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absolutebl · 1 year

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This Week in BL

Feb 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) ep 9 of 12 - WinSound totally won me over in this ep. They were great. Their competitive style of romance, made me really happy. Double tsundere it’s so rare to get and not be annoying or depressing. Of course the mains were adorable too.

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) ep 8 of 12 - Solid little episode. Perth in the pool, thank U BL gods. Peeling the shrimp to rope, always a favorite of mine. Some awesome couple flirting and a nice romantic sex scene. What’s not to like about this episode?

Hit Bite Love (Sat YouTube) ep 2 of 6 - King is fucking adorable. Burger is clueless and (apparently) entirely straight. Shogun is one of the gayest characters ever put in high school BL. Heda is kinda awesome, basically a chaos wingman. Matteo is interesting. I genuinely like the central friendship between King & Shogun a lot. Queer baby besties! It’s Ming & Wayo-esk but better. Holy KINK FEST outta nowhere, BLman! I’m getting total whiplash with this show. Very Make It Right. What does it want to be? Who tf knows but I’m into it, that’s for sure. It’s accomplishing something, which most pulps don’t.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) ep 11fin - my backup computer is down so I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet. Hopefully but next week’s report.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 6 of 10 (or 11&12 of 20) - Jonny’s hair is driving me nuts. Hai Yi’s behavior is confusing me too. Office boys remain totally adorable. Very doomy mid run ep 6. Ah Taiwan, how unpredictable you are.

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 7 of 8 - these weirdos make for very strange boyfriends. Frankly? K seems like a useless bit of business, if you ask me.

Individual Circumstances (Korea Thurs Viki) ep 5-6 of 8 - I’m just annoyed with Mr. Tsundere at this point, he’s gone from grumpy to mean. I just want him to have a really good reason for having disappeared without saying anything, and good does not mean “sensitive pathetic authorial feels.” You don’t abandon your best friend just because you fell in love with them, that’s an unforgivably shitty thing to do.

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu (Japan Sun Gaga ep 1 of 8 - Stars Toshiki Seto (Senpai, This Can't Be Love). The world is about to be destroyed by a meteor, so Masumi visits his old uni library to read as much as he wants until the end. There he meets Ritsu, his player ex. It’s a bit awkward, and I’m not sure about the premise (it scares me that it might be sad). It’s racier, gayer, and has better kissing than i was expecting (again a sign it might go dark). Also Is Ritsu a big time bi-slut player or is that Masumi’s perspective? Regardless I’m intrigued if wary.

Finished this week

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) ep 7fin - They are so cute it’s unbelievable. I thought it was a good office romance ending, if not a great Bl ending. All in all this is a darn near perfect nugget of an office romance BL, sweet and much gayer than we have any right to expect from Korea. Rainbow rice cakes forever! 9/10

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) ep 12fin - It’s a serviceable series about hot swimmers flirting and dealing with family drama in a sweetly earnest manner, but ultimately it squanders the talent in play. I would’ve preferred a cleaner narrative arc, less angst and more plot, fewer couples, and a shorter series. That said, there’s nothing objectively wrong, sub-standard, or off-putting about this show. And it has lots of consent and other good qualities. It’s fine. Watch along here. 8/10

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) ep 12fin - I did think a lot over why I disliked this one. Because on the surface it’s just your standard slightly terrible Thai pulp, and I’m usually not that mean about them. I think in the end it comes down to the uke who just seemed to never warm to the boy pursuing him, and never really actually wanted to be his boyfriend. Also terrible dead fish kiss. 5/10

Gossip

Apparently we have new scions (waves goodbye to BrightWin) - GeminiFourth: The Crown Princes of BL. If you’re wondering how their chemistry is so good (My School President), this article may explain it.

In Case You Missed It

Caught up on 2020′s The Reason Why He Fell In Love With Me. (Gaga picked it up and I’ve been wanting to see it since it got announced in 2019.)

TRWHFILWM Series 1 - 2 teachers who work together at the same high school, one outgoing and the other reserved, start an affair. Gave me Ossan’s Love vibes and that is my least favorite kind of JBL. It’s just far too cartoonish and slapstick and I don’t like it. That said, it has several kisses, a happy ending, and they are cute together. So if you can this style BL, it you might like it.

TRWHFILWM Special - Completely ignores the first couple and the teacher premise, carrying over just one main character, and should have been a new BL (Boys Love flashbacks). I understand 2021′s season 2 continues this tactic. But I’ll watch it eventually.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Not a lot actually, which is cool, I still got some 2022 catching up still to do. Why You Y Me, may be?

Starting:

Moonlight Chicken (Weds? YouTube) 1 of 8 -

My Beautiful Man S2 - ??? sorry I’m scared of this one and not really paying attention, it being Japan and a desirable property, I’m assuming it will either be impossible to find or just show up on my dash in 2 places at once.

Feb releases list is here.

2023 forthcoming BL master post. (see comments some are inaccurate, NOT UPDATED)

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Hit Bite Love it’s classic terrible Thai pulp and I’m kinda loving it.

Thank you very much GMMTV.

FINALLY!

Also FINALLY.

More FINALLY (My School President).

I love the acknowledged combative nature of this relationship. It’s great.

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Under the Skin by &team, eh, it’s catchy I guess

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sendme-2hell · 2 years

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Ranking the HOTD episodes by how gay they are

10. Episode 3. really very little happened except Rhaenrya and Alicent having their gay little fight in the godswood 5/10

9. Episode 5 this episode isn’t super heavy on Alicent/Rhaenrya other than Alicent having her big green dress moment and angrily calling Rhaenrya “stepdaughter”. But it DOES introduce a very important gay couple: Laenor and Joffrey. If this episode hadn’t violently murdered joffrey in a way that diverged from F&B and made it MORE traumatic for Laenor, making him get married in the same building his love was murdered in, hours afterwards, I would give it more points for having a canon gay couple. I’m not over the change however. I still don’t understand how Criston got away with that .10/10 for joffrey and Laenor before the end of the episode -10/10 after the ending

8. Episode 2. This episode was also homophobic bc Alicent got engaged to Viserys. But it did have a scene of Alicent comforting Rhaenrya in the crypt, which 1) shows Alicent is religious 2) is the beginning of the holding hands motif 3) was sweet 4) also a parallel to them sitting at the table in episode 8 with the candles 5) highlights how they are both two young women who have lost their mothers and neither of them should be anywhere near a certain two targaryen brothers😔 6/10

7. Episode 6. This episode was important because it introduced Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke. And the question on everyone’s (my) mind was: now that the younger actors are being replaced, will the homoerotic subtext remain? And the answer is a resounding yes. Episode 6 was an experiment to see how much gay tension you could fit in one small council scene. Alicent was really mean to Rhaenrya in this episode and also accidentally asked for the murder of her baby daddy but I still call it a win 8/10

6. Episode 1. I rememeber having extremely low expectations for HOTD due to GOT disappointment but after watching the first episode there was only one question on my mind: did they add lesbians to game of thrones? Even my extremely straight friend texted me to ask if I thought Alicent and Rhaenrya seemed a little bit in love. 10/10

5. Episode 7. The entire knife scene is one of the best on the show. And really showcased a breaking point in Rhaenrya and Alicent’s relationship. The rituals were intricate I fear. Also Alicent called Rhaenrya’s feet pretty. oops. This is also the episode that Laenor and Quarl avoid death and HBO avoids the #buryyourgays accusation so I’m happy for them 9/10

4. Episode 9. In this episode Otto calls Alicent gay to her face, and Alicent loses her shit at the mention of murdering Rhaenrya. It lays it out for us that Alicent cares a lot about Rhaenrya and it’s messing with Otto’s plans. But also Alicent crowning Aegon is not gonna help her pull Rhaenrya. 9/10

