#specifically hello tae

[lurkingshan]

A Brief History of Queer Representation in Modern Kdrama

Earlier this week, totally unrelated to Heesu in Class 2, @twig-tea and I were making a list of kdramas with proper queer representation, because Twig loves to track queer things and I love to make highly specific lists. In light of all the discussion around Heesu and its appeal to a mainstream kdrama audience, we thought it would be helpful to share as context for what Heesu’s creators set out to do, how it compares to Love in the Big City and its goals, and why both shows are so significant for those who are not as familiar with this media landscape. We wrote the below together (strap in, folks, it's a long one).

As always, let us be clear what we are talking about with this list. We’re only looking at modern mainstream kdrama, so this list is not inclusive of Korean queer cinema or QL dramas, both of which have a rich history of their own. And when we say queer representation, we mean canonically queer characters that are acknowledged as such in the text of the show, if not by saying the words, at least by openly acknowledging same sex attraction. If there’s anything we know about queer people on the internet, it’s that our community can read gay subtext into anything, but that’s not what we’re doing here. For this list we are only interested in depictions of LGBTQ+ people that are clear and spelled out for anyone watching a show.  In addition, for the purposes of this list we are talking about intentional inclusion of queer characters with a proper role in the story, not nominal nods to queer people existing (like every Hong Seok Cheon cameo in a drama), comedic gender bending without real reckoning with sexuality (ala The King’s Affection), use of queer people as the butt of a joke (glaring at you Vincenzo), queerness in psychosexual dreams to titillate and generate buzz (hiiiii Friendly Rivalry), or subtextual gay tension between two same sex actors who happen to have chemistry (waves hello to The Devil Judge). The point of this exercise is to chart the evolution of significant queer representation in kdrama—both good and bad—not to document every gay character that ever appeared for two seconds on screen. That said, while Shan has watched several hundred kdramas and Twig has tried to watch everything gay on the planet, it’s possible we missed something that should be here, so let us know if you think we did (though please do mind the criteria and don’t send us an impassioned essay about why Beyond Evil should count). 

With that, let’s begin our walk through of the last two decades of queer characters in kdrama. 

Coffee Prince (2007) 

Among the most famous dramas on this list, Coffee Prince kicked off queer rep in modern kdrama with a classic gender bender in which Go Eun Chan, a girl, pretends to be a boy for Reasons. But what made it stand out is that her love interest falls for her while he still thinks she’s a man and has a whole sexual identity crisis and bisexual coming out process. Choi Han Gyul (and Gong Yoo), you will always be famous! This show was sincerely groundbreaking, not only for depicting a male romance lead struggling with his sexuality, but also including lots of gender fuckery for the female lead. It’s still one of the most significant queer kdramas ever made.

Life is Beautiful (2010) 

This show is notable for how high it set the bar and how nothing has reached it since. Yang Tae Sub is our central character in this 63-hour ensemble family drama, and his arcs struggling with the closet, falling in love, coming out, commitment, and marriage (yes: marriage! In 2010!), are surprisingly realistic and touching without being too cliche. Kyung Soo and Tae Sub start as a casual hookup, and they have to recalibrate as their feelings change (and yes, they kiss on screen and the show is clear that they have sex throughout the series). They fight, they make up, and as their relationship deepens they have other problems in their lives they support one another through—their gayness is not the only or even the most interesting thing about them. It’s also notable that both of these actors (Song Chang Eui and Lee Sang Woo) were established kdrama stars before taking these roles. 

Secret Garden (2010)

This het romance features a side character (played by our beloved Lee Jong Suk) who is a young musical prodigy pursued for his talents by the second lead, a senior musician. Over the course of the story we learn that he’s gay and harboring feelings for his would-be mentor. His plot is minor, but he ends the story happy and successful in his career, if not in a relationship. It’s small scale representation in the grand scheme of things, but one of only a handful of decent depictions of a gay person in kdrama at that point.

Reply 1997 (2012) 

This wildly popular drama (at the time, it was one of the highest rated cable dramas in history) that spawned two follow-up iterations features a gay character, Joon Hee, who is in love with his long time best friend, Yoon Jae, and confides his feelings to their other best friend, Shi Won. Of course, this show is ultimately Yoon Jae and Shi Won’s love story, so Joon Hee does not get his happy romance ending, but his friends and the show treat him with kindness and compassion, and his character was well received by audiences. 

Reply 1994 (2013)

Similar to its predecessor, this drama featured a side character with a gay subplot, but this time it was more about questioning his identity. Bingguere is a character whose arc is all about his confusion and indecision, and that extended to his sexuality when he struggled to understand his attraction to the male lead. Ultimately, he moves past those feelings and we learn his partner in the future is a woman, and the drama doesn’t really clarify where his sexuality landed. It’s kind of weak in terms of explicit queer rep, but showing a man grappling with his sexuality in a very popular family drama still feels significant.

Seonam Girls High School Investigations (2014) 

While most of their content is limited to two episodes of this 14-episode high school drama, Eun Bin and Soo Yeon have, to our knowledge, the first lesbian kiss on Korean television, which earns them a place on this list. They are an established couple struggling with how their relationship is a risk for them (because it can be and is used against them). Their relationship doesn’t survive to the end of the series, but they are treated with compassion and their humanity is underscored by the narrative. They also spark an important conversation among the main characters about whether they should be helped because they’re gay, which was a little better intentioned than it was executed, but the show had the spirit. 

Perseverance Goo Hae Ra (2015)

In a show about aspiring musicians forming a group to take a second shot at stardom, Jang Goon (portrayed by solo idol Park Kwang Seon) is one of the core group members with a heartwarming arc about acceptance. His story is about his father coming to terms with him being an idol and being gay. He has a one-sided confession scene that is decently done, and the scene where his father accepts him knowing the truth (after having been outed against his will) is genuinely moving. It was also touching to see the girl who originally crushed on him support him once she found out about his sexuality. 

Hogu’s Love (2015) 

This drama was considered progressive for its time, as its core plot is about Hogu, a man who decides to support his first love when he finds out she is pregnant with someone else’s child. In addition to that, side character Kang Chul has an arc where he experiences attraction to Hogu and tries to sort out his feelings, considering whether he identifies as gay before ultimately deciding he does not. It’s not the best rep we’ve ever seen, but it was part of an interesting attempt by a drama to explore complicated social and identity issues.

The Lover (2015)

Lee Jun Jae and Takuya (played by Lee Jae Joon who was also in the gay film Night Flight (2014) and Takuya of jpop group CROSS GENE) are roommates in this series about four couples in an apartment building. Their story starts as a comedy, in which Jun Jae and Takuya end up in ship moments that are played off by the narrative as jokes and misunderstandings, but then they catch feelings for real. We see one of the characters struggle with his queer awakening and there is a happy ending. Using the actors’ real names was a choice, and led to some seriously disruptive RPF shipping; but it was refreshing to have an active idol not only play gay but in a romance with a happy ending. 

Prison Playbook (2017)

Another ensemble show with a queer side character; Loony, one of the main character Je Hyuk’s cell mates, is notable for his queerness not being used as a joke and not being the core of the character’s arc. Instead, this character struggles with addiction and how that affects his relationship, which is only incidentally gay. His story is moving and well developed, especially considering the size of this cast, but it doesn’t get a ton of screen time.

Romance is a Bonus Book (2019)

The queer rep in this drama is minor but overall positive, as we learn that the male lead Eun Ho’s ex-girlfriend, who he is still friendly with, ended their relationship because she fell in love with a woman. The show presents her as a lovely person who helps the female lead several times and is happy in her lesbian relationship, and we even get to see her with her partner briefly. A small win for sapphic representation in a very popular Netflix drama.

Moment at Eighteen (2019)

Jung Oh Je (RIP Moonbin) is a side character friend of the main lead. His sexuality becomes part of the plot when he is confessed to by a friend of the female lead, and he admits that he has a crush on the second male lead (Ma Hwi Young). While the characters in the show are mixed in their response, it’s clear the story is on the side of treating Oh Je with compassion. 

Be Melodramatic (2019) 

This is an ensemble show centered on a group of friends who move in together to support a grieving young woman, Lee Eun Jung, and one of the housemates is her younger brother Lee Hyo Bong, a gay musician with a long-term partner. He is a side character and his most significant plot is about supporting his sister, with his sexuality and relationship part of his characterization rather than an active story thread. It’s a positive depiction and the way his sexuality is presented as just part of who he is felt significant at the time. 

