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angstics · 1 year

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i finally articulated my opinion on my "is gerard way doing drag" question. my definition of drag is when a person impersonates, exaggerates, or appropriates a mode of gender expression. drag can be artistic or political (or both). drag can be an identity. drag and transgender identity are confused as the same thing. for some, it is. what is considered cross dressing can also be considered drag. it's important to note that drag is essential to queer culture, and how the us government harasses queer people through cross dressing, and now anti-drag, laws. we wouldnt be here talking about pop artists doing drag without drag performers and nonbinary-trans-gnc people.

to some people, a self-identified man in a female-identified dress is drag. "cross dressing" depends on cishet norms. queer people, especially nonbinary-trans-gnc people, have called to dismantle the assignment of gender to clothing. under that lens, a man in a dress is just a man in a dress -- for it to be drag, context and intent matters. that's how you get women doing female drag, or androgynous people doing what gerard way's been doing this last year on tour.

in asking "is gerard way doing drag?", im assigning importance to the topic. does it matter? within my understanding, drag is about intent and context as much as gender presentation. intent and context is what makes something important. therefore: understanding why the question is important solves it.

male music artists have a long history of cross dressing and doing drag. there's a good chance plugging any dude into a search engine with "drag" or "skirt" will bring something up. bowie, queen, nirvana, manic street preachers, placebo. here's a list. newer artists: lil nas x, harry styles, anthony green, pete wentz, young thug. some are impersonating female caricatures, some are masculinizing female clothes (long, ill-fitting, straight). some, like molko and lil nas, wear feminine clothes without exaggerating or masculinizing. gerard is in that same grey area.

male music artists have a long history of cross dressing and doing drag -- photos: "i want to break free" mv by queen (1984) / placebo in london (oct 1998) / lil nas x at audacy beach festival (dec 5, 2021) / fall out boy at rock for people (june 17, 2022)

all that history is why it was so weird when kerrang called gerard's riot fest "dress and heels" "a compelling show of contrarian anti-rock star eccentricity". it is not anti-rock star, at least not as described. it may be compelling, contrarian, and eccentric, but no reviewer really cares to analyze why. the closest they get is by identifying non-binary connection (them.us) and its relation to the "minefield that is American gender politics today" (latimes.com).

fans were struck by way's outfits for a lot of other reasons.

1. we have to get it out of the way that they just looked hot -- gerard is perpetually attractive, skirts are pretty. easy equation.

2. he has a long history of gender nonconformity. more on that in my #mcr queer studies tag. gerard is a 45 year old famously androgynous person who doesnt do labels, aligns himself with gender nonconformity (2014 reddit ama, 2018 advocate article, 2015 he/they tweet), and doesnt seem to care to be known as a man.

3. the tour outfits were well-fitted. many were crafted by skilled designer marina toybina and her team. which leads to ->

4. the outfits were very casual and very feminine. as mentioned, most men opt for masculine, ill-fitting skirts. which is to say they are NOT showing leg and they are definitely not showing ass. gerard doesnt steer clear from shortness or tightness or movement. he also dresses in ways people dress day to day -- the miniskirt is as casual as the shorts as casual as the jeans. there's some discussion to be had about what casual means -- he could be imitating expected presentation or just using basics, like his frequent shirt and pants.

the miniskirt is as casual as the shorts as casual as the jeans -- photos: firefly music festival (sept 23, 2022) / uncasville (sept 1, 2022) / eden project night 1 (may 16, 2022)

5. there was variety. many outfits, many types. he wasnt just doing pure femininity. some looks were high concept, some low concept. some gendered, some genderless. some feminine, some masculine. it was playful. its honesty evident in its fluidity yet cohesiveness. expanded in the next points ->

6. they incorporate elements of masculinity and gender neutrality concurrent with the feminine. his aggressive, energetic performance style often doesnt mind what people are seeing when his skirt lifts or shirt droops. he has little to no make-up -- if he does, it's stage and not glam. the closest he gets is the agender black swan look at boston night 1, the stage contour at wwwy night 3, and dubious lipstick at firefly. he also maintains the same hairstyle: barely styled, not straightened-curled. pinned a few times, gelled back some other times.

he has little to no make-up -- if he does, it's stage and not glam -- photos: boston night 1 (sept 7, 2022) / when we were young night 3 (oct 29, 2022) / firefly music festival (sept 23, 2022)

7. the character outfits weren't caricatures, like green's sleazy hooker or queen's uptight housewives. gerard's characters were appropriated but not exaggerated. cheerleader, nurse, manson girl, jackie o, princess diane, st joan. all figures of pop culture. he wore them as they were. even comparing green and way's similar white-green cheerleader costumes there's a difference in presentation. green wears long leggings, way wears shorts. green's costume is based on a stranger things character, way's is a custom remade vintage outfit. green exhibits the masculinization of feminine clothes which way subverts. this comparison highlights what makes way's outfits different, and therefore exciting to talk about.

green exhibits the masculinization of feminine clothes which way subverts -- photos: saosin in garden grove, ca (oct 27, 2022) / mcr in nashville, tn (aug 23, 2022)

8. and when he played with masculinity, it was in a way that was dubbed "boydrag". the new jersey night 2 casino singer look was a dramatic caricature that heightened masculine features until they were pure style... the defintion of camp. he had a mustache -- thin like john waters or a confirmed bachelor, and drawn on with eyeliner. he had a suit -- a pink-gold, glittery woman's cut jacket with a glittery bowtie and pleated shirt. the dramatic flair is accentuated by the black eye make-up, the frank sinatra "my way" cover, the drum tag: "the house always wins".

the defintion of camp -- photos: new jersey night 2 (sept 21, 2022) 1 / 2

when i asked which outfits others considered drag, all replies identified the casino singer and jackie o as drag and the rest as "just clothes". this relation made me understand why the rest couldnt be drag despite all the connections i talked about above. the jackie o outfit doesnt exaggerate the source like casino singer, but the source itself is both highly dramatic and highly gendered. cheer is gendered but not highly dramatic, st joan dramatic but not highly gendered. diane is gendered and dramatic, but not highly. the list goes on and on. it's a fine line. especially cheer could tip into drag for me.

but the source itself is both highly dramatic and highly gendered -- photos: mcr at riot fest (oct 12, 2022) / jackie kennedy onassis (jan 3, 1971)

if drag is understood in this way, simply wearing gendered clothes isnt drag. the look itself has to be about the performance of gender, however that may be presented. that’s the importance of classification. we can see what the artist is doing.

#mcr #gerard way #mcr queer studies #mcr performance studies #qessay #mcr fashion studies

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cillian-gets-me-wetter · 1 month

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casual - carmy berzatto x fem!reader

prompt: “he hasn’t got his eyes on anybody else, you know? ..hmm? but it’s hard for that bastard to take his eyes off of you.” by @urfriendlywriter

a/n: this is going to be a two part story so buckle your seatbelts for this one. takes place during season 2, was inspired by this edit i saw recently! i literally have been jeremy allen white girly since shameless so i’m glad he’s getting his flowers and writing anything about his characters is a personal favorite of mine :))

part 2: “silver springs” out now!

warnings: reader and carmy are on their fwb shit, 18+ only??, mentions of smoking, claire (my apologies, ms. girl 😭), cameos from richie and syd, smutty??, kissing, co-workers to fwb to lovers, slow burn, angst

summary: you were hired as a cashier and server at the beef and sometimes helped out in the kitchen whenever no one was in the front of the house. a few months after working there, you struck up a friends with benefits arrangement with the new owner, carmy berzatto. while your connection was supposed to be strictly casual, he starts seeing a girl he knew from childhood, claire, which breaks your heart.

disclaimer: i do not own any characters mentioned in this story. this is for fictional purposes only. do not copy or claim my work as your own. comments, reblogs and constructive feedback are appreciated!!

here are resources for supporting palestine and gaza 🇵🇸

masterlist

knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?

you’ve been working at the beef for over six months now after the new owner, carmy berzatto hired you after reviewing your application for the job and the interview process. you looked him up not long after, discovering that he’s an michelin star chef so of course, you knew you had high expectations to uphold.

the first month working there, you worked in the back of the house alongside him, his cousin named richie as well as other people they hired on to work with them to revive the failing restaurant. you were used to working in fast paced environments as you had previously worked in a couple of local restaurants throughout chicago.

then eventually you move up to the front of the house, taking people’s orders and making sure everything is in good shape and you were able to have your friend, jules, who you attended a few college classes with.

you quickly scribble down the order for the customer at the booth near the register as you hear the bell behind you ping, indicating the food for the other customers in the restaurant is ready. you asked the man, “will that complete your order, sir?” he nodded as he looked over the menu, “yeah that’ll be all, thank you so much.” you smiled politely, “of course, i’ll come back and refill your drink for you.”

you walk over behind the counter, grabbing the two plates off of the shelf. then you bring them to the customers who are sitting in the next booth over when jules comes in for her shift, politely smiling at you before walking to the back. you go back to the previous man you were serving and get him a refill as she walks back out in her apron.

you go up to her, “hey, i’m going to go on my break. can you cover these tables for me?” she nodded, “yeah, sure. don’t have too much fun.” she walked over to see if the man was ready to order as you walked into the kitchen, taking in the chaos as everyone is at their stations making sure all the food is up to standard before sending the food out.

you make eye contact with carmy as he’s talking with marcus about something as you walk closer to the back, sneaking into his office to wait for him. unbeknownst to everyone except jules, syd and richie, you and carmy were hooking up. sometimes you would spend the night at each other’s places and have quickies whenever you both had the opportunity.

it wasn’t long until he walked in, closing and locking the door behind him. you sat on his desk as he walked up to you, parting your legs as he stood between them. he wore his usual white shirt and blue apron, your fingers trailing down his muscular biceps. you traced the tattoos on his hands as you stared up at him with lust filled eyes.

he sighed, “fuck, you can��t look at me like that.” he felt his cock throb in his pants as you wrapped your leg around his waist, pulling him closer to you. he quickly reached behind him, untying the apron and throwing it to the floor. you grinded against his clothed erection slowly, making him shudder as you smile and lick your lips at his reaction.

you whisper seductively, “and what are you going to do about it?” he shook his head, “oh, you have no idea.” you suddenly grabbed a fistful of his shirt, his lips roughly slamming against yours. your hands released the hold on him as one hand instinctively ran through his curly, golden brown hair.

his cold hands wandered under your shirt, groping over your bra, making you mewl as he took the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth. you let out a moan into the kiss as his hands then lifted your shirt up so he can get a good look at your tits when his phone dings. he ignores it as he grasps the straps of your bra, pulling both down to reveal them.

the cold air hits you, making your nipples hard as he groped and kneaded them. you whimpered underneath him melting into his touch as his phone goes off again. he stops touching you, pulling his phone out of his pocket and typing a quick reply to whoever texted. you pulled your bra straps up as you felt the moment was over and moved your shirt back down.

he quickly put his phone down on his desk, the phone screen facing you as he leaned down, whispering in your ear. “i’m sorry about that.” you whispered back, “it’s okay.” he leaves kisses down your jaw and moves to your neck, making you moan softly. you felt the vibration of his phone against the desk, taking a quick glance since he wasn’t paying attention.

