#best flagship 2022

[absolutebl]

Best Angsty BLs with Family Drama & Bad Home Lives, or Past Trauma

That still end happily. Requested by the incomparable @winterswhumpblr (Warning these all have tiggers in them mostly suicide, rape, and/or child abuse.)

Until We Meet Again

Thai 2019 YouTube

UWMA is, without question, a work of narrative genius with a powerful and cohesive romantic backbone driven by family drauma and betrayal and stellar performances. It is (to date) the only Thai BL that I’ve rated a 10/10 predominantly on the basis of story structure. That said it is also very well cast (and it’s a BIG cast), with solid production values, and enduring pair branding. Discussion here.

Spin off, Between Us, also satisfies this criteria.

Blueming

Korea 2022 iQIYI

Hwang Da Seul directing this angsty BL that's a tiny bit dark and a tiny bit bittersweet, almost too honest to a university experience and first love. But if you want your mind ever-so-slightly messed with and your intimacy hellishly sweet, this BL will do it for you in a coldly distant manner, while bitch slapping you with self worth issues. I wasn’t into it at first, but the leads are solid and by ep 5 it got really good, becoming a narrative about self discovery meets understanding and accepting others people’s flaws without hurting them. Ultimately we witnessed two characters maturing because of each other and their mutual affection, without that affection becoming the conflict point. Instead, tension was built around other aspects of identity, popularity, and childhood trauma.

Tokyo in April is AKA Shigatsu no Tokyo wa

Japan 2023 Viki

Two young men with a shared tragic past reunite and fall in love all over again, but the past will not stop hunting them. Based on a manga, this office set reunion romance is GREAT… damn it. It’s Japan in full on soft focus which means it gets emo, abusive, and chewy. These two characters are giving parts of their souls away in a desperate attempt to shape themselves to the expectations they have of each other.

The Eighth Sense

Korea 2023 Viki

This feels more atmospheric gay coming of age romance than strictly BL. It’s got a bit of an age gap, country boy/city boy, stellar acting, complex characters, and leads with great chemistry and tension. It’s a bit chewy and sticky and less perfect than most KBLs (do I detect a touch of Taiwan?) This one deployed BL tropes (messy eater, shoulder sleep, protective seme, there’s even some hyung-slinging) but front loaded them with painful backstory and tons angst drives the 2nd half. This isn’t in the KBL bubble, there’s sharp edges and lots of triggers. For a BL the darkness of the content left me feeling unsettled (which is the only reason it didn't get a perfect score) but it does have a glorious ending and that counts for a lot.

Bad Buddy

Thai 2022 YouTube

This was GMMTV’s flagship BL and it started 2022 on a BANG (okay no actual banging but you know what I mean), starring heavy hitters Ohm & Nanon in a pitch perfect university Romeo & Romeo masterpiece that will give you domesticity meets pain whiplash throughout and jet lag at the end. Some of the friendship and family dynamics are overworked, but it has great production values, killer acting, and some conscious effort to correct for half a decade of Thai BL’s anti-queer mistakes. The whole set up is build on family drama so, yeah.

Bed Friend

Thai 2023 YouTube

Office frienamies transition a flaming hot one night stand into a f-buddy relationship that is built on a puppy/cat dynamic (and kinks into it at one point). Our puppy is loyal, smitten, and protective with endlessly longing eyes, while our cat is snarky, prickly, and deeply damaged. NetJames give lovely high-heat with excellent chemistry and tuned-in performances of surprising depth, could have been spectacular but was the story is overworked, especially at the end. Still if high heat is your thing, this one will not let you down.

Lovely Writer

Thai 2021 YouTube

What Lovely Writer does, at heart, is reexamine Thai BL has done to queerness, but in a very gentle way that has more to do with Thai BL growing up than any actual queer authenticity. It’s not parody or pastiche, but it is self reflective and trying to correct for some chronic mistakes. Whether it is ultimately successful in this matter is going to depend on the watcher’s relationship to BL and queer identity. But that’s what makes this show beautiful, interesting, and thought provoking. And I, for one, applaud the effort even if I didn’t personally connect to the characters. There is both family trauma and dram and childhood stuff.

Happy Merry Ending

Korea 2023 Viki

Stars Lee Dong Won (KNK) as an ex-idol turned wedding singer with an abusive ex and a panic disorder + the sunshine pianist who falls in love with him. Timid tsundere & sweetheart gay is an interesting match. They’re gentle together, almost kindly, and there is a calm ache to their pairing. However, it lost its way as a BL, being more about the main character’s struggle than the romance. It had a strong finish but ultimately the premise & characters meant this was never going to be one of my favorites. But if you like angst, well...

Given

Japan 2021 grey

Boy joins band, falls in love with other boy. The singing is terrible, fast forward through that but with the possible exception of the hair styles, this BL could have been made in 2015 and no one would be surprised. As such, it wasn’t ground breaking, but it didn’t disappoint either. Very much a tortured past for our singer. (More here.)

The Eclipse

Thai 2022 YouTube

GMMTV does gay Blacklist with a good boy/bad boy pairing. This is a good show but the cast is excellent and the leads are absolutely flawless, which elevates it beyond just good. We got a nuanced and multifaceted burgeoning relationship: philosophical (and socio-political) conflict contrasted to moments of empathy; flirtation contrasted to moments of genuine affection, plus plenty of angst. This narrative is less about love than it is about courage and tenderness. However, near the end the pacing was off and the plot frustrating. Still, this is an enjoyable watch, with a finale that features verbal consent and a fun blooper reel.

Love Class 2

Korea 2023 Viki

3 couples form within a semester of university: 1. a hyung romance reunion of exes, one of whom has a dangerous past, 2. a friends to lovers romance, and 3. a one night stand between a mature student and a TA (many aspects of which had me laughing). I enjoyed the characters and dialogue of this show immensely. It was a little bit more breezy and friendly than I was expecting after the first installment, Love Class (to which this bears little resemblance and no connection). I’m not entirely sure Korea can handle multiple couples like this because it definitely felt disjointed, especially with the 3rd more mature couple (also my favorite) who probably should’ve had their own series. But I enjoyed something different from Korea.

About Youth

Taiwan 2022 Gaga

A truly lovely little coming of age high school BL with a classic YA low drama but high angst and an earnest depth. I didn’t even mind the singing, and that’s saying a lot. A weak seme/uke dynamic but tons of BL tropes (both rare in a high school setting but common for Taiwan) makes this one feel both sweet and colored by an almost real world authenticity and grit. More here.

Restart After Come Back Home AKA Risutato wa tadaima no ato de

Japan 2020 Gaga?

Atmospheric study in rural Japan meets complex family dynamics built on a romance framework of city boy meets country boy, grumpy/sunshine. It’s beautiful and icy sweet. Slow moving in places but ultimately worth the patience, low heat, low angst, and stunning.

DNA Says Love You

Taiwan 2022 Gaga

DNA deserves extra marks for an upbeat approach to a queer story arc that other shows have systemically mishandled with sadness (in the guise of realism). There is a twist, which I found predictable, but knowing what would happen didn't spoil this show. The leads are luminous and engaging, and it’s full of queer found family representation and an unexpected amount of domesticity, plus it’s Taiwan, so the kisses are great. The first few eps are rough going but have patiences, it's worth it as the last ones really are special and life/love affirming - and the end is big-grin charming.

My Tooth Your Love

Taiwan 2023 Viki

Earnest dentist hottie with sad eyes who worries too much is smitten by an adorable sunshine neurotic bar owner with serious anxiety issues. They fall madly in love while courting each other with food, plushies, and naps. Then, shocker, talk about their feelings and try to actually sort out their problems so they can have an adult relationship. Bonus crumbs = 18 year old poor little rich kid in mad crush with a much older man. I really enjoyed this show, it had a unique premise, killer dialogue, there was a solid lead pair with charming chemistry, soft flirtation, delightful smiling kisses, and stinkingly cute domesticity.

Where Your Eyes Linger

Korea 2020 Viki

Ostensibly high school set about a poor kid whose been raised in a mafia kid’s family specifically to protect him (whipping boy trope, attack dog variant). Themes of codependency and survival with pretty classic Korean style romance ending.

TharnType

Thai 2019 Viki

This Thai BL has everything: university setting, great acting and complex characters, interesting friendship groups, enemies to lovers, angsty coming out, high production values, AMAZING chemistry, and multiple BL side couples with all the issues. But when I said everything I meant it because there's also: damaging queer rep, strong seme/uke and husband/wife language, classic tropes and lots of them, child abuse, bullying, mental illness, rough play, dub-con, non-con, and statutory rape (by the seme/gay character).

and its spin off: Don't Say No also qualifies for this post.

In fact most Mame stuff will involved trauma & drama, specifically.

