#I like my queer media anyway I get it!

[respectthepetty]

I am currently hooked on Past-senger. I don't know how possibly may have a happy ending but I am enjoying its lightness and humor. Did you notice Bamee house is the house of Tonhon in TonhonChonlatee?

I have tried Love syndrome III because I like its protagonists but it's terrible. How can the acting be that bad? I know from other series they are not that bad.

How the Koreans manage to give us such a steady string of wonderful stories such as Unintentional love story and The eighth sense? They always leave me with a nice aftertaste I don't get anywhere else.

Anon, Taiwanese BLs are my favorite, but I appreciate Thai QLs because so many are produced compared to the ZERO I've gotten from Taiwan in 2023. ZERO! The last BL Taiwan offered was HIStory 5: Love in the Future, which shared the time travel theme with Past-Senger, and as much as I love Taiwanese BLs and the HIStory franchise, I think Past-Senger did a better job with it.

Quantity does not equal quality, so Thailand having over fifty QLs a year doesn't necessarily equate to great stories or production value, but, much like Vietnamese and Filipino QLs, there is always a solid foundation with some heart at its core. Also, Thai series are easily available, for free. I haven't nor will I watch Love Syndrome III because I will hate it, and not in a fun hate-watch way, but some who watched it liked it because that's the beauty of variety; we have more to pick from based on what we like and there is something for everyone.

Past-Senger, with its Tonhon Chonlatee house, has its issues, and there are plenty including spotty sound, a clumsy final quarter, and odd pacing, but as you mentioned, it does humor well, and it takes the time-traveling aspect seriously compared to HIStory 5. When Kiew lands in the future, he is constantly reminded that he is out of place and not meant to be there, while HIStory 5 spent the first episode on that idea, then quickly moved along.

Korea tends to go back to the past (Tinted With You and Once Again) or for reincarnation (First Love Again and The Director Who Buys Me Dinner), but there is always in underlying melancholy to these since the narrative makes it clear these are "right person, wrong time" stories. Korea loves a time skip like Japan loves to make its guys run. But the issue most people as well as I have with Korean BLs is they are too short to properly develop the plot, the characters, and the resolution. For me, something is always rushed or lacking.

Yet Our Dating Sim has done the best "left him because I love him" plot out of all the QLs I've watched, and I think Star Struck might do well with it also. Both also demonstrate the Korean staple of "right person, wrong time" with time jumps that I just complained about, yet they are done well here.

As much as I stay rooting for Taiwan, I appreciate a range of queer media because every show is doing something different; therefore, each show has the possibility of doing it better.

Gameboys and Hello, Stranger, both Filipino offerings, gave us love stories about the pandemic DURING the pandemic, but unlike my Taiwanese See You After Quarantine?, I feel like some dismissed them simply because they were Filipino even though Gameboys was one of the biggest BLs of 2020 with its mask-off scene.

I have trash taste. I didn't like Bad Buddy overall and I have intentionally never watched a MAME series, so you don't have to trust one word I wrote here, but all of this is really to tell you that as great as Korean dramas are, I encourage you to continue dabbling in other countries' offerings every now and then. I'm a HIStory 4: Close to Me whore first, and a human second, but I loved being surprised by how Bed Friends handled healing from trauma through a sexual relationship, how Moonlight Chicken presented generational and economic differences through a queer lens, and how Kabe Koji and My Beautiful Man showed how distorted views of self-worth can drastically harm the people who love us.

Gems are everywhere. We just have to be willing to shuffle through some dirt to find them. Consider Love Syndrome III your dirt, but perhaps a Mame series will be your gem.

[hellohellowelcome]

ik it's just homophobia at work, but something that's always puzzled + bugged me is when fans can't apply the real-life complexities of romance, sexuality, and identity to fictional romance. I'll see a well-thought out analysis of how Ochako or Izuku are great examples of comphet, for example, and all of a sudden here comes a pack of dudebros shouting "MHA fans don't know how to read OCHAKO CANONICALLY LIKES MEN! IZUKU BLUSHES AROUND GIRLS! THEY ARE STRAIGHT!" from the rooftops....like.....okay? Should we clap? It's the same spirit that drives antis to rush to social media to say "bkdk and togachako are dead I prayed for times like these" instead of just enjoying their own ship 💀

It's "sexuality can be fluid and sometimes your understanding of the attraction you experience (or don't) changes over time and that's okay!" Unless, of course, you're talking about [insert character here who must be straight because it kinda seemed like it in these three panels from four years ago~] Like oh brother, give it a rest.

