#also i just realized that the last twilight trailer is the one with less views between the 2023 BLs that still have to air and i just

[stormyoceans]

the biggest april 1st prank is the fact that we didn't get new last twilight updates even tho trailer reached 1m views 🥲

PLEASE DON'T REMIND ME ANON THE WAY NOT EVEN A WEEK AGO I WAS LIKE 'I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE LAST TWILIGHT TRAILER TO GET TO 1M VIEWS BECAUSE FOR SURE THEY'RE GONNA GIVE US NEW CONTENT THEN' IS JUST SOOOO DAMN EMBARRASSING

like you'd think my dumb ass would have known better at this point and yet!!!!!! i was really sitting here thinking 'i mean jimmy made an IG post when varitda's MV reached 1M views, so OF COURSE he will mention it when the trailer for his own upcoming series will get to the same milestone, right?? and doesn't GMMTV usually make a post when these things happen?? and even if nobody got us i KNOW p'aof got us..... RIGHT?????'

call me boo boo the fool the way i never stop clowning

[bengiyo]

Hello hello ~~

Through wen-kexing-apologist's recent post about The Birdcage (which seems to come from your syllabus for baby gays) I got to the original series of reblogs which resulted in said syllabus. I read most of it (not everything because Real Life has my time hostage), and as someone who has seen her fare share of queer media I have now a pretty long to watch list.

As you wrote about how you enjoyed the romance of queer media I have a question.

Recently I have come across a Netflix movie trailer called Love at First Sight. With such a basic trope as a name I checked it out hoping the title to be misleading and to see something surprising in the plot. The disappointment I felt when by the end of it I realized it was exactly what the title sold: the most basic boy meets girl and they have to look for each other throughout the whole movie.

One of the things I really appeciate about queer media (and mainly BL probably) is the possibility to explore different kinds of romances and emotions. Both positive and negative. From Not Me to Heartsopper to Double Mints. I feel that being "out of the norm" they explore such emotions and situations in a more interesting and relatable way (and add to that that I, as a woman, cannot stand women characters making a 360º personality change once they fall in love)

So here's my question: what unusal or out of the ordinary romances would you like to see more of in BLs/queer shows/etc?

I personally would like romances with disabled characters to be more explored (I'm really looking forward to Last Twilight) or polyamory. Also more GL.

I admit this might be a very biased ask, it comes 100% from my subjective view, and I have yet to watch most of the movies in your syllabus for Baby Gays.

Anyway, I hope you have a great day and that this long ask won't bother you ❤

Well look at this ask! Let me get into this!

The Syllabus is on a Google Doc

First, I sincerely appreciate you watching me and @shortpplfedup go back and forth about stuff. For yours and others' convenience, I did put the Queer Cinema Syllabus in a Google Doc for @wen-kexing-apologist

Some Recommendations

If you're looking for a film with a disabled protagonist and also a bit about women, I would recommend checking out Margarita With a Straw (2014), Sleep With Me (2022) (I watched on Gaga), or if you're willing to tolerate hets Isa Pa With Feelings (2019) (currently on Netflix) or Silent (2022) (Viki)

If you're interested in more polyamory, I genuinely think that Quaranthings Season 2 (2021) does some really fascinating stuff worth checking out. We had complicated feelings about Me, My Husband, and My Husband's Boyfriend (2023), but I liked it.

What do I want though?

I think this is a harder question for me to answer than I was expecting. I see myself as a guest when I'm watching a lot of content from Southeast Asia. I will voice my opinion on what I like and don't like, what I'm taking from these shows, and how they're affecting me. However, I don't really consider myself the target audience. I watch the shows as legally as possible and help generate engagement, but the "interfans" they care about are the English-speaking Asians in their region, not really me I feel like.

So when I think about what I want, I don't feel a yearning for any of the BL-producing Asian countries' film industries to make it for me.

I want to see the shit I like in the West get made. I want to see Black queer people presented complexly (Here is my regular plug for For The Boys). I'm a fat black gay nerd. The last time I saw a fat black gay nerd that I liked in an American production was Fire Island (2022).

I'm a 33-year Star Trek fan who still thinks we need more GAYS IN SPACE. I'd like to see more productions like Sort Of (2021- ) where complex queer friend and social groups navigate just existing in the world and finding love and meaning. I'd like to see less of reboots of classic shows like Queer as Folk be about a horrifying mass death event in the city I live in and the spaces I frequent (I refuse to link to it).

