#but I want to steal Phu's wardrobe

[nabi-unveiled]

Cir: What if I told you that you will like me more than cardigans?

Phu: That's not possible.

[dramaplatters]

Dhevaprom: Laorchan

  “Do you remember watching the Khun Chai series back in 2013? Well, I have some good news. Their sons have all grown up and have their own love stories. Back in the day, Grandma On wanted her grandsons to marry the Dhevaprom girls, but they all fell in love with different girls, so she couldn’t accomplish her goals. In this series, her great-grandsons will be accomplishing her goals.” 

  “The first installment starts with ‘Dhevaprom: Laorchan’, starring Gina Yeena Salas. You’ll recognize her from the lakorn with James Ji in ‘The Deadly Affair’. It also stars Gulf Kanawut Traipipattanapong, whom I’m not familiar with. This is the first time I’ve watched his work.”

“So, the plot is about Laorchan, who is a Dhevaprom, but she doesn’t know it yet. She returns from France and starts working for ‘Phu’ Phuthanet Juthathep. Her aim is to steal the necklace (Atchanajakkra), which has a blue sapphire, in order to clear her family name.”

"Laorchan starts working as a secretary for the extremely punctual, perfectionist, and strict ‘Phu’ Phuthanet Juthathep. She begins her job with Phu with the intention of stealing the Atchanajakkra (Blue Sapphire necklace).

 This lakorn mostly takes place in the forest, and the forest scenes are lengthy. There was zero chemistry between the couple. However, I was more interested in the romance of the other couples, such as Satarassamee Phukhamwong / ‘Jao’ (Prince) & Veena Mahannop / Veena Wongsawan (bodyguard of Prince), and ‘Kan’ Kanthika Juthathep (Laorchan’s sister) and Wachira Wongsawan [Major] (Kan’s boyfriend / fiancé). If there were different leads, the lakorn would have had a lot of potential.. 

  Time-wise, the lakorn is set in the 80s. There are a few things that need mentioning, particularly the wardrobe department. Yes, Phu’s outfits match the fashion of the 80s (well, I was just a child in the 80s so I don’t remember much, but luckily we have search engines), but they also remind me of those baggy suits from the 70s. Women’s outfits are more in line with the 80s, apart from Gina’s high heels with red bottoms. Those shoes were not even a thing in the 80s." 

  Please keep in mind that there is not much romance in this lakorn. Basically, I found it boring. I didn’t really enjoy Gulf’s acting, although Gina has improved her acting, she still has a long way to go. Also, the parents from the original series are replaced with actors who are more age-appropriate to be the parents of 20-30 year old offsprings.

  You can directly skip this part and move into ‘Dhevaprom: Kwanruetai’, which is the second installment of the series. It’s the story of a military doctor, who is the son of Khun Chai Phutthiphat (James Ji). He falls in love with a country girl who dresses up as a tomboy because her mother puts pressure on her. 

 She earns her money by selling food to the doctors and nurses in the hospital. They even share an accidental first kiss at the end of Episode 1. The casting directors did a good job here, as the actor has a baby face. With the haircut and glasses, he resembles Khun Chai Phutthiphat (James Ji’s character in the prequel, his father’s story). 

  So far, we have completed ‘Dhevaprom: Laorchan’, ‘Dhevaprom: Kwanruetai’, and we have three episodes of ‘Dhevaprom: Jaipisut’. We also have two more installments, ‘Dhevaprom: Phon Cheewan’ and ‘Dhevaprom: Dujapsorn’. From the trailers, I can see that ‘Dhevaprom: Phon Cheewan’ is going to be nice. The plot is similar to ‘Rak Rae’. ‘Rak Rae’ was filmed in Austria, while ‘Dhevaprom: Phon Cheewan’ was filmed in Switzerland (apart from the secret pregnancy, control freak male lead, and crazy aunt). 

and here is the trailer for the Dhevaprom: Dujapsorn

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[welcometophu]

Not Your Love Song: Chapter 24

Marked Book 2: Not Your Love Song

Chapter 24

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Rory sits on his bed, his back against the wall and knees drawn up, shoulders slightly hunched to keep his head from hitting the ceiling.

Alaric grabs clothes and shoves them into a duffel, pausing when he has to pull his suit out of the wardrobe. Alaric frowns at it—a dark charcoal jacket and slacks, with a deep purple shirt. “This isn’t going to work,” Alaric mutters.

“Football season’s over, why are you getting dressed up?” Rory has seen that suit come out exactly three times over the year, usually with the addition of a gold and purple striped tie in PHU colors, and the last time was the banquet at the end of the season.

Alaric mutters something, and when Rory makes a noise because he can’t hear it, Alaric grunts. “Paint it Red,” he says. “It’s a charity dinner tomorrow night. SigPsiE does it, benefits heart disease. Everyone’s supposed to wear red. ’S’formal.”

