#wenjim | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

In 2020, Tumblr had 29.4 million users in the US.

wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

Text

Moonlight Chicken is For the Queers

Ok I started my rewatch of episode 8 and figured out what I want to talk about for this series' finale: intentions and resolutions. This post will be about intention, and how I truly feel that Moonlight Chicken is a gift for queer people. Why? Well, there are many reasons, but for the purposes of this post, I will simply present the following title card.

Moonlight Chicken, Chapter 8: The Self-made House and Home

(if you are expecting this post to be anything other than a jumbled mess of my personal experiences with no clear through-lines or relevant transitions between sentences, thoughts, etc. then turn back now)

Whatever we want to say boy loves started as, fetish or otherwise, queer people are still able to see themselves or get comfort and representation. But coming from watching literally 25 boy loves in the last four months, this show feels different from most (not all) of them, to me, because of how strongly this show centers around built community, rather than romance, as it's central theme.

And yeah while any standard friend group in BL could be considered community in the abstract, the idea that they are a community is never quite presented. It's Team taking food from Pharm and all three of the gang teasing each other, it's Kuea and Diao spending most of their time talking about their relationships, it's Porsche forgetting Pete exists because he's so caught up in Kinn. More often than not we are building towards and hoping for declarations of love between two characters. And do not get me wrong, that is all well and good, and always what I'm rooting for in those shows. And we get something akin to that in Moonlight Chicken too, which is when you finally have Li Ming and Jim calling Heart and Wen (respectively) their boyfriends.

But the "I love you" we get in Moonlight Chicken? That isn't between the couples, it's between Li Ming and Jim.

Because the thing that makes Moonlight Chicken different from other BLs is the emphasis it puts on queer elders raising queer youth. It's about queer youth learning from queer elders and queer elders learning from queer youth. It's about how home and birth families don't always fit quite right, and how you build families and homes despite. And it's applicable to many people, children in abusive homes, disabled people, etc. too. Which is why P'Aof adds strained parental relationships and deafness in to this piece. But because this is fundamentally a BL show, I'm viewing this more through a queer lens.

So naturally, this also means I am informing my analysis of this show through my feelings as the only (known/out/visible) queer person on either side of my family. When I was little, a decade or more before I realized I was queer, I asked my mother one night if I was adopted. I'm not, and I know that, but why did I ask? Because I never really felt like I fit. Not the way I was supposed to fit, not the way family was supposed to fit together. My house never felt like a home.

And it's why I love this exchange between Wen and Jim at the end of episode 2

"I want home," "Don't you already have one?" "I don't." "A person like me doesn't fit to be anyone's home,"

And technically we know this isn't true. Wen does have a home, he has a condo, he has a place to sleep. But emotionally is where the problem lies. Wen is living with his ex, the apartment is cold, he has work colleagues and a friend that he and his ex both know and that's it. And as he tells Jim in episode 7, all his friends are straight. And then he meets Jim, and there is a spark, and maybe it's possible for home to grow there.

Literally, physically, I have a home. I have a family. But the more I embrace my queerness, the more I understand and am comfortable with myself, the more isolating and cold that house and family feel. I'm such a different person now than I was, and there are homophobes and transphobes on both sides of my family, and that makes it hard for me to feel like I am loved. Even when logically I know I am. But it's hard, when your mother says she accepts you and has yet to use my pronouns properly despite me being out to her for over a year and having three separate conversations about it. When your uncle spends twenty minutes or more complaining about trans people, when your cousins don't think trans people should exist. That's my family...technically. That's my home...technically. But it hasn't felt like that in years. So I understand what Wen means here, Wen's definition of home is not a place it is a feeling.

And Jim? We know Jim is already everyone's home. He is home for Li Ming, he is the closest thing to a parent that Leng has in his life, he makes sure the community not only has food, but has as much as food as they could possibly eat. He is first and foremost a community caretaker. But he is so wrapped up in his grief about Beam, his self-hatred, his stubbornness, his exhaustion that he is not able to believe that about himself. Home is a place and not a feeling for Jim, because he can't allow it to be.

The key to Wen and Jim's relationship is finding and building that home.

Home, Family, Community. These are incredibly important themes to Moonlight Chicken and those themes are incredibly important aspects of being queer.

I don't know how Thailand is re: homophobia and transphobia, if kids risk the same chance of getting kicked out of their homes for being queer, etc. But that is a very real possibility for many queer people in the States. But I'm thinking of homelessness in queer youth, how 28% of queer youth have reported experiencing homelessness in their lives. I'm thinking of ballroom and ball culture and how participants in the Ballroom scene were parts of Houses with mothers and fathers at the head of them who acted as mentors to their queer children. When I think about queerness and what it means, I think about ballroom. I think about connection, I think about community.

But that community is often forged from necessity borne out of isolation. What do I mean by isolation? I mean the isolation that Li Ming feels in school, around his school friends. I mean the faces Li Ming makes when his friends are talking about girls:

I mean the physical barriers the show places between Li Ming and his school friends.

