#bengiyo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elnotwoods · 2 years

Note

Top 5 pieces of media you try to get all of your friends to read, watch, or listen to?

Oh Ben, not you coming in with such a good one!

Hmmm… it totally depends on the friend cause I would not rec something I know they wouldn’t be comfortable with…

Books? Let’s see, I think I have talked about the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson with most of my irl and online friends when I first read those books. It is not for everyone maybe but the themes of violence against women, paired with a badass female character? I still go back and re-read them once in a while! Oh, also something from Haruki Murakami, even tho he can be hard to get into but some of his books are really amazing! Also the Alchemyst, because it was a great book (I am a firm believer that the books you need to read will find you at the right time though). Nothing else comes to me rn. (My brain straight up can’t remember other books, it’s been a while since I read actual published books cause I tend to gravitate towards fics nowadays…)

Series/Movies? Hmm… I would tell everyone to watch Bad Buddy just to see how queer relationships can and do work! I also love recommending stuff that made a certain impact in the industry in the context of the time it was released! Like Star Trek TOS! Can’t go wrong there in my opinion… oooh, also Philadelphia! Granted, nowadays we wouldn’t cast a straight man in the role of a gay man of such importance, but at the time it certainly opened the doors and started discussions and the movie itself was so important. To Wong Foo is also a great movie in my opinion and more people should watch it. I also loved just recommending movies I’ve seen 100s of times like Ghost, Dirty Dancing, Moonlight, Snowpiercer or Parasite and some good 90s romcoms for a good movie night. Damn I don’t even know now, there’s so many…

Music? Okay, I am a firm believer that one should always explore and discover new things… and I certainly made a lot of my friends listen to opera because opera is something I came to absolutely love and adore… Madame Butterfly by Puccini? Goosebumps, especially with Maria Callas in the main role. L’elisir d’amore, Magic flute (Diana Damrau as the Queen of the Night? Hello?!) ooff there are so many I made my friends listen to, even took them to the opera with me. My admiration for this art form knows no bounds, I swear. I, of course, recommend a lot of Korean music to my friends. Eaeon is amazing, so are BTS of course. Their Korean discography is a gift that keeps on giving.

Ask me my top 5 anything!

#bengiyo #top 5 ask game #el’s got mail

5 notes · View notes

babetanatat · 2 months

Note

List 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 10 people who liked/reblogged something from you. Get to know your followers and mutuals!

Aww, thanks so much for this ask. 💖💖💖

I love getting to share things like this~ Buckle up though, this is a lot of stuff.

1.) Finally working in my dream job as an Early Childhood Educator. I'm currently a substitute pre-primary teacher and I love it! I get to go from school to school and work with so many different groups of children. It's such a rewarding job and I can't wait to make it into my full-time career in the future. I've even earned the nickname "Anda Panda" from some of the children and fuck if that isn't the goddamn cutest thing ever omg.

2.) Meeting so many lovely people through Thai BL/GL/QL series. Pretty much every single person that I've met through this fandom is a darling angel baby. Our Discord server brought me out of my shell and has helped me become more confident, bless all of their hearts. It's hard to make friends in your thirties and I've found a bunch of new friends now because of the server. 💖💖💖 I didn't even know how to use Discord before this and was hesitant to join, but the lovely people over there made it so easy for me. And now they can't get me to shut up.

Maybe even join us if you want?

(But here's a heads up: we're all really unhinged and basically share a single braincell, so if that's not your cup of tea fandom wise... no worries.)

3.) Getting back into writing again. I've had serious writers block since 2019 and haven't been able to get out anything that I've been proud of for a long time. But now that I'm back into the swing of it, you can expect lots of fics to come out of the woodwork over the next year. I'll be posting anything that I write over on my sideblog, so feel free to follow me there as well.

4.) Coffee! I drink so much of the stuff that my blood is basically 75% coffee at this point lmaoooooo. But since I work with children, I need to stay caffeineated so we can run around and play and stuff so... yeah. Coffee, my beloved. ☕☕☕

5.) Embracing positivity! I spent so much of my life hating myself and being negative and I was miserable. No more of that in 2024. I'm gonna be so fucking annoying with my positive vibes this year and you're all just going to have to deal with it.

