#and its done in the most homoerotic way possible

[dorkinette]

no one in the nana fandom warned me about this

[oroontheheels]

Daddy’s gonna be real honest with you kittens.

I’m disappointed with current Venom Run. Let me be real CLEAR here. I don’t hate it. I don’t have beef with its creator. So for a long period of time I was telling everyone “it’s a mess, but it’s better that Donnie Cates”.

But I think comparing them is not correct and let me explain why.

So Donnie Cates. Our boy. Extra edgy, made some terrifically BAD retcons, hated symbrock, tried to make Eddie Brock as trad as possible (giving him human son and all). Plus he ignored the fact that Sleeper was a child of Venom and Eddie. “nOt BioLoGiCalLy” Eddie’s but he called Eddie “father” and they both deeply cared about each other. So Donnie Cates couldn’t allow this either.

But! Donnie Cates while fighting the yaoi made the story ironically even more gayer. It was a train wreck but at the end of the day at least it was fun to laugh at this “closeted shipper” as I like to call him.

And most importantly? At the end they were still “Venom family”. All 4 of them. In Donnie Cates comics.

Now Al Ewing and Ram V… It was… ok. I like Dylan, I like Venom, I like Sleeper. I didn’t like that they “killed” Eddie right at the start of the story and sent him running solo trough time traveling shenanigans. I liked him interacting with Doctor Doom. I liked Meridus being gay with Kang and with that one old man.

But what I lacked is interactions between Venom and Eddie. They almost didn’t interact.

But like, okay. Let Eddie do his thing, let Venom singlemom it out. Also did I mention Ewing and V made Dylan Venom’s son? That was NICE. That’s I liked. A LOT.

And immideatly got my hops up.

Which was a mistake.

So the problem is where Donnie was closeted shipper, I’m starting to believe that Ewing and V don’t actually see Venom and Eddie as a romantic partnership. Or even all that important partnership.

If you check Spider Man Venom War comics, Venom talks A LOT about how much “Saint Peter”(Parker) means to him. It’s very gay very romantic very deep. But at the next pages it also downgraded Eddie role in Venoms life?? Venom is like “so yeah Peter taught me to save lives so I saved Eddie from offfing himself”. And that’s almost it. No emphasis on their bond, on Eddie’s feelings, of their bond. Almost nothing, really.

And now it’s Venom War and Venom says “wow Peter and I are sooo perfect, also it feels nice punching Eddie in the face”.

So what. Venom hates Eddie now? After all those years of forgiveness?? And it wasn’t elaborated in the slightest??

I would hate it but I WOULD understand if they wanted to make Parker new host for Venom for a while. But they don’t?? Apparently Al Ewing planing to give Venom new host (all of the candidates SUCK for the role btw). And if I understood one of his interviews correctly he want to send all the characters their separate ways.

Here’s the statement

Which annoyed me. A LOT. Like i understand that cis hetero males bring all the money to Marvel. We little faggots don’t bring so much cash. So our feelings and wants are not important. But isn’t there big ass FANDOM for symbrock? People who advertise comics for free with their art and activities?? Are we not important whatsoever? And on top of that wasn’t EVERYONE celebrating when Eddie got Venom back (in 2016)?? Don’t we all love homoerotic weird ass bond these two have??

And what does it even mean “yeah it’s been a while since Eddie and Venom have been together”. It wasn’t. Donnie Cates first made Venom into amnesiac DOG, then sent him into exile and then kept him and Eddie from having meaningful interaction until the very end of his run. Everyone who loves symbrock were STARVING.

And Al Ewing and Ram V story separated Eddie into his own story line.

And now Al Ewing tilling us “yeah it’s been too long, it’s time to move on”.

It’s like giving starving person a cup of water and saying “well now you are fed, let’s go on a 20km hike”.

“My work here is done” Tuxedo Mask meme

So like… yeah.

If they’ll make Sleeper a traitor this will be so bad. This will drop from 6/10 to 0/10 immediately.

Not looking forward to Venom future.

And the WORST part? I feel like they are pulling out “this relationship is toxic so it’s cancelled” card on symbrock. They never do that on hetero ships, but they happily destroy gay ships with that argument.

It sucks.

I hope I’m wrong. But like Venom gets new host this December. There’s not much room left to give us decent amount of Symbrock IF writers even want that.

[nightmarerodent]

what do you think the Kombat Kids think of each other? Do they hate their partners? Get irritated by them? Go wild!!!

(Frost can be included if you wish to write for her!)

Takeda and Frost fight like two cats trapped inside a box that’s then shaken violently. The rivalry is encoded in their blood. However, only they are allowed to talk smack about the other. Anyone else is being disrespectful to their brother/sister and they will defend the other’s honor on their behalf. But it’s not like they care about each other or anything. Certainly not.

Cassie and Frost are the disaster couple whose stupidity is so great it has its own gravitational pull. The sheer amount of hair pulling Takeda had to go through to get Frost to realize she had a crush was insane. He is never helping that emotionally repressed lesbian with any relationship issues ever again. (Or until next week probably.)

Jin thought very little of Cassie at first. Just another dumb American that was way too sure of herself but had no idea what she was doing. Now he crashes at her place all the time and they binge Bridgerton together. Times change. They are the gay/lesbian alliance and platonic soulmates and all shall be consumed by their bullshit.

Jin and Jacqui are the two most competitive MFers on the planet. They argue constantly. They love each other but will also turn anything into a competition just to have something to hold over the other’s head. Jacqui is glad she’s an only child because if she had a brother like Jin growing up she would’ve killed him. Doesn’t stop him from being the world’s best uncle to her children though.

Cassie took one look at Takeda and instantly knew she had to corrupt that goody-two-shoes in some way. He wasn’t going to be the little prince of the Shirai Ryu when she was done with him, oh no. He was going to be just as much of a mischievous little shit as the rest of them. Her unwilling sidekick in chaos. She succeeded. It took her two years but she got there in the end.

Frost and Jacqui see themselves as the only competent ones. Everyone else the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead. They get along surprisingly well. Not best buddies for all time well, but they can hold civil conversation that doesn’t end in bloodshed. A rarity for Frost.

Jacqui and Cassie are BFF4Ls and sisters. Ride or die till the end. Also view each other as a sidekick sometimes.

Frost and Jin talk shit about the others together over iced coffee.

Takeda and Jin know each other more than they know themselves sometimes. They know every tic, every habit, every tell. They are as close as two friends could possibly be. Sometimes a bit homoerotic but that’s neither here nor there. They also sometimes share only one brain cell and it’s a guess as to who has it at any given time.

Jacqui and Takeda are Earthrealm’s most functional couple. They are so lovey dovey with each other that it can rot teeth. That’s not to say that they don’t fight sometimes, because they do, but it’s always resolved quickly enough. They never try to change anything about the other and love every flaw and insecurity the other has.

Conclusion: You are just as likely to find this group of chuckle heads bickering as you are to find them all asleep together in a cuddle puddle. Found family relationship goals right here.

[symphonybracket]

YouTube links: Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 1

Comments:

Mahler 1

cmon there's evil frere jacque in this symphony it's the best thing ever

The beginning is so beautiful… and very reminiscent of the Star Trek intro!

It's SO MUCH. The first two movements are gorgeous. Putting minor key "are you sleeping brother john" and then klezmer wedding music in the middle of it is the funniest thing anyone's ever done AND THEN CYMBAL CRASH an absolute deluge of sound and the most epic f***ing music ever (Wagner can go eat his socks). You have to love it.

Tchaikovsky 6

Everyone bangs on about the 4th movement but it's the 3rd movement that really hits

tchaik 6 is what i would listen to if i had an hour to live

the 5/4 movement of the tchaik lives rent free in my mind and i think about it every day

It’s beyond gorgeous. The melodies soar, the orchestra swells, and you just need to lie down for a while after listening to it. It’s Romanticism at its zenith. You want to weep and sigh, and it’s impossible to listen to it without literally feeling something.

Symphony No. 6, titled “Pathétique”, was Tchaikovsky’s final symphony. It is an intensely emotional piece, and to many scholars demonstrates the emotional turmoil that characterized much of Tchaikovsky’s life. He died about a week after its premiere, a fact which leads many scholars to debate about whether the content of the piece itself reflects the possibility that he may have committed suicide. The title itself is often translated to mean “impassioned suffering”, although this was most likely a later addition by Modest and not actually part of Tchaikovsky’s vision. Given these facts, many scholars interpret this piece to be about death and suffering. However, this piece can also be seen to represent life and all its contrasting moments. This interpretation is more holistic and inclusive of all of the moments captured in this piece, and also serves to break down the common narrative of Tchaikovsky as a tragic figure.

More comments about Tchaikovsky 6 below the cut (length warning):

Scholarship surrounding Tchaikovsky’s music tends to focus heavily on the ways his confliction over his homoerotic desires appears in his writing. However, his personal letters reveal a much more balanced understanding of himself that goes beyond the common narrative. In one letter written to Modest describing a new relationship with another man, he writes: “I awoke today with a feeling of unknown happiness and with a complete absence of that emotional sobriety that used to make me repent in the morning for having gone too far the day before.” Many of the letters he wrote regarding his relationships demonstrate no shame and no anguish beyond what can be expected of a man living in a homophobic society. It is important to take this information into account when listening to a piece such as this one that has been discussed so frequently, and to understand it beyond the turmoil and strife that it is seen to represent. Like many of Tchaikovsky’s works, this symphony displays a range of human emotions. It is not only representative of tragedy and “impassioned suffering”; it is a depiction of what it is like to live. It is also interesting to note that this piece is used as a signifier of queer desire in the novel "Maurice" by E.M. Forster, a novel also notable for its radical portrayal of a queer man who gets a happy ending. Much to think about there.

