#having a lot of fun reading from apple’s perspective

[shititsarobyn]

When your crush is too busy being gay abt ur wife and ends up falling into a lake so you gotta save her

Anyways so I’ve been reading this fanfic and I need more pleasepleaseplease :3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/56826652/chapters/153956083

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

fellow + gidel ssr time fellas

(This bastard took an entire soft pity :(( but hey, I got a Dorm Uniform Jade dupe and finally FINALLY my first Dorm Uniform Floyd on the way, so I ain't too pressed about it.) RISE UP FELLOWIVES NOW’S YOUR TIME

***Character profile, voice lines, Groovy, and vignette spoilers below the cut!!***

First off! His official profile, coffin, and candy (Fox Candy):

(School) Grade/Class: None

Birthday: May 17 (Taurus)

Age: 26

Height: 181 cm

Dominant Hand: Right

Hometown: ???

Club: None

Best Subject: Mathematics (specifically Arithmetic)

Hobby: Watching theater

Dislikes: Saving money

Favorite Food: Apples

Least Favorite Food: Potatoes

Special Skill: Sewing

We finally get confirmation of Fellow’s age! (He had previously said in Playful Land that he was 20-something.)

I love that Fellow’s best subject is math Deuce is jealous/j; it makes so much sense given that his inspiration, Honest John (and Fellow himself) aren’t good at reading. It’s that whole “kids are either good at math or English” stereotype. In Japanese, the phrase 算数 is used. 算数 refers to arithmetic, or very basic math taught in elementary school (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing). That specific phrase explains Fellow’s elementary level of understanding. His dislike being saving money is also related to numbers; he spends the money he has right away to get by in the moment. Fellow doesn’t really have the skill or the luxury of financial planning, he has to focus on the here and now, looking out for both himself and Gidel.

OMG, his favorite and least favorite foods???? 😭 Playful Land has apple (core) flavored candies and popcorn… and again, this is a reference to Honest John and Pinocchio’s first encounter! He takes the kid’s apple and eats it, lol cnsvwiwguwkw Potatoes being his disliked food… Maybe it’s because it’s the “poor” man’s vegetable? Because potatoes are so versatile, keep for a long time, and are filling because of the starch content, Fellow might resort to eating them a lot, so perhaps as a result he got sick of the taste.

What I find most interesting about Fellow’s profile are his listed hobby and special skill. He largely comes off as despicable and a slimy scammer (which he is, don’t get me wrong), but we can see different sides to him in these details—both the inner child that had his dreams trampled but remains hopeful about the future and the big brother figure/guardian to a child. Gidel is actually formally referred to in Fellow’s profile as his (non-blood related) brother, which made my heart melt 🥺 TWST must know I have a thing for beastmen who act shitty but are actually excellent mentors to the children/j

Fellow enjoys watching theater. It’s a way of transporting you away temporarily to new worlds with crazy stories and emotional performances. When words aren’t enough, you sing. And when singing isn’t enough, you dance. It’s an area that’s so full of life and joy, at least from the audience’s perspective. I’m thinking that watching theater must have been a form of escapism for Fellow, especially with how accessible it is (think of like street performances). Watching theater might also serve a dual purpose of teaching Fellow how to come across as amicable and friendly, which says a LOT about his character. He’s resourceful and able to learn from unconventional sources, then is able to apply those skills to real world situations.

Fellow’s special skill being sewing is surprisingly very cute! If you’ve taken one look at his and Gidel’s designs, we may have already spotted some of his handiwork. There’s mismatched fabric patches on their clothes!! The stitches look so clean too. The patterns not matching is probably because Fellow just used whatever scraps he was able to get his hands on, but I also like to imagine that he tried to make the best of the situation by incorporating the mismatched fabrics in a fun way (like the diamonds in his pants).

Next, can we talk about the composition of that GROOVY????

It’s another reference to the same Pinocchio scene! Fellow’s holding his book like Honest John did and it looks like he’s trying to teach Gidel the alphabet from words scratched on the sidewalk. Notice how the C is written backwards too 😂 He even wears glasses like when Honest John was trying hard to act like an intellectual.

And Gidel!!! Pencil and pad of paper in hand, he looks so interested to learn (something which was hinted at in Playful Land). Gideon in the film is also shown with a pen and pad of paper, scribbling down nonsense as Fellow pretends to diagnose Pinocchio.

Gidel glances up at Fellow with an expression of admiration. I love how wholesome their relationship is depicted as, it leaves a warm feeling in the heart.

The framing of this Groovy is very interesting. We have Fellow to our left—a direction has historically been associated with evil (in Italian, the word for left is even sinistra, as if to imply something sinister) and in the darkness. Gidel is the one to our right and in the light. It presents Fellow to us as someone who has given up on his dreams—but not completely, since we see some light touching his hat, gloves, and highest features + he is currently teaching Gidel and still has dreams of opening his own school. Gidel is shown in the light because he’s still a naive child that doesn’t understand how the world works. His dreams haven’t been destroyed yet, and there’s hope for him to have a better life since Fellow is looking after him and instructing him.

CHECK THIS OUT, GIDEL FOLLOWS FELLOW TO CLASS LIKE MARY'S LAMB OR SOMETHING????? Gidel pops out from under the desk or out of/behind Fellow's cape! Gidel also joins Fellow on the homescreen.

Some of Fellow's expressions are so priceless... For example, look at him in Flight! There's an unsure face and a little bead of sweat. (He makes a lot of pathetic accompanying sounds too, lol) Flying takes magic, so he's probably not confident or powerful enough to maintain flight for long stretches of time--though when he does nail it, he looks ultra smug.

ADGKVAVFOOEFIEQOfsl HIS SHOCKED FACE

How uncool, Fellow-san...

His attack sprites are very similar/identical to what we saw in Playful Land--Fellow's just playing for the opposite team now.

Gidel hops into battle to assist, so I guess they count as the first two-character card. It's been a while since I've seen these animations, but I think I can appreciate them a lot more now. I'm noticing new little things like how Fellow adds a bunch of showmanship into his attack, little flashy flourishes and even presenting Gidel with his arms splayed, as if welcoming a star to the spotlight. The attention to detail really is crazy for these.

If you want to read his voice lines in full, you can find an excellent fan translation of them here! I'll just be remarking on things I noticed while combing through the voice lines myself:

First off: bro calls himself Fellow Hones-SAMA???????? OKAY, KING 😭 Love that confidence you got goin' on there...

bifabsiyofbefe Love how he just reads a textbook and then flat-out admits he has no clue what the heck it's saying. Hey, honesty is a virtue.

Ace 💀 He has the balls to play a prank on an adult... I kind of want to know what the prank was, but at the same time I feel like I should be shaking my head and telling him off for doing it in the first place. I do appreciate that Ace being shitty brought out Fellow's true personality there for a second though, I live for it when Fellow gets real steamed and starts shouting that the NRC students are brats or that they should drop out if they have no motivation in school.

The way Fellow automatically clocked that Kalim is way too trusting and would surely be in danger even if he wasn't the one to come for him... Fellow, watch your back. Jamill WILL come for your sketchy ass for what you did back then.

I didn't find anything super interesting in Fellow's comments about Ortho, but I do think it reveals that there is value in him coming to school. It's only at NRC where Fellow can see such a curious thing like Ortho, and that speaks to the value of really going out there and being exposed to different things. That's part of Lilia's own growth arc too, and a large part of why he now spreads that same rhetoric.

Fellow remarks that Ramshackle is "pretty sweet", which means one of two things: either this is the refurbished post-book 6 dorm OR it's still the shabby pre-book 6 dorm, but since Fellow and Gidel have never really had their own stable housing, even run-down old Ramshackle seems like a massive upgrade.

Fellow and Gidel must have been so happy to see that lunch at NRC is free and served buffet style (so there's no limits to how much you can take). On top of that, they got dead chefs from 5 star restaurants staffing the kitchen! Those two really hit the jackpot, I hope they eat well.

AVUSDGVUADOVIAISDBIDAS THE DIALOGUE IMPLYING FELLOW CASUALLY BYPASSED THE SCHOOL'S BARRIER AND OTHER SECURITY MEASURES... So Chenya-core of him, really. Fellow may not have magical might, but he's seriously street smart to have found a way in like he has.

Small detail but I appreciate how Fellow has lines which call attention to Gidel. It doesn't just remind us that Gidel is there too, but it also demonstrates to us that Fellow actively tries to include him in the conversation despite Gidel's muteness (a condition which may lead others to outright ignoring him or talking down to him).

LAST THING (though it's not in MysteryShopTL's linked post): in his birthday greeting to the player, Fellow says that both you and him don't have talent for magic, so you should get along. I didn't think the game would acknowledge the player and Fellow's similarity in that sense, so it was very nice to be proven wrong.

And to finish off this post (which ended up being way more massive than I thought it would be), a quick summary of the vignettes!! If you want to read them in full, please check out MysteryShopTLs’ post!

In vignette 1, Fellow and Gidel are putting on a street performance in Silk City. Fellow collects fees from the onlookers and then tries to milk more out of them by spinning a story about how Gidel is a puppet that can walk without strings. Buuut Gidel moves like a normal living being and sneezes, which ruins the ruse and leads to the crowd getting mad at them. The duo run off, but Fellow reveals that while the locals were looking at Gidel, he used magic to steal some of their precious metals and jewelry. In the next vignette, Fellow and Gidel have moved on to Fairest City. It's said that they live a nomadic lifestyle and hop from place to place, never staying for too long in any one location because word of their scams may spread and cause a situation where they cannot reasonably make money through their lies. (Cute detail: Fellow listens to Gidel's suggestions on where they should go next and even praises Gidel's smarts.) This time Fellow's trying to auction off a magestone that he claims will allow anyone who holds it to use magic. The people of Fairest City don't believe him and give him the cold shoulder, which upsets Fellow (since he really hates it when others look down on him). He ends up using his UM to get his audience to be more pliant and manages to sell the magestone for a pretty penny. At the end of this vignette, Fellow drops a line about how he and Gidel are so free, how they can do whatever they want since they have nothing holding them back. I really love that thought~

AND IF YOU THOUGHT VIGNETTES 1 AND 2 WERE FUNNY HAHA TEEHEE CUTE, WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE VIGNETTE 3 💀 VIGNETTE 3 FELT LIKE IT WAS A TARGETTED SNIPE ON MY HEART

The setting is Sunrise City! Fellow and Gidel are being chased off by an angry person they tried to rob. It looks like they're unsuccessful today and will be going hungry. Gidel tries opening a random can of OIL in search of food, so Fellow scolds him and tells him to leave it be. Apparently Gidel does this a lot when he's hungry (just grabbing random shit and trying to eat it), even though Fellow has tried teaching him how to read. THIS IS WHAT THE CONTEXT OF THE GROOVY IS, FELLOW SQUATS DOWN (like we literally see his 2D model lowering) AND DRAWS IT ON THE GROUND FOR GIDEL TO SEE. O is for orange, I is for ice-cream, and L is for laugh. Fellow realizes that L is the only non-food word, but he couldn't come up with anything else. I wonder if like... this is some common game they do to distract from hunger. They have to imagine the food they could have but can't. And L being "laugh"? That can't be a coincidence. Fellow could have used any other L word as an example, even if he couldn't come up with a food that starts with L. It makes me think he picked "laugh" on purpose in an effort to lift Gidel's spirits and to try and distract from their circumstances.

Aaaah, as I was saying! Fellow gets upset that he doesn't know as much as your average 26-year old would since he never went to school. Gidel seems to sense his frustrations and reassures him with a pat, which reenergizes Fellow. He says he'll try to find some food, so Gidel should focus on making a fire. While gathering wood to burn, they come across a job posting by a shady rich man that Fellow and Gidel supposedly did another job for in the past. Fellow suggests that they check out the job and if they don't like it then they can leave. ADSKJBBSLDIADBLUBAB These are the events leading up to Playful Land... meaning that Fellow’s showmanship is wasn’t something he developed at the amusement park, but as a general coping and survival mechanism to get by day-to-day.

I uh. May or may not have cried a little at Fellow and Gidel's really wholesome interaction 😭 I MEAN YEAH OF COURSE I'M A SUCKER FOR BIG BROTHER CHARACTERS (and we certainly see that in how Fellow scolds Gidel and looks out for his wellbeing, both in the vignettes and in Playful Land) but also???????? ? ? ? ? ?? ?????? ? ? ? ?? I love Love LOVE how Gidel is shown to be supportive of Fellow as well. Fellow as the older person, the adult, and the able-bodied one of the duo is pulling most of the weight when it comes to getting resources and handling communication. However, Gidel plays an important role in their dynamic as well. He's the heart and the emotional support that Fellow needs when he's down in the dumps and being hard on himself. Gidel not only serves as a "reason" for Fellow to work hard (to support a child), but he also gives Fellow motivation and hope that tomorrow can be another day. YOU CAN REALLY TELL HOW MUCH THESE TWO CARE AND LOOK OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER OTL

OOOOOOOoooOOooOOGGHHHH MY HEART *clutches it* I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE, I CAN'T HANDLE THE ONII-SAMA OF IT ALL

[queer-ragnelle]

I saw your list of favorite Arthuriana authors and I can't help but ask for a few of them. What can you tell me about...?

Gerald Morris

Phillis Ann Karr

John Erskine

Marvin Borowsky

Hi anon!

Gerald Morris is the author of The Squire’s Tales, a 10 book children’s series that covers many points of view. A lot of lesser appreciated side characters get focus, like Gaheris, Dinadan, and Lunete. He also has another series written for an even younger audience called The Knights’ Tales. These are still in print and Mr. Morris alive, so I’ve linked to goodreads and you can decide from there if you want to get the books from the library or buy them.

Phyllis Ann Karr is the author of murder mystery Idylls of the Queen which covers the story of the apple poisoning in Le Morte d’Arthur and subsequent search for the culprit. It’s written from first person Kay perspective with deuteragonist Mordred. It’s excellent. She also wrote The Arthurian Companion (which is out of print, so that link is a PDF), The Follies of Sir Harald, and recently published a compilation of short stories that were previously included in now defunct anthologies called Arthurian Tales. They’re all wonderful.

John Erskine wrote two Arthurian books, one is Galahad and I actually haven’t read that one yet but have heard good things. He has another one called Restoring Palamede which is mostly from Palomides perspective and really goes a long way of handling his character with respect and dignity previously never explored. I loved it a lot! It’s an old book so it’s far from perfect in its depiction of a Muslim family (Palomides’ parents are both in it too!) but the effort comes from a good place and was enjoyable. Those links are PDFs where you can read them too!

Marvin Borowsky has a single novel to his name and that novel is The Queen’s Knight. I thrifted this on a whim as I’d never heard of it. Anon, I devoured it in a single day. Enthralled, I tell you. It reminds me of Knights of the Round Table (1953) in that Mordred is an adult from the start as another warlord butting heads with Arthur. The majority of the book is in Lucan the Butler’s point of view, sometimes switching to Mordred or Arthur, and has omnipresent narrative at times too which occasionally dips into other characters’ minds. This book has a whopping four ratings on good reads (one of which is me) and no cover. It’s so niche. Mordred is gay in it (content warning for pederasty) and near the end of the book has a loving relationship with another knight. Agravaine also appears to be hopelessly in love with Lancelot the whole time. I like the characterizations of Orkney bros, Kay, Lucan and kin, Guinevere. Most of the characters really! The writing style is delicious. Lucan’s wife Jocelyn and Kay’s mother Margaret are both fun characters. I also find it endearing that this book has a newspaper article dedicated to it, published April 10, 1955!!! My friend @waleweinn was able to get it for me. Check it out!

[the-conversation-pod]

The ITSAY Anniversary Show, Part 1

AND WE'RE BACK!

October marks the third anniversary of the show that rewired the BL industry, and it felt like the right time for a retrospective. In part 1 Ben leads a panel talk on I Told Sunset About You. Just us along with @liyazaki, @waitmyturtles, @wen-kexing-apologist, and @so-much-yet-to-learn

Join us as we talk about our history with the genre, Phuket as a setting, the complexities of the characters, and why this show remains so important.

Listen on Apple Podcasts!

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

0:00 - Intro 4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY? 11:31 - Phuket as a Setting 19:00 - Style and Genre 29:40 - Characters 36:18 - Teh and Oh's Dynamic 50:07 - Why do you care so much about ITSAY? 1:04:08 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

0:00 - Intro

Ben

BWOOOOOOOOM. Okay. It Worked. You're already in it. 

Nini

[laughs] That's staying in.

