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Is this QL couple into that kink?

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PROOF THAT THEY FUCKED MORE THAN ONCE DURING THEIR FIRST TIME!

Ahem... puts on unrepentant slut hat.

In the above exhibit, you can clearly see that Pete's feet are NOT chained and yet in another cut of the same scene, we see them chained WHICH MEANS! MULTIPLE! ROUNDS! OF! SEX! I'm goddamn Sherlock Holmes!

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Brotherhood in the Theerapanyakul Clan

The finale of KinnPorsche brought this absolutely stark realization to my mind on how differently the brothers of each family interact with one another. We have the fathers, Korn and Gun, who for the entirety of the season are at each other’s throats, making the relationship between Main and Minor families incredibly tense. They made their sons into perfect enemies, creating a rivalry so deep that every bad thing that happened to one was the result of the other. When Kinn succeeded, Vegas paid the consequence of losing to his cousin. Vegas was constantly told by his father to keep an eye on Kinn, to always stay a step ahead of him, to lie, cheat and murder to get an advantage over him. Kinn was told that the minor family were out to get him, his family his biggest threat.

We don’t know how Korn and Gun got this way. We see glimpses of half-truths during the finale, with both brothers accusing each other of killing Nampheung’s husband. Korn accuses Gun of assaulting their foster sister, and uses that as the excuse to why he kept her locked up for years to protect her from Gun. There is a moment where Gun shouts “you’re worse than our father” to Korn, which clearly indicates both sons suffered abuse from their father probably in the same way they dispense abuse over their own children (korn being mentally abusive while gun is more physical). What fully cements the vicious relationship between the brothers is the fact that Korn can shoot his brother dead in the third eye for the sake of keeping his twisted web of lies intact.

However, as toxic and volatile as the main and minor families are with each other, the harmony that exists within the brothers of both families, especially in times of crisis, is astonishing.

At first glance, the Theerapanyakul brothers of the main family seem to be off in their own worlds, unconcerned with what the others are doing. However, Kim created a whole murder board to figure out who his brother’s new bodyguard was and who could possibly be the mole amongst their staff all while not living in the house. Kinn got worried every time Khun left the house and even joined him on his second outing as a way to ensure his brother’s safety as well as appearing at the drop of a hat when Kim called him for assistance, no questions asked. And Khun, a big brother for the ages, who despite having PTSD and social anxiety (most likely) was the most logical during the Tawan situation and found a way to help the family during the shoot out in the finale. Not to mention his trust and love for Porsche was spectacular throughout the series, especially once he learned of his significance in his brother’s life. When Korn fakes his death, the three brothers find solace in one another’s presence, although their reactions to his “death” are very different. Kinn, twisting his ring on his finger, clearly realizing the true weight of it now. Khun crying his eyes out, the one who least likely saw the evil in their dad, saddened by the loss. Then there’s the ever suspicious Kim, either skeptical at the news or aware of what’s to come.

On the other hand we have the minor family brothers, Vegas and Macau. We don’t get a single scene of the brothers alone together, but from the little we get of them, it’s evident they love and care for each other. Macau is still in high school so he’s obviously not as involved in the mafia business yet, but he’s enough of a presence to already be a disappointment to his father. While Vegas lives trying to gain the validation of his father, he also lives to protect his brother. We see him turn red with rage when Porsche splits Macau’s head open, evidently willing to kill for his younger brother. The scene at the end with Pete in the hospital room also establishes a loving relationship between the two, Vegas placing a soft kiss on both Macau’s and Pete’s cheeks, signifying these are the two people he loves the most in the world.

Among the many things KinnPorsche as a series did well, establishing clear lines of trust and love amongst the younger men of the Theerapanyakul lineage was a refreshing take on a tired family rivalry troupe. Kim could’ve been trying to usurp Kinn with his behind the scenes machinations. Kinn could’ve secretly resented the hell out of Khun. Vegas could’ve hated having to take care of someone else when he could barely care for himself. Growing up in such a toxic environment, seeing the older generation at each other’s throats could’ve inspired the same in both sets of brothers, but I think this is the one thing that made them stronger. In a world when you can’t trust anyone, what are you left with if you can’t trust your own blood.

