#but we do owe most of it to michelle gomez

[quantumshade]

gomez!master is by far the best one of nuwho and I will NOT hear otherwise. she feels so much like delgado!master in that her motivations are not exclusively world domination. even before her redemption arc in s10, she has a complex agenda of her own and sometimes that means her goals align with those of the doctor’s. i love seeing the master team up with companions it’s my absolute favorite thing. her dynamic with clara is absolutely fascinating and i find the “i want my friend back” motivation to be five million times more interesting than the “i want to Destroy You Forever” motivation or whatever it was that dhawan!master had going on

[winepresswrath]

you mentioned in the tags of your last post that you relate a lot of music to the yunmeng bros, any recs in particular? i’m looking for songs to add to my yunmeng bros playlist :D

It’s less a Yunmeng Bros playlist and more a Jiang Cheng playlist that doubles as a Yunmneng Bros playlist. I feel like I should warn you all that:

My guiding principle for nerd playlists is “does this song make me laugh in this context.” The full Jiang Cheng edition includes “Numb” by Linkin Park. There is a lot of girly pop.

There are also a lot of breakup songs because not enough people make music about hating yourself for loving your brother. If I think the bitter self loathing outweighs the sexiness, it goes on the list.

I started adding commentary is a misguided attempt to explain myself (I am inexplicable but also right about all of these songs except one). Sorry!

I think think this playlist is hilarious (see above) but I’ve been informed  (by cowards) that actually it “brings the mood down”

Grape of Wrath- Yunmeng Bro Edit

Purple Rain (Prince)

No Jiang Cheng playlist would be complete without this song, but despite the title it’s Wei Wuxian all the way through.

I never meant to cause you any sorrow/ I never meant to cause you any pain/ I only wanted to one time to see you laughing

Our House (Madness)

Yanli is the one they’re going to miss in lots of ways. Lotus Pier was their castle and their keep. This song manages to be frenetic about nostalgia for most of a verse, which I think is both impressive and on point.

Our house, in the middle of our (something tells you that you've got to move away from it)

Hey Brother (Avicii)

More Yunmeng Siblings! I think sometimes things are obvious because they are correct.

Hey brother! Do you still believe in one another?/Hey sister! Do you still believe in love? I wonder

Boy Problems (Carly Rae Jepsen)

I always have a terrible time choosing what Carly song to put on a given playlist, but this is the one that’s on it right now.

So tired of hearin' all your boy problems

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor Swift)

Sometimes it’s not about drama and tragedy and transcendent love. Sometimes it’s about being really mad because you’ve spent a lot of time having feelings about an asshole who you know isn’t going to change, and then being additionally mad that you’re wasting your time being mad about that.

This is exhausting - Jiang Cheng aged 18 3/4

(They are getting back together though. I will not be taking criticism on this point)

Rare (Selena Gomez)

This song doesn’t actually belong on this playlist because there is no point in canon where Jiang Cheng has the requisite self esteem. “I don’t have it all! I’m not claiming to. But I know that I’m special. :(” makes me laugh, and so it stays.

Crack Baby (Mitski)

Usually when I’m amusing myself making everything song about The Untamed Mitski reminds me of Lan Wangji, but this is a song about being in perpetual withdrawal for the love you knew in childhood so it’s about Yunmeng Bros.

Crack baby you don't know what you want/ But you know that you're needing it/And you know that you need it bad

Are You Happy Now (Michelle Branch)

The quintessential “fuck you! You don’t get to pretend that this didn’t matter it DID” song. Also, by the end of the story Jiang Cheng has accepted that Wei Wuxian no longer cares about him and is happy now, so this song makes me laugh in a mean way.

Would you tell it to my face/Have I been erased 

Happier (Marshmello, Bastille)

This is the single most obnoxious way you could possibly respond to “Are You Happy Now” while also being a completely valid and reasonable response to “Are you Happy Now.” Playing them back to back really nails their second life vibe.

I wanna raise your spirits/I want to see you smile but/Know that means I'll have to leave

La Di Da (Lennon Stella)

Sometimes Wei Wuxian’s inner monologue is also expressed via the medium of girly pop.

We both know there's no use/Talkin' 'bout what I owe you/I want back the old you

You're gonna say something you don't mean/So just before you take it too far, I'll hold my ears say "la da da di da"

Glendora (Rilo Kiley)

The only reason Rilo Kiley isn’t the ultimate Jiang Cheng band is that Rilo Kiley fucks. Nothing on this playlist makes me laugh harder than this song, not even Pink’s Family Portrait. This is the best “I am actively ashamed of loving you” song in the world.

I cry, cry, cry, then I complain/Come back for more, do it again

I should find someone better for me/But Mom says we're born this way

And So It Goes (Billy Joel)

Brother-divorce is hard on the heart. Sometimes because of stabbing, other times just because it’s difficult to leave someone when you’ve grown around them as much as you’ve grown with them.

So I would choose to be with you/That's if the choice were mine to make/But you can make decisions too/And you can have this heart to break 

Maybe This Time (Liza Minnelli)

Someone give Jiang Cheng a prozac and a hug.

Maybe this time, I'll be lucky/Maybe this time, He'll stay

Everybody loves a winner/So nobody loves me

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (The Hollies)

In any modern au where they’re mad at each other both of them change the channel the second this comes on the radio and then stare out the window, bereft.