Ben

Welcome back to The Conversation, everyone, for our fall season. We're very excited about this season. We decided to take advantage of the reduced output of shows, at least for part of summer, and decided to do a retrospective on I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon. We also have made a lot of friends in our time on Tumblr and decided to hang out with some of them, and talk about the show so it wouldn't just be me and Nini blabbing about one of our favorite projects.

Nini

Our panel of I Told Sunset About You experts includes the lovely, the only Turtles a.k.a @waitmyturtles on Tumblr. We have Aiden @so-much-yet-to-learn on Tumblr. We have Captain Hands who is @wen-kexing-apologist on Tumblr. And the fabulous friend of the pod, our good friend mor @liyazaki on Tumblr. 

So that is our esteemed panel for I Told Sunset About You in this episode. That's who you're gonna hear. In the next episode we're gonna talk I Promised You the Moon and have a different set of people on. 

So, Ben, aside from the fact that it's the anniversary of I Told Sunset About You—the third anniversary—why did you feel like this was the right time?

Ben

I think this has probably been one of the most thematically interesting years that the genre has had, and I've said many times that I don't think we'd be able to get the kinds of quality productions we're getting out of the genre now without the success of I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon, and I feel like for us to move forward with this particular show I think we had to at least get that show out of our system and into the recording. It had been bothering both of us that we hadn't really sat down and talked about it even though we dropped constantly that we are fans. I think it was really useful to talk about it. 

I really liked that we actually split up for it because you and I talked to each other a lot on this show, and it was really fun to talk to some other people about the show first and get some other perspectives.

Nini

We always say that one of the whole points of The Conversation is to expand the conversation outward, so we had a really good time doing these panels. We think you're gonna enjoy them. So, let's just dive right in.

4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY?

Ben

We're gonna get right into it, Our first question of the night. We're gonna start with Mor: longtime friend of the podcast. Mor?

Mor

Yes, hi Ben! 

Ben

How did you come to ITSAY?

Mor

[laughs] Well I came to ITSAY actually as a relatively new BL watcher — I had very begrudgingly watched 2gether and a handful of other very typical GMMTV type shows. And I had heard that there were some higher budget higher brow BLs out there, but I'm not ashamed to admit that what initially drew me to the genre in the first place is the… kind of fluffy romance trope-driven narratives? And it was just the first time that I had encountered any kind of queer media that was so lighthearted, and typically took place in a world where homophobia basically doesn't exist, and especially as a slightly older queer, that was such a nice change of pace compared to the other queer media that I'd been consuming up until that point. So frankly, the idea of watching a more serious BL back then made me a little nervous, even though that's a lot of what I typically watch when it comes to Western media. So I put off watching ITSAY for a while until I eventually decided to just jump into it and the rest is history. 

ITSAY isn't just my favorite show in the genre, it's one of my favorite shows and pieces of media period. I Promised You the Moon is too, but that's a hot take I'll expound on next time.

Ben

Thank you. Aiden, what about you, you've been around BL for a bit. How did you come to ITSAY?

Aiden

I've been in the BL slash QL sphere since the beginning, largely as a lurker. I didn't watch ITSAY when it aired, due to not being in the right headspace at the time to tackle a show with that much emotional impact. It was obviously very much in the zeitgeist, constantly in my feed, impossible to miss. So many other shows since then have been compared to it and I always planned to watch it someday in the nebulous future, but with so many things constantly airing I’d never quite gotten around to it. 

So when word went out that Ben and Nini were looking for people who hadn't watched it yet to get a mix of perspectives, I figured there probably weren't many others who'd been around as long as I had and somehow hadn't watched it yet. I re-evaluated whether or not I was ready to watch it and turns out I was! So, better late than never.

Ben

I am so glad we finally convinced you to watch the show. I wasn't gonna push you but I'm like ‘oh my god Aiden’s finally watching.’

Aiden

I'm glad as well. It was definitely an excellent thing to watch.

Ben

Okay, Captain Hands! [laughs] What about you?

Captain Hands

So I got into BL like a year-ish ago, and of course being a queer person who had not seen a lot of queer media the worms got in my brain instantly! There's like a master post of queer Asian shows that is somewhere on Tumblr that I saw, I don't know what user it is, sorry! But I saw a post that had I Told Sunset About You on it as like a good show to watch but I wasn't sure where to access it at the time, so I kind of just filed it away for later. Cut to like six months later, Ben and Turtles were yelling at me to eat vegetables, Kyr-kun-chan changed her icon to I think PP or Billkin or something, Nini mentioned PP and then a thousand messages in the clown server later ginnymoonbeam and I committed to watching ITSAY for the first time, which is probably a good thing because then Ben could warn me about doing one episode at a time.

Ben

Oh right, you were the one who was like, I'm tough I can watch more than one episode at a time. No.

Captain Hands

Wrong. Very wrong.

Ben

I'm glad you also finally joined us. Last but definitely not least, Turtles what about you? How did you come to ITSAY?

Turtles

Hey folks! Ben and Nini, thanks for having me, this is so awesome. All right, so, I guess what I'm the most well known on Tumblr for is the old GMMTV challenge project that I am blogging on. I came to BLs through Kinnporsche, at least Thai BLs through Kinnporsche, I was familiar with Japanese BLs for a couple years before that. I Told Sunset About You, in regards to it making it into the project — it was obviously going to be a natural part of the challenge syllabus, in terms of anybody picking up that syllabus and learning about Thai BLs in the first place. But the entire project, the watch list is community contributed, it’s 100% created by the community of Tumblr posters who love Thai BLs and who have lots of opinions about Thai BLs including this group here. It wasn't just through the solicitation of feedback on the OGMMTVC, uh, that I came to it, I certainly had seen I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon on many lists across Tumblr as, as an impactful BL. But in regards specifically to where it belonged by way of chronology, and by way of its cinematic impact, all of that feedback came through my soliciting the community on Tumblr for creating my syllabus that is teaching me about Thai BLs, and will hopefully get replicated in other people's journeys as well. So that's how I came to it.

Ben

I'm very excited by everybody's answers about how they came to this. I want to ask a quick follow-up question since — some of us have been here since the before time and the long long ago, and some of you got started like a year or two ago? Going in reverse order real quick: what is everybody's first BL that they remember? Turtles?

Turtles

The classic, the wonderful, the amazing, What Did You Eat Yesterday? Long story short, that was the first time I had ever discovered Tumblr as well — enjoyed that drama and I was absolutely insane for it for about two years solid.

Ben

Thank you for that. Captain Hands! What was your first BL?

Captain Hands

My friends were really obsessed with Word of Honor and showed it to me, so I got really into that, and that's how I found the, like, list of other BLs. If that does not count as a BL, then Kinnporsche was the first thing that I watched.

Ben

[laughs] Aiden, what about you? I'm actually really curious to hear your answer, because you and I have been around since the beginning.

Aiden

It depends on how you define BL, really. The first thing that I think could probably qualify would be the first Takumi-kun from Japan in 2007.

Ben

Unfortunately, that counts.

Aiden

Yeah [laughs]. Unfortunately indeed.

Ben

What about you, Mor? You said ITSAY was one of your first BLs. You have any others you watched before that? Or what was your other pathway into this?

Mor

2gether was one of the first ones, which is ironic because I hated 2gether. [laughs] I don't know why I finished watching it, I was just intrigued, so even though I kind of despised it for a lot of personal reasons — just wasn't for me — I enjoyed it enough that I wanted to keep watching. I wanted to find more.

Ben

I'm absolutely fascinated by how everybody came to this. It's KinnPorsche, 2gether, What Did You Eat Yesterday? and Aiden with some of the oldest stuff.

11:31 - Phuket as a Setting

Moving on to our next question! We're going to get into some setting stuff. What about Phuket as a setting stands out to you? I think I'm gonna have Mor answer this one first because they actually visited Phuket and some of the filming locations.

Mor

I certainly did, and I made a concentrated effort to take pictures, as some of you I think have seen, of the actual scenes in ITSAY, like the famous chip crawl deck, which was a journey to find. It was an incredible experience getting to visit Phuket. The setting of Phuket is unlike any other backdrop to a BL that I've ever seen. The landscape is really a character unto itself. I get a very similar but also sort of very rare sort of feeling when I watch ITSAY as I do when I'm watching, say, the train scene in Spirited Away. It's like looking at a natural environment that's been elevated to something almost magical just because of the way it's being shot or portrayed. 

I read once that Miyazaki's films almost make you homesick for a place you've never been, and that's how I felt about Phuket after watching ITSAY, to the point that it absolutely influenced my decision to go to Thailand and actually go there. And having been I can say it's just as lovely as they portray it to be — but I do know my attachment runs a lot deeper and is more personal than that, because Phuket to me will always be tied to Teh and Oh. 

The specific locations they chose, having now been there and walked around and seen it — it was so smart and it really enhanced the narrative while never overwhelming it or taking away from it. Like, I was very struck that the beach that the hammock scene takes place on… it's very wide, it's very open, and you would almost miss the hammock, because the way that the trees hang so low to the beach, it really sort of encapsulates the hammock? You have to actually climb under the branches. It really I think created this effect of Teh and Oh — they almost look cocooned in the darkness, in this otherwise very wide open environment. Maybe it felt a little safer because of that, to start saying what they had been feeling and skirting around. The wide shots of the beach chase scene… and obviously the beauty of Promthep Cape, and so many other moments. Phuket just… it did so much to enhance the intimacy of the scenes, and move this story along.

Ben

Apparently we're all going to have to go visit Phuket now. Turtles, when you were reacting to the series you were writing about some of the cultural crossover stuff. What do you have to say about Phuket as a setting?

Turtles

I've never been to Thailand, but I have spent a good portion of my entire childhood and adult life in Thailand's southern neighboring country of Malaysia — with my mother being Malaysian, my being part Malaysian — Phuket is an incredibly important locale for me to consider. Chinese migration from Fujian, from other locales in China, traveled in part down that Thai landscape to the Malaysian peninsula, and then ultimately settling all throughout Thailand, through Malaysia as I said, and ultimately into Singapore which has a majority Chinese population. 

A lot of what I learned about Phuket in part comes from my own Malaysian heritage, but also through conversations with other amazing Tumblr users including the very wonderful telomeke, who hails from the southeast Asian region himself. Phuket, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, these are towns that happened to receive more than their fair share of Chinese immigrants, that ended up in part creating a very unique culture that we call Peranakan culture: Chinese immigrants intermingling with ethnic residents of the areas in which they settled. Teh's mom is just a fabulous example of somebody that, that holds a lot of those influences all in one person: she wears Peranakan clothes, particularly when she's hosting events for the public at her Hokkien Mee stall.

Ben

Captain Hands, Aiden, do you want to say anything about Phuket?

Captain Hands

Phuket is a small town when compared to locations like Bangkok, which is where a lot of I Promised You the Moon is going to take place. I've been thinking that the small-town vibe works very well with how often it feels to me like Teh's entire world is ending whenever Oh, like, does something that like makes him jealous. Or like, if Teh's rejected or if he makes a mistake, like you can just feel in his body how much that impacts him, and it feels very small-town to me, to like to have these little moments be so big to him. 

There’s such a significant use of the Chinese language in this show, and for all the ways that like Chinese is used to tell us, like, what Teh is thinking and feeling, and for all the ways that like Teh is taking the time to try to teach Oh how to understand the language that Teh himself uses to express himself frequently — is a really poignant thing for me to pick up on considering Teh's own heritage, and like, his mother's heritage, and like the Chinese immigrant population that is a part of that community.

Ben

Turtles was talking about the cultural crossover that occurs in Phuket from all the various people migrating there. I'm from New Orleans which can jokingly be described as the northernmost Caribbean city, that has passed between French and Spanish control multiple times, and has now been occupied by Americans for one hundred and fifty years. So we have a very weird collection of cultures here as well — most evidenced in our architecture. And I think about that a lot when I reflect on Phuket — because I just rewatched it this week — it looks different from what we usually get in Bangkok.

Turtles

This show was so unbelievably layered by its visual cues, from a cultural interpretive perspective. Ben, as you pointed out to me, one of the friends, Phillip, he clearly comes from from a Islamic family, his parents are shown wearing a hijab and a songkok, and it's just very indicative of the the filmmakers giving us the indication that we're talking about… the mixing of cultures, assimilation and melting pot, all of the different words that we want to throw out there. 

As per your note about New Orleans, you know, as we say in Malaysia same same lah. It's very comparative to all of these indications that they were bringing up about Phuket. Thinking about Phuket as a tourist town as well, as compared to New Orleans, having just been to New Orleans myself, I think that there's just so much to, to pull out there by way of whether you make Phuket a permanent home or not. Teh and Oh clearly exist on the borderline of that permanence as they get closer to going to college.

Ben

There's something specific about growing up in a tourist town, like you can go visit tourist locations during peak tourist season as a way to avoid people you know. Because unless they're working the location, it's just strangers.

19:00 - Style and Genre

Ben

We're going to move to our next question here and get into some style questions. How does ITSAY play with genre and stylistic expectations? And specifically, are there any works that you recall while you were watching it? Aiden, you and I had talked a little bit about this.

Aiden

For myself when I was watching ITSAY, rather than paying attention to the source materials that ITSAY drew from, I found myself thinking back on shows that I'd seen since ITSAY aired and reevaluating them through the lens that had changed from my watching it. ITSAY clearly broke open a number of aspects that the Thai BL circuit specifically hadn't delved into until then, and expanded the genre as a result. 

My personal favorite impact is seeing shows set in rural locations, which were quite thin on the ground before that point, and have increased at least in visits if not fully set in more rural locations since then. Shows like Tale of a Thousand Stars, Cupid’s Last Wish, I Will Knock You, Remember Me, Moonlight Chicken. And it also, it showed grit and grime in a way that you really hadn't seen before that point in at least the BL genre. It was more common in media intended for queer audiences or art house type of content but the BL genre had always been very sanitized, very urban, very clean cut. Almost cartoonish and simplistic. And seeing something where you got to see buildings with marks on the walls that are from, you know, monsoon rain, stains, faded paint, chipped plaster, dirt on the ground, picture glass that had flecks on it, dust settled on things — that was a revelation, at least at the time. It really made things feel a lot more… settled and grounded and realistic. It felt like you could walk down the road and see these places, rather than it being a kind of constructed facade of where these shows are, that's an everyplace everywhere kind of generalization. And that followed with shows like Not Me, I Will Knock You again, Remember Me, that you got to see the grittiness, Not Me especially. 

The inclusion of religion, more Chinese cultural aspects, things like that that had largely been omitted from most shows until then, started becoming involved more in the day to day life that you got to see. Things like the talk Bart where you do the alms in the morning providing the food for the monks that go around traveling from home to home. 

We also started getting more slower paced shows like Nitiman, You're My Sky — which had heavy callbacks — Coffee Melody, My Only 12%. Shows with high concepts, stronger writing, better production value on a number of levels, like, ah, Bad Buddy, Triage, La Pluie, Kinnporsche. Also things with some of the more awkward side of queer life, which until then had very much not been present almost at all, outside of the more tragic kind of shows. Because again, it was that sanitized, sort of, ‘it has to be picture perfect, it has to be ideal’ kind of… nuance and vibe on the shows. And so we got things like Secret Crush on You, and I'll argue that I Will Knock You should fit there as well. 

The way that it's expanded the shows that have come after — and yes we do still have those sanitized, simplistic, clean, bubblegum sort of shows — very much enjoyable when you're in the mood for that sort of show, but we've also added things to give more breadth. Things like La Pluie, Step by Step, Moonlight Chicken, that make it a much more encompassing sort of genre, able to draw broader crowds that have differing interests as well. I am thrilled to see the change and be able to tie back now to how that was driven by ITSAY.

Ben

This is one of the reasons why I was really glad we finally got you to watch the show, because you've been in the genre as long or longer than me? And it was one of the shows that you had skipped for specific reasons when it first aired and I was curious how your long view of the genre would play into your reflections upon it. 

When I watched ITSAY, I ended up having a really intense reaction to the end of it — positively, as a result of some of the works that had come before. It's sometimes hard for me to connect ITSAY to other BLs that pre-date it, because those BLs are often heavily influenced by product placement and a slapstick version of humor that ITSAY is not relying on at all — it's an incredibly serious show about what it wants to cover. And that connected me back further to some of the German works I had watched growing up. Like Summer Storm, which is I think from 2004, there's a Dutch film called Boys from 2014, Big Eden from America in 2000 which uses its setting in the American hinterland really well. And I just had not seen this in Thai BL. 

