#because quite frankly while i did like the stereotypical things little girls my age did (barbies and my little pony...which i still do 😙)

[fangomango]

Reading a book about the autism spectrum and like

God I have never related to a book more

Like this guy loovesss door locks and when he's talking to someone it's more of a "speaking at them" rather then with them and he's mostly talking about door locks...

Dude....

Me too

#it just feels like im spewing bobs burger word puke at people rather then a conversation #also it was like...giving me little wtories anout 2 guys experience and ine thing stuxk out #“bob never played pretend.he didnt know how a box could be a space ship to hi. it was a box #i played pretend...i would go to my backyard holding my rainbow unicorn nechlace and pretend to talk to unicorns... #but not because i thought unicorns were real or anything like that.... #doing that just seemed lime a thing little girls did...i was pretending to do whar a child my age would do #because quite frankly while i did like the stereotypical things little girls my age did (barbies and my little pony...which i still do 😙) #but i didnt feel lime the other girls....some how even at my young stupid age.. i knew deep down something separated me from the girls in #my elementary classes... #when the kids in my class would joke with each other it would get a positive reaction...but when I make the same joke people thi k im weird #which is a universal experience at this point... #autism experiences

[jj-babebank]

Room 107 // chapter I // JJ Maybank (smut)

I have started my first JJ story, which will consist of several chapters that I will constantly be updating. The story picks up where season 2 leaves us. TW: Contains mentions of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, sex and violence. 

Chapter 1 can be found below.  Oh, and - please feel free to submit requests, I tend to write a lot ;) 

Enjoy xx

Chapter 1 - La Guardiana

Days had passed since the Pogues had last seen civilisation, maybe even weeks. The sun was hotter than ever, with close to no wind to mask the warmth. JJ was taking this particularly badly. 

“I’m so done with eating bananas, man,” he moaned, kicking a pebble as he trotted a little behind the rest of his friends, “Can’t we just stumble across an oasis or something and end up in, like, an actual city?”

As if on command, his friends stopped in their tracks, the girls awing and the guys smiling happily. 

“We just might, JJ,” said John B, looking at the city unfolding itself in front of them in the distance, “We just might.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m actually starving,” laughed Sarah, nudging John B’s arm, “Don’t tease!” “Hey, so am I,” he cooed, “First joint we find, we’re going in for food.” Kiara rolled her eyes, “As much as I would love to accept that offer, let me remind you that we have no money.” Sarah nodded, “Mhm, nothing at all.” “Nada,” John B looked at the two girls sternly, “And when has that ever stopped us exactly?” Kiara rolled her eyes once again, smirking at her friend, “Alright, I suppose a good meal would give me the energy I’d need to run a marathon after getting caught not paying.”

The group continued walking down a not too busy street, studying the buildings, looking for a restaurant, cafe, diner - anything, really. They hadn’t had a proper meal in God knows how long and they were famished. They couldn’t help but notice how all the buildings on the street were of the same height - no more than four storeys each, all painted in different colours. If they hadn’t known any better, they’d have thought that they had left the United States of America altogether, although one thing was certain - they were definitely not in the Outer Banks anymore. 

The street wasn’t crowded at all, there were hardly any cars or people lurking about. JJ concluded that this was probably an unpopular area of whichever city they were in. This would also explain the lack of supermarkets and restaurants. He really wanted to ask his friends to stop for a little break - his throat was so dry and his legs could barely hold him up anymore, but he knew better. The longer they walk, the faster they’ll find what they are looking for. Having no indicator of the time on them wasn’t helping either, hell, they could have been walking for 12 hours for all he knew, and with no result. 

“Maybe we should just ask someone,” Pope suggested, “Neither of us is a wanted criminal anymore, I’d say we have nothing to worry about.” John B smirked at his friend’s remark, but ultimately agreed to ask the first person they ran into where the nearest food joint was. Turns out, they were standing right in front of it. 

“La Cubanita Hotel and Restaurant” it spelled out in bold, red letters. The building was narrow and a light shade of blue, totally contrasting the obnoxiously coloured sign planted in front of it. Much like the rest of the buildings on the street, it had no more than four floors, each consisting of a row of Spanish windows with brightly coloured frames. The Pogues looked at each other with a hint of uncertainty before John B lead the way into the building. 

On the inside it looked like a typical diner - tiled floor, red and blue booths, a long bar accompanied by bar stools and, cheesily enough, a boombox. JJ guessed that the way to the hotel was through the back, but he didn’t put too much thought into it. The place seemed dead, with only one of the booths being busy. It was either an off-peak hour or this city was actually a ghost town. 

The group sat at one of the booths on the other side of where the other people were and JJ took a second to observe them. A group of bikers, all wearing stereotypical biker outfits from leather jackets down to bandanas. They were in their mid 50s and were all smoking indoors, drinking what looked like whiskeys, despite of the blazing sun still very much being out. JJ had to give it to them though, they did look pretty darn cool if he did say so himself, and those cigarettes looked eerily appetising to him at this given moment. Oh, what he’d give to have a sip of whatever they were having and a long, much needed drag of one of their cigarettes. He was so lost in his daydream, he barely realised Kiara poking him in the arm. 

“JJ,” she urged, “Waitress is here!” In this moment JJ turned his attention to the new subject in question, their waitress. She was standing at the foot of their booth, wearing her uniform, black and red, holding a pen and a notepad, chewing a piece of gum, waiting for his order. Could this place get any more stereotypical? JJ thought to himself. “So what’s it gonna be, handsome?” She said, not even bothering to look in his direction. “Uh…” JJ fumbled with the menu, “I’ll just have whatever they’re having.” He said, pointing at the bikers in the booth across from theirs. The woman rolled her eyes, popping her bubblegum. She took the rest of the Pogues’ orders before disappearing somewhere behind the bar. JJ followed her with his eyes, blocking out the conversation his friends were currently having. The waitress came back out of what he assumed to be the kitchen and handed the paper with their orders to another girl behind the bar. JJ guessed she was the barmaid, and boy was she a bit of him. 

She was wearing the same uniform as her colleague, although JJ had to admit - it looked a whole lot better on her, at least from what he could see from above the bar. Her hair was long and brown, half of it tied up effortlessly, and slightly messily, although JJ didn’t mind one bit. He watched her as she took the paper from her colleague and went to fetch the drinks written on it. He couldn’t make out what exactly colour her eyes were, and quite frankly - he didn’t really care, she was gorgeous regardless of what her eyes looked like, and she looked around his age. Had the sun and heat gotten to his head, or was it just the fact that he hadn’t touched a female in so long, he didn’t know, but if there was one thing JJ Maybank was notorious for, it was his ability to pull any girl his heart desired effortlessly. This is why he excused himself from the table and, albeit his friends’ confused looks and comments, he made his way towards the bar, sliding into one of the stools directly across from the girl. 

She looked up at him, “Can I help you?” “Brown…” JJ mumbled to himself. “Excuse me?” She said, this time sounding slightly annoyed. Her eyes were brown, JJ thought, brown and sexy. He coughed, trying to compose himself and gave her his signature Maybank stare. It worked wonders back home, surely it would work wonders now again. “Name’s JJ,” he said suavely, “I’m not from around here-“ “Clearly,” she muttered, picking up a bottle of whiskey. JJ assumed it was for him, “Aren’t you a little young to be drinking, JJ?”

JJ smirked, “What can I say, I have the face of a boy but the body and mind of a man.” The girl snickered under her nose, “Sure. Well since you’re here, make yourself useful and bring your drinks over to your friends,” she gave him a fake smile, placing a tray with their orders on it in front of him, after which she turned her back to him and walked towards the back of the bar. JJ was too busy observing her behind to notice the other waitress standing next to him, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Should I take that or will you?” She said, waking JJ up from his everlasting daydream. “Oh, uh, don’t sweat it…” he said, picking up the tray and carrying it over to his friends’ booth. “So much for customer service,” Sarah laughed. “And to think my dad says I’m hostile to our customers,” Kiara muttered out. JJ took his seat next to her, his eyes never leaving the bar. “La Guardiana,” Pope read out loud, “This place is called La Guardiana, and apparently we’re somewhere in Florida.” “Florida?” John B said, confusion dripping through his words. Pope nodded, pointing at some text on the bottom of the menu. 

La Cubanita Hotel & Restaurant **, 97 Diego’s Crescent, La Guardiana, FL 

“Holy shit, we’re in Florida!” John B whisper yelled. Sarah laughed at his reaction, “Calm down now, Sancho, let’s not draw any attention to us,” “Yeah, you might wanna tell Casanova here that,” teased Pope, nodding his head in JJ’s direction, “Was it really worth it to potentially blow our cover just to talk to that girl?” JJ snapped at Pope, “Hey, man, just ‘cuz you don’t have the nuts to go over there and talk to her yourself,” “Yeah, I really want to attract the staff’s attention, you know, even more than we already are, seeing as we’re the only other busy table at this place.” “Your food,” the waitress from earlier was back with some of the Pogues’ orders. They waited for her to be out of earshot and JJ spoke up, “Relax, P, I bet you I can charm the pants off that girl and we won’t even need to sneak out without paying!” Pope gave JJ a fake smile, “Mhm, I’m sure she’s gonna be so deep under your spell she won’t even notice us leaving without paying a cent." JJ rolled his eyes, picking up a toothpick from the table and placing it between his teeth. “Might even offer us a place to crash, you know, because she’ll be so captivated by you.” Pope continued to tease. “Yeah, chicks totally dig this whole I’m homeless and I haven’t properly showered in like 15 days look you're going for,” Sarah joined in on the teasing. Kiara laughed and added, “Yeah, and the bit that’s gonna fully seal the deal for her is that you have literally nothing to offer her, like 0 dollars.” Everyone was laughing while JJ just crossed his arms in front of his chest and turned to look out the window, “Talk all you want, guys, but once we get that gold back, you’ll see who’ll dig what.” “The rest of your order,” he recognised the girl’s voice. It was her bringing their food over this time. She placed John B’s plate in front of him and then made her way around the table, next to where JJ was sat. She handed him his plate and bent down slightly, so that her lips were on the same level as JJ’s ear, “Next time you decide to share your criminal plans, you might wanna talk a bit more quietly.” She whispered, setting his cutlery down for him, “Oh, and, you might be charming wherever you come from, but your friend’s right. That shit doesn’t work around here.” She said, patting him on the shoulder before walking away. JJ didn’t waste time sitting around to listen to his friends pass comments about what had just happened, he downed his whiskey and practically chased after the girl. “I’m guessing you’ll want another one?” She said, not even turning around. JJ wondered how she knew that he was there. When she turned to face him, the bottle of whiskey was in her hand. “Let’s see… Do I pour you another one and close my eyes about you planning to leave without paying, or do I do what anyone else in my position would do and call the police on you? Hmm…” she pretended to think, her eyes never leaving JJ’s now panicking ones. “Please don’t call the cops,” he blurted out, the whiskey hitting his brain and making him stress out more than he wanted to admit to, “Look, we - we were in a boat accident, we don’t even know how we got here, hell - we didn’t even know where we were up until 10 minutes ago! And we - we don’t have  any documents on us, we don’t have any sort of identification, what would you -“ “Relax, kid,” the girl smirked, picking up two glasses and pouring a generous amount of whiskey in both of them, “I won’t rat you out.” She said, handing JJ one of the glasses and raising hers for a toast. JJ clinked his glass with hers, a large smile growing on his face, his dimples becoming very prominent, “Thank you, really… That means a lot.” The girl took a moment to observe JJ, then to look at his friends having a heated conversation at their booth, all of them practically stuffing their faces with food in an almost animalistic sort of way. Could this boy really be telling the truth? Could these kids have been lost at sea with no place to go? She looked back at JJ who was also looking at her. Despite the smile plastered on his face, she could clearly see that he was extremely nervous still. “Hey,” she said, “I told you to relax, didn’t I. I won’t charge you for your food, in fact… I might even have a place for you to sleep and clean up tonight.” JJ’s eyes grew wider at her words, “You what?” She leaned in closer to him over the bar and lowered her voice so that he would be the only one to hear, “Hotel upstairs, my aunt owns it. She’s currently out of town with my cousin. Should be back next Thursday. I think I can fit you and your friends in. You just have to promise to be on your best behaviour.” She said, pulling away and taking another sip from her drink. JJ couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was too good to be true. She was hot and she was willing to help? This must have been his lucky day. Sarah could suck it, and so could the others. Clearly this girl was into him. Why else would she be offering to help? “So, uh, what’s in it for me?” He asked, a hint of mischief in his voice. The girl opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the other waitress groaned from behind her. “Samara, how many times do I have to tell you?” Her croaky voice rang. The girl, who JJ had just learned was called Samara, rolled her eyes and repeated with her colleague, “No drinking on the job, yeah yeah, I know. But Heather’s gone and so is Conner, so who can tell me what to do, really?” She said, finishing what was left of her whiskey, “Besides, Georgia, as far as I’m concerned, since they’re both gone, that leaves me in charge, no? Now get back to work,” she said, making her colleague roll her eyes at her. Samara turned around to face JJ again, giving him a wink, before disappearing into the kitchen. JJ couldn’t believe his luck. He swung his arm over the bar and picked up the bottle of whiskey to pour himself one more drink before returning to his friends. “Guys-“ JJ tried getting their attention. “So what are we supposed to do now? We’re totally screwed!” “They’re gonna call the police on us, hell, they probably already have! The cops could be on their way!” “Guys!” JJ yelled, catching even the bikers’ attention. His friends looked up at him, worry filling all of their eyes. “You’ll never believe what I’m about to tell you, oh, and Sarah? You can eat your words.” He smirked before telling them what had just happened. “Hold on,” said Kiara, her face revealing her confusion, “So this random girl in this random place just randomly said that we can crash here until when?” “Next Thursday, or was it Tuesday? What day is it today?” JJ scratched his head. “JJ!” Kiara slapped his arm, “What if this is a trap? It sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Like, what’s in it for her? We don’t even know her! What if she’s a murderer or something?” “She’s right, you know,” Cleo chimed in. “She is,” said John B, “But we have nothing to lose, literally.” Pope nodded, “I’d usually agree with Kie, but John B’s right. We have nothing to lose. And what if she calls the police? What could even happen then? We get put in jail for agreeing to sleep in a hotel for free? Come on, guys, I’m sure we can all agree that a bar of soap and a normal bathroom would do us good. I mean, we stink.” Everyone laughed at Pope’s remark before Kiara turned to JJ again, “So what’s the plan?” Realisation just struck JJ that he didn’t in fact know what the plan was. Samara had told him virtually nothing about how any of this would go down. Where were they supposed to meet? Was she going to take them to their rooms? Would they all be sharing one room? He was so busy thinking about how all of this would go down, he barely noticed Samara herself passing him a note. It was taken out of her colleague, who JJ now knew to be Georgia’s notepad. The note read in messy handwriting:

Bring your friends to the lobby. Straight down the hallway by the bathrooms. 

