#basically Going in Style but explicitly gay

[piosplayhouse]

Hi! I came across a post complaining about the guy yuri poll and discourse aside, I vaguely remember you made a post about what is yaoi and what is yuri? I dunno if I dreamed this post up, but I've scrolled and scrolled and I can't find it. So, I wanted to ask (if you don't mind answering >.<), what is yaoi/yuri? (beyond the basic definitions) What counts as guy yuri and girl yaoi?

Uwaa ok so I will say Im planning to actually write a paper on this but I haven't done much research yet so ask in a few months and you'll hopefully have a better answer with cited sources. But here is a bit of what I'm conceptualizing at this point (corrections and additions very welcome!)

What set me down this path really was of course the fantastic Yaoizine hosted by tshirt3000, which includes a rather poignant author's note about broadening the definition of yaoi in public to the abstraction. Indeed, the actual origin of the term "yaoi" is an acronym for "yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi" (plotless, climaxless, meaningless) from 70s doujinshi spheres wherein it was used as a somewhat self-degrading term to define a specific type of porn-without-plot self-indulgent indie fancomic. These were of course, mostly of the male-male variety. However, as the Yaoizine makes clear, there's not really an inherent gendering within the word in any sense but genre expectation-wise. This becomes particularly salient in the case of perhaps one of the most famous wlw romances out there, Revolutionary Girl Utena. Tshirt cites an interview with the creator of the anime, Ikuhara Kunihiko, where he refers to the relationship between the two main female characters (among other things) as yaoi, recontextualizing the term from merely a mlm genre into a statement on the dynamics of power and consumption as they relate to gender-- an act of sexual passion paired with a reversal of societal norms = yaoi in this case, which is why utenanthy fits perfectly within the term.

Conversely, yuri (lily) is a bit more difficult to analyze from a gender-neutral perspective as it originated not as a counterpart to yaoi, but instead as a counterpart to bara (rose, a term used to refer to erotic gay male content) used when lesbians would write in to gay magazines trying to hook up and whatnot. However, it's pretty agreed upon that the genre grew out of Class S literature, a type of literature based on girls, often senpai and kouhai, going to an all-girls school together and experiencing a connection that straddles the thin line between romance and homosociality. Homosociality like this among women has historically been and to this day remains somewhat under the radar and perceived as a "phase" or an amateur attempt at romance before a woman eventually marries a man. This is where we see significant overlap between pre/early modern Japanese male homosexual literature and lesbian literature, where homosexuality is seen as a youthful phase that will inevitably be grown out of (as in the case with the chigo system, LUG (lesbian before graduation), etc). Essentially, it was very common for the characters of early modern queer literature (mostly written by queer authors btw) to have brief and passionate schoolyard flings before graduating onto "normal" sexuality. Of course, these narratives fell out of style and are considered dead today, but their remnants can still be seen in the subsequent shojo and modern gl manga boom. The yuri that grew from this in the beginning was usually explicitly erotic, but still somewhat held onto the predominant themes of schoolgirl innocence and youthful beauty. Over time, meanings and terminology shifted, and the "yuri" we use today is more interchangeable with "gl", meaning it's not so much of an indicator of explicit content as "yaoi" is. However, I would still argue that one of the largest indicators of a story's "yuri factor" (if you could say that) is its ties to the establishing homosociality progressed into homoromantic relationship genre expectation. Of course, there are many wlw stories that subvert this, (as there are many mlm stories that subvert the yaoi or even bl template) but to me, if you were to compare yaoi and yuri's theming, yaoi's focus tends to skew more towards the intimacy in explicit eroticism, while yuri looks more into the implicit eroticism in intimacy. If that makes sense.

Of course, when looking into "boy yuri" there's also a transfem-coding factor to consider, which I think is what the majority of people have in mind when they refer to a couple as "boy yuri". Historically, there is massive precedent for feminization between male queer couples in historical Japanese literature, as well as in early modern relatives of bl, mainly Inagaki Taruho's work, so it would be somewhat disingenuous to say feminization is a purely modern, female-created phenomenon. But anyway, those are my (somewhat messy and likely inaccurate) thoughts so far, let me know what you all think. Have a happy yaoimas and merry new yuri, as they say.

[thelesbianpoirot]

i don't really care about taylor swift one way or the other, but i love the fact the biggest celeb on earth rn is a woman who overwhelmingly dresses "comfortably" (outside of her dancing leotards you rarely if ever see her in something skin-tight or lowcut/etc, if you get me) and wears only "normal" makeup as opposed to drag queen makeup, etc. she's just a celeb to us, but to little girls growing up and seeing her that's GOT to have a mental impact. when i was growing up it was heroin chic kate moss super skinny, and it's never left me, the idea that i need to be under 100lb to have worth. i really hope all those millions of 8yo's looking at taylor singing her lil songs looking human have that imprinted on their psyche forever too.

I agree. I couldn't even pretend to give a fuck about Taylor, but the way people are obsessed with painting her like she's the devil, or that she is uniquely untalented has a lot to do with her image. For all the shaming they try to do with her dating life, she is pretty clean cut. They complain she is for basic white b*tches or say they hate her because of her carbon foot print, ignoring beyonce has sweatshops making her clothing for her fashion line or the impact of fenti. She is no different than any other wealthy celebrity. She's still very feminine, but in a closer to natural than the beauty standards of today. She's like 90s celebrity feminine, and she still has to diet, exercise, wear makeup, go to stylists, have micro procedures etc. I think it's one of the reasons people hate her. In a few ways she won't changed for them. She looks older, but generally the same as the day she entered the industry. This is quite the feat. I notice she is one of the few big named female popstars that gay men don't worship. Too many men say how much they hate her and how mediocre she is. And this is coming from men who worship Charlie XCX. And a large amount of libfem women hate her with a childish unfounded passion, while licking the boot of any untalented man or popstar sing explicitly about dick loving. Little girls and young women being obsessed with Taylor Swift isn't a problem, it's an improvement, just a few years ago they would be obsessed with a boyband, Justin Bieber or one direction. Swiftees aren't more unhinged or annoying than biebers, directioners or the beehive were/are.

However, I have to say, She isn't gay, people who think she is a closet lesbian are delusion on the level of flat earthers. That is my only beef with swifties.

It is hard to recover from the desire to be sickly skinny because it never really goes out of style. People are enamored with women looking like we're on the verge of dying, the only difference today is they want you to get a butt implant attached to your withering frame. People are going to the surgeon for hollowed out cheeks. Dickensian Orphan aesthetics pop back up every few years.

[lurkingshan]

Boys Be Brave is a show I want to love. I find the characters endearing, the show has a lot of visual style and great music, the actors are charming and funny, and the plot set up for both romances is intriguing. But some of its storytelling choices are getting in the way for me.

The biggest issue is this show is trying to exist in the nebulous space between a bubble and non-bubble show, and it's not working. It’s distracting that they keep subtextually alluding to queerness being part of the conflict between Jin Woo and Gi Seop but won’t actually come out and say it. Instead they are giving different textual explanations for Jin Woo’s reticence around relationships, like his withholding dad. I think this whole story would work better if they had him openly say he is gay and that is part of his struggle.

This week's episodes were a perfect example of why this is a problem. We have Gi Seop playacting as Jin Woo's ideal type, which explicitly involves feminization, and Jin Woo meeting and going on a date with a girl who fits his ideal type. Am I supposed to be reading Jin Woo as gay or not? Does he actually like girls or is he just trying to convince himself to like a girl? Has Gi Seop only dated girls before because that was his preference, or just because a guy has never asked him out? Is everyone in this show bisexual by default, or does the fact of their same sex attraction matter? Does either of them have any feelings specifically about being attracted to another boy? I have no idea because the show is avoiding the issue, and it's making it impossible to grasp the core of the characters' psychology.

They've basically designed this so you can read it either way, which I'm sure some people will be fine with but I personally find deeply unsatisfying. Choose your story and tell it with conviction! Don't leave your characters and their struggles vague and ill-defined so you can straddle a line that we are long past the point of needing to straddle in this genre.

[honourablejester]

Okay, normally this wouldn’t be something I’d go near at all, but I saw some things fly past my dash on the new James Somerton youtube controversy, and I vaguely remembered watching one of the guy’s videos a while back (I can’t actually remember which one, I just remember he was talking about growing up in a poor town where people were paid under the table as a regular fact of life? I can’t remember the topic, which maybe says something about the dude’s presentation style). So I got curious and watched first hbomberguy’s plagiarism video and then Todd in the Shadow’s misinformation video on the guy. The basic takeaway of which appears to be that 90% of his output is stolen, and the parts that aren’t are often wildly incorrect instead. Anyway. I realise this is a weird thing to get hung up on given the much more serious issues of, you know, plagiarism and theft and misogyny and frankly astonishing opinions on queer history, but …

There’s a section in Todd’s video (around 1.25.00) about Somerton’s interpretations of various vampire media from his video on ‘Vampires and the Gays that love them’, and I got to ‘Gary Oldman was the first fuckable Dracula’, and … what?

