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ghouljams · 7 months

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To be honest, I would want to be Price and Witch’s kid instead of fuck them idk why. I have mommy and daddy issues I guess lol.

Yeah I can do that, Witch adopts a lot of people and Price... also adopts strays.

"Do you want some tea darling?" The Witch asks, crouching to be on your level, "or maybe some hot chocolate? Could perk you right up."

You think for a moment before nodding your head. You're not supposed to talk to strangers, but you've seen this witch in the neighborhood and there's something comforting about her. Her concern seems genuine as she fusses with the copper pots in her kitchen. And you really can't complain about the rich dark liquid she pours neatly into a mug for you. It certainly looks, and smells, like a melted chocolate bar. Far flung from the powdered stuff you expected.

She frowns at you for a moment, plucking at the space around you with purposeful fingers. You sip your drink, and try not to watch her too closely. She may feel warm, but her movements are alien to you, and strike at your stomach with a strange primal fear. You think it's fear, you don't quite have the word for this feeling. You're sure it will come to you.

The chocolate coats your tongue, thick and viscous, you think you can taste cinnamon under the cocoa. The Witch taps her finger against her cheek, watching you, she seems ill at ease. Obviously concerned over the strange child that's made themselves comfortable in her home. She seems to come to some conclusion, holding her hand over her mouth as she whispers something. It's inaudible and yet it fills the room, dissonant whispers echoing off the walls and collecting in a swirl of smoke.

A man steps out with a roll of his shoulders, and almost as quickly as he lays eyes on you, he's looking back at the witch.

"Where'd you get the changeling?" He asks with a raise of his brow. The Witch lets out a breath.

"Oh good, knew they felt fae," She goes to the kitchen while the man takes a seat next to you, "they just showed up, I assume they're one of the neighbor's kids."

"Is that right?" The man smiles at you, it makes his eyes crinkle at the edges, you smile back with all your teeth. He seems to like that, poking his fingers against your sides to make you giggle. "Where's your mum, hm? Can't have wandered too far off."

You shrug and the fae man nods. You like when adults don't make you talk, sometimes talking is too much. The witch taps her fingers together, thinking, while the man lets smoke swirl off his fingers. It makes little shapes and animals in the air, elephants and lions dancing around your head, butterflies flying over to distract the witch. You hold your hand out for one, and watch a lion burst into a flock of penguins to waddle across your palm.

"I can run a trace, I suppose," The Witch sighs walking closer, she crouches to be at eye level with you, "Can I have a pinch of your hair darling? I promise it won't hurt a bit."

You don't know if you want to give a witch your hair. It seems dangerous, that's how witches take control of people. You look at the man for help, surely he knows how witches work and won't let this one puppet you around. He chuckles, leaning his elbow against the table to rest his head against his fist. He nods at you.

"Go on then, I'll make sure she doesn't do anything nasty." He assures you. You look back at the Witch, who's glaring at your new friend.

"Don't make me sound so wicked," She scolds him.

"Don't need my help for that sweetheart," There's something warm in his voice, something that makes the whole house light up with warmth as the Witch bites down a smile.

She's very careful with you, pressing her fingers against your scalp as she twists hair around her fingers, plucking a few stray strands before pulling away again. She's right, it doesn't hurt. You rub your head, and she turns it back towards your mug of liquid chocolate. You think that's payment enough.

You don't watch what she does with your hair, but you feel the shiver of it. It's like a little zap of electricity, a stray shock from rubbing your socks against carpet. You wrinkle your nose at the feeling, it's not unbearable, but it's unpleasant. You consider peaking at what the Witch is doing, but you catch sight of your new fae friend first, and watching him watch her is much more interesting.

His eyes spark, and you mean that literally. There's a fire behind them that traces its way around his iris each time he blinks. A spark of gold against ice blue. A shooting star in a snowstorm. His eyes smile, and even though his fingers stop you from seeing his lips you assume they're smiling at well. You glance at the witch and see her hold up a vial of black powder to the light, her eyes studying it as she tips it one way then the other. It's not anything interesting, you don't see what's worth staring at.

"Can you make a bear?" You ask the man, he hums questioningly before looking at you. "They're my favorite," You explain.

"Can I make a bear?" He scoffs, swirling his fingers to collect the smoke. The wisps of it draw together and burst with a spark into the silhouette of a brown bear. It plods along the table top before sitting down to look around. It's a good bear.

"I know a good story about a bear," You tell him. He raises a brow, and doesn't stop you as you chatter away telling your favorite fairy tale. In fact his smoke seems to act out the scenes for you, stopping and restarting as you try to remember details. By the time you finish there's no more sound coming from the witch's work, and you're starting to notice the "lovely princess" and "handsome prince" smoke figures look a lot like your hosts.

"I called their mum," The witch tells the man, setting a cup of tea in front of him. "She should be here soon." The fae man snaps his fingers and the smoke disperses.

"One of the neighbors?" He asks, and she hums in confirmation. He tugs at her hand, pulls her down to perch on his lap with a quiet word.

"Are you alright to go home dear?" She asks you, and you think she means it. Sometimes people ask you things but they don't really want an answer, they just want to ask. You nod after a moment's thought. She looks relieved. "If you ever get lost again, you can call me,-" she hands you a little black card with gold lettering, it looks very official, "-I'll get you back home."

You turn the card over. There's no name on it just a phone number, an address, and one word, "Witch." You're studying one of the gold stars on the corner of it when there's a knock at the door. The Witch stands to answer it, and the fae man's touch lingers on her hip before she moves away. He gives you a wink as she pulls the door open, as if his affections are a conspiracy between the two of you. You hop off your chair and he catches your arm.

"Price," He tells you quietly, it feels like an important word so you nod solemnly. He smiles, "Go on back to your mum, and don't go spreading my name around."

You hold onto your mother's hand as you wave good-bye. She thanks the Witch profusely, though she waves all of them off. You watch the gold slip off of her like water, humans are so funny like that. They never hold onto heavy ties, kind only for the sake of kindness.

"Do you know how worried I was?" Your mother scolds you, "You're lucky someone dangerous didn't find you."

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wavesoutbeingtossed · 2 months

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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.

#thisisctrying and taylortruther sorry for tagging you two!#can remove if needed!#but you guys made me think a lot #this was inspired by a conversation i had with a friend the other day #where she relayed an argument she had with her partner #who basically felt slighted that he wasn’t getting acknowledgement for all the housework he does — which is. just. the dishes #and she was like ‘wow congrats you’ve done the dishes — i do every other fucking thing to keep this household afloat in ways you see #and don’t see and i never ask for praise because it’s just stuff that needs to get done because that’s how you support your family’#and it just reminded me that some partners (and a certain kind of man in particular) just… think their struggles take precedence #when their partners drown in them everyday but keep things afloat out of necessity and are never recognized or supported for it #(my friends have shitty husbands/boyfriends can you tell lol)#long post #again the way i just feel like i know the vibes of ttpd in my bones are 😵‍💫#i feel like i have a lot more thoughts but I’m trying to be more gracious and less parasocial so #also just want to again defend the introverts of the world by reiterating that being introverted does not mean unsupportive #being a shitty partner does though!#writing letters addressed to the fire #it’s also just like… i feel like if Taylor had had even a modicum of the support in private and even public she needed #she’d probably still be with you know who and wouldn’t have considered leaving let alone doing it #because it would have felt like enough and like it was what was needed for both of them #whereas we’re seeing a completely new side of her open up now because this is the first time she’s ever had that support from a partner #in her adult life at least #and it’s like it’s opening up things she didn’t know she needed or wanted

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