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Searching best practices on JSTOR

Hi Tumblr researchers,

As promised, we're going to dive into some best practices for searching on JSTOR. This'll be a long one!

The first thing to note is that JSTOR is not Google, so searches should not be conducted in the same way.

More on that in this video:

Basic Search on JSTOR

To search for exact phrases, enclose the words within quotation marks, like "to be or not to be".

To construct a more effective search, utilize Boolean operators, such as "tea trade" AND china.

Advanced Searching on JSTOR

Utilize the drop-down menus to refine your search parameters, limiting them to the title, author, abstract, or caption text.

Combine search terms using Boolean operators like AND/OR/NOT and NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator finds keyword combinations within 5, 10, or 25 words of each other. It applies only when searching for single keyword combinations, such as "cat NEAR 5 dog," but not for phrases like "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog.

Utilize the "Narrow by" options to search for articles exclusively, include/exclude book reviews, narrow your search to a specific time frame or language.

To focus your article search on specific disciplines and titles, select the appropriate checkboxes. Please note that discipline searching is currently limited to journal content, excluding ebooks from the search.

Finding Content You Have Access To

To discover downloadable articles, chapters, and pamphlets for reading, you have the option to narrow down your search to accessible content. Simply navigate to the Advanced Search page and locate the "Select an access type" feature, which offers the following choices:

All Content will show you all of the relevant search results on JSTOR, regardless of whether or not you can access it.

Content I can access will show you content you can download or read online. This will include Early Journal Content and journals/books publishers have made freely available.

Once you've refined your search, simply select an option that aligns with your needs and discover the most relevant items. Additionally, you have the option to further narrow down your search results after conducting an initial search. Look for this option located below the "access type" checkbox, situated at the bottom left-hand side of the page.

Additional resources

For more search recommendations, feel free to explore this page on JSTOR searching. There, you will find information on truncation, wildcards, and proximity, using fields, and metadata hyperlinks.

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Collection

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Random info: Arthee is Porsche’s uncle from his father’s side. Porsche uses “aa” (ep 12 - 54:20). “If it’s your father’s younger brother then uncle is อา (aa). If it’s your mother’s younger brother then uncle is น้า (náa). If it’s your parent’s older brother then uncle in Thai is ลุง (lung).”

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There’s nothing left. I’m here, Vegas. I’m here. 

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Vegaspete for @answermywearyquery ☃️🌲✨️ (for @kptssecretsanta 2024)

Bonus close up of my fav vegas moment 😌😌

Which was probably very obviously my fav part to draw

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I think Vegas probably stares out the window daydreaming about Pete's tummy. and then goes and mushes his face into Pete's tummy.

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For the AU meme: Pete never leaves the safehouse (up to you whether that's because he fails to escape or chooses not to.)

oh man. see this is a fun one because the thing about the safehouse is that it is always kind of running on a timer, and Pete knows it and Vegas is trying very, very hard not to.

I think I'm going to go with Pete choosing not to for this one, because that provides a particular flavor of downward spiral for me that sounds like fun. because the thing is, if we go with the course of canon events, where Pete thinks things are starting to change and then Vegas goes ahead and puts the chains back on him, rather than Pete taking his moment of Oh Hey I'm a Person and deciding to hang onto it, it is Pete giving up. Pete deciding that this is just how it is, and he can be, if not content with it, at least accepting, for as long as it lasts, which it won't.