It’s around 38.10 in Somerton’s video, and the full quote is as follows:

“Again, the significant element here is how readily Coppola depicts a vampire who fucks, whereas Dracula is more prominently depicted as a reclusive humanoid monster. From Nosferatu, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Salem’s Lot, the Last Voyage of the Demeter, this figure has almost exclusively been painted white, and shown with clownishly monstrous features. But Coppola creates a monster for whom the audience looks at and completely understands what Mina is so horny about.”

I’m going to leave out everything else he says about Coppola’s Dracula, because … wow, there’s a lot of interesting opinions in there, but …

Christopher Lee. And Bela fucking Lugosi.

The man cannot be unaware of the two single most famous depictions of Dracula ever put on film, right? Dracula has been ‘more prominently depicted’ as the Nosferatu-inspired Count Orlok type monstrosities, and Coppola’s is the first ‘sexy Dracula’ on film? Like. What?

As Todd says, anyone even passingly aware of Dracula films is gonna go … Hammer? Universal? Bela Lugosi. The single portrayal that has been shaping Dracula’s iconography for nearly a literal century? THE film Dracula? The one literally everyone is going to think of?

Like. It’s such a weird choice. If he was going to say something about what you could get away with onscreen now vs in the 60s or 30s, or about the evolving tension between the sexier Draculas vs the more monstrous, which Chris Lee’s Dracula was an element of, a more visceral, animalistic portrayal vs Lugosi’s suave charm, arriving to what Coppola’s could actually explicitly put on the screen, but … This is framed like Universal and Hammer just didn’t exist. At all. It cherry-picks such a weird selection of examples of the Nosferatu style portrayals (and not even of Dracula, just vampires in general), and just flat never mentions the two single most famous Dracula film franchises ever made.

I’m curious what the comment section for this video was like. It’s been locked down now because of the controversy, so I can’t tell, but I’m assuming … I mean, that can’t have flown, right? As Todd says, literally anyone could have picked up on that one.

It’s just such a strange thing to choose to say. There maybe is a fair bit to say about ideas of sexiness in film across different decades, or if he meant that Coppola’s Dracula was the first to literally fuck on screen because of what could be shown in different eras, or even which Dracula he personally found most sexy, but …

Why would you choose to say, with a straight face, that Dracula has most prominently been depicted Nosferatu-style when literally anyone with the remotest knowledge of Dracula is going to point directly at Bela Lugosi and his ninety years worth of imitations and rejections and parodies and rebuttals? Nosferatu is a silent era classic and a periodic cult revival for vampire depictions, but THE movie vampire in popular consciousness is still Lugosi’s suave, sinister European nobleman in classy eveningwear. Any random Joe Soap off the street is gonna know that. Saying the Nosferatu depiction is the most prominent is just flat not true and everyone knows it.

Sorry. Again, I know this is a weird thing to get hung up on, but it’s such a weird choice. I get selective cherry picking of evidence to make your chosen point, but you can’t just ignore the one depiction that literally everyone knows and expect them to just nod along. Right?

Anyway. Weirdness aside. Carry on.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Glass Onion (2022): Mixed company, mixed feelings

This movie is very Current Year, even though it finished shooting in 2021 and is set in May 2020. One minor joke early on; Blanc plays Among Us during lockdown, because he's so bored.

I am not making that up.

I had the same issue with the first movie. I wasn't sure what all the Topical References™ added to the movie. And I know we love to say that great art is timeless.

But as someone who actually does read a lot of old, public-domain, popular books, many  had topical social issues in them. Heck, the first Doc Thorndyke book is about fingerprinting, which was cutting edge science at the time, and even makes a self-depreciating joke about it's inspiration, Sherlock Holmes.

I've enjoyed the odd Clancy or Connelly or Cussler or Cavanaugh or Patterson thriller. And those tend to be pretty topical. (obnoxiously so, in one case) Not to mention my love of the Vorkosigan Saga, which was so progressive in the 80s it's still progressive now.

I've also seen stories that had poorly integrated topical issues and much better-handled ones in the same show. The same episode, even.

So I don't know why the political stuff in the two movies rankled. I'd say my issue is "politics I disgree with", but I just mentioned enjoying a book series which is clearly waaay to my left.

Heck, both movies are blatantly inspired by Agatha Christie, and I distinctly recall topical stuff in my mum's old copy of *Third Girl*.

Like, literally the whole plot.

I read it a long time ago, but I think I'd still enjoy it.

Other, less important criticism. And spoilers.

-Blanc intially felt like a caricature, which was very different from the way he appeared in the first movie. turns out that's deliberate. He later says he was playing up the folksy Southernness.

Even though he's an internationally famous detective who lives in a $10,000,000 Park Avenue penthouse.

Don't ask me about the high-waisted pants, the cute little scarf around his neck, or the 19th century bathing costume he wears to the pool. Apparently his style in this movie was partially Daniel Craig's idea.

Also, he's gay.

It's not made explicitly clear during the film, and the guy he's living with could be a roomie or friend or assistant, but Johnson confirmed it. I'm not sure what it adds to the film, except an explanation for the scarf.

And also some irony when Birdie flirts with him, even though he's famous and probably publicly known to be gay. Heck, just his visible discomfort in those scenes would be irony enough, whether or not he liked women.

Miles Bronn -possible shallow Elon musk parody --he’s fooling people w/ fake genius, when he's really just a charismatic idiot. And one who gets swindled, possibly. -There's one bit of irony. Early on, Miles guests on his private island get a COVID vaccine. It later turns out Miles is an idiot.

Since the movie takes place entirely in May 2020, the implication is that Miles should know it's basically impossible to develop a proper vaccine in just a few short months.

Cough.

The actual main protagonist isn't Blanc, it's Cassandra "Andi" Brand and Helen Brand. Andi is a tech genius who Miles ripped off. And also murdered. So her twin sister Helen, a teacher, steps in.

Anyone familiar with the Trojan War is probably going "hey, wait a minute..." Did I mention that this takes place on a Greek island in the Aegean Sea? Which has Troy on its borders?

And the first things we see in the film are tantalizing wooden boxes?

Helen poses as Andi with Blanc's help, so they can investigate the murder and figure out which of Miles friends, “the Disruptors”, killed Andi.

Both Brands are played by Janelle Monae. A famously left-wing singer and actress, whose biggest film role was in the movie Hidden Figures, where she played one of a team of black women in STEM forgotten by history.

And in this movie, Monae plays two hidden figures, eclipsed by white men. One maliciously, one charitably.

Birdie --Birdie is an idiotic middle-aged singer who keeps getting cancelled because she does dumb stuff. -She sexually harasses Blanc. This is possibly why Blanc's gay, to make it extra ironic. -She's introduced at a party during lockdowns. When she arrives at the island, she wears a completely decorative facemask.

-Birdie prides herself on her honesty. In this case, it means she's inconsiderate and narcissistic, with no filter. Which makes it kinda ironic (or something?) when the day is saved in the end by a combination of lies and truth.

Duke -Dave Bautista plays an alt-right mra. Supposedly.

-He supports a girlfriend and his mother, who abuses him. He's  three or four times mom's size. He goes "Mom, I told you not to interrupt when I'm recording!" and she physically slaps him. Not even any ramp-up, she just does it.

She also tries to disrupt his call with his friends by "helping" him solve Miles' puzzle box, right up until it's done, and she stops caring.

So the show decided to mock MRAs by...making one a male victim of domestic violence and emotional abuse from a woman.

And from what I saw on Youtube, plenty of people didn't notice the irony. In fact, I found an official Netflix short of the scene, and the comments were glad he was getting "put in his place" because he politely asked him mom to let him do his job.

Also, remember when I mentioned how Birdie sexually harasses Blanc?

This movie includes two examples of the exact sort of issues MRAs talk about all the time.

-I know he's supposed to be a parody, but of who, exactly? jordan peterson? andrew tate? Pewdiepie? All of the above?

I think they even got some alex jones in there when they mention how he sold pills. Specifically, "performance" pills for men, made from rhino horn.

-Duke carries a gun near his crotch at all times for most of the movie. Specifically, an underpowered Tokarev, I've read. On top of the abuse, he also self-cucks himself so his GF can try and pillow-talk Miles into supporting Duke's next endeavour.

Subtle.