“So you’re going because Drea—”

“Said I had to or she was going to make our parents buy tickets,” Alaric mumbles. “Better to go there with Chris than have my father here on campus.” He carefully pulls the jacket from the hanger, undoes the shirt and tosses it on his bed before rehanging the jacket. “Need to see if Chris has a shirt I can borrow. And a tie. Red doesn’t go with any of this.”

“You could buy more formal wear eventually,” Rory suggests. He toys with his phone, opening the text app and closing it again. He finally opens it and leaves it open, staring at the end of his infrequent text stream with Kit. They aren’t quite back to their previous amount of texting, but they’ve been talking again. “Drea will probably make you go again every year,” Rory points out.

“Mm.” Alaric huffs. “Corbin’ll be there, too. Ought to be okay.”

“Do all the sisters drag their siblings or parents into it?” Rory asks, thumbs sliding across his screen. Kit hasn’t mentioned it. On the other hand, they talked about anything personal. Fine. He should just ask. He types in a text: Are you going to your sister’s charity thing?

“Have to sell the tickets somehow.” Alaric shrugs. “They aren’t cheap, but it’s less if we’re students. The parents pay more. And they sell tickets to all these pretend celebrities, like radio DJs and newscasters. She said there’s going to be dancing, like that’s a draw. Corbin probably thinks it is.”

“You could actually dance with Chris,” Rory tells him. He’s still watching his screen, as Kit apparently rethinks what he’s typing several times without sending anything. “Call him. Ask about a shirt and tie. Or if he’ll take you down to Albany to go shopping.”

Alaric winces. “Not my favorite part of football.”

Rory would bet that Chris has a better selection of formal wear than Alaric, and probably doesn’t hate wearing it nearly as much. “But if you see Corbin, you can also take a break and go flying to get it out of your system after dealing with being dressed up,” he suggests. It seems like a decent solution, and a way for Alaric to blow off steam.

Rory’s phone chimes, and he waves it at Alaric, miming putting it to his ear. “Call him,” Rory says, before checking his messages.

Paint it Red on Saturday? Yeah. I bought tickets for me and Serina a while ago.

Rory winces.

“Hey. Yeah, purple and gold don’t match red at all,” Alaric says, leaning his elbows on his bed, his back to Rory. “No, why would I have anything else? We could do that I guess. Or that. Yeah. Okay. I’ll be over soon.”

Alaric tosses the phone on his bed. “We’re going to deal with it tomorrow. OPT’s having a barbecue in the snow thing tonight, and we’re heading out early tomorrow to go to the brew store. If I can get something while we’re out, I will, or I’ll just borrow a shirt from Chris.”

Rory nods, because that isn’t any different from every suggestion he’s already made, whether Alaric wanted to think about it or not. “So basically I’m not going to see you until late Saturday,” he says.

“Probably Sunday.” Alaric shoves everything but the suit into his duffel, including a pair of dress shoes. “I’ll just crash with Chris on Saturday night. Figure Dax’ll be with Cass anyway.”

“Doesn’t Cass have a roommate?” It seem just as unfair to always sexile Cass’s roommate as it was when Dax used to leave Chris stuck without anywhere to go. But maybe that’s just Rory. Maybe they don’t care.

Alaric shrugs. “That’s their problem. I’m not bringing Chris back here and making you uncomfortable. And Dax and Cass can crash in his bed as long as they’re not doing anything.” He wrinkles his nose. “They always reek around each other.”

“Healthy young allosexuals, always wanting to get it on,” Rory deadpans. “It’s probably a good thing I can’t smell things like you do. I’m pretty sure you’re pretty stinky yourself. And Thorne must reek.”

Alaric’s gaze narrows. “Thorne wasn’t so bad, really. Not the same.”

Yeah, that conversation has the potential to go downhill fast. Rory shifts direction abruptly. “Have a good time at Paint it Red. Give Drea a hug for me. Kiss Corbin on the cheek—it’s the only way he’s getting one from me.” He almost wants to say to check on Kit for him, but that’s not really an Alaric thing.

Alaric approaches the bed slowly, and Rory wonders what he must smell like for Alaric to look so wary and slightly worried. Rory inches to the edge and slides off, landing just as Alaric’s arms wrap around him. Rory tilts his head down so Alaric can reach him, rub their cheeks together. It’s both hello and goodbye for Clan and family, and it feels good to let go of his tension and let Alaric hold him.

“Try and have fun tomorrow,” Rory says. He doesn’t bother with well wishes for tonight; he doesn’t want to think about fraternity related activities.

“Mm,” Alaric agrees. “If you need anything—”

“I’m not going to pull a fire alarm to get you out of a formal event,” Rory says with a small laugh, and Alaric growls. Rory nudges him toward the door. “Go. See Chris and relax. Go do your brewing thing, and you’ll be fine.”