3. Episode 10. In this episode Otto recovers and finds a way to use his daughter’s inconvenient lesbianism to his advantage. Is it gay to keep a ripped out piece of paper your ex-homoerotic bestie-now-enemy gave you decades ago? Is it gay to receive this piece of paper and shed a singular angry tear? The way that Rhaenrya says “Alicent…. asked …..you to …declare ….for Aegon” is the second most heartbreaking line delivery on the show, right after “he is your son, Viserys”. Clearly Rhaenyra cared about Alicent. 10/10

2. Episode 4. First of all this episode contains possibly the gayest scenes in the whole show, when Alicent and Rhaenrya are sitting on the bench. Rhaenyra apologizes to Alicent and says she missed her too and grabs her hand. In interviews, Milly Alcock and Emily Carey said they thought they were gonna kiss and reader, I did too. This scene of almost reconnection is so tender and heartbreaking and it adds to the hand motif these girls got going. But second of all, the way that Alicent reacts to rumors of Rhaenrya fucking daemon. I’m sorry there is no heterosexual explanation for HOW upset she is. None at all. 11/10

1. Episode 8. Rhaenyra and Alicent giving forgiveness toasts. Rhaenrya and Alicent staring at each other while pretending to stare at Viserys. But most of all, Alicent begging Rhaenrya to stay and giving her a death grip and Rhaenrya gently reciprocating as she promises to return, even though I think in some way they both know that if she leaves their tenuous reconciliation will not last. Every time I see a gif of that grip I go feral. All of the shots of their hands touching in episode 1,2,4,7 for it to culminate in this shot of them desperate to find each other again. 100/10

#rhaenicent #Rhaenrya x Alicent #HOTD #did this bc I was thinking about it but then was like well why post to my silly little blog #i love ranking silly little things

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nicosraf · 1 month

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*a&m spoilers!

i just finished reading a&m and i am in shambles, so thank you (genuinely)! i was expecting to be hurt by the fate of some of these characters, but i was also admittedly excited for the inevitable toxicity and hatred/anger being shared particularly between Michael and Lucifer, and you delivered so much more than I would have expected. I want to apologize if this ‘ask’ turns into me just yapping away - your work has impacted me so greatly (,:

Not sure if this has been mentioned by another reader yet, but i read this line, said by Lucifer to Michael, “be blessed that you will never know why” (pg 406) and found that it sounded familiar, and I realized that this exact sentence was also mentioned to be said by God to Lucifer at the end of chapter 1. Lucifer imitating/wanting to be like God was hammered in so subtly here, and including this line on opposite ends of the book added so much to this theme

CHAPTER 37!!! I lost it - I knew that something like this was bound to happen but the way that you did it brought me so much joy. I must admit that I adore Lucifer and Michael’s dynamic now (although I of course also adored the past dynamic as well). It’s complicated, genuinely toxic and written so painfully well ;; Lucifer’s incessant insults and degrading, Michael craving violence and choking him, biting him and digging his fingers into the wounds he caused, i was in disbelief. (And Michael having that thought as he brushed past Baal oh my god i felt the ground shake)

And even then, despite them hurting each other, Michael listens when Lucifer tells him about the table because he knows that there is something genuine in the way he says it. It was bittersweet, to see a very brief moment of care (and a fraction of what remains of their past selves in heaven) in between this performance of violence and hatred

I appreciate just how much love you put into your characters, particularly Lucifer. I’m genuinely a fan, I’ve been mystified and trapped if it wasn’t already painfully obvious. I love how much emphasis you put on his excessive jewelry and the sort of clothes he wears, it really set the mood for him as a character and it tied in so well with his body language. I was super super impressed with how you were able to paint a picture of his demeanor now that he has become satan, especially in the heart-eating scene. You made it so easy to imagine every one of his little actions in all their unrelenting cruelty and it was definitely one of my favorite scenes in the book. Lucifer eating a raw, human heart straight from a man’s chest while staring into Michael’s eyes was one of the gayest things I’ve ever read

I have so many more things I wish to say but i will end my yapping here for now lol, thank you for writing these characters I’ve come to adore! <3

Thank you so much for reading!! It means a lot to me and I'm really glad you enjoyed!! :) please do not apologize for yapping... Im the angel of yapping

Lucifer imitating/wanting to be like God.... I'm glad you noticed that little recurring line! Lucifer is very much acting like his own version of God in A&M, mimicking him to some extent... and the narrative treats Lucifer like a new God in this book too! (in ABM, God is distant, seemingly all-knowing, and his plans/thoughts are unknown to the reader. And in A&M... agh.,.,. Lucifer..... the way the narrative treats Lucifer... all of Lucifer's actions in this book... I'm really crazy about it, Im afraid)

And Chapter 37 skskssk I'm glad you like their dynamic! Michael and Lucifer are fascinating to me because of the insane development of their relationship. I love them when they're innocent love birds and I love them when they hate each other; I love the turmoil of going from one end to another. Lord, they are so toxic. There are so many relationships here that are unhealthy (I would say most of them), but Moocifer is definitely near the top of the list of Messiest. Michael's fingers in the wounds... Michael thinking that at the end.... What's wrong with him. Whats wrong with the both of them (there's so so much)

Michael moving off that table when Lucifer asked... the brief moment of care... i can't think about it too much right now without going insane but... lord

i love my characters very much, so im glad that you like them!! and i put a lot of thought and love into Lucifer... It warms my heart a lot that you find him fun! <333

thank u again for reading!!! have a great day :)

#mine #ask

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gascon-en-exil · 4 months

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15 for Xander, 25 for Dedue

15. What’s your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn’t matter if it’s canon or not.)

Ryoma, to the limited extent that I ever get into Fates shipping. Laslow is there as well, but that would involve accounting for his dimension-hopping weirdness and time in a game I revisit even less than Fates.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

From pre-release:

Me: "The Finn to Dimitri's Quan, possibly the gayest part of this game."

Now: Actually is the gayest part of these games in spite of stiff competition (and I don't mean from the nonentity that is Byleth). Onscreen handholding, a back-and-forth of schlocky romantic one-liners, a secret shared death scene, lots of story attention even in routes where they're not playable, including one where Dedue does in fact play out Finn's role, even more cheesy activity dialogue and paired warrior special dialogue, plenty of indicators that they'd be down for opening up their relationship from a variety of angles...Dimidue is astonishingly gay, and remains so even over four years and one mainline game later.

#Fire Emblem #FE14 #Fire Emblem Fates #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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hermanunworthy · 11 months

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!DNDADS S2 EP37 SPOILERS!

im a bit late bc i was at work all day but time for ep37 reactions!! i cant believe its already here

- now ive heard everyone talking about the intro i bet its gonna be a rickroll or some shit

- ITS FUCKINF ALL STAR. I KNEW THEY WOULD PULL SOMETHING LIKE THIS

- A TEENAGE GIRLS PARENT JUST GOT SHOT AND KILLED AND UR PLAYING ALL STAR.

- hermie mention in the intro im so calm and cool and chill about this /j

- "ur enough as u are" AINT NO WAY UR ABOUT TO MAKE ME START CRYING OVER A PARODY OF SMASH MOUTHS ALL STAR. WHY DID U HAVE TO PULL OUT THE BIG GUNS

- I DONT WANT THE TAYLOR VOICE CHANGE GOD NO

- MATT IM SCREAMING

- WILL CAMPOS U ABSOLUTE MADMAN. i already knew he was gonna find a way around using revivify but THAT WAS WILD

- are people gonna start drawing normal w that piece of jewelry now. bc i wanna. i already like drawing him w bracelets

- oh god what is beths fact gonna be.