JJ turned the piece of paper towards his friends and they all got up, rushing towards the hallway by the bathrooms.

#outer banks #jj maybank #obx #pope heyward #kiara carrera #jj one shot #jj smut #obx smut #sarah cameron #john b #jj x oc #netflix #love #smut

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

Looks Like Someone Picked a Whole Bushel of Oopsie Daisies: Chapter Three

Okaaaay I am so fucking sorry it's been awhile, you guys. But you're not here for my life story and personal bullshit, I'm sure (though please do feel free to ask). So here's chapter three. Enjoy... I hope?

Thank you, as always, to @edward-or-ford for being an excellent beta!

Chapter Three: Sex on the Brain Feel you under my skin; middle of the night, wonder if you feel it, too.- All Time Low, Trouble Is

There was a warm body atop Mabel’s, and lips pressed against hers. There were hands grasping her breasts, then one of them traveled down between her legs.

“Mabel,” gasped a voice as the lips traveled down her neck. A pleasant voice. Deep, but not alarmingly so. It was soothing, familiar. Comforting and arousing all at the same time.

One hand pinched her nipple while the other stroked her, and she gasped out quietly.

When she opened her eyes, Dipper leaned down to kiss her again, and-

Mabel woke with a start, disorientated. Her eyes flitted around the dark room, and she remembered she was at Candy’s. Recognizing Grenda’s sleeping form on the floor and Candy’s even breaths beside her, Mabel sighed quietly.

Well. That was certainly disappointing. Those types of dreams were the worst because she hated waking up from them.

She hadn’t always had so many sex dreams. It was a recent development. And frankly, she wasn’t a fan. Yeah, Dipper was sexy, but like. She knew that already. She didn’t need her subconscious waving a big ol’ flag with “REMEMBER HOW SEXY YOUR BRO IS?” emblazoned on it. She could do without that, thanks ever so much.

It was half an hour before she managed to fall back asleep. She definitely didn’t fill her friends in on the details the next day, even though she probably would’ve if the dream had been about literally anybody except her twin brother.

She was quite sure that when Grenda and Candy thought of “sexy” vibes in relation to Mabel, Dipper was the last person on the face of the earth who might be considered for such things.

————

The following morning, Mabel tried her absolute hardest to seem as normal as she possibly could. Y’know, talk without changes in her voice or tone or speech pattern. Gesticulate some but not too much. Talk about non-Dipper things. Definitely not because Mabel was having a great deal of difficulty thinking about anything but Dipper and what his lips and hands and teeth (oh god his teeth) would feel like on various parts of her body. That had zero to do with it.

Of course, normal for Mabel was… odd for other people, to say the least. And that suited her just fine. Really, it did. She rather liked it that way, actually. Normal people were kinda lame.

Still, there were, of course, some aspects of Mabel’s life that she sometimes wished were a bit more normal, she pondered as she brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror. Not entirely, just a bit. She wished she didn’t have to live separately from her sibling. She wished she’d found her soulmate the same way as everyone else rather than having it be a big mystery.

But most all, she wished she’d never developed these stupid feelings for Dipper. They really were stupid. Who gets feelings for their twin, anyway? Like, where did that even come from?

When Mabel thinks of the word “incest”, she pictures royal families trying to keep the bloodlines pure and stereotypical hillbillies and rednecks. What she did not picture was a modern day middle class Californian teenager.

Not that it had gotten to incest levels, of course. Obviously not. In order for anything to happen, Dipper would have to return her feelings, which he decidedly did not. Why would he?

You’re the weirdo, she reminded herself as she set her hairbrush down.

Well. It is what it is, she supposed. No reason to dwell on it.

And on that note, Mabel skipped out of the bathroom, doing a rather excellent job of pretending she was definitely not dwelling on her romantic-but-very-much-unrequited love for her brother.

Not even a little.

————

They didn’t ride in the same car. Of course they didn’t. They never did. She knew, intellectually speaking, that her and Dipper couldn’t be in the same car for the half hour drive from Candy’s to the mountains. Even five minute drives, though, her parents refused.

“What if you get stuck in traffic?” They’d demand whenever she asked if just once, Dipper could take her in his car. It didn’t seem to make a difference that the odds of a traffic jam in a town as small as Gravity Falls were minuscule at best. Eventually, she stopped asking, stopped trying to reason with them.

She wished she could text him during the drive. She couldn’t stop staring at his last message. She didn’t mean to, it was just that she sometimes got into these moods where whenever she stopped looking at his texts, she’d immediately get the irresistible urge to look at them again, even if she knew full well that all she’d see was the fifteen minute old see you in a bit.

Mabel felt bad about the whole thing sometimes. It wasn’t that she’d meant to fall in love. She truly hadn’t. But… Dipper was just so goddamn sweet. He was considerate and kind and he always asked about her day. And when she told him, he actually listened! None of the guys at her school ever did that. They just stared at her boobs while she talked.

It was suuuuuuuper guilt-inducing, though. Like, somewhere near her (it had to be near her or she’d have been going through withdrawal symptoms all her life) was her soulmate. Emotionally healthy people developed crushes on their soulmates even before they turned seventeen and felt the pull.

Evidently, Mabel wasn’t an emotionally healthy person. She’d developed a crush on her twin brother. And then it had developed into this suffocating, desperate, agonizing, all-encompassing consuming love and adoration that she just couldn’t seem to shake.

It was hard not to see him, she mused as she stared at her phone (still black because he hadn’t texted her, obviously; get a grip, Mabel). But then, it was just as hard to actually see him. The urge to touch him was even worse lately.

Sighing and leaning back in her seat, Mabel stared out the window.

She completely missed her father’s solemn gaze flickering to her briefly in the rear view mirror.

————

Mabel liked visiting Gravity Falls in the winter. She probably wouldn’t get to see snow otherwise. It was beautiful.

It had snowed in the mountains the night before, and there was frost on the ground and snow on the tops of the trees, the sun bouncing off them and making them shine. The cold air bit her face when she opened the car door, but Dipper’s smile in her direction as he stepped out of his own beat-up sedan made her forget about everything else.

Buzz buzz buzz, said the bees.

Mabel resisted the urge to dance when she saw him.

Or slap her stomach a few times. Maybe the sting of it would numb the stupid fucking bees and their stupid fucking buzzing, for god’s sake, would you shut up already-

She did neither, however (good job, Mabel girl!), instead opting for a definitely-not-nervous-in-the-slightest-so-just-shut-your-mouth smile.

“Why hello, Sir Dippingsauce!” She ambled over to him, telling herself she was doing an excellent job of not being awkward.

How long did she have to keep that up for again? A week? That was… that was fine. She could do a week. She could totally do a week, no problemo (Note: Mabel could not do a week. She could possibly do 2.5 days, and even that was most certainly pushing it, but to suggest as much is incredibly rude, as Mabel was doing her very best to make her mind into a 100% Doubt-Free Zone™).

He put an arm across his stomach, the other rigid at his side, and bowed deeply at the waist with a decidedly snooty expression on his too-attractive-to-be-legal face. “Lady Mabelton,” he greeted. “I trust your carriage ride was pleasant?”

“Indeed, milord. You may rise,” she lifted her hand in a dainty gesture, her nose (which was red from the cold) in the air. He did, grinning. “So, what d’you have planned for me n’ the ‘rents today?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Just a fun little nature walk, I guess. Nothing crazy.”

Mabel shot him double finger guns. “Coolio, bro-lio.”

Their parents were just climbing out of the car. They always took forever. Why did people over the age of twenty-eight always take forever to emerge from a vehicle?

Mabel fiddled with the empty space her right forefinger left in gloves she wore. Gloves were always too big for her as far as finger-length went.

“Soooooo…” she drawled as her parents rounded their car. “Lesgo!”

Running off in a totally random direction, she skidded to a halt at the edge of a clearing. “Yeeeah… might wanna let me lead the way, Mabes. I know my way around pretty well, since I... y’know... live here,” Dipper said with another one of those heart-stopping grins.

Ugh.

Suddenly feeling tremendously uncomfortable again, Mabel laughed awkwardly. “Indeed you do, bro-bro. Indeed you do.” Chill chill chill it’s fine, it’s fine, totally fine up in here.

Dipper walked around Mabel and started down a winding gravel path, definitely neglecting to give her anything that could remotely be classified as “enough space to not have a heart attack”. She followed behind him after several seconds, trying very hard not to stare at his butt.

Again. Dammit.

Mrs. Pines even scolded him a bit. “Careful not touch your sister, Dipper!”

Her voice carried through the trees, and Dipper called out a quick, “kay,” over his shoulder before continuing on. It had been perhaps five minutes. Ten, maybe? Who knew? Time lost meaning when she stared at Dipper too long, and he was walking directly ahead of her. Besides, she had to pay attention to where he was going! She couldn’t really be blamed for staring at him, right?

The path widened significantly after awhile, allowing Dipper to fall back a bit, frosted gravel crunching beneath his sneakers.

“Is it okay if we walk ahead of you, Dipper?” Mr. Pines asked. “Your mother and I would like to look at the scenery a bit more clearly than we can behind you and your sister.”

Dipper nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward from here.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pines smiled at him and stepped around him, Mr. Pines patting Dipper’s shoulder affectionately as he walked past.

Dipper fell into step beside Mabel, walking in silence. Mabel inspected her shoes. Some of the frost had gotten on the rhinestones she’d glued to them.

Glancing up in front of her after several minutes, she noticed that their parents had gotten further and further away, far out of earshot.

For the first time in as long as Mabel could remember, they didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to her and Dipper’s interactions.

Blushing furiously at the very idea of being alone with her twin, she looked down at her shoes again. Thank god for the cold. Nobody would question her red face in the cold.

“So,” Dipper said haltingly. Mabel’s head whipped up to face him, her eyes wide. She hadn’t really been expecting him to actually speak, but then she couldn’t very well have not expected it, either. It had just… never occurred to her that he might.

“So?” Mabel said back. Don’t be awkward don’t be awkward don’t be awkward-

“Well, there’s this… thing.”

“Very specific,” Mabel nodded indulgently. “Say no more, brother dear. I know of what you speak.”

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Y-you do?” He stuttered.

Mabel snorted. “Uh, no. Doi. Why would I know?”

He blinked at her. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Guess you… probably wouldn’t, huh?” He looked away and muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that?” She asked, pushing her hair back behind the ear closest to him, some of the strands catching on her glove.

“Oh, uh. Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm...kay?” When he didn’t say anything, just kept staring at her, she spoke up again. “What were you gonna tell me?”

“Oh! Right. Yeah. That. Right.”

“Right. That,” Mabel agreed with a nod, as if she had the slightest idea what he was talking about (note: she did not, in fact, have the slightest idea what he was talking about).

“So, there’s this thing,” Dipper said again.

“Right,” Mabel repeated.

“This thing… that I’ve been kinda meaning to tell you for… well,” he laughed hoarsely. She’d never heard him laugh like that before. “For a few years, actually.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Errhm. Okay. What is it?”

“Okay, so it’s like this,” he started, then stopped and looked up at the sky. “Why me?” He muttered, so quiet she almost didn’t hear him again.

“Okay, Dip, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

He sighed and stopped walking. So did she. His eyes were closed, which was probably a good thing because they really were terribly distracting and whatever he had to tell her seemed pretty important. He turned his face to her again, opening them, something… different in them. Something she’d never seen before. Something she didn’t recognize.

Something urgent and terrifying and nerve-wracking in a way she didn’t entirely understand, and then-

“Kids!” Her dad called out, both parents jogging over to them. Well, okay, it was more like running. Why would they be running? They hadn’t been that far behind, yeesh.

“Shit,” Dipper muttered again, and Mabel turned to him in surprise. He’d tried to talk to her before, too. Before she’d left for Candy’s. Why? What was going on? Was he sick? If he was sick, why couldn’t he tell their parents? Oh god, what if he’d gotten an STD? What if he’d gotten somebody pregnant? No, wait, pregnancy didn’t last “a few years”, which he had said very clearly, so not that. Oh, fuckity fucking fuck, what if he’d found his soulmate?

“What’re you guys talkin’ about?” Their mom asked with a smile that was a bit too tight and didn’t reach her eyes.

Dipper shrugged. “School and whatnot. Just catching up.”

Mabel didn’t understand why he was lying, but, well. Mabel Pines ain’t no snitch, so she nodded and said, “yeppers yeppers Johnny Deppers! The usual, y’know.”