Alaric stops at the door, lifts his head, nostrils flaring. He shifts his duffel on his shoulder, looks around the room with his brow furrowed. “If you need anything,” he repeats.

Rory shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

He has his phone in his hand by the time Alaric closes the door.

I bought tickets for me and Serina a while ago.

Rory has no reason to be upset about the message. But it still picks at him, digs under his skin and makes him itch. He rubs at his right arm.

Have fun at it. Alaric’s all grumpy about getting dressed up.

It’s easier to keep the messages light. For the past day, he and Kit have exchanged maybe a dozen messages, all about either the ritual (in the group chat with Shane) or about superficial, easy things. This is the closest they’ve gotten to talking about what happened between them, ever since Kit told him that maybe it was just fucked up to begin with.

It’s going to be awkward.

Rory can’t disagree with Kit’s assessment. Sorry, he sends back. I didn’t mean to make your life more complicated.

That’s got potential. Rory grabs for his notebook, scribbles down yet another potential stub for a song. That’s probably what he’ll do tonight, fall into a music fugue and let himself forget everything else.

A whisper of sound, a low cough. Rory turns, and a shadowy figure stands in the corner. As he watches, she becomes less dark and more human, still wreathed in shadows.

She raises a hand. “Hi.” She points at his phone. “Go ahead, if you feel like you need something and want to call your Clan roommate. Pretty sure he smelled me.”

Rory blinks as his phone chimes in his hand. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Actually here? Not long,” she says. “I was in the shadows, waiting for him to leave. He doesn’t like me, for obvious reasons.”

“I can’t blame him.” Rory tilts the phone so he can see the message.

It’s not you. She broke up with me on Tuesday, before the ritual ever happened.

Something twists in Rory’s chest. He sends back, oh. It’s not enough, but he has no idea what to say that right now. He tosses his phone on the bed which both keeps him from continuing to talk to Kit, and makes it obvious that he isn’t afraid of the shadow. He’s willing to listen to her.

“I’m Mattie.” She takes a step forward, hesitates as soon as she’s standing out of the shadows that linger near the walls. She turns, fingers out like she finds them comforting and is reluctant to move into the light.

“I’m Rory, and I’m not going to do anything to you unless I have to,” he says. He doesn’t want her on either bed, and there’s still only one chair, so he gestures at the floor. She sinks to sit slowly, and he mirrors her, about a foot away, both of them sitting cross-legged.

“You saw my humanity,” she says quietly. “Even then.”

“You were trying to scare the shit out of me,” Rory counters. “All of us.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a thing. When you’re soulless, the whole world is a playground made of fear and elation. It’s better when you taste good.”

Kit was right about the adrenalin rush. “And now?” Rory asks.

“You’d still taste good,” Mattie admits. She gestures at his chest, waves her hand from his head to feet. “You in particular would taste good. Even better now, there’s all this energy crackling off of you, like it’s reaching out to something that’s not here. You’re having a harder time keeping it together.”

“I don’t steal energy.” Given all the difficulties he’s had so far supplying energy for rituals, Rory’s pretty damn sure he’s not taking it and storing it for future use. “I just stop it.” He holds out his hands, and she leans back and shakes her head.

“Speaking as someone who used to guzzles souls for meals, and sip the best ones for dessert, I’m something of an expert on energy transfer,” Mattie tells him. She looks pointedly at his hands, waiting until he lowers them before she sits upright again. “You didn’t stop my Talent, you took it. Not the Talent itself; you weren’t going to turn into a Shadowwalker. But you took the energy that feeds my Talent. Think about it, Rory. It’s magic. It can’t just stop. And if you make it so I can’t use my energy, it has to go somewhere. You’re the only logical choice.”

“I don’t feel it.” That’s not a lie, not when he’s talking about stopping Talent. That has nothing to do with the tingle in his wrist, the way he can feel Kit walking across campus, moving closer to Douglass as if Rory’s drawing him in. Even though Rory knows Kit isn’t coming over.

He wonders if Kit feels the same thing. He probably should ask. Eventually.

“You’re touching yourself.” Mattie nods at his wrist. She doesn’t reach for him, and he’s thankful for that. It’s good that she doesn’t want him to touch her, because he really doesn’t her to touch him, either.

“That’s something completely different.” When Mattie wiggles her fingers, Rory shows her the mark. He carefully sets his other hand down, doesn’t push at the sparks he can feel. He simply rotates his wrist while she leans in to look at it more closely.

“You didn’t have that when I saw you last,” Mattie says quietly. “It might have been a fight to see if you could break me before I drank you down, otherwise. You taste different now. Better. Like there’s more of your essence. You’re like a fine champagne; you sparkle.”

“Great, I’m a weird kind of vampire.”