- "i just keep meeting all the right people at all the wrong times" BETH MAY U ARE EVIL. THE PLOT OF THIS EPISODE HASNT EVEN STARTED AND IM ALREADY EMO

- ITS STARTING. OH NO

- NICKY BETTER FUCKING SHOW UP im curious to see what they actually decided on for the reason for him not being there last episode

- HERMIE WAS REMEMBERED giggles and kicks my feet

- TAYLOR AND LINCOLN ARENT AWARE THAT TERRY IS DEAD RN.

- were getting terris reaction rn i cant believe this is happening

- IM starting to feel sick godddd

- i bet im gonna see art of the lincoln and taylor piggyback ride hehe

- OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD TERRIS ASLEEP THIS MEANS WERE GONNA GET SCARY BACK. ALSO IS SHE GONNA SEE WILLY OH NOOOO

- NO NO NO NO NONONO

- "theres my girl" STFUUUUUU

- DOES SCARY REMEMBER ANYTHING??? DOES SHE KNOW WHATS GOING ON????

- "just wake him up" I. HATE. THIS EPSIODE

- SCARY GETTING CHOKED UP I CANT DO THIS

- TERRY DIDNT EVEN NEED TO DIE FUCK THIS

- "whoooa shit thats fucked up!" anthony burch i know u are just so incredibly pleased w urself.

- SCARYS STILL PRETENDING LIKE SHE DOESNT CARE ABOUT TERRY. JUST FEEL UR FEELINGS GIRL GOOD GOD

- "EMBARRASSING"??? FOR A KID TO BE UPSET THAT ONE OF THEIR PARENTS GOT MURDERED???? WILLY STAMPLER WTF IS WRONG W U

- there was never a more obvious lie than willy saying hell revive terry

- 19 INSIGHT LETS GOOO

- THATS RIGHT SCARY. STAND THE FUCK UP TO HIM

- NORMAL DESPERATELY TRYING TO HELP AWWWW MAN :[[ I HATE THIS

- PUTS MY HEAD IN MY HANDS. THIS IS SO DEEPLY UPSETTING

- WHEN WE SAID WE WANTED MORE SCARY AND NORMAL INTERACTIONS WE DIDNT THINK ITD BE LIKE THIS!!!

- THE TWINS ARE HERE NOW OMG

- beth is out for fucking blood this episode. god she is so good at making the audience feel for her characters

- SHES TELEPORTING TO GRANT?? IM NOT READY YET

- "hes dangerous! get away from him!" THE FACT THAT THIS IS LINCOLN SAYING THIS ABOUT GRANT BREAKS MY HEART

- SCARY HAS A GUN FUCK YEAH!!!

- FIRST HERMIE SPEAKING LINE OF THE EPISODE YIPPEEEE

- halfway through the episode now. cant wait to see what could possibly go wrong next!!

- i love whenever anthony allows a fun rulebreaking idea to work

- IDK WHY THE IDEA OF THE KIDDADS HAVING A GC IS SO FUNNY TO ME

- rons status remains a mystery....

- "we could do a whole scene w just hermie and all the other ones" u joke matt but i enjoy every scene w hermie no matter how unnecessary and drawn out

- as always linc and taylor are such a funny iconic duo

- WERE FINALLY GETTING ANGRY NORMAL??? FINALLY????

- WILL WITHDRAWING HIS COOL MOVE LMAO

- i just realized WE STILL HAVENT SEEN NICKY!!! GODDAMN!!!

- "the gayest fucking mecha of all time" swiftli fans do u like the new ship name /j

- ig i cannot deny it anymore swiftli is practically canon atp

- NICKY!!!! NICKY!!!!! I SHOT STRAIGHT UP IN MY SEAT

- NICKY AND HERMIE ARE FINALLY INTERACTING. PRAISE THE LORD

- i thought nicky got all his limbs back?? did anthony just forget

- btw ive probably been waking up my whole house w how hard im laughing over swiftli this episode

- LINCOLNS GONNA PUNCH GRANT WHOA. WHOA

- "so what are u gonna do, ur gonna kill me?" as i said before. i hate this episode.

- SCARY OBLITERATED PAPA JOHN SO FAST WHOA.

- THE DUNGEON SETUP VS THE TONE OF THE EPISODE HELPPP

- i just had such a weird thought/prediction. but i will hold my tongue. bc the last time i said something like this it came true and i do not want this to come true

- IS SCARY GONNA BREAK IT W LOVE FOR TERRY. I CANT DO THIS

- "i love u and i hate that u made me love u when u are who u are and u knew it." I WISH U COULD SEE MY FUCKING FACE RN. HOLYYY SHIT THATS DEVASTATING

- oh. my. good. lord.

- GUYS????? I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO NOW. HOLY FUCK. THAT WAS HEAVY AS SHIT

#dndads #dndads spoilers #dndads s2 spoilers #siren says

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captnswilson · 3 years

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Oswald and Edward in Gotham, S3E05

#nygmobblepot #nygmobblepotedit #oswald x edward #gotham #gothamedit #mine #this scene remains one of the gayest

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searidings · 2 years

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In your opinion, what were Kara and Lena's individual gayest moments? 🤔🌈

oh bestie how long have you got? ok ok let's go lesbians let's go

lena:

filling kara's office with flowers. the bitch really said if my verbal language can't tell this woman how much i want to be railed by her maybe the language of flowers will do it for me

granting kara unrestricted office access on like their 3rd meeting

buying catco for kara. need i say more

whatever the fuck she was doing in every single s2 couch scene. bedroom eyes ass motherfucker

saving supergirl's life over her boyfriend's

apparently spending all her free time building lifesaving super tech without being asked even while she and supergirl were fighting

repeatedly risking her own life to save kara’s back when she still believed she was human

the inherent homoeroticism of continuing to pretend she didn’t know kara’s identity because it allowed her to remain close to her

“she broke my heart” yeah because that’s a normal thing platonic friends do

every time she’s ever gayzed at kara aka every time she’s ever looked at kara

the defining cultural moment that was “i killed my brother for you for our friends don’t you understand what you’ve done” aka the ultimate declaration of love: murder

her entire angsty s5 breakup spiral

programming the fortress’ lena lesbian luthor protocol aka no one touches my fucking WIFE

being quite happy to let the population of nc get turned into phantoms because she couldn’t put anything above her imperative of bringing kara home

“do you really not believe in magic?” “i believe in you”

the bickering spouses energy of their 6b interactions and lena’s overwhelming “ok i tried but you’re gonna make your own mistakes, i love you honey i’ll see you at home” energy

the worried wife vibes of her healing kara in the med bay

"hey, you” / “hey, hey, it’s okay”

kara:

how she absolutely peacocked around as supergirl in front of lena for the entirety of s2 l-corp gala im looking at you

biting the head off her boyfriend's mother when she thought lena was in danger because of her

crashing lena's date just to third wheel it with more manic jealous energy than any one person should contain

agreeing to come back to catco because lena batted her eyelashes

being prepared to save lena's life at the cost of poisoning the entire city's water

risking her civilian identity to save lena's life when she was poisoned

gazing tearfully at pictures of her and lena every time they have a lover's spat

every conversation she's had directly with lena's chest s3 gala im looking at you

“i’ll beat [james] up for you” aka kara choosing lena’s side over her best friend and first love

her whole "sure i can excuse murder if you're the one committing it babe" schtick throughout s3&4 aka nice grey gay morality