Thanks again~ 😘😘😘

#bengiyo #answered #💖💖💖

1 note · View note

sapphorarelyreads · 1 year

Note

For the Food Ask: Ketchup

Which character's food I'd like to try the most hmm

Definitely Luem Kluem and Look Choup by Pharm (UWMA)

Pran's hot dogs (Bad Buddy)

#sapphorarelyreads #bengiyo

1 note · View note

wen-kexing-apologist · 28 days

Text

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

I am currently working my way through Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley, the totally light-hearted, definitely not agonizing section of @bengiyo's queer cinema syllabus where I get to watch countless acts of violence be committed against queer people. Thank fuck I have Lesbians waiting for me at the end of this unit. The films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004),Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the Side (1995).

Today i will be talking about

Philadelphia (1993) dir. Jonathan Demme

[Run Time: 2:05, Available on: YouTube for rent, Google Play, Amazon, Lang: English]

Summary: When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit.

Cast: * Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett * Denzel Washington as Joe Miller * Antonio Banderas as Miguel

___

To steal a comment from @lurkingshan, it has been awhile since I’ve watched a good legal thriller. Philadelphia is brilliant, and I don’t just mean in the general sense, I mean it is smart. It is smart in how it sets itself up. We start with Andy and Joe on opposites sides of a court room, we can see the rapport between them, but we set them up on opposite sides from the beginning. We move from there to Andy at the hospital, receiving his transfusions, looking across the way to a man whose karposi’s sarcoma has advanced to the end stages a look to where Andy himself will end in this film. And then to Andy’s law office where there is physical touch, after physical touch, after physical touch. Some that happen so quickly, others that linger, that the camera focuses in on, and I only wish that we’d seen Andy the day after that meeting, because I would be curious to see if and how the physical touches changed with people in the office.

But that’s not what we get, and we don’t really need it because what is truly important is that Andy is sicker than he originally let on. The point is that the law firm set Andy up while he was away. The point is that at so many stages in this film I was mad. And that was how I was supposed to be. I was mad at all the homophobic pieces of shit that were sitting there making excuses, that based a significant portion of their legal argument about not discriminating against Andy because he was gay with HIV, by trying to discredit Andy’s character because he was gay. [and of course the law office used a woman as their representation and had a Black man at their table as well…you know they were really trying to look good]

gif by @rancidtofu

You might know by now that I love a complicated relationship, so I was really thrilled that Joe eventually decided to represent Andy. Because Joe was homophobic as fuck, and he very much did not want to take the case. But again this film is smart, we never have to hear from Joe’s mouth or anyone’s for that matter that Joe decided to work with Andy after seeing how he was being treated by the librarian, but we know there’s no way it isn’t informed by experiences of racism in Black communities. The way Joe was stared at by a library worker when he was sitting at his table, the way Andy was stared at by a library worker when he was sitting at his table. The way Andy was being suggestively ushered away to somewhere out of view to other library patrons.

I loved that Joe was viciously homophobic because it demonstrates so well the boundary between work and personal life. Joe is able to do his job and do it well, and eventually after months of working with Andy, is able to come around, even touching Andy’s face which we know even has a lesion on it, by the end of the film. That is huge from someone that started the film literally running immediately to the doctor to make sure he didn’t have AIDS from shaking Andy’s hand. From a modern lens I can totally see how that would probably feel stereotypical or derivative or something like that but I think it is important to keep in mind that this film was one of the first Hollywood movies to feature HIV/AIDS and also portray gay people in a positive light. I haven’t actually been adding the for/by/about designations to the Heartbreak Alley films because something about doing that didn’t really sit right to me when we’re discussing the violence to and death of queer people. But this film definitely was not made for queer people, and Tom Hanks acknowledges that he was cast in the role for his “non-intimidating screen persona” and that “one of the reasons people weren’t afraid of this movie was because I was playing a gay man.”

The casting here was strategic to further assist audiences in sympathizing with a gay, HIV positive character.

gif by @rancidtofu

I really love all the little moments of solidarity, the smiles between the Black secretary at the law office and Joe because They Know™ about experiences of discrimination in the workplace. The solidarity between the secretary with AIDS and Andy. I loved that a Black woman was teaching Andy how to apply make up to cover his lesions. I loved that Andy’s entire family knew that he was gay, knew he had AIDS, knew he had a partner and that they all loved and accepted him, and that he had so many people in his life that truly, well, and deeply cared for him.

And I love how that is used to deliver maximum emotional impact, at least to me, in one single stupid opera line.

