#just fascinated by the bromance presentation

[miss0atae]

Random Thoughts about High School Frenemy (EP 5 - 6):

I'm so obsessed with this show right now. I know I could get all my answers by watching the OG version, but I don't care about the OG version. I care more about this version of the characters.

Usually, I get annoyed when a situation gets drag on for too long. I feel like it makes no sense to spend too many episodes on a conflict between two characters. However, here, I'm fascinated by the love-hate relationship between Shin and Saint, especially as it is quite obvious for us viewers that the hate part isn't that big. Shin always declares that he hates Saint and he would never forgive him. Yet, there is a longing in his eyes where you can see how much he would like to start again. I'm impressed by how Saint never let any rebuff stopping him from saying how much he misses Shin and how much he loves him or how much he wants to be his friend again. The bromance is high here (so BL-coded and so sad it's not a BL too).

Unfortunately, what Saint did, certainly changed the course of Shin's life and he can't let go of the grudge. Obviously, what happened (even if we haven't seen it yet) must have been terrible to destroy their tight bond. However, many characters have already said to Shin that holding this hatred of the past will never give him peace. It will keep him bitter and sad. Forgiving Saint wouldn't mean that he would forget what happened. Forgetting is not and never was a required outcome of forgiveness. They will probably never return to what was their relationship before the "incident", but Shin should be able to rebuild trust and safety.

I feel like Shin's life is stuck or frozen in time from this "incident" time. Since then, he hasn't really been able to grow. He made new friends in his school and he still defends the same values, but he hasn't been able to heal from his "incident". He also has to suffer from the reputation of the Tsunami, a name he took for himself, despite not being his, at first. Jeng, because of everything that is associated with this nickname and what Shin did to save Chatjen, put his resentment and sadness over the death of his brother on Shin (even though he is not responsible and Jeng should have been a better brother). Jeng isn't a normal person, he is part of a violent gang. This violence can get to Shin in various forms and it must not help him have a positive view on his life. It just reinforces the idea that nothing will ever be good since Saint has been responsible for his legs' injuries and changed his life.

Now, most people know about the supposedly murder he did. Even if some are defending Shin such as Chatjen or Saint, no one really listen to them or believe in the truth. The school board, apart from Sung and Jan, are set on expelling Shin to make an example. However, we've seen from the beginning that they are so unprofessional and incapable of finding a real solution to the violence between Udon Phithak and Thep Burapha. I wasn't expecting them to actually think properly, this time either. This new threat in Shin's life will not help him be able to heal from the past. It will just convince him that things are ineluctable because he can't change anything and everything has been terrible since Saint's actions towards him. I hope the teachers and his friends will help him.

I didn't expect Sung to have a deeper role and to be partly behind the main conflict that still opposes Udon Phithak and Thep Burapha. You see how much he wants to correct his "mistakes" (sorry I couldn't find a better way of saying it) and that's probably why he became a teacher. However, this past guilt is still present in his life. He may be the metaphor of the idea that there’s No Such Thing as “Forgive and Forget”, but to heal you must forgive yourself to be able to live and do better. Memory plays a key role in supporting and managing relationships or your actions.

Two other characters made a great impression on me in these episodes. Of course we have Chatjen who has always been a positive force in this story. He is really trying his best for Shin and he is a very good friend to him. He is also supporting Saint so he can mend his relationship with Shin. Let's not forget that this character is as remarkable as he is because he is being played by Mark Pakin. The second character, I really like is Ken. I know he is supposed to be a bad guy, but I feel so much pity for him. I feel like he is the victim of his environment. You can see how much he hates following Jeng's orders. He also fears him and he doesn't know how to escape the hold Jeng has on him. I really hope he will get his redemption and that he'll find a way of escape.

I could say so much more about this series, but it'll be too long. I already can't wait to see the next episodes.

[absolutebl]

Hello, hello, Sensei! I figured other BL fans might benefit from this Q&A, so I'm posing this question on the public channels: in your reblog of my TharnType review, you mentioned watching Dew the Movie in a comment about being surprised about the developing kinds of BL that were coming out of Thailand in 2019. Could you expound a little more on that? I'm trying to get a sense of what Dew stands for by way of where it lives in the BL history books. I'm also aware that if it weren't for Bad Buddy, that this piece would have likely been Ohm Pawat's last appearance in queer media, and I want to keep that in mind before I watch it (which will be very soon). Dew will be the only movie on my Old GMMTV Challenge list, so I want to give it the understanding it deserves. THANK YOU, *FOR EVERYTHING*, SENSEI! <3

Dew the Movie

Not a review, more where it sits in Thailand's cinematic journey and how that correlates to queer cinema and its standard pattern of evolution.

I've always though of Dew as GMMTV's My Bromance. Not the same tropes but same tenor. Sweet Student Boy is another one. Or even Your Name Engraved Herein (although that is Taiwan and superior).

All quite heavy. Not much BL.

In Thailand this style started with Love of Siam. And I would put Present Perfect in there as impactful as well (very arthouse and complicated piece that made waves in the Thai queer film industry for many reasons not the least of which was political).

Most queer cinema enters the world with this kind of offering.

There is also a gay rep vis "character patterns in cinematic traditions" that everyone pretty much knows about in ET:

if there at all = kill the gay

if there at all = punch down humor (aka fear the gay so mock openly)

gay rep narratives green lit (usually arthouse) but in order to be taken seriously by critics and greater social structure are censored away from joy (gayness not permitted to be portrayed in a positive light) = queer characters exist but are not allowed to end up happy - these shows can win awards and critical acclaim (the Broke Back Mountain effect)

magical gay advice giver (queer serves only as a plot device to help the hets) - there's usually a make-over involved

1 major gay character (usually in comedy/romance) = tokenize the queer side (aka my gay bestie)

happy ending sanitized gay romances (or skinned romances where the gay characters act like hets - see seme/uke),

actual gay romances honest to the community/experience and peopled with multiple queer characters and life stages

Of course this is not a tidy progression, we can see Thai BL (stage 6) still grappling with 1-5, but also slowly moving into and having more and more of stage 7.

Actual queer narratives (of which romance would be a subset and tends to emerge later) like Dew stay quite dark, gritty, and chewy and usually spring up along side the mainstream depiction of gay characters - around the time that mainstream film decides to acknowledge gays exist at all (and immediately starts killing them).

They just get little to no attention because they are under funded, under marketed, and scary for mainstream viewers. Society isn't ready if these are made too soon in the 1-7 progression. Which is not to say the shouldn't be made! Just why they aren't popular in the zeitgeist.

Dew is part of the "yes but what about the real gays?" side (yet parallel) evolving tradition to BL (that is only now kind of getting integrated into BL). So, stage 3.

But also all stuff I watched North American arthouse grapple with extensively in the 90s and seemed to all follow EXACTLY the same non-romantic narrative path. Therefore it feels like I've seen it a million times.

I'm personally exhausted by this kind of "picking at gay pain" queer content. I don't need to see it anymore. I got into BL because it was materially different and all ways from what happened over here in Hollywood. We never got THIS level of stage 6 and it's fascinating that Asia is lingering in it for so long.

Back to Dew...

Wistful gay?

What might have been...

Something like that?

These shows grapple with identity and expression and out-ness and courage.

It's sad and depressing.

That's about all I remember of it because it was so much like so much of what I had already seen in queer cinema. Perhaps special for the Thai queer film world, but not special for me.

Although I do remember thinking Ohm was great in it.

In the end I think Dew was GMMTV picking up and experimenting with the more universal tradition of exploring (and exploiting for drama) gay pain. It's not really a romance in the modern sense of the term... and I prefer romance.

(source)

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: My Bromance and Yaoi Influences Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I cover My Bromance, a 2014 stepbrothers movie rooted in yaoi tropes and structures.]

Okie-dokie, my yaoi smokies! Earlier this week, I reviewed likely the most seminal film to have influenced the Thai television BL genre, 2007's Love of Siam. I took on one more pre-BL movie to round out the early Old GMMTV Challenge list in My Bromance (2014), and I did so for a few reasons.

First, a little time period context: before the launch of proto-Thai television BL in Love Sick (2014) -- an ensemble drama that did not center, but rather included, a queer romance in Phun x Noh -- Thai cinema was where queer relationships were mostly explored. In discussion with @bengiyo, Thai, pan-Asian, and international queer cinema was also where the majority of stereotypes about the presumed endings of queer relationships were mostly held, as I discussed at length in my Love of Siam review.

My Bromance aired in February 2014, and Love Sick aired in July 2014. I don't *think* the two properties spoke to each other by way of art or influence -- in part, simply because My Bromance is rooted in some STRONG Thai yaoi tropes that almost pre-determined the ending of the film (spoiler alert, I'll get into this later). (And I want to note and appreciate the differences in the term "yaoi" as interpreted in Japan vs. Thailand.) Love Sick, while utterly and fabulously chaotic, ended in happiness, with Phun and Noh confirming their relationship.

The second reason why I added My Bromance to this list is because history tells us that Thailand's past and present fascination with Japanese yaoi manga and anime, in part, primed wider Thai audiences for television dramas featuring queer love and relationships. As we know now, Thai filmmakers have made Thai television BL a genre of its own, complete with tropes and built-in assumptions about how the dramas are structured and how the stories are told. The most overt Thai yaoi-influenced drama on the OGMMTVC list is TharnType, and I wanted to add at least one pre-BL yaoi piece to get a sense for how yaoi would then play out on television (and I know there are PLENTY more very early television BLs that were touched by yaoi, but TharnType is the most influential one on the future of the BL genre).

