I had a realization the other day that seems obvious in retrospect, but I hadn’t put these two things together before.
I was telling my mom that I’m kind of dreading having a private practice someday because it’ll mean working lots of late nights to accommodate my clients’ schedules and make enough money, and as I know from working 12-8 last year, that’ll wreck my social life. She was like, “So you’ll have a social life on the weekends.” And I’m like, and what, spend every weekday night alone in my apartment because it’s too late to go out and see people? She gave me this knowing look and was like, “Well, hopefully you won’t be *alone*…”
That’s when it hit me that this thing–this whole monogamous couple/nuclear family ideal thing–directly enables work to take over our entire lives. Because, yes, if I had someone living in my house–in my bedroom, even–who prioritizes me higher than anyone else in his (because, let’s face it, it would always be a he in this scenario) life, who doesn’t sleep with or date any other people, who treats his free time as our shared time, who drops plans with friends or family the moment I need him, who convincingly promises to never leave me–if I had someone like that, and if I believed in that fantasy, then yes, I’d be fine working late every night and coming home at 9. I could see my friends on weekends sometimes, but I wouldn’t *need* to because I’d never be lonely or bored.
Because however you look at it, cultivating and maintaining a group of friends and a broader social circle or community takes more effort–especially more *intentional* effort–than cultivating just one person with whom you share your life. When we have to work unreasonable hours just to get by, guess which one’s more likely to fall by the wayside?
No wonder it feels like my like-minded friends and I are constantly wading through waist-deep snowdrifts. It’s not set up to work the way we want it to. Yes, life would be easier if I had someone who is always a few yards (or less) away from me when we’re not at work and who can provide romance, friendship, emotional support, entertainment, household help, financial assistance, AND hot sex (and maybe eventually co-parenting) without me ever needing to seek out other people or even leave the house. But that’s…horrifying.
Remember that the nuclear family ideal (husband/wife/child as the entire family unit) is an aberration of the 20th century. Everyone else in the world for almost all of human history has lived in large groups, either tribes or extended families, usually a blend of both. When a woman married she joined her husband’s family, or he joined hers, but humans have generally always lived in large groups with multiple generations sharing space for all of our history.
Our western experiment with making two people entirely dependent on each other for all of the emotional support normal people get from a large extended family group is part of the reason we’ve got a high divorce rate. One person isn’t enough to sustain another entirely.
I think as well, this is why so many single people (like me!) get so damn LONELY.
I recently bought a house (by myself) and I pay all the bills, buy all the food, ect, because it’s just me that lives here.
And at night, I’m so fucking LONELY. My coupled friends don’t get it, they want some peace and quiet to get away from the kids, or the hubby - and when I say “I’m so bored” they don’t get it.
My ONLY FACE-TO-FACE interaction is at work.
That’s it. If I don’t make the effort to go out at weekends, I see no one.
Sure, I can talk to people on the phone, and I have online friends… but you know, I don’t remember the last time I got a hug?
Yup. I went to a coworker who I’m close to the other day and asked for a hug because I couldn’t remember the last time I touched another human being. Dog cuddles can only take me so far.
Holy shit, it’s what I’ve been saying the whole time. I’m super introverted, but I /need/ people around me. I will go to coffee shops just to talk to the barista and hear people around me, because I get so lonely. I routinely turn into a clingy, touchy-feely person when I’m home because that is the only place I get hugs. Do you know how many times I have become just… absolutely depressed and unhappy, just because I want a fucking hug and there’s no one to hug? There was this admin assistant when I started here and she and I talked a lot and I’d go by her office just to say hi, and she would always, ALWAYS give me a hug. And then she left, and now I don’t get hugs. Which maybe seems like a weird thing to be upset about, but I am, routinely.
People ask me how I put up with having a roommate all the time, and why I don’t just live by myself rather than playing roommate roulette and maybe getting a bad roommate (hasn’t happened so far, though). It’s because I go CRAZY when I live alone. Sure, having the cats around helps, but I seriously DO NOT deal well living by myself. I’ve tried it, and I can handle it for about three weeks to a month, but after that it starts to really wear on me, especially if I’m dealing with a lot of stress or something at school/work. I often joke that I don’t care if I ever get married, but I would be super psyched if someone I really liked (or multiple someones, even better) and got along with wanted to be roommates forever and ever so at least I’d know I wouldn’t be alone.
Right, this. Positive social contact, including friendly touch, is a thing that most-to-all humans very much need. I’m both pretty solitary and pretty good at keeping my chin up even when things aren’t ideal, but when I look back at my life the unhappiest part of it by far was the part where I was most isolated. And I’ve never even had to deal with living alone, so who knows how I’d handle that.
And, honestly, that expectation – on a societal level! – that everyone will find one person and basically build a life around them and only them…like OP said, I find that pretty horrifying. Especially when the dominant socially acceptable alternative is the aforementioned intense loneliness. Good grief.