"i'm trying to catch lex FOR YOU that's why i'm doing this" never mind the fact that the man is kara's blood enemy noooo she's doing it for her gf

red daughter’s existence, period. honorary shoutout to her gay journal entries

flying around the world to bring lena her favourite things

“if i could be kara, just kara, then i could keep you as a friend” / “i was selfish and scared and i didn’t wanna lose you” aka kara canonically admitting that the idea of losing lena scared her more even than the potential fallout of her lies

volunteering to break the law for lena

volunteering to change all of history to get lena back

post-pz reunion hug. leaning in to kiss your bestie in front of god and everyone is something that can actually be so homosexual

every 6b interaction ie leaning into lena, mirroring her, finishing her sentences, “pot sticker me” etc

having lena be the one to ultimately inspire her to make some of the biggest decisions of her life ie becoming a reporter, revealing herself as kara zor-el

staring right at lena’s lips during her last most emotional scene of the series

#once i started thinking about examples of this i literally couldn't stop this is just me running through sc moments off the top of my head #as smash mouth so eloquently put it: and the gay starts coming and it don't stop coming #and no i cannot whittle it down #this is me being concise #there are literally so. many. more #sorry it's so long tho lmao #but frankly don't blame me blame the writers and madams benoist and mcgrath #truly an abundance of riches to choose from #hope you're having a great day #asks #anonymous

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starry-eyed-psychopomp · 3 years

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Stop what you’re doing and go read The Girl from the Sea!

It’s a beautiful ya lesbian graphic novel by Molly Ostertag (who you may recognize as the author of The Witch Boy, writer of the gayest episodes of The Owl House, and wife of Nate Stevenson) about a teenage girl falling in love with a selkie.

Morgan, a closeted teen in a seaside small town, has a plan: get through high school while remaining closeted and distant from her friends and family, then go to college far away where she can be out and truly find herself. All that changes, though, when she meets Keltie, a selkie who’s much more open and unabashed about her feelings.

It has so many cute scenes and kisses, with a lot of emotional and relatable elements! While the coming-out element is important, it doesn’t really feel like a lot of the more serious and heavy coming-out stories that saturate gay media. It’s a very beautiful urban fantasy story with an amazing romance and great queer themes! The art is gorgeous and it is so so worth it to get the book. Easily one of my favorites!

#I need a movie adaptation tbh it’s so good #ive been so hyped for the past year and it lived up to it!#the girl from the sea #molly ostertag #molly knox ostertag #noelle stevenson #lesbian #books #graphic novels #reccomendations #tgfts

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artsybi · 3 years

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so i knew going into watching the new star trek movies that i would never be able to form my own completely independent opinion on them or on star trek as a whole, i know too much about the history of fandom and how star trek factors into it to have ever been able to do that, and i acknowledge that completely, and i acknowledge that my opinion of it will be colored by that, however, you wanna know what i think is one of the funniest fucking things ever?

they couldn't fucking de-gay the new movies. like, i love in general when that happens, like with spn when it's clear they tried to de-gay destiel and couldn't, but it's even funnier with aos spirk because it's so clear that they tried so damn hard

like, they gave spock an actual girlfriend (and btw i love and stan uhura, but like, oh honey no) and it's clear that from the very beginning they intended to de-gay spirk as much as they could, and they just fucking couldn't

like, they gave us spirk as enemies, had them clash in ways they don't in tos (at least from what i've seen/heard) gave us a different first meeting for them, tried to change things enough that maybe the relationship would remain a de-gayed platonic rivals thing, except then they gave us leonard nimoy as prime!spock and one of the gayest damn scenes i've seen in a long while with the fucking cave mind meld i just- i can't fucking even because oh my god

and like, don't even get me started on the into darkness shit with the reactor and spock going batshit on khan after jim dies, like, wow, that's gay babe

it's just, oh my god it's so funny

#star trek #spirk #aos spirk #aos star trek #i ramble #james t kirk #jim kirk #kirk #spock #nyota uhura #khan #star trek into darkness #de-gay #star trek reboot #god it's just abdioawufhl;wejrfh god i think it's so FUNNY #anyway that's all i just wanted to share lmao

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land-of-brains-and-chocolate · 3 years

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Rec list for Eddie and Symby being vaguely to very gay?

I'm sorry for coming to you with my monsterfucker agenda 😔👊 (no I'm not)

i mean, i probably could’ve seen this coming.

venom is dominated by two opposing narratives. let’s call this the “relationship narrative” and the “control narrative”. they’re not perfectly separated, like, you’ll definitely get elements of one in the other, but generally one of them describes what the story, at its core, is using the symbiote for.

now comics are an endless tug-of-war at the best of times, much less the gayest and slimiest of times. there’s a neverending backlash and backbacklash going on between these two takes. what you want is the relationship narrative.

everything very much started out with that take. eddie and the symbiote are two characters who forge an evil alliance because it lets them do what they wanna do (kill spider-man, more or less) and they have the same kinds of neuroses and complexes and syndromes. lots of early comics are also very fun about the merged consciousness, merged identity deal. that’s kind of the textbook relationship stuff.

personally i absolutely think the original stories (venom was created by david michelinie) have romantic undertones, even starting in the villainy days. eddie describes their first meeting as “a shadow moved, caressed me.” he takes the rejection of the symbiote still being “in love with” spider-man really hard. he sobs his eyes out when he thinks it’s dead and promises to avenge it bare-handed. they totally expect to live happily ever after on a deserted island together.

then there’s venom: lethal protector, which is cute on its own, but if you’re reading for slime romance, i very specifically recommend the novelisation. i won’t even spoil it. and then, planet of the symbiotes is the first comic that i would say has outright queer themes, intentional or not.

so all those recs until now are collected in this post.

we're trucking along through the 90s, we explore elements of one take and then the other and sometimes we ignore the symbiote completely, but not too much changes, overall. the next BIG stop in Gay Venom is, of course, the hunger.

miniseries by len kaminski, just venom: the hunger. plenty of people have written their essays on it, but what’s always important to me is that it DID NOT come out of nowhere. as said above, it expanded on themes that were there, it references michelinie venom very explicitly, like you get your SECOND “tenderly touching the green glass tube” scene.

but yes this one is specifically about, like, stigmatisation, otherness, mental illness, meeting all those things with care and empathy and optimism, tentacle sex. again, many essays. a venom comic that can go “look at the twisted deviance of this relationship” and then turn it around into “but how are you looking at it” is good. god how good would it be if they also did that to eddie more. anyway.

a few years later you get the first MAJOR fucking backlash, culminating in the SECOND story titled the hunger. spectacular spider-man: the hunger, from 2003. completely reboots venom and retcons their motivations and backstories, makes very spiteful references to planet of the symbiotes and the hunger, like it is not also called that by sheer coincidence. literally starts out, in a comic that wants to tackle and redefine venom, with the line “the PROBLEM is that you guys are like an old married couple”. so the new status quo is that the symbiote only ever used eddie to be with spider-man, and eddie only ever used the symbiote to not die of cancer.

the “control narrative” that really kicks in here uses the symbiote as, you know, a thing to control, eddie’s demons personified or even a completely foreign force to torment him. if eddie is evil, it’s not because of what he thinks and believes and wants, it’s because he couldn’t control the symbiote and gave in to its inexplicable bloodlust.

this is an unambiguous downgrade in terms of complexity, in my humble opinion, completely fucks up eddie’s responsibility themes, and is also a pretty clearly petty reaction to venom’s absolute oversaturation in the nineties. the bitch was everywhere and most of it wasn’t good. so there was LOTS of “look at this creepy loser” content by writers cringing themselves into self-awareness at the time. the 00s were going to be GRITTY and MATURE.

