#making gay fishes

[semrielle]

its her birthday today !

[lazer-meme]

love love love steddie + supportive wanye

thinking about wayne and eddie going on an annual fishing trip (like thee Munson Men Annual Fishing Trip™️) just like a little weekend away. and the first one is coming up after eddie and steve starts dating. over breakfast eddie jokingly complains about having to go and tries to get out of it. but wayne is used to his dramatics so he just gives hmms when appropriate because eddie’s whole spiel never got him out of it before and he tells eddie that.

steve watches the whole exchange with amusement when wayne asks if he’s looking forward to it. and he’s like ??? because he assumed it was just a wayne and eddie thing. and wayne is like i just told eddie all munsons must go can’t get out of it kid.

steve gets flustered and is internally is like oh??? all munsons,,,

or like after the trip a neighbor asks wayne if they caught anything and he pulls out his wallet to show a picture they took on the trip. wayne passes it with ‘here’s a picture of my boys’ and to steve’s surprise it’s a picture of both him and eddie with their biggest catch.

and just idk wayne casually accepting steve into their family and throwing steve off guard with it.

[nhura]

QUICK NO ONE'S LOOKING

(See readmore for thoughts, cope, bonus, etc.)

Anyone else up thinking about Ratio's big, strong, secure arms and how warm and all-consuming they could be in a hug or embrace. :/ Anyway

I just wanted to draw them being cute and seizing a sliver of a moment where they could have some PDA silly time without actually having any eyes on them. They're public figures and working adults with very clear boundaries between public persona and private life (to varying degrees of "in a sad way"), so while it may be in Aventurine's nature to constantly blur lines for various agendas and self-preservation (read: play "the flirt" without an aligned goal), I believe that in an actual relationship they'd be fairly private.

It's kind of fun to break your own rules, though! Ratio would be more upset about the consequences, though. He's a little bit of a hypocrite, which is devastating for someone of such discipline, but nobody's perfect.

I'm of the mentality of, "If you're tired of working on it, then just post it!", so here are some fun peripherals that I didn't feel like adding:

Some staff in the background sweeping up to evoke a blended sense of fragile privacy and liminal time.

A laptop on the aquarium/bar/counter because there's something fascinating about seeing people on their work laptops in public.

The rest of their clothes (casual friday)

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Mix Sahaphap gets to perform (and has the performance chops to perform) in a style that I’ve never seen any other male actor get to embody. Mix gets to unironically play the #strongfemalecharacter. The Beatrice, the Elizabeth Bennett, the Jo March. Strong-willed, emotional, kind-hearted.

Not only do the plot points line up, but Mix, more than any BL actor I’ve seen, fully leans into the embodiment of this archetype. In his roles, he rolls his eyes, pouts, banters flirtatiously, softens his posture and expression at small details. He doesn’t over-exaggerate and imposition other characters but his face also doesn’t hold back his character’s thoughts and judgments. And when the moments arrive, he lets all the hurt and anguish pour out in shatters of tears and visible heartbreak—the star-counting scene, anyone????—in a way that harkens to the operatic emotionality of well-done melodramas, soap-operas, and their contemporary Thai equivalent of Lakorn. It’s only that these have never been men’s roles in those.

It’s no surprise that one of Mix’s roles—Cupid’s Last Wish—is explicitly a gender body-swap, and Tian in A Tale of Thousand Stars is (albeit explicitly denied within the show) heavily connected to gender body-swapping. What Mix specializes in as an actor, and does exceptionally well, has been defined as feminine. To depict a kind of queer expression in this style is novel because it’s not camp, it’s not okama, it’s not a soft or femboy, it’s not a BL twink (Mix has been mostly excluded from the schoolyards and quads of the BL universe except for a role as a senior crush in Fish Upon the Sky). It’s too sincere and too adult for any of that.

In Moonlight Chicken we get to see, without the pretense of gendered mysticism, this performance style’s seduction, warmth, wit, and explosiveness within the framework of a general gay form of expression. It says that this kind of femininity might just be a gay thing. Not all gay men exhibit it, obviously—queer men aren’t a monolith. Still, it gives us something to consider about how we observe performance of queerness on screen, especially in front of an audience that puts so much more emphasis on ships, heat, and pairing chemistry to assess how well they perform a BL role. Could we look for other features to judge performance of queerness instead of how well they kiss?

Seme and uke roles would be the major performance style categories loyal BL fans assess actors with, yet even within the archetype his character’s fill within BL narratives, Mix’s performances differ from the typical uke depiction in BL because he really doesn’t perform them as passive. Rather, Mix’s characters and his portrayal of them are dynamic and demanding. It certainly fits certain stereotypes of ukes (Gilbert!) and their gay stereotype equivalent of bottoms as pillow princesses and brats. Mix’s characters, though, have more drive, agency, and compassion than that, and he plays them with all of those currents running underneath.