While we're on the way to there, why not share?/And the long doesn't way me down at all/He ain't heavy - he's my brother

Dessa- Children’s Work

This goes out to all the siblings.

You slept in my bed / and if I kept quiet... I could hear all the voices in your head When the wagon tipped / I prayed over your body I asked God to take the damage out on me

[blarhiv]

Pre-Debut Fan on Shipping and KM

Guys,one wonderful Anonnie decided to bless us with so well written article.So,please,read it <3

Anonnie,thank you for sharing with us your thoughts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BE WARNED VERY LONG SHIPPING/KM POST AHEAD!!!! 

First of all, I just want to clarify that I’m a KM supporter. By my current understanding and my own personal definition, this is to say that that while I believe in the possibility of these two individuals being in a real-life relationship, I am at peace with the reality that it is also conceivable that they are merely very close, wonderful friends. I will get to KM a bit later, but I first want to go through some general commentary on the statement of the fandom in regards to shipping first. I’ve tried to be as respectful as I could and so, things have gotten quite lengthy indeed. 

PART 1: Shipping and Fandoms

Shipping Wars

My first point of major contention lies in shipping wars—in quick and easy summation, I truly really fail to understand shipping wars.

It doesn’t quite make sense to me that there are individuals warring over which ship is real when, no one in the band has ever confirmed a heterosexual relationship, never mind an in-band relationship. So, why fight about it when we can enjoy the lovely bonds between human beings and celebrate good, ostensibly healthy relationships?

If shippers were really into their “ship” (for lack of better terminology) for the bond between those two people, I feel that it is imperative to acknowledge what complete injustice one is doing by participating in something so meaningless and hateful as shipping wars.(Now, despite my refusal to get involved in shipping wars, I do empathize and understand those combating the wretched comments and criticisms these toxic individuals in the fandom say about undeserving band members. But I still do implore people not to argue over with some of these hyper-volatile, toxic individuals about why their perspective is inherently flawed because these people are highly unlikely to entertain a healthy, open discourse about a difference in opinions.) 

And at the point where shippers are determined to evince the realness of their ship, I think their intentions are automatically highly suspect.

Why?

If one is truly trying to celebrate the connection, the supposed love, and the affection of said ship, there absolutely shouldn’t be a pressing need or compulsion to prove others wrong for not sharing the same perspective as yours. 

At that point, it becomes less about a celebration of love and more about selfish gratification—whatever it is that may be incentivizing said shipper (And there are, unfortunately, a plethora of self-serving reasons people ship which are not limited to the fetishization of gays/Asians, the determination not to have their dreams of being with a band member to be shattered by their significant other being a female, the egotistical compulsion of needing to be “right”, etc.). And if one is shipping with the genuine intentions of supporting a potentially LGBTQ band member or generally supporting two humans demonstrating great love (whether it presents itself in a platonic or romantic expression), it needn’t matter what the label or status of that relationship is. 

So, if one is supporting with selfless intentions and a sincere desire to see members happy, there’s no point of arguing about the “realness” of a ship because at the end of the day, all the ships in the band are real—because they all have honest, genuine relationships with one another as friends. Shipping Real People 

This is also a highly controversial subject and I believe it is mainly due to the lack of boundaries people have set in place when they participate in shipping real people.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with real people ships—but only under great constraints and self-monitoring. Most people who ship real people do so because human beings are naturally drawn to and attracted to love—that is to say, people love love. That’s why people enjoy romantic movies and relationships between characters on television shows. That’s why writers like to write about love and photographers take pictures of things and people they love.

However, the problem lies in people who take liberties with how seriously they can invest into a real person ship or how entitled they begin to feel towards someone else’s life.

This is where para-social relationships come into place—through the use of social media, fans are given ultra personal ways to interact with celebrities causing them to believe that they’re connected to their idols despite the reality that it is a one-way relationship. These celebrities do not know you—and therefore, they owe you absolutely nothing in regard to their personal life. And so, I absolutely do not condone writing or tagging or demanding things from any real-life ship (ie. VLives, Twitters, fan meets, InstaLives, etc.) where one could be causing the human being distress or pressure. They are, at the end of the day, real people with real feelings and real lives—and we, as fans or spectators at best, are simply entitled to no components of their life.

I think there are instances that you can comment on a celebrity’s life and have it be a perfectly innocuous encounter. For example, it’s quite alright to appreciate and feel second-hand joy at seeing two people whom one respects and follows as a fan looking happy with their potential partners (as in the case of KM) or commenting supportively on a confirmed real-life couple’s Instagram photos (Justin and Hailey Bieber, Michelle and Barak Obama, Hyuna and E’Dawn, Cara Delevine and Ashley Benson, etc.). Feeling joy at seeing someone else happy or commenting something cute and chill on a real-life couple’s picture doesn’t cost anything nor does it harm anyone. But if you, as a fan, begin to demand things from said people if the real life couple breaks up (Justin Bieber-Selena Gomez, Cole Sprouse-Lili Reinhart, etc.) or you hate the real significant other after one half of a popular ship is revealed to be dating someone else (Zendaya-Tom Holland-anonymous girlfriend), that’s when you’ve got a real problem and you need to reassess what you’re doing. If you are going to ship a real-life ship, do it sensitively—don’t personally bother these people with your unsolicited advice and woes, they don’t care about your ships, they just want to live their lives.

