#how does Taiwan keep doing this to me

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

A few of the things that I am not normal about in today's episode of Kiseki: Dear to Me.

Chen Yi yoinking Eddie into his arms, as always

and then doing a kabedon on him. *fans self*

Eddie smelling Chen Yi's jacket, and then CUDDLING WITH IT TO SLEEP.

Eddie attempting to hit on Chen Yi to make him back off, and it backfiring spectacularly, because Chen Yi is now super dtf.

Followed by a carry (and Chen Yi opening the door with his foot, the smooth motherfucker)

And a bed toss

and Chen Yi making it clear that he 1) sees boss as a boss now, and 2) knows Eddie is lying about not having feelings.

Ok, yeah, pretty much every moment between those two.

Then we have:

Eddie & Zong Yi's friendship

and Eddie running to Zong Yi to confirm that Chen Yi might actually be into him now.

Zong Yi having to immediately write down Ze Rui not remembering him, because otherwise he won't remember it. *sob*

Only Ze Rui does remember and just wants to fuck up the Fans for justice, and also feels like he destroyed Zong Yi's life. *more sobs*

And his brother being an absolute supportive boss about everything, and trying to get him to go back to the man he loves.

Seriously I love everything about An Jun Peng, and where is Lin Chia Wei to come and smooch him because clearly we have a pattern of prior series couples cameoing as a couple (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE ME TANG YI AND SHAO FEI).

What. an. episode.

*cries quietly realizing I now have to wait for a week again*

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

[absolutebl]

Top 10 Most Underrated BLs of the last 3 years

(mid year 2021 - end 2023)

This list will not include BLs that ended their run in 2024. I need some distance to know if something is actually underrated (We Are maybe?) or justifiably ignored.

1 I Cannot Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai (Japan 2023 Netflix?)

This classic friends-to-lovers BL is everything Japan does best. Angsty. Emo. Aching. Driven by real thirst. Yamato is deeply in love with his childhood bestie, Kakeru, and has been for ages, increasingly unable to hide his ungainly damaging high school need. He wants Kakeru in every way possible and it oozes off of the screen. Kakeru is silly and a little simple, but not frenetic or overly camp about it. He is earnest, and genuinely wants to keep Yamato in his life, which means giving a romance (and gayness) a fair chance. We watch him realize his affection and what form it can take in a truly authentic way. This show was impossibly kind to both of its lead characters and I felt almost honored that I got to watch something so lovely and rare play out on my screen. Full review.

2 My Ride (Thai 2022 Gaga)

Thai BL grew up with this pulp (the first ever pulp to make my end of year top 10). It’s a truly lovely and special little show featuring the extremely rare pairing of sunshine/sunshine (AKA a cinnamon roll couple) plus mature explorations of relationships using one of the softest, sweetest, and most innocent friends to lovers vehicles. Kindly, overworked doctor meets broken-hearted motorcycle taxi rider in an “other side of the tracks” slow burn romance. The support cast is excellent, making for great friendship groups and family dynamics. With honest queer rep that adds to, but doesn’t impede, the story, and genuine conversation about the nature of class, wealth, and classism, not to mention communication, honesty, and respect for boundaries, you can’t go wrong with this show. In other news, I am a sucker for a single dimple. Full review.

3 Our Dining Table AKA Bokura no Shokutaku (Japan 2023 Gaga)

A lonely salaryman (+ talented cook) gets accidentally adopted by a college kid (and his little brother). I was always gonna love this show if they stuck to the original yaoi (which is very dear to my heart). And they did! Paralleling it almost exactly. It’s a quiet & cozy little parable of found family alleviating loneliness. Possibly too slow for some but definitely high up there for me as the best of what Japan can do with softness (like Restart After Come Back Home). It’s only flaw (if I dare say such a thing) is that it is not really “romantic.” Lovely & sweet but the romance beats are being used to build a family relationship, not just couple intimacy, but that's OK with me. This is a very safe show for anyone to watch.

4 About Youth (Taiwan 2022 Gaga)

A truly lovely little coming of age high school BL with a classic YA low drama but high angst and earnest depth. I didn’t even mind the singing, and that’s saying a lot. A weak seme/uke dynamic but tons of BL tropes (both rare in a high school setting but common for Taiwan) makes this one feel both sweet and colored by real world authenticity and grit. Full review.

5 Step By Step (Thai 2023 Gaga)

This was Thailand’s answer to The New Employee, and everything I loved about that show I loved about this one. This office romance between a stern boss and sweet subordinate felt more authentic to cubical work than previous Thai BLs of this ilk. That authenticity added tension to the narrative and its characters development (how novel). I also really enjoyed the charming side characters and the brothers' relationship to each other (although I could have done without that brother's side BL). Full review.

6 DNA Says Love You (Taiwan 2022 Gaga)

DNA deserves extra marks for an upbeat approach to a queer story arc that other shows have systemically mishandled with sadness (in the guise of realism). There is a twist, which I found predictable, but knowing what would happen didn't spoil this show. The leads are luminous and engaging, and it’s full of queer found family representation and an unexpected amount of domesticity, plus it’s Taiwan, so the kisses are great. The first few eps are rough going but have patience, it's worth it I promise! The second half is really special and life/love affirming - and the end is big-grin charming. Full review.

7 Unintentional Love Story (Korea 2023 iQIYI)

Of all the BLs on this list, this is probubly the MOST underrated. OMG the plot! Uke forced into a totally understandable betrayal, falling in love despite himself, put into a corner he can't get out of, the AGONY, the PAIN in those gorgeous eyes. Gah. Okay, so: A boy loses his job due to trumped-up corruption charges accidentally discovers his ex-boss's favorite artist, now a recluse. Evil manager offers him his job back, if he can convince the artist to rejoin society. Instead, they fall in love. I found the artist a bit stiff and reserved but Gongchan (maknae of B1A4) is a fucking GIFT - he carried this show (which I do not expect from the idol element). He was luminous with extraordinarily expressive eyes, just drown in the emoting abyss. The external conflict, social tension and pressure is complex and beautifully executed, plus Korea gave us legit side dishes (NOT a love triangle, hally-fucking-luya). Full review.

8 Dear Doctor I'm Coming for Your Soul (Thai 2022 iQIYI)

This is a romance between a doctor trying to save his patients and a reaper who is both his enemy and (eventual) lover (basically the genius premise of a gay Doom at Your Service). High concept looks good on you, Thailand. It’s lovely to see KarnNat back on screen together and they are still great, and Karn is just as painfully beautiful as ever. I enjoyed this one more than its ending deserved, and the best I can say is that it’s not strictly HEA but if you’re okay with Life: Love on the Line, you’ll be okay with this BL. It’s set up well, there’s no surprise unpleasantness like HIStory 3: The BL that shall not be named. Full review.

9 Destiny Seeker (Thai 2023 WeTV)

A darn near perfect pulp featuring 3 likable grumpy/sunshine pairings with uncomplicated iterations of enemies to lovers. At least one half of each does a decent amount of pining and there’s good chemistry, classic tropes, and excellent communication rep. It’s fun and full of linguistic jokes. Sublimely cheesy but a good rainy day offering with tons of rewatch potential. (Also WAR PEANUTS!) Full review.

10 Make a Wish (Thai 2023 grey)

A doctor who can see the dead strikes a bargain with a wish-granting irreverent tree angel - naturally they fall in love (from Sammon: Manner of Death & Triage). Stars Fluke Natouch opposite not Ohm, but who cares because Fluke has chemistry with everybody. Once again the Thai afterlife is incredibly bureaucratic but I enjoyed the premise and the unfolding of the story (it’s not predictable but still satisfying and with nice little twist). I like that the doctor is just gay AF - fag hag bestie and made of swagger. The cast is excellent but the comedic stylings are a bit overblown and tonally off. It has sad parts and did make me cry but is ultimately happy with a great sex scene, good smiley kisses, and all the agency.

10 others I rarely see anyone talk about:

Triage - Many would put this at the top of the list, but I don't find it very rewatchable and that weighs a lot in my assessments. Still it is GOOD and very underrated. BL does Groundhog Day featuring a doctor stuck in a time loop who must save a poor little rich boy from death by seducing the stuffing out of him, then PLOT TWIST, poor little rich boy must do the same for doctor! Unfortunately… stuffing keeps leaking. I thought the plot was engaging if a little redundant and occasionally exhausting. The pairs were all well done, low heat but with decent chemistry and the support characters were likable (or unlikeable, as required). My reason it's not in the top 10? If anything, the romance arc detracted and distracted from the main plot, but that doesn't stop this from being a genuinely good show it's just time loop is not a trope I personally enjoy. Review here.

See You After Quarantine? - This under appreciated gem is Taiwan’s answer to Gameboys and is just as charmg and adorable yet still as quintessentially Taiwanese as one might hope. It features a Japanese love interest and the cutest most confused disaster gay. Slow burn because the two have almost no actual screen time together and yet manage some truly amazing chemistry. Honestly how does Taiwan do it?

The Tasty Florida - I don't know, maybe it's Speed nostalgia, but I love this one, classic Korean BL with all those strengths and flaws... but The Prettiest.

You Make Me Dance - it's Korea but somehow they got this one, maybe by featuring mature characters and a real world crisis? Also they both ve hot.

Blueming - at the time it got a lot of attention but it seems to have faded into obscurity under the shod of The 8th Sense and Love of Love's Sack. This was a precurser to both and well worth a watch if you like it when Korea gets a little gritty.

Love Stage!! (Thai version) - I liked this IP alerady more than most. But this is the best of the 4 adaptations, and the first full Thai version of Japanese IP. It's both charming and notable in the industry. Hard to find and that's why it gets so little creddit but I think it's well worth the effort to track down.

Oh! Boarding House - I think most who watched this din't jive with it because it's an ensamble piece witha wicked love traingle. But I really enjoyed it. It felt like the move Kdrama BL that Korea has given us and I like me some Kdramas.

What Zabb Man! - one of the better BLs to come out of Star Hunter in the last few years. I like this pair a lot more than most, and the sides are wicked great. This is probably one of my favorite food themed BLs, actually.

2 Moons The Ambassador - possibly the lowest scoring BL to appear on this list but I just really like the leads. Nothing else is good, but they are kinda awkwardly fantastic. I also like how gay af the seme is.

Stay By My Side - This show was an interesting take on the "ghost boyfriend" trope. About a boy who is tormented by hearing the dead, except when he is around one other boy - desperation+proximity = love. Despite a strong initial premise it ended up mostly being enjoyable for sappy domesticity but nothing more. Still, I always give extra credit for the diabetes-inducing sugar content and rewatch capacity.

Requested by the lovely @l1xyz

FYI: I judge “underrated” on the strength of what I see people talk about (or more precisely not talk about) on social media, MDL reviews, and YouTube watch numbers (when available, as compared to comparable shows from the same country). 

Because of this, statistically, there will always be quite a few BLs that are difficult to get hold of.

Here's my pulls of the Top Underrated BLs prior to 2021. Considering the amount of content generated over the last few years, the pool to draw from is likely about the same.

My Top 10 Most Underrated BLs prior to 2021

Seven Days

Restart after Come Back Home

Wish You

Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding

He’s Coming to Me

Oxygen

My Day

Most Peaceful Place

HIStory 2: Right or Wrong

HIStory: Obsessed

I'd throw Great Men Academy in there, but I always dither over whether it actually is a BL.

[fuckingrecipes]

How does one actually build a useful repository of recipes for different cuisines? Like, I have the Silver Spoon which is a pretty good cross section of Italian cooking. I know more than enough variations of the typical french mother sauces to get the principles without a need for a recipe. I know from various Euro cuisines particular flavors that pair well I could build a dish around (like, I could make a goat cheese and caramelized onion soup without the need of someone telling me a recipe). I don't have any such data sets for other cuisines, and you know the recipe website world is a hell scape.