Again, there's nothing wrong w/ disagreeing with headcanons like these!! You might think, "well, I actually think Ochako's crush on Izuku is genuine and that they would make a cute couple!" That's great, love! Ship to your heart's content! My issue is when people act like any interpretations aside from heterosexuality are insane and the product of some inability to understand the source material. Especially when it doesn't affect your individual hcs or enjoyment of the series at all? And especially when most of these headcanons often come from actual queer fans seeing their experiences in these characters' journeys.

[hysteriafossil]

guess who finished tlok tonight and immediately had this come to him in a vision!!!!

[formerprincewille]

Something that really sets Wille and Simon apart from other queer ships is that when we say their love language is physical touch, IT REALLY IS PHYSICAL TOUCH. And I’m not speaking of just sex. Over the course of the show, the amount of touching between them is astronomical. And that’s really something rarely seen in queer media. There may be moments here or there, but often times there’s a lack of physical contact unless it’s for “the plot”. Wille and Simon feel like a real couple in the way they’re always physically reaching out for each other.

[chronic-cynic]

I know everyone wants a Solitaire movie (and so do I) but I honestly think they'd fuck it up beyond anyone's imagination.

[brother-emperors]

DECIMATION ROW

Decimation: Myth, Discipline, and Death in the Roman Republic, Michael J. Taylor / Spartacus: War of the Damned, Decimation

[nugatorysheep]

So you think people voicing their disgust at your degenerate coomer pedo shipping bullshit is censorship? Surely that means you support freedom of speech then? How about this: you're a nigger and a faggot.

Real cute! You should say this again off anon :)

Anyway Steven and his Gem are getting married this weekend and I'm the best man at the wedding <3

[neolxzr]

you do see my point though, I was saying that yes a piece of media can have a character imply they are queer, but it’s frustrating when they won’t explicitly confirm such, because of (in the case of… checks app store purchase statistics…. A multi million dollar game franchise!) the need to market to as many people as possible. Shumika will never be “canon” because some people just don’t like shumika and won’t spend money on the game if shu and mika are in a relationship, whether or not that’s because they like the ship or the characters or are genuinely homophobic or whatnot. If the writing team cared about telling a love story, they would tell a love story, not go “well maybe they’re in love, it’s up to viewer interpretation!” like this works, sometimes it adds to the meaning of the work, but enstars really doesn’t have an excuse for their constant “this character might have feelings for this other character, but we’ll never have them say it out loud!” except the fact it makes them a lot of money, since they can market to people who like a character being the way they want that character to be, whether that’s with that character being in love with another in game character or self-shipping or whatever else. Outside of shipping, this is why some characters like Shinobu haven’t changed despite wanting to change (he continuously talks about how he wants to be more mature and taken seriously but his cards continue to make him look small and cute because his fans like that about him and god forbid we change anything!) I just think enstars should not be your first thought when someone asks you about a good piece of queer media because they’re doing just about the same job as large cast games with characters of the same gender (minus Arashi) who continue to have characters go “we’ll do all these things to imply we could be in love, but we’ll never have our characters actually date! teehee!”

i can understand being frustrated about your ships not being "confirmed", but the obsession with what is "canon" and "not canon" is just straight up not a very interesting discussion to have. what happyele's or the writers' agenda is is not of particular importance to me. one of the first things they teach you in classes about media analysis is that once a work is out there, the intentions of the creator no longer matter. the only thing that matters in your analysis is your own thoughts and the way you interpret a text.

if we were having a conversation about how much the creator of something sucks, then sure, talk about that all you want, but i am specifically referring to discussions about the piece of media and these characters and their relationships and their growth and the themes of the work etc. those things are removed from whether or not the company writes the way they do because of profit motives or whatever. companies make money, that's just what to expect. if you want art that is free of profit motives, read something by an independent creator.