I want to see TJ Klune's, Ginn Hale's, or Lynn Flewelling's works adapted to series. I would like to see more wide release queer shit in the West not be overwhelmingly about fit, attractive, young white guys.

I want distribution for queer stories to not always have to go through four years of distribution hell because of the film festival circuit.

I want the West to try to make BL! I don't care if it feels cheap on the front end. I just wish more of us would be willing to throw support behind web shows. We did it for Awkward Black Girl! We can do it again!

This is turning into rambling, so I'll say that I don't necessarily have strong feelings about what I absolutely need to see. I like connecting with the specific humanity of stories, especially if they're about queer people. I didn't know I needed Moonlight (2016) until I saw it. I didn't know I needed Make the Yuletide Gay (2009) or Black Sails (2014-2017) until I watched them.

I just want more people with ideas to get a chance to turn them into something cool for us.

What about the rest of you? Please tag me if you have things you're hoping for.

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Worst of 2019 (So Far)

And now we get to the opposite of yesterday’s post: the worst of what we’ve seen so far. Time to give them a proper thrashing before they (hopefully) fade into obscurity. Disappointingly, there's a general lack of films that were bad but in an interesting way. Mostly, it’s either been the same sorta dreck we usually get with a couple of unusually offensive stories and a couple of soul-crushingly bad superhero flicks. Curious? Read on.

10. Serenity

I like to save my #10 spot on the “Worst of” list for a movie that has a chance of becoming a favorite among those who love bad movies. Serenity is competently enough made that it does not belong in the same category as The Identical or Runaway. It’s another kind of bad movie, the kind that baffles anyone who sees it and who will have film historians scratching their heads in the future. It’s not quite on the same level as 2017’s “The Book of Henry” but close. Top-notch actors at the top of their career in a story so poorly conceived it would’ve been brilliant if it weren’t awful and utterly absurd.

The revelation that everything we've been seeing is actually part of a video game programmed by an angry teen who hates his abusive father, and that his actions are tied to those of Matthew McConaughey's character is the kind of nutty decision someone at some point should've questioned. My advice? Surprise some unsuspecting friends with it. Periodically pause the movie so they can write down how they think it'll all fit together and then watch their faces as they're proved wrong.

9. After

I’m not going to remember After down the line so this is my opportunity to give it another flogging. I can’t believe fan-fictions of real people is a real thing and that one of them was deemed legitimate and popular enough to be turned into a movie. It plays out like the clone of a clone of a clone of Twilight. At least that movie had danger in the form of vampires and werewolves. This has nothing to offer except embarrassing drama and a prepubescent’s idea of what romance and love look like. I saw it in the theater with a friend and thank goodness she was there; it made what would've been a chore... slightly more bearable.

8. Dumbo

I’ve already gone on about how I feel about Disney’s string of live-action remakes. For the most part, they fail to validate their own existences; they’re just copies of the original but with “real” actors dancing around animated backgrounds, objects and locations instead of everything being traditionally animated. Dumbo isn’t like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. It does try new things. It diverges from the source material significantly in the worst way. The titular character winds up playing second banana to a bunch of circus performers no one cares about and in the end didn’t contain an inkling of the emotion the 1941 version did.

7. Dark Phoenix

This one’s a triple-whammy. Not only was it a deeply disappointing way for Fox’s X-Men series to end, it retreaded old material in a way that was worse than X-Men 3: The Last Stand AND it was a box office bomb. By the time the story finally comes alive… it’s just about over. The whole thing feels like a mistake, bringing in aliens and asking us to invest in characters we just haven’t had enough time to fall in love with. Makes me wonder what the future of the characters is going to be like. Yes there are a number of heroes and heroines we haven’t yet seen, but are people going to care, even when the brand gets a new coat of paint from Marvel Studios?

6. Men in Black: International

Was anyone asking for the Men in Black series to return? Maybe if they'd had a dynamite story this could’ve overcome the public’s general disinterest, but this was an extremely generic plot you could figure out easily minutes in and lost touch with what endeared us to the first. Even with the combined forces of Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth failed, it to generate many laughs. Worse, to make sure I got any references or Easter egg it might drop, I re-watched all of the previous Men in Black movies, including the horrific Men in Black 2.