I genuinely enjoyed essentially sitting in a court room for two hours watching Joe strategize, and execute his traps for the jury to win them over. I love how you know that they have won the second that a juror repeats verbatim a line Joe had said repeatedly throughout the trial. I am grateful the film was kind enough to let Andy be awake and alert enough to know that they had won. That his one of his last acts on earth was getting to engage with the part of law he loved most: “that every once in awhile, not often, but occasionally, you get to play a part in justice being done” Justice was done here, Joe and Andy both played a role in what could potentially become another precedented case in the roster to build towards a stronger future for gay people in the workplace. I think that (though likely coupled with how much his body was beginning to fail) is what finally made him ready to go. Because for so much of this film he would hesitate when it came to death.

gif by @rancidtofu

He froze over the line “the actual physical [death]” when quoting the line about AIDS causing a social death. He talked about planning his memorial to try to get a reaction out of Miguel, and when Miguel gave him a response he very much did not want to hear “maybe you should” he took Miguel to a party, he talked about opera instead of practicing his Q&A.

I am grateful the film ends at his memorial, not just for the memories, though I am especially glad it ends on a video of Andy as a child (to appeal to the ‘he was somebody’s kid type of crowd) but that the memorial was not entirely gloomy. There was life, there was conversation, there were smiles, it made things feel more real. Just like all “see you tomorrow” lies everyone knew they were telling themselves felt real.

Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington are such powerhouses of actors and I am so so grateful that they did this project together.

Favorite Scene

(I am acknowledging that these gifs by @antoniosbanderas have nothing to do with my listed favorite scene, but I just need you all to know that the scene of these two laying in bed was cut from the final edit of the film, so I didn't actually get to watch it, so now you know it exists if you didn't already)

My favorite scene is when the law firm is questioning Melissa Benedict, a secretary that used to work with one of the lawyers in his previous firm. Melissa was diagnosed with AIDS after a blood transfusion, and she was put on the stand to prove one of the lawyers knew what AIDS lesions looked like and therefore was able to identify that Andy had HIV a week before he was fired.

I was ready to reach through my screen to smack a bitch when the law firm’s representation started trying to make a moral argument, that Melissa’s AIDS was acceptable AIDS to have in an office because she involuntarily contracted the disease through a medical procedure, whereas Andy had had gay sex and therefore voluntarily risked acquiring HIV. And you can just see Melissa looking over at Andy so often when the law firm is trying to make this argument, and trying to get Melissa to answer questions in a way that would make her seem like she is actually of the law firm’s opinion.

And she doesn’t let them do that to Andy. Instead she looks right at him and she qualifies her response saying: “But I don’t consider myself any different from anyone else with this disease. I’m not guilty, I’m not innocent, I’m just trying to survive” and it is just a beautiful moment for me. Especially because this film is trying to portray queer people in a positive light, having a straight, white woman with a disease she had no way of preventing say that she was just like anyone else with AIDS is hugely important to driving that message home.

Favorite Quote

gif by @fran-kubelik

I am so sorry in advance for how long this quote is, and that 90% of it is technically just Andy translating an opera but:

“‘Look the place that cradled me is burning.’ Do you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it Joe? Now in come the strings and it changes everything. It’s like the music, it fills with a hope. And that’ll change again. Listen. Listen. “I bring sorrow to those who love me” oh oh that single cello. “It was during this sorrow that love came to me.” (sobbing) “A voice filled with harmony. It said, live still. I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. It’s everything around you. It’s the blood and the mud. I am divine! I am oblivion. I am the god that comes down from the heavens to the earth and makes of the earth a heaven. I am love. I am love.”

The level of emotion, the implication behind each and every line that he translates, the way that those lines spoke to me as a queer person. “Look the place that cradled me is burning” this body, his body is failing; this life, his life is coming to an end. “I bring sorrow to those who love me” we see that with Andy’s mom, with his entire family for that matter, we see how loved he was and know that his death is going to be a devastating blow for a lot of people. “It was during sorrow love came to me” Miguel is there for all of it, through all of it. When he collapses in court, his family is the first to get to him, to try to help him. When he’s in the hospital the entire hallway is flooded with people that love him. Andy breaks at this point in his monologue, choking out the line “A voice filled with harmony. It said, live still. I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. It’s everything around you. It’s the blood and the mud.” I do not think Andy was ready to go until the very end when he finally said he was. Live still. Andy wants to live still. I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. It’s everything around you. It’s the blood and the mud. He will see Heaven soon, he is looking at the world through the lens of a dying man. “I am the god that comes down from the heavens to the earth and makes of the earth a heaven” We have one life to live, we should use it well, Andy has so much love in his life, that’s truly such a heavenly thing to have. He is seeking justice, in such a way that others might be protected the way he wasn’t. “I am love. I am love.”