The third reason for this addition is that the two leads of My Bromance -- Fluke Teerapat and Fluke Natouch -- both have long and notable careers in Thai television BL, with Fluke Natouch also having starred in a number of other pre-BL queer Thai films. Fluke Natouch, for me, reached legend-ish status by just existing in Until We Meet Again, which became a fast favorite of mine when I watched it for the OGMMTVC. But separately, I was particularly curious about seeing Fluke Teerapat in a pre-television Thai BL piece. As many of us know, likely his most famous role is that of Wad in SOTUS, GMMTV's first BL from 2016, in which Wad may or may not have been presumed to be paired with the older character, Prem. More importantly, since then, Fluke Teerapat has had a long career in Thai BL screenwriting, penning (with his partner, Tanachot Prapasri) two of the most notable non-GMMTV BLs of the past few years, My Ride and La Pluie. Both of these shows have reached a touch of cult status, and if they were both penned by a guy who's been around the BL way for a second, then -- I wondered if Fluke Teerapat's early acting career could give me insight in any lessons he learned about, maybe, what NOT to do in Thai BLs today.

Welp, I think My Bromance helps with those lessons, lol. @lurkingshan hipped me to the central trope that structures My Bromance -- the yaoi stepbrother trope in which, yes, oh yes, stepbrothers, ya know.

Maybe the first and most overall general assessment I can give of My Bromance is that it could perhaps get a little insane in its storyline by way of how it needed to be centralized around the taboo yaoi stepbrother trope in the first place. I've talked with @so-much-yet-to-learn and @absolutebl in the past about how in some shows rooted in yaoi, or at least a taboo trope or two -- how oftentimes, that show may include two or three or more taboo influences, since the show already decided to go to a different place than a socially acceptable moral or ethical center-norm.

I think I was watching that in My Bromance. Besides the stepbrothers realizing that they were attracted to each other, probably the most remarkable infrastructural inclusion of this movie was the utter cluelessness by Golf, the stepbrother played by Fluke Teerapat, that trying to continue a relationship in the face of everything against them might have been an effort not worth pursuing. That love of this sort might lead to more pain than pleasure.

Golf was a character set up as essentially abandoned by his father and stepmother for the sake of work, as both parents left Golf alone to travel for work constantly -- which left Golf alone in a house with Bank (Fluke Natouch) for lengthy periods of time that allowed them to find out their love for each other. Now, if you and your lover are alone for an inordinate amount of time, then yes -- you are going to think that in that environment, in that particular moment, your love can flourish. But when reality hit, and Golf and Bank were found out, and attempts were made to split them up, man, did Golf ever put the pressure on Bank to just... suck it up.

It was a tough framework to watch. Golf, through Fluke Teerapat's acting, was the living version of denial personified. He would NOT accept, immaturely, that Bank and himself could NOT be together. EVEN WHILE Golf and Bank were ultimately separated, physically and emotionally, Golf expected Bank's love to remain true. (I mean, imagine, this Bank is played by an 18-year-old Fluke Natouch. Bank was taking hit after hit!) And this is even after Golf returns from a years-long overseas stint.... with a girlfriend. Golf still scolds Bank for giving up on their love...

...to the point that they get into a physical altercation with deeply impactful results involving a car accident, surgeries, organ transplants, everything. Apologies for spoiling the ending, but it was so wild for me that I just need to process it for a second and consider its impact on television BLs.

I mentioned before that Bank was taking hit after hit. Before the car accident, his own mother seemed to begin to accept his sexual orientation (!!!) -- even trying to set Bank up with a new boyfriend. Thundering right back to another yaoi framework, Bank replies that while he might be gay, he doesn't need to love another man (what was this movie DOING to poor Bank?!). Then, later on, Bank even reluctantly agrees to try seeing a new guy himself at school. Bank himself wasn't necessarily an innocent blushing maiden -- at one point, he called Golf a coward for not being 100% committed to their love, which I think was an accurate call-out for what Golf was expecting Bank to accept by way of Golf's outward performance as a straight man. The poor kid was just trying to figure himself the hell out in the face of confusion and repeated abandonment.

Then the car accident happens, and Bank is gravely injured, to which Golf responds with a kidney (at least Golf showed up in one way!). And Golf disappears after that.

We learn, after Bank leaves the hospital, that Golf has died. (Here's where we get into the we've-come-to-expect-horrible-endings-for-queer-characters paradigm that I discussed in my Love of Siam review.) Man, Bank was taking a lot. He was under the impression at one point that Golf was going to get engaged. And then he learns that Golf, instead, was gone!

It was a lot -- a lot for a movie that clearly was not going to treat its queer characters well, inconsistently at best, and a lot for a movie that kept piling on the yaoi-ness of the genre it was playing in. These guys stood no chance of happiness, especially with Golf insisting that Bank still love him, despite everything Golf himself was doing in trying to live a straight life with a girlfriend/fiancée before he departs the film.

Now, with the benefit of watching this 2014 film with 2023 hindsight, I knew that Golf would "come back" in a My Bromance television series from 2020. But in 2014, at the end of the first movie -- I am sure audiences were just like, what.... was all that for. Bank had been through the ringer, for a relationship that was going to be difficult to maintain anyway, in a society that isn't easy on gay men in the first place in mid-2010s Thailand. (And the WONDERFUL @twig-tea filled me in on the context of the long wait to get to 2020's My Bromance sequel in the first place -- only for fans to be disappointed again in the quality of that series.)

When I think about this film in the context of 2019's TharnType, and even to a smaller extent, 2018's Love By Chance (both MAME pieces that feature yaoi overtones), it just seems that a common framework of early Thai yaoi BLs was that many of the dudes just didn't deserve empathy in their creation and longevity. That being queer AUTOMATICALLY meant that one was subject to pain. It's interesting for me to ponder this as this expectation was flirted with on television screens, as opposed to the movies. Again, while I discussed this previously in the context of how cinematically-driven queer and/or BL art plays out -- in regards to art that's structured specifically around yaoi frameworks, it seems like a rule that the dudes are supposed to take hit after hit, without the responsibility of the content checking in on the characters and offering them alternate trajectories of emotional discovery.

We didn't see that in TharnType -- TharnType featured a deeply complicated resolution that involved the intentional hurting of feelings over lengthy periods of time, and a redemption for an INCREDIBLY problematic character in Lhong. And TharnType was made not that long ago -- just four years ago from now.

I talked at length in my Love of Siam review about how brilliantly today's BL filmmakers have taken other expectations of Asian media, such as the concept of open-ended endings, to fascinating and artistically challenging results (to me, resulting in beautiful pieces). But when a piece is structured around yaoi rules and tropes, then it seems like many characters don't stand a chance at happiness. I know that's not a hard and fast rule, but it does create an expectation that something might happen.

I haven't seen My Ride and La Pluie yet, but at least with my dear drama clown friends, I followed the La Pluie journey through meta, and it looks about as opposite from My Bromance as anything -- a tight story about an emotional journey that featured a little magical realism and a lot of emotional development. I want to think that Fluke Teerapat saw the early work that he himself was getting involved in, and said to himself -- man, I know how I can make this MUCH, MUCH better, especially to represent queer happiness and queer love. I think he was beginning to address these conflicts in 2020's YYY, which features a wildly fabulous character in Porpla DEMANDING that the men of their life perform exactly to their yaoi standards. By the time Fluke Teerapat gets to My Ride and La Pluie -- it makes me think he had learned ENOUGH about what could go bad to make excellent standalone art.

Because of my respective fascination and appreciation for both Flukes, I'm glad I watched My Bromance, and separately, it does very much deserve a spot on the OGMMTVC syllabus to just show us what was out there on the eve of Love Sick's premiere. We hear so often that yaoi was an important influence to early Thai canon novel BLs and the television genre, so this sets up folks nicely to understand why shows later on like TharnType existed and were so popular. The expectation had been born and bred, and with TharnType's heat included, it drove the masses crazy. For my totally personal tastes, My Bromance wasn't my speed. But I do think and hope that it set up the two EXCELLENT Flukes for developing their standards around good, even GREAT, BLs in their writing and acting futures.

[Allllllllllright! My previously unscheduled detour into early Thai queer cinema is done for the moment, and I am back to the chronology of a few weeks ago, when I left off with Manner of Death watched and unreviewed. That review will drop early next week. My LOVING homage to my first P'Aof Noppharnach BL in my rewatch review of A Tale of Thousand Stars will drop after that. And then, my surprised take on Lovely Writer -- surprised because I did not expect, at all, to fall so much in love with it!

I'm getting through Nadao Bangkok's Last Twilight in Phuket and I Promised You The Moon at the moment, and soon on the horizon, I've got Not Me and 55:15 Never Too Late on deck -- 55:15 on the list because of its integrated BL storyline and commentary. And then a moment that *I* know I've been waiting for -- my long-awaited Bad Buddy and Our Skyy 2 rewatch. Oh, my heart. Can't wait.

The latest list is below -- I welcome your thoughts! (Tumblr's new web editor is jacking with this list below and not letting me strikethrough those shows that I've watched. For the most updated list, check this link right here.)

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review coming) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (review coming) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review coming) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 39) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 40) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 41) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults) 42) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 43) Only Friends (2023)]

[back-and-totheleft]

Blowback

”I’ve enjoyed dope for more than 40 years,“ Oliver Stone says, speaking by phone from his Los Angeles office. “It started in Vietnam, I was a soldier. I showed it in Platoon. Half the platoons were getting high—not in the field, but in the back, and it made that whole experience survivable to a large degree. I don’t think I would have kept my humanity without it. Getting high was an antidote to the madness we were surrounded by. I’m very serious about that. The music and the dope.”

I’m talking to Stone about his latest film, Savages, the story of a couple of high-end hydroponic pot growers—rock stars of the Southern California boutique marijuana scene—who run afoul of a ruthless Mexican cartel angling for a cut of their business. It is, I think, his best movie in years: a ripe, wildly energetic caper—a Stone(r) noir, if you will—that also provides a sharper snapshot of the way we live now than the more overtly topical World Trade Center, W., and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. International diplomacy and the state of the economy are very much on Stone’s mind here too, but the politics are niftily concealed by a vibrant genre-movie surface; striking, color-saturated visuals; and the toned, tanned bodies of a sexy young cast in various states of rest and motion. Think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (a movie Savages directly makes reference to) if Butch, Sundance, and Etta were a full-blown ménage à trois. Think They Live by Night with surfboards and tattoos.