Love By Chance 2

Love in the Air (Part 2)

Wedding Plan

Some others but I'm getting tired:

I Told Sunset About You et al

You Are Mine

Dear Doctor, I'm Coming for Your Soul

Ghost Host Ghost House

But frankly there are a ton more depending on how you look at it. I mean, what about Why R U? FIghter's dad is the issues with him coming out, but it's not really in the plot until late so ?

Lakorn BL drama llama soaps & similar

Moonlight Chicken - review here

Laws of Attraction

To Sir, With Love - review here

Sirs not appearing on this list

Our Dining Table is driven by childhood trauma but not angsty, similar to Oxygen. Not Me is angsty and dramatic and family stuff, but that's not really the driver of the plot. Life Love On the Line is all angst but he brought it on himself.

(source)

Updated Nov 19, 2023, no intention of adding to this so if you want more, look at the comments. Someone is bound to get annoyed their favorite isn't on the list.

[russellius]

“I feel ready to be world champion,” says George Russell, IWC ambassador, Mercedes driver, and mental health campaigner. “You’ve just got to keep persevering. And sometimes, when you least expect it, that’s when it happens…”

No photoshoot in the history of mankind has ever finished on time. But George Russell’s wrapped up precisely 37 seconds earlier than it needed to. We had two hours with the Mercedes driver in which to do the following: dress him in three rather lovely outfits, get a series of portraits on the streets of Mayfair, shoot a behind-the-scenes video, conduct an in-person interview, travel to Cafe Royal on Piccadilly to host a dinner with IWC Schaffhausen, and conduct a lively panel discussion for 60 devoted Formula One fans. Is there a land speed record for cover shoots? To watch George and his team at work — a multi-part, smoothly-cogged machine of slick synchronicity — is to reach constantly for metaphors: they are like a jaw-droppingly efficient pit crew, perhaps; or the silent, infinitesimally-precise inner-workings of some fine, lovely automatic watch. I’m told that if a falcon watched television, it would assume it was sitting in front of an achingly slow slideshow, such is the processing speed of the bird’s eyes and mind. Before you even get to the on-track heroics — the sheer physical and mental ridiculousness of driving the fastest cars in the world competitively for a living — you sense that George is a falcon on the sofa; eyes profound and heartbeat slow.

It is appropriate that we have been brought together by a watch partner, I say, as we sit across from each other in a quiet room above the IWC flagship on Bond Street. IWC and Mercedes have enjoyed one of the longest heritage partnerships in Formula One, and George says he has been an ardent fan of the ancient, modern marque even before he joined the team in 2022. I comment on how disciplined and millimetric and precise the afternoon has been. Does he think a lot about time? “I’m now recognising how important my own time is, not only on a professional level — racing in an F1 car, where it’s all about the time — but also appreciating how much I value my own time,” he says. “So everything has been planned to the millisecond, which is how I like it.”

It has certainly taken a long time to move this fast. George — 25 years, 4 months, and 22 days old at the time of writing — left school at the age of 14 to pursue his career behind the wheel. All drivers start incredibly young (George was winning karting competitions at seven.) But this must have felt like a bold move in an industry that is precarious at best, brutally competitive throughout, and characterised by sliding-doors moments, quirks of fate, milliseconds that are worth entire careers. Did it feel bold and risky at the time?

“Now I look back at the responsibility it took for [my parents] to make such a bold decision, it couldn’t have been easy,” he says. “I think there are things in school I have missed out on, but there’s also a hell of a lot I’ve learned in life that school couldn’t have taught me. From the ages of 14 to 18, when I was travelling the world racing, I was working with engineers who were thirty or forty years older, and going to dinner with my mechanics who were in their late twenties. That matures you a lot to the world. I feel like I grew up a lot quicker,” he says.

“It also meant I stayed out of trouble. I had people who I grew up at school with who got into a lot of mischief, as a lot of teenagers do, going out partying and drinking. I missed out on that side of social life. Whether that’s a positive or a negative, who knows. But I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.” Either way, at this precise moment, the gamble looks to have paid off. All careers look smoother in hindsight, and George is refreshingly open about the mistakes, stumbling blocks and setbacks that have punctuated the last decade. But the general trend — the Wikipedia trajectory — has been upwards, upwards, upwards: a whistle-stop climb through karting, Renault Formula 2.0, Formula 4, Formula 3, Formula, GP3, Formula 2, and then, finally, the big one.

Again, timing is everything. In 2014, having won the Formula 4 title, a 16-year-old George sent an email to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, humbly asking for a meeting and potential future shot at one of those 20 coveted seats. “I didn’t plan it this way, but I sent that email two days after the championship had finished,” says George. “Timing’s exceptionally important. There was a lot of success and happiness [at that moment]; a relaxed environment. Perhaps if I had sent that email three days earlier, it would have just got caught up in that craziness of the race weekend. And perhaps I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

Does he think those soft skills — the ways of communicating, his clear thoughtfulness, being polite and kind — are useful, in some unsung way, to a driver’s success on the track? “First impressions are very important,” he says. “Maybe if [his first message to Toto] had come across in an arrogant way, I wouldn’t have gotten a reply to that email.” He says the main things he has learned from Wolff and from Lewis Hamilton, his race partner at Mercedes, are all around “being a grounded and humble person,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the greatest of all time, or you’ve never had any success — you need to be a grounded person, be humble, treat everyone with respect. They’re things that will take you far in life.”

But still, he tells me, “there’s a clear distinction between being a nice guy, a polite guy — but also being a ruthless athlete. It’s about having that respect, charisma and humbleness in certain scenarios — but also about having that that fire when the helmet is on. That’s a very important distinction.”

That fire fueled a successful debut year in a Mercedes car for George. In April 2022, at the Australian Grand Prix, he achieved his first Mercedes podium. In July, in Hungary, he earned his first pole position. And then, in November, at Sao Paulo, George claimed his first Grand Prix victory, holding off Max Verstappen and Kevin Magnussen in an impressive performance. This year, he says, the team has had “some bad luck”, though he has been pleased with his own performance in general. We meet on the Wednesday before the British Grand Prix — always a slightly more pressurised and poignant race for homegrown talent — and there is a sense of calm confidence about the task ahead. When things can be improved, George says, it is important to work smarter, not simply harder. “I could be on the simulator five days a week, putting in even more hours on my driving,” he says. “But it wouldn’t make me faster. Having those days when I can step back and think about things with a more open vision is important. We can be so fixated in our job. Sometimes you miss the obvious.”

Are there two Georges, I ask? An on-track George and an off-track George? “When the helmet is on, you turn into this animal with one goal; extremely driven,” he says. “You have tunnel vision. You’re looking through this visor — it’s as tunnel vision as you can get. Nothing else matters.” But it is sometimes tricky, he says, when that on-track intensity is broadcast, often out of context, to an off-track setting. “It’s a bit challenging, because all the radio messages [from the cockpit to the race team] are broadcasted now,” he says. “The things you say under the highest pressures are scrutinised and broadcast to the world. And that’s a challenging place to be when you’re representing a brand like Mercedes, or IWC, or any of the other amazing brands and partners we have on our race car, and the 2000 people who work for the company. You’re representing more than just yourself — you’re representing thousands and thousands of people, and you want to make them proud on track with your performances. But it’s important not to let people down with actions you do in the heat of the moment, but may regret an hour later.”

The job of an F1 driver has always been unthinkably intense. But it feels much harder for drivers now — in the age of 360 observation, 24-hour coverage, and armchair Twitter critics — than perhaps it was even just 20 years ago, say. The helmet is a goldfish bowl as much as a shield. “Well,” George says, with Falcon-like perspective, “I think it’s a much more intense environment for every single individual on earth now. We’re all scrutinised. Everything we say on social media is being judged. Every photograph a teenager is posting on social media is being judged, idolised, criticised. It’s a brutal world, and I think the larger the profile, the harder that is. It sometimes feels like nobody can do right.  You open your mouth and you will upset somebody.”

That’s why, he says, the emergence of Netflix’s gargantuan hit Drive to Survive has been so refreshing. While it has brought some added pressure in that it’s awoken a new, much wider audience for the sport, it has also allowed the season some necessary breathing room; the context and zoomed-out perspective that the live, magnifying-glass coverage of each weekend often misses.

“It’s broadcast a year later, so there isn’t that initial reaction to a crash, or a comment, or something that’s been said ten minutes after a race has finished,” George says. “Whereas when you’re dealing with the on-site, live media, people have views, reactions, emotions straight away. And that’s why you’re also reserved to speak from the heart, because someone’s going to take offence from it, and it’s going to spiral, and it’s going to cause you pain from reading.” Does he read the Twitter comments? “No.”

That scrutiny, that pressure — and the clear empathy George has for other people of his generation, the first to mature almost entirely under the blazing, distorted gaze of social media — is one of the reasons he began working with Meta on a mental health campaign last year. As the editor of a magazine largely for young-ish men, I can attest that the ‘conversation around male mental health’, as it is so often loftily dubbed, can be waffly and buzzword-y and earnest beyond usefulness — sincere without being serious; optics over actual advice. So I ask George for one clear thing he would say to young people of his age.

“Don’t be afraid to fail,” he says without pausing. “There’s a huge amount of scrutiny upon people to not make mistakes; to try and be a perfect individual. But it’s definitely okay to make mistakes, and to learn from them, and I can just speak from my own experience: my mistakes were the toughest times of my career, but they’re what has defined me as a person — not just as a professional driver, but as an individual. As much as I regret all those mistakes, and wish they didn’t happen, I sit here now and know they’re the things that have defined me.”

Earlier, I had asked George whether, if he could click his fingers now and be crowned instant world-champion, he’d take the accolade; or whether he would want to earn it, graft for it. “You don’t want an easy journey,” he says. “Those who have an easy journey with no failures will always get slipped up in the future at some point. Yes, I feel ready to be world champion. I feel like I’m performing at the highest level I’ve performed. I’m going head-to-head with the greatest driver of all time, and last year was a great season for me. On a personal level I feel like I’m doing a good job. I have faith that everybody gets their opportunity,” he says.

“And yes, I wanted to be world champion yesterday. But unfortunately life doesn’t happen that way. You’ve got to keep persevering. And sometimes when you least expect it, that’s when it happens.” George Russell is moving fast. But he is not in a hurry.

[cleolinda]

Sparking Joy (Jean Patou, 1930)

What's the best perfume of all time? Objectively, I don't think that's an answerable question; it might be that the absolute best perfume (which means what?) is something designed by an artisan outside the French tradition or the Arabian tradition, or not by a professional nose at all, but a single bottle mixed up by a hobbyist in some quiet little corner of the world. We just don't know. But much the way the American Film Institute decrees that Citizen Kane is the best [American] film of all time, what do Those in the Know think is the best? Chanel No. 5, right? The top seller in the world for decades?

Not at all. In 2000, the Fragrance Foundation FiFi Awards bestowed the public's choice for "Scent of the Century" on Jean Patou's Joy.

I remember reading this in the newspaper at the time, back when we had newspapers; I hadn't even worn fragrance since Sun-Ripened Raspberry body splash in high school, and I was shocked that it wasn't Chanel No. 5. I have to think "the public" meant "knowledgeable members of the perfume industry," because I had never heard of Joy, and most people I've talked to (who aren't hanging out on on fragrance forums) haven't, either. I feel like many of us would reflexively say "No. 5" because Chanel's done that good a job at shoring up their flagship's legend.

The story of Jean Patou's Joy is the opposite: when a fragrance isn't given the respect it deserves.

(Joy ads, 1947 and 1978; more here)

Famously, back when Joy was famous, perfumer Henri Alméras created Joy for Parisian couturier Jean Patou, as an oddly defiant, perhaps even life-affirming reaction to the 1929 Wall Street crash. At the time, it was "the costliest perfume in the world": "One ounce of the lavish scent contains 10,600 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen May roses"—and it cost $40 ($728.45!!!). And I might say it's a little obscene to create such an extravagant thing in the middle of the Great Depression—and yet, somehow, Joy was a huge success. A master perfumer created a work of art for a luxury vendor, and people bought it, and they loved it. Jackie Kennedy wore it; Vivien Leigh wore it. I've been wearing Joy for three weeks, and if I could have saved up enough pennies in 1930 to buy a tiny vial, I could see myself doing it, just to have that little something.

Joy was explicitly intended to be "a lighthouse" in a dark time of deprivation, and it wasn't overpriced just for the hell of it; it was the costliest in the sense of quality. It might best be known for its rose-jasmine pairing, but besides the entire region of Grasse crammed into every bottle, Joy also contains "leafy green notes," tuberose, ylang-ylang, aldehydes, peach (our old friend undecalactone?), lily of the valley, orris root, orchid, civet, musk, and sandalwood; Wikipedia also lists "michelia," which may mean magnolia here.

I'll admit up front that I have no idea when the sample I bought last month was produced, but the “juice,” as they say, looks very new; it doesn't have the deep dark color that I've seen on vintage bottles of Joy. It's got to be one of the newer formulations. Tom at Perfume Posse can speak for the older ones:

The [2022 sample] I received smells thinner than I remember - more skimming over those fields of flowers than just bashing into them, face-first. The Joy I remember reveled in the excess: bowers of roses, masses of lilies, clouds of tuberose backed with some of that “don’t F with me” musk that must have been civet back in the day. This is nice. Nice and sweet, with only a hint of the previous hedonist.

Angela at Now Smell This:

For the longest time, to me Joy smelled dense, like a Victorian room with the curtains pulled. I couldn’t feel my way around in it. The turning point for me came from hearing current Patou house perfumer Thomas Fontaine describe Joy’s sillage as lush and old fashioned. I’d been trying to make Joy a light, happy perfume. Really, it’s a gorgeously constructed velvet overcoat, heavy and plush and meticulously made. It’s red wine, not champagne.

The Scented Hound:

Joy (current version eau de parfum) is truly a joy when it first goes on the skin as it’s full of lush ylang-ylang and soapy white flowers and bright aldehydes. [...] As Joy continues its slow and deliberate path, a jasmine blends itself with the rose…but combined, they’re still very controlled and incredibly proper. Joy doesn’t transform or morph very much, but in the end, the florals fade and soften a bit, and what you’re left is a lightly warm breeze of light floral sandalwood musk.

The version I have is clearly the newer one—I actually would say it's more like champagne, not in the literal effervescent way (see the Coco Mademoiselles), but in the sense that this Joy is light. Not weak, but light, the way I described the aspect of No. 5 that I could stand as "limpid." In my head, Joy is a beautiful sunset pink color, sheer, almost verging into red. The jasmine comes out the strongest for me at first, maybe with the slight presence of an aldehyde, but then, on top of that, the biggest, fullest, realest rose I've ever smelled in a perfume. If I get cut flowers for my birthday, I always save any roses in the bouquet and dry them. Jean Patou's Joy smells like a rose that is so fully blown that the petals fall apart in my hand when I try to pull it from the vase. Not decaying, not that far gone, but the rose's absolute full potential of bloom, and so vividly that I can see the texture of the petals. If you want to tell me there’s 336 roses in here, I will believe you.

On my skin, the rose floats there on top, on a bed of headier florals, for at least half an hour; in my notes, I jotted down that a spicy ylang-ylang "with a slight bubblegum connotation" (see Samsara for more on the bubbleylang) shows up then, and by an hour-twenty, the whole thing has come together, all flowers present at once in a sweet, soft, heady, slightly spicy, rose-pink glow.

[Sidebar: At three hours, Joy reminded me in some non-literal way of Murray & Lanman's Florida Water, also billed as "the Richest of All Perfumes" in the late 1800s. (Of course I got myself a bottle of an actual Gilded Age perfume they still sell today for $4, are you kidding me?) I've seen a lot of Florida Water formulas (which are still used today in various spiritual traditions), and I've mostly seen lavender, clove, and multiple citrus notes as the components, sometimes with rose, ylang-ylang, and/or cinnamon as well. Unlike many, many French perfumes, Jean Patou's Joy doesn't have any citrus top notes at all, so I'm not sure what I'm getting in common with Florida Water, other than the florals and a certain spiciness that comes out late in Joy's game for me. I'd like to think it's purely the "richness" that reminds me of the Costliest Perfume in the World.]

"Warm breeze" is a good way to describe Joy's drydown; it's not heavy or old-fashioned to me at all, and I can't specifically pick out musk at any point (clearly, this sample was made after real animal musk was banned in 1979; anything animalic still here would be synthetic). I barely get sandalwood—it's just gorgeous florals, and if you (I) haven't smelled the original Joy, you aren't capable of missing it. Now Smell This has a breakdown of how the eau de toilette and the eau de parfum differed as of 2008; I got the EdP. I don't feel like it goes from light to dark, but it does smell very lush and complex to me. It feels like it sings, and you know what? When I first smelled it, I thought it smelled like a number of things I'd tried recently, particularly Coco Mademoiselle L'Eau Privée. That glowing pink rose-jasmine-ylang-sandalwood combination—and then I realized, no, those perfumes smell like Joy. Joy is so iconic that it's used as a building block, a quotation, in so many fragrances that came after it.

And it's so, so easy to wear—in fairness, I haven't worn the heavier original formulation, but I'm not even sure I'd want to. This Joy is so easy and lovely and gorgeous—I've been wondering if I'd ever find my one signature scent to rule them all, and while Joy doesn't have all my favorite notes, I wouldn't mind if it became mine.

But here's the thing: they don't manufacture Joy anymore. You can still buy what's already been produced, for now, but as existing supplies sell out, it'll only get more expensive with time. Because someone bought the rights to Jean Patou's Joy for the sole purpose of not producing it.

You're about to get a second post about who did that and why.

Perfume discussion masterpost

[creaturecomfortsva]

some old things i made.

i used to call my crochet shop "sadgirlcrochet". i started posting and selling my crochet stuff in late 2020, was dealing with some serious depression, and had only come to terms with being NB a few months earlier. calling myself a girl still felt right back then, or at least not painful. i put frowny faces on everything.

this was the flagship product, the depressed daisy bikini. I'm thinking about re-designing these because they were always my best-selling product. honestly, as someone who works in marketing, "sad girl crochet" was branding gold. I could make any design that was popular with the tiktok crochet girlies but trade a smiley face for a frown and BOOM. iconic piece. hundreds of instagram likes. for example, my 420 creations in 2021:

these are some of my favorite creations from that year. and while they're adorable, they're also simple. i wasn't exactly challenging myself on a technical level - more of my energy was going towards figuring out how to market via the instagram algorithm. because sadgirlcrochet was, above all else, marketable. the clothes weren't for crocheters. they were for followers.

i redesigned the depressed daisy bikinis in 2021. i sold close to a hundred of these, maybe more. i didn't track inventory too closely (but i DID track my instagram followers, obsessively, at the time)

i also had a really shitty phone camera, so i edited the fuck out of my photos to make the blurriness and low resolution into a feature instead of a bug. it worked for a little while. also, my living situation was hellish at the time, but we had a giant yard with this 70-year-old dogwood tree, and it made for an excellent backdrop.

a commissioned witch hat i made for a friend. one of my favorite things i have ever made. after a while, i realized i liked doing commissions more than just creating products to sell to the masses because it let me push myself on a technical level.

this was my most-liked photo of 2021. partly because of my boobs. that's fine. they look great. i created this top because of a commission that went viral, and it spawned so many copycats and fake etsy listings.

my feelings toward the top itself are mild. it's cute. i made it so that people would like and share this photo. there's not much heart in it, if i'm honest. i look back at this top and know that it was made almost algorithmically. granny square bralettes + halter straps + strawberries were all Very In right then so my hands produced this.

the picture above is one of the first photos i took of myself and felt like i looked like my gender. gender euphoria, i suppose, though the stress of my life at the time dampened the joy. it was then that i started really questioning how i felt about having my online image so tied up in my girlhood. in my feminine body shape. i was 24 and recently estranged from my relatives and working through childhood trauma, including all my preconceptions about gender, and whether or not i owed girlhood to anyone.

i owed girlhood to my followers, though.

when i announced that i would be killing the sad girl crochet brand, a lot of people were genuinely upset. i lost over a thousand followers in three months. people didn't care what i, tabby, was creating. they cared about seeing Content under the Sad Girl Brand. that's okay.

when creating for sad girl crochet i felt beholden to both sadness and girlhood. my primary mode of expression and self-understanding, my crochet, started to be incongruous with what i actually needed to express. instead of contending with my sadness and seeking to understand it, i exploited it. instead of finding my own version of girlhood, i recreated the girlhood that was shown to me online. it led to a pretty significant creative drought from mid-2022 till about three months ago, in late 2023.

when you make the art people expect of you rather than the art that is true, you kill a part of your soul. i know this now.

i did my first craft fair in summer 2022 and immediately after, i was creatively bereft. what little bits of creative energy i had left were spent. a few months later my husband and i moved across the state, away from the hellish house with the beautiful yard, a fresh start. once we moved, i told myself, i would feel at home with sad girl again. and i kept waiting to feel the way i did in 2020 and 2021. but the more time went by, the less sadgirl felt like a creative outlet, and more an albatross round my neck.

and weirdly...i started to feel guilty about ever marketing my sadness in the first place. to grapple with the fact that i was making money off of other women and femmes with depression - and marketing to them on the basis that they were as depressed as me. the more i thought about it, the squickier it felt.

i barely posted anything in 2022 and 2023. i signed up for pattern tests and immediately dropped out of them. i made promises i didn't deliver on. eventually, i just stopped logging on.

a lot of life went by. i crocheted for my family, my loved ones, myself. journaled. got back on tumblr. deleted twitter. started trading screen time for books. got outside more. made friends in the new town. and the longer i ignored sadgirlcrochet, the less i wanted to go back.

see, the thing was, i was actually healing and growing, finally. our living situation was stable. my family found our own little village. i came to terms with being trans-er than i'd let myself admit. sad girl was dead. i'd killed her. and that was healthy for me.

creature comforts was born of a desire to be truer to myself and to live with more love. to craft instead of sell. to share instead of market. to be online without wearing a mask. to be active on tumblr instead of instagram. to be a creator and an artist. to let these desires be misunderstood by others. to love, unabashedly.

i'm excited to see where this takes me in 2024.

[mercurialstephie]

Twitter is a cesspool of awful but IWTV being recognized on pretty much EVERY ‘best of’ list for 2022 is HUGE. It’s absolute affirmation to AMC that they have a huge hit on their hands. I know people were worried with whatever shakeups are going on at the network but this kind of amazing press should reassure them in committing to making this their new flagship series. It’s AMAZING!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jacob Freedland

Published: Jun 8, 2024

Non-white applicants to the BBC’s flagship journalism training scheme were almost two and a half times more likely to get in than their white counterparts.

Since 2022, an average of 22.5 per cent of applicants were classed as coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).

However over that same two-year period, BAME individuals made up 41 per cent of participants on the scheme.

In contrast, whites made up an average of 77.5 per cent of applicants but only 59 per cent of participants, since 2022.

This means that non-white applicants were 2.4 times more likely to be given a place on the highly coveted scheme than their white counterparts.

The two-year scheme, referred to as the Journalism Advanced Apprenticeship, provides participants with training and a potentially permanent role at the Corporation.

Females also had stronger chance

The findings were released via the Freedom of Information Act. Female applicants also had a stronger chance of getting in than men, but by a lesser degree.

Since 2022, an average of 60.25 per cent of applicants were women. But in that same period, women made up 71 per cent of participants.

In contrast, men made up an average of 39.75 per cent of applicants but 29 per cent of participants, meaning that womens’ chances of getting onto the scheme were 1.6 times higher than their male counterparts.

Neil O’Brien, who until the election was the Conservative MP for Harborough, said: “Unlike previous BBC schemes which have stated they are BAME-only, this scheme markets itself as open to anyone. But in practice there is discrimination.

“These practices will go into overdrive if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister.

“People are not being treated fairly. We need to get back to hiring the best person for the job rather than basing it on the colour of your skin.”

‘Offer places based on merit’

In April, the Telegraph revealed that one in three participants on the scheme identified as white British.

A BBC spokesman said: “Similarly to The Telegraph’s Newsroom apprenticeship scheme, our apprenticeship courses enable people from a range of backgrounds to enter the media industry. We always offer places based on merit.

“We’re committed to our recruitment processes being fair to everyone, and attracting applicants that represent all parts of the UK, and like the Telegraph Media Group we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture at the BBC.

“The BBC runs many apprenticeship schemes, so it’s unclear what analysis can be determined from applications made to one course.”

==

DEI is systemic racism and systemic sexism, by definition.

[brian-in-finance]

Eleanor and Caitríona: De Beers Flagship Store Opening Event, 24 November 2021, London (Photo: Getty Images)

Tony, Caitríona, and Eleanor: Wimbledon, Day 7, Centre Court, 8 July 2019, London (Photo: Getty Images)

Filming has commenced in Leeds and Belgium on the six-parter from Professor T producer Eagle Eye Drama, which follows Tomlinson’s Evie and Pete (Harry Potter star Alfred Enoch), who move into an upscale neighborhood and find themselves in a world of curtain twitching and status anxiety. They find friendship in the shape of the couple next door, alpha traffic cop Danny (Heughan) and his wife, glamorous yoga instructor Becka (Jessica De Gouw), but after Danny and Evie share a passionate night together, there is trouble ahead.

The U.S. streamer and UK network, who never have co-produced together, described The Couple Next Door as a “psychological drama, exploring the stultifying claustrophobia of suburbia and the fallout of chasing your darkest desires.”

Tomlinson is best known for playing Demelza Poldark opposite Aidan Turner across five seasons of hit BBC drama Poldark. Other credits include Stephen Merchant comedy-drama The Outlaws and Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of David Nicholls’ One Day.

Scottish actor Heughan is gearing up for a seventh season of Starz hit Outlander, in which he plays Jamie Fraser, while he is also starring in Priyanka Chopra Jonas rom-com Love Again with Celine Dion – set for May release. He generated headlines recently when his memoir revealed how a brutal rape scene in Outlander Season 1 had impacted him negatively.

Marcella writer David Allison is penning The Couple Next Door, Professor T‘s Dries Vos is directing, and EPs are Jo McGrath, Walter Iuzzolino and Alison Kee.

The thriller is based on Dutch series New Neighbours and feeds into Eagle Eye’s strategy of turning European hits into shows for the major English-language markets, following Channel 4’s Suspect, which is based on a Danish series, and ITV’s Professor T, which is based on a show from Belgium.

The show was commissioned by Channel 4’s Caroline Hollick and Rebecca Holdsworth. EVP Programming Karen Bailey is overseeing The Couple Next Door for Starz, and it will be distributed by Beta Film.

Instagram Deadline

Jamie & Claire Fraser: S04E03 The False Bride, 18 November 2018

Photo

How Well Do Outlander's Caitríona Balfe & Sam Heughan Know Each Other? | Vanity Fair Game Show, Season 6 Promo, 14 April 2022, YouTube

Remember… when you’re working with your friends, it doesn’t feel like it’s work. — Ken Jeong

[bm-blog01]

Has Bridgerton made a misstep with their S2 anniversary silence?

On 25 December 2021, the first anniversary of Bridgerton season 1, the release date for Bridgerton season 2 was announced. That it was the first anniversary was acknowledged in the announcement which was made by seven cast members, including the new leads Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey. On 25 December 2022, the second anniversary of Bridgerton season 1 was acknowledged with throwback stills from season 1.

25 March 2023 is the first anniversary of Bridgerton season 2, a much more successful season than the first, but none of the official accounts have acknowledged this milestone. In fact the official accounts changed their whole aesthetic from Bridgerton to Queen Charlotte just a matter of days before the season 2 anniversary.

These actions by the Bridgerton marketing team have upset and angered fans, especially fans of Kate and Anthony who already feel that the production have sidelined their favourite couple during season 2 promotion in favour of others (a post on the S2 marketing will be coming within a few weeks). Furthermore, one of the directors/producers, Tom Verica, waited two days to post the Queen Charlotte trailer on the day that Kanthony was trending, this has been seen as a deliberate snub to Bridgerton S2, and especially to the Bridgerton S2 leads.

The decision by those involved with the official Marketing to acknowledge and post for the season 1 anniversary but ignore the season 2 anniversary could end up being an own goal (to take a football analogy). By doing this, and not understanding their market (ie: viewers) all they succeed in doing is to anger the core fandom, and alienate viewers which in turn makes viewers less inclined to support the production company in their projects.

Could this have been a misstep by the Bridgerton Promotions team with a backlash against the Queen Charlotte series, and season 3 of the flagship production? Time will tell, but what it has shown is that the Bridgerton marketing team have very little understanding of their market, or very little care for catering to what the market wants. It makes the production and the marketing team appear arrogant at best, and that is not the way to engage the viewers when you are promoting a new show in the Bridgerton universe.

[nwbeerguide]

Elysian Brewing updates the Space Dust family with the release of Juice Dust IPA.

Press Release

Excited to share that Elysian’s Space Dust universe is expanding… Introducing Juice Dust IPA, a delicious new release from Seattle-based Elysian Brewing. Known for their best-selling Space Dust IPA, Elysian's new Juice Dust is a lush, 8.2% ABV, citrus-forward India Pale Ale now available in Seattle and at select West Coast locations.

Credit: Rachael Jones for Elysian Brewing

Juice Dust steps into the spotlight as the second persona - following 2022’s Dank Dust, an IPA with a refreshing herbal kick - derived from Elysian's beloved flagship IPA, Space Dust. Juice Dust boasts scents of orange, guava, and tropical fruit to emerge as Space Dust's citrus doppelgänger, extracting luscious hop flavors with balanced bitterness and a hint of sweetness. With real orange juice added during brewing, this delight caters to IPA enthusiasts in search of fruity notes while also satisfying those craving a subtle bitterness with a unique twist. The latest release is currently pouring at all three of Elysian's local Seattle pub locations: Elysian Fields, Capitol Hill, and the Elysian Taproom.

[cristina-gomez]

THE MONSTERS THAT YOU FEAR...

"Human History is Monster History" - Dr. Emily Zarka From the PBS 'Storied Humanities' Channel TV Show, Dr. Emily Zarka joins Cristina Gomez in this week's episode to look into what is behind the fascination with monsters, and evil creatures, and why do they have such a huge following in pop culture..? Do the monsters represent our fears, or give rise to evil people from within, and are there monsters in all of us..? Dr. Emily Zarka earned her doctorate in literature from Arizona State University where she currently serves as a faculty member in the English department. With expertise in the Gothic genre, horror, and monsters in literature and film, Zarka’s research applies the theory that ‘human history is monster history.’ Zarka is the creator, writer, and host of the popular YouTube series “Monstrum,” the flagship show on PBS’ Storied humanities channel. Since its launch in 2019, “Monstrum” has won multiple Telly awards and was a 2022 Webby Honoree in Video-Best Writing. She also serves as cohost and script editor for Storied’s “Fate & Fabled” series. Zarka wrote and hosted the Telly award-winning documentary special Exhumed: A History of Zombies that aired nationally on PBS in October 2020.

[jackvanzet]

The 2022 print order cut-off is fast approaching. Some of the flagship pieces from the abstract series are close to being sold out. Use code 'Structures' for 15% off. Thanks to everyone who has put in an order recently https://jackvanzet.com/shop/

PS. Instagram is the best place for new work up dates - https://www.instagram.com/jackvanzet/

[absolutebl]

best bls with external conflict (conflict outside the relationship)?

Hum, this one kind of answers this but it's not been updated in a while:

BLs With The Best External Conflict  

Until We Meet Again (Thailand) - will probably always top this list. It’s a perfectly executed story, fantastic well seeded plot twists, and the only BL I would love to see adapted by other countries or read professionally translated. There is a lot of internal strife but the conflict is the result of the sins of the past, so I think it counts.

Color Rush (Korea) - I lost my mind over the allegory and the perfection of the story to the point of forgiving it certain other sins in stiffness and low heat. The world-building is too simple for it to play well to a SF/F genre only audience but it’s absolutely groundbreaking for BL. (Color Rush 2 continues the story and while I don’t like it as a BL, and the plot is somewhat typical, it’s still better than most.) 

He’s Coming to Me (Thailand) - such a clever take on both paranormal romance and the cohabitation trope, what I love about this is how closely the story and the supernatural conceits are married to each other. Basically boy and ghost move in together, fall in love while they investigate murder. 

HIStory 3: Trapped (Taiwan) - Taiwan often struggles with story structure but Trapped is different. It has a baby murder investigation that promotes conflict between the leads, so the romantic tension is between plot and character, it’s so clever.

Long Time No See (Korea) - Catfishing assassins on either side of a turf war who fall in love not knowing they are on opposite sides. Or do they? Good fight sequences, mature characters, high heat, very suspenseful, AND an HEA. If you like KinnPorsche you will LOVE this one.

Bad Buddy (Thailand) - This was GMMTV’s flagship BL and it started 2022 on a BANG (okay no actual banging but you know what I mean), starring heavy hitters Ohm & Nanon in a pitch perfect university Romeo & Romeo masterpiece that will give you domesticity meets pain whiplash throughout and jet lag at the end. The conflict is all family and friend pressure, some of which is overworked, but it has great production values, killer acting, and some conscious effort to correct for half a decade of Thai BL’s anti-queer mistakes. Full review.

Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding (Korea) - this has a 12th Night meets Cinderfella feel to it, plus some great story tricks like a plot that requires a historical setting (I love it when narrative elements are codependent).

Triage (Thailand) - a “correct the past” Groundhog Day story, that has narrative baggage I normally do not like but is so clever about time loops, I have to forgive it my own hang-ups. About a doctor who must save a boy to fix reality, but not in the usual way. 

Not Me (Thailand) - GMMTV gave us a dark disestablishment narrative (in a time of civil unrest) with established queer award-winning director Anucha and starring the biggest guns of BL, OffGun and IT WAS AN AMAZING THING to get to experience at the time - nerve racking but remarkable. But was it ACTUALLY BL? It certainly has a lot of BL elements, but in the end romance was not what this show was about, or even what it was genuinely trying to be as a performance piece. Still a special moment in Thai cinema, certainly worth your time. Don’t worry, it all ends happily. Full review.

The Eclipse (Thailand) - GMMTV does gay Blacklist with a good boy/bad boy pairing. Starred First & Khaotung plus the side dish pair from FUTS NeoLouis. This is a good show but the cast was excellent and the leads were absolutely flawless elivating it beyond good. They gave us a nuanced and multifaceted burgeoning relationship: philosophical (and socio-political) conflict contrasted to moments of empathy; flirtation contrasted to moments of genuine affection. This narrative is less about love than it is about courage and tenderness. However, near the end the pacing was off and the plot frustrating. Still, this is an enjoyable watch, with an finale that features verbal consent and a funny blooper reel.

Others to try

You Make Me Dance

Manner of Death

Tinted With You

3 Will Be Free

Great Men Academy

[janetkwallace]

My opinion on Zeb Wells' current Spider-Man run

Note: If you really enjoyed Zeb Wells' run, that's really good! I wish I could have enjoyed it. I am criticizing the product, not the reader. Also, my opinion is not gospel. No one is forcing you to agree with me or my own views of a particular subject. I don't hate Zeb Wells or anyone involved with Spider-Man these days as a person, I'm only criticizing what they made under Spider-Man's flagship. Well, If you're still here... Let's begin.

Number One: Bad Characterization

[Aunt May is right. This is not Peter Parker (From Amazing Spider-Man #23 (2022).]

The characterization ranges from mediocre to awful.

Peter is miserable. Everything is depressing and mean spirited, but not compelling as Daredevil. It's just so depressing to the point it becomes painful to read. Peter and Mary Jane are split up again, despite Spencer's run portraying both characters as close to each other, and the reason why they are split up is because external forces won't keep them together. Because Paul, I guess. He is not even a character on his own, neither his children are, they are just plot devices keeping Peter and MJ apart. That's the reason they exist and I stopped caring.

So, I thought the first issues were low, and maybe the quality would improve over time. Yeah, it doesn't. Peter Parker is a loser for the sake of being a loser. He gets punched more than he gets to punch someone in the face. All I see is Spider-Man getting his ass kicked and constantly needing help from someone else.

In one issue he begs Norman Osborn, of all people, to help him fight the Vulture. You know, the Vulture, who has been defeated like, I don't know, a hundred times before by Spidey himself. Hey, the Vulture has new equipment, so I'll buy it for a moment.

...

....

...........

...I buy more the fact that Spidey managed to break the unbreakable window of Hobgoblin's battle van by punching it back in issue 251 of Amazing Spider-Man.

Anyway, if you're going to ask for someone's help to fight against your enemy, would you choose Norman Osborn of all people? The dude who killed your girlfriend in front of you, who psychologically tormented your best friend, the one Norman Osborn who was behind the atrocity of the Clone Saga, that Norman Osborn who took you as his heir and tried to turn you into the next Green Goblin!? You've got to be kidding me.

From what I read, Norman is not a villain anymore and kind of a good guy now. I don't care, he could have asked for anyone else's help. This is just forced, like many of the things going on in Zeb Wells' run.

Number Two: Lazy Writing

If characterization wasn't already one of Zeb Wells' strengths, his writing often feels, uh... How do I describe it? Well, it is lazy. That's it. While I admit that I got a bit invested in the beginning of the run, the writing fails to hold up to my investment. Again, if you liked it, no worries! I am not criticizing you, the fan, but the Spider-Man book that was a kind of let down for me. And one of the reasons why I gave up reading... it was the writing.

It's ok, nothing particularly memorable, which's a bad thing when you are writing about Spider-Man, dude! Sure, Denny O'Neil's run was boring, but there was at least some investment from the author and the creative team to make the stories interesting, even when they did not make any sense.

Zeb Wells, however, it's just pure nonsense, and he doesn't seem to care much about what's going on, there's no attempt at making any of the stories exciting. If that's the case, then it's more of Romita Jr's effort to tell a story through their artwork rather than words. The artists are the ones who brought me to read this run, who fed me interest instead of Zeb Wells himself.

One issue (I think it's the recent one, issue 23) and the narration boxes are like 'God hit me. MJ is with God. Police sirens. Feds are behind me. Gotta run. Body slam. Falls from cliff', and I don't have much of a problem with it. It is the way it's presented that it is a chore to read. There are moments you do not even notice the narration by how tiny the narration boxes are, because one character says 'Yes, I exist', and that's their narration.

Again, this might be a 'problem for me' problem, since it's easy to follow the writing style, it's nothing complicated. Complicated, however, is the author's relationship with the character...

Zeb Wells does not understand Spider-Man. He is capable of writing a story, Wells is a talented writer after all, but man, does he understand how Spidey works... Peter just YELLS at people, pulls them against the wall, and says 'I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP!!!*' and goes away; that could sum up the way he writes Spider-Man.

It comes as a forced drama to progress a flawed plot in order to keep people invested in an event that is very unlikely to happen, which means Peter and MJ staying together and the story being like 'hey they will be together, but not in this issue! We're gonna tell what's going on... not in this issue!', and the story is all about 'revelations!... next issue'. 21 issues later, and now we know who Paul is, and he still manages to be the lamest Spider-Man character I have ever seen. It leaves me baffled at how or why Mary Jane decided to stay with that guy, without saying it is because of Spider-Man editorial, but in-comic context I mean.

(*Also, small pet peeve of mine, but I absolutely hate the word ballons whenever a characters YELLS VERY LOUD, as if MAKING THE FONT THIS BIG tells us something meaningful to the audience.)

Number Three: Disregard with continuity

This is not a problem with Zeb Wells himself, but with the whole of comics.

Point is, character behavior should remain consistent as the story goes on. The more the chapters, the more it's inevitable that the writer (or writers) may screw up with the character behavior. And in a 70 year old title, of course there'll be lots of character developments and relationship shake-ups, it's necessary in order to keep people invested in. However, Zeb Wells' does the opposite.

Instead of developing characters, they are regressed to their lowest common denominator. Imagine if Lois Lane forgot Clark Kent was Superman and left Clark to stay with another man (following a slap in the face) while Clark himself punches Jimmy Olsen in the face, pulls Perry White to a wall as he quits the job at the Daily Planet, goes back from Metropolis to Smallville to date Lana Lang and Lex Luthor want to be best friends with Supes, how would you feel about it? That's how I feel about the current Amazing Spider-Man run.

I may be exaggerating a bit, but that's what happens. Decades of character growth are completely ignored so Zeb Wells can write his soap opera where everyone does stuff they would never do unless under bad writing. Peter gets beaten by every single villain despite having years of experience in combat and being smart too.

Hey, remember when Spidey fought Juggernaut (issues 229-230 of Amazing Spider-Man) not only with his fists, but by being clever as well? By tricking the unbeatable Juggernaut wrecking havoc through New York to a construction site where he sinks into wet cement? That was intelligent, but forget about it. Under Wells' writing, Juggernaut would have stumped with his feet on Peter's head and the fight would be over.

It's just sad to make us feel sad, because that's 'relatable'. And, speaking of which...

Number Four: Relatability

I have this theory that the Spider-Man editorial only lets writers who agree with “their vision of the character '' write Spider-Man these days. Their vision of Spider-Man? Just like how Stan Lee wrote him back in the '60s. Young, single, social awkward, studying at high school, struggling with a job, engaged in love triangles... They can't accept the fact that a 70 year old character needs to move on and be an adult and, I don't know, have some maturity. Peter is a manchild and I hate it, it's not relatable at all, and if that's an attempt at emulating Lee/Ditko or Lee/Romita phase, it fails.

The thing that made Spider-Man be Spider-Man was how readers related to him, how his character grew up by each comic and alongside the readers. When Peter Parker graduated, some of the readers were graduating too. When Peter Parker asked Mary Jane to marry him, some of the readers were married. When MJ told Peter that she was pregnant, guess what? Some readers were raising their children.

As for this Spider-Man, though... I do not relate to him at all. He suffers, everyone suffers, and it's not engaging or entertaining. We don't see Spidey suffer like Daredevil then coming back stronger than before, he feels weaker by each issue, and a D list villain being able to defeat him in a single issue is an offense.

It's pathetic, what happened to Spider-Man, who lifted tons of weight so he could save his aunt's life? Or the Spider-Man who was buried by Kraven the Hunter for weeks until he came out of the grave because of his love for Mary Jane? The Spider-Man who tore Doctor Octopus tentacles apart because of his love for Black Cat?

The Spider-Man who single handed defeated Firelord by punching the hell out of him?

The Spider-Man who fought Morlun face to face and was so badly injured by the end of it yet he never gave himself in to death? The Spider-Man who lifted an entire collapsing Daily Bugle in 'The Final Chapter'?

I do not feel related to Peter at all. Is that the same character I grew up with? Is this the guy who showed me what an ordinary man could do to help people, while in his outfit or not? Peter represents just how an average person can face life’s troubles and tribulations in order to come out stronger, but this Spider-Man? Peter being a sore thumb by every single issue is so annoyingly frustrating to watch.

Number Five: Paul

Oh, Paul... What's with Paul? He is a self-inserted editorial mandate as a character dictating 'no, you can't be together!', sure, but why does he exist in the story's context? Why? No one needed another Paul.

(Yeah, there was Paul Stacy, Gwen's whiny brother who only existed to blame peter for his sister's death, how he was not there when Gwen Stacy died, that Gwen could still be alive if Peter cared more, and he was annoying on his own right, but back to the other Paul.)

Paul is so one dimensional his kids were born 3D because of Mary Jane's genes.

Like I said before, Paul is in the comics to keep Peter and Mj away from each other. He has no reason to exist other than to fulfill Zeb Wells' (and I blame the editorial too) forced drama agenda. Also, why would Mj marry someone who has shown to be aggressive as Paul, isn't her backstory revolved around her abusive father?

Again, bad writing doing its job. Yeah, Peter and MJ had their ups and downs, everyone has in a relationship, but unlike Paul, they had depth, they had humanity, you cared for both, you understood both's feelings for themselves and each other. Paul is a waste of time, and I could say this entire run is a waste of time and vital energy, but there are some positives.

The good stuff:

Romita's Jr. is a good artist. It looked bad at the beginning, but his artwork has improved with each issue (though the neanderthal faces look weird);

The first story arc with Tombstone was decent. Nothing really new, or astonishing, but overall decent;

Hell is filled with good ideas, and so does this run.

Number Six: Mary Jane's treatment

Poor Mary Jane. The way writers have treated you with the years...

Let's be honest: The marriage was a natural progression for both characters. For years, writers have been teasing a closer and deeper relationship between Peter and Mary Jane, so it was obvious they would soon get married. Peter proposed twice, once in Wolfman's run, and later in David Micheline's.

Under Micheline's writing, Peter was a more mature person, he had been through a lot, and he felt like he had been giving too much importance to Spider-Man over the ears while ignoring he's also Peter Benjamin Parker, that he has a life as a person, so the next step to be taken was to ask Mary Jane in marriage. Why? Because, as mentioned before, they knew each other for a long time, and only MJ knew Peter was Spider-Man and Peter knew that Mary Jane would be there to listen to his worries, as much as he listened to hers.

It's a heartwarming story, it shows how much the characters have grown throught time, and it's one of the best examples of why Spider-Man is one of the most relatable of Marvel characters. And then came One More Day, which ruined the character forever. But let's talk about Zeb Wells instead. His Mary Jane hates Peter for some reason, and it's a drag to follow up why. Other than that, MJ is a writing tool, she is no longer a character. I call it Paul's disease.

Issue 21 tells the reader on the front cover that 'Finally! You will see the truth revealed!', but of course not, it happens in the next issue, and it's just bad. Did they reduce Peter/Mj relationship to this? They can't be the human beings I felt related for years ago anymore.

Personal considerations

[You know how bad a comic run is when other comic books acknowledge it. A panel from Doctor Strange #1 (2023).]

When I read Superior Spider-Man, I swear, Ock Peter and Anna Maria's relationship was more developed than current Peter and Mary Jane's relationship these days. It was obvious Superior would not last forever, after Otto Octavius sacrificed himself (don't worry, he came to life again through a deal with the devil, not kidding), with Spider-Man in his red/blue suit saying "Now it's my turn!".

When I saw that panel, with old Spidey's vibrant colors showing in the dark, I really, really had hopes that Spider-Man would beat Green Goblin' ass and the flagship title would be amazing once again. It was a sign of better days to come. What do I get from out of my invest? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Peter is Spider-Man again and so what? He never learns from his mistakes. He is all about 'with great powers come great responsibilities' and he can't be a responsible adult to save his life. "He and MJ will be together" is teased over and over, but external forces keep them apart.

I was only three years old when One More Day came out, watching Woodpecker on TV while Peter sold his marriage to the devil. I had no idea who Spider-Man was, but ever since I read the books, saw the animated series, and had a school's notebook with Spider-Man in it, I became a fan. And I hope I never give up, because that's the lesson Peter taught me when he got to be written by better writers.

If you enjoyed Zeb Wells as a writer, that's completely fine. We all like something others do not. This is by no means a personal attack against any of you who have liked this run, this is just the opinion of a reader. And that's all.

[ausetkmt]

Numerous police officers lured to new jobs in Florida with cash from Governor Ron DeSantis’s flagship law enforcement relocation program have histories of excessive violence or have been arrested for crimes including kidnapping and murder since signing up, a study of state documents has found.

DeSantis, who is expected to launch his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination this week, has spent more than $13.5m to date on the recruitment bonus program, which he touted in 2021 as an incentive to officers in other states frustrated by Covid-19 vaccination mandates.

“This will go a long way to ensuring we can have the best and the brightest filling our law enforcement ranks,” Florida’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, said in April last year as DeSantis announced one-time $5,000 bonuses for new recruits.

However, among the almost 600 officers who moved to Florida and received the bonus – or were recruited in state – are a sizable number who either arrived with a range of complaints against them, or have since accrued criminal charges, the online media outlet Daily Dot has discovered.

They include a former trainee deputy with the Escambia county sheriff’s office charged with murdering her husband; an officer with the Miramar police department fired for domestic battery and kidnapping; and a former member of the New York police department (NYPD) who was hired by the Palm Beach police department having once been accused of an improper sexual proposition.

That officer, named by the Daily Dot as Daniel Meblin, was also part of a $160,000 settlement by the NYPD for violence at a 2020 protest against the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in which officers were accused of beating Black males without provocation.

A Palm Beach police spokesperson told the Daily Dot that Meblin – who had complaints against him including abuse of authority and sexually propositioning a teenager – had disclosed his background during the hiring process, according to the NYPD watchdog 50-a.org.

He has been an “exemplary” officer since he was hired in October 2022, the same month he left the NYPD, the spokesperson said, while denying a request to allow Meblin to be interviewed.

The Daily Dot compiled its report from state records it obtained from the Florida department of economic opportunity through a Freedom of Information Act request. The undated document lists payments of more than $8.8m split between 1,310 newly hired officers, with most receiving $6,693.44 from the signing-on and additional bonuses.

In a press release earlier this month, DeSantis announced the program had since grown to more than 2,000 officers, with a parallel rise in cost to more than $13.5m.

“To date, 595 law enforcement recruits from 49 states and US territories have relocated to Florida, including more than 215 recruits from California, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania,” the statement said.

For its report, the Daily Dot matched information from the 50-a and NYPD databases, as well as published media reports, to officers’ names listed by the state.

It says it uncovered “an exodus” of officers to Florida law enforcement agencies from the NYPD in the wake of a backlash against the department for its brutal handling of racial justice protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Among them were at least two dozen officers whose names matched those on the NYPD’s civilian complaint review board database, including some who, according to those complaints, “unlawfully pepper sprayed, assaulted, and pointed their firearms at suspects, as well as used chokeholds and offensive language regarding race and ethnicity”.

A civil rights lawsuit filed in 2018 against former NYPD sergeant Haitham Hussameldin alleged the officer used physical violence against a teenager on her way to school. Hussameldin, now employed by Florida’s Manapalan police department, accrued six formal complaints, including “multiple allegations of abuse of authority and overuse of physical force” in New York, the Daily Dot said. All the complaints were withdrawn or unsubstantiated.

Another former New York officer now employed in Florida was involved in two deaths, one of which led to a $100,000 civil settlement, the Daily Dot reported. And in October 2022, the Apopka police department hired as an officer Justin Burgos, 19, the son of a retired NYPD deputy inspector, who a year earlier was charged with reckless endangerment, reckless driving and obstruction of governmental administration for driving his car into protesters in Manhattan calling for the firing of an officer accused of beating a Black suspect.

None of the police agencies contacted for comment responded, other than the Palm Beach department, the Daily Dot reported. DeSantis’s office did not return a request for comment from the Guardian.

[maniacwatchestheworld]

hey I really really don't want to ruin your fun and am not sending this to you to be mean or patronizing but with the way things stand it is extremely unlikely that DC would make Bruce canonically queer any time soon, and strongly hoping they will is just setting up for disappointment. yes there has been that tease with Ghostmaker last year and Bruce's interactions with other male characters tend to read vaguely homoerotic, especially with characters like Clark or Harvey, but Bruce is still their flagship character and as long as making him canonically interested in men might mean losing a large part of their reader demographic (straight male comic nerds) they won't risk that. Making TwoFace bi however is a much more likely scenario since he's a villain or side character! If they made him bi it would most likely only be vaguely implied rather than outright stated (like they did it with the Riddler in last year's Valentines anthology) but it is a possibility, so if there is any official plan of validating BruHarvey as a ship then the best most likely bet is hoping for a one sided confirmation of Harvey's crush

So the thing is... I agree with you! I have doubts that DC would want to make their best seller canonically queer. I don't have my hopes up, and I'm entirely ready to be disappointed that this isn't going to happen... But the thing is... It's weird isn't it...?