I just.

I don’t know y’all I just really liked this film.

Score

9.5/10

I’m salty that Denzel wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, though I am wholly unsurprised, and I am glad Tom Hanks won and that his speech included praise of Denzel.

““And an actor who put his film image at risk and shown because of his integrity, Mr. Denzel Washington who I very much share this with”

Lovely film, highly recommend. Now on to The Living End

#bengiyo queer cinema syllabus #queer cinema syllabus #unit 4: heartbreak alley #philadelphia #philadelphia (1993)#denzel washington #tom hanks #antonio banderas #and with this film I am now 60% of the way through Unit 4 #I can see the finish line

55 notes · View notes

ctl-yuejie · 7 months

Text

きのう何食べた？２　- the menu of episode 1 -

カレイの煮付け Braised flounder

オク��の油炒め Fried okra with bonito flakes

ポテトサラダ Potato salad

お味噌汁 Miso soup

#food cw #kinou nani tabeta #what did you eat yesterday?#wdyey #wdyey 2 #what did you eat yesterday? 2 #kinou nani tabeta 2 #hidetoshi nishijima #seiyou uchino #i so badly want to cook flatfish now #not tagging @bengiyo but i'd love to cook this potato salad for you at least once and then you can still decide that it's sacriligious :"D #the fish looks so good #one of the marvels of this show are the sexy supermarket shots #i have just finished making 1 months worth of shepherds pie and borscht #きのう何食べた？#きのう何食べた？２

118 notes · View notes

bengiyo · 10 months

Note

Hello hello ~~

Through wen-kexing-apologist's recent post about The Birdcage (which seems to come from your syllabus for baby gays) I got to the original series of reblogs which resulted in said syllabus. I read most of it (not everything because Real Life has my time hostage), and as someone who has seen her fare share of queer media I have now a pretty long to watch list.

As you wrote about how you enjoyed the romance of queer media I have a question.

Recently I have come across a Netflix movie trailer called Love at First Sight. With such a basic trope as a name I checked it out hoping the title to be misleading and to see something surprising in the plot. The disappointment I felt when by the end of it I realized it was exactly what the title sold: the most basic boy meets girl and they have to look for each other throughout the whole movie.

One of the things I really appeciate about queer media (and mainly BL probably) is the possibility to explore different kinds of romances and emotions. Both positive and negative. From Not Me to Heartsopper to Double Mints. I feel that being "out of the norm" they explore such emotions and situations in a more interesting and relatable way (and add to that that I, as a woman, cannot stand women characters making a 360º personality change once they fall in love)

So here's my question: what unusal or out of the ordinary romances would you like to see more of in BLs/queer shows/etc?

I personally would like romances with disabled characters to be more explored (I'm really looking forward to Last Twilight) or polyamory. Also more GL.

I admit this might be a very biased ask, it comes 100% from my subjective view, and I have yet to watch most of the movies in your syllabus for Baby Gays.

Anyway, I hope you have a great day and that this long ask won't bother you ❤

Well look at this ask! Let me get into this!

The Syllabus is on a Google Doc

First, I sincerely appreciate you watching me and @shortpplfedup go back and forth about stuff. For yours and others' convenience, I did put the Queer Cinema Syllabus in a Google Doc for @wen-kexing-apologist

Some Recommendations

If you're looking for a film with a disabled protagonist and also a bit about women, I would recommend checking out Margarita With a Straw (2014), Sleep With Me (2022) (I watched on Gaga), or if you're willing to tolerate hets Isa Pa With Feelings (2019) (currently on Netflix) or Silent (2022) (Viki)

If you're interested in more polyamory, I genuinely think that Quaranthings Season 2 (2021) does some really fascinating stuff worth checking out. We had complicated feelings about Me, My Husband, and My Husband's Boyfriend (2023), but I liked it.

What do I want though?

I think this is a harder question for me to answer than I was expecting. I see myself as a guest when I'm watching a lot of content from Southeast Asia. I will voice my opinion on what I like and don't like, what I'm taking from these shows, and how they're affecting me. However, I don't really consider myself the target audience. I watch the shows as legally as possible and help generate engagement, but the "interfans" they care about are the English-speaking Asians in their region, not really me I feel like.