Mr. Pines inclined his head. Mrs. Pines was clasping his hand.

Her knuckles were white.

Their parents didn’t let their children out of their sight for the remainder of the hike.

Mabel could barely speak. She couldn’t even think much of anything.

What if he’d found his soulmate?

The bees never shut up, either.

#gravity falls fanfiction #gf fanfiction #pinecest #mabel pines #dipper pines #fanfiction #fanfic #looks like someone picked a whole bushel of oopsie daisies #my writing

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House Valentine’s Day Double Feature (Back in Black and Stage Plight) or My My My Once Bitten Twice Shy

What is up my Loudites? And while I am returning to the Loud House I do have some sad news to get out of the way first.. i’m ending regular coverage of the Loud House. I don’t like doing this.. but when I picked up the show, I didn’t really have a set schedule.. and that was a bad thing as I didn’t get nearly everything I wanted done. Now I have one and honestly it’s been great: it allows me to stay focused and if I end up not feeling what I was going to do that day, provided it’s not a comission or specfically needed that day, I can swap things around a bit easier. 

The reason I bring this up is Nick’s way of scheduling means I CAN’T reasonably put the show on the schedule. They often don’t announce airdates until the wee before, which isn’t a bad thing WATCHING, and isn’t unresonable for a children’s network. But for someone who likes to have a concrete schedule at the top of the month, still flexable and able to make changes if they come up but at least some idea of what i’ll be doing and when, that’s a non-starter, as not knowing when a show’s going to be there or not really messes with things. In contrast Disney puts up their entire programming schedule for next month towards the end, so I know if a show’s coming back, and thus that it’ll probably be around for next month’s too. And if it goes away a week earlier than expected then super I have that space for other sttuff. But I just have too much other stuff, paid and on my own time, to keep friday’s open in perpetuity.

I will however still reviewing the show infrequently as I still love it, Season 5 will probably have plenty of episodes I want to talk about, already it has Leni running for mayor which sounds like one of my wonky spinoff ideas and I love it all the more for that, and ther’es tons of episodes I have and haven’t seen to dig into. So like Lori I won’t be in the house on a daily basis but i’m still going to show up a lot. I already have an April Fools special planned, as well as a retrospective ready for some time in the future. And of course if more Sam and Luna episodes show up, you know i’ll be on those as fast as humanly possible so yeah not leaving the show.. just not coveirng it because I like having some control of my schedule, it’s a thing with me. 

Good then we can get to why your ACTUALLY reading this unless you’ve already scrolled past or scrolled up to this. Next Sunday is Valentine’s Day, and so to continue Valnetine’s Shenanigans on this fine blog, i’m doing some romantic style episodes of the loud hosue for you. I did intend for this to be bigger, but frankly i’ve been running behind on reviews and running out of steam lately, so I paired it down to the two I wanted to do most. So for today we’ll be covering two of the show’s couples: One they badly need to bring back and I question why they haven’t, and one that I feel has gotten a lot of flack for things that aren’t it’s fault. Both are really adorable so expect some awkward blushing, bats, blood, and other stuff rhyming with B under the cut!

Back in Black: So we begin our double feature with Lucy

Yeah I have not covered this adorable harbinger of death enough on this blog, and intended to do this one, among other lucycentric episodes back in october.. and the fact I didn’t is a good argument for why I have a schedule now ain’t it? But sometimes your plans not panning out right at the exact time you planned them works out for you. Not getting to do Plan 9 From Mission Hill during Pride Month meant I got to do it on comission later. And not getting to do this one at Halloween means it still works fine just fine for valentine’s day.  

So we begin the episode with Lincoln working on his science project, with Rusty coming over to help. 

Shockingly though not only is he not just taking a nap or hitting on Lincon’s sisters while Lincoln works but actually helping, he’s actually good at it. I’m as suprsied as you. Though this is early in his characterization, so he hasn’t’nt been established as horribly sucking at everything or his friends being done with his bullshit QUITE yet. Give him time.  This is an interesting moment in the character’s history though, as it’s the episode that firmly establishes him as a close friend of Lincolns. While he was already turned from a member of a random violence gang to LIncoln’s buddy in the span of season 1, this episode cements him as one of his closer pals simply by him coming over and the two being fairly familiar with one another. Granted by that same token Girl Jordan should be in the group.. and I have nothing to add to that. Add Girl Jordan to the Lincrew. Just do it. 

Anyways Rusty brought his brother along. And you’d expect me to be terrified as there’s now three of them. But.. nope I like Rocky. He’s a chill kid and his personality goes together well with Lucy’s as while he’s a more typical kid, he’s still very subdued in his emotions like she is. Also he mentions both parents so my divorce theory.. is honestly still valid as this was three seasons ago and I could buy their mother left during that time. 

And yes Lucy’s in love.. and stalking him a bit as she follows him around the house sighing while he wonders who did that.. though it is a nice clue their compatible. When you can sense the presence of someone whose big running gag is showing up out of nowhere to scare the crap out of people that means something. And it’s either that you’d really get that person or your Wolverine. Or one of his kids. Or his clones. Or clones of his clones. What i’m saying is Rusty’s mom banged the wolverine and his family tree is really weird even by marvel standards. 

But I do give her a pass as she’s not trying to be creepy or obsessive, she just doesn’t know how to talk to him as he’s your average kid and she’s a creature of the night. It’s just a kid being shy which is very refreshing both because pre-savnio being fired the show had some very messed up ideas about relationships and gender politics at times, the latter of which actually crops up here, and because having grown up with the cartoons of the 90′s and 2000′s.. I had to put up with things like this. 

Full Disclosure: I DO ship sonamy.. but only after around Sonic Chronicles, where Bioware and then Sega decided to not make “Constantly harasses sonic despite him clearly not being interested and saying so vocally” and “Obessess over him to a point I worry she’s going to break his legs so he’ll never run away from her again”, as well as aging her up from 12. Still find her ungodly annoying at best and terrible at worst before that point, Sonic CD and Sonic Advance excluded. And yes I am that huge of a nerd, damn proud of it too. 

What i’m getting at is that a little girl unable to talk to a guy and only being kinda creepy because that’s what she does is LEAGUES better than “IT’S NOT CREEPY WHEN A WOMAN DOES IT”. Given this episode was written by a woman that probably helped a lot if not entirely but I don’t blame her for that.. more on that later. 

Point is she’s smitten but her first attempt to talk goes back as he rushes to leave after she tries talking to him.. and also appears out of nowhere to spook him. Come on man, your better than that. YOu sensed her before why not now? Up your game. But yeah Lucy’s depressed while Lincoln talks to her about it, about them leaving and once Lucy confesses she’s into rocky asks what he’s into. Lincoln.. has no idea as he’s barely been around Rocky. He’s just an average kid he dosen’t quite understand. Normal is the word he uses and Lucy ponders that.  We next see the three most traditionally feminine sisters, Lori, Leni and Lola, all pissed someone stole their stuff, though Lori does suspect Lola at first because let’s face it, this fits her MO of being an entitled brat and not being above petty theft. But no the culprit is Lucy who genuinely apologizes and understands that their mad but the other girls are fine with it given the context, which Lucy explained, and are happy to make her over.  This is where the problem I was hinting at comes in: ALL the girls are on board with this makeover plan. the problem is.. only the three who came in in the first place make actually sense making Lucy more tradiotnally feminine. Lori loves fashion and is a control freak who has troubles with empathy at times especially at this point in the series, Leni while not INTETIONALLY hurtful is kind of ditzy and thus can miss some cues, and Lola has a yawning starless void where her soul should be. For these three? Yeah this plot actually makes sense they wouldn’t think of Lucy’s feelings and actually help her use who she is to get rocky or tell her it doesn’t matter she’s beautiful as she is.. then presumably bring the wrath of god down on that poor child before things were cleared up.  The issue is more dragging the other sisters into it. It only fits the three above to really give a shit about making Lucy more “normal” and “Girly” and “Other stereotypical bullshit”. Luna is very chill and empathetic and would be the first to say “Wait maybe making her the opposite of herself isn’t a good idea”, Luan is likewise empathetic though I could possibly see it she really doesn’t need to be in this plot, Lynn ENTIRELY doesn’t fit as she prefers sports and getting dirty and what not and is the closest to Lucy out of the sisters and thus would probably be the most defensive about her not changing and that could’ve actually been interesting, Lana would be the same minus the being closest and Lisa is coldly detached a lot of the time and wouldn’t care about any of this on a good day. It feels HORRIBLY offensive and out of character to have them all suddenly be “nah your not girly enough”. These girls don’t give a shit about whose more feminine than who and it’s really bad to pidgeonhole them as that.  However.. I dont’ blame episode writer Gloria Shen entirely for this. She wrote it, she gets some of the discredit.. but she didn’t DIRECT the episode and a LOT can change from page to screen. No  THAT was series creator and known sexual preadator Chris Savino. And i’m not just blaming him because he’s a creepy asshole, but because the seasons he directed, seasons 1, 2 and most of 3, had a bad habit of having episodes where all the girls acted as a group and often to weak ends, like the green house, the one where they all fought, the gender swap episode or  heavy meddle.. which is a headache for another day. Point is it doesn’t surprise me he didn’t fix this or even genuinely cared to differentiate  them and it’d be until next season where the show fully became an ensemble piece. SO yeah I blame him on this not for his horrible history, but simply because it sounds like his writing style and as director, and a producer on the show, he had the power and responsibility to fix things and did nothing. So if it wasn’t directly his fault in the first place , he certainly didn’t fix it, call it out in storyboarding or well anything. So yeah shared blame all around.

So after a makeover montage, Lucy is uh... well I can’t describe the abomination they’ve created. 

I mean.. none of it works, and I think that’s very much the intent, dosen’t make it any less horrifying. Nothing about this is right: makeup REALLY shouldn’t go on a child in any circumstace so the blush on her cheeks is creepy and makes her look like one of those creepy porcelian dolls that i’m 100% sure either are planning to kill us all one day or were made to keep the souls of the damned trapped inside forever. The ear rings just look creepy and again are a bit much for an 8 year old, and the blonde hair just brings it all together. The pink outfit is fine.. I guess but the face is just so unsettling I can’t process the rest of her outfit and i’m not even going to try. 

Point is she looks terrifying, and not in the fun way she usually does, and Rocky dosen’t know what to make of this. Oh and if your wondering why he’s here Lynn just.. took a hockey stick to Lincoln’s project to get the Spokes Boys back over here, and Lisa mocked him for pointing out the obvious holes in their plan despite being 4 and LIncoln having a girlfriend at this point. Granted his relationship with Ronnie Anne at this point is also kinda effed up, but given you all pushed him in this direction, Lisa still has no room to talk and they amicably broke up at some point once the writers decided “Let’s pretend like this never happened and they were just friends, despite her being introduced with a crush on him and us still replaying episodes with said relationship in play, instead of actually dealing with this directly”. You may be easily able to guess what hte retrospective’s about at this point.  So Lori comes in for phase two .. WITH BOBBY!

Just.. I cannot tell you how much I needed my boy to calm me down after the last two scenes of horribly off character writing and ... that thing up there. He dosen’t do much this episode but every episode is better with Bobby and that’s a scientefic fact. So Lori claims they had a double date fall through which Bobby barely follows along with.. and it does kinda feel pressurey to kinda force Rocky’s hand here but her intentions ARE good, and a group date is a good way to relive presssure. It just ends up falling through becaue Lori wants her to act intentionally helpless, which makes no sense both for Lori’s personality given how driven and controlling she is and how Bobby clearly knows both things and likes the first and she worked on the second for him. So yeah the golf date falls through and Lori apologizes for being a bitch about all of this, as they all do, which again. .has me questioning WHY we needed the whole sister group instead of just Lori and co. Or even just Lori. The show REALLY needed to learn character ballance and while it is struggling on occasion, as seen with how lincolncentric this season has been so far, this episode reminds me it used to be MUCH worse. 

But Lucy thanks them because their intetnions were good, i’m going to need a citation on that given it came off as them wanting her to change because they found her weird nad not because they genuinely wanted to help her, and goes off to sulk about being alone. Lincoln dosen’t know what to do till the next day where, again suprisingly, Rusty had the right idea and had them come over to his place. We also find out he’s scared of blood.. which.. I can relate to. Seriously i’ve only insulted the guy once the whole episode

But we find that out because Rocky made his own because he actually found Lucy’s really cool, what a kid. So Lincoln gets the brothers over to his house by damaging the project himself then claming they need to go back and once he sees Lucy’s around has Rocky go into the kitchen to get them some sodas which he agrees to because why not. 

So in a nice little change-up on the running gag Rocky shows up startling Lucy and we get a really fucking cute scene as they hash things out. They have a normal conversation, finally getting past their shared awkwardness, in part because he admits he prefers her as herself.  As it turns out Rocky wasn’t scared.. he just thought she was too cool for him and felt intimidated and like Lucy had no idea what to say. The two then blush and after my heart melts and I freeze it back into shape in a few hours, the two decide to go look at her coffin collection and the next day proudly show off their perfected fake blood.. which destroys the project one more time. WAH WAH WAH. Oh rusty... I knew I could count on you to fuck up at least once. 