Adapted by Stone, Shane Salerno, and Don Winslow from Winslow’s compulsively readable 2010 novel, Savages follows the perils of Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), yin-and-yang best buddies who meet cute on the beaches of Laguna and soon go into business together. They use primo seeds ferried back by Navy SEAL Chon from the Afghan war zone to cultivate a highly potent strain of weed whose profits in turn fund the new-agey Ben’s third-world nonprofit. The two friends share home and hearth with the movie’s narrator, O (Blake Lively), a burnt-orange beach bunny who claims to love the two men in her life equally, though perhaps that love is not quite as intense as their own bromance. Then into this progressive love nest comes a missive from the cartel honcho known as Elena “La Reina” (Salma Hayek), who makes Ben and Chon an offer they can’t refuse: join forces with her or else it will be O’s decapitated head they find under their communal sheets.

The cartel in the film behaves like a corporation—Wal-Mart by way of Monsanto—wanting to co-opt not only Ben and Chon’s distribution network, but their seed-growing technology too. And everyone is, literally or figuratively, in bed with everyone—the cartel with American Indian reservations, the DEA (in the person of John Travolta’s deeply compromised agent) with the dealers and the growers alike—leading to a wild, loop-de-loop climax that may leave some wondering if THC has somehow been piped into the cinema.

Savages presents a fascinating cycle of subterranean trade: high-quality Afghan weed makes its way to Southern California as a kind of byproduct of the war over there, and ex-SEALs use their military training and weaponry against the Mexican cartel in a new kind of war zone.

I don’t want to be preachy, but that ties in to my belief that blowback exists in this world. You don’t go fight foreign wars and expect them to stay there. The blowback comes, and not only in the form of Osama bin Laden in 2001. We have so many wounded people from the two Iraqs and Afghanistan, people with diseases and concussions and maimed limbs. There’s tremendous callousness in the country and it destroys us, and in a strange way Don Winslow caught that in his book with this idea of these soldiers becoming active here. In Vietnam we always thought that we’d come back and we’d make a difference here in this country; we’d lead the revolution against Nixon. I love the idea that this kid Chon just takes things in his own fucking hands. He doesn’t go crying to the cops—there’s no cops to cry to. They drive around on bicycles in Laguna. So he gets his RPGs and his IEDs and he fucking does it with real hardcore veterans. I loved that idea of war coming home to roost.

The depiction of the Mexican cartel is unusual in that the characters are quite three-dimensional, particularly Salma Hayek’s Elena, who has a fraught relationship with her twentysomething daughter, and who ends up treating O as a kind of surrogate daughter when she kidnaps her.

We always thought of it that way. We also had scenes with Uma Thurman as the mother of O—they were good scenes that were funny, actually. But with the movie being two hours and 10 minutes now, we were concerned. John Travolta’s character also had a wife, and there was a tender scene between them. And there was a very interesting side story with Lado, Benicio’s character—we had Mia Maestro as his wife, and we see that she is trying to make their children into Californians and the kids disgust him because they don’t have any of the old-fashioned ways that he wants. But we had to let all that go. What I like about the movie is that it has a tension to it, and I think it keeps you going, wanting to know what’s going to happen next, and it doesn’t let up.

The three leads have a terrific chemistry together. They really click in a way that gives the movie a lot of energy. How did you decide on the casting?

Aaron was the first one in. I met him and I just fell for his charm. We met in London and I said, “I don’t know which one you should play, but I want you to do this movie.” He was getting hot, he had done Kick-Ass and I had liked him in that. He was being offered a big role, and it was a big deal for him, but he gave up the [other] movie because he loved this idea so much. Then I saw Taylor in Friday Night Lights and an early version of Battleship and thought he was dead-on for Chon. So that made Aaron Ben. Blake came about after Jennifer Lawrence dropped out to make The Hunger Games. It was a difficult movie because she had Gossip Girl shooting 10 months a year, so she had to fly to New York practically every fucking day. She was working monster hours, as they do on TV. We stayed on schedule, but it was a difficult shoot.

The film feels in some ways like a sibling to Natural Born Killers and U-Turn in its ferocious pacing and the hyperreality of the imagery—the intensity of the sunlight and the bold primary colors.

Let’s put it this way: it was going to be a sun movie, which is to say Mexico, the South. The colors were intended to be primary, and I drove everyone a little bit crazy with that. Early on, I screened Contempt for [cinematographer] Dan Mindel, and I said, “I want these colors.” We had great sun all summer, we were shooting outdoors, we shot with windows, we shot with light, we tried to use as much beach life as we could. At one point, I went out on the set and screamed that I wanted towels, as many bright yellows and blues as possible, to get rid of the weaker colors that were sneaking in. Sometimes set designers want to have that tasteful balance, and I said, “No! We want excess!” Flowers, paintings, everything we could do to get some color in there, including bringing standby painters in and just slapping a wall together if we had to at the last second. My references in this were certainly Contempt, but also Duel in the Sun—I saw that several times when I was young, and I saw it again recently, and it’s just beautifully done. The showdown scene at the end was sort of an homage to that. Also to Leone.

To wit, the movie’s score has a strong spaghetti Western feel to it.

It’s funny you should say that, because I went about 10 rounds on U-Turn with Ennio Morricone. It was the only time I worked with him, and I never worked with someone so difficult in my life. It was a creative collaboration, but I think I’m the only American director who made him return to America a second time—he doesn’t like to travel—because I was unhappy. At one point in our collaboration, I actually showed him a Road Runner cartoon and I said, “This is the type of music I want you to write.” And he looked at me with a cold stare and said, “You want me to write cartoon music?” But if you listen to U-Turn, there’s a lot of boings and bings and bangs.

On Savages, I didn’t really know what the sound should be. There was a guy, Adam Peters, who I’d used on The Untold History of the United States, and he did great work for me. He’s English, so he’s not at all of the Italian style, but he adapted. As with Natural Born Killers and Any Given Sunday, we used a lot of needle drops, a lot of Mexican music. We listened to all the narcocorridos, but we didn’t end up using any of those. We put Brahms in under the sex scene at the very beginning because I wanted the movie to have some tenderness and romance. There has to be that element like in Duel in the Sun where you feel for these people—they’re young, they’re tender, they’re at the mercy of the world, they’re in danger, and they’re in love.

How do you interpret the love triangle at the center of the film? Do Ben and Chon really love each other—as Elena intimates—more than they do O?

I don’t know. I did look at Butch Cassidy before we shot the movie, and it’s interesting, because Katharine Ross is with both men, but it’s so hidden in the movie that you barely notice it. Certainly, Butch Cassidy was considered, even at the time, a bit homoerotic. O has her own journey, too. She lives through this thing and she has to find herself, through this process of looking at death so clearly. She says toward the end: “I don’t think it’s possible for three people to be equally in love.” Which indicates that she’s thought about what Elena says to her in the dinner scene: “Something’s fucked up about your love story, baby.”

What is the current status of your Showtime miniseries, The Untold History of the United States?

It grew out of my desire to leave something behind. I’m aware of what my three children studied in American History and I’m aware of what I studied in American History, and I feel like we were all cheated by the book publishers and by the schools. In my case, it grew into a mythology about the United States that was very dangerous, because among other things I went to Vietnam under the belief that we were fighting the demon enemy: Communism. And what we did in Vietnam was so heinous, so evil, and it bothers me still that it was never apologized for, nothing changed, and we went to more wars. So in 2008, around the time I was doing W., I started this project. It was designed to be 10 chapters about the mythologies of American history, going back to 1945 and the bomb and working our way through to 2012. It’s an upside-down version of American history, which is to say it takes everything you thought you knew about America and questions it. Anyway, it turned into a monstrosity. It went two years over and took a lot of time. Writing history for film is the hardest thing in the world, and I’ve been giving all my free time to it when I haven’t been making other films. It was originally scheduled for May, but when Universal moved Savages to July, we and Showtime decided to push it back to November because we didn’t want to overlap. We’re working like dogs on it as we speak. We keep revising, fact-checking. Things change. It’s a bitch.

Savages ultimately feels like the work of a filmmaker reborn. If you watched it without knowing who directed it, you might think it was the work of a first- or second-timer fresh from film school or music videos, showing us everything he can do, in case he never gets to do it again.

It’s really my third or fourth childhood, because I’ve had these kinds of periods before. Bear in mind that I did Platoon when I was 37. To me, part of me had died in Vietnam, and to finally get a chance to make a movie about Vietnam in 1986 when I was almost 40, I felt like an old man then. I was going back to my 20-year-old self, and being in the jungle with Charlie Sheen and all those young dudes, I was the old guy. Life is like that—you get old, you get young, you get old, you get young. That’s happened to me repeatedly. Natural Born Killers was an enormous explosion of energy at a time when I was getting divorced and my life was falling apart and I was in a very dark place and I just said, “Fuck it.” So the answer is, I felt very old on the movie at times, because it was such hard work, and to get out of your chair for the hundredth time of the day and have to walk over to some young person and talk them through the whole thing again… What am I doing out here in 100-degree heat at Pyramid Lake? But it’s the idea that keeps it alive.

As a director, you sometimes feel like you’re the most loathed person, because you’re telling everyone what to do. And most people in life, myself included, don’t like to be in control all the time. I don’t enjoy it. But once in a while, you have to go out there for 60, 70, 80 days and you’ve got to be in charge and you’ve got to be tough to bring it together, because it’s tremendously logistically complex, and if you have 16 competing visions or even two competing visions, it won’t work. Every time you direct, it’s a tremendous effort. It’s like mounting the D-Day invasion. I’ve made 19 movies and they were 19 wars.