you simply saw the name: “claire” and the text said, “on my way.” you were quickly pulled away from your thoughts as an urgent knock on the door brought you both back to reality. he scoffed and yelled out, “i’m on my break, what do you want?” tina’s voice projected through the door, “chef, we need you here for a second.” you pouted as he left a few soft kisses on your neck before pulling away from you.

you asked, “did you want to come over tonight?” he grabbed his apron off of the floor and tossed it to the side and pulling out a extra one he kept in the cabinet. he shook his head, “i can’t tonight. how about this weekend?” you nodded as you got off his desk, “that’s fine with me.” he smiled at you, “good. i’ll see you later.” he kissed your lips sweetly before walking back to the kitchen.

you smiled to yourself at the fact he would always kiss you whenever he had to leave somewhere, even if it’s back to the kitchen. you snuck out of his office, as your thoughts flooded with how much you truly feel him. the only person who knows about your feelings for carmy was richie after he walked in on you and him fucking in his office.

you walked out into the night as you stayed in late to help prep for the next day. you pulled a cigarette you always kept in your apron pocket out of convenience. you sat on one of the crates as you ignited the lighter with your thumb, holding it towards the butt end and spark it.

you take a long drag, feeling your nerves settle down after the long day you had. you hear the door open and look over seeing richie walk out, closing the door behind him. he walks over, standing not too far away as you exhale the smoke out of your mouth. you hold up the cigarette to him as he accepts it, taking his own drag.

he exhales the smoke into the air before handing it back to you. he asked, “so, how long have you been sleeping with my cousin?” you blinked at the sudden boldness of the question as you try to figure out what to say. you stammered, “uh.. for like two months now…” he nodded as you saw him mentally do the math of how long this had been going on under his nose.

you both sat in silence as you passed the cigarette back and forth. when the cigarette was done, you flicked it over to the ground next to you before stepping on it. he started to make his way back into the restaurant but stopped to look at you, “he hasn’t gotten his eyes on anyone else, you know?”

you looked at him, “..hmm?” you heard what he said but it wasn’t something you could wrap your head around. he continued, “but something i do know is that it’s hard for that bastard to take his eyes off of you.”

you walk back to the front of the house and catch up with jules on the tables that need to be taken care of. she lets you know the orders for the people who have ordered their food while pointing out those who just came in.

as you start catching up on what you missed during your “break”, a woman who looks about your age walks in. she had brown hair and wore medical scrubs. she walked over and asked, “excuse me? do you know if carmy is here?” you smiled politely and nodded, “yeah, i can get him for you. are you a friend of his?”

she said, “he’s my boyfriend, actually.” you couldn’t tell if you heard glass breaking from the kitchen or if it was your heart was shattering in your chest after hearing what she said. she held her hand out, introducing herself to you. “i’m claire, by the way.”

you nodded as you connected the dots in your head. you knew that she was the person texting him while you both almost fucked for the millionth time in his office. you didn’t shake her hand and coldly responded, “i can go get him for you.” she was about to thank you when you suddenly made your way into the kitchen before she could say anything else to you.

you walked back into the kitchen as richie attempted to greet you but you ignored him, making your way towards his cousin. carmy was talking to syd about a new recipe when you tapped him on the shoulder. he looked over at you, “what’s up?” his face suddenly dropped after noticing the hurt in your eyes before you said, “your girlfriend is here.” venom was laced in each of those four words.

the kitchen suddenly fell silent as everyone collectively knew you and carmy had something going on. the charged energy between you two would fill the room whenever you were around each other. they all looked at carmy as if he ran over a dog without any remorse. he walked away from you and to the front, without saying another word to you.

as soon as carmy was out of sight, everyone went back to work at their designated stations. you walked out to the back of the restaurant, needing fresh air to collect your thoughts. you didn’t hear the door open behind you until you heard a voice say, “hey.” you jump startled until you turn around and see it’s just syd, making you sigh from relief. “jesus, don’t scare me like that, dude!”

she laughed, “i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to scare you!” she then changed her tone, “i was just checking to see if you were okay after that.” you were far from okay. all you wanted to was scream at him for not telling you that he was dating anyone but still sleeping with you. you also wanted to cry and wonder why you weren’t the one he wanted to date.

you shrugged it off, “yeah, i’m fine.” while you knew that you had with him was supposed to be casual.. but was it casual when you would lie in bed after sex, nude for hours as you talked about your lives? or was it casual when he would run his fingers through your hair while you read your book and laid your head in his lap on his couch during your days off?

she gave you a comforting smile, “no, you’re not. it’s okay not to be after what you found out.” her words made your eyes well up with tears as you blinked them away to prevent feeling vulnerable. she pulled you into a hug, you laid your head on her shoulder as you sobbed.

she rubbed your back, letting you cry it all out rather than judging you. your breathing began to get ragged as you struggled to talk through your cries, “i don’t know why he wouldn’t tell me about her.” she sighed, “sometimes it’s better if we don’t understand everything.”

#carmy berzatto #carmy berzatto x reader #carmy x reader #carmy berzatto imagine #jeremy allen white #the bear fx #the bear fanfiction #writeblr #Spotify #izzy writes 💕

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zerobaselove · 6 months

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brain freeze | sung hanbin

pairing: frozen yogurt worker! hanbin x regular customer! reader

genre: fluff, strangers to friends to lovers ?? kinda ??

word count: 5067

warnings: none i don't think! lowercase intended, not proofread, or even read or written in one sitting truthfully

notes: thank u to tiff for convincing me to write this after our zb1 as part time workers conversation, it's honestly rlly rough but i like the concept so :]] i hope u guys like it,, especially since ive been mia </3

"welcome to cosmic swirls! our frozen yogurt is over on that wall there and the toppings are just to the right! you can come up here when you're all ready and i can ring you up!"

the cheerful boy at the front counter beamed at you as you walked through the front door of the new frozen yogurt shop in town, gesturing to the other side of the store. you gave him a smile and a small thank you as you followed the bright-coloured walls towards the frozen yogurt. after a long day at work, you couldn't help but give in to the temptation of trying the new sweet treats just across the street from your work.

the shop was lined with bright purple and blue paint and star decals, a wall filled with every topping you can imagine, and the plethora of flavours of frozen yogurt that lined where you stood. there was a faint hum of whatever tune was playing on the radio, and you could faintly hear the cute worker shuffling around at the counter. you honestly weren't expecting it to be so empty, but how many people were getting frozen yogurt on a thursday night, right?

"hmm," you wondered aloud, browsing the options in front of you, unable to decide on just one.

"i recommend the cotton candy!" the cute boy chimed up, watching as you admired the machines in front of you. "ooh, i like the sound of that," you smiled, grabbing a cup and filling it with the frozen dessert. you added a few simple toppings before walking over to the counter where the boy stood.

after ringing you up and paying for your treat, the boy, who you've noticed is named hanbin, judging by his name tag, speaks up. "hope you like my recommendation!" a wide smile crosses his face, gesturing to the pink and blue swirled frozen yogurt in your cup.

"and if i don't?" you teased, giving hanbin a mischievous grin. "well," he pondered for a moment, "then i owe you a new one! but i bet you'll love it, scouts honour!"

you let out a laugh at the boy with his hand up in the air, "well i'll keep you updated." you laughed again as you went to go sit down, scrolling through your phone as you tried the frozen yogurt, pleasantly surprised at how good it was. i guess that's why everyone's been talking about this place lately, you thought to yourself.

finishing up your treat, you threw out the cup and walked back to the counter, getting hanbin's attention. "so?" he started, a smile on his face as he waited to hear your review.

"hated it!" you said, joking around with the boy as a laugh passed your lips. he feigned offence, a hand coming to his chest dramatically as if you had personally struck his heart. "no way!! how could you!" the two of you burst into a fit of giggles, drawing the attention of the lone couple in the corner before covering your mouth with your palm.

calming down a bit, you continued, "guess i'll just have to come back and try a different flavour next time!" you insisted.

"i guess you will!"

and you did. in the coming weeks, you found yourself returning to the shop more times than you could consider normal. every time, trying a new flavour than before. had to give it all a shot right? even if some nights left you with a cup of half-eaten frozen yogurt or more toppings than dessert in an attempt to drown out a flavour you weren't particularly fond of.

what you had grown quite fond of though was the boy behind the counter. hanbin. over the weeks you had gotten to know hanbin a bit; often you were there late, one of the last people there at that time, which gave you two time to talk and get to know each other a bit.

what you had learned was that hanbin was a dancer outside of his daily employment. most of the time his paychecks went to different classes with teachers he admired. something about "wanting to learn from the best." you also learned that he had a small hamster plushie that he kept behind the counter with him, even got him a miniature apron that you could only imagine he stole from a small doll. but sometimes kids would come in and he'd show off his little friend, loving to watch the way they got excited over the worker hamster. it was cute. he was cute.

and with that thought clouding your brain like an all too familiar brain freeze, you walked through the familiar front doors yet again, the jingle of the bell signaling your entrance had become something you were sure you'd hear in your dreams.

"on time as usual," hanbin smiled at your familiar face, "what flavour are you going to try today?" he questioned as he watched you saunter over to the machines, grabbing a cup before staring them down. "is the coconut any good?"

"never tried it honestly," he said simply, leaving you shocked. it was the first flavour so far that he hasn't had, "heard it's good though! you'll have to let me know!" his usual smile plastered on his face, you once again end up mirroring his expression, "guess i'll have to get it then!"

you found yourself at what you considered your usual table now, the one closest to the front counter. you like to tell yourself it was because it was convenient but you know it was just so it was easier to talk to hanbin. but that wasn't a crime!

a few minutes had passed and hanbin found himself sitting with you at the table, a now regular occurrence when there were no other customers around. "how is it?"

you plunged the spoon into the dessert, holding it up to the boy, "give it a try," you hadn't really thought about the intimacy of your offer, but hanbin didn't give it a second thought as he took a bite off of your spoon, letting out a hum of approval. "not too bad." he said, covering his mouth.

like many other nights, the two of you let your conversations run freely, only stopping to glance at the time on your phone; 11:05.

"shit hanbin," you quickly stood up, grabbing your phone and cup, "i didn't mean to keep you past close. i'm sure you wanna go home after a long day." you can't help but shake your head at your innate ability to get lost in time.

he let out a chuckle at your sudden urgency, "hey no rush, i honestly like the company, it gets pretty lonely here at night." his reassurance helped calm your guilt for a moment, "plus there's not much left to do to close up." he stacked the final chairs, the ones you had been sat at, as he continued. "but it's getting late, you should be heading home, no?" he sounded almost worried at you being out so late, and your heart swelled a bit at the thought.

"yeah i probably should head back," you let out a small sigh at the idea of ending the night with hanbin, "sorry again hanbin, and please get home safe." you gave him a sheepish smile as you turned on your heel to leave.

"make sure you get home safe too! what would i do without my favourite customer?" he joked, not knowing the way your heart skipped a beat at being called his favourite.

you were running out of excuses, or rather flavours; reasons to be at the frozen yogurt shop as much as you were.

