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#but it's good goddam it

etakeh · 1 month

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I love coincidences like this.

I've been watching one the Great Courses called Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach, right? On Kanopy because I'm not bougie enough to pay for it.

I watched lecture 6 last night - Vehicle Collisions: Land and Sea

It was about "the Summit Venture freighter collided with Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980" (among other things).

I wake up this morning to this.

and I'm like THAT! I know about a giant boat and bridge thing!

And later I'm looking it up so I can show someone Hey look at this coincidence! and the first thing I find is

I dunno. I thought it was an interesting thing. Makes me wonder what Stephen Ressler thinks about it.

#tampa bay #baltimore #bridges falling down #kanopy #yes it's me schilling for kanopy again #but it's good goddam it

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starryalpacasstuff · 2 months

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Indian BL? FROM 2017????

There's an Indian BL from 2017 that I just watched. And I have incoherent thoughts

Before I continue, massive thanks to my bestie @anixknowsnothin for telling me about this show and proofreading the post for me. You don't even watch bl so I have no idea how you found this, but I'm incredibly grateful nonetheless

Here's the link to where I watched the show from, there's a glitch in the first episode subs where the subs seem to be from another show entirely, but it's only for the first ep and about 50% of the dialogue is in English anyways, so it shouldn't be hard to follow.(My ask box is also always open if there's a specific dialogue/scene in Hindi that you want the translation of)

Edit: The link seems to be region locked, so to watch it you can use a vpn and set your region to India, otherwise the episodes are available on youtube, albeit without subs

Note:- this post is going to have a few mild spoilers throughout, but I'll flag major spoilers in red

It's no secret that India is fairly behind when it comes to queer love shows if we compare it to other Asian countries. While it has a handful of great queer shows and movies, it's still quite a small quantity. Additionally, before this, I'd never watched an Indian show that felt like I was watching a bl (if you have recs, please send them my way!!). I'm not going to get into the technicalities of what feels like a bl and doesn't, because honestly, I'm not completely sure myself. For now, I'm just going based off of vibes and feelings, and this show felt like a bl through and through.

Titled 'Romil and Jugal' after its main characters, the story is a modern, desi, bl remake of the classic story...

Romeo and Juliet

Well, Bad Buddy was the first Thai bl I ever watched, so Romil and Jugal being the first Indian BL I watched just feels right, no?

I didn't actually know that the story was based off of Romeo and Juliet till the second episode, because I didn't bother looking for a synopsis, and jumped right in. However, it's links to Romeo and Juliet quickly became apparent, around the same time I started to see similarities between this show and Bad Buddy. I also did not know that this show came out in 2017 before I googled it, having already watched the entire thing, which was a pretty huge shock, because this BL is progressive by 2024 India standards.

Alright, enough of my rambling. Here's a synopsis of the show in case you haven't heard of it. (I couldn't find an official one, so I did my best to write a spoiler free synopsis)

Ramya happens to start talking to a slightly older woman at an airport, who believes that there is no romance in the younger generation. To prove her wrong, Ramya decides to tell the older woman her brother's love story. The story from the past is shown to us as Ramya narrates it to the woman in the present. Jugal is a closeted 19-year-old who lives with his parents. One day, a family moves into the house next door, and Jugal immediately falls for the son, Romil. The two of them attend the same college, and eventually become friends. The two of them eventually get together, but have to face the challenges of a homophobic society and having parents that hate each other.

I was a little skeptical of the show going in, but the show surpassed all of my expectations in the best way possible. It's no masterpiece, and it has its flaws, but it was far better than what I expected. It had both comical elements and darker themes, and it did not shy away from exploring the darker themes at all. Oh, and it has a few musical numbers. What did you expect? This is India after all.

The show is 10 episodes long, with 20 minutes per episode, and so it does unfortunately fall into some of the pitfalls that shorter shows tend to fall into, namely underdeveloped relationships and rushed endings. I did end up feeling a little bit like it didn't make sense for the pair to sacrifice and suffer as much as they did because they hadn't known each other for very long, and I felt like they should have been given more time to fall in love with each other. But it also could be argued that the show stays true to the play, and Romil and Jugal are dumb teenagers who make mistakes and stick with each other through them. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.