Love with Flaws (2019) 

Joo Won Suk (RIP Cha in Ha) is one of the FL’s older brothers, and while not the focus of the drama he gets his own fully developed arc, including the mentorship of queer side character Choi Ho Dol. The queer rep in this show covers suicidality, the loneliness of the closet, bullying, solidarity, and fear of parental shame. That makes it sound depressing, but it’s a hopeful story about the character moving out of depression and into self-acceptance, has one of the best scenes depicting gay acceptance from a father in any show, and both Won Suk and Ho Dol have a happy ending (including for their romance). 

Itaewon Class (2020)

The first drama on this list to feature a transgender character, Itaewon Class is about a group of social misfits trying to launch a restaurant on a trendy street in Itaewon. Ma Hyun Yi, a transgender woman saving money for her gender affirming surgery, is among the gang. Her story is not a big focus for the drama, but she gets a nice arc about coming into herself and gaining recognition for her talents as a chef, and the other characters always respect her identity. It’s pretty solid representation for a side character.

Sweet Munchies (2020)

This drama tries to tackle the problems of homophobia and appropriating queerness but misses the mark on both. The queer character in this show, Kang Tae Wan, is here to function as a driving force and conscience for the main male lead and female lead; he’s essentially the second lead but never had a chance (though he didn’t know it, since the main lead is pretending to be gay for clout). Tae Wan is a good character, but the narrative doesn’t care much about him or about queer people in general, it’s focused on how heterosexuals experience queerness. Not exactly amazing queer representation, whatever its intentions.

Run On (2020) 

This drama features both a gay character and an asexual character, both of whom are written respectfully and get proper coming out scenes. There is also some messiness around one of the main characters appropriating queer identity as a way to avoid the pressures of her patriarchy, and the drama knows she’s wrong for that. This was one of the first instances of a kdrama acknowledging queer people as a regular part of the world around us and not singular oddities, and it was nice to see multiple facets of queer representation in one show.

Mr. Queen (2020)

This gender bender retains its place on the list because the main character (a man who awakens in the body of a Queen during the Joseon dynasty) openly struggles with his gender dysphoria as well as what it means that he’s attracted to a man, and these struggles are present for the bulk of the show. The character also has sex with both men and women while in that body. It’s one of the better representations of gender swap and feels queer, even when the relationship on screen has the guise of heterosexuality. 

Mine (2021)

In this drama about ambitious women married to powerful men who struggle to break free from their constraints, one of the main characters reunites with her first love—another woman. The drama follows Jung Seo Hyun as she struggles to acquire the power she needs to live as she wants, and she ultimately achieves her goal, reuniting with her lover at the story’s end. It’s the first kdrama with a lesbian character in a major role who gets her happy romance ending. 

Move to Heaven (2021)

Despite only being featured in episode 5, this was a good story that garnered a lot of attention in a popular Netflix drama, so for cultural impact reasons alone it belongs on this list. We start the episode with Jung Soo Hyun’s death, but this is a show about finding closure after death, so for once this death doesn’t feel like bury your gays. This is a compassionate tragedy in which we see how fear held Soo Hyun back from his relationship with Ian Park while he was alive, but his belongings at death indicate he was getting ready to face his fear and move to the US to marry Ian after all. Through the main characters of the show, Ian gets the closure of knowing Soo Hyun loved him. 

Nevertheless (2021) 

Yoon Sol and Seo Ji Wan have a typical plot for side characters (they’re in the female lead’s friend group) with a friends-to-lovers arc that depicts the fear and frustration when both friends are closeted and uncertain about risking the friendship but reach the point where they can’t pretend anymore. Since they’re both women, this felt pretty radical. They got a good romantic arc and a happy ending, if not a lot of screen time.

Under the Queen’s Umbrella (2022)

In this sageuk, the fourth prince is living a double life, hiding away makeup and women’s clothing that they wear in secret. The character is depicted as trans, but given the setting, explicit language and modern terminology (including altered pronouns) are not used in this side plot. When the prince’s mother finds out, she supports her child to have an artist paint a portrait of their true self, and ultimately, the prince leaves the royal family to go live a more authentic life in isolation in a bittersweet resolution. 

A Time Called You (2023)

The queer rep in this drama comes in the form of a brief backstory montage for two gay characters, one of whom (Yeon Jun) is in a coma. We learn that he ended up in this state after getting into a car accident while in the process of confessing to the guy he mutually liked (Tae Ha), who was killed in the accident. From there, Yeon Jun’s body is taken over by a heterosexual character (it’s a whole time loop thing). This entry is mostly notable for featuring a high profile cameo from Rowoon playing Tae Ha, and unfortunately, for being a fairly textbook example of the bury your gays trope. In 2023!

Wedding Impossible (2024) 

This disaster of a drama purported to finally feature a gay character in a prominent role that drove the narrative—in a story about Do Han pretending to marry his longtime friend to avoid being forced to marry another woman—but Do Han ended up a minor side character in his own story when the show chose to focus nearly all its attention on his brother’s het romance. Worse, the other characters treated him terribly and the story blamed every problem on his sexuality. This show was straight up homophobic and it was a significant regression for queer depictions in mainstream Korean media. 

Bitter Sweet Hell (2024)

image credit @respectthepetty

Choi Doi Hyun (played by Park Jae Chan of Semantic Error) is the closeted son of the main character, struggling with how hiding his secret affects his school life and his relationship with his family. His story ends happily with Jun Ho in the US, which felt like a win after the above history with kdrama, but because his secret being his queerness is hidden for most of the story, we don’t get to see it inform the narrative much except in retrospect. 

Squid Game 2 (2024)

The most recent entry on our list features Park Sung Hoon as Hyeon Ju, a transgender woman who enters the life or death game at the center of this drama to earn money to move to Thailand and get gender affirming surgery. While her inclusion wasn't entirely groundbreaking, Hyeon Ju was a well-developed character with a sympathetic backstory who quickly became a fan favorite, notable given Squid Game's popularity and broad international audience. 

Bringing Better Queer Stories to Mainstream Drama Audiences

With all that context established, we have been contemplating how queer creators in Korea can reach a wider audience with their stories and ensure queer representation in kdrama is both more common and more authentic. We look to Love in the Big City and Heesu in Class 2 as a start, as we would argue that both shows exist in the gray space between mainstream kdrama and kbl. They both leverage kdrama style and structure to tell queer stories that include, but are not limited to, gay romances. They both had unusual distribution and battled to even get released and in front of an audience, with LITBC rushing its episodes out amidst public protests and Heesu sitting on the shelf for two years before being quietly released on a streaming platform. And they both had goals to reach an audience beyond the usual BL viewers, albeit with wildly different tones and themes in their stories. The BL audience is too niche to effect the social change that queer creators are seeking, and the limited runtime, genre tropes, and laser-focus on romance means it is harder to make wider social and cultural points in a BL story (it doesn’t hit the same when gay characters are treated as human in a story that takes place in the no homophobia BL bubble). And as we’ve seen from this walk through the past, there are real limits to queer representation that is not created by queer people or informed by their lived experiences.

As you can see from reviewing this list, these two shows were the first kdramas in well over a decade (after the only other example, Life Is Beautiful) to center on a gay main character whose journey drove the story, and they were doing this in the context of a media landscape that rarely elevates queer people beyond minor side plots, still regularly fumbles on respectful representation, and in which representation seems to be getting worse. Love in the Big City set out to show a young queer man’s life in all its glorious messiness. Go Young was not an easy character, and the show did not hold back on his flaws or shy away from either the joy or the struggle he found in his sexuality. Heesu is about a younger character and so his struggles are centered around coming of age and first love, but it similarly depicts a beautifully flawed young gay man coming to terms with himself and asks the audience to empathize with and care about him as his loved ones in the story do. Where LITBC uses a unique storytelling structure to draw in the viewer and highlight what makes Young’s life feel different, Heesu roots itself in familiar drama beats and queer-coded side plots in the hopes that the audience will see and be comforted by the familiar in Heesu’s world. 

Both of these stories, in their own way, speak to a mainstream audience and ask for queer existence and queer humanity to be acknowledged. And this does not make them problematic as queer works, because they accomplish their goals of speaking to a wider audience while still being true to queer experiences. Given how scant decent queer representation has been in kdramas over the last twenty years (consider the size of the list above against the fact that there are well over 1500 modern kdramas, and so few of the above listed characters are mains or even significant sides in these dramas), more shows like LITBC and Heesu are needed to bridge this gap. We sincerely hope they find the support they need to get made.