because Pete knows that it can't - either Vegas is going to get caught holding him when he's supposed to have killed him and Pete has no illusions about who Vegas is going to choose in that scenario if he's pressed to obey (it's not Pete), or Vegas is going to get bored and kill him. Pete does not figure he's going to be in suspended animation in the weird no man's land that is the safehouse (and I am so fascinated by the safehouse as this kind of liminal space, especially for Vegas, but I could talk about that more later); this is a time-bounded exercise that will eventually end (in his death).

meanwhile Vegas also kind of knows this but it living as blissfully as possible in his fantasy where he can just kind of Keep Pete Forever and it'll be Fine. he's not thinking about it too hard, on purpose.

so now the two of them are in this very weird place where Pete is like "this might as well happen and it's not all bad" and Vegas is like "this is perfect, great setup I've got here, nothing could possibly go wrong" and I love that kind of psychological dysjunction where two people have two very different perceptions of what is going on.

and Pete does care about Vegas! and is certainly attracted to him and the sex feels good and sometimes he almost feels like a person again and it's kind of nice for now to feel, you know, wanted, even if it's not really real.

but the thing is the illusion is very, very fragile, and any time the cracks show Vegas does not take it well, which means he ends up taking it out on Pete.

basically I feel like this is going nowhere good. it's a downward spiral for them both and I think in the end Pete is right. in one of my fics (Fidelity) Vegas thinks:

If [his father] was still here then Pete probably wouldn’t be. Was that what it was? He had to trade one for the other?

and I think that's what it comes down to. in which case either Vegas kills Pete and implodes, or Vegas kills his dad and implodes. and Pete doesn't do so well in either scenario.

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Hello again! Another question. Do you have any strong feelings about websites (like Tumblr) using the word "archive" when you're an archivist? I'm talking about thoughts like "Well, this would be a pretty poor excuse for an archive if it was a real one"? I'm interested in any thoughts you have about the word being used to describe anything other than an archive maintained by trained, dedicated professionals.

The basic definition of an archive is a collection of materials, physical or born digital, that are stored in an organized fashion to be referred to at a later time. In a blogging sense, that generally involves being good with your tagging and metadata, because the entire point of an archive is for things to be found easily if they're needed.

If you look at my own Tumblr, I tag pretty excessively, and I have links to the tags people would most want to use linked on a page. That's a rudimentary finding aid - not detailed, like the ones I write and use at work, but one that gets the job done and allows people to find what they're looking for more directly.

AO3 is an archive that uses tags and metadata. So is the Internet Archive. But a personal blog can be a small scale archive so long as you're using an organizational system that you can understand if you need to find the things you're saving.

Having worked in museums for a lot of my career, believe me when I say that a lot of the time a physical archive is a mess when you first walk into it. Archival standards are a more recent development in our field, and although we apply them to new accessions that come in, there's often a backlog of old things not up to those standards that our predecessors worked on years or decades ago. Sometimes part of our job is cleaning that backlog up and getting things up to standard so they align with everything else, which is a lot of work.

tl;dr anyone can be an archivist on a smaller scale, but if you're working with an actual physical archive or a really large digital collection please at least use a system people can figure out so they can find things. That's the key. In the US, we often operate off of a manual called Describing Archives: A Content Standard that regularly gets new editions as things evolve, but that's only one example. At my current job we also use Library of Congress subject headings when tagging catalogue entries in PastPerfect. But all you need is a standard you can understand, and one other people can pick up easily if your archive is public!

I'm not in the business of gatekeeping. It's hard enough to get into this profession already as it is. A lot of archivists working for smaller organizations, like local historical societies, are volunteers with no formal training. The important thing is that they have the resources to do what they need to do, and I'd like those to be more widely spread around and accessible!

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Macau's no different...

This line has always unsettled me, and I've realized that may be because I'm misinterpreting what Vegas is saying here.

I've clipped this part of the scene, to give some context:

So, Vegas says that everything he loves has left him and that his life is pathetic. Pete counters by pointing out that Vegas has Macau - and this is the point at which Vegas says Macau is no different.