5. Replicas

This movie goes about itself in such a convoluted way. First, Keanu Reeves plays a scientist working for a company that wants to transplant the mind of dead soldiers into androids. Then, his family is killed in a car crash, prompting him to use the mind transfer tech to put their memories into new clone bodies of themselves. Problem is, he only has the means to clone three out of four family members. This means he has to erase all memories of his youngest daughter from the others’ brains. Following me so far? Good because it keeps going from there. Actually, that’s just the start of it. It’s a classic case of TMSGO - too much sh*t goin’ on. Even with all that, it STILLL managed to have gaping plot holes. No surprise it came and went as quietly as possible.

4. Hellboy

This one hurt. I wanted to see a superhero horror film badly. The early interviews I read about them wanting to adapt Mike Mignola’s books more closely than the Del Toro films got me excited. I was a little apprehensive when the trailers showed some goofy stuff but I figured these were included to draw people in. I should've listened to that sinking feeling. The actual film is awful, one giant mistake after another. Without a doubt, this featured the year’s worst special effects and even this I could've forgiven but the would-be humorous tone was badly misjudged and the story bloated with way too many elements that might've worked... if we weren't also trying to tell the character's origin at the same time. Hellboy ends with a teaser promising more and there’s no way we would’ve seen a sequel even if this had made money at the box office. Cool demons though, for what it’s worth.

3. Shaft

Looking back, I’m struggling to think of anything worth seeing in Shaft. I hated the film’s approach at comedy, particularly when it reverted Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft into the kind of man who proudly doesn’t understand modern sensibilities and spews out one homophobic joke after another. The plot was uninspired and uninteresting - not to mention generic - and none of it felt like it belonged on the big screen. On the upside, it prompted me to view the original trilogy with Richard Roundtree and those were enjoyable.

2. Simmba

Simmba is unlikely to be on the “Worst of 2019” list next January. It probably won’t be at the #2 spot. The film mixes two wildly different tones but not well. It begins as a romantic crime comedy, a dated one, sure. Simmba staging a phoney crime in order for the woman he’s attracted to to call him for help and then use the call as an excuse to stay with her through the night is creepy but I guess it might’ve passed like 20 years ago in North America. What makes this a bad film is the way it then introduces a character’s gang rape and murder as a way to prompt the anti-hero onto a righteous path. From there, it turns into this vigilante revenge film that has disturbing implications. You probably haven’t heard of it before now, much less seen it. I don’t recommend you check it out.

Runner Ups:

Aladdin

A controversial choice, as many casual filmgoers seem to have fallen madly in love with it (similar to the way they ate up 2017’s Beauty and the Beast) but honestly, what does this film do better than 1992’s Aladdin? Add an unmemorable song for Princess Jasmine to sing? Reduce the number of talking animals in order to give us more… nothing? Pile on the CGI to the point you wonder why it was made with live-actors in the first place? Like the innumerable direct-to-video sequels of classic films who've been all but forgotten, I tell you this Arabbian adventure won't endure.

Tolkien

So much potential squandered on a boring story. It didn’t take an astute viewer to recognize the film was crippled by the studio failing to obtain the rights to Tolkien’s actual work. I get the feeling we'll see another shot at a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien in a couple of years and this will be the Christopher Robin to the much superior Goodbye Christopher Robin.

The Hustle

It’s an unfunny comedy, what more is there to say? Rebel Wilson makes yet another bad career choice playing the same character she always plays. I only realized it was a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels while writing my review, which is unfortunate. Hopefully I can expunge this film from my memory soon enough and forget anything it might’ve spoiled about the original Bedtime Story or the 1988 remake.

1. Unplanned

The numerous instances of technical incompetence - mostly coming from the performers who are given lackluster material - would be enough to condemn Unplanned to this list. What made me hate the film is the way it blatantly lies and attempts to manipulate the audience into further entrenching themselves in a certain point of view through cheap, manipulative means. I can respect that genuine passion was poured into the project but the way it goes about it is shameful. Do not go see it, even if you're curious.