So when I think about what I want, I don't feel a yearning for any of the BL-producing Asian countries' film industries to make it for me.

I want to see the shit I like in the West get made. I want to see Black queer people presented complexly (Here is my regular plug for For The Boys). I'm a fat black gay nerd. The last time I saw a fat black gay nerd that I liked in an American production was Fire Island (2022).

I'm a 33-year Star Trek fan who still thinks we need more GAYS IN SPACE. I'd like to see more productions like Sort Of (2021- ) where complex queer friend and social groups navigate just existing in the world and finding love and meaning. I'd like to see less of reboots of classic shows like Queer as Folk be about a horrifying mass death event in the city I live in and the spaces I frequent (I refuse to link to it).

I want to see TJ Klune's, Ginn Hale's, or Lynn Flewelling's works adapted to series. I would like to see more wide release queer shit in the West not be overwhelmingly about fit, attractive, young white guys.

I want distribution for queer stories to not always have to go through four years of distribution hell because of the film festival circuit.

I want the West to try to make BL! I don't care if it feels cheap on the front end. I just wish more of us would be willing to throw support behind web shows. We did it for Awkward Black Girl! We can do it again!

This is turning into rambling, so I'll say that I don't necessarily have strong feelings about what I absolutely need to see. I like connecting with the specific humanity of stories, especially if they're about queer people. I didn't know I needed Moonlight (2016) until I saw it. I didn't know I needed Make the Yuletide Gay (2009) or Black Sails (2014-2017) until I watched them.

I just want more people with ideas to get a chance to turn them into something cool for us.

What about the rest of you? Please tag me if you have things you're hoping for.

#answered #lgbt film #bengiyo queer cinema syllabus #lgbtq

39 notes · View notes

dekaydk · 3 months

Text

Pottery Barn rule, BL edition

If you aren't serious about your blorbo, you better figure out a way to not continue to lead him to think otherwise.

GIF by @theside-b

#he is now my blorbo too #h/t to @bengiyo for coining the phrase #obsessed with this show #and this character #love for love's sake #korean bl #kbl

15 notes · View notes

waitmyturtles · 10 months

Text

ITSAY, to the ITSAY docs, to YYY.

This journey, y’all.

#the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #bengiyo said dissonance and well #he was right lol #itsay #yyy

8 notes · View notes

lurkingshan · 3 months

Text

Last Twilight Episode 12

A month ago, I never could have predicted that I’d be sitting here trying to assemble some thoughts to explain how on earth this show went so badly off the rails. I am truly taken aback by where this story landed, and I advise anyone who wants to think of it fondly to just pretend it ended at episode 9, and even skip the finale if you haven’t watched yet. Before I get into it, let me just start with a word of praise for the cast, who did a great job with their performances and kept this show afloat when the writing fell apart. And boy, did it fall apart.

In my view, this narrative had three main threads it was addressing: 1) Day’s journey to accepting his disability; 2) unresolved family trauma; and 3) Mhok and Day’s romance. And in the end, it failed on all three of them. I am going to dig into this and I am not feeling particularly nice, so if this is going to hurt your feelings I suggest you stop reading now.

Day’s Journey

Just…wow. We have been afraid of this turn the entire time and trying to hold out hope that the show would not go there, but here we are. I started laughing out loud when we got to the end of part 3 and Mhon’s phone went off with an alert for a new eye donor, and then just stared incredulously at my screen as we time skipped AGAIN to a Day whose vision had been restored for years (last week I joked to @bengiyo and @waitmyturtles that once a drama starts using time skips it becomes addictive and they never stop, and—welp!). What was this entire show for? Why did we spend twelve episodes with Day grieving his vision loss, learning how to cope, and finally accepting his blindness only to completely undercut it at the end? The first part of the finale was so much about how he was thriving—finding a new career for himself and becoming self-sufficient and growing so much on his own—only to give us an ending that implied he could not actually have his happily ever after without his vision restored.

And this is in fact the message they sent by coupling the return of his vision with the return of he and Mhok’s relationship, and giving us a happy ending rooted in his contentment at having his sight back. They even went back to the Last Twilight mountain to completely tarnish the thematic resonance of the original scene. Calling back to the beautiful memory of Day “seeing” the sunset and experiencing “a moment so good that you feel like you can live there forever” as he accepted his disability with this scene of him seeing the real sunset with his restored vision was so hurtful to me that I actually got angry. Day didn’t need his vision back to get a happy ending, and I absolutely hate what this communicates about disabled people’s capacity to live happy and fulfilling lives. This show has created many writing sins but this is the most unforgivable to me.