My brain has always connected this line with 'everything he loves leaves', with the implication being that Vegas is just waiting for Macau to leave too. But, it occurs to me now that this line may actually be connected with 'his life is pathetic', since Macau is also part of the unfortunate second family.

How do y'all interpret this line?

Here's a poll, that breaks things down a bit further to get at some potential nuance here:

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I was writing a lengthy comment about how Vegas and Pete being unable to develop friendship affects their (mainly Pete's) relationship with Macau but then I forgot the main point when typing. 😭 

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So. I think as a fandom we haven't talked about this nearly enough. Actually, I haven't seen it mentioned at all and I want to change that.

It's just a throw away line. The screen writers were probably like, "Hm, we need to make Tankhun say something relevant to the situation as a reason for him wanting to give Pete to Kinn and take Porsche. Ah, yes, a bizarre thing from the past with Macau and Pete, cool, throw that in." What the screenwriters didn't expect, I suppose, is me seeing that line and losing my mind over it. I've been thinking about it for months, it's kind of a problem.

Alright. How is this line significant? Well, it gives us vital information about 1. Pete himself and 2. Pete and Macau's relationship, because it sure af affects it later on, even though we never saw it in the show (we needed more Macau GODDAMMIT.) Ok, so first things first. Pete. I would like to everyone to know that this is the second time we get indication that Pete speaks his mind against things he believes are wrong to do. The first is during the mermaid scene in ep 2, the screenshot below showing what Pete said to Tankhun when he ordered him to feed Porsche bread:

Generally, throughout the show, we see glimpses of Pete's opinions being expressed at the Theerapanyakul sons, and while most if not all of those times he gulps them back down, the fact that he said them at all is significant to his character. He's not a pushover. He doesn't just blindly follow orders. He has *opinions* about what he sees and hears and he expresses them. And he's smart enough to not retort when those opinions are not taken seriously, being ignored or when he gets warned about them (a.k.a. the interaction he had with Vegas at the table in ep 4, this moment also lives rent free in my mind, thank you.) Back to Macau, what was even the situation with him that ended up making Tankhun asking Pete to tie him up? Was it just silly Tankhun being silly (that man is never silly, he knows exactly what he's doing)? Was it something serious that involved the whole family? Neither of those? Whatever it was, the most important thing is that Pete said no. And, in headcanon fashion, I believe Macau was present during that moment. Macau saw Pete refuse Tankhun's order, the order of someone from the main family, someone above Macau in status. He saw it and he remembers it to this day, because during the temple scene in ep 9, we get this:

Ok. I'm going a little feral over what my mind has come up with. What we're seeing here is Macau, a member of the minor family, the lesser family, making fun of Tankhun, the oldest son of the main family. The family Pete serves. And all of the people present know this. It's evident - to me at least - by the fact that Vegas says *nothing* about Tankhun. He just says Pete is alone as an answer to Macau's question. So, the conclusion of this is that Macau feels confident and comfortable with sharing his actual opinions about Tankhun to Pete, who's Tankhun's main bodyguard, which both brothers know about. Vegas is also comfortable and confident with allowing Macau to say those things and the reason I'm mentioning him as well is because we all know how protective Vegas is of Macau. If that endangered him in any way, he wouldn't allow it. A reason they're both comfortable, of course, is because Pete is below *everyone* in status. He's literally just a foot soldier, he has no power over them. But the moment he returns to the main family, he has protection against Vegas and his side. He's in his own turf, and Vegas cannot do shit to the main family bodyguards if the main family decides so, as evident by the whole Porsche&Macau situation in ep 2. Now, can we imagine for a hot second, if Pete reported that back to the main family, what would have happened? Probably nothing, I hear you say, and maybe you're correct. But the more suspicious (and angsty) part of me wants to believe that there would be repercussions for this. Tankhun can literally hit Vegas with a fucking tray if he wants to, because he dared eat at the same table as Kinn. He can order Pete to tie Macau up because...something something Macau is a brat I guess. He can do whatever the fuck he wants to them, even if they've done nothing wrong. Can you imagine what he would do if he had actual reasons to punish them? The thought makes me shiver but it's reality and it's evident from ep fucking 2, as mentioned above, when all Porsche gets for making Macau BLEED from the HEAD, is a little choking and a pat on the back. The same goes for Kinn of course. He threatened Vegas with a gun in his OWN FUCKING HOUSE because he kissed Porsche in ep 7. He says the line "Do you see my ring?" and everyone understands what that means. The main family can do whatever the fuck it wants to the minor family and you just have to shut up and accept it. In conclusion, where does that bring us to Macau&Pete post-canon? Well, there's the simple thing called "trust". Yes, Macau will not trust Pete immediately. Yes, I love seeing this in the multiple hospital era fics I've read. But, can I introduce the variable of that event shaping Macau's feelings about Pete to the table? Because holy shit, it's eating away at me and I love it so much to let it be ignored anymore.