It is the isolation that comes with queerness, with poverty, with everything about Li Ming. Beyond the fact Wen is a little younger than Jim and thus better able to understand and see Li Ming's desires to be seen as an adult. I think it is this state of listlessness in Li Ming is also something Wen recognizes. I think at this point Li Ming is so desperate to get away, to go to America, to be listened to and respected by Jim.

Jim who is too caught up in constant stress to see the home he has built for himself, Li Ming who is too caught up in wanting to be understood to appreciate that he has a home to run from. Wen who is working as a go between for Li Ming and Jim because he wants them to be his home. Heart who has been trapped at home and found his freedom because Li Ming understands the frustration of misunderstanding, and the importance of community.

I'm thinking about how so much of the final episodes are dedicated to showing community, showing family, showing the audience that home lies in the collective.

We see it in how many people rush to help Mrs. Hong:

We see it in the people who help you carry your grief:

We see it in how deeply and broadly the pain is felt when community pillars are lost:

We see it in the end of and era:

We see it in the olive branches:

And in new beginnings:

Very few people in these shots are connected through blood, but they are a family. And when I look at these shots the only thing I can think about is how I felt the night I threw a party for all my trans friends. All I can think about when I see these shots of everyone sitting and eating together is how many times I would look over to my friends and see them beaming. How many times someone came up to me to excitedly say this is the first time they felt like they could fully be themselves. How everyone kept asking to do an event like this again. How everyone kept asking to be added to a group chat at the end of the night so they could keep in contact.

And I remember how it felt for me to realize that I had built a community for myself in a place that I have really been struggling to feel was home. Because I had spent so much time in school and work, barley able to scrape together enough money to cover expenses, exhausted and stressed and unable to see what I had sitting right in front of me.

And I think about other queer people I have met, who light up when they see someone else who is gay, who talk about how lonely they feel because they only have one other queer friend. How immediately the need to invite them out, to introduce them to people, to make sure they have community strikes.

I think about how I worked at a summer camp out of state, and got to try out my pronouns, and figure out who I was, and then a few months later, I had to return home. Where I wasn't out yet, where I was going to get misgendered, and how quickly I came out to all of my close friends about my gender identity to try to mitigate how much my mental health tanked when I had to be someone my parents thought I still was. How at the same camp, the queer kids flocked to all the queer staff, how desperate they were to bond. How much lighter they got to be when they were away from their parents and allowed to be themselves around people who also understood not only them as people with the identities they held, but also their struggles existing in a household that didn't see who they were.

I think about how, in the States at least, "are you family?" is/was used as code for "are you gay?"

It's why it is so important to me that Moonlight Chicken ends with the line: "I just built a home. I don't want to move anywhere."

Because Wen has finally built his home. Because he has found his family, his queer community, his home. And yeah, we get the romance, yeah we get Li Ming and Heart holding hands, and Jim and Wen making out, but the emphasis of the final episode is moving forward, being brave, allowing yourself to love, and allowing yourself to stop, look around, and realize that you've made a home for yourself that is built of the people you love who love you in return.

Community building is a huge part of life for literally everyone, but it vital to the survival of marginalized communities. And when I think about my own relationship to queerness, one of the most sacred and important aspects of being queer is building the family you need.

523 notes · View notes

heretherebedork · 1 year

Text

Love and chicken rice, both based on personal taste about what is delicious and what works and what matters and the love that brings them warmth brings them the same filling warmth as the chicken rice they share and create together.

This is a community built on full stomachs creating fuller souls and the way that love and food can shape everyone.

361 notes · View notes

quodekash · 1 year

Text

the fact that jim is saved in wen’s phone as “chicken stranger” is so funny to me

he’d better keep it like that forever

his phone rings when he’s out drinking with friends from high school or something and they look at it and they’re like “who the hell is chicken stranger”

and then he picks it up and, without breaking eye contact with his friends, says “hey babe” in the most casual way possible

#it would honestly bring tears of laughter to my eyes #it’s just so funny to think about for literally no reason #chicken stranger- I can’t #mlc #moonlight chicken #quodekash watches moonlight chicken immediately after watching 1000stars #moonlight chicken series #moonlight chicken the series #jimwen #wenjim #earthmix #uncle Jim #earth pirapat #mix sahaphap

62 notes · View notes

blmpff · 1 year

Text

theearthe on ig 23.02.2023

#earth pirapat #mix sahaphap #earthmix #moonlight chicken #jimwen #wenjim #blmpff

52 notes · View notes

earthyorangeaid · 1 year

Text

I honestly thought Moonlight Chicken was going to be a story about Wen cheating and Uncle Jim having to revisit his trauma, and for me to have to fight past Wen being a cheater to eventually get his character… I wasn’t expecting Wen to NOT be a cheater.

And I don’t care what anyone has to say about it cause he’s just not. He’s very clearly communicated in the past to Alan that he is not interested in being in a relationship with him any longer and that whatever they had is over. If both parties don’t consent then there is NO relationship aka they’re broken up aka Wen is not a cheater. We stan clear communication and setting boundaries!!!

#moonlight chicken #wen #wenjim #jimwen #??? whatever the tag is #anyways good shit

42 notes · View notes

wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

Text

At the request of my friend: "When you are done with the complex analyses, please do a simple analysis that is just a list of characters ordered by best crier”

So without further ado...