"what are you gonna do when there's nothing new to try?" hanbin laughed, watching as you had narrowed it down to your last few choices of untouched flavours.

"die, maybe." you say nonchalantly, earning a laugh from the boy at the counter, finding your dramatics endearing. "you could just try every combination of flavours with every topping." hanbin suggested, a smug smile on his face.

you laughed, shaking your head, "hanbin that would take forever."

"and?" he questioned, "just means more time with me!"

he did have a good point, as silly as the idea sounded. you'd honestly do anything to give you an excuse to hang out with the boy more. except actually asking him out, of course.

what you didn't know was that despite the jokes, hanbin was honestly hoping you would take the idea somewhat seriously. one or two more guaranteed visits did not sound like enough time for him to finally gain the courage to ask you out, or even to get your number, so he felt like he needed all the time he could get.

you weren't the only one who had grown fond of your frequent visits. you had quickly become the thing hanbin looked forward to every week. it had only been a few months of small chats across counters and plastic tables, but hanbin could've sworn he was falling for you, at least in some capacity.

so instead of either of you asking the other out, you just sat together again like every visit, giggling and talking about anything and everything, sometimes even sharing bites of your dessert as you rambled on about an interaction at work that day. it was the least you could give him for listening to your rants.

instead of leaving when you were finished, you took it upon yourself to help with stacking the chairs, hopefully as an apology for always keeping the boy so late.

he couldn't help but smile at the gesture, "you don't have to do that y/n, i'm the one who works here not you." you simply smiled and shook your head, "but it gives me an excuse to stay here with you longer," you finished stacking the last table on your side of the room, "plus it's the least i could do."

"well i appreciate it," a shy smile spread across his face, trying to mentally stop a blush from rising to his cheeks at the thought of you wanted to stay with him longer. god i need to hurry up and ask them out. the thought echoed in his brain as he grabbed the key to lock up, walking with you to the door in a comfortable silence.

you both said your goodbyes, waving as you split off in opposite directions. you spent your walk home that night thinking more about the boy than usual, and as if connected telepathically, hanbin happened to have you at the forefront of his mind the whole drive home. not that he was complaining.

this was the time, hanbin reassured himself. this was when he'd finally ask you out, give you his number, get your number. something. anything. but as he watched the hands on the clock move at an agonizing pace, seemingly taunting him, he couldn't help but second guess himself.

in the midst of his self doubt, the familiar chime rang through the quiet store, right on schedule. and in you walked, dressed up nicer than usual. not that you didn't look great all the time to hanbin, but you looked particularly nice this evening.

"bad news hanbin," you said, walking up to the counter, "i have to take it to go tonight," your lips pressed into a frown. he looked quizzically at you, urging you to continue. "heading to my brother's graduation." you continued simply.

"and yet you still came in for frozen yogurt?" he questioned, a small chuckle escaping his lips. "well i didn't wanna miss my flavour this week," you exclaimed, as if making a very obvious point, "plus i don't think i could go a whole extra week without seeing you, c'mon now."

you kept talking as you filled up your first cup, one of the last flavours that you hadn't tried. setting it on the counter, you started grabbing the second, taking the opportunity to surprise your brother with some of the frozen yogurt you had been raving about.

tapping your card on the machine, and saying your farewell, you turned to leave the small shop and head on your way. but not before hanbin could stop you.

"wait!" he called out, quickly jogging up to you with a napkin in hand, "you might need this, for the road," a hand came to the back of his neck, rubbing sheepishly. "and uh, one minute." he quickly rushed to the back of the shop, where you assumed he kept his things, reemerging from the back door with a jacket in hand. "it's cold out there, staying warm is important, especially if you're eating frozen yogurt."

he lightly placed the jacket around your shoulders, letting the fabric drape along your frame. he took a second to catch his breath, partially from the running back and forth, and partially from the sight of you in his jacket. he quickly tried to peel his eyes off of you before his thoughts got the best of him, and luckily, that led hanbin to miss the way your cheeks heated up at the gesture.

after a moment of silence and thumping hearts, you said your goodbyes once more, accompanied by a thank you from yourself as you headed out the door.

as opposed to the usual, this time you found yourself sitting with your brother indulging in the sweet treat. "since when did you wear jackets like that?" your brother inquired, glancing over the clearly oversized mens jacket. you tried to shrug the question off, attempting to act nonchalant, "since today i guess." you brought the spoon up to your mouth to take another bite, avoiding any further answers.

"y/n, how dumb do you think i am." your brother chuckled, shaking his head at your poor attempt at an excuse, "who gave it to you?"

you quickly gave up on the facade, knowing you couldn't lie to your brother. "just the guy from the frozen yogurt place," your voice trailed off as you watched a shit-eating grin spread across his face. "i've never heard of a frozen yogurt place lending jackets to customers, or any business really." he said sarcastically, laughing at the way your face quickly heated in embarrassment, only stopping to continue teasing you.

"so do you like this boy?" he asked, as if your reaction hadn't given it away. you gave a shy nod as you hummed a confirmation, not only admitting it to your brother but also to yourself. "well as long as he treats you right, i approve, otherwise he better watch out, i bet i could take him anyways."

you couldn't help but laugh at your brothers weak attempt at intimidation, even getting a bit of frozen yogurt on your face in the process, causing your brother to erupt into laughter himself. "hold on," you reached into the pocket of the jacket, pulling out the napkin hanbin had given you as you were leaving, only now you had noticed something you didn't earlier.

there was something scribbled on the napkin. a number. hanbin's number, next to a small scrawled note reading, "in case you ever want to get some real food." a small heart outlined beside the message, even a small tear where the pen had ripped through the thin napkin.

you couldn't wait to get home that night. as soon as you had gotten into the comfort of your room, you grabbed the napkin again, quickly unlocking your phone and typing in the series of numbers messily written across.

"hey, it's y/n ^^" you typed simply, hoping the emoticon didn't feel too awkward as you couldn't stop your heart from beating out of your chest. the feeling of unstoppable palpitations only amplified as you watched the typing bubble quickly appear on the other side of the screen.

the seconds seemed to slow as you watched the typing bubble disappear, only to reappear once more before a message rang through.

"y/n! how'd your brother's graduation go??"

you quickly typed back a reply, giving a positive recollection of the night, selectively withholding the small confessional about the boy you were texting.

you spent your night getting ready for bed at a slower pace than usual, every minute or so your phone would ding with a message from hanbin, and you couldn't stop yourself from reaching for your phone to respond.

before you knew it, hours had gone by and through blurry eyes you faintly read out the time; 3:47am.

"hanbin,," you typed, pressing send on the short message for suspense, "did you realize it's nearly 4am"

his reply came faster than you thought, "shit don't you have to work in the morning?" you thought it was endearing that despite you both being awake, he was still worried about your wellbeing and rest.

after saying goodnight and tucking yourself into bed for the last time that night, you let yourself drift off, thoughts of the boy still swirling around your brain as you fell into a deep sleep.

after the longest friday of your life, you finally got to return to the comfort of your home, and you couldn't have been more thankful. checking the time and noticing that hanbin would still be at work, you decided to do a bit of self-care. as silly as it sounded, you just wanted the time to pass so you could talk to him more.

a nice hot shower and face mask later, and your phone dinged with a message.

"guess who's off for the weekend!" hanbin's name and photo popped up accompanying the message.

"hmm, me?" you typed, laughing as you pressed send, getting an excited "no way!! you too??" in response.

you spent the rest of your evening texting the boy while you listened to the white noise of whatever tv show was quietly playing in the background. that was until, hanbin asked if you wanted to call.

with an overly eager yes, you watched his name pop up again, this time your finger hovering over the answer button as you heard your ringtone blare through your speakers.

"hanbin~" you dragged out, nearly hearing the boy smile on the other end. "y/n~" he mirrored, a small chuckle escaping his lips after.

the conversations carried on into the deep hours of the night, yawns interrupting your thoughts as the time went on, leading hanbin's voice to become laced with concern.

"are you getting sleepy?" he questioned softly, his tone almost putting you to sleep in itself. you responded with a faint hum and nod, even if he couldn't see you. "go to sleep, love. don't let me keep you up." he muttered, keeping quiet as to not wake you.

in your tired state you couldn't quite process the pet name, but you were sure it would plague your mind once you were more awake.

you attempted to mutter back an argument, but before you knew it, your eyes had fallen shut to the sound of hanbin mumbling about something you couldn't quite make out.

hanbin thought it was cute; your faint snores and soft rustling in your sleeping state. he stayed on the call for a while before hanging up, leaving you to sleep peacefully. deciding it was time to head to bed himself, he got comfy in bed and opened your messages for one last time that night.

"sleep tight <3 didn't wanna accidentally wake you so i hung up." he pressed send, hovering over the keyboard for one last message, one that left his heart pounding through his chest. "and uh," he typed out, "if you're free today, maybe we can go to that diner downtown, or anywhere really, if you'd like... okay goodnight!"

he breathed out a sigh as he sent the last message, worry and self doubt taking over his mind as he considered the possibility of you rejecting his offer. but it was too late now, the message had been sent and now all he had to do was wait.

what would usually be a peaceful morning was anything but; as soon as the morning fog in your mind cleared, the night before had flooded back to you in a flash, embarrassment taking over as you failed to remember hanging up or saying goodnight before falling asleep. the only thing your brain could remember was a faint "go to sleep love" echoing over and over in hanbin's soft voice, driving you to near insanity as you opened your phone to a few notifications from the boy himself.

it only took a moment of skimming past the words on your screen before you were eagerly typing a response, accepting the offer to go out followed by a brief apology for falling asleep.

instead of a typing bubble appearing on your screen, it was a call answer screen, which you answered without much thought.

"morning~" you singsonged, hearing hanbin shuffle before responding with a raspy, sleep ridden "good morning y/n."

you swore your head was spinning at the new tone from hanbin, an unexpected change from his usual cheery voice. you took a moment to collect your thoughts before speaking up again, "d'you just wake up?"

he hummed in response, hearing his run this hand through is hair. "then why'd you call me silly?" you questioned, wondering if he had considered just typing a response when he was more awake.

"wanted to hear your voice," he sleepily mumbled, not quite aware of his own confession until it had already left his lips. you muttered a small "oh," taking another moment to process what the boy had said before attempting to come up with a response. you stuttered out a small chuckle and a teasing "well here i am" before switching the subject.

once hanbin was a bit more awake, the two of you confirmed your plans for the day; deciding that hanbin would come pick you up around 5pm and you'd go head out to a diner for some food. "it's a date," you exclaimed, your smile audible through the phone, causing hanbin to smile in return, unknown to you.

"sounds perfect," he hummed, "see you then y/n."

anxiously checking the clock for the nth time, you read the seemingly unchanging time; 4:55pm. you couldn't help but fiddle with the hem of your jacket, or rather hanbin's jacket, in an attempt to calm your nerves. the faint lingering smell of his cologne on the jacket helped ease your mind as you awaited the boy's arrival.

a few minutes had passed while you were lost in your thoughts, only pulled out from your endless what if's by a knock at the door.

you opened the door you had been pacing in front of, leaving the boy to come into view. what you hadn't considered until this moment in time was that this was your first time seeing him out of the bright-coloured uniform and apron he usually adorned at the frozen yogurt shop. instead he sported a loose fitting white t-shirt, a light wash jean jacket atop his shoulders. he looked good.

"oh hi," you managed to stutter out, trying to pick up your jaw that was hanging open. "you look nice," you muttered, eyes trailing over his frame, stopping for a moment on a tattoo that hadn't been visible in his usual attire. a delicate celestial scene placed between his collarbones, lying between the chains of a dainty rose necklace that lay on his chest.

he let out a shy chuckle at the compliment, taking notice of your wandering eyes, "hey that's my line!" he said, almost flustered as he looked over your figure hiding in his jacket yet again. "but really, you look great y/n," he smiled, "you might look better in that jacket than i do."

you simply scoffed in denial and shook your head before the boy spoke up once more, "oh, these are for you," he gestured to the flowers you only just now realized were in his hands. a small bouquet decorated with carnations and roses, small blooms of baby's breath scattered between.

a small gasp escaped your chest as you admired the bright flowers, "they're beautiful hanbin, thank you, you really didn't have to." he simply smiled, muttering a "but i wanted to," which caused you to blush as you welcomed him inside for a moment.

"let me just put these in a vase and we can go!"

hanbin took a moment to admire your cozy home. the walls adorned with simplistic art and photography, small succulents littering every surface you could find room. it felt so unapologetically you, and he loved it.

"your place is gorgeous," he smiled, his eyes, and subsequently his legs, following behind you into the kitchen. you muttered a small thank you, chatting briefly about a recent piece you had thrifted for the quaint apartment, and hanbin couldn't help but smile at the joy radiating off of you as you talked about something you loved.

once your new flowers were safe in a vase on your counter, you followed hanbin out to his car; the boy even opening your door for you. "what a gentleman," you chuckled, smiling and speaking a soft "thank you" as you looked around the car. it was nice; the air freshener smelled like citrus and sitting snug in the cupholder was none other than the small hamster plush you had seen at the frozen yogurt shop, no longer adorning the small apron.

"so you really do take him everywhere," you let out a small giggle at the boy's surprisingly adorable antics as he got into the drivers seat. he only smiled sheepishly in return, "well of course, i can't leave him at work that wouldn't be fair, now would it?"

the two of you burst into a fit of giggles as the car started up, the radio beginning to quietly play some r&b tune; you even found yourself bopping your head to the unfamiliar song as you and hanbin made easy conversation, as usual. the only difference this time was your eyes were trained on hanbin's hand on the wheel, the other resting on the console between the two of you.

you couldn't lie; watching hanbin drive so relaxed, his gaze shifting from the road ahead to you periodically. it was nearly enough to take your breath away. it was hard to believe that months ago, he was just the guy who worked at the frozen yogurt shop you decided to stop in to check out, and now you were here, in his car, on your way to what you hoped was considered a real date.

it wasn't long before the two of you had arrived to the diner; hanbin being the gentleman he was, nearly raced out of the car just to come open your door for you. it was endearing.

"finally some sustenance," you laughed, eyeing up the plate of food in front of you, "can't live off of frozen yogurt forever."

"i always wondered why you're in there so often," hanbin let his thoughts slip his mind and past his mouth, "not that i'm judging though," he quickly continued, " just seems like you'd get sick of frozen yogurt by now"

he was partially right; there was only so much frozen yogurt one person could handle. only so many brain freezes one could endure. "honestly," you popped a fry in your mouth, "i kind of am, that's why i always get a different flavour," you said matter-of-factly, "but it helps that you're there," your voice trailed off at the end, almost embarrassed by the words leaving your mouth.

hanbin seemed rather happy with your answer, a smug smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, "are you saying you've been coming to the shop to see me?" the confident tone in his voice made your brain spin, watching as he proudly took a sip of his milkshake as he awaited whatever response you could come up with.

you nervously bit your lip as you tried your hardest to form a coherent thought, "well i mean," you paused, "look at you, i'm sure you're a huge draw in for customers," you pushed out a small laugh to prevent yourself from humiliating yourself in front of the boy.

"y/n," hanbin smiled again, somehow more smug than before despite his cheeks now flushing a light shade of pink, "are you calling me attractive?"

the accusation nearly made you choke on your drink as you realized the implication of your earlier statement; and sure, it's what you were thinking, but it's not exactly what you meant to say.

deciding there was no going back now, you simply muttered a quiet agreement, hoping that would be enough for the boy. it wasn't.

"sorry what's that? i couldn't hear you," he teased, enjoying the way your ears turned bright red under the dim overhead lights. this time you lightly cleared your throat, repeating the confirmation at an audible volume. "god you're cute," hanbin muttered, lightly shaking his head at your endearing antics.

you let out a laugh for the nth time that night, "is that what you tell all your customers hanbin? that's quite the way to get sales." it was your turn to tease the boy, wanting to see just how serious he was about it all.

"only the customers i have a crush on," he said plainly, smiling as he watched your jaw drop at the blatant confession. it was as if your brain had effectively shut down, or maybe short circuited. some other form of brain freeze, perhaps? you couldn't decide as it took what felt like forever for your brain to come up with a quip.

trying to keep the light atmosphere, you continued joking around, "that's not going to get you employee of the month, you know."

hanbin only reached across the table, placing a hand on top of yours; and you could've sworn your skin was on fire at the contact. looking up at you with a sincere look in his eyes, you struggled to keep eye contact with the pretty boy sitting in front of you. it felt like you were melting under his gaze.

"well i have other priorities now," he breathed out, his voice quieter than before, "and number one on the list is making you mine."

#zerobaseone #zerobaseonefics #boys planet #boys planet fics #boys planet imagines #boys planet reactions #kpop #boys planet drabbles #zb1 #zb1 x reader #zb1 imagines #sung hanbin imagines

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tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons · 15 days

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Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

#queued post #the scrambled timeline #I tinkered around with the ordering of these entries so much that I guess this is a scrambled post for the scrambled timeline #credit to hieronymous-botch for the Alex Hirsch's Sunnydale idea #credit to Lorelei for the Orson Scott Card's Steel Gear idea

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clawbehavior · 2 months

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tdj modern au idea where gaon works as a cook in a poorly managed restaurant with a shitty owner that nevertheless has glowing reviews because people crave his food. except for one prick.

he comes in every day, orders a range of dishes, then provides unasked for constructive criticism on the meal to a fuming gaon and leaves a 1 star review. every. single. day. but he pays 400% so the restaurant owner falls over his feet to get him back.

still, the 1-star reviews catch up with the restaurant. the owner calls it a flush and shuts it down abruptly, leaving his staff unemployed.

which is when said prick pops out of the blue to open a new and better restaurant in the exact same spot staffed by everyone who just got fired, including gaon as the chef. gaon's in a bind, being jobless, but he still plays hard to get, demanding competitive wages and benefits for the staff and complete creative control over the food. surprise! yohan agrees and over time wins gaon's trust and heart. and then you find out this was yohan's plan all along to capture this spitfire of a cook and make him his.

just imagining gaon dressed in the gif below and absolutely reaming out yohan for being a dick while yohan stares back awe struck and wanting to kiss him sooo badly

#gahan #the devil judge #my fic ideas #my ficlets

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linghxr · 4 months

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My trip to Taiwan

I took a break from posting because...I went to Taiwan! This was my first time going there, and I was mostly in Taipei. I had a great time and took many, many photos. I'll share some highlights here (along with commentary) to commemorate my trip.

Left: Liberty Square 自由廣場 Right: Chiang Kai-shek Memorial 中正紀念堂

You can't tell here, but there was a row of porta-potties directly to the left of the archway. That was a funny sight. There was also a stage in the middle of the square. Maybe they do outdoor concerts?

Left: Tamsui Old Street 淡水老街 Right: "Sidewalk"

Besides the main roads, most streets lacked raised sidewalks. Instead, they had a painted path. I had to get comfortable being very, very close to cars and other vehicles.

Left: Motorbike parking lot near Tamsui Old Street Right: Covered sidewalk.

I’ve seen motorbikes before in China, but Taipei took things to a new level. Motorbikes were absolutely everywhere. I even saw this parking lot exclusively for motorbikes. They rule the streets.

In the busy downtown districts, you often don’t need an umbrella due to the covered sidewalks. You can walk for blocks and blocks while staying covered. This was pretty convenient on rainy days.

Left: Jadeite Cabbage 翠玉白菜 at the National Palace Museum 國立故宮博物院 Right: Umbrella rack (also at the museum)

Confession—I didn't think the National Palace Museum was that good. Probably because I've been to the actual Forbidden City in Beijing. And sadly, the Meat-Shaped Stone wasn't on exhibit.

In the US, some stores will provide a plastic bag for your wet umbrella. In Taipei, many stores had a rack or basket outside instead. Most were not as secure or elaborate as the one pictured.

Left: Eslite Xinyi Store (bookstore) 誠品信義店 Right: Sun Yat-sen Memorial 國父紀念館

I bought a couple books and a Yoga Lin CD at the Eslite 24-hour bookstore. I only planned to swing by, but I think I spent 2 hours there. I definitely recommend checking it out if you're in Taipei.

Taipei 101 台北101

It was overcast when I went to Taipei 101, but the view was still nice. On the bright side, there was NO line. 101 is by far the tallest building around, so you really feel that you're looking down at the city.

Taroko National Park 太魯閣國家公園

Taroko was the only place I visited outside of the Taipei/New Taipei City area. It's in Hualien county on the east coast. There were so many betel nut stores in the countryside on the way there.

Left: Pond at NTU 國立臺灣大學 Right: 228 Peace Memorial Park 二二八和平紀念公園

Taipei has the best parks! They really put American parks to shame. Before going, I didn't understand why so many Taipei parks are tourist destinations with 4.5+ star reviews, but now I totally get it.

Elephant Mountain 象山

I didn’t realize how mountainous Taiwan is. Taipei is cradled by mountains, so there are many places to hike, even within city limits. I braved the rain for the famous view from Elephant Mountain.

Subway billboard 臺北捷運

The Taipei Metro/MRT was amazing. So fast, clean, frequent, and convenient. US subway systems are a joke in comparison. These are from an amusing series of billboards promoting riding etiquette.

Some other observations:

I was quite impressed by all of the English signage in Taipei. I think it would be very easy to navigate even if you don’t know Chinese. Many stores and small eateries had menus, signs, etc. in English.

I knew Taiwan had many convenience stores, but I was not prepared to see a Family Mart or 7/11 on every block. Someone needs to open this style convenience store in the US ASAP.

I saw numerous adds featuring Korean actors like Son Ye-jin and also kpop groups like IVE and NewJeans. I also heard kpop playing at various stores, whereas in America, I only hear it at Hmart.

I was struck by how many street signs and subway stops names used pinyin romanization. There was a lot of inconsistency and mixing of different romanization systems. For example, you have Taipei vs. Beitou (same character: 北).

There were many Japanese stores, pharmacies, and restaurants. Upon further consideration, this makes sense given Taiwan's history, but it stood out to me nonetheless.