And while I was looking up the gun, I found someone on /r/liberalGunOwners saying "well, maybe it's supposed to look Russian because he's pro-Putin like a lot of right-wingers?"

That's possible, but it would be a really obtuse reference in a movie chock full of really blatant references.

-Also, there's something a tad ironic about a supposedly (alt-)right influencer being a large, muscular, tattoo'd Hispanic man. Unless that's supposed to be a tan.

Claire -Claire is a left-wing, environmentally friendly politician. She wears beige, and always looks terrible (to Katheryn Hahn's frustration). She's also a hypocrite.

Some TVTropes editor: it's about progressive politicans that gradually turn conservative.

No, the message here isn't "conservatives bad". It's "hypocritical left-wing politicians are bad". And I'm not sure about the "left-wing" part.

Duke is a hypocrite because he self-cucks for advantage, and is also physically abused by his tiny little mom. Claire is just a straight up liar, as politicians often are. There's a contrast between his performative peacocking in every aspect of the way he presents himself, and Claire's beige cold mess.

I'm not kidding. That was the stated intent of her costume and makeup.

-claire calls duke an MRA. I'm not sure if the writers were wrong, Claire's wrong, or Duke actually calls himself an MRA in-universe. He's certainly a traditionalist, which MRAs usually aren't. He also wants women to get back in the kitchen, which MRAs usually don't.

And finally, there's Miles’ No 2., tech wizard Lionel, who spins Miles' straw - or napkin ideas - into gold. In fact, he spends most of the movie with a gold wishbone pin on his lapel. GEDDIT?

Duke is a right wing tradcon MRA who cares about physical appearances even though he has a bad social rep, Claire is a left-wing progressive with a terrible physical appearance and a good social rep, Birdie is an idiot who keeps saying un-PC things, and Lionel is the smart guy, who is apparently more or less apolitical.

Also, the movie has obvious inspiration from Christie's "And Then There Were None". And maybe Clue. Or Among Us.

Or all three.

[cryzono]

Nondespair Ishimondo Timeline

Okay okay so I'm gonna like just go here im gonna just type im gonna go bananas but this is the ishimondo au that lives in my head

The Trauma

So let me set up the family dynamics okay. mondo has a shit dad and a decent mom but she ends up going to jail for killing the dad in self defense. Daiya is his half brother and his mom is said mom from earlier and mondo doesnt actually know his real mom, but that doesnt matter because she loves him like her own. So the brothers are on their own for awhile (re: dad is dead and mom in jail) and they start the gang. You know how this story goes of course; except this time, daiya LIVES (good for him!) and becomes disabled in the accident. This ties into some themes of ableism i've kinda added to the story on mondos part both internal and external. mondo is also really hurt in the accident, leaving basically everything on his left side really fucked up from being pushed onto the street by a moving bike. he Ignores This and its Bad For Him

Taka has decent parents but his grandfather was bad bad bad; his mom passed away when he was young but he remembers her very fondly and still has some items of hers. He was diagnosed with autism and adhd basically as soon as you can be and he diagnosed himself with gay relatively early on as well. He was pretty bullied at his old school, but spends much of his time there as it was better then being at home with his grandfather. he even worked to get scholarships for room and board at his high school, partially for that reason and partially to lessen the strain on his father.

High School

Okay so the meet of this is going to be in my 57k fanfic AYSCAWBHAY, but some of the gist is mondo coming to terms with being neurodivergent (audhd, dyslexia, and bpd isnt mentioned explicitly but i got a lot of people saying they felt seen as people with bpd by mondos portrayal and i honestly LOVE that headcanon and wish i thought of that) and kiyotaka and mondo navigating dating and ableist and homophobic society and trauma etc etc also friends!!

Future

KIYOTAKA RANCH TRUTHER i love kiyotaka becoming a farmer soso much but i think he also volunteers at the school a lot. Mondo is a carpenter and builds their ranch and its very cute but he also helps out with the animals. He finally comes to terms with his disabledness and gets a service dog (a poodle named charlie) and it helps a ton. Daiya rebuilds his bike and tricks it out so its accessible and also becomes a tattoo artist and worlds best uncle because ISHIMONDOS ADOPT A KID her name is Kisa (<yes she IS based on the character from fruits basket i have no shame) shes nonverbal autistic and is sensitive to loud noises which is at first definitely an adjustment for the VERY LOUD dads. taka bonds with her because he knows sign language and can understand getting overwhelmed by noise sometimes and she bonds with mondo because he does her hair and styles it in fun ways and lets her dye it. She loves fashion and is bullied in school but that ends when her big scary dad shows up on a motorcycle and her other scary dad joins the pta.

In summary: they live in my mind and its my city now

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 175 Rundown

The Witch from Mercury: So IMMEDIATELY after Sul’s duel with Gaston everyone goes ‘wait aren’t the suits that suck the life out of you banned because our war chief is a bloodthirsty dictator?’ and she immediately gets arrested and kicked out of school. Meanwhile Mio’s been told that she’s no longer forced to marry the school’s top pilot and her father is cutting out the middleman and just arranging a marriage for her which she’s like what 16 even for a high business monarchy style thing it seems a little early to lock that down that hard. Also just kinda wondering what the point of even playing at the ‘oh it’s whoever the best is’ if you’re just gonna immediately cut the façade whenever it’s someone you don’t want like why not just force a marriage from the start. Anyway Mio’s like ‘bitch I wanted to marry the gay girl how dare you take back your orders and give me new ones’ like she doesn’t like being told what to do but explicitly seemed a lot more chill about it when it was Sul. Gaston gets beaten by his father for losing and we allude to him being slightly less shitty than we were initially led to believe since he did send some people to clean up Mio’s garden. The bigwigs are all having a NERV-style meeting of shadowy figures and our resident obligatory Masked Gundam Character Prospera is like ‘yeah it looks and functions exactly like a Gundam but it didn’t suck her soul out so it can’t be one, right?’ and no one’s fucking buying that and also it’s a bunch of old men high on their own power so they’re just like ‘well you’re under arrest for building something that functions exactly like the thing we banned then’. Meanwhile Mio shows up, redicrecting her escape attempt to Earth to save Sul and telling her father off and basically having a badass teenage tantrum in a shareholder’s meeting, like it’s kinda cool how blatantly petty and personal her grievances are that it takes some balls to bring it up the way she does surrounded by the most important people in the world that just sentenced a masked lady to jail for technically not breaking the law. She challenges her dad to fight the Aerial and reinstate her engagement to Sul which he has absolutely no obligation to accept given idk if Corporations should really work on Klingon rules anyway and if you’re gonna take shit from him say if you win you get the whole company, go big or go home. But the group discusses that the illegal suit is pretty dope and they wanna get some more data out of it so they agree to let Sul fight to save her Gundam and her lesbian fiancée so that’s good.  

Inuyasha The Final Act: Inuyasha and co. are still soaking in Kikyo’s death and Koga gets an admittedly nice sendoff where he gets to leave on good terms with Kagome as well as get enough out of a rise out of Inuyasha to snap him out of his post-Kikyo coma and get him to resolve to make Koga’s sacrifice worthwhile. I like how Koga intentionally says the most triggering shit just to piss him off at this point like he’s really become self-aware as a character and knows what his role is. Also as another character that embodies the ‘the power to achieve your dreams is inside you’ moral of the story he started out seeking the jewel to obtain the power to unite the wolf demon tribes and ends up so strong that losing his jewel shards is basically just a minor inconvenience and ends up in a relationship that does in fact unite the fractured parts of the tribes. Meanwhile Sesshomaru is talking to his mom about trying to master Meidou Zangetsuha and ends up getting Kohaku and Rin dragged into the underworld during the training. I feel like Sesshomaru’s mom is such wasted potential like she has so little screentime and is basically a plot device they could’ve done so much more with. Once she reveals that Rin can’t be revived again by the Tenseiga Sesshomaru’s grief and compassion evolves both the healing and the meidou side of Tenseiga so he can purify a hundred souls as it was originally stated and create a much larger Meidou Zangetsuha, though Rin still has to be brought back with Mommymaru’s necklace of convenience. It’s really funny that Jaken takes it upon himself to be Sesshomaru’s emotion translator at this point since he knows he’s stoic enough not to cry when Rin dies despite wanting to and also won’t  thank his mom for saving her despite being thankful. Last but not least she tells Kohaku he also can’t be saved by Tenseiga in case people were starting to think that now that he and Sesshomaru are together, apparently you only get one free get out of death free card regardless of the source so yeah. Inuyasha’s group make it their new mission to hunt down and protect Kohaku so they can figure out what to do now that Naraku has 99.9% of the jewel.  