Fetishization and Homophobia

Another deeply problematic that comes with the shipping territory is the fetishization.

There are, unfortunately, many fans that like the idea of a real ship right up until the point there’s a possibility where the members might actually be part of the LGBTQ community. It’s sexy and sensual, a “guilty pleasure”, to imagine the idea of gays, but the actual concept of homosexuality as a real part of someone’s identity is somehow unacceptable to many fans.  This is definitely a problem in the Asian music industry. 

While girls fawn over the boy-boy interactions on stage, these same young women are equally likely to be disgusted by the existence of actual homosexual men trying to celebrate their love on the streets—and the KPop industry feeds into this by via methods like encouraging fan service between members or the Pepero game.

This is deeply disheartening as there are, without doubt, LGBTQ members in this industry—we may not know them by name or face (aside from Holland), but they certainly do exist. And how sad is it to imagine that the closest to acceptance these human beings will ever attain for their sexual preferences is on stage for the gratification of fans who won’t even support them if they actually come out? If you only enjoy same-sex interactions on stage, feeling repulsion or deterrence in supporting a gay or lesbian idol based on their sexual preferences, you probably have some soul searching to do. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is the tendency of same-sex shippers to modify a harmless interaction between members as they make jokes or innuendos that splatter a hue of raw sexual essence onto the moment—this is, in part, some fetishization. We should try to avoid this as gay men are trying to escape the sexualized view a large majority of people have about them. 

And KMers are guilty of this—after all, sometimes when a boy says he wants to do his laundry, he really just wants to do his laundry.

So, this is something else to keep in mind. 

General Homophobia

How many times have bloggers received comments about how X members can’t be gay or how if X is gay that the anon can’t be a fan of that person anymore? I’ve definitely read several too many in my time and these are all exemplifying comments of people who house internal homophobia.

Unfortunately, the need to explicitly state and prove homosexuality will always be a symptom of the heteronormativity of most societies—and I do understand why it happens and it’s not always a malicious assumption.

What I peacefully and regretfully do not understand are aggressive fans who flagrantly deny the possibility of any other sexuality aside from being straight—these instances really make me suspect these are mainly female fans that can’t stomach the possibility of their idols not being into their gender or are straight up homophobic without any other reason. (That being said, I also don’t encourage any same-sex shippers/supporters to make assumptions about sexualities either. It’s fine to support and to suspect the possibility of a same-sex relationship, but there should always be that margin for error since none of these idols are definitively out.)

Conclusion to General Shipping 

TLDR; my basic point in the first part of this ridiculous essay is that, we should really all respect one another as members of a single fandom. And beyond that, we should all respect the people whom we are shipping, taking great care and using our sensibilities to ensure we aren’t making real people uncomfortable.

PART 2: KM

History as a Fan of BTS

So, I just want to clarify that I am a pre-debut BTS fan. I literally read about JM and JK a couple days before they were due to debut and as a huge hip-hop fan, I was immediately interested in their concept. I instantly fell in love with JM’s voice and JK’s multi-faceted talents (and live vocal skills)—that is to say, I was most interested in these two members from the very beginning. As of recent days, I have detached myself from the fandom, preferring to keep a great distance away due to the toxicity and negativity I’ve unfortunately been privy to as the fan base grows bigger and bigger—and it really does make me incredibly sad. I’ve always been into BTS for the music—they were what I listened to bussing up to school as I admired the Cyphers by the rap-line, the gorgeous fluidity of JM’s melodic voice, the deep resonance of TH’s voice, and JK’s talents as a quality, consistent singer despite his age.

And now, sometimes the ship wars and solo stans are louder than the positive members in this community. Luckily, I’ve found a small niche of BTS blogs and KM blogs that have made this experience a lot easier (for KM blogs, many thanks to people like blarhiv, slowlybutobvious-jikook, gaja-aegiya-gaja, chaotic-jikook, singwriteluv, jiminkoo, etc.)

Shipping as a Whole

Now, as for the shipping component. I want to clarify I’m a very selective real-person shipper—I don’t look for mere skin ship or overt proclamations of love or popularity of ship.

Of course, these are initially the easiest features to discern a shippable “ship”, but I’m well practiced in the KPop industry and know these factors between members are virtually useless in discerning romantic interest. 

On top of being a selective shipper, I also think it’s safe to say I’m pretty respectful about shipping as I always try to maintain reasonable skepticism and I’ve never commented anything about shipping on any forum that could make the involved individual uncomfortable. With all that being said, the beginning of BTS, I did not see ANY SHIPS that I could’ve deemed suspicious enough to be considered real.  They were all just young kids that were trying to pave their path to success and just boys messing around on their early television appearances whilst trying to promote their albums.

And even when YM and TK began to gain traction as the fandom’s decidedly largest ships with some believing them to be “real”, I still didn’t see it—and this is said with utmost respect to their closeness and respect for one another as teammates, colleagues, and close friends. 

Undoubtedly, their interactions were playful and adorable, but there was nothing in how they interacted to rouse any suspicions whatsoever. I would view their interactions as commonplace as any other men in regular friendships—with their culture and their age and their jobs in consideration.   Again, I never understood people who truly believed in the validity of these ships.

