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.
43 notes
·
View notes
RECIPE OF THE DAY
[OR: This was the most upsetting alternate looper option]
Long post because i have been cooking this in my brain for like, two months, and it's all-consuming. Also I'm not in the Discord yet because Anxiety so my ramblings had to go somewhere, and what better than one big fucking post yknow. I cast spell of fuck you mind blast on the tag/lh /j
TLDR for below: Siffrin words his wish differently, Bonnie gets trapped in a time-loop, and despite saying they're in a timeloop repeatedly nothing works and no one can help them. The normal ISAT absolute horrors ensue.
CONTENT WARNINGS: the normal ISAT tags [death, violence and trauma, suicide, self harm and unreality], Notable Pin on child endangerment and death, poisoning.
most of these get discussed ^ even if shortly
SO. THIS AU.
This is it this is my big one. Ignore me pushing the literal 12 other isat aus I have into a pile pls this is THE big one. I’m looking at the note I’ve stored all this lore in on my notes app,and it’s like. 35 fucking pages?
I've looked at a ton of alternate looper aus [that's part of the hyperfixation babeyyyy I need to consume ALL content forever and ever and ever] and I was like “oohhhh I wanna do that!!” So I literally just listened to music until I caught an idea and yikes. Looking at the AUs playlist now [it’s about 100 songs! Oops!] and I’m like [cartoony image of me laying face first on the floor]
This is a bit scattered because I wrote it over 3 days instead of working on the fic I’m supposed to be writing ooopsieeeee. Ramblings belowvvvvvvvvvv
It begins as simply as the game does. No one knows how to wish properly; so Siffrin wishes, because they know how to. The same folded leaf, repeated three times wish. Close to what is said in canon; different enough for the Universe to read it differently. No longer does Siffrin loop, because the wish isn’t about him, it’s about Bonnie and their sister. Siffrin’s wish is construed as “I wish Bonnie’s wish would come true,” and even if the Universe can’t hold onto Bonnie’s wish as they did it wrong, it CAN hold onto Siffrin’s.
And that’s the base point: EVERY LOOP, Siffrin wishes, because he wishes after he talks to them and that's where they loop back to, and its wish craft goes to Bonnie. A recipe for disaster with how much time they have!
They loop back when Siffrin gets crushed by the rock, because they can’t win while being down a party member. When they touch a tear, or when the sadnesses get the jump on the party and they all go down, or when they use the dagger equivalent [a poisoned snack], or when they get to the King. They Never Beat The King. Think SASASAaP but ISAT.
Bonnie doesn’t fight with craft, but rather craft-infused weapons. The wok and their pan for rock, a pair of kitchen shears for scissors and a cookbook for paper. Snacks for healing and buffs. And they have a cool friend that lives in the favor tree! [they get in fistfights like every five loops. Maybe it would be funny, someone just as willing to spar with them instead of trying to find the right words they can’t find because they’re a kid, if their friend wasn’t ALSO another version of themself, which bonnie clocks pretty late.] They pick up little quirks from their friends, like biting their nails like Belle, and puffing up to look bigger like Isa and stealing Dile's curses and closing an eye to match Frin's in focus. And maybe they start forgetting a little bit, just a little! The same thing over and over will get to you.
So everything essentially boils down to this. Bonnie specifically needs to be strong enough to beat the King, as the rest of the party doesn’t keep experience through loops. For a good chunk of the loops, they take advantage of Siffrin asking them if they need help and drag him into a training lesson that slowly goes from a whole emotional conversation to them quietly listening to Siffrin’s every word. [Siffrin fills this silence with random star facts that pop into their mind. This Is Important It WILL Be On The Test] Eventually the training becomes too tedious, so they start sneaking off to go fight sadnesses— and eventually just punch trees, which busts their knuckles— to get stronger faster! Everything goes downhill from there, with them forgetting to make food to them sneaking out at night to fight more to them getting reckless and uncaring; it snowballs down into “oh this could be considered suicidal confidence”.
Every loop, you say "hey, I'm trapped in a time loop", and EVERY time it is a big emotional thing that exhausts you to the point of going to bed immediately after, and everyone gets antsy and worried, and in the end the anxiety and trouble NEVER ends up mattering because the King still flattens the party every time. [And (shuffling through the sea of my notes for the au), imagine this from their situation for a second; Today, you tell your friends you are trapped in a time loop. They drag you into a long, uncomfortable conversation that makes you cry, and you go to bed with a full stomach and the knowledge they will protect you, and you will protect them. You make sure he doesn't get squashed by a boulder, you make sure they find the key, you make sure they don't die. Tomorrow, you will tell your friends you are trapped in a time loop. They will drag you into a long, uncomfortable conversation that will make you cry, and you will go to bed with a full stomach and the knowledge they've failed to protect you, but they're trying this loop, and you'll still protect them anyway.]
And then the King fight. He grabs them and he kills them and it fucks them up. [it fucks them up, until it too happens again and again, and eventually it simply is just another obstacle you must pass, because the second his stupid hand wraps around you like a ragdoll it’s over, so you just spit in his face to make him press the trigger immediately and not drag it out for forever- imagine the most traumatic event in your entire life, repeated over and over, until it looses all meaning. It’s still traumatic, it’s sewn into your brain forever you will never forget this.]