this of course means that we get to see eddie slit his wrists and bleed to death on panel after selling the symbiote to supervillains as an attempted act of redemption???

wild fucking times! it’s not exactly worth recommending as ~shippy~, but the first real backbacklash to this first round of retcons comes from dan slott, who just kind of ignores it all in new ways to die. drags eddie back to the land of the living and relevant, makes the symbiote refuse to let its new host kill him, telling that host, and reestablishing, that it loves eddie. and then, to keep him living and relevant, slott makes eddie anti-venom.

don’t even worry about it. anti-venom is essentially eddie seeking redemption with symbiote powers, but without the symbiote, except he pretty much acts no fucking different at all, just keeps on being a murderous vigilante with cracked ideas about innocence and guilt. people still act like he’s better now because, in its metatextual ways, the hunger was right.

then fucking uuuuuuhhhhhhh. agent venom. symbiote goes to flash thompson and the us military, and the writer, rick remender, goes really, really, really hard on the control narrative. the symbiote becomes a substance flash is addicted to, gives a voice to his past abuse, it’s dark times all the times.

people very much do like that narrative for flash, like at least from that perspective it was worth it. i don’t like it much for the symbiote. for the symbiote, representing everything fucked up with flash and forcing him to murder kill bite all the time is resolved via the good guy avengers literally lobotomising it so flash can wear it without further resistance or input. imagine doing that to a human person. you’re uncooperative so we’re gonna turn off your higher cognitive functions and wear you like a meat suit. happy ending for everybody! truly we’ve conquered our demons this day.

then! at the same time, there’s a cartoon coming out, it’s called ultimate spider-man. THAT one does the control narrative take with harry osborn, but then does the relationship take with flash, making it the only cartoon to outright redeem the symbiote and let it find friendship and be valued as a person.

and people loved it! so brian michael bendis gets it in his head that he’s going to redeem the symbiote and make it partner up with flash. and he does redeem it by the highly fucking questionable means of having it be “cleansed”, aka brainwashed and relieved of its memories and personality. not that it matters for long. nothing fucking matters in comics. take this with you if it’s the only thing.

so then for fun friendship times you get venom: space knight, flash and the symbiote’s adventures in space! and then that gets cancelled. eddie is off somewhere being toxin and hunting carnage (2016). many good comics but you did not ask for them.

and THEN.

it is time for the next MOTHER of backlashes.

flash gets literally discarded at fucking roadside to put the symbiote back on eddie and turn back time on their relationship to RIGHT before the FIRST backlash happened. you know, all those 2003 retcons. gone. ignored. no more. venom’s themes are now those circa 1996 again. full fucking on relationship narrative. ROMANTIC relationship narrative, and that after the symbiote was turned into eddie’s evil shadow, after he hated it and spent a LONG time seeking to eradicate all symbiotes (and not even for the first time).

the COSTA run. venom (2016). reviled and beloved.

like this comic is fucking ANGRY about symbiote treatment. i HAD to tell you all of that so you’d understand ANYTHING it’s doing. the first thing it does is flip it completely around, puts the symbiote on a military guy who’s making IT do bad things, makes his ability to control it horrifying and abusive instead of heroic and admirable. one of the later things it does (in the follow-up venom: first host) is outright feature a villain who lobotomises symbiotes, ending on a symbiote serving him swift and sweet payback by doing the same thing TO HIM. it’s exactly as unsubtle as the hunger (2003) was about its hang-ups.

comics... are a conversation.

flash remains a symbiote friend but still got fucked over big time by it all, symbiote-focused writers slott and costa also kind of use him to literally, in case anybody hadn’t caught on, literally spell out the REAL story that’s been going on in the writer's room for the past THIRTY YEARS:

you’ll notice i didn’t actually list any of the Gay Shit for you, you’ve probably already seen it or you’ll get to see it for yourself. yes, they are deeply in love, yes, it’s fucked up and flawed, yes, it is real and taken seriously and has ultimately redeeming potential. yes the concept of that nearly knocked me off my feet and in front of the subway at one point. yes there’s mpreg

it’s also fucking riddled with events, which spin off into other comics, so either ignore those and rely on the recaps OR click yourself forward through the “next issue (story)” button on marvel wikia to know what to read.

and after that must of course come the backbackbacklash, as certain as death or taxes. in the next run, we retcon everything once more, eddie just needs to control his darkness, the symbiote was an evil abuser all along, nothing on earth is ever new.

i’m not gonna go through it, i’m just gonna point you to the backbackbackbacklash issue that came out during this time: venom annual volume 2 number 1 - it’s confusingly named, it’s the one that has a blue-skinned space lady on it. this one ignores the backbackbacklash going on very pointedly and goes “it’s not ABOUT control” again, it’s pretty explicitly romantic.

and then there’s also marvel comics presents (2019) #5, which, oddly enough, does not particularly feature the characterisation you’d typically see in the relationship narrative? but it does feature eddie and the symbiote literally fucking, so you’d want to know about it.

that’s the overall, like, frame of eddie and the symbiote being in a relationship (nuh uh) (yeah they are) (NUH UH) (YEAH THEY ARE)

some stuff that’s smaller but still notable, uh.

nova (1999) 6 - 7, that’s the “we’re space married”

venom: dark origin, that’s an ALTERNATE (!!!) take on the character, don’t expect a likeable eddie but it’s very darkly funny and gay so what can i say.

venom: the end, which i would absolutely fucking hate to be canon, i think its characterisation is quite regressive, but the symbiote sure is in love, i guess.

venom: separation anxiety, the dawn of the control narrative but eddie’s characterisation did not have to go so wrong from here, like if they’d just figured out AT THIS STAGE that he's STILL acting like venom without it... i digress. it has the symbiote going eddie eddie eddieee

venom: sinner takes all, this is the first she-venom comic so that’s. hm. interesting. healing symbiote blanket

don’t read venom: license to kill just look at this panel with me

if i think of more comics worth adding i’ll add them.

the subtext slash text is heavy enough to be present to some degree in literally every cartoon adaptation of eddie brock. spider-man: the animated series goes FULL control narrative, in fact it started the “the symbiote corrupted peter” take that we to this day cannot escape, but the first few venom episodes are VERY playful about their relationship.

in spectacular spider-man it’s canon, but horrible. eddie’s in love with it, but eddie's a good boy and the symbiote is played very, very, very abusively. i think this is an evil symbiote adaptation that works well enough, at least it’s an actual meaningful character instead of just a malevolent force to resist.

in marvel’s spider-man, the only venom episode worth watching is venom returns.

i’ve actually got every symbiote-relevant episode listed right here from when we did our communal watch-through.

also watch truth in journalism. idk if it’s exactly shippy just do it

#venom #symbrock #tl;dr i wish i could tl;dr this #no off-site links to please the gods of tagging

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absolutebl · 1 year

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This Week in BL - KISSES galore

Jan 20232 Wk 2

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) 6 of 10 - The mutual squealing and kicking and rolling over in bed was v cute. Tiw might actually be the greatest BL wingman of all time, yes better than Namgoong. Friend zone? Cute GMMTV, very cute. Elevator kiss, on the other hand = you little shits. Also, I’m mad you made me watch the MV because there was no way to skip through it without missing stuff. Tricky bastards. GMMTV = cute, shitty, & tricky all in one ep. Guess that’s why they’re the top of the Thai BL food chain.

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) 5 of 12 - We knew that this pair kisses really well, but for the characters that was a pretty stellar first kiss. I liked that we got to see Palm really want something for a change. Up until now, he’s been a pretty passive character, constantly told what to do by others, this is the first independent choice his character actually makes in this narrative. Meanwhile the action part of the bodyguard plot has begun, which makes me happy. Let the forced proximity cohabitation trope commence! With probably at least one running through the woods holding hands to come.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 9 of 12 - Basically a filler ep with in-your-face backstory we already sussed. Prem is doing a good job tho. WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) 8 of 11 - There was no GamesVee. I’m sad.