Now, to be fair, I have, of course, also participated in casually shipping a few members for fun too. For example, I thought Sope was cute and I was drawn to VM’s friendship as well—JM and TH were so ridiculously cute and close, it was nearly impossible not to casually ship them. In the earlier years, since I believed there to be no "real" ships, I was on board with other casual shippers but was greatly confused by those who believed the big three ships (YM, NJ, and TK) were actually real.

My View on Early KM

I first started tuning into KM when I saw a particular Bomb clip of JM and JK messing around with a phone app where their voices were autotuned. Whilst JM was laughing, JK just had his face crinkled up with the softest look on his face. I was like, “huh”—but it definitely wasn’t enough for me to begin thinking it could be real.

Since it was one isolated incident, caught directly on camera, it wasn’t nearly enough evidence to make any logical inferences. At that point, I’d just be jumping onto the train of delusion. While on the subject of early KM, I also want to take this opportunity to quickly give my take on this malicious narrative that JK doesn’t like JM—as a pre-debut fan, I’ve never bought into this.

Between JK’s self-proclaimed shyness towards JM’s unadulterated fondness for him, JK’s proclivities to drop honorifics on camera even from the beginning, JK telling JM he teases his hyung because he likes him—I was almost flabbergasted when I first caught inklings of it.  

This is such an outrageous vilification and outright character assassination of a young kid in his teens who didn’t know how to deal with his hyung’s affections, despite having always confirmed and reassured JM that he does, in fact, like him. 

The fact that so-called fans to this day still try to drive this narrative despite the fact that JK has set fire and gasoline to this toxic roller coaster ride of lies and delusions is actually unfathomable to me. Never mind the exact type of relationship KM have, it’s just so distinguishably clear that JK really, really likes JM judging by the amount of time they spend together and how beautiful JK’s smile is when he’s around JM. 

The Shift

Essentially, I casually shipped Sope, VM, and KM at some point—they were my favourites to see interact and I was always cooing over how adorable their bonds were with one another. And if I’m being frank, I was especially partial to the latter two ships because of how attentive and caring JM is to his younger members.

JM’s kindness has always touched my heart.

I find JM’s interactions with people the most fascinating based off the fact that he is just an enthralling, ethereal human being with this gorgeous voice and enormous heart—and for that, he was my very favourite member always.

But, of course, I am a KM supporter.How did this happen?

Well, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head at the infamous back hug at 2015 KBS Music Festival—especially since it was JK being so unusually expressive and forward with his affection. But perhaps this was a cultural thing? I definitely felt some cognitive dissonance as I tried to explain the strange, almost romantic aura of the moment using logic despite sensing that this string of reasoning didn’t sit quite right with me. But again, one isolated incident is a whole lot of nothing in the world of skin ship and KPop. 

But as we all know, at this point, we got see KM get closer and see their relationship develop and I was really all for it as I was incredibly pleased by that personal growth in JK as a maturing adult and the joy it conversely seemed to bring JM with this newly matured JK.

JK’s Development

A large part of my transition over from casual to serious “shipper” is actually because of JK. I’ve always viewed him as a talented individual, as aforementioned, but other than that there was certainly other larger personalities that caught my eye quicker—between JM’s big heart, JH’s enormous personality, and TH’s quirks, he was definitely quietly existing in the background when he wasn’t performing. But he really just grew into himself and I think any fan can see that.

There’s all the general ways he grew up, his physique and his facial structure and his height, but more than anything my heart softened immensely when I began to see what a beautiful soul this boy had always had. I’m not saying that he’s not without flaws—because another a huge problem in the industry is the fans’ tendency to idealize their idols past the mortal realm of making mistakes or having character flaws—but anyone can see he’s clearly matured.

The way he treats JM only gets better and better with each year.

And I genuinely don’t feel that it’s delusional to say the way that he treats JM is vastly different from any other member. He is kind-hearted with a dreamy view on the world and he’s good to his hyungs after everything they’ve done for him when he’d been a child, but he’s that in tenfold around JM. To say he doesn’t play favourites when JM’s involved is being willfully ignorant because there’re so many recent examples alone (the way he splashes water on SJ vs. JM, the way he roughhouses other members vs. JM, the way he gives JM a big pancake because of an impending punishment vs. SJ in same predicament, the attentive way he watches JM in interviews over other members, the way he monitors JM's health via food and drink, etc.).

I also want to mention as a disclaimer that these comparisons aren’t made in any type of malicious way or with the intent of discrediting relationships between JK and other members. It’s simply instrumental in understanding why such a large population of non-shippers have been drawn to KM as a potential real pairing versus any other pairing. If everyone stopped inserting their own captions and interpretations of JK’s actions and only had the source material in front of them, no misleading historical content to waylay new fans with a tired and counterfeit narrative, it’s pretty clear that JK displays incredible fondness and tenderness towards JM in a conspicuous manner.

It doesn’t make his relationships with the others any less, it just makes his relationship with JM just that little bit more. It’s not about putting down or undermining the other relationships, it’s just about acknowledging the reality of JK’s obvious magnetism towards JM. If a fan really cares for JK, it’s almost cruel to disregard the fact that his face lights up when he’s with JM (WeVerse picture, JM punching him on the shoulder, FaceTime picture, VLive, etc.) and his voice softens when he speaks to JM (Run episode with JK slating, Run episode playing palm game, Run episode asking JM if he’s ready, etc.).