Back in Black Final Thoughts: First off Black in Black: Weird Name. I mean it kinda gives the game away, not that fans would thikn horrifying mistake lucy would stick but still, and dosen’t really fit. Call it “Why Do Ghoul’s Fall in Love” or something like that or something related to makeovers. Makeover Mistep. Don’t Make Me Over. Makeover Your Case... okay that last one sounds more like the Legally Blond equilvent of Cobra Kai but the point is it’s just weird.  Outside of the parts I already went in detail about why their dreadful.. this ep is pretty good. That one bit isn’t enough to derail the episode, merley take it’s goodness down a notch, and Lucy is genuinely fun to watch and her heartbreak is hard to watch, and Rocky was an engaging new character with lots of potetial. A large part of why I did this episode. is to ask WHY he hasn’t come back. Rusty’s now a major character, to the point he’s co-headlining an episode next week with Zach... why Zach’s getting an episode, a SECOND one at that I have no earthly idea but the point is the show’s getitng comfortable enought heir giving lincoln’s friends starring episodes without him too, as Liam got one , if alongside Lynn the power couple of 2021 I tells ya. My point is, besides when is Stella getting an episode dammit, that Rocky really should make a come back as he both provides another character for Rusty and the rest of the lincrew to bounce off of, and he and Lucy had genuine chemstiry and now she has her OWN cast there’s an easy story there about her friends reaction to her dating a non goth. There’s a lot of story potetial with this precious boy bring him back.  But overall Pretty in Black is a decent episode, worth checking out if you haven’t seen it and rewatching even if you have.

Stage Plight: So we open with Luann, whose one of my personal faviorites along with Leni, Luna, and Lucy. Granted I haven’t checked out her yearly bouts of going ax crazy on her family yet, but we’ll see in april. But outside of that, which is easy enough to isee iven it’s three episodes out of 214 where she’s like this and she gets her compuance, I find her precious, awkward, and entertaining, from her habit of saying “Get it “ to her love of puns, to the fact she’s essentially a wholesome version of the batman villian the ventriloquist..

Yeah in case you forgot about this gag, she often talks through her dummy Mr. Coconuts.. who functions as her sounding board and helps her figure things out, talks like he’s from the 40′s or 50′s, and in general is a delight. He also once or twice, including this episode acts of his own free will so I don’t know if this is a Child’s Play situation and a dying comedian put his body in her dummy and she’s just rolling with it, if she somehow put a piece of her soul in a dummy or what the hell’s going on here. Compared to the series recently what with it’s mayoral campagins, children murdering guys, and actualy factual spies, this is mildly sane. MIldly. This may also be a serious and untreated case of Disociative Identnity Disorder, but given it’s not framed that way, and Coconuts just seems to be Luann’s way of talking with herself, for now she has’nt gone full vintriloquist. Thoguh givne her april fools day behavior and her profession as a comedian, she probably WILL become the new joker at a some point. 

So the two are talking about Luann’s crush on Benny. Benny was introduced back in L is for Love and is one of the only three love interests there to actually return, and along with Sam the only onen to get multiple episodes about their relationship with their respective loud and a full personality. He was also MASSIVELY hated. For those who joined the fandom more recently, Luann was massively shipped with Maggie, an emo girl who showed up in Luann’s second spotlight episode and one where she didn’t torment her entire family, one I still need to see but have read about. It was pretty cute and nothing was wrong with that or the opposites attract dynamic. But said fans got REALLY and understandibly upset about his introduction and were presumibly none too happy he got to return and got his roll expanded.  And I.. genuinely like the kid. I have nothing against Maggie and in fact poly ship her with both Luann and Benny, as both seem like they’d be open to that and her dour demanor creates a nice contrast between the chipper luann and the somewhat chipper but also chill benny in the middle. I just feel he’s a very likeable character, sweet and awkward and very much on Luann’s wavelength. Like Sam he’s SIMILAR to his love intrest, having Luann’s love of puns, mime and the theater, but is also not quite as giggly about it and as I said has a bit more of a chill to him, in contrast to how sam is slightly more energetic to Luna’s near constant calm off stage. 

I also like him because he’s voiced by Sean Giabrone, an up and coming voice actor who I first met watching the Goldbergs as Adam. His other biggest role so far has been playing Jeff on Clarence, though he’s currently picked up another lead voice roll as Yumulack on Solar Opposites, easily one of the best parts of that show, and has done othe rminor and recurring work, but I feel he’s got the potetial to have a long and fruitful career in voice acting if he wants it. I mean he’s far from the first former ABC star or former Ron Stoppable to make a long and successful voice career of himself. Be the next will fredle man you can do it. 

But yeah I like him and think their cute together and feel demonizing a ship for one that had a low chance of happening isn’t fair, especially when you know, we’re in a fandom where incest runs rampant and is STILL a recurring problem to this day. Pick your fucking battles for god’s sake. As I mentioned you can put maggie in with this relationship or Still ship luaggie regardless. 

So back in the episode Luann and Coconuts notice Benny signing up for the school play and decide to join him. 

Yeah i’ve noticed that a LOT of school set plots are about one of the mains joining a play to either be near or play romantic lead with their crush, or romantic hyjinks happening anyway.  Seriously i’ts a lot. I DID think most of them were around romeo and juliet, and Proud Family, Pepper Anne, and Ned’s Declassified all are probably why, it’s actually way more diverse and i’m happy to give credit to shows and movies for that:  Jimmy Neutron used Macbeth (IN SPACEEEEEE), American Dragon Jake Long used Antony and Cleopatra, as did the comic strip Foxtrot (That one I remembered), Daria used the canterbury tales, Arrested Development used Much Ado about Nothing, and one of my faviorite instances is the film Get Over it. It’s a cheesy as hell early 2000′s high school pg-13 comedy, that I loved as a teen and nos nostalgicaly love but am aware it has issues and some stitled acting as an adult where our hero joins the high school play in order to win his ex girlfriend back from the douchebag she’s seeing now and ends up falling for his best friend’s kid sister instead. They do a mid summer’ night’s dream, which is not only awesome SOMEONE thought to use that one , as the film has given me a special affection for the play.. but it’s a cheesy musical version written by the gloriously over acted director of the play played by martin short. 

My faviorite part of it is the boy band style number about Hermia. Yes really. And I didn’t even get into the fact Siquo is one of the main character’s best friends, Kristin Dunst had to reshoot a scene while making the first rami spider-man , our heroes weird parents who are sex therapists and have no real filter AND offer Coolio a threesome on their advice show, and yes the actual coolio and yes that was an actual person that existed, or best of all the douchey rival who stole our heroes girlfriend, whose not only a former boy band member whose band peformed the song love scud, but also threatens our hero with nunchucks at one point. 

Just see this movie.. i’ll hopefully talk about it some day. 

Point is this kind of plot is stock.. but it’s the good kind you can do a lot of twists and turns with as every example mentioned, even the ones using the crush thing, had some clever twist or turn. And this one is no exception as we’ll see. 

So we meet Ms. Berardo, the schools HAMMY as hell drama teacher who gives herself an entrance and is just wondrously entertaining throughout. She’s played by Grey Delise Griffin, which I could recognize immodestly and man does she bring it. Seriously bring her back. Wonderful character. So our heroine and her leading man audition and in a refreshing change of pace they do not get the lead rolls, instead a modern valley girl and a jock who writes his stuff on his arms do so instead.  But since Bernado’s a bit nuts, she decides to have the Montagues and Capulets practice separately despite tha not making a ton of sense, to drive up tension and what not. I mean isolating an actor to drive up tension is a vallid technique but even having not read Romeo and Juliet since high school, over a decade ago, I can tell you they have several scenes together and this is a logistical nightmare. However our heroine finagles her way over to swapping camps so she can talk to Benny since honestly given the whole thing was a way to get to spend more time with him, she might as well quit otherwise. It also.. isn’t a bad tactic. She wants to know him before asking him out properly, which is fair and a good way to go, and they already know each other and are friendly, and it’s something she likes doing anyway as they were both involved with a play in his first appearance and her liking theater makes sense as she’s a comedian, and while she clearly prefers standup, it’s often a natural evolution to go fromt hat to acting in comedy stuff or making your own show, so it’s not a bad idea to learn that side of the buisness too. 

So Luann FINALLY gets to talk to Benny.. after fast ball specialing mr coconuts in the way of someone trying to sit down

But we get a really cute moment as the two just.. talk like two dorky teenagers; They talk about the real mimes of la, which I want badly to be a show.. even if it’s just to find out what the Mime from Animaniacs is up to now. Where DID that guy go? Did the anvil finally kill him? These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night.. which is probably why I’m finishing this at 4 in the morning. But the two have genuine chemistry with Luann offering him her banana, phrasing, and making a pun he chuckles at. It’s adorable as all hell. 

And Bernardo notices, and since her leads have no sparks she regretfully demotes them.. though their reaction is hilariously realistic as both are just happy to have less lines and walk off. She decides to cast Luann and Benny despite being freshman which would never happen but eh this is a unvierse with a snakebird and spies trying to destroy cherries with a death laser why I do I care two seasons later if two freshman got the leads in the play. Still I love the twist: our hero wasn’t trying to get the lead to creeiply force intamacy or anything.. the two just had natural chemistry and the director noticed that and wants to use it. 

But while this should be great.. it isn’t as Luann keeps dodging actually kissing Benny when they rehearse the kiss. The reason.. is really frigging endearing. Luann simply hasn’t kissed anyone before, this will be her first.. and naturally she’s REALLY nervous about having it in front of a crowd or Benny thinking she’s a bad kisser. And I mean... while I had no personal experience at that age in kissing, most media and personal accounts detail it as awkward as fuck. But that’s the irony: she dosen’t KNOW it’s always awkward and thus is putting a ton of pressure on herself like anyone her age.

So she breaks under the pressure despite the reasurances of her Dummy/Possible Sign that she needs therapy and while she finds a way out the next Day Benny has aburbtly quit because of “chess club”.. which he’s not in. Luann finds him and talks to him about it, worried it’s her fault.. and she’s right, though Benny bowed out because she clearly wasn’t comfortable with him and didn’t want to make her kiss him when she clearly wasn’t comfortable with it. What a man what a man what a mighty good man. Luann TRIES to explain.. and then lets Mr Coconuts do it. Which usually in high school would lead to humilating rejection. instead Benny brings out his own puppet Mrs. Appleblossom. 

Just those eyes.. black and souless.. like a doll’s eyes.. because htey are a doll’s eyes. So yeah Benny also has a puppet he uses to say the things he’s too nervous to say. Which is endearing even if again , KILL IT. KILL IT. I mean i’ts like tha tone guy from victorious if the puppets were actually charming and one of them looked like it was about to play hide the soul. Mrs. Appleblossom explains that Benny is also nervous and with the air cleared and the two realizing theyw ere nervous about the same thing... the inevitible happens

So that fades into the kiss happening on stage, with Luann’s family cheering her, our heroes take a fookin bow and Coconuts and Appleblossom look on.. and talk somehow...and somehow got in the seats on their own. 

Stage Plight Final Thoughts: This episode.. is one of the series best, with great pacing, a low amount of repetition and a relatable conflict, while building up Luann’s love intrest to be a wonderful and engaging guy, and giving us a hell of a guest character and Mrs. Gerardo. This episod eis great, the chemistyr between Gambrone and Pucelli is fantastic. This one is just awesome and worth a look especially if the ship contrversy had hit you hard. It really is good. And there’s always room for benny. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure. 

#the loud house #lucy loud #luann loud #benny stein #lori loud #leni loud #lola loud #lincoln loud #rusty spokes #rocky spokes #valentine's day #animation #nickelodeon

[grellsuke]

do you have any good lgbt manga recs? i just finished shimanami tasogare and loved it

yes!!!

Authors:

yuhki kamatani - the author of shimanami tasogare! kamatani is x-gender (and ace!) and thoroughly incorporates lgbt characters into their works. the others aren’t like focused on the lgbt experience like how shimanami is, but they’re all wonderful and beautiful and have lgbt characters and i highly, highly rec them.

akiko morishima - a lesbian mangaka who i really like! she’s really good abt tackling the traditional stereotypes in yuri manga as well as writing stuff about older characters and frankly discussing sexuality and shit. she also has works that are not yuri manga-centric but iirc a good chunk if not all of them still have lgbt characters, so they’re worth checking out as well! (she does have a few works with some fuckshit in them tho, fair warning)

takako shimura - i don’t personally know what her sexuality is (tho shes a woman, i know this), but shimura is pretty well-known for her lgbt works. wandering son and aoi hana are probably her most famous, at least over here in the west! she also tends to incorporate lgbt themes into her works that don’t center on lgbt characters as well.

ebine yamaji - another lesbian mangaka! yamaji’s works are very... realistic, usually about lesbian working through things. there’s a lot of trauma and a lot of sadness in her works, as well as sexual content, and i really love her art. i haven’t read ALL of her works, but what i have, i’m enamored with. they’re sad but rarely TRAGIC.

hiyori otsu - i don’t actually know otsu’s sexuality, but she’s a shoujo ai/yuri mangaka who writes a lot of genuinely sweet stuff. her works tend to very much be on the softer side of things, even if they can be bittersweet, and i’ve really enjoyed all i’ve read by her. it’s nice to just, be able to read a simple and nice lesbian manga without any major angst or tragedy or even sexual content sometimes, you know?