So to summarise - working full time long hours plays havoc with having a social life.
We need a social life or we get sick and lonely.
Therefore we should stop working long hours and use our free time to cultivate friendships.
Sound freaking excellent idea to me.
If we actually had enough space for all of us I’ve said more than once that I could live with my siblings forever. Right now there’s five people and two emotionally best cats living in our three bedroom house so it’s not great.
But with enough room? Sign me up
My sister and her best friend lived next door to each other in their apartment building for a few years and it was great for them. A few nights a week they’d make dinner together or go out and do something. They watched certain shows together, splitting the cost of cable so it was actually affordable. The rest of the time they had their own space and could hang out with their boyfriends whenever. Even their cats went back and forth between the apartments.
Tl;dr I could happily live in the same apartment building with a few of my friends forever.
@prosthetical and I have continually been talking about a very similar arrangement for years now.
Rose I am still 1000% serious about this. I want to live in a small queer/trans/neurodivergent commune. Like a duplex or triplex or quadplex or something similar.
Plz come here. I can’t handle living WITH your kids but I would be happy to live near them.
I swear this will be a thing. I mean obviously not now but like.. I for real want this to be a thing.
THIS THIS THIS.
I have to have communal living spaces. Living alone may work for some people but I think it’s toxic for most. Having a partner, if that’s your thing, is wonderful and it provides a much needed level of companionship. But people, coupled or otherwise, they need friends. Human beings can’t do it alone, can’t do it in duos. They need community, they need family and friends.
My dream would be living in a giant house with plenty of space and plenty of people. I’d love to have myself and my partner and then two or three other friends, either with partners or alone, all living together, eating together, hanging out and spending time. We could all work to support the whole house as a group, as a family. Maybe even all raising kids together at a future point. That’s living the dream for me.
I’m really dreading school now that I’m going full time, because all my friends are online. I have few to no real life friends who are more than acquaintances. I have family as roommates, but I’m going to move out next semester with god knows who. I’m terrified.
I find I have the opposite problem?
I love my boyfriend very much and he’s probably my best friend. We have many common interests together. We co-parent. We understand each other’s introversion very well.
But like… that hasn’t stopped me from being lonely. I mean, to an extent, the longer and more committed you are as a couple, the less you NEED a dazzling social life. But you really can’t have just one. I have no one to hang out wth regularly other than my boyfriend and it’s really depressing. Sometimes I just want to talk about girl stuff, or whatever, and my bf is great about a lot of things but he doesn’t satisfy all of my needs, nor should he.
I live in a house with nine people in it (two children, seven adults). I co-own the house with two of my housemates, who have lived with me since the early 1990s; the newest housemate moved in four or five years ago, and most of us have been living in this house at least a decade. There are other friends we’d like to live with, but we never have a vacancy.
Cohousing is the best. There are problems - no living situation is without problems - but the benefit of having other people around, of having a situation in which spontaneous conversations with friends naturally occur, is (cue Donald) YUUUUUGGEE. I’ve lived alone, and it’s exactly as other folks here have described - lonely AF. I have no idea how I would have gotten through life if I didn’t have cohousing.
One thing I’ve noticed - I’m much less desperate to not be single than many of my single friends. Sure, I’d like to have a romance - but it’s not a big driving need with me. And I think that’s because I don’t have the fear of loneliness if I don’t find a girlfriend.
Also, I think this arrangement is much better for the two kids - and for their parents - than living on their own would be. If you want to become a parent, cohousing can be a great situation.
All of this. I can confirm from unpleasant experience that communal living can go REAL BAD REAL FAST (it’s complicated, but it ended with my parents being severely depressed and broke, and baby Moran being about 75% dead from various diseases, I cannot emphasize enough the need for vaccinations when living with a lot of people), but on the other hand, living alone with a very limited social life? I also have experience with that and I can confirm how…horribly, horribly isolating it can be (admittedly, I lived in Middle Of Nowhere, MT, and had other issues at the time, but the point remains that I’ve never been so miserable in my life and that’s actually saying something). My beloved darling roommate and I have been living the dorm life together for over a year and we’ve basically concluded that this will continue indefinitely until we feel comfortable with another arrangement. I recommend the roommate thing whole-heartedly. Shit, if you want to live with a whole bunch of people who you know and trust (I cannot emphasize that last one enough, do not ever live with someone you don’t trust if you can possibly avoid it), you fucking go, just make sure that you know what you’re getting into.
Humans…we’re social animals, you know? Even introverts need people, someone who can hold our hand when we’re in pain or stroke our hair when we’re upset, and it’s not a FLAW that you need a social life outside the internet and your possible significant other. Fuck, that’s normal. Fuck the ‘nuclear family’ shit, the ‘move out and get your own place’ mentality.
