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Dominant Yakuza & Wimpy Corporate Grunt

(Yes, I changed the title to protect the guilty AKA moi. Don't search, follow the link BLabies, that's what it's there for.)

Ore-sama Yakuza to Hetare Shachiku: Kuni wo Koeta Jingi Naki Dekiai, Japan YT.

A 30 min slice of ridiculousness. (terrible sound, some spinny spinny, the usual with grey stuff)

This mini walked out the back of one of my 1999 yaoi (you know those little shorts they always had along with the main story?) and randomly got cut together by some helpful malcontent, tumbled into my YT feed like a Taiwanese prat fall, and I couldn't be happier. It's the Cliff's notes of a story that could have been amazing, but I adored it anyway.

Basically what it says on the tin: office cutie from Taiwan working in Japan runs across hot AF mafia hit man beating up lesser thugs. Falls instantly in love, turns out so does the yakuza. They end up together for...... reasons? (one is cute and the other is cool?). That's it. It's dumb and I loved it.

I'm posting it here right away and not just in the end of week round up because who knows how long that cut is gonna last on YT so you should all watch it now before it vanishes.

@heretherebedork I think you'd enjoy the utter silly.

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fadel: this man could be dangerous!!

bison: so you're saying he's in love with me?

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Damn it's been a minute since I've seen a lovely crop top like this. Reminds me of 3 will be free

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why they gotta be out here looking like a 2nd gen kpop group 🤣🤣🤣

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I absolutely love their dynamic. Junior is so damn cute and friendly, and Sun is just an awkward precious bean.

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lmao was that a spirit exiting her body or some shit

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It's giving miracle of teddy bear ep 1

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This show is already so unhinged and weird I love it

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I finished Smells Like Green Spirit

The amount of bittersweet emotions I feel is insane. I have so many thoughts, but none of them are coherent.

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He's so pretty it's unfair. If Pond looked at me like Hill looks at Ter I would cry or freeze

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Starting Fourever You entirely for Pond

First scene it literally this. Bless. They did it for me

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I really like how Smells Like Green Spirit has both Mishima and Kirino as their main queer characters. Cause their both feminine amab people, but their view on gender is very different. Usually in shows we only get one of these.

Mishima is feminine and is proud of his androgyny. However he's also pretty confident in his male/masc identity. So far his femininity has nothing to do with his gender identity. He just likes being cute and looking pretty. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have some questions about other aspects of himself, but gender identity is relatively solid. From what I remember he did say something along the lines of "I don't think I want to be a girl", plus he uses masc pronouns like ore (not even boku or watashi, he uses ore which is about as masc as you can get) even when he knows he could use something else around Kirino.

Kirino on the other hand, their femininity IS tied to their gender (whatever that is). Kirino uses female pronouns when able to and is very excited to do so. They're jealous of Mishima's natural androgyny. I can't remember the scene exactly, but it does seem to imply that Kirino at least slightly sides on the "I wish I was born a girl"/"I want to be a girl" side of things. Kirino also seems (at least originally, they might be more even on this now) more confident on their sexuality. They definitely like boys. But gender?? I don't think they exactly know 100%, but they do know they like siding more towards fem gender things. Which really is how a lot of people start their gender journey. Just doing what makes them happy.

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Yumeno in peak sexuality crisis + internalizes homophobia and Kirino gets all emotional (understandably bc Yumeno you shouldn't have done that, if it was someone else you'd get punched in the face) then hits him with atashi (feminine way of saying 'I')

These are not the emotions I asked for at 12:30am

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A friendship that is like a treasure

Young 🫂 MiAe

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Translator confirming my ears aren't wrong. I started hearing Kirino use atashi and I immediately thought "oh???" Cause as far as pronouns go atashi is a very feminine one. A guy usually would never choose to use it

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Sure, Love in the Big City is melancholy and raw and truth-telling and blah, blah, blah. But right in the center of it is this gay vitality, this flopping effeminate performance we’re rarely allowed on screen and it’s even more rarely the central role. Nam Yoon Su is not a femme, exactly, but a distinctly legible gay, a stereotype if he wasn't taken so seriously and played across his full-range.

Ko Yeong’s characterization of the character enlivens a dour narrative. While I respected the novel I actually wasn’t a huge fan when it came out in translation because of its overwhelming depressive quality, but the adaptation’s rendering of the narrator (among some other key changes) gives us resiliency and humor in the form of a vibrant affect even within the dark lonely depths.

There’s something clown-like in the physicality of this kind of gay: neck and wrist flexible as rubber, an inclination toward inappropriate laughter, gawkiness that suddenly makes perfect sense as it bursts into spontaneous and surprisingly coordinated street dancing. In lesser hands, its a flamboyant cliche. But here, its a natural way for this character to be in the world, instinctively concealed when wary of others judgment, and never detracting from other shades of emotional intensity.

I've been thinking about this embodiment for a few months now, not because of LITBC, but because it's my own. Gemini's performance of Tinn in My School President is another instance where I think something similar is captured, and on the first season of South Korea's gay dating show His Man, Eun Chan carried himself with this demeanor. Its a gestural language with an insistence towards joy that drives it. That doesn't mean it's driving in the right direction, of course. However, when people watch LITBC I hope they can see how this queer characterization creates a throughline of self-acceptance, persistence, and bathos even in the face of the hardships associated with the queer experience. It's a body enacting queer joy.

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HE SAID: NEXT QUESTION (x)