The closest we came to something this grounded-feeling from Thailand was The Love of Siam, which they submitted to the Academy Awards in 2007. I actually had Turtles and Captain Hands watch that this week, so before I get into my very specific reactions to that, at the end of episode 5 of ITSAY, I kind of want to hear you two, and what you have to say about Love of Siam in relation to ITSAY before we move forward.

Captain Hands

You've said before that you felt like ITSAY is an apology for Love of Siam, and I fully agree. Two kids that are childhood friends separate for a number of years, come back together, the attraction between them is instantaneous and very obvious and kind of hard to ignore? And then having it end the way that it ends for Love of Siam, is, you know, it's a choice! I can understand and see why they would play it that way, but I agree with you, Ben, that it is, that this feels like an apology for what they did to us with Love of Siam.

Ben

Turtles, any commentary you want to give?

Turtles

Me not being Thai, not knowing Thai, having not visited Thailand — for a movie in 2007 to end with a successful same-sex relationship would have surprised me. So the film ending the way that it did was not surprising, and I found the journey to get to that point really poignant. That is a very deeply Turtles read, a very deep Asian read. Absolutely no surprise whatsoever that many BL filmmakers were influenced by this movie. And as far as ITSAY goes, is ITSAY an apology for Love of Siam? I can absolutely understand that verbiage, that's not a verbiage that I would necessarily jump to using. 

I could very well say that if ITSAY had ended without Teh and Oh getting together, I also would not have been surprised, especially with the way episodes 3 and 4 went. And now that I've seen Love of Siam I could feel stronger in that opinion. Now, as far as it making me feel good or satisfied with the story conclusion? That's, I think, you know that's, that's personal extrapolation there. But as far as the art itself goes I think Love of Siam communicated to me that I would not have been surprised if Teh and Oh didn't get together, if they had more personal, emotional, and also macrocultural wrangling that they needed to do. Love of Siam absolutely talks to ITSAY but I'm not sure that I would necessarily call it an apology.

Ben

Mor, do you have any commentary on genre history?

Mor

The really interesting, different thing that ITSAY did for me, as specifically a queer 30-something, a Westerner who's been in all sorts of extremely homophobic environments and, and different things throughout my life, and I've just gotten used to not having happily ever after. What I loved so much about BLs in the beginning was just, ‘oh man, we can have these light, bubbly, effervescent stories that get a happily ever after and it doesn't have to be complicated, it can just be sweet?’ And it was such a new concept for me, to see that. 

So, ITSAY ended up, like, with the ending that we got, it ended up being almost healing for me? As dramatic as that sounds. And that's really why, because it subverted it. You could tell going in, this is gonna be serious. This is gonna be hard-hitting. We're gonna be getting into deep stuff in terms of these queer kids figuring out who they are, and learning how they can be together, if they want to be together. So I was sort of expecting — because of my history and what I'm what I'm used to seeing — okay, well we're going serious, it's not a good chance this is gonna end well. So to see that — which frankly was a much more realistic portrayal of queer relationships than your typical sanitized BL — that is what took ITSAY for me to god-tier media, god-tier.

29:40 - Characters

Ben

Let's get into some of the character stuff. For all that they are incredible and great characters, why couldn't it be Bas or Tarn for Teh and Oh? Captain Hands! You're up first for this one.

Captain Hands

So the easy answer for me is that it just couldn't be? Like neither Teh or Oh really knows exactly when they developed feelings for each other, and they both try to have feelings for Tarn and Bas and they just can't make it work. Teh going to Tarn at 4 am and asking her to tell him that she loves him was, for me, like, ‘Oh I need to know what it feels like to hear this from her so I can know how it, how it feels… to hear it? And to know whether or not that feels good? If that feels something, like something I want to hear.’ 

For a more, you know, in-depth answer, because that's my whole shtick, right? There's a couple of things that I was thinking about, mostly the Chinese language element, the color element, and then just like Tarn and Bas as characters? One of the throughlines of ITSAY is that Teh frequently writes whatever his subconscious is fixating on over and over again in Chinese. Teh can't parse through the complexity of his emotions, but he can summarize them in like words, so like ‘rival’ or ‘intimate,’ and we know that there is much more behind what he's writing, than like what is actually being put down on paper? Because Oh's not good at Chinese, Teh spends so much of this show like painstakingly teaching Oh how to understand Chinese, and like how to understand him as a person and like his subconscious? So like once Oh starts to get it and get better at Chinese is when they really start to connect more intimately. If you think about the end of episode 3 with the sniffing scene, the buildup to that moment is Oh using the male/male protagonist question — like, how you say male protagonist in Chinese, how you say female protagonist in Chinese, is male-male okay? — is him asking if Teh is okay with them like potentially becoming a couple. 

And I know this is going to kill Ben to talk about the colors, but this is for the color girlies! Oh is red and Teh is blue and green, and something that I did notice on this watch through is like, Teh's home is filled with red, like the walls of the restaurant are red, his bedspread’s red, the couch, the clothing his mother wears is often red, and Oh's home is… very much blue and green, so like the sign for the Panwa resort is blue, the windows, all of the windows are framed in this kind of like, light green. These boys grew up in each other's colors. Their home is each other's colors. And so of course when they first meet, they're going to be drawn to one another because they remind each other of home. Tarn's color is purple, and so there are parts of Tarn that Teh is drawn to, but I see that as kind of being like the red parts of Tarn. 

Oh likes Bas because Bas kind of acts as a similar person in his life to Teh. In episode 2 Oh says that he likes Bas because Bas drives him around, but he won't confess because he doesn't know what Bas's feelings are for him, and he thinks that Bas likes girls and he doesn't want to lose him as a friend, when that is a direct parallel to Teh. And something that I started noticing on this watchthrough is that Bas picks up whatever color Teh is wearing, but he's often like a scene or an episode behind. So in episode 4 Teh’s wearing green at the beginning of like them going to the resort? And then Bas picks up the green when he shares a bed with Oh, and then by the time that Bas has picked up that green color, Teh and Oh are both in yellow, and so like they're now matching, and Bas is is behind the curve. 

From the perspective of just like, Tarn and Bas as characters, like they both value themselves enough to know when to let go, which I think is a very crucial part of their relationships with Teh and Oh? When Teh colors the hibiscus that Tarn draws red, she shuts that shit down like immediately and sends him home. And when Oh is quiet and sad on like the drive home, Bas knows immediately like why that is, and goes to Teh’s house. So like I really strongly believe that Oh ends up with Teh at the end because Bas gives him up? Oh would have kept fighting the urge to go to Teh, and like to comfort Teh and to support him, if Bas hadn't driven Oh to Teh's house and been like, ‘it's okay, it's fine, I understand.’ And, and given him that freedom.

Ben

I’m very fascinated to follow up on the thread about Tarn and Bas having more willingness to cut those boys off [laughs]. Anyone else have any commentary they want to talk about on Bas or Tarn? Oh please, Aiden, proceed.

Aiden

It just needs to be said that Bas is the best boy and Tarn is the best girl. Sorry, somebody had to say it.

Ben

Thank you, sir. So [laughs] I think Teh likes Tarn because she's as committed to her future as he is. She intentionally does not pursue a romance with him because she thinks it would get in the way of her pursuit of her art and architecture career. And Teh is super committed to his career as an actor. And I think that's probably why he liked her so much? This is a little bit of I Promised You the Moon slipping through. But like Captain Hands pointed out: because she's committed to what she wants for herself, she's not going to sacrifice a ton of her stuff for him the way Oh might, or that Teh might for Oh. 

And Bas… I've been thinking a lot about second lead stuff because of conversations with Shan. Bas doesn't confess until really late in the game? But so much has happened at that point, that Teh is going to be able to break past that because of the earlier promise. I agree that he is the best boy. But I think Oh likes the drama [laughs] that Teh brings to his life.

36:18 - Teh and Oh-aew’s Dynamic

Ben

On to our next question! The dynamic between Teh and Oh-aew is one of the primary draws of this story. What did you connect to in their dynamic or their story? Mor, you're up first.

Mor

I'm vibrating, can you tell? [laughs] So there is so much, I think, that could draw anyone into the story of ITSAY, because the glories and the pitfalls of first love, they have so much in common regardless of who you fall in love with. But I personally connected so deeply to their story, again, as a queer person, I know a lot of other people did as well. You can't help but painfully relate to both of them — at least that was my experience, especially my younger self — Teh having so many feelings that he spends so much time being incapable of processing or acknowledging, let alone communicating? And Oh being so long-suffering and hopeful and just pining with his whole self for this mess of a boy, who doesn't know what he wants or what he's doing. I mean not that Oh really does either; who knows what they want in a relationship when they're that young? And when you have feelings for your long-lost best friend that you just reunited with, it's very complicated. 

But there were just so many quintessentially queer experiences in ITSAY and in their dynamic that hit me right in my gay little heart. The tiny secret touches that mean so much, the affectionate friendly banter that all of a sudden is veering into flirting, or ‘are we flirting, like what's going on?’ and then the crippling doubt that sets in afterwards and how it can haunt you for days. This gut wrenching fear that these feelings you found yourself in can possibly affect your whole life: how your friends feel about you, whether or not your family accepts you. There's just so much that we have to consider, well beyond what our hetero peers typically have to deal with, and it's exciting and it's terrifying. It's not just incredibly validating, but like I mentioned earlier, it's healing in a way, to see such a frankly visceral experience portrayed with so much care and accuracy, as they did with giving us Teh and Oh's story, and their dynamic and how it progressed. I just feel like overall the stakes are so much higher for us? And often at so, so young and tender ages, to just explore who we are, to like and to fall in love with who we want to, and… their whole story for me, watching it unfold — this is very dramatic but it's true — for me, it felt like someone peering into my past looking at all these little hurts I forgot, these bigger ones that are still healing, and saying, ‘it was like this back then wasn't it? It was so hard. But there's so much beauty here, and you can have it too! It can be yours too. You can have this struggle, you can go through all of this, you can walk through the fire and emerge through the other side with this beautiful, beautiful thing, that maybe even is even more beautiful because of how much work and how much brokenness it took to get there.’

Ben

I'm so glad we got to let you get that out of your system, Mor. [laughs] Turtles or Aiden, do you have any commentary on Oh and Teh?

Aiden

For me the, the dynamic between Teh and Oh was very unique and… not something that I had necessarily dealt with, but the coming-out scene for Teh and Hoon resonated incredibly strongly for me. The dialogue from that scene matched almost word for word how I came out to my own brother? And the emotions, and the fear and the terror and the relief and the reassurance and the, you know, gentle teasing to lighten the mood… that felt so real. Mine had [laughs] rather less crying, at least in the moment, I definitely did later — but the text and the, the feeling of that scene just took me right back to that moment. And there's so much about this show that is authentic in a very specific way to different people's experiences.

Ben

Thank you Aiden. Turtles?

Turtles

For me, what Oh was able to get out of Teh, by way of what I called a drunken hormonal experience… just the way Billkin acted in his exploratory attraction towards Oh and how PP received it… how their physical interplay represented that budding romance, that budding attraction. The end of episode 2 on the boat particularly moved me, let alone the incredibly impactful endings of 3 and 4. I was surprised to sort of see Teh… melt, and go back and forth in his physicality at the end of that episode. Just the physicality of that exploration, and how the physicality itself then compared to and reflected on all the emotional processes that we saw between the two of them. I thought that that was so unique particularly about this show, and how unabashed it was to display such physical attraction developing between the two of them, particularly on Teh's end. That's something that I'll really take away from this show, that it displayed attraction, really really vibrating attraction, in such an impactful way.

Ben

Captain Hands, you have any commentary?

Captain Hands

Of course you know I do, I have commentary about everything all the time. So I think the thing that really drew me to Oh and Teh’s dynamic was the power of their feelings for one another, and like, especially the way that Oh acts as a magnet to Teh and like, the trance-like state that Oh kind of puts him in, so you get all these moments of Teh just kind of following after Oh, and like Oh being aware of that power that he holds? The sincerity of their characterizations and the commitment to their characters… I love this show so much for having Teh just constantly walk in circles. And how that will kind of translate into just the cyclical nature of his own personality, and like the experiences that he has, and the stuff that he puts himself through. The things he will continue to do as their relationship progresses. You can tell so much, like how comfortable these two are with each other, and how in love they have been with each other since they were kids, and that's another reason I think that they couldn't have really been with anybody else, is because they have all of this history between them? That is like so palpable, and like how much Teh wants to protect those memories, and like the feelings that he has when he's with Oh. The line that they say like, ‘don't give my time to others’ is so poignant. 

Seeing the way that Teh is continuously transformed by being around Oh, hating coconut at the beginning of the show and thinking that it smelled bad, and then like having that scene with Oh on the boat at the end of episode 2, and then immediately opening episode 3 with Teh just smashing a bit of coconut meat on his face as like hard as he can, because he just wants to be like as close to it as possible and like, how it doesn't smell bad anymore, and how it tastes good now because he's starting to have these feelings for Oh. And that has radically changed how he interacts with the world around him. It’s just like so good to me to watch being portrayed on screen, especially because Teh is not aware of his queerness in the way that that Oh is? And so like, Teh not knowing why he feels the way he feels, and then lashing out because he can't put a name to like, what it is that is causing the feelings that he has, it feels very, very in keeping with like, the queer experience as you are like, learning your own identity.

Ben

The thing with ITSAY — it's not just the things that it does that are familiar: with all the important touching, the knowing that exists between you, the dealing with the homophobia, the concern about how other people will perceive you, whether or not your parents can be proud of you if you are honest about this portion of yourself. What I think makes ITSAY so special as queer media, and why I lose my mind over it? It's about the fact that these two cannot hide how they feel from each other, at all. And as a result they are the most cry baby boys I have ever seen in all of queer cinema. I just rewatched it this week. These boys are crying constantly at and about each other. Every time any one of them says anything to the other, they make the other one cry over something. 

It's interesting because so much of the ‘are you are you not’ thing, when you're growing up, is about the uncertainty that the other boy is actually feeling it? And that never feels like it exists between them. Oh knew what he was feeling, but as soon as Teh starts to show interest in him, he picks up on it instantly, and eventually confronts Teh very directly about it. As Turtles pointed out, the way the intimacy between them is displayed so frankly. They spend all of episode 3 dancing around each other — we know where this is going! And then you get the back-scratching scene which leads into this arc about Teh dealing with the physical reality of Oh being a boy. Episode 4 has the underwater kiss. During the underwater kiss, Teh puts his hand on Oh's chest again, and Oh has a reaction to that, and you can see him immediately being hit with the uncertainty about Teh's attraction to girls — in the middle of the best kiss that has ever happened. And I don't think I noticed that in my earlier watches: even during this huge moment for them, they are still continuing the drama. There's a specificity to the way that these two feel queer, that I have noticed that every person who grew up with some of the Knowing, as I call it, feels so intensely about these two boys.

Mor

I'm nodding so hard over here I'm surprised I haven't lost my head at this point. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to everything you said. The sheer magnetism of their connection, that's really one of my biggest takeaways from this show. Not only the authenticity, but just how much Billkin and PP's chemistry and their talent as actors, how they were able to really, ah, just make that experience that is so true, it's so true to my experience as a queer person who definitely had the Knowing from a very young age... and had a lot of of moments like that where it just felt like, ‘what, I think there's something here, you know it, I know it, I think we both know it’ — it's hard to put it into words, but they just captured it so beautifully, so brilliantly. It took me back. 

It was so accurate that it made me remember little moments, tiny little moments in my past that weren't so little in the moment, they were really big when I was, you know, ten, eleven, twelve, falling for a girl for the first time. That's part of what made it so special for me is how it really took me back to those times, and in a healing way.

Ben

Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

I was just thinking about, in the opposite sense of like, I did not at least acknowledge my queerness until I was in my early 20s? But like, definitely grew up feeling very different from people around me and like, lonely compared to people around me, for like reasons I could not explain at the time? And so like, seeing Teh have to go through and process his own queerness because it is not something that has occurred to him before, was something that I took so strongly to. I relate so hard right now in my life to the identity narratives, because it took me so long to kind of parse through what my identities are, and to like, get comfortable with them. And so seeing Teh’s kind of like, ‘can I even like boys?’ moments, that is something that was really fun for me to watch, again with like the circling, like he has no clue [laughs] what's going on in his life and he is just circling and circling and circling until he kind of comes to a point that he can connect to, and then he'll kind of run off in that direction.

50:07 - Why Do You Care So Much About ITSAY?

Ben

Final question for everyone: Why do you care so much about ITSAY? Aiden.

