#i just love everything about them and this episode so much

[softtdaisy]

a better father / Aaron Hotchner

summary. All Hotch wanted was to get a second chance to be a better dad. And now that you were offering him this chance, he fears he might have failed already.

words count. 2,465

a/n.  I got this idea with the episode from season two when Haley comes and she tells Hotch that he forgot about an appointment for Jack and I was like omg I need to do something with that so here's sad Aaron again

Being an FBI agent and a dad was sometimes hard to combine. Hotch knew something about that. 

He had a lot of regrets about Jack. Not being there much when he was a baby, not seeing his first steps, hearing his first word, and missing so many memories that were nicely caught on camera by Haley. Things he could never make up for.

And no matter how often Jack could tell him that he didn’t hold any grudge against his dad, Hotch still felt bad most of the time. Wishing he could get a second chance to be a better dad. 

At some point, he accepted that it would never happen. He was getting older, and the morality wanted him to date women close to his age. Which wasn’t a bad thing at all. He had wonderful dates with them. But none of them wanted to have a child. Some already had one, some never wanted to get pregnant, and some simply couldn’t. And of course it was never a cause of a breakup—or stop seeing them, because Hotch didn’t date most of them. Hotch simply accepted he won’t be a dad again. 

Then he met you.

You were an old friend of JJ's that he met at her birthday. Your work made you travel around the world for many years, which explained your absence during the past parties and you being unknown to most of the team. But you were back in town, ready to meet new people and start a new life.

Hotch never believed in fate.

But he was sure he was destined to meet you.

You were so full of life, acting like a ray of sunshine in every room you were in. And not that he considered himself dark, but he had to admit that his life and job had quite an impact on how he perceived himself. As someone who wasn’t very funny or joyful to be around. Not a very good dad or a nice partner. And sometimes, not even a great boss.

His life was pretty much in black and white. And when you came around, you brought colors with you.

It started that very first night, when you spent almost an hour sitting outside with Aaron. Drinking and watching the stars.

“Shouldn’t you be with JJ?” He asked after you finished a conversation about your favorite countries to visit and the one you recommended for someone like him.

“Don’t know,” you replied, shrugging. “I like being with you.”

Aaron could blame the alcohol for the redness on his cheeks, but you both knew it was insecurity and flattering. It’s been a long time since someone pointed out how they liked spending time with him. He felt…alive, knowing that you wanted to be around him.

And you weren’t lying for a single second. “You’re an interesting man, Aaron Hotchner. You need to let people see that.” you added, giving him a little shoulder bump. You kept your shoulder against his for a second. You loved the little smile your words created and the sparks that appeared in his eyes.

You felt lucky that you were one of the few people he offered a glimpse of the real him.

It started with coffee dates once a week. Before he went to work, and while you were still discovering your new life back in town, you met at the same coffee shop for an hour. You talked about everything, more life than work. You wanted to see Aaron, and not Hotch, the man JJ told you about. 

Even if she gave you such a good description of him that you were already willing to give him your heart without any hesitation.

You loved discovering new things about him every week. 

Each smile was breaking the wall around him.

Each time he put his hand on yours was him installing himself in your life.

And each kiss was you giving your heart to each other. 

These coffee dates were still a thing.

They just happened every day, at the place you were now sharing together.

And not only did you give him a lot of things already, you offered him the chance he thought wouldn’t come again, which he sadly accepted. 

To be a dad again.

You were four months pregnant, and it wasn’t always as easy as it seemed. Either the stress that comes from work or the fact Aaron still felt like he was too old for this, for you. But he was trying his best to make things as perfect as they could be. He was leaving the BAU earlier than before, and every day off was for Jack and for you. 

And every night, he made sure to have at least half an hour with you in the baby’s room to talk about the future.

But sometimes, dealing with both situations can be difficult. And today was another proof.

What was supposed to be a calm office day turned out to be more rough and animated. A new case came in the morning and turned out to be in town. 

Hotch was part of the team that went out to catch the unsub. He was going less on the field these days. There was a selfish reason behind that: he didn’t want to stress you or miss anything important with the baby. But the case being in Virginia, he took the opportunity to follow Spencer and Emily outside while JJ stayed with Penelope, like the good old days.

“God, I wish every case were as simple as this one.” Emily said when they came back to the car, the unsub was with the police officers. And Hotch had to admit it was pretty easy this time. He couldn’t wait to tell you about this one, how good it felt to be back there.

He could already hear you say something like, “We’ll tell our baby how their dad is a superhero,” which reminded him of when Jack used to see him like that. He hoped your baby would feel the same about him.

What if they hated him? What if they blame him for being away, for not doing enough? What if someone terrible happened to them because of his job?

Most of the time, Hotch managed to put these bad ideas away. And when he couldn’t, he found comfort in your arms. That’s what he needed right now.

He only had one thing to do: check on JJ and Penelope once he was back at the office to conclude his report and make sure everybody could go back home soon. Him included.

When Hotch entered Penelope’s office, he was welcomed by her confused and surprised face. “Sir? What are you doing here?” she asked. She got up and took a few steps towards him to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

“What do you mean what am I doing here?” he asked, even more confused than her. 

And the confusion just kept growing when he looked around and noticed Penelope was alone. “Where is JJ?” 

“Hmm, at the hospital?” From her tone, Hotch could tell that Penelope assumed he was supposed to know about her absence and the reason behind it. “[Y/N] called her?” This wasn’t a real question, because Penelope was there when you called. She heard you. But she couldn’t understand why she would know about that before Hotch.

And he couldn’t believe what he just heard. Sure, it made sense that you would call JJ if you needed help. She was one of your emergency contacts. But why wouldn’t you call him? 

Looking for his phone to check on you, Hotch realized his mistake.

He forgot his phone at his office. And spend the whole day assuming you were fine.

Before Penelope could explain the situation, or maybe she did, but he didn’t listen, Hotch ran to his office. He probably jostled some people in the rush, and there was a high possibility that he forgot to apologize. But it wasn’t his priority. Especially not when he grabbed his phone and saw the notification.

Six missing calls.

Around ten texts.

All from you.

You’ve got awful cramps when you wake up, and nothing would make them go away. You spent most of your day in bed, crying—which you didn’t tell Aaron, but he could hear the tears in your voice in one of your voicemails. You were asking him to come and bring you to the hospital to make sure the baby was doing fine.

But he never answered.

“I called JJ; she’s coming. Please don’t worry and text me when you see this. I love you,” said the last one.

When he dialed your phone, Hotch met your answering machine. 

He kept trying during the drive to the hospital. But all he could hear was your joyful voice asking to leave a message and that you would call back later. 

Never has Aaron needed to hear your voice so badly as right now.

The hospital wasn’t too far away from the bureau. Which didn’t prevent him from driving way above the limits. Not that he cared this time. 

Even if Aaron had prepared his speech in the car to appear calm, he lost his words right when he made his first step in the hospital. Being there was scary. Hopefully, when he arrived, the first person he saw was JJ. He rushed to her, almost scaring her from the way he grabbed her arm.

“Where is she? How is she? And the baby?” 

“Slow down, breathe for a second,” she replied, putting a hand on top of his to try and reassure him. “She is fine. And the baby too.”

The seven words that he needed to hear the most.

“I was supposed to bring her home, but she’ll be happy to have you.” JJ added with a sweet smile. If someone could understand Aaron’s position here, it was her.

Once she indicated to him the room you were staying in and he introduced himself to the nurse, Aaron rushed to meet you.

He was relieved to see you, for real. Sitting on the bed with your eyes closed. He took a second to look at you. Aaron hated that feeling in his stomach. He didn’t realize that until now, there was a quiet thought in his head saying that maybe he wouldn’t see you again. 

But you were there, looking better than he imagined you would. 

And when you opened your eyes and saw the man you love in front of you, you lit up the whole room with your eyes. “Aaron, you’re here!”

“Of course, I am,” he sighed, with a tired smile. He finally walked up to you and accepted the arms you were opening for him. It’s been a long time since a hug had felt this good for him. He let it go for a few seconds, closing his eyes and enjoying the feeling of having you close to him like that. He imagined you were home, in your bed, on a Sunday morning. Not at the hospital. 

Then everything hit him back. You, being sick and pregnant. Him, not being here for you.

Aaron kissed your forehead before cupping your face with his hands. “What happened?”

“The doctor said it wasn’t serious. Sometimes you get cramped and sick during the second semester. Basically, the baby is telling me to relax and stop overworking.” You replied with a soft laugh that wasn’t effective enough to stop him from frowning. “Love, we are both fine.”

“But I wasn’t there.” 

It hurt you how his voice sounded so sad. 

You heard Aaron speaking when he was physically hurt. And you already hated the way he would contain the pain by gritting his teeth, making his voice sound deeper and heavier. You always thought he was blaming himself for not being careful enough, which explained the tone.

But this time it was different. Aaron sounded like he hated himself for what he thought was a disappointment for you. But for him, mostly. His voice was broken, almost unintelligible. Like he didn’t want to be heard. And deep down, even if it was a part of his life you’d barely ever talked about, you knew where this was coming from.

"Aaron," you said softly, asking him to focus on you and not his pain. "I'm good. We're good.”

When he finally looked up to you, you met his red eyes. “These moments, they’ll happen again, you know.” 

He let out a sad sigh. “That’s not what I want.”

“I know, but you can’t blame yourself for that. This is your job. And we all accept it,” you said. You took one of his hands to put on your rounded belly. “She does too.”

Aaron opened his mouth to reply and argue on how this wasn’t the family dynamic he wanted for his second child. Not again. 

But no sound left his mouth. Which made you smile. This was exactly the reaction you expected from your so serious and composed boyfriend.

“She?” he finally replied, this time the glow in his eyes being replaced by happiness and surprise.

“The doctor did an ultrasound to make sure everything was alright. And this little princess inside finally decided to stop the mystery around herself.” You explained, but it would be a miracle if Aaron even heard you. You couldn’t help but laugh at his reaction: his mouth open, his eyes going from yours to your belly like he was trying to comprehend what you said. “We’re having a baby girl, Aaron.” This time, you couldn’t contain your own tears.

This was all Aaron needed to put all his stress behind. He couldn’t think about his job and everything that came with it when now he knew that in a few months, he would hold in his arms the miracle he couldn’t wish for anymore. A daughter that will be the result of the love he had for you. A daughter that he will love as much as he loves you. As much as he loves Jack.

Even if he still couldn’t speak, you could tell he was as excited as you by the situation. But there was still one thing that was waiting to be clarified.

“And wanna know the best part?” you asked, slowly caressing your cheek. “She’ll be the biggest daddy’s girl and will always love you. When you’re home, at work, or away. You’ll hold a special place in her heart, forever, Aaron Hotchner.” 

Being an FBI agent and a dad was sometimes hard to combine. But Aaron knew that he was fighting alone to find the perfect balance between both. 

He had you. And a perfect family to make sure he was a great man and a great father.

[charmac]

Danny did a little interview for AARP Magazine in December. I haven't seen it copied anywhere past the paywall and I enjoyed reading it, so wanted to repost here

(Article is pasted as text below the cut)

Noisemaker I was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I was the baby, my sister Theresa was 10 years older, my sister Angie was 16 years older, my mom had two sisters, and none of them shut up, ever. It’s an Italian family, so the decibel level is out there. A little smart aleck I went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel School, because if your mother and father didn’t know what to do with you, they gave you to the nuns. … and still a smart aleck I remember when Peter, my nephew, was born. I was 7 years old, and I went over and looked into the bassinet, and the first thing he did was pee on me. It was great! I don’t think there’s a conversation I’ve had with the guy over all these years where I don’t bring up the fact that he peed on me. Also an old softie Do anything you can to keep on an even keel with your family and friends, no matter what happens in your life. That’s all we have. Don’t hide things. You’ve got to get up every day thinking about how you’re going to make it easier for the people that you’re working with or that you love or that you eat breakfast with. Because it’s infectious; everybody starts feeling good. Falling into the business Growing up, I’d spend the weekends at the movies, but I actually wasn’t even thinking about doing it. I got introduced to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in a roundabout way, took a couple classes, and I got the bug. And I thought, I’m not like Cary Grant, but I got a feel for this thing. So I studied, and then I went and started looking for jobs in New York, like every other actor does. I didn’t care what the description was—“male, 6 foot 4, 250 pounds”—I’d go out for the audition. Once I got in the room, I’m going to do what I’m going to do. Becoming Louie I wanted that part, Louie DePalma [in Taxi]. I walked into the room to audition in front of the four guys who created it, and I said, “One thing I want to know before we start. Who wrote this shit?” And I threw the script on the table. And I had a nanosecond of, did I screw everything up? Then they fell on the floor. Louie walked into their lives. Sudden fame I went to the market the day after the first episode aired, and people are stopping me on the street: “Hey, Louie!” They weren’t calling me Danny. After a couple of days of this, I called my publicist, and said, “This is really crazy. People are chasing me down the street.” He says, “Danny, you don’t have to worry until that stops happening.” Now it’s all, “Frank, Frank, Frank!” because of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is good. The fans are all you have. Still evolving I think I’m bolder than I’ve ever been—I don’t monitor myself as much. I do say things that are, like, pretty far out, that are really weird, and sometimes I’m inappropriate. But I am always respectful, and that’s because of my two sisters, I swear to God. You have to respect other people’s space.

My happy place Since my two grandbabies have been born, I am just in- corrigible. You gotta tamp me down in the joy department, you know what I’m saying? I’m just so lucky. Blessings have been showered down on me. I wish that for everybody.And the thing is to be aware of it. Don’t let it go. Rhea [Perlman, DeVito’s wife, from whom he is separated but with whom he still spends a lot of time] and I were always able to see those little, incremental changes when our kids were growing up. And I tell my kids that, with their babies: Don’t miss a thing, don’t look away. A sudden case of holidays I’m in the movie A Sudden Case of Christmas with my daughter Lucy, who plays my daughter. It’s just a real warm, wonderful movie, and I loved doing it. As far as the actual holidays go, we have family dinners. Basically we’re Italian, so you know, anybody who’s around, we grab. We get to celebrate all the holidays, because Rhea’s parents were Jewish, so we did all the Jewish holidays, and we do all the Catholic holidays or Italian holidays. My mantra It’s always a good thing to be positive about life, and always get out of bed thinking today’s the day you’re really going to kick its ass. That’s the way to do it

[cosyvelvetorchid]

You want a little bucktommy oneshot that’ll make you cry?

I was watching the episode of SWAT where Deac gives Annie ‘The Letter’ and it sparked an idea. I’ve only given it a cursory edit so apologies if there’s any mistakes.

Anyway, grab your tissues and enjoy!

🩶

Read on Ao3 or below.

**********

The Letter

Rating: G

W/C: 2,192

Summary:

Buck decides it’s time to give Tommy back his things. He add The Letter to the box he had stashed in his locker in case something happens to him.

It’s not what Tommy expects.

**********

Buck stood outside Tommy’s door with the box in hands. The box of Tommy’s things.

The first month after the breakup he couldn’t touch any of Tommys things, let alone remove them. To remove them would be to remove Tommy from his life and he was not ready to do that.

The second month it hurt too much to see his toothbrush on the bathroom shelf, or his underwear mixed in with Bucks in the drawer. He wasn’t ready to get rid of everything yet but he couldn’t stand the pain radiating through him but the constant reminders of him everyday. So he’d boxed everything up and shoved the box into his closet hoping they he’d forget about it.

The third month he was still in pain but managing. Mostly by either working or baking. Everybody was definitely getting sick of eating his cakes or breads or pies but it wasn’t like he was using drugs or alcohol to—he’d found a healthy outlet. If you don’t count the sugar. Still, when he saw Tommy for the first time since the breakup up at a scene they were both on, it felt like another lightning bolt to his heart.

He stood staring at his former boyfriend; his boots glued to the ground, not being able to remove. Tommy eventually tuned and caught his eye and of all the ways Tommy could have reacted in that moment, he chose the one that broke Bucks heart even more.

He walked away.

Buck cried himself to sleep that night. He hadn’t done that since a month after they broke up. But in the morning when he woke up he decided he’d had enough. Tommy didn’t want him anymore—he’d made that clear. Buck needed to move on and he couldn’t until he’d completely removed Tommy from his life.

He removed the box from his closet and took it to his car, leaving it in the trunk while on shift. When his shift was done he’d take the letter hidden in his locker and add it to the box before dropping it at Tommys house.

The Letter. It was something that first responders did in the event they never made it home. They’d write a letter to a loved one or one’s, and keep it in their locker just in case.

Buck previously had one in his locker from about a year into being a firefighter, addressed to Maddie. But recently, after hearing of the death of somebody at another station he realised he needed to update it now that Maddie was happily married and had a beautiful daughter.

It was then that he’d thought about Tommy and the idea of dying without Tommy knowing how he felt about him wasn’t even a question.

It was supposed to be read in the event of his death but what was the point now? He’d chosen to leave Buck so there was no need for him to keep it. If he was honest he didn’t really know why he was giving the letter to Tommy now—it just somehow felt like the right thing to do.

So, he left the box on Tommys porch—hidden to the side so no passers by could see it—and left.

*****

Tommy arrived back home from a tiring 48 hour shift. He’d spent most of it doing ground work at a large factory fire. God he hated ground work. On top of that he’d seen Evan yesterday and his heart nearly tore itself out of his chest.

He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to beg him for forgiveness. He wanted to scream how sorry he was. But he couldn’t move. It hurt too much. In the end he had to use all of his strength to walk away. Again.

He lugged himself out of his truck and up the steps of his porch. Something caught his eye and he spotted a box at the far end of his porch. He looked up and down the street cautiously but didn’t see anybody hanging around.

He lifted the lid and immediately recognised Evan’s handwriting on an envelope placed on top of a familiar blue hoodie.

Evan had delivered his things back.

Emotion bit at his throat and he struggled to hold it down. He picked up the box and took it inside, dropping it onto the sofa. He picked up the envelope and ran his fingertips over the familiar handwriting, remembering when he’d first seen it and teased Evan about it.

He put the envelope back down and walked over to the cabinet in the corner to pull out a bottle of whiskey. He down the first glass for Dutch courage and poured a second one before sitting back down and once again picking up the envelope.

He was fairly certain what it was—a letter telling him what a piece shit he was for breaking up with Evan. How much of a coward he was and how Evan had regretted ever dating him.

He should probably burn it without reading it but in a pathetic act of self hate he forced himself to open it and began reading.

“Dear Tommy,

Obviously I don’t need to explain what this letter is for and why you’re receiving it. To be honest I’m not really sure what to write so I’m just going to put pen to paper and hope for the best (and hope to you can read my “chicken scratches.”)”

“Oh my god.” He said out loud realising what this letter was. It was The Letter. The one that most first responders had. He’d never written one for Evan—not because he didn’t want to, but because he was scared that writing one would somehow jinx their relationship. The irony was not lost on him, now.