These examples aren’t delusions, it’s reality—the evidence are quite literally in photographs or videos. As a longtime fan, I honestly and sincerely mean this—JK has become a handsome man in my eyes not because of his appearance (though he’s undeniably good-looking) but because of the way he treats JM and others he cares for. As the years pass by, his heart and soul has become more and more beautiful in my eyes. I can’t attribute it fully to JM, but I can certainly say that my heart melts when I see his interactions with JM—not because I am a shipper/supporter but because as an empathetic human, I am viscerally drawn to humans with kindness in their hearts. The man treats JM so, so well. I know I keep repeating this but it’s just a grave injustice to ignore how much JK cares for JM. Never mind your projected desires and your biases, just look at what’s in front of you and just appreciate that enviable, lovely bond. Even if people will choose to disregard romantic overtones in GCFt or the meaningful lyrics during the times JM shows up in GCFsai or the fact he has the most screen time overall (which is fine), it'd be prudent to at least acknowledge the fact that JM is incredibly treasured by this young man.

JMs Shift

Another thing that made me suspicious was the transition of JM’s behavior as well.

I find it harder to read JM than JK in many ways—perhaps it’s just an introvert relating with follow introvert—but there are differences in his behavior that also made me question things as well.

It’s obvious that JM used to be a little much for shy, introverted JK in front of the camera and that that behavior tapered off as the years went by. I do think a large part of it is due to JM growing up (although I do suspect some part might be due to vicious fans who might’ve hurt his feelings about his personality) and reigning himself in. But even then, he was still visibly touchy and affectionate with JK—just as he is with all his other members—whether he was petting his head, openly calling him cute, or what have you.

In my view, the most telling thing about JM is how careful he seems around JK—something in his behavior feels tailored in a way that’s still affectionate towards JK but in a way not to rouse suspicion even if the body and eyes don’t lie.

I’m not sure if it even makes sense, but I do sense a certain sense of caution about how JM treats JK in the public eye in comparison to JK who reliably wears his heart on his sleeve. He seems to be more aware of cameras and the public eye than JK does. It’s really hard to verbalize, but I’ve sensed a discernible change in how JM treats JK—it’s not bad or worrisome, it’s just different.(Although, they’ve gradually become a lot more carefree this year.)

Time Skip

I don’t want to bore everyone anymore than I already have, but the point of how I became a more serious supporter compared to my origins as a casual shipper is based off suspicious trends and continuous patterns in the boys’ behaviours over multiple years.

Even now, I continuously try to translate the boys’ body language, vocal tone (when speaking to each other vs. another member), facial expressions, and constant mentions of one another as a platonic demonstration of affection. And some interactions are pretty harmlessly adorable, just a little something to wet the lips of any casual shipper, but with the surmounting amount of moments it becomes really hard for even the most logical person not question the nature of their relationship.

KM and Ship Wars

Clearly, the progression of their relationship has been the target of incredible hatred and frustration on the parts of hostile members of other ships and it’s gotten to a point where they’ve resorted to subterfuge to try pilot a plane missing a wing—that is to say, they’re trying to keep an aircraft based on intentional mistranslations, vicious lies, and carefully crafted stories of events that have been disproven afloat.

The incredible discrepancy between what sorts of behavior can be categorically classified as fan service seems to conveniently shift based on whatever is keeping the fragile balance of their dreams alive despite evidence to the contrary.

The moment we try to discount or negate the relationships a member has with another one in the name of a ship, there’s absolutely a problem that needs reassessment—this goes for all fans including KMers. 

KM and Coming Out

I want to clarify very firmly that if you are a true supporter of KM, one who selflessly wants their happiness above everything (which includes everything from the potential of KM having other significant others, KM being single, KM being involved in a fling, etc.), you absolutely do not want or need them to come out. 

If they do come out, of their own choice and volition, you can happily support them, but you do not need or seek this from them.

And may I carefully remind people that if you want them to come out for the sole purpose of feeling vindicated against other shippers, you’re not a true supporter and you’re in this for selfish reasons. So, if you imagine your first instinct will be an outcry of “I told you so, I’m right” with the express purpose of throwing it in another ship’s face, please evaluate your role and incentive in being a KMer. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or if you’re wrong—all that matters are these incredible boys who inspire people on the daily are happy, healthy, and well. I honestly want their happiness and safety over a confirmation of a relationship any day and I really encourage all supporters to feel this way as well. In a conservative Asian society, it wouldn’t be easy to maneuver as an openly homosexual man. I implore you to consider the occurrences of hate crimes in more liberal countries. It’s not going to be an improvement, only likely to be a far more isolating experience, in a more traditional country with homophobic tendencies as the majority sentiment. So, while I know most reasonable supporters feel this way, this is a reminder to toxic shippers to stay in your lane and stop demanding things from other human beings that owe you nothing—they don’t owe you pictures of WeVerse, they don’t owe you selfies with one another on Twitter, and they don’t owe you a coming-out story to prove your ship right.

Conclusion

To sum up, I’m not saying that KM  is real for sure.

No one can know that except their personnel, their friends, and their family—or sadly, in a conservative country, perhaps even just themselves. The point is, we as fans, absolutely cannot know for certain.

And this is mainly why I'm not too concerned or bothered about timelines or specific dates. We don't know and there's no point (for me) to delve this far into the realm of speculation. But to each their own as long as you're not being invasive to KM! 

However, I’m not unconfident in saying that if they are not real, the likelihood of any other same-sex relationship in the band is highly unlikely—though not impossible.