The first movement begins with a lone bassoon soloist playing a plaintive minor melody, which later comes back in the strings. As the movement progresses, it grows in intensity and texture. More instruments are added, and the music becomes more frantic, building and building towards the dramatic trumpet fanfare. Throughout this piece, Tchaikovsky continues to make significant use of contrasting dynamics and melodies, reflecting the emotions he hopes to convey through the music. Dramatic, tumultuous sections are interspersed with pastoral woodwind melodies, and the angry brass fanfares give way to a quiet ending.

The second movement is reminiscent of a waltz, and uses the strings and woodwinds more than the brass to achieve its floating melodies. The dynamics ebb and flow to build tension, but this movement never reaches the same levels of anguish that the previous movement does. Tchaikovsky makes use of pizzicato in the strings to convey a lighter, more cheerful mood, and features the upper woodwinds prominently. He also repeats themes frequently, giving the audience something familiar to listen out for as the movement progresses.

The third movement begins with frantic energy in the strings and woodwinds. As more instruments join the rush of music, the underlying eight note accompaniment does not let up, continuing the vivacious beginning through the whole movement. Instruments pass the melodies between each other and engage in conversations across the orchestra. Like the first movement, the brass play a prominent role in creating dramatic climaxes in the music, as well as supporting the march-like conclusion. Conductor Myung-Whun Chung describes the deceptively dramatic ending as, “one of the greatest, most thrilling, but most empty of victories in musical history,” observing that this movement has the energetic finality of a final movement. The reversal of having the true finale be a slower movement represents a shift away from the “Beethovian model of light over darkness” common in most other symphonies of this time period.

As mentioned before, ending on a movement with a slow tempo was a significant shift away from the standard of the time. This innovation inspired many other future composers to use the same technique, most notably Mahler in his Ninth Symphony. The quiet beginning builds up towards a chaotic rush of fast runs throughout the orchestra, only to stop abruptly and continue in halting, cautious bursts of melody. The movement continues with this cycle of rushing up to a climax and backing away as the movement progresses. Tchaikovsky highlights the horns in this movement, giving them both angry, blaring notes which cut through the string melodies and the flowing, lyrical lines that are passed throughout the orchestra. As the piece ends, the instruments fall away until all that is left are steady repeated notes in the basses, bringing this lament of a movement to an understated close.

[homoerotic-shonen-rival-showdown]

Round Two Match Eight: Sasuke and Naruto (Naruto) vs Gojo and Geto (Jujutsu Kaisen)

why should you vote for them?

Sasuke and Naruto (autoqualified but still got 4 submissions):

duh

Idk I don’t go here I just wanna help them for all the tumblr girlies

because of every single crazy quote they’ve said

Gojo and Geto (3):

uh…divorced. i love them

STSG ESSAY TIME >:)))))) Warning for Jujutsu Kaisen anime/manga spoilers ahead! I had to explain deep dark depths of the story to prove that they deserve to win the crown. Here I go. Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru (also known as Satosugu or simply stsg) deserve to win the crown for the following reasons. Please bear with me throughout this whole essay because I am unequivocally insane about them. First of all let’s get into the rivalry side of things.

In high school, Gojo was an absolute menace. The first time Gojo and Geto met, the latter hated the former because he was annoying, rude, and arrogant. Now eventually they became best friends, but you see, their rivalry returned when Geto was exiled from the school because they had a stark disagreement in moral ideologies, which resulted in a dramatic breakup in front of a KFC (yes, this is actually canon). Gojo was supposed to execute Geto because he did some Bad Things (that we don’t need to get into right now) but as Geto walked away he said (paraphrased) “Go ahead and kill me. There’s meaning to that.” And My Lord is that a line. So for the next ten years of their lives, these two were separated, now on opposite sides, now each others’ enemies. Eventually this came to a climax when Geto declared war on Gojo, but before we get to that, let’s pause for a second, and talk about the meaning behind this all. I’ll try to make this part quick because without restraint this would become excessively long. So technically, Gojo and Geto’s breakup directly caused the plot of Jujutsu Kaisen to unfold. If they hadn’t broken up, then Geto wouldn’t have declared war and then died. If they hadn’t broken up, Geto’s body wouldn’t have been possessed; his body wouldn’t have, completely against his will, trapped Gojo in a prison, as Geto sat back helpless, unable to do anything to stop his best friend from being sealed *by his own hands*. Every single other tragic event that happened in Jujutsu Kaisen would not have happened, because, assuming you have never watched/read Jujutsu Kaisen, no, Gojo and Geto are not the main characters, and the whole rest of the cast was affected by this event. Yes, this homoerotic rivalry breakup is the very Big Bang for Jujutsu Kaisen, because if it didn’t happen, Jujutsu Kaisen wouldn’t have the incredible plot that it has. Butterfly Effect at its finest. Anyway, now that their rivalry is out of the way, I will now get into their homoeroticism.

My first piece of evidence for their homoeroticism is that… it’s in the name. Both of their first names start with “s” and end with “ru”. Both of their last names start with “g” and end with “o”. And both of their full names have the same amount of syllables. There is no possible way that this wasn’t done on purpose to get the point across that they are literal soulmates. Do I sound insane yet? In addition, Gojo called Geto, and I quote, “my one and only”. Now if that isn’t some fruit ass shit then idk what is. And now the most damning evidence of homoness, comes when Geto died by Gojo’s side. This was after the war that Geto declared on Gojo, and Geto ended up on the losing side. Even though they had been rivals for ten long years, they still had an important and heartfelt history together, so as Gojo walked over to his dying best friend, Geto smiled, glad to see not only an old friend, but the most important person in his life, for the last time. Gojo’s last words to Geto as he died were NEVER REVEALED. Only very very few producers of the anime know the words. They will be released soon but for now we don’t know. But it was confirmed that his last words were THREE WORDS. Now I don’t wanna put any words in Gojo’s mouth but the most obvious theory here is that he said “I love you” as his best friend and rival of 10+ years died by his side. This is even further affirmed when, after hearing those three words, Geto BLUSHED, SMILED (as he was in the process of bleeding out!) and described the words as (paraphrased) “embarrassing words that they had never said to each other before”. IT’S BARELY SUBTEXT AT THIS POINT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THEY’RE GAY AS HELL!

Now before this gets any longer I will cut myself off here. Thank you for coming to my way-too-long Ted Talk about these stupid ass anime men who have been plaguing my mind for months, I hope you take my submission into consideration! I don’t expect them to win but I’m just happy I get to aggressively type an essay about them in this google form :D

[that-darn-clown]

so...i know i already sent you a message about Rewrite!Animatronics singing Heartaches, but! i have a sadder/creepier one! (it's both. trust me, you'll see how)

so...the Diner Animatronics are meant to be more "old fashioned," based around old cartoon characters and the sorts of culture and whatnot that both Henry and William grew up around: Fredbear was meant to be an old southern gentleman, goofy but wise, not unlike some of the older men Henry would've met/seen growing up. O'Hare was based around those silly and eccentric book characters set in England, as well as characters like Mickey and Bugs (and perhaps William's actual personality that he wished to express more openly). due to this, most of the animatronics would sing older songs, but in a way that they'd still be popular with the children and families that visited.

and that included the older version of Heartaches. like the 1930s version. not like the newer version along the lines of how RAE sang it.

songs would be sung one of two ways: either Henry and William would sing it themselves onstage, or they'd play the music prerecorded. depended on if the suits were being used by the pair or not.

so, with this context out of the way, now let me set the scene for you:

it is late 1983-early 1984. William is working during the short amount of time he has before the animatronics awaken and immediately try to tear him limb from limb. he's trying to make sure the old springlock animatronics still work.

("Just in case we ever get the chance to reopen the diner," William says, only somewhat jokingly.

the look of hatred that Henry's been giving him lately is now mixed with something else: Pity.

as though William's hopes were naive, unattainable.)

one of the many tests he regularly does include making sure the animatronics could still "sing." in other words, making sure the prerecorded voice lines and music weren't corrupted, out of time with the movements, or too scratchy.

so he gets to Fredbear, and decides to try and play a specific track from Fredbear. not Heartaches. but as he tries to get the song to play, it...only plays Heartaches. of course....a version of Heartaches Henry sang. O'Hare had only done some vocals like humming in the background, nothing too noticeable.

William is a bit frustrated, but just shrugs it off. eh, these things have gotten a bit buggy since...You Know What. so perhaps that's why it seemed to ignore his choices and override them. he ignores it...for now.

(he can ignore the pangs in his heart that this causes. if he just pretends Henry is singing to someone else.)

eventually, William is satisfied with the results, and goes to turn Fredbear back off, trying to turn off Fredbear's voice box. it...seems to work very briefly, and William turns to leave the backroom.

...only to hear the song start all over again, without his input.

William, now startled, tries to get the animatronic turned off, to get the practically taunting music to stop. hearing Henry's voice singing a song about how the subject broke his heart...well, when directed towards William, he can tell what the purpose is. guilt. "see what you've done to him?" it says.

at some point, it clicks for William that this isn't a simple animatronic malfunction. this is some Paranormal Shit. and maybe it's not just that the animatronic won't turn off despite his inputs.

...maybe it's also that the animatronic is leaking some black fluid out of its eyes and mouth as the song starts to distort.

he leaves. uneasy, frightened, and utterly baffled. there's no logical explanation for any of this, certainly not the fluids. he'll tell henry about this in the morning, after William's calmed down and got some sleep.

but his biggest mistake was assuming that Kelsey was the spirit behind this...event.

because there's no other spirit that could possibly be inside of that thing, right?