Overall, I had a lovely time in (mostly) Taipei. As a big city (but not too big) surrounded by beautiful nature, there's something for everyone. I already want to go back! Of course I also want to see some other areas of Taiwan too. Maybe next year.

#culture stuff #taiwan #taipei

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moonah-rose · 3 months

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I think that's something we do forget about the finale is that the choice to leave wasn't just a sacrifice on the ghosts part.

It was Alison's as well.

Yes the ghosts are losing her and Mike and Mia, they're losing people they've grown to love, as well as their freedom to have their own rooms, their own space, someone to let them read and watch movies and dance to music at their whim, they're sacrificing all of that so the Coopers can have a less stressful and financially secure life.

But Alison flat out said in the previous episode that she can't leave them. Not won't, can't. Because it's too painful for her to leave the family she's come to know. Because they were the ones who were waiting for her after what happened with Lucy, when what she thought was her only chance at knowing family turned out to be a lie. Because they love her enough to help out when they can by ensuring a wedding goes perfect or their B&B gets five star reviews or she gets to see a panto like she loves or HER HUSBAND IS SAVED FROM BEING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. It's because of all of that she was able to forgive Julian and the others so easily. It's because of that the thought of having lost them on April Fools was so devastating.

They're the family she always wanted and now she has to give them up because, as Pat reminds her, she has to think of Mia and Mike just as they're all thinking of her. She knew without Julian reminding her that the golf people would be happy for them to change their mind but she still tried to brush it off like it was no longer an option. But it was and it was the best they were ever gonna get.

So despite how god-awfully the episode portrayed the decision, and I will always stand by that, I think Alison did suffer as much as the ghosts in having to be separated from them. Yes, she and Mike and Mia will have happy times together, just as the ghosts will find enrichment and excitement in the hotel - but they'll miss each other equally. She's gonna have moments when Mia is asleep and Mike is out and she's gonna see that an episode of Is It Cake? is on and immediately be reaching for the phone to see if Kitty is watching.

#bbc ghosts #alison cooper

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uninformedartist · 6 months

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Pardon my outburst/pettyness but fuck you Viv, what an absolute cunt you are.

Wow just wow. First off not denying Viv has probably experienced abuse in the past, not gonna do that. But we all know why she made this post.

After Salem came out with their testimonies on workplace abuse that happened in spindlehorse, them not being credited in so2 ep 6, the missgendering they experienced, the legal threats to stay quiet Viv has a reputation in sending legal teams after her victims so believe Salem on this because this is a tactic Viv has used many times and confirmed by herself in posts she resorts to legal action whenever.

Here comes Viv with this tweet. Ive noticed lately people are starting to notice the smoke comming from Viv. People are starting to believe the multiple victims that came forward (Ken draws, Erin, Salem, the anonymous reviews on the animation industry document/anonymous tumblr asks), her fans rabidly defending her/silencing her victims in to submission isn't as strong anymore so she's stepping in now. How totally coincidental to make this post after Salem testimonies, its not like now she's painting herself the victim in this occurrence to take off all the eyes on Salam's testimonies.

Personal tangent: I've experienced manipulative abuse like this, someone long ago who real close to me was emotionally/financially and psychologically abusing me and they always painted themselves the victim whenever I shared my shortcomings that was from their doing on me. So I see the signs of abuse here some may not see/or has experienced abuse but is too star struck in liking Viv they don't see her obvious manipulative, narcissistic & victim silencing tactics.

Ya'll, I feel defeated honestly. Cos it seems like Viv will face accountability soon but then such things occur, stuff gets snuffed quite/dismissed or forgotten and its back to square one, sighs.

#vivziepop critical #helluva boss critical #spindlehorse critical #my post

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ourshadowstallerthanoursoul · 7 months

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Unearthly sound

"Jimmy Page, lead guitarist (electric, pedal, steel, and acoustic), was devastatingly effective with his electronic techniques. Page, who has played with the Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, and Donovan, elicited the greatest response with his use of a variable lag system. This technique, achieved with the pedal steel guitar, is merely a sound delay. The sound would emit from the speakers about a second and a half after he struck a chord. The tones were highly modulated and at times hung on the edge of a plunge into screeching feedback. Page added haunting sight gimmicks. After striking a chord, he would raise his arm in the air - only with the variable-lag, the sound burst forth on his upstroke, giving the appearance that he was playing the air above him. Another technique involved using a violin bow with a fabric-like tail attached to its end. Still using the pedal guitar, he would slowly pull the bow across the strings and then bob the tail over them. The resulting unearthly sound which broke into the air was just short of phenomenal."

- From the Aug. 31, 1969 Lewisville concert review by S. Weber (Star)

#jimmy page #pagey #led zeppelin #john bonham #bonzo #john paul jones #jonesy #robert plant #planty #60s #70s #70s rock #70s music #rock music #ourshadowstallerthanoursoul

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absolutebl · 11 months

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This Week in BL - When good chemistry goes bad

May 2023 Wk 3

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

La Pluie (Sat iQIYI) ep 4 of 10 - yes it jumped to the top of the standings, the kiss was THAT good, best of the year so far. So soft and yet so sweet and yearning and with a proper chemistry - body, breath, everything. Also... there was plot happening this ep, but who cares about that? Some additional thoughts, now my brain has rebooted from that kiss. I do suspect Pat of still being a player: he is awful smooth, and he may want revenge for being jacked along for 2 years (I would). Ep 4 is early for a kiss like that, which means pacing-wise we may be in for a separation/break up around ep 8.

Step By Step (Thai Tues WeTV & Gaga) ep 5 of 10 (MDL still says 12, but Gaga still says 10) - Pat, dear, your gay is squirting all over our screens. Meanwhile… That is the smallest presidential suite bed I’ve ever seen. Lucky for us of course. And lucky for Jeng. Me with the side dishes = UH OH.

Our Skyy 2 (My School President) eps 9-10 - Alt reality where Tinn is in charge of the music club and Gun is the school president with the crush. Basically, it’s an excuse for them to play each others’ parts (which just highlighted how well they were cast, originally). Ultimately, Gemini is a better piner, and Fourth is a better tsundere. Although the reversed “holding it over his head” was v funny & Fourth IS a decent seme. (I also realized what I like so much about Fourth, like Saint he’s one of those rare full body actors.) Sound was a great uke and I loved how they changed his makeup for the role (did you notice?). TiwPor were as adorably ridiculous as ever. I liked the minor baby pairing for Aun, too. Still my NO SIGNING holds (although there was lots of dancing to counterbalance). In the end, all this really did was make me wanna rewatch the original. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. FYI The MV was a parody of HCTM, BB, 1k*. 8/10

A Boss and a Babe (Fri YouTube) ep 12fin - It was a cute sappy ending for a cute-ish sappy-ish show. I cannot abide that the mom who condoned the rape of her daughter got forgiven. No. Stop it GMMTV. Review below.

The Promise (Thai Weds YT & WeTV) ep 9 of 10 - I'm in trouble when I'm rooting for everybody BUT the main couple. I guess Nan doesn’t have a NO SINGING policy. Also I guess Nan was waiting for Phu all along? This show. ALSO could we not have just ended it here?

Past-senger (Thai Weds Gaga) ep 11 of 12 eps - I don’t understand. What? Where did all these new characters come from? Do we care about the hets? Not even slightly. What is anyone doing? What’s going on? do I care abotu anyone anymore? No. Please make it stop.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Our Dining Table AKA Bokura no Shokutaku (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 7 of 10 - OMG so adorable, so repressed, so reserved, so soft, so awkward, so special. Heart melting. Also. Hungry. The WAY Minoru looks at Yutaka when he’s eating (now that he knows the history). The way we got to see the exact moment that Minoru realizes he is in love. Perfection.

Star Struck (Korea iQIYI & Gaga) ep 1-2 of 8 - Zuho (Kpop SF9 - noted good egg) opposite rookie actor Kim In Sung (the one with the crush). icky is being weird about it but it looks like Gaga also picked it up? Depends on your territory I suppose. Anygay: Friends since childhood, jock/nerd, puppy/cat and I sense bi-himbo confusion and pining introvert gay. There’s family strife plus class issues and it has some interesting things to say already about the nature of friendship, romance, and jealousy. I like it, weirdly reminds me of something that might have come out of China. Not early CBL, but some of the later stuff that was censored but hearkened to Addicted. This has the feel of what China could have made now (were things politically different). Because of this feel, I’m not confident in this being an HEA or even a true BL but it is interesting enough for me to bump it way up the ranks.

Happy Merry Ending (Korea Thurs Gaga) eps 7-8fin - I get why SJ pushed JH away, but I kinda agree that SJ is too much work. Abused or not, I wouldn’t put in the damn effort - so I guess I’m glad SJ took a year off to figure his shizz out? Far be it from me to agree with a year break in a Kdrama, tho. I didn’t even mind that they were separated most of these 2 eps: it was nice to see a Seme told no, who actually backed off and did as he was told. Plus the running of the gays (how Japan of you SK). I’m assuming that this was the final episode and that Viki thinking that there are 2 more is bonkers? Because this felt like a finale. For me this one had a stronger finish than any other aspect of the show (odd when the couple spent the bulk of it apart). Oh! And someone give Shin Myung Sung (the surfer bestie) his own damn BL, m’kay? Review below.

Love Mate (Korea Thurs Viki) eps 5-6 of 8 - Longest elevator ride in the world. Honorifics discussion! My favorite! And, “there is only one bed but they slept together on the floor anyway” trope. A BL staple. Also the tie/lanyard grab. Another fav. Still pushy puppy stalker remains creepy manipulative obsessive warped hotness. Basically KBL version of trash and… I’m into it. We all got our kinks, I guess.

Vian the series (Vietnam YouTube ) - Such a cat. I’m reminded of Milk. It’s cute. They cute. I like it.

Naked Dinner AKA Zenra Meshi (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 6 of 12 - So is the nude dining meant to be some kind of weird allegory for repressed gayness?

It’s Airing But ...

My Story (Pinoy Sat YouTube) 10 eps - I bounced at ep 4. Someone will tell me if I should bother with the rest.

House of Stars (Thai Mon iQIYI) 12 eps - I bounced at ep 3. Will binge if told it is worth it at end.

The Day I Loved You (Pinoy YouTube) eps 6-7 of 10 - Terminal illness for the sunshine. I bounced at ep 6. DNF.

Ended this week

Love Syndrome finished its run on WeTV (I stopped at ep 2) - anyone wanna weight in with thoughts on the ending and whether I should binge or not? I do love Lee Long Shi.

Happy Merry Ending - Stars Lee Dong Won (KNK) as an ex-idol turned wedding singer with an abusive ex and a panic disorder + the sunshine pianist who falls in love with him. Timid tsundere & sweetheart gay is an interesting match. They’re gentle together, almost kindly and there is a calm ache to their pairing. However, it lost its way as a BL, being more about the main character’s struggle than the romance. It had a strong finish but ultimately the premise & characters meant this was never going to be one of my favorites. 8/10

A Boss and a Babe - With an inconsistent narrative and self-sabotaging characters this was not the Thai BL office romance I was hoping for. I spent most if it feeling manipulated without good reason and sorry for ForceBook. They did their best with a shoddy script (AGAIN!) and none of its flaws were their fault. This show was all over the place and so am I about it. It’s better than Enchanté but that’s not really saying much. 7/10 I guess

In Case You Missed It

BL Express reported that Taiwanese production companies have announced 7 new BLs (4 of these from Vidol.) Stories range from office romance to crime drama.