Castlevania: So I’mma be honest, this is where the Internal Vampire politics get kinda frustrating, like I’ve had it in the back of my head that all this infighting may just be a way to ruin Dracula’s otherwise impregnable plan and have a heroic victory while both evil sides are fighting each other and I’m still worried about that considering we’ve spent more time with them than with Trevor this season but in this episode we even find out that all the shit Carmilla wants to do Dracula would’ve just let her do anyway like he doesn’t give a shit, she wants to usurp his armies and the one move that she’s been gunning for since she walked in the door they’re just like ‘sure go nuts’ and the planning of the past like three episodes has basically been for that. I’m getting ahead of myself, Trevor’s group stuff first since we actually make some progress on that this episode. Basically Alucard gives Sypha the reverse speech that Trevor gave her last time about how he’s a dick and they can’t really trust him and like 75% of this show at this point is untrustworthy vampires telling people they can’t trust people. Sypha wisely asserts they’re both morons and they’ve gotta suck it up and get to world-saving or else everyone’s fucked. But yeah back on Carmilla’s weird warpath they don’t know Godbrand’s dead and Isaac is called by Hector to get him to sign off on going to Braila and get in on the Carmilla cult. Isaac is not down for Carmilla but he is for the Braila plan since it means everyone can shut up about it and Carmilla can stop whining so the politics of it don’t functionally matter, like it’s been such a long fight for this and it doesn’t functionally matter because they just do it anyway. Granted Isaac does it because it means their traitors are all in one place with a name and a face and Hector does it because everyone that talks to Carmilla is like ‘Carmilla is always going on about how she doesn’t trust or respect anyone but I’M DIFFERENT, I’M THE SPECIAL ONE’ like Godbrand was a fucking moron so that was fine but geez she’s not even being seductive enough for them to be thinking with their dicks they’re just idiots, she’s not even good at the manipulation considering if she’d just asked Dracula to do it he’s so done at this point he prolly would’ve. She doesn’t even bother to pretend this was Hector’s independent idea and follows him into the room coaching him and shit. Like the only functional thing this does is make Carmilla the Commander in Chief for this fight for… some reason, and like it’s not even a good argument because the two sides are ‘do something’ and ‘do nothing’ and Carmilla has the balls to be all ‘haha now you’re in too deep Hector so I don’t have to pretend to like you anymore’ like BITCH AS LEAST WAIT TILL YOU ACTUALLY HAVE THE REINS like holy shit all you did was convince Dracula to do something he wasn’t all that adverse to doing in the first place you’re not exactly Sosuke Aizen and she has this weird girl power bent to some of her speeches and I’d really rather girls just do the badass girl power thing instead of talking about how girly and empowered they are all the time. Long story short I don’t really like Carmilla and this plot had a really weird end to this section of the season for basically taking up half the runtime. Meanwhile, actual girl power girl Sypha found a way to trap Castlevania in one place as long as she can jerry-rig an ending to the spell that’s like 80% done but she doesn’t have a lot of time because the castle just showed up like… five minutes ago.

Jujutsu Kaisen: It’s Mahito versus Nobara time and apparently Mahito’s clone can’t transfigure souls and can only do the Clayface body warping shit and Nobara actually figures this out and uses the clone’s body as a substitute Straw Doll like she did with the other guy’s arm cause semantically the clone is basically Mahito’s arm and she wrecks him up from long distance, saving Yuji from an ambush in the process and giving him the opportunity to beat the shit out of Mahito while he’s stunlocked. Rather than keep going through that shit, Mahito employs the Joestar Family’s Secret Technique and books it the fuck out of there. The two Mahitos actually meet up and switch, the real one attacking Nobara while Yuji beats the other one’s head in. Mahito gives Nobara’s face a quick tap and isn’t sure if he killed her, like this whole exchange is excruciatingly vague about whether she’s dead or not but we jump straight into her backstory which isn’t a good sign. It’s basically a fleshed-out version of the story she told in the beginning of the series. I feel like this happens a lot where characters in long-running series have simple backstories at the beginning and then have a secondary supplemental flashback to beef up the tragedy or reframe the original flashback, half the cast of One Piece has done this at this point but for Nobara it’s an interesting retelling of her story through the eyes of her friends and giving a ‘this is your life’ type deal about who she’s loved and why she’s done what she’s done that gives a lot better of an idea of who she is than her original introduction. But yeah her eye fucking explodes which is weirdly not how we’ve seen Mahito’s powers work anywhere else but it was just a light tap while he was in a hurry and maybe her energy resisted it or something. Given that and the vagueness where even Mahito’s not sure if it was enough to kill her I’m tempted to say she’s not dead because usually you don’t want to be ambiguous about that shit unless you’re gearing up for a big return but as far as I know the manga’s already fighting Sukuna at this point and she’s yet to make a comeback so who fucking knows.

Delicious in Dungeon: After Laios’s sword gets busted he tells the story of how he got it fighting a bunch of living armor in the dungeon and how he fucked up and died the first time, confirming that death does indeed have no consequences which explains Marcille’s dialogue in the first episode and why no one seems too worried about rushing to get Falin. Still I’d say if death has no consequences in your series that’s something you’d want to establish right away because that is kind of an investment breaker, something like how DBZ put limits on the dragon balls at first and made loopholes harder so death isn’t just meaningless like it is in the Buu Saga. Still I kinda like this episode since it’s mainly focused on one thing and the food stuff doesn’t get in the way of the storytelling too much. They manage to sneak past the living armor colony and Laios fights Ornstein and it turns out it’s a bunch of mollusks living in the layers of the armor and doing weird goopy Alphonse Elric shit. They cook them and Laios gets Ornstein’s sword but it has a mollusk living inside it still so he’s basically got a living weapon which is pretty neat.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: Frieren confronts Aura and surprisingl the Autistic Elf Power Hour has its second encounter with Living Armor this week, what’re the odds? Aura basically has the Millenium Scales except instead of summoning a demon to eat a Musuem Curator she weighs their power level and just instantly controls anyone weaker than her with the caveat that if someone stronger than her shows up she just automatically gets controlled instead. I’m kinda sad this means Aura doesn’t actually have a demon army like this was just a plot by four guys and not a whole organized force but I guess it’s fine. She uses an anti-spell spell to dispel the control instead of blasting nameless husks into the ground and desecrating their corpses because Himmel yelled at her last time for disrespecting the dead. Aura asks her why she cares what a corpse thinks and oh it is ON now. Meanwhile Fern and Stark are preparing for Stark to book it out of dodge and try and get Frieren back to fight the other two demons when they get caught in an ambush by Blood Sephiroth and the little girl. Turns out the little girl’s powers are Unlimited Blade Works/Sharingan shenanigans where she can create a weapon and mimic a fighting style by watching it enough and she’s just so happened to have copied Eisen’s style during the first war and decks Stark with his own moves but better. Meanwhile it seems Fern’s ability is Quick Draw and she can just fire off spells crazy rapid and puts the push on Blood Sephiroth in a really cool fight that creates literal fireworks. Stark takes Eisen’s words of “Just don’t die, stupid” to heart and does that thing from Samurai Champloo where if you leave yourself wide open enough it leaves the enemy wide open for their counterattack and destroys the little girl so yay, two down two to go.

Vinland Saga: War has reached Ketil’s farm and he’s got about 300 farners with pitchforks versus Canute’s 100 Jommvikings and Royal Theigns so yeah it’s basically the coughing baby versus the hydrogen bomb. Luckily Thorfinn’s met up with Leif and Leif’s a fucking chad and agrees to take on all of Thorfinn’s extra baggage he’s gathered over the past season and transport Arnheid out of there while the fighting’s going on. Snake tells his men that Ketil is a fraud and was never a war hero because he knew the guy his name was actually based on and came to him for help but at the same time he feels indebted to the family that’s taken care of him all this time and it’s really funny to watch his speech about how Ketil’s a fraud and not worth dying over right as he goes out to die for him fires his men up more than anything, like actions really do speak louder than words. Ketil’s kinda bought into his own hype at this point and isn’t listening to the dozens of people telling him he’s going into a meatgrinder and yeah it’s a fucking massacre, I imagined Thorfinn would be more upset watching this or trying to actively broker peace talks but I guess he’s got other shit on his plate right now since Arnheid’s on death’s door and got her ghost husband’s permission to go say her last goodbyes. Meanwhile Thorgil’s just gonna pop out of the ocean buck naked with a sword and try and cut Canute’s head off behind enemy lines so that’s… a plan I guess. I have no clue how he intends to get out of there even if he succeeds but okay, you do your naked regicide.