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Hi! Lately, I've been trying real hard to start writing again after a break of a couple of years, and it's simply not happening. I took the break to begin with because I figured that I could pick up writing fic again easily when I felt less burned out. But each time I've tried since 2025 started I can barely get the words out. I keep telling myself I need to go slow and build up to it, but my brain blanks after a sentence or two, with or without an outline. I can force myself into a drabble or two, or even a flashfic, but it feels like pulling teeth the entire time. I even tried going back to old drafts and adding to them (unsuccessfully). Nothing works! I'm getting more and more frustrated and angry with myself for taking this long of a break from being creative. Do you have any concrete recommendations for what to do when the ideas/words/characters/whatever just aren't coming? My brain is mush.

(I love this blog. So excited to see you back.)

I'll tell you what I do, but I also want to encourage folks to add their thoughts on the notes. This is very much a situation that can be worked on in a million different ways, so any one particular take might or might not work. Often, frankensteining a bunch together is the better route.

I've currently got two creative hobbies: writing fic and making site skins for AO3. When a site skin isn't working, I just have to drop it. I've been attempting to redo my glowy blue Tron skin from like 4 years ago and every time I go back to it, I just get frustrated and need to stop. I don't have a clear idea of where I want to take it, and so nothing looks "right" because everything feels wrong. For site skins, I need to have a solid idea to latch onto in order to get anywhere with them.

For writing, it's kind of similar. It's a LOT easier to write when I have an idea that really lights a fire under me. However, I've found that I can write even if I just know what the end goal of the story is. Even if my ending is just "and then they bone" at least I know where I need to get my characters in the end, and that guiding principle is really helpful because most of what my characters do in the fic is going to be aimed at that end point.

I don't know if it's just the way that you've phrased it in this ask, but it seems like you can't see the story for the words. If you're focused too much on the act of writing then you might need to back away from that for now and work on just imagining the story first. Spend more time daydreaming or lying in bed staring up at the ceiling and picturing your blorbo in situations. Get into the habit of thinking about the story before you start writing the story. Then the writing part is just transcribing the picture that's already clear in your head.

I well understand the frustration that comes when you've got something in you and no way to get it out. Whatever else is happening, the way you used to go about writing fic doesn't work for you anymore and now you need to discover a new method. Maybe it's handwriting in a notebook instead of typing on a screen. Maybe it's dictating into your notes app. Maybe it's chatting it out with a bestie over coffee or in a DM. Maybe it's something else.

Let's see what other people suggest for you, and then you can cobble together a method of your very own. Good luck, anon! I'm rooting for you ❤️

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Still thinking about how hilariously normal and real life it was when Pete’s immediate reaction to Vegas, mouthful of blood, on the floor, midfight, looking up at him with big watery eyes and going “if i die today could you be the one that kill me 🥺” is to go “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?” Because yeah Pete me too