Aiden

I care about it because, for one it is authentic queer representation on a level that I had very rarely seen on screen — both in Thai media and and just in general. It's very true to life for a wide variety of queer people. But also I am passionate about it because of the way that it drove Thai media as a whole forward to a profound degree — but especially the QL genre. It showed unarguably that there was a market for high quality productions, and the industry reacted by broadening their offerings accordingly. Many of the Thai shows that I love most from the past couple of years clearly echo back to ITSAY in specific aspects, and there will be untold echoes that continue radiating forward from here, in a good way.

Ben

Thank you, Aiden. Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

ITSAY to me is a foundational queer show. Mostly because queer characters are allowed to be complex, three-dimensional and frustrating. If anybody from Tumblr is listening to this podcast, which I know you are, the for, by, and about queer thing is something that I've been looking at a lot as I've been watching more stuff, and this is very much all three, right? Because they're letting these characters make mistakes, and like hurt people that they care about in their quest to better understand themselves? They are allowed to be human, which is like a wild concept in a lot of the like earlier BL shows, it's part of why I don't like it personally when people say that ITSAY's not a BL, because like, why can't BL's be high quality with like, really good structure and story right? Like I don't think that it's fair to just be like, oh this doesn't count as a BL because of like the, the production itself. 

And I think that just the emotional, like honesty and vulnerability that the script and the actors like showed throughout this process, really struck deep in my experiences figuring out like my own identity? There's such a commitment to everything and everybody in the show that I really liked. Watching the documentaries. I just love how much of the emotionally safe space it felt like, seeing how often the director himself was crying watching these scenes? Or like, how they would kind of wind up these these crying scenes by like, I remember like, PP being rocked back and forth in a hug by the director in the position that he's going to be in when he hugs Bas crying at the end of, what is it, episode 4 or part of episode 5 when Bas is like, go comfort Teh? All of these moments that like really show that the cast and the crew support each other, and like trust in each other… there is so much time and effort put into this show, and that is part of why I like it so much, is like you can tell how much care every aspect of this show was given.

Ben

Thank you, Captain Hands. Turtles?

Turtles

ITSAY for me reaches an echelon that only a very few Thai BLs have done for me by way of really balancing out an homage, a love letter to the culture that, that it's celebrating, along with what Aiden and Captain Hands have said so far regarding queer representation, and just hit a really incredible artistic balance experimented with with cinematic form and this serialized kind of publication way. Captain Hands, to your point about the argument about if it's a BL or if it's not a BL, one thing that I've been considering quite a bit in conversations, particularly with neuroticbookworm, has been whether or not ITSAY would have been more successful as a movie. And I've thought more about it and I think that, while there may be an answer to that that's separate from what I will say here — which is that I think it was really groundbreaking that they took this incredible idea and artistic vision and put it in serialized form, and experimented with what had been concretely developed as a serialized BL genre, and played in that sandbox. 

So taking all of that together, taking all of those maybe slightly even risky decisions rooting this show in a particular voice of a culture that we hadn't seen highlighted quite in as explosive of a way as ITSAY being rooted in Phuket was, along with its gorgeous depiction of queer revelation, of queer realization. Just all of that combined into one pot of a show really blows me away. 

My watching experience of it — it took me out, I couldn't multitask, I had to take all of your guys' advice and watch one episode at a time, and no show has done that for me. And so that, that's what I'll take away from it. A unique experience, unlike anything else that I ever experienced watching a Thai BL.

Ben

Before I move to Mor, I just have to say: Absolutely not! This should not have been a movie! I have watched a lot of goddamn movies. We deserved all of the time [laughs] that ITSAY gave us on this story. It would have felt so rushed if they tried to force this shit into two goddamn hours! Yeah! No! No. [Ben bangs the table] There's the table slamming. [laughs]

Turtles

Bartender, get him another drink!

Ben

I have drank like three-quarters of a bottle of wine, so, I'm sorry.

Turtles

Get him some pasta. [laughs]

Ben

[laughs] All right, sorry. This is about you all, not about me. Bestie in Christ, Mor!

Mor

[laughs] That was fantastic, thank you. I was bangin’ my desk over here like yessss, preach, take me to church! I am here to receive.

Ben

Why do you care so much about ITSAY?

Mor

Ohhh boy. A core memory for me from the last couple of years is sitting shell-shocked, absolutely shell-shocked on my couch, silently weeping, watching the credits of ITSAY roll for the first time. Truly just unable to move for probably ten, fifteen minutes, just trying to absorb everything that I just witnessed? And all I could think was, ‘things are different now.’ Truly, that was my reaction to it, I mean, this show? It wasn't made to fulfill a trope. It wasn't made to fill a time slot. It was made to show the tender beautiful humanity that is at the core of all love stories, regardless of the gender of the person you fall in love with, and that's just not something that I can say for a lot of other BLs, or shows period? Not that they don't stand on their own two feet for all sorts of other reasons, but it's something that set ITSAY forever apart for me. Not only that that was clearly their goal, but in how beautifully they achieved it, how perfectly in my opinion they achieved it. 

It was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, but it's also a show that I would feel very comfortable showing to someone who had no experience with the BL genre. Because you don't have to have any. You don't have to have an appreciation for it. You just have to be a person. You just have to be a human who has lived through tough human things, and had relationships, to find so much value, so much to relate to. I don't know how you can watch ITSAY and not have it just reverberate with you on some personal level. Whenever I discuss it with people, just like we've been doing tonight, I'm hearing things that even being — practically a priestess of ITSAY I feel like at this point — even with that I'm hearing things that I hadn't thought of before. And I think that's beautiful, that a show can be so elevated, and done so well that people from all walks of life can come to it, and come away with things that are just so true and accurate to their experience, and you learn things by hearing it, you know, hearing from them. But yeah it was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, while also giving a happily ever after, which was beautiful but it was also very hard won, which made it even more beautiful for me. The characters are real, they are flawed, but they figure it out… gives hope for the rest of us. [laughs] It raised production values. It raised the bar on what a BL can be. 

We did touch on a little bit about people debating whether or not ITSAY is a BL and I just have to say, whenever I'm debating anything I go to the source. And it was I believe a Teen Vogue article that BKPP were interviewed for: they both referred to the show as a BL, so have the writers, so has the crew, and if they are comfortable with addressing it as that, so am I. 

And then on a more personal note, it introduced me to BKPP my beloveds, to some of my best online friends, it got me halfway around the world to Thailand. Overall, it's an artistic and technical triumph as much it is is queer storytelling at its finest, it did everything it needed to in all the ways that it mattered, it moved me, it continues to, in a way that not much media ever has. It's got my whole heart and I could probably find something new to marvel about, you know, forever. It's as complicated and as, as simple as that for me

Ben

Thank you, Mor. I have been watching queer cinema for a very long time. Part of why ITSAY is so important to me, is no other piece of media has so consistently generated such strong visceral reactions. There's so many great pieces that you can pull out for people that many of them haven't seen, but there's something about ITSAY, where if you are aware of it at all, if you even heard its name, you know something about it, and have an opinion about it, whether you've watched it or not. And I also feel so strongly about watching Thai queer people talk so frankly about how they also had the same sort of visceral experiences that the rest of us had. 

What also matters for me about this show is, like we've had some interesting moments in the west: like Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, other queer movies that have released, and we keep waiting for their impact to hit the rest of us. We felt the impact of ITSAY within a year of it releasing? ITSAY immediately impacted Korea's willingness to participate in BL, despite how conservative their film industry is. Japan re-upped their efforts on the genre… and GMMTV responding to that! We felt it all throughout late ‘21 early ‘22. It is so rare that you can point to a work that genuinely changed the way an entire genre functioned? And also really rare that you can feel that impact in its time. 

And with that: thank you all for joining us on this first clown panel of The Conversation! If there's anything you want to say to the people before we go?

Turtles

I just want to say what an honor it was to be invited on this. I love loving BLs and I love loving BLs along with you all.

Ben

Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

Sorry if we weren't as funny as David.

Ben

[laughs] That's impossible. He's an unhinged 45-year-old gay man. Aiden?

Aiden

One last thought that came up: ITSAY has this level of radical compassion for every single character on the screen, and that helps the viewer to have compassion even if they may be homophobic or unfamiliar, it brings a level of love and care to those characters, in a way that we really don't get, and I have high hopes that it's something that's going to be repeated again as we move forward.

Ben

Mor, any other closing thoughts?

Mor

Oh man, I don't know, I'm just all caught up in the ITSAY wave of feels, as I, as I tend to do. This show has a unique way of shutting down my logical brain and just making me feel all the things, which is what good art should do, dammit, it really should. So, it's doing its job. 

Go watch ITSAY! If y'all are listening to this and you haven't, what are you doing? Come on.

Ben

It's been three years, if you haven't watched it since 2020, go watch it again. It holds up. It's still good.

1:04:08 - Outro

Ben

And we're back. Fun fact for all of you: Nini's setup went completely to shit while we were recording, so she had no idea what the hell we were talking about. For the entire recording we're having to text her updates so she doesn't close down the recording booth. So, Nini is now reacting from post, not from the panel. 

Nini

[laughs] Yeah, it was a very interesting experience editing the panel not having heard a word that you guys said, so it was all brand new to me. That is a very new experience for me. 

Ben

She edited out all of the “Nini can't stop me because she's not here.” [both laugh]

Nini

Oh god, no, but it was really delightful. I had a really good time. I had a really hard time editing the panel, but there's some things that you guys brought up that really sort of tickled my brain, and I wanted to get into them while I was talking to you in the afters. 

Captain Hands made some comments on why Teh teaching Oh Chinese, with Chinese being Teh’s comfort language of expression, why that matters, and how the translation scene on the side of Promthep Cape plays into that. I found that was really interesting because that is new thinking for me, after three years and countless rewatches of this show I didn't think that there could be something about it that I hadn't thought about, or that was new to me, but thinking about Chinese as Teh’s comfort language—as his main language of expression. That brought up a whole new set of things to me in their relationship.

Ben

I have a couple of friends locally whose parents have immigrated from Taiwan, and they talk about how they have probably like a kindergartener's understanding of the language sometimes, and I hadn't thought about how Teh wasn't learning Chinese for the first time—that he may have had some familiarity from growing up around his mom. That was a fresh thought that I had coming out of the panel.

Nini

It just adds a little bit more color to what exactly Teh was doing in that class, what he was doing tutoring Oh-aew. How hard he worked to make sure that Oh-aew could understand him, because Teh is not great at expression, but the few times that he manages to express himself very clearly to Oh-aew it is in Chinese. Using the Chinese flashcards on the boat, writing and rewriting words in Chinese in his notebook. That's how he's able to get his points across to Oh-aew, and he can only do that because he's taught Oh-aew how to understand him. I found that was a really good observation. 

You made an observation as well that I really enjoyed about tourist places as safe spaces when you are from a tourist place, that going to do tourist things actually gives you a certain amount of anonymity that you wouldn't normally get. 

Ben

Some of the normal spaces like cafes, malls, etc. are populated by people that you would run into, but, like, locals are not going on a swamp tour. And so, you can get away with things that you might not elsewhere. Like, I think about the fact that Promthep Cape is a really popular tourist location, and the fact that when they were actually filming that scene very kind tourists stayed out of the camera, but were like two meters sometimes away from the boys while they're recording one of the most pivotal scenes of the series. And that's kind of what it's like when you're in tourist places in your hometown. Like there's a bunch of strangers crowding around you, and it doesn't matter if they hear you say something because they don't know any of your people.

Nini

One thing that Aiden brought forward that I really wanted to delve into myself: Aiden talked about visual style and how ITSAY allowed things to look grungy, and things to look worn, and things to look old, and things to look a little bit dirty; and how that contrasted against the previous BL impulse for everything to be bright and clean and shiny. And one of the things that made me think about from my own experience, how upset—I don't know if ‘upset’ is the term—people tend to get from my home country when my home country is portrayed outside as anything other than bright and shiny and clean and modern. There's that whole pressure to look a certain way to the outside world, and that comes through in our media as well. 

So watching that impulse sort of come through in Thai media, and then being sort of broken by this particular production. I always like when I'm watching media from other places when I can see the points of connection between my culture and another culture, between my home and another person's home, that always makes me feel more grounded in the story, even though it's a culture and a place that might be 180 degrees away from me. You can still find those very human points of connection. I really enjoyed that. 

Here's one that I want to ask you. You talked towards the end of the panel about Oh and The Knowing, and you've brought up The Knowing over and over again recently, and it's something that I've really been sitting with as you've explained certain things in your life and certain things in queer life, and one of the things that struck me listening to the panel that I think hadn't struck me before is that Oh Knows. Oh has The Knowing, but Teh also knows about Oh because Teh has a complete lack of surprise when Oh tells him that he likes Bas. He doesn't even register it as, like, a surprising thing. So Teh also has a Knowing about Oh but not about himself. I found that a really interesting juxtaposition.

Ben

Teh is an actor who's masking all the time. I think he was probably a little bit surprised, but when Oh tells him that secret, Teh's only goal is to desperately reconnect with Oh. So, I don't think in that moment he cares about Oh being queer. Like, Teh’s so stupid. He's not like paying attention to that sort of stuff. He only cares about Oh not shoving him away at that moment. Like, it didn't really matter what that secret was because he was going to respond positively.

Nini

I get that, but as the time goes on, we don't see any reaction from Teh about it, which is not the reaction that I would expect a teenage boy to have.

Ben

[sighs] When it comes to Teh, he's always performing. It's possible that he already knew these things, but I get the sense that he compartmentalizes. Like, a big part of it for Teh was he doesn't want to talk about it. Because talking about it makes it real, and then he has to face the reality of it. Like, that's what happens after the underwater kiss scene is Oh wants to talk about it and Teh really, really doesn't want to talk about it. It's possible that he knew, but because he's been away from Oh and so repressed, it's not eating at him.

Nini

I'll sit with that.

Ben

Teh doesn't act like he knew, but it's very clear that Oh was important to him, and he had to rapidly come to terms with those feelings.

Nini

I think it's pretty clear that Teh didn't know about himself. It's pretty clear that his journey I Told Sunset About You is a journey of understanding things that he didn't know and understand about himself.

Ben

Part of why I like that so much of Teh's journey is unspoken is it allows it to be more universal because it lets the audience at large take from Teh what they need and project into him what they're bringing to the scene, and this works out really well for Oh a lot, too, because Oh does so much with just looking at Teh.

There's some really great dialogue in the translations of this show, but there's a phenomenal amount of amazing work done from what isn't said, and that is one of my favorite things about it.

Nini

I also agree that one of the great things about ITSAY is how much is done in the silences and it's so interesting that you talked about the silences being something that the audience can project whatever they want onto and that being part of ITSAY’s success, because it's also in a way so legible. 

Normally when there's space like that for the audience to project onto we get all kinds of wild shit, like I’m just gonna be real with you. But the silences and the way that these two boys acted were so legible that even though there was all this silence between them, for all this space for the audience to project into, they generally projected what I think the creators intended because the reads were largely consistent in terms of how people were taking it in and how they were reading things.

Ben

I do think so, but a big part of that is how simple ITSAY’s story is. It's a very straightforward coming of age story in a lot of ways. That's why it works! Everything about ITSAY is inherently familiar, and it feels like an experience that people can enjoy again a decade, two, three decades from now. It's one of those classics you can go back and look at and you can probably point at where other projects referred back to it. 

I feel like I Told Sunset About You is going to be one of those projects where the future of queer coming-of-age cinema is going to refer back to it as one of its seminal moments.

Nini

So all that said, if we had to write at this point… an ode to ITSAY as our closing remarks on this retrospective, what would be your ode?

Ben

ITSAY is the best show that has ever existed because it is called I Told Sunset About You. It sets up this huge drama about running to the cape together before sunset, and they make it to the cape at sunset. Oh has this incredible breakdown and just says “I don't care what we're going to be to each other, just please don't leave me again,” and Teh, upending decades of genre history and expectation, says, “If I can be anything, can I be your boyfriend?” and old wounds finally closed in my heart.

Nini

Well, that is an ode. I don't think I could be anywhere as poetic as you about it, but what I will say is that this story touched something very deep inside me. I can't imagine not having seen this. I can't imagine where I would be now if I hadn't seen this. It changed things for me in a lot of ways, and that's one of my highest praises for media. If you change things for me, if you make me look at things differently, you've won. So, that's my ode to ITSAY: you won.

And with that we're gonna wrap this one up. Our next episode will be our Last Twilight in Phuket discussion. Ben and I are going to sit down and jaw about that a little bit, and then we will be introducing a fresh new panel and talking about I Promised You the Moon.