Cutie Pie 2 You (special) 2 of 4 - Awwwww, how sweet they tried to give it a plot. Operative word being: tried.

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 9 of 12 - Stuff in tents. Lots of cringing blushing maiden bullshit. Noey = v bold and into public claiming. I’m not wild about this one.

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 14fin - Honestly, they were branded pairs so we knew ManTitle were goona kiss, but I kinda wish they hadn’t bothered. These characters just didn’t work for me as a couple. Marriage equality stinger* on this puppy. Still, what a slog. I’m only binging stuff from this studio henceforth. (Next one: Buddy Line Y Animal). Whatever. Frankly that’s my review of the show: whatever. 5/10

* I do like that this drama teased a marriage and then intentionally never gave us that marriage on screen. For all romance genre fans, this would've felt like a slap in the face. Instead they put in a stinger that essentially said “if you want a marriage scene between men, legalize marriage in Thailand, you fuckers.” And ya know, I’m here for that.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) 4 of 8 - Ooo first date. Omg they are SO CUTE. There was a lot of squealing and flapping of hands on this side of the screen with the show. Also two out gay boys! Korea how far you have come in just a few short years! If adorable our baby boy’s 2 fag hags don’t get together by the end of this show, I will be a touch disappointed. (It has to be said. I’m not expecting it because this is still Korea doesn’t do sides in BL. But hope springs eternal.) Meanwhile, I like that there was actual desire expressed with these two. This is definitely one of the gayest BLs to have come out of Korea in recent years. If you’re confused like I was, that pen has the initial of baby’s ex crush from uni on it.

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) 3 of 10 (or 6 of 20) - Classic that Taiwan has finally given us a femme character in a BL and he is predatory & evil. The secondary couple is the most adorable thing, I even forgive them a pratfall kiss, because there was a 3 piece suit involved. I am starting to like the main couple a little bit more, mostly because of the rich kid character. I love domesticity, and Taiwan always does it so well. The main character time traveler whatever remains a bit annoying, I prefer a sunshine archetype that is not intentionally naïve to the point of stupidity. Still, I’m invested. This is classic HIStory franchise.

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) 4 of 8 - It’s a bit too much second hand embarrassment and cringe for me. I hope Japan someday gives us a BL like Eternal Yesterday, where both characters are cool and no one dies. Incidentally, if you’re playing a game of spot that BL actor, the one playing the “actor character” is Izuka Kenta (from The Novelist and Absolute BL2). WE LOVE HIM.

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (Korea Weds iQIYI) 9-10fin - I honestly don’t know how I feel about this one. It was more of a red thread fated mates who are fated to repeat the mistakes of the past. Shall we call it faded mates? And I’m not sure, even though the ending is somewhat optimistic, that I am actually optimistic about it or them as a couple. So I wouldn’t call it HEA.

Final review? Featuring a gorgeous & stellar cast, TDWBMD should have utilized them less for melodrama and more for chemistry. This BL is a unique twist on an office romance if NOT a unique twist on a doomed red thread trope, resulting in it feeling less than the sum of its parts and ultimately unsatisfying. Possibly this had to do with the fact that this was one of those KBLs where I felt how short it was the whole time, like I was missing something constantly, in every episode. No HEA. Worth watching for some but seriously flawed. 6/10

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

The Star Always Follow You (Vietnam YT) - same Team RL peeps we have seen before (Sunshine, Stupid)

GMMTV’s Midnight series - first segment has begun bit it’s not the EarthMix messy gays. I’m so not interested in messy hets, so I’m waiting until they grace my screen. Moonlight Chicken (Weds YT) 1 of 8 eventually.

Gossip

I’m gonna hold off on The Warp Effect and binge it later, after I know for sure if the BL couple makes it.

I will be taking everyone‘s advice and not watching Till the World Ends sorry not sorry. Protecting my squishy center (also I HATE xmas carols.)

In Case You Missed It

I posted a meta of all my 2022 wraps, top picks, industry stats, etc..

I ALSO posted the 2023 forthcoming BL master post.

Coffee Shop shorts series with the adorable couple from Ghost Host, Ghost House have a WONDERFUL new installment with "BLACK COCONUT". You should watch it. Also... try the drink.

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) starring Bah Vinh ended its run and IT’S SAD. I am so glad I waiting because now I’m not gonna watch it. So there.

Adorable KGL Girlfriend Project, basically a very short lesbian version of Love Class. It’s cute.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Jan 19: Individual Circumstances (Korea Thurs Viki) 8 eps - A reunion romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past wounds. Stars JunQ (main rapper of 2nd gen group MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner).

2023 forthcoming BL here

THIS WEEK��S BEST MOMENTS

The LOOK in his eyes. I really hope we get more than crumbs from Satang Kittiphop in the future.

Also, that outfit, definitely an instrument of hope. (Mark is going to be in Moonlight Chicken, Cooking Crush, Last Twilight, & Only Friends this year. Apparently GMMTV’s directors like him a lot. So ALL the hope. Plus more sweater vests without shirts, please and thank you.)

Relatable.

FINALLY! (all are My School President, it was a GREAT ep this week)

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Well Monsta X released a new single, Beautiful Liar, so yeah, THAT!

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crying-is-your-latest-fashion · 3 years

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I finally read the great Gatsby and oh my god this bitch is a gay. Literally we are introduced to Gatsby Jordan says the line “having a gay time?“ And then it is an entire paragraph from Nick‘s point of you, about how wonderful Gatsby‘s smile is and how he’s looking at him as if he’s the most important, wonderful, fascinating person in the world and it makes Nick so damn happy. Even if you use the traditional meaning of gay, which is happy, ITS STILL GAY AS FUCK!!

Also apparently Nick have a habit of wandering off with men and just waking up the next day, in a different locaruin, such as on page 29, where he goes out to eat with an effeminate man named Mr. McKee, and then the next sentence has him in Mr. McKees bedroom. It’s literally stated that Nick is sitting at the foot of his bed and Mr. McKee is between the bedsheets in his underwear. There is no heterosexual explanation for this scene and it’s glossed over but it’s there; and considering the amount of effort this man put into color coding objects and wardrobes for symbolism, I doubt he would just throw this in there if I didn’t have a meaning.

And don’t even get me started on the pink suit. My English teacher has very much stressed how much color means in this story. Honestly and we watched parts of the movie the only thing she talked about were the colors and what they meant and how they symbolized change. So the fact that Gatsby is wearing a pink suit, was very much intentional. Pink is a very effeminate gay color; in the book A Separate Peace, another queer coded piece of literature, there is a scene where Phineas is wearing a pink shirt and Geen is just flabbergasted because just wearing the color pink, gives off the impression that you might be gay. now since this trend is so firmly established in the 1940s in the book is only the right Gatsby is only sat 20 years before that we can assume that this trend is still around, and is known. Therefore if pink is synonymous with being gay and Gatsby is wearing a pink suit when he has finally gotten over Daisy and is now spending his days with Nick, and is now finally doing some things for himself, we can assume that F. Scott Fitzgerald is trying to hint that Gatsby might be a bit gay.

