Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."
Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.
These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!
Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!
Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.
So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.
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I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.
And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.
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Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.
Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!
Binghe is not happy about this.
But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.
Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.
When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.
While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.
Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.
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i've been spoiled with the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the last piece, have another one that i can't seem to get right with colour
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idk if this is accurate but i’ve felt like in previous seasons riz & gorgug have been one of the inter-bad kids dynamics we’ve seen the least of & this season has been so great in that aspect. gorgug having helped make some of riz’s magic gear. riz helping gorgug with his studies. the shared birthday party. gorgug’s gift to riz being something he himself made to protect riz. riz’s gift to gorgug being something he illegally grabbed to protect gorgug. gorgug who utilizes rage to put his body on the line for his friends & riz who will take deep levels of mental stress for his friends. even though it was within the context of a joke, riz calling gorgug an “absolute sweetie.” like yea they might not be in a band together or both part of a presidential campaign team or owlbears teammates, but they’d go to war for each other, because they’re best friends.
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