One thing that I loved the show for was that it showed us that the relationship is not all sunshine and rainbows. They argue, they break up, they get back together, and they do argue even after that. But every time, they eventually work through the issue and reconcile. The show even depicts Romil dealing with internalized homophobia and struggling to reconcile with the fact that he will never be who his family wants him to be. Although I do wish they'd have had more time to explore this, I'd say it was decently depicted and handled. The show really delves into how children are forced to uphold their family's wishes and are constantly put under pressure to make them proud. Although it clearly affects both of them, it's more obvious with Romil, who is expected by his family to date and marry the daughter of his father's boss, whom they think he is dating. There's a metaphor along this theme too, where Romil pretends to like the mango shake that his mom has been making for him since he was a kid, even though he hates it, and when he tries to tell her, he has to act like it was a joke to spare her feelings. The show also goes into the communal mindset of basing your actions off "what will people think?", and you can see how a lot of the characters' actions throughout the show are haunted by this question. Some of Romil and Jugal's earlier disagreements are due to this very mindset.

The show also very candidly depicts the extreme homophobia of society in India. Romil and Jugal had to constantly hide who they were, always having to keep up a mask and I felt that reach somewhere deep inside me. When the pair come out, the show really shows how ugly homophobia can be in India. Their parents immediately disown them. They're mocked in college and wrongfully suspended for a fight that was provoked by other students. Very, very few people stand with them, and the pair very quickly realize that now that they are out, they simply cannot live in the city anymore. So with the help of Jugal's best friend and her mother, they flee to Mumbai, where they get jobs and live as paying guests with a friend of the aforementioned mother. But, even in Mumbai, the masks stay up. They have to act like cousins, for fear of being persecuted. The series depicted the worst-case scenario that so many of us live in fear of, so watching it was something of a cathartic experience for me.

Another thing that the show did quite well is showing how different people and their mindsets can be. Jugal's best friend, Ahalya, and her mom are very supportive, and they help the pair out quite a bit. Ahalya's mother provided a safe house for the pair and helped them find a fresh start. Meanwhile, Romil and Jugal's parents are incredibly homophobic. There was a scene that really stuck with me, (mild spoiler ahead, skip to the last sentence of the paragraph) where Ahalya's mother came across Jugal's mother, who prided herself on being educated and well-read, searching up how to cure homosexuality. Ahalya's mother then tells her off for calling herself educated yet believing that homosexuality is an illness. It is so important to me that the show depicted both the violent homophobia that permeates Indian society and the surprising, warm acceptance that one can find.

One final thing that I loved about this show so, so much is just how authentically Indian it feels. Asian cultures share a lot in common, but they also have their differences, so seeing a show where I can imagine encountering the characters in real life is really amazing. Rather than something big, it was little things sprinkled throughout the story that warmed my heart. The story felt like something I could hear the local aunties gossiping about. The way it depicts queerness in India hits incredibly close to home.

One thing I've learned watching Asian bls is that the ending of a show can make it or break it, but with this one, I'm stuck. The best way I can describe the ending is absolutely insane and incredibly Bollywood.

I believe this show was supposed to get a second season because the last two minutes of the show leave us with a massive cliffhanger. Now, it's been 7 years, so a second season is unlikely, so I'm simply pretending that the last two minutes of the show never happened. But the ending has so much more to it than just this (Major spoilers for the ending up ahead. I mean it when I say major, this is like going into Bad Buddy knowing that they're going to trick their parents in the end).

About halfway through the show, I remembered what play it was based upon and realized that there was a very real possibility that Romil and Jugal would die. The first half of the last episode leads up to this, telling us that they died when reconciling after an argument in the middle of the road when they were hit by a truck. We get a super emotional scene (yes, I cried) where the two families somewhat reconcile in their grief as they go to the police station to identify the bodies. Except... they're not dead, which is revealed when Romil's father hugs Romil's (not) dead body. They reveal that they planned this to show their family that they still loved their sons. I did say it was like PatPran tricking their parents in the end, didn't I? So the families reunite, Romil and Jugal get jobs in New Zealand and get married, and return to India for a wedding celebration (yes, I cried. again). The ending does feel slightly rushed, but if I'm being honest, it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Believing that your child is dead for a bit is a somewhat justifiable reason for a sudden change of heart. There's a part where Romil and Jugal tell their parents that if they choose acceptance, they can reconcile, but if they choose to remain prejudiced, Romil and Jugal can simply get back on the stretchers, because they'll be as good as dead to their families anyways and it is *chef's kiss*.