Someone did a survey on KBL watchers.

Build Jakapan has been cleared of all charges.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Starting this week:

5/26 Be My Favorite prev title: You Are My Favorite (Thai YouTube) Adapted JittiRain y-novel (2gether, FUTS, ToL, Vice Versa) one of those “rewrite the past to change the future.” Stars Krist (SOTUS) + Fluke Gawin (DBK, Not Me). Expect this to be v low heat, full of LIES and manipulation.

5/27 The Luminous Solution (Thai ????) 10 eps - Thana is having trouble at work and in his relationship. He can't seem to catch a break. So he makes a wish to change everything. The wish has a price.

5/27 Takumi-kun Series 6: Nagai Nagai Monogatari no Hajimari no Asa (Japan) - NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS (but that has never stopped Japan before) and no, I have no idea where to get it, why would I ????? (Say it with me everyone: Oh Japan, must you?*)

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

This Week’s Meta Moments

naturellement (Step By Step naming its trope.)

The Promise calling out the uke archetype, Mary Sue much?

ALL THE DANCING. Live the dream! Live the trend! Live the trope!

4 tropes in one! Drinking, piggyback, feed him, product placement. Very nice GMMTV & GeminiFourth. I’m impressed.

nash

(all My School President’s Our Skyy - kinda a masterclass in using ALL THE TROPES and ALL THE BL references.)

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

The unmitigated irony of so-called fans of ZeeNunew coming after this show for this moment (not to mention the self sabotage). Truly mind boggling. (Step by Step)

The two boys who didn’t win the boy but totally should have. This show makes me wanna drink too. Next week... soju! (The Promise)

Yes please and thank you GMMTV. (My School President)

I do love the kinkification of Phi. (Boss & Babe)

These tiny idiots it turns out are, in fact, totally hilarious. La Pulie (side dish friendship group)

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Key & Taeyeon’s Hate that... (which if it wasn’t an OST SHOULD have been)

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lilareviewsbooks · 8 months

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The Goblin Emperor 5/5: I’m Bored and I’m Having So Much Fun

5/5 stars

446 pages

Contains: an emperor that doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing; kindness as like a plot point; court intrigue!!!

The Goblin Emperor has been on my TBR for years, now. I’d heard someone say, a long time ago, that it was a weird book, and that “you’ve never read something like this before”. Of course, my curiosity was piqued. I love weird, funky little books, that turn you upside down and shake you a bit, especially if they’re speculative fiction. So The Goblin Emperor went into my TBR, until this month, when the mood to read it finally struck me and I sat down with it.

But The Goblin Emperor is not best described by “weird”, in my opinion, nor is “uneventful” a good descriptor, either. I think those of you who have read the book will agree with me that there are several big events throughout the story that capture your attention and are major turning points for the characters. However, it’s impossible to avoid, when recommending this, the fact that it is… boring?

Let me be clear: I don’t mean this in a bad way, at all – I had so much fun reading The Goblin Emperor. Nor am I using it to suggest that Ms. Addison’s writing choices were inadequate. I’m using this word because I think it’s the best way to describe what happens here.

I’ll explain myself: it’s not that nothing happens in The Goblin Emperor, but the pacing is slow. And not in a bad way – things just take their time. We follow our main character in an almost day-by-day basis. We watch him wake up, have breakfast… And at the end of the day, we are with him as he puts on his pajamas and goes to bed.

And then there is the fact that Ms. Addison takes what I called an “almost anthropological approach to describing culture” in my review of the Teixcalaani Duology, by Arkady Martine. Much like Ms. Martine does in her two books, A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, Ms. Addison takes her time to consider every move in its cultural context. If, in A Memory Called Empire, the most striking element of this approach is the Teixcalaani smile, which differs from how other parts of the world chose to do so, here we see this attention to detail in the elvish language.

In this world, “we” is the default first person singular. It’s the formal “I”, and “you” is the formal second person singular. Watching these characters drop this formality barrier or decide to put it up makes for a beautiful addition to the dialogue and character relationships throughout the book. It also, of course, tells us much about this world and this culture, which is bound tightly by strings of formality and tradition. (And is also a reflection of how other languages work, in the real world. French, Italian and Spanish, for example, have formal yous, as I’m sure other non-European languages do, too. This makes me super curious to see how this quirk was translated in languages that already have this as a feature. If anyone knows, please tell me!)

This almost-anthropological lens, however, adds a stillness to the story that makes it move slower, taking more time in each of the character’s movements. Which, in turn, makes this book a little more boring.

But, like I said, this is boring in a good way. This stillness, this slowness, allows us to spend ample time with our characters, really getting to know them. And the world sparkles around them, made so vivid by this attention to detail, this approach to a fictional culture. It feels alive outside of the pages, like we’ve only popped in for a visit, and the clock will continue ticking when we’re not there.

But the crux of the story, and the reason why it needs to slow down, the most, is our protagonist, Maia. Maia is the youngest, half-goblin son of the elvish Emperor, who scorns him. He is secluded to a remote location with his cousin Setheris, until a messenger arrives – the Emperor and all his other sons have died in a freak accident, meaning Maia has inherited the throne. With no education in politics and no friends, Maia journeys to court, where he will learn to rule.

And although he’s put in this position of power, and finds himself, in several ways, helpless and dependent on others, Maia never loses his kindness. He’s a generous soul who strives to make decisions for the good of others, and this is the axis around which the rest of the plot moves, slowly, forwards.

To really understand this kindness, to dig into it and be aware of its various implications, its causes, it’s necessary to spend quite a while in the company of Maia, as he blunders forward. And what a journey it is! I’ll tell you, “boring” might be a good word to describe this book, but so is “compelling”. When it hooks you, it hooks you, and it leaves you wanting to bury yourself further and further into this world, to know more, to spend more time with Maia, and find out all the intricacies of his language.

Thank you for reading this review! I’m working on a list of similar books, which will be called something like “Books for Humanities Nerds”, so if this sounds like your cup of tea, keep an eye out! Have a nice day :)

#the goblin emperor #tge #sff books #books books books #currently reading #fantasy books #cozy fantasy #book recs #book recommendations #book reviews #booklr

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fuedalreesespieces · 2 months

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ramble-y post incoming:

tldr: is the inukag to izanori pipeline real, and am i falling headfirst into it? yes, yes i am.

[This post does contain spoilers for Kanata Kara and Inuyasha.]

recently (and by that i mean two days ago) i decided i wanted to start a shojo manga that wasn't too long, something I could read in between lectures. i checked some of my saved manga on the website i use, and found one that i had saved purely because i'd been enthralled by the cover art, which looked like this:

(i mean, look at them!!)

...that, and it was 14 volumes, so I thought i could finish it within a week or two, reading a few chapters every day.

i was wrong. i'm on volume ten and it's been a day and a half.

i haven't finished and I'm making this post (partly because i've been rambling about it in ballistic keysmash-consistent twitter posts) to say that Kanata Kara is good. very, very good. damn that one-star review on the site i'm using, because that shit has to be an accidental click. I love the world-building, the diverse cast of characters, and the art is magnificent. I think my favorite thing of all has to be the themes represented so far in the manga, perpetuated by our titular characters noriko and izark. I may make a future post about that when i finish the manga, but there is one thing i noticed while reading that struck me as really interesting: the dynamic between izark and noriko, and the characters themselves, remind me a lot of inuyasha and kagome.

now i'm gonna preface this by saying i'm not trying to say that these are the same dynamics or something, because they aren't - I just want to point out parallels i thought were really interesting, as someone who loves both relationships in their respective mangas. i also want to establish that Kanata Kara predates Inuyasha by three to five years*- so what I really should be saying is that inuyasha and kagome remind me of izark and noriko, but you get the picture. you could argue a number of things with this in mind, but i'm not here to discuss any of that. this isn't meant to be some sort of dumb gotcha; both series are good in their own ways, and some of the similarities i'm highlighting can be attributed to similar tropes being at play!

*(sources vary, some say 1993, others say 1995)

izark/inuyasha

demons - inuyasha is half inu-youkai, whereas izark is the sky demon from a prophecy that makes up much of the manga's internal and external conflict for him. an interesting contrast i found was that while inuyasha's half-demon features are present for the majority of the manga and his human side shows up only a handful of times, it's the exact opposite for izark, whose "human" appearance reigns for the majority of the manga.

both characters were shunned by their respective communities (and humanity at large, though inuyasha had his mother for some time, and izark's mother tried to kill him). when both parents died, they began living on the fringes of society, never interacting with anyone and, according to them, "preferring to be alone."

both share moments where their demon sides take over and they are unable to control themselves - unless, of course, their loved one is present to help them. otherwise, both are trapped in a violent, bloodthirsty state of mind that makes them lose parts of their identity each time transformation is undergone. both try to avoid this part of them out of fear of losing themselves, but when occasions rise where they are in those forms, their respective loved ones pull them out of it/help them ground themselves.

powerful fighters willing to quite literally put everything on the line for their respective loved ones - i'm talking half-dead-dragging their-bodies-across-the floor and thinking "well, at least she's okay."

one interesting difference to me is how izark and inuyasha approach their humanity. izark is constantly shown in his "human" form and is only in his demon form a handful of times, and the exact opposite is true for inuyasha. izark's earlier (brief) plan of doing away with noriko is spurned from his desire to avoid the tragic fate tied with his demonic form, whereas inuyasha's earlier actions are motivated by his desire to become a full demon. izark relates his demon side to inevitability, to the idea that he might just become the monster everyone prophesied him to be; inuyasha (in the beginning) views his humanity with scorn and associates it with weakness. he wants to embrace the possibility of achieving full demon status, and why? is it just because he wants power? in my opinion, no - I think it's a way of finding a place; being free to go where he wants. inuyasha is already powerful in his own right, and even when he's given the opportunity to claim a formidable weapon like his father's sword, he says he has no interest in it (until, of course, kagome mentions he could try to claim it just to spite sesshomaru, and only then is his interest peaked.) inuyasha seeks freedom by assimilating into a full demon identity, izark seeks freedom from that full demon identity, and only then will he feel in control of his life.

kagome/noriko

both from modern era japan and get isekaied into another world - kagome's instance is time-travel, though - noriko is transported to a whole other world with different culture, geography, and language (noriko having to learn the language of the people there and taking part in their customs is one of my favorite things about the manga!!)

the beacon of light in their respective groups/found family, bringing everyone together

key players in a "Prophecy of Doom" - kagome's "destiny" is to continue the cycle of the shikon jewel; noriko's "destiny" is to awaken the Sky Demon (izark). both girls, and their loved ones, change their futures.

damsels? maybe, but never in distress:

and, of course, the most prominent parallel for me: their acceptance of their lovers and the ripple effect that love has on their lovers' relationships and life:

"i'm not leaving you no matter what happens, no matter who you are - I will stay by your side":

"you changed my life for the better":

"i've opened up and become more vulnerable":

there are a ton of other examples i could use for this bullet, since it has a pretty broad spectrum of events that could fall under it, but these are my favorites.

i also want to draw attention to the way noriko deals with feeling powerless - both she and kagome are surrounded by powerful, experienced individuals, but unlike noriko, kagome has a reign on her archery and spiritual skills pretty early on in the manga, so she contributes in battles one way or another. one of noriko's longest internal conflicts is that she feels guilty that she can't do anything to help and that people are getting hurt on her behalf:

i absolutely love the advice given to her, and how it ties into the themes of the manga. noriko feels like she isn't helping, but even a simple thank you helps - even if it's just thanking one person for a single deed, everyone is intricately tied, and that goodwill spreads. it grows. it becomes a part of everyone. you don't have to be a fighter to spread good.

conclusion: the parallels are neat and READ KANATA KARA!