(tl;dr - Cassidy decides to taunt his murderous father by using his homoerotic feelings for his business partner against him.)

yebdebdebdebbwebwebwebumbumbumbumbobobobobumbumbumbumbumbumheartaches

[telelsie]

GAY SPOCK REAL OR FAKE PLEASE READ

i haven’t been an active tumblr user in about 3 years but SNW and the whole gay spock debate has been occupying enough space in my mind that i felt the need to inflict my opinion onto you all.

as a spirker myself, i’m not at all denying that the het romance arcs SNW is pushing for jim and spock are by no means my favorite. i dearly dearly wish that we would’ve gotten at least SOME queercoding from SNW this season, but i’m also not as disappointed as some of you are with the choices the SNW team has made for spock’s character. i’ve seen quite a few people begging for gay spock (bless u all) and canon spirk from SNW, which is unquestionably the ideal outcome for the series — and given the way both the writers and actors have reacted to and welcomed fan opinions and questions about where the jim/spock dynamic is heading, i don’t think it’s unreasonable at all for us to be optimistic about the show’s direction. if sybok can be in a queer relationship, then we’ve already gone miles past existing TOS canon in terms of queer rep.

admittedly, SNW has issues (ortegas show us ur girlfriend and the lesbian flag hanging in ur quarters!!! we all know it’s there!!), but i struggle to believe that the het romance arcs for jim and spock were written with the intention of convincing fans to ~let go of spirk~ or anything along those lines. in fact, i think the biggest issue that trek fans are having with SNW is wanting it to deliver on all the subtext and queercoding that existed in TOS on an implicit level explicitly and immediately. SNW is a prequel. it’s whole job is to set up and develop the relationships that appear in TOS; and it does an amazing job of this for the most part, especially in giving the female characters like una, christine, and t’pring traits other than crippling gene roddenberry syndrome. what i’m trying to say is that the SNW writers are doing a good job. yes, even (ESPECIALLY) with spock.

i get why people are protective of his character, i am too, but i don’t understand the lack of faith and, honestly, lack of viewing comprehension, that i’m seeing from self proclaimed spock fans. if you were expecting SNW to give us fully formed Nimoy-Spock within the first two seasons, then i’m sorry, but you’re a little bit of an idiot. a lot of you both don’t understand the purpose of the show (in general and in relation to spock’s development) and don’t value the importance of long form storytelling. in fact, in my ideal world, spirk wouldn’t even be together by the end of SNW. part of the value of the k/s dynamic in TOS was spock’s internal struggle with his feelings for jim, a struggle that defines his character, actions, and life throughout TOS and the movies. this is a struggle that isn’t resolved until midway through the movies, and it wouldn’t be doing justice to the canon that created spirk to have their relationship evolve into romance before the events of TOS.

spirk is, and always will be a long form story which derives its value from the fact that it is a Very Very slow burn. for the relationship to retain its value without being watered down by reinterpretation, it needs to have all the turns, pitfalls, and pining that it did in the original canon. although it’s entirely possible that the SNW writers have no plans of canonizing spirk, it’s also entirely possible that their plans are just a little more long term than what most of the community wants right now. i would far prefer a spirk that begins in 3 seasons of steadily evolving homoerotic friendship than one that jumps the gun and results in an unsatisfying and underbaked depiction of a relationship that deserves to be done justice.

TLDR: be patient!!! stop acting like SNW is actively taking spirk out behind the shed and shooting it!! SNW is already the best new trek to come out of the revival — give it a little more time and slack to build momentum and solidify its position within paramount and the fan community and you’ll be happy you waited.

[synesindri]

so it is generally understood by people who understand how fantasies work that a lot of "problematic" fantasy-fulfillment tropes in fiction are not literal, right? like sexy dubcon/noncon is not typically about wanting literally to do that/to have that done to oneself, it's usually about something else (often being absolved the guilt of surrendering to pleasure or similar) that the fantasy scenario gestures at.

one of the things that annoys me about treating fictional moral shortcomings as if they are real moral shortcomings is that doing this demands that the fantasy be taken literally, when it isn't literal for most of the people indulging in it. is dracula creepy? yes, straighforwardly so. is the beginning of dracula also genuinely sexy? potentially yeah, if you want to engage with it in a forced-submissive-homoeroticism-that-absolves-you-from-being-gay-as-a-victorian-englishman way. does it totally fuck up the fantasy to demand that dracula be held accountable for being creepy the same way a real human man would be held accountable for being creepy if he really did all that stuff to another real human man? mostly, yeah! it's irritating and frankly misunderstands the way the fictional text works to do that! it can be interesting to engage with the text using a real literal moral framework, but that happens at a totally different level from engaging with it as a horror-y homoerotic fantasy. which is NOT to say that engaging with it as a homoerotic fantasy makes it NOT creepy; you do not have to imagine it to be sweet to engage with it that way! the creepiness can be part of the eroticism, or it can detract from it, but people who find it sexy are not necessarily ignoring the creepiness by any means to engage with the possible sexiness. and furthermore you do not even have to engage with it as being YOUR homoerotic fantasy to engage with the idea that it COULD be a seductive fantasy to some people. and you miss out on SO MUCH possible analysis (and enjoyment, maybe) if you insist on acting as if all of these do or can take place at the same level of engagement.

and this doesn't have to be about sex either obviously, it could be about fantasies of power or self-efficacy or vanity or wealth or platonic love or whatever else. i just think it's really reductive and disingenuous to talk about scenarios that invite fantasy as if they MUST be discussed with a moral framework that is the same as literal reality OR that they must be dismissed as faffy feel-good bullshit that is totally disconnected from reality (this is not disparagement, faffy feel good bullshit is very valuable in its own place i'm just annoyed).

[adarkrainbow]

The Lost Sister (B)

The continuation of the article that began here.

As I said previously with the Frau Trude article: while this article contains some interesting information and point of view, I also do NOT agree with a lot of the points made, ranging from the article's comparison between "Little Snow-White" and "Snow White and Rose Red" (which is possible in the article's optic, but that I think is clumsily done), to the author misuse of several terms (like "hypersexualization" when talking about the Disney Snow White when I think they mean "hyper-genderization"). This will be the last time I say this: I am merely sharing these articles for the purpose of information, it is not because I share something that I agree with all of it.

INTIMATE FRIENDSHIPS

In “Snow White and Rose Red,” the sisters’ relationship of intense intimacy lends the tale an air of homoeroticism. As Martha Vicinus points out, sororal and homoerotic relationships are linked: “Women frequently referred to each other as ‘sister,’ the most egalitarian relationship they had in a nuclear family. . . . The widespread use of the sororal metaphor may have been a cover for something more intimate” (2004, xxvi). This intimacy between women is commensurate with the lesbianism in Renaissance literature that Valerie Traub describes as “a representational image, a rhetorical figure, a discursive effect, rather than a stable epistemological or historical category. It is employed as an exceptionally compressed and admittedly inadequate rubric for a wide, and sometimes conflicting, range of affective and erotic desires, practices, and affiliations, which have taken different historical forms and accrued varied historical meanings” (2002, 15). Such “intimate friendships” have been explored by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (1985) and Lillian Faderman (1981). The relationships that these scholars examine include a full spectrum of both filial and friendship bonds, often expressed idiomatically in a heavily romanticized way.

Smith-Rosenberg (1985) examines the world of nineteenth-century women’s relationships as recorded, not in public documentation, but rather in their private letters and diaries. Women wrote about the joy they shared in each other’s company and the despair they felt when isolated from one another (63). The intimacy, and eroticism, of these relationships must not be overlooked, as the women’s support networks commingled with desire for more emotional and sensual sorts of love (73). Smith-Rosenberg also indicates that these relationships led to an alienation from males, so that marriage caused “a girl’s traumatic removal from her mother and her mother’s network . . . [and] adjustment to a husband, who, because he was male, came to marriage with both a different world view and vastly different experiences” (69). Arguably, in “Snow White and Rose Red,” the encounter with the masculine brings about just such a life-altering occurrence for the two sisters.

Lillian Faderman, in examining Victorian society, suggests that its culture actually condoned romantic friendships and notes that only twentieth-century mores cause this kind of relationship “to be perceived as a refinement of the sexual impulse, . . . in many other centuries romantic love and sexual impulse were often considered unrelated” (1981, 16). Lisa Moore, however, disagrees, arguing that these intimate/romantic friendships were seen as taboo, and that they could be understood as either sexual or romantic by female friends (1997, 8). Her account of lesbianism in the British novel emphasizes the conflict between eighteenth-century fears of the dangers of female homosexuality and contemporary accounts that approved of such relationships so long as they were exemplars of chastity. As her study’s title, Dangerous Intimacies, indicates, Moore finds that such lesbian relationships held great risk to heteronormative society. Just as lesbianism, viewed as dangerous, was repressed in Victorian culture, so too was the sexually problematic “Snow White and Rose Red” marginalized, giving way to the heteronormative “Snow White.”

Nevertheless, Rose Red has not disappeared completely; rather, her name, figure, and character are used from time to time to highlight the virgin/ whore dichotomy that her original tale prefigures. More modern figurations of Rose Red demonstrate how contemporary writers interpret her and use this dichotomy as a kind of shorthand to explore diverse expressions of femininity.

MODERN REPRESENTATIONS OF ROSE RED

Dan Andreasen’s sumptuously illustrated children’s book adaptation of “Snow White and Rose Red,” titled Rose Red and the Bear Prince, is described as being “adapted from ‘Snow White and Rose Red’ by the Brothers Grimm” (2000, 4). This revision, though, as the title implies, completely leaves out Snow White. It becomes the story of “a poor widow and her only child, Rose Red,” who is not only “as lovely as the roses on the rosebush that grew near the garden gate” but also “as sharp as the thorns.” The daughter’s Snow White–like lack of sisterly companionship is, indeed, specifically noted: “Though she had no other children to play with, [Rose Red] was never lonely. There was the forest to explore, and all the forest animals were her friends. Rose Red was so kind that the animals were not afraid of her, and as for Rose Red—well, she was afraid of nothing” (6).

Other than the lack of a Snow White to be her counterpart and the fact that Rose Red cuts off the dwarf’s beard, mustache, and hair, rather than just three parts of his beard (possibly to facilitate variation in the illustrations), Andreasen’s adaptation is quite faithful to the Grimms’ original. It follows that story right down to the transplanting of the rosebush from the mother’s garden to their castle home at the end: “Rose Red and the bear prince planted it outside their window, and every year it bore the finest red roses in the land” (Andreasen 2000, 30). In this story, Rose Red herself remains wild and undomesticated, more allied with the animals of the forest than with the home and hearth of her mother. This “wildness” is even further accentuated in this version by the fact that she goes into the woods all alone, without a sister to accompany her.