I also want to reassure everyone that I love the bonds between all the members and encourage everyone to understand that even if you favour or don’t favour one member over another to realize that your opinion really doesn’t matter in comparison to how BTS feels about one another—they love one another. 

And at the end of the day, shipping isn’t so important that we need to fight over it.

After all, if all we’re trying to do is support love, then shouldn’t we be doling it out to?

And with that, I’m out!

Thank you to anyone for reading and keep well and healthy everyone!

PS Thank you very much to Blarhiv to allowing me to use her blog as a platform! This very, very special individual we should all treasure in the KM community!!!❤️❤️❤️    

(omg anonnie this is too cute тттт Thank YOU).

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Belated thoughts on The Doctor Falls

(Spoilers, obviously)

A late “review” owing to me being out of down and offline for the Canada Day long weekend. Now to make up for lost time...

I make no secret of nor do I apologize for the fact I was very disappointed with Series 10 as a whole. I stand by my opinion that it is - taken as a whole - the weakest season of 10 we’ve had since the series returned. BUT, in the 9th inning, Steven Moffat managed to score a home run, even though it was more of the “players fumbling to catch the ball” inside-the-park homer than a “knock it out of the park” blockbuster. It ranks a solid 3rd behind The Name of the Doctor and Hell Bent among Modern Era finale episodes and for the most part left me smiling (albeit a sad smile).

More thoughts after the break:

I’m going to get the negative stuff out of the way first.

I have mixed feelings about how Bill’s fate was handled (not the fate itself). I love the fact that Moffat managed to come up with a way to get Bill out of her dilemma and reunite her with Heather in such a way that promises future adventures (Big Finish and Chris Chibnall take note). It’s great that we finally got a pair of Moffat companions (including Nardole, though more on him in a moment) who basically survived their time with the Doctor. However, I wish Moffat hadn’t copied what he did with Clara and Ashildr in Hell Bent: making the companion immortal and sending her off on adventures with an immortal companion of her own (only difference being the romance direction: with Clara it was separation from her OTP; with Bill it was reunion with her OTP). I spoke to a few friends who watched it on Saturday and they were very upset by this. Not because they were Clara fans (believe me, they aren’t - in fact they pretty much hated Series 8 and 9) but because it was so similar to what happened last season. And I am annoyed at people saying that this is setting up the spinoff everyone wants, when that’s exactly the same thing they said with Clara and Ashildr in 2015! (That said, I agree with everyone who says getting the four together would kick ass. Big Finish, again take note.)

I also wish Heather had been referenced more during the season. If she was supposed to be Bill’s OTP, why was she basically forgotten for 10 episodes? As a result, while it was great to see Heather return, it still had a feeling of deus ex machina about it that was unfortunate. And any viewers who missed The Pilot and jumped on late - they were screwed figuring out what the heck that was all about with the woman made of water. 

One last negative was the fact we were left with no real resolution for Nardole. We saw him setting off with a bunch of kids and a girlfriend(!) but the impression given is they were still dead because they’d be spending their time moving up the ship and eventually the Cybermen would regroup and get ‘em. I hope Moffat plans to resolve this at Christmas because I felt the story wasn’t completed. This one I’d hate to have to leave to Big Finish to flesh out but perhaps they’ll have to.

OK - negative stuff over. Time for the positives.

Despite the fact I disliked World Enough and Time on the whole, I said I loved the opening and the closing minutes of that episode. Well, The Doctor Falls was basically all “opening and closing minutes,” (you can take that literally as virtually every scene felt like a teaser or cliffhanger and the longer running time flew by) and it was great and exactly the type of episode I was starved for this series. Had Series 10 had more of these I might have even joined the chorus of those calling Series 10 the best, even without Clara.

Despite the criticism I just stated, I loved how Bill and Heather were reunited (read my complaint again and the bottom line is I wanted there to be more of them) and Pearl Mackie gave her best performance ever as Bill. The character had a shaky start in my opinion, but Mackie was exemplary and Bill stands proud with the other iconic companions because of it. She’ll go far.

And Matt Lucas was great as always, and in some respects I’m going to miss Nardole more than Bill (ironic since I hated Nardole in the 2015 Christmas special). That’s nothing against Bill or Pearl Mackie, but even though he was shoehorned in to a good chunk of the season, Lucas just felt right once it was decided to make him a proper companion, and that was something that occurred to me way back in Return of Doctor Mysterio. I’d say Lucas would go fear but the guy’s already gone far. So I’ll just say he’ll go farther.

The Master Twins were amazing and had terrific chemistry and while I don’t believe for one second that this is the end for the Master (the Missy incarnation, perhaps), it was a unique resolution to Missy’s arc that I’m sure had many going “why hadn’t we thought of that?” I also found it fascinating to see how the Saxon Master reacted to having a female incarnation (despite the Doctor’s comments last week, Saxon seemed to suggest Missy was his first/only female version). He wasn’t that thrilled about it, really, which caught me by surprise. It added an unexpected depth to their meeting. I only wish we saw Simm regenerate into Gomez but then maybe that opens the door for another incarnation, if Missy is truly the final Master. I kind of hope she is, because it would be great to think that in the end, after teasing the concept for 46 years, the show finally made good on the promise of redeeming the Master. Plus, let’s be honest, male or female, who could follow Michelle Gomez?