He continued reading.

“I’m writing this a week before our six month anniversary, although I’m not sure that’s a thing you celebrate? We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked about a lot I suppose. I don’t know if it’s because we’re caught up in the newness of us or we’re both scared to open up.

For me I am a little scared. I’ve had so many people in my life leave me that I tend to cling on to relationships that aren’t working out of fear they’ll be another person who leaves. But not with you. For the first time in my life I don’t feel like I’m clinging.

Being with you is the easiest it’s ever been with anybody. You fit so perfectly into my heart it’s as though there was already a space in there waiting for you to fill. My whole life I’ve always felt like something was missing and when you kissed me that first time in my kitchen I thought the thing that was missing was my sexuality. But I was wrong. I think the thing that was missing was you.

You’re the most incredible man I have ever met, Tommy. And every day I look at you and I am in awe. How somebody so beautiful could want me is something I don’t think I’ll ever understand. I’m not naive—I know there are things you don’t talk about, things from your past, I see it in your eyes sometimes or when a subject comes up and you quickly change it. I hope that one day you’ll feel safe enough with me to talk about those things.

Hope? I should probably have said “hoped” given that I’m likely dead right about now. Whatever is the right word I want you to know that I have no intentions of going anywhere, no matter what you tell (told?) me.

You flew into my life LITERALLY, and turned it upside down in the best way. You once asked me why I liked you calling me Evan and I think I gave a half hearted response of I just like how you say it. And while that is the truth (seriously it’s hot as hell!) it’s not just that. It’s that for the first time in my life somebody is saying my name without following it up with criticism or derision. You speak it so purely and lovingly. Like it brings you joy. I’ve never had that before.

I’ve never had somebody make me feel so seen or so wanted. You let me yap for hours about stupid things and never make me feel like I’m annoying you. You tease me but always with affection. Even when you’re mad at me you never try to intentionally make me feel bad. You make me feel like being me, being Evan Buckley, is enough.

But we can’t ignore the big dead elephant in the room. I’m dead and you’re reading this almost like a ghost wrote it which thinking about that is actually kind of creepy. Anyway, I better stop writing soon before this ends up stupidly long.

Tommy, I am so insanely in love with you I don’t know what to do with it half the time. Who you are, how you look at me, the beautiful things you say to me, those gorgeous blue eyes and those wrinkles around them that I adore so much. If I could have stayed and lived the rest of my life loving you, just know that I would have done it in a heart beat. You were it for me. Not an infatuation or some shiny knew toy after realising my sexuality.

You were my whole heart and I’m so, so sorry that I couldn’t stay longer on earth to tell you that. But hey, maybe by the time you’ve read this in the future I would have already told you in person how much I love you.

I really have to go now. We’re decorating the station for Halloween this year and I’ve seen a super cool fake corpse at a prop house down the street so I need to pick it up.

I love you so much, Tommy. You made my life infinitely better while I was here and if I made you half as happy as you made me then it was worth it.

Love,

Your Evan.”

Tommy broke down in choked sobs.

*****

Buck was finally drifting off to sleep. He was exhausted. His 12 hour shift and then the emotional weight of getting rid of the last of Tommy from his life had taken its toll.

A knock at the door echoed throughout the loft. Buck sighed in annoyance—he just wanted to sleep. He threw off the covers and padded down the stairs, grabbing some sweatpants on the way and quickly slipping them on before opening the door.

His heart jolted in his chest at the sight of Tommy standing there. His eyes red and raw, and his face puffy. He looked away—he couldn’t bear to see Tommy like this. Or see him at all if he was honest.

“I take it you’re here to drop off my stuff?” He said to the ground. When he didn’t get a response he looked up. That’s when he noticed the letter in Tommys hand.

“Did.. did you-“ Tommy couldn’t get words out. His voice was raw and hoarse and barely there. He took a shaking breath. “You loved me?”

His face gave away how much he couldn’t believe what he’d read. As though it were a ridiculous notion that he could be loved.

Buck wanted to deny it. God, he wanted to tell him no; that he didn’t mean it; that it was past Buck who’d written it and current Buck didn’t feel the same anymore.

But that would be a lie.

The love he had for Tommy hadn’t diminished in the slightest in the last 3 months. He’d wished it had—it would have made getting over him a lot easier. But it hadn’t. Tommy was wrapped around his heart and permanently etched into his bones.

He tried so hard to keep himself together but it was fruitless. The tears fell from his eyes as quick as they’d gathered in his waterline. His whole jaw and chin shook as he spoke.

“I never stopped.”

Tommy let out a loud sob as he threw himself forward wrapping his arms around Evan. His Evan. Buck couldn’t stop the matching sob from leaving his own throat as Tommy peppered his face with kisses in between words.

“I love you.. so much.. I’m sorry.. I’m so… so sorry.. I love you.. I love you.. I love you..”

Finally his lips met Bucks. The kiss was wet with tears and probably snot, too, but neither cared.

They clung to each other and cried. All of the emotion they’d both felt over the last few months pouring out of them raw and unfiltered.

They had a long road ahead of them to get things back on track. A lot of talking, probably some therapy and hard work from Tommy to build Evan’s trust in him back up.

But all of that could wait until tomorrow. Right now all they needed was to hold each other. To remember how safe the other’s arms felt around them.

The future could never be promised, but they will both give everything to try.

[bronx-bomber87]

Hello amazing fandom and happy Wednesday :) Episode 3 off we go! So grateful to have my happy place back. To be able to do these first impressions. I love not knowing a single thing about this season really. Rachel being in the recap blew my mind. Like what?! Love the shock. Had zero clue she would be here this season. Let us get started.

7x03 Out of Pocket

We hit the ground running in this ep. Grey yelling at them to come to his office in front of the entire bullpen.... Lucy calling him the troublemaker we all know he is this year. heh Also he is one perpetually now thanks to you my dear. Brought out his playful side long ago. It’s been here to stay ever since. Love Tim replying it’s a fair assumption. Not fighting her on this even a little bit. It's fantastic.

Will say I love how Tim naturally jumps on the grenade for her. Old habits die hard. Or never die at all…Lucy isn’t here for it though. Still a little bristly (rightfully so.) Also I'm sure she thinks it isn't a good look that he does. Commenting she doesn’t need him to protect her. Grey is bemused by them and their flirty fight, but does have to rein them in because of course he does. LOL You can tell he’s happy they’re acting this way even if it's driving him nuts.

Tim jumps into apology mode. Not wanting to ruffle her feathers. It truly is a hair trigger response from him to shield her. He can't help it. Like breathing for him. Grey basically calling them out for their work flirt. ‘A weird itch they need to scratch’ heh I mean it is. Their version of foreplay let's be honest. Lucy seems quite embarrassed he has pointed this out.

Tim on the other hand....He is cheeky af in this dressing down of their's. ‘We didn’t put any money on it.’ With a big ole smirk on his face haha Oh my lord. No shame in the game for him. Who are you and what have you done with Tim Bradford?

Lucy is taking it seriously af. Where this goob to her left is cracking jokes and what not. Her face kills me. Like what are you doing? Do love seeing him be lighter and not so serious about everything. It’s delightful. Therapy is doing him wonders truly. Now Lucy isn’t as airy as he is but that’s ok ha

Tim you so cute apologizing and saying why he tried to protect her. Needing to defend why he did as such. That, if they were going to go down, should be him, since it was his idea after all. Lucy is much kinder outside of Grey’s office though. Saying she said yes to the whole thing. So it's just as much on her as it is him.

Do adore her jumping right back into it with wanting to finish this out. That they still have time. This way they can check each others methods. Lucy continuing the work flirt of their's. I am down. The smiles on these goobers I cannot. Lucy’s face when he walks away. My goodness you still love that man. *happy sigh * I love these idiots.

Rachel out of nowhere. Oh my lord. Do love these recalls to previous season's we're getting this year I have to say. Characters and all. Seems like they’ve kept in touch. First thing I thought was wondering about that. I had questions running through my head at her return. Like she must know Lucy dated Tim? Does she know how madly in love she was with him? (and still is...)

Sucks N.Y. chewed her up and spit her back out. Man it’s a trip to see her. From another life. Truly. S2 feels like it was eons ago. They were much different people back then. When Rachel said she hadn't contacted Lucy in 6 months....Knew that meant she didn't know of the emotional horror our girl went through.

Thus begins the digging up of wounds that have yet to heal. Detective exam and Tim..... Oooh boy. The two pillars that nearly broke her. Kinda glad for her asking about it in a way. I wanna see where Lucy truly is emotionally right now. Been having a feeling it's not great under the surface.

The fact Lucy is now trauma dumping shows she isn’t ok. Which of course she isn’t. She had a trio of trauma last season. Between detective, Tim and Tamara. The way Lucy says Tim broke up with her…. Ugh my heart. A wound that hasn’t healed for this fandom either. It's not going till until this is hashed out and reconciled.

‘Screw him. He’s an idiot right?’ *sigh* I mean a good response for Rachel though. It's what you say to a friend going through that. ‘It’s all for the best…’ Is it though? Oh my girl still wanna hug you and make you better. That has not gone away since 6x07.

Tim comes up not expecting his past to be standing there. He pulls out the Sanford Smile we haven't seen in awhile lol The one where he's clearly uncomfortable and his smile isn't reaching his eyes. You can tell he is confused and slightly unsettled. I mean they didn't end on the best terms after she started her life in N.Y. Now here she is in the station next to his girl. What a trip for him.

‘She ghosted me.' 'Yeah that’s her thing…’ We never did see what happened there. She was all in for long distance then she was gone just like that. Tim did a good job pretending he was happy to see her. The Oscar goes to you my love.

Poor Ridley is shaking in his boots. On edge waiting for a 'Tim test.' But he was prepped by Lucy in a way Tim wasn't expecting. Seth has his 'I’ve been shot answer.' right away. Too quickly really. Tim is sus af. Grilling him if Lucy warned him? It does explain why he was looking out the windshield as they were driving LOL Tim asking what else she told him?

Oh my word she recited chunks of her trauma training to Seth. Majority of her s1 ones at that. Except for the flour bomb. I’m dying. These call backs to s1-s2 are making me giddy to no end I have to say. She really dug in their archive to tell him about Wrigley. I'm laughing so hard. Tim is shaking his head so hard and I’m cackling. Playing dirty Lucy….’Ok I just have to get more inventive.’ He is not pleased LMAO Legit undermined him.

Texas instantly putting his foot in his mouth with Lucy. I was wondering if he thought be easier with Lucy. Or he thought he could charm his way into her being lenient. But he has never met Lucy Chen....Learns quickly how much that was not going to fly with her. I love Lucy putting him in his place immediately about 'darlin.’ That isn't going to stand for even a second with her. She makes sure he knows that.

The banter is PRIMO when Tim arrives. We get to see protective Tim arrive on scene again with Miles. I love it. Lucy doesn’t stop him this time. Knowing Texas needs it from both barrels if it's going to stick with him. But mainly I just love Tim immediately not having it with that shit for her. Any bravado remaining is squashed by Tim calling Penn 'Darlin' hehe

This is a mini moment that made very happy. You defend her Tim! Immediately protected his girl from Grey’s clutches about the rookies not listening. Gimme. I'll take this all damn day. That innate reaction to protect her is deeply ingrained in this man. I love it so much I could cry. Lucy once again not stopping him. Appreciative he has her back in this moment. The little things is how we inch our way back.

Poor Lucy so worried this will be another black mark against her career. Regardless of who won this is a loss for them. Adore Tim being positive with her. Saying as long as they don’t fire them, they have a chance to turn them around. Make them into good cops if given that chance. Love this. Look at Tim being the positive one. Only for his girl. Lucy looking to him for answers makes me happy. Asking what their chances really are? ‘Slim to none….’ Heh helpful babe real helpful.

It is nice to see Lucy catch up with Rachel. This is an ally we forgot she had. One that was far away in N.Y. So it's nice they get to reconnect. Not only that but be very mature about it. Especially about Tim. Celina getting a history lesson on the side is a hilarious bonus. lmao Frigging adored Rachel's 'Well yeah.' Like of course we would be friends still. Emotional maturity. Love to see it.

I love love love Rachel seeing Tim and Lucy were the better match. Rather than her and Tim. Doesn't even hesitate to bring that up in their convo. I said it many times in my s2 reviews. Forever grateful for the path she set Tim on. She was his first post divorce relationship. A Lucy 2.0 to get him ready for his soulmate.

Rachel is the fandom when she makes her comment about their break up. Trust me Rachel none of us expected the emotional devastation that was last year….it’s been 9 months and I’m still not over it tbh. Idk I'll be over it until they have reconciled. It's the gut punch none of us have really recovered from.

Lucy just breaking my heart all over again. Saying she made all these moves for them to be together. Only for it to blow up in her face. *sad sigh* You sure did.... Our boy has A LOT to make up for. That it taught her to just focus on her career. I mean I truly hoping that is the case this season for her. That we can some true clarity for her career. Nothing I want more (other than a reunion.) ‘No more messy station romances.' Sure sure mmhmm....

Those boys are LUCKY. They are trending online in a positive way or their asses would be grass. The defiance cannot be overlooked. I love Tim/Lucy standing next to each other as they back Grey. The little things I love so much. Forever in awe of insane amount of physical chemistry they have just standing next to one another.

The lack of personal space never a thing with them. It makes me happy to see it. Post 6x06 the physical distance could be FELT between them in every scene till 6x09. Felt like the Grand Canyon for awhile. So this is so nice to behold. Once again the little things that make me so happy. We're on the slow road to healing.

I wanna get into this scene and what it represents to me. I did always wonder what happened between them. After 2x20 she just fell off never to be heard from again. So this was nice to get. Tim can claim he didn't need closure but he did. This scene is an olive branch from Rachel to Tim. Just like when Isabel came back in 5x20. The return meant to be a healing one. Nothing more. Took guts for her to do this. If she wants back in Lucy's life Tim comes with that. Breakup or not. She knows this. Best to smooth this over before she can rebuild her life.

Do I find Rachel a threat? No. No I don't. Why you ask? Because this isn't 13th grade. These are grown ass adults. This isn't a H.S. or Teen drama. Just because she came back doesn't mean trouble for Chenford. Hell the woman even said Lucy was the better fit for him. One of the biggest complaints I saw last season was Lucy's support system. Someone who was in it has returned. This is a wonderful thing for Lucy. A win she so deserves. I just wanted to be the voice of reason in case anyone the fandom was worried with this scene.

That man could not be more in love with Lucy Chen if he tried. And vice versa. He is kind and courteous with Rachel. To me, mainly because post-therapy, Tim can see when someone is trying to make amends. Hell it's what he's trying to achieve everyday with Lucy. Also like to note it's not his mega watt Lucy smile. That is reserved only for his girl. But it is a 'second chance' smile. Like Lucy stated earlier in the ep. A second chance is a clean slate. This is just that if she is going to be in Lucy's life again. I'll be intrigued if she makes another appearance or not. We shall see. Every ep we are one step closer to them healing some more. I cannot wait to see what 7x04 brings.

