#i still want more

[sunshinechay]

The flashbacks in this episode were…something. I’m going to likely be that person who goes against popular opinion and say that I actually liked the use of the flashbacks. Were there too many? Absolutely! However, I do appreciate what they were trying to be. A way of visually showing Kang contexualizing his feelings for Sailom as they happened. Most of the time, when a character in a drama realizes that they like another, there is that montage of romantic moments of the two characters growing closer to each other. The big difference is that while there is usually only one, this time, the editors seem to air on the side of being too heavy handed with the metaphor.

Kang spends the episode conflicted about his feelings about Pimfah, about Sailom and about Pimfah’s feelings about Sailom. Love triangles are tricky things to do and I liked this one. I even liked how quickly it started and got resolved. Going too deeply, and spending too much time lingering in, Pimfah’s feelings for Sailom would have slowed the show down in a way that wouldn’t have worked (and yes I do agree that the show needs a bit of a slow down). It also risks turning Pimfah into a character she isn’t. She isn’t meant to be a jealous girlfriend nor a competitor for Kang. She is her own character with her own storyline (*looks at Pimfah and the student teacher* Harold they’re lesbians). She also serves as a narrative device to help Kang and Sailom get close (Guy also serves this function within the episode). Kang needed to see her feelings for Sailom in order to confront his own about her and Sailom.

Each flashback serves this function. Every time something happened, it would be accompanied by a flashback and more often than not, a pensive look from Kang (a part of me would very like to know exactly how many times Perth got “now I need to stare thoughtfully into the middle distance” as an instruction). Kang had to rethink and recontextualize just about every interaction he’s had with Sailom since being forced to be tutored by him. Kang does not have much in the way of emotional intelligence (which is the result of many factors both within and outside of Kang’s control) so he doesn’t, can’t, figure it out quickly. Kang himself has said that it has been told to him since he was young. He has to grow up, find a nice woman, get married and have children to carry on the family name. He doesn’t believe he can deviate from that path. That it’s the only path that will make his father proud, that will make his father pay attention to him and love him. It’s the only path that will make him feel worthy of something he should be getting already, his father’s love.

Which also brings to a thought I’ve been having since the beginning. I don’t know how many other people have thought this, but I don’t think Kang has ever actually liked Pimfah. They get along fine and are friends, but I don’t think Kang has ever actually had anything in the way of romantic feelings for her. I think he just decided on her because she was a safe choice. She is his friend, one he knows he gets on with, she seems to like him well enough and also, she is the daughter of one of his father’s business associates. There is no way his father would disprove of her. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Kang’s father has mentioned something about Pimfah in the past or Kang and Pimfah’s fathers wouldn’t have tried to get them together a few years down the line.

Kang has buried how he really feels so far down. He has to take the time to truly dig it up and come to terms with it and I honestly don’t even think he really did that before he kissed Sailom. He figured it out sure, but he hasn’t come to terms with it. He just knows that if he doesn’t act now, he’ll lose Sailom to someone else, whether that is Pimfah or Guy or someone else. It also hasn’t escaped my notice that both of the possibly “love rivals” Kang has had have been characters that are a part of the shows secondary ships, which I also absolutely think is intentional.

The flashbacks are a narratively and visual tool to help the audience go on that journey with Kang. There were too many of them sure, but even that works in this situation, because it shows that Kang isn’t just going off of instinct. He is re-examining his feelings, even if he always jumps to the wrong conclusion in the end, but hey denial will do that to you. This show does have its issues and I think a lot of them do stem from the philosophy of “airing on the side of too heavy handed for it’s own good” in its use of tropes and pacing but in this particular case, even if they were kind of annoying by the end, I think it still worked.

[nightmaregirl]

what the actual fuck is wrong with me

[rayatii]

OKAY, so I knew that Samuel Ramey voiced the Beast in Over the Garden Wall, but how did I not know (or at least, remembered) until right now that Deborah Voigt apparently ALSO voiced a character in Over the Garden Wall??? (the Queen of the Clouds, in Greg's dream sequence that's very much like the "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead" bit from The Wizard of Oz but in the style of one of those creepy 30s cartoons, set in a land of clouds, you know the one.)

[eosofspades]

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[nipuni]

the snake of eden 🥰

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[gatorinator]

“Walrus on your doorstop” this “fairy’s more unrealistic” that my professor just uttered the sentence “there was one day I found a real octopus in my backyard” this man hasn’t left Utah his entire life. How was there an octopus in his backyard in Utah. He then said “I do not have time to elaborate we need to cover a lot today in class” GIRL WHAT DO YOU MEEAN

[astearisms]

catalysts, protectors

[mamawasatesttube]

BTW... PSA.... even if we arent mutuals if youre in my notes regularly theres a Very high chance i am still fond of you. yes im vaguing someones tags on the compliment the person u rbed this from post. but like. positive vaguing? THE POINT IS im weird abt following ppl but IM STILL SENDING U FOND VIBES...

[july-19th-club]

seriously have been thinking about this all night long. call me autistic but the fact that 90% of workplaces the point is not to get your work done and then be done doing it but to instead perform an elaborate social dance in which you find something to do even when you're done doing everything you need to do in order to show your fellow workers that you, too, are Working . because you are at Work . disgusting why cant we all agree that if there is no work immediately to be done. we just dont do anything

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Vanny and Michael if they met as teens

[batbabydamian]

*you opening the love letter* what does your damijon look like, pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, i know it would be so cute, i just know it 🙏🙏🙏

here you go! thank you for the ask, this was a lot of fun to do! they're working on a case together ^^

[thebibliosphere]

Still not over the head of cardiology, who said she wouldn't formally diagnose me with dysautonomia because she didn't want me to think of myself as disabled.

As if good vibes and a can-do attitude can stabalize autonomic dysfunction.

[ruporas]

trigunned the hades or hadesed the trigun (id in alt)

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.