Of course, Snow White’s absence from Andreasen’s narrative cannot be overlooked. Producing this book in a Western context in which the Disney version of Snow White has attained classic, iconic status (the book was published over sixty years after the premiere of the movie), Andreasen needs to remove Snow White in order for the story to be about Rose Red. Snow White’s absence from the book takes away any misapprehension that the story will be about Snow White and the seven dwarfs. But it also allows Andreasen to retell this narrative on its own strengths and merits, rather than trading on its associations with the more famous story of a Snow White who, despite having the same name, is an entirely different character from Rose Red’s sister. In the context of this children’s book, Rose Red’s story can only be told by entirely deleting the potentially dominating figure of Snow White. Yet her absence also overdetermines the narrative’s heterosexual focus.

A more adult yet equally overdetermined use of Snow White and Rose Red’s tale makes direct reference to the differences between the two sisters, using both names for their associated imagery. Ed McBain’s novel Snow White and Rose Red is not a retelling of the Grimms’ fairy tale but a contemporary story that uses the original, and its dichotomy between the two sisters, as a metaphor. The names represent the vacillations in the mental state of protagonist Sarah Whittaker, whose initials are by no means coincidental. However, when, in an exchange near the end of the book, narrator Matthew Hope calls her “Snow White,” she reacts forcefully and negatively: “‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘no, my dear, it’s Rose Red, didn’t you know? Rose Red!’ she screamed and came at me with the knife. I had never known such brute strength in my life” (1985, 230). McBain knowingly plays with the differentiation between Snow White and Rose Red, which posits the former as gentle and the latter as a thoroughly dangerous woman

The novel’s final chapter, composed mainly as a stream-of-conscious narrative from Whittaker’s point of view, relates how the daughter discovers and murders her father’s mistress. She first learns of her father’s affair when overhearing his erotic phone call with his mistress. This moment is responsible for violating the chaste, virginal status she possessed as a self-described Snow White: “I was wearing white that day, Snow White was, a white dress and white sandals and white lace-trimmed bikini panties, inadvertently and surprisingly damp as I listened to this illicit conversation” (McBain 1985, 235). This sexuality and death of innocence becomes directly tied to the color red: “I stood aghast, as well I might have, such obscenities falling upon my maiden ears, oh the horror. Snow White blushes, actually feels the rush of blood red to her maiden cheeks” (234). The white-as-virgin/red-as-whore symbolism and the intimate connection between the two become even more direct within the flow of Whittaker’s somewhat delusional monologue when she confronts her father’s mistress, noting, “She is barefoot, Rose Red in her bright red wrapper, and her hair is wet, she is fresh from her toilette, my father’s whore, his Rose Red whore in her scarlet dress and golden tresses, hair like mine, blonde like mine” (242). These similarities between daughter and mistress invoke the incestuous and queered father/daughter relationships in other tales discussed in this volume, including “Princess Mouseskin” (see chapter 10) and “Donkeyskin” (ATU 510B, “Peau d’Asne,” also “Allerleirauh”; see chapter 4).

McBain’s adult take on the images (if not the tale) of Snow White and Rose Red, along with the overshadowing of Rose Red by Snow White, is further addressed in writer/creator Bill Willingham’s comic book Fables. The series portrays traditional fairy tales and folktales with a twist: all the characters live in modern-day New York, having been driven out of their homelands by an evil “Adversary.” Although Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf (now the sheriff of Fabletown) are the main protagonists of the first few storylines, Rose Red, Snow White’s younger sister, becomes a crucial secondary character. In Fables, she is depicted as “the last of the dedicated party fiends. She’s the original wild child” (2002a, 13).7 The very first storyline of the series, “Legends in Exile,” revolves around one such “wild” act. Rose Red fakes her own murder so she and her boyfriend, Jack of the Tales (a composite of famous Jacks from various stories and nursery rhymes) can enjoy the dowry she received from secretly getting engaged to the wife-murdering Bluebeard, without ever having to marry him

The second storyline, “Animal Farm,” reveals even more of Willingham’s characterization of Rose Red. She and Snow White take a vacation to the upstate farm community where the non-human “Fables” (as all the fairy tale/ folktale characters are called) are forced to live. The sisters arrive just in time to encounter an armed uprising. Rose Red seemingly joins the rebellion, which Snow White eventually quashes. As Rose Red is put under arrest, she tellingly states, “It seems I was a bad girl again” (2002c, 21). However, the story later reveals that Rose was working against the revolutionaries, buying Snow White enough time to create a plan of escape. When the girls finally confront each other on this issue, Rose eloquently states her predicament, a metafictional accounting of the place she holds in the contemporary world:

The Mundys [ordinary humans] adore you by the millions. By the hundreds of millions! They keep making their godawful animated movies and writing their endless children’s stories about you. So you can’t die! They’ll never let you! But who remembers me? Not one in a million of them! It used to be Snow White and Rose Red. Now it’s just Snow White, period. All alone! No sister needed or desired, thank you so very much. . . . When we were young, back in the cabin, we pledged we’d be together forever. You and me against the world . . . remember? But the moment your pretty prince charming came along, you rode off with him, without so much as a backward glance. . . . You’re still the popular one and I’m fed up with living in your shadow. (18–20)

After boldly stating her case, Rose finally gets her due—she is put in charge of the restructured and rebuilt upstate farm, where her character (and her own internal strength and self-confidence) develops over the course of the series

ROSE RED’S PREDICAMENT

Unlike in the world of Fables, in European and North American cultures, Rose Red has never had a chance to prove herself or to grow as a person and a character beyond her initial portrayal as the whore to Snow White’s virgin. Thus Fables offers an extreme exception to a general pattern—Rose Red is silenced by the very fact that she is the symbolic representation of a dangerous, active woman, a femme fatale to Snow White’s innocent persecuted heroine. Though periodically invoked to express the danger of a sexualized woman and female-dominant spaces (as in Walker and Lunz’s [1976] analysis), Rose Red is for the most part restrained, ignored, and forgotten in contemporary culture. The overshadowed Rose Red takes the Grimm tales’ silenced woman (see Bottigheimer 1986) a step further; Rose is the silenced and forgotten woman

As Ruth Bottigheimer posits about such female characters, “To the extent that these tales corroborated and codified the values of the society in which they appeared, they reinforced them powerfully, symbolizing and codifying the status quo and serving as paradigms for powerlessness” (1987, 130). Rose Red and her sister, however, are by no means silent within their own story; they are active and passionate girls with a frighteningly close intimacy that borders on queer. Thus, the status quo of not only patriarchy but also heteronormativity is maintained and reinforced through the silencing, overshadowing, and disregarding of the sisters’ tale. By forgetting Rose Red, twenty-first-century culture forgets its own dark secrets and desires.

[04tenno]

Well goddamn, Daigo. I can only guess that was a part of his all-around terrible behavior that emerged when his world felt like it was crumbling. Of course, though, that’s still an awful way to act. It reminds me of the substory for him in 0 when he’s being a much more toned down kind of awful to that lady, and Kiryu points out that it’s not normal for him to act that way. It’d be interesting to see how he’d be with woman when he’s more levelheaded.

If you don’t mind me asking, what are your thoughts on Daigo and possibly being gay, anyway? It’s an area of intrigue for me in a way I can’t properly explain 🫠 Maybe due to being queer myself I wind up thinking about stuff like that.

Choosing a heartthrob type actor who doesn’t seem to do a lot of stuff like Yakuza and has a multitude of suggestive photo shoots makes me wonder so much. He’s not the usual choice compared to a lot of the other actors here. And what they used him for in the original version of Ishin is also just ???? There’s too much stuff in this series that my brain hooks onto and rotates endlessly. Even when it’s a character that doesn’t get thought about much 💀

Sorry I’ve been rambling so much. I really appreciate what you’ve shared with and done for the fandom, and it really gets my curiosity going.

How Daigo acts in Y0 is definitely in line with him ending up that way, because he's clearly begun to internalize certain beliefs about how he should act and what what he should want. It's very much not normal for a kid his age even if he doesn't fully understand it.

So, you know, there's stuff to chew on, but at the same time constantly showing that a character's hit his "lowest point" by having him victimize a female character gets old, and I'm glad Yokoyama stopped relying on that as shorthand.

I'm queer as well, so I think it'd be pretty cool! A huge draw to the series for women and queer people is the homoerotic subtext (which is, on occasion, text). And the subtext with Daigo really is intriguing, of course in terms of what we've talked about with Mine and with women, but also with Shinada and with Nick, for example.

When I've got the time I'd like to talk about it in a separate post (or in an ask to Snap in all likelihood lmao) but I'm like, 98% sure Mine just assumes he's gay and it's incredibly funny to me. Mine is certainly not Free of Projection, but still.

I honestly think Daito fits the casting pattern, though! There's at least one standout "heartthrob" in the cast of most of the games since faceclaims were introduced. Out of the actors I'm familiar with, Shota Matsuda (Kenzan), Hiroki Narimiya (Y4), Daito (Y5 and Ishin), Arata Iura (Y0), and of course Takuya Kimura, Shosuke Tanihara, and Hiroshi Tamaki (J1 and LJ) all had that reputation; even Tsutsumi did in the past. I think there's an understanding that the female fans are here to stay and are worth catering to.

Uhhhhh only tangentially related on the topic of queerness and faceclaims, honorable mention to Peter (Dead Souls) who is just straight-up one of Japan's most well known gay and GNC performers. Honestly. Slay. I love that he got to work with RGGS (even if, as usual, he plays a villain...)

With Ishin, it's definitely an interesting case, because with how Takeda and Todo are portrayed, it carries implications for whoever is "cast as" those characters. Because there's the acknowledgment Hayashi and Awano are, y'know, fruity, and there's also the acknowledgment Baba and Zhao could believably be desirable to gay men.