All in all, the show was surprisingly heartfelt and poignant. It had me laughing, kicking my feet and even crying. There's a lot more about this show that I could talk about, but I'm going to stop here for now, and I'll try to write more on it later. This show really does deserve more recognition than it has, and I'm almost mad at myself for not knowing about it before. Am I being really biased when talking about this show? Absolutely. But I do think that this show is a worthwhile watch, and I'd really like to see what other people on here think of the show, especially because I'm aware that I am biased towards this show.

I'm tagging a few people who I know might be interested/have some thoughts about the show because this is a show that I really want to hear other people's opinions on and have conversations about, so I hope you guys don't mind!

@waitmyturtles @lurkingshan @bengiyo @neuroticbookworm

#good lord this post is almost 2k words #i think this is the longest post i have ever written #and there's more thoughts rattling around in my brain about this show #did i convince you to watch the show?#please say yes #i need people to talk to about this show #bl recs #indian bl #indian bl recs #romil and jugal #romil & jugal #bad buddy #i mean it's related #how does everything i write about somehow find it's way to that goddam show #but seriously romil and jugal was surprisingly very good #i did not expect it at all #but i have never been so glad to be proven wrong

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spacehero-23 · 1 month

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I know I always shit on Grace because of the SA scenes. But can talk about Cassandra Clare being a little FREAK for actually writing them?

Because those scenes have NO reason for existing. Why is Grace kissing James if he's already under her control? And we have to read not one, but THREE separate scenes of him being SAed? For what? What was the reason Cassie?

And the Matthew one!? She has Grace force him to kiss her, threaten to tell people that HE was the one who SA her! And then she makes him forget and it's never mentioned again. So it's not like it was important to the plot. Clare was just a freak who decided to include FOUR SA scenes in her YA series, apparently for shits and giggles!

At least when Sebastian did it in TMI it was obvious that we're meant hate him for it, and be disgusted. At least in those books it was treated with some respect. But in TLH? She gives the person who did it a redemption arc and doesn't even have the balls to write a proper confrontation or an apology.

I have A LOT of issues with Cassie but this one takes the cake.

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transmechanicus · 2 months

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This is a projection of limited personal experience but there’s a type of poly person who realistically shouldn’t be in more than one relationship due to time, emotional availability, mental health, etc and just decides to try for like five relationships in a doomed quantity-over-quality approach and i think a large concentration of these ppl in one area is partly why Portland and an increasingly large surrounding exclusion zone is That Way

#my stuff #twice now i’ve been broken up with by partners wanting to pursue polyamory #and then afterwards it becomes apparent that for multiple reasons they can barely maintain like 1 romance and a couple acquaintances #and that romance is someone they’ve got Locked In and have considerable leeway to basically neglect to varying degrees while they grab more #like goddam if your life is so busy and stressful that your husband is a glorified roommate and you talk to like 3 other ppl once a month #perhaps you are not in the best place to pursue at least two additional partners #i do believe poly ppl are capable of finding happiness but you gotta be able to actively maintain one good relationship before more

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kujakumai · 1 year

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I do kind of feel bad for Marik because I think he is in his bones a fundamental Rebellious Teen of the classical sort but like. do you have any idea how hard it would be to be rebellious when your primary caretaker is Rishid Ishtar. Kid commits murders and the worst he gets is maybe a "Not mad, just disappointed." How's he going to run around with his motorcycle and leather vests and listen to loud obnoxious music when Rishid's just going to hang sidecar in the motorcycle and buy him louder music for his birthday in a show of loving support. Where's the goddamn fun in that. Someone give this child some rules to enthusiastically break

#a proper teenager habitat needs rules and structure for that teen to ignore/evade/break judiciously/bitch about #i believe this. developmentally necessary. stop being such a good goddam brother