[self-loving-vampire]

Personally IMO this stuff discredits feminism. When I remember the feminism that was ubiquitous and inescapable in my youth it was all this shit. Sometimes it was anti-tomboy and sometimes it was tomboy-supremacist and sometimes it was a secret third thing, but it was always always always people projecting their own personal shitty complexes onto the entire human condition in an incredibly transparent way but exploiting social power to prevent people from pointing it out, Emperor's New Clothes style. It was not a united front, but it was united in being awful and making excuses for awful.

I imagine this is about this post? Not really sure what the context is otherwise and relatedly I am not really clear on the specifics here.

What I think personally is that I wish more people were as apathetic to gender as I am.

I find it kind of off-putting when people highlight gender in a way that makes a big deal out of it, such as by treating others visibly differently based on something like that (even in "benevolent" ways). It's especially bad when people go as far as to treat men and women as being like fundamentally different species (radfems love to do that explicitly, but really they're just regurgitating regressive attitudes that are not that uncommon among the general population).

I don't even like it when people gender behaviors or interests or the like either. That's a big part of why I didn't like the comments screenshotted in the other post.

I guess this puts me closer to the pro-tomboy side of this but I just find the whole thing completely arbitrary and primitive. For example, my father was so poisoned by this nonsense that he believed only women and gay men liked cats and a True Man should reject them. Cats. A thing basically everyone who isn't an insecure tryhard likes.

And I imagine many of us saw this twitter post and experienced nothing but confusion as well:

This kind of thing makes no more sense to me when the things being randomly gendered are already more socially normalized as gendered (example: Violent video games being For Men or liking cute things being For Women).

Maybe once I take over the world and can grant easy, widely-available, and reversible transitions to anyone who wants them the whole concept of gender essentialism and gender norms will finally explode. Look forward to it!

[whatyourusherthinks]

Argylle Review

So man, was there anyone not looking forward to this movie? For anyone one not in the know, Argylle was directed by Matthew Vaughn, the same guy who directed the Kingsman movies. He's got a signature style and energy that makes his movies a joy to watch. Also, this movie has a cat! I'm not really one for spy movies but c'mon! There's a cat!

What's The Movie About?

A writer who writes an incredibly realistic spy novel is roped up in a struggle between a spy agency and one of it's agents gone rogue. Also there is a cat.

What I Like.

Most of this movie is expertly crafted. I mean watching the trailer will give anyone a sense of just how fun the movie's action will be, and how fucking dope the soundtrack is. Seriously, every few minutes I was pulling up Shazam to get the know what song was playing. Go listen to Electric Energy. GO LISTEN TO ELECTRIC ENERGY. The action is top notch, full of energy and color and again, the pace is set by the music. My one weakness! The cinematography and directing is also to notch, Vaughn really knows how to capture cool locations and movement. I really dug the leads as well. It's been said before but Sam Rockwell is a goddamn treasure. This movie probably has the best explanation of why a cold blooded killer is trying to get a meek normal person out of their shell by teaching them to murder that I've ever seen. And I like that this is basically Kingsman but for girls. Seriously, this movie does that spy movie thing where this is just wish fulfillment for the audience, but instead of suave guys in suits driving cool cars and banging tons of women, it's a mild mannered woman wearing a sparkly dress, defeating bad guys with ice-skating and winning the heart of a gruff but highly devoted guy. Part of reason I'm not really into spy movies is that even the ones with female leads feel like they were made explicitly for men. And I like that despite her growth into a badass spy, the movie never moves away from the leads mild-manneredness.

What I Didn't Like.

Everything about this movie is really good, except for the story. The story is god awful. I need to talk about this, but I don't really want to spoil the entire movie, so I'm going to replace all the twists with similar but different ones. But if you're smart you'll probably figure some of it out, just so be aware. So the first twist is that the main character is straight. The set-up is that she is a lesbian but then, surprise, no she isn't. Okay, I guess that work, no wait, the bad guys made her a lesbian, how surprising. Whatever. Then there's a second twist that, surprise, she's actually lesbian? And this makes Sam Rockwell mad because they've been flirting for most of the movie and also why the fuck the the bad guys use MKULTRA technology to make a lesbian a lesbian, but okay. She's gay. Wait no, she's actually bisexual and her and Sam hook up at the end, but also her dead girlfriend is alive. What the fuck is happening?! The final twist is that the movie is the adaptation of the book the main character writes or something, fucking screw off movie. And the movie takes place in the same universe as Austin Powers. WAIT, WHAT?

Final Summation.

Movies like this I find to be the trickiest to review. Do I recommend this movie because of all cool action, beautiful cinematography, good directing, and brilliant soundtrack? Or do I reject this movie because the story feels like someone went of a Wikipedia binge while on ketamine? The it's first half was good, and the finale was good too. But whenever they explained anything I had to stop myself from yelling at the scene about how stupid the plot is. I honestly think it would have been better if played it straight. The lady is somehow so knowledgeable about spy stuff that she predicts actual spy stuff, a real spy needs to protect her, and they fall in love. It's the Amazing Race but with murder, perfect movie pitch right there. But I guess if you can ignore the dumb stuff, it is still a pretty fun movie.

[shadowsong26x]

So, I have seen variations on this take several times over the past few days:

Image description: a tumblr post from a user whose handle has been obscured with a red block. the post says: “anne rice has been in the ground for nine whole months and they’ve already got louis and lestat rawdogging on tv did they greenlight that the second her heart stopped or what”

There is nothing particularly Special about this post, it just happens to be the most recent one I’ve seen. And they all sort of have the same theme: “The TV show is Super Gay, Anne Rice must be rolling in her grave.”

And I’m like.

“How to tell me you’ve never read the books without telling me you’ve never read the books.”

Look, Anne Rice had an extremely contentious relationship with fandom for a lot of reasons. I’m not in any way denying that, although I’m not going to get into all of that here because it’s off-topic. The point is, queerness was not really one of those issues.

Admittedly, I haven’t actually seen the show yet--I don’t have AMC+ and I need to catch up on Andor first anyway--but I have read the books an embarrassing number of times; I’ve seen both movies ((for the purposes of this post I am going to acknowledge the existence of QotD)); I have bootlegs of both the San Francisco and New York versions of the stage musical.

So you can believe me when I tell you that the books have always been super queer.

And, honestly, some of Anne Rice’s other work has been, too--Cry to Heaven, which came out in 1982, between when Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, heavily features an MLM relationship ((there are some. Very Necessary trigger warnings for Cry to Heaven, which I am happy to share if you’re interested; I actually think it’s one of her better works)).

Also, the musical I mentioned above came out in 2005/2006, which was while Anne Rice had decided to stop writing about monsters and erotica and monster erotica and write about Jesus instead (I read the first Jesus book. It was...I have very little memory of it other than a general impression that her writing style for a 10-year-old POV character was. A Choice). Anyway, the stage version pretty explicitly frames Louis and Lestat’s relationship as a marriage; Lestat’s relationship with Nicki is just as clear and present; the Foe Yay with Armand is arguably ramped up compared to the books. How much involvement she had with that show is a little unclear, but she never attempted to disavow it or anything; there are interviews with her from the Broadway opening night, etc.

The only place where the queerness of this series is really downplayed are the two film adaptations. The IwtV film, while otherwise excellent, definitely has that problem, but Tom Cruise was involved in some of that decision-making. The QotD film straight-up cuts Nicki and Louis (among other Problems), and I have no idea of the behind-the-scenes factors there.

There’s also the fact that one of the things AR was doing with the IwtV novel was processing the death of one of her children; Louis and Lestat are essentially stand-ins for her and her husband (I forget which is which).

Not to mention everything with Armand and Daniel. And Armand and Louis going off together for like thirty years at the end of IwtV. (Also Armand and Marius, but that is. Uh. Problematic; most of the relationships Armand has in his memoir/titular book are but the details about his relationship with Marius are. Something Else.)

Also, if you look at the last few books that she wrote--which she was working on while the TV show was in the early development stages--they are pretty overt. I’ve only read the first two, and it’s been a while since I have but two things I remember are:

I definitely recall a conversation with Louis and Lestat that is basically framed as marriage vows.

Gabrielle has a girlfriend (I want to say Pandora?) in Atlantis.

Also, as a note, Lestat is pretty explicitly a bi disaster/disaster bi in the books. Even leaving aside his relationship with Gabrielle (which was also cut from the QotD movie but for Much More Understandable Reasons); there’s references to him sleeping with women before being turned, and in Tale of the Body Thief he has a brief relationship with a human woman while he’s human. Louis’ sexuality is a little more ambiguous; apart from a retconned backstory giving him a dead wife, he only really has two prominent relationships with women. One of them is Claudia, and the other actively put a spell on him. Armand is a Mess for many reasons. Marius has relationships with both men and women as well.

