#but I like the series reasonably

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

i think you were kinda meh on ninth house but Leigh said on ig that ninth house 3 news is coming soon!

i am so curious to see where darlingstern ends up because i feel like one more book isn’t enough idk

I did enjoy Ninth House! Though I was a little meh on Hell Bent.

Darlingstern is like. fine I guess. I honestly don’t think they need a ton of build up? There’s not much keeping them apart, and they both seem aware that they’re attracted to each other! I was surprised she didn’t just have them get together in some way in Hell Bent. Or at least have them make more obvious romantic overtures. I’m curious if she’ll take them somewhere interesting in book three though

[puppppppppy]

this place is so fruity

[rogueshadeaux]

“I hate the script, the vault dwellers sound so cheesy—“ my Brother in Steel you realize that’s the point, right? They were bred to act like the physical embodiment of an HR e-mail. Did you not catch the memo that Vault-Tec put out regarding their experiment facilities?

[himbionn]

Doodles of the boy(s) cause I adore them so 🩷💙

(Fullscreen version of the screenshot redraw below!)

[kyurochurro]

and now i bring to you my concept art for my imaginary tos episode: the crew go to the beach planet (the beach episode) 🏝️

[itsajollyjester]

Family Portrait

The only family he has.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Is there a lore reason vampire fiddleford wears stereotypical vampire clothes or is he just Silly Like That /genq /pos

Yes, lore reason!!! That actually probably won't come up in the comic, so I'll answer it here!!

Fidds was actually wearing it for a vampire "meeting"!! Yess, he has been a vampire for a while, and he doesn't particularly like it, but he has to participate in vampire culture 🙏 And y'know, you have to dress up for those things. Stan just caught him at a bad time, he usually doesn't wear stuff like that!!!

So when he said costume party, it wasn't that much of a lie, who would've figured!!

[ciderjacks]

despite Laios low self esteem making him think that if he’d been eaten, Chilchuck and Marcille wouldn’t have helped Falin,

theres a small part of me that thinks the reason Chilchuck stayed with the party and went back in the dungeon in the first place was because he didn’t want to leave Laios alone. That Laios was moreso the reason he stayed.

[12thbiologist]

annihilation is soooo good because the biologist is aware that she is an unreliable narrator and also hates it. she WANTS to be completely impartial and objective and just observe everything without influencing any of it. but she cant so instead she omits her name from the entire book to the point where it's almost absurd and completely intentional and splits her journal into "objective" chapters detailing her expedition and "subjective" chapters detailing her memories about her husband. ill never be over you biologist

[catilinas]

The wind blows their ghosts to the ground

line (loosely a translation of iliad 6.146-9) from memorial by alice oswald, embroidered onto a ginkgo leaf i found on the ground

[ironinkpen]

The dynamic in Rise between the rest of the team and Leo is. so fucking funny. Because like you've got these three extremely talented individuals who all seem like perfectly reasonable people at first glance, right, but then if you squint hard enough you realize they're actually all batshit insane (affectionate) and the clown boy standing behind them is secretly their common sense.

Clown boy will occasionally put himself and the others in danger to Prove Himself or Prove Someone Wrong (see Minotaur Maze and the movie) but like otherwise... i think people forget Leo's overwhelmingly the voice of reason in most situations?

Raph, Mikey, and Donnie are all incredibly powerful boys with very specific skill sets. They are also, as a direct result of this, the WORST decision-makers on god's green earth lmao. When presented with a problem, Raph will smash, Donnie will blow shit up, and Mikey will razzmatazz. They will all run straight toward death with the same oblivious enthusiasm of a dog about to run straight into a screen door. None of them realize this and all of them think they are Extremely Good At Problem-Solving.

And the guy cursed with the common sense to realize this is literally the LAST person anyone would expect.

When you look closely, the entirety of Rise is actually a chronicle of Leo trying to find new and creative ways to keep this team of superpowered fools alive while simultaneously white-knuckling his Cool Fun Guy persona so the others don't realize he's secretly the Boring Responsible One. Haha, you know what would be Cool and Fun, guys? Not going after the Spine Breaking Bandit lol. Getting home before the sun goes up lol. Evacuating that civilian lol. Not telling the guy dangling me off a roof "you won't, no balls" lol.

The sacred struggle of every iteration of Leonardo is thanklessly wrangling the most trigger-happy siblings in the world, and Rise Leo has not escaped it. He just does an occasional shenanigan to avoid detection and his brothers fall for it every time.

[lucabyte]

Different standards

[chloesimaginationthings]

Are you more of FNAF or Jojo? (Ofc you will then say, I can be both-)

Why pick when they are so similar/hj

[maybe-boys-do-love]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[kyurochurro]

shore leave on the mind bec its such a wacky episode 😭 SO here’s a fun spirk drawing cus they were all over the place in this one GHDJBSJKSBJ

(also feat. a small angry bones appearance :D)

[mythmerth]

I really don’t think there’s any way that arthur didn’t know that merlin loved him, even if it’s never acknowledged by name between them for the whole show. he just doesn’t realize the sheer magnitude of it until the last episode, until he utters that

I know now.

Merlin, from his perspective, was someone so helpless but so keen on keeping arthur safe. he was someone who was completely defenseless yet foolish enough to go with arthur on the most treacherous of quests and to face horrors by his side just to be sure arthur was safe. Arthur knew all this, and I really do think he attributed it to merlin loving him in this unsaid unspoken way, and I also fully believe he reciprocated (again, in this unspoken way). I think maybe it was also something he had to come to terms with when he found out about Merlin’s magic— the thought that merlin wasn’t actually there just because of sheer love like he thought, but because he had power to protect that arthur never knew. maybe it was just duty, maybe he misread the whole thing. but in the end, that I know now… he knows. he knows the depths of Merlin’s love that is far beyond any protective duty, he knows just how much merlin was risking to love him and keep him safe.