As always. Thank you to the amazing readers I have. Your likes, comments and reblogs mean everything to me. Truly comment away I love it. As long as its respectful I adore chatting about this season as we go along. Shall see you all next week :)

~~~~

Side notes

Tim being the cold open. And breaking through Nolan's security system. I cackled so hard. Then is a sexy beast leaning against his bookcase. Pops a soda. Never wanted to be a can so much before.... ‘That’ll owe you two more Lakers tickets.’ LOL I love this man.

Poor Wes is gonna implode. Every time he hears that detectives name he shudders. Losing it a little more each time.

With the ladies saying let nature take its course with Jason. HA I'm with them. But of course Nolan being a boring boy scout won’t do it that way.

Anyone else think it’s weird Nolan doesn’t wear his wedding ring? I would hate if Tim didn’t wear his after their wedding.

Also going without backup after this guy. Like this man hasn’t learned at all from his mistakes. Do you not remember s2 you dope? Balian's reunion was as lackluster as they are. Welcome back Bailey. I did not miss you madam sorry ha

[spoilerssweetie13]

Hi, I've been meaning to reply to this. I just haven’t found the time to sit down and write a whole essay, hehehe. I'll start off by saying I definitely get where you're coming from, but here's just my two cents on everything:

The Doctor has, at one point, been President of Gallifrey, and given how Time Lords are, I don't they would allow someone "less clever" than them to lead them. The Timeless Child isn't supposed to make the Doctor special. If anything, it makes them a victim of abuse dissected like lab rat by their own adoptive mother over who knows how lifetimes. The Timeless Child does not negate their choices. Instead, I feel adds to them. They are alien even to this universe but chose to save it time and time again. In a sense, if they hadn't been kidnapped the DW universe would have died a billion times over, isn't that beautifully fucked up in its own way?

Davros once asked Twelfth why he ran from Gallifrey, and under this new context of the Timeless Child, you realize, "Oh shit that's what he was running from." That's what they are all always running from. I also saw another post on here that said that the Time Lords "granted" Eleventh more regenerations to cover their own tracks, and that makes so much sense. The Time Lords don't do anything unless it benefits them. When you see the whole show under the lens of Timeless Child, all the pieces start to fall into place. It's definitely a different viewing experience. It becomes so much darker, and I think that's part of the appeal of the Timeless Child for me.

The Doctor did always feel like the adopted child of the family; Timeless Child just confirms it. But they will always be the Doctor, because the Doctor is the name that they chose for themselves, their empathy and and love for humanity has nothing to do with where they come from, and that was true even when we thought they were from Gallifrey. It's all about their choices, and they will always choose to be the Doctor sorting out fair play throughout the universe, no matter their origins.

Ever since I watched the Fugitive Doctor episode, every time someone new would pop up on screen, I would go is he the Doctor, is she the Doctor, [ominously whispers] are we all the Doctor? (Joking, but seriously, the paranoia did set in!) To me, Timeless Child isn't taking the Everyman-ness or Everywoman-ness away but adds to it by saying literally anyone and everyone can be the Doctor. You don't have to be born on Gallifrey to be the Doctor; hell, you don't even have to be from the DW universe, so we could all very well be the Doctor, lol.

Extended lore says Time Lords used Looms to procreate so I don't know why the Doctor wouldn't know who the Susan's parents are, unless it hasn't happened yet because of timey-wimey stuff [shrugs] probably will never happen now because of the retcon. :( Marrying a werewolf is crazy but it's the Doctor, so I'm not even surprised.

It's funny that I don't like the Bi-genration for the same reason that you do like it. That it's a one-off and will never happen again. To me, it feels too convenient compared to the Timeless Child. Love it, hate it, want to purge it from your memory, the Timeless Child will always be a part of the show's history, it's essentially a infinite money glitch, a way for the show to go on forever. See, what really gets me is that Fourteenth will just drop dead at one point, and Fifteenth will just get all his memories and be like, "I'm healed now." That feels too convenient. To me, that's messing with the established rules just as much as Timeless Child. If we're talking about closure Fourteenth and Donna should've gone back to The Library and Fourteenth should've used his "resemblance" to Tenth to his advantage to confuse the Vashta Nerada and somehow save River without time collapsing in on itself (but that's just the Doctor/River shipper in me speaking). To me, Donna just getting her memories was closure enough.

RTD said he didn't want to make a mockery of drag by putting David Tennant in Jodie's Whittaker outfit. Mind you, her outfit was specially designed so anyone can wear it. What's so feminine about trousers, a shirt and a coat? It seems to me that it was just done in bad faith.

Bigeneration is just as lore-changing as the Timeless Child. And yet no one shits on it because their precious RTD wrote it. If Chibnall did something like this, y'all would have your pitchforks at the ready. The double standards in this fandom, I swear. RTD is allowed to retcon Doctor Who, but heavens forbid Chibnall even try.

The Doctor is no longer even a parent because of him. David Tennant is a good actor, but I'm tired of people pretending like he's the face of Doctor Who. The whole point of the show is that the Doctor has different faces, and we should love them all—not regress backwards.

We deserved to see the Fourteenth Doctor in Thirteenth's clothes, and not for everything she is to burn up and die. The Fifteenth Doctor deserved his own regeneration scene like every other Doctor, without Fourteenth randomly sticking around because of RTD's inability to let go of the characters he wrote.

At least the Timeless Child added something more to the Doctor's story. Bigeneration took something away: the emotional impact of the Doctor's regeneration - having to say goodbye.

[miyakazashi]

Link Click Bridon Arc Episode 5

Thoughts on the dinner scene

Oh dear... Oh my goodness...

Omg😭😭😭 Cheng Xiaoshi's wayyyy too gullible 😭😭🤣🤣 what do you mean he really thinks "you look tasty" is an authentic Bridon greeting😭😭😭 he doesn't understand English and just somehow adapts the weirdest thing Vein has ever said since his debut😭😭😭😭 and Vein looks so proud of himself- I can't- I'm crying I love them so much-

But they're adorable🥺🥺 like, they've only met twice where did this secret handshake come from- you know what, continue on, I'm not gonna stop this mess. I love it.

Xia Fei is literally me when I saw this😆 Lu guang has clearly had enough😆😆😆

Uhmmmm.....I’m not sure that’s the usual way people describe meat...uhm... Vein...?

Nevermind- he's adorable- everythings fine- everythings all under control, let's all just ignore what he said seconds before...okay ??

"Heh..."

No words just 😶🫢 don't say that with that expression, the fans are gonna misunderstand and I know it-

Overall Thoughts

1. Can I say I literally almost screamed when I saw the Chinese traditional round table, like omg...!!!

2. Vein calls Xia Fei by his English name Felix, saw some people asking on Twitter just a few days ago, didn't think we'd get the answer this soon though

3. Guess we can add one more clue to the latest right hand left hand theory, chopsticks on the right

4. I don't know how I feel about the "tender as your flesh" line, it's honestly kinda unsettling, like...I don't think it's a joke anymore guys... Even if it is just a Vein is eccentric thing- I don't know 😥😥

[ionobjectshow]

Hello granddad!! Really enjoyed the new episode by the way :D I just wanted to ask something, I dont know if you already answered this so I'm sorry for bothering you if you have D:

Do you have a particular interest in nuclear physics? I'm wondering because when I watch ION it seems to me like you must be very passionate about it as well, either that or your just very good at researching (or making stuff up this sounds legit to people who dont know anything about physics, like me! /j), but it sounds like you know a considerable amount! Maybe it just seems like that to me because I don't understand physics at all :P

I really love cracklin!! So much!!! I've felt like I was too naive and childish for most of my life, I felt weak, pathetic, i cried nearly every day and my feelings of self hatred were only solidified by the people around me. And even though I act MUCH differently now and am in fact quite crude (I am much like a bird squawking outside your window that refuses to shut up!!!) and say uncomfortable things, I'm still regarded as naive and dumb sometimes! The thing Sylvia and cracklin have going on feels very similar to MANY friendships I've had with girls my age. I liked school very much and liked to work, so it made them angry that I managed to be "so stupid and so smart at the same time" (quoted directly from something a girl said to me when I was in middle school). I feel very seen.

I also want to ask if you have a particular interest in object shows, or if you just happened to choose to make your show an object show by coincidence? Object shows are my special interest and I LOVE how your show goes against (almost) everything standard for an object show. Your show is absolutely unique and there's nothing like it out there! I'm sure you will inspire many young creators to make their object shows more serious and complex, deviating from just the typical competition show. In my eyes something is qualified as an object show when there are objects (or non human characters) and the creator considers it an object show, so I love how versatile the title can be! Your designs communicate a lot about the characters and that's SO uncommon!!!! I love it!!!!! You inspire ME!!!! The art is also BEAUTIFUL, really abnormal to see in object shows, most of the time very little detail is put into it, but your backgrounds feel so ALIVE

Have a good day! :]

☢️ As soon as I saw this secret message, the words flashed through my mind: “this letter is very autistic, perhaps it was created by an autistic person.” ☢️ I love long opinions with lots of details and sincere emotions, thank you for this text, I was very happy reading it!

☢️ Yes, you guessed it - nuclear physics (especially everything related to the operation of Nuclear Power Plants) has been my special autistic interest for about 5 years now. I love everything about it. In fact, I am absolutely bad at the exact sciences, but the dance of nuclear energies fascinates me and takes my breath away! I order manuals on nuclear reactors for myself and read them with great pleasure, waving my hands. I often go to a coffee shop to read there by the window with a cup of coffee ^^

☢️ I created ION during the most terrible period of my life, and this project was the only thing that held me while anxious depression was rapidly developing and consuming me into some bottomless black abyss. So I put my whole soul, all of myself and what I love into ION, I made this project my mirror. ☢️ It is very important for me to see how this story touches the hearts of other people, I scream with delight if some neurodivergent people recognize themselves in Cracklin! This is extremely important to me.

☢️ Object shows are not my special interest, but I was very surprised and intrigued by this genre of web animation. At first, I did not like the concept of an object show and I could not understand why people were watching it … and then something switched inside me and I really wanted to create my own experimental Object show. To create it entirely myself. To make an author's project that will become a part of me. I didn't even hope that ION would be liked by anyone else, I posted 1 episode with the thought that I was doing it only for myself. And now I am happy as a rainbow in the sky, reading so many kind comments and support! Thank you very much

[championari]

So I’m constantly thinking about Charles and how he could eventually meet Edwin with his feelings.

Here’s something I realized: Charles, despite constantly talking about things he miss, things he wants, he actually has a complicated relationship with desire as a concept.

How I would put it is by taking Supernatural as an example. There’s an episode in Season 5 where the boys meet Famine, a horseman of the apocalypse. However, Dean is not at all affected by him. It’s because due to being the older brother, and a Hunter, Dean was never allowed to consider acting on or even having desire for anything.

You can see where I’m going with this. Charles, like Dean, doesn’t actually believe he should want anything, due to “not being good enough”.

This is something actually touched on subtly in the show through the acting. When Niko says, “I know what it’s like to want something you can’t have.” Edwin directly looks at The Cat King’s bracelet, while Charles stares off into space. When Tragic Mick describes Angie’s light as enforcing a sense of yearning, Edwin looks at Charles, while again, Charles looks off blankly (can’t access screenshots right now). Edwin knows what he wants but is scared of it, while Charles doesn’t know what he wants because he can’t allow himself to consider it. This gives an entirely new meaning to Charles’ hatred of the Cat King. A supernatural entity who describes his kingdom as being about “want and pleasure”. Thomas is the encapsulation of everything Charles was never allowed to have. Charles chases after things that he knows he can’t have, romancing a living girl despite knowing she will eventually leave. Charles can’t consider returning Edwin’s feelings because that would mean he’s been running away from what’s been in front of him the whole time. That what he wanted was always there, at his lowest point, when he thought he deserved it least.

Returning Edwin’s feelings means he was already enough. And Charles can’t imagine that yet.

While I would obviously adore an interaction between Charles and Desire of The Endless, ultimately I don’t think it would do anything. Like Dean, Charles might be completely unaffected by them because he’s spent most of his existence building walls around his desires. Edwin was completely blindsided by Thomas because he never even considered having to think about Desire due to having no attraction to women and that being the dominant narrative of his time. Charles pursues Crystal because he still wants to feel like he has a chance at “normal life” (which as I said is self-punishment by throwing himself at something he knows he can’t have). To accept that he’s in love with Edwin would mean no longer pursuing a living person. Edwin would be it for him, which he kind of already gets but it hasn’t fully sunk in yet. Just like his death

There's also this exchange that drives me nuts:

"You gave up tranquil eternity…for your friend?" "Does that sound like someone who belongs in Hell?"

THIS. MAKES. ME. INSANE. Because Charles, like he always does when confronted with his own wants, completely avoids it. He doesn't respond to The Night Nurse's obvious confusion as to why he ran from Death, and instead turns the conversation back to Edwin. He makes it all about what Edwin deserves, not what Charles saw in Edwin that led him to make that choice. You could say this is practical as time is of the essence, but I think that's the point. Charles throws away the chance to explain his viewpoint on their first meeting, the consequences of his choice to run from Death with a boy he just met and knew for a few hours, and instead remains single-minded on Edwin's safety. Like when Edwin reasonably questioned, "Why are you getting angry?" when he began freaking out over Thomas getting close to Edwin, he says nothing.

There's just so much happening in that head that I can't stop thinking about.

[concretejunglefm]

What do we think the guys would be like if they had a secret crush on you? Like if you were working on tour somewhere with them.

Personally I think Folio would be the most obvious one. 😂

Folio would be the most obvious but that's because he's just generally excited to be around you and you start to easily pick that up, especially when you're aware he likes to hang out with the crew when everything is being set up. Normally it's him and his drum tech hanging out, but suddenly he's starting to spend a little extra time with you, maybe inviting you over. Despite this there is a little awkward shyness to him, especially in the beginning. Once he loosens up it's easier, but his crush on you makes him a little shy at times, mainly when you're alone because with other people around he can bounce of their energy, but solo he finds himself a little more a loss for words.

Matt would not be obvious at all, perhaps the closest he could ever come to even allowing himself a slight acknowledgement of the fact is when he isn't as tough on you about your job. Firstly he really rides you hard on it, mainly because you're young and not as experienced, he wants to give the benefit of the doubt but you also know what you came into so he shouldn't have to. It'll be subtler things with him, such as picking you up lunch when you forget yours because you selflessly are putting everyone else and everything else ahead of yourself, as well as simply bringing you a coffee in the mornings when you wake up early, because you want to get a jump start on the day. The walls come down a little, but when he feels like there's a little too much comfort there he's quick to pull them back up and give you a hard time to remind you about doing your job correctly. Little does he know you kind of like that he gets so bossy.

Jolly is a subtle man who is merely observant. Usually he keeps to himself, perhaps engaging with you a little, even if he does have a crush, but the most of it comes from you both sharing a love of books. You're the talkative one between you, firstly when you spot him reading a book you've read, which prompts him to begin a conversation with you. It's brief, but it leaves his chest feeling a little warm and there's a bounce in his step, one which is noticeable to the other guys. Eventually his subtly extends to an occasional touch here and there, grazing hand along your back, brushing your arm, even offering you his hand as you climb down off the bus. The biggest tell, not to you but the other guys, is when he gifts you a book you mentioned wanting to read. Each stop he'll peruse the smaller bookstores where he can and when he finds one he mentally wrote down you mentioning, he picks it up and gives it you. "I haven't read this one." You'll tell him, while he offers a smile and soft "I know." Before walking off with all of the guys sharing a knowing look.

Noah is alot more shy and awkward than his stage persona would have you believe, yeah he has an ego and knows that he's hot, but that doesn't mean he assumes you fancy him, just because he happens to have a crush on you. You bond over your similar interests after he discovers you're not only an AOT fan, but a death note fan, it quickly moves from anime to music and he finds his crush becoming something gnawing at him the nights you both spend sat up talking over all of these shared interests. If you're not talking about them, you're texting and even sending memes. Sometimes he'll even invite you into his bunk to watch an episode or two before he finds you falling asleep, head against his shoulder.

When it comes to Nicholas he shares the same sentiment as Jolly in regards to giving you gifts as a sign of his crush, but unlike the Swede, they're usually hand made and smaller when on the road. Most consist of little drawings and doodles, he can't count the amount of times he'd actually attempted to do a self portrait of you, some more serious and artistic than others. Calling you his muse would be a cliche, but he can't say that you don't inspire him to draw sometimes, especially on the days off when you go on your little adventures, sometimes he'll even go as far as doodling a little flip book of those for you during his spare time.

[vetchtibbles]

I’ve had a couple people ask me about the results on this quiz and wanted to see the other options, so here’s all the descriptions I wrote for the recommended shows down below:

Uquiz Podcast Descriptions

[Unseen - A short urban fantasy show where each episode is a different monologue from someone in the unseen world! Incredible music, writing, and performers. Some of the episodes are really genuine and sad, some are fast paced and comedic. You get something new every time - a college class lecture, a voicemail, a tour, a story. I love this show and I highly recommend it!

Red Valley - A sci-fi mystery with amazing writing and performances - a show about the scientists behind cryogenic technology, and the people that got mixed up in it all accidentally. I'm obsessed with this one and cannot wait for the next season!

Malevolent - A Lovecraftian horror about a detective with the voice of a mysterious entity stuck in his head. You've got to take notes for this one. This show is devastating, emotional, terrifying, and one of the most beautiful pieces of media I've ever enjoyed. You should really give this one a try! The sound design, writing, and voice acting are all insane - especially because it's all done by one creator.

Camp Here and There - For this show, you get the mealtime announcements from the loud speakers at an unusual summer camp in Ohio. Enjoy paranormal happenings, drama among the camp counselors, and a banger soundtrack (yes, by Will Wood. I still have no idea why.)

Death by Dying - Absurdist comedy. A very thorough obituary writer tries to get to the bottom of every mysterious death his column covers. This show has wordplay, nice gothic vibes, and a strange little town with far too many strange little deaths.

Welcome to Nightvale - This show is a classic among audio drama podcasts, having started in 2012 and still going strong. Every episode is a radio broadcast from the bizarre little town of NIghtvale, located somewhere in the desert. Tune in for news, traffic, sports, sponsors, horoscope, and the weather, none of them what you'd expect. You should really listen to some of this one if you haven't yet

Wolf 359 - This might just be my all-time favourite show - a long form scifi about a small crew aboard a spaceship orbiting a distant star. Things start innocently enough, but this show builds in drama and mystery quickly. Incredible soundtrack, writing, and performances! Intrigue! Witty writing! Amazing actors! SPACE!!! This show has everything and I love it very much

The Amelia Project - A comedy about an agency that fakes people’s deaths. This show has fun characters, absurd situations, and a banger of a theme song. Each season feels completely unique, but I always have fun listening to this one

Sherlock and Co - This is the best modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that I know of. For being set in 2023 - 2024, the stories are insanely book-accurate! This show is done as an in-world true crime podcast, so it's very immersive. The actors are incredible, and the theme song is fantastic

The Magnus Archives - The recordings of a paranormal research institute's archived statements. Things gradually start connecting across stories, and everything starts becoming more complicated for our characters working at the institute. This show is long at 200 episodes (with a developing sequel) and has some amazing writing and performances! It explores all kinds of horror imaginable, while being centrally about the characters and humanity. You'll enjoy this one 100%

The Bright Sessions - Here's the thing. The original show is good, but the sequel is definitely more of my kind of show. Bright Sessions is a long form series about the patients of a psychologist that works with people who have special abilities. It's pretty sweet and mostly about character relationships, but the sequel show AM Archives is a scientific thriller/survival show about ethical dilemmas in medicine and patient care - it also has more in the way of music and sound design. Both shows are really well done, with incredible performers and writing!

Deviser - A short form horror that I can't explain too much of without spoiling the entire thing, but this show is AMAZING! It's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard done in audio, so be prepared for that. It's got it all - insane sound design, performance, writing, and music, all done by one creator. If you want a dark speculative fiction about humanity and our relation to artificial intelligence, with a dog, then give this one a try

Zero Hours - A short series of one-off episodes spanning time in ninety-year increments, all with the theme of the end of the world. I truly love this show - each episode is devastating in a different way. The actors, sound design, and music are all incredible, and the show is produced by my favourite audio fiction team. Please listen to this one, you WILL enjoy it

Time:Bombs - This show is short at only three episodes - the fast paced account of a bomb disposal team on one night - New Year's Eve. There's a surprising amount of character development and heart for such a short story in this one, and you can listen to the whole thing in one setting, take the quiz again, and find another show! I'm kidding of course but I do love this show. The creators made the whole thing in one week, which is insanely impressive

Wooden Overcoats - This show proves that the only difference in tragedy and comedy is your point of view. A sitcom about two rival funeral homes on a tiny island off the coast of France with far more absurd deaths than you might think for such a lovely little community. This is honestly one of my favorite shows of all time, and I know you'll enjoy it too. It's incredibly good - the performers and gothic orchestral soundtrack are amazing, the writing witty and fast paced, and I know my descriptions aren't giving this show any justice. It's that good. Go listen to it.

Alice isn’t Dead - Poetic and terrifying, this show is about a truckdriver searching America for her wife, whom (as the title suggests) she thought was dead. If you're into the idea of the endless and lonely expanse of the American mid-west as horror, then this is the show for you!

Re: Dracula - The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker is conveniently made up of journal entries, letters, and newspaper articles all corresponding to certain dates. With this in mind, the podcast Re: Dracula released each day's events as written in the book in high-quality audio format! Essentially, this is just a really good audio book, with full cast performances, sound effects, and a haunting musical score. For fans of the book already, or anyone who enjoys gothic horror and literature

Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later - You didn't know you wanted an ancient Roman political comedy, did you? Well, you do. And the good news is, this show is perfect for you! It starts just after the unfortunate murder of Julius Caesar, when the financially struggling republic of Rome has turned to its new triumvirate for support. The three of them, however, are having a bit of trouble managing the world-superpower. This show is great, with incredible writing, performances and soundtrack. The story's got it all: intrigue, forbidden love, rivalries, and theatrics. Enjoy!

Trice Forgotten - Listen to this show if you like stories about PIRATES! Or if you're into shows with incredible soundtracks, intrigue, immersive soundscapes, and women sword fighting each other.

The White Vault - Long-form found footage horror about scientists dealing with paranormal happenings while trapped at a research base in the snow. Very technical and linguistic, so if you're into that, then you should give this show a try!

Fawx and Stallion - If you hate the Sherlock Holmes books then this show is for you, because this is about a different mystery solving team in Victorian London. It's a comedy about the neighbors of literature's most famous detective having to solve a major mystery as, essentially, the backup team. This show is very fun, and I look forward to the next season. You should definitely give it a listen!

New Year’s Day - This show releases one episode per year, on New Year's Day. Two magicians agree to meet up and talk every thirteen years since a performance stunt left them both immortal. There's only three episodes of this out at this point, so come back in a couple decades and let me know how it turns out! It's already really good!]

Made a quiz :DD -

[ropebunnykant]

Any thoughts about the fact Fadel was seemingly planning to up and leave Bison?? Do we think Bison knew anything bout the bf or the plan? Find it hard to imagine, at least within their current dynamic, that he'd be okay with it. I'm intrigued!

tbh? i think the reason the dynamic between fadel and bison exists as it does in the show is because of what happened with fadel's ex. i think that at that time, fadel likely saw his ex as a way out, much like bison saw kant as when this whole thing first started. i think at that point, fadel was much closer to being like bison is now, just ready to leave it all behind.

but then he got left, and that changed everything. i think after that, fadel took their mother's words to heart about them only having each other - but the "each other" was just bison for him. bison, who understood him probably better than anyone else because keen never had to kill like they did. so, he latched onto bison. fadel says as much in episode two, that he doesn't need anyone but bison, and i think that's because he tried to have someone else once, and that person left him without a word. and he has a similar sentiment in ep7 when he finds out bison was apart of the whole thing with style and kant, when he says that he trusts bison more than anyone. bison is the one person he relies on, that he allows himself to love and trust, and that's because he knows better than to open his heart to anyone else.

as for bison knowing about the bf, i 1000% believe he has no idea. fadel obviously did his best to keep his ex away from his family, and i also don't think bison would have dared say fadel doesn't have a heart back in ep2 if he had any idea that fadel had loved before and been left. i also feel like he actually would have taken fadel's advice more seriously if he actually knew.

[11queensupreme11]

Hello! I loved yesterday's episode! It was perfect. I love watching Perssasy in action. It was so fun to see the Yans despairing over Percy's actions, it was a very funny moment. AAAAAAH— I'm still looking forward to the Arsenic Blues reaction story. How would the Yans, humans, or everyone in general react to Percy's intrusive thoughts about suicide? Or when dyslexia and its ADHD become present? I feel like the gods and humans won't see it as relevant until Percy gets into a lot of situations because of it. Or about Percy's actions not generally considered feminine.

oooooh i'll answer this one by one

How would the Yans, humans, or everyone in general react to Percy's intrusive thoughts about suicide?

very very very VERY worried. percy is very self-deprecating throughout the books and sometimes slips into more concerning territory where he talks about hiding away in isolation out of shame for failing to save someone/people or claiming he deserves to die for the same reason.

i wouldn't say she has a hero complex cuz that's defined as "psychological tendency to want to be the hero in any situation" and she has expressed many many times how much she wants to have a peaceful and normal life (canon too btw) and just wants to go to college. she's just the unfortunate "chosen one" 💀

(also, those with hero complexes sometimes PURPOSELY create dangerous situations so they could "play hero" and percy would NEVER do that in my fic or in canon)

so yeah, no hero complex, she's just very heroic in nature. SO very heroic that whenever she experiences failure, she literally shuts down. that's absolutely not normal and everyone will pick up on that immediately. they'd most likely pick up that the insurmountable pressure that she's been in since age fucking 12, the fact that almost every damn year the fate of the world is ALWAYS on her shoulders (and there was the one time that it literally was thx atlas 💀), the trauma of being a demigod in general, the brewing war, etc etc. is what's exacerbating her depression and suicidal tendencies

they're first immediate thought, that gods and humans would agree on is: no more hero/demigod life, HOWEVER......

humans (and some gods) would be able to tell that all she wants is a normal life like humans do. she wants to be able to live her life without being hunted down, without gods constantly interfering in her life, without seeing her friends die, without the quests.... she just wants to go to school, hang out with her friends and be a NORMAL GIRL.

the gods however.... 💀💀💀💀💀 in their eyes, they MUST save her by locking her up in a gilded cage. she doesn't want to fight anymore? perfect! she can remain in the palace where all she has to worry about is being a good wife and mother! school? friends? silly girl wants to be with humans haha! and what's this about a normal life? in their eyes, this IS a normal life. they'll MAKE IT a normal life for her.

Or when dyslexia and its ADHD become present?

the humans won't care! disorders are a normal part of humanity. some of the more ancient ones might not know wtf they are, but other than that, they'll have pretty normal reactions.

the gods however........ those are HUMAN defects. but to them, once percy ascends, she'll be rid of all those defects and be a happy lil goddess 🥰

Or about Percy's actions not generally considered feminine

obviously, the more ancient humans will be a bit miffed when they find out that percy and other female demigods are fighting. but they won't make a fuss since they know that for every (greek) demigod it's "survival of the fittest" for them.

the gods (mainly the yans tbh) would be more irritated that percy's forced to fight. she's a princess, why are they making HER do everything 😒

[the-conversation-pod]

Year in Review 2024

AND WE'RE BACK!

Come join Ben, NiNi, and Shan as we talk about the trends we noticed, air some grievances, hand out some of our favorite fan awards, and make some new resolutions!

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:00:55 - 2024 Headlines: Industry Consolidation 00:06:49 - 2024 Headline: Self-Censorship 00:13:52 - 2024 Headlines: Vertical Format Micro-BLs and Other Shit We're Anti 00:20:14 - Festivus Airing Of The Grievances 00:36:51 - 2024 Fan Awards 00:55:49 - QL Resolutions 01:04:45 - Affirmations and Hopes for the Future

The Conversation Transcripts!

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

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

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation, the Queer Media And Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

I'm Ben, the media critic

NiNi

I’m NiNi, the vibes queen

Ben

And we are your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs

NiNi

We’re here to talk queer film and dramas, with a special focus on Asian QL

Ben

So if you like to dive deep into queer stories…

NiNi

If you like cracked out takes on art and commerce in queer media…

Ben

If you just enjoy simping for attractive people…

NiNi

We believe in simping!

Ben

Tune in!

00:00:55 - 2024 Headlines: Industry Consolidation

Ben 

And we're back. Oh my God, it's time to review 2024 before we get to the VIIB Awards, where it's just nonstop us talking about our faves. Once again, we have brought Shan into the booth because we have too much to discuss. Shan, say hello.

Shan

Hello!

Ben

First, it's time for us to talk about the big ideas of the year. NiNi, as the person who loves Thai BL the most on The Conversation, let's talk about how clearly the money is drying up and everybody is having to shuffle to whoever's got something to offer them.

NiNi 

Is the money drying up or is it just being funneled all to the same place? Because it feels like more money is getting spent on fewer things. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but I'm not sure that I can put my finger up and say that's a bad thing, either. We have seen some definite dips in quality. We don't have as many faves this year as we did last year, or even the year before. But what we did love, we loved-loved. 

So it's a complicated picture, I guess, but definitely there's been a consolidation and we wanted to talk about it a little bit because we predicted this in our very first set of episodes, all those many, many, many moons ago. We predicted that there was a consolidation coming in Thai BL because everything just got so big, so fast, and that usually precedes everything's starting to shrink back down a little bit.

Ben 

Big things we noted this year was GMMTV absorbing a bunch of free agents and, in one case, basically the entire staff of a whole studio that they now hire to do production work for them. 

Shan

Mmhmm. It's been wild. Like every week, I feel like we've been seeing announcements of new talent acquired by GMMTV.

Ben 

Barcode is now at GMMTV.

NiNi 

That was a big get.

Shan 

All the Wabi Sabi boys this year, too.

NiNi 

Yeah, those were the two big headlines, Wabi Sabi getting folded into GMMTV was one and definitely Barcode coming right at the end of the year. That was a big one.

Shan 

They also got Dimple Fluke.

NiNi

I mean, we love Dimple Fluke, but I don't know how big Dimple Fluke is in the general fandom—

Shan 

—He's big in my heart, NiNi, big in my heart.

Ben

[laughs] We thought this was coming when they got Singto to come back. Clearly trying to do it on his own didn't work and they were able to get him back in their house. I don't know how I feel about it. Wabi Sabi is no longer doing talent management. BOC seems to be shrinking

NiNi 

BOC (Be On Cloud) has said that they're backing off of talent management, as well. They dropped most of their roster. I think they only represent Mile, Appo, and Bible now.

Ben

Wow.

Shan 

GMMTV is the big studio that seems to want to be in the idol management game. And so that's where a lot of the talent is going. What feels concerning about it to me—we've talked quite a lot on this podcast about the increase in output, but not a commensurate increase in quality from GMMTV.

Out of all of the BLs that they're putting out annually, which is around eight to 10, there may be only a couple that actually have really good scripts behind them. So they're acquiring all this talent, but we know they don't have enough good writing to support shows to support this much talent. They put out, this year, a script writing contest to the plebes to say, “Help us, we need help writing shows.”

NiNi 

I was just gonna bring that up.

Ben

With hostile as fuck language, by the way.

Shan 

They literally went to the fans and said, “Can you write us some shows? Because we got nothing and we're acquiring all this talent.” That's just on the BL side. They've got this whole side of the house of these great, talented actresses and very few projects to cast them in. So it's concerning to me to see all the talent going to this one place that clearly cannot handle everybody that they're taking on.

Ben

It worries me too, because we've noticed a lot less sponsorship deals in most of their shows. One or two shows per year will get the usual eight- to 10-plus sponsor cards at the beginning, but that number has dropped off overall. It's very clear that there's maybe not as much ad money helping fund the production in the first place.

NiNi 

Bestie, I haven't seen an Oishii ad in quite some time.

Shan 

Right, where did Oishii go?

Ben 

If the juice makers have given up, it's over.

NiNi 

It is concerning to see this consolidation happening. There's a few people who are out on their own, who I think might be able to survive on their own. Like Jeff is out on his own, Billkin and PP are out on their own, and they're probably the ones who can sustain. Everybody else is either going to GMMTV or they're getting into the other side of GMM Grammy, like the One31 kind of lakorn side. But even that is shrinking, we're given to understand, people are moving into BL because that's the growing side of the market. 

Actors are moving into BL who might not have done BL before. Big names got into BL this year, like Jes Jespipat did 4 Minutes with Bible, a Be On Cloud production. He's a big lakorn actor. And then JJ and Tor did Spare Me Your Mercy at the end of the year. The headline on that really is like these big lakorn actors who nobody would have ever expected to do gay shit are doing the—well, in the case of Spare Me Your Mercy, semi gay shit. But Jes did gay gay shit in 4 Minutes, you know what I mean? So that's one of the big, I think, headlines that we need to be looking at looking at Thai BL in particular going forward.

00:06:49 - 2024 Headlines: Self-Censorship

Ben 

We need to talk about Thai BL starting to self-censor, likely to reach specific markets.

Shan 

Yeah, it's concerning. I wouldn't call it a trend yet, but we've seen a few examples of it in the last few months and it's making me nervous. What I'm talking about is, productions that are publicly saying, admitting that they are censoring some of the more explicit romantic or sexual content from their BL shows so that they can focus on reaching a wider audience with their message. We've seen statements like that from the Addicted Heroin creator. We've seen recently the screenwriter of Spare Me Your Mercy talk about the decision to remove explicit sexual content from the show for the same reason. We saw some of this related to Love Sick as well. If you're gonna do a Love Sick remake in 2024, the one thing you would expect them to improve on is not having censored kisses, but nope, they didn't do that. 

So there's this drive and this stated intention by some of the creators behind these shows to create BL dramas that minimize the actual BL as much as possible. They want to take advantage of the market for BL. They want to take advantage of the fan interest and the fan engagement for BL while also getting away with keeping the actual queer romance in these stories as minimal as possible. That is pretty shitty. They're coming out and they're saying this openly, this is not us just guessing.

NiNi 

Just saying that taking the romance out is why I left a lot of Western media. I'm so tired of seeing people say things like, “Well this doesn't have any plot.” The romance is the plot, the relationship is the plot and not recognizing that in a genre that is about romance is the part that kind of makes me go like mmm, okay, like yes—

Ben 

The genre is literally called Boy Love. (all) Where is the love? 

How old is that song? Hold on, let me Google that real quick.

Shan 

Don't look it up. But this is what I mean. Like, NiNi and I are refugees from Western romance. We came over to Asia for kdrama, because we wanted to see a genre of television that respected romance, that took it seriously as its own storytelling, that actually respected romance fans and people who like love stories. That is one of the best and most consistent features of Asian drama. And so to have now this subset of Asian drama creators who are specifically working in a queer love space that is even more hard for people to find, even less accepted by the mainstream, to have them intentionally self-censoring because they are trying to prove some kind of weird point. It just completely misses the point for me of why people are here engaging with these dramas. Certainly it doesn't seem to be helping in terms of pushing forward the social agenda in these countries where they're making these shows.

Ben 

This is the part that always stresses me out when we're trying to measure how gay can it be and still get funded because this happens to us repeatedly in queer viewer space. Netflix pulled this shit on us where, when they first wanted to go to digital streaming, they set up deals with all of the gay distribution houses. And we got to watch all of these movies that we had never had access to before. And it was great. And we all were like, hell yeah, I'm going to go on Netflix so can watch my little gay shows.

As soon as they get tastemakers—read: queer and brown people—to pimp their shit, they try and immediately convert and get a bunch of normies in there.

NiNi 

Yep, that's basically what happens.

Ben 

This, again, this is not shit I'm making up! This is what really happened.

Shan 

These are the patterns and we've seen them play out so many times in so many places and it's the pattern we're starting to see play out in BL and it's alarming.

NiNi

I mean! It played out on Tumblr. The platform that we spend so much of our time on, this is exactly what happened. The people who built the ship got kicked out of the ship.

Ben 

It's been an actually horrible year on Tumblr for queer people, especially trans people. It's a bad look that the gays who make the shit who seem like they're in an accepted enough space are either choosing to or being pressured to straighten up their act so that they can continue to get fed and make stuff. That doesn't feel great. It feels really worrisome as a sign about what may or may not be going on. Like it's only a few things right now, but we're seeing this everywhere else.

NiNi 

What we're basically saying is support GagaOOLala

Shan

Please! If you're gonna spend money on any of these platforms, spend your money on the queer platform hosted in Taiwan that actually cares about queer people.

Ben 

If you have spent significant sums of money on iQIYI in the last year for two shows and you haven't spent money on Gaga, reflect and then message us. [all laugh]

NiNi 

And I mean if you need yet another reason to subscribe to Gaga, their social media manager is like the greatest person in the world.

Ben 

They're my favorite person. They made fun of Kidnap. They were like, Kidnap, the show that's probably poorly named, is back on this week.

Shan 

Let's just get on our soapbox about Gaga for a minute, okay? They are the only platform that streams the vast majority of Japanese QL, period. They bring us Taiwanese BL. They bring us Thai BL in increasing volume.

Ben 

The WeTV shows have been consistently airing on Gaga lately. GMMTV is also clearly trying to consolidate and are starting to put their shows behind the Gaga and iQIYI paywall.

Shan 

It's a good platform that is worth supporting and it's far cheaper than any other streaming you're paying for. You should have it. You should subscribe.

NiNi 

This is not an ad.

Ben 

They do. We are not being paid. But if you guys want to hang out—I'm just kidding. Don't put that in there, NiNi. [laughs]

NiNi 