I suppose it kind of had to happen though. While Ishin does a LOT of original things with its concept, Takeda has to be Takeda, and Todo has to be Todo. In real life, Takeda did prey on younger members of the Shinsengumi (some believe Hijikata had Saito assassinate him after receiving complaints of this), and if one wanted to acknowledge that within the main story, well, Todo is the youngest captain.

In terms of casting, I think it's a mix of being dead-set on having an "all-star" cast (for the time) and needing the cast to fit "the image" of who the historical figures were. So Todo would naturally need to be someone who's boyishly handsome (even though Baba is 30 lmao). And hey, turns out we've got a really well-liked character that fits the bill right there in Y5, which was the best-selling RGG game by far in Japan until (I think) YLAD.

[minimanic]

JUNE MOVIE ROUNDUP!

Made it 33% of the way through my aspirational pride month list which is a little less than I'd hoped for but not the worst I've ever done. Viewing overwhelming skewed 90s with some notable exceptions.

Handful of unrelated and late additions that I also feel some type of way about.

Opinions and links under the read more

✨In which 90s queer cinema makes me nostalgic for a period of time that I was technically alive during✨

But I'm A Cheerleader (1999) Directed by Jamie Babbit: An absolutely adorable romcom about conversion therapy that handles its premise with more grace than anyone could have possibly expected. None the less, it stressed me out so bad i nearly ground my teeth to dust.

💚 But I'm a Cheerleader available on Internet Archive here, Tubi here

Nowhere (1997) Directed by Gregg Araki: I like to joke about how insufferable i would have been if I'd found Araki's films as a teenager but i think this is the one I would send back to myself if I could. The man takes teenage angst both seriously and honestly and that's a talent and a level of compassion that sets him apart. Also this one has aliens in it.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) Directed by Cheryl Dunye: The drive to find people who were like you within the history of art and culture, especially as a marginalized person, can be a consuming force and it's portrayed beautifully here. Also it absolutely rules to see a classic 90s indie slice of life film about black lesbians.

💚 The Watermelon Woman available on Internet Archive here

Bound (1996) Directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski: It Just feels Good man. This one was a re-watch but it's a re-watch at nearly 20 years and it hits just as good today as it did when i was 15. If the Wachowski's excel at anything it's a commitment to catharsis.

✨More Pride month flics✨

You and the Night (2013) Directed by Yann Gonzalez: Admittedly, I don't have a ton of experience with low budget french films about supernatural events happening at an orgie but even so I'm confident this is the best of the genre or at the very least the sweetest. An absolute comfort film.

Apocalypse After (2018) Directed by Bertrand Mandico: It resonates. It's also full of goo and fun outfits and practical effects!

Pink Narcissus (1971) Directed by James Bidgood/Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp) (2022) Directed by Peter Strickland: Pink Narcissus is a homoerotic fever dream that appreciates the erotic power of ass more than anything i have literally ever seen. It works completely. Blank Narcissus is equal parts cheap parody and fairly compelling rumination on lost love. It doesn't quite work but i get it.

💚 Pink Narcissus available on Internet Archive Here

El Pico (1983) Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia: I mean... its absolutely the prototype of the don't do drugs kids type dramas of the 90s but its noteworthy that it came out a solid decade before Trainspotting and co.

Lucifer Rising (1972) Directed by Kenneth Anger: Finally found a screener for this movie with more than 4 pixels! I'm gonna level with you. A couple weeks later I have forgotten literally everything about it despite my best efforts. I was certainly enthralled while watching it though. I'll give it that much.

💚Lucifer Rising available on YouTube here

💚 Most if not all of these can be watched through Solidarity Cinema. They're doing really excellent work over there. I use their streaming option through Plex and its been an absolute dream so far.

✨Movie I did not know was queer but oh my god holy shit✨

Anchoress (1993) Directed by Chris Newby: Threw this on for summer solstice and... its a revelation honestly. Part of the Folk Horror box set that came out a few years ago and definitely one of the best. The cinematography is beautiful. The ethos is immaculate. And who among us wouldn't have risked it all for a janky statue of Mary at some point in our life.

✨The Best of the Rest✨

Twister (1996) Directed by Jan de Bont: I am saying, truly and genuinely, with my whole chest: this is the best disaster movie ever made. Every single character is a delight, the effects inspire a mixture of fear and awe, it essentially watches like a road movie, Helen Hunt is trying to get revenge on a tornado. Its the rare perfect film.

Witch's Cradle (1944) Directed by Maya Deren: The best experimental films carry a sense of genuine magic with them and this has that in spades. Absolutely hypnotic.

💚 Watch Witch's Cradle on YouTube here

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Directed by George Miller: I fully forgot how good this movie is. You can really see a lot of the themes and sensibilities that would eventually come to fruition in Fury Road start to form here.

Moby Dick (1956) Directed by John Huston: Appropriately epic and perfectly cast, who doesn't want to watch Gregory Peck fight a whale?

💚 Moby Dick available on tubi here

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Directed by Stanley Kubrick: First time watching this one all the way through and in a packed theater no less! Tragically, the jokes still land just as hard as they did when it first came out. The whole theater lost it during Ripper's fluoride in the water bit. Kubrick's signature style is wildly successful when employed for comedic effect.

💚 Dr. Strangelove available on Internet Archive here

Galaxina (1980) Directed by Wilim Sachs: Is it a good movie? No absolutely not. Does it inspire a powerful fondness within me? It sure does! Imagine if Space Balls had no budget and periodic delusions of also being a real science fiction movie. That's what you're working with here and it is a delight.

💚 Galaxina available on YouTube here

[butchtwelfthdoctor]

tentative alignment chart of my doctor who ship opinions. it should be noted that a significant amount of these i mean compelling in a 'that's interesting' way not in a 'i ship this' way b/c i also think the doctor is ace and/or aro Most Of The Time it makes sense i swear. explained under the cut cos oh boy do i have thoughts

like ten and river was set up quite compellingly but obv we dont really see much more of that (i think its in some audios but i haven't heard those) and then idk eleven was weird abt it sometimes. and thirteen and yaz was only compelling for like...... the last three specials in which i was losing my mind over 'not such a bad date am i' etc but doesnt make a lot of sense cos there was like zero lead up to that lol.

doctordonna qpr is of course peak, tendonna as a ship is not, tenmartha is..... weird........ like i just cant see a way to keep everything canon that happened and make that not weird. elevenamy and amyrory are like..... ok. like sure amy was a little bit in love with the doctor but it was handled in a kinda boring way imo.

tensaxon is on one hand INCREDIBLY HOMOEROTIC but im sorry i just cant with last of the timelords like sorry but he just genocided earth. like i understand the tension but just eueuuegh. but then end of time part two rolls around and yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. twelvemissy is fantastic because she is trying so hard to cast off everything she's done and she Wants the doctor to love her even just a little bit in any way because she has nothing else left and they are the only people who could possibly understand each other. spydoc is interesting because its kinda an extension of the same - spymaster goes and burns down gallifrey after discovering their secrets because OF COURSE it centers on the doctor, just as everything always does, and he just wants her to understand everything and to realise that despite everything they belong together, the last of the timelords. but of course super messed up because of course.

twelveclara i dont think makes sense romantically but they're just so unhinged about each other especially on clara's part..... its like they're not romantically involved because they have to pretend to themselves that they think about each other a normal amount and in normal ways because otherwise they'd have to realise that whatever they've got going on is messed up.

tenrose has its moments. like it really does. the way he looks at her at the end of the christmas invasion. obviously bad wolf bay. but a lot of the time its like...... they really are just friends!!! but also its a codependant lesbian teenage situationship. except for when its platonic. ninerose has a few moments as well but not as much nine is too emotionally repressed. ninejackrose tenjackmartha has SO MUCH GOING ON i didnt even know where to put those on a dynamic scale because they dynamic has So Much Going On yknow but like........... theres something there......... it sure is happening.........

rose and tentoo is....... fine i guess. like roses ending was so tragic as it was but it was such a strong ending? and bringing her back for journeys end was really cool and i liked it but tentoo commits genocide and then tens like yup uhmmm so i'm dumping him here with you. without asking. but he's me and you're in love with me so its fine bye i'll go cry by myself. which was weird. idk. rose and mickey were only interesting as the counterpoint to roses obvious adoration for the doctor vs her normal teenager relationship with mickey.

river song and missy is crack ship lol but i do think it would have been so fabulous is we'd got some screen time of them together.

[swarmkeepers]

tâm, in the after (wandering isles epilogue thoughts, to say goodbye for real)

the tl;dr: tâm stays on the delrose. ari stays too, for years of travel and study, before  finding their footing on an island to grow on their own. xarus leaves shortly after the fall of castellane to open his dancing hall on solid ground, and before they go he trains tâm to take over their position as quartermaster. lian teleports back on board for weekends playing go fish. but tâm will spend the rest of her life on its decks with thalia and eris and vesper and a family bigger than she ever thought possible.

it’s hard to tell if tâm got a little taller (even at 19) or if she just stands a little straighter. either way, she’s not making herself look small. she’s gotten her legs on the cloudsea and stands a little steadier; her eyes aren’t darting around all the time so much as scanning a familiar horizon.

smiles so much more, is so much more tactile—leaning her head in towards lian or eris or ari or nyx’s to hear what they’re saying, laughing at thalia and eris bickering on deck, looping her arm around someone else’s as they walk, bodily scooping up some of the delrose’s younger crew and slinging them over her shoulder like a sack of flour as they shriek with laughter. she's learned she's allowed to love her family like this; she's learned it's enough (it's everything, really)

tâm isn’t really a letter writing person (she’s not even really a words person), but “i. uh. please can you help” comes easily, if nothing else does. she sends some of the first letters of her life to xarus and is both surprised and delighted when they write back, lots. there’s quartermaster advice and life advice and mutual commiseration over paperwork when all your cargo is illegal and the WORSE paperwork when your pirate ship is starting to become less illegal in the pillaging-for-profit sense but still illegal in the mutual-aid-via-piracy sense. eventually tâm will ask xarus to tell the story of how he became quartermaster with a genuine curiosity, and maybe xarus will tell her

in the process of managing the continual chaos that is the delrose’s inventory as quartermaster, she gets herself a bag of holding and, among other things, keeps her pike in it. it’s always near at hand, still, but she’s not towered over by her own ten foot weapon all the time. also, she thinks it’s funny to surprise the new crewmates the first time they see her pull a ten foot long weapon, magical aura and all, like scarves out of a hat out of the bag that usually holds paperwork and snacks

she mostly uses her bag for snacks, makes herself the first person to greet new crew, size them up for clean clothes, and ask them their favorite food. she grew up hungry, and no one on this boat is going to do the same—for tâm, this is what makes working as quartermaster worth it far more than the raiding parties or the paperwork. when eris shows the younger crewmates and kids the delrose takes in up to the teen zone, tâm usually won’t be there to greet them (she’s still. not the best with new people) but their favorite snacks will be.