even so, it feels strange to place enstars into the bucket of "stuff that should be gayer but the bad company that makes it wont let it be" because the characters ARE so very openly queer. there are so many instances in it where characters pour their heart out to each other or offer themselves to another character in beautiful and poetic ways, and i think it's wrong to claim it doesn't count because they didn't confirm their relationship status at the end of it. if you ask me, there is absolutely no way to interpret enstars in a way completely free of queerness. there is so much explicitly queer text that ignoring it is just plain incorrect. but, if homophobic people like this game and choose to look the other way at all of the gay shit, again, that is not my problem.

why is canonization the only thing that matters? is a shitty BL with awful writing better and more worthwhile than enstars as a queer narrative because the characters had explicit gay sex on screen? are poorly written gay characters in the background of other media with nothing going on more worth talking about than shumika or wataei or rinniki or whoever else just because they say the words 'i'm gay' out loud?

queerness is so much more than all of that. it is so much more than labels and it is so much more than relationships that are easy to understand. it is so much more than the extremely narrow view of it that the internet has concocted about it over the last few years, where you’re only allowed to talk about queerness if you yourself are openly queer and out of the closet, and even then you’re only allowed to make art that makes for “good representation.” that is just so incredibly limiting. i would rather tons of companies who are trying to profit off fujoshis make vaguely gay media with unconfirmed romances and relationships that aren't easily defined by labels than have less queer art in the world.

more queer art means more queer people who will find something to really connect to. more queer art means telling more queer stories. why should who is allowed to write lgbtq media be limited? why should the kind of media people are allowed to make be limited?

its fine to criticize happyelements if youre unsatisfied with the way they do things, im not always 100% in love with everything they do either. i wouldn't even consider enstars to be the worlds' best example of a queer piece of media. but no one is forcing you to like or engage with it or give the company money if you're unhappy with how they write and market their game. they don't owe anyone explicit confirmation that any of their characters are dating, and it doesn't even matter if they do provide that confirmation or not.

regardless of who made it or for what reason, queer stories are worth talking about, "canon" or not.

[hussyknee]

In one of the 647968 posts going "What You Like Says Nothing About You" (broadly agree) the first comment in the reply section was, "well I'm never going to apologize for being a Swiftie and a Reylo and Destiel shipper and Snape fan and loving ACOTAR and LOTR and Hamilton and B99" and I'm like, actually being this much of a pathological white liberal makes you the exception to this rule 😭😭

[todayisafridaynight]

yk in retrospect it really is no surprise that rgg has a lot of queer fans. outside of the games being utterly homosexual of course

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

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[mossflower]

loki season two has me screaming crying throwing up trying not to get dragged back into the mcu trenches

[poems-of-a-lover]

i will never understand the "stop casting straight actors as gay characters" argument. people just wanna out gay actors so they can have a better grasp on who to hate.

[kalmeria]

I think when talking about how a queer ship is “basically canon” you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Go beyond the in-universe explanations of “gay marriage isn’t legal here” etc, and consider the reasons a piece of media is giving you these excuses.

Think about it logically: if a story is choosing not to depict any form of real life homophobia other than “we can’t get married”, then there should be no reason not to have these characters explicitly say they are dating. And you can’t ignore the actually practiced alternatives to marriage like the partnership certification system available in more and more parts of Japan (it’s still a long way from equal rights, but it is not meaningless!).

All of this is to say, this is just another example of using pausible deniability in depictions of queerness in order to keep mass appeal. And let’s not forget, Ensemble Stars is a franchise mainly targeted at women, and Anzu / the producer is an audience insert character meant to let readers imagine having a relationship of their own with these characters if they so desire.

[twistmusings]

I have finally found my audience and it's feral Jade Stans /gen

[dinitride-art]

Nancy and Mike (and Robin) - Character Relationship Analysis/Exploration

Nancy and Mike’s relationship has always been really interesting to me. We don’t see Nancy pull away from Mike but we see Mike reacting to Nancy’s absence in his life. He tells their parents about Steve, and takes Nancy’s things, and tries to hold onto their relationship in the only way he knows how to. Because Nancy acknowledges him when he’s annoying her and when she’s angry at him. Or when he’s in danger. That’s it.