We certainly have openly gay writer/director Aof Noppharnach to thank for writing this kind of queer character for Mix to play in Tian and Wen. But for Mix’s specific commitment to the performance starting off with his (debut!?) role in ATOTS, we first have Earth to thank for believing in Mix’s ability and recommending him to portray the role of Tian, and then Aof’s acceptance despite his differing initial expectations for the character. Mix, Earth, and Aof have all been open about how Mix in his personal life and nature holds a lot of similarities to both his role as Tian in ATOTS and Wen in Moonlight Chicken. Some people might knock points off his performances because he’s like them. But his relationship to the characters, rather than dampening my enthusiasm for Mix’s performances, helps me appreciate his willingness to give an authentic performance in a style that hasn’t been encouraged on screens previously. It’s made more impactful that he chose to risk vulnerability to bring something personal that had previously been excluded from screens because of its gender deviance (and in broader society explicitly condemned). This doesn’t make a claim on Mix’s actual identity, but simply shows his willingness to understand and perform the expressions of his queer characters with an effort at empathy that many other actors would feel challenged to bring.

Some actors are chameleons, but some actors have a gift of a type within which they can explore depths and range that no one else can best. For me, that’s what Mix does in his work when directors and casting understands his talent. There’s a BTS video of Mix actually fainting during a scene while in Earth/Phupa’s embrace on the mountain that immediately brought to mind the wildly famous final scene in the film Camille where Greta Garbo as Marguerite dies in her lover’s arms.

For Mix, it was a serious incident due to regrettably extreme conditions and requiring the on-set paramedics, but these levels of theatrics, for me, are emblematic of what Mix is capable of as a performer, as well. After all, he had to faint in Phupa’s arms multiple times on purpose. It’s the kinds of Old Hollywood and heightened sentimental romance realms Mix takes his performances to! Then he can turn around and make it look easy to take that same character into grounded quips or dedicated everyday tasks. It only takes writers, directors, and audiences willing to see that men can feel this way and act this way. Mix has paved the way.

[omatoxin]

happpy pride month :) i luv u

[avephelis]

top ten riptide bits that make me pause the episode and physically recoil and walk away for a day and resort to homophobia and

[arrokett]

chips and fish or something….

[thecraftgremlin]

I love it when an animal becomes inexplicably popular. Like fuck yeah how are things going in the sockeye salmon fandom, love that dude.

[unsanctitude]

cracks open my coffin lid to show my newest disgusting old person furry

[tailsnumber1fan]

they need to stop giving them such fabulous outfits im going insane (⁠｡⁠•́⁠︿⁠•̀⁠｡⁠)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[s0ljpeg]

DAY 15: TREASURE

Yk some people find others that they consider as treasures, so I took that definition and the normal one, anyway THIS IS THE LAST DAY IM SO HAPPY I FINISHED IT

[ffredmujkic]

Coping so hard nothing bad happened :)

[bananafishdepression]

Life is so unfair there are so many shitty shows out there with a dub and Banana Fish never got one and its been 6 years now

[ikemenomegas]

good-ending!kakashi and itachi need to have a little former traumatized geniuses cooking club where they get comfortable with making little "mistakes" and putting imperfect dishes on the table and improvising without needing to explain themselves like it's life or death

[helpimtrappedinthetextbox]

A fnc fic where they met as kids, either by Chip obtaining a way to the under sea and meeting Gil some how or Gil running away to an above sea island and meeting Chip, where they know each other for no more than a month, but fundamentally change the course of each other's lives.

Where Chip shows Gil that it's not always black and white, that life is colored in shades of gray, that the Elders approval isn't everything.

Where Gil shows Chip how to allow himself to be, where he doesn't shave to chance his adoptive father's legacy, he can just be himself.

Where they sob in each others arm for hours knowing it'll likely be the last time they meet.

Where Chip, as he grows, learns to dream for himself, be himself, not chasing a shadow of a time long gone.

Where Gil, as he grows, learns to live for himself, be himself, not trying to fill impossible shoes for a Prophecy that could never be for him.

They do meet again, many years later, when each other is barely a wisp of a memory.

Chip in that boat with Jay, sure of himself and his own journey.

Gil floating in the open tide, having left his home to be free.

They don't recognize each other. They remember the person they met in their childhoods. But names and faces were lost to time.

They become crew, they become family.

One night, in an emotional conversation brought on by feelings of longing for a person long gone, they tell each other about the friend they had in their youths.

About the friend that forever changed their lives.

And maybe they realize, maybe they don't.

But regardless, they're together now. And forever.