((Tangential but somewhat relevant--there’s an intersex vampire in Blackwood Farm; she generally uses female pronouns IIRC and, like Marius, dates back to the Roman Empire.))

Quotes from some of the books are below the cut because they have always been queer and I am citing my goddamn sources. (I own all the core books, but I only grabbed the ones Lestat narrates because I was looking for a specific quote about his bisexuality and I’m too lazy to go back to the bookshelves and get the others; suffice to say there would be Many from The Vampire Armand; and quite a few from Interview, at the very least.

The Vampire Lestat [published 1985]

My beloved Louis [...] Of course I hated him for the lies he told about me. But the love was far greater than the hate. He had shared the dark and romantic years of the nineteenth century with me, he was my companion as no other immortal had ever been. And I ached to write my story for him. [pg. 16]

“Ah, you are a dreamer!” [Nicki] said, but he was delighted. He was beyond handsome when he smiled. [...] He reached out and put his arm around my neck and kissed me. We almost upset the table we were so blissfully drunk. “My lord, the wolfkiller,” he whispered. [pg. 48-49]

I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me. “Let’s go to bed,” he said softly. [pg. 75]

Carefully I opened my eyes and looked at him again. All his natural gifts were there in a blaze of light: the delicate but strong limbs, large sober brown eyes, and his mouth that for all the irony and sarcasm that could come out of it was childlike and ready to be kissed. [pg. 128]

Heartbreakingly innocent [Armand] seemed in the midst of the crowd. Yet I saw crypts when I looked at him, and I heard the beat of the kettledrums. I saw torchlit fields where I had never been, heard vague incantations, felt the heat of raging fires on my face. And they didn’t come out of him, these visions. Rather I drew them on my own. Yet never had Nicolas, mortal or immortal, been so alluring. Never had Gabrielle held me so in thrall. Dear God, this is love. This is desire. And all my past amours have been but the shadow of this. And it seemed in a murmuring pulse of thought he gave me to know that I had been very foolish to think it would not be so. Who can love us, you and I, as we can love each other, he whispered and it seemed his lips actually moved. [pg. 275]

By the time I left Italy I was playing dangerous little games with mortals. I’d see a man, or a woman--a human being who looked perfect to me spiritually--and I would follow the human about. Maybe for a week I’d do this, then a month, sometimes even longer than that. I’d fall in love with the being. I’d imagine friendship, conversation, intimacy that we could never have. [pg. 337]

Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas. He had Nicki’s grim intensity, his rebelliousness, his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to despair. Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas ever had. Even in his cruelest moments, Louis touched the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken word. [...] But I loved him, plain and simple. And it was out of the desperation to keep him, to bind him closer to me at the most precarious of moments, that I committed the most selfish and impulsive act of my entire life among the living dead. [pgs. 497-498]

“Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?” His eyes darkened and he looked away from me. “I’m not mocking you, Louis,” I said. “You’ve come back to me, Lestat,” he said. [pg. 531]

Queen of the Damned [published 1988]

But to continue with the review--the concert was a success. I had my moment of triumph before fifteen thousand screaming mortal fans; and two of my greatest immortal loves were there with me--Gabrielle and Louis--my fledglings, my paramours, from whom I’d been separated for too many dark years. [pg. 5]

Honestly, the entirety of ‘The Story of Daniel, the Devil’s Minion’ [pgs. 73 - 118], but a specific notable quote:

[A]t other times, he burned for Armand as if for an elixir without which he could not go on. The dark energy that had fired him for four years was now missing. He dreamed Armand was near him; he awoke weeping stupidly. Then the morning would come and he would be sad but calm. Then Armand had returned. [...] He’d come silently out of the shadows into the moonlight, a young boy in dirty jeans and a worn denim jacket, and he had slipped his arm around Daniel and gently kissed Daniel’s face. [...] They had entered the dark, low-ceilinged rooms, the press of Armand’s arm against Daniel’s back oddly comforting. Ah, yes, this intimacy, because that’s what it is, isn’t it? You, my secret... Secret lover. Yes. [pgs. 91-92]

[to avoid getting sidetracked by the Issues with Armand and Marius’s relationship, I haven’t included a quote that revolves around them, but it’s on pgs. 273-275]

“No,” I said. I wished I could speak of it, all the things that were in the book. “You know, we were lovers, she and I, so surely as a mortal man and woman ever were. “Of course, I know,” [Louis] said. I smiled. I kissed him suddenly, thrilled in the warmth of him, the soft pliant feel of his near human skin. [...] There was so much I wanted to say to him, to ask him. Yet I couldn’t find the words really, or a way to begin. He had always had so many questions; and now he had his answers, more answers perhaps than he could ever have wanted; and what had this done to his soul? Stupidly I stared at him. How perfect he seemed to me as he stood there waiting with such kindness and such patience. And then, like a fool, I came out with it. “Do you love me now?” I asked. He smiled; oh, it was excruciating to see his face soften and brighten simultaneously when he smiled. “Yes,” he said.

I can keep looking, but it’s late and I’m sick of skimming; I might come back and update this post to add more later. For one thing, I remember a quote that I’d really wanted to cite--I couldn’t find it; I think it’s in Tale of the Body Thief--where Lestat says something along the lines of “I’ve fallen in love with men more often than women, because until recently, the women I met just weren’t very interesting.”

But the point of all this--the quotes, the rambling--is that, no, Anne Rice is not turning over in her grave over the queerness of the new TV series. The movies downplayed/cut the subtext, the first largely due to Tom Cruise, the second for reasons I can’t really fathom. The books have always been super queer. The stage musical acknowledged this and leaned into it. Other Anne Rice novels also prominently feature queer characters.

...and yeah, posts saying otherwise make me mad. There are plenty of reasons to take issue with Anne Rice, with her writing, with her relationship with fandom, and so on. But this isn’t one of them. And I can’t quite articulate why this bothers me, but...it does. A Lot. And so here we are, one very long post later, with all the proof I can muster in a couple hours on a Thursday night.

Because Lestat has been a bisexual disaster from the start. And claiming he isn’t is just. Vexing.

[gillianthecat]

I am feeling oddly perfectionist about posting after not posting for so long? To counteract that, I will share my (mostly) unedited responses to The New Employee.

Episode 1 (and the very beginning of two)

I was skeptical at the beginning, given my general aversion to office romance, especially featuring an intern, especially in advertising (although it's still better than "content creation"). And I was feeling a bit over shows based in webtoons after Oh My Assistant (which I realize is a lot of the Korean and Japanese shows and therefore a diverse genre, many of which I’ve liked), or maybe just didn't like the drawing style of the cartoons used. But the rest of the episode won me over. The characters are growing on me. I do enjoy people being good at their jobs. I was worried that the lead was going to be way too chipper, but he seems like he'll be interestingly complex. The scene in the elevator was so good!

And it's so queer! There's a queer student group! His best friend is a queer woman!

I've also realized I'm a person who actually likes love triangles in my stories. I feel like that makes me very basic or something, but I like the tension it creates, and I like it when the protagonist is forced to make choices and figure out what they really want. Obviously, it's easy to do them badly, but when they're good, or even just ok, I eat that stuff up.

Episode 2

-the wrist grab in the meeting! I knew they were going to do it and yet it still made me so happy. and Jong Chan held on for a long time after 😍 and looked slightly flustered when he realized that he was still holding Seung Hyun’s wrist 🥰 (I just went back and timed it, he held his wrist for 47 seconds! which is a long time in 20 minute episode.)

-i would love an office romance that isn’t set in an advertizing/marketing/content creation industry. why not the power company or something? I know I complain about it every time, but every time they start talking about marketing I am tempted just to quit the show altogether. It would be fine if it was just the background, but when they talk about how to convince people to buy things it’s either bullshit, which annoys me, or it’s accurate, which also annoys me. I realized my objection isn’t to office romance in general, just to the specifics of the companies where they’re so often set. At least this one isn’t completely staffed by 22 year olds.

-But I love the love triangle-esque dynamic. And Yoo Seong is so pretty, I do not blame college Seung Hyun one bit for falling for him. Even though his friend Lee Beom is right, Yoo Seong does seem like bad news, manipulative and selfish. But he’s listed as a main role, so hopefully we will still get lots of him.

-And the show is so delightfully, explicitly queer! I think the part that brings me joy is it’s featuring queer community, and happy queer friendships, not just gay boys pining (like Roommates of Poongduck 304, for example.)

-I just went to MDL to get the spellings of everyone names and learned that the main character is supposed to be a “late bloomer” and a “virgin.” This is why I don’t read summaries, I prefer to find things out about the characters as the show tells me. Is his virginity a plot point or a major concern of his? Perhaps it will be, but if not, why are you telling me this. (Ok, fine, after watching the rest of the episode, apparently it will be important to the show.)