Autobiographies:

honey x honey by sachiko takeuchi - a slice of life little manga about the author and her girlfriend! it is abt a decade old, which you can see some of, but it’s a really cute peek into their lives and japanese lgbt culture. there ARE sequel(s?), but i unfortunately haven’t managed to find any english translations for them. if you do, let me know!

my lesbian experience with loneliness by kabi nagata - i own this manga! i keep it squirreled away in the bottom of my desk and pull it out every few weeks or so because it’s deeply, deeply relatable to me. the first time i read this manga i sat down and cried because i felt it deep in my soul. absolutely rec!!! there’s also a sequel, my solo exchange diary.

the bride was a boy by chii - a cute little manga about a trans woman named chii, recounting her early years up to her current life, her transition and how she met her husband (+ abt their relationship). it’s super cute and sweet, and very informative!! an absolute rec!!

i was born the wrong sex! by mayufu konishi - i haven’t quite finished this one yet, but this is a highly informative manga about a trans woman heading to thailand for her surgery! it’s extremely extremely informative about every single step of the process, and the author is an absolute delight, so it’s one i’d absolutely rec.

our journey to lesbian motherhood by emiko sugiyama/koyuki higashi/hiroko masuhara - have you heard of the lesbians that got married in disneyland tokyo? this is them!!! this is their autobiographical story of, well, their journey to lesbian motherhood! it’s very good, i definitely enjoyed it - it IS a sequel to another manga by them, but i sadly couldn’t find an english translation anywhere… it’s completely understandable without having read it, though!!

fictional manga:

my brother’s husband by gengoroh tagame - this is one i haven’t read myself, but is pretty damn high up on my ‘next to read’ list. the author is a prominent gay bara author - this is his first dabbling into more family-friendly series. he’s also recently started another family-friendly one called our colors that may be worth looking into as well!

whispered words by takashi ikeda - it’s been a good long while since i’ve read this, but i really enjoyed this when i was younger! (has it already been almost 8 years since it ended?? i feel old) it’s about two lesbians who are best friends - one of which is secretly in love with the other. unfortunately, she’s very much not her friend’s type. :( i vaguely remember some kind of weird crossdressing shenanigans with one character, tho, so tread lightly with that.

koimonogatari by tohru tagura - if you liked shimanami, this is also probably right up your alley! it’s a very realistic manga about a boy finding out that one of his classmates is closeted and gay - and he promptly decides to tell no one because he’s not an asshole, which leads to him being one of this boy’s main confidants. it realistically deals with the homophobia that gay people face, as well as the main character’s slow realization that he’s not necessarily straight, either (or at least, that’s my hypothesis - it’s still ongoing!!). i really enjoyed it.

lonely wolf, lonely sheep by fuka mizutani - two women with the same name, same birth month, and same injury end up meeting by complete coincidence at the hospital. i genuinely adore this manga and all it is. despite it only being one volume long, it deals with heavier topics such as depression, self harm, homophobia, and iirc even suicide. it’s really, really good though and i wish all the best for them.

kono koi ni mirai wa nai by morihashi bingo - i recommend this one tentatively, as the last two chapters are not yet translated (as of 1/11/19), but i enjoyed what was there. despite the label as BL on many sites, this story is actually about a trans woman (tho there is also a gay man in the manga!). the note left off on the most recent chapter, chapter 10, was a very uplifting note that she is not alone and that how she feels is completely, utterly normal, and i have hope for the last two chapters! the art’s really pretty, too, and the metaphors. but again - who knows what could go down in the last two chaps. fingers crossed!

i hear the sunspot by yuki fumino - PLEASE read this one. this manga is about two college-aged young men who end up meeting when one LITERALLY stumbles across the other. kouhei, one of the boys, is hard of hearing - and the other boy, taichi, starts taking notes for him in class in exchange for lunch, and thus begins a friendship that will blossom into romance! it absolutely gets in depth on the hoh/Deaf community in Japan, and is definitely informative - and the guys are just genuinely so sweet (as well as the other characters!!!) and I wish them all the happiness. it’s STILL ONGOING so like, warning on that, but i’m really enjoying it so far. i think there’s also a movie based off it!

cirque arachne by nika saida - this one has some sexual elements to it, so fair warning on that, but i really enjoyed it! it’s a single volume manga about two acrobats that fall in love. the art was cute and i genuinely liked the characters, quite a lot. would definitely rec.

yuureitou by tarou nogizaka - i have not actually read this manga, but it’s another that’s amazingly high up on my to read list. it’s a supernatural horror manga, and the main couple is a trans man and a cis man! i’ve heard good things about it - from people i know personally, as well as just in general - and it’s one i can’t wait to check out.

ohana holoholo by shino tarino - i FEEL like this one is completed, but if it is, the translation isn’t done. either way, i did love what i read from this! ohana holoholo is about a bi woman raising her son along with her ex-girlfriend and their neighbor, nico. it’s really good, one that i HIGHLY recommend, and one of the woman is implied to be trans, too! (fingers crossed they explicitly state it please please please-) overall, i absolutely rec it, please check this out!

no. 6 by atsuko asano/hinoki kino - who HASN’T heard of no. 6? no. 6 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the government is, well, the government. it involves two young men working to take it down alongside others and they fall in love. and one of the other characters is non-binary! ...honestly that’s probably the best i can describe no. 6 because WOW is it a wild trip. it’s a wild trip that i highly, highly recommend though! you want gays taking down the government alongside killer bees and a magical bug goddess? this is the manga for you. please read it.

asagao to kase san by hiromi takashima & bloom into you by nio nakatani - two shoujo ai manga centering around high schoolers that i haven’t actually read yet, both of which recently got animated adaptations!!! i have heard genuinely fantastic things about both of them (ESPECIALLY) the latter, and bloom into you is actually next on my reading list. they absolutely sound fantastic and i can’t wait to read them!!

seven days by rihito takarai/venio tachibana - a two-volume manga about two high school boys. every week, a boy named seryou goes out with a different girl - he treats them very well, showers them in attention, and then promptly breaks up with them at the end of the week because he didn’t fall in love with them. out of curiosity, his upperclassman, shino, asks him out one week - and thus begins their seven day romance. i really loved this, i really really did.

tamen de gushi by tan jiu - it’s an on-going webcomic about how two girls, qui tong and sun jing, meet and fall in love. the characters are all absurdly fantastic, from the two girls to all of the supporting characters around them, and it’s an absolute TREAT to read. i would highly rec it, there’s some lovely shenanigans in there.

last but not least, i highly rec manga written by the year 24 group. this group was a non-formal group of female mangaka in the 1970s that really revolutionized and influenced the shoujo manga genre. many of their works are considered classics today, with works such as kaze to ki no uta, claudine...!, the heart of thomas, and shiroi heya no futari among them. a lot of their works really dug in and examined sexuality and gender, and you can find some of the original shounen ai, shoujo ai, and trans manga among them. i’m a sucker for the classics, and i highly recommend them. i honestly could have listed every single of one these mangaka in my recommend authors list, but decided it was just easier to promote the group as a whole. the best for last, you know?

hope this helps, anon!

#Anonymous #long post #lgbt manga #manga recs #lgbt anime #fucking long post im sorry you probably didn't expect this essay

[wow-thisismylifeiguess]

I truly don’t know what this is, so read at your own risk...?

Sheith fanfic that I came up with at 2:30am because my mind wouldn’t shut the fuck up. It’s stupid and probably poorly written, but it made me laugh a few times, so.....I dunno. Have fun

Keith Kogane was good at a lot of things. Navigating so called ‘human emotions’ was not part of that list, and it was something nearly everyone around him was well aware of, including himself. It wasn’t that Keith wasn’t capable of acting like a normal human being. On the contrary, Keith was excellent at pretending to be that exact thing. No, the real problem came from the fact that while he knew how to fake it, Keith couldn’t quite understand what he was faking. Because, as stated, emotions weren’t something that….came easily to him.

It would be easy to blame it on a childhood that consisted of a missing mother and a father who was gone for work more often than not, but that was a simple answer, and one that didn’t work so well when you delved into the details, such as Keith’s father, Akira Sr. (because of course Keith’s name wasn’t really Keith) being the best damn dad when he was home, showering his son with love and affection to hopefully fill in the gaps of missing time. Keith had a good childhood, if a bit unconventional. He spent a lot of time alone, but he didn’t mind it, and maybe it was that that truly led to the way he was now. But then again, that couldn’t be the full story. No, it was something much deeper than just a preference for being alone.

Perhaps it had to do with his missing mother…. He had never met her, his father telling him stories of how she had to go somewhere far far away when he asked repeatedly at the age of four. When he was five, he learned that ‘far far away’ meant six feet under in a grave in another state. All that she left behind were several letters she wrote when she first discovered she was sick, and a wicked knife that looked like it had come out of an alien flick, the kind his dad loved to watch. But, the letters were filled with as much love as written words on a piece of paper could hold, and more. Keith was quite frankly impressed, and even now, had the letters pinned to his corkscrew board in his dorm. The knife went with him everywhere, but no one needed to know that. Especially campus security.

So no, Keith’s mother’s missing presence during his life was also not necessarily a factor in how he had become such a strange and somewhat alien human being. There wasn’t much else on the list, and so it narrowed it down quite significantly. There were only three people Keith knew that had ever held some sort of reverent importance in his life. Two of those were his parents. The third was Takashi Shirogane. Pretty boy. Golden boy. Sports star spectacular. Thinking about it…yeah. It was definitely Mr. Perfect who had fucked up Keith’s rather decent like, leaving him weird and strange and just…abnormal (as Lance had a habit of calling him). But Lance’s opinions didn’t matter….is what he told himself at night to keep the other boy’s voice out of his head as he counted backwards from seventy-seven (his lucky number), hoping that maybe, maybe tonight he’ll be able to fall asleep before three am hits. It doesn’t work, but most of what Keith tries to do in life doesn’t work, and again, it’s all his fault.

Keith had met Takashi Shirogane (it should actually be Shirogane Takashi, but of course, Americans don’t fucking care about cultures other than ‘white’) when he was sixteen years old. His dad had finally managed to move them to a better town with a new job, one where his skills as a fireman were actually useful and where he could also see his son on a more daily basis. Keith was transferred to a new school, where he had to go through the customary ‘new student!’ introduction (“Yes, my name is Akira, but please call me Keith.”) which was an unfortunate necessity. He’d only done it once in the past, so the second time was significantly easier, and Keith was braced for what would be a sudden influx of people curious about his life before the excitement gradually died down after one or two weeks.

Except….this time was different. Because Takashi Shirogane, an upperclassman by only a year, was instructed to show him around and get him used to his new school. Keith was instantly starstruck, and it didn’t take long (maybe about...an hour?) for him to find out he wasn’t the only one. Not that Keith cared much about the opinions of others (the third letter from his mom, labeled on the front to be given to him on his first day of middle school, had said to never let the opinions of others knock him down because he was going to be a badass and that was because he was Krolia Kogane’s son). No, Keith ignored everyone else, other than a petite girl with round glasses that seemed to cover the majority of her face and a series of hoodies that zipped up to her neck, concealing even more of her features, and kept most of his attention firmly on Shiro, as he insisted on being called.

Keith had nearly swooned the first time he had actually called him ‘Shiro’. It had been because of an argument (friendly banter) over Shiro insisting on calling Keith by his legal name. It wasn’t that Keith didn’t like his name. It was a good name. It was just that it was his dad’s name, and Keith wasn’t a big fan of taking things that he didn’t feel were his. So, Shiro insisted on being called Shiro, and Keith insisted on being called Keith. The girl with the large glasses, named Katie of all things, insisted on being called Pidge (of all things).

Somehow, they became the trio™️, an incredibly ridiculous and lackluster name given to them by the rest of the student body (and, surprisingly, by some of the staff as well). Just because they hung out a few (lot of) times didn’t mean that they deserved to be called such a dumb name. Sure, Keith and Pidge would sit in the bleachers during Shiro’s lacrosse practice, watching as he barrelled through other teenagers who looked way too beefed up on steroids. Sure, Shiro and Pidge would sit in the audience of Keith’s art award shows that Pidge would secretly sign him up for behind his back (because, “Your art is beautiful, Keith!”). Sure, Keith and Shiro would hang around in the halls outside of Pidge’s technology class to dissuade any of those particular boys who thought it was fun to rifle through her bag and flick at her glasses. It didn’t really mean anything.

But, with two years of high school left for Keith and Pidge, and only one year left for Shiro, it was inevitable there would be a goodbye. Shiro was too good at lacrosse and quite frankly, a genius in academics as well, so of course it wasn’t a surprise when he was handed a sports scholarship that would be immensely stupid to reject. He took it, after way too long of an internal debate, and on the last day of class, he promised both Keith and Pidge that they would see each other during the summer before he moved away several states over to attend a fancy schmancy university.

What Keith had not been expecting from this sort of stereotypical cross-grade friendship had been a confession.

Standing in front of the building in which their high school annually held their graduation, Shiro had bent down, still clad in the stomach-churning yellow of their school’s graduation gown, and whispered three simple words:

I. Like. You.

Sure, maybe kicking Shiro in the crotch before running away wasn’t the best response to a confession Keith never in all his years of living thought he would receive. But, in his defense, he had been hardcore crushing on the one year older male for maybe over four months, and having his feelings returned in such a way was a shock. It left him feeling strangely numb, and his only way of reacting (as stupid) as it was, was to block Shiro’s number on his phone and then immediately call Pidge to ask if he was insane or not. Of course, she told him the truth (“You’re more than insane, Keith. Much more.”). He had been looking for comfort, not to be mocked, but he should have known better than to come to Pidge for that. Still, she tried her best to calm him down, but it didn’t mean it was the end of Keith’s descent into whatever it was he was now. No, it had only just begun.

Now, while Keith had made an absolute fool of himself on that particular day in June, he had tried to make up for it by promptly unblocking Shiro’s number (nearly four hours) after his call with Pidge. He waited patiently. And then waited some more. And then a little bit more.

Finally, overcome by the need to do something, Keith picked up his phone and called Shiro himself. After three rings, the telltale sign that whoever was trying to be reached was not going to answer, Keith nearly ended the call, only for the ringing to stop and for Shiro’s cool ‘hello’ to breathe over the line. Wow, a rare four ring pick up, Keith had only read about those before… It took a lot of effort for him to force any words from his throat, but when he did, he instantly regretted it. “So, about what happened earlier…” He muttered, and that wasn’t a line he should have muttered. It wasn’t even something he should have said in the first place. Regardless, it was out, but the response he got was much worse than anything that could have come out of his own mouth. Shiro’s voice was level, calm. Extremely normal, despite the circumstances surrounding this call:

“What do you mean?”

