#even though we’re adults

[blouptalking]

Even Though We’re Adults

Otona ni Natte mo

Takako Shimura

8 volumes (ongoing)

drama, romance, slice of life

“Ayano, an elementary school teacher in her thirties, stops by a bar one day and meets another woman named Akari. Sparks fly as the two chat, and before the night is over, Ayano even goes in for a kiss. Akari is intrigued but confused…especially when she discovers that Ayano has a husband! Both Ayano and Akari are about to find out that love doesn’t get any easier, even as you grow older.”

(resume from Seven Seas Entertainment)

Story: 7/10

A simple yet complex slice of life story. I was a little scared because it seems that many topics were covered in this manga, like queer relationships and depression for example, but it all seemed really natural in some way. The entire story is very realistic and I could totally see it happen to someone in real life… One thing I could criticize is the infidelity in the manga. It just feels very wrong and it made me uncomfortable on a few occasions. I hate stories that attempt to justify adultery by "real love/fate" or whatever.

Cast: 9/10

The cast is very humanlike. All of them have their faults and their qualities. I’m thinking about the husband (I forgot his name ngl). I find his behavior somewhat irritating but at the same time I totally understand how he feels about all of this and why he's acting that way. You don’t really get to like or dislike a character because they all have their reasons to be as they are so you can't actually blame them. And I love that, it makes the story even more real.

Art: 6/10

Not my favorite kind of art, but I still love it a lot. It’s easy to understand. The volume cover are beautiful, I like the watercolour ambiance and the color scheme used is also very nice.

Enjoyment: 6/10

I really liked this story. I've only been through the first three volumes. I'm going to wait for the rest to be released in my country so I can buy the manga. Even if, once again, the whole infidelity thing made me uncomfortable.

Overall: 7/10

[lycorid]

Wow, a yuri with adult characters! And they’re both 35!

Years ago, when I spent a lot more of my free time reading manga, I would often come across a scanlator group called the Sexy Akiba Detectives. Their name came to stick in my mind because of how often I saw it in their custom credits, accompanied by whatever comments they had about the chapter. I learned from reading those notes that they were a yuri focused group that occasionally did other genres as commissions. Years later, tonight actually, their name popped up in my mind and I went and looked through the list of manga they’ve scanlated, looking for something to read. This manga stood out to me, so I gave it a shot.

I read the available chapters Mangadex has, then I went looking for the rest; the next site I found only had up to chapter 30, so I’ll have to find another. All in all, I’m really enjoying it. I don’t agree with the last line of the description calling the characters “some awful human beings” however, as I feel like it just glazes over why the characters act the way they do and how the people around them influence it to instead just boil it down to them being “terrible people.” I haven’t finished the manga yet though so maybe the two main characters become serial killers or something.

The big plot twist is revealed chapter one and acts as the catalyst for everything else, so I don’t feel a particular need to add a spoiler, but some people do care so as always; thar be spoilers below.

I haven’t quite had time to sort my feelings about this manga into more coherent thoughts, so a lot of this will be just me rambling. A lot of this manga is more feelings for me anyway, so it isn’t that off anyway.

The way homophobia is presented in this feels very refreshing, though it feels odd to put it that way. Relatable may be a less… inciting word. It isn’t loud and violent, it isn’t in hushed whispers, it’s subtle; it’s baked into the words and actions of the characters in a way that feels natural. It’s a hidden poison.

Fairly early in the manga, Ayano comes out to her husband, and later his family, that she had an affair with another woman. These are the panels that stuck out to me specifically.

I cropped out parts that weren’t relevant to my point. I do wonder if I’m looking too far into it, and the mother is just reacting that way not because she kissed a woman, but because kissing was as far as it went.

This is the kind I’m use to seeing and experiencing, the kind that even well-meaning or seemingly decent people display. They don’t even notice it. Violence is in your face, you have to at least pretend to disavow it. But this is so baked into people’s beliefs that questioning it would have everyone in the room look at you like you’re crazy. If you put homosexual and heterosexual relationships on a scale, the former would have no chance of touching the ground.

This kind of language exists when you see lesbianism as a transitional period or a phase in a woman’s life. You can play around while you’re in school, but once you graduate then marrying a man and having his children is where you will always end up.

Ayano as a character is also really interesting to me. She is a great example of a passive character; she constantly moves forward in life without any real will or want, at least until she meets Akari. She married her husband because she thought he’d be an okay person to marry, she agreed to wanting children but left it to something that will come when it’s time; more and more, it becomes apparent that she doesn’t want these things because now that shes taken something for herself, she can’t stop. She admits almost immediately to her husband that she had an affair, shes completely open about it to his family, like she wants them to push her away, to initiate everything, because she can’t do it herself. She makes no attempt to hide her feelings and openly admits to him that shes texting the woman she had an affair with. She wants to want, to take, to not be passive, but she doesn’t know how and still needs someone else to give her the push.

It feels a little unfair to write so little about this manga in comparison to Tomorrow, I Will Be Somebody’s Girlfriend when I have comparable feelings to both, but the latter is so much easier to write about because there’s so much going on, so many characters (and it’s longer!) while the former is more of a nebulous feeling in my chest that brings hazy memories of my own to mind.

