also just a little fyi before i go to sleep. um people are allowed to complain about their lives and vent online when ever, how ever, or how often they please and they should be able to without receiving paragraphs of unsolicited advice. especially if they’re complaining about how their brain simply works (and usually not in their favor). like don’t just give them random advice just because you don’t think complaining/venting is gonna help anything. it does. it can make people feel better just getting to write out the shit going on in their head and get it off their chest. like if it makes them feel better by doing so then why have a problem with it.

Will-o-wisp

nu metal lestat 💀 hair metal lestat 😁👍

What he says: Honestly, Ed? I don’t like who you are around this guy.

What he means: This entire scenario makes me uncomfortable because Jack’s banter is akin to the bullying I’ve dealt with my entire life. He reminds me of those who stoned me for picking flowers, or those who blatantly mocked me for being soft. I know he’s your friend, and I want to like him for you. But seeing you willingly engage in something that brings up bad memories is hard for me.

What he says: This is who I am, Stede. Do you see me now? You’re always going to realize what I am.

What he means: This is a part of me that I’ve never been able to escape. This is who I’ve masqueraded as for years and years. This is something I’m afraid I’ll always have to be. Jack feels like a representation of that persona, and you dislike him, so I don’t want you to dislike me. I don’t want you to see who I believe myself to be, and consequently hate me as well. So I’m leaving before you can. I’m leaving before it’s too late. I’m choosing to leave before I lose you.

One of the best parts of Fellowship of the Ring is finding out about Aragorn and Bilbo’s friendship. Like I’ve seen people talk about how they collaborated on the song together, but I have yet to see people talk about this:

“[Bilbo] turned to Strider. ‘Where have you been, my friend? Why weren’t you at the feast? The Lady Arwen was there.’”

Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring pg. 261

Like. Bilbo was definitely one of Aragorn/Arwen’s chief shippers and no one can change my mind about that.

I know she had era tour but I don’t think I can do it w a broken heart is actually eras tour

I thought of this too. Maybe sometime down under? No way to know, but I did think the line she threw in at the end “Try and come for my job” might have hinted at something. I can read it both ways. As always, we’ll never know for sure. But I think it’s fair to say she has felt this way many times. It reminded me of Katy having to go on stage immediately after having her husband tell her he was filing for divorce. And it’s relatable. We’ve all had to put on a happy face at work and pretend things are fine at home.

I don’t think An gets enough credit for being like… such a casually nice & kind person without even trying. To the point where even I can tell and I’m not a VBS fan (behind on stories) bc it just bleeds through in every interaction she has with other characters. Like it’s never her being Absurdly Over The Top Kind she just. Treats everyone equally. Friendly with everyone. Thinking abt her being the first one @ school to attempt to befriend Mizuki and treat them like a person. Nene being nervous on her first day of second year and An just immediately walks up to her like Hiiii good morning!! An Shiraishi: Lesbian Jesus.

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.

Aight I’m gonna rant about the ending of totk… again. I deleted the first post cuz honestly my opinion has changed on it and I just wanna say some things cuz a lot of people left some awesome inputs.

Now I wanna say this first, I have nothing against happy endings. I love happy endings. Zelda games all have happy endings. But they’re also very bittersweet and some of them just outright devastating. This game def has a happy ending, but it’s underwhelming to me. What I want out of totk is CONSEQUENCE. You’re telling me that Link lost his arm and Zelda turned into a dragon and then in the end everything is back to normal and things are fine and dandy? Like it’s not a terrible thing, but it feels like everything you went through was kind of pointless cuz the characters don’t seem to have been affected by it. I would’ve been less upset if Zelda at least kept her memories as a dragon, or had some dragon features or something. The light dragon was easily the best part of the game and it ended in such an unsatisfying way. YOU don’t have to agree with that statement, but it was unsatisfying to me. I didn’t like how Rauru and Sonia’s bs magic just turned her back. I can understand Rauru’s arm being there since Link was there and Sonia’s time power turning her back to her original form, but how is she just there? It’s not a TERRIBLE solution but it’s not good to me personally.

A lot of people commented on the original post that there should’ve been a quest for Link to find a way to bring Zelda back, and I found that far more intriguing than leaving her as a dragon. This game is full of fetch quests but this type of quest I would’ve loved, besides, Impa WAS going to look for a way to bring Zelda back, it’s not like it would’ve come out of nowhere. I’m sure doing this would ruin the flow of the ending, but let’s think about AOC. Terrako dies. He stays dead at the ending. But after you finish the game, you can start rebuilding him, and there’s a second ending where Terrako is back with a cute second staff credit. Totk already has some AOC influence with the character bios and stuff, so I feel like it would’ve been fine if they had done this honestly. And it would’ve been more satisfying that the player WORKED towards Zelda returning back to normal. You can have the dive that parallels the beginning and all that stuff, it’s fine. I just feel like this would’ve been a better ending to the game.

But again, I want consequence. I want Zelda to either be haunted or amazed at seeing history before her very eyes as a dragon, I want Link’s arm to not magically regenerate, I want there to be something different with the characters. Cuz to me, it felt like the characters came out the same way they went in.

Now just to clarify, this would’ve fixed the ending for ME. If you’re content with the ending I do not care. Good for you. I’m so glad you’re happy. But this overhyped game wasn’t good for me and I have so many issues with it so I just wished that Nintendo did something better with the ending. Something more bittersweet or hopeful towards a future cuz there’s none of that (I guess Mineru dies but she was already dead and only Zelda cared about that so I really didn’t care that she officially died. And it’s not like she was an interesting character to begin with).

Tldr; I wish there were more consequence to the game and I wish the light dragon had a more satisfying ending

きっと日本語ではdungeon meshiを見れば、日本語を話すかたを思い出す。きっと勉強のに役立ちます

important question, do people think magistrex is in the recent mc series or is it a seperate more peaceful rt character. please discuss i am so so interested

Jackie realizing she’s gonna have to take care of shauna and jeff’s ghost baby

The thing is , ATLA live action is like…an approximation of what the story is actually supposed to be.

There are elements that good, even really good, but it leaves you feeling hollow because it’s missing the heart of what ATLA is about. It’s a delicate balancing act between tragedy and comedy, underscored with hope.

The live action is sort of reminiscent of Ember Island players because it’s trying to be as -real- as it can be but doesn’t delve into deeper meaning.

To me, it felt like they wrote the story with thinking about the end too much. They were too wrapped up in how these characters end up, how the story ends. They overlooked how raw, how unpolished it was at the beginning.

me after editing the aau prologue for the bajillionth time

also btw michelle lasso is a victim!!

These boys have stolen my heart

And they can steal yours too, read Kit and Basie please