-Scott Foundas, "Blowback," Film Comment, July-August 2012

[byneddiedingo]

Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre, and Oskar Werner in Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre, Vanna Urbino, Serge Rezvani, Anny Nelsen, Sabine Haudepin, Marie Dubois, Michel Subor. Screenplay: François Truffaut, Jean Gruault, based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. Cinematography: Raoul Coutard. Production design: Fred Capel. Film editing: Claudine Bouché. Music: Georges Delerue.

Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) is insane, and Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) love each other more than either of them loves Catherine. That's obviously a reductive way of looking at the movies' most famous ménage à trois, but it's my takeaway from the most recent viewing of Truffaut's masterpiece. Why is Catherine insane? one should ask. Because she's a free spirit trapped in a woman's body when freedom for women can be glimpsed but not fully achieved. Note how liberated she becomes when she dresses as a man, smoking a stogie (pace Dr. Freud, but sometimes a cigar is more than just a cigar) and providing a light for a strange man outside of a pissoir. And at no time do Jules and Jim find her more sexually desirable, I think. Naturally, she marries Jules, the more repressed of the two, and finds further liberation by cheating on him rather than falling into the socially respectable roles of wife and mother. As for the "bromance" of Jules and Jim, that too skirts societal disapproval: The narrator tells us that their friendship was much talked about. Even separated by a war that puts them on opposing sides, each worries that he may find himself killing the other. But they survive, only to find Catherine testing their friendship. That it survives the test until Catherine kills one of them is the film's deepest irony. And Catherine is never able to find the freedom she seeks, even after death: Her desire to have her ashes scattered to the winds is thwarted by "the regulations," as the narrator (Michel Subor) tells us. It is, of course, one of the great films, made so by Moreau's tremendous performance, by Georges Delerue's score, and by Raoul Coutard's cinematography, but most of all by Truffaut's direction and (with Jean Gruault) endlessly fascinating script. Even Jules and Catherine's daughter, Sabine, is perfectly presented: Sabine Haudepin is one of the least affected, least annoying child performers ever to appear on screen.

[googleplaysore]

BroTech LLC limits Bros to 40 Fistbumps per week. It’s regulation for all Bros.

[sadviper]

Woo Do-Hwan: Interview with Hanryu Pia - May 2019

@staidwaters​ - Once again, thank you so much for patiently cleaning up and correcting my translation!! ;__; You’re like a superhero swooping down from on high to make my noob efforts look good!

@ibelongtomousse​ - Thank you for listening to me cry whenever I encounter another translator’s dilemma! It’s old news to you but it still feels new to me every time I run into the same problem!

Fans have been eagerly waiting for Woo Do-hwan to star in a full-scale romance, and now he’s taken the challenge with the drama “The Great Seducer”. He burst into the limelight from his role as a brave high school student in the drama “Save Me”, then transformed into a young man who strove to expose insurance swindlers in “Mad Dog”. In a complete change of image, he now enthusiastically takes on the fascinating role of a playboy.

A transformation into a narcissistic playboy:

The romantic drama “The Great Seducer” portrayed a dangerous game of passion amongst youths living in high society.

This dramatic work remade the narrative motifs of the classic French novel “Dangerous Liaisons”, which has been adapted for live action and theatre countless times around the world.

WDH: When I read the script, I didn’t know that this was a drama based off of an existing work. I watched the film “Untold Scandal”, starring Bae Yong-joon, and I also saw the Korean-Chinese film collaboration “Dangerous Liaisons”, but I feel that my acting is never constrained by the original performances. “Save Me” was also a drama that was based on a webcomic, but in the beginning, I didn’t know that there was an original work in existence.

Woo Do-hwan portrayed the character of Kwon Shi-hyun, the son of the chairman of a financial conglomerate. He’s a true playboy who takes down women with a single look, boasting, “There isn’t a single woman who hates me”.

WDH: The title “The Great Seducer” grabbed me right away. It’s pretty overblown wording, but I’d never seen a title with that much self-confidence before! The role of Shi-hyun fits the title completely. I was fascinated by his abundant self-confidence, unreserved manner of speaking and overwhelmingly self-absorbed dialogue.

The dramas "Save Me" and "Mad Dog" showcased Woo Do-hwan's bromances with Taecyeon (2PM) and Yu Ji-tae. But in this work, while taking advantage of his cool and shadowy charm, he crossed into a new frontier, becoming an indiscriminate and experienced womanizer. Born in the upper class and raised without knowing love, Shi-hyun starts a game of passion to woo and dump the honor student, Tae-hee (Red Velvet/Joy), only to genuinely fall for her without realizing it.

WDH: This is my first traditional romance. It was one of the genres that I’ve been wanting to challenge myself with, and no one has seen me in a romance like this work before, so I was really looking forward to it. I learned a lot through trial and error. Shi-hyun grows up due to the  pain he feels during a game of passion. I did a lot of research into expressions of love, and what the kind of men who would cruelly and casually play games with women’s hearts are like. What kind of voice should I speak with, what kind of eyes should I have in order to lead women astray? (laugh) Be that as it may, the character is described as a twenty-year-old, so I had to take that aspect into consideration too.

Over and over, the audience was charmed by Woo Do-Hwan’s sexy, mysterious gaze, deep voice, and sweet, direct lines. Nicknames such as “Killer Kwon” and “First Kiss Expert” have spawned from his role’s lethal charm. When we asked him about these reactions, he became embarrassed, exclaiming “Uwaa” and laughing.

WDH: I’m so thankful to be granted those kinds of nicknames. “First Kiss Expert” is really embarrassing though! I think that I only appear that way because of how skillfully Soo-young (Joy’s real name) performed with me, and how the director and everyone on staff did us the favor of filming us beautifully.

A handsome high school student in a school uniform blazer:

Just like in “Save Me” where he played a high school student, this work also showcases a school uniform look. Woo Do-Hwan is very attractive in a rumpled blazer.

WDH: I want to wear school uniforms a lot while I still can (laugh). If there is a chance to do this type of drama again, I will always want to do it. Every time I wear a school uniform, I feel young and fresh. I remember the good old days. School uniforms are great.

During high school, Shi-hyun formed a terrible trio of troublemakers with his diva-like best friends, Se-joo (Kim Min-jae) and Soo-ji (Moon Ga-young). He did well in acting out the sentiment of a precocious high school student.

WDH: The three people in the drama are depicted as being wise-guys. They feel that they are the only ones in this world, so they pull a lot of pranks. I think that I lived a very ordinary life during my time in high school. I loved soccer; and I went to cram school after school. I was definitely a very average Korean high school student.

It seems at his present age of twenty-four, Woo Do-Hwan’s personality is very different from Shi-hyun’s.

WDH: I feel that I still have an overly cautious side. It’s not that I don’t want to think about things, but I should be more carefree. I often feel that there are many instances where I overthink and I cannot take action.  I’m one of those people who always worries whether I’ll regret it whenever I start something new. 

Shi-hyun carries out multiple seduction strategies in order to capture Tae-hee’s heart; however, Woo Do-Hwan especially likes the scene where he visits a nursing home.

WDH: I think that was a very fun scene. Shi-hyun met Tae-hee and accompanied her to the nursing home, but once there, he ended up doing things like cleaning the floor. Meeting all the grandmothers, and the other unexpected happenings that broke out were all very interesting.

From a dangerous love entrapment game to true love:

Shi-hyun falls into the love trap that he set up, and in the end, awakens to true love. Do you think it is possible for a love that started from a game to become the real thing?

WDH: I think it’s quite possible! That’s because we humans never know what will happen. I think that Shi-hyun is truly blessed to have Tae-hee as a friend. Here is a woman who is willing to accept and love an immature partner who tricked her and hurt her. I, Woo Do-Hwan, have never met anyone like that.

Well then, who is closer to your ideal type of woman: Tae-hee or Soo-ji?

WDH: In life it’s amazing to have a female friend like Soo-ji who you can talk to about anything, and to have a woman who is able to love like Tae-hee. The two have opposite personalities, so I think a girl who combined both their best points would be best. That’s incredibly greedy of me, but that would be ideal! (laugh)

Irreplaceable bonds formed in the time that these three actors from the same generation appeared together. It was Woo Do-hwan’s first experience co-starring with actors who were younger than himself.

WDH: Before filming started, I made time for the four of us to do things like eat meals and chat  outside of the script reading. That’s how it happened. It was a challenge for me to be the eldest. Up until now, I was in the position of relying on my sunbaes. With my co-stars, I felt like we were friends of the same age. Within the drama, we were classmates, so I would usually call them by their role’s name without using honorifics. Instead of them feeling like younger siblings who had to defer to me or who I had to look after, I think it’s more accurate to say we became good friends.

Woo Do-hwan constantly appears in popular films, and will co-star with Park Seo-joon in the upcoming movie “The Divine Fury”, which opens in theaters this summer.

WDH: The film is in the occult genre but has a lot of action too. Parts of it will be spine-tingling, but that doesn’t mean it’s a straight horror film. It depicts the conflict between good and evil. While building the character for my new role, it feels as if I am pulling free from the old role that I just finished filming. I don’t like not having anything to do, so I’m the type who will read the script and continue to prepare while resting for a while, until it’s time to start filming the next work.

(And finally, a sad photo of the poster because my scanner is tiny, ^^;;)

Waiting for the day he gets to be on the magazine cover <3 :3

[thebookoflosttalesproject]

The Fall of Gondolin

Let me start by saying that the first part describing the wanderings of Tuor is the most tiring part of this book... :) But the descriptions of Gondolin, its people, and the siege are absolutely fascinating, and probably my favourite part of all the Lost Tales! It’s epic, and tragic, and described so vividly that I could see it in my head, just as if I was watching a historical c-drama! ^^ It also made me weep for the characters who were much more fleshed out than in the short and rather dry account of this battle presented in The Silm… So, in one sentence: I love this story!