And then there was Peter. What can I say? I mean, his speech about kindness is one they’re going to be quoting for years. And I hope the other Doctor actors are ready because just as with the Pandorica speech and the Zygon Inversion speech, they’re going to be asked to recite it forever. I’ve given up on awards, but Peter Capaldi is in my opinion the best actor to ever pilot the TARDIS, and I’m not just saying that because he’s the incumbent and I liked Whouffaldi. No - all the actors who have played the Doctor were amazing (yes, even him - whoever you want “him” to be). But Capaldi is the best. And I am including Sir John Hurt as I say that, with no disrespect intended to the late legend (or any of the others).

The regeneration - I mean, wow. And to see him repress it. That’s new and will make the Christmas special absolutely fascinating to watch from a performance perspective, alone.

David Bradley as the First Doctor? I don’t know about that. This isn’t 1983 when Richard Hurndall could step into William Hartnell’s shoes because no one had DVDs of any of Bill’s episodes. Apparently we’ve already had some viewers state confusion on Twitter over who this old guy is. I’ve no doubt that David Bradley will do a good job, but recasting an earlier Doctor, especially one with such a different acting style... jury is out. Much as I like Bradley I actually would have been more in favour of Sean Pertwee appearing as his dad. Ask me again on December 26.

Finally, of course, me being a Whouffaldi fan I cannot end this without mentioning the Clara flashback. I can’t begin to express how important this was. For her to have been omitted ... while it might have worked from the memory block perspective, it would have made the sequence feel incomplete. Does it mean the Doctor remembers Clara? Actually, we know that he does to a degree already - he says so to Clara herself in Hell Bent that he remembers their adventure together and has been able to piece together a lot about Clara, and at the end of the episode he sees Rigsy’s portrait of her, so he now remembers her face and, thanks to the diner, her voice. But then again - he would remember her face and voice from the diner if it was a “fresh” memory, right? Instead, he remembers her as she was in Last Christmas. So is it possible that Bill’s tears did more than give Twelve a stay of execution? That they - or the fact the Doctor is mid-regeneration - have undone it. Time will tell. I’m aware of certain tabloid reports today (also mentioned on the BBC) and I refuse to get my hopes up. But maybe it was foreshadowing. Or Moffat simply realized that to leave Clara out of a roll-call of every Modern Era companion would have made him look like a dick. Either way, we got a final direct reference to Clara to end the season on. (And River fans got one too, so everyone’s happy.)

One of these days I’ll do a proper postmortem on Series 10, going into detail as to why I didn’t care for it as a whole. But for me the finale hit all the right notes and leaves me looking forward to Christmas, even though a sad milestone awaits.

PS: Because there seems to be a lot of people harping online about Clara’s appearing in the flashback and the potential for her to appear at Christmas (of the “don’t bring her back ever” variety) let me state for the record that as far as I am concerned Bill Potts and Nardole are welcome to reappear or be referenced any time. Hopefully they’ll get a nod at Christmas.

[doctorwhonews]