“well, thalia gave me this crisp $20 bill” was dead serious but especially now that thalia is her first mate and not her captain Going Thru Some Shit i think. that she and tâm both learn to laugh more, figure out they share the same kind of sense of humor. tâm will continue finding thalia and vesper being extremely cute on deck and/or conducting captain business without thalia ever leaving vesper’s lap and fake-roll her eyes for months once she feels comfortable enough to get away with it.

she still loses game after game of go fish to lian. eventually she’ll win one. i don’t think they bet anything, but these two thieves might make a variant game out of both playing go fish and trying to pickpocket the other at the same time. winning is based both on who won the game of go fish and who got the most stuff.

when nyx steps off the delrose with intent to leave, and eris is standing on deck unsure how much space to give her, tâm will find a deck of cards and then go find eris and ask if eris wants to be distracted by winning game after game of go fish.

the teen zone grows. the teen zone is enabled by the fact that technically tâm does the budgeting on board. things tâm and eris consider adding to the teen zone: more blankets, cannons so eris can be the ship’s gunner, better wine than that blueberry stuff they keep on board for pirate ceremonies, extra snacks

with incredible confusion, for the five long years that eris and tyche are being incredibly homoerotic rivals: “i don’t do romance but i thought YOU do romance so. uh. ARE you trying to do romance right now?”

(by the time tyche joins the crew, there have been a lot more crew coming and going on board the delrose, but. tâm is reminded of something specific when there’s now a rogue/cleric bickering stubbornly with eris on board again, different person notwithstanding. she’s absolutely NOT telling either ari or eris about the similarity.)

tâm grows up. ari grows up. there are things that are undefinable but there is family, and there is love, and that’s never been the hard part between them

there are also care packages, and most of them have bread. tâm learns she likes exploring new cities as the delrose crisscrosses the isles and tries to send ari some new kind of bread every time she finds it in a new marketplace. sometimes, if they have time, she’ll teleport right to their apartment from the bakery to give it to them still warm

eventually the delrose comes back from a long trip through the outer isles and docks in geline for a long stretch of time. tâm wanders the capital’s streets and realizes she’s unsteady. under constance’s new government the city is developing in a new way that she doesn’t intuitively know like she knows the back of her hand (she no longer knows these streets, and she no longer knows blood and hunger here either). she balances now like she’s ready for the deck of the ship to toss in the wind, not like she’s ready to sprint across rooftops on the run. it feels weird. it feels like growing pains. it feels good.

at ari and nyx’s wedding: your vows were very nice, tâm tells ari seriously, slinging an arm around their shoulders to wrinkle their clothes but also to let them preen a little about what they wrote. she hugs them so, so tight and says, i’m SO proud of you for saying them

a few weeks after ari and nyx get married, tâm will look at eris for a long time while they’re both working on the rigging and tip her head to the side and ask, very confused, “are we. siblings?” (the consensus is not siblings, but yes family. it doesn’t make sense. that’s fine)

sometimes you grow closer to people when you’re not living out of each other’s pockets all the time, and that’s tâm with much of the crew that killed prynne castellane. they’re family, tied together by tragedies and victories and magic and letters and visits and love

what’s important to her, when she can’t be the one leading her crew into fights, is training someone new. tâm goes to miles’s magical community school and earnestly asks if they have any accounting classes suitable for one of the younger crew members and gets a weird look, but it’s important to her that they come into this job better than xarus had to, than she had to. that they know how, but they also know why—so they can feed and clothe and take care of and protect this crew, in the big ways in and the small

she still mostly thinks one day at a time, in a better way. tâm will keep putting her body and her weapon in front of her family to fight for them until she can’t anymore. she’s done being scared, and she’s learning to like being scary when she wants to. wherever the bow faces that day is where she’s facing too, and she’ll stand at the hand of her captains and first mates as the positions change hands over the years. tâm will spend the rest of her life on deck, in the storm and the cloudsea. she gets to help people feel safe, at her side and behind her guard.

[tiredcath]

Zukka Fic Recs

after atla came back into pop culture i found myself falling back in love with zukka which resulted in me reading (almost) every zukka fic on ao3 and here are my favorites

Transference by The_Quatermasters (146k)

In a modern AU, Zuko has to deal with settling in a new school after expulsion, dealing with an angry ex and an abusive father. Maybe his new found friendships and growing closeness with Sokka will help him make it through. 

Borderlines by The_Quatermasters (73k)

Three years after the war, the work still isn't quite done and the Gaang is scattered across the continents in their efforts to help the world recover. When Aang and Katara pay visit to the Fire Nation where Zuko is Fire Lord and Sokka acts as Ambassador for the Water Tribe, sparks fly between the siblings over Sokka's life choices.

Ashes Inside When You Finish Your Song by Muncaster (47k)

Sokka writes lyrics for his sister’s band. Zuko plays piano and is unnecessarily nice. Fellas, is it gay to write love songs about your friend and his golden eyes?

(AKA, a modern band AU featuring The Gaang, crappy software equipment, homoerotic lyrics, and the realization that maybe, if you think about a guy every night before you sleep, you just might be in love with him.)

sirens & sleepless nights by Satirrian (54k)

Life can be pretty hard living in a city under a totalitarian regime. Between adhering to the ridiculous curfew, keeping himself from being gunned down by a passing patrolman, and paying his unnecessary tolls to the state for, say, breathing, Sokka has his hands full just getting to work. Add aiding a resistance group on top of that, and Sokka should really be getting paid for this.

Then, one night, Sokka finds an injured patrolman collapsed in the street, who tells him with blood on his lips, “If the patrol finds me, I’m dead.”

 Real Slow by surveycorpsjean (21k)

“I see.” Zuko closes the scroll. “Is the Water Tribe sending a replacement?”

“Uh yeah,” Sokka gestures to himself dramatically. “You’re looking at him.”

 First by HoneyBadgerMole (20k)

Zuko has been nurturing a crush on the jock in his AP Psych class but he has been too scared to talk to him until they get paired up for a project.

the benefits of getting a flat tire by LesbeanLatte (64k)

Zuko makes an impromptu decision to run away from home after a disturbing conversation with Azula. Unfortunately, some plans are better when they're actually, well, planned. Zuko isn't counting on getting a flat tire almost as soon as he's far enough away from the city to really be in the middle of nowhere.

Sokka is immediately taken with the stranger he and his friends find stranded on the side of the road during an afternoon joy ride. However, he has no idea what he's getting involved with and a kind attempt to help a fellow teen in need turns into a massive coverup for a missing person who just so happens to be the son of the mayor of Ba Sing Se.

Azula was just trying to help her big brother - in her own way - by telling him things she thought he deserved to know. Now the situation has gotten wildly out of control. Did she enjoy seeing Zuko upset and afraid? Of course. Had she intended to endanger his life? Not necessarily, but of course, her idiot brother overreacted to everything and that's what happened and now she doesn't know how to stop the chain of events she's indirectly put in place like dominoes.

Operation Leverage by snowandfire (50k)

Sokka's instincts are onto something great. Zuko just wants to serve tea and brood in peace. Ironically, Toph is the only one who can see what's really going on.

 The Stingray by Smediterranea (24k)

“You’re not carrying me.”

“I don’t mind,” the lifeguard says easily.

“I can just hop over.”

“On sand?”

Zuko will never admit it, but being carried feels pretty nice. The lifeguard sets him down and eyes him warily.

“Are you really all by yourself?” he asks in a worried tone. “No friends in town you can call to check on you?”

“No,” Zuko confirms. Tears are forming again with alarming speed; his foot throbs painfully with every passing second.

“What kind of burrito do you want?”

“You don’t have to —“ Zuko repeats.

“I’m getting al pastor. You like al pastor?”

 AU: Zuko falls for Sokka, the super hot lifeguard who helps him after an unfortunate encounter with a stingray.

 it's the illusion of separation by argentoswan (110k)

Sokka takes a job washing dishes at the new tea shop in town. It's a great gig, until he finds out his only coworker is his old high school bully. Sokka really should quit, but he also really needs to afford rent.

Also, Zuko is kind of hot now.

 People like to think war means something by trying_to_spell_both_our_names_at_once (21k)

Sokka was the first to leave.

Somehow that hurt the most. . . . Not long after Zuko becomes Firelord, forces gather in the South and next thing he knows he's thrown into a civil war with almost no one by his side. Maybe healing is longer and more complicated than it needs to be, but with the right people by your side it is always possible.

 a way that will destroy you by anothermistakemade (14k)

In the wake of Ozai's death, Zuko begins to fall apart. Sokka will do everything in his power to make sure that doesn't happen.

-

or, zuko might be losing his mind, but he also might just be really sad & traumatized

 Those Who Favor Fire by CSHfic, VSfic (30k)

After a failed attempt on his life, Sokka fakes his death, dons a disguise, and infiltrates the would-be assassin's ranks in an attempt to bring them down from the inside.

Zuko learns of his husband's tragic death, mourns, and vows revenge.