#inuyasha #inuyasha a feudal fairy tale #kagome higurashi #inukag #inuyasha x kagome #kanata kara #from far away #izanori #comparison

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outofgloom · 9 months

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THERE ARE NO STARS IN THE PIT

With a shock, I struck against cold stone, and before I had even the chance to inhale, to blink, to raise my head or process what had happened, there was a blow to the center of my back, and I was sprawling flat.

Hands gripped my arms and legs, and I was hauled upright with a rasp of chains. Chains...heavy on my wrists. When had they appeared? My feet left the floor for a moment as I was lifted bodily and slammed into a seat of some kind. The metal bars dug into my back.

At last, my vision cleared, and some sense returned to the world. I was in a small chamber made of smooth rock; walls on all sides, rising into the distance above. Ahead, there was a faint light; a gap, a window.

I groaned and leaned forward, raising shackled hands to my bruised face. There was movement in the corner of my vision, and I saw that I was flanked by no less than three guards. Hulking brutes, nearly twice my size. Not a word had been spoken yet.

I tried to focus, looking toward the window. There was a patch of sky there, and I strained my eyes toward it, to get a sense of my bearings. A pale color, no clouds, and shot with stars...but they were foreign stars to me. Still, perhaps there was hope--

"--there is no hope," a voice said, noting, I suppose, how I stared through the window, "for they are not stars."

"What..." I gasped, finally finding my voice, "Where is this place? I was somewhere...else...just now."

"You were, and now you are here. And here you'll remain."

"What have I done to deserve--"

"--You know what you've done. No sense in denying it. I’ve looked into it myself."

At last I registered that the voice belonged to a dark figure, off to the right. My eyes widened, mouth fell agape.

"There must be a mistake," I said, raising my hands submissively, "A mistake! Please, oh please, let me just explain. Look here, I--"

The silhouette twitched its head, and an armored hand clamped down on my jaw, silencing me. Another gripped me painfully by the temples and forced my gaze to the floor. Two more hands fell heavily on my shoulders, and there was a terrible threat in their movements.

"Your explanations are usually quite convincing, aren’t they?" the figure said. "But I’ve met your type before--a better hypnotist than you, in fact. You’re a poor imitation."

Ah, so the jig is up. Well, patience is the next best approach.

I relaxed, reassuring my captors that I did not intend to struggle. After a moment, the grip on my jaw and head released. A start.

"You fancy yourself a star-diviner as well, I hear," the figure continued. "Better than the seers of the City of Legends, even. Well, I doubt you divined such an end for yourself."

What a fool.

"And...and what end is that, if I may ask?" I replied in as humble a voice as I could muster.

"This is a prison, and I am its warden," the figure said. "You have been committed into my...care...by the decree of the Great Spirit."

A pompous fool too? All the easier.

"I am honored," I said, "even to occupy the merest fragment of the thoughts of Mata Nui. What are the charges against me, and when is the trial? The judges of Ananga are fairly efficient in--"

"No trial," the jailer interrupted. "Not how this works. We're beyond the scope of the petty judicial systems that have sprung up amongst the peoples of the world..."

So the usual legal avenues are out, then.

"...And anyways, your crime is not against them, but against the Great Spirit himself."

Perhaps a moral appeal...

"I have committed no crime," I said contritely. "Surely if Mata Nui is just, then he--"

My mouth was shut again. The jailer now held a tablet in one hand. He stepped closer, and I could see dull eyes shining in a skull-like face.

"Moving on. Just a few points to review for the official record, and then we'll be done here."

He scanned the tablet for a moment.

"Let's see...You've had a number of aliases over the past century. We have record of a 'Sage Akedox' in the east quarter of Metru Aui. This was your earliest designation, was it not?"

The guard's grip loosened to let me speak.

"I have no idea who that is. I am from the Eastern Archipelago. A humble scholar!"

The jailer nodded agreeably.

"Other aliases are known on the Lesser Continent and in the star-cults of...hm...Stelt and its islets. Have you visited Metru Nui recently?"

"Why no, I never have. It would be a great honor even to set foot within the City of Legends."

Look at me, right here.

"Of course, of course. Now, I think we can skip ahead...Here, yes...Now let me see...Sublevel 10 of the Great Coliseum in Metru Nui, and again on sublevel 36. The wards there picked up traces of you, even after you managed to hypnotize half of the Matoran in the complex. Did you command them to actually attack and kill the other half, or was that just poor wording on your part?"

"What a horrible thought! I can't believe such accusations."

Yes, keep looking here. Don't glance down.

"That alone would be crime enough--the killing of Mata Nui’s chosen--but I thought I'd give you an opportunity to set the record straight..."

Must be subtle about it.

"Well anyways, you went much further than that. It seems you have tread upon holy ground, my friend. You found out the way. Deeper than the deepest places of earth and stone..."

Just a twitch of the head and hands. These cursed shackles clink too much...

"...That place, you must know, was made by the Great Beings themselves. I know because I saw it done, in the Before Time, and no living thing may now trespass there. To your credit, your divinations were fairly inspired."

Almost there. No use pretending anymore. Talking will help a bit.

"Then you know, don’t you?" I replied calmly. "You have seen it too: the place far beneath, where the rock and stone give way to something else, something keener and harder, and more...more alive."

The jailer stared unblinking. A good sign.

"Alive like us," I continued, warming to my tale. "That is the shape of the world. Like us. The oracles of the East once claimed that the world is a great machine, but I know now that isn't true. I can still remember the sound of it, the thrumming, and there were lights twinkling in the blackness there. Lights like stars in the bone-deep foundations of the world--can you imagine it? I found them, and I could have deciphered them too. I could have...and then I'd--"

"--I said," the jailer interrupted again, very rudely, "that no living thing may now trespass there. You saw this in your divinations, did you not? A great sage you may be, but you are still a fool."

"Be quiet," I replied, and the jailer fell silent. Good.

"Stand still, and take no action except at my request," I continued, and the jailer complied also. Very good.

"Now, command these guards to release me."

The guards were not entirely living, I had surmised. They were automatons, much like those I had encountered in the deep place beneath the Coliseum. And with the right command...

Click. The shackles fell from my hands at a sign from the jailer. The guards moved back, and I stood up, massaging my wrists and stretching. That was some good work--some of my best, in fact.

"And what do you think of me now, jailer? Poor imitation indeed."

"You are a fool, as I said," the jailer replied.

I bristled, but kept my control. Subjects were entitled to their opinions, I suppose.

"Why don't you unbolt the door there?" I said.

The jailer complied, as I knew he would. The door opened, and I stepped out. It was brighter here. The corridor stretched off in both directions, and the walls rose upward as they had in the chamber, except for a small gap above, where the patch of sky could be seen still. I squinted at the twinkling stars there, focused my mind to divine their patterns and understand this place more fully. This was the talent that had earned me the title of Sage.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all. I had only a small fragment. That must be it. I went back to the chamber.

"What is the nearest exit to this place?" I asked the jailer, who still stood listlessly.

"There is no exit," the jailer replied.

I frowned.

"Where is it that you make contact with the outside world, then? Surely you do that. Which way should I go?"

"Go right. It's only a short way."

I turned to the door, but paused.

"In my haste, I almost forgot," I said. "As my new disciple, you should not lie to me. It is very important that you be truthful in answering my questions."

"Oh, I see..." said the jailer. "In that case, there is an exit, and it is to the left." He shrugged: "I'm sorry--it's in my nature."

"No harm done! Thank you for your help. You'll come with me to show me the way, won't you?"

"Of course."

We turned left and walked down the featureless hallway for a while. There were many doors, some closed, some open, with darkness inside. A few of the hulking automatons flanked the openings as we went, but they stood at ease in the presence of the jailer. I repeated the subtle movements of my mesmerism as we walked, to ensure that I maintained control over my new disciple. It seemed to be working well.

At regular intervals, I noticed that a gap appeared high up on the wall--the same as the one near the chamber I had been held in. And each time as we walked, I imagined that the patch of sky there was growing clearer and larger. There must be other buildings or structures in the way, and we were moving to a better angle. That would prove useful. I would be able to gather much more intel once--

"Here," said the jailer, at last, breaking my reverie. I shook myself and saw--

The hallway ended abruptly here, and the space opened up into emptiness: a deep, open shaft descending into darkness, but with open sky above. The scrape of my feet on stone echoed in the cavernous air as I stepped back hurriedly.

...but there was no room to retreat. I ran up against my disciple, the jailer. He was blocking the corridor, the clumsy oaf.

His hand was already on the back of my neck, fingers hard as iron.

"It's easier this way," he said as I struggled and gasped and writhed and realized. "Easier than dragging you kicking and screaming down the corridors. Quieter too. Keeps the other prisoners from getting too interested."

"I...you--You! No! I was...I was in control--"

"You'll learn who's in control, soon enough."

He threw me into the pit.

I fell for a while, air whistling in my ears, until the shaft narrowed like a siphon, and I struck the wall and began to slide helplessly, down into the darkness.

At last I reached the bottom; I don't know how far down. The sky that I had seen above was now a small circle, even dimmer than before. I crawled to the center of the circular room, exhausted. But I was not alone, even here. The robotic guards came forward from somewhere and picked up my bruised and battered body. The jailer was there too, somehow. He made some command with his hands.

"Are you learning, good sage?" he asked. "I said you were a fool before, but even fools can learn wisdom, in time."

"I’m not a fool," I rasped at him. "I know...I know the shape of the world, jailer, and I’ll read out your future too."

"I will be interested to hear it, when you are ready. Regardless, I have what intel I need from you now. I appreciate your candor in telling me exactly what you saw, down there in the deep."

"Just you wait. You think yourself patient? No matter...no matter how many days or nights it takes--"

"--But there are no days or nights here. There is only vigilance. Only eyes, watching you. And with what you know, we will have to watch you closely."

"The closer the better," I spat back. "I see it already--the stars foretell it. Distant they may be, but I can still see them. You’ll die accursed, jailer, with a blade in your back...and your corpse will rot. This I prophecy...And then I will know the shape of the world once more."

The jailer stepped closer.

"I told you," he said, smiling faintly, "they are not stars. No, they are the lights that flicker in the cells of those for whom death has been deemed an inappropriate fate. Instead of death, eternity under my watch. Just like you."