Keith nearly stopped breathing, which wasn’t a good thing seeing as human beings need air to, yunno, live. But Keith couldn’t help it. His breath hiccuped and Shiro seemed to shift on the other line, the sound of fabric coming through the speaker. “You okay, Keith?” Shiro sounded so damn normal and it bothered Keith. Because….because why??? Why was he acting like a CONFESSION hadn’t passed through his lips, what….five hours ago? No, no. If Shiro was gonna play this game, then Keith was not going to be the first one to crack. He refused. If there was one thing his mother had drilled into him from the moment he learned how to read and held the first of her letters in his hand, then it was that Keith would never be the one to break first. If he were to be kidnapped and tortured on government secrets (though he had no idea why that would ever happen), then Keith was pretty sure he’d be getting out of there with a few bloody knuckles and his lips sealed shut. Keith didn’t lose. He wouldn’t allow himself to.

So, he shut up all the errant thoughts running through his mind about how fucking weird this situation was, and cleared his throat. “Nothing. I’ll see you in a week for movie night.” And with that, Keith ended the call and threw his phone across his bedroom (making sure it landed in the pile of clothes that needed to be folded) before dropping his head into his pillows to scream.

This was the start of Keith’s eventual fall into absolute madness and numbness to ‘human emotions’. The summer passed by in a way that was not at all memorable, sprinkled in with movie and game nights, as well as three am group chat conversations that made the three of them sound like they were either high, drunk, or both. By the time Shiro left for college, Keith had already begun his change from regular weird boy to what Lance cheerfully dubbed as ‘what the fuck?’ weird boy.

In the end, the reason Keith was the way he was had nothing to do with his parents, but instead, had everything to do with Takashi Shirogane, the man who had cut off ties with both Keith and Pidge a week after his classes started, leaving the both of them bitter senior high school students, and eventually, even more bitter freshman college students. But, what had been the most shocking thing about this whole ordeal was that Keith never ever expected to run into the man who ruined his life again. Shiro had gone off to a far more prestigious university in another state while Keith and Pidge made a pact to both get into their own state university and kick ass.

Of course, Keith’s life had a habit of not going the way he wanted (again, all because of him), so seeing Shiro’s face on the first day of lower sophomore semester, sitting in the front row of his Abnormal Psychology class….well. Keith did himself rather proud. He held back all the screams he had building up for the past two years, and walked past Shiro, ignoring the scar along the bridge of his nose and the stupid white tuft of hair in front of his eyes, and made his way to the back of the room where Lance and Allura sat. He did not spare Shiro another look nor a glance. He did not say a word to him. And after his professor finished explaining their syllabus for the semester, he did not let his eyes wander over the man who had said such life-altering words to him, only to walk out of said life. No, instead, he laughed at Lance’s stupid jokes (“What’s Beethoven’s favorite fruit?” “What?” “BA-NA-NA-NAAAA!”), held Allura’s hand as they walked out the door (because guys loved to flirt with her even though she was about as straight as a rainbow colored slinky and Keith was intimidating enough to keep the majority of them away), and kept his gaze steady and firm in front of him.

What he didn’t know was that Shiro had completely blanked out on everything Professor West had said, his mind simply filled with the images of a boy who had grown, with hair long enough to be pulled into a ponytail, dyed a dark purple at the tips, and eyes that matched almost perfectly in color. In this respect, Keith had won the battle, not that either of them were aware a war was going on in the first place. Keith wasn’t going to let this ruin him. No, not again. But just because he had made that decision, it didn’t mean he didn’t immediately text Pidge once he had both hands free. Definitely not. He wasn’t stupid.

#this was something I wrote in two hours at like....2:30am after feeling sad for a bit #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #katie holt #pidge gunderson #lance mcclain #allura #voltron legendary defender #voltron #sheith #my fanfiction

[outlyingthoughts]

Trapped in a carnival: Feb 19

According to the Oxford reference definition, a carnival is : “a social expression that often subverts and parodies the conventions of society. Such subversion, parody, and satire, when applied to other realms of everyday life such as literature, is sometimes called ‘carnivalesque’. It exposes and mocks the flawed practices and decrees of officialdom”.

Costumed festivities are and have been a recurrent pattern in innumerable cultures across the globe. Whether it is the Catholic carnival or the Halloween tradition in the english-speaking world (derived from the pageant celebrations of the Gaelic Samhain Eve festival), it appears that costuming is part of basic human traditions and behaviors, regardless of cultures, ages and places.

Couples days ago, my friends and I were about to attend a themed party (basic human behavior remember?). Angels and demons. After agreeing that we’d go all together, we quickly started to rack our brains, trying to figure out how we would dress up for the event and we settled for matching outfits.

A friend and I ended up twinning as demons, both of us wearing bodysuits with coordinated colors. red and black. Hellish colors for what we expected would be hell of a night. But when I got my bodysuit out of the mail, questions were raised. As I tried it on for the first time with two friends, one had a knee-jerk reaction to it, stating that it was a lot and that she wouldn’t be comfortable wearing it. The other one’s opinion was in between, liking the outfit but also unsure about the revealing features of the bodysuit.

Revealing, indeed it was. A red laced V-neck, leaving little room for mystery. And even though questions started to build up into a debate within my styling crew (isn’t that what friends are?) on whether I should pull it off or not, one part of me was clinging onto the idea of wearing it. As I slipped into the bodysuit, I also slipped into the character, making me out of the sudden both emboldened and confident. Frustrating it would have been to not wear it.

Women bodies have always been pointed out as fruits of sin, and this idea is somehow anchored in most of human cultures for a reason I still haven’t figured out. As early as the metaphor of Adam and Eve, women have been branded with the symbolism of temptation but also as temptations themselves. We have been directed by patriarchal society to hide our bodies, one way or another, and throughout history to remain pure: putting on us men’s faults, weaknesses and inability to control their desires and blaming the victims.

As much as desires are also part of basic human behaviors, they are also a peculiar craft of our own. Shaped and reshaped during our entire socialization, they are mirrors molded in the cultures we live in. Human desires are inherently artificial, they are not biological needs and are rarely fulfilled for the sake of specie survival.

Thus the idea of lack of agency regarding one’s desires and the debate on one’s responsibility over her/his desire is a crucial concept. Researches have been and are still conducted to analyze the human brain and its reactions. The results of the first studies of that kind had serious legal implications as law solely relies on them to prove that humans are physically able to control their desires, thus legally binding them for their voluntary and conscious choice to commit an offense or a crime in the pulse of a desire. Such studies highlighted the fact, that it is possible for any mentally healthy human to control its desires and react to them according to her/his will.

Based on this, the almost automatic societal response consisting in blaming male’s lack of control and agency towards their sexual desire over women’s behavior and appearance comes as a proof of the normalization of what I consider a deviant behavior that men are socialized to interpret as normal or at least something they shouldn’t be held responsible for. Funnily enough, throughout history, those same men claimed that women had no will of their own and thus shouldn’t study, vote, work on their own, meaning shouldn’t be responsible of their own lives. For centuries, we have been handled by our fathers, husbands or literally any chromosome Y bearing person on earth, the very same that are rarely held accountable for their abnormal desire-led behaviors while putting a stereotype of irresponsibility on women.

Without meaning to, my red laced top was thrown in the middle of an everlasting debate: should I censor myself or be blamed for other people’s voluntary sexualization of my body ? A lot of weight on the shoulders of an eighteen years old girl who just wanted to party with her friends. As one part of me craved to rock my very own forbidden fruit as I felt enbolded in it and it had been praised by all my very feminist and politically aware friends, the other part of me held all the negative remarks, feeling guilty just at the thought of wearing it, as it would make me the prey of male gaze. If I listened to the remarks I got, by dressing up in such ways I’d justify or worst encourage the behavior I was denouncing earlier. To sum up, I’d become another blamable temptation. This highlights how we still live in a patriarchal society in which the rape culture is still a burning reality, where sexualizing women’s bodies regardless of the context or their intent is still the norm.

After dwelling on whether I should or not wear it, I went against my doubts and decided that I’d wear it for several reasons. Firstly, I know for a fact that if you are going to be sexually harassed or aggressed, the way you dress is just a mere excuse for the aggressor. Hiding behind clothes branded as « safe » isn’t 1) a solution for the societal issue behind the debate 2) going to prevent the person whose mind is set on agressing you from agressing you. It simply strips you from your freedom to dress accordingly to your own will, and that is a fundamental freedom for women. That day, I decided to not let male gaze or any normative patriarchal discourse prevent me from exercising this freedom that has been given to me through the fights of generations and generations of women.

As for the “reputation” side of dressing up in such ways, I sent out to our main groupchat the following text: «so I’m gonna go like that (insert picture) to Angel and Demons, so if you wanna gossip about it, you can start now, because people will see my nipples and I don’t care, if anyone pisses me off, I’ll tell them not to look at me, it’s not my problem if people choose to sexualize a part of my body that is not sexualized on men». I did not want to let slut-shaming get in my way, and quite frankly it’s 2019, if you put words and meaning behind appearances and acts, there is little harm possible to your “reputation”. Everybody understood and accepted my decision, my incentives were praised and others girls told me they had also decided to dress up in -what could be branded- a “scandalous” way. Being mainly surrounded by male friends that are aware of how flawed our society is in terms of sexism and aspire to participate along the side of women in the making of new norms, they also supported my choice of wearing my red bodysuit and I was, then, 200% sold.

From the moment I posted that text until the day of the event, everything went great, people might have been bad mouthing me but for all I knew and I cared, my friends supported me and the party turned out to be a fun event and we danced the night away. I don’t know if it is that I’m surrounded by an amazing community or that I simply got lucky, but no one harmed me, looked at me intensely in that threatening sexual manner that too many of us know. I tried to limit the spread on social media of pictures from that night to websites where I could control them. Yet to be honest, as soon we accept to take pictures or go out in our everyday life, we accept that anyone can find, keep and spread later images of us in public spaces. This bodysuit debate made me come up with a guideline of only wearing and doing things I would and will still be ok with being seen and posted in a twenty years time. This oversharing and ineffaceability that characterizes the internet created something that most of my friends and I have integrated. Living in an overconnected world and planning to have thriving careers, we owe it to our success to own and control every single word, act and image of us that could be, in this digital age, used against us.

But here again, I would willingly show these pictures to my children, and if I ever get lucky enough I’d be proud to explain my decision of wearing such revealing piece of clothing to who ever would try to minimize my professional legitimacy or who I am to a simply piece of scarlet lace. Because that is something that needs to be reiterated, the world has to stop associating women’s worth to their appearance. I find it increasingly shocking as days pass by that a woman can be denigrated on the basis of her clothing only because people have crossed boundaries and sexualized parts of her body regardless of whether she meant or not to sexualize her outfit. I could go on and on about Instagram’s policy regarding the ban women’s nipple while male nipples are seen as non harming to/by the Instagram community, or even something as innocent as hairstyles in the professional life (the fact that black women are often facing troubles within the corporate context because most of our natural hairstyles are considered to be unprofessional or unfit to someone holding a high position in hierarchy): it appears that women’s bodies have been institutionalized as a danger to human kind requiring to be tamed or hidden.

Meanwhile, few days after the Angels and Demons night, one of my relatives called me, fuming after seeing pictures from the party. He said he was ashamed of me, of seeing me dressed up like this, in a way he considered indecent.

But whether it is or not indecent, little do I care. The problem with “indecency” or such terms is that they are socially constructed and vary according to time periods and cultures. One part of me has understood through socialization that indeed nudity or partially nudity is indecent/deviant, abnormal/illegal in public, which makes me understand his point of view and shock, but then another other one looks at #freethenipple movements and many others, that argue that what makes women’s breasts or part of them indecent today is the tradition of blatant sexualization of women’s bodies throughout ages. In my relative’s argumentation, it appeared that a huge part of the issue to him was the vision people would have of me, that men already “disrespect women but that it’d be worst” if people associated me to that lacy scandal. He professed that I’d only meet ‘bad men’ and have a bad reputation if I kept up with that attitude.

And I was shook to my very core.

There was something extremely primitive and backward to his arguments. While I could understand his views on decency, the fact that he supported them using patriarchal clichés, implying that if I hooked up with men and dressed in a provocative way, I could/would only be passivily used by men. Through his speech, he took from me any kind of control over my sexuality or room for my own desires as he was describing the “consequences” of appearing in public in such ways.

This made me realize how women’s desires are often suppressed or disregarded from mainstream discourses and ideas but also the way I was educated by my atheist so-called progressive left leaning family. Within my family context, female sexuality was solely addressed in the context of informing us about sexual reproduction -which I already feel very lucky I received because there is an unbelievable number of women on earth who are not taught about their own selves, thus lacking of any resources to learn how to protect themselves and their sexual life-. But never has any adult throughout my teenage years addressed what pleasure was. Not in sex ed class, not in a family talk on sexuality, never.  The thing is that along with not owning the sexualization of our bodies or the link between our reputations and appearance, society also expected us to be hidden whores. You’re expected to meet patriarchal expectations, be a sexual being (remember our bodies throw men “out of control and responsibility”!) but you can’t explore it on your own  (outside of a normative heterosexual monogamous exclusive relationship) without being discredited, stigmatized as being a slut or deviant.

As such my relative was afraid that my reputation as a woman (supposed to have standards) would be jeopardiwed because I’d be associated with a provocative piece of clothing suggesting that I’m not a hidden whore but an public one. It felt like he thought I couldn’t afford to not be respectable based on men judgement and standards. Then he suggested that my outfits would increase the chances of me of getting raped or sexually harassed and it felt like he was just re-assessing the entire sexist dynamic of our society: instead of normalizing women’s ability to dispose of and expose their body in the way they want to, it just slut-shames them into covering their body parts.