So look out for that. We out. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 9: They Know Not What They Do

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness.’ The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried outside that awareness, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

While I have been going through the timeline, there have been a few points that have been put on hold, that I’ve promised I would circle back to later, because I needed to integrate a lot of information from different points on the timeline. Now is the time for that integration. I need to more seriously address the question of how Aziraphale can still believe angels are existentially good in the abstract, with all that he has seen them do, while also believing they are acting against the wishes of God.

If angels are good by definition and don’t have a choice in their moral alignment, how do they end up committing morally reprehensible acts? If Aziraphale uses his own continued ethereal status to prove to himself God is fine with his actions, wouldn’t that also prove God is fine with all of the other angels’ actions? Not exactly, and the reason takes us all the way back to the opening of Season 1. The first point I promised I would eventually get back to was a question:

What happens if Aziraphale thinks he isn’t supposed to know what God’s will is, because it’s not for him to understand, but he also thinks that he does know it? What are the consequences of having knowledge he isn’t supposed to have?

Responsibility.

I Slithered Here From Eden

The design of the universe (according to Aziraphale) is letting humans choose sides between good and evil. That is a choice that humans make, and celestial entities don’t. But at what point did humans get that choice?

They had to have knowledge of good and evil first. As far as philosophers tend to frame things, it’s only really free will if you know what you are doing with informed consent. By eating the apple, Eve and Adam gave that knowledge to humanity. Now that humanity has the knowledge of good and evil, they have the power to make a choice, and the responsibility to choose good. 

One point I glossed over at my first look at Eden is that Aziraphale was on apple tree duty. He failed that mission in a big way. While there are fun speculations about Aziraphale being distracted by the sexy snek, I wonder if he had a hard time with the idea that knowledge of good and evil was bad. When discussing the human’s transgression, Aziraphale weakly says, “It must be bad… … otherwise you wouldn’t have tempted them into it.” It’s not a compelling argument as to why eating the apple was bad, and frankly, there isn’t one. The most compelling argument I could give is that lacking knowledge of good and evil shields people from responsibility to do good, and it might be kinder not to burden humanity with that responsibility. I think during their conversation at the wall, Aziraphale won’t see things that way because that would hit too close to home.

When Crowley encouraged Eve about the apple, Crowley was just looking to stir up trouble, and was surprised they were punished so harshly. From Crowley’s perspective, I would imagine the apple as a precursor to the real temptations. Crowley argues his points logically, he is not on the ineffability train. How do you make a logical argument about what is fair and reasonable to someone who has no concept of good and evil? You’d have to teach them about good and evil first. Crowley makes arguments that are built on meaningful concepts of right and wrong frequently. They are not alien to him.

When Aziraphale takes on the worldview that the universe is set up to allow humans to choose between good and evil, he is tacitly endorsing the idea that Eve and Adam eating the apple was part of the Ineffable Plan. This was originally Crowley’s idea, though it may have just been sarcastic. Aziraphale has taken it on for real. Now the humans are choosing good and evil.

'The Right Thing'

Aziraphale has asserted very confidently twice in the timeline that choosing is for humans. Not celestials, just humans. I’ve talked about how this is self serving for him, it means he is good by definition. It makes his place in the universe make sense, it gives him a sense of self and purpose. It also has major downsides, in that it makes him consider Crowley existentially evil independent of his character and actions, which makes a mess of how he treats Crowley. It also risks entrapping him into considering the other angels definitionally good, and believing that whatever they do is definitionally 'the right thing'. The instability of what Aziraphale believes situation to situation lets him spend most of his time avoiding the downsides of any particular belief system, he mostly pulls them into focus when they are useful, and forgets about them when they aren’t. 

When I’ve brought up ‘choosing is for humans’ before I glossed over a key question. Why is choosing just for humans? Not in the sense of what motivates Aziraphale to believe that, what does he think the reason is? By the Edinburgh framing, why don’t celestials have the capacity to choose that humans have? The answer: they never ate the apple. They have no meaningful knowledge of good and evil. The institution of heaven is a rigid hierarchy. Angels and demons only know what they need to know to follow orders. They have no opinions on ethics or grounded morality. 'The right thing' is a term of art for the heavenly code of conduct. 'The wrong thing' is a term of art for the demonic code of conduct.

Something shifts in Aziraphale's relationship to humanity at Edinburgh as he is confronted several times over with scenarios he can't help but notice demonstrate that the normal day to day heavenly code of conduct, 'the right thing,' is absolutely not in keeping with what he would personally understand to be morally good. It was not a one off instance from God that could be a test, the issue was the system. He was forced to acknowledge Crowley knew what was morally right better than he did, and that he knows what is morally good better than the other angels do. Aziraphale's biggest leaps forward happen when he is forced to admit he does actually have an opinion that is his own.

I think for the audience, the absurdity of 'the right thing' and 'the wrong thing' being terms of art is most pronounced when demons are tasked with doing 'the wrong thing' because God represents Herself to will it. When Crowley 'destroys' Job's goats and children, his permit is signed by God. Crowley understands his assignment as given by God. Does that make it 'the right thing'? No, it's outsourced to hell because the aesthetics are wrong, and if it's been given to hell to do, that makes it 'the wrong thing' for Crowley to do it. Does that make it 'the right thing' for Crowley to refuse? No, because the code of conduct for the angels it to let it happen, and Crowley isn't an angel anyway. The correct thing for Crowley to do is 'the wrong thing,' that God want's him to do. (Aziraphale doesn't believe that is what God wants in that case, but he does believe that God generally wants demons to do demonic things.)

These terms have no relationship to what is actually morally good or bad. However, the knowledge from the apple does have that grounded relationship. Humans need that connection to have that real choice, and be accountable for that choice. Celestials are following orders, they aren't 'supposed' to be making choices, they are 'supposed' to do what they are told. Knowledge of actual good and actual evil has no value to their professional role. Aziraphale continues to think that ignorance is how things ought to work all the way to the 1800's, and even as he shifts to wanting the other angels to have the depth of that knowledge, he can plainly observe that they don't.

To be clear, this isn’t to say that celestials are not able to decide to do things, but rather that as Aziraphale sees it, their actions cannot be judged in a way that impacts their moral alignment. The angels aren't responsible for the misalignment of heaven because they don’t know any better. Their actions don’t make them less existentially good, because they are too ignorant to make informed choices. Same with the demons. I don’t think Aziraphale would consider any of them to have chosen evil, because they didn’t have knowledge. Fate put them in the evil role, and they do what they are told. Choosing sides is for the humans, and they are only able to do it because of their ability to know the difference between good and evil. 

As we move past Edinburgh, Aziraphale understands that the angels, near universally, are maintaining a system that doesn't let humans choose freely thee way he would believe in, and thus they are maintaining a system that he believes isn't operating as God would want. As a practical matter of staffing, it would make a mess of things if She turned them all into demons.

Aziraphale can use his maintained ethereal status to prove to himself that he is on good terms with God, because he is the odd one out. If Aziraphale is in the wrong, and heaven has the right of it, it doesn't break the system to fell the weirdo angel going off on temptation missions as a treat and salivating over demon décolletage. If everyone else is wrong, the remedy for that has to be learning, growth, education, and training, not leaving Aziraphale as the last angel standing.

Unconditional Forgiveness

The second time Aziraphale argues choosing is for humans, it isn’t an argument about ability anymore. He wants all of the angels to join him in deciding not to choose a side, in taking a caretaker role over the system that lets the humans choose. He presents this plan to the archangels, offering them a way forward that would move them away from ignorant obedience and us vs them thinking, into a world of layers and depth. 

They are not prepared to go along with Aziraphale on this, lacking his 6000 year long character arc of developing knowledge of ethical complexity. Uriel accuses Aziraphale of thinking too much. When Aziraphale shouts at the archangels on their way back to heaven, he calls them ‘bad angels’ in the tone someone would use to say 'bad dog.' It is an expression of them being ‘bad at being angels’ yes, but it is also an expression of their lack of depth, lack of thought, and lack of understanding. It is a condescending dismissiveness of their capacity to make valid decisions. I don’t think Aziraphale retains any animus towards them after the scene ends, because they don’t have enough knowledge to be accountable for their actions. 

When Crowley confronts Gabriel in Season 2, he points out that Aziraphale wasn't there for his execution. He never witnessed Gabriel tell him to “shut his stupid face and die.” That's true, but I honestly don’t think it would make a difference to Aziraphale. Aziraphale also does not retain the resentment for Michael’s role in Crowley’s failed execution that Crowley has for Gabriel. I don’t think that comes from a lack of valuing Crowley, but instead speaks to Aziraphale’s unwillingness to apply accountability to celestial entities. Gabriel hasn’t eaten the apple. Michael hasn’t eaten the apple. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Automatically, no hesitation. Without knowledge of good and evil, they are not responsible.

But That's For Them

I have talked about how Aziraphale doesn’t believe everything he can believe at once, and his potential beliefs often contradict themselves. Aziraphale has a lot of shame and self doubt for someone with developed strategies on how to be certain his choices are good by definition. (Not an uncommon phenomenon IRL, but still an ironic one. People develop the strategies because they feel a need to have them.) He puts an enormous burden on himself to do the right thing, compared to the instant and absolute forgiveness he grants to the other angels. Aziraphale does gloss over his own mistakes, but not by forgiving himself. He does it by burying the shame out of his awareness because he can't forgive himself.

Over time Aziraphale has become more settled into comfortably believing that he can intuit God’s will in ways the other angels... I wouldn't say 'can't,' but at the very least, don't. Along with that comfort, he has developed his own senses of what is morally good, and morally bad, and those opinions diverge from how the concepts are framed by heaven and hell. He can also observe that the other angels have not developed these concepts. Gabriel has a preference for getting what he wants, Michael has a preference for order, and Uriel woke up this morning and chose violence. They have personalities, but no moral compass. Post Edinburgh Aziraphale typically considers himself to have knowledge of good and evil that the other angels do not have. Given that he is correct, I am willing to forgive him the arrogance. 

Aziraphale understands that ‘wrong’ as defined by heaven has no substance. What he sometimes forgets is that he personally does have substance. It is uncomfortable for him to know that, because the weight of responsibility is tied to it. When he is told to do something he cannot do, or abide by something he cannot let stand, Aziraphale believes he has knowledge of good and evil, because he needs to own that knowledge to justify going against the party line. When it kicks in, he feels the weight of the responsibility to make the morally right choice, and he feels the horror of all the other angels being on board with the morally wrong one.

The moments where he goes against heaven and the rest of the angels because he thinks that he understands God’s will and that they don’t are not Aziraphale at his most self righteous. Quite the opposite, he usually seems hesitant and ashamed. He has knowledge of good and evil, but he doesn’t think he is supposed to have it. Most of the time he wishes that he didn’t. Aziraphale is very good at suppressing knowledge he wishes he didn’t have.

The evidence isn’t always visible, but Aziraphale has metaphorically eaten the apple. So has Crowley, although I don’t think Aziraphale believes Crowley was responsible for his fall. I think modern Aziraphale is fully onboard with the idea that God felled Crowley into a martyr as part of a larger plan. The other celestials haven’t eaten the apple. Yet. Saraqael and Muriel are probably on their way, but I don’t think Gabriel and Beelzebub are. They went AWOL for love, not for principles. For Crowley and Aziraphale, as grand as their love for each other is and has been, their principles always came first. That is what they love about each other.

To Shades of Grey

At Uz Crowley was a demon who goes along with hell as far as he can, and Aziraphale was an angel who goes along with heaven as far as he can. To the extent that they experienced a choice, it was finding ways to be as conformist to their jobs as their principles would let them. Post agreement, they tend to stray as far as they can get away with. Their principles would allow them to be more conformist, they just don’t want to be. They aren't trading and gambling on their professional assignments at the Globe because Aziraphale got asked by Gabriel to allow an atrocity in the name of heaven, or because Crowley got tasked with killing children, it was because neither of them felt like bothering to ride a horse up to Scotland. There is no rock vs. hard place dilemma there. 

At first Aziraphale hides behind believing that he is too definitionally good for doing Crowley's assignments to be 'choosing' anything, or creatively reframes his understanding of responsibility to not feel his actions are impacting the outcome. After the church bombing, something clicked when he allowed himself to know he was in love with a demon. He let himself know he was choosing to meaningfully stray from the expectations of what it supposedly means to be an angel.

In 1941, Aziraphale offered a toast “To Shades of Grey.” At this toast, Aziraphale let himself understand that he and Crowley do have a degree of choice, and the shades they each choose are not pure. The responsibility is something he really doesn’t want to engage with most of the time. The option is there though. If a decent set of situational beliefs can be cobbled together, Aziraphale can believe that he and Crowley are human aligned enough to choose a little, deciding to become a bit grey, and with that comes the responsibility and accountability that the other celestials don’t have.

I think the choice of their shades of grey needs to be understood relative to their respective defaults. Aziraphale represents a default white that decided to become light grey, and Crowley represents a default black that decided to become dark grey. We can understand this as Crowley preferring darker shades to Aziraphale, and while that is true, I think it is very misleading. Crowley is choosing the lightest shade of the options available to him, and Aziraphale is choosing the darkest shade of the options available to him. I don’t think that is lost on Aziraphale. It is one of the tragedies of their miscommunication that Aziraphale believes Crowley to be the better one, while consistently saying sentences a reasonable listener would assume mean the opposite. 

To The World

The toast is offered by Crowley. Crowley, who argues with God over Her treatment of humanity. Crowley, who gave humanity knowledge of good and evil. Crowley, who paved the way for saving Job’s children. Crowley, who convinced Aziraphale to work to alleviate human suffering, and give a way 90 guineas. Crowley, who convinced Aziraphale of the need for humans to have equal opportunity. Crowley, who convinced Aziraphale to try to derail the Great Plan. Crowley, who convinced Aziraphale to stand up to the Institution of Heaven. Crowley, who just before this toast predicted their peace wouldn’t last. 

To the World. Their home together. Their future together. Their choice together. Their responsibility together. Aziraphale believes they are committed to defending the earth together. And, he believes that is what God wants them both to do. 

Part 9/10

[shingekinomyfeelings]

what you really are // 1st installment

Reiner finds that his first sexual encounter with a girl he truly cares for brings up a lot of memories and conflicted emotions. Reiner’s POV; honestly a casserole of angst, fluff, romantic drama, and Reiner being a big dumb idiot. I won't call it comedy, but it made me laugh.

As always, thoughts and comments mean so, so much to me. I really appreciate those of you who've followed me to read my stuff. It's so strange and funny to me that writing about this blonde mess of a man is what brought me back to writing for fun.

warnings: none yet; explicit sex in later installments, but nothing fetishy or triggery. Reiner is angsty, but is that really a warning?

Characters are cadets, but aged up to 19, don't come at me.

notes: uh, so, this one’s a little different from the usual.

It’s from Reiner’s point of view, which has been really fun to do. I’m really not sure how to tag it, though, because the girl in question is unnamed and descriptions are vague enough that she functions as a Reader or y/n, but since it’s from Reiner’s perspective, she’s never referred to as ‘you,’ so idfk if I should call it an x reader fic or an x oc.

It’s also pretty self-ship coded, but I’m starting to realize that most x reader fics are, when they’re written with real feeling and immersion, because a truly blank, universal ‘reader’ is lifeless, and we’re all writing about canon characters through our own lens of interpretation, so the entire fabric of fanfiction is deeply personal, and frankly I doubt anyone is even still reading this fuck it I wish I had apple juice

"Have you, um... have you ever slept with a girl before?"

The question, posed with shy curiosity, makes Reiner's brain skip a few beats along with his heart. He swallows, eyes wide for a moment, the faintest hint of pink creeping across his cheeks, and then he coughs quietly to regain his composure.

"Uhh... uh, a... few, yeah..." He rubs awkwardy at the back of his neck, not sure why he sounds apologetic. She doesn't look upset; she's simply gazing up at him with a slight tilt of her head, waiting for him to say more.

"It was just a few hookups with some girls from town,” he explains, a bit sheepishly. “Not even other cadets, just... strangers. Just some fun now and then, until we got bored of each other and moved on, which never took long. Pretty sure one didn't even tell me her real name."

His heart gives a tiny pang at the soft way she laughs at that, and he pauses for an awkward few seconds before he asks her, "Have you? Slept with... anyone?"

"Of course not," she answers, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I told you, you were my first kiss, remember?"

Oh. Right.

He nods, a little flustered. It’s not that he's forgotten that first kiss – it happened a little over two months ago, and while they've shared many more since then, it’s still the one that keeps him shamefully preoccupied at night when he should be sleeping – but for some reason, this conversation has him fumbling with both his thoughts and his words.