Tried and true method is: Cook often, try new things, and save it if you like it.

Get a blank notebook (or a 3-ring binder) and collect recipes yourself as you try them. You can write recipes in by hand, or print them off & punch for the 3-ring binder.

Go to restaurants which serve food you want to explore, and take a picture of the food, record the name of it on the menu, and note some of the ingredients that you can identify in it.

If you live in a small town with not many places that serve 'foreign' food nearby, get off google. Use DuckDuckGo or Brave as a search engine. They have very few ads and the search algorithm prefers when you get to the point in your recipe blog, rather than dicking around with your life story.

Do a little tour on your world map. Focus on countries, search for food from that country, then search for specific kinds of food from that country. Search for things like "Authentic Turkish Stewed Chicken" "Traditional Brazillian Goat Recipe" "Hong Kong Street Food Recipe" "Collection of Taiwan Recipes" "25 amazing Korean dishes" "10 best Cajun Soul Food Recipes" "Dominican Republic Cuisine Recipes"

Go watch cooking tiktoks that aren't european-centric; go out of your way to find them.

Go down a list of spices and pick one you've never tried before. Look up where it's traditionally used, and try to find some dishes that use that spice!

Go to your Local Library and dig into their cookbook section. Every library has one! Look for cookbooks focused on cuisines you don't know yet, and try those recipes!

If you're cool spending money on this, go to Half Price Books or other book-reselling stores where you can find cook books at really low prices. Again, explore the cuisines you're not familiar with.

If you have grocery stores for other cultures near you, go into their grocery! Check out what spices have a shitload of different brands on display, and pick one at random. Seek out a recipe that uses that new spice you just bought.

And remember: Write that shit down!

You can always have a little guide at the front or back of your recipe collection that explains different spice blends, or explains key sauces, or anything else!

You can keep a little guide on how roasting spices changes them, and your experiments with that.

You can keep a list of bread recipes, or cooking hacks like how to make really good naan without a woodfire grill.

---

Personally, I'm forgetful. I forget sites exist, forget logins, and lose passwords all the time. I have about a hundred recipe collections across about as many websites, and I know where like, 3 of them are right now. Many of those websites have gone down, and my lists are lost forever.

The book of recipe & food-tips collection I've kept & used the longest - my Food Grimoire - is a physical item that I can misplace in my house but never truly lose. It can't have its server crash or website maintenance suddenly be abandoned and blip out of existence.

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

hello! can you recommend some feel-good and no drama vibes BL series? 😭 been a stressful month, badly need a relaxing series 🫠 thankyouu!

Hello beautiful Anon 🌹

It is a pleasure for me to recommend you some feel-good series! It is not that easy to find series without drama, because people think a series without drama is not a good series, but sometimes we all need this swoony, relaxing series to calm our system and to let us believe in life and love again.

I tried to keep the drama level as low as possible, but most of them have a little bit of drama at some point, just to keep the story going.

My main criteria were personal experience and feelings while watching and rewatching those series and how many trigger-warnings there should be (like violence, prosperity, cheating, mobbing, etc.) - in the best case, there should be none and how heavy the topic is. For example: I absolutely adore the series "The Day I Loved You". It is such a beautiful, wholesome series, but the topic is so heavy, it wouldn't fit here.

The only order this will have is by country.

Thailand

Well let's get started with one of the most unproblematic and innocent, happy series out there:

My School President

Tinn likes Gun. Gun is a little rascal and the singer of the school's band Chinzhilla. Tinn is the school president and son of the principle. Chinzhilla needs to build up their reputation and win this year's Hot Wave Music Contest to make sure the band will still be around next year and to be able to date. And now it's Tinn's time to shine and help Gun reach this goal. It is such an unproblematic, fun and sweet watch.

Cherry Magic Thailand

Karan is the model employee. He is everything Achi wants to be. Achi's confidence is weak and the things he does, he doesn't see them as valuable or important. But somehow he is exactly what Karan wants, because he is kind and attentive. A story about self-acceptance, loving yourself and seeing your valuable traits through the eyes of someone else. And hearing other people's thoughts might help as well. I love the story and yes, Japan's version is gem, but I really like the thai one and TayNew did such a good job, imo.

We Are

People said nothing is happening here. But that is not true. The story might not be drama-driven, but that is exactly what I sometimes want. I want to watch friend groups coming together, sharing secrets with each other and fall in love. I want to see this daily life. The story is wholesome and cute and perfect for a rainy sunday to warm up your heart.

Ingredients

This miniseries is a slow burn between two roommates, one loves cooking and the other one music. And they are just the sweetest. I watched this while I was sick and it made my life so much warmer and less tiring and annoying. Jeff and Gameplay did such a good job in portraying these two characters.

Bonus:

Every You, Every Me

This series is not completed and is airing every sunday. There are only two episodes out and I am completely in love with them and the concept of this series. Every week we see those two fall in love again in different timelines. The story about soulmates and the fate to be together in every universe. My romantic heart can't deal with it! It is exactly what I need after a stressful week.

Taiwan

Well Taiwan is more known for heavier themes and emotional series with a lot of trauma included, but there are some lighthearted series too.

Be Loved In House: I Do

I have no clue how many times I watched this series. Is it that good? Well, for me it is one of the most comforting series out there. For others? Not necessarily. The conflict is a little bit dumb, but it is so good to watch these two to slowly overcome their differences and getting all soft with each other. It is just a sweet series where you don't have to think too much about.

History 2: Crossing The Line

The story of a young troublemaker who likes to pick fights and the manager of the school's volleyball-team, who can't play volleyball anymore because of an accident. I mean, I love volleyball and bl, so this is the perfect combination for me. It is funny and somehow emotional and so good to witness the troublemaker finally having something worth to put his energy in.

South Korea

I absolutely love korean bls. They are my favorite, but most of them come with huge baggage and trauma for the main characters. As much as I love them, I wouldn't call them easy watches to relax. But there are a few I want to mention here.

Our Dating Sim

A second-chance love story. They meet again after being separated for years and finally are able to talk to each other about everything that stands between them. And yes, there is some light trauma, but it fits the story very well and isn't that traumatic for the viewer, imo. As a given for korean bls, it is a short watch and perfect to binge after a tough day.

Roommates of Poongduck 304

A fun and short watch about a rich kid who has to work for the first time in his live to understand the value of money and work and his new landlord who is also his subordinate at work. These two need to work together in every parts of their lifes and it is just so good to watch them getting closer. And don't get me started on their chemistry! If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and watch the behind the scenes!

Sing My Crush

Han Baram wants to become a professional musician. He has the talent and the will to achieve it, but most of all he has Im Hantae, his biggest fan and supporter and his best friend. While Baram already knows what he wants, Hantae needs to figure it out in the cutest way. This series just feels so good! It is one of my favorite bls ever. And the music is good too!

Japan

Japan is the king or queen for cosy and wholesome bls! There are so many, I can't list all of them. I really enjoy diving into this yellowish warm world.

I Cannot Reach You aka Kimi ni wa Todokanai

While Yamato has to deal with his popularity with the girls and being in love with his best friend Kakeru, Kakeru really wants to be as cool as his schoolmates and wants to get a girlfriend too, just to notice, that his heart obviously wants something or someone else. This is such a sweet series. It is wholesome and so freaking soft! And the soundtrack is soooooooooooo good!

Takara's Treasure aka Takara No Vidro

Takara once helped Taichin and with that he influenced his life deeply. In the beginning I didn't understand this series and the actions the characters took, but with every episode this little series grew more and more on me. Both of them are searching for something in their lifes and find it in each other. They are the perfect match and watching their connection deepen will comfort your heart.

If It's With You aka Kimi To Nara Koi Wo Shite Mite Mo

I think this series is highly underrated and didn't get the recognition it deserves. The main character Amane is gay and doesn't keep it a secret. He has made some bad experience in the past and doesn't believe in love anymore. Until he meets his schoolmate Ryuji, a kind and hardworking young man, who is so open and accepting that Amane is not able to not fall in love with him. This is such a beautiful series. Highly recommended.

Our Dining Table aka Bokura no Shokutaku

This is an absolutely wholesome series about found family and food. Be aware watching this might make you very hungry! Tane, the younger brother, is such a sweet child and the best wingman. The drama in this series is not the prominent aspect of it, but the healing from it through love in all kinds and forms, acceptance and finding a place for yourself in this cold world is. And after watching this you feel loved and warm and hungry.

Old Fashion Cupcake

A well played age-gap? Finding joy in life? Food? Living your life in the best way possible? Check, check, check and check. This series means so much to me. Meet Nozue, almost 40 without any real joy in life, because he thinks he is too old for it and Togawa, ten years younger, attractive and obsessed with the idea to make Nozue enjoy his life again. And that with eating together. I love this series so much! It is so good!

Honorable mentions:

Fukou-kun was Kiss Suru Shikanai!

Takara-kun to Amagi-kun

Aki wa Haru to Gohan wo Tabetai

BL Drama no Shuen ni Narimashita: Crank Up Hen

Perfect Propose

Living with him

Kieta Hatsukoi

Anon, I hope there are some series which can give you some relaxation after such a stressful month! And I wish you more quiet and less stressful month to come! Stay safe and enjoy watching bls! 🌼

[panda-writes-kpop]

I NEED A FLUFF ALPHABET FOR THE REMAINING 7 MEMBERS OF TWICE, STAT (PREFERABLY STARTING TZUYU AND THEN JIHYO) BUT WHATEVER ORDER YOU CHOOSE IS FINE BY NEED, I JUST NEED OT9 TWICE FLUFF ALPHABET NOWWWWWW--

Tzuyu Fluff Alphabet (Requested!)

a/n: of course, lovely! I am so happy you enjoyed my previous works on the Twice members, and I'm happy to (albeit slowly) work on all of the twice fluff alphabets! ❤️ also final exams are this week, please keep me in your prayers as I attempt to pass three exams. ��

tw: none!

♡ Masterlist ♡

Affection (How do they show their affection? What love language(s) do they use?)

Not wanting to overwhelm you or herself, she chooses to express her love in quick kisses, subtle touches, and small gestures. Tzuyu definitely shows her love in acts of service along with quality time - there’s nothing better than making you smile with a small gesture as the two of you are together.

Beauty (What do they admire about their S/O? What makes their S/O beautiful?)

You can catch her staring at your face a lot, she’ll deny it to the stars and back, however. There’s something so intriguing and comforting about you that she’s drawn to, so she spends a lot of time studying you. Unfortunately, she can get a bit distracted when she stares at your lips and eyes for too long, so make sure to give her a quick kiss to bring her down to Earth.

Comfort (How would they help their S/O if they were having a rough day?)

Wherever she is at the moment, as long as it isn’t work-related or an unskippable commitment, Tzuyu will come to you if you call/text her that you’ve had a rough day. Of course, you’ll tell her that she could’ve just come to see you afterward, but she likes to show you that you’re a priority to her, and she’ll always be here when you need her the most.

Dreams (How do they picture their future with their S/O?)

Tzuyu wants a future where the two of you can share your culture and customs with one another. Whether you’re living in Korea, Taiwan, or your home country, she wants to keep learning everything about you, especially if you’re learning about each other in the process.

Equal (Do they tend to be more dominant or passive in the relationship?)

Tzuyu is the more passive person in the relationship, but she likes to plan small dates and outings together. You may have to do more of the heavy lifting when it comes to planning vacations or longer events (or your wedding :] )

Fight (Would they easily forgive their S/O after a fight? How would a typical fight go?)

Honestly, the two of you don’t get into serious arguments, it’s more so subtle disagreements about smaller issues. You both are quick to resolve the issue, move past it, and prevent any further problems because you don’t want to upset each other in the future.

Gratitude (How grateful are they for everything that their S/O does for them?)