I won't do a recap, but I’ll just leave here some quotes and facts from this chapter that I find especially interesting :)

* * *

Littleheart the Gong-warden of Mar Vanwa Tyalieva is actually the son of Bronweg/Voronwe! That's why he's the one who tells this story to Eriol :)

* * *

About the nature of orcs:

(...) for all that race were bred by Melko of the subterranean heat and slime. Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal, and to nothing were they more fain than to aid in the basest of the purposes of Melko. The greatest hatred was between them and the Noldoli (...)

* * *

A detail in Gondolin:

On either side of the doors of the palace were two trees, one that bore blossom of gold and the other of silver, nor did they ever fade, for they were shoots of old from the glorious Trees of Valinor (...)

#WhoStoleThem??? When??? How??? I want to know :D

* * *

Turgon is not surprised by the sudden appearance of Tuor:

"Welcome, O Man of the Land of Shadows. Lo! Thy coming was set in our books of wisdom, and it has been written that there would come to pass many great things in the homes of the Gondothlim whenso thou faredst hither.”

Still, Turgon won't listen to Ulmo’s warnings that Tuor has brought with him. *sigh*

* * *

Now Tuor learnt many things in those realms taught by Voronve whom he loved, and who loved him exceedingly greatly in return (...)

#Bromance

#NotMeSuddenlyRememberingBelegAndTurinAndCryingAboutThem

* * *

Then on a time Melko assembled all his most cunning smiths and sorcerers, and of iron and flame they wrought a host of monsters such as have only at that time been seen and shall not again be till the Great End. Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creature of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin whatever fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin.

This is so vivid and terrifying and probably the closest to steampunk we've ever been when it comes to this universe, and on one hand it gets me excited, but on the other hand I feel like I must subdue my enthusiasm after reading Tolkien and the Great War...

anyway-

(...) and the number of Balrogs that perished was a marvel and dread to the hosts of Melko, for ere that day never had any of the Balrogs been slain by the hand of Elves or Men.

The Elves are not easily defeted, even when they face a foe as terrifying as Melko and his metal hosts!

but - cue me crying for Ecthelion… :')

* * *

Legolas Greenleaf of the House of the Tree makes an appearance :D (he helps guide the siege survivors to saftey)

* * *

>> and at the end - two interesting facts from the Notes on this chapter:

The gift by the Gods of these ‘shoots’ to Inwe and Noleme at the time of the building of Kor, each being given a shoot of either Tree, is mentioned in The Coming of Elves, and in the Hiding of Valinor there is a reference to the uprooting of those given to Noleme, which ‘were gone no one knew whither, and more had there never been’.

#YupTheNoldoliHadStolenThem :D

Gothmog was a son of Melko and the ogress Fluithuin, and his name is Strife-and-hatred, and he was Captain of the Balrogs and lord of Melko’s hosts ere fair Ecthelion slew him at the taking of Gondolin (...)

#ExcuseMeWHAT :D

#SoManyThingsToUnpackHere

It's... good that the concept of the Valar having children has ultimately been abandoned... :D

[papers4me]

Pour one out for all us yuki/kakeru shippers that find the relationship to have more depth and chemistry than yuki/machi but bc of the shojo culture, a not straight end game romance is impossible to have BUT I CAN DREAM! (minor spoilers ahead but like just to explain why this ship never came to fruition)

For reals tho I really do love Machi and her development and truly, she and Yuki have a lot in common and great character interactions, I just feel like Yuki also exudes gay and Kakeru (who also has a gf in the manga boooo but I love her) just loves teasing the hell out of Yuki and their bromance just would have made a better romance I think....

In general I think it has a lot to do with late 90s early 2000s shojo culture wherein LGBT content in Japan was more or less R18 by default and outside of jokes, it never played a role in big series

Hi. I can’t comment on yuki/kakeru having more depth and chemistry than yuki/machi since I’m not a manga reader & se03 hasn’t aired yet. Moreover, I’m not a shipper by nature but I enjoy analyzing literature, narratives & artistic media. So, I’ll approach your question from n analytical pov based on furuba’s content so far!

Reasons why I believe the writer went for machi/yuki end game rather than other yuki pairing:

It has to do with yuki’s goal in se01, ep.12. He stated that he wanted: (1)warmth, (2)friendship & (3)home:love. Ever since that ep, the writer has been moving yuki steadily towards that goal. 3 sub goals meaning yuki’s journey will have 3 parts. If it was all found in kakeru, then yuki’s journey will be cut short for him. Yuki needs to interact with 3 different types of ppl to achieve his goal. This way his growth will be more wholesome & complete.

Yuki’s aspiration is centered around: friendship just like how kyo’s aspiration is centered around: love/family. From the beginning yuki wanted to “befriend kyo”, he envied kakeru & kyo for how easy ppl befriend them without the two needing to wear a fake mask or pretend to be kinder. We even saw how kyo was annoyed by his two buddies who tease him all the time, yet he allowed them to be near him. Yuki was shown craving that exact scene. Yuki got it. Kakeru teasing him & annoying him, yuki allowing kakeru around. Kyo has friendship but he doesn’t crave it, what he craves is a family that love him for who he is without fear or disgust. His family went thro extreme methods to leave him: (mom: suicide, dad: repulsive hate). kyo’s desires a family who’d want to stay with him, be always together with him by choice. He’s got kazuma, but kazuma chose baby kyo first, kyo needs to choose love by himself, that’s why tohru loving him isn’t important, it is kyo’s love for her that should free him from his trauma. Exactly like kakeru’s friendship with yuki freed him. Cuz yuki chose kakeru as his friend by himself. Yuki has haru who befriends/cares for him. But it IS kakeru who yuki chose to know. These two boys (yuki/kyo) will be freed by choosing their own aspiration in life by themselves.

Yuki/machi doesn’t need to be deep or extremely meaningful. I believe furuba presents different kinds of romance & friendship. (Kaker/yuki: best friends who know everything abt each other & share secrets, stay friends forever: amazing friendship), (kyo/his two buddies: best friends who are casual, don’t share secrets or deep personal info but can be friends forever if they chose: amazing friendship). (kyo/tohru: roommates to best friends to lovers, the change is very slow since you can’t decipher if you care cuz you treasure them or care cuz you fancy them, confessing can mean loosing the other if the feelings aren’t reciprocated & you can become awkward afterwards. but if love is mutual then: happiness!). (yuki/machi: from strangers to lovers. machi isn’t close to yuki much as she rarely talks or engage in the groups shenanigans but yuki is noticing her as an individual person & is attracted to her, if the feelings are mutual then it is a fast romance with the majority of knowing each other happens while dating: happiness!).

I personally believe that “ transforming after hugging someone from the opposite sex is a gimmick. The synopsis of the show says nothing abt child abuse, trauma, coming of age, youth struggle. It simply poses as a romantic comedy that tricks you watch the show. Honestly, the animal transformations stop as soon as “ the zodiac intro ep ” is over & they’re all comedic in nature except 3 times. One is the true form which is the manifestation of trauma & abuse, followed by kyo willingly hugging tohru in an emotional wrap of the night’s truma, even the transformation smoke is not shown as it’ll lessen the emotional weight, we just see kyo in cat form in her lap. The other two are momiji’s after tohru hugs him in Se01 after his mom’s reveal & se02 after akito’s abuse & it’s done to comfort poor baby momiji.

I wished that yuki’s romance doesn’t happen much onscreen & more like it’s sth he’ll be able to do once he graduate high school cuz yuki has just “left the nest” a while ago, I’d want to see more “normal yuki” as opposed to yuki in stage 3: love. but all is good. The writer already set her goal from ep.12.

I know that you probably didn’t want to hear my boring analysis & I’m not criticizing you at all. I believe fans are free to ship whoever. I wish I was like you, but I usually look at the show as a story unfolding in front of me & I’m extremely fascinated by onscreen /canon dynamics & relationships as they’re my insight into the author’s mind! To see through the author’s eyes is highly fascinating to me! but this doesn’t mean I won’t criticize the authors at times.

Thank you for the ask!

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Heyo! This has probably been asked before, but is there a rec list for non-slash fics? Thanks :)

YES!! Okay I was LITERALLY setting up a new Platonics list because I’m working on cleaning up my offline lists on this beautiful Sunday, and WE’RE DOING THIS THING because it’s SUNDAY and I’m in a great mood because it’s sunny out, and I want to share more lists than normal because I CAN’T QUEUE ANYMORE, LOL. 

Check it out, Lovely!! :D

PLATONICS / BROMANCE / FRIENDSHIP Pt 4

See also:

Platonics and Domestics

Platonics & Domestics Pt 2 / Hugs, Cuddles & Kisses Pt. 3 / Tooth-Rotting Fluff Pt. 5 / Love Confessions, Slow Burn & Dev. Rel. Pt. 2 / Established Relationship Pt. 3

Platonics / Bromance / Friendship Pt. 3

Smut-Free Fics Over 50K (Aug 2019)

And When The Night Is Over by Simply Isnt On (K, 329 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Platonic Bed Sharing / Not Slash) – Sherlock and John sleep together.

Dinner With John by Zang Bluetterfly (T, 505 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Romance) – "Let's have dinner, John." Sherlock secretly smiled. Irene had been right: he had rejected her dinner's invitation because he already had John by his side, even though the doctor was still clueless about Sherlock's true feelings for him.

Do You Love Me? by whitchry9 (K, 641 w.,1 Ch. || Friendship, Family, Epic Bromance) – John asks Sherlock perhaps the most important question.

Sleep Tonight by Jenn1984 (T, 1,220 w, 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Bed Sharing, Worried Sherlock, Sick John, Hugs/Cuddles, Touch Neediness) – Fingers begin prying open his jacket looking for a wound and John would really like to swat at them. No, he's not hit anywhere, he's just damn sick.- John Watson has a fever.

A Better Fate Than Wisdom by flawedamythyst (G, 1,339 w., 1 Ch. || First Kiss, John’s Sexuality Crisis, Pining Sherlock, Happy Ending, Fluff) – Nearly four hours pass between their first kiss and their second.