Of course he wants to; God, he wants to. He’s tried his best to hide how badly, not wanting to rush her. He’s never taken his flirting and teasing far enough to make it sound like he’s impatient. He’s even readjusted himself awkwardly many times when she jumps on him playfully, or when he’s pressed against her with his arms around her waist, and his body starts to get just a little carried away.

But, as their private moments together have become more heated, the subject has come up a few times, and she’s expressed interest, and now it’s even harder to keep all of his thoughts at bay. He can’t escape them even in his sleep, recently, though he would never in his life tell her the lurid ways he’s dreamed about her. Underneath all that constantly simmering lust that threatens to boil over a couple of times each day, though, Reiner has noticed other, unexpected feelings beginning to surface as well. Guilt. Sorrow. Hesitation. And...

He looks at her for a moment, the way her hair falls around her face and her shoulders, and the way her eyes are so kind and intent on him.

"Does it... uhh, does it make you nervous, knowing I've done that?" he asks, his eyes trained on hers.

She stares back up at him and asks blithely, "Does it make you nervous knowing I haven't?"

"Tsshh..." He makes a noise like she's just asked something ridiculous, and tries to roll his eyes a little for good measure, but he’s sure she sees through it, because she just smiles just a little more.

His hand reaches out to hers, where it rests on the ground, to lace their fingers together. She’s always seeing right through him; it’s annoying, but charming - and a liability, but so endearing...

She doesn’t see everything, though. If she did, she wouldn’t be here right now, sitting beside me, relaxed, letting me hold her hand.

He reminds himself of that at least once a day.

She would never let someone like me touch her. Why would she?

She sighs softly and bumps her head against his shoulder. “I don’t want it to make you nervous,” she tells him. “If we uh... end up doing that, I trust you, you know...”

You’re too sweet, he wants to tell her. I don’t deserve how sweet you are. I don’t deserve how much you trust me. One day you and everyone else are gonna find that out...

She must see the slight tension that crosses his features, because she plafully blows a puff of air into his ear, and he scoffs in feigned annoyance and puts an arm around her, releasing her hand to drape his on top of her head, ruffling her hair so that it falls across her face. Pulling her closer, he buries his face against her neck and kisses her as she half-assedly tries to squirm away.

He hates himself for feeling happy.

I’m the worst devil on this whole island.

[beerecordings]

The Other Monster - Chapter 1/4 so far

From my Graceling AU - Based loosely on Kristin Cashore’s Graceling books, this is a magic-medieval setting where Jameson is a child who’s been raised by Anti - a Monstrously beautiful assassin and abuse survivor who's come to see the world as evil. As Jameson starts to question his brother's perspective, he discovers another Monster in need of his help: Marvin the Magnificent, who's been abducted from his home and sold to the highest bidder.

Previous fics in this world: One l Two l Three

Next Chapter

For more context, I'll add that Anti and JJ are Gracelings (beings who have a supernatural ability of some kind). Anti is capable of Persuasion, and JJ is still discovering his power. In the books, all Monsters have a kind of Persuasion, but I didn't give that power to all Monsters, only Anti.

And let me be real upfront before we get started: this fic is never explicit in any scene, and absolutely never fetishistic, but it involves Anti continuing to process severe child sexual abuse, including incest, and Marvin being trafficked, held prisoner, and sexually abused. There is no pressure to read. I will tag carefully, but be aware these themes continue throughout. That being said... it's a story about healing and loving people anyway. Because a lot of us are all processing some stuff of our own too.

Okay. Let's go. And let me know if you want to see more <3

.

He dreams of Chase.

“Keep up, slowpoke!”

Running through the grass with their hands clasped together, turning to heave the child into his arms when the mud reaches his little brother’s thighs, making him shriek with laughter as he swings and rocks him through the muddy valley in mid-spring, blowing blubber kisses into his fat toddler tummy.

He dreams of Jackie.

“Keep quiet, keep quiet! You have to stop laughing.”

Sneaking through the hallways of the castle one at a time, beckoning for each other when the coast is clear before darting into the kitchen to steal lemon poppyseed muffins and jam bakes and a jug of apple cider each, causing trouble and then retreating as fast as their teenage feet could carry them to their rooms in the high tower or the swaying tree house they built for themselves in the arms of the old oak tree beyond the courtyard.

He dreams of his cousin.

“You study too much, come on, come play with us.”

Slamming cards and chess pieces down against the table as they played games at rapid-fire speeds, their eyes sparkling with a shared enthusiasm for the fond competition between them, exchanging insults in a half-dozen different languages, gossiping about everyone they know and laughing for the fun of it, curled up in front of the fire with mulberry wine and Henrik’s company to keep him warm through the winter time.

He dreams of his family.

“Where are you?” he whispers to the shadows. “Why haven’t you found me yet? You said you’d keep me safe, please… I know I act like I can take care of myself, but I’m scared. I’ve never been this scared in my life. I don’t want to be sold.”

A slam against iron like the striking of swords jolts him from his sleep with a scream. He grabs his own shoulders and shoves himself back against the walls of the cage, staring in terror up at his captor, who looks back with bleak blue pelican’s eyes, thoroughly unimpressed.

“Age?” he asks, holding up a pad of parchment.

Marvin breathes hard, staring around his cell, blinking.

“Still surprised to find yourself in here? You been in here three fucking days, start adjusting. Age?”

“What?”

“How old are you?” asks the man, enunciating his words slow and mocking. “How many years do your parents say you are when your grandpappy asks?”

Marvin squeezes his eyes shut, flushed with humiliation. “I – I’m twenty-six.”

He writes it down, unperturbed. Marvin wraps his arms tighter around himself, shivering in the cold. “Can I have something to eat?” he croaks out. “I’m starving.”

“Better if you’re thin,” answers the man blandly. “Maybe in a couple days. What’s your name?”

Marvin clutches his knees to his chest, staring at the filthy floor in front of him, his eyes flickering back and forth. “Fabian,” he whispers after a moment, hearing the frailness of his own voice. His whole body is giving out on him. His mind too, he expects. He closes his eyes. “I’m Fabian.”

“Good,” says the man, scrawling on his notepad. “You’ve already learned to lie about it. No one cares about your old name. No one cares about your old life. Forget it. You’ll never go back to it.”

“My family would pay a lot of money to have me back,” cries Marvin. “And my brother is a Graceling warrior! You ought to let me go before he finds me, or I swear to God that you’ll regret being born!”

“Glad to see you’ve resorted to threats instead of biting and screaming like that first day,” grumbles the man, shaking out the wound on his hand that Marvin gave him.

“You deserve it!” Marvin screams. “You and everybody’s who’s trying to steal me away! I’ll kill you like I killed the first one who grabbed me! If he didn’t have his fucking friends there – ”

“Any health concerns?” asks the man, staring down at his clipboard.

Marvin breathes hard, tears dripping down his face, holding himself in the middle of his cold cell.

“Well?”

“I… I’m allergic to walnut,” Marvin whispers, shrinking in on himself and closing his eyes.

“Great,” says the slave trader. “I’ll mark that down.”

He turns and walks away.

Marvin stares at the floor. The tears dripping onto it humiliate him. Everything is a humiliation. Everything is a threat. Everything wants to use him. To hurt him. To take him away.

He remembers being rebellious as a child when his parents would shave down his hair and make him wear coverings in public or hide him away during state dinners, never letting anyone but Jackie and Chase and Henrik see him, sometimes even telling guests they had only two sons to keep him a secret. He complained about being a prisoner - isolated, guarded, not allowed to grow up like a normal kid. At the time, the pain of his being hidden away from the whole rest of the world felt like something that would destroy him. It makes him want to laugh now, but all that comes out is a quiet sob. He should have been more careful. He should never have gone into town with Chase. He’s thirteen now and old enough to get anything Marvin needs from the city without him. What Marvin wouldn’t give to be back in their little summer cabin right now, making pancakes or swimming in the lake with him. With no one staring at him or touching him. With food in his belly and a friend at his side.

But the one upside to this hunger and the cold and the grief are that they keep sending him back to sleep. Back to dreams. He drifts off once more soon enough, chewing on a strand of his hair like he’s a five-year-old again, rocking himself against the stone walls on his every side.

He dreams of his parents, and his childhood.

“I don’t want to go to bed yet, Momma.”

“You don’t have to just yet, baby.”

He would like to be a child again, rocking on her lap, curled up between his parents by the fire. Jackie would be on the floor, looking up at him with his big child’s eyes, just a couple years older and protective from the start. Watching over him. With everyone close. With everyone holding him. He would like to be safe again.

“I don’t want to go just yet,” he whispers, pressed into his mother’s arms. Jackie would struggle up onto the enormous bed and squirm his way into his mother’s arms beside him, landing soggy child kisses on his face and reaching out to be held by their father, patting his chubby hands against his shoulders when he’s picked up and snuggling down against them both, the four of them sandwiched together in the warmth.

“You can stay,” his father would say, stroking his hair, blue as the galaxy, shining like its closest stars. “You can stay, my little son. No one will take you away.”

They had made him this promise time and time again. Even before he was old enough to realize it, his parents understood the curse that he was born with. No one, they said, will take you away. Even if we go. No one will take you. Jackie will protect you. Won’t you, Jackie?

And Jackie, from the time he was three years old, had nodded and promised with more intensity in his Graceling eyes than any child should ever have to muster.

“Yes, Marvy. I will protect you.”

He’s spent his whole life protecting Marvin. He’s given him everything he had. It wasn’t his fault. Marvin knows that. Their parents should never have made him promise. Their parents should never have promised him they could keep him safe. No one can. No one ever could. He should have known.

“I’m just a Monster,” he whispers, when consciousness comes to hurt him again. The walls of the prison cell stare back at him, wide-eyed and silent. “The whole rest of the world knows that this is where I belong.”

Forget that old life. You will never get back to it.

Marvin realizes that this might well be true. Up until this moment, he never knew it was possible to be this afraid.

“Please, Jackie… please hurry. Please find me soon, my brother.”

.

It's always so strange, watching the spiral his brother goes through before his birthday.

He doesn't think Anti knows that he notices, but it's been happening for years now. Anti starts out overenthusiastic at the start of the month, but as the days go on, he grows quiet, deflates. He's never liked the idea of Jameson growing up. He doesn't think he was supposed to notice that either.

He knocks on the door of Anti's study, waiting for a rumble of an answer before he comes inside. Or tries to. The door is locked. He hears his brother get up and come to the door, unlocking it and letting him in.

"You're locking your study now?" Jameson asks.

Anti scowls. "You never know who might come in."

Sure.

The fortress where they live is all cold stone and locked doors, always has been. Jameson knows it's not normal for the serving girl to have only one hour a day when she is allowed to clean one room at a time, and even stranger for her to be blindfolded when she serves them dinner.

But he also knows why they do it.

"Come sit," says Anti, patting the chair across from his desk before he goes to sit back down. Jameson notices a new patch of dried blood on one side of the cushion. Who did his brother kill here, and for what? A business deal gone wrong, an insult he couldn't abide by? Or did someone catch a glimpse of him, and figure out his secret?

Anti tucks away some papers on his desk, and Jameson studies the lines of his brother's face. He knows how rare a privilege it is to be allowed to do so. Rarer still for Anti to look back at someone without suspicion. With warmth. Sometimes, Anti even lets Jameson touch his face. Scratch his small nails along the rough texture of his beard.

His brother was born a Monster, not that Jameson will ever understand the word. Even after all these years, he's so fond of his brother's appearance. The skin is clear and smooth, no matter how little he cares for it, and even the scars seem artful, charming, intriguing. His mismatched Graceling eyes burn with color, green and blue, each competing to be brighter than the other, and the dark beard and waves of emerald hair are so familiar to Jameson. He remembers the first time he met him, when Anti came to his room to save him. He remembers asking his brother if he was an angel.

Not an angel. More like a demon. Always a Monster. But never to him.

"You wanted to talk to me?" Jameson signs, and Anti's quick to turn his head from his work. He swore to him years ago he would never ignore his signing, and he's not sure the promise ever leaves the front of Anti's mind.

Since he's about the only one who understands him, Jameson's grateful.

"You done with lessons for the day?" Anti asks.

"Yes."

"And you took care of Bertrand?"

"Of course I did."

"Good." Anti finishes shutting his drawers and gives Jameson his full attention, looking at him keenly from across the desk. "I need your help with a mission."

Jameson's stomach turns over. "I don't want to watch any more dying, Anti."

He sees his brother bite back on a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed for a second, and Jameson squirms in his seat. They've talked about this so many times, he knows what Anti's going to say before he says it.

"You have to learn how to kill someday, Jameson. I'm trying to get you accustomed to death. But if you're not ready yet, we can wait. It's okay for you to be a kid a while longer."

Right, thinks Jameson flatly. That wonderful conundrum of Anti wanting him to be fully grown and tiny forever at the same time.

"That's not it, though. I just need you to wait outside while I storm a building. A girl will come out and you can take her somewhere safe. Then I'll come get you and we'll go home."

"That's it?" asks Jameson suspiciously. "I just have to wait outside a building? Won't the girl wonder why I can't talk?"

"I'll tell her you can't. Just lead her away. To that big church nearby that you like. It will be easy."

"But can't some of your... minions help? Or Anja or someone?"

Anti starts laughing. "Minions, is that the sign for that? No, James, I can't trust lackeys with this, and partners even less so. Anyway, Anja is in Loughlin. You'll have to come with."

"Somebody tried to cheat you, then, and you're punishing them."

His brother pauses for a moment, looking him over. "No," he says. "They don't know me. But the girl is innocent and the rest are not. So you'll wait outside for her. Tomorrow night, okay? So get done with everything you need to do before then."

Well, it doesn't sound so terrible. "Okay, fine. I'll do it."

"There's a good kid. Come on, darling. You ready for some dinner?"

"Yes, let's go!"

He loves when Anti takes the time to eat with him. His brother puts a hand on his shoulder as he leads him out of his study, locking it firmly behind him, just like the rest. "And maybe we should talk about your birthday coming up," adds Anti.

Jameson looks up at him, surprised. It's not a topic they bring up, usually: Jameson getting older. He doesn't understand why, but he knows his brother's never liked it, knows celebrating his birthday is always something Anti has to force. It's like a secret they keep, at times - one of many.

"What about it?" Jameson asks.

"Like what you want to do and get for presents," says Anti. "You're going to be ten, after all. That's a milestone."

"What? No, Anti, I'll be eleven."

Anti stops short and looks at him, mouth curved down.

"I'll be eleven," Jameson repeats. "I was ten last year. Do you remember?"

"Ah," says Anti, and for a long moment, he's quiet. "Of course you were. I do remember."

And then, softer still, "you'll be eleven."

"Maybe you could stay home with me all day," Jameson offers. "And we'll go for a ride with a picnic, and we can have the beef with gravy I like for dinner?"

But Anti's doing that thing now, that thing that he does around his birthday. A sad thing, Jamie thinks, or maybe a mad one. He can never quite tell. But he looks at Jameson, and then right through him, and it's like he stops seeing him completely. He wonders what his brother sees when he looks at him like that.

"Of course we can," says Anti, but Jameson doesn't think he understood him at all.

It's happening more and more, lately.

Jameson puts his arm around his brother's waist and hugs himself against his side. Anti can give him missions and lessons and duties if he wants, and that's okay. But his real job is always going to be this: taking care of Anti, like Anti takes care of him. After all, if he doesn't do it, he knows there is no one else in the world who will.

Next Chapter

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

hi bea!! I've seen that you always give people such fun asks, so it's your turn!! what song is associated with each color, and what does your current favorite song taste like?? ok byee :]]

hey ben, i love this ask!! thank you so much for thinking of me 🩷 i’ll drop something in your inbox after this!! adding a read more because it’s kinda lengthy. apologies this took so long!

my current favorite song is kiss with a fist by florence + the machine. it tastes like bubblegum.

red: bedroom hymns (florence + the machine)

flo is very tinted red in general. i saw this song described as the woman’s perspective in tmtc, and that’s so interesting. this is just a very red song, musically and lyrically: the wine, the women, the bedroom hymns.

orange: damage gets done feat. brandy carlile (hozier)

was tempted to use first light for this but thought it too cliche. dgd is really such an underrated track on uu. i think that the almost ballad-like vocals and imagery evoke ORANGE.

yellow: up (sing street)

the chorus specifically is what made me choose this!! it literally sounds like the most majestic sunrise.

green: from eden (hozier)

this is green to me in a lot of ways! in that eden’s apple is green, the serpent was green, hozier is green with envy.

blue: the returner (allison russell)

blue is the color of renewal for me, not white, and i think the returner is such an uplifting song. it’s a perfect, crisp blue, and allison is telling you it’ll all be okay.

indigo: better love (hozier)

i have never known a darker blue than the darkness i have known in you?? nuff said

purple: cosmic love (florence + the machine)

all the pictures i see of the cosmos and the galaxy are in some blueish purple background, so i thought that this song was a good fit :)

[ruthlesslistener]

We sure do live in a society, don't we.