[spurbleu]

Hello bleu :3

I lovee how you write the characters accent, it's like i can hear them but i still able to understand them very well.. especially with Johnny

Do you mind sharing tips on how to write their accent? 🫴🌹

hello mbe <3 ofc!!

disclaimer: this is how i do it/what sources i use. i do not speak with either of these accents. so I am no expert.

for the four of them:

with intense emotions, kick the accent up a little bit. slurring the words especially with f or y (for me = f’me, you got = y’got). avoid writing g’s (turning = turnin’).

slang!! but when appropriate- look up some classic british or scottish slang and keep it in your back pocket. avoid packing it in too much because it will feel less authentic.

for johnny specifically:

hard o becomes ‘ae’ (to -> tae, no-> nae) and y’s endings usually become ah (my -> mah) ect. almost never pronounces an ending g. ‘ou’ becomes ‘oo’ (about-> aboot)

a great post

sources:

scottish slang

british slang

scottish accent guide

[jmdbjk]

Hello, everyone.

I came by to say something important: I got sidetracked by nekkid Jimin searching for a specific cranberry sauce recipe on Pinterest. You're welcome.

Why is nekkid Jimin on my Pinterest you say? Welllll.... maybe you need to ask Pinterest that question.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see Jimin's words on Weverse. And then even more thrilled to see Jungkook being typically adorable. It's really hard to put into words the beauty of it all that I see in my mind. It is reassuring to see evidence that where ever they are, whatever they are doing every day, has not changed them at all. And Jin and Hobi jumping in trying to keep up with those two.

Speaking of Jin and Hobi, so it appears they will bring back a little taste of Bangtan Chaos™️ in the next episode of Run Jin. The kidnapping episode of Run Jin looks like it will be about getting Hobi to do the Running Wild dance challenge. Perhaps Hobi will launch his Tiktok after that, by now surely he's found a handle that hasn't already been taken by Armys (heh heh)

Namjoon... oh, Namjoon... I never thought he'd so openly pine for BTS. He can't wait and neither can we.

It snowed a lot in Seoul today, setting records not seen in over 100 years. Those memories from Japan they could recall during their enlistment... and also JK posted snowy pics of Bam that his caretakers sent to him.

Anyway. I didn't mean to stay away from here for so long but after Hobi came back, it seemed difficult to put thoughts into words. There was a lot going on in the world and in my personal life... still is... but during these last six weeks, a lot of stuff also rearranged itself in my mind. A lot of things became more clear. Maybe I can get some of it down in coherent paragraphs at some point soon but trying not to think too hard about it all because that takes the fun out of everything. Know what I mean?

As we wait for the Bing X V White Christmas song and literally in a few hours, Tae's little cinematic MV for Winter Ahead, I want to wish those celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. a Happy Thanksgiving! And everyone else, I hope you all have a great rest of the week and weekend.

[waitmyturtles]

Thinking About QL Fandoms and Markets For Indian Queer Media

Alright, ::rubs hands together::, let's see if this old auntie can get the link history of this thread straight first.

@impala124 originally wrote in an ask to dear @lurkingshan about Shan's thoughts on a developing fandom for Indian queer media.

Shan subsequently asked a few of us on the internet, brown Asian and/or otherwise, to weigh in, which @starryalpacasstuff did here. Starry's piece has a few great reblogs with media resources that everyone should scurry to check out.

The inimitable @neuroticbookworm then decided to show us her literary Tae Bo skills and dropped an absolute MONSTER of a must-read regional media and industry analysis here. (Let me emphasize that this is a MUST-READ PIECE if you're interested in Indian media.)

I'm going to use NBW's piece as a reference throughout my weak-ass response tea here, because she covered almost everything that needed to be said about why there ISN'T a robust or developed fandom on the internet for Indian queer media. So go read that first, and if you forget to click back here, it's all good, because I'm just gonna offer some unorganized macro-level thoughts at this point.

****

I'd like to first amplify a number of themes that @neuroticbookworm made clear in her piece about the "media industry in India." I'm only putting that phrase in quotes not because NBW wrote it (she didn't), but because it's a wholly inaccurate phrase.

1) INDIA IS *NOT* A SINGLE, UNIFIED CULTURAL MONOLITH. Remember your early social studies classes on early civilizations? The Aryans, Harappa, Mohenjo Daro? Those specific civilizations arose in the north of the Indian sub-continent, and not a lot of social studies spaces outside of Indian classrooms give love to the other regional areas in India -- like, say, all of South India, hello -- that belong to other civilization definitions.

To be grossly overgeneral, ancient civilizations in the northern subcontinent were known as Aryan civilizations, while those of the southern subcontinent were known as Dravidian civilizations. We see these differences today in the food we brown people eat, and ESPECIALLY in the languages we speak. Tamil (a Dravidian South Indian language) couldn't be farther away from Hindi (a North Indian language emanating from Sanskrit).

2) While the prominent political nationalists of India (😐) would like to have you believe that all Indians are monolithically similar -- or rather, SHOULD be monolithically similar by way of all Indians speaking Hindi, consuming Hindi media, and erasing religious diversity (🤬) -- nothing could be farther from the truth of our incredibly diverse and complicated subcontinent. We Indians are regionally, and therefore culturally, diverse in a great myriad of ways, way beyond our food, language, and religious preferences.

[For my non-Indians and non-Asians reading this, think about the two dishes you see the most on Indian restaurant menus outside of India. Chicken tikka masala and tandoori chicken, right? That's typical "Indian" food to the untrained eye. CTM is a British dish borne from immigrant South Asian chefs; and tandoori chicken was created by North Indian Punjabis. My own Indian origins are half-half (lah), I'm half-South and half-North Indian (with some SE Asia thrown in there, boleh!). My brain fucking freezes when I speak to someone who thinks the extent of "Indian food" is CTM and TC, and I have to explain, for the millionth time, the basics of the incredible array of South Indian vegetarian food that I grew up eating and loving.]

Thus, what I'm trying to say is, when we say the word "INDIAN," there are some questions that a curious listener should be tuned into asking to get specifics about just what kind of "India" or "Indian" the speaker is speaking of. I'll often get the question, "but WHERE in India are your parents from," from tuned-in Asians, who want to know specifically about my regional background.

VERY SO OFTEN IN POPULAR DIALOGUE ABOUT "INDIAN MEDIA," THE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION OF THE CONVERSATION IS THAT THE SPEAKER IS ONLY SPEAKING ABOUT HINDI-LANGUAGE MEDIA, WITHOUT RECOGNIZING THAT REGIONAL AND/OR NON-HINDI LANGUAGE MARKETS MIGHT BE MAKING MEDIA, EVEN POPULAR MEDIA, FOR THEIR SPECIFIC REGIONAL MARKETS AND AUDIENCES WITHOUT AS MUCH OF A GLANCE TO THE DOMINANT HINDI-SPEAKING NORTH.

NBW says this brilliantly in her incredible piece, which delineates the major differences in the MANY regional and even sub-regional media markets of India, that produce a VAST array of media in the languages of the regions, markets, and audiences that this media serves.

On a personal note, when I was a kid, I only watched old South Indian films subtitled in English that my South Indian dad found. My North Indian mom watched them with us happily. We didn't do Bollywood in my house because frankly, dad hated those films and wasn't into them. Now that I think about it, it's probably because those Hindi films didn't bear a single resemblance to the cultural and life he lived growing up in South India.

3) Alright, so we have established that in terms of media, to speak about "Indian media" as a monolith is utterly incorrect, and just, go back to NBW's piece to get an excellent analysis of the details of that situation.

NBW does a bang-up job highlighting important pieces of regional media throughout her post, and like I mentioned before, there are multiple lists of media in the reblogs Starry's piece linked above ( @silverquillsideas notes in her reblog of Starry's piece that two important films come out of the state of Bengal, a market that us Indians should certainly pay attention to in particular.)

I therefore might posit that there might not actually be a unified "fandom for Indian queer media."

IT IS CLEAR from the reblogs of the various pieces that we've written over the last few days, that us Indians who love QLs certainly don't INHERENTLY know, universally, about ALL the queer media, across the subcontinent, in the MANY languages we speak, that has been made.

We have a lot of learning to do across our own regional identities.

I'd argue that, instead, from an organic growth perspective, that regional media markets in India would respond to THEIR OWN AUDIENCE'S AND MARKET'S DEMANDS and create queer media WITHIN THEIR OWN REGIONS

a) if their market(s) demanded it, AND b) if there was either pre-production funding, or a guarantee of net revenue from the airing of such media.

A fandom doth not create media.

It is filmmakers that create media.

And those filmmakers need

✨ MONEY ✨

✨ MONEY ✨

✨ MONEY ✨

to make media.

Some regional markets will, by nature, be willing to take risks on a filmmaker's desire to make queer media. Those projects could succeed, or could fail. Badhaai Do is one of the best examples of a Bollywood breakout piece that gained even some international attention, and certainly attention ACROSS the subcontinent.

But I want to emphasize this point about

MONEY.

The question that we're pondering is, why isn't there a more prominent fandom for Indian queer media and/or QLs?

