#do not tag as husband/partner

[cebwrites]

@star-babii made me the CUTEST little law edit to help cheer me up from a funk 🥺💖💗

my crops are watered, the sun is out, feeling joy again, they're the light of my life everybody say thank you ishiiiii <3

[ineffablyruined]

Do Aziraphale's eyes snap down to Crowley's sprawled body before he says, "Temptation Accomplished?"

They absolutely do.

Temptation, indeed.

[indecisivetomato]

i just wanted to draw something stupid and soft

[goodomensao3tagoftheday]

[considerablecolors]

Despite the explicit instruction not to, Orpheus looks back. He needs to know if Eurydice will follow him anywhere, and so, he turns- And he finds her standing in place, unmoving.

We, the audience, find this sad for a few reasons:

1. We know there was a time when Eurydice would have followed him to the ends of the earth and straight into hell- but now, she watches Orpheus ascend to heaven alone. We know there was a time when she would have followed. We know what has changed between the then and the now.

2. Orpheus does not know what has changed. Orpheus does not know Eurydice stays because of how badly she loves. Orpheus thinks Eurydice has stayed behind because she does not love him enough.

3. Eurydice thinks the same thing. We know this, but we cannot tell them. They have both gone to places we cannot go.

4. By looking back, Orpheus has doomed them both, thinking he was saving them. If given the chance, he would do it again.

5. At some point, Orpheus believed the world was good, and Eurydice believed the world was evil. At some point, their love was powerful enough to change each other's minds.

6. Now, both see what the world could be. Orpheus reveres it. Eurydice fears it. Both are wrong. We don't know if their love can become powerful enough to change their minds again.

7. Eurydice does not follow, but she waits to see if Orpheus will turn around again. She cannot resist one last look.

8. We, the audience, know what has happened, and we know why- Orpheus and Eurydice are not gods. Their mistakes are human. We watch the scene again and again, denying what has transpired, longing for a deeper reason- coffees, lies, a higher power- but the story of Orpheus and Eurydice plays out the way it always does, for the reason it always has- love.

9. These two know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice well. Perhaps they watched it play out. Perhaps they greeted Eurydice at death's door. Perhaps they sat in a tavern and heard Orpheus play. Aziraphale thinks the story is about the inevitably of fate, the inability to resist the higher-ups- a god's will is ineffable. Crowley thinks the story is about the inevitably of leaving, the inability to have a happy ending- a god is always cruel. Neither have gotten this story quite right.

10. Once again, Aziraphale and Crowley have forgotten to focus on the love.

[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.

[possamble]

AHA thank u i was mostly just. frantically pulling the "no hetero" card bc farcille is super super always endgame for me and the "marcille has two hands" thing is absolutely not for me and my personal characterization of marcille

i like. can't find it anymore for some reason but there was a farcille fic set just after the shuro confrontation where laios reaches over to hold marcille's hand and ask her if she likes him or if she's just tolerating him too and it was so. the vulnerability. the puppyness.

that safety and security he must feel in knowing that she wears her heart on her sleeve and he will always know when she's unhappy with him because she will absolutely let it be known. the way that falin's first revival was the turning point for the way he felt about her because, for the first time in his life, protecting falin wasn't something he had to shoulder alone. there was finally someone else who cared about her as much as he did (in his eyes, resenting his parents for failing to protect her) and would stop at nothing to save her. the way it must have been proof for him that, not only was falin not alone anymore, he wasn't alone anymore.

idk why i like rather than dislike the fact that his only framework for parsing how he feels about "the first girl other than his sister that he's ever cared this much about" is a comphet romantic lens. like he would have the autism moment of fully assuming that he's in love with her for a while and just like. not? doing anything about it? because he doesn't feel the urge to, nor is he sad that he knows marcille would mostly likely never "feel the same way" about him?

like. he "figures out" that he's "in love with marcille" with all the passion of printing out a label and sticking it onto a favourite scrapbook for organizational purposes. he's equally happy to be her husband or brother-in-law so long as it means she stays close and is part of his family.

i know logically i should hate it but it's sooo crunchy to me. my comphet besties ever. designated plus one and dance partner to all fancy and formal occasions. having actual real chemistry but the "romantic" part of it is some weird shapeshifter smokescreen. augh

[altschmerzes]

it's just that sometimes you're so... impossibly happy and full of so much incredible joy that you gotta post about it on the internet otherwise you may get on the roof with a bullhorn yknow.

[void-dreaming]

So I'm rewriting both my Kirby AUs from the ground up, which means lots and lots of neat stuff.

Here's a concept for older (15~16ish) Marzipan.

Oh yeah, I'm not kidding when I say EVERYTHING is changing xhdndh

[sunglasses-and-bowties]

this poll has no repercussions or scientific importance but humor me because i'm so curious....i've seen a few different ship names for aziraphale/crowley floating around and they seem to wax and wane in popularity over time so, tell me:

[1tbls]

once read a fic where it described kim as a "widower" because of eyes' death and i don't think i'll ever get over that

[sixofazicrws]

Aziraphale: Wait, Beelzebub and Gabriel are together? Why didn’t you tell me?

Crowley: Because I wanted our plan to fail, putting us both in emotional distress leading to me confessing my love for you and you leaving to join heaven again because you’re still convinced you can fix the toxic and corrupted system.

Aziraphale:

Crowley:

Crowley: OBVIOUSLY I DIDN’T KNOW!

[goodomensao3tagoftheday]

[the-rat-eatery]

Yay! My two favorite things- the grandness of the universe and handholding!!

Background and other things below the cut because I swear I spent half my time on that

[nekorinnie]

Like mother.. like son.. kinda... need to do an actual wip of these lol

[hare-there]

Dude how tf did the "My adventures with superman" team get a hold of my boyfriend's sketchbook wtf wtf