You Should Have Let Me Sleep! by theraggedypond (T, 1,542 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Sleepy Sherlock, Cranky Sherlock, Domestics) – After a three day case with no sleep and hardly any food, Sherlock is recovering from it by playing comatose. John finds out what happens when you wake up London's favorite consulting detective.

Happy Birthday John by Starlight05 (K, 1,580 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Friendship, John’s Birthday, Shopping, 3rd Person POV John) – When an important date comes up, Sherlock finds himself doing something he never has before - shopping! But will he succeed and manage to get his best friend a present?

Santa Knows by Itsallfine (T, 1,719 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas Party, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Fluff, Matchmaking, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – Sherlock and John both get exactly what they want from the Yard's secret Santa exchange. Pure holiday fluff.

Fascination by xLaramiex (K, 1,959 w., 2 Ch. || Friendship, Cranky Sherlock) – Ch1: John returns home to find Sherlock sleeping on the sofa. At least, he thinks he does. Ch2: Once again, John is forced to abandon his food to trail after Sherlock. He doesn't even know why.

3:00 in the Morning is a Great Time to Talk by Aztecwarfareandcrumping (K+, 1,775 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt / Comfort, Friendship, Bed Sharing, First Person POV John, Cuddling, Worried Sherlock, Comforting John, Platonic Affection/Love) – "Are you trying to talk your way into my bed?" "Obviously."

The Stranger by LaKoda0518 (T, 1,844 w., 1 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Fluff, First Kiss, For a Case, Mysterious Madman, Lonely John) – John Watson is standing on the platform waiting to board a train to his sister’s after being invalided home from Afghanistan. A chance meeting with a mysterious madman turns his world upside down and changes his life forever.

Baskerville After Dark by Ttime42 (T, 1,921 w., 1 Ch. || THoB, Friendship, Humor, Bed Sharing, Missing Scenes, Cranky John, Cuddles) – John and Sherlock have to share a bed at Baskerville. Gen, but can be preslash.

The Perfect Place by SilverSmile (K+, 1,955 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Romance, 5 and Ones, Fluff, Experiments, Bed Sharing) – Sherlock attempts to find the perfect place to sleep, but his little experiment proves to be far more difficult than expected.

Denial Isn’t Just a River in Egypt by satanatemycat (T, 2,107 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Friendship, Texting, Bored/Cranky Sherlock) – In which John makes a bet with a co-worker. If he wins, she shuts up about him and Sherlock being a couple. If he loses… well, that doesn’t matter, because he won’t lose. Because he and Sherlock ARE NOT a couple. Right?

Nothing Left Untouched by ForeverShippingJohnlock (K+, 2,617 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Romance, Bed Sharing, Oblivious Sherlock, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Grumpy John, Fluff and Cuddles) – Sherlock rearranges the flat. So what if John's bedroom is now a research library. It's not like John needs a bedroom, he can share with Sherlock. They're friends and John has obviously slept in close quarters with men before and it's not like Sherlock sleeps much anyway. It'll be fine.

Insomnia by TheSingingGirl (K+, 2,635 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Humour, Bed Sharing, Sleepy Sherlock) – Sleep is merely the next frontier in what has become the battle to keep Sherlock alive. It's because of this that John ends up in bed with a sociopath.

It's Just Another Birthday by Vintage Tea Party (K, 3,207 w., 2 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Sherlock’s Birthday, Sherlock 3rd Person POV) – When John makes a birthday cake for Sherlock he thinks its an innocent enough gesture. But nothing is ever normal with Sherlock and this isn't just another birthday.

Breakfast, acronyms and brotherhood by Rose de Sharon (K+, 4,074 w., 1 Ch. || TBB Fic, Friendship/Bromance, Hurt/Comfort, Protective John, Fluff) – Set after The Blind Banker: my take of Sherlock and John's conversation over breakfast. S/J friendship, bromance, no slash.

Human Body Pillow by Lunavere (K, 4,122 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Five and Ones, Sleepy Johnlock, Bed Sharing) – A story about the five times John fell asleep on Sherlock, and the one time Sherlock fell asleep on him.

When We Sleep by PrincessNala (K+, 6,660 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TGG,  Alternating POV, Bed Sharing, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Hurt/Comfort, Hugs) – Sherlock needed to feel every beat of his heart, every rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. It was the only way to completely assure himself that John was alive and right there next to him, and not dead, no, never dead…

Made for You by Raxicoricofallapatorious (K, 8,440 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Sci-Fi, Androids) – When John was shot in the shoulder he was decommissioned and his memory and personality was wiped. Sherlock was given the blank droid and he quickly learns that this droid is more than it seems. John just so happened to come back and no one can fathom how or why. Johnlock if you squint.

Five Times Sherlock Realized He Was Getting Older by Mildred Graves (T, 9,215 w., 6 Ch. || Five and Ones, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Getting Old) – . . . And one time it didn't matter.

Sherlock's Sleeping Habits by Cumberbatch Critter (T, 11,424 w., 16 Ch. || Friendship, Sleepy Sherlock, One Shot Collection, Fluff, Domestics) – In which John learns about Sherlock's sleeping habits. Series of unrelated oneshots featuring the one and only ADORABLE Sleepy!Lock! Fluff abounds.

Shuteye Shenanigans by Ayakae (K+, 13,263 w., 8 Ch. || Post-TRF, Friendship / Epic Bromance, John’s Nightmares, Angsty Fluff, Bed Sharing, Humour, Cuddles, Taking Care of Each Other, Domestics) – John Watson has never slept with Sherlock Holmes. Never ever ever. And never will, thank you very much. Well, there was that one time, but John didn't count that. It was completely different, just like the second time it happened. And the third. And the fourth. Epic bromance, but it can be read as pre-slash if you wish.

A Silver Sixpence by _doodle (NC-17, 16,400 w., 2 Ch. || LJ Fic || For a Case / Case Fic, Fake Relationship, Humour, Romance, Marriage Proposal, Awkward Idiots, Cuddling, Touching, Kissing, Love Confessions, Bed Sharing, Friends to Lovers, Fake Until It’s Not, Schmoop and Fluff, Bottomlock) – “John, we need to get married. It’s for a case, not any romantic notions on my part pertaining to our partnership,” Sherlock said, with brutal honesty, and without even looking up.

A Week is Just Seven Days Isn't It? by scifigrl47 (T, 39,906 w., 4 Ch. || Humour, Friendship/Bromance, Stroppy/Bored Sherlock, Undercover/Army John, Texting, Pining-ish Sherlock, John Whump) – When John heads overseas for a week, Sherlock's forced to fend for himself. It goes about as well as anyone could have anticipated. Which is to say, very, very poorly. Don't worry, things'll be fine in just seven days.

[trishmilburn]

An Exploration of The Untamed’s Romance and Mystery, Episode 1

Disclaimer: This post and the ones that will follow will be filled with loads of spoilers if you haven’t seen The Untamed, the Chinese drama based on Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation).

It’s been almost a month since The Untamed aired its final episode, and I’m still totally obsessed with it. That’s both as a pure fan and as a writer of romance. I’ve been published in romance for eleven years now, and I’m always fascinated by how romance storylines are constructed in various forms – books, movies and TV. To me, The Untamed has a beautiful romance even though, due to the Chinese government’s censorship of homosexual (or BL, i.e. boys love) content, it was presented as a bromance. But you can tell that the writers, directors and lead actors of The Untamed were very well aware of the enormous fan base of the original novel and the donghua (Chinese animation) and did their best to live up to the spirit of the love story even though they couldn’t present it in an explicit or obvious way. But here’s the thing, the constraints did nothing to lessen the beauty of the romance; in fact, in some ways it made it even more impactful and emotional.

So beginning with this post and continuing with more in the future as I complete a re-watch of all 50 episodes, I’m going to explore the development of the romance and what made it so lovely to watch unfold. To a lesser degree, I’ll also be commenting on the development of the mystery and the machinations of the forces working against or using for their own personal advantage our two leads, Wei Ying (aka Wei Wuxian or the Yiling Patriarch) and Lan Zhan (aka Lang Wangji or Hanguang-Jun).

Of note, I’ll be commenting with the knowledge of what’s going to happen throughout the series and having read the novel.

So here we go with Episode 1:

We are thrown right into the middle of the action of a battle scene that happens a good way into the story as we’ll see it presented but that happened in the past. The first thing we hear spoken is some unknown person saying, “Wei Wuxian is dead. This calls for a celebration!” And then we see the raging battle, Wei Ying (Wei Wuxian is his courtesy name) is looking broken and horrified as people battle for a piece of powerful metal known as the Yin Tiger Seal, which Wei Ying created. Then the action is frozen as tears fall from Wei Ying’s eyes and he starts walking backward toward the edge of a cliff. We’ll see in the episodes ahead just why he is so broken at this point, but suffice it to say that almost everyone wants him dead and he’s lost so much that his tears are more than understandable.

But as he begins to fall, we see that there is still one person who very much wants him to stay alive – Lan Zhan, the man who loves him but who has never said those words. The first we see of Lan Zhan is him extending his arm bloody from battle and flying toward the edge of the cliff, grasping Wei Ying’s wrist at the last possible moment. His arm shakes as blood drips off of it, but he’s determined to hold all of Wei Ying’s weight with that one injured arm to keep him from falling to his death. You see the desperation in his eyes, and when Wei Ying looks up at him, you see how surprised and touched he is that this one person still cares whether he lives or dies. The first words we hear Wei Ying say are Lan Zhan’s name, right before he tells Lan Zhan to let him go. Lan Zhan, of course, doesn’t, but then Jiang Cheng, who is basically Wei Ying’s adoptive brother, approaches with the intent of making sure Wei Ying does, indeed, die. As he stabs down at Wei Ying with his sword, he misses but very nearly stabs Lan Zhan in the arm that is already injured. Seeing this, Wei Ying’s eyes go wide. He doesn’t want this person who is dear to him to suffer more injury, especially something that might prevent him from playing the zither or using his sword, the two items that help make him one of the most powerful immortal cultivators among all the cultivation sects. And so Wei Ying wrests his wrist out of Lan Zhan’s grasp and falls to his death, much to Lan Zhan’s horror. As a smug Jiang Cheng walks away, all Lan Zhan can do is stare downward, heartbroken, shocked and in utter despair.