@twig-tea made note, in her reblog of Starry's original piece, about the importance of accessibility and subtitling, an important note not just for international audiences, but for regional Indian populations that don't speak the same language(s). Accessibility allows fans to watch the media of their own markets, and markets outside of their boundaries.

But even bigger than this is, before we even get into accessibility, is: the filmmakers need money to spend to MAKE projects, and in an ideal scenario for themselves and/or their studios, they then need to (hopefully) make a PROFIT to demonstrate a sustainable desire and demand for the media they're producing, a profit that could hopefully be re-invested into more and new queer media projects.

Let me not get into all the obstacles in which filmmakers, queer or otherwise, might run into issues with production fundraising for a queer-centered project. We Indians know about our conservative, often violent, obstacles.

NBW does a fabulous job in her piece discussing what COULD be made by way of queer media that COULD gain a stronger cultural foothold over time across the subcontinent.

4) A fandom, most often, develops as a response to media already created. A fandom, HOWEVER, *IS*, often, in today's digital age, often recruited to fundraise for projects they want to see! GoFundMe, right?

I think it was @impala124 in a reblog that mentioned that there's already a "market" for Indian QLs. But we've established now that there are actually many unconnected regional media markets in India that can't be assumed to be glommed together.

If a fandom WANTS to see a particular kind of media, in their own specific regional market, it's certainly well within its rights of speech to create internet buzz for it.

But I think we as fans also need to take responsibility for a better understanding of the economics of media creation, and to be patient as queer media is produced across the subcontinent, and to simply do our best to hype it up on the internet when we can, so that commercial sponsors and potential production funders can then pay attention to what us fans want -- and what we're willing to pay for.

And let me be honest, this is a *tremendously difficult proposition* for a field of media that's just really small against the giant, mainstream, well-funded media markets of India. And this field of queer media would be guaranteed to face crippling and disgusting conservative criticism as it gains more of a prominent cultural foothold -- as we are seeing in South Korea literally at this very second.

Looking on the economic bright side: we see in Thailand and in Japan that QLs make MONEY. Shit, not just Japan being into Japanese QLs, but also, Japan is so into Thai QLs that the major Thai channel and studio, GMMTV, has a distribution deal with the Japanese channel TV Asahi to air Thai QLs in Japan. MONEY, BABY! INTERNATIONAL DOLLAS. Great Sapol, of the QLs Manner of Death and Wandee Goodday, just wrapped a stint in a mainstream Japanese drama, and I'll assume that's because he's hotttt and talented gotten a lot of attention in Japan from his previous Thai QL work, as well as his lengthy resume in Thai mainstream media.

The hunger for QLs is there in these two major national markets, and the Thai and Japanese audience markets have proven that the demand for content for these countries can be economically fruitful. So the media markets of these two (much smaller than India) countries are pumping ever more money into production, and filmmakers are responding with more QL content than ever.

We have not even begun to contemplate reaching that tipping point in India, across our regional markets, yet. Again, NBW offers some creative paths forward that will take time to develop.

Fuck, I mean. Imagine Bollywood looking towards Thailand and its branded pair formula as an inspiration to develop queer media. (IMAGINE.) Get two super popular Bollywood actors together in a branded acting coupling/partnership. Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan doing India's version of What Did You Eat Yesterday?. In aprons! Making keema and rajma and chapatis. ShahSaif (SaifShah?!). KhanKhan. How would that go down?

It's a proven economic formula in Thailand. And that's just one example. We're well familiar, separately, with how Japanese QLs gain traction in bigger media spaces for its audiences, with media being adopted for the screen, as they mostly are, from popular yaoi and yuri mangas.

India and its regional media markets need some proven economic formulas within its regional markets to prove that queer media can gain culturally important footholds across the mindsets of various audiences -- and to prove that those footholds can produce profits.

The fandom element in this is that the regional fandoms, while creating buzz, could also prove to be important economic factors to a regional queer media industry being able to survive, and maybe even thrive.

Assuming that I am speaking to a mostly progressive group of fans here: we can only hope for this, and we must support the queer media that the subcontinent currently produces, IN *ALL* THE LANGUAGES (!!!!), to demonstrate to producers that Indians, wider South Asians, and even non-South Asians, WANT THIS MEDIA. We want it, we SHOULD want it, and damn it, we should SPEND OUR MONEY on it, to show our appreciate to the filmmakers taking risks to make this media.

I'm out! I need a chai and a samosa and a dosa.

[hyukalyptus]

ot5's reaction to bsf chubby!reader wearing tight clothes like a bodycon ? ;-;

:c ugh bsf chubby!reader is literally my favorite thing in the entire fkn world lol. let’s put some thoughts together, hm?

cw. clubbing, dancing, a stranger is kinda mean in tae’s (nothing specific is mentioned), lmk if there’s anything else!

yeonjun—let’s say his feelings aren’t fully ~realized~ yet lol. i mean he’s always flirted w you like he does all of his friends. but seeing you walk in the bar for a cute lil night out w ur friend group, it’s like everything stops for a second. he stops talking in the middle of his sentence, just stares at you. whoever he’s talking to is like “yeonjun??? hello?” and he clears his throat and is like “sorry what?” and his dude bro friend won’t stop teasing him for it the rest of the night. and when yalls favorite song comes on “ah yeonjun! let’s dance~” and its so hard for him to keep his hands off you :( and that's when his big fat crush started lol

soobin—already has a crush on you. and he's SO sweet about it </3 waiting for you in his car when you step outside your front door, just watching you. he's already trained himself to be calm around you, but seeing every curve of ur body makes it a bit more challenging than usual. plopping down in his passenger seat and "...well?" "what?" "how do i look ? this is a new dress..i'm kinda nervous about it.." eyebrows furrowed. lips pouty as he’s been granted the privilege to look at ur body. “y-you, uh, you look…good.” “damn i must look really good if you’re stumbling over your words like that.”

beomgyu—would be such a tease like “woah you look nice for a change.” “whose attention you trying to get tonight?” “someone’s trying to get some.” while also hiding how much he was drooling over you. he’d never seen you like this before. you just didn’t go clubbing with him often, so he’d never been given the chance. but oh do you look sexy in your dress tonight. watching from afar as you dance with a stranger. watching them touch and squeeze you. wishing it was him.

taehyun—of course noticed ur ass and thighs in those biker shorts. and so did everyone else at the park. he could see everyone looking you up and down, turning their heads to get a better look. his ears were red. but you liked the attention so it’s none of his business anyway. until he overheard some jerk make a gross comment to one of his buddies. “what was that?” he instantly turns into a protective bestie ready to punch someone and the guy quickly retreats at the sight of his big biceps. the cute “thanks, tae~” with a hair twirl you give him makes him blush, adding a sweet kiss to your forehead for good measure.

hueningkai—is it cheating to say i feel like he’d cave immediately? i feel like he’d already have a crush on you, but when you come back from changing into lounge clothes and you’re wearing leggings, he can’t take it anymore. “look, i’ve been…meaning to talk to you about something…” he’s so nervous and you can tell. “what is it? you know you can tell me anything.” looking down while he tries to put his thoughts into words. “i’ve been…having these feelings…” and he takes a big pause. “i just- i think you’re beautiful and i wanted you to know that.”

[seokjinsonlyone]

ok yayy so most to least likely to do a soft launch vs a hard launch on sns ☺️

the way this was so fun to do like i ain't even have to think about it sklskf

yoongi: yoongi launch gon be so soft that it’s actually hard like he’s just gonna post a screenshot of him listening to outro her one day and that’s gonna be it that’s the hint and then three years later he’s gonna post a pic of y’all baby snuggling with y’all cat and when everyone freaks out he’s gonna be like ? i told you i had a cat, no???

jimin: super soft launch like unless someone is specifically looking for it they’ll miss it; he’ll post a pic of his food from the restaurant y’all went to and 3 of your fingers gon be in the frame and he’s gonna giggle about it or he’ll take a photo of scenery and you’ll be like 50 ft back facing away from the camera so it looks like you’re just a random person that happened to be in the shot

hobi: he’d do a normal cute soft launch like a picture of your hands intertwined or y’all would both have on matching mang slippers and he’d take a pic of your feet together

jk: i think he would intend to do a soft launch something really artistic like your silhouette or something but in reality you’d be playing around with tiktok filters and end up making a video he thought was really funny and he’d post it on his story for like 20 minutes before deleting it 

namjoon: he’d make a formal post about you about 7 or 8 slides like there’d be some sculptures about love or something and a couple quotes about love and in the middle of it all there’d be a picture of you with a heart sticker covering your face for privacy the whole post is set to japanese denim by daniel caesar

jin: he’d just randomly drop vacation pics of the two of you like you’ll be at sanrio world and you’ll have the hello kitty bow on your hair and he’d have the daniel bow on his neck and you’d be holding hands and that is your entrance into the world; there’d be like 2 other posts of y’all posing with the characters and holding cute plushies

tae: he’s gonna post a pic of y’all making out on his story his hand will be on the back of your neck and his tongue will be down your throat but it’s gonna have his signature blur dirty mirror type layover so it looks a lil less raunchy than it actually is but it’s gon bring the whole internet to its knees nonetheless

[taekooktimeline]

July 9, 2024 -

One of the photos in Tae’s “Type 1 Photobook” is this one of him posing next to a “Hello Kitty rainbow plushie in bear costume.”

It’s the same plushie we’ve seen in Jk’s home, in GCF Budapest.

https://youtu.be/gJ1Hknhs1Ys?si=C4p2ZtBJrpdXz8le, :20-:28

And what’s super cute is it looks like Taekook own the biggest plushie of the three options -

CT to @angel_HeMaYa on TW for the above info on the plushie and last two pictures

And it’s exclusively available in America only (remember, Jk was in America quite a bit for Golden promos) -

I’d also like to archive some of Tae’s choice in clothing in his photo shoots. In the first photo, he’s wearing a “love my way” t-shirt by allsaints. The brand launched a collection theme with people expressing their own perceptions of love, celebrating different love stories.

This t-shirt’s name references the Psychedelic Furs' song “love my way.” The song is dedicated to people struggling with embracing their own sexuality amid social pressures. More specifically, Richard Butler, who penned the song, said, “It’s basically addressed to people who are fucked up about their sexuality,” and says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ It was originally written for gay people.”

The song is also featured in the movie “call me by your name,” which we all know is a movie near and dear to Tae’s heart, as he’s repeatedly referenced it multiple times over the years.

Info on the song -

CT to @PeachesMinty, @jjkofvante, @allissur and @prettiestV95 on TW for the above photos and information.

Lyrics -

Tae CMBYN references:

June 9, 2019 with Hobi, and on May 31, 2019 when he played the OST for the movie on the piano - https://www.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2019/625212551783907328

June 9, 2020 - reading Elio’s fathers speech during pride month - https://www.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2020/625387601649713152

September 4, 2023 - an article on Weverse notes that Tae’s song “Rainy Days” is a nod to the tomato girl summer trend which was inspired by movies like CMBYN - https://www.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2023/727548456756035584

Other notable clothes worn I want to archive (and you can decide relevancy) - “personal freedom, make love not war” -

Shut the F U nobody cares what you think” (side note - I really want this shirt 😆)

[laswells-ashtray]

Hello again! :D

I'm the one who mentioned about the reactor mission and was ranting about cod, also sorry that I made you have to get your glasses 😅. (I have a really bad habit of apologizing to practically everything even if someone tells me that something I do is fine or for absolutely no reason)

Anyways, I have a question about John Price. Since you've mentioned on multiple posts that his father was not good to him, do you think Price ever celebrated his birthday or was given anything during the occasion growing up? Or do you think that as he grew up he never saw the point about it until accidentally mentioning it to his team or even Mac during his time as a sargent (idk if that's how it's spelled) while extremely drunk. (Also I mentioned Mac cause I remember you saying that you like writing him cause you don't have to go all proper British English lol)

I also have a question for you specifically, what's your favorite color/s and your favorite dinosaur?

Hope you're having a good day or night so far! :)

Also I love the dinosaur drawings, they're adorable. Making me wanna draw them with how cute the little diplodocus is. Just wanna squish their little cheeks.

Helloooooo, you've set yourself up for a rant here so I apologise in advance. Firstly, no need to apologise for me having to grab my glasses I'm just partially blind as shit. I can see the words but without glasses, it's hard to focus on them or process them without the spectacles.

Secondly, I have autism and OCD so my favourite colours are sorted into tiers based on importance as are my favourite dinosaurs. Top tier colours are blue-toned purples, dark red, black [technically not a colour but that's a whole other conversation], teal and forest green. My top-tier dinosaurs are the t-rex, spinosaurus, diplodocus, ankylosaurus and velociraptors. They're basic but they're goated. Sorry, I had to have five colours and five dinosaurs or it'd grate on me.

I am having a relatively good day and I wish the same for you :]

"What is this?" John looks far too taken aback for such a simple gesture. Concern spreads across the young sergeant's face as he looks over Mac's desk.

It's nothing special, he hadn't wanted to overwhelm the younger man with some big surprise party or dragging them all out for birthday drinks. There are two takeout containers, both from the Indian takeaway that John had sheepishly admitted he was fond of one night. On "John's side" of the desk there's a small black box, no name or brand across the packaging.

"It's yer birthday dinner, noo get yer arse on the chair. It's getting cauld."

John closes the door behind him and hesitantly sits down, looking between the takeout container and the suspiciously plain black box beside it.

"What's in the box?"

He offers the Englishman a soft smile as he nudges the box towards his hand. "It's yer birthday, son. Yer supposed tae open it and say thank you."

John had let it slip the last time they went drinking after a mission gone right, mentioned that his birthday was coming up and how he'd never done anything for it. He'd never wanted to the older he got.

The sergeant narrows his eyes at him, a faint hint of frustration visible in the tenseness of his shoulders. There was a reason he'd made it a quiet, one-on-one celebration. The lad would've lashed out in front of a group.

But John, ever the good soldier follows his order and opens the box cautiously. He watches John register the gift and look back up to him, face full of painfully youthful confusion.

"What's this?"

He sighs, eyes flicking between John and the watch he's holding. It's a simple thing, a plain watch with a brown leather strap. Sophisticated but still casual.

"It's a watch. Ma father bought me wan on my eighteenth, ye should've got wan on yours. If yer auld man willnae step up then a'll just huv tae, every gid man deserves a watch. Yours is just a wee bit late."

For both their sakes he pretends not to notice the wet shine to John's eyes before he blinks rapidly and suddenly it's gone.

"Thanks." He utters softly, ever so carefully placing the watch back in the box. He knows the lad will put it on in his own time, try it on and stare at it as if it's some kind of unfathomable gift of riches instead of a simple watch from his superior. That was John's right, something he had to process in his own time.

"Eat up, son. Yer tea's getting cauld."

[stygiansauce]

Happy birthday to MoE Tango I’ve actually just melted into my bed and onto the floor, your writing is always beautiful to read, thank you for sharing <3

What website / app do you use to write btw? I know the usual weapon of choice for authors is Google Docs but I don’t recognise yours as that! (Unless you have a different font set lol) 🦃

Turkey! hello hello!

Happy birthday MoE Tango ToT. I love him so so so so so much, like my little southern guy who is practically an OC at this point--I realize we are in a heavy time of pining in MoE right now, but I have sooooooooo much fluff planned. I needed to give yall a little taste of that joy to come for ranchers. Thank you for your kind words, I WILL cry (I have...) I'm very grateful you read and enjoy my work <3

I use twoooo guys at the moment. Google docs mostly, my font changes per au. so MoE is normally in Georgia font (today's TaE wip was not? idk I didn't check I was too excited to share) sticks is written in Spectral because it's cleaner to look at. I feel like when I've writing action scenes/Hockey games, the movement is easier to follow when there's more spacing to see the words. My brain works funny yall, blame the wires crossing. Superhero au is currently written in Georgia but that's because I haven't written anything new in there since I started sticks, and therefore haven't changed the font yet.

I did TRY to write MoE in spectral but it fucked with my brain heavy. MoE only flows in Georgia font. The only time I change it is to edit, and if I do that I tend to do it in Times new roman because that's my academic brain mode font and it helps me notice more beta-leaning edits. (Edits not revision!)

The other sight that Kit has me trying out is called Ellipsus. It's free and has zero ai attached, save for the spell check you can turn off if you wanna. I use that for my cannon-verse fic (Teknition union my beloved) and Dealing Despair. This is mostly because I love changing the theme and having a color for each au. The day I figure out how to do this for docs, it's soooo joe-ver. MoE is such a baby pink au and Sticks is my blue/green king. (or orange? idk sticks tastes like an orange au in concept, but that also might be the flavor of the titles rn. like if I say countercurrent, thats an orange word. but if im like, cross our sticks-- that's blue/green. mmmm sitting on this.)

I don't hate Ellipsus, I actually like it a lot! but when it comes to beta reading, I really prefer google docs. It's much more collaborative and the way I set up my beta documents is super specific? I like to ask for specific things and then I use a color code system to mark stuff off as I read and edit. THEN the beta's roll in and do comments and highlights of their favorite bits. I just can't get that experience with another writing service (that I know of). It will admit though, my google does not have much space left and I might end making a whole new account just for my fics to hang out.

I DO use word, but only for my final final final final drafts. This is because i'm spending my summer learning how to format books to an industry standard and it's much easier to format fics when I have a document version to copy and paste off of. Kit has said she want's to bind MoE for me (aha not if I do it first kitkat) and it will save her a lot of time if I put the whole thing in a word doc for her. So every time I finish a fic, i put it in the word collection for if I decide I like it enough to bind one day.

OKAY THAT WAS A LOT! sorry, I yap. this is one of the thing's I haven't talked about in a moment so it's nice to be like ahhh here's my process lmao. thank you turkey, I really like when you pop into the box to ask questions. you've been a real light recently Joining all my favorite anons <3

[thetaekookcloset]

Checking In ~! (And Signing Off)

Hello, everyone!

I logged in for a few minutes today just to check in on some other blogs, and I knew some people would probably see that I've been online so I wanted to say a quick hello and thank you to everyone who's been looking for me, thinking of me, and sending in sweet comments saying that you've missed the blog -- thanks so much for thinking of me!

I thought I'd give you a few rapid-fire answers to some questions I've seen since logging on and that have been floating around, starting with why I've been gone. The honest answer is that I never intended to run this blog forever, which is why I worked so hard to make sure it was well-organized, so that it could remain as a resource even after I moved on from it. I've had a lot going on in my life for the past couple of years, including buying a house with my partner and making a new best friend (you know who you are lol love youuuu), not to mention keeping up with all the members' solo projects! For the most part, I felt that I said what I had to say, and so I've been putting my fandom energy into other areas.

That said, there have of course been developments since I've been gone, so let me address some of them briefly.

Several people seemed to want to know how I feel about Taennie these days. I feel the same as I did before. I would be pretty damn surprised if anything legitimate were to ever come out about Tae and Jennie being involved. Everything that links them together is flimsy and circumstantial at best, whereas Jennie's links to G-Dragon have remained consistent and compelling, and regardless of Taehyung's relationship with Jungkook, I feel pretty confident that he is, shall we say, not especially interested in women in that way.

As for the developments in Jikook's relationship, and more specifically in the common Jikooker narratives lately, I feel the same as I always have. I think Jungkook and Jimin are clearly good friends who are very comfortable with each other. I'm glad they have each other close by for their military service as forced conscription must be hard on anyone and those two in particular seemed less than enthusiastic about the experience. I do not, however, believe that it would be safe for them to enlist together to potentially stay in close quarters if they were in a romantic relationship, nor do I think they would be put together by the company for content like a whole duo show, complete with photobook and merchandise, if they were in a relationship.

Taekook, on the other hand, proved again and again throughout 2023 that they were seeing each other often, keeping up with one another's lives and work, and remaining as close as they always have been, as there is and always has been ample evidence to prove. A few of my favorite moments: Tae saying that Jungkook would sing him "To Find You" from Sing Street, a song about being destined to find someone despite not believing in fate, and pulling up Jungkook's cover to listen to, while Jungkook was away; Jungkook mentioning Tae unprompted, like sharing his memory of going snowboarding with Tae and his friends when asked to talk about why he chose "Ditto" for his Spotify interview and mentioning that he loves the song "Golden Hour" during a live; Tae playing "For Us" and doing a little boxing move when JK happened to be in California; Jungkook asking Taehyung "Where have you been?" when he showed up late to Inkigayo -- I could go on honestly, probably forever, so I'll make myself stop here.

That's part of the thing with this blog. I could go on and on, and I have so much that I love and want to do and say, so many other directions I want to spread that energy, so I don't plan to stick around. But I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has missed me; I genuinely didn't anticipate that, and it means a lot. I hope you're all doing well, and finding spaces for yourselves in this wild fandom we share.

TL;DR -- I'm sure the question anyone would most want me to answer is just this: Do I still believe in Taekook?

Yeah, I do. More than ever before really. I think their relationship speaks for itself, more than I ever could, for anyone willing to listen.

Borahae!

[taevescence]

Hello! Im the girl who asked that one shot about Taehyung :D, i saw that you reached 300 followers, first of all, congratulations, you deserve it 😊, and secondly, I wanted to ask you for a hc of Tae in love with reader, being just friends 🍁, thanks for everything, take your time 💜

a/n: Hi! It's a pleasure to meet you, you don't know how much I adore you. Really the requests you do are the best, I feel so comfortable doing them and it's so easy to work like that, thank you so much for that <3 I hope you like this one as well as the other one and thank you so much for the congratulations. taglist: @thunderg @minjianhyung @queenv1997 @yoongtism @lizzymizzy-blogg @superbbananananana @drpepperobsessed @themwordsblog @taekritimin123 @bluecloudss

Best friend Taehyung who: it took him years to realize how he felt about you, and when he did, he was desperate to let you know in every way possible. Taehyung's fingers rested nonchalantly on the warm cup of tea in his hands, his eyes fixed on your face and how your expressions changed every time you tasted a different chocolate from the box in front of you. He let out a slight chuckle as he watched you accidentally stain the corner of your lip with the bunny shaped chocolate you had just eaten, there was something about the way you smiled at him and talked about how delicious it was that generated a much stronger warmth than his cup to his hands. "Y/N, come here," he beckoned you with his free hand, stretching it out until he had your face in his grasp. His fingers lightly brushed your cheek as he wiped the chocolate from the corner of your lip with utmost care. His attention was entirely on your lips and how you puckered them as you realized there was a stain you hadn't felt; there was something about your pink, glossy lips that enticed him to caress them, to kiss them. "Tae?" you murmured with a slight frown, "what's wrong? can't you get the stain out?", Taehyung's gaze returned to your eyes, briefly snapping him out of his reverie. "Shit" he whispered, letting go of your cheek and dropping his back against the back of his chair. He ran his hand through his hair, tugging at it as he watched your face with new eyes, how had he not noticed before? "Y/N, I need to make a call, wait here" he stood up awkwardly, almost running to the street outside the coffee shop you were in. He searched through his contacts for Jimin's name, his fingers twitching as he dialed him and listened for the typical beep they played while you waited for the other person to answer. "Taehyung?" asked Jimin on the other end of the line, but was completely ignored by Taehyung, "I'm in love with Y/N" he mumbled as he looked at you through the glass window separating the store from the street, a slight smile growing on his lips, "And you just noticed?" for the second time, Taehyung ignored what Jimin said, feeling a pressure in his chest as his brain processed the discovery, "How do you think I should propose to her?".

Best friend Taehyung who: would pay attention to every single thing you say or do, knowing you so well that he would even notice mannerisms that even you didn't know you had. You grimaced as you felt a pounding headache brought on by the bustle of the place, who knew restaurants could be so noisy? You lowered your hands to your lap, clasping them both together tightly enough to forget the pain in your head and focus on the one in your hands, "Does anything hurt?" whispered Taehyung next to your ear, taking one of yours between his, "You're doing that thing with your hands." You took a second to watch his large hands cover yours completely, only to return to his face and the worry that adorned it, "What are you talking about?" you cocked your head slightly, trying with all your might not to grimace as you felt a particularly sharp twinge in your head, "You always clench your hands when something hurts" he clarified, his gaze studying every action you took for a sign of what specific place it was that was causing you so much pain, "Oh, I didn't know…. " you looked at his hands again, slightly surprised that he had noticed, "my head has been hurting for a while now, the noise doesn't help much, but-" before you could finish, Taehyung stood up from the chair and apologized in a low voice, helping you up as well, walking -still hand in hand- to the exit, "You should have told me earlier, did you endure the pain a lot? " you felt a light squeeze on your hand, laughing softly unable to help it, "No, Taehyung, I'm fine, it's just a little migraine, it will pass soon," you said with a chuckle, letting him lead you to his car, "anyway, why did you leave too? I could have taken a cab," an overly dramatic gasp came from his heart shaped lips, turning around so fast you almost bumped into his chest, "And having to put up with those six idiots without the light that brightens my days… nights in this case," Taehyung smiled big as he saw you laugh again, his fingers gently caressing your knuckles as he heard you say how stupid he sounded. He could be stupid if it made you laugh like that again.