The anons sending you hate are doing my head in. Like, I can completely understand why they bristled at your initial response, because as someone who writes Ghost as an adult in a child's body (hi, Gently, my beloved fic that is drowning from my dead muse), I had a kind of similar "hey wait" response at first.

But then you CLARIFIED. You took the time to ask, listen and let others educate you on another POV. It may not have changed your own personal HCs (and that's OK!!!), but you clarified your meaning was not people like me - it was not the average person who spurred it - and that's all anyone can really ask for. You don't have to agree with or ask people.

The best part of fandom is taking bits and pieces of each other's ideas and using them to decorate our sand castles and make them our own. That means "I wouldn't spin it that way but I liked reading how you did it." It also sometimes means "Oh I cannot get behind that but I respect your right to."

I think it says a lot that people are on anon, rather than actually talking to you and giving you a chance to engage with them one-on-one. I'm not sure I would label them trolls. I think their feelings got hurt and they are lashing out because of it, in an impolite way, rather than stopping to listen to explanations. I am going to give the benefit of doubt and assume that ill-intent wasn't meant, and that the reason they're on anon is that anxiety has them going "if I say it on my main, I'm going to get flamed because I offended popular tumblr user." To that I say: If you weren't on anon, Aren could've replied privately to you, and likely would have. A one-on-one conversation can go a large way for trying to clear up misunderstandings.

TBH, I probably could've just sent all of this on Discord but I just am frustrated. Asks like the ones you received are why I am terrified of sharing my own headcanons, why I assume anyone asking me ANY opinions has bad faith, and why everything I say has a giant ass disclaimer on it with "THIS IS LIKE, JUST MY OPINION GUYS" and we shouldn't have to do that. We shouldn't have to sit and police everything that we say because Someone Might Twist It.

Anyway, sorry. I just needed to put this out here because I was about to blow up on my own blog. lmao

Thank you tumblr user grollow I appreciate it immensely and I agree with everything you said about fandom being a sandbox made more fun by people having different ideas that make things fun to play with. It's just that I've been off in my corner playing relatively on my own for a bit, which kinda fucks over the amount of context you get on things a bit. And also the miscommunication had the misfortune of landing squarely in the intersection between 'things I really don't like' and 'things that have a canon basis but lack canonical descriptive details', turning it into a shitshow. Which I really really fucking wish didn't happen, even if I did enjoy discussing the pros and cons of different mental interpretations of Ghost and was able to come to the conclusion that it's about as appealing to me as a slice of apple pie. Which is to say, I like certain bits of it and will gladly nibble at said bits, but if there's any other option out there I'd take it over pie anyday. It's not bad and I certainly do enjoy it in extremely specific context, but it also doesn't appeal to me in the slightest and there's certain parts that I refuse to touch altogether (the texture of cooked fruit makes me cringe and nauseates me, much like the idea of Ghost being an adult trapped in a child's body from a horror perspective incites panic). But that's fine, bc then I can just plop the filling onto a friend's plate for their enjoyment, and nibble away at the bits I like in piece. My dislike of pie doesn't extend to the people who enjoy it, nor do I get upset when my brother refuses to eat what I cook for him. He's picky, I'm picky, I've got no right to judge. He's just as valid for saying my cream cheese frosting is gross as I am for thinking him refusing to eat anything but mac n cheese and scrambled eggs is gross. Same concept with fandom here

(And honestly, my judgement on the whole minor/adult thing is seperate from Ghost as a character altogether. I'm of similar mind with Miquella of Elden Ring, who is canonically an adult trapped in a child's body. Having a relationship with him in his child form would be fucked up- hell, even Mohg goes for breaking the curse first, and Mohg is canonically fucking insane! This isn't something limited to just one fandom, it's a hard line I draw in fiction in general)

Also yeah, I totally would have just worked it out in private, but I get the feeling the anon thinks I'm running some sort of clique or something over here where I would have twisted it into clout somehow. Which needless to say, I would not fucking do. Can't say this enough, but I'm autistic as all getout and had to deal with that enough in high school so I have nothing but contempt for that sort of behavior.

[mamayan]

Me again who asked about the hentais. Since you said it was alright to send you some more recs here are some. But these aren’t one shots and are series that aren’t hentai unfortunately. You’ve probably read a lot of the well known yan hentais already hence my differing recs. But they do have yanderes in them ranging from hard to soft! I think these are more unknown or at least less popular so I’ll be surprised if you’ve read some

Shadow of Visions (Chinese-hard yan who is rabidly persistent for fmc)

Tian Jiang Xian Shu Nan (Chinese-soft/med yan who is just a loyal cutie patootie who wants to be loved by fmc)

Beast Master (Japanese-soft/hard yan who’s adorably animalistic at times? Been a long long time since I first read it)

Crazy Girl Shin Bia (Korean-hard yan but unfortunately he’s a side character that snaps for fmc when the series starts to end)

Dai Ja Ni Totsuida Musume (Japanese-soft/hard yan who’s a literal monstrous talking snake)

Fiancée’s Observation Log of the Self Proclaimed Villainous (Japanese-soft/hard yan who falls in love with an isekaid girl)

Honggane (Korean-med platonic brother yan for fmc)

No More Princes (Korean-soft/med yan that’s a dragon)

The Reason Why Ophelia Can’t Get Away from the Duke (Korean-soft/hard yan who likes his step sister)

This Time I Will Definitely Be Happy! (Japanese-hard yan antagonist with a great over arching story)

These aren’t yan but I thought you may like them…

Kimi wo Mae ni shitara Ore wa mou…Nikushokuha Danshi no Junjou na Yokujou (Japanese-Pretty smut with a hot man)

I Became the Mother of the Strongest Demon Lord’s 10 Children in Another World (Japanese-thought I should include it since it’s funny and a cute family story)

Sijin: The Brocaded Tale of Girl Si (Chinese-not really yan but has a strong fmc who has a super loyal hubby)

The Reincarnated Little Mermaid Does Not Want to Disappear as Foam (Japanese-cute retelling of the little mermaid from an isekai perspective)

The Reincarnated Snow White Doesn’t Want to Eat the Poisoned Apple (Japanese-cute retelling of Snow White from an isekai perspective)

Hana and the Beast Man (Japanese-not really yan but thought I should include it since it’s basically monster f ing)

Rosen Garten Saga (Japanese-legendary characters fight sexually)

I hope you can have fun reading some of these!

This might be forward but I love you—

I’M GOING TO DEVOUR ALL OF THESE!!! I’ve read a few but tbh I need to reread them too cuz they’re so good! Thank you so much♡

You sent me so many too and I adore the little snippets and yandere evals ｡♡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡

[lnkedmyheart]

@themoonawaitsherexecutioner

So about how skk would hit different if one or both was a woman is less in regards to how it changes the overall story but how the general energy changes.

For starters if either one of them was a woman while the other stayed a man, the biggest change in their interaction and by extension in the way they are perceived would have been their dynamic. Nobody would have denied the way their interactions are heavily charged with some kind of tension. Sexual or romantic or whatever there is a pull there in canon but with one of them being a woman nobody would deny that they have some kind of subtext there. From Dazai waiting for Chuuya to show up, their banter moving from vitriolic to friendly teasing, to the dead apple scene with the princess-prince analogy, to Dazai catching Chuuya in his arms in sb, the silly little love confession and admitting Chuua was part of the reason Dazai decided to live at the time and even the current meursault situation with the line about the moments where their hearts connected. Remove the mlm or wlw aspect for half a second and people will automatically begin to notice all the subtext present in the story and interactions.

We also know that Dazai is a womanizer who broke many hearts back in the mafia and that his interactions with women tend to be pretty shallow (except Yosano and Koyou) and I think it would have been interesting how that would have changed had Chuuya been a woman. There is a distance between Dazai and the important women in his life, there is also a distance between him and the men, all of them, including Oda (at least from Oda's perspective he never fully grasped how much he meant to Dazai). That distance is entirely absent with Chuuya and it's repeatedly brought up not just in the text but also in their interaction. Dazai has a way of talking to Chuuya and Chuuya can read his words like they're his own thoughts. Dazai is also very physical with Chuuya in general, constantly ignoring his own boundaries all the time. I would love to see how that would change had Chuuya been a woman. It would also lead to a scenario with a woman as the muscle and the man as the thinker/damsel.

The same is true vice versa, how would their interactions with each other change if Dazai was a woman while Chuuya stayed a guy? Chuuya is stated to be very respectful to women by the creators, we know he has a soft spot for little old ladies, but he doesn't underestimate them as was the case with Yosano and he has been raised by Koyou. The point is how would things change in that situation? It would be more traditional, yes. Dazai being the damsel and Chuuya being the rescuer on a surface level but not entirely because Dazai is never actually helpless. I also think the most interesting thing about Dazai as the woman is actually in how it changes a lot of the subtext in general with everyone else in the series and not just Chuuya. Dazai would perhaps be less feared in the mafia as the demon prodigy as a woman because of the potential to underestimate her or maybe even more feared idk. How would it alter her interactions with the men in her life normally. How would Dazai's depression and suicidal tendencies be viewed and treated in the story and how they would affect her. Would there be any major change at all or would there be none.

And lastly if they were both women, again, most of the above points still hold true for this scenario. However there is more here given that there would be heavy subtext with 2 women instead of 2 men. In this situation there would imo be less change in how they interact with each other and more in how the others interact with them and perceive them. (Also I'm a lesbian, wlw is always more fun to me than mlm or wlm lmao).

On a negative sidenote, had one of skk been a woman it would have been less popular of a ship because it would have been a het one.

[hypnotisedfireflies]

First, I just want to say how much I absolutely loved The Legend of Charro. It really was a great old style serial western.

Second, I would love to request a little cutting room floor material from Joel and Tess's sweetheart period. I loved the moment with them in the orchard so if you had anything more like that, I would love it. If not I will honestly take anything I love these two so much.

Hello!

Thank you so much for reading and being so supportive of The Legend of Charro throughout.  It was really nice to be able to delve into something a little different and I had a lot of fun.

Luckily (or unluckily) all the apple orchard scene did make it into the story.  However, I have a sweetheart scene that was cut to share in its place.

The schoolhouse opening scene was originally supposed to take place from Tess’s POV.  Then I changed some things around and that flashback had to occur in a Joel chapter instead, so it got reworked. I kept the little bit that I wrote from her perspective – which mirrors what was published but then had a different direction at the end that did not end up occurring in the actual story.  It ends abruptly because that’s at the point I realised it wasn’t working, lol.  The parts I wanted to accomplish from Tess’s POV were rewritten into the apple orchard scene.

I should also note that the reason I tried to include the cut scene was because it was one of the tier prompts for the BigBang challenge.  There’s another scene or two I cut with this very premise.  I just couldn’t get it to work anywhere.

The whole town gathered together the day the new schoolhouse was unveiled.  It lay a short walk from the town proper, down a little new path and over a rambling brook.  Tess’s mother had provided all her own learning and, had she been young enough to go to the school, she probably wouldn’t have been allowed anyway.  The ranch they had recently built to be their new home was just too far away – almost a day’s ride from the town – and there was too much work to be done.  Book learning was a luxury, and she was already sixteen.

Tess drifted from her mother’s side once the glossy ribbon was cut.  She wandered around the big party.  It seemed everyone from Black Creek and surrounds had come.  She was curious about all her new neighbours.  Everything seemed so far away out here.  They had only one another on which to depend.

There was a long table for dining and people sat hip to hip on it, filling up on cakes and pies and all the good things to eat that had been made especially for the occasion.  Four men in their clean shirts got all together with guitars and violin and started up some cheerful music just made for dancing.  Tess liked dancing.  She tried to keep still.  She didn’t really want to dance out here with all these people watching.  Her family was the latest to come.  Everyone was just as curious about her as she was about them.

She watched Isobel dancing with Isaac.  It looked like he could learn a thing or two from her friend – and maybe so could Tess.  Isobel was so light on her feet, her pretty pale pink dress swirling in the sunlight.  She always seemed to know what the latest fashions were, and just how to wear them right.  Tess tilted her head to one side and tried to follow the dance.  She didn’t know the steps but Isobel made them look so easy, easier than they had to be.  She floated with an enviable, practiced grace.

“Tess!  Papa’s looking for you.”  Her brother Nathaniel waved her to follow him.  When she looked like she might drag her feet, or not come at all, he sighed and took her by the wrist.  “Come on, Tess.”

“What does he want?”

“You not wanderin’ off on your own, for one thing.”

The crowd parted around them and she saw her father talking to the sheriff, an older man with a stunning white moustache and foamy hair beneath his hat.  His wife was in warm conversation with Tess’s mother.  She turned at once when Tess appeared and gave her a lightning-quick once-over to make sure she was still presentable.

“Thérèse.  There you are.  Some people here have been waitin’ to make your acquaintance.”

Tess had met the Sheriff Miller and his wife before – their daughter too, who was just a little younger and would probably make good use of that school.  But then she noticed two boys standing by the sheriff.  They were around her age.  They looked like they’d been washed and starched and couldn’t wait to get out there in the dust again.

“Well, don’t you look mighty pretty?”  The sheriff smiled down at her.  “Are you enjoying the party, young Miss?”

“Yes, sir.”

“These are my boys,” he continued.  “You might see them around.  They’ll be looking after these parts long after I’m gone.  You have any trouble and you can’t come to me, you come talk to my boys, all right?  This here’s Thomas.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“And this is my eldest, is Joel.  Your ma tells me he’s your age, though maybe got most of a year on you.”

Tess opened her mouth to greet him, but there was a great swell of applause as the musicians finished their song.  She looked back to the boy as her mother took her by the hand and drew her away.

“Come on, Thérèse.  Help me cut up the last of those pies.”

Tess cast one final glance over her shoulder before the crowd closed in.  There was just enough time to shoot one another a quick, shy grin.  Nobody but them had to know he was already making excuses to pass their ranch at least once a week. 

She helped her mother and then, with a willingness that could get her whipped, stole from the party with Isobel the first instance her mother turned her back.  They hurried behind the new schoolhouse. Tess could smell the fresh paint as they skulked close to the boards. 

There was a little flat, green space between the schoolhouse and the creek and no windows overlooking them.

“This’ll do,”  Isobel announced.  “It’s real easy, you’ll get it in no time.  Put your hands up like this.”

Isobel began to demonstrate, but it was too hard to follow when Isobel insisted on staying in the girl part.  Sure, it showed Tess what she was meant to do, but she didn’t know how that connected in with what her partner was doing.   Isobel soon lost interest. 

“Keep practicin’,” she told Tess.  “I’ve gotta be seen.”

“What?”

Isobel lowered her arms and leaned forward, cupping her hand to her mouth.  “I got a sweetheart.  Well – almost.  It’s any day now.  I know he’s been itchin’ to ask me to dance all day.  You keep practicin’ and I’ll see how you done when I come back, okay?  Then maybe when you’re good you come out and I’ll make your acquaintance with his brother, all right?  We could be sisters!”

Tess did a few more steps and then stopped, feeling foolish doing this all by herself behind the schoolhouse.  She looked up where Isobel had disappeared and turned sharply away, moseying closer to the stream.  She kicked at a tussock of grass.  Wasn’t much point learning how to dance, anyway.  There was always too much to do at the ranch. 

“I could teach ya.”

She whirled around to see the sheriff’s boy, the one who liked going past her ranch and looking for her when it was quiet, coming slowly across the green. 

“If you want,” he added, taking his hands out of his pockets.

Tess looked up at the building.  She could hear the revelry well enough, but nobody else was in sight.

“You been spyin’ on me?”

“No,” he protested, eyes going wide.  “No, not that.  Just – came down and … I saw you dancin’. And I saw you watchin’ the others.  I can show you.  Cos I can do the other part,” he hastened to add.

Tess fiddled with her hands in the small of her back.  “Well … you shouldn’t be spyin’.  But I guess that’s all right.  If you want to show me, I mean.”

Joel came forward and offered her his hand.  Tess placed stroked his palm lightly with his fingers before she laid her hand on his proper.  Joel drew her nearer and cleared his throat.  He began the lesson.

[bisexualshakespeare]

fic writer asks

I saw these questions by @ficwip and decided to just answer all of them rather than waiting to be asked

30 questions below the cut!