In the next scene, we jump back to the “present” timeline, 16 years later. A storyteller is telling stories to the Lan Clan’s disciples, including Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, about the infamous Yiling Patriarch, which is the name Wei Ying was known by after he startd down the demonic cultivation path. Though he’s been dead for 16 years, this storyteller is planting the seed that he might not be or that he might come back. On first watching, I was confused here, especially when the storyteller looks over his shoulder toward someone who is sitting behind a thin curtain and holding a fan. Now I know that this person is Nie Huisang, who while outwardly putting on a cowardly but loveable face and seeming to know nothing throughout the story, is actually a master manipulator of events, moving people like chess pieces to gain the end result he desires to get revenge for the death of his brother.

It suddenly starts getting darker outside, a person on the street says, “The soul has returned,” and the wind kicks up. A flag flies through the air and lands against a door at Mo Manor, where Wei Ying has returned to the land of the living because of a spell cast by Mo Xuanyu so that the powerful Yiling Patriarch can carry out revenge against all the people who have harmed Mo Xuanyu, who has been branded a lunatic by his family and others because he’s gay. As all of this is being explained, we see a flashback to the moment when Wei Ying was falling off the cliff. It took some discussions with other fans and this re-watch to figure out what was going on here, especially since this is where there’s a significant difference with the book. In the book, Wei Ying comes back in the body of Mo Xuanyu, so he looks like a different person and thus is unrecognizable as Wei Ying by just looking at him. Understandably, the makers of the drama didn’t want to have two actors playing the part of Wei Ying, and so we’re led to believe that the spell Mo Xuanyu cast allowed him to actually swap bodies with Wei Ying just before the moment of Wei Ying’s death. There’s a time travel-y aspect to this spell, and thus this is the reason Wei Ying’s body was never found in the drama. It’s a little mind twisty; just go with it because we get to have the handsome owner of gorgeous smiles Xiao Zhan play Wei Ying in both of his lives.

But wait, you might be thinking, how does that work? How would his family not recognize him? Well, Mo Xuanyu is actually the illegitimate child of the Jin Clan’s leader, and thus he went to the Jins’ Golden Unicorn Tower when he was 13. He was an adult when he got kicked out and returned to Mo Manor. His family has never seen his adult face as he always wears a mask or heavy powder to cover it. This mask will also allow Wei Ying to hide from those who would recognize him and assume he’d done something nefarious to come back to life.

Mo Xuanyu’s voice in Wei Ying’s head tells him what’s up, and Wei Ying notices a series of deep cuts on his arm that are a product of the spell. These wounds will never heal if Wei Ying doesn’t carry out the required revenge.

After an encounter with Mo Xuanyu’s ass of a cousin, Wei Ying steps out of the room that is covered in blood and paper talismans that were used in the spell to bring Wei Ying back. He eventually encounters the young Lan disciples. He marvels at this coincidence and wonders, “Is he here, too?” He being Lan Zhan. When Wei Ying wanders into the room where the Mo family is meeting with the disciples, who are there to get rid of some evil spirits, he’s once again attacked by his cousin. Lan Sizhui helps protect Wei Ying, likely acting on an unknown but instinctual connection since, though he’s forgotten, Wei Ying was an important person to him when he was young.

When Wei Ying sees the disciples using spirit attraction flags, he thinks about how everyone wanted him dead but they still use something that he created. When talking to the Lans, he notices the cloud pattern on Sizhui’s clothing and remembers the first time he saw Lan Zhan, back when they were both teens studying at the Lans’ home in Gusu, the Cloud Recesses.

That night, as the Lan disciples are in position to capture the evil spirits, Sizhui hears Wei Ying playing a tune on what looks like a blade of grass and tells Jingyi the song sounds familiar, like a melody from Gusu. He likely has heard Lan Zhan play the song as he’s mourned the loss of Wei Ying and desperately tried every day of those 16 years to reconnect with some piece of Wei Ying’s soul. It’s obvious Wei Ying is still thinking about Lan Zhan as he plays the song, and when he stops he says Lan Zhan’s name with a look of longing on his face. He is probably thinking about how Lan Zhan’s was the last face he saw before dying, about how Lan Zhan was trying so desperately to save him despite everything that had happened and how the rest of the world viewed him.

It’s important to note that at this point, Wei Ying is likely not in love with Lan Zhan, at least not knowingly. He can be a bit oblivious not only to the feelings of others, particularly Lan Zhan, but also his own. But there is no doubt he harbors a deep affection for the person he considers his dearest friend in the world.

His thoughts of the past are interrupted when Master Mo and his servants drag Wei Ying back to the main room, where Cousin Mo has been possessed and Madam Mo is convinced it’s Wei Ying’s doing. At this point you understand why Mo Xuanyu wanted revenge on his family. They’re awful. Wei Ying and the Lans work together as one member after another of the Mo family gets possessed by a spirit that is, strangely, residing in their left arms. The young Lans decide they need to call Lan Zhan for backup since they’re out of their depth, and of course Wei Ying is against this. After all, he can’t yet run the risk of being recognized, especially by the person who knows him best. While everyone else is dealing with possessed Madam Mo, Wei Ying sees an opportunity to exact some of the revenge he’s been tasked with and smears the circle keeping Master and Cousin Mo contained and tells them to “get to work.” Thus begins a fight between the three Mo family members.

Next we see Lan Zhan at some other location, his zither behind him and holding his sword, Bichen. He sees the signal flare the disciples sent up and off he goes to help. When he arrives and uses his powerful zither to send out a wave of white light to bring the Mo family under control, Wei Ying realizes who made that happen and slips away to hide. When he sees Lan Zhan descend into Mo Manor (like the gorgeous angel he is -- oops, sorry, got carried away with my love for Lan Zhan there), the smile on his face shows how much happiness Lan Zhan has brought him in the past, particularly when he was teasing Lan Zhan.

Sizhui asks Lan Zhan what kind of evil spirit they’re dealing with, but Lan Zhan replies that it’s rather a spiritual consciousness of a spiritual weapon. After he examines a sword, he realizes it has traces of the Yin Tiger Seal, to which Jingyi replies that the Yiling Patriarch must still be alive. Remember, that idea was planted by the storyteller at the command of Nie Huisang, who studied alongside Wei Ying and Lan Zhan at the Cloud Recesses.

Movement at the edge of the manor is Wei Ying making his escape, and Lan Zhan follows but doesn’t catch him. But when Lan Zhan is alone, he looks down the street and wonders, “Wei Ying, was it really you?” You can tell there is hope mixed with dread of what method Wei Ying may have used to come back.

The next scene reveals the storyteller being paid a gold nugget by Nie Huisang, though we still don’t see Huisang’s face, all for three days of stories about the Yiling Patriarch. Unknown to the storyteller, Wei Ying passes behind him with a donkey. Again the nameless man in the street says, “The soul has returned.” And Wei Ying sees that there is only one cut left on his arm. He wonders who it represents. That question and the mystery of the left arm-possessing spirit are what will bring Lan Zhan and Wei Ying back together and lead them on a series of adventures, during which their feelings for each other will grow.

[five-wow]

a meta-y ramble: some lengthy thoughts on mcdanno + girlfriends, and more specifically steve in the context of danny and their girlfriends, because to be honest, i think some interesting things could be said there, because... steve consistently seems to take greater liberties in getting close/flirty with danny if they have girlfriends around (or at least the vague concept of them because they’ve just been mentioned) to cover for both their heterosexuality. a list of examples:

3.05: steve puts his arm around danny and they cuddle on the couch while they watch the notebook. catherine is also on the couch (steve’s straight girlfriend), and so is grace (danny’s kid, which is a less obvious but still generally accepted indicator of straightness).

4.04: steve and danny take their girlfriends to the movies. they sit next to each other and talk to each other the entire time, ignoring and embarrassing their girlfriends who keep shushing them, but it’s not like they’re on a date with each other because clearly they have their straight girlfriends of straightness right there!

4.19: steve tells danny he loves him right after a lot of talk in which he repeatedly encourages danny to get closer to his girlfriend, who danny just slept with for the first time (VERY GOOD straight cover! that’s enough to allow for something as daring as an admission of love between two men who are unusually close). later, steve and danny say mutual i love yous, right after we’ve seen them reunite with their respective girlfriends (and grace) who were waiting for them.

4.20: steve and danny say i love you to each other after a very short conversation in which they manage to mention both their girlfriends, who are not in this episode, but amber is waiting for danny in the car and steve totally knows where catherine currently is! thank god. we almost could’ve been fooled into thinking there might be something not straight about this.

6.01: at kono’s wedding, steve is dancing with catherine when he sees danny. he dances over to danny. it’s okay; he brought catherine as his date to the wedding and literally just dipped and kissed her in front of everyone present, so he’s obviously very straight. (after this in the same episode, he tells danny he’s going to propose marriage to catherine, which i personally think has more to do with steve’s abandonment issues and the fact that he genuinely does like catherine than anything else, but you could relate it to this if you want.)

6.14: steve gets very interested in danny’s interest in lingerie. that’s okay though, because danny is talking about liking lingerie on his very straight girlfriend, and steve is a straight man who is straightly fascinated by that, and there are a lot of bras and pink around when they walk into victoria’s secret together. also, steve carries a literal visual reminder of his straightness around in the form of a black eye that he got while on a date with his really hot straight girlfriend and everyone keeps asking him about it.

7.16: many things happen here, but most notable is the end scene, where steve and danny are at one end of the table and steve throws his arm around danny and watches his face from up close and his eyes briefly stray to danny’s lips at one point and he flicks danny’s ear, all while their wonderfully straight girlfriends are across the table from them, being straight.

now, the behind the scenes reason for all of this is probably very simple: this show is aimed at a somewhat conservative straight audience, so to let viewers enjoy steve and danny’s bromance without having to worry that they might be watching something Gay™, the showrunners make sure to mention and/or show girlfriends. it’s fairly straightforward (pun totally intended).

however, this heteronormativity in the writing of canon does kind of leave us with an obvious pattern in canon, and if we look at this from a watsonian perspective (i.e. we basically ignore that this is fiction that human beings are responsible for and we try to make the world of the story make sense in-universe without falling back on “that’s what the writers did because x”), then we still need a way to explain that pattern. and, i mean, if you really wanted you could throw it all on coincidence. you could also say steve is straight, and while not homophobic (9.14 rules that out beautifully) perhaps he’s still a little uncomfortable with his straightness being called into question, so he feels more secure about showing affection for male friends in a context where his heterosexuality has been established. or! it’s less sinister than that and the presence of girlfriends/women is just something that puts steve at ease and takes away some of the need to be macho. for me, none of this would fully explain all of it like the lingerie kink, what’s up with that, but it’s not like my interpretation is the only one possible; you could probably make this work.

but honestly, what seems to make most sense to me is steve mcgarrett, a man who dedicated his life to a job that comes with a very aggressively straight, homophobic environment, and he’s been pining for his best friend for going on a decade, but he doesn’t want that/thinks it’s hopeless/can’t admit to it/genuinely doesn’t even realize it’s happening even though his actions are still led by it, so the only times he feels safe enough to almost make a move and cross some boundaries are when his straightness (and usually danny’s, too) has been established and is unquestionable because he has receipts, basically. (once in a while he maybe does it the other way around, first getting close to danny and then panicking and overcompensating in straightness. it can work both ways.)

(by the way, while this argument could possibly be made for danny too, i don’t think it works as well. at least in the episodes listed above it’s steve bridging the distance almost every single time; even in 4.20, where they both mention girlfriends and both say i love you, it’s steve who says it first. danny is generally presented and perceived as the one who shows affection more easily though i’m not always sure that’s true, but that’s a whole different conversation, so to have steve initiate all these things is an interesting contrast and maybe a question in itself. (ALSO. danny is far more agressively straight most of the time, as in, drools over women more obviously. does that mean steve is less interested? is he just more of a gentleman? more secure in his own attractiveness, so he doesn’t have to chase women? is danny compensating for something too, but in his own way?))

[sparda3g]

Kimetsu no Yaiba Chapter 177 Review

The battle has ended, but Kokushibo’s story has not. He is perhaps the last remain of the past generation; now fading to the afterlife. Before he goes out, the backstory begins to unfold, revealing the life and downfall of the Moon Breather. It all started with the Sun Breather.

This chapter is all about the flashback. That’s definitely not a bad thing; however, if you’re dying to know (no pun intended) the status of the Pillars, you’ll have to wait. It’s not confirmed that Tokito and Genya are dead, though for Tokito I can’t see any way around it, so patient is key. In the meantime, the flashback will serve a sob, depressing tale of brothers that couldn’t have their own way.

We know Kokushibo envied his younger brother, Yorichi, but we don’t know when exactly that sin began to consume him. Honestly, I didn’t expect the last chapter’s closure was seguing to his entire backstory, but not only it’s welcoming, it’s warranted. Not only will we learn the depth of Kokushibo’s character but so as Yorichi’s. While the future of the series is still unknown, despite the feeling of closure is strong, this flashback will set up for what’s to come today.

Although they are twins, Yorichi was born with the Mark. It disturbed the father so heavily, he wanted the baby killed. That’s just sad. Curse or not, what kind of person would want to kill a baby? Thank the sun for the mother, for she denied him and kept the baby alive; like a true loving person. It’s only when he turns ten that he will be sent to a temple.

The idea is, Yorichi was treated like a special person; differentiate from how Kokushibo was raised. Different food, different clothing, and so on. Yorichi had cling to his mother’s left side; as if she is the only one he is treated with love and care. She did save him, so no child would ever leave their mother’s side. However, there’s a major key to that illustration, but let’s go one step at a time.

Kokushibo pitied his younger brother for how he was treated. I thought it’s sad to know he did care for him. He even went out of his way to make a flute for him. The brotherly love or bromance did exist once upon a time. It’s also sad to know how lonely Yorichi was; unable to smile or even speak, like a mute person. It’s amazing how much he will change as young adult, but saddening to see him as a child.

The seed of envy was planted when Yorichi watched him training. It was that moment where he was fascinated by his dream to become the strongest Samurai in the nation; so he too wanted to become one. Kokushibo was shocked to not only hear him speak for the first time, but so as see him smile. It’s like a blind person finally able to see in 20/20 vision; it’s a miracle. It’s a heartwarming moment, but disturbing to Kokushibo. This moment is very crucial to the following scene for it would become apparent how much life changes for the two.

He believed it was unthinkable for Yorichi to become a Samurai. This gives you an idea how he judged the book by its cover, and you know the old saying goes. He was a kid, so it’s understandable in some regards, but this is where it began to change. Yorichi takes a practice sword and goes against the instructor for fun. Kokushibo has practice for so long, he’s still unable to land a hit on the instructor. Yorichi however on his first try not only lands it, but soundly defeated him.

It’s striking to see him go at it, practically annihilated the instructor in his first try. He was only seven years old. It’s as if he’s the Broly from Dragon Ball of this series; gifted with incredible power. It becomes more apparent when Kokushibo asked him about his strength. Yorichi was already able to see the Transparent World. That’s unheard of, but according to his description, it’s most definitely the case. All this time, Kokushibo pitied him when he’s in fact not only gifted, but vastly superior. “Looks can be deceiving” is what he should have known.

This should have been an uprising hill for both, but it sadly becomes a downhill spiral. Yorichi’s smile faded away once he realized the damage and pain as a Samurai. This explains why we hardly see him happy until he spoke about the next generation. Maybe he found it again, but as of now, it appears his life was forced to live this path, based on his gift or maybe curse. It’s crushing to see him wanting to play games with his older brother, yet all they can talk about is Samurai, something he wanted to avoid.

As for Kokushibo, his downfall is much clearer in compare. He was outclassed by his younger brother by a large margin. It was then their father changed his mind about his sons’ role. Yorichi would inherit the House, while Kokushibo would be sent to a temple. In other words, the roles have been reversed.

It’s bad enough the same guy who wanted Yorichi dead now kisses him like the favorite, it is worse that Kokushibo is now treated like a second fiddle. It’s not like he was rude like a spoiled brat to warrant this kind of karma. It’s not designed for us to laugh at him, rather sympathize. The sad part is, he was raised to be a Samurai from the get-go. Because of House’s status, he can no longer be as such. Imagine being raised to be a football player, training and all, only to be declined seven years later. Your mind is fixated to live that life, but now that’s taken away, how can you adjust to something else. It’s not easy and Kokushibo got it really rough.

Perhaps the last tender bromance moment is Yorichi’s farewell. Their mother had passed away and Yorichi was departing to the temple. He stopped by to say goodbye to his brother, presenting him the flute, the same one from the past. It symbolizes how much he cherished it. Even with their shortcomings as of late, Yorichi truly loved his brother; like their mother, he saved his life. Now the tear scene back when they are much older holds so much meaning. It’s quite sad to look back.

The nail on the coffin for Kokushibo is the mother’s journal. She has been dealing with a bad illness for a long time, and her left side was suffering. That’s when he realized Yorichi was supporting her since the beginning. Once again, seeing is not believing. With Yorichi winning the father’s approval, loving and caring the mother, and being a superior Samurai in every way, Kokushibo was enraged with envies.  Looking over the chapter, I can’t really blame him.

To me, this is deemed as a sad story. Yorichi had nothing, only to be granted with everything, yet he wasn’t amused. Kokushibo had everything he thought to have, only to be discarded by reality, yet he thought he was doing well. The best way to describe him is a Shounen protagonist gone wrong. He was treated with respect, but inside, he was the underdog. He trained hard, yet Yorichi was gifted with everything. Because we know he became a demon, hard work didn’t pay off. I look forward to that moment.

I thought this was a touching chapter. It delivered the insight depth of the Sun and Moon Brothers back in their childhood. Their adulthood differs greatly from their childhood. I would have assume they lived mostly normal, but their childhood shows hardship and painful reality. Kokushibo’s envy was reasonable and sympathetic in my opinion. It would have been pitiful if he was just jealous without any circumstance such as raised as a prodigy or approved by the House before changing plans. I know I mainly summarized here, but the narration is very good. It’s wall of text, but compelling and thoughtful. The tale isn’t over, so the downfall will resume.

[thesffcorner]

Truthwitch

Truthwitch is the first book in the YA fantasy Witchland series written by Susan Dennard. We follow 4 perspectives: Safi, a domma of Cartorra who happens to be a Truthwtich, one of the rarest form of witchery in the land; Iseult, her Nomatsi best friend and a Threadwitch; Aeduin, a monk and Bloodwitch; and Prince Merik of Nubrevna, a Windwitch. These 4 characters are all brought together in a conspiracy threatening to destroy a truce between the different kingdoms, involving piracy, magic and kidnapping the Emperor's betrothed. 

This book took me so long to get into; I started reading it the summer of last year, and then put it down 40 pages in. Then I tried again last month, got about 80 pages in and put it down. I knew I would like the book if I just committed and actually gave myself time to read it, but I kept not wanting to pick it up, until I finally did and… finished it in 2 days. There is a reason why it took me so long to get into the book, and that’s the writing. Susan Dennard has a very specific style of writing that’s hard to explain. In her plotting she has the ‘everything, but the kitchen sink’ approach; she throws a lot of