Best friend Taehyung who: would talk to you about his feelings for you by pretending to talk about someone else just to get your opinion. Taehyung stirred the milkshake in his hands, his eyes vacillating between whether to look at your face or the floor. "And what did you say her name is?" you asked, taking a sip of your strawberry slushie, you leaned your back against the backrest of the wooden bench you were both sitting on; it was nice to sit for a while and just talk about simple things while watching the Han River turn an orangey yellow due to the sunset. Taehyung cleared his throat, "Her name isn't important, what is important is the fact that I like her, like, too much, and I'm not sure if I should just take a chance and tell her or not ruin our friendship…" he stirred in his seat, feeling a new uneasiness plague his mind. He hadn't thought much about it at first, but what if you didn't feel the same way? What if you were already in love with someone else? And more importantly, what would he do if this broke your friendship? "I think you're tormenting yourself too much, you know?" you smiled at him in the most reassuring way you could, starting to notice the anxiety and worry the whole situation was generating in him, "if everything you told me before is true, then I'm more than sure that you both feel the same way." Taehyung turned to look at you so fast that for a moment you thought his neck would break, "Are you serious?" he set the plastic cup of his milkshake down on the floor, using his hands to take yours; the earlier worry about how the relationship between Taehyung and his crush might end seemed to no longer matter to him, "Of course it does! Besides, you're an amazing guy, why wouldn't she like you?" you squealed softly as Tae's hands pulled you to his chest, pressing you against him in a tight bear hug, "Oh my god, you don't know how much I adore you, Y/N, you're the best!" he left a soft kiss on your forehead, pulling away just enough to be able to meet your eyes. You convinced yourself that that sparkle in his eyes was due to the evening light.

Best friend Taehyung who: would support you in all your decisions without a second thought as long as it didn't affect you in a negative way. Taehyung came out to the rooftop of your building, sighing in relief as he saw you standing in front of the railing that separated the ground from the void. He approached you quietly, taking off the jacket he was wearing so he could cover your bare shoulders with it, "Something wrong going on in that pretty little head of yours, sweetheart?" he whispered, making sure the jacket covered every bit of skin your clothes didn't cover. "I'm too upset… and sad" you muttered with your eyes fixed on the rest of the buildings surrounding yours, each one bigger than the other, each one more expensive than the last, "it's my life, why can't I choose what to do with it?" you let out a sigh, a small cloud of smoke escaped your lips and disappeared into the dark night sky. Taehyung leaned his arms on the railing, but unlike you, his gaze was fixed on the stars, "May I give my most sincere and humble opinion?" he smiled as he watched out of the corner of his eye as you nodded your head, he took a breath of air, trying to sort out his thoughts a bit, "I think you should do it, what difference does it make what your family thinks? You worked hard for years to get that promotion, you shouldn't, no, you can't give it up just because your parents don't like the idea of you traveling often… it's your dream, something you've wanted for over a decade, don't let them take it away from you" he turned to you, a smile barely visible on his face, "unless you forget to call me every day when you leave, if you do that I forbid you to set foot on the plane" he said with a mocking tone, resting the tip of his index finger on your forehead. You laughed along with him, feeling a tear escape from your left eye, "Thank you, Taehyung, you are the best friend ever" you hugged him tightly, hiding your face in his chest. His hand paused on your back, gently rubbing it as he rested his chin on your head, ignoring the sharp pang he felt in his chest at hearing you call him 'friend'.

Best friend Taehyung who: would constantly dream about you and what his life would be like if you were together. A big smile took over Taehyung's face when he saw your back moving back and forth in the kitchen as you hummed a Lady Gaga song. He approached you from behind, trying to make as little noise as possible, his hands coming forward and preparing to trap your waist between them as soon as he was close enough. "I can hear you, Tae" you hummed as you stirred the pot in front of you, laughing softly as you felt a whimper behind you , "You're so mean to me" he mumbled, pouting in a vain attempt to give you grief; he stopped when he noticed you were too focused on what you were cooking. He finished moving closer to you and wrapped his arms around your waist, kissing your shoulder tenderly. "Are you wearing my shirt?" he hid his face in your neck as he heard you say yes, the warmth so characteristic he felt every time he was with you became even greater, as if that was possible, "It looks amazing on you… why don't you keep it?" he whispered over your ear, feeling a little more confident as he saw the effect he had on you and your body, "Because it looks amazing on you too" you whispered, feeling your cheeks light up as Tae's kisses moved down your neck to your shoulder. His grip became even tighter, pulling your body closer to his, "You can't even imagine how much I love you, honey" he murmured between kisses and bites against your skin, preparing his ears to hear your response, "Tae, I…" he let out a loud gasp as he felt something hit his head, opening his eyes lazily, looking around the room. This wasn't his kitchen, and you weren't there. He growled under his breath, banging his head against the floor again, "You always end my dreams at the most important moment!" he shouted towards the ceiling, frowning. At least this time you had reached to say something.

Best friend Taehyung who: would propose in the most clichéd and romantic way possible. Taehyung's heart almost exploded as he felt the front door of your apartment close. He quickly checked that every detail was where it needed to be; the candles, the light blue rose petals, the flowers, the food, the speaker, him. "What's this?" he heard you say from the doorway, his breathing getting faster and faster as he felt your footsteps sound louder, "Oh, Tae? What…?" you stopped as you took in the whole scene in front of you. The path of rose petals that had greeted you at the entrance ended right in front of your table perfectly adorned with a three candle candelabra, a lace tablecloth and two wine glasses; in front of the table stood Taehyung, wearing a full beige suit that contrasted perfectly with the colorful bouquet of flowers he carried in his hands. You felt your throat tighten at the sight, "Y/N I…. " he swallowed saliva, awkwardly approaching you, stumbling - and almost falling to the floor - from stepping on some of the petals, "I-I'm not sure how to start this, I went over the speech so many times in my head, but I don't really remember anything at the moment and-" his eyes stopped on your face, feeling his mouth go dry as he paid attention on how you looked; your loose hair stretching down your back, your lips just a little pink from the lipstick Jimin had bought you a few weeks ago, your cheeks flushed and your bright eyes fixed on his. For a second his heart stopped and his brain stopped working, simply saying what he felt in those moments, what he had been feeling for you for years "I love you".

Masterlist.

300 followers party.

[system-of-a-feather]

hi hello it's @starringmycoffee (on anon bc my main is not the same)

would you be willing to share how you go about seperating again after functioning as One Entity for a long time? what is that like for you? if you don't want to share, that's totally fine! i just think you are very smart and i love your posts

Tbh its kind of a "ya know what, fuck it lets just be our individual selves" and leaning into it. A lot of DID in our experience is So much fucking Self-Fulfilled Prophecies and most of our recovery involved a lot of us playing with our head like a guinea pig with it. We've actively and regularly practiced radically just changing what we believe about ourselves and our concepts to influence how our system functions and works a lot and it's done us a fuck ton even before fusion and what not in navigating issues. The hard part is actually Genuinely changing how you think and what you believe rather than just telling yourself what you want to, and so its an art we've practiced for years and operating as separate parts at a will / whim is a very SPECIFIC version of that art that we have actually spent dedicated time playing and experimenting with.

We actually started from a functional multiplicity place where we practiced fusing for short periods at a time and back then it was easier to re-divide back into individual parts. Then we kind of weaned off of being seperate parts until our new baseline was a fused state, but like... it was super easy (and often unintentional) to unfuse so its just really about remembering how to use our brain to operate in the way I have for years and just... doing that again.

I make it sound incredibly easy, but honestly during a lot of our recovery and a shit ton more after, we / I spent a shit ton of time actively exploring and observing and playing around with my ability to control my own mind. May it be actively Pavlov-training myself to control switches or radically pushing myself to see how well I could change my perspectives and core values and just how much I can take unconscious awareness of how I exist and how I relate with myself; its something that's been a very deep and primary interest of some of our parts and a thing our whole has very deeply enjoyed.

One of the reasons we are as into Buddhism as we are is because Buddhism is almost entirely about curating deeper awareness of yourself and intentionality about your relationship with your mind, and I just very much enjoy developing and having fun with that meta-relationship I have with my mind.

Changing from singular-operating to plural-operating, from no dissociation to mild dissociation, from wearing one hat to the next, etc is just a practice of a larger art form for me. I like to think I've become very very good at authentically changing myself in radically dramatic ways to suit what I want to be at the time.

Honestly, its really nothing special at all for me tho. I just decide to mentally operate in a different way, lean into it a bit, and viola, I'm operating in an entirely different way and that's cool.

For me, when it comes to how I exist internally, a lot of things if I want to do something, I'll just do it.

It's also important to really note that "I" don't really exist, at least not in any way that really fits into the Western / American standard of self, let alone the Heavily-Westerned-Influenced standard understanding of self when discussing plurality and/or DID.

"I" am just this undefined but chronically present background existence. Riku, XIV, Ray, Chunn, Tae, Dhalia, etc; they are selves, parts, people, they "exist" as concepts and forms and depictions and states of being that "I" take form in, and I gladly wear them like clothes in my closet or paint with them like colors on my palette, but like, I don't really subscribe to having a concept of self as a whole other than that "I am me / whatever I am at this very millisecond and that is always changing"

So for me, operating as individual parts is more like just choosing to wear my Blue Suit that I bought as a coordinated outfit OR my goth GF outfit rather than an amalgamation of all the 500 outfit sets I bought. It's not anything that much different than I usually do, I'm just picking a set that's familiar and that I use / used regularly because its easy, comfortable, and a very practiced and rehearsed way of being.