[mirimangarecs]

even though we’re adults - takako shimura

i read this one a while ago so i don’t remember everything :’)

a schoolteacher in a comphet marriage meets a free-spirited woman in a bar one night and realize they have a mutual attraction, sparking a lot of lies, a messy divorce, and a completely new relationship

the couple: they’re sweet but they make me tear my hair out in a bad way. why can’t you just be happy whyyyy. but i knew what i was getting myself into with this one

story and setting: extremely dysfunctional families, everybody is scheming against everybody else, and everybody loves doing SO much adultery. but underneath all that there are some really touching relationships and character growth moments.

obligated to mention that bisexual women keep catching random strays re “you were able to stop dating women and marry a man and live a normal life but I’m Different” like omg grow up literally leave us alone

the art: honestly the biggest reason i kept reading, it’s very up my alley! i like the faces and the big expressive eyes

[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.

[lawchan89]

“Well yeah, of course it’s not going to be as good as the original show!”

Then why?

Why does this thing exist?

Why does it need to exist in the first place?

This “defense” is not the flex you think it is

If you can’t remake it better

Why remake it at all?

[mumblesplash]

the fact that doctors can just Recommend Weight Loss with no instructions beyond ‘eat healthier/less’ is actually insane to me, i lost weight on purpose ONCE and it took me like 6 years to recover a semi-normal relationship with food and hunger

[extasiswings]

Nitpicky pet peeve for published books, I find it extremely grating when a character isn’t doing something they otherwise would and it’s obvious the only reason is the author has decided “X can’t happen yet for the plot”. Because it’s totally fine and reasonable if X can’t happen yet for the plot, but then…come up with a legitimate reason for the character not doing X? Don’t be lazy about it!

(This complaint brought to you by the fact that the protagonist of the book I was listening to was confronted by what he thought was the dead body of the love of his life and went into a blind rage and tried to murder the antagonist who was responsible for her death and he…stopped himself for Reasons that seem to boil down to “she wouldn’t want me to kill someone” except that a) he regularly kills people who have done far less than the antagonist, b) she knows this and is fine with it, c) she would definitely support him avenging her with murder (to be clear she is not actually dead but neither he nor the antagonist know that), and d) this motherfucker (the antagonist) definitely deserves to get murdered. Like…it would have been extremely easy to write it as “he was stopped by the guards in the room” or “the antagonist managed to escape” so the fact that the reason the antagonist is still alive is because the protagonist had a bizarre crisis of conscience resulting in a complete and total personality change is just???????? Please be so fucking serious rn)

[mickeym4ndy]

One of my favourite things about Fiona and Debbie’s relationship is how it’s such an accurate portrayal of sisterhood when the older sister has always played the role of a mom.

It’s fine when Debbie’s little because she wants a motherly figure. But when she becomes a teenager, she just wants Fiona to be a sister and not a mom. You can see the roles start to shift. Up until then Debbie was the daughter and Fiona was essentially the mother. But at the beginning of the middle seasons as Debbie gets older, they become each other’s sisters. Debbie wants to be Fiona’s equal and to be able to talk to her about things the way sisters can without Fiona lecturing or mothering her.

But Fiona desperately wants to stop Debbie from making the same mistakes she did and to make her see things the way she does, because at the end of the day teenagers still do need guidance from adults. And there were no other adult female figures to do that for her. She can’t just turn off parent mode and be the sister Debbie desperately wants.

One sister having to play the parent role is often unavoidable but it can drive such a wedge between sisters, especially during the younger sisters teenage years.

[dykeredhood]

Claire Randall: I’ve never owned a vase 🤝 me: why don’t I own a cheese knife

[ranger-kellyn]

.

[cuteniaarts]

What a shame… you always had such beautiful hair

[lionblaze03-2]

sometimes I think about writing and singing music not because I’m an incredible singer but because no one has my fucking voice, especially in popular music, and its disheartening to be born a girl, told you’ll only get girl roles or try to voice match other girls, or ‘sing with the girls’ and then only be able to match male voices because you’re a fuckin tenor and not anything higher. I can’t think of any girl Broadway roles I can hit all the notes on. Most songs I love I have to pitch down for myself or use falsetto for singing along to. It bothers me a lot less now because I’m an adult who’s more secure in myself but as a teen in kids musical theatre it FUCKED with me, BAD style. And I know for a fact that even now when I hear people with a voice like mine singing I get excited and immediately invested in their work because they’re like ME, finally, for once. A brother in this world of being afab and having the voice of a recently pubescent boy forever. Maybe I should be that brother too.

[sisterkosho]

Is there an age gap between Cora and Illuso?

Given that Illuso doesn’t have a canon age, this honestly depends on how old you HC him to be. I personally see him as being around 26 or younger, so in that case there wouldn’t be much of an age gap since Cora is 24. But I do have a bit of an inside joke about Illuso secretly being like 30, though it’s definitely not something I take seriously. 😭 So unless I’m joking about his old man behavior or something, there’s only like 2 years between them.

[pepprs]

i wish i’d kept pushing the point (<- vagueposting). im so tired i’m hitting a wall. but why is the answer to feeling bottomlessly lonely just to love myself and be loved by myself? isn’t that only more loneliness?

[neatfrog]

literally why did I never watch a single episode of one piece when I was a kid it’s one of the funniest fucking things I’ve seen in my life

[psychosomaticdeicide]

Went to an art show today! I told my folks I’d be back around 7:15 but I lingered until nearly eight.

She’s amazing.

I’m glad to be reminded that there’s a future.