- “Because it’s you, Seung Hyun.” What does it mean?! I understand Seung Hyun thinking that it feels like a love confession, because it doesn’t really make sense any other way. Who are you, Jong Chan? You are a mystery man so far. I do appreciate you making sure your intern gets credit for his ideas though.

-ooh the crush is definitely mutual already! But what is Yoo Seong’s game? Is he just a shitstirrer? Is he good hearted and wants to help them get together? My initial assumption was that he wanted to keep Seung Hyun in his thrall, without ever actually dating him, so I was surprised that he would point him out as dateable to his (friend? rival?) coworker. It’s probably because I too am swayed by his pretty face, but so far he’s the character I’m most curious about.

- i’m not sure what I’m going to think about this series. Overall I feel neutral about the main characters so far. They neither grab me nor annoy me; their have been moments I’ve liked but overall neither of them have one my heart so far. Seong Hyun is definitely a puppy, and while he is adorable I tend to prefer the cat romances. Jong Chan is making me mull over my general thoughts about cold stoic boss-type romance figures. GAP is doing interesting things with that archetype (I’m way behind), and I’m also thinking about Alexis Hall’s take on the billionaire romance genre How To Bang a Billionaire, which very self-consciously plays with this tropes. My understanding is het Korean dramas love this dynamic; I haven’t watched that many, but have seen the first episodes of Business Proposal. I think it’s a dynamic I can either love or hate depending on how it’s treated. We need to get enough insight into the cold stoic boss for me to care about them. And it generally doesn’t work if they treat the love interest like shit (GAP treads this line very well as far as I’ve seen). Perhaps I will write more on these thoughts later.

-the protect-him-by-drinking-his-alcohol-for-him maneuver! I love it so 😻I mean, it’s the kind of thing that if someone did that to me in real life I’d probably be tempted to through the drink in their face, but for some reason I love it on screen. And sweet Seong Yoon so earnestly trying to fit in he’s letting people trample all over his boundaries. Good thing Jong Chan is there to protect him.

-ok. my parents came home and I took a long break to watch and think about The Apartment. I wonder if that other office romance will change my thoughts on this one.

-oh! I didn’t realize that his friend from university worked for the same company. Her drunken lack of boundaries is troubling, but I don’t mind because I’m sure that this information about Seung Hyun’s virginity is only going to make Jong Chan fall harder. I do love the way that they look at each other and burst into laughter when Jong Chan asks if they’re dating. And that he’s jealous enough to ask.

-this car ride is confusing me. Is there another man in the backseat, are we sometimes somehow seeing Seung Hyun in a mirror, or did they fuck up the editing and reverse some of the shots?

-However, drunken Seung Hyun is adorable! And clearly Jong Chan agrees. His daring little cheek kiss! Will Seung Hyun remember the next day? What will be the fallout from this? I will find out in one day.

-And of course Korea can’t resist ending on fall-into-his arms

[azems-familiar]

I am This Close to watching the untamed

So if you want to perhaps yell about it or something (since you’ve gotten me into stuff that way before) that could be cool idk

OH MY GOD PLEASE WATCH IT

okay to start with. the live action show is very good and a great place to start but it has some important differences from the novel and the donghua (animated show). i personally prefer a combination of cql (the untamed/the live action, that's the acronym i'll be using for it from now on) and the donghua; the novel suffers a lot of lost in translation effect and whatnot and i personally dislike the way the relationship is built in several places in it as opposed to how the adaptations do it, but it's definitely still worth reading. (dm me on discord if you want a copy of a pretty good fan translation of the novel and also like, a link to a place you can watch the donghua, btw.) other problems with cql: censorship hits the live action the hardest and their budget was i'm pretty sure basically nonexistent (they very clearly spent most of it on the costumes and the props, which you know what, the costumes are fucking stunning so great choice). so they changed the worldbuilding some and like.... the fight scenes? are really not good. they're really not good. also the special effects are universally pretty bad. it can make watching some parts of it difficult to get through, and there are some plot elements that are changed as well that i dislike, and a lot of the moral greyness of the original story had to get removed because again, censorship issues (if you want the most accurate, non-morally-whitewashed take first, you'll want to start with the novel, which is also what has the explicitly gay stuff). it's also not explicitly gay - but the actors played it as gay and there are multiple marriage metaphors and holy fuck like. honestly. there doesn't need to be a kiss or a confession or anything it's REALLY FUCKING GAY.

what cql excels in is its character interactions. the acting is absolutely stunning, the soundtrack is beautiful, and every single scene is just done with so much heart and emotion in it. so definitely keep that in mind going into it. i've watched it all the way through i think 3 or 4 times and i still keep seeing new fun details in the background that i hadn't noticed before.

the donghua, on the other hand, has an absolutely stunning art style, very very good voice acting, the worldbuilding and plot are more accurate to the book, and the magic and combat scenes are much more realistic for a fantasy and the powers they have. however, it, especially specifically the third and final season, is very rushed (and it has its own plot changes to fit how much they had to condense things, mostly just in the second half of season 3) and excludes some details, so it can be confusing if you don't know what you're seeing first. i recommend either watching cql or reading the novel first, then watching the donghua!

in terms of like, actual fandom stuff! so the main character of mdzs is, obviously, Wei Wuxian. i'm not sure how much you know but he's like. an incredibly ADHD man with horrible self-worth issues (despite being arrogant as hell) and a very strong sense of justice who is extremely brilliant and goes through a shitton of tragedy. he is known for inventing a viable form of necromancy, which is considered incredibly heretical and, among other things, gets him killed, and then gets him resurrected, so you know. pros and cons. he does magic by playing the flute. he is a disaster bisexual and also a bit of an alcoholic (okay a lot of an alcoholic) and i love him. his love interest is stoic and serious and incredibly autistic-coded and has been in love with him since they were teenagers and literally wrote him a love song. the two of them get trapped in a cave together and have to kill an ancient corrupted divine monster without weapons. it's very romantic. wei wuxian as a younger teenager is basically the epitome of a child pulling a girl's pigtails because he has a crush and is desperate for attention.

anyway, i'm not sure how much you know about the plot, but there's two timelines going on - the present and the past. the present is after wei wuxian is resurrected, and he and lan wangji (the love interest, in case you haven't picked up on the names yet - everyone has like two or three names and it can be hard to tell them apart at first) are basically going on a fun little murder mystery quest while also babysitting a bunch of teenagers which then abruptly devolves into politics, murder, more politics, and more murder. the past on the other hand goes from a high school definitely-not-a-romance to a goddamn war drama to politics and back to. hm. not exactly a war drama anymore but i'm really not sure how to describe everything that happens after a certain event. it's all very much a tragedy and the real "villain" of the story (which is less obvious in cql, again because of moral whitewashing due to censorship, though honestly i feel like they did a pretty good job of staying as true to the source material as they could all things considered, a whole lot of the scenes were word for word from the novel just slightly edited to fit the adjusted worldbuilding or plot changes) is the mob mentality, rumors and gossip and hearsay, and society itself!

lastly, because i am trying not to overwhelm you here, i am going to link you a couple great amvs i've found on youtube that will probably not make a lot of sense without context but will at least hopefully intrigue you?

and

and

the other one i really want to link i cannot because it definitely will make absolutely no sense without having watched the show and so you have to come talk to me when you've finished it so i can give it to you. also hey please feel free to come dm me on discord i Will ramble at length about this. especially about wwx he is my BLORBO and currently taking up residence in my brain. and also i need your live reactions if/when you start watching things oh my god

be glad it's almost 2 am and i'm still recovering from my covid booster or this would be even longer

[mysticdragon3md3]

📏...

A while back, i posted how i didn't like big height differences between members of a ship. This is what i meant:

But this, I'm fine with:

Even though I prefer this:

I wanted to dig out more examples of height differences that I disliked, from my manga collection...but then I realized that I was unlikely to have bought manga like that. lol

I know that a lot of mangaka choose contrasting character designs for a couple, to make interesting, every composition they're together, which is expected to be often. But sometimes I don't like how a lot of Shoujo manga makes the leading lady so short, baby faced, and childlike, while the male love interest is so masculinized and seemingly aged-up, that the excessive contrast makes the heroine seem infantilized. Maybe that's not the intention of the mangaka, and it's certainly not going to be the implication that other people interpret. But for me, I can't help seeing those symbolic signifiers and reading it as "infantilized heroine", especially since I've so often seen such heroines turned into "damsels in distress" or infantilized in her personality or in her relation to the leading man. And it's usually just so the leading man can seem so much more masculine and reassuring. And by "reassuring", I mean some of these leading men just act like guard dogs, parental, jealous, and/or basically a big mountain for the leading lady to get smothered with. (I flipped through Happy Hustle High today, years after I had last read it, and I was reminded how often the leading man just smothers the heroine in his arms, and jealously pulls her away from other guys that he perceives as romantic threats.) I'm not a big fan of this imbalanced power dynamic, and I can't help expecting it, whenever I see a couple with such excessive height differences.