Why is Harvey in so many pieces of Batman media right now? He's in their best selling comic AND he's in the comic that the freaking company is named after AND he has a TV show starring him AND he is in a film that they JUST released AND he's popping up here and there in other things too (the podcast, the comic based off of the Animated Series). And so I can't just help but to wonder. Why. Because like, I can chalk a lot up to coincidence. But it's enough at this point where it feels like this is either deliberate, or someone at DC fucked up. Because for people who don't like Two-Face or that like other characters wouldn't all of this Two-Face at once in all the big pieces of Batman media that's coming out right now feel alienating...? Why bunch all of these appearances all at once instead of releasing them spaced out from one another? I don't think that this year is like a significant anniversary year for him. Is it purely because of Gotham Knights? I doubt it. It's a TV show based off of a video game, more or less, and it's not like Gotham Knights: Gilded City is doing crazy well right now either. And the game received lukewarm reception as well. No one gave me an answer on my other post from before of asking if other rogues periodically get a sudden wave of love like this, so I can't say these things for certain, but I doubt that all of this was done for Gotham Knights. Like did the Riddler get this much love when the The Batman movie came out?

And just... The more I think about it, the more it feels deliberate. But why would they be doing this? Are they pushing him to be a character with his own solo series? I'm sorry, but as much as I love him, I don't think that Two-Face is that popular. And what can you do with him if he did star in his own series? I think that he would be used best for a courtroom procedural, (but he doesn't have his law license anymore,) or... A noir mystery series... You know... Like some kind of... Detective Comic...? But I have so many doubts that he'd replace Bruce or that they'd want to create a series to compete with the book that the company is literally named after. And if he was popular enough to warrant having his own solo series, you would think that Task Force Z would have gone on for longer. Are they trying to use Harvey as their answer to Moon Knight? Possibly. But the dates don't line up super well for that. (Moon Knight came out in March of 2022, and they had already ordered a pilot for Gotham Knights in February of 2022.) So just... Why would they deliberately push him so much? I'm not really certain.

And honestly when it comes to comic books... I think that they have a LOT more to gain from LGBT rep than to lose from it! Look at Harley Quinn and Ivy! There are SO many queer characters in DC right now! Specifically in the Batman sphere too! Speaking for myself, I would not have gotten into Batman comics like I have if it wasn't for the Harley Quinn Show and their queer rep. I had 0 interest in the Harley Quinn Show until they had Harley and Ivy start dating in it. And straight-up, if it wasn't for Harley and Ivy dating, I would not have watched the show. I started hyperfixating on Two-Face because I decided to give the Harley Quinn Show a shot. I've sucked my sister into the Batman hole with me, and I guarantee you that if Bruce and Harvey started dating, I could convince pretty much all of my friends to start reading Batman comics. I think that they have FAR more to gain than to lose by appealing to the LGBT community. Watching the Harley Quinn Show, it felt like the show was uncertain that it was going to get revived at the end of the second season, so they did their best to wrap things up and get Harley and Ivy together so that they could at least say that they did it. And now look at the show. They had no question of if the show would come back at the end of season 3! They got a Valentine's Day special! It has its own comic book series now! Them leaning into the queerness of the characters has only benefited the show! And I think that the same can apply to the comics. Just look at the Transformers comics. The Transformers franchise for forever has appealed to a solely straight, white, male fanbase. But by adding queer content into the comics, I think that it not only didn't hurt the comic, but rather contributed to its popularity and ensured its longevity. I think the same could apply to Batman. Also isn't Constantine bi? Doesn't stop him from being popular! And Deadpool is pan and he became a pop culture icon!

Given how pretty much everyone in the Harley Quinn Show is confirmed as some flavor of LGBT, it's kinda weird that Bruce HASN'T been confirmed as queer in that show yet! Harley is bi! Ivy is bi! Clayface is sex and gender fluid! Bane is bi! Riddler is gay! Clock King is gay! Catwoman is bi! If anything, Bruce feels like the odd one out for not being confirmed as bi! And... Isn't it kinda weird that they haven't confirmed Two-Face as bi in that series...? It's such an easy and obvious thing to do with him. Like, OF COURSE he'd be bi! He's bi everything! If any piece of media would just be like, "Yeah, Two-Face is bi. OBVIOUSLY! Duh!" It would be the Harley Quinn show. But they haven't done it yet and I don't know why. But it would make sense if they didn't mention it on sheer virtue of them wanting to actually address it later. It's WEIRD to me that Harvey hasn't been confirmed as bi yet because it's not a big deal for Batman characters to be queer anymore. Tim Drake is bi. Why haven't they just gone through with it yet and mention somewhere that Harvey likes men too? Why not just say the obvious thing out loud already? Are they worried about what people would think of Two-Face? Are they worried that people might look at the only other man that he's ever been close to and start asking questions? Why would DC care if they started asking questions about that?

One or two of these things in isolation absolutely can be a coincidence. But all of these things together are painting a picture... Especially when you start considering the content of these stories. So that and the interview and I can't help but to speculate. I am not going to get my hopes up. I do not expect for Bruce and Harvey to be getting together. But it sure as hell would be the RIGHT thing to do right now! It opens up so many story possibilities! It is the morally correct thing to do given the political landscape right now. And I guarantee you that they would get a lot of new readers by being daring and doing this with their flagship character. I think that the benefits outweigh the losses. I don't expect that it will happen. But DAMN they are giving me a LOT of fuel for my conspiracy theory brain! I didn't mean for this post to get this long but just... I think that it's the right move. And I keep finding evidence that it's a good move, and the evidence just doesn't stop coming. This is a thing that keeps tugging me deeper and deeper into believing the more time I spend in this fandom. I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't want to believe it. But when the only response to all of this is just, "They would never do that with Batman. It would alienate the straight, white, male fanbase!" Just... It might have been a strong argument at one point... But the strength of that augment just gets weaker and weaker and weaker the more I look at and think about things. Honestly, it might even be good for the incels that fixate too much on Batman if their hero turned out to be interested in men. Might finally get to them that us gays are just better.

[fastlanewithjeff]

I’ve been working for Lexus for 7 years now and have seen the release of several new models. A particularly memorable year was 2018 when the all-new LC was released along with a totally redesigned LS. The LS is the flagship sedan, and the LC is a large luxury sport coupe. For the first time, the all-new LS 500 received a turbo 6-cylinder engine rather than the traditional V8 that had been used in the LS since its origination with the brand. The 2018 LS 500 received a boost of 25 horsepower over the outgoing 2017 model. Having driven both models I can be certain that the LS 500 is a superior driving machine and though the power boost on paper is less than ten percent the change in driving dynamic is profound.

                Having spoken with many Lexus owners during ride-alongs and elsewhere I know that reliability is a particularly important selling point. Working as a technician I question if the reliability of the reliability of the three-and-a-half-liter twin turbo V6 is up to par with the outgoing V8. We have seen some issues with the new engine, but I would say that the failure rate is rather low and the 4.6 V8 was not without its issues, especially with over one hundred thousand miles. The original 4.0 and 4.3 V8 engines were the best that Lexus ever made and are arguably the most reliable engines of all time. In 2022 Lexus sold 2,679 LS 500 models in 2022. A rather pathetic figure when compared with RX sales, which topped 96,000 units in the same year.

                The RX is Lexus’s bread and butter, in fact, it is the best-selling luxury car period. Not just the best-selling luxury SUV but the best-selling luxury vehicle across all model designations. For 2023 Lexus unveiled the all-new Lexus RX which for the first time received a turbo four-cylinder engine. I imagine you are seeing a trend at this point toward smaller cylinder counts, and Lexus is not alone in that trend. Government mandates and consumer demand have compelled manufacturers to turn out smaller more efficient engines. The challenge is to beat the power, reliability, and refinement of the larger motors. Lexus cannot simply match the outgoing engine they must surpass it even with the smaller cylinder count. Lexus’s first four-cylinder turbo motor was the two-liter 8AR-FTS. It debuted in the 2015 NX and 2016 IS, RC, and GS. This motor makes a poultry 241 HP in its most powerful form and response feels delayed especially in IS and RC models. The new 2.4 turbo motor in the 2023 RX does not suffer from this problem and manages to outperform the V6 in power, feel, and refinement.

Image Credit:

Lexus News Room. (2023). 2023 RX Gas. [Photograph]. https://lexus-cms-media.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp- content/uploads/2022/05/2023_RX_Gas_HERO-1500x1000.jpg