Yuck. That last one really left a bad taste in my mouth so I'm going to talk about a movie I did enjoy and am enthusiastic to direct you towards Alita: Battle Angel. Rosa Salazar as the titular Alita impressed me and I really dug the action scenes. I'll also right a wrong from last year by reminding you to find and watch Paddington and Paddington 2, both movies I should've put on my "Best of" lists the years they came out. I don't know what I was thinking but I keep coming back to these in my head. They're excellent for kids and adults.

And with that said, the list is over. Back to our regularly-scheduled film reviews until something big comes up. Thoughts or comments on the list are welcome and I hope you enjoyed reading.

[kimmysfandomblog]

🔥 for the dr3 anime. Have at it. (Before I forget I just wanna say I agree 110% about your opinion on Ko's sexuality. Single-target sexuality, I think it's called?)

Thanks for the ask, Hyun :) Sorry I took so long, but I have a lot of feelings when I write about this subject ^^; I accidentally... wrote you an essay ;;;;;;;

(And also, thank you so much!!! I never knew that existed, but it sounds very much like how I headcanon Ko!)

Unpopular Opinion on DR3, huh? I feel like I am generally... aligned with how most of the fandom view DR3?  DR3 was written poorly, DR3 ruined some characters (specifically a certain girl I love), DR3 had a bad mastermind/main antagonist, DR3 retconned  things poorly, etc. Like, honestly, the only thing I can do is actually tell you something I like about DR3, lol.

I guess one unpopular opinion would be that DR3Z Episode 3 is still my favorite out of all of DR3 (Hope Side included)!

I think when someone refers to their favorite episode in DR3, it would be something like Hope Arc, maybe an episode of Future Arc (like in Episode 6 when we were super hype about possibly Kamukura being there instead of Hinata and all these boats coming on their way). While I was also super hype about that, and I may have watched Hope Arc 20x times that day because my boy Hajime Hinata is safe and Happy, I have to say, I just like DR3Z Episode 3 more. It wasn’t completely satisfying (I don’t know if any episode of DR3 can be said to be completely satisfying, especially once you’ve finished the series), but it made more of a lasting impact on me.

First of all, I think one of the things that made me attached to it is that this is a much more Hajime-centric episode. We start with Hinata’s POV, and it shifts only a few times to other perspectives (Like Fuyuhiko’s, or Sato’s). WHen I finally got to know and love th DR2 cast, I was prepared to be excited for DR3 and getting to know their pasts. I first saw the DR3 trailer not knowing what they were talking about until they released the game on team, so when I rewatched it in anticipation, I got excited! One of the things I definitely wanted was more of Hinata! He was, and remains, the best DR Protagonist! I kinda figured that we would get more of Izuru than of Hajime, but I wanted to at least get more out of his motivations, and, yeah, we kinda did! It wasn’t what I thought we would get, what with a few mentions of his parents, but not so much of what they were like, but parts of Episode two, and all of Episode three were made to explain it a bit. SOme stuff, we already know, or could guess, such as that Hinata was desperate for a talent, and that be acquiring a talent, he would get Hope (Or a meaning to his life).

However, we get some additional info. Firstly, in Episode two, it is mentioned that HPA is paying for his tuition, should he enter the Hope Cultivation Plan, implying his parents are not as rich as we thought (DR2 made it seem like they were, since his parents were mentioned in that sort of flashback sequence). That puts a lot of pressure on him... not to mention they give him some time to decide. By the start of Episode three, he mentions he only has a week left. Within that one week he has left, he is acquainted with both sides of the decision, represented by Chiaki, representing the Ideal solution, where he wouldn’t need the project to have Hope, and Natsumi, representing the, I guess you could say, “Logical” solution, as in that no one alive cares about anyone unless they have talent, and HPA is giving it to him with no monetary cost to him, or his parents.

Now, we know that Chiaki is technically right, that even without a talent, you can have hope, but the problem is that she doesn’t have that same perspective. She does have a talent, and those words she learned from Yukizome can only help her because they were meant to say that Talent shouldn’t restrict Chiaki from doing what she wants, just for the fun of it. Hinata, meanwhile, has much less freedom in this Talent-driven society he is stuck in. No one will acknowledge his existence without talent, and because of  that, he can’t do anything even if he wanted to. By the end of this episode, he sees this flaw because unlike Nanami, Natsumi has the same perspective he does. She dies and it looks like as if no one cares at all about her death.