Family Trauma

The show began dropping the ball on this one a few weeks ago, but this finale put the nail in the coffin. We spent most of this episode at Porjai and Night’s wedding, an event that might have felt meaningful if the show had let us see any of their romance. I’m grateful to Mark Pakin and Namtan Tipnaree for their beauty and charisma because it’s the only thing that made me care about those scenes at all. Rather than actually being about them, however, this wedding was used primarily as a clunky vehicle to deliver heavy-handed messages about “second chances” to encourage Day to get back together with Mhok (more on that in the next section).

I did enjoy the brief nods in this episode to the brothers continuing to have newfound harmony in their relationship, but where the show really lost me was in their attempt to bring Night and Day’s dad back into the mix and imply some sort of resolution between him and Mhon. Mhon, a woman whose perspective on their split we never actually saw, whose motivation for her choices and behavior toward her sons were completely elided by the narrative, who was forgiven and made peace with offscreen during a time skip. I was never given the chance to understand her or what this relationship meant to her in the first place, so why would I care about these scenes with her making her peace with this man? I continue to be so confused about where this show chose to spend its time, and why someone with Aof’s track record on developing strong and narratively important familial relationships dropped the ball so much with her.

The Romance

Okay, let’s get into it, and remember what I said about not reading if this is going to hurt your feelings! My criteria for considering a romance successful is I have to believe the relationship is mutual, beneficial to both of the pair, and that the couple is prepared to weather future challenges. Last Twilight’s romance fails on all three fronts, and it all comes down to the total imbalance in the relationship that persisted right through the final scenes.

This entire narrative has been Mhok bending to Day’s will, giving Day what he needs, forgiving him for everything, and letting him make all the decisions about the relationship, and the finale was regrettably more of the same. In episode 11, Mhok made a mistake when he lied to Day about turning down the job in Hawaii. But he made that mistake out of grief and fear, and Day didn’t care—he unfeelingly rejected him and his pain and ended their relationship without a second thought. That was potentially forgivable as a momentary lapse borne out of instinctual hurt, and could have been repairable had Day reconsidered soon after and extended Mhok some grace. But in this episode, we find out Day blocked Mhok and refused to communicate with him again after that night, and has left Mhok completely in the cold for three years after he failed to be perfect one (1) time.

And this episode? Was on Day’s side in this conflict. Mhok is the one to return and start pursuing Day again. Mhok is the one to broach the topic of their breakup. Mhok is the one to thank Day for breaking his heart and tell him he did nothing wrong (y’all, I almost threw something at the screen). Mhok’s grief and trauma go completely unaddressed in this finale until they try to play the Rung card for one last moment of sentiment. Day cries to his mother about how he just doesn’t know if he can forgive Mhok. And in the end, Mhok makes the grand gesture, missing his flight to go to Day and stay in Thailand with him despite the successful life he has built in Hawaii.

The cognitive dissonance I felt watching this play out was extreme. I rarely see a writer misunderstand their own characters and relationship conflict so thoroughly. In order to believe in this romance we needed to see Day finally show some empathy for Mhok, take responsibility for his own mistakes, and be the one to make an effort this time. We needed to believe that Day has the capacity to be a supportive partner to Mhok even when he’s struggling. But Day didn’t demonstrate any of that, and so I simply don’t believe in this relationship. I don’t believe Mhok can trust Day not to abandon him again when some other major life event intervenes and Mhok is less than perfect. And that’s a shame, because the show really almost had something here with these two.

And that’s all I got. What a disappointment this show turned out to be. If you need me, I will just be over here in my little corner imagining the Night and Porjai romcom that we never got and pretending the rest of this show ended several weeks ago.

#last twilight #last twilight the series #thai bl #shan shouts into the void

379 notes · View notes

anotherblblog · 4 months

Text

@bengiyo challenged me to get a pic with Neo and this sign I wanted to make. 🤣 I wasn’t able to get it signed though so half completed in this quest.

I wanted Neo to know Boston still has shooters in these streets.