Tzuyu isn’t the most verbal when it comes to her gratitude or praise, so she shows her thanks with small hand squeezes or a short, loving note attached to your fridge. If you catch her in a softer mood, she’ll wrap her arms around you and give you a long back hug as a thank you for everything that you do for her.

Honesty (Do they tend to keep secrets from their S/O, or do they share everything?)

Tzuyu is honest with her partner, but she doesn’t reveal everything immediately. She’s the kind of person who will randomly tell you a childhood story after you mention a topic relating to the story. Although she isn’t a yapper, she will tell you everything over time. You just have to be patient with her.

Inspiration (Did their S/O change them, or was it the other way around?)

You’re inspired by Tzuyu’s hardworking nature. No matter what is in her way, she always works through it with a graceful smile on her face. You find yourself trying to emulate her positive traits, which causes her to tease you at times for “trying too hard”.

Jealousy  (Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?)

The “bite your tongue and don’t say anything unless you’re extremely uncomfortable” type. You’re an adult, you can handle being around someone your own age who is extremely attractive. Tzuyu doesn’t have to like it, but she quickly gets over it when you give her a small kiss or a quick hug.

Kiss (How often do they kiss you? Where do they like to kiss you?)

She doesn’t usually initiate the kiss, so how much you kiss is mostly up to you. If she does kiss you, it’s usually a quick peck to the cheek or your forehead. You can catch her off-guard and turn your head, causing your lips to meet. When this happens, Tzuyu usually deepens the kiss for a bit before shyly backing away from you.

Lazy Day (How do they like to spend days off with their S/O?)

Tzuyu likes to both stay in and go out when you both have a day off to spend with one another. You might sleep in late, all cuddle together, before going out to eat and do a little shopping before visiting an amusement park. You head back in the evening and watch your favorite show/movie as you fall asleep next to one another.

Marriage (Do they want to get married? How often do they think about marrying their S/O?)

It isn’t a constant thought in Tzuyu’s mind until she stares at you one day and thinks about how much she wants to spend the rest of her life with you. Then it nags at her for a bit before she confronts you, and you end up talking about what you want from your futures with each other.

Nicknames (What do they call their S/O?)

Babe, honey, darling

Standard, simple, and sweet, or she’ll just call you by your name if she wants to tease/annoy you.

On Cloud Nine (What are they like when they are in love? Is it extremely obvious to others?)

Tzuyu is mostly herself when she’s head over heels for you, except she may talk about you more often than her other friends or family, which gives people the hint pretty early on that you’re more than friends. Or she has a small Freudian slip and calls you her partner casually to her friends and family who had no idea that she was dating you.

PDA (Are they very upfront with their relationship, or do they prefer to keep things quiet?)

Tzuyu likes for most of her relationship to remain private, but she doesn’t mind sharing pictures or videos to social media for friends and family. She also tells them about you, whether it’s basic information, a fun story, or something romantic that you did for her.

Quirk (Some random personality trait that makes them an excellent partner.)

Tzuyu is respectful of you and your boundaries. Although she doesn’t move fast in any relationship, if you happen to want to move slower with her, she’ll happily do so for you. She always asks if it’s okay to kiss or touch you, especially if it’s the first time that you show affection to one another.

Romance (Are they a born romantic ready to woo their S/O at any moment, or do they struggle to spark romantic moments with their S/O?)

Tzuyu lies in a comfortable middle ground between the two options. She’s not a natural born romantic, but she’s not unable to spark romantic moments. If the mood calls for it, she’s willing to step up to the plate and be more romantic with you.

Support (How do they help support their S/O to reach their goals?)

She leaves small notes for you around the house and, if possible, quietly tells you how amazing you are and how you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. Tzuyu’s going to be there for you, no matter if you succeed or fail, just as you’ve been for her.

Thrill (Do they like trying out new things to spice up their relationship, or do they prefer to stick to a routine?)

Tzuyu likes to stick to routine, but she isn’t against you trying to spice up the relationship every once and a while. Bring her to a new restaurant or place that you can explore together.

Understanding (How well do they know their partner?)

Tzuyu has a deep understanding of you that’s come from being around you and admiring you from afar. She notices and appreciates your smallest quirks as much as your loudest personality traits. 

Value (How important is the relationship to the person versus other relationships and things in their life?)

She tries to hold everything to equal value - her job, her romantic relationship, her familial relationships, and her platonic ones - but sometimes one has to come over another for a small period of time. You’ll always be important to her since you’re the one she wants to spend the rest of her time with.

Wild Card (A random fluffy headcanon that you have about the relationship?)

When you slip up and make a funny mistake, she won’t point and laugh or record you doing so. Instead, she softly exhales and teases you for a bit before helping you clean up.

XOXO (Do they like to kiss, hug, and cuddle you? How often do they do so?)

Although she won’t often initiate it, Tzuyu does like to hug, kiss, and cuddle you. She cuddles up to you every night you spend together, and when you’re watching movies or TV. Hugs are often her choice of greeting or comfort, along with a quick kiss.

Yearning (How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?)

Tzuyu usually dives into her work, hobbies, or other projects while you’re away. She does call you every night and will FaceTime you if you’re up to do so. She knows you’ll come back to her, it’s only a matter of time.

Zeal (Are they willing to go to great lengths for the relationship? If so, what kind?)

She doesn’t often say it, but Tzuyu will go to great lengths for the relationship. She’d sacrifice a lot for the two of you, but you have to show some appreciation or sacrifices of your own in order to make her invest fully in the relationship.

[project-sekai-facts]

Your recent update made me wonder about something. I don’t know how much you know about this but wanted to try asking anyway. Hopefully this makes sense? Why would the English translation choose to censor things? I assume translations are being done in America where queer things are slowly becoming more accepted but is that a factor? Are the translators themselves changing certain things due to their own biases? I don’t know who they are and don’t want to assume anything about them, but I can’t help wondering if that’s part of the reason? Or is it because of something like, for example, sometimes movies or TV shows have certain content removed based on where it’s being aired, so is it something like that? Is the game being released in regions where queer content is banned or removed? Now that I wrote it, I feel like this is the most likely answer but what do you think? I basically just rambled in your ask my bad. Also, do you know if the Korean and/or Taiwan servers have censorship too?

oh there's more than just the Asahi thing and i have mentioned it in passing before but i'll cover it properly here. "the miles i fell in love with is so cool" -> "it was so cool! i guess that's miles for you" is definitely the biggest example though.

First off, a minor thing. it doesn't really happen anymore but in the earlier translations they quite often use words other than partner, like "pals" and "buds", in the VBS story. Probably one of the best examples of this would be An and Kohane's 3rd kizuna title, which the JP name was often fan-translated as "Making each other better" or "Raising each other up", and is called "Two supportive pals" on EN. Which does have the same meaning but the "pals" seems so unneccesary when they could've used partners. The original text is Takameau futari, the first part means "to raise" or "to lift" and futari means "two people" or "a pair/couple". So it technically is a good enough translation but using pals when partners would be more accurate to canon just seems.. off.

I’m assuming their avoidance of the word partner is because it could easily be misinterpreted as romantic, but they seem to have moved on from that at this point.

There's also THE POWER OF UNITY where they switch out "love" (daisuki) for "cares about a lot" when KAITO is comparing the relationship between Arata and Souma to Akito and Toya. Daisuki literally means "likes a lot" so often you'll see people translate it as love, though likes a lot is still valid. "Cares about" is not a direct translation but definitely can still convey the same meaning, so again instance of valid localisation it just seems like an odd choice when using love would've conveyed the exact same meaning and been more true to the original.

Then you've got another instance of them not translating daisuki correctly in Dear Me, As I Was Back Then (sorry this one is a wiki screenshot my phone died). This is worse. Like I guess if you really want then it does have a close enough meaning to the original. Like I guess daisuki meaning "like a lot" or "love" could be localised as "you're the best" if you really wanted it too. But even then, the line before this is "I'm gonna show just how much I admire her!". Minori's shout of "I LOVE YOUUU" from the original would be way more fitting here. "You're the best" feels too casual and buddy-buddy - even if Minori didn't know Haruka at this point, Haruka still had a big impact on her life and imo "I love you" would be the best to use here.

There’s also this one from Walk on and on that removes one key thing. In the original, Toya says something more along the lines of “I was able to make this track because I want to continue to be a partner who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you from now on and always”. This is a bit more similar to the Asahi incident in that they’ve restructured the sentence to make it two, adding in the thing about performing which isn’t even there originally, and replacing “korekara saki mo zutto” with “keep singing with you”. And “keep singing with you” still works, but it’s much more toned down, let’s say. You know what really is odd about this translation though? If the quote I put seems familiar, it’s because it’s also the name of Toya’s event card. Kinda odd they omitted that from the story then, huh? The thing is the translation of the card is very accurate so removing it from the story starts to seem intentional, especially when everything around it is accurately translated like with the Asahi incident. Also doing this removes the fact that the card name references the story so what the hell are you doing EN? It's the same sentence, if you can translate it correctly on the card you can translate it correctly in the story.

There's definitely more than this, this is just what came to mind first and I don't want to make this post too long.

These were certainly... choices. Especially with the ones that avoid translating daisuki as love because they do translate as that on other occasions, most frequently with An and Kohane. I'm assuming the reason they omitted it with the guys is because it's far harder to pass off guys saying that they love each other as platonic because societal expectations or whatever, but I'm actually surprised by the change to Dear Me because normally they're pretty good with Minori and Haruka usually. Like they've translated daisuki correctly for them before and leave in everything else that indicates Minori has a crush on Haruka, so why not this line?

I'm tempted to say that they just change the things that they think are too hard to safely pass off as platonic, but then again they left all of the unsubtle ship teasing in Buddy Funny Spend Time, which has a lot of focus on Minori and Haruka's relationship (and they even added in Haruka saying that Minori makes her heart tickle in her card story), so I'm genuinely not sure why they left that in but then changed one instance of Minori saying she loves Haruka which doesn't even have to be interpreted romantically. Like what is the limit here? An can say she's going on a date (with Kohane) and the WEG regulars can ask who she's been seeing, but Asahi can say he fell in love with Tsukasa's character and it gets removed. Both of them have romantic connotation. The only thing I can think of is that An's comes from a whole card story and event, but Asahi's is one line that's easy to remove. Same with Toya saying he wants to stay with Akito forever.

In other words, it's a mess and I don't think any of what I just wrote is coherent either.

Interpret all of this however you will at the end of the day it’s all just ship tease which is up to interpretation anyway. Except the Asahi thing. That one is a censor.

Oh and the KR and TW servers don’t do this.

[putschki1969]

Hi Sarah! Not sure if you had any experience with this, but since FJ Asia Tours were announced, how do I buy tickets? JP has the mega-confusing fanclub/lotto system, so I'm not sure if the same applies to their overseas lives. I'm not even sure if a service like Ticketmaster is available for the venues FJ will be performing at. Any help would be amazing, thank you!!!

Hello there!

For those who are wondering, anon is referring to these news here =>

Overseas Performances Added to the YKL Vol.#20 Tour Line-up

No details have been announced yet, but this year’s tour will once again get an Asia leg. The performances are scheduled for November 2024. YK and her team will be returning to Shanghai (China), and will be performing for the first time in Guangzhou (China), Bangkok (Thailand), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). More details will be announced soon. (Source)

It's a good question but I'm afraid I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the topic. Here's what I know〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

Local event organisers will most likely be in charge of these concerts and they will be updating their audiences on all the ticket information in the next few weeks/months. Also, the Japanese entertainment service PGE has been heavily involved in last year's Asia tour so they might coordinate a lot of this year's finer details as well (especially when it comes to the venues in China => Shanghai and Guangzhou). It would probably pay off to keep an eye on their official homepage.