Now to Natsumi, she is the character struggling with society’s rules that you have to have a Talent to mean something. Both of them actually believe in these rules, and they are both desperate to get into the Main Course, but for Natsumi, the need is greater. She has a brother and his bodyguard who are both acknowledged as Ultimates, yet though she probably spends time with them both, Natsumi was left out. She was deemed, by society’s leaders in HPA, that she wasn’t enough for them, so how could she be enough for her brother? She would do anything for the same opportunity Hinata got. Hinata, who had been stuck with Reserve Course students that were all trying to accept they were nothing more than Reserve Course students and would never move on to the Main Course, now has come across someone similar to him, who has also refused to give up on their dream of being acknowledged as something special.

Hajime feels like the Hope Cultivation Plan is his only chance to finally be happy and proud of himself, but at the same time, he is, by nature, skeptical that such a plan would. It’s too good to be true (and it was, of course). The episode starts off with him looking up the school’s website, which doesn’t give him any real results. He’s only got a week to decide left, and he’s not completely sure yet if this is the right way to go even if, in his head, he desperately wants this to be the solution. It would be easy, and would benefit him and his family. But, with that doubt he still has, he latches on to Nanami’s words that he won’t need talent to be happy. THese words sound right. They sound like this is something that exists. But, it isn’t proven. In fact, it is disproven by Natsumi, first by her denial of his words that Talent isn’t everything (because it is something to enough people for it to matter), and secondly, when Natsumi dies despite coming from an influential family, and when she dies, her death is covered up with lies and unsatisfactory answers. This girl who he only just came to know and kind of befriend is dead, and he could do nothing about her death. He even pieces together that Sato killed her by chance, and that there was something clearly wrong with Sato to begin with, but then she is dead. Two classmates, now dead, and both of them had their deaths covered up. Hajime is not dumb, he can put pieces together (He didn’t need as much help in the trials unless someone was withholding information (usually Komaeda)). He knows exactly who to ask, and would have investigated it, but is stopped by Juzo.

He of course doesn’t know Juzo is trying to make sure he doesn’t dig too deep and gets targeted by HPA for revealing too much, but Juzo really doesn’t know how to talk with anything other than physical language. As in beat up a 15-16-year-old kid into submission, but you know. Juzo is just one more reason on top  of Natsumi’s death that he accepts the plan. Juzo validated his thoughts that he, nor anyone that lacks talent, matters.

It’s really heartbreaking to see Hinata like that, however I suppose, in his own way, he thought of the project as his way of breaking the mould of normality he was stuck in. You know that he needs to become Izuru Kamukura, you know it has to happen, but it does crush me how he had to come to the “realization” he is worthless otherwise to do it, through two deaths and his own degradation by Juzo. (and being saved by Chisa... probably not what he wanted.)

I find it interesting that the person that represents accepting the Hope Cultivation Plan is Natsumi, because we know if Fuyuhiko had ever heard her speak the words she did to Hinata, he’d have denied it. He’d have said she deserved to be in his place, that she would have been the better clan leader, that even though she didn’t accept his role, he would always introduce her as is Ultimate Little Sister, and no old men and drunk scout can change that.

If Hinata could have known that by being such a supportive friend, his friends would value him more than just as someone who has an Ultimate Talent, or EVERY Ultimate Talent, and that he provides all the difference just by being himself, I don’t think he would have turned to the Hope Cultivation Project.

But that isn’t how things went. Hinata, had no proof that Talent was truly meaningless. Society kept on validating that Talent meant much more than someone not acknowledged to have any.

Oh... I got.... way off topic ^^;

Well, overall, this was an emotional episode. I get why people don’t like it much: They really rushed the Twilight Syndrome MurderCase, to the point of not even showing the events in the minigame. I also wished for more Natsumi and Hinata interaction, or have this episode split in two (and take place instead of Love SOup incident, please). I found Satos’ character to be ver much lacking as well, since they reduced her to some kind of yandere-like personality (although thinking back, was she like that in the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case?) However, for what we got? It’s still something that I really love! It gave us an insight into Hinata, and an awesome character to boot!

(I also kinda skipped over the Hinam bits, but the Fountain scene was pretty sad, even if I’m really ehh about the way Nanami sees he’s hurt and still offers him to play, and other weird things like that involving those two... Like I swear Nanami would be way more concerned about his wellbeing in DR2 and pick up on the obvious bad signs and act on them more)