By saying that he was ashamed, he associated my clothing to a certain type of behavior that he then judged and shamed. Adding to the fact that it is inherently wrong to “judge a book by its cover”, it just shows how even people that know you rarely dissociate people from their appearances and tend to easily forget your initial worth when they interpret negatively the symbolism in your clothing. As he normalized through his discourse the minimization of women to their appearance and legitimized through his meant-to-be educational advices that women are treated and seen as if they were as shallow as the layers they coat themselves into, I felt hurt. Without meaning to, he still suggested that I was acting like a whore. As hurt as I was, still I knew.

I knew that I had slipped into my stigmatizing scarlet bodysuit just the time of a night and I wouldn’t let myself become my carnival costume. And so no matter how bad I felt, I decided that I’d keep on dressing up the way I wanted to. One day this relative might tell me off again and I’ll tell him: I won’t reduce all my intelligence, experiences, dreams and expectations to the way I appear to people that are -sorry if I cross anyone- stupid enough to judge me only in the context of a themed party and choose to ignore the multiple layers a human being can have.

[organicli]

Day 53, Kuala Lumpur

Guess who wanted to hang out with me today!! That's right, another old man!!!! I went out first of all to a street called Jalan Alor, without realising it was more of a night market, so most places were closed. I looked around the vacant metal kitchenware and exchanged a few words with a short Malaysian local man about why I was there. I bought a pork wantan mee and sat down to eat. The old man sat down with me and asked me about my studies. He paid for my lunch for me and said that as a man, he was providing for me. I then fabricated that I had a friend to meet in Merdeka Square because I didn't want company. I thought he wouldn't want to come since it was over a mild away and he seemed pretty old but he said he would show me the way. I said he didn't have to but he insisted that he be my bodyguard. I just didn't really want company, as usual, but I didn't think he was a threat and I assessed that I'd be able to take him in the unlikely event that I should need to take him on, on account of him being so much shorter than me. He seemed honest though and genuinely happy for the chance to show me around and not like he was trying to hit on me or anything. He was sweet, bless him, but as I've learned recently and as I specifically said after yesterday, I don't want to hang out with random older men anymore. As we were walking, I asked him how old he was and he told me to guess. I hate guessing and I usually lowball it so as not to offend anyone. Most Asians seem to look a lot younger than they really are so I guessed 60. "No!!!!" He said; I remember the high pitch fluctuation of his voice exactly, stereotypical to his Chinese heritage, "I'm 40!!" I thought he didn't have the walk of a man on the end of his youth as he shuffled along in his leather slippers, but I felt bad nonetheless and he proceeded to give me a lesson on guessing someone's age by their hair colour. I was puzzling over just how I would execute my story about meeting a friend. Most girls will clock on when you're with a guy and you suddenly pretend you're friends with them that you need rescuing. It wasn't guaranteed though. He could register the flicker (or obvious blunder) of confusion and I'd be busted. I'd only get one shot at this. I'd have to assume or hope the 'friend' that I chose would understand English well. I wasn't sure I could pull it off. We walked through the central square market and past Petaling Street. He was giving me a bit of information about the place which was nice. We got to Merdeka square and it was alright there. Nothing special, to be honest, and there was a load of construction work going on around as well. There weren't really any white tourists around either that I could safely rope into my plan. I aborted the mission and it started to look like rain so I told him I was gonna go back to my hostel to rest while it rained. My hostel was quite nearby so we started walking. It also started raining and he got an umbrella out of his bag. He held it high up in the air with his arm fully outstretched so it would shelter me from the rain and he was bobbing along next to me with a big grin on his face. We must've looked a little ridiculous because a lot of people were looking. I felt like I was some white princess with my little Malay man servant, but not in a good princess way. I got back and said good bye to him, making sure he'd be able to get home okay. I went and lay down for a bit, feeling lethargic. I did go back out again and walked through loads of construction work and down Petaling Street/Chinatown but it was just a load of the usual shit for sale. I bought a pineapple stick and a durian egg tart from a bakery because I thought I'd be adventurous and try some new things. The pineapple was nice but the egg tart was, predictably, a bit eggy. I was going to walk towards the botanical gardens but I started to feel unwell so I headed back, deciding to call it a day because there was no point in keeping on walking around, forcing myself to see the area, when frankly I wasn't enjoying it. I got back in bed. I don't even feel like I'm looking forward to the rest of Malaysia. I'm just so tired all the time and it's not the kind of tired sleeping can fix. I'm probably just dehydrated. I hate just hanging around the hostel for ages because I feel like people are judging me for not being out and seeing the place but I guess it hardly matters what they think. On the plus side, my confidence in my career has returned! At least I feel good about that today.

#travels

[thedramafilesblog-blog]

Welcome to our ‘End of Year Review/Awards’ post. Yes it’s in January because we’re doing it in line with Chinese New Year! So Happy New Year Everyone!

RedRosette J: Hey Everyone! we were really behind on the end of year reviews and awards posts that everyone was doing at the end of 2016, so we decided to do it in line with Chinese New Year because technically 2016 just ended (LOL)! We came up with random categories based on what we thought was deserving of a best/worst/whatever award. We also are basing this list off the dramas that we watched this year (we have not watched some of them so those aren’t included in this list). So….Enjoy!

Jubiemon J: We had this idea a while back but remembered it now! Yes, Chinese New Year ended recently. This is probably going to be a savage post, so let’s hope you’ll like this!

Best Couple

RR: So it’s really hard to say which couple is THE best, but there are a few strong contenders in the running for best couple. I wouldn’t award this title to one particular couple per se, but would award it to a few couples because I think that they were all ‘best’ in their own way. My picks for Best Couple are: Shopping King Louie, Descendants of the Sun, and Oh Hae Young Again. All of these couples had redeeming qualities. SKL was really all about their devotion to each other and the cuteness, DOTS was about two people who learned to be with each other while still remaining very much a part of their own established lives and OHYA was about two people overcoming their insecurities to be with each other (sort of). At least that’s what I got out of them. These are all qualities that a ‘best couple’ should have so, I’m choosing to award this title as a combo award!

Worst Couple

RR: I think the Worst Couple title should go to IU and Lee Jun Ki in Scarlet Heart Ryeo. If anyone is curious as to why we’re awarding this, please read our reviews on this drama. We go on ad nauseum about how badly these two are as a couple.

JM: Yes, the Worst Couple award goes to these two. I still think IU and Kang Haneul had more going on…. *face palm* Yes, we did extensive reviews about their relationship, so please check out those posts!

Other Contenders for the Title: Kim Woo Bin and Suzy in Uncontrollaby Fond and Hye Ri and Ji Sung in The Entertainer.

Cringiest Drama

RR: Scarlet Hear Ryeo. Ugh. Again for reasons see previous review posts.

JM: Agreed! Especially the awful editing and multiple versions floating around and . . . well, check our reviews.

Drama “that had shit going on and then shit hit the fan and everything died” Award

RR: This category was created specifically for W – Two Worlds because when it started out it was amazing and we were all glued to our screens and freaking out and yelling and gasping and it was awesome. Then episode 6 or 7 happened and everything just went south. All of a sudden, none of it made sense and it just became a hot mess so it gets its own special category.

JM: The title of that award came from me, just saying. ;) Sorry for the long-ass title, but I think it summed up W very well. We didn’t review this drama because we hadn’t started our blog yet. However, both of us watched it and like RR said we were literally SO into this drama INITIALLY. Then . . . he kept dying, reliving, the dad also kept dying, reliving, etc. Oh my god. No.

Worst Legal Drama

RR: If you’ve been following us, you will know how we feel about this drama….Woman With A Suitcase! It was so awful that we had to stop reviewing it halfway. If you decide to do a legal drama, make sure you have a legal consultant is all I have to say for this drama.

JM: I think what made Woman with a Suitcase awful was that the lawyers solved the legal problems in a very similar fashion for each case. More details can be found in our reviews.

Most Ridiculous Action Drama

RR: This is also a special category that we created for The K2 because it was just completely ridiculous. The plot was a big mess and consisted of ridiculously long action scenes, Yoona acting like an infantilized Bambi, and the evil Mother lady directing everyone from her secret supercomputer in an even more secret underground lair. Seriously? (We actually reviewed this whole drama too -_-)

JM: I have to be frank. I watched the first episode and saw that she was running for 90% of the ep. I knew that this action drama would be a mess. I don’t know how RR stuck with this drama. I fast-forwarded through the first episode and finished it in less than 10 minutes. All I got from it was this: she ran.

Most Pointless Adaptation from US TV Shows

RR: Entourage gets this award. Unlike the other adaptions which got better reviews (I didn’t watch those so I can’t comment on those), this was just an excuse to have penis jokes and watch dudes walking around in their underwear. The characters apart from Jo Jin Woong and Park Min Jung really fell flat and didn’t really do anything much. Most of the time the 60 minutes felt really long and pointless, hence it deserves this award.

JM: Ah, I tried to watch this drama too but then dropped it after the first few episodes. We were really looking forward to potentially reviewing this, but . . . no. The first few episodes were just the guys talking and talking and talking. Nothing really happened. *Yawns*

Most Underrated Drama

RR: When Age of Youth started out, I honestly didn’t see it going the way it did. I really liked the way it portrayed the girls’ friendships and individual struggles. They were all really relatable. Maybe it’s because I’m also a twenty-something struggling through trying to figure out life, but it really resonated with me. I liked how this drama also left the ending very broad and open, as if to say that the characters struggles continue on and it’s not something that can get wrapped up neatly in a bow at the end as how it is with life in reality. It was definitely the most underrated drama of 2016 in my opinion.

JM: Jesus, Age of Youth is SO underrated. I wished we had started this blog earlier so that we could review this drama. I have to say the ending was kind of rushed and could have had more, but overall I still really enjoyed watching this drama. There was just the right amount of suspense, gossip, mystery, friendship, love, and drama. This drama is perfect for those going into their late teens to mid twenties. So many of the problems that the characters face are realistic and interesting.

Best Remake

RR: Being a huge fan of the original drama, I was a little skeptical about the remake but 1% of Something really delivered and is totally deserving of this title. Ha Seok Jin and Jeon So Min were the perfect Lee Jae In and Kim Da Hyun. It was the perfect contract dating love story, and I think that’s where the perfection lies: in its predictability and normality. Plus Ha Seok Jin had much better hair than Kang Dong Won in the original. It was a really good remake. I’d recommend watching it if anyone hasn’t already.

Best Reverse Harem Drama

RR: I would award this title to Cinderella and the Four Knights. It was a bit all over the place and Ahn Jae Hyun spent most of it brooding over Son Na Eun‘s dull as ditch water character and Jung Il Woo was an ass for most it. But once you get over it and focus on the cutesies, it’s not awful. Its still a lot better than the reverse harem nightmare in Scarlet Heart Ryeo so I will give it that!

JM: Personally, I couldn’t get into this drama so much. Maybe in the end . . . where there were more cute fluffy scenes and I wanted to watch some cuteness. But yeah . . . this drama was kind of stereotypical? I did like the character who was the musician.

Worst Web Drama

RR: So I actually gave up watching Seven First Kisses after the Lee Jun Ki episode. NO ONE KISSED ANYONE!!! WTF?!?! How is this okay? You get all these hot guys and no one is kissing anyone? The title of this show is the epitome of misrepresentation! -_-

JM: This was the drama I watched when there was nothing else to do and I needed to pass around 10 mins of my time. I watched the whole thing because I wanted to know whether she would get kissed. I mean, the actors and the actress really got it easy for their roles. They didn’t even have to KISS each other. Even as an advertisement, this failed. I still have no idea what Lotte Duty Free is selling. A lifestyle? A romance? A fantasy that will never be fulfilled?

Contenders for Best Web Drama: High End Crush and The Miracle

Worst Character – The One You Most Want To Push Off A Cliff

RR: If I absolutely HAD to pick one character, I’d choose……IU’s character on Scarlet Heart Ryeo. I just couldn’t deal with the wishy washy-ness going between Kang Ha Neul and Lee Jun Ki  and just her attitude in general. Ugh. Off the cliff you go!

JM: Soo from SHR. Yup. She was super weak, flat, stupid, selfish and more. How could she not So even be with his daughter? Huh? That really boggles my mind. Guh.

Worst Mom

RR: Hands down the Mom in Scarlet Heart Ryeo is the worst drama Mom of 2016. I’m guessing that EVERYONE has seen this drama so it warrants no further explanation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about watch this train wreck and you’ll see.

JM: Oh dear. I forgot about her until RR mentioned her. LOL. I guess she was such a bad mom that I had to blank her out. I still don’t understand why she hated So. LOL.

a) Evilest Mother in Law

RR: As a sub-category under Worst Mom we’re doing the ‘Evilest Mother in Law’. This title goes to…….the Mother in Law in Happy Home who used emotional and psychological terrorism to subjugate the daughter in law. It was frankly quite terrifying to watch. Honourable mentions in this category should also be: Do Kyung’s mom (the money stealing mom) in Oh Hae Young Again, the whole in-law family (they killed the daughter-in-law’s mother and father) in My Daughter Geum Sa Wol and Gab Dol’s mom (abusive mother in law) in Our Gab Soon (this one is still airing though so it doesn’t technically count).

Second Leads:

a) Who Should Be First Leads

RR:  Hands down this title goes to Baek In Ho in Cheese in the Trap, although arguably this did happen for like half a second so…..But he gave us all the feels with the moping….