Nancy doesn’t play D&D with him anymore. She doesn’t talk to him anymore. Even in season four, the most we see of their relationship is Nancy driving Mike to school. And even though Nancy’s been pushing Mike away, he still goes to her when Eddie tells him and Dustin to find a replacement for Lucas. Mike keeps trying to come into her life, and Nancy keeps pushing him out.

Nancy is constantly trying to find a place in the world. She’s with Steve in season one because she thinks that’s what she’s supposed to do. And she gets good grades and studies and goes to party’s in season two. Even to the detriment of her relationships. However, she doesn’t take any blame for her actions, because of the societal pressure for her and everyone else to conform. Jonathan confronts her about it when they’re trying to find Will and Barb and she’s immediately defensive. She gets back together with Steve and blames Jonathan for not making a move sooner. Barb tells Nancy that she’s making a mistake with Steve, and Nancy tells her to go home.

But Barb dies.

Nancy blames herself for that. She blames herself for a lot of things. But she doesn’t want to understand why she blames herself for these things. Jonathan’s already told her that living married to Steve and conforming to societal expectations is bullshit. And she knows it is. But admitting that she’s hurt people by conforming, and trying to get them to conform, means that she’s hurt more than just herself. She’s hurt Barb. And Jonathan. And she even hurt Steve.

But most of all, she doesn’t want to admit that she’s hurt, and has been hurting, Mike the whole time.

That’s why she doesn’t like Robin at first. Because Robin is very similar to Mike. She’s loud, and impulsive, and says the wrong thing at the wrong time. And she can’t help it in the slightest. It’s not Robin’s fault that Nancys cold to her at first. It’s got nothing to do with Robin. Nancy just doesn’t want to admit that Mike hasn’t done anything wrong either. Because that means she’s wrong. And that means that she’s hurt him.

Mike and Robin both display autistic traits. Honestly, a lot of the characters in Stranger Things do, but these two are the ones with the most on screen brushback against those traits. Everyone has autistic traits, and having autistic traits doesn’t necessarily mean that someone’s autistic but. Considering that this is a writing choice, I think it’s fair to assume, at the very least, that they’re autistic-coded. And the reactions we are told and that we see, like Robin telling Nancy that she doesn’t pick up on social queues easily, and that her mother thinks she’s got something wrong with her. Versus what we see with Mike, people calling him annoying and an asshole and oblivious. Going to Lucas for help with El because he doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to do.

The key difference between Mike and Robin is what we see and what we’re told. Robin always tells us what she’s thinking and feeling and who she is. But with Mike we’re shown what’s happening. Same with them being queer characters, we’re told that Robin likes girls, and we’re shown that Mike likes Will. Robin is a queer character for a heteronormative audience. Mike is a queer character, regardless of the audience’s biases. Robin tells us that she doesn’t pick up on social queues. She explains that to Nancy, and Nancy is confronted with what we’ve seen the entire time with Mike.

Mike doesn’t pick up on social queues either. And Nancy knows this, and she’s seen all of his similarities to Robin as a bad thing. And she’s told him that he’s doing something wrong for being that way.

The reason that Nancy doesn’t like Mike, why she pushes him away, and calls him annoying and an asshole, is because Mike can’t be like her.

He can’t conform in the same way that Nancy does. And she doesn’t understand why he can’t.

Until she meets Robin.

And there’s a neon sign in front of her face that says, “Mike didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t his fault. He’s different, and so is Robin, and you told him that something was wrong with him.”

Nancy hurt him. She pushed him away. Told him in every way possible that his interests, and friends, and personality were wrong. And that she didn’t want a brother who was like that.

And now she knows why. Robin told her why.

Nancy doesn’t hate Mike. She’s scared that she was wrong. That Mike hasn’t really done anything wrong. That it was her fault that their relationship is like this.

And she’s scared.

Because she’s a lot more like Mike than she wants to admit.