My problem being more in the character design reflecting that expectation, more than in my problem being in the height difference alone, is proven by me shipping Ichiruki. I don't care that Rukia is so short and Ichigo is so tall. In fact, it's kind of funny that way. But because the power dynamic between them is so blatantly level, I don't have to see their height differences as a signifier of power imbalance. She has authority as his mentor figure in the ways of being a Shinigami and a warrior experienced on a higher level than his average life demanded. He's the gutsy protagonist who will stand up to her when he disagrees or spend entire story arcs, rescuing her. And as the series goes on, they learn from each other equally and very quickly become peers. They have a very equal power balance. Because of that, I don't have to interpret their height differences as a signifier of a power imbalance.

But that's not often the case, especially in Shoujo manga.

And actually, I see it a lot in BL manga too. Often, an uke is designed so bishounen, that sometimes he'll look like a tiny child next to the overly macho-ified seme, and the bishounen uke is often additionally treated as this fragile "damsel in distress" to protect. Sometimes the uke looks so childlike compared to the seme, that the narrative will have to explicitly state or prove that the bishounen uke is 18 or old enough for college, so we don't have to feel like the couple is problematic, because of their contrasting appearances. I like bishounen and pretty characters, but when the partner to the bishounen is drawn so relatively overly masculine, the contrast becomes too much for me, especially when a series gets lemony. I'll put up with such extreme pairings of character designs (regardless of orientation) if a story or pairing is really good, but I'd rather not.

Again, not everyone will interpret height differences as reflecting power imbalance. I know there are actual short girls and tall boys that exist. I know that gay couples of contrasting heights exist in real life. But I'm talking about fictional character designs in an industry where art direction, art style, and character designs are used to convey story, tone, personalities, and expected relationship dynamics. I'm sure some mangaka purposefully design their height-difference couples to intentionally reflect one as the protector and the other as the protectee. It's a very common Romance genre trope. Though often technically an imbalance of power, it plays into a specific fantasy that some people really like. And I'm sure some manga readers and mangaka artists may not see height differences as reflective of power imbalance. But I think I've seen it enough times for it to mean that to me. Just as much as big eyed, cutesy character designs and art styles used to immediately convey to a reader that a new manga series' tone will be light. (Until Madoka Magica made subversion trendy.) Or just as much as realistic art style can often immediately convey a series will have a serious tone. I think there is a language of symbols in manga art styles, and it's kind of necessary in the industry, to quickly convey to potential readers what types of stories are inside of books. So I don't think it's too far fetched for me to see "super short romantic lead paired with super tall love interest", and fear a power imbalance might be in store. That's why I prefer fictional couples with same or similar heights.

[wigglesforsquiggles]

What kpop group wiggles. Feel fre to infodump bc I am just v curious

cup my beloved thank u sm

basically mnet (korean broadcasting company) love creating tv shows where kpop trainees compete to debut in a guaranteed successful group (bc of said tv show), with the audience voting each week for their favourite trainees (so image is a massive part of the show)

the most recent on being boys planet! it finished last week, with the new group zerobaseone (zb1) (not the worst kpop group name) having some very interesting idols!

for some reason mnet went with a much more explicitly gay editing style??? for the show?? is the only way i can describe it. like they had a BL (boy love) actor (kim jiwoong my BELOVED) as a contestant, who is absolutely STUNNING might i add (he is the one in the copious amount of gifs ive been reblogging)

they also creating relationship story lines much more explicityl than they did in prev. shows, with the top 2 contestants, sung hanbin and zhang hao, basically being shipped by the editing (there are definityl compilations out there of just them).

ive seen a few theorries theyve decided to switch up their formula a bit. they're trying to ensure their group is popular, and with the recent growth in girl group popularity (whereas in the past, boy groups were the mega popular ones - bts, exo etc), and their previous girl version of the show not being as spectacularly popular as previous iterations, they really tried to target the new audience (young women with a taste for watching idols act gay with one another)

its very interesting honestly, and im curious to see how far they'll push this marketing angle. with two of the popular ships making it to the final group (maybe more, im only aware of those two), i wonder if they can continue the image into future promotions or they may have to calm down the concept if rumours or backlash get too strong

but yea! the group is going to be very interesting to watch, and i am PRAYING they have good music when they debut in july. the survival group pick me song has been stuck in my head for like a week so i have strong hopes.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

SYABM complains about a quest again.

There's this CKII-style quest.

The lead is a guy in the 80s, who runs a company dedicated to fighting supernatural threats, researching it to make money (like XCOM), and other activities. The Quest Master gives a bunch of advisors in various categories, and the audience get to vote on available options, and the QM rolls to determine success or failure.

The "Stewardship" advisor is a racist.

That's basically his only character trait. He's a connected Southern gentleman, and he's a "racist bigot".

In fact, he's such a racist bigot that he can't be allowed close to the actual troops, because he'll presumably have Heated Gamer Moments, so to speak.

The obvious question is "Wait. Couldn't the MC hire someone else with the same skills who isn't a raging bigot? Especially someone whose job description includes making connections with a lot of people, in a company that operates worldwide?"

Apparently not.

Also, one of the other advisors got married and had a kid. A few thousand words ago. I just hit the point where we learn she was married to another woman.

In the 80s.

In America.

How do we learn this? Well, the MC marries a Japanese woman, and she casually mentions the respect the advisor and her wife have for the MC. And also that the Steward has a "history of racial bigotry".

Last time I checked, the wife grew up in Japan, in the 80s and maybe 70s. Which...would also be pretty racist and sexist and not exactly gay-friendly. Heck, the narration when she was introduced pointed out that Japan was still a male-dominated culture.

But apparently she's personally really tolerant. Especially compared to the other clearly flawed waifu candidates the quest had. She's explicitly supposed to be a "Yamato Nadeshiko", a traditional Japanese housewife.

Which seems odd, considering the whole "successfully running a company in a culture that frowns upon her doing just that" thing.

Oh, and another advisor is described as 'black-haired' and 'brown-skinned'. This is supposed to be following the MC's perspective. And calling characters "brown-skinned" or "dark-skinned" seems to be a modern progressive thing.

A random guy in the 80s, even a progressive one, would probably call her "black" or "black-hispanic" or "hispanic" or "Indian" or some specific ethnicity. He should have that info on hand, because he hired her.

So, yeah, this feels a lot like the QM wanted to acknowledge prejudice and stuff, but didn't actually think it through. 

EDIT:

Since I wrote and queued this post, I've gotten a few more chapters into the quest, and I've noticed some...details.

A while back, God - yes, the God - randomly showed up while The protagonist was eating at a cafe and said " I'm going to die and be reincarnated for no explained reason. And I want you to find my reincarnation and take care of her."

this is the first time that God has appeared in the entire story. There are Angels and Devils, but nobody mentioned  the big guy or his actions specifically, IIRC.

the reincarnation turns out to be little girl who is found in a Brazilian favela.  some real bad hombres lock her in a dark room, drain her magical blood, and sell it as a drug.  as a result,  God's reincarnation has a fear of men.

and only men.

not needles or seeing blood or the dark, just men. 

It's possible they did...other stuff, but the story isn't clear. In fact, we don't even get to 'see' her captors, only the aftermath of the rescue, from her perspective. The fact that they’re men is just implied.

and who does the protagonist (and the quest readers) decide to leave her care to?  yep,  that's right, the aforementioned couple.

God is a woman, and she lives with lesbians.

So I'm starting to think that this particular subplot is some kind of  attempt at ironic edginess. I'd probably care less if I wasn't a) Christian, and b) a writer myself. It shows the same lack-of-thinking as some of the other stuff.

Just to be clear, this isn’t portrayed as a good thing. The protag’s job - which he seems remarkably cavalier about - is to make sure Little Miss Godette doesn’t grow up toxic. 

For obvious reasons, that would be bad.

[guzhufuren]

people are saying that this is the end of offgun playing romantic partners together and all i have to say is no <3 i know them personally and they just told me they will keep up the good work until they get a script for a bi grandpas drawn into bankrobbing slowburn. ONLY THEN its over cause there are no more plots they havent tried and off is at peace and just wants to play makruk with gun over a cup of tea