BEST CRIERS IN MOONLIGHT CHICKEN (From Worst to Best):

Last Place: Heart's Mom

What more can I say than she did this to herself?

Objectively is it better crying than the 5th place person? Yes. But it's her own damn fault she doesn't know how to communicate with her son.

Empathy: 0/10

Fifth Place: Mrs. Hong

Because we saw this moment and collectively agreed she was going to die by the end of the show.

Eye Shine: 10/10 but no actual tears from Mama :(

Fourth Place: Jim

Peace, Love, Single Tear after being asked if you're happy.

Jim is working over time trying not to cry in front of his nephew, but damn if the meanest person you know isn't always 18 years old.

Existential Crisis Level: 8/10

Third Place: Heart

Cause ain't nothing more satisfying than crying out all the emotions you've bottled up over the last three years.

gifs from @tinngun

The tears on his cheeks might be fake but the catharsis on his face? That's real baby.

Emotional Release: 100/10

Second Place: Alan

I mean...this seems obvious because First is and always will be The Crier, but Alan is the closest thing to an antagonistic force we have in this show, and First has a lot of heavy lifting to do to ensure we sympathize with Alan.

gifs from @gunsatthaphan

As much as we love a single tear, we gotta give it up to Alan for trying to hold back tears and then fully sobbing in his apartment while Wen is in the other room. This dude needs a hug, some ice cream, and for someone to tell him it will all be okay.

Emotional Complexity: 500/10

First Place: GAIPA

For sheer emotional weight.

Hopefully this is a surprise to no one, and you'd think he'd be the Best Crier winner because of the moment where he is physically trying to hold back tears after leaving the ER:

gif from @thebvbbletea

Or because of him absolutely breaking down while singing at his mother's funeral:

gif from @thebvbbletea

But that's not why Gaipa wins the crown. Gaipa wins the Best Crier crown for the following scene:

gif from @gunsatthaphan

Because I felt so bad for Gaipa in this scene that I have to skip through it in subsequent re-watches.

Being So Brave About It: 10000000000/10

316 notes · View notes

heretherebedork · 1 year

Text

Heart and Li Ming spend five years in the US, learning and working and loving and when Heart graduates and when Li Ming is ready they start planning their move back to Thailand but first they want to get married. Legally.

Heart's parents help pay to fly Jim and Wen over with them and Tong and Jam come as well and the wedding is beautiful and everyone cries and laughs and celebrates.

And then at the reception Li Ming pulls Jim and Wen aside and asks them how they feel and brings them to a little room with the officiant that married him and Heart and asks, simply...

"Do you want to get married too?"

And it turns out he'd been preparing this the whole time as well, a second little ceremony just for his uncles so that they can have the same thing that he does.

In a tiny room in a hotel to the sounds of his nephew's wedding being celebrated Jim marries Wen and they sign a piece of paper and there are no rings but that doesn't matter and they kiss as husband and husband before rejoining their family in the party.

(The wedding certificate ends to inside the food truck because they spend more time there than at home and everyone loves the rings they pick out together back in Thailand. )

252 notes · View notes

ragsweas · 1 year

Text

FUCK!!! THIS EPISOD3 HAD SO MANY FEELINGS!!!

To begin with, JimWen, they are growing?? So much?? Like they are teasing about old trauma and going on not-dates dates and spending time together.

(Though Wen bringing Jim into the place you and Alan made a home was kind of a weird move)

The family dynamics!!! Jim and Jan and the bitterness of sibling relationship that is so subtle about stupid things but that doesn't deter them from helping each other. Li Ming being angry at everyone but also being clear that he does not love his mother but he loves Jim (!!!!!!). Heart's parents actually changing!!! That verbalization of the care between all of them, but especially Li Ming and Jim.

And in fact, the same kind of verbalization from Wen about Alan, about caring for him still!!!

Alan was so hurt this episode, like my boy, so much pain, but he still was there. I don't blame him for his bitterness and anger towards Jim at all, and Jim was at least mature about it.

GAIPA THOUGH!!!!

Listen, I have never been a BIG fan of Khaotung, but this episode? It changed that completely. THE RANGE!!! THE EMOTIONS! THE EXHAUSTION AND KEEPING IT TOGETHER??? I felt that. And even with everything between Jim and Gaipa, they were there. Together. In that moment, Gaipa had the people he needed. Jim, Leng, Li Ming to some extent. The sense of community was beautiful and damn if I don't miss it.

(Gaipa's speech and broken singing got me. I am dead. There is no recovering)

Idc if they make Alan/Gaipa a couple or just friends...just get these two together because Gaipa needs more comfort.

AND THE CLOSING OF CHICKEN DINER???

Leaving the past. He finally stopped holding on to the past. Jim is finally ready to move on and so is everyone else.

(I will kill Beam's parents though)

That's it folks!!! Can't wait for tomorrow!!!

#rags rants #moonlight chicken the series #moonlight chicken #jimwen #wenjim #jim #wen #jim x wen #alan #gaipa #earthmix #khaotung thanawat #first kanaphan #li ming x heart #heart #li ming

22 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs