#but thats the general gist

[theside-b]

Spoilers for the novel (and my review for the Live Action) ahead :

The boys do get together, but that act ends with their break up when people find out that Tian and Wang are romantically involved, unlike in Unknown where everyone was ok with Qian and Yuan getting together in A Certain Someone the fact that they are 'brothers' plays a huge role at that stage of their relationship and the eventual demise of their first attempt at a romance. Their break up lasts 6/7 years, don't remember exactly, but its a long time...

A lot more happens, but the show made some fundamental changes to both characters. It takes A LONG time for Tian to come to terms with his own feelings, that scene where he sees his father with another man in bed tints his whole worldview from a very young age — he develops quite the internalized homophobia; he is fine with other's queerness but it's his own that he cannot accept since he sees his father sexual orientation as the reason for the destruction of his family.

There is a tense moment between Tian and his father, where his dad says "we are more alike than you care to admit" hinting that he knows of what its happening between the boys and mind you Tian is still trying to sort out what he feels for Wang. The show sugarcoats quite a lot, novel's Tian would never initiate a kiss with Wang or even play along like he did in the show, at least not at that stage of their relationship.

Speaking of which, Wang is also different in the books. In the show he reads as pretty open minded, curious about anything and everything. In the novel he's pretty straight (at first), the journey really begins as a bromance until the feelings start to change. There is a lot of push and shove between the two of them, and is veeery slow.

The show pretty much burns bright the part where Wang tears Tian's emotional walls. Which I don't mind, otherwise it would take 50 episodes to wrap the first act. I honestly thought they were going to draw an original route for the show, but they are slowly adapting elements they left behind so they can follow the book.

Now for the review:

All in all, I think the show did a good job all things considered: production began in mainland China where Liu Dong was cast, but censorship hinders lgbtqia+ productions there so pre-production moved to Taiwan and there the rest of the casting was done. It's hard to tell how much of that interfered in the script but I assume Tian's father core plot was removed in the first draft and got re-integrated once production moved to Taiwan (Chris Lee's casting was one of the last to be announced which probably means he was also one of the last to join filming). Considering that productions like The Spirealm got pulled for much less is understandable that they would avoid the more thorny subjects under China's homophobic gaze.

(Educated guess here: considering all the publicity push, I imagine either Andy Cheng or Stan Huang were the choices for Wang, but since Liu's casting was an order from one of the financial backers they got smaller roles — it's a common move in taiwanese productions — by the way, there is a 'love triangle' later, is a sad thing since there is no-way you can split the main couple, but the show made me wonder who is going to be playing the third party in the live action).

As I always say about taiwanese shows: you have to watch the live play. The On1y One is much like it's local peers, it works wonders in small doses, but as soon as you see the whole picture you start to see the cracks. It reminded me a lot of Kiseki: Dear to Me in the sense that the main couple story is the emotional backbone, with a somber approach with brief moments of humor but everything surrounding it is slightly unhinged.

Everything that happened at that school was insane. The amount of crimes committed in the school grounds was ridiculous, the fact that Qi Jia Hao didn't ended up behind bars after ordering thugs to attack Wang and assault the english teacher is crazy. The whole side-plot involving the teachers was head-scraching by the way, much like everyone else I assumed that Zhao Xi and Benny were married when they were introduced.

Imagine my surprise finding out that not only they were not married but at one point Zhao Xi thought Benny could be interested in the english teacher (speaking of her, why the hell did she sounded dubbed? Is that not her real voice?). This whole story felt so disjointed from everything else, and it came at the tail end of the season(?), so not only it took some much suspension of disbelief for me to buy that these 40-year old gays were that emotionally impaired but also demanded patience since they spent very valuable screen time which could've benefited the main couple.

That is all to say that while I was having a blast while watching, the more I stop and think about it critically the more problems I see in this show. And again, that usually happens with taiwanese productions, experienced the same with Kiseki and Unknown, two shows that I adore, flaws and all, and now the same happens with The On1y One.

[clumsypuppy]

Been LOVING your lil magician folks recently please continue they're beautiful and very cute and cool and also very well-designed!! 🥺❤️

thank you for the kind words !!! im not much of a writer, but i do have some sort of story in mind for them.. theyre bitter rivals who end up as roommates bc of their scatterbrained elderly landlord lol

[teomodo]

is there a reason for this apparent trend of Extreme Credulosity on the internet beyond the usual advertiser friendly/made for kids/eternal september/no-discretion-just-endless-content reasons... like i acknowledge i am not the target demo here but it seems very common these videos with the spooky scary thumbnail about how this media was BANNED omg what could it be and what it be's is like 30 years ago in the dark ages of mass media conservative christians had the power to take bloodhound gang off their radio stations because it was too off color for their tastes. like i think maybe this is only interesting to me because ive been around older/religious people so much so i hear the decline of society thing all the time and like accelerated degradation of social etiquette and taboo and Young People are all culturally relevant and hip and with it and savvy but it feels like wrapping back around to this like extreme wide eyed...ness... very disingenuous feeling very obviously for profit... like maybe in my mind im overstating the cultural relevance of rotten.com and it just feels like EVERYONE on the internet used to watch videos of the cartel torturing people to death and now EVERYONE only watches 30 pieces of lost childrens media found in 2025 [12:28:56] number 30 a reddit user posted about a show they couldnt remember about a blue dog who solbed mysteries and a comment suggested it was a show called blues clues Lost Media: Found. maybe the powers that be have enforced the dichotomy of content creator/content consumer in a 10/90 ratio because everyone acknowledging their capacity for creativity and self fulfillment is not profitable and they did it so well that it cultivates this feeling like we *are* running out of new things (even though we're not) so we take the campfire ghost story aesthetics of like a whang video on mr. hands and apply it to whatever the anticlimactic drama du jour is because this form of presentation is established even if we don't have actual content to justify such a presentation and we're just scraping the bottom of the barrel for ad sense, content wise. the other side of this coin is of course that uber savvy misanthropic irony poisoning is also still everywhere and the grand old tradition of white kids adopting aave to seem Worldly is alive and well so when they say "blud thought he ate with the top hat willy wonka ahh chile 😭 😭 " it sounds like everyone else is soooo gauche and naive and you see the top hat soooo often that everyone knows what you'retalking about. i think i understand that a little more as a cultural trend/defense mechanism where the gullibleness maybe i want to understand less because im afraid the answer is everyone buying wholesale into the modes of thought that make them good youtube viewers, or, if not enthusiastic conscious adoption of that kind of thinking just taking the path of least resistance because real life is so sucks right now. honestly most of the time it just feels like everyone is talking to nobody online and our little jokes and performances are always just whizzing over the shoulders of The Viewership so maybe none of this even matters whatsoever

[rpfisfine]

mesmerized by what they look like when you set the pixel size to 100

[1tsjusty0u]

zelda is done. so dirty sometimes

[vastnbeyond]

to me, all my muses here are princes, just that some sometimes they forget it -coughs- gilly -coughs- romano -coughs- f.eliciano -coughs-

[koushirouizumi]

Katekyō Hitman Reborn! + Ep. #180 ~ Yamamoto & Tsuna {YamaTsuna} / 8027 + Moments & Interactions + Important Dialogues {Anime Ver.} + Character Development Parallels - Tsuna's Character Development{s}

"I put unnecessary 'Pressure' on you without realizing it..." - Tsuna, Initially

{"...I want you to stop."} - Tsuna, Later

Happy belated Birthday, Yamamoto! {Apr. 24th}

{Gifs by Me} {Do Not Re-post} {Do Not Re-produce Without My Permission} (Please ASK to Use)

[winterbonk]

Starting a new dragon age painting. I don't do scenery very often

[petorahs]

9s and 2b as a relationship is so good because theyre written in a yuri way. ive never seen a depiction of a m/f relationship more yuri than them and it's probably intentional. hope this helps

[bluejaybytes]

I DO actually have non-fandom OCs they've just been on the backburner while both 1. The squid autism rages on and I make 15,000 sploon OCs and 2. I still need to figure out what the hell the main plot is for some of my newer ones. Juno has a pretty good motivation for participating in her plot (She's a robot from a line that were all decommissioned, with her specifically having been murdered for unknown reasons. Her main motivations are to find her old corpse so that she can access the black box left on her so she can learn what happened to her and why she was killed), but Cal... Cal is Just Kinda There. I will figure out why he's Just Kinda There... eventually.

[toxarts]

I could me misreading, but in the READ ME it says Yes Man has an internet browser? Do you have to have a certain relationship level with him to access this?

You're not mistaken, he has a internet browser feature that functions as a little ""minigame"" type thing to find things to show yes man and other stuff, and that's correct! Once he warms up to you it'll show up on the main menu you get when double clicking his Taskbar.

[pekodayz]

being black and liking anime is like top 10 hardest things ever

[rxttenfish]

i need to explain how translation spells/charms work in context of the redesign universe because! surprise! it annoys me greatly when people treat languages as just a given and set in stone as a given fact of the universe and not a highly specific cultural artifact that changes and varies wildly through time and context!

which is all to say that yeah translation spells exist but they're all designed specifically for a certain language at a certain time, and are massive and complex because you have to define out every single word and turn of phrase that might come up and isn't perfect anyways because they usually translate it to whats "intended" by that speaker. there's different studies and languages of magic that you work with, but all non-merfolk forms of magic are pretty vastly hampered by the needed complexity and fitting the associated magical "wiring" into a space that you can actually carry around.

[rontra]

Hey I just want to tell u I love the way you draw Zee (and your style in general).

thank you!!!!!!! 💃

when i was putting together my zee design i was like. this is a bit off-standard in a few ways However she is the only bitch who came to the fight dressed like A Magician so they'll know who she is no matter what i do to her BNDSBH

that's brand power. sometimes when i draw her she even comes out a lil handsome... 🥰

hahaha im glad you like her!!!!! thanks!

[crescentfool]

i'm a little late (oopsies) buuuut if you're still answering 'em, 6 and 14 for the artist asks? ehehe

hi misty!! thank you for stopping by with the artist asks, i'm happy to answer them!

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn’t supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

it took me a bit to come up with an answer for this because stylistically speaking, i try to be very deliberate with what choices i want to try out and yoink from artists...

that said, i think that whenever i do any silly comics, because i'm not too well-versed in the medium, i feel like my expressions end up getting subconsciously inspired by expressions i see passed around a lot... like anya's waku waku expression or MS paint tails...

so basically memes...! im a very silly littel guy. oh and do cats count i swear my expressions are based off of meme cats sometimes.

14. Any favorite motifs

i think in most arts of mine it's very easy to see that i'm so very fond of sparkles... i can't help but insert a little ✨ into my work... i am also very fond of the moon (all phases are cool but i am most drawn to crescent and full moons). this is probably not a surprise whatsoever given that ryoji's one of my favorite characters 🤣

i think i just really like circular motifs in general too... like radial lines? concentric circle? is that what they are called? my vocabulary regarding these are a bit lackluster, so here's an example of what i mean featuring a sylvain concept from may 2023 that will probably not see the light of day </3 (this was supposed to be for his birthday) (being impaled by the lance of ruin is a great birthday gift i know)

for composition heavy things i usually enjoy integrating character motifs... whether if it's very direct (e.g. crests for fe3h characters, the moon for ryoji, water for minato), or just something that i feel reminds me of the subject matter... (i love sprinkling music notes whenever i draw ryomina i just think there's intimacy in sharing music together when you use ur headphones to isolate urself but umm thats very unrelated to this ask.)

i also really enjoy visual motifs being used to make characters look like they are being displayed in a church (see this tweet for examples of characters)... i guess you could say religious imagery? i'm very fond of the art nouveau style and i feel like i'd wanna make a few pieces like that!

[pandaemoanium]

i'd like to ask you to be less normal and give us the deets about Valtiel

ok so uhhh i wrote a lot more text than i was supposed to dfhgjkdgh, so heres his backstory under the cut:

valtiel was born and raised in baldur's gate. his childhood was pretty normal, living with his parents in a modest house, his father earning well enough working as a high ranking officer in the flaming fists.

it was also his father who suggested that valtiel would take up swordsmanship when he was still in his early teens. he quickly learned to wield a blade, and ended up joining his father in the baldur's gate military once he entered adulthood. he served under the flaming fists for a few years, working his way up in ranks till he was promoted to a sergeant.

the payment was nice, and valtiel was glad he could put his strong draconic physique to good use, but he slowly started resenting the way the army was handling certain things. he could sense something was off with the higher ups - corruption, possibly? - and tried to bring it up to his father, who just brushed the whole thing off as valtiel just having issues with the authority (which he also did. he was never happy taking orders from others.)

a year or so pass, and valtiel and his father have a falling out over him getting into more and more trouble with the authorities, and his father being the proud soldier that he is, couldnt turn a blind eye any longer. valtiel resigned from the military, left most of his earnings to his mother before walking away from baldur's gate for good.

valtiel traveled around the lands, working as a merc for hire for whoever was willing to pay. it didnt really matter whether the gig was morally "good" or not, as long as he could afford nice warm meals and the occasional ale. one day, at a pub in a small town, he meets a bard, an elf who had just performed there earlier. they hit it off almost immediately. on one bored, drunken night the bard decides to teach valtiel how to play a lyre, and through that, magic. it took him quite a while to get proficient with the instrument since he can be quite clumsy with such things that require more finesse to use properly.

a while pass, and the two have to part ways, promising to meet again someday; after all, the bard has to see if their pupil has actually stuck with the performance arts, and how much he has learned.

now, valtiel continues his travels working as a mercenary while also diligently practicing his newfound skills to wield magic.