 Words Mean More at Night by DaisytheDoodleDog (28k)

Even ten years after the end of the war, rebellions rise and risk the balance of the nations. Sokka was willing to do anything to protect his people, which is perhaps why he's leading an army against the rebellion, attacking only as a last result. But Sokka's unwinding, it's taking a toll on him, and the only thing keeping him grounded are the letter Zuko and him exchange late in the night when no one can see the messenger hawks. But as they say, nothing's fair in love and war.

another word for wanting by eurydicees (23k)

Sokka begins to dream of his soulmate when he's eleven years old, and it just gets harder from there. Or, 125 moments soulmates share, and none of them come easy.

(In which your dreams are your soulmate's memories, and Sokka dreams of an all-consuming fire, growing and eating at his soulmate until it burns up the connection between their souls. In which they find love anyways.)

 It Has Only Just Begun by Kirazalea (39k)

There is a bitter triumph in crashing when you should be soaring

Zuko had now chosen the path his uncle had been trying so hard to show him; he had someone who believed in him, who maybe loved him; he was travelling with the Avatar and they apparently had a plan to end the war. By all accounts, Zuko should be smiling.

But Uncle was gone (captured by Azula, and Zuko didn't think she would kill him, but he didn’t, couldn’t, know for sure). The Avatar was barely breathing (he could still die at any second and there was nothing any of them could do about it). Azula had conquered the last Earth Kingdom stronghold (all those innocent people who were now at her mercy). It seemed like, for every step Zuko took forward, the world sent him back three more.

But he was determined to push forward anyways. He needed to make his uncle proud, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

aka: zuko joins the gaang at the end of season 2

 Nightmares and Reveries by HisMomoness (20k)

Zuko doesn't sleep because when he does, he's haunted by nightmares. Sokka worms his way into a job and makes it his mission to get Zuko to relax. Lots of head pets and one vacation to the South Pole later, Zuko might just be getting the hang of it.

Cue pining, some fluff, and eventual romance.

 The One Who Stopped Time by ohhihoney (66k)

All hope was lost to Zuko until one day, his uncle asked a random person at the Jasmine Dragon to tutor his nephew. Gritting his teeth and embarrassed beyond the point of no return, Zuko gave the blue eyed boy his number.

Little did Zuko know how much Sokka would change his world.

 Rubbed Off Stars by ohhihoney (2k)

Sokka wasn't going to just sit and watch the boy at the back of the bus cry while trying to rub off pride flags off his cheeks.

--------------

WIP

Ozymandias, King of Kings by Think_of_a_Wonderful_Thought (168k)

After that fateful Agni Kai, Ozai makes a different call. Branded as a traitor and banished to a prison camp, Zuko learns how cruel the Fire Nation can be to its citizens. Three years, a water tribe raid, and an unexpected meeting with a gang of over-enthusiastic idealistic children puts Zuko back in the spotlight. The revolution is coming and it wants another poster boy, but Zuko is not willing to lend his face to the cause.

 Another Brother by AvocadoLove (312k)

It was a mission of revenge. There weren't supposed to be any survivors, but Chief Hakoda couldn't bring himself to kill the Fire Nation boy. Against his better judgment, he brought him home. A Zuko joins the Water Tribe story.

--------------

BONUS : zuko x jet

Something to Hold Onto by Wildgoosery (122k)

Since the day the walls of Ba Sing Se fell, the Freedom Fighters have struggled to protect what remains of the city and its people. Jet and his second command, a mysterious boy named Li, have spent the summer piecing together an army, hoping for a chance to take the city back for good. But Li is also Zuko, and the time for that secret is quickly running out. Soon, he'll have to decide exactly who he is, what cause he's going to fight for, and where his heart lies.

[girl4music]

‘Sins Of The Past’ is very queer storytelling done right.

Everybody will think back on it and say “wait, how is it queer? Xena and Gabrielle don’t kiss” as if same-sex sexual intimacy is the only thing that defines what being “queer” is. No, it’s queer in its overall thematic narrative of the main female protagonists saving and changing each other’s lives and ultimately choosing to travel together rather than doing the “home life” gig.

They choose each other. They become found family.

That’s what makes it queer because that’s often a very real and true situation for real and true queer people. And from then on, it just gets queerer and queerer. Sometimes because they kiss, but most of the time not because of that at all but because “found family” is always the take-away in pretty much every episode.

What makes it queer is that it’s a very honest and realistic representation of queer life for queer people and not because they kiss every now and then or do other homoerotic stuff that implicitly, if not explicitly, indicates that a romance is happening between them.

Which … if you want to interpret the show and the ship like that, you’re absolutely free and welcome to. But that’s not what fundamentally makes it queer. It isn’t.

That’s just what makes it GAY. There is a distinction because the gay stuff is usually just jokes and subtext until the later seasons anyway when it is made much more evident that Xena and Gabrielle are very in love.

But the very honest, sincere and purposeful stuff is queer. Is maintext from the very beginning. Is canon.

In other words: it’s the queer stuff that informs the gay stuff. It’s the queer stuff that the fans picked up on to the point where they thought gay stuff was possible.

“Queer” does not only define sexuality. It never has.

“Gay”, however, does.

Both terms can be used to refer to the show and ship but the distinction needs to be made clear that what’s queer about this show and this ship is not what’s gay.

BUT … queer is what ultimately evolves it into gay. But if you ask me, the gay should not be as taken seriously until the later seasons when it’s more than just gay jokes played up for a gay female audience because the straight actresses themselves hated it and the showrunners themselves actively avoided it.

In their eyes - if it was going to be gay, it was going to be serious and not just jokes. As serious as it is queer.

In that respect ‘Sins Of The Past’ is the queer episode.

Let me be clear. There are many many many queer episodes, but I’m saying that is THE queer episode because the whole thing is very queer storytelling!

So Xena is not necessarily a GAY show. That all depends on however which way you interpret it.

But it is a QUEER show. What’s canon is QUEER.

And I wish people would understand this about Xena and about queer TV art/entertainment in general. That what’s “queer” is something deeper than sexuality. For example: when you watch Buffy, the same again. What’s deep about it is the queer stuff. And while it may only be through metaphor on that show,… it still works and hits because that is what resonates most.

Queer storytelling - queer themes and narratives.

It’s very deep stuff. So deep that it takes you awhile to see it. But when it is eventually picked up on… suddenly that piece of TV media is more valuable and you’ll go back to watch it and see it all anew and it will absolutely throttle you and blow your fucking mind.

As soon as you see Xena in the “queer” way… by the gods does it make one hell of a difference watching it.

Xena: Episode One

Sins of the Past

"I am not your mother."

I remembered Xena's backstory involved being a former warlord and conquerer with a laundry list of war crimes behind her and an even longer list of enemies for justified reasons. I had no idea we get to see her home village and meet her mother as early as the first episode. That surprised me a bit, but my memory of the overall show is almost thirty years out of date. Part of the point of a first episode is to establish the characters and the world and this episode does a pretty good job of it.

The angry villagers when she got home I understood and were all rather generic, but the scene with her mother. Ooooh, the scene with her mother.

Let me rewind a bit.

Part of the point of the first episode of a television series is to establish the world and characters. What we know going in to Xena is the world is one I often refer to as Fantasy Ancient Greece. Very loosely based on Ancient Greece, but about as accurate as a quarry in California being an alien planet in Star Trek.

The episode does a pretty good job of establishing the bits of Xena I remember: she's got enemies, she's intelligent, she's hyper competent at combat, and she's very remorseful of her previous actions. She makes no apologies because she knows she does not deserve them.

Which makes the scenes with her mother hit even so much harder for me.

The A plot with Xena involves a warlord named Draco who may or may not be an ex-boyfriend tries to enslave women from a nearby village. This is where we meet Gabrielle and I will get to her later. She gets the ex-boyfriend to leave the village alone. Draco decides he's going to burn Xena's home village down so she has no place to go back to. And he's going to have his men claim he's doing this under Xena's name to ruin any chance she has of acceptance. Over the course of the episode she obviously saves the village and people warm up to her, ending in her mother telling her she forgives her.

The B Plot is Gabrielle desperately trying to follow Xena. I genuinely forgot Gabrielle's sheet audacity. I mainly remember her being a writer, but I had no idea she originally started off following Xena wanting to be a warrior. This woman, to follow Xena, tricks a blind cyclops into letting her pass, flings herself onto a road in hopes a cart will pass by and sweet talks herself into a ride to Xena's village, and then gets between Xena and a mob ready to stone her and talks the mob down. All because she does not want to be trapped in her village and doesn't eant to marry a guy.

I hope Gabrielle's audacity continues and I just forgot about it.

The overall episode is as campy and cartoony as I remember it being with sound effects straight out of Loony Tunes, a bit involving a minion trying to attack Draco while he's giving orders and failing, and Xena's armor looking like at home on the Eras stage. Overall very entertaining.

Episode two to come when I have an evening free. As this rewatch goes I might come back to this episode since it gives me a lot to chew on I don't quite know how to articulate just yet.

[accidentalrabbit]

TOGETHER WITH ME

(series)

Thailand 2017

RANK: S

A-pairing: Korn x Knock

B-pairing: we will get to that

C-pairing: we will GET to that

Other character(s) i enjoyed: Yiwha, Faii, Farm

Overall review:

This show is a MESS. And it is iconic. Some truly horrible and inane things happen to its characters, and that’s a warning. It’s camp! Proceed with caution.

Overall, the production is par for the course. You get your occasional weird sound effects and audio, but in the edit, the show basically works. I love that Amphawa Floating Market is one of the major locations, it’s so striking and breaks up the university vibe with a standout, non-beach setting. Shoutout also to hair and makeup, ESPECIALLY on Yiwha, who is serving Carmen Sandiego/Fortune 500 CEO with a bold lip at all times, and Pleng, who is also on her evil girlboss grind 24/7. I’m going to be overusing the word girlboss, because this show is fully in its girlboss side character era. And everyone in this show is giving their roles 110%, boots the house down.