Yeah, but yeah, support Gaga. That's the only platform that when Park Seo Ham came out of the military, sent out a tweet saying, “Tell the world the bitch is back.”

Ben 

I love her!

Shan 

They deserve it.

NiNi

She is us, we are her, and this is a non-binary she. We don't know the gender of the GagaOOLala social media manager, but she's one of the girls.

Ben

I'm using ‘she’ in a gay way. It's very affectionate.

NiNi 

She, non-gender specific.

00:13:52 - 2024 Headlines: Vertical Format Micro-BLs and Other Shit We're Anti

Ben 

While we're bitching about things, let's talk about all these stupid vertical TV shows that keep coming out and how we must continue to refuse to watch them. We have already seen one of the shows that [Iijima] was in is going to apparently be put on TV properly. 

Good job, everybody, in not watching that. [NiNi and Shan laugh]

Do not let this become a thing. We cannot tell them that we are willing to watch shows two minutes at a time on our phones only. Unacceptable.

Shan 

Not only two minutes at a time on our phones only, but only after burning through a huge number of ads. That's how you get to the shows.

Ben

Gross.

NiNi 

This is like Ben's whole conversation in one of our more recent episodes about the BL TikTok filter. They're trying to get you used to the BL TikTok filter in like a million ways.

Ben 

I won't. I will NOT accept this!

Shan

Because the aim of this is to stop making actual dramas and just get us to watch a version of TikTok on our phones and call that BL. That's the end game here, guys. Don't fall for it.

NiNi 

Do not fall for it.

Ben 

We are here to support storytellers only. We are not here to make ad guys happy.

NiNi

I think that's a good segue.

Ben 

Speaking of ad guys who clearly don't like us, Korea is not interested in BL right now. [laughs]

NiNi

Oh my God.

Ben

We got three good Korean BLs this year.

Shan

At least they were all excellent. I know we talked about it on our recent Hallyu episode but now that the year is complete and the data has been crunched, I just want to underline this. We got, not necessarily fewer shows total from Korea, but we got fewer shows of a decent length. We got fewer shows of quality. A lot of what Korea put out this year was junk, frankly. These little vertical series, these small little web series that are really short episodes and very lacking in narrative. And then they also put out three of the very best things of the year. 

So it was a real dichotomy. In years previous Korea was putting out a more steady run of quality shows. We saw a real drop off of that this year.

Ben 

Oh shit, did Strongberry even make anything this year?

NiNi 

I was just about to say this is the year that Strongberry pissed me off because they made that Happy Ending thing that was neither happy nor an ending.

Shan 

And they made Blossom Campus, which was terrible.

Ben

Ew…

Shan

Strongberry let us down this year for the first time ever.

NiNi 

I kind of feel it for them because the CEO of Strongberry has spent so much time telling us how hard it is to get shit made and to get money to get shit made. So I was just like, ooh, things must be getting, like, real rough if they couldn't put out anything good.

Shan 

Can we though just take a moment to shout out the CEO of Strongberry for putting out his own little story about what happened with that show and basically being like, I told the writer not to fucking do that and he didn't listen to me.

Ben 

I did love that. I love that he just said, I told her she ain't let one listen.

Shan 

He was like, this is not on me. Do not associate this with me. You love Strongberry. You will continue to love Strongberry. [NiNi laughs]

Ben 

He basically did say it like that. We were like, all right, girl. [laughs]

Shan 

We'll let you have this one.

NiNi 

Yeah, but I mean it's a year in which we had nothing good from Strongberry, and that to me is like, wow. We got other really good stuff, some of it came out of absolutely nowhere. And I think that it had to come out of absolutely nowhere to get aired, because, as we saw when things are in the pipeline and they know about it, they're going to try to kill it.

Ben

Our last big highlight of the year we want to point out is that there was a Japanese BL airing almost every week this year. That is unprecedented. Usually, even if stuff gets made, we barely know about it, it gets no distribution, and the fansubbers are having people show up at their houses over. [NiNi laughs]

So we almost never get a lot of the Japanese BL, but there was a significant amount that was just handed to us on legal platforms for us to support, most notably GagaOOLala.

Shan 

GagaOOLala! I started Japanese QL Corner in January of 2024 on Tumblr. It's just a weekly post that I do that tracks the Japanese QL that's out. And I had things to write about every single week for the entire year. And we weren't always having to chase things down in the dark corners of the internet. We had things that we could watch on a regular streaming platform every week from Japan, And there were weeks when I was writing about six or seven shows at a time. That's how much was airing.

NiNi 

Now were those six or seven shows great? 

Ben 

Not always.

NiNi

I would say no, not always, but in terms of batting average, I think Japan did pretty well this year.

Shan 

I'd say still about half of the shows that aired from Japan this year were good to fantastic. And the other half were problematic here and there. There were only a handful that I thought were, like, bad bad.

Ben 

My favorite thing about watching Japanese BL is that I am never mid about it. I either really liked it or I was like, who is this for? [Shan and NiNi laugh]

I love that there's not all this wishy washy shit about like, oh, maybe it's kind of okay if I squint this direction. I'd be like, no, fuck that show. A 4 for you, a 3 for you, a 4 for you. Stay away from the shows I love. All of you over here, my 9s and 10s. Don't look at them. They're not worth it. Averages are not the most useful metric but I really like that when I'm recommending or not recommending Japanese BL, I feel very firm about how I feel about these shows.

Shan 

I do think that there has been a lot more variation in quality with the high uptick in volume of shows. But the batting average is still pretty damn high. 

We've got two new Japanese QL productions starting this week. So I'm excited that it's gonna keep going.

Ben 

That's it for the big highlights.

00:20:14 - Festivus Airing Of The Grievances

Ben 

Before we close out this year, we need to vent a little bit of grief. We need to talk about the things that we were super hype about that made us look like clowns. We're gonna start with our biggest disappointments in no particular order. Starting with the worst. 

NiNi, Wandee Gooday!

NiNi

[laughs] The absolute worst. I am so pissed off at this show. I talked a little bit about how pissed off I was with this show in our mailbag episode, but friends, I still have more ire in me about the show. I was so stoked, and the show dragged me along for a solid five to six episodes and then literally dropped me on my face. And that's something that I do not forgive in any way. I will remain pissed off forever. 

This is not The Shipper level, but damn close and I can't do it.

Ben 

If you want to feel a little solidarity, David was actually bitching about this at brunch earlier this weekend. He said, I can't believe I wrote a whole post for the first time on Tumblr about this show only to be made to look like a clown like this. He said he's never writing anything ever again.

NiNi 

[laughs] David's like, how dare you embarrass me?

Shan 

How dare you? It sucked, man. It was a huge letdown.

NiNi 

And the thing is that it could have been so good.

Shan

Could’ve had it all.

NiNi

I'm convinced that the first half and the second half were written by two different people. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me.

Ben 

Yes, let's start talking about BL like Star Wars fans. STAR WARS COULD BE SO GOOD IF IT WAS GOOD. Before you bitches come after me, my very first email address I made is a Star Wars email. Don't come for me.

NiNi 

Don't come for him, period. Okay?

Shan 

Leave us alone, it's been a long year.

Ben 

Speaking of a long year of disappointments, Shan, I'm letting you have the entire disappointment that was all of Sammon’s collected works this year.

NiNi 

Oh God, here we go.

Shan

We're calling this the Sammon Omnibus entry in the disappointment list. This year there were four different projects associated with Dr. Sammon. She screen wrote three out of four, and was the original writer for one: these shows were Dead Friend Forever, 4 Minutes, Spare Me Your Mercy, and Petrichor. All QLs, all with her attached, all very heavily promoted and very buzzy. 

I'm not gonna say that none of these shows were good at all or had any artistic merit. I actually really liked Dead Friend Forever until it fucked up the ending. 4 Minutes I found to be a very beautiful but ultimately incoherent mess. Spare Me Your Mercy was just a flop for all of us, none of us finished the show after all of us putting it on our list of the most anticipated of the year. 

Ben 

After JJ put his whole ass into Great Men Academy, I can't believe they embarrassed him like this.

[NiNi laughs]

Shan 

We have all seen Tor and JJ in other projects. You are lying if you claim that they were on their game in this show. I'm sorry. They have both done better with other people with better material. This show did not live up to the hype. I did not even finish it because I was so disappointed.

Ben

I can't believe we're saying that Tor was better in fucking Midnight Museum.

NiNi 

He was! He was absolutely better in Midnight Museum.

Shan 

He was better in Midnight Museum! And he had better chemistry with Gun than he did with JJ in this BL. JJ was light yards better in Great Men Academy than he was here. I'm not trying to shade the actors. It's not their fault. It's the material. The writing was bad. The show was flat. They seemed not at all dialed into their characters. They seemed confused about what they were supposed to be conveying, probably because their relationship development arc didn't make any fucking sense. It's not the actor's fault. They are very good actors and this show did not give them what they needed to succeed. I cannot believe what a letdown this show was after all that hype. There's also Petrichor, which is the first GL that has her attached to it. And I had to drop that one, too. It was hard to watch. 

Sammon is kind of considered one of the best screenwriters in the QL industry in Thailand. She wrote Triage. She was attached to Manner of Death. She has a track record. She has all these novels that are very popular and well liked. So there's a certain level of expectation that comes with her shows. But this year, her big year of four QLs, this was not it. Not a single one of these projects left me satisfied. I started the year as such a strong fan of her work, and I'm ending the year kind of throwing my hands up like, well, girl, guess Triage was a fluke. I don't know what's been going on, but you have not even come close to meeting that standard again.

NiNi 

I liked DFF and 4 Minutes more than you guys did. We've talked about this already. But I will say that these are shows that they spent money on. I have no complaints about production quality on any of these shows. They pulled up some quality actors. They got Engfah in Petrichor. They got JJ and Tor for, as you mentioned, Spare Me Your Mercy. Bible and Jes put on a clinic in 4 Minutes. And the DFF boys, they put their whole pussy in. They acted these shows, and they produced these shows. They look great, they sound great, but the writing just didn't hold up to everything else that they were putting in. 

And they got progressively worse because the one that I enjoyed the most was Dead Friend Forever, that was the first one. And the one that I enjoyed the least was Spare Me and Mercy. Like, we all dropped it. For different reasons, I think, but we all dropped it.

Shan 

I mean, it was not working on any level. So no matter what you were there for, there was just nothing to hold on to. If you were there for the romance, if you were there for the mystery, if you were there for the euthanasia discussion, it didn't really succeed at any of those.

NiNi 

Let's move on. Because we could talk about this forever.

Ben

Oh, that's fine. It's time for me to go the fuck off. I've been holding this in for months. [NiNi] It's time to talk about My Love Mix Up.

NiNi 

God, here we go.

Ben

Before I hurt people's feelings about this, I like Fourth and Gemini a lot. I think they're both very charming. I think they are both real talents and I am very much looking forward to seeing how they mature over the next decade, the way we got to experience with the original GMMTV BL boys. That being said, part about supporting your faves, for me, is wanting them to get work that uses them well. And I do not believe that My Love Mix Up used anyone well. It's extremely disappointing to me that after doing such a good job on Cherry Magic Thailand, that GMMTV released a show that did everything I was afraid would go wrong with Cherry Magic Thailand.

Cherry Magic Thailand managed to make the Cherry Magic story applicable to the Thai context in a way that we all loved. My Love Mix Up was not a Thai adaptation of Kieta Hatsukoi. It was My School President in a terrible Halloween costume, clearly trying to sell more tickets for concerts for these boys. It was embarrassing and it was a waste of everyone's time. I am so mad about this because I had doubts about this the whole way into it, but really hoped that after the strong showing in Cherry Magic, that there was gonna be something really cool here. I had a lot of hopes about this. This sucked.

And so much of it comes down to casting. As much as I like Forth and Gemini, I like them as individual actors, not as a branded pair. I think they work just fine together, but they were not the correct boys to play these characters together.

NiNi 

It's especially noteworthy because there were other boys in My Love Mix Up who I think would have done a better job. 

Ben

[performately coughing] Aungpao!

NiNi

They put Aungpao in this show and they didn't make him one of the leads. Aungpao would have killed Atom.

Ben 

Yeah, Aungpao would have done a way better job.

Shan 

Yeah, he would have been perfect. 

Ben 

And I think Fourth should have played Ida's character.

Shan 

I watched one or two episodes of this before I dropped it. And to me, it was just such an obvious case of miscasting. They cast it based on wanting to shove a pre-existing branded pair into a set of characters that did not fit them. And so from the start, the whole production betrayed the story. That's just frustrating.

Ben 

And they clearly did not understand the major themes either. They really fucked it up.

NiNi 

I came at it from a different perspective than you guys, because you guys had watched Kieta Hatsukoi, and I deliberately did not watch Kieta Hatsukoi until after I had watched My Love Mix Up, because I wanted to be sort of a control, and I ended up in the same place on the whole thing that you guys did, watching Kieta Hatsukoi afterward. 

They did not get this right at all. They didn't have the spirit of it.

Ben 

I'm really glad you were able to arrive at this conclusion with us. Kieta Hatsukoi is really solid and I do not understand how they fucked that up that badly. It pissed me off. It was disappointing. Chop!

Speaking of chops, how dare they reboot Love Sick in 2024 and then fuck it up this badly. I loved Love Sick as what felt like the Thai Degrassi. How do you make a worse version of that? In 2014 Love Sick was absolutely insane. They had girls two-timing dudes in the same bed with them in their own apartment complex. They have motherfuckers trying to drown each other in the pools and shit. [NiNi laughs]

Shan

And they had sex. They didn't show it on screen, but those characters had sex.

Ben 

I get much of the stuff that we saw in 2014. Love Sick may have been adding stuff and they may have been trying to be more true to the book by just making it into this boring ass GL and BL experience, but it just wasn't good. And I was pissed because they went in a cool direction by making Aim queer that was really good, but it doesn't save the show.

Shan 

That was the only interesting thing I heard about this remake, is that they made Aim a lesbian which added a little bit of a layer to her desire to cling on to her boyfriend. But everything else they did worse on than the original show.

Ben 

I don't want to be super mean to these boys because everybody was new in Love Sick and everybody's clearly new here. But goddamn, the new kid does not match Captain. And the way that they went so hard in making him look like Captain undercuts him constantly because he's just not as good as Captain.

Shan 

You know, Ben, the moment I saw that buzzcut is when I knew that this production was doomed. [NiNi laughs] Because that is so not the fucking point. That's not the part of him you have to get right!

NiNi 

My whole thing about this is that to be disappointed you have to have expectations. I was not disappointed in Love Sick 2024 because I had no expectations. I did not watch it. From the time I saw that they were remaking Love Sick, I remember, I think we said on this podcast, “Who needs it? Nobody.”

Nobody needs a Love Sick remake in 2024.

Ben 

We were correct. We asked why it was made and they had no answer.

Speaking of why was this made, Yin and War had a great deal of fun with their friends in the show that they produced, Jack and Joker. I ended up dropping it because they killed Jennie and I refused to accept that and I left.

NiNi 

Jennie Panhan is a goddess and you cannot kill her on your show. I'm sorry, you just can't.

Shan 

They really shouldn't have. It was pointless and gratuitous and disgusting. 

But let me just say, I did finish this show and I don't wanna be super mean to Jack and Joker because here's the thing: it's not a real show. It is a self-funded vanity project from Yin and War so that they could hang out on a set with their friends.

Ben 

And Tee Bundit was there.

Shan 

And Tee Bundit was also there. I went into the show and I was like, I know this is not a real story. They cobbled this script together themselves. We're just having a good time here. That was my only expectation: this will be fun. It'll be entertaining. I have no expectations for a coherent story, for themes, anything like that. And even with that bar, the lowest bar I can possibly grant to a show, somehow this show disappointed me. 

It was a mess, but not a fun mess. It was boring. It was mostly sexless, which was the most shocking part to me. They had three pairings in this show, only one of whom actually kissed on screen. 

Ben 

They had our boy Pee in this show.

Shan 

They put Pee fucking Peerawich in this show and they didn't let him kiss anybody! I was pissed.

I'm livid, still. They had this great side couple that the fandom was super into. They never actually let them get together on screen. They did not become an actual romance. 

Ben 

The most useful thing about that side pair is that Shan recognizes Mark Siwat about 30% of the time now.

Shan 

I know what his face looks like now!

Hi, Mark Siwat, this is my letter of apology to you.

NiNi 

Shan has a very specific Mark Siwat face blindness.

Shan 

It's Mark Siwat-only face blindness. And I'm sorry, Mark Siwat, you don't deserve that from me. You were a delight in this show. And I'm so mad that your character did not get a proper story. 

The thing that frustrated me about this show is it's a fucking fan service project. So why aren't you serving the fucking fans? We spent 16 hours in this show and it was mostly boring nonsense. They stopped doing the capers halfway through for some reason and just made us sit in these endless plots about this stupid fucking mafia whatever, rich families playing squid games. It was stupid. It was boring. 

Meanwhile, they didn't deliver on most of the things that the fans wanted. What a pointless use of so much money. Why, Yin and War? Why?!

Ben 

We hadn't seen Mark properly in BL since Bite Me, so I was especially disappointed. I'm still mad about that, too! Don't you worry! I'm still mad!

NiNi

God, I'm still mad about Bite Me.

Shan 

This should have been the funnest thing that happened this year. And instead, it was boring and sad.

Ben 

I'm so sorry that you were on two of our disappointments, Jennie. You didn't deserve that, either.

NiNi 

That's an important thing to bring up. Like, where's the fun? I feel like there were things that should have been fun that were just a slog. Where did the fun go? If this is gonna be a caper BL, then be a caper BL. You know that it's bad if you can't get me to watch a Tee Bundit show. I have not watched a minute of it. You know I feel about Tee Bundit. I love him even when everybody else hates him. Except for Hidden Agenda, which we will never talk about again. But this show didn't even compel me to watch it, which is saddening.

Shan 

Yeah, it was lackluster and it was truly only the fan sentiment for Yin and War that made it popular. It was just fans supporting actors that they like, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's no there there with this show.

NiNi 

Shout out to War’s pottery videos. Sir, you are hyper competent and I find that very attractive.

Shan 

And I really recommend just watching his pottery videos instead of this show.

Ben 

That's right, just head to IG instead. War did good work in Love Mechanics. That's why he's a fave. That doesn't mean I have to applaud everything he does after that, especially when it's not that good. 

I did like all of his outfits, though. Clearly he had a great time.

NiNi 

Okay, so now that we have completed our Festivus airing of the grievances… 

Ben

I feel better. I really do.

Shan

I'm happy we got that off our chests.

NiNi

Let's move into our fan awards.

00:36:51 - 2024 Fan Awards

NiNi 

In advance of our Very Important Internet BL awards, VIIB Awards that are coming up later this month for you guys, we just wanted to have a few awards that are just us having fun. And so we put the call out and we got some feedback.

Ben, take us into it.

Ben

We are finally awarding the Girl, You Tried winner of the year. Girl, You Tried, for those of you who have been with us, is something we like to award every season to shows that we think had really good ideas that maybe weren't executed as well as they could have been. We handed out quite a few awards this year. I don't remember all of them right now, but we have selected a winner.

Shan, would you like to announce the winner?

Shan

Ooh, do I get to announce? How exciting. Okay. 

The 2024 Girl, You Tried Award goes to Love Is Better The Second Time Around from Japan. [air horn]

Ben 

We've already covered this. I'm very happy about the yukata sex, but not about episodes 5 and 6.

Shan 

So close to being one of our favorite shows of the year. And that is why it gets this award.

NiNi 

Agreed. I am in 100% agreement.

Ben

Other shows that were up for consideration included The Sign, Living With Him, Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, I Hear the Sunspot—oof I got beef with that show—and The On1y One, Shan got beef with that one.

Shan 

I got beef with that show!

NiNi 

I think we made the right choice in terms of the final winner, though. I think of all of those the one that was closest to actually making it.