In most cases, overseas concerts will have a normal ticket sale with different ticket prices depending on seat category. The sale will be handled by a local ticket company, by a Japanese one (like PGE as mentioned above) or by both. It is unlikely that you will be confronted with most of the usual hurdles that are unique to the Japanese ticketing system so that's a big plus. However, that does not mean that it will be easy for non-locals to get their hands on a ticket. I would assume that the language barrier alone would be too much to deal with for most of us (especially if tickets are sold on regional apps that are almost impossible to navigate for anyone who is not familiar with them). With any luck, you won't have to sell your left kidney and jump through a bunch of impossible verification hoops to register on the local ticket website/app. If they also offer overseas payment options, you've pretty much succeeded. But honestly, we'll just have to wait and see...

From my own experience, I can recommend finding a local who is willing to help you out. I certainly wouldn't have been able to attend the YK live in Taiwan back in 2019 if it hadn't been for some super kind fellow fans. I owe them my eternal gratitude for pretty much holding my hand throughout the entire experience.

Right now I am kinda eyeing the concert in Bangkok because I have a friend there who is very convincing in her efforts to make me want to visit her. But again, I would 100% be relying on her assistance and that's something you always have to take into account when making decisions like that.

[misfitwashere]

Freedom and safety

A lesson from a demining test

TIMOTHY SNYDER

OCT 18

Maybe, for you Americans out there, it's time for a little break.  We are wonderful at talking to, for, about and past ourselves, and not so good at listening to other people.  So maybe for just a few moments we could pause to remember some of the people who allow us to have our quarrels, to have our election season, to have our elections, some of the people who are actually taking risks for the words like freedom and democracy that we throw around so casually, especially this time of year.

This could many groups, of course! I mean the Ukrainians. They are doing us a lot of good, as we tend to forget. They are holding back a Russian army so that other countries can keep all of their soldiers in the barracks.  They are deterring China from invading Taiwan by showing that offensive operations are risky and unpredictable.  They are making nuclear war less likely by ignoring Putin's bluffs.  They are defending the international order, which is based on states and borders.  And, yes, they are defending democracy as such, including our own.  They have bought us time since 2022 to recover from Covid and economic collapse by bearing the brunt of this crisis on their own.

This month the Biden administration is decising how much it will help during its last three months in office.  President Biden has a chance to leave with a legacy, by creating structures that will allow for aid to Ukraine to continue, and by inviting Ukraine to join our most important institutions.  Given the uncertainties ahead, though, the question goes far beyond that of how President Biden will be remembered.  If we allow Ukraine to lose, or if we vote for Putinist candidates who want Ukraine to lose, the costs will be horrible in Ukraine, but will be felt around the world.

So of course we can hope the president does the right thing.  And we can vote for the right people the next time around.  And if you are American and care about Ukraine, voting, canvassing, and donating for pro-Ukrainian candidates in American elections is likely the most important thing that you can do right now.  But if you are not American, or if you are American and can spare a little money, there are plenty of other ways to make a direct difference.  

You can do something to help Ukrainians be safer, even as they help us to be safer. Let me just suggest a specific step that I know something about, having seen the tools for myself.

When I was in Ukraine last month, I visited a competitive test for mine-clearing robots.  The moment was one of cooperation: private companies had brought their robots for a test organized by a couple of government ministries, with the participation of a presidential tech platform, in connection to a fundraiser supported by people around the world.  Along with Mark Hamill, I am supporting this fundraiser, called Safe Terrain, because mine-clearing robots can save human lives and prepare the way for humans to return to their normal lives.  Mark and I announced the fundraiser on my birthday, two months ago, and we are three-quarters of the way to the goal ($307,000 of $441,000 -- thank you to all of you who have donated!).

There were some fascinating moments at the test.  The detonation of anti-tech mines is very loud. I learned a great deal about the demining technology.  But I wanted to share with you a human detail that has stayed with me.  After it was all over, after the three robots had detonated mines safely, we all took some pictures together: the tech and corporate teams, the officials, the visitors.  Just as the photographer was about to begin, one of the corporate representatives told him to wait: one of the robots was blocked from the shot.  But here is the interesting thing: it wasn't her robot.  It was the robot of one of the other, competing firms.  She wanted to make sure that it was in the picture.

A small thing, perhaps.  Just a momentary gesture, it might seem.  But it was someone doing something for someone else, amidst the pressure of a competitive trial, under the stresses of a war.  It was someone who, for that moment, was not thinking about herself, but about fairness, about the good outcome.  Sometimes people do have to fight for democracy, as the Ukrainians are doing right now, but democracy itself is not a fight.  Freedom is not all about just doing what we feel like doing, just because we want to, right at the moment.  It is about seeing other people, hearing other people, working together, creating a world in which we can all be more free. 

I'm in southwest Ohio now, and I see that spirit here too, not of course in everyone, but in many people, the ones who care about the country, the ones who are not just arguing, the ones who are doing the little things they can do, the ones who want to open things up rather than close them down.  I'm trying to do the little things I can do, too, in my own country, but I don’t want to take for granted that I can. Along the way, today, I am also going to make a donation to those robots, or to the people behind them.

[greycaelum]

Kaleidoscope Series—Covet Me: { Verdict }

—Mafia Gojo X Ex-Assassin Reader

𑁍 Synopsis:

"I change my mind, I'm gonna wait inside. It's hot, I hate sunburn." Satoru hummed, removing his slippers and leaning against the headboard. His strong biceps flexed as he puts his hands behind his head, smirking at Akina.

Her eyes rolled and let him be, she doesn't have the energy to play with him early in the morning.

"The seagulls."

"Hmm? What about them?"

Akina walks to the connecting bathroom. "The breakfast in the deck."

Satoru cursed and leaps out of the bed and out of the room.

𑁍 Genre: domestic life, violence, dark themes, yandere tendencies

𑁍 CW/TW: (4.5k)— assassination, handling of guns, luxury life, violence, underground auction, mentions of killing, yandere gojo, mutual understanding

𑁍 A/N: Hi everyone, so I finally had a little time off after the first sem, and tomorrow is the start of our 2nd sem, before that starts here's a little something I've been working on, I'll see you on the next one~ —Grey,

"Target in sight," She uttered against the bluetooth headset while adjusting the scope of her M107 sniper rifle from the rooftop of the 57-floor building aiming the crossfire on the window of the hotel 1500 meters away from her spot. The night camouflaged her from the eyes of anyone daring to interrupt her job.

"I need him dead before midnight 1603," the person behind the other line spoke in a languid manner.

"Understood."

1603

She was raised in the institution, and most of them were children sold by their parents to the organization in exchange for a hefty sum of money.

From then on children like her lose their names and identity. In exchange for food, shelter, and clothes. They are children turned into pawns, forced to play soldiers. And all that matters is the orders of the organization.

As long as she follows the orders everything will be taken care of, for someone like her who have nothing but the organization, their orders are absolute.

The room-lit-up window drapes are pulled open granting her better access to the target's movement and position.

Dangerous index finger hovers over the trigger of the gun, waiting for the perfect timing, eyes, and mind in total concentration to keep her focused, after years of doing this she's already used to relying upon her instincts rather than calculations.

The head of the target peeks through the fabric oblivious of the impending bullet about to hit his skull.

Finger tug the trigger, the sound of the sniper silenced by the shattering of the glass, her job is done, she stood up from the floor and pack her sniper going down the building and took off her wig and black suit, stuffing the gun into the nearest waste segregation and hail a cab.

Someone will come and get her equipment all she needs is to throw off any possible lap dogs trailing behind her. Hopping from one taxi to taxi to the nearest marina, walking to the east wing there's a luxury yacht with Dullahan Head branded on the side-climbing aboard she's greeted by her manager showing the breaking news of the Russian diplomat assassinated just a few minutes ago.

"The Headmaster is waiting in Taiwan, be prepared for your next mission 10 days from now." The man disappeared in the shadow, leaving her in front of her designated cabin.

No suggestions or objections are permitted. There's just 'go' and 'yes' in every mission assigned whether they like it or not.

Entering her cabin she took a cold shower and let herself go on autopilot. Her body followed the rocking of the yacht, setting sail away from the harbor to who knows where.

Her life is already decided. Follow the instructions until you die, all for the organization. That's all, other things are unnecessary.

Drying her hair she looks out the porthole as they travel through the ocean.

"How does it feel to be wild and free?" Staring at the waves that seem no care as they continue to billow through the ocean, undisturbed and constantly. So peace yet drowning.

Closing her eyes she dozes into a dreamless slumber. Letting her head go into the clouds and fall deep into a dreamless sleep.

Even in her dreams, she has nothing but darkness.

"Your next assignment is Gojo Satoru's extermination."

In the dimly lit room, she stood in the center of the spacious room, on the far end is a person sitting hidden in the shadows.

"..."

Extermination...? Not assassination.

"The information about the mission will be sent to you along with the travel. You have 15 days."

That long? She blinks. The usual mission only has a 3-5 day deadline. This is the first time she ever received a 15-day assignment.

Was Gojo Satoru that hard to kill?

"Yes, Sir." Saluting, she accepted the file and left to finish another usual mission.

"Move or your skull explodes." The cold muzzle of the gun kisses the back of her head.

Her eyes darted down to the window where Gojo Satoru stood, his hand supporting his face and a palpable smile on his calm face.

No wonder the organization gave her 15 days to kill him, he easily tracked down and destroyed the plan which landed her at the mercy of the man holding the gun behind her, undoubtedly working for Gojo Satoru.

She'd rather die than betray her organization...

...

"Akina?"

Insistent knocking roused her from slumber. Her eyes opened and the low ceiling greeted her good morning, the gentle rocking of the floor followed by the sound of waves hitting a surface finally woke her from her dazed state.

"You awake? Breakfast is in the deck." The door opened and Gojo Satoru in a casual white sleeveless shirt and grey cotton shorts came in. "What's wrong?" Receiving no reply, Satoru's smiling face morphed into a worried frown, and sit by the edge of the bed. "Bad dreams?"

She nodded and drowsily rubbed her eyes. Clearing the blurriness of her eyes she turn to the side and saw the blue sea through the porthole.

"I went out of bed to make breakfast, next time I'll stay in bed with you 'til you wake up." Satoru's hands reach to smooth the wild tangled hair on Akina's head.

"I'm not a kid," a subtle pout formed on Akina's lips. Satoru chuckled and run the bridge of her nose with his finger. But it was swatted away with a glare.

"Go wash up, I'll wait for you outside. Shoko and Suguru will be here any moment."

"Mn," she nods and peels off the blanket from her lithe frame. "Out?" She turned to Satoru who is looking at her intently, then pointed to the door and repeated. "Out?"

"I change my mind, I'm gonna wait inside. It's hot, I hate sunburn." Satoru hummed, removing his slippers and leaning against the headboard. His strong biceps flexed as he puts his hands behind his head, smirking at Akina.

Her eyes rolled and let him be, she doesn't have the energy to play with him early in the morning.

"The seagulls."

"Hmm? What about them?"

Akina walks to the connecting bathroom. "The breakfast in the deck."

Satoru cursed and leaps out of the bed and out of the room.

Silly guy... She entered the bathroom and immediately cleans herself.

She has always thought that all her life she will be that 1603, an assassin of the organization. She'd rather die than betray her organization... But her organization doesn't think of the same. She was their soldier, a sacrificial pawn, no more no less. But here she is now, with her past target now turned benefactor.

Ironic how the people who fostered her can easily discard her like used paper to the trash can.

Never in her wildest dreams, she would've thought that the person she was bound to kill would covet her and change her life so much bringing her out of the hellhole she thought was her home. Life sure has strange tastes in playing the game.

"I heard the salted caramel fudge there tastes great, we should drop by before checking in the hotel."

Satoru pushes his aviators up to the bridge of his nose while licking off the sauce from his thumb.

"We're going there for a job, don't sidetrack."

Satoru's cheeks puffed out and pouted from the dismissive remark. This a rare display of childishness from the Mafia Don.