Other Contenders for the Title: Ryu Jun Yeol’s character in Reply 1988 and Lee Joon’s character in Woman With A Suitcase.

b) Best Male Second Lead

RR: The adorable Gong Myung’s puppy character with the crush on Park Ha Sun‘s character on Drinking Solo was by far the best second lead. And because you know that he can never be the equivalent of a first lead, it really was the one character that gave you a real case of Second Lead Syndrome.

Other Contenders for the Title:  Go Kyung Po’s character in Jealousy Incarnate, and Ohn Joo Wan’s character in Beautiful Gong Shim.

c) Best Female Second Lead

RR: I honestly can’t think of any second leads who are decent and not absolutely horrible people. Except maybe Shin Hye Sun’s character on Legend of the Blue Sea (but technically its not included as 2016 drama because it ended in 2017 so it doesn’t count)

d) Bitchiest Second Leads

RR: Most female second leads are by default absolute bitches so it’s really really hard to pick one particular character. For this reason, I’m going with a combo award again. I’m choosing Seo Hyo Rim (the sister) in Beautiful Gong Shim, Jeon Hye Bin (the sister) in Woman With A Suitcase, Park Se Young (the adopted sister) in My Daughter Geum Sa Wol, and Lee Sung Kyung (the twin sister) in Cheese in the Trap for the Bitchiest Second Lead title. Is anyone else sensing a trend with the evil sister thing in 2016?

JM: I concur. Bitchiest everywhere. Man.

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Worst Actor-Please Go Back to Acting Class Award

RR:  By far the Worst Actor title goes to Baekhyun on Scarlet Heart Ryeo. It was just terrible. Too much of everything. Please. Go back and get some acting lessons.

JM: I think they made him do aegyo WAY too much. I get that his character is supposed to be really innocent and cheerful, but . . . yeah. If he does pursue acting, I agree that he should take more acting lessons!

Candiest Candy

RR: I absolutely love Gong Hyo Jin, but her character on Jealousy Incarnate was the Candiest Candy character of 2016. Candy characters annoy me but oddly, I didn’t hate her version of Pyo Na Ri which I think is the point. She was dogged and clingy but not in a creepy or desperate way. Also, her fashion in this drama was absolutely on point so….Kudos girl!

Worst Kiss

RR: OMG. These were the absolute worst kisses in the 2016 dramaverse. The IU and Lee Jun Ki kiss on Scarlet Heart Ryeo (they were all horrible so you can choose which one you hate more) and the Park Shin Hye and Kim Rae Won in Doctors (also known as the ‘Dancing In The Rain Kiss’). These were all equally horrible in their own right. Mostly because a) the kissing was bad and because b) it was super awkwardly positioned. Ugh. How hard is it to mess up a kiss scene?

JM: SHR for me. RR actually showed the “better” kiss scene from SHR. I’m telling you, the worst kiss in that drama has to be the initial forced kiss from So. The director even filmed the kiss upside down so you couldn’t see much of the action at all. The kiss was reflected from a pond. LOL. (Yes I know LJK has said in an interview that he hasn’t been that good with kiss scenes in the past, so I was kind of looking forward to seeing some improvement on his hand for SHR. Unfortunately, those scenes didn’t show . . . much. I wished they had created better kiss scenes.)

Best Kiss

RR: Hands down, the best kiss of 2016 goes to……Seo Hyun Jin and Eric (also known as the ‘Wall Kiss’) in Oh Hae Young Again. This kiss is totally deserving of this title. It was very much what you would expect a real kiss to be; all the tongues and hands and feelings. So very realistic. An honourable mention should also go to Gong Hyo Jin and Jo Jung Seok (also known as the ‘Locker Room Kiss’) on Jealousy Incarnate. *fans face*

Best Makjang (Or worst depending on your approach to Makjangs)

RR: I would award this title to…..My Daughter Geum Sa Wol! It had a little bit of everything; fires, death, birth switches, birth secrets, love affairs, awful in-laws, noble idiocy, poverty, a Romeo-Juliet-esque love story etc etc. It was all super intense and very much in your face all the time and made you want to scream and/or pull your hair out. It was great.

a) Best Family Drama

RR: In line with the Makjang is the Best Family Drama title. I would award this to Five Children. It’s all about a blended family coming together and their extended family drama. If nothing else, the scene stealing Sung Hoon and Shin Hye Sun put this drama on the map with their super awkward ‘Supremely Obnoxious Jock Falls For Nerdy School Teacher’ love story!

Best Costumes

RR: The costumes in Moonlight Drawn by Clouds were absolutely beautiful!

JM: Yes. So pretty.

Worst Costumes

RR: The outfits and style choices in Lucky Romance were absolutely atrocious. They made Hwang Jung Eum look like some New York city bag lady. It was absolutely terrible! An honourable mention for worst costumes also goes to…..Hwarang: Poet Warrior Youth for its god awful drowned rat hair! (it’s technically still airing so it doesn’t count but I think it deserves to be included twice in this category for both 2016 and 17!)

Worst Script

RR: I mean there is no contest for this……Scarlet Heart Ryeo (If you want to know the reasons why please read our review posts on this)

JM: SHR!!!!! They had a NOVEL and a Chinese script to work with. Things shouldn’t have gone wrong.

Worst Editing

RR: Again, no contest….Scarlet Heart Ryeo

JM: SHR. Cutting off the actor/actress’s speech before the scene ended? Having multiple versions going on? What? No.

Worst Manhwa Adaptation

RR: When you basically make the Male Lead disappear and replace him with the Second Lead for half the show which is totally not what is in the Webtoon, you deserve this title. Cheese in the Trap, I’m talking to you!

JM: My God. The webtoon is SO MUCH BETTER. Guys just read the webtoon and ignore this drama. What a waste of Park Hae Jin. He’s a really good actor. (Watch him in Bad Guys).

Most Underused Talent Award

RR: Talk about a waste of talent. This title goes to Ji Sung in The Entertainer. This whole drama was pointless in the first place, but to cast Ji Sung and then have him do barely anything and give him have an awkward love line with Hye Ri? Really? That’s the best you could do? -_-

Actor Who Did A 180 Award

RR: Honestly, I didn’t see this coming. When UEE was cast in Marriage Contract, I must admit that I was less than excited. But, she totally proved me wrong by really killing it in the role. Oh My God. She gave me all the feelings. It was a job very well done. *applause*

Rising Star Award

RR: I didn’t really notice any newbies that really took my breath away in 2016 except maybe Kim Min Suk who was Private Kim Ki Bum and Jin Goo’s little ‘brother’ character on Descendants of the Sun. He also went on to play a cute doctor on Doctors later in the year as well. He’s doing quite well playing resident puppy roles. Keep it up!

Best Drama

RR: For me, this year’s Best Drama Award should go to Descendants of the Sun. In spite of some of its cheesiness, what I really liked best about this show was the characters’ dedication to their own lives and careers and choice to be with each other without giving these up. They remained very much their own person until the very end and were not willing to compromise things that made them, them. This is often not the case with most drama characters, so it was really refreshing to see a love story being portrayed in such a way. Its really the twenty-something struggle (love vs career) and these two really figured it out amidst the landmines and natural disasters.

JM: For me, the best drama goes to SIGNAL. If I could vote Signal for everything, I could try to squeeze it in for anything. ;) I’m sort of biased because I adore watching murder mysteries. I find the suspense to be fascinating. All of the actors were great. However, the younger male police lead (Lee Je Hoon) . . . he was decent but still not as skilled as the veteran actors. The cases were also very interesting and I heard they were based on real cases which makes the drama even more fascinating. I think the drama also brings on some social issues to light which is great. BRING ON A SEQUEL or another wonderful murder mystery drama for 2017. PLEASE.

RR: That’s it for our 2016 wrap up! Goodbye 2016! You will not be missed!

End of Year Drama Awards – 2016 Welcome to our 'End of Year Review/Awards' post. Yes it's in January because we're doing it in line with Chinese New Year!

#1% of anything #2016 review #age of youth #ahn jae hyun #baek jin hee #baekhyun #beautiful gong shim #cheese in the trap #chinese new year #choi ji woo #cinderella and the four knights #critique #descendants of the sun #doctors #drama #drama awards #drama recap #drama review #dramarecap #dramareview #drinking solo #End of Year Review #entourage #eric moon #final review #five children #gong hyo jin #gong myung #ha seok jin #han hye jin

[theliterateape]

Problematic Movies of the '80s | Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

By Don Hall

I grew up loving science fiction. I was that sixth grader who read the Asimov entire Foundation trilogy in the fall. It’s likely I only understood 30 percent of it but I read it with gusto. I gravitated to Star Trek and was in the audience of the initial release of Star Wars 25 times (this being long before the joys of VHS tapes to capture films in the unending home viewing loop). Alien worlds, exploration, movies about astronauts and starships. I ate that shit up.

What drove me was the ideas. I loved the ideas. Which is why it is a bit distressing in the hindsight of 2018 that the only thing I can remember about 1988’s Earth Girls Are Easy is Geena Davis in a bikini.

By the time it came out, I was a senior in college, a blackout drunk and all the things we now revile in a collegiate aged white guy (minus the rich parents and rapey instincts), so I suppose I’m unsurprised that I only remember the hot chick in a movie featuring Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Michael McKean and Damon Wayans.

I loved Davis in 1986’s The Fly (it always surprises me that movie never seems to make my Top 10 list despite how much I fucking loved it) and I crushed hard on her in Beetlejuice, so it seems natural that the draw for me was watching her parade around in the barest of clothing, but c’mon, right? I find myself bemused and slightly embarrassed that in my most physically viable years my choices were so directly motivated by my cock.

Earth Girls Are Easy Written by Julie Brown, Charlie Coffey, & Terrence E. McNally Directed by Julien Temple 1988

To describe Earth Girls Are Easy is difficult. Part MTV generation ‘80s fluff piece, part quasi-musical (I’d forgotten that part entirely), part romantic comedy, all pinks and light blues and yellows — this thing is like someone ate a Spencer’s Gifts, a Chess King and a Contempt store, drank a gallon of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, and threw it all up on Julie Brown’s chest.

Julie Brown, for those not in the know, started as a spoof musician, broke into film in Lily Tomlin’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and hit with the debut of her first EP, a five-song album called Goddess in Progress. The album, parodies of popular ‘80s music combined with her valley girl personality, was quickly discovered by the Dr. Demento Show. The songs 'Cause I'm a Blonde and The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun were given radio airplay across the world. The latter was a spoof on stereotypical 1950s teen tragedy songs with cheerleaders' heads and pompoms being blown to pieces.

While starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum and the cast of In Living Color, this film is all Julie Brown. Channeling a healthy portion of John Waters for style, Brown’s script tells the tale of a manicurist (Davis) who discovers her doctor fiancé (Charles Rocket) is a cheating skeeve, destroys all his stuff and is sunning herself by his pool when horny, fuzzy aliens (Goldblum, Wayans and Carrey) crash land in said pool. Over the course of two days and one night, the aliens are completely shaved by Candy Pink (Brown), go clubbing, do a dance-off, fall in love, rob a convenience store, go to the beach on “Blonde’s Day,” escape being dissected, and fly away with Davis in tow.

There are several musical numbers (not enough for a full-blown musical) and the most popular and oft highlighted is Brown’s spoof piece Because I’m a Blonde.

I mean, this is a really dumb movie.

And, yes. Even 30 years later I found myself completely mesmerized by Davis in a bustier, in a pink bikini, in a midriff shirt, in ripped jeans. It should be noted that 30 years later I was equally mesmerized by super hot Jeff Goldblum in his waist-high billowing pants and no shirt. Quite frankly, these two onscreen are absolute magic. It’s no wonder they were married for a brief three years and it is in no small way that this extremely dumb movie is carried by their chemistry. Both unconventionally sexy, there’s just something hot about the two of them together.

Oh. There’s also McKean doing his level best playing a surfer burnout. 

Problematic Moments & Themes

Yes, Wayans is black and is in the top-billed cast. He gets some goofy moments and his big showcase scene is a dance-off with another black actor vying for the affections of a black female actor. Not going for Roots here but at least there’s some color on the screen and nothing in this entire movie is racist or bigoted in any way. Which is refreshing for the 1980s at this point.

There’s a little bit of homophobic humor, primarily in the lispy accent suddenly adopted by a cop, but it skirts the line of offense in that the gayness of these two police officers is not made fun of, rather it exists as kind of a long gone conclusion.

If there is a series of problematic messages in this dorky vehicle, it’s that Valarie (Davis) is kind of perpetually dumb. She lives for a finance who treats her like shit and is willing to marry him despite his crap behavior. On top of that, she pretty much parades around throughout the film in “look at my hot, lean, tall body” while adopting the slightly stupid baby talk that Brown makes fun of in her Blonde video. She falls for the Goldblum alien only after he uses his psychedelic love touch on her (with her full consent but still kind of Cosby-esque, you know?). As a leading lady, there’s just not much going on in the brains/agency department.

A few years later, Davis took this same character and evolved into a bit more empowered feminist in Thelma & Louise, but they die in the end rather than get transported to another planet so maybe the messages are a tad mixed.

Overall though, aside from the fact that the only reason a 16-year-old boy would even bother to see it starts with a B, ends with an S and rhymes with boobs, the movie is more dumb than tainted by incorrect political platforming.

Did it Hold Up?

It’s fine. Not great, not terribly problematic. Fun in a “Oh my fucking christ — did we really dress like that?” sort of way.

Overall

Scale of 1 to 10 1 = Classic 10 = Burn all VHS copies of it

Earth Girls Are Easy gets a 7 (if only to witness the young, sexy Goldblum in full sexiness.)

Next Up: Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

#Problematic Movies of the ’80s #Earth Girls Are Easy