to put it under his pillow that night while Masaomi just looks on in skepticism. He seems about ready to say that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, but then he looks at how excited his son is and ultimately can't bring himself to do it, so he says nothing instead.

The next morning, when baby Akashi runs out of his room to tell his parents that the tooth fairy left him a 1000 yen bill, Shiori glances toward her husband and gives him a knowing smile. Masaomi pointedly avoids her eyes and continues pretending to read his newspaper.

[astriiformes]

Me: I have "Losing my Religion" stuck in my head, but specifically the version from that one tweet that replaced it with "Losing to a pigeon"

Scribe: ...I am not familiar with this tweet

Me: Oh sorry I assumed it was universal

Scribe: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,

[mantisgodsdomain]

We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.

[nihongoseito]

How do you stay motivated in self-study?

メッセージありがとうございます！ thank you for asking!

this is an interesting question for me because i've been self-studying for so long...almost 12 years at this point(?!?!). i decided to learn japanese for fun and for no other reason than because i wanted to (i'm a big proponent of "if it sucks, hit da bricks" lol). i was just a kid, so i had no idea at all how much time and effort it would entail, and sometimes i think that back then, if i had known at the time how much studying and studying and more studying it would take for me to become conversationally proficient, i wouldn't have even started. and i'm really, really glad i don't live in that world, where i never decided to self-study because i thought too far into the future and tried to quantify my studying.

so i guess that's my biggest piece of advice, even though it sounds counterintuitive: try not to plan where you're going next or any specific long-term goals, because if you're anything like me, you'll scare yourself off. if you focus just on what's right in front of you—today's kanji, your current textbook, etc.—then you'll have a much easier time remembering why you like japanese (or whatever target language you're working on!). that kind of viewpoint on learning a language makes it really clear that you are building a beautiful structure out of many discrete pieces, not just out of thin air or sheer linguistic osmosis. not only has that attitude kept me motivated, since making decisions as i go always keeps things fresh, but i also genuinely think it's helped me learn better and remember what i've studied.

also, don't be afraid to give up on something, a book or a grammar point or even a whole routine/study plan, and try something else instead. you can always come back to it later, and in my opinion there's no point trying to quantify or quantitatively evaluate your learning in that way. there's absolutely no shame in admitting something is too hard right now. plus, letting yourself feel confident in what you do know is a great boost to motivation—every single little piece is an accomplishment!

does any of that make sense?? this is how i've handled it anyway! ofc, the nature of self-study is that it's different for everyone, but hopefully the things i've said here resonate with some people :) みんな、頑張ってね！！

[sky-is-the-limit]

Fuck anyone who has ever made you feel like you can't enjoy a piece of media, music, video game, sport because of your gender. Fuck them.

[panickedpansexualprincess]

Me: I'm trying to figure out exactly how much about amnesia Waka knows.

Enfys: Waka only know enough to know the chemical compound of the amnesia darts.

Me: /cracks up laughing, but they're probably not wrong 😂🤣

[kacchanisms]

average morning

[discoperulean]

moving in 📦

[rooshroomsims]

Tory & Evan are finally married!!!

My pookie wookie shnookem bears are finally married and im so happy for them <33

[king-aidan-the-artist]

Having sexual thoughts about your friends are out

Having murderous thoughts about your friends are in