Alright, we have to start with episode one, which for the record is the most impressively homosexual first episode of any show i’ve watched. Korn and Knock are childhood best friends who lost touch but reconnect while studying architecture or whatever at university. If this were a drinking game, you’d already be drunk. And speaking of drunk, they go back home to pick up girls and get absolutely faded, but when the girls leave early (and rob them, those enterprising girlbosses!)...they fuck. They have just completely unrestrained and messy drunken sex in episode one. Twelve episodes to go! This is such an aggressive way to establish their barely contained homoerotic tension that i almost can’t believe more shows haven’t done it since, but i guess once you have a show that does it so well you can’t just do a pale imitation. This also establishes the insane level of chemistry these two have when they’re not holding back, and my god. In terms of high heat, who comes close? They also do a great job at playing awkward but still intimate when they are holding back, like when Knock gets injured during their soccer football match and Korn has to bathe him, but they’re both in their “let’s pretend nothing happened i love our friendship” era. Oh, they’re also pretending nothing happened because Knock has a girlfriend. Oops! We’ll get there.

For the remainder of the show we have three main characters to root for, if we’re generous. Korn is the audience insert/POV character and we love him, Knock is the somewhat passive (lmao iykyk) protagonist whose arc becomes the arc of the whole show, and then there is Yiwha, a gorgeous queen who has never done anything wrong. She is the girlboss: an excellent wingman, a nosy gossip, an amateur detective, never takes off her plot armor. Yiwha is the character who holds the plots together and moves them forward. She is responsible for creating the show’s main antagonists, the evil girlboss trio, and she is, for the most part, the one who moves between all the different subplots, acting at key moments when it looks like the story might otherwise stall. Knock’s girlfriend and noted evil girlboss Pleng puts out a hit on her at one point and i did worry, but Yiwha uses her plot armor to beat up the bad guys and convince Korn’s ex to betray the evil girlboss trio. You cannot stop Yiwha. She’s a legend and she is the moment. When she’s on screen, i’m having fun, even when she’s being slightly evil.

I’ll take a moment here to say that at first i thought the show had no moral core because the way these characters act is extremely chaotic. Even our main characters who we love and want to root for behave very sketchily, lying and cheating and betraying each other and outing their friends and just being plain mean. It makes for excellent comedy. But at some point i realized the theme of this show is that self-deception is the ultimate evil because it prevents the possibility of love, and then everything fell into place. These characters behave in amoral ways because they are hammering a point home for thirteen episodes and everything that stands in their way is a nail. Even deceiving others is okay if it’s in service of making them realize or admit something about themselves, and the most evil characters are the ones who want their loved ones to keep lying to themselves about what they truly want. And that’s why cheating on your girlfriend is okay if you’re a queer man, actually: Because she’s keeping you in the closet on purpose, because she is evil.

THE EVIL GIRLBOSS TRIO. I love the execution of the antagonists. No one has done it better more entertainingly when it comes to the (problematic) women scorned trope. All three of them have reasons, all of the reasons are bad, and all of them are at least partially antagonized by Yiwha. They are unhinged; they have zero hinges between them. Their schemes make no sense and require an incredible amount of expertise. Getting hired thugs to beat up your enemies? Hacking university databases? Printing hundreds of flyers of your boyfriend making out with his gay friend using a photo you took of their room from a rooftop fifty meters away? It’s camp!

Faii is a minor character in the grand scheme of things but i love her interactions with Yiwha and Farm. I love that she’s on the boys’ football team and WINS. I love her can-do attitude. I love her John Watson detective era. Lesbian-coded gnc icon. Ugh. Legend.

Farm: I love him. Perfect baby gay. We’ll come back to him. Dr. Bright is a good character in terms of the story, but i like him less because i want only good things for Farm, and he is Not That. Phu and Kawitra also exist and are characters. We’ll get there.

I appreciate how tightly written the side characters are. They all continue touching base with the plot throughout. They come back occasionally in unexpected ways. They all interact anonymously with Knock’s online thread about his conflicted feelings, and sometimes they say very insightful things. For a show that is so silly and trope-reliant, it’s refreshing that the writers demonstrate that they pay close enough attention to the plot to make the smorgasbord of characters both necessary and sufficient to the story. No one feels extraneous and no subplot feels underdeveloped. The writing is also very funny most of the time. It is like the best possible CW young adult drama crossed with a decent sitcom, with ridiculous soap opera plot details, and i mean all of that in a sincere and kind way.

Before i wrap this up, i am a sucker for a bow-tied happy ending, and Korn and Knock, despite spending several episodes driving each other up the wall, do eventually get to kiss without having to sneak around Pleng’s back or worry about telescopic camera lenses. These two are so compelling to watch even when they’re mad at each other; when they finally get to be openly in love, it feels transcendent. The writing also makes good use of the fact that they are childhood friends with a shared history in various foods, objects, and rituals, and it makes their scenes, ups and downs alike, that much more emotional.

This show is so...much, but part of that “muchness” is also its earnestness. Despite being weird, often uncomfortable, and not at all self-aware, it never felt like this show was cynical about its own existence or the progression of its story, which happens in even very good, very well-written Thai BL (see: Bad Buddy (2021), Dark Blue Kiss (2019), and also most of the mediocre series (My Gear Your Gown (2020) is a BIG offender)). I know it’s dangerous to make blanket statements but in my unitary and subjective opinion i think this is the best Thai BL made before 2019, and it still outshines many others made since.

I had a good time, but:

Together With Me is PEAK television, but that does not mean you should look to it for moral guidance or real world advice. Please. I had a good time, and that is not an endorsement of the objectionable plot points, which are so important to the show being peak TV and which i would like to never see ever again. This show is hanging onto its S-tier status by a thread, and these are the things that almost undid it.

I loathe student-teacher romances. LOATHE. I ultimately made some uneasy peace with the Phu x Kawitra C-plot, but every scene with them worked my nerves. I mean, from the jump i was on edge, and i sighed with relief every time a scene ended with the status quo mostly unchanged. I liked how Kawitra stands by her ethical principles as a professor (mostly), i was relieved that a fully-grown very annoying university student was the pursuer (so i didn't immediately have to root for prison time), and i tolerated how the narrative made their one kiss very unattractive, based entirely on Phu's lies, and blessedly unrepeated.

That being said, the moral core of this show was all about confronting self-deception and admitting your true feelings or whatever, so i understand why, to an extent, this storyline is here. I did not like what they did with it. But their little arc wasn't NOT compelling, in a narrowly-avoided trainwreck kinda way. And because all the characters are written so interconnectedly (she's Korn's sister and Yiwha's professor, all the students are roommates, they all care about each other), it also tied into the other plots in a way i appreciated. I now simply hope Phu graduates and gets a decent job far away and never bothers her again. (And Kawitra, ma'am, get a grip! you have to want better for yourself!)

Farm gets his own section. Don't you worry.

This is not a real complaint, but Yiwha deserved to be bisexual, because i say so, and we were robbed.

Other than that, there's not much left to complain about. Even at its…least restrained, Together With Me has the benefit of being very fun. The tropes, the edit, the neon blue tequila shots, the Yiwha ex machina plot armor, the evil girlboss trio—none of these things are unimpeachable. But goddamn do the weak spots have an oblivious charm that i don't think any other show i've watched has quite replicated.

Unfortunately, you have been chopped: Bad Romance (2016, parent story/sequel), Together With Me: The Next Chapter (2018, sequel).

Honestly, neither of these shows piqued my interest, and the stories they tell are entirely ancillary to this one. Korn and Knock lose a lot of their spark, which is one of the primary reasons i enjoy this show so much, and Yiwha, for all her girlbossery, has significant changes by necessity to her character when she’s with her little man or whatever. I think in the sequel in particular, everyone loses the kind of weird, chaotic, amoral edge that they have in this series. I did try to power through TWM:TNC, but it’s so long for so little payoff, and that’s not even bringing up what they did to

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: Farm, my beloved. Here comes an essay.

Between his friends plying him with alcohol to get him to fess up about his love life, to his girlfriend drugging him and then trying to assault him to turn him straight, to getting punched by a random homophobic hitman, to his messy, messy, messy one-way puppy-love relationship with Dr. Bright—Farm deserves therapy. To be honest, if i didn’t see a lot of myself in Farm, his arc would have been much more uncomfortable and much less enjoyable, and i understand people who hate everything about this B-plot. But i actually found his story touching, even when it was being played for a laugh. (Which, to be clear, it usually should not have been.)

I do think the writers kept it real about different kinds of non-traditional relationships in the gay community, and i think they kept it real about how much it would hurt to go from one kind of relationship that looks right but feels wrong because of your sexuality, to one that feels right but is still wrong for you. But they definitely should have treated serious subjects like sexual assault with more care. I was definitely uncomfortable, and my heart really ached for the parts of me i saw treated so poorly in this character—and still i found his story worth showing even in such a problematic way. Bright enjoys very non-traditional relationships and Farm is a hopeless romantic, and they are both unable to love, persuade, cajole, or embarrass each other into changing what they want, and that is KEY to the theme of the show: Self-deception is the enemy of love. You cannot force a relationship that smothers your truth.

In the end, Farm learns the wrong lessons about jealousy and relationships, but it feels like a mistake he’s making as a confused baby gay, and not something he can’t grow past with the help of his (amoral and possibly sadistic) friends. And this is why i’m asking us all today to disregard TWM:TNC as canon. Do it for me. Do it for Farm. Thank you.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed this show a lot. Unreservedly, unabashedly, i say everyone who enjoys BL, or LGBT media in general, should at least try to watch it. Anyone who wants to get into the Thai genre should make this one of the first shows they watch in order to learn what these specific tropes look like when they're being played mostly straight, but with a solid cast and impressively tight writing to back it up. So: despite everything that is objectively weird and uncomfortable about it, i truly love Together With Me. It is, quite simply, peak television.

Tune in next time to read all about unproblematic fave Kieta Hatsukoi (2021), in which we dare to root for…the heterosexuals?