"Akina-channn~ don't be so uptight." He tutted, stealthily putting a little of this and a little of that on Akina's plate already filled with food.

Akina disregard the coquetry from the male and continued eating. The yacht is anchored in between who knows where of the ocean and the relatively serene waters along with the sumptuous breakfast in front of them bringing a sense of peacefulness.

"Speaking of job, after the job, where should we go?" Satoru hummed, retracing his hand back to his plate after satisfyingly filling a small hill of food on the lady's plate.

"Home," Akina replied.

Satoru froze. Satoru has one home, the hidden mansion by the mountain. Akina however grew up in the facility of her organization which couldn't even pass up to be called a domicile. More like a slaughterhouse. And that sniper has long been 'dead' in the paper. There's only his Akina. If there's 'home' for her it would only mean one place. Satoru's lips smiled softly and stare at the lady's untroubled countenance.

"Alright. Home it is."

Their breakfast was interrupted by the sound of a chopper, slowing down as it was near their yacht and maneuvering to land on the helipad.

From the corner of the stairs, Suguru and Shoko descended with bags in their hand.

"The auction is starting tomorrow evening. We should dock in the marina tomorrow morning." Suguru greeted you and pulled a chair beside Satoru for himself. Shoko followed and sat beside you.

"Why not later evening?" Shoko frowned.

"Higher possibility of ambush." Akina supplied. "Also lesser chances of being traced if we arrive late."

Satoru snaps his fingers and reaches for the long case that Suguru is holding.

"I got something for you." He turned to Akina and extended the long black case. "You don't need it now, but just in case you should be prepared."

Akina accepted the case and carefully laid it on the yacht's flooring. Unlocking the safety hatches, her fingers raise the flap open. Behind her, Satoru's smile grew wider, a trace of pride and joy as Akina's blank face morphed into astonishment to awe to a gentle smile. Her fingers caress the shiny raven metal with delicate care.

"I had it fixed. Since I also broke it. I hope you like it." Satoru chuckled.

Suguru ears flared a tint of pink and conspicuously cleared his throat. Technically it was he who destroyed the sniper rifle, under Satoru's orders of course.

"I... appreciate it." She nod and lifted the gun. Testing the waters, she checked if it was loaded and aimed at the open sea.

"Try this." Satoru threw an apple into the air and Akina pulled the trigger.

The hole pierced through the fruit, smoking with a thin screen before it fell into the waters.

Suguru threw a banana and it was followed by two 'bangs' and fell to the waters.

"Two shots?" And it all hit. Suguru stared at the lady, checking the scope of the gun.

"Check this one," Satoru threw a blueberry and Akina pulled the trigger, hitting the thumb-size berry with ease.

"Put a silencer, you're hurting my ears," Shoko mumbled. The three of them continued playing around, shooting targets until the sun rose high and they went inside the yacht's cabin to cool down the heat.

Contrary to their plan, Akina and Shoko was left to roam around the city while Satoru and Suguru went to the auction.

Akina fiddled with the black card in her hand. Satoru gave her several cards under her name but she's never used any of them. It's not like she's used going to shopping. Satoru in their free time would drag her to go down the mountain to the city and stroll around the luxury boutiques and establishment that screams 'not for peasants', aside from that nothing more. She doesn't have many wants, and whatever she essentially needs is provided in the mansion. There's nothing much to buy.

Satoru on the other hand... Has a bad habit of indecisiveness during shopping. When he says he's just buying eyeglasses, but when he comes out of that store, he has two to three more purchases.

"Is there something bothering you Akina?" Shoko waved her hand before the dazed lady.

"I was thinking what time will the auction end."

"They'll probably be back tomorrow. Rozen Croix Auction can last for a week. It depends on what day the item will be presented." Shoko puffed out a cloud of smoke and drop the ashes of her cigarette on the tray.

"Do you think they'll get what they want by today?"

"I also don't know. But don't worry too much. They can handle it."

Rozen Croix... An underground auction hosted by an anonymous organization that sells anything. She has attended it once. And it didn't end as planned. She lost people before she could secure what the organization wanted to get. Really... It fits its name. A cross of roses.

"Should we get something to eat?" Shoko pointed to the ice cream rolls and tug her from the ominous memories trying to surface.

A day passed and neither Satoru nor Suguru came back. Y/n's foreboding thoughts are starting to gnaw at her, leaving her jumpy and restless. Shoko who has been watching over her tried to blow the grey clouds on her head but to no avail.

"Where are you going? It's already late at night." The door opened, and Shoko lean over the door, watching Y/n tighten her holsters and tie off her combat shoes.

"I'm going out. I can't sleep." The case of her sniper has never felt this heavy as she pulled on the adjustment.

Would Shoko stop her? She likes the doctor who has been like an older sister to her. But she would still get out of here by hook or by crook.

They stared for a few seconds and Shoko throw a black pouch at her.

"At least bring first aid. I'm sleepy, so I couldn't notice even if someone sneaks away from the door." Faking a yawn, Shoko leaves and went to her room.

"..." Thank you...

Rozen Croix has a villa designed in a cross surrounded by roses. Bloody red ones filled with thorns. But this is where most newcomers die.

The lights of the mansion are lit, and the auction still going on. When Y/n peeks through the scope of her sniper, there were only eight people doing the bidding.

And one of them has striking white hair, sitting with his legs and arms crossed. A sigh of relief flooded her heart.

The auction seemed to be ending as one by one the people left the room. Satoru however stayed behind. His head turned to the side almost as if he could see through the tall wall of grass Y/n is hiding behind.

Her heart drummed in her throat. Would he get angry if he knew she sneaked away and followed them?

Suguru appeared and seemed to have said something urgent that made Satoru tear away his eyes and quickly left the auction room with a dark look on his face. Only then did Y/n feel it was safe to breathe.

Three days became her routine. Sleep in the morning and sneak away at night. Today is the last day of the auction and the hall is full of famous entities in the underground business. She could hardly spot Satoru until he arrived in his all-white suit contrary to the black suits of the attendees.

What the hell is he planning to buy here? It's been three days and not once did he bid on anything.

"Today's event will be the last. Allow me to present the first item... The background information of Mr. Al-Farssi"

And just like that, what use to be an orderly auction started getting rowdy, with countless fingers, doubling and tripling the previous bid.

How could she forget... The highlight of Rozen Croix. Information bidding. You wouldn't want your dirty laundry to be aired and used against you. The host is a sly one, selling information from birth to the present day and selling it against the person's consent making it easier for his enemies to find cracks in his weakness.

Who could Satoru want?

" For our next item, 1603... An assassin most of you might be familiar with."

What? Curses flew out of Y/n's mouth. Why the fuck is her name there? She's supposed to be dead.

The room went silent. As expected, no one really knew her.

"5 million." A woman raised her five fingers. "US dollars."

Okay... Now that's gotta be some sick joke. She probably killed that woman's husband or son. Great. Fucking great. Y/n blew a frustrated sigh. Did Rozen Croix know she's still alive? Or it's just a blunder on the host's side for not thoroughly checking her status

"5 million, and one dollar." Satoru, for the first time since day one, raised his hand and drawled.

"6 million." The lady raised, shooting a glare in the albino's direction. Back off.

"6 million and a dollar," Satoru smirked. Not a chance.

The room is starting to fill with small chuckles, looking at Satoru and the lady back and forth. The woman however gritted her teeth and raised it again.

"6 million and 10 dollars." Fine, I'll play your damned game. Fuck you.

You sighed. Satoru never fails to piss people off.

"20 million." Satoru shrugged and the room fell silent. Raising a brow at the woman who was seething in her seat. Loser.

"Anyone else?" The ringman look around and seeing no one else raising a hand, held the gavel.

"25 million." The woman regained her posture and clenched her fist.

The room once again started getting louder, in amusement at this strange event.

"25 million and 25 dollars." Satoru rolled his eyes, starting to get bored. His eyes slanted to the outside of the window. His Little Flower seems to be preoccupied to notice his eyes, boring into her sniper scope. She must be getting bored. I need to finish this up quickly.

"30 million." The woman up.

Getting tired of this. Who is this woman? Satoru needs to secure this deal than let his Akina's information fall into the wrong hands.

"50 million."

The gavel rang and the word 'sold' rang out of the room. Satoru bagging the deal away. He needs to get out of here and go back home.

"I got the case. Are we leaving now?" Suguru came back holding a black attache case.

"Find the identity of that woman. I'm picking someone up, wait for me in the car."

He turned to her position but she wasn't there anymore.

"You. Hold it." The cold voice stopped Satoru from crossing the door of the villa.

"What is it? Angry your toy got stolen, Missy?" Satoru slips his hands in his pockets and turns around.

A woman with long blackish-purple hair that extends down her back, with some strands tied behind her head, thin eyebrows, brown eyes, and a scar on the right side of her face that crosses the bridge of her nose. She is slender and of average height.

"How much do you want in exchange for the case?"

For her to be this persistent, this woman must know his Little Flower a lot. Say... a past comrade? Just the thought of it irks Satoru. After they have abandoned her, what else do they want? Take his Little Flower away from him? Not a chance in hell.

"Even if you sell me your soul, I won't give it to you Missy."

Satoru doesn't believe in love. But she shed light on his life. She keeps his heart in peace. Cliche as it could be, but she makes him happy.

His Flower never asked him for anything and it irks him how could she be so contented with complacent life after what she'd been through. He wants to give her everything, anything of her desire. But no... She would simply shrug off and continue playing with the flowers she's arranging in the vase for his office.

It's her simplicity, the calmness in her draws the chaos inside him to a tranquil state.

Only her

"Then I'll take it by force."

The woman lunges forward toward him. Throwing knives slid down her hand and flung them in his direction. She's agile, her body is able to follow Satoru who has practiced mixed martial arts. Not to mention that lying idea behind Satoru that the blade she's using is laced with poison.

A faint sound made Satoru back off and a shell of ammo parted the two of them. His Little Flower walked out of the shadow, holding a pistol, aimed at the two of them.

It takes Satoru back to the day she was finally caught in his trap. It's the same as this, her gun is pointed at his head. It's just that, now, it's pointed at someone else's head.

"You..." Realization dawns on your face.

"Akina, you know this one?" Satoru relaxes his stance and walks towards her. He's right then... He hates people connected to her past life, it invokes the cruel side of him to selfishly keep her by his side at any cost.

It's fine. He tries to reassure himself, even as his heart breaks seeing her fierce face fall down to recognition.

"She use to be my captain and senior. Utahime."

"Oh?" A spark of selfish anger ignited in his guts. His vision is overtaken by the green monster clouding his better judgment.

"Y/n you're alive. Let me look at you." Tears gathered in the eyes of that woman. "Everyone thought you died. Why did you hide it for this long?"

Satoru is more than tempted to cut the arms that tried to reach for his Akina. But her reaction was more than enough to calm the green monster inside him.

She jerked her arms away, stepping back much to the woman's pain and disappointment.

"Did the organization have you retrieve my information?" The wavering in her eyes was replaced with hardness.

"Y/n, come home with me now. I was going to find you after looking into your information. Everyone has been worried sick about you. Remember Paris? The child has been crying for you."

Ah, the oldest trick in the book. Evoking familial emotion and pity.

Akina has her back against Satoru so she cannot see the darkness in his eyes boring into her soul. No matter where you go, I will have you by my side. It's an obsession, something embedded and resounding in his veins. No matter what she chooses, in the end, she'll end up with him and only him. It's like a curse he has never stopped chanting in his darkest dreams.

"The organization abandoned me first. Why should I go back? Wouldn't that make me a fool?"

Good. Very good. It pleases Satoru. The coldness of her voice, the hatred behind her words. Inflict them pain the pain you endured, and pay them back tenfold.

The woman's face crumpled in sadness.

Satoru held a hand over his Flower's shoulder but the sting of her swat threw it off. Dead seriousness is engraved in her eyes.

"Move, I need to talk to her. Alone."