#only friends #only friends boston #neo trai #bl fan adventures #don’t ask why it’s two pages 😭

242 notes · View notes

kexing · 4 months

Text

i want to take a moment to thank the creators that blessed our bl fandom in 2023. we’d be nothing without your stunning gifs and edits, touching fanfics, thorough analyses and hilarious memes.

thank you soooo much for blessing us every day with your endless effort, dedication, love and amazing talent! and may we see each other in 2024 ❤️

@taeminie @seatawinan @loveisactivated @jimmysea @guzhu-furen @gunsatthaphan @daymork @alexshenry @dragonsareawesome123 @itsallaboutbl @seatawinans @baek1nho @yohankang @spicyvampire @mymycorrhizae @athousandbyeol @blmpff @wanderlust-in-my-soul @sparklyeyedhimbo @pranpats @milkpansa @raypakorn @ahxu-laowen @forcebookish @forcebookcorner @morkofday @chinzillas @seajimmy @selenophiles92 @dimpledpran @i-got-the-feels @bengiyo @benkaaoi @25shadesoffebruary @mooninagust @moonkhao @smittenskitten @respectthepetty @thisautistic @elliebirdwrites @earthfluuke @pharawee @khaotunqs @pranink @gabrielokun @piningintrovert @ahxiang @taikanyohou @zhaozi @markpakin

feel free to add your favorite creators to this post! let’s spread the love!!!

#mobile only allows 50 links :(#but love all of you creators! even the ones who aren’t mutuals or that i don’t even know aldkskkdks #mj talks

187 notes · View notes

wen-kexing-apologist · 3 months

Text

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

Hello! After a holiday hiatus, I am returning to @bengiyo's queer cinema syllabus. We will be ringing in the new year with Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley, the totally light-hearted, definitely not agonizing section of the syllabus where I get to watch countless acts of violence be committed against queer people. That fuck I have Lesbians waiting for me at the end of this unit. The films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004) [cannot for the life of me find this film], Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the SIde (1995)

Today I will be writing about

Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee

[Run Time: 2h 14 min, Lang: English]

Summary: “Ennis and Jack are two shepherds who develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Their relationship becomes complicated when both of them get married to their respective girlfriends.” -imdb

Cast: * Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist *Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar (Rest in Peace)

Okay, so unsurprisingly Brokeback Mountain is one of seven of the movies on this syllabus that I had seen before I embarked on this project. I watched it for the first time in 2021 and walked away from it with two images in my head: Jack and Ennis’ reunion kiss and Jack getting his face bashed in with a tire iron. This film is in Heartbreak Alley for a reason and that’s because it is fundamentally depressing as fuck. Jack and Ennis are stuck in unhappy marriages, lonely all their lives, struggling to carve desire out of a life that does not let them have it. Ennis ends up alone, and Jack ends up dead and these things are important. Ennis slipped out of his role as attentive father and doting husband the second Jack walked back in to his life, Jack kept breaking his own heart by daring to dream of the life that he wanted.

A life he was denied.

I want to mention these tragedies up front because I want primarily to talk about something else in this film. But i do not want to just push past the violence here. This is probably something other people have heard, it was definitely something I was told by the person who recommended this film to me the first time. But the way Jack dies, the way Earl dies, these are both similar to the way that Matthew Shepard died. Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, pistol whipped, tortured, and tied to a fence in Wyoming for being gay and was so brutally beaten his entire face was covered in blood. Jack was beaten to death with a tire iron on the side of the road, Earl was brutally tortured and left in a ditch. These men are not just killed, but brutally, violently, torturously murdered for being queer.

That said, this movie felt so different to me the second time I watched it and I am so amazed to see how much I truly missed my first time around. I was younger, freshly queer, and did not have anywhere close to the extensive queer media viewing history I do now. It is wild to me to see how I have grown in my engagement with media after spending a year writing about body language. Because this film is so fucking brilliant, like legitimately intelligently crafted in it’s displays of gay politics. Maybe this is stuff that I picked up on subconsciously the first time through because I never found the movie boring despite it being rather slow. But this time? My brain was buzzing at how expertly crafted the dialogue and body language was around trying to be safe while being queer.

I am thinking of the way that Jack sizes Ennis up at the beginning, Jack’s posture as he leans against his truck the first time they meet. I’m thinking about the line “Mr. Augirre’s got no right making us do something against the rules” when you consider that queerness is very much against the rules at that time and in that place. The way Ennis refuses to let Jack be gentle with him at first, tending his own wounds, staying distant and quiet, until he doesn’t.