Ben

A bunch of those guys are in another MBS not-BL right now where they're all playing boxers, hugging each other without their shirts on, and sweatin’ and shit.

NiNi 

Yes, more information? You're burying the lede here. Like, I need to know where I can find it.

Ben

[laughs] Nowhere, man. It's not in the Western circles right now. 

NiNi 

The fan subbers are letting me down. 

Ben

I got a couple of Japanese fans keeping me in the loop. They send me little clips and it's all my favorite boys wrestling on the ground and shit in dark gyms.

NiNi

Why don't they make more shows like that?

Shan 

This is what I'm saying!

Ben 

Let me tell you, Petty's been demanding this BL for like four years.

Shan 

It's true.

NiNi 

I think we are actually getting a boxing BL next year.

Ben 

We are. [everyone laughs]

Onto our next award. It's time to award our Trash Fave of the year. 

NiNi, please describe the award.

NiNi 

Trash Fave is basically my favorite award. I cannot defend any of these shows, but I had such a good fucking time with them.

Shan 

Our Trash Fave winner of the year is Gym Affairs from, wait for it, China! Did you all know that China put out a real modern BL with kissing on screen in it this year? Well, they did, and it's called Gym Affairs, and it's winning the Trash Fave award because, listen. This show is not a quality production. It was clearly filmed on some iPhones with just whatever guys they could find around. But you know what? I respect it because it had a narrative, it had a clear story, and they are doing what they can in China to get these queer stories out, one way or another.

Ben 

It really spoke to guerrilla filmmaking, like they just really popped up somewhere, filmed what they needed to and got the fuck out of there.

Shan 

And it's a cute little show. It goes quick. Watch it on YouTube, it's free. It's a fast binge. It's charming. The actors are cute. It's a good time. We can't really call it a good show because the production quality is so low, but it's a fave. All of our friends who have seen it had a great time watching it. You should join in.

(Transcript note: The show has since been pulled from YouTube.)

Ben 

Our other two shows for consideration were Kidnap and OMG!Vampire. [NiNi laughs]

NiNi 

Yup.

Shan 

O-M-G Exclamation Point Vampire.

NiNi 

I was gonna say that y'all have very different definitions of trash than I do because even though I haven't seen Gym Affairs yet, from what I've heard about it, it is not trash it is just produced on a shoestring. Whereas Kidnap was actual trash.

Shan 

Yeah, Kidnap is super trashy. Like, trashy in the sense of, like, pulp novels.

NiNi 

It's called Kidnap, but there's only half a kidnapping, maybe.

Shan 

Did anyone actually get kidnapped in Kidnap? That was a Gaga joke.

Ben 

This show was so stupid.

NiNi 

At one point the guy kidnapped himself. Like, there was a lot going on.

Ben 

This show was so stupid that I got bored with Ohm Pawat, and was like I can’t do this anymore.

Shan 

I could only sustain myself by looking at Ohm's arms for so long.

NiNi 

This is what makes it my Trash Fave. I watched it till the very end because my favorite two things were in it, Ohm Pawat and being babygirl.

Shan 

You know what I think this is, NiNi? I think it's like when you open the trash can and you look inside, you sometimes find, like, this gem of a thing that someone threw in the trash. And that's what Gym Affairs is. And Kidnap is all the actual nasty, dirty trash around it.

NiN

Ohm, we love you on this podcast, sir. We love you so much and that's all we're gonna say.

Shan 

Free Ohm from this trash. That's what I want to say.

Ben 

We love you, even though all of Tumblr celebrated your character getting shot again, just like a few weeks ago.

Shan

And I don't think any of us actually watched OMG!Vampire.

Ben 

Our friends loved it. They had a great time with Lee and Frank's final show together.

Shan 

Several of our friends submitted it and they had a great time watching it. They highly recommend it if you're into vampires that are, apparently, very bad at being vampires. [NiNi laughs] You know, you should check that out if that's your thing.

Ben 

Onto my favorite award, it's time to award the BEST BOY!

NiNi 

The Namgoong Best Boy Award, which I promise I'm gonna watch Light On Me this year. I promise, I promise.

Ben 

NiNi, I swear to God.

All right. Shan, I'm putting this in my resolutions at the end of this. If NiNi does not watch Light On Me, we are not doing this show next year. [NiNi laughs] I've had enough. I have a list of shows that are non-negotiable for the next awards show. Light On Me and Rainbow Prince. 

NiNi 

Okay, I will. I absolutely will. 

Ben

You will watch them. There will be no more arguing about this!

NiNi

Okay, we're not arguing. It was never an argument. It's just more kind of, it always gets pushed down to the bottom of the list, but I promise you this year, bestie, this year.

Ben

Namgoong is the best boy and is the reason why we have this award. And this year, the award for Best Boy who did everything he could for the gays goes to Yai from The Sign. [air horn]

Congratulations, sir. We loved everything about you. We loved your arms. We loved your heart. We loved your wife.

Shan 

Mostly loved the wife the most.

NiNi 

I definitely had a lot to say about those arms. I'm sorry, I'm spacing out thinking about them now.

Shan 

This award is for the best supporting male friend who is all about helping the couple get together.

Ben 

He was so great. Good job, Yai.

NiNi 

Yai absolutely did that.

Ben 

What a mess of a show, but you had a clear throughline.

NiNi 

I just loved him saying, “Where were you discussing the problem? The bed or the sofa?” I think that was one of my favorite lines.

Shan 

He was mischievous.

Ben 

Other boys in consideration were Ryoga from I Became the Main Role of a BL Drama for his feathers and his support of his friends by tricking them into having a date and also telling Akafuji he was aggravating and then giving him useful advice.

Shan 

He was a real one. He was helpful.

NiNi 

He was the realest.

Ben 

Our last boy is Ryosuke from The Fragrance You Inherit, a last minute addition to this list.

Shan 

The drama did technically end right before the end of 2024. Ryosuke is the lead’s, Sakura, of the show, he's her bestie. He's been supporting her since college. He's the person who knows her and who props her up through all the hard things in her life, including her gay disappointment, her crushed, unrequited love, and parenting her son who is a perfect angel boy. He's there for it all. He is there to help her out. We love him.

Ben 

He is also played by Takeda Kouhei.

Shan 

He sure is! Looking excellent. Sir, I salute you.

Ben 

If you don't know who that is, you better ask somebody.

Shan 

You better not come ask me, because I'll get mad at you.

Ben 

On to my second favorite award. The Yiwha Best Girl Award!

NiNi 

Yiwha! We love her over here!

Ben 

I absolutely love Yiwha. I love that that show, all these years later, spawned the best girl and worst girls award. The Best Girl, like the Best Boy, goes to the girl who supports the boys the right way and is there for them and willing to scrap for them. 

NiNi, please hand out the award to our Best Girl.

NiNi 

Best Girl for 2024 is Lukpeach from Knock Knock Boys!. [air horn] All she wanted in life was to spread good information about sexual health and behavioral practices, to support her boys and to write non-creepy fan fiction about them. I salute you, Miss Mama. You are the best.

Shan 

Yes, support her in all her endeavors.

Ben 

She was a great character. I really like her as part of the evolution of the shipper character. I'm okay with them finding a way to write girls that really love gay boys and want them to have a good time without it being creepy. 

Beyond Lukpeach, we also had Jane from Knock Knock Boys!, Ju from Century of Love, and Pai from Cherry Magic Thailand on this list.

I liked Pai a lot and she was a strong contender for this award, particularly because she stole a motorcycle to make sure those boys had the scene they needed to have. And then she left. She explicitly said, “That scene is for them. I got what I needed. I know my boys are going to make this happen.”

Shan

Pai  was great at knowing the line between supporting and inserting herself where she didn't belong, and she never crossed the line.

Ben 

What a great character. This was a pretty decent year for fujo characters in the genre. That is one of the positive things I can say about this year in terms of trope-related stuff.

We have introduced a new award this year.

Shan 

What exciting stuff.

Ben

I'm gonna let you award this one, Shan. This is our Bridesmaid Award. This goes to…

Shan 

Hyunho from Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. [air horn] Oh, I love it. This award is for the second leads. The character that can never win, but that still manages to make you kind of want them to and who makes you sympathetic for them when they inevitably lose. I think Hyunho was the platonic ideal of the kdrama second lead in Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. He is definitely a deserving winner of this Bridesmaid Award.

Ben 

Our other two people in consideration were Sangwon for Love for Love's Sake, because he got into a whole fight for the gays and then got mad that they kept asking him for help for the rest of the show. And Kurosawa from Ossan's Love Returns, because this man has not won five times now. Incredible.

Shan 

He will always be the Bridesmaid eternally. But yeah, this is really Korea's category to lose, because this is what they do. Second leads are specifically a Korean trope.

NiNi 

Good job, Korea.

Ben 

We are once again awarding our favorite version of BGP!

Shan 

Ben, remind the people what BGP means.

Ben 

BGP is a term that we got from Bump Up Business, a terrible BL from the boys of OnlyOneOf, a Korean kpop group whose entire business model is pretending to be gay, and they made a whole show about idols who had to work together in a what they called a business gay performance to sell records, and wanted us to pretend that it was a real romance. Absolutely insane behavior. The audacity!

Shan 

I can't believe this show happened.

NiNi

I'm sorry! “Is our business gay performance over before it began?” [everyone laughs]

Ben 

Oh my god!

NiNi 

I watched that entire show specifically because they told me that line was in it.

Ben 

She, NiNi was like, Shan and Ben are just cackling. This has to be ridiculous if the two of them have completely lost composure over it. And she was not let down. 

We love the term BGP because it's about the performance of the relationship for consumption. Shan, please announce our winners.

Shan 

This year's BGP award goes to Daou and Offroad, the only potential winners of our hearts.

NiNi 

I have to agree, there wasn't even a question. This was definitely Daou and Offroad’s to lose this year because, sir, the performance is performance-ing.

Ben 

They got a really solid outing with Century of Love despite everything that we now know was happening on that set and around that production. And they have continued to make their music and handle their performances, and they're coming to America this year. That's a huge deal.

Shan 

They have a fan meet in the United States that is already sold out. These boys are making moves.

Ben 

I'm very excited for them. Also up for consideration were Chris Chiu, aka Modi, and Kurt Huang for Unknown the series, because they went way hard on their Taiwanese BGP. Tumblr may not have been paying that much attention to it, but those boys were working very hard. And of course, we're going to acknowledge Yin and War, who got a whole show financed on BGP alone.

NiNi 

That is impressive.

Shan 

Pretty impressive.

Ben 

All right, our final award, our most fun award. We are handing out the Blorbo of the Year Award. This is for the character that took over your brain and you just could not let them go. Every time someone tried to take it from you, you just bit down harder and shook.

Shan 

Ben, would you like to announce the winner?

Ben 

The winner of the Blorbo of the Year award goes to Go Young from Love in the Big City. [air horn] What a great year for us and that character.

NiNi and Shan in unison

He is the moment. [all laugh]

NiNi

Oh my gosh, I can't get it out of my head. You owe me a coke.

Ben 

Yeah, it's gotta be a coke because you guys can't have any more drinks after Friday night. [laughs]

NiNi

Oh my god, no more, no more, no more drinks, no more.

Shan 

Keep it, keep it to soda, non-alcoholic. Nope.

Ben 

Go Young was so important to us. He is one of the most dynamic and complicated queer characters we got to experience this year. I am so thankful that despite all of the drama, we were able to get Nam Yoon Su and friends’ version of these characters. My goodness.

Shan 

I feel unbelievably blessed that they got an actor of Nam Yoon Su’s caliber to play him in the drama. I never in my wildest dreams could have expected that.

NiNi 

And he put his neck, his back, his pussy, and his crack into that.

Shan 

Holy shit. Me and NiNi are kdrama watchers. We have seen him in other work. He transformed himself for this role. It was impressive shit.

Ben 

Our runner up, who we had a great deal of discussion about and who almost won this award until like five minutes before this recording, was Dynamite from Cooking Crush, another complicated queer character with a ton of heart that we deeply loved. I've been thinking about this boy all year.

Shan 

As often is the case when a character you love is misunderstood by others, it makes you love them even more fiercely. That definitely came up with Dynamite.

Ben 

A lot of you don't watch anime, but Twig and I were not gonna let this go unremarked. We wanted to acknowledge Hisashi from Twilight Out of Focus, along with Shion, who was my favorite boy from that show. I love that pink Twig so much! He said, I'm going to high school and I'm gonna get me a motherfucking boyfriend. And he did.

Shan 

The pink twink!

Ben

I love that pink twink so much! He said, I'm going to high school and I'm gonna get me a motherfucking boyfriend. And he did.

Shan

He did. He did it all.

NiNi 

Good job, anime twink. I think there is a missing person here. I can't believe that Ben left this one out considering how he started the year. Aoyanagi Hajime?

Ben 

He's not on my Blorbo list. I think about that boy a lot. But does he take over my whole soul like these boys? He does not.

NiNi 

Mmm, interesting.

Ben 

I admire him deeply, and I think Nachika did a great job with him, but they're getting the sequel, so. It ain't over yet! [laughs]

Shan 

We'll get to talk about him again.

NiNi 

We're gonna talk about them in 2024 and 2025. Fantastic.

Ben 

I'm winning. I might not see Go Young ever again, but I'ma see my boy again this year. A win for me.

NiNi 

Excellent, good job.

Congratulations to the winners of all of our fan awards and our runners-up. These are not VIIBs so you do not get a plate but we will figure out something, I don't know.

Ben 

I'm gonna send you a cup.

Shan 

Souvenir mug!

NiNi

At least it's not a koozie. A koozie is just disrespectful. We discussed this before.

Ben 

I know that if we sent Gap Jakarin a mug that said Best Boy, he would absolutely show it on the IG.

Shan 

He totally would and he’d pose with it!

NiNi 

I believe that. 100% he would totally do it. Maybe, maybe he would even put it next to his bicep.

Shan 

Maybe we should consider sending it.

[Ben laughs]

NiNi 

And I would have a plotz moment. He's large, people, you know how I feel about the large ones.

00:55:49 QL Resolutions

Ben 

It's time for our QL resolutions. Shan has pulled up the record on the things we said we would do for this year. It's time for the call-outs. We'll start with me. 

Shan, proceed.

Shan 

All right, so Ben stated a couple resolutions last year. His kind of not that serious one was he said he will watch 100 shows in 2024. And his second, which he was more serious about, is that he would be backing off of shows when he's getting aggravated with them sooner than he used to and just being more willing to stop watching shows. 

So Ben, you've definitely failed the first goal, but I think you did good on the second one.

Ben 

I did great. I engaged with 75 Asian QLs this year, but I dropped 26.

Shan 

That's big for you. That was a big mental wall that you had to move through this year and you did a great job, bestie.

NiNi 

Four for you again, Glen Coco. Four for you.

[Ben laughs]

Shan 

Are you feeling better now that you started backing off shows you're not liking?

Ben 

Honestly, yeah, I feel way better that I'm recognizing when a show is irritating me and I'm not forcing myself to watch it for this weird sense of ego. Like, “It's really important that I say something about this.” I don't care anymore. Who cares? It sucks. I'm not writing about this. 

The core of what I want to do is, I want to convince uninitiated BL viewers to watch BL. There is no value for me in watching a show that I despise or just isn't working for me, because I'm not using it as a reference to try and get people who might like BL to watch BL. I'm not gonna ask them to watch a mid-tier BL. So it gets dropped.

Shan 

All right, NiNi, in January, 2024, you said your resolution for the year was that you were gonna stop picking on New Siwaj. Let's check in on that, how you feeling?

NiNi 

I definitely had a great time with a New Siwaj show this year and talked about it on the show. These resolutions do have power so you gotta be real careful when you make them. I won't say entirely that I have stopped picking on New Siwaj. I'm still gonna pick on him if he deserves it. But I liked something that he did this year.

Ben 

Don't worry. He definitely deserves it.

Shan 

But you found something nice to say about him this year. You did.

NiNi 

I did find nice things to say about him this year. So I think that I have kept that resolution.

Shan

We did great this year guys, because my resolution from last year was to be more aware of when I'm getting no joy out of a show and cut it off and not feel bad about not finishing it. And I did that this year. I also got better at not starting shows I didn't think I was going to like. And I think that that was a good and healthy choice and I'm glad that I did it because as we've been talking about, the genre just keeps getting bigger. There are so many shows. We can't watch everything and we can't make ourselves miserable trying to force ourselves to watch the things we're not enjoying.

I'm real proud of us. I think we did good on our resolutions this year.

NiNi 

Excellent, good job. So let's look ahead. What are the resolutions that we're all making this year 2025?  

Ben?

Ben 

I have no fucking idea. What should I do?

Shan 

Do you have something about how you wanna write or how you wanna engage on Tumblr?

Ben 

I'm probably going to focus on writing more reviews this year. I stopped doing Stray Thoughts but I don't want to stop writing about things I loved. I think I'm gonna push myself to write more reviews and stuff. I think I'm going to start writing on Tumblr more about Western stuff. I think I'm going to start writing more reviews about more generalized queer work that I'm engaged with. That'll probably be my thing this year, writing more thoughtful pieces about work after it's done instead of yapping about it in real time.

NiNi 

Okay, Shan, how about you? What are you resolving to do this year?

Shan

I was thinking about this a bit. I think there's a couple things on my mind. I want to continue quitting shows if I'm really just getting no joy out of them. I want to continue being more selective about what I start in the first place. Another thing I've been doing more of lately that I think is working for me and that I want to continue is waiting to binge shows that I suspect I will not enjoy very much week to week. For me, it makes a real difference how I watch a show, because if I'm watching weekly and participating in a weekly discussion, I'm going to naturally think more about the show, I'm gonna dig into it more. And when these shows are kind of weak or mediocre, I'm spending an awful lot of time thinking about what isn't working. So, I'm trying to identify those shows where I just can tell I'm gonna have a better time if I get it over with quick instead of stretching it out. 

I also wanna stay committed to continuing to have variety in my media diet. I want to continue to watch things outside of QL, want to be better about continuing to mix in Western shows here and there. If you just watch too much of the same thing all the time, you really lose perspective. So I wanna be attentive to that this year and make sure I'm changing it up.

Ben 

You heard it here, friends. Shan is joining me in watching over 200 movies a year!

NiNi 

I'm not sure that's exactly what she said, bestie. [laughs]

Ben 

She said she wants to mix it up! I got a great Indonesian film for you to watch.

Shan

I will say this. This is my big gap. I just don't watch many movies. I like long-form stories. 

Ben

Mm-mm. I’m challenging you, Shan. It's not like I hate movies. You’re gonna watch some movies with me, Shan. I watched a great Chinese film from 2015 last night! 

Shan

Ben’s resolution is to force Shan to watch movies. I don’t hate movies. They just don't fill my soul the same way, you know? They're just here and gone so quick.

NiNi 

Yeah, if I really love something, I definitely need to sit in it for a while. So I am definitely more on the long-form storytelling side of things, as well.

Ben 

A great film just stays with you forever. All right, we're starting with Ghost Dog.

Shan

All right, you can make your list. NiNi, what’s yours?

NiNi

My resolution this year is to finally watch some of the shit I have been meaning to watch. My watch lists keep growing and growing and growing and I need to put some time and effort into actually watching some of this shit. Some of it because Ben is going to stop talking to me if I don't watch it. And we can't have that.

Ben 

It's true! I'm glad you recognized that that is a real outcome!

NiNi 

There's definitely some things that are on the list I gotta get past. I think I've finally gotten past the uncanny valley effect so that I can watch Light On Me. And I'm gonna watch Eternal Yesterday. Finally, I am gonna watch Rainbow Prince.

Shan 

I forgot you haven't watched Eternal Yesterday?! 

Ben

I haven’t!

Shan

Oh my god.

NiNi 

To be fair to me, I do not think that is the thing for me to have watched when I was in the mental state that I was in for most of last year.

Shan 

It's very true. You need to wait for the right moment, but I'm excited for you to watch it.

NiNi 

I am looking forward now that I'm feeling mentally better to getting into some of the things that I have meant to watch, but just not been able to hit play on. Like I said, these resolutions have power, so It's definitely happening this year.

Ben 

I'm excited. My resolution is to torment Shan into watching movies. That's great. I feel good about this one.

Shan 

He's getting revenge because I have forced him to like kdramas and he's mad.

NiNi 

You have gotten Ben to watch kdramas, cdramas.

Ben 

I have watched Goblin, I watched The Rebel Princess. What else did you fucking force me to watch? School 2013. That is like 6,000 hours of TV. You owe me a few movies.

Shan

I sure did! School 2013. He's starting Healer again. Listen, the truth is that Ben likes the kdramas. He hates that he likes them, but he likes them.

Ben

They're just so fucking long. I just spent two hours on a fucking episode of a kdrama. I could have watched one of my fucking movies during this time.

NiNi 

Speaking of movies, y’all have got to watch Paradise of Thorns as soon as you're able.

Shan 

As soon as it's out.

Ben 

I believe it becomes available very soon after we finish recording this.

Shan 

Yeah, I'm excited to watch that one. And I still need to watch How to Make Millions When Grandma Dies. 

NiNi 

Have you not watched that yet?

Shan

No, it was only on New York screens for like a few days and I didn't make it during.

Ben 

We have literally not had access in the US, girl! Like this, it's one of those things where like I've been intentionally waiting because we know it's coming to American distro.

NiNi

It's on that Oscar shortlist, so it's definitely coming.

Shan

Yeah, we need it. It's gonna come for sure. It'll be in theaters and I'll go watch it.

01:04:45 - Affirmations and Hopes for the Future

Ben 

Okay, affirmations for the year. Things that we really liked that we would like to see more of. Number one, Kongthup Productions. Good job this year, guys.

Shan

We love them.

NiNi 

We do. This is the studio that produced Knock Knock Boys!, Monster Next Door. There was a GL. 

Ben 

Apple My Love.

NiNi

Apple My Love, yeah.

Ben 

They have been a really fun breath of fresh air in the genre this year, and I really hope that whoever is having fun funding them is getting returns so that they can keep doing that.

Shan 

They are out here producing original scripts that are interesting and that have things to say.

Ben 

Next, despite how much I deeply despised My Love Mix Up Thailand, I would like to continue to see more of these cross-country collaborations. There were a lot of interesting results we got from that this year. We got Unknown the series out of it. We got Love in the Air: Koi No Yokan. 

Shan

I loved it.

Ben 

We got Cherry Magic Thailand. And we got a couple of interesting projects where it was kind of funded in both places. Like Eccentric Romance, Meet You at the Blossom, Battle of the Writers. There may have been Chinese money involved in that one.

NiNi

There definitely was.

Ben 

It's very interesting seeing these sort of cross-cultural collaborations. And even within the countries, Oxin Films and, what is the other group's name? They teamed up and made Haunted Hearts. It wasn't good, but they worked with someone else.

Shan 

I'm interested in these productions adapting works from other countries in these kind of joint funding models. Love in the Air Koi was great because the MeMindY team was deeply involved in that production and there was a lot of cross marketing. They had actors from the original Love in the Air Thailand cameo on the Japanese show. It was cool to see that kind of cooperation going on.

Ben 

Lastly, and we say this every year, more GLs. There needs to be way more lesbians in this genre than there are.

Shan 

And we need to give them good stories.

NiNi 

And even though there was a ramp up this year, because there was actually quite a bit of GL this year, I can't point to one GL that I saw or was truly that interested in this year that really hooked me.

Ben 

She Loves to Cook happened this year.

NiNi 

I mean, yes, yes, okay. She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat, but that goes in the category, the same category as What Did You Eat Yesterday? It's eternal, it's everlasting.

Ben

I'm sorry, you didn't think Chaser Game W changed the face of the game?

NiNi

No.

Shan 

There were a lot of GLs this year, but most of them had, like, really terrible writing. What's wild to me, and this has been a really interesting thing that we've started seeing in the recent months. These shows, even when they're not very good in terms of the quality of the story, they're really popular because the fans are so thirsty for this content. The QL viewership wants GL and these studios need to put some real resources behind making these shows and making them good because there is a lot of potential there.

NiNi

I think GL's kind of following the trajectory that BL followed, which is a shame because BL sort of set the trajectory already, so they could have shortcutted all of that.

Shan 

Can we not just skip to the good content part?

Ben

Well, they did try to make GL SOTUS, so hang in there, girls. [everyone laughs]

That's going to end it for us. We will see you all in the coming weeks as we make our way through the VIIB Awards. I'm very excited.

NiNi 

And a little super special little treat for you before we get to the VIIBs, which I will not spoil but it's gonna be fun. 

That is going to wrap us up on our Year In Review. Oh my god guys, another year. This is our third Year In Review.

Ben 

My goodness.

NiNi 

Absolutely wild. This is our 50-something episode. We're getting up to 60. We're about to be retirees up in here. We love it. 

See you guys next time, we out. Say bye to the people, Shan.

Shan 

Bye people!

NiNi

Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

[sewliia]

Magnus Archives Episode 154 / 200 Analysis

(If this was mentioned by anyone before, I am sorry. I found one tumblr post showing the similarity in John's “Together - one way or another” but nothing more. So if you guys know more sources on this topic please share them with me. I would love to talk about this more.)

(also this is maybe a bit messy but I hope you guys see my vision)

I believe the Ending of the Magnus Archive was already decided in the episode “154 - Bloody Mary” or at least episode 200 is a parallel / continuation of the post statement scene.

I will show 154 in order while adding the matching parts from 200 (the parts from 200 are coloured differently to easily recognize them).

In 154 John learns that they can leave the Institut if they damage their eyes permanently.

After gaining this information he goes to Martin. He is the first to know.

(This one is not hard evidence - just something small I noticed)

(200) Martin is also the first to know what John did (also the only one).

(154) John then proposes to Martin that he wants to leave with him, because he trusts Martin and doesn't want to do it alone. He doesn't even consider the others here. He just wants to be with Martin.

This also plays into Jon's identity crisis in Season 4. Martin was there for him all the time and Jon values Martin's opinion more than the others, cause he loves him, cause he hopes Martin wants the same, cause he wants someone who gives him permission, to tell him what is right.

(200) Here we have it the other way around now. Martin trusted John not to kill Jonah on his own and John finally had the courage to do something on his own.

(154) Martins response is:

He doesn't want to choose for John, since he knows how insecure John is.

(200) John made it Martin's decision. He can’t kill himself at this point and already made his choice.

(154) This scenario is almost the same, just that the roles are partly swapped. In both cases they aren't sure if John will survive this, that it is a risk and a wish to escape.

Ending with the famous “one way or another” spoken again by John.

(154) After John proposes his idea to Martin he gets unsure, saying his idea was stupid. Martin says he has to see things through with Peter, which triggers John to try again.

(200) There is no exact line that fits this, but John derails everything by killing Jonah on his own.

(154) This one is interesting.

Martins says John would never blind himself. John indeed doesn’t want that. He wants to live, he wants to see and he likes his powers.

Blinding himself would be the easy way out.

In this season John fights a lot about his wants and his identity, so it makes sense that he asks the others for guidance and opinions. He is not sure what he really wants and even if it is okay to just take it. I am sure that John at this point loves Martin deeply and wants his input on the situation. He wants to hear “of course I come with you John”, but Martin denies that from him.

(200) At this point not even John's love for Martin holds him back and he does what he wants to do, going from “could” to “did”.

Martin is also in disbelief here, mirroring his and John’s words in 154.

you do - you didn’t

I could - you can’t

“I did. I am “

John is confident in this scene. He IS what he decided to be. He is whole.

(154) More evidence that even Martin doesn't believe John.

Again a parallel:

I can't follow you

Martin pushing Jon away ( to save him)

(200) Where you go I go.

John pushing martin away (to save him)

(and then changing his mind, accepting the proposal of escape)

In short:

(154)

John proposes to leave together.

Martin says John would and can not do that.

He won't make the decision for John.

Martin pushes John away.

John says he waits.

(200)

John does something that Martin dared him to do.

John tries to push Martin away.

Martin proposes to leave together.

Martin has to make the decision for John.

They stay together.

Maybe I went a bit crazy here but these scenes have so much in common.

[spikeface]

hiiii hello if you would ever like to rant about teen wolf s6a please do <3 i'm like five episodes in on my rewatch and i'm constantly oscillating between peeking at my phone like a proper zoomer and repeatedly asking myself where is theo my friend enemy theo.... i know he's here where is he...

Omg okay I will but you have to understand that this is the distillation of years in this fandom, the once loose coal of my irritation compressed into a diamond of haterism. There are parts of this season I love, and I've made peace with some of the stuff I complain about here. 

But we're not here for peace. :)

Never Say "Pineal Gland" Again. The Ghost Riders are fun as a plot device. People being kidnapped and forgotten, a mystical train station, that's fun! Teen Wolf loves monstrous, seemingly unknowable villains, and does great with them in two ways, both of which 6A fails at:

The first option is to get inside their heads. The alpha of season 1, the kanima, the darach, the nogitsune, the Dread Doctors—all are introduced as deeply alien creatures whose inner lives and personal connections to the main cast are slowly revealed. 6A seems like it's going down that route, because the crew spends a lot of time trying to figure out and talk to the Ghost Riders, but there's no payoff: they just want to hunt forever and that's that. No personal history with anyone, no connections beyond a willingness to mind control Parrish and a bit of nervous shuffling around Lydia.

Which might still be fine, because the second option with characters like these is to make them window dressing for a charismatic villain, a la the oni with the nogitsune or the berserkers with Kate. This framework would be great for 6A if not for the fact that the villain in this case is Garrett "Brain-Eating Nazi Lion Wolf" Douglas. 

Douglas does not get enough hate. I get that he's so forgettable, what else is there to say besides "blech," but we can do better. Teen Wolf has such fun villains: they're dramatic and camp, while also intimate and personal. They have deep connections with the main crew and almost always have a sympathetic side to them. Even the nogitsune, the most alien of the main villains, has an almost plaintive moment where it reminds Noshiko that it's only doing what it was created to, what she summoned it for.

Nothing about Douglas is challenging or charismatic or sympathetic or aesthetically appealing or well acted. Davis had a bad habit of hiring wooden blonde hunks as far back as the mechanic of season 2, and now there's one as a main villain. Douglas's closest connection is to Theo—their scene in the shed is easily Douglas's most engaging, though that doesn't say much—but their connection is superficial. How would Douglas even know who Theo was if he spent those years floating unconscious in a vat? 

His final showdown is deeply unsatisfying. By the time Scott faces him, they've barely interacted so far. What does it mean for Scott to challenge him? What does he mean to Scott? How has Scott grown to be able to face him? Why does Douglas want this power anyway? Why would this Nazi be telling a Mexican-American that he'd be a fine Hitler youth? What the fuck is happening here? 

In the end, Peter rightly points out that a brain-eating Nazi is such a low bar to clear that taking a stand against him is almost meaningless. Douglas is a mockery of the complex, charismatic, intimate, high-stakes villains of previous seasons. Damnatio memoriae is too good for him; we need to remember how bad he sucks.

If Only We Knew Someone With Lightning Powers. Dropping Arden Cho unceremoniously was gross. Following that with a season of lightning villains is gross. Having Kira's only legacy be a sword that is then given away and broken, after everything she sacrificed for it, is just foul.

Would It Kill You To Let Them Go To Prom? Teen Wolf is only sporadically interested in high school life. Sometimes, it's part of the show's appealing silliness, but 6a's indifference just gets to me. This is the final semester of senior year for Scott and co., but we get absolutely nothing. Stiles misses that final semester and apparently, so do we! There's no classes, barely any lacrosse, and definitely no prom or graduation or college acceptance letters, nothing that acknowledges this season as a rite of passage. Any hints to the characters' future are condensed into a few lines at the end. C'mon, man.

It goes beyond the expectations of a teen show. Davis is so indifferent to his characters that in the next season, he makes all the characters who should be juniors into seniors, just to add on a flimsy narrative about things ending. It's lazy. 6A, to me, also really brings out how little Davis has invested in the world of Beacon Hills. Beyond Coach, there are so few consistent background characters. The high school class, lacrosse team, hospital, and sheriff's department are all prime opportunities for recurring background characters, but the show only bothers with a few (e.g. Brett&Lori, Sydney, Danny until they dropped him without even telling the actor). Nathan, Gwen, and Phoebe are all new characters, rather than people who have existed in the background before this, and after this season, they disappear again. There's very little sense of the world of either the high school or the town in general, and it stands out in a season where the whole town is being targeted.

The Newest Werewolf. Hayden was a minor character in season 5, but still had a lot going on: a close relationship with her sister strained by the supernatural; having to work a shitty job to afford the medications for her life-threatening condition; being targeted by the Doctors; being pursued by a boy she's not sure if she likes; trying to flirt when she's naturally competitive and sarcastic; DYING; being revived by Theo and then exploited by him; fighting the Demon Wolf's attempts to get in her head; deciding to help her friends; walking a fine line to survive the Beast when she's kidnapped by him; discovering Tracy's body. Her life is rich, and ends with a groundbreaking moment where she's the first person onscreen that becomes a werewolf with fully informed consent.

In 6A, she's flattened into Liam's love interest. Almost all of her scenes are with him, and her decisions are almost entirely about him. Many of her lines are about reassuring him. The exception is her dynamic with Gwen, which is much more engaging, and to me only shows how much more they could have done with Hayden if they just let her cook. Why is Liam the only one to get scenes alone with Theo? Surely she and Theo would have stuff to say to each other. Or what about her relationship with Scott? Why is Liam the only beta to have an arc with him? Where's her relationship with her sister??

The Wailing Woman. This should have been such a good season for Lydia. The groundwork is all there! Banshees have a special power over the Ghost Riders, and to placate them, the Ghost Riders create a facsimile of someone the banshee has lost.

Hmm, whom has Lydia lost recently? Whose presence might give her a vested interest in ignoring evidence of the Wild Hunt? 

Allison would have been perfect as the deceptive product of the Wild Hunt, and would have matched the framework the show established far better than Claudia. Part of the reason the Hunt falls apart is because Lydia is instantly suspicious of Claudia, and has no emotional investment in her. With Allison, Lydia would get to say goodbye to her in a way that matches the season being set in the final semester of high school. 

This would also have built on season 5 in fruitful ways. Lydia's power makes her a target in season 5, but she has almost no agency over her power. She's driven to blow Valack's head off without any control over it. 6A could be about Lydia realizing that this fake Allison has been created for her because the Wild Hunt is afraid of her power, but only if she chooses to use it.

And with respect to Allison, Lydia has more grieving to do. She's been struggling to process her death since it happened. She spends all of season 4 trying to find a way to help people as a response to Allison's death, but then is locked in a basement for the finale. In season 5, she has to be told by Stiles about Allison's role in defeating the Beast. Lydia deserves a season in which she can properly grieve Allison. She's literally the wailing woman! Let her wail!

As a final note, I'll add that I was frustrated with the way Stydia was done in this season. I dislike it strongly but waffled on including it because I've never been a big Stydia shipper, and so I worry that this criticism will seem motivated by my disinterest in the ship, rather than my frustration with its execution. My issue, though, is not Stydia itself but how little the show explored Lydia's subjectivity. 

Imho 6a substitutes Lydia remembering Stiles for her liking him, and prioritizes exploring his feelings over hers. It's clear from the first episode that Stiles is still in love with her, even if he's accepted they'll never be a romantic couple—which is one of my favorite things about Stiles, and a great part of O'Brien's portrayal. But when it comes to Lydia liking Stiles, the show focuses on how she's the one to remember him. But that's also, apparently, because she's a banshee? They focus on that at the expense of her personal feelings for him, and when the scene is most explicitly about their connection—in the memory landscape sequence of "Memory Found"—the focus is on Stiles' feelings for her. It just didn't seem like it was about Lydia in a meaningful way. The previous season, she'd been into Parrish, which is a pairing I despise and don't want to see more of, but the fact remains it was important to Lydia. The lack of exploration of how Lydia had ended it or moved on from it felt like more dismissal of her experiences. Stydia seemed like it was ultimately about making sure the audience knew Stiles is important, at the expense of a real exploration of their dynamic, which I discuss more below.

You Don't Have To Stop But Could You. So, okay, stay with me on this one. I loved that Theo returned, and thought they did some great things with him, BUT that's not why we're gathered here today. Despite enjoying a lot about Theo's dreamscape sequence, I was really frustrated by the way it framed Tara and what its impact was clearly intended to be.

I really loved the first scenes of Theo's return: he's dirty, angry, confused, and biting. He looks exhausted with his own bullshit, but instantly attacks Liam and Hayden and then threatens to kill everyone, and lies by omission about Douglas (and his own powers?), reflexively playing his cards close to the vest. He's looking out for himself and averse to personal risk. I thought they did a good job of presenting a Theo who has the potential to change, but hasn't yet. He's not really ready to see Scott and Malia again, and reverts to flippancy. 

We also get a scene in “Ghosted” of how deeply Theo hurt Malia. She hallucinates his betrayal in connection with her guilt about her own family; both of them are still deep wounds for her. It makes sense that she would lose control at the sight of Theo suddenly showing up in Scott's living room with a little "you aren't still upset about the whole shooting thing, are you?"

But then the episode ends!

And the next one starts with the Tara dreamscape.

Again, I don't want to sound like I disliked this sequence full stop. I've written meta about its relationship with Scott's dreamscape sequence and what it says about Theo, but I remain frustrated with how the basic impact is about generating sympathy for Theo. Tara is the victim the viewer knows least (vs Josh or Tracy or Scott), her death the most ambiguous (we only see Theo watching in what could be a daze, like the one pre-resurrection Tracy was in), and her only role in this sequence is to hurt Theo. She doesn't have any subjectivity beyond that: she's not Theo's sister, betrayed by her little brother's violence towards her, ready to explain her point of view. She's a gory ghost who barely reacts to Theo, a walking prop.

Theo, meanwhile, is there to be pitiable. When he was pulled under, he was powerful, and attacking everyone, and wearing shoes. Now he wanders barefoot through the hospital, and at the sight of Tara, he just runs. Beyond some frustration with the door, there's none of the vicious anger he showed in season 5. 

To be clear, it's not that I think Theo shouldn't be pitied or doesn't have this vulnerability, and Cody Christian does a stellar job with this scene, which is also beautifully atmospheric. But in terms of the impact of the scene on the viewer, it's there to create pity for Theo at the expense of grappling with any of the violence he did. It frustrates me because the sequence easily could have addressed his violence while still making him look sympathetic.

Theo was trapped in and perpetuated a cycle of violence. The viewers don't know the full truth about Tara, but we do with Scott, Josh, and Tracy. Theo killed them. What's more, we know all three tried to have a connection with him: Josh followed him post-resurrection despite the fact that Theo had been the one to kill him the first time; Scott wanted Theo in his pack, trusted him, and tried to be there for him; and Tracy was in love with him, trying to help him, without judgement, even when he was at his lowest. It would have been much more meaningful to have Theo face them instead of Tara, or at least in addition to her. 

It also would have been more meaningful to have Theo reckon with his capacity to do violence, rather than his fear of suffering it. We all know Theo is scared of being hurt; Theo knows most of all. He's even honest about it: "I don't want to be one of the bodies, it's that simple." What he has more trouble with is confronting how he perpetuates a cycle of violence, or even that he's in one. The dream sequence as it is does have Theo confront the idea of an endless, unchanging cycle, but it would have been much more effective to have that cycle be about the violence Theo did.

Think about how it would have looked if, once Tara dragged Theo down, Theo went on to reenact any of the violence he did, over and over and over. He could push Tara off the bridge over and over, but it'd be even more impactful to have him kill Josh over and over. He already killed him twice, but now he has to do it forever.

Scott stands there, barely on his feet, betrayed and weary, and says, "Now you have to kill me yourself." 

And Theo does, over and over. 

Tracy tells him, over and over, "You're hurt. You need time to heal." 

And Theo kills her for it, over and over. 

You'd get the same progression towards despair, but now it would be much more about Theo confronting what he did. It would still be a sympathetic depiction of a lost kid, shaped and trapped by brutal forces, while addressing his own choices, and why Malia might be so upset to see him.

As it stands, the sequence undermines Theo's history and Malia's reasonable reaction to him. We get her flashback/hallucination, Theo's inflammatory return, but then an episode break, followed by an extended sequence in which Theo is nothing but helpless and pitiable, finally followed by Malia's rage. Her reaction is divorced from the catalysts of the previous episode, and the scene of her anger even contains a callback to the dreamscape ("you don't have to stop"). I've made my peace with it, but it remains frustrating as a choice from Davis, who wrote this episode.

Malia Middle Name Tate.* Again, there's a lot I love about what they do with Malia in 6A, but now is not the time for love. So much of Malia's screentime is about Stiles and Peter at her expense. Those are both huge relationships for Malia, but they're not explored on her terms. 

The last we saw of her and Stiles, they'd broken up over a complicated situation. Stiles ends things at a self-destructive moment, as Malia tells him she would accept him even if he did kill Donovan. In some ways, I think Stiles is punishing her for this acceptance out of self-loathing, but it's also about the fact that Malia's acceptance is clearly tied to her own desire to kill the Desert Wolf. She accepts what might be Stiles' violence because she wants him to accept that she plans to kill Corinne, and Stiles isn't cool with that. The two never speak about it again, though, even though Malia subsequently doesn't kill Corinne. By season 6, the two obviously have baggage, as seen in their clash over the senior portrait. 

Once Stiles is gone, we see that he's still her anchor. I thought this was an interesting choice, because Scott and Allison's breakup was what forced Scott to be his own anchor. It would have been interesting to see that for Malia, or for her to decide that she still wants Stiles to be her anchor as a friend, or any sort of arc where she processes the breakup or her own feelings or makes decisions about Stiles for herself. Instead, the anchor concept seems to exist to remind the viewer how important Stiles is in general: he's Malia's anchor! Look how lost she is without him! Stiles simply must be rescued from the Wild Hunt! Malia isn't the one to break through the veil, however, and after he's back, there's still no sense of what this means for Malia. Her subjectivity re: Stiles is just ignored. After he comes back, she doesn’t even get a scene to greet him.

It's even worse with her "arc" with Peter. The last we see of those two is in the finale of season 4, when Peter betrays her. After going out of his way to get close to her, he literally tosses her aside and tries to kill her friends. Season 5 begins with Malia confirming that she's Malia Tate, not Malia Hale. She then forgets Peter until he returns from the Wild Hunt, when she goes to take his pain and is suddenly struck with the memory of his betrayal. That's the entirety of their relationship. 

Meanwhile, Peter is busy carving the biggest revenge spiral of his life in Eichen, suggesting he hasn't changed much from the end of season 4, before he's swept away by the Wild Hunt. I didn't dislike his scenes with Stiles at the train station, but to the extent that it's about his relationship with Malia, it cuts out Malia. Stiles' contempt for how alone Peter is as a result of his actions is good, as is his desperate plea for Peter to help his daughter, if no one else—but Malia sees none of this. She goes to Peter after his return only because he seems marginally less horrible than Theo, and still doesn't trust him. And why would she? Why would the viewer? We saw how big that revenge spiral was. 

Peter does go on to sacrifice himself for Malia, but these moments are always about Peter and what he wants, and they lead to one of the most abhorrent moments of the show. The fact that Malia is forced to call him "dad" despite obviously not wanting to is just gross. It's all about what Peter wants, and honestly, why would he even want this? It's meaningless because it's forced, and it's especially foul that Lydia is written to be the one telling Malia to do this, given Peter's history with her. I hate it!!

Meanwhile, where is Henry, the father she chose? Was he kidnapped by the Wild Hunt? Did she ever tell him she's a werecoyote, or about the Desert Wolf? 6A won't tell us. We see in "Ghosted" that her mother and sister's death still haunts her, but does the season do anything with that? No.

The last grump I'll add re: Malia's treatment is how little she gets with Theo. I've already talked about how I disliked how her anger at Theo is framed, and it was especially frustrating that it wasn't followed up with anything beyond an angry quip in the finale. Liam gets a series of scenes (good ones!) where he works through his anger at Theo, and it's incredibly frustrating that Malia, after having a much more intimate dynamic with him in season 5, gets so little. I despise the writers' choice to ignore them.

*This is a tiny thing but in the birth certificate prop for Malia in season 4, you can see that her name is written as Baby Malia. So. Technically. Malia is her middle name. Baby: a beautiful name for a baby.

Mieczysław. You knew this was coming. My frustration with how Stiles was handled this season is about the ways in which it's done at the expense of other characters, and even of Stiles himself.

The premise of 6a was to work around O'Brien's absence by making it a plot point. Stiles becomes the focus of the season, but theoretically, characters could have space to work through their relationships with him, and potentially plenty more for dynamics with other characters. 

But in practice, the writers clutter the season with repeated empty claims about Stiles' importance that stifle exploration of Stiles' relationships. Yes, he's Malia's anchor, but what does that mean now, after season 5, and how does it change over the course of the season? Yes, he's Scott's best friend, but again, what does that mean now? How does the season help them grow and develop? A lot of screentime is given to the sheriff, who gets long soliloquies about Stiles' importance, but there's no sense of development in their relationship or even any context. We don't, for instance, get any sense of what it means for the sheriff to have forgotten his own son, or how this revelation relates to things like refusing to believe him about the supernatural in 3a. On top of all of that, the sheriff's consistent presence and the primacy of his relationship with Stiles only emphasizes how marginalized every other parent-child relationship is in 6a: Scott&Melissa, Lydia&Natalie, Malia&Henry, Liam&Dr. Geyer, and Hayden&Valerie get almost nothing. I wonder if Noshiko has any thoughts on the importance of your child being remembered.

Some of the references to Stiles are poignant—the Jeep, for instance—but their impression overall is that the writers thought that Stiles could be replaced with cardboard cutouts. We get a parade of props, disconnected anecdotes and lore, the useless introduction of Elias (never seen before or after and gives them no new information<3), and of course, my worstie, Claudia.

Claudia's presence is a reference to Stiles, but not meaningfully about him; Stiles only finds her at the very end, and instantly rejects her. The biggest arc re: Claudia is the sheriff's, and while I'm not, like, against the idea of him grieving Claudia, it's done at the expense of Lydia's arc. To the extent that Lydia focuses on Claudia, the show seems to be trying to suggest that Stiles is important to her, but the message is undermined by the cheap cipher. Is she thinking about Stiles because he's important to her, or because there's a fake lady in his house right now? Is her relationship to him about her feelings for him, or her role as a banshee?

And again, all of this is at the expense of something like Lydia's grief for Allison.

If we needed to pad Stiles’ absence with proxies for him, why not at least give us characters who explore his dynamic with the pack? Why not, say, a flashback scene of when baby him met baby Lydia? We have actors for both their younger counterparts. Or, better yet, why not scenes between Stiles and Scott as little kids? Again, we have the actors, and it would allow for more exploration of their relationships. It’d be especially meaningful for Sciles, given their anxieties this season, but I have more thoughts on that below.

The Alpha of Beacon Hills. The extent to which Scott is shut out of arcs and relationships is bananas. There are things I like (Scott&Liam, Scott&Lydia&Malia as besties), but we're here for the parts that frustrated me, which were numerous:

His future and dreams. This builds on my frustration with Davis's general disinterest in the characters' lives, which I discussed above, but it was an unresolved plot point for Scott last season and gets worse this season. Season 5 (last semester) made Scott's future more tenuous than ever. His dream is UC Davis's prestigious vet science program, and he's working his ass off to get into it: he's got school, extracurriculars, his job, and the constant life-or-death chaos of people trying to kill him or wreak havoc he's told he's duty-bound to stop. Season 5 Scott seems despairingly resigned to things always getting worse, but also throws himself into things like AP Bio, despite his friends' lack of faith in him (hated that scene) and his teacher's negging. Then, of course, Theo and the Dread Doctors show up, and the last we hear is that Scott has missed a deadline for a scholarship. In 6a, he's excelling at his psych elective (AP Psych?), but is still stressed about how much class he's missed.

Then we get nothing until the very end of the season, when Stiles asks in passing: "Real question is, how did you get into UC Davis?" Why is this such a tiny moment? Why is Stiles so uncharacteristically snide about this achievement, when he's been one of Scott's biggest cheerleaders, and this season is meant to be a Sciles season? Wtf?

Scira. Not one word about Scott dealing with Kira's absence. Not one word!! Everyone jail forever!

Scott&Peter. This could have been such a juicy arc. Scott's last interaction with Peter was the season 4 showdown, but Scott still has hope for Peter—a hope he's committed to even when it causes friction with his best friend. Peter's return and his tentative interest in connecting with his daughter would have been a great basis for exploring what it means for Scott to have this hope, or just an exploration of Scott and Peter in general. Peter is Scott's first supernatural villain and his own supernatural origin story, and Scott forgets him. The show gives us a beautifully devastating scene where Scott goes to help a seriously injured man and, in taking his pain, discovers that this was the man who caused him some of his own worst pain! Scream!

But then… nothing? Scott and Peter barely have interactions, never mind a meaningful dynamic. It could have been so powerful. Such a waste.

Scott&Theo. Some of this was really good! The moment when Scott walks into his house and suddenly sees the kid who murdered him standing in his living room, seemingly have once again convinced Liam to believe him! I loved it! We get a very rare moment of Scott being at the edge of his rope, ready to snap, and we can see Theo's shock. The last time he saw Scott, Scott was angry but also desperate to get away, shaking when he got close to him, staring at him with big sad eyes. But now things have changed! You can see it hit Theo. That's so good, and there are elements of the Sceo arc in this season that I adore.

But after that dynamic return, Scott and Theo split up, and we don't get any of the charged conversations and confrontations that Liam and Theo get—why not? It would have been so good!

What moments we do get prioritize Theo's perspective. In the finale showdown with Douglas, for example, he mocks Scott that a lone wolf never survives. At that point, Theo makes his entrance to declare: "He's not alone. He's got a pack."

This is so significant! It directly recalls the murder, when Theo trapped Scott alone and told him he didn't have a pack. Beyond that, Theo's risking his life in a seemingly impossible fight, just to back up Scott, without even claiming he's part of the pack, and in facing Douglas, he's confronting a demon from his own past.

But that's the point. This moment is mostly about Theo. We barely get Scott's reaction, beyond the shock of Theo's arrival, and then the tone changes with Malia and Peter's arrival. We don't get Scott's perspective on that moment, or Theo at this point, or anything else with them. Blech.

Scott&Melissa. I could go on about how their dynamic was dropped about halfway through season 2, but I'm gonna try to keep it to 6a here so please know I'm exhibiting great restraint! Anyway, they get so little. There's that devastating scene in "Ghosted" when Scott hallucinates that his mother's been murdered and doesn't yet realize it. So haunting, and potentially so resonant to their relationship: does he worry that being a constantly targeted werewolf has doomed her? That he can't protect her? That he's already lost her in some sense? How does it tie in to the fact that she's then taken by the Wild Hunt, and he's seemingly doomed to lose her, that he's lost her already? We barely linger on that moment.

We see him teach her to use a weapon, but the moment's gravity is ignored for the joke of her electrocuting her son. Melissa's arc with Chris is half-played for laughs, even though it represents a significant move on her part to become more involved. Why now? What does it mean for her? For that matter, what does it mean for her to date the man who once treated her son like a rabid dog? Does she even know about that? Does her son have any feelings about their relationship? We don't know. 

Scott&Stiles. Omg, ok, where to begin. This should have been the Sciles season, and its faults had nothing to do with the acting—the love and loss was palpable for Posey and O'Brien, and I think that gives their arc the poignancy people love about this season. They act their hearts out around some really awful writing.

The writing starts off well. It seems like the season is going to address some of the fallout and unresolved communication issues of season 5. Stiles, who's still petrified of losing everyone, is obsessed with being "needed," while Scott, who's been shackled to a nightmare since he was bitten, is desperate to no longer be required to fight. This recalls a lot of the tension of 5x01, which was never really addressed, and it's a great theme for the final semester of senior year.

The two also struggle to articulate how much they mean to each other, which seems like a lingering issue from s5. By the end of 5b, they'd affirmed that they were on the same page, in the same pack, and needed each other, but hadn't articulated their anxieties about losing each other. A season in which they're separated is the perfect way to explore it, and at first, it seems like they're going to. Scott uses his psych class to guess at how Stiles' anxieties are manifesting, as if it's been on his mind. He asks nervously if Stiles wants to split up (to look for clues), and seems relieved when Stiles refuses, as if the question is about something deeper.

Stiles, for his part, answers with meaningful intensity. He's clearly trying to express that he doesn't want to lose Scott, in the same way that his obsession with being "needed" is about not wanting to lose people, and being convinced that a crisis is the only way to hold on to them. Scott, meanwhile, sees crises as what get between him and his connections to people—they're what take people away from him, and him away from his life with them. This is a great theme to explore for Sciles, because the answer to both issues is the fact that their friendship has always been bigger than supernatural crises—older than Scott being bitten, bigger than the Wild Hunt. Scott could assure Stiles that he's never going to lose him—not because Scott needs his help, but because he wants his friendship. He'll never draw away even if it means tearing apart the Wild Hunt. Stiles, for his part, could assure Scott that no matter how many crises there are, how often Scott is forced to be the true alpha, he'll always be Stiles' friend first: "You'll always be human to me." Both significant statements after s5!

At the very least, the season seems like it's going to make these two articulate how much they mean to each other. In one of my favorite moments of the season, Stiles realizes he's going to be taken and tries to talk to Scott. O'Brien's acting is so good here, because you can see that Stiles is beyond trying to explain what the problem is. He just wants to tell Scott something like goodbye, how much Scott means to him—but he can't. There's no way he's saying goodbye, and his love for Scott is too big to articulate.

And Posey's reaction is soooo good. You can see Scott take in that Stiles is clearly struggling with something, and that this struggle is significant in the same way as the one from the previous season. He won't push Stiles to talk right now, and wants Stiles to know he isn't drawing away: "Tell me later." At the same time, he's holding Stiles to actually come talk to him, instead of stewing like he did in s5: tell me later.

But then Stiles is gone! Scream!

And then, once Stiles is gone, Scott struggles with how to articulate how much Stiles means through the hole his absence creates. All he can say is that it feels like he's missing a limb, and when it comes time to remember Stiles in "Memory Found," he gets so overwhelmed with how much Stiles means to him that he almost dies. 

All of this suggests that the payoff for this struggle is them finally articulating what they mean to each other--in the most basic way! They're traumatized eighteen year old guys, no one is expecting speeches. Just something about how their friendship answers some of their most existential worries: "I still got you."

But instead we get:

SCOTT: They still need us. STILES: They'll always need us. And, you know, I... I need you. You know that. SCOTT: I need you, too. I'm gonna miss you. STILES: No, really, I need you, though. Uh... I lost my license in the Hunt, so you have to drive.

Why is Davis so allergic to meaningful expressions of love in the context of characters leaving? So many characters disappear with no goodbyes (Jackson, Isaac, Danny), or only the briefest one (Kira, Derek). O'Brien and Posey do their best with this scene—both of them seem near tears—but the writing's joke-y tone works against them at every turn. It's Stiles' final scene before the finale, and the capstone to Scott's greatest relationship in the season and arguably his greatest in the show, and it could have been so much stronger if Davis weren't an infuriating mix of apathetic and cowardly.

This concludes this episode of Spikeface’s Sundry 6A Snipes! Thank you for letting me rant<3. 

[shanblackrx]

So I've been seeing (and saw in real time) comments of people saying

--Either that it doesn't make sense that Joke feels so strongly about Jack when they had only briefly met 2 times before the time skip when:

1- …..bro. It was love at first sight. FOR BOTH OF THEM. Are you fucking blind? Didn't you see all the flirting at the bar and after the bar???? Also for all that's sacred What is the fucking non-romantic heterosexual explanation for this?

2- This is more of a character analysis of mine, but I think Jack gave the positive enforcement Joke never got from his family. That created not only a bond between them but also kind of an emotional dependence from Joke. I honestly don't think Joke's feelings for Jack were super healthy at the beginning, especially with how self-destructive for him he is. And that's precisely why, although all those things he does for Jack after the time skip might seem too much if it was anyone else, it's still reasonable for him. He's so guilt-ridden that he fucked Jack over when all that Jack has ever offered was kindness and something Joke never had before, that he needs to overcompensate.

And especially because he's been marinating in guilt for 5 years, with only his thoughts and his self-deprecation as company, and then seeing how things escalated for Jack in a way he never imagined, that he feels the need to fix everything for him. That is the real meaning of the "100 ways to apologize".

-- OR when people say Jack and Joke's love is unbalanced. Like it feels Jack doesn't love Joke as much, that it's too sudden, that it doesn't have romance, yadda yadda.

Let's go back to the bar scene and afterwards. This is episode 1. This is the past. This is the first time they met. They literally left out the girl (poor Rosé I'm so sorry baby you fell for a homosexual) because they were in their own little world. The world they created on that bar when they shared bad experiences and made each other company in their sadness. The world that cheered both of them up in a day of misery. Also for all that's sacred What is the fucking non-romantic heterosexual explanation for this?[x2] (underage Jack is smooth as fuck)

Not even counting the scene at the bank when Jack was so happy to meet Joke again, and then even writing down his number for Joke and saying he'd love to go drinking with him again before he vanished.

Here's another character analysis: Jack is methodical, he doesn't act on impulse, and keeps everything to himself. This, added to the fact we don't often see things under his POV, makes him a bit hard to read.

Alright but damn, no one is caught daydreaming about the face/lips/closeness of someone they're not attracted to lmfjhsfd please. This is episode 4, c'mon.

There's also this (ep 6)

and this (ep 7)

(both of which I also made an analysis of from Jack's side in this post)

and this (ep 8)

So do you really think he just pulled everything that he did that night when they get together out of his ass instead of, after him and Joke reconcile, having actively nurtured this feeling THAT HAD ALWAYS BEEN THERE???? Damn, right when they met again Jack kept Joke from signing a loan contract with Boss because he knew it would be a point of no return. Because despite all the rage and bitterness, even then he still cared about Joke and didn't want that life for him.

Jack and Joke are opposites. Joke wears his heart on his sleeve while Jack has the necessity of hiding away anything that can be a weakness. It's all in between the lines for him. But that doesn't mean the feelings are not there. It's called nuance.

Also, shit, the mutual pining is so obvious idk these people might've watched it with their eyes closed or something. like?? Things start to get messy in Jack's life mostly because Joke came with his chaotic energy trying to make things right for Jack - and if Jack didn't, little by little, allow him to, Joke would've never succeed on being by his side. Jack starts losing control of things, of himself, because he's always being pulled by Joke, gravitating towards him, and he lets it happen because he wants it. Subconsciously or not.

Anyway Jack and Joke love each other and had always loved each other, period.