They tell the party ‘hey, I just got murdered’, and if this au was ISAT, it would go from having a memory that gave everyone a defense buff to a memory that literally stops you from winning, randomly attaching to a party member. You couldn’t get rid of it. They’d take every hit for you, and you’d have to loop back, because you couldn’t win with an unremovable memory like that. and that’s why they stop saying things, because if the people you loved would die to protect you, something you don’t want and have the ability to stop, would you stop them?
And so everything collapses, and from that point [the start of act 4] it collapses fast.
WHICH LEADS US TO ENDLESS MY FAVORITE LITTLE THANG
if this is transparent or not I don’t fucking know and honestly. After 2 hours of fighting ibisPaint X to make it transparent I stopped caring. o7
Slight design notes tangent: the fucking. Wispy things around their limbs just kinda move around them- yknow because black holes pull things in and they are one. Their like,,,, face spike design??? Question mark on what 2 call it? It’s designed to look like their hair lol. The little star-dot things on their knuckles are important smile. Eventually I’ll post a full thing 4 them (I have like 2 pages of random doodles of them it’s craaazy)
Endless (or Ness, later on) is Bonnie’s loop-alike. They’re a little angry hater and I based them on the song Black Hole Sun [therefore they double-dip in the space theming, the little scoundrel! Imagine being both a black hole and a partial eclipse!! Damn why you taking all the space theming for!!] which was the song the whole AU was based on! Woah! Damn you carrying ALL the out of AU lore in you! They’re anger over fear while Bonnie is fear over anger.
They make me SO fucking upset. Like. I’m not being funny anymore. This is THE most upsetting character I’ve ever written. They make me cry. My entire schtik is making horror and this little creature is the most upset I've ever been at a creation of mine.
Endless is a Bonnie who, without exaggerating, literally imploded from having too much wish craft in them— hence the black hole theme. They went through an unreasonable amount of loops [i think I noted down 400??? Probably not that many, but hey, leveling is slow when half the time you rely on a scripted event that has like 3 enemies. Never really pinned anything down, but it’s a CRAZY upsetting amount.] and just couldn’t win,, and they eventually broke, and begged for it to stop— and, well, with so much wish craft in them, even without the proper rituals the Universe just couldn’t ignore ALL this wish craft, overflowing, in one spot. They asked for help and it killed them.
And then they were at the tree! And they’re helping a DIFFERENT Bonnie, who they’re upset at because what. What why is this happening? They asked for it to stop, not for a whole NEW Bonnie to exist and to do it all over again, what is this what, stop stop it. And they have to keep watching Siffrin wish, and doom them to their endless loop, and they have to tell Bonnie no, the party can’t help them like they want the party to do because the party never could help them, and it’s just going to bring them distress and heartache. Bonnie does it anyways, until the very beginning of act 4: it goes downhill from there, until they’re worried This Bonnie will end up like THEM.
They’re not the most self-confident type. They give themself the most un-nicknameable name [Bonnie still finds one that fits— Ness. They reluctantly accept it.] [Endless vc: Ness? Like? From Earthbound???] they can think of because nicknames are a love language and they speak it, and they don't think they deserve it anymore because they've Changed, and trade out the nicknames they have for the party for things they learned from Siffrin in their own many many training loops: The Sun, The Moon, The Star, The Sky, and Bonnie is Supernova, because its cool as hell and Siffrin told them that’s what happens when a star dies, and they died. Open foreshadowing. They take to closing the same eye they made Siffrin the Star loose, because if he doesn’t get to see anymore neither should they— even if that eventually becomes a natural thing, something they do now to focus. They talk about a sister they have— had, because their world is gone and she never got unfrozen, they never learned if she was alive under all that icy craft or not, and they’re not Bonnie anymore. Ness is Bonnie, but Bonnie is not Ness.
And so, when act 5 hits, they’re desperate. They can’t see it happen again, because it erased them as a person and it was terrifying enough why would you want to see it happen again? they prepare to storm the house, bevause theyre strong enough to tear it apart themself, get stopped by the party, and essentially they’ve replaced Bonnie for a loop; which would be okay, if failing didn’t mean there would probably be Two Endlesses and No Bonnie’s. By the end of the au, Bonnie, lvl 99, is like bringing a brick to a stare down. Endless, in comparison, is like bringing a bazooka to a fistfight. They can’t face the King, they can’t, it would probably mess something up [the party has them pinned as being a kid by this point— wether they realise Ness acts a lot like Bonnie or not, who knows] so they panic and wave the party off into the King’s room and fights off the remaining sadnesses to calm down.
And the Party brings Bonnie down, and they fight a fake version of their sister [who they win against, even if barely, because Nille is their sister and damnit, Nille would never hurt them, not after giving up her life for them] and they have a breakdown, and then there's two of them. There's Bonnie and there's Ness. Bonnie confronts them and they get in ANOTHER fistfight, bveause how else would two angry ultra-powerful preteens settle things, and Bonnie convinces them to come along, because their identity has been found out and damnit Nille really won't care, Ness is her sibling too.
[Nille approaches the situation carefully, but Bonnie is right: Nille sees the two of them and immediately decides she has two siblings and she wants to protect them. Both of them went through so, so much, and they saved the country and damnit it would be monstrous to throw Ness out to the wolves because they Changed. Aka I was physically incapable of letting Ness dissapear or have a bad ending they deserve the world too.]
I just I jsutt. Auguhghghghhh. au too big in my brain spill it out on the floor it goes everywhere. When you hyperfix on your own au
20 notes
·
View notes