Hands clamped my mouth shut again, and I struggled like a dying Rahi as they held me down, screaming murder through closed lips.

Murder and death as they fixed a metal brace over my jaw and bent it permanently closed.

Dismemberment and desecration as they welded metal plates over my eyes, to seal me in. To seal away my mind and my will, and the secret knowledge I carried. Would always carry. Forever.

The last thing I saw through the opening high above was the twinkling of the lights in the dim sky.

But that was no solace...I was learning now.

For they were not stars.

There are no stars in the Pit.

#bionicle #writing #fanfiction #art #outofgloom #hydraxon #works

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waitmyturtles · 10 months

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Dew the Movie Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I’ll cover Dew the Movie, screenwritten and directed by the seminal Thai BL artist, Ma-Deaw Chookiat, and starring Ohm Pawat and Nont Sadanont.]

Before I get started, I want to note that I’m publishing this review out of chronological order from the list: I owe you all a review of 3 Will Be Free, which will drop next week, but I just watched Dew the Movie this week, and felt the strong urge to get out my thoughts sooner rather than later.

Why?

I have had a number of quick conversations about Dew the Movie with some of the around-the-block mentors on Tumblr, particularly with @absolutebl Sensei, who very kindly answered my question last week about where Dew stands by way of the trajectory of BL in Thailand (and just to note, as ABL Sensei says in their answer: Dew is most definitely NOT a BL, but an important piece of queer media to consider for the BL-driven OGMMTVC).

The (small sample size) majority of people I’ve spoken to about Dew have actually not seen it, which is utterly understandable from the perspective of the tragic circumstances of the film.

When I first planned on watching it, I put a caveat note on the OGMMTVC list on my blog’s pinned post that Dew wasn’t an official part of the Challenge. I change my tune on this: I would argue, at least from my perspective, that it was a *must for me* to watch.

Again, why?

As ABL Sensei writes, Dew fits into a stage-checklist mold of queer cinema, where, at the time of its release, it potentially NEEDED to check off certain boxes in order to get produced. It very well may have NEEDED a tragic end (arguably, multiple tragic ends) to get made. It may have NEEDED to kill off a gay character (arguably, multiple gay characters) to be ripe for consumption by a wider audience. It may have NEEDED some amount of equivocating about those deaths within the art itself.

I was aware of this when I was watching Dew, aware of watching Brokeback Mountain again, aware of death and disappearance and erasure.

What I didn’t expect from Dew, possibly as strong a punch in the gut as the impact of the death(s) themselves, was how Asian the movie was.

This sounds silly, coming from an Asian-American towards a Thai movie made in Thailand, about Thai young men, as based on an original story from South Korea. But having visited Malaysia, one of my home countries, a whole bunch in the 1990s, at the same time when half of this film was situated -- I was absolutely struck by how the film did not shy away from the Asian experience of discrimination and the destruction of Asian family systems by way of homophobia and other explicit biases throughout the film.

The depictions of homophobia and discrimination in Dew were so raw that I caught myself actually gasping-crying at certain points. Before I get there, let me offer a quick summary of the film, since I believe not very many people have seen this:

Dew and Phop are two high school classmates in the late 1990s, in an extremely rural town called Pang Noi, adjacent to Chiang Rai. As the wonderful @shortpplfedup kindly noted for me, the timing of Dew and Phop’s engagement took place right before the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis that first emanated out of Thailand, and was also set as military dictatorships had given way to democracy in Thailand.

In their rural town, young men who are either out or presumed to be gay are sent to training camps. Accusations about the spread of AIDS are made vis à vis the LGBTQ+ population. Students who are out are rejected at school and in their homes.

I’ve written previously about how certain BLs, mainly in the MAME realm (Love By Chance and TharnType), have touched upon a kind of bigotry and bias that I have described as being particularly Asian in nature, reflective, word-for-word, of the kind discriminatory language and ideas that I was exposed to as a kid from my Asian parents.

To see that kind of discrimination and homophobia orchestrated on a community-based level -- in Dew and Phop’s school, when children are rounded up by teachers and soldiers to be sent to a training camp -- was brutal to watch.

It immediately introduced a level of dystopia to the entire film. And I ended up appreciating that the film went that far, so immediately at the beginning of the film, after we had seen an otherwise happy-go-lucky young man in Dew beginning to engage with Phop.

We needed that element of dystopia to kick off the film, because: Dew faces rejection from his school and, potentially, from his single mother, to be an out and gay young man in Pang Noi.

More brutally, arguably, is the rejection of Phop from his EXTREMELY patriarchal Thai-Chinese family, led by an almost despotic father, who is ready to take down his son at a moment’s notice, with a helpless mother present as Phop is progressively rejected by his father, his brothers, and the patriarchal family system that keeps that family together. (@shortpplfedup, as I wrote to you, this was Double Savage x 10, maybe x 100.)

The reason why I liked the juxtaposition of the community-level discrimination vs. the micro, family-level discrimination is that both experiences of this kind of discrimination are dystopic. As humans, as mammals: we crave community, family, and companionship.

To be rejected by your community is unnatural. To be rejected by your FAMILY is unnatural.

This is not a message that’s limited to Asian media or Asian cultures -- this exact kind of discrimination flourishes in America and elsewhere, including conversion therapy (Dew reveals that his own mother sent him to behavioral therapy). In rural Thailand, this kind of existence... simply cannot exist. That’s dystopic to queerness, to the LGBTQ+ community.

I brought up Malaysia earlier to make a quick mindset comparison. Around the time of the setting of Dew and Phop’s high school days, I remember hearing on Malaysian radio, riding in a car with my family, that the singer Sting (STING, y’all -- vanilla STING) had been banned from performing in Malaysia for his music being “too rhythmic.”

Malaysia, unlike Thailand, is an Islamic nation. But borders are only lines on a map, and as I’ve spoken at length with the amazing @telomeke about, the cultural flow between the countries is strong and present. It doesn’t surprise me, therefore, that rural Thai towns WOULD engage in this HIGH LEVEL of discrimination and exclusion, as unbelievable as it might seem to Westerns not familiar with either Asian or Western styles of dystopic discrimination, as I’m calling it here.

To try to survive: Phop runs away to Bangkok. And begs Dew to come with him. And Dew dies in the process.

Phop lives. He becomes an adult, a middling adult, with only middling success in his life. After a life in Bangkok, he moves back to Pang Noi, broke, married, reminiscing about Dew.

And he discovers, after becoming a homeroom teacher, that Dew has been reincarnated in the body of a young female student. (This is one of a few times that ideas of ghosts, spirits, the reborn, and the reincarnated are introduced in queer Thai media in 2019, along with Until We Meet Again and He’s Coming To Me.)

We then get the presence of an actual controversial filmmaking trope in age gap, between a young student and an older teacher. Age gap is certainly a present trope in BLs, past and present.

In lightly peeping the MDL reviews for Dew, I saw quite a bit of consternation about this age gap, and honestly, as a mom, I certainly felt the wibbles as well. But I thought it was an interesting filmmaking device to use, in putting Dew’s spirit in the body of a young student.

Because -- of course -- this inclusion forces us viewers to confront OUR OWN BIASES. Besides the community-level and micro/family-level discrimination we see in the film, we’re also forced to truly dig into what we, as viewers, are biased against. AND, the film very much digs into the controversial nature of teacher-student relationships as well, and Phop is condemned for his closeness with the reincarnated Dew through the student, Liu, wonderfully acted by Pahn Riety of 10 Years Ticket.

This film is fucking brutal. But the fact that it forces us to CONFRONT OUR BIASES, on so many levels -- it does a wonderful job at that.

To the end. To the end of the loss of Phop and Liu, so that Phop and Dew can be together in the afterlife.

The film leans on Thai-Chinese Buddhism in the second half, again, so reminiscent of He’s Coming To Me, leading to ANOTHER non-happy ending that brings two people together in unideal circumstances. Phop and Dew’s spirits will be together, not in this world, but where, exactly? Certainly not in the world of 1990s rural Thailand, a world that wanted them extinct.

When I say that this film is rooted in its Asianness, I really mean it. I think one needs to have an appreciation for how these themes tie together -- the community-level discrimination, how general sexuality and queerness were treated with such a hands-off/ignoring approach in the SEA region in the 1990s, and why Thai-Chinese Buddhism was chosen as a means of bringing Phop and Dew back together, just like Thun and Med in HCTM. There is an acknowledgement by the Asian filmmakers of these pieces that queerness was brutally unacceptable during these times in Thailand and elsewhere, and these pieces do not shy away from that reality.

I’m tremendously glad I watched this. I feel like crying right now while watching this, but I’m really glad, as someone with SEA roots, to have watched this, and to have seen discrimination at that level that I have seen previously, and to know it exists. If one takes up the OGMMTVC and feels like they can’t watch this, I can totally understand. But I think Dew the Movie is a tremendous gateway -- as He’s Coming To Me was -- to a very particular Asian mindset around collectivist living that does not jive with individual expressions of sexuality and queer acceptance.

Those realities are brutal -- I hate thinking about them, I HATE IT. The acceptance gateway that I have discovered vis à vis Thai QLs is a salve to my soul that was subjected to HEINOUS discrimination against ANYONE deemed different from my Indian culture growing up. But that discrimination was also VERY REAL. I’ve broken out of being exposed to it, and I’ve tried to become the best ally I can be. But the acknowledgement, through art, that that level of discrimination can exist, in my Asian cultures, is also a reality that I have a responsibility, as an ally of Asian descent, to reckon with.

(A quick side-note. Once more: Ohm Pawat shines. This man is a CIPHER of queer pain and queer joy. The acting, directing, and cinematography of this film was stunning. Two hours went by in a flash. If you avoid for the content, that makes sense, but if you’re a film buff, you may enjoy this film just for the devotion it pays to rural Thailand and the spectacular expanses that it captures.)

[Yow. My heart is aching, not just for Dew the Movie, but I’m also recovering from a crazy week of Step By Step, HA.

But anyway: my review of 3 Will Be Free will be up early next week. WHAT A GODDAMN AMAZING SHOW! The OGMMTVC is definitely ruining me for great content, up against what I’m watching that’s airing now (....side-eyes to SBS, hmph).

And: I’m digging into Until We Meet Again. IT’S FABULOUS SO FAR. Come AWN, Fluke and all of ‘em! I’m traveling for the holiday next week, but hopefully my watch schedule won’t get too messed up. But with this review of Dew and 3WBF next week, I’m holding all y’all down if you’re looking forward to these reviews!

Here’s the status of the watchlist. As ever, I’ll take any feedback ya got!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 11) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review coming) 15) Dew the Movie (2019) 16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (watching) 17) 2gether (2020) 18) Still 2gether (2020) 19) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 20) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) 21) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 23) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS 24) Lovely Writer (2021) 25) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) 26) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 27) Not Me (2021-2022) 28) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 29) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 30) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 31) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 32) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 33) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 34) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 35) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 36) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 37) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

#dew the movie #dew #dew the movie meta #phop x dew #dew x phop #ohm pawat #nont sadanont #pahn riety #age gap bl #homophobia in bl #discrimination in BLs #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc

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