UPDATE! Disregard the last half of that paragraph. I googled it and the idea of pink being for a girls and being the effeminate color did indeed appear in the 1920s but it was two years after this book was published so it doesn’t count. However pink is still associated with romance, love friendship, and positivity. Him wearing it could actually be seen as his devotion to Daisy, as when he’s most in love with her and he feels like they’re family with the love he’s wearing the pink suit only for it to break down. He keeps it on because he still loves her, even after all she did. He also remains in this color until it’s time for his funeral, showcasing that he loved her until the very end. It’s a damn good analogy but it’s not a gay one.

My teacher also stressed that description is a very important part of Fitzgeralds writing, that he emphasizes certain features that don’t fit in with white heteronormative society. So the fact that Nick is constantly describing men that he finds attractive or has a connection to as “effeminate” and the women as “handsome”, is another hint that he might be gay.

Now we move on to Jordan Baker, A woman who Nick has a close connection with, a curiosity as he puts it. Jordan is an independent woman who is unmarried and well has an escort, is later seen wrapped around two women. She is also very close with Daisy, Nicks cousin. When we were first introduced to Jordan she is giving of the gayest of gay vibes, laying in this plush couch in this beautiful sunlight room laughing and just enjoying herself in the company of another woman. honestly I’m not doing this thing justice but believe me, the gal pal vibes are there. Jordan on her own can give off gay vibes, but when you add in the fact that she is best friends with Nick, a man that she also has a close connection with that she cannot explain. It kind of seems like the two gays in the village just joined up together since they had no one else to hang out with.

To conclude, I am a mess who finally realized the gay coding in front of me.

#great gatsby #nick carraway #jay gatsby #tom buchanan #daisy buchanan #gay rights #lgbt #queer coding

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its-chelisey-stuff · 3 years

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Word of Honor eps 1-10 (thoughts and feels!)

Well, grab your glasses, fill them with your favorite drink and raise them up because this wonderful drama is doing God's gay work lmao Cheers!

I mean, who would've thought that the romance (there's no way I'm even gonna pretend and call it “bromance”) between a former and dying leader of a assassin's organization under the Emperor's orders AND the unstable (a gentle way to say crazy) but charismatic overlord of the sneaky and scary Ghost Valley, could end up being this sweet and kinda wholesome? I mean, I could easily name couples from other dramas that do not have as healthy of a dynamic as these two or the same level of understanding between them (they’re soulmates!)... Which is, you know, bit unexpected lol

On the other side, while the person they present to each other is true to them to some extent, is also in no way the people they are completely (or were, in ZZS’s case). You have one man that is trying to forget his past and trying to live peacefully for the remaining of his days, and the other who laughs at people who fight and kill each other for a piece of glass that he helped replicate, seemingly just for the laughs. This romance is INSANE and they’re most definitely not good people but I DON’T CARE, because I need them together and happily living in seclusion, just like they want. I’m rooting for them.

No, but for real, I'm gonna start measuring the gayness in BL chinese adaptations in a scale from The Untamed (lowest) to Word of Honor(highest) now because holy Jesus! I never thought I'd see another chinese BL that would make me see The Untamed as a bromance (and still doesn't lol but it's easier to imagine now, in retrospective). Word of Honor basically went "hey let's try and see how much of this we can get away with, let's find our away around the system, put in there as many touches and hugs and loving looks without ever actually saying the words “I like you/I love you” and let's just hope for the best" and my goodness! Those crazy brilliant bastards! Those mad geniuses! They fucking did it!! And it's an amazing thing to see. It’s beautiful.

Anyway, I have to say, while the romance storyline has me in love with this drama, I struggle to keep up with all the Sects' drama and their schemes to get ahead of each other lol which was something I saw coming given that I didn't like that in the novel as well. And I realize I have to pay a bit more attention to that because otherwise I'm not gonna get the whole story they've written for my precious, gayest, craziest and blood-thirstiest male lead ever, our very own and dangerous Wen KeXing (who is being played delightfully by Gong Jun, it’s like this role was made for him).

Difference with the novel

Yeah, I know I shouldn't obsess about this, but I can't help it. I mean, if we look at it broadly, they're basically telling the same story. Let's look deeply though and it's different, a more detailed one, I guess? The novel is very short (yet i haven't finished it and it doesn't help that I can't find it completely translated lol) and it's not that I don't like the changes, on the contrary, I'm glad and they had to because otherwise they couldn't tell a story that filled all 35 episodes. And it's good because this way they added more depth to the story and characters and we have more interactions with our OTP.

My biggest surprise about the differences with the source material is that they decided to tell/show right away that Wen KeXing is bad news and a little okay a lot coocoo bananas. Even past halfway of the novel, you still don't know the full story with him, despite his weird behaviour (although Zhou ZiShu suspects it).

Another thing (but this is me being super picky) is that I preferred the way Cao Weining and A-Xiang met in the novel, but in the drama they made A-Xiang appear right away as the badass she is before the guy. It's still a "love at first sight" kind of meeting on his side, so it's okay. And we have KeXing older brother/parent protective side that it's not that shown in the novel. So you win some, you lose some lol.

Them, drinking under the moonlight, being happy and starring lovingly at each other is most definitely not straight. There isn’t any heterosexual explanation for that.

Now I need to see ep 11 asap because I cannot handle my OTP fighting and going their separate ways (this doesn’t happen in the novel!). They need to reconcile soon! The fastest the do that, the fastest I can get over that final scene at the end of ep 10. Gong Jun was brilliant but damn! That was a bit scary.

#word of honor #gong jun #zhang zehan #shen he ling #cdrama #tian ya ke #kinda long post #sorry to everyone who has no idea what i'm talking about #but y'all should check it out #for the first time in some time i felt really inspired to talk about a drama #this much #cdramas are my salvation right now after some heavy disappointments

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gascon-en-exil · 2 years

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And with that I've finished Triangle Strategy. Comments on the second half of the golden route.

These last three chapters play out like a variation on Benedict's route: Exharme dies in a cavalry charge in the field, Lyla is fought (but here not killed) in the streets, and then it's the final battle against a magically oversized Idore, his robot hierophant, and her exploding marionettes. It's not terribly challenging once you figure out how Idore's invincibility gimmick works.

I can't say that Idore is a compelling villain, but he becomes unintentionally more interesting in that his motivation is at last revealed to essentially be Fire Emblem's thesis statement. Even without divine or supernatural beings humans will still fight because of their own weaknesses, and so he lost faith in both the goddess and humanity and so sought to control the people with corpse-powered immortality magic and an undying hierophant with no voice but what he gave to her. Serenoa gives the usual hero spiel about believing in people, but TS is at least realistic enough not to turn its "real" epilogue into an unambiguously happy ever after.

Said epilogue takes the form of Roland becoming king of a unified Norzelia but arriving at that point gradually, with self-governing territories (led by Svarog and Lyla, since everyone else is dead) and open trade borders. No word on how Hyzante's economy survives the devaluation of salt, or if it even does since that part of the epilogue is all about Lyla holding everyone together somehow and sharing her medical research with the world to everyone's benefit. Svarog has to put down a (counter) coup from Gustadolph's loyalists, and I wonder who's supposed to rule Aesfrost after him since hereditary rule remains the law of the land and Svarog's line has ended. I suppose the unspoken assumption is that House Wolffort will take over Aesfrost then via Frederica - and there's cause for a future war right here if civil unrest doesn't tear Hyzante apart...or Serenoa's kids don't start a succession crisis over the throne Glenbrook, because he does tell Roland that they're brothers here too. This happens in a sequence where Serenoa has long talks with both Benedict and Roland, allowing them to apologize for how they acted prior to the final vote and reaffirm that Benedict will continue serving House Wolffort and that Serenoa won't seek the crown even when offered, although he apparently does take all of the Roselle under his dominion. You may notice I've not mentioned someone here...