Maybe it’s just because of how much I’ve watched The Sign drift further away from the hyper-masculinity aspect of their story, but I could not stop thinking about the delicate dance that is required to navigate the growing feelings and sexual relationship between these two extremely masculine men. I started looking and I think there are about three times in the entire movie where Jack and Ennis are soft with each other. The first is on Brokeback the second time they have sex, and Ennis is struggling and just rests his head on Jack’s chest before going in for a kiss. The second is when they are cuddling in bed at the motel after their first reunion. The third is the scene after Ennis tells Jack he won’t be able to see him again until November. That’s it. Otherwise they aren’t touching, or when they are touching they are rough, rough housing, rough kissing, rough fucking it doesn’t matter.

Ennis says he isn’t queer and Jack says he’s not either, but they fuck and then they are drawn to one another for the rest of their lives, because there is no one who could get it like they do. Ennis isn’t lying when he tells Jack that is the most he’s spoken in a year. Ennis is a lonely man. Ennis is a rural, hyper-masculine rancher he does not have emotions, not anymore, if he ever did. Whatever conscious or subconscious queerness he had undoubtedly shriveled and died the day he was shown Earl’s body. And that, I think, is part of why Ennis is just constantly drawn to Jack, why his face lights up when he sees Jack, why he throws such caution to the wind upon their first reunion.

Ennis does not need words for Jack to understand him. Jack is also a rural, hyper-masculine rancher. He gets it in a way that Alma never will. The violence they bestow upon each other, Jack understands why Ennis would lash out. The need to escape in to the mountains, Hack understands why Ennis needs it. It’s just so smartly written. Ennis so unmoored from his own feelings that his body physically rejects them when he and Jack separate for the first time. The way he has to suck it in, suck it up, pretend like he’s unfazed, unaffected, until the minute he has a chance to be out of eyesight, and then he just collapses retching, sobbing, punching walls.

And then he’s able to separate himself from his emotions once more, he marries Alma, he stays lonely, he does his duties, until Jack comes calling. I think I remember a story about how the first kiss that Heath and Jake have when Ennis and Jack are reunited, their faces slammed together so hard one of them almost broke a nose. And that is how 90% of Ennis and Jack’s relationship is. Those emotions come back and then Jack is leaving again, and Ennis just starts to crumble.

I could not stop thinking about the dialogue in this film Mr. Aguirre’s carefully chosen words when he is telling Jack exactly why he isn’t hiring him for another season, the way Jack tries to suss out if the man sitting next to him at the bar after the rodeo is queer and down to fuck, how that man picks up on it, rejects him, and how quickly Jack gets the fuck out of the bar afterwards. The inherent understanding of what being invited to the cabin means in that conversation with David Harbor’s character. GOD, it’s just so well done.

Favorite Moment

To continue on the subject of incredible code work in this movie, my favorite scene is when Ennis goes to visit Jack’s parents to try to get Jack’s ashes so he can spread them on Brokeback Mountain. How without ever saying anything directly, Jack’s parents are able to convey that they know the reason Jack died, what Jack and Ennis were to each other, and that they accept Jack and accept Ennis was just beautiful. The way she lets Ennis go up to Jack’s room, Ennis finding the shirts, stained with blood because that’s what it is to be queer, Jack’s mother letting Ennis take those with him, Jack’s father saying: “We’ve got a family plot. He’s going in it.” as Ennis is about to walk out the door, Jack’s mother saying: “You come back and see us again” and not have either of those things feel like a threat or a trap? It was incredible.

Favorite Quote

Hmm, I know we have the two famous quotes, but it’s hard to pick a favorite line because there is so little dialogue in this film considering it is over two hours long. I think I am going to go with the last line of the movie:

“Jack, I swear”

Cause it made me cry. Alma Junior pays a visit to her father to let him know she’s getting married, and she drives away forgetting her coat, and Ennis opens his closet (intense staring at the visual commentary) and he buttons the top button of Jack’s shirt, and he swears to Jack and to me that feels like a wedding vow.

Score

10/10 This film is gorgeous, just utterly beautiful all around. The cinematography, the script, the commitment and the care the actors give to these characters, to the subject. I am so glad this was on the syllabus so I had this opportunity to revisit this film. I got a whole lot more out of it as a result.

#bengiyo queer cinema syllabus #queer cinema syllabus #queer cinema #unit 4: heartbreak alley #brokeback mountain

74 notes · View notes