And he leaves. Satoru leaves, because no matter what she says, he'll listen only to her alone.

"Y/n you're coming back with me, right? You're just vying for your time to kill him, right?" Utahime look at her with renewed hope as Satoru went in the waiting car, several meters away.

She use to look up to her. She patched her wounds, sneaked in food, and fed her, keeping her from ultimately falling into the darkness of their work. She looks up to her as a sister would.

"Did you know the organization abandoned me?" She feared this question almost all her life.

"That's not true, the organization needed to fool Satoru, or else he'll use you against us." Utahime pleaded, how much Akina wanted to believe her words. That the people who fostered her never meant to abandon her, that they cared for her, even just a drop, for the sake of her loyalty and effort through the years.

"I... want to believe you." Akina looks at Utahime. She doesn't want to doubt her senior, after all the years of being together. "But this isn't a matter of believing or not. The fact they left me on the brink of my death is enough."

I've had enough of it. That kind of life, taking and taking lives like breathing. Akina lowered her gun.

"The organization never really cared about me. They care about what I knew. In the end, people like me are disposable pawns for them. People like us. The next day they abandoned me, I'm sure there's another kid being trained to replace me. I'm not ignorant. I've paid my due for working all my life for them until now. If the Headmaster is wary I'll speak about the organization, please tell him, I won't. Even if it's Satoru or you, I won't spill a word about what I have done for them. That is the last thing I will do in exchange for the years of feeding me until I could properly shoot a gun." She turned her back on the defeated Utahime, walking to the waiting car.

"He's just using you. How do you know he won't torture you to get information out of you?" Utahime cried, her voice cracking.

"I know. Aren't we all? Just using each other for our own satisfaction. It's up to us how to use each other. It's just that this time, I'm given a choice, and I chose him."

Akina continued walking but stopped before she could reach the car.

"Senior... Please don't look for me ever again. This will be the last time you meet me as that kid in the white room. The next time you try to hurt him, I will kill you."

Since they went home she's been awfully quiet. It doesn't help that it's been raining in the mountains for week-long straight setting the mood as grey as it could be.

On days that he has to handle business in town, he leaves with her staring out of the window and comes back home with her still sitting on that window, accompanied by his two tigers whose big bodies are sleeping on her feet. It takes him back to the first day she stayed here. Bleak and empty.

He tried to divert her attention with conversations but her reply to them was as curt as possible and Satoru can't help but despise that woman for influencing his Flower's thoughts like this. It makes him miserable seeing her in a gloomy mood. If only she knew how many of his subordinates suffered from his irritableness, even Suguru has to reign him down from snapping.

"The hydrangeas are in full bloom today." The first full sentence she has spoken since they went home.

It's drizzling the whole afternoon. Satoru quietly held the umbrella as she walk on the stone path at a slow pace, admiring the blooming varied hydrangeas. The two tigers—Karma and Eros—lounge on the open terrace, despiteful of the rain.

"Sorry about being  so gloomy, I've just had things to think."

"What were you thinking about?"

Leaving him? He stops, turning to face you with a complex look dawning on him at your aching silence. The side of his mouth clenched, and his eyes were dark, dark enough that they were electric blue, a minuscule image of your face inside his gaze. 

His hand moves to hold your cheek halts in its tracks, the warmth of his fingers barely brushing your skin as you turn to him in question. "I can't tell you, and I made up my mind anyway. Nothing can change my mind now." You repeat softly, turning away from him.

You inhaled and point to the vacant spot in the garden. "I think looking out the window would be more fun if we have a lotus pond here."

"I can't do it alone." Satoru sanguine look bore into you.

"No, you're not." Your hand search for his rough palm and tug him to continue walking in the faint afternoon showers.

—GreyCaelum

PLAGIARISM IS A CRIME

Check out the Masterlist for more.

All rights and credits of the Jujutsu Kaisen character(s) mentioned image(s) and song(s) used, belong to their respective owner(s).

General Taglist: @ice-icebaby @aeanya @tender-rosiey

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Some Surprises

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

NOV 2024 Week 1

Ongoing Series - Thai

Fourever You (Thai Thurs YT) ep 5 of 16 - I love this show, but I absolutely hate the main couple's communication style. Or complete lack of communication style. I really hope the other couples are not gonna be this bad and it’s just because this one is leaning into the worst of BL archetypes. But I’m not confident. Poor Ter dating Hill put a big old target on his back. Earth being a dramatic stressed gay queen was peak comedy tho. Apparently the good kisses are only on WeTV (I am annoyed) so props to the giffers who keep me supplied. You're doing the BL gods work.

I suddenly realized, after the bullying sequence, that one of the reasons I’m liking this so much is it reminds me of early Japanese yaoi. There’s something about the dynamics of the characters and the way they're reacting to situations that’s not very Thai BL feeling. And if I think of this is more JBL, I forgive it. Or maybe that’s just why I’m liking it so much despite its flaws? Difficult to understand my own feels about this show.

Jack & Joker (Thai Mon IQIYI) ep 8 of 12 - I don’t like this new evil-bonkers rich kid character and whatever is going on with Jack and Rose and that whole story. It’s boring. And then my brain short circuited. No further thoughts... just War in a wife beater. 

Love Sick 2024 (Thai Sun iQIYI) ep 7 of 15 - Phun's bitch face really is epically wonderful. I kinda enjoy everybody ribbing the two of them because they have no idea what’s actually going on. I'm chronicling my experience with 2024 as compared to 2014 here.

Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 9 of 12 - Omg cutest boyfriends EVER. I don’t even mind how cheesy their bf era is. Does this lull jive with the rest of the story? Nope. But ya know that’s GMMTV’s thing these days, flailing during the final act.

Perfect 10 Liners (Thai Sun YouTube?) ep 1 of 24 - Pretty standard Thai BL university fair. I am hoping it’s better than ForceBook’s previous offering. Yet another sniff test. Is this the trope of the year? Meanwhile, they also deployed the crash into me trope in episode one. Who do they think they are? Taiwan?

New is directing this uni BL with a massive cast + massive run time. It's an endurance test ya'll - we will be watching this until APRIL of 2025! Su su na.

Every You Every Me (Thai Mon Gaga) ep 4 of 10 - I really like that they had the bandwidth to give us a little side couple with this installment. Fun crumbs. Meanwhile, the thing with the shirt in front of the mirror was extremely sexy. This installment was very sad though. And, of course, I’m not happy about it. To top it all off, next week is musical themed, so you know I’m disgruntled about it. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

See Your Love (Taiwan Weds Gaga) ep 3 of 13 - Aw spoiled neglected rich boy wants to be cared for and spoiled honestly. I do love them. Also tiny idiot syndrome is spreading. 

Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 6 of ? - The side couple (teacher student, hyung romance but he’s using em) interesting. Not sure how I feel about them. The subs are so bad it’s largely incomprehensible but I’m still enjoying it for no defensible reason. 

My Damn Business (Korea Sat YT) eps 5 of 7 - I love that our uke can be such a little shit. I love it when a tsundere has some serious snark and attitude to back his petulance up. Also liquid courage. At least we got to the root of the tsundere. Also neck kisses and cuddles! 

Eccentric Romance (Korea Weds Viki) eps 7-8 of 12 - Oooo, cute kiss. Drunken but adorable. I do like it when they use older Korean actors in KBL, they actually know how to kiss. Has the kiss saved this show? Possibly. I’m shallow. 

Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 7 of 10 eps - Our con man is such a good little homemaker. And it’s sexy yukata time! Love this trope. 

Love in the Air: Koi no Yokan (Japan Sat Gaga) ep 1 of 10 - Same plot as the Thai original, only from Japan. Very similar so far. I hope Rei is a bit more smart and Arashi is a bit less of a sleaze. I still get too much secondhand embarrassment and my mame alert is blaring.  I'm wary.

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (China Sun iQIYI) eps 1-2 - Triggers for child abuse, alcoholism. Two artists, one an abused rich kid and the other a tough scrappy poor kid, in the same art prep school. I of course adore the side couple of the much younger kid and the older teacher. Oh, I do like it. But it's CBL, I'm very scared as to where it might go.

Bad to Bed (Taiwan Sat YouTube) ep 1 of 10 - Influencer Wan Xiong suffers from insomnia, it’s a physical and mental battle. As he tried to find a solution, he encounters five boys along the way. I'm putting this on the list because it's airing and I just found out about it but I didn't have time to watch it yet. I hear it's v weird.

It's airing but...

The Hidden Moon (Sat WeTV) 10 eps - Supernatural romance (my ghost boyfriend trope) by Violet Rain (I Feel You Linger). A man is hired to write an article about an old mansion. He sees the ghosts of people who died at the mansion, falls in love with one of them. Was substantially recast. I loved IFYLITA except the ending so I think I'll let this one run it's course you can tell me if it's work tracking down... if they managed to land it. I have my doubts.

Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) 10 eps - I DNF'd at ep 7, I couldn't make it. I am weak. Life is hard enough right now, this show is making it harder. It’s not what I want from my entertainment.

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo (Korea Thurs Gaga) eps 4 of 8 - I put this one on pause. It's too heavy for me right now. I'll wait to know if the ending is hard fought happy (and then watch) or not (and won't finish). Sorry all, rough times this side of the screen.

Random I watched it

Vending Machine Sabi Koi AKA Can I Buy Your Love From A Vending Machine AKA Sono Koi, Jihanki de Kaemasu ka? (Japan 2023) - This show is utterly adorable, impossibly awkward, and kinda old fashioned. About a cute nerdy little office worker (he's out!) who has a big'ol crush on the tall hulking vending machine guy. They fall in love. And that’s it. And it’s charming. There’s some first name eroticism, because Japan, and there's emphasis on communication, which is so not Japan, but turns this into an organically loving and talkative relationship. There’s a bit of an age gap, and our office cutie may or may not have a muscles fetish (the hot bod not the shellfish) because (if I’ve told you once I’ve told you 1 million times) Japan always goes kinky. And you know what, I loved it. 9/10

Next Week Looks Like This:

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

November BL:

11/4 Our Youth AKA Miseinen: Mijukuna Oretachi wa Bukiyo ni Shinkochu (Japan Mon Gaga?) 11 eps - Minase was an exemplary high school student who hates Hirukawa, head bully and top delinquent. But then Minase uncovers Hirukawa’s secret and the two get intimate.

11/15 Caged Again (Thai Fri WeTV) 10 eps - Penguin escapes zoo by turning into a human. Gets trapped again and a panther falls in love with him.

11/17 Your Sky (Thai iQIYI) 12 eps - Due to an unforeseen situation, a naive freshman and the campus’s popular senior agree to pretend to be a couple - but their fake deal begins to generate real feelings.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Honor the crumbs indeed. This pair is so much crumbs it's practically dust. (Love Sick 2014)

God he is so stupidly in love.

(lask week)

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

Sigh, Tumblr in its infinite wisdom doesn't like too many at-ings.

[pandasmagorica]

First Watch Review: Unknown

See also episode 1 notes

I just binge-watched the Taiwan QL series Unknown over the last few days. While it didn't knock anything off my Top 10 the way Knock Knock, Boys! did, it did earn a place on my A Cut Above list.

(As a side note, I'm realizing that I feel weird about Eternal Yesterday and Until We Meet Again no longer being on my Top 10, so I'm considering letting my Top list be as large as it needs to be to keep them on the list. 10 is an arbitrary number anyway. Eternal Yesterday and Until We Meet Again are special series in my heart and are definitely above being "just" a cut above.)

First off, I was almost ready to write the series off partway through the first episode because of the violence - content warning: crime gangs stage fights that they bet on and the fight scene is quite brutal. But it is mercifully brief and there's not a lot more violence in the rest of the series. I'm not generally someone who fast forwards but I guess you could do that or use the seek feature to skip it.