Live with roommates. Live a few couples in a big house. Live in an apartment block with a few friends. Touch your people, hug them, watch stupid movies together, cuddle on the couch, sit in the same room doing your own things, whatever. Just…have people. It’s good.
everybody liveblogging clone wars stuff on my dash made me think
okay in the theoretical instance where eventually finn sparks off a revolution and all the stormtroopers rebel en masse…
you can’t fight with no helmet bc that’s impractical (even if seeing faces would be incredibly important and powerful) but how can you tell yourselves apart from the stormtroopers still killing for the first order?
easy. helmet decoration.
every freed/rebelling stormtrooper takes their helmet off and they make themselves bleed and they put the blood on it just like this, that same smeared handprint, with ONLY their own blood
because in a universe where so many weapons are lasers, you wind up getting a lot of carnage with no BLOOD, and it’s easy to forget people, especially stormtroopers, can even bleed at all
but what better way to say, we are men? what’s more personlike and human than bleeding?
and i picture finn somehow coming over a hill and i don’t know if it’s better if they recognize him or if they don’t but imagine the sun rising or setting just behind him, and for a moment he’s in silhouette, and they’re all faceless again
and finn just seeing the ARMY of them, the tens of hundreds (of thousands!?) of PEOPLE who’ve made themselves look like him, so they can BE like him, who’ve bled to do it, and each and every one of them have a name
DO STORMTROOPERS WHO REBEL TOGETHER–FRIENDS WHO COULDN’T BEAR TO LEAVE EACH OTHER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND SIBLINGS WHO COULDN’T STAND TO KILL EACH OTHER, LOVERS WHO COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT EACH OTHER–PAINT EACH OTHER’S HELMETS WITH THEIR BLOOD?
ARE THERE WHOLE SQUADRONS WHOSE HELMETS ARE MARKED WITH THE BLOOD OF THEIR CAPTAIN, WHO WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR THEM AND WANTS IT TO BE KNOWN?
DOES IT BECOME PART OF THE CULTURE? CAN YOU WALK UP TO A REBEL STORMTROOPER WHO’S OUT, WHO’S FREE, AND SAY “WHOSE BLOOD DID YOU WEAR?”
“MY HUSBAND,” SAYS ONE, FLASHING THEIR RING, AND THEY HAVE A HUSBAND, THEY ARE A PERSON WHO COULD MARRY, AND THEY ARE PROUD.
“MY BROTHER,” SAYS ANOTHER, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER IF THAT BLOOD WAS SHARED IN THEIR VEINS OR IF THEY WERE SIBLINGS OF CHOICE, BECAUSE THEY ARE FAMILY.
“MY BEST FRIEND,” SAYS A THIRD, AND THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE WORD ‘FRIEND’ BEFORE THEY FLED BUT IT WAS WORTH IT, SO WORTH ALL THE PAIN TO LEARN THAT WORD.
“MY COMMANDER,” ANOTHER SAYS, AND, NO, THEY ARE NOT A STORMTROOPER, NOT ANYMORE, BUT THEY ARE STILL A SOLDIER AND THEY STILL LOVE THEIR COMMANDER.
“IT WAS MINE,” ONE SAYS, PROUD AND FIERCE AND UNBROKEN, AND THEY REBELLED ALONE, ONE AGAINST MANY, AND THEY WILL NOT BE BROKEN NOW.
“A Fragment out of Time”, published in 1974. Kirk / Spock. page 1 page 2
I had to share it with you because I can’t stop laughing, and every time I reread it it just gets funnier and fUNNIER
This fan fiction is older than the push-through tabs on soda cans.
Your grandma wrote this on her Commodore 64.
I miss my Commodore 64
Oh my dear, sweet children. The Commodore 64 came out in 1982. This was produced on a typewriter and probably mimeographed. And while it may seem funny now, it took more courage to write and distribute this than you will ever know.
Reblogged for that last comment.
respect your elders
Children, in the olden days fanfiction was written on a typewriter, copied and sent by snail mail. Getting one one of those letters from across the world was every bit as exciting as getting a notification that your favorite writer posted a new fic.
i think it’s time people realize that there is an actual need for shows to be professionally filmed and sold in order to stop bootlegs being filmed because no matter /how/ many times actors talk about bootlegs and ask for people to not film them people are still going to do it. Broadway is an incredibly hard thing to have access to when you’re a teenager or young adult and don’t live close enough to New York because overall, it costs a lot of money. There needs to be perspective from both sides and each side needs to give a little to take a little. Stop making theatre closed off for those who can’t afford to see it. Don’t just complain about a problem, realize that there IS a solution to it and fix it because at the end of the day, people are still going to want to see shows from Broadway and /will/ find a way to see them, illegally or not.
No but seriously.