Sometimes I can't come up with a good amalgamation for the moment and so sometimes I just feel like being a Goth GF or maybe a Vampire Hunter or a lazy fuck in a T shirt and shorts. Sometimes I'm going to an event that has a dress code. Othertimes fuck it Ill take some from everything idk man

TLDR; there really isn't a huge "how" I do it other than that I just Do It and its easy for me because I just have that sort of a relationship with my sense of self and my relationship with my mind.

I think it would be a lot harder for me to do if I actually built Feathers / my fused whole as an actual identity / having an actual sense of self / as a thing that actually identifies as a "person", but our fused whole very explicitly doesn't really identify with those notions.

People who do actually have a collective identity that is defined, identifies as a person with a sense of self, and an individual probably would have a lot more difficulty going back and forth, but my fused state is largely me just letting go of the concept of self and identity and being greatly at peace without those concepts. My "operating as parts" state is just me kind of deciding to grasp at one of the many I have.

Like... try letting go of a ball and then picking it up. It's that simple for me honestly.

[curio-queries]

Haiii.

Found your blog recently and I love reading your production notes :)

I'm going to probably explain this really badly 😝 but here goes.

I was wondering about your thoughts on how they used sound clips that were not from the footage the viewer is seeing in ep. 3? I'm not sure what you would call this type of editing but a moment I found peculiar was when they were trying on the North Face clothes.

We see the 3 of them going through the items/trying different things on, then we see JK trying a jacket, then Jimin with a jacket on turning around.

The audio doesn't match. You hear JK talk about the clothes. Then Jimin asking how he looks to JK. (not to mention how the messed up subtitle saga continues 🙄)

The second time I noticed the same type of editing happen was at the end of the episode at the go-kart place. After JK did his circling of his go-kart in front of Jimin & Taehyung, we see Jimin do that frog thing lol then we have a wide shot including both scenery and them in the corner chatting, then a drone shot, and the audio is of Jimin & JK talking about the day's activities with added music as well.

This second case felt right to me. It gave a bit of reflection and wrapped up the episode. 

But in the first case, I’m a bit confused. What was the creative choice there?

Not having appropriate footage of them (i.e. 1 person was not decent/not covered up) when they were having that conversation trying on the clothes? Then why use the audio at all? There wasn’t consistency in the use of this type of editing choice so it stuck out to me.

Anyways, just looking for some insight from someone with knowledge such as you.

Thank you 🥰

Hello there! I'm so thrilled you sent this in! I love chatting about this stuff and you helped me notice something with this scene as well.

To your point, yes, there are usually a few reasons why editors will play audio from one scene as a voiceover for another.

It's an extremely useful tool for transitions, helping to build a bridge between two scenes.

In traditional TV and movies it's also most frequently used as a bandaid to cover when they want to change the lines an actor says after they've already been filmed.

It also can be purely stylistic. They did this in this episode at the end of the bit where vmin talk to jk on his bike for their mafia/hitman role play. The final dialogue as a voiceover helped continue the fun and fantastical moment.

For the moment you mentioned when they're changing clothes, I suspect it's edited this way purely as a utility for one reason: The guys aren't wearing their mics so there was no audio that matched up with the moment they decided to show. I'd easily wager there was a brand deal with the North Face to have the members wear some of these clothes as product placement. In that case, brands usually will have requirements about how much screentime specifically highlights their product and my even require approval of the final segment. The guys are obviously used to this so they made sure to record some good dialogue when they did have their mics on but the footage we got is more dynamic than them just complimenting straightforward to a camera. That would be my guess as to why this specific moment was edited like this.

Fun fact though: Tae never put his mic back on after getting out of the pool until after they put these clothes on. And JK only donned his while JM was taking that pic that was only the top of Tae's head. I'd wager they flipped the chronology of when Tae took his scooter ride cuz he and JK both have mics on when he gets back and I highly doubt Tae wouldn't have walked right by him if Jimin was still asleep on the ground when he got back.

Anyway, thanks again for the ask. I may be incorrect about why anything was done this specific way in these episodes but it's fun to chat about the possibilities.

For everyone that's new to my blog (and there are a bunch of you suddenly!), may I also point out two of my sideblogs that you may be interested in?

@bts-polls is a daily poll blog for bts, army and such.

@aspec-kpop is just a gathering place to share perspectives of those of us on the ace-aro spectrum as we experience the kpop world.

Okay, end of shameless plug!

Edited to add:

Are You Sure?! MasterList

[manias-wordcount]

Hello, could I please request Kawakami and Takemi (separately) with a reader that calls them mommy? At first by accident but later on on purpose. I would appreciate if you could make it partly nsfw but not fully.

I really hope this isn't too detailed and feel free to disregard parts of the request if it is and thank you in advance if you decide to accept this request.

Accidentally Calling Her "Mommy" HCs (Sadayo Kawakami, Tae Takemi)

𝗔/𝗡: 𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆!

𝙒𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚? ⇒ 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩

𝙟𝙤𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙧?

𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙚?

Sadayo Kawakami

Didn’t catch it at first

In fact, she only realized it when you started to freak out and apologize LOL

She was really taken aback at first since she hadn’t been feeling like a good teacher lately and didn’t feel like she gave off those vibes

Super hesitant to accept all the times in the future that you did make the same mistake

But eventually, she got tired of the apologizes and just said to hell with it and decided to let you call her that

So both were still really really shy about the term for a while

But eventually came to accept it more or less

To be honest, she’s more receptive of being called “mommy” when in the bedroom lol

Just something about you calling her that in that specific setting really gets her going

Maybe it’s all that time working as a maid for that company finally getting to her LOL

Tae Takemi

Definitely takes it in stride lmao

(You know she had to have been called that in past relationships, right?)

So she probably answers to it immediately and then laughs in your face when you start to get embarrassed

After a couple of more slip-ups, she starts encouraging it since you clearly associate that word with her already

And suddenly “Mommy” has just replaced almost every other pet name you’ve ever had for her

In private, at least (unless you got the balls to say in front of other people haha)

So after a while, you start using it very casually and it starts becoming just part of your vocabulary with her

Like to get her attention, in simple conversations, just whenever she’s arou

And so far, Takemi seems to really enjoy it from you

Especially whenever you end up saying it in the bedroom LOL

[moonchild-in-blue]

hello! I'm a new sleep token fan and have been gathering as much as I can about lore and such as i listen to all of their music on loop lol. i have been haunted by the thought of BTS vocal line covering the songs from Two since I heard it for the first time and hope you can appreciate the thought too, have a lovely day 😁💜✨️

HEY. HELLO. COME BACK HERE. YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT 🫵

No because my first thought reading this was Jungkook (or even Jin) covering Nazareth and now I can't rest. Or Tae - he *is* probably the closest to Vessel timbre-wise, what with his deliciously low baritone voice.... Mmmmmmhhhh yeah. Thinking things.

Jericho would fit Jimin nicely me thinks. Obviously he has a very airy, soft higher pitch, but when he gets low and raspy is SO NICE. I'm thinking of the Tony Montana performance specifically - that was gorgeous.

Anyways. Big brain, galaxy brain. 💜

[jmdbjk]

Paving The Way

I might get cancelled for this but I want to talk about something controversial.

Specifically: Paving The Way.

It has come to my attention that some of the other members of BTS feel like they can just fling their nipples all over the place as if it's nothing. I mean, like wtf is the problem with them?

They need to remember these nipples Paved The Way:

The audacity.

In case anyone has forgotten, Jimin Paved The Way Of The Nipple Road ... yes those are Jimin’s nipples the members are walking on or behind or whatever. Their nipples are possible because these Paved The Way:

My little anchovy worked his nipples off for ten years though they did go into hiding for a while (why?) I don’t know maybe BT21 took the "living rent free in my mind" thing too far and needed a job for a while.

This wasn’t my time but back in the day, women protested by taking off their bras and burning them. I don’t know where I was going with that except all I know is that Victorian era is over because we’ve not only seen Yoongi’s naked shoulders ...

...we’ve seen Tae’s nipples ...

...and almost RM's crotch which he deleted. Why is he always the awkward one? Anyway, I digress...

And finally, bunny nipples which is funny because now he is just so... hello! here they are! .... after YEARS of split second peek-a-boo Fake Love. And his little "I was shy posing without a shirt"... my ass... he ain't looked back since he felt the ice cold air conditioning on his little b... anyway, THE AUDACITY!

Just remember... these are the ones that Paved The Way:

Rant over...