Brother-as-father Wei Qian starts helping homeless youth Yuan on the street. Yuan ultimately follows him home and sister Wei Bao lets him in. Yuan becomes part of the family, fully integrating into the family life with Qian, Bao, and friend-landlord San Pang.

As Yuan, now Wei Yuan, grows up, he realizes that he is gay and in love with Wei Qian. Meanwhile, Qian tries to put his gang life behind him and forms a game startup with Pang and Xiong Da Fang.

This series does a great job at showing domesticity and found family. There is also plenty of food porn. The transition of feral cat Yuan to family member Yuan is handled well.

The series generally does a good job of taking us on a journey across years of family life. One exception is a section where one of the characters spends time in the US. The series does not do a good job of getting across how long that time is, and we only learn of it later in a line of dialog in a later episode. I realize they wouldn't have a budget to show the character in New York, but for a script that did so well at setting where we are in the story, this was a significant failing. Given one of the other character's reactions to this absence, it's a wonder that other character was still alive upon the traveling character's return.

One possible challenge for English speakers is Yuan and Bao's name for Qian being transcribed in the subtitles as "Da Ge" rather than translated as "Big Brother" and Bao's name for Yuan as "Erge" rather than as "Second brother." But if you didn't know that before, you know now.

Similarly, I'm guessing when we see "San Pang-ge" in the subtitles, that this is family-izing San Pang as their brother. But that is only a guess.

Recommended if you're okay with an adopted-brothers adults relationship.

Anyway, let's go to the jump:

So the question all along once we know Wei Yuan's feelings is, how does Wei Qian feel about Wei Yuan? Is Wei Qian gay? After all, Pang has been setting up Qian with blind dates with women to no avail. Wei Qian claims to only have time for his job and his family, but is he hiding something, if only from himself?

Wei Yuan's scene coming out to Wei Qian is quite interesting. Wei Yuan seems to assume Wei Qian already knows and that Wei Yuan is just confirming it. Yuan is refreshingly self confident, a welcome improvement over Thun's self-doubt coming out to his mom in He's Coming to Me. However, Qian, in a scene reminiscent of Jim's reaction to Li Ming's coming out in Moonlight Chicken, can only tell Yuan of the difficulties Yuan is likely to face, including within his own family.

It's hard to know for this monolingual English speaker how much of it is in the original Chinese and how much is a shortcoming of the subtitles, but it seems to me that in this scene that Qian is intentionally being dense about Yuan's attraction to him. Ultimately, in a later scene, Yuan has to spell it out for him with a drunken kiss.

Qian had already been making noises about sending Yuan abroad to study - interestingly to this American Qian considers the UK more dangerous than the US. But now that Yuan has made his feelings know, Qian insists.

So Yuan goes to New York and Qian falls to pieces, eventually texting Yuan that he is welcome to come home if he wants. Does he finish his studies? We never find out. We eventually find out in a line of dialogue that Yuan was abroad for 4 years - I guess we can figure out the time lapse was significant as Yuan transforms from cutie pie to rugged dude, but still, more hints would have been welcome. And given the amount of drinking Qian did while Yuan was away, it's a wonder Qian hasn't killed himself or destroyed his career.

Part of the turmoil involves the return of the mob figure. Yuan puts himself in danger to try to keep Qian out of danger. But the mob dude is surprisingly okay with Qian's retiring. We never really get an explanation for this, but it's a relief that it's apparently over. Well, except for Qian's medical issues that are a hangover from the mob days.

Some of the turmoil, fortunately quickly resolved, involves Qian and Yuan keeping their relationship from Bao, as well as Bao and Pang keeping their relationship from Qian. It's funny that they can be offended by the others keeping secrets while being okay keeping secrets themselves.

But Yuan is a open book. Everyone knows how he feels, except of course Qian who doesn't want to know, until he's told and can't deny it any longer.

One thing: the obnoxious office-mate who wants to know who's top and who's bottom. I personally don't care and glad Qian didn't answer, but does say to himself "Isn't it obvious?" Well, not to me, although if I had to I'd guess Yuan as seme and Qian as uke, but why can't they be verse? Again, it wasn't clear to me and had no bearing on how I view the series.

Anyway, this is a fine series and deserves a place on my cut above list.

[tachineko]

any reason why you love kiseki so much?

Thank you for this wonderful question, anon!

Oh, where do I even start? First, I would like to say that I started watching Kiseki because of the author. Lin Pei Yu has become one of my favorites, and it's no surprise that I keep track of what she produces from time to time. She's made me watch and keep track of BL's from start to finish, such as trapped, to we best love, to my tooth your love, and now kiseki: dear to me. She is like the Taiwanese hwang da seul, though her endings are not as polished as HDS.

Kiseki also introduces one of my favorite tropes in romance. the savior and the saved.

But what's interesting is that BZY becomes the savior despite the financial difficulty, and FZR becomes the saved despite being in a higher quality of life position. I love a little unexpected switcheroo when it comes to these types of roles, which is why I was gagging (affectionately) about their sexual placements in the past episode.

Kiseki also reminds me of Trapped for some reason. Maybe it's because Kai Hsu (FZR) and Chris Wu (TY) look like the typical mafia members

-or maybe I'm just drawn by the hate-turned-love relationship effect between Yu Tong (BZY) and Jake Hsu (MSF).

Also, live-watching Trapped back in 2019 with bad subtitles has changed my hunger for BL. I now know that I am more drawn to BL's with amazing chemistry and back-to-front plots like I was when I was watching Trapped, despite the bad fansubbing.

Some of Lin Pei Yu's best troops revolve around scenes that are confrontational within the emotions of both lovers and characters. This is shown in some of her works, where in Trapped, it was TY having a heart-to-heart with MSF about being each other's safe space and not being alone anymore during TY's birthday.

In my tooth, your love, it was JXA clarifying to BL how, despite what BL thinks about his shortcomings, JXA clarifies that he does not mind and that he would rather challenge the hurdles of their relationship and face the effects with him in the long run.

For Kiseki, since currently it's airing, there's still more heart-to-heart conversations between the two. I do love that one scene where FZR explains a little of his sad background as the second-best prodigy son forced to stay in his brother's spotlight while BZY explains his relapse of painful memories around his abusive mom and how, despite everything that has happened to them, they can be each other's safe space from here on out.

Sorry, I just love heart-to-heart scenes. It's the make or break for me in BL's.

Last but not least, I know this is a bit controversial, but you can argue in my DM's about it. I do like that Taiwanese BL's such as Kiseki often go out of the box and just dip their BL's into controversial topics that some people might dislike, such as the student-teacher relationship or the age gap between BZY, who's 17 (legal age in Taiwan), and FZR, who's 24.

(dont mind the self insert of my own gif)

You can kind of see the contrast between people's perspectives and how people have western-oriented views about legal age. It also shows how people are so fixated on age that they ignore the thing that makes it substantial, which is the characters and their goals.

Also the plot has currently had me on chokehold that I was about to buy the untranslated version and open Google and Baidu translate so I know what happens. That's how much I love this series.

[mylittlesecrethaven]

I Read Project 2025, So Here's A Rundown I Guess: Part 3.1

Idk if this counts as political, but I'm just reading the stupid book online and putting down what it basically says and some other stuff i Guess. (it could get political I guess? Idk. Just kinda wanted to make these posts since I'm reading the book and I kept getting annoyed with people just saying what the book says instead of writing down exactly what it says and what page to find it on)

(That's not saying I won't do the same thing, but for some things I'll rewrite what it says unless it just needs to be summarized. I will have page numbers though)

(also, if this stuff does go into effect, I will be fearing for my life and the lives of many others for the effects this could have on people. for lgbtq, minorities in religion, race, and ethnicity, and those who are poor. this will effect everyone and a lot of people should be afraid of it. that is not be getting political, that is me saying that this is a scary plan meant to give powerful people even more power)

(also, if you want a faster rundown than waiting for me to give shitty interpretations of this, go to the wiki here. it sums it up pretty well, but it doesn't state everything.)

Department of Defense Reforms -

Policy:

Focus most military efforts on keeping China from taking over Taiwan (Pages 93-94)

Encourage foreign allies to take up better arms against world enemies such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (Page 94)

Expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal to compete with China and Russia (Pages 94-95)

Help increase ally capabilities to fight against terrorism (Page 95)

Aquisition and Sustainment:

Improve the PPBE Process (Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution), basically making the process through which stuff gets done in the DoD easier and more efficient (Pages 95-96)

Increase production of military weapons and ammunitions and allow for smaller businesses to help with the productions of such things (Pages 96-97) (and there was also something about how defense companies are required to use 100% American made weapons and ammunitions and that we should use weapons and ammunitions produced overseas by allies to speed up production)

Make it easier for military projects to get the go ahead and allow them to bypass "unnecessary departmental regulations that are not in the best interest of the government" within the laws range and also make it easier for people to work for the DoD in general (Pages 97-98)

Research, Test, and Evaluation:

Increase collaboration between DoD and scientists to make stronger, more powerful weapons and futuristic weapons faster to combat enemies (Page 99)

Increase speed of weapon deployment to the battlefield, and make the process of making final weapons out of prototypes easier, as well as make the prototype creation and testing process faster (Pages 99-100)

Create a better framework to protect the "technological leadership" that the U.S. holds over its enemies (Page 100)

[p5x-theories]

While I assume you will not start a new account after the global relase, will you still check out any gameplay to see how the official translation works and if you missed anything?

Definitely not a new account, no! I'll probably have a dedicated tag for any news about the English release (like I do for the Japanese release), and I may make a post if it comes to my attention that any of my info posts were lacking something significant, that I then become more aware of due to the Japanese or English versions.

But, I'll be honest, a lot of my info posts are put together because there's no official English version yet, so a lot of this information is difficult to come by! It's also a little frustrating to me when wikis have incorrect names for characters, or lack information that's easily accessible in the game. They've gotten better about this over time, especially since the start of the open beta, but my info posts were essentially made because no one else was posting this information anywhere in English, and I really wanted it to be more accesible for especially English-speaking fans.

For that reason, I probably won't change summary posts that I've already written once the English release reaches those points! At that point, my old summary posts aren't really necessary anymore- any English-speaking fan should be able to find gameplay and streams of it, in English, online. I'll still make new summary posts for new content that hasn't reached the English release yet, of course! But the core concept behind those posts was to help bridge the gap for people who couldn't easily find and translate the information, and that gap won't exist once the English release has those parts of the story available in English.

I will update character posts with things like English VAs, and any new important information like that, including names for characters that I haven't been able to confirm! The whole point of confirming names is to make sure they'd match up with the official English name when an English release was announced, so, as this blog is primarily meant for English-speaking fans (though I genuinely really appreciate the Japanese and Chinese fans I've gotten to talk to as well!), any posts here will be taking the English release's word as law for character names.

I don't plan on playing the English release myself (as much as I'd love to), however, as I simply don't have the time to keep up with playing two versions of the game simultaneously, not to mention the storage space on my computer is already a bit strained since I keep both the mainland China files (to datamine) and Hong Kong/Taiwan/Macau files (to actually play) on my computer, and a third version of the game would be too much. I also, to be honest, hate combing through others' gameplay videos to verify things, so I likely won't be watching much English gameplay either, outside of necessity. But I will keep up with news and announcements, and share whatever I can here! And I have some friends who are interested in playing the game when it comes to the US, so I hopefully can at least get reports from them on anything I should know. ... If not from you guys? I know I tend to get asks when exciting new things are revealed even now, so I'm sure if anything crazy we didn't know about already comes up in the English release, someone will let me know, hehe.

Oh, that does make me realize, though, I should probably start using a new spoiler tag for story content once the English version releases! I want this blog to be friendly to people that are new to the English release but don't want spoilers from the mainland release, too. I might use "eng version spoilers"? Not sure exactly, but that's something I'll think about. My main spoilers tag will still be used for any datamined story spoilers, of course!