This all goes hand-in-hand with the whole “NO ONE CARES ABOUT BROADWAY ANYMORE~~~ /SADFACE” BS spewed by Broadway industry/NYC tourism board people.
Like, they’ve got this narrative in their head that people just suddenly lost all interest in theater one day and are trying to paint themselves as the victims of an uncaring public completely oblivious to the fact that attendance went down around the same time that ticket prices started inflating into the hundreds for seemingly no other reason than “they felt like it.”
Back in the ‘90s you could get orchestra seating tickets for a popular new Tony Award winning show for somewhere between $80-$100.
Now? Theaters are charging the same amount for seats in the nosebleed section with an obstructed view. It’s ridiculous. Orchestra seat tickets these days are going for as high as $500. That’s a 400%increase over the course of twenty fucking years.
Imagine spending ~$1000 on a night out with your partner and that doesn’t even cover the cost of dinner.
Outside of lotteries – which not every theater does, aren’t highly advertised, are not easily accessible to people who work/are visiting – it’s literally impossible to buy a pair of tickets without ending up spending somewhere between $200-$400 unless you’re seeing a show that’s been running for over ten years.
People can’t afford to go to Broadway anymore.
Or if they do, they have to save up or wait for a sudden influx of money and then choose one show that they really want to see that year and hope anything else will still be open by the time they get the money to see that.
You cannot continue to price more and more people out of Broadway theaters and then 1) complain that no one’s coming anymore so they must not care, and 2) complain that people are finding other ways to try to experience these unnecessarily exclusive shows.
The film industry was partially founded on the idea of making theater more accessible to people who couldn’t patronize Broadway. When did the theater industry decide that film was its enemy?
No wait, I’m not done.
People want to see the shows.
That’s why bootlegs exist! Not because people are selfish, but because they can’t afford the only means of actually seeing them.
You really think that people who pay for bootlegs wouldn’t happily pay for a legitimateprofessional recording?
Why do you think Andrew Lloyd Webber is slowly working his way through his entire catalogue and putting out DVD’s? Of even the FAILED projects! And people are watching them! They’re watching them so enthusiastically that he’s in the process of reviving at least one of those epic failures!
For fuck’s sake even the Metropolitan Opera has a partnership with one movie theater chain to livestream their productions because they understand this very basic concept that people will pay to experience something they really want to but not if they can’t afford it.
Also, What does it say that every time a musical is filmed and released, it always has big named stars attached to it, it’s always labeled with ‘movie of the year’ and always tops the box office for the weekend it’s released?
The fact that Phantom of the Opera with gerard butler earned back more than twice it’s budget despite heavy criticism. Hairspray from 2007 earned almost 3 times. Mama Mia earned back 12 times its budget.
Because i can afford ten dollars to see a movie, i might even be inclined to see a movie twice or three times in theatres, and still buy it on DVD for 25$ when it comes out. which, all in all is less than 60$.
Clearly the point ins’t that musicals aren’t popular, despite what pop culture would like to tell you about theatre kids. Musicals are always popular, and movie musicals almost always do well financially, and id bet money its because it’s a lot easier to take a chance on seeing a new movie for less than the cost of a dinner than to see a broadway show for the cost of a mortgage payment.
I can think of three live shows filmed, off the top of my head (Rent, Shrek and Cats) and they’re all very well done, (i mean, cats as a show is kind of generic) I own a copy of all three, and to be honest I’d rather have copies of these shows as filmed on stage then the ones i have that are actual movies. Stage performance is an entirely different medium than film performance and you can’t really encourage people to embrace a new art form if youc ant expose them to it.
Might I also add that there are also people interested in Broadway productions, but they don’t live in the US or Britain, so they don’t get to see it, because half of the productions don’t get translated and performed here. And if they do, some of them don’t have the quality of the original performence.
So it’s not just about the tickets. I might have enough money to actually buy a ticket to Broadway, but not a ticket to London or New York!
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I really hate this post bc i really disagree with it and I think it makes a bigger impact that a Hufflepuff was the Hogwarts Champion than if a Slytherin was bc Hufflepuff is the house that is treated the worst in canon (and in fanon too). Malfoy says he would rather leave Hogwarts than be in Hufflepuff and Hagrid says that Hufflepuff is full of duffers (or something like that). So I really think it was a big deal that Cedric (a Hufflepuff) was the Hogwarts Champion bc really Hufflepuffs deserve way more recognize than they get by everyone.
Yes! The whole point was that in-universe, Hufflepuff got so little recognition or respect that even a House defined by its adherence to fairness seemed to feel is was kosher to mock Harry because they believed he was hogging the spotlight. In terms of the narrative, Slytherin might have gotten the short straw, but in-universe, Hufflepuff was the house of the despised, the disrespected, the ‘also-rans’. Cedric being the champion had been the ray of hope for them.
i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.
and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum.
and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god.
i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.
like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.
in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster.
john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all.