Mattie snorts, presses a hand to her face like the sound surprises her. Rory’s just surprised she gets the reference.

“That’s all the funnier because technically I guess I am a kind of vampire,” Mattie says, her gaze dropping. She makes a face. “I don’t feel the same as I used to. I regret things now; it’s like needing to become a vegetarian.”

“I’m already a vegetarian,” Rory tells her.

Mattie’s gaze drifts toward the door. She pushes to her feet, hands pressed against the floor for a moment before she rolls to standing. Her movement is fluid, shadows flickering around the edges of her skin. She still seems alien, not quite human.

“He would kill me if he catches me,” she says.

“Alaric? No, he wants to question you,” Rory says. He can’t promise it, but he’s pretty sure Alaric wants answers first, vengeance second. “But I wouldn’t recommend that you come visit him any time soon.”

She makes a soft noise that Rory thinks is probably agreement.

“How human are you?” he asks, when she is silent for several breaths.

She turns slowly, raises her hands, palms up. She walks closer and sinks into a crouch, offering her fingertips to him. She is wreathed in shadows, like smoke swirling around her skin. “Just touch,” she says, and Rory nods. It’s an agreement that neither of them will invoke their Talent.

He reaches out, bridging the distance between them. She flinches when his fingers brush hers, then she carefully holds herself still and nods. “Go ahead,” she says. He rests his palms atop hers, her skin warm.

“I am as human as any other with Talent,” she says. “More human than I was, and not any less than you. And even before, I was still human. Simply lacking a soul.”

Rory withdraws slowly. He grabs his notebook, rips a piece of paper out, and scrawls down his phone number. He folds it up, then hands it to her. “If you’re human and determined to join the modern age, find a way to get a phone,” he says. “We can keep talking. We should keep talking, because I’m hoping you’re the key to figuring out how to keep from more of your kind killing people who have fresh, new Talent.”

“I agree.” She takes the paper, unfolds it long enough to look at it, then carefully refolds it and tucks it into a pocket. She’s dressed like anyone their age—t-shirt and jeans, beaten up sneakers that look like they came from the thrift store.

Wait.

“Where are you living? How are you affording anything?” Rory asks.

Mattie looks at him, her head tilted. “You probably don’t want to know. I’m not killing anyone. It’s complicated when I was declared dead a long time ago. I’m working on getting a lawyer. There are funds that belonged to my family.”

“I could put you in touch with Mages who would probably welcome you,” Rory says, although he’s not sure how his extended family would feel about a Shadowwalker in their midst. “They’d have a lot of questions, though, and would probably want information in exchange for your room and board.”

“I’ll call you when I get a phone.” She ducks her head, rocks back and puts space between them. “Thank you, Rory. For trusting me. For not trying to kill me immediately.” She hesitates, smiles slightly. “For treating me like a human.”

“I’d say thank you for not eating me as a sweet dessert like you once promised to, but I’m pretty sure it’s a given that I don’t want that,” Rory says drily. “Keep behaving like a human, and I’ll keep treating you like one. I think we need each other right now. Because I know you’re not the only one, and you’re the only way I have to figure out what to do about the rest.”

“I’ll try to help.” Mattie stuffs her hands in her pockets, takes another step back until she stands half in shadow in the corner, just past Alaric’s equipment. The shadow has spread as the sun goes down, and the lower half of her body seems insubstantial where she stands within it. “I’ll see you again.”

“Yeah.”

She’s gone between one breath and the next, and Rory exhales. His chest is tight, his shoulders aching, and his skin still pricks. He pushes his hair back from his face, presses the heels of his hands against his eyes until it feels like he’s breathing normally again.

Fuck. This is… overwhelming.

It’s been a hell of a week.

Rory climbs onto his bed, picks up his phone. There’s no further response from Kit, and Rory still isn’t sure how to poke at that. He can’t think Kit’s had a good week either; breakups, for whatever reason, are never fun.

He brings up a new text to Mac. The last time they texted was in December, when they were first planning to capture the shadow. To capture Mattie. Yeah. Rory doesn’t think he’s going to tell Mac that he’s been talking to the enemy.

He wants something else.

I figure you’ll be at that Paint it Red thing tomorrow. Kit’s going to be there with Serina. I don’t know if you know, but I guess they broke up earlier this week. And Kit’s my soulmate and everything’s weird. It’s probably going to be really awkward for Kit at the thing.

Mac’s reply comes quickly. I’ll keep an eye on him, Rory. He’s a good guy.

Rory laughs, because that’s not the problem at all. He knows Kit’s a good guy. He likes Kit. He just doesn’t want to feel like he’s being forced into something. Or to have Kit feel like that. Or to feel like anyone’s going to expect more than Rory’s comfortable with.

I know. Thanks, he sends back.

He leaves it at that.

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