Sorry, that was maybe a longer answer than you expected, haha. Basically, in summary, this blog will still operate as it has been, and I'll start sharing Japanese and English release news as well (with separate tags)! Past story summaries will not be altered at all, but character posts and stuff like that will be updated as necessary. I won't be playing the English release myself, but I will keep an eye on it, and I hope anyone who does play it can help keep me updated, too!

[nicklloydnow]

“But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”

I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?

(…)

A chronic “soft budget constraint” in the public sector, which was a key weakness of the Soviet system? I see a version of that in the U.S. deficits forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to exceed 5 percent of GDP for the foreseeable future, and to rise inexorably to 8.5 percent by 2054. The insertion of the central government into the investment decision-making process? I see that too, despite the hype around the Biden administration’s “industrial policy.”

Economists keep promising us a productivity miracle from information technology, most recently AI. But the annual average growth rate of productivity in the U.S. nonfarm business sector has been stuck at just 1.5 percent since 2007, only marginally better than the dismal years 1973–1980.

(…)

We have a military that is simultaneously expensive and unequal to the tasks it confronts, as Senator Roger Wicker’s newly published report makes clear. As I read Wicker’s report—and I recommend you do the same—I kept thinking of what successive Soviet leaders said until the bitter end: that the Red Army was the biggest and therefore most lethal military in the world.

On paper, it was. But paper was what the Soviet bear turned out to be made of. It could not even win a war in Afghanistan, despite ten years of death and destruction. (Now, why does that sound familiar?)

On paper, the U.S. defense budget does indeed exceed those of all the other members of NATO put together. But what does that defense budget actually buy us? As Wicker argues, not nearly enough to contend with the “Coalition Against Democracy” that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been aggressively building.

In Wicker’s words, “America’s military has a lack of modern equipment, a paucity of training and maintenance funding, and a massive infrastructure backlog. . . . it is stretched too thin and outfitted too poorly to meet all the missions assigned to it at a reasonable level of risk. Our adversaries recognize this, and it makes them more adventurous and aggressive.”

And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the federal government will almost certainly spend more on debt service than on defense this year.

It gets worse.

According to the CBO, the share of gross domestic product going on interest payments on the federal debt will be double what we spend on national security by 2041, thanks partly to the fact that the rising cost of the debt will squeeze defense spending down from 3 percent of GDP this year to a projected 2.3 percent in 30 years’ time. This decline makes no sense at a time when the threats posed by the new Chinese-led Axis are manifestly growing.

Even more striking to me are the political, social, and cultural resemblances I detect between the U.S. and the USSR. Gerontocratic leadership was one of the hallmarks of late Soviet leadership, personified by the senility of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.

(…)

Another notable feature of late Soviet life was total public cynicism about nearly all institutions. Leon Aron’s brilliant book Roads to the Temple shows just how wretched life in the 1980s had become.

(…)

In a letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda from 1990, for example, a reader decried the “ghastly and tragic. . . loss of morality by a huge number of people living within the borders of the USSR.” Symptoms of moral debility included apathy and hypocrisy, cynicism, servility, and snitching. The entire country, he wrote, was suffocating in a “miasma of bare-faced and ceaseless public lies and demagoguery.” By July 1988, 44 percent of people polled by Moskovskie novosti felt that theirs was an “unjust society.”

Look at the most recent Gallup surveys of American opinion and one finds a similar disillusionment. The share of the public that has confidence in the Supreme Court, the banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, and organized labor is somewhere between 25 percent and 27 percent. For newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business, and Congress, it’s below 20 percent. For Congress, it’s 8 percent. Average confidence in major institutions is roughly half what it was in 1979.

It is now well known that younger Americans are suffering an epidemic of mental ill health—blamed by Jon Haidt and others on smartphones and social media—while older Americans are succumbing to “deaths of despair,” a phrase made famous by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. And while Case and Deaton focused on the surge in deaths of despair among white, middle-aged Americans—their work became the social-science complement to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy—more recent research shows that African Americans have caught up with their white contemporaries when it comes to overdose deaths. In 2022 alone, more Americans died of fentanyl overdoses than were killed in three major wars: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The recent data on American mortality are shocking. Life expectancy has declined in the past decade in a way we do not see in comparable developed countries. The main explanations, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, are a striking increase in deaths due to drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, and suicide, and a rise in various diseases associated with obesity. To be precise, between 1990 and 2017 drugs and alcohol were responsible for more than 1.3 million deaths among the working-age population (aged 25 to 64). Suicide accounted for 569,099 deaths—again of working-age Americans—over the same period. Metabolic and cardiac causes of death such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease also surged in tandem with obesity.

This reversal of life expectancy simply isn’t happening in other developed countries.

Peter Sterling and Michael L. Platt argue in a recent paper that this is because West European countries, along with the United Kingdom and Australia, do more to “provide communal assistance at every stage [of life], thus facilitating diverse paths forward and protecting individuals and families from despair.” In the United States, by contrast, “Every symptom of despair has been defined as a disorder or dysregulation within the individual. This incorrectly frames the problem, forcing individuals to grapple on their own,” they write. “It also emphasizes treatment by pharmacology, providing innumerable drugs for anxiety, depression, anger, psychosis, and obesity, plus new drugs to treat addictions to the old drugs.”

(…)

The mass self-destruction of Americans captured in the phrase deaths of despair for years has been ringing a faint bell in my head. This week I remembered where I had seen it before: in late Soviet and post–Soviet Russia. While male life expectancy improved in all Western countries in the late twentieth century, in the Soviet Union it began to decline after 1965, rallied briefly in the mid-1980s, and then fell off a cliff in the early 1990s, slumping again after the 1998 financial crisis. The death rate among Russian men aged 35 to 44, for example, more than doubled between 1989 and 1994.

The explanation is as clear as Stolichnaya. In July 1994, two Russian scholars, Alexander Nemtsov and Vladimir Shkolnikov, published an article in the national daily newspaper Izvestia with the memorable title “To Live or to Drink?” Nemtsov and Shkolnikov demonstrated (in the words of a recent review article) “an almost perfect negative linear relationship between these two indicators.” All they were missing was a sequel—“To Live or to Smoke?”—as lung cancer was the other big reason Soviet men died young. A culture of binge drinking and chain-smoking was facilitated by the dirt-cheap prices of cigarettes under the Soviet regime and the dirt-cheap prices of alcohol after the collapse of communism.

The statistics are as shocking as the scenes I remember witnessing in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which made even my native Glasgow seem abstemious. An analysis of 25,000 autopsies conducted in Siberia in 1990–2004 showed that 21 percent of adult male deaths due to cardiovascular disease involved lethal or near-lethal levels of ethanol in the blood. Smoking accounted for a staggering 26 percent of all male deaths in Russia in 2001. Suicides among men aged 50 to 54 reached 140 per 100,000 population in 1994—compared with 39.2 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic American men aged 45 to 54 in 2015. In other words, Case and Deaton’s deaths of despair are a kind of pale imitation of the Russian version 20 to 40 years ago.

The self-destruction of homo sovieticus was worse. And yet is not the resemblance to the self-destruction of homo americanus the really striking thing?

Of course, the two healthcare systems look superficially quite different. The Soviet system was just under-resourced. At the heart of the American healthcare disaster, by contrast, is a huge mismatch between expenditure—which is internationally unrivaled relative to GDP—and outcomes, which are terrible. But, like the Soviet system as a whole, the U.S. healthcare system has evolved so that a whole bunch of vested interests can extract rents. The bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy, brilliantly parodied by South Park in a recent episode—is great for the nomenklatura, lousy for the proles.

Meanwhile, as in the late Soviet Union, the hillbillies—actually the working class and a goodly slice of the middle class, too—drink and drug themselves to death even as the political and cultural elite double down on a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.

In the Soviet Union, the great lies were that the Party and the state existed to serve the interests of the workers and peasants, and that the United States and its allies were imperialists little better than the Nazis had been in “the great Patriotic War.” The truth was that the nomenklatura (i.e., the elite members) of the Party had rapidly formed a new class with its own often hereditary privileges, consigning the workers and peasants to poverty and servitude, while Stalin, who had started World War II on the same side as Hitler, utterly failed to foresee the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and then became the most brutal imperialist in his own right.

The equivalent falsehoods in late Soviet America are that the institutions controlled by the (Democratic) Party—the federal bureaucracy, the universities, the major foundations, and most of the big corporations—are devoted to advancing hitherto marginalized racial and sexual minorities, and that the principal goals of U.S. foreign policy are to combat climate change and (as Jake Sullivan puts it) to help other countries defend themselves “without sending U.S. troops to war.”

In reality, policies to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” do nothing to help poor minorities. Instead, the sole beneficiaries appear to be a horde of apparatchik DEI “officers.” In the meantime, these initiatives are clearly undermining educational standards, even at elite medical schools, and encouraging the mutilation of thousands of teenagers in the name of “gender-affirming surgery.”

As for the current direction of U.S. foreign policy, it is not so much to help other countries defend themselves as to egg on others to fight our adversaries as proxies without supplying them with sufficient weaponry to stand much chance of winning. This strategy—most visible in Ukraine—makes some sense for the United States, which discovered in the “global war on terror” that its much-vaunted military could not defeat even the ragtag Taliban after twenty years of effort. But believing American blandishments may ultimately doom Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to follow South Vietnam and Afghanistan into oblivion.

(…)

To see the extent of the gulf that now separates the American nomenklatura from the workers and peasants, consider the findings of a Rasmussen poll from last September, which sought to distinguish the attitudes of the Ivy Leaguers from ordinary Americans. The poll defined the former as “those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile,” and having attended “Ivy League schools or other elite private schools, including Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.”

Asked if they would favor “rationing of gas, meat, and electricity” to fight climate change, 89 percent of Ivy Leaguers said yes, as against 28 percent of regular people. Asked if they would personally pay $500 more in taxes and higher costs to fight climate change, 75 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said yes, versus 25 percent of everyone else. “Teachers should decide what students are taught, as opposed to parents” was a statement with which 71 percent of the Ivy Leaguers agreed, nearly double the share of average citizens. “Does the U.S. provide too much individual freedom?” More than half of Ivy Leaguers said yes; just 15 percent of ordinary mortals did. The elite were roughly twice as fond as everyone else of members of Congress, journalists, union leaders, and lawyers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 88 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said their personal finances were improving, as opposed to one in five of the general population.

A bogus ideology that hardly anyone really believes in, but everyone has to parrot unless they want to be labeled dissidents—sorry, I mean deplorables? Check. A population that no longer regards patriotism, religion, having children, or community involvement as important? Check. How about a massive disaster that lays bare the utter incompetence and mendacity that pervades every level of government? For Chernobyl, read Covid. And, while I make no claims to legal expertise, I think I recognize Soviet justice when I see—in a New York courtroom—the legal system being abused in the hope not just of imprisoning but also of discrediting the leader of the political opposition.

(…)

We can tell ourselves that our many contemporary pathologies are the results of outside forces waging a multi-decade campaign of subversion. They have undoubtedly tried, just as the CIA tried its best to subvert Soviet rule in the Cold War.

Yet we also need to contemplate the possibility that we have done this to ourselves—just as the Soviets did many of the same things to themselves. It was a common liberal worry during the Cold War that we might end up becoming as ruthless, secretive, and unaccountable as the Soviets because of the exigencies of the nuclear arms race. Little did anyone suspect that we would end up becoming as degenerate as the Soviets, and tacitly give up on winning the cold war now underway.

I still cling to the hope that we can avoid losing Cold War II—that the economic, demographic, and social pathologies that afflict all one-party communist regimes will ultimately doom Xi’s “China Dream.” But the higher the toll rises of deaths of despair—and the wider the gap grows between America’s nomenklatura and everyone else—the less confident I feel that our own homegrown pathologies will be slower-acting.

Are we the Soviets? Look around you.”