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satankilledmyghost · 6 months

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263 >:(

nope. nuh-uh. that didn't happen.

i'm making an executive decision here.

from here on out, anything that happens in the weak hero webtoon, no it didn't. it's not cannon. what's canon is that donald gets better, he's just in a coma for now. we all agree?? good.

i can't physically, mentally, or emotionally handle anything else.

i don't think any of y'all understand how much i love donald as a character. i loved how he developed from us getting everyone else's view on him, to how kingsley revered him, and then finally how donald saw himself. his 'character growth'which was really just us getting to know donald more as a human, was so compelling and sympathizing, seopass & razen did an AMAZING job at narrating the effects of the twisted roots of government, school corruption, domestic violence, familial death in a WEBCOMIC over a handful of chapters. everything we learned about donald was so humanizing, readers who hated him from his first appearance came around to liking him at the end. donald was so well written and fleshed out, same with other characters like gray, i physically cannot have or handle my favorite character die.

i'm not accepting this. i knew about donald's death for like a month now but i still can't get over it :C

i'm actually quite mad that this is the route seopass wrote for him, donald had so much potential as a character and they fucking fumbled the ball so hard it deflated.

i'm making my own ending, screw the canon one.

#weak hero #weak hero webtoon #na baekjin #donald na #this scars me more than my ptsd #WHY DID THEY MAKE SUCH A GOOD GODDAM CHARACTER IF THEY WERE JUST GOING TO KILL HIM OFF?!!??#brb going insane #5 stages of grief here i come

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greenerteacups · 24 days

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You're great at plotting your story. Whenever I try to outline my story goes towards a storyline that is too overboard, or very far away from my initial idea. So I tend to just sit and write and let it get me wherever it's taking me.

How do you outline ? Do you have any tips ?

Tumblr has made the executive decision to banish the post where I gave my full outlining process to the fucking Shadow Realm, so I'm afraid I can't find it right now, but I have two thoughts here. The first is that, though flattered by your compliment, I am in fact terrible at plot — my interest in a book flows from (1) character work (2) atmosphere & setting (3) Actual Plot That Tells A Gotdamn Story, in that order. This means plot is the thing my brain does least naturally, and so the part where I put the most Effort Points while I'm in fic pre-production. So. This may be the blind leading the blind here.

But: George R. R. Martin said there are two kinds of writers, planners and gardeners. Planners... plan; gardeners plant a bunch of seeds, prune some weeds, and just kind of wait to see what turns up. Like most dichotomies, this is an arbitrary bisection of something that's really more of a wishy-washy sliding scale. For every writer, there is some level of detail-in-outline that they need to understand what the book *is* and what they should be trying to accomplish. Under that line, your book feels vague and boring because you don't know what's going to happen, so you don't know what you need to do to get there. So the engine stalls. Which is a sucky feeling. Over that line, your book feels boring because you don't have anything left to discover about the piece, and discovery is an essential part of the joy of creation. At its best, writing should feel like reading on steroids: the world disappears, your body disappears, even you disappear, and you get to live and be wholly in what you're creating. You have a baby universe in your pocket, and you get to show people around it.

None of that is remotely helpful to your problem. Okay. I guess my question for you would be what you mean by "overboard," and if there's a more specific problem that your over-outlining creates. First, if your outline starts feeling too intense to start writing, like you're intimidated by the number of things you need to do to tell the story, you may either (1) lean more toward the gardener side of the scale or (2) writing in the wrong form. Long-form stories are scary as shit to plan and scarier than shit to write, because there can be a million things in the air at once, and even if the through-line's simple, your execution has a lot of different places it can go wrong. They are immensely rewarding projects and a fuck of a lot of fun to write, but there's nothing wrong with trying shorter ones that are easier to outline and — more importantly — finish, which is the no. 1 thing you want to be doing if you're working out your process. You don't know what your process is until you actually execute it from start to end. You don't know what helps you finish a story until you've (drumroll) finished a story, and then finished another one for comparison, to see which went better. So short projects, which require less endurance in general, may be the stopgap remedy, at least in the short term.

#greenteacup asks #going to start tag for this so i stop losing all these goddam posts #write good art

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rubeau-art · 1 year

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