What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again? Uhh I wrote a lot of smut? 😅 oh I have a fic that is just a sex scene? it was part of a series so the lead in was technically there and also I was about to start my period and was very horny. I loooove a long lead in to the sex. Lightning Strike, and kind of Nymph Butter too, has like a couple horny paragraphs and then sex. I don't know if I would do it again but it wasn't really planned? so I guess we'll see what happens!

How many fics did you work on this year? (They don’t have to be finished or published!) it looks like 25??? wild

What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer? I think I have a better grasp of how I intuitively write and I learned that it's NOT a thing I need to train myself out of. It's okay if I write non chronologically or in dialogue only for the first draft, because following the way my brain works will lead me into the most energetic path and I can circle back and add description or transitions later. I think I'm better at description than I think I am but it just doesn't come as quickly.

What piece of media inspired you the most? I mean I published 5 Willow fics in less than two months and started several more so I feel like I have to say Willow!

What fandom(s) did you write for this year? Willow, Ted Lasso, Haven, a couple other one off fandom filks

What ship(s) captured your heart? Airk/Elora/Graydon I am such a sucker for ot3s

What character(s) captured your heart? THRAXUS BOORMAN MY LOVE

Did you write for a new fandom or ship this year? Yeah I watched Willow in i think April and enjoyed nothing else as much

What fic meant the most to you to write? Finishing Multivocal was soooooo wow. Like it is The longest thing I've ever finished and it really brought writing back into my daily life as something to look forward too rather than something to feel guilty for not doing? I wrote it for like three years. This year I made some edits and added some scenes that made me feel really good about taking my time. I really wrote the fic I wanted to see (except i mean i would've preferred them to fuck but other than that lol)

What fic made you feel the happiest to work on? Eckleberry Pie was so fun. It was really stream of consciousness. I just had no worries about what other people would think cause I literally was like no one is gonna read this but @lowkeyed1 so I can do whatever stupid shit I want 😂

What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing? I think Apple Candy. I didn't realize how it was going to end until I got there. I kinda sped through the end of the chapter cause it was already going up after the October collection was closed and I wanted to get it done, so I was just kinda awkwardly figuring out what we were gonna leave on and then I wrote that Graydon was loved and I was like 'oh. yeah. that's what this was about!'

What fic was the most difficult to write? Did you finish it? All of them were difficult. If we're including fics I didn't finish then probably every ted lasso fic I tried to write and couldn't. I was planning on writing a series from Jamie's perspective, I tried to write a fantasy AU, I tried to write PWP, just so much did not work and then I left the fandom.

What fic was the easiest to write? I think I wrote Lightning Strike in like an hour lol

What were your shortest and longest fics this year? If we're ignoring filks and Multivocal, which started posting last year, then the shortest would be Bridges at 670 words and the longest would be my as yet unposted Cyrano AU at 21K.

Rec a fic you wrote or posted in 2023 I mean I have to go with Eckleberry Pie and the rest of the Harvest Festival series right?! Or if you don't want a bunch of smut then In The Middle is a filk about yelling at creators, so that's a mood

What were your go-to writing songs? I got really into these "immersive writing session" videos where someone buys the rights to a bunch of instrumental music and puts it together to fit a vibe. I listened a lot to traveling through a medieval fantasy world but it gets darker the longer you write What were your go-to writing snacks? tiny bottles of wine cocktails from the grocery store

What was the hardest fic to title? I guess Lightning Strike? I almost always name fics after phrases I use in the fic and in the Harvest Fest series I wanted them to be named after food cause I knew the last one was going to be called Apple Candy, but Lightning Strike didn't have any time for food cause it was just fuckin so I had to find something that felt like it fit but was different. It was a change in perspective, Elora instead of Graydon, so once I decided I wasn't mad about the title not fitting the theme.

Share your favorite opening line Okay I actually wanna use a filk for this cause I love the first verse of What You Believe: How on earth could I be calm When inside my chest's a ticking bomb? The nicest guys can be deceiving Lift you up, then leave you bleeding It's a goddamn tragedy like Misérables

Share your favorite ending line As the moon rose on the final day of the Harvest Festival, Graydon knew, with the utmost certainty, he was loved.

Share your favorite piece of dialogue From Apple Candy:

“So what am I gonna do while you and Airk are together? Sit in my room twiddling my thumbs?” She scoffed and dropped her hands from his shoulders. “I kinda thought you would do things that I don’t like, like studying your languages or practicing the flute.” “Yeah or sleeping with Boorman.” Elora groaned and rolled her eyes. It was kinda cute though. Knowing she was in love with him made it better. He ran a thumb over her hip. “Hey so, Airk left us your bedroom for a few hours. What do you think he’s doing, knowing what we’re supposed to be doing?” Elora’s eyes narrowed. “He better be twiddling his damn thumbs.”

Share an excerpt from your favorite scene From Multivocal, a scene between Duke and Audrey I added right before posting and was much needed:

“I think it could work." She pressed. "The three of us.” “Oh you’re not even gonna ask me? I could have other offers. I’m a very well liked guy.” “As I can see by the gigantic mess all your friends left.” “Hey I don’t mind a mess,” he held her eyes, “as long as I’m not the only one trying to clean up.” She stepped closer. “You’re not.” Audrey put a hand on his chest. She had almost done the same thing several months ago, when she thought the only option was giving him his family trouble again. But then she’d wrapped her hand around his neck instead and pulled him in for their first kiss since Colorado.

Share the final version of a sentence or paragraph you struggled with. What about it was challenging? Are you happy with how it turned out?

this is so hard. I feel like I forget what I used to struggle with cause I'm so focus on what i'm currently struggling with 😅

I had a really hard time writing Nymph Butter because it was this mix of humor and smut and sincerity and I wanted to have like real moments of connection between Graydon and Elora without it being so serious that it killed the sexy mood. The whole fic was a big balancing act there.

“Can you stop talking about Airk? He has nothing to do with us.” “Of course he does!” She shouted, hitting the ground in frustration. “I thought I loved him, but what if I was just using him to get over you? Like you're using Boorman to get over me.” “First of all, Boorman likes being used. Don't you, pal?” Boorman’s moan came from behind him, along with the sound of his hand sliding with help from the nymph butter.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I was very meh when I first posted it, but on a reread I think it holds up. Since my new main ship is an ot3 I'm sure I'll have many more chances to work on this mixture of sex and relationship negotiation.

What’s something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

I think I was surprised in Apple Candy that Boorman got a little jealous of Graydon and Elora. Boorman was always supportive of them but when I was writing the morning after, I started thinking in Boorman's voice and I felt that little twinge of sensitivity that he has and how he runs away from his emotions and I was like hmm okay I'll follow that. The overall story was the same but I think it added a little weight to the Graydon/Elora relationship negotiation that came after.

What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.) a combination of GDrive, LibreOffice, OneNote, and a physical notebook.

If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year? Probably in August when I first started writing Cryano AU. I hadn't written anything the whole month and then in the last week and a half I wrote like 5k

Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic?

No but I should! I need to think of a good finished project ritual. I think I usually just text a friend and sigh and watch youtube videos and wait to get a comment.

How did you recharge between fics?

I...don't? Should I have a recharge ritual too?

If this were an awards show, who would you thank?

🥺 I would like to thank my IRL friend Lee for beta-ing Multivocal for me. I would like to thank lowkeyed for leading the way in the scary world of rare pairs. Thanks to everyone on the Revolorilution server for encouraging my ideas. Everyone at Voiceteam for encouraging my filks, especially klb! And of course I thank everyone who commented and gave a kudos on my fics! I love you all so much! It's been a great year of writing! Thank you 😭

What’s something that you want to write in 2024?

I want to write all of the willow season 2 fic ideas. I am manifesting an announcement of the show coming back and I want to make sure I get all my thoughts out before that happens. I'm definitely excited about the possibility and would like to have trust in the writers, BUT I put off all my ted lasso ideas until season 3 and now they're all dead to me so gotta grab my joy while I can!

[lorelune]

loreeeee, i read the blade fic update and i CANT. express. how much i love your writing (again LOL). ugh, the way you write thoughts, mentalities, how ppl navigate and take in info...insane. INSANE. ugh,,,,,,im sorry but having adrenaline "tumble between the eyes" or the weird sureness of his thoughts but still being unidentifiable (unintelligible? or there little understanding of the source of specific thoughts) in and of themselves...the way you write makes me FERAL. im savoring it so much, i just bit into the juiciest orange, the ripest strawberry, took a mouthful of the crispest apple cider ive ever tasted in my life--(sorry im low on sugar rn HAHA)

i have a lot to say. but not enough mental space to go through all of it...but i do want to mention how you wrote the retrospective scenes of blade being washed by kafka, it was captured so well. i know this kind of experience is very nuanced, and i think you expressed how blade processed it well. especially how this shows up in pieces thereafter in the rest of the fic, it's different from just mentioning or referring to a past moment. you threaded the experience to the present and from reading your works overall, i believe this is a "trademark" of your writing, at least to me.

the trademark is that there is purpose in every mention, there is delicacy in choosing a perspective and the lens in which the world is viewed or something is experienced by a character...there is a specific atmosphere, headspace, etc., that you want to convey and the entire thing is brought together with every sentence that follows the previous. youre making these connections, however small they may be, between shards of the characters' lives...it feels like you properly chewed them so you got the texture, flavor profile, salinity, etc., of those characters. it's what got me hooked onto you works, and im afraid (feral, positive) youre only getting better at it. im in trouble (eager) :D

this is small, but i personally love seeing purely from one chara's pov, i love unreliable narrator-esque stuff, it just tickles something in me, maybe bc life is THAT subjective to the one living it (also AP Lit was one of my fav classes back in hs, so is it rlly a surprise LMAO). i love connotations, questionable morals, existential dilemmas, all of it. and seeing that blade is full of the latter two, im SO up for it. i also love how he's constantly (unconsciously) trying to be mindful of the space he takes up, even if he chooses to not care for certain (most) ppl. idk, to me thats a testament to his previous life/experience, and it just adds lore (see what i did there :3) and depth to everything. and im so looking forward to see how he navigates and learns (pog self reflection!) about his violent urges/tendencies, and what they mean for him (and mc)--and even if he doesn't i am looking forward to your writing 🙏

this is not even 1/4 of what i wanted to say LMFAOO, but its 1am for me and i need some sleep...thank you for this lore. :) we are blessed to have you share your talent, its my spiders thread in the hellscape im in (life), love you always, stay healthy and happy lunar new yr if you celebrate!!

SLEEEPY 🥺!! thank you for the kind words!!!!! 🥺💕💕💕!!!!! i am screaming crying throwing UP i appreciate your feedback so so much!!!!!

rambling under the cut <3

writing blade for the architect has been both like.... deeply cathartic and so very different from any character i have written for!!! i don't write a ton in character POV, however blade's feels unique and interesting in a way that keeps me going back to him. the dynamic between blade and reader is so interesting to continue to revisit, and writing their relationship expand and change has been very fun!!

blade is truly monstrous, but not for any of the reasons he thinks. his monstrous is monstrous in the way that he shouldn't exist or be alive, and that he essentially a human weapon, but how he feels isn't monstrous. he's coping. poorly. and through centuries of compounded trauma and an accumulation of mara. he absolutely sees some of himself in reader and can't help but want to ... protect them? if nothing else be near them. it's horrific, the way he thinks, but not monstrous. and i think that's an important distinction in the architect!!!

blade is an incredibly unreliable narrator. it is integral to the story (moreso as we go on) that he is unreliable. his own confusion is woven into the plot and vital to his relationship with the reader. his feelings towards you are a tangled mess, and so much of that comes from his own fractured consciousness.

its been very fun to write and dive into it just like... explore. full send. i started the architect originally as a drabble that was supposed to be uneditted LOL and i didn't want to pull any punches with the implications and like... 'darkness' of the story. i'm glad that you have enjoyed it sleepy and THANK YOU for your comments and elaborations, they truly make my day and get me hype to continue the story too <33 thank you thank you thank you 💞💞💞

[babyboybokuto]

hiii cece hope you're having a great day/night ♡ i wanted to return the favor and ask you something !! sooo i wanted to know your favorite characters of all time, like your top 5, and if u want to i would like to know why !! i just think u can learn a lot from someone by their favorite blorbos lol

OOOOOO this is a good one, ok in no particular order (because I just can’t I love them all so much) I’m gonna say my top 5 are

1) Bokuto (obv, that’s my sunshine cinnamon apple)

My best friend was the one to get me into Haikyuu and the first character I actually loved was Nishinoya, but when this himbo ball of light came on screen my heart was like “him, that’s our boy”

Also fun fact I’m actually such a hater lowkey because in my first year of college (before I was into anime) my ex was actually watching Haikyuu and I walked in on her crying over an episode and I looked at her like 🤨 what is wrong with you crying over some pictures (oh how the turnt tables am I right)

2) Gon and Killua (you can’t separate them)

My babies my sons my everything’s , HxH had such a big impact on me and it took me FOREVER to watch it so it was a part of my routine for a while and it sounds silly to say I was inspired by some 12 year olds but genuinely I was I absolutely love their characters and their development throughout the story

3) Nobara (best girl)

From the moment she showed up on screen I have loved this girl so much she’s so sassy and funny and she is so sure about herself her sense of self is something I can only dream to have and she’s such a fucking badass her technique is incredible and I miss her so much GEGE BRING HER BACK

4) Gojo

Riding that jjk train still it’s actually really funny because I actually hated Gojo when I first watched season 1, I found him to be arrogant and annoying, and then I read the manga and I realized that the reason I hate him was not really because he’s arrogant and annoying (which he is) but it’s because I saw myself in him (tragic I know) and then especially after I read Hidden Inventory arc my entire perspective changed and I realized he’s actually a character I treasure very much and I love him

5) Zoro and Sanji (another package deal sorry)

Now hear me out right I am like 0.000001% of the way through one piece (I’m on like episode 140) but the way these characters have stolen my heart is insane, and do I happen to also simp for both of them?? Yes, but the point is that their actual characters are so amazing to me and I know there’s still more of Sanjis backstory that I haven’t really seen and it’s most likely going to break me but I just have such a love for them and their dynamic so I’m gonna say they’re top five for me; the way that Zoro is so dedicated and loyal is something I find to be an incredible aspect of him (not to mention his talents as a swordsman), and Sanji cares so deeply for people and is such a caretaker and the fact that he is able to fight using only his legs is also incredible to me

So those are my top 5 (7?) favorite blorbos and a little bit as to why , idk why I stuck specifically to anime because I definitely have favorite characters from other forms of media but this is just what my brain wanted to supply at this very moment

thank you for the question carmen 🥺🫶🏼

[thewalrus-said]

For the ask meme! 🍍, 🍏, and 🍑?

Pineapple: What kind of AUs do you like? Are there any AUs you hate or just generally have beef with?

Wildly variable, I'm afraid, depending on the canon and what would be different from the canon. I don't know if there's any AU as a whole that I have beef with (the one fanfic I read where Viktor and Yuuri were doping still haunts me, though).

If we're getting personal, the one AU that I apply to almost every fandom, in the safety of my own head, is the one where characters have access to a psychic, who can show them other characters' perspectives or what's happening to they at times when they weren't there or couldn't see. I like to think of how characters peripheral to the action, whatever the action is, would react to it, so I do that a lot. I'll never write it down, it's just for me, but it's fun!

Green apple: Is there something you overuse, whether it’s a certain phrase, trope, or piece of punctuation?

I think I am also a semicolon-overuser. For The Arrangement, my editor went through and highlighted every time I used the words "utter(ly)" or "mere(ly)" and I almost cringed out of my skin, though that's a relic of my "period" style, not all my writing. I also like whichever dash this is: —

Peach: If you could make a connection between your favorite character and another work you care about (whether a crossover/fusion or a wonderfully “pretentious” literary reference) what would it be? How would it work?

Oooh, good question....

I'll do two. For Chris Giacometti... Maybe Maurice, or Bright Young Things? I haven't actually seen BYT, just gifsets of Michael Sheen, but I deeply want to throw Chris into the interwar homosexual scene. And that gifset of Michael Sheen is almost exactly how I pictured Chris in Blackbird.

And for the blorbo currently occupying all my thoughts, Henry DuBois IV, I want him in modern times or close to. I don't think this really counts, but I've been listening to a lot of Elton John while rotating him in my mind like a rotisserie chicken, and some sort of Bernie Taupin-style collaboration would be fun for him, given that he canonically writes the music to his boyfriend's lyrics. Not really a fictional work, but it's the best I can think of.

Thanks!