...and that's because Serenoa and Frederica don't speak to each other at all during this epilogue, even though it ends with their wedding. I swear, TS often feels actually afraid of writing romance scenes, even of the most banal variety, and I came away from this ending thinking that the route that ships Serenoa/Frederica the hardest is in fact the one where Serenoa dies. I guess it's cute that Erador and Geela cry at their wedding and that we see Lyla reunited with her son Quahaug (a conviction-based recruit interacting with the main plot, imagine that), but the scene cutting to credits just before they walk down the aisle practically demands that the player take up the story from there...except their relationship is so bland that I wouldn't want to even if I were into M/F.

Speaking of ship dynamics I'm not much into, Cordelia and Avlora are together at the wedding, and Avlora's character stories (which I had to grind a bit to see) continue to use Cordelia as her primary motivation. I believe I can confidently say that theirs is the single gayest relationship in all of TS, despite there being no solid romantic foundation. That's where fanon is going to have to step in.

#Triangle Strategy

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silent-era-of-cinema · 3 years

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Jack Pickford (born John Charles Smith; August 18, 1896 – January 3, 1933) was a Canadian-born American actor, film director and producer. He was the younger brother of actresses Mary and Lottie Pickford.

After their father deserted the family, all three Pickford children began working as child actors on the stage. Mary later became a highly popular silent film actress, producer and early Hollywood pioneer. While Jack also appeared in numerous films as the "All American boy next door" and was a fairly popular performer, he was overshadowed by his sister's success. His career also declined steadily due to alcohol, drugs and chronic depression.

John Charles Smith was born in 1896 in Toronto, Ontario, to John Charles Smith, an English immigrant odd-job man of Methodist background, and Charlotte Hennessy Smith, who was Irish Catholic.[1] He was called Jack as a child. His alcoholic father left the family while Pickford was a young child. This incident left the family impoverished. Out of desperation, Charlotte allowed Jack and his two sisters Gladys and Lottie to appear onstage, beginning with Gladys, the eldest. This proved a good source of income and, by 1900, the family had relocated to New York City and the children were acting in plays across the United States.

Due to the work the family was constantly separated until 1910 when Gladys signed with Biograph Studios. By this time, his sister Gladys Smith had been transformed into Mary Pickford (Marie was her middle name, and Pickford an old family name). Following suit, the Smiths changed their stage names to 'Pickford'.

Soon after signing with Biograph, Mary secured jobs for all the family, including the then-14-year-old Jack. When the Biograph Company headed West to Hollywood, only Mary was to go until Jack pleaded to join the company as well. Much to Mary's protest, Charlotte threw him on the train as it left the station. The company arrived in Hollywood, where Jack acted in bit parts during the stay.

Mary soon became a well-known star, and by 1917 had signed a contract for $1 million with First National Pictures. As part of her contract, Mary saw to it that her family was brought along, giving the now-named Jack Pickford a lucrative contract with the company as well.

By the time he signed with First National, Pickford had played bit parts in 95 shorts and films. Though Pickford was considered an excellent actor, he was seen as someone who never lived up to his potential. In 1917, he starred in one of his first major roles as Pip in the adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations as well as the title role in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and the follow-up Huck and Tom in 1918.

In early 1918, after the United States entered World War I, Pickford joined the United States Navy as an enlisted sailor and was stationed at the Third Naval District in Manhattan, New York. Using the famous Pickford name, he soon became involved in a scheme that allowed rich young men to pay bribes to avoid military service, as well as reportedly procuring young women for officers. For his involvement, Pickford was nearly dishonorably discharged; afterward he returned to making films. By 1923, his roles had gone from several a year to one. In 1928, he finished his last film, acting as Clyde Baxter in Gang War. Through the years, he dabbled in screen writing and directing; however, he never pursued either form further. Most of his films, especially those in the late 1910s, were both commercial and critical successes, making a highly regarded name for himself. Pickford's image was that of the All-American boy, with his sister being “America’s Sweetheart.”

Despite his "boy next door" image, Pickford's private life was one of drinking and drug abuse, domestic violence, and womanizing, culminating in the severe alcoholism that resulted in his early death. In the early days of Hollywood, movie studios were able to cover up almost all of their stars' misbehavior, but within the Hollywood crowd, Jack Pickford's behind-the scenes activities made him a legend in his own time.[citation needed] All in all, Pickford appeared in more than 130 movies between 1908 and 1928.

Pickford met actress and Ziegfeld girl Olive Thomas at a beach cafe on the Santa Monica Pier. Thomas was just as wild as Pickford. Renowned screenwriter and director Frances Marion later commented on the couple's lifestyle:

...I had seen her [Thomas] often at the Pickford home, for she was engaged to Mary's brother, Jack. Two innocent-looking children, they were the gayest, wildest brats who ever stirred the stardust on Broadway. Both were talented, but they were much more interested in playing the roulette of life than in concentrating on their careers.

Pickford and Thomas eloped on October 25, 1916, in New Jersey. None of their family was present and their only witness was Thomas Meighan. The couple had no children of their own, though in 1920, they adopted Olive's then-six-year-old nephew when his mother died.[3] Although by most accounts Olive was the love of Pickford's life, the marriage was stormy and filled with highly charged conflict, followed by lavish making up through the exchange of expensive gifts. For many years the Pickfords had intended to vacation together and with their marriage on the rocks, the couple decided to take a second honeymoon.

In August 1920, the pair traveled to Paris, hoping to combine a vacation with some film preparations. On the night of September 5, 1920, the couple went out for a night of entertainment and partying at the famous bistros in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. They returned to their room in the Hôtel Ritz around 3:00 a.m. It was rumored Thomas may have taken cocaine that night, though it was never proven. She was intoxicated and tired, and took a large dose of mercury bichloride, a common item for bathroom cleaning.[5] She was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, where Pickford, together with his former brother-in-law Owen Moore, remained at her side until she succumbed to the poison a few days later. Rumors arose that she had either tried to commit suicide or had been murdered. A police investigation followed, as well as an autopsy, and Thomas's death was ruled accidental.

Pickford married two more times. On July 31, 1922, he married Marilyn Miller (1898–1936), a celebrated Broadway dancer and former Ziegfeld girl, at his sister and brother-in-law's famed home Pickfair. By most accounts it was an abusive marriage due to Pickford's drug abuse and alcoholism. They separated in 1926 and Miller was granted a French divorce in November 1927.

Pickford's final marriage was to Mary Mulhern, aged 22 and a former Ziegfeld girl, whom he married on August 12, 1930. Within three months Pickford grew increasing volatile towards Mulhern. After two years Mulhern left Pickford, claiming he had mistreated her throughout the marriage. She was granted an interlocutory divorce in February 1932 which had yet to be finalized at the time of Pickford's death.

In 1932, Pickford visited his sister Mary at Pickfair. According to Mary, he looked ill and emaciated; his clothes were hanging on him as if he were a clothes hanger. Mary Pickford recalled in her autobiography that she felt a wave of premonition when watching her brother leave. As they started down the stairs to the automobile entrance, Jack called back to her "Don’t come down with me, Mary dear, I can go alone." Mary later wrote that as she stood at the top of the staircase, an inner voice said "That’s the last time you’ll see Jack".

Jack Pickford, at age 36, died at the American Hospital of Paris on January 3, 1933. The cause for his death was listed as "progressive multiple neuritis which attacked all the nerve centers". This was believed due to his alcoholism. Mary Pickford arranged for his body to be returned to Los Angeles, where he was interred in the private Pickford plot at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Jack Pickford has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1523 Vine Street.

#jack pickford #silent era #silent hollywood #silent movie stars #early 1900s #early film #1910s movies #1920s hollywood

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