Empress of Mars

Latest Review: Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Wayne Yip Starring Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas with Michelle Gomez, Anthony Calf, Ferdinand Kingsley, Richard Ashton, Adele Lynch, Glenn Speers, Ian Beattie, Bayo Gbadamosi, Ian Hughes, Lesley Ewen, and the voice of Ysanne Churchman Produced by Nikki Wilson Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Brian Minchin A BBC Studios Cymru Wales production for BBC ONE First broadcast 7.15pm, 10 June 2017​This review contains spoilers. This review contains spoilers.   Earlier in the week, a friend circulated one of the pictures released by the BBC to promote Empress of Mars. It depicted an Ice Warrior serving tea to the Doctor, Bill and the British officers around a cloth-covered table, with hints of reddish cave walls. He declared that we had reached ‘peak Gatiss’. Empress of Mars repeats many of the techniques used in The Crimson Horror, Mark Gatiss’s previous excursion into Victoriana for Doctor Who, but perhaps with more restraint and to more broadly entertaining effect. There’s a great amount of detail in Empress of Mars which enhances its worldbuilding. Careful attention is paid to the Martian atmosphere. The introduction of Friday the Ice Warrior is a canny reinforcement of the idea that a menacing Ice Warrior bearing down on you is not necessarily hostile, a concentrated homage to The Curse of Peladon. From the Doctor’s poetic description of the Ice Warriors, blending or suggesting details established in Brian Hayles stories with Doctor Who Monster Book lore, the accretions of fandom and the innovations Gatiss introduced in Cold War, we move to learn about Ice Warrior hives and tombs that are not really tombs. The imagery owes something to The Tomb of the Cybermen via Dragonfire, but more widely to every film or television production featuring people or creatures preserved in ice. This is a fortress of solitude for superbeings more than it is a memorial to the dead. Influences are mixed and matched. The rhetoric surrounding the discovery of Iraxxa draws from late-nineteenth century imperialist fiction; I can spot H. Rider Haggard’s She but Gatiss doubtless knows his way around many more. However, the presentation of her tomb owes more to the European Middle Ages than Haggard’s sub-ancient Egyptian fantasies. Bill’s fourth-wall breaking recognition that the Ice Warriors are modelled on Vikings is in some way honoured, though Iraxxa on her bier looks more like a mediaeval knight, gilded like the armour of the Black Prince. Her awakening helps justify the awkward idea that reptilian Ice Warriors have hives like bees, the gold leaf fragmenting and disappearing like the pupal skins of some social insects. Dialogue throughout presents the Ice Warriors as guardians of military honour, but their military honour proves a concept over which there can be debate without integrity being compromised, in contrast with the non-negotiable values of devotion to Queen and Country and of bravery and cowardice proclaimed by the British soldiers. As this last point indicates, worldbuilding isn’t just a matter of sketching in Ice Warrior culture. One of this story’s observations is that the imperial culture of the Victorians is alien to their modern British descendants. By locating the soldiers as veterans of the Anglo-Zulu War – the battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879, is mentioned as the site of Colonel Godsacre’s desertion – the soldiers are associated both with both imperial conquest and with one of the British Empire’s most substantial defeats in southern Africa, where a European army equipped with technologically-superior weaponry was no match for a force armed with assegais which they held in contempt. There’s more than an echo of this in Captain Catchlove’s dismissal of the Ice Warriors as ‘upright crocodiles’; and the demonstration of the ‘thin red line’ formation in the episode only shows, as it did at Isandlwana, how soldiers could easily be picked off. Just as there are parallels between Iraxxa and Ayesha of She, then Catchlove has something of H. Rider Haggard’s imperialism about him. He’s far more the ideologue of empire than Godsacre is, and that he is also a practitioner of blackmail and unapologetically avaricious is not just a good character sketch for a forty-five minute drama, but a sharply unsubtle commentary on the reality of the supposedly civilizing mission inspiring British rule as presented by Haggard and others in the late nineteenth century. The most sympathetic of the soldiers is Vincey, the one who has a girl back home, and with deliberate irony this black character he’s given a name which is, in She, the family name of the British descendants of the forgotten white rulers of Kôr in central Africa. Gatiss enjoys the irony of depicting the reality that Victorian Britain was not monolithically white ‘Anglo-Saxon’ with a character name borrowed from a figure intended to represent white superiority. Likewise, his inclusion of Catchpole’s evident attraction at their first encounter towards Bill, whom Haggardian imperialism would regard as inferior to a white person. Bill’s stunned, appalled face at the casual way in which the British officers have named their Ice Warrior ally Friday, and by extension why they think he should to wait on them, helps pay off her earlier string of cultural references. It’s juxtaposed with the way the script is already establishing Friday as a courteous warrior, a mind rather than a shell. Arguably it also points towards Godsacre’s journey from servant of colonialism, whose demeanour is that of a dead man walking (as his grave name suggests) to a more self-aware person serving the colonized, much as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, rescuer-captor of the original Friday, passes through several states of consciousness of his own actions during Robinson Crusoe the novel.   The regulars have quirks here which might not be found welcoming. Neither Bill’s tendency to spout film anecdotes nor the Doctor’s apparent ignorance of so much pop culture (which surely his tenth self knew about) rang as true as the production hoped or expected. Nevertheless, Peter Capaldi’s fiercely deliberate portrayal of the Doctor’s observation of Martian ritual helps bring home how crucial for all those on Mars negotiation is, and though I found Bill’s characterization early in the episode to be at odds with how she has been portrayed earlier in the series, Pearl Mackie restores her to alert and intelligent Everywoman by the second half of the story. Empress of Mars feels much more cohesively whole somehow than several other episodes have this series. It also feels more welcoming. Perhaps the assembling of recognizable old-fashioned ‘types’ among the characters helps; but so do the warmth of the red Martian soil, the fire, the gold and the green-hued Ice Warriors themselves. In recent years Doctor Who has often seemed grainy and blue, and so much of The Lie of the Land seemed to take place in a dystopian grey haze which reminded me of the post-nuclear Yorkshire of the BBC’s 1984 film Threads. Faced with a warm colourscheme it’s up to Murray Gold’s music to suggest cold and the thin atmosphere ‘topside’, and his thin, reedy notes manage just that. She featured a mysterious African queen who beguiled white men to do her will. Iraxxa, here, does not perform that part of Ayesha's role. Instead, it’s another queen behind a veil who is acting as seductress. It’s never explained why the TARDIS returned itself to the Doctor’s study at St Luke’s with only Nardole on board, but we are invited to guess who is its secret remote operator. The final scene of Missy as contrite woman-child facing the Doctor, backlit, as Murray Gold’s score slithers across the speakers, sets up how compromised the Doctor might just be by Missy, and also how the end of this Doctor’s era, now so close, might be brought about by his belief in an old friend's better nature. On a lighter note, perhaps… Who else of a certain vintage grinned or even punched the air when that high-pitched voice turned out to belong to a certain hermaphrodite hexapod? Who else exclaimed ‘It was Ysanne Churchman’? As the Ice Warriors are welcomed to the universe and give up isolation, those who regretted that this episode wouldn’t be set on Peladon learned that one doesn’t have to go there to use the Ice Warriors to make comments about Britain and its relationship with its neighbours in Europe. By invoking one of Doctor Who's own imperial phases, that of velvet jackets, Venusian aikido and broad political allegory, to warn about British imperial nostalgia (the brief visit to NASA is a concession to contemporary expectations, but feels like a stand-in for a Pertwee-era British Space Control), Empress of Mars recalls strong storytelling values whose appeal rightly stretches beyond the fan audience these references court, and help Doctor Who feel more anchored on Saturday nights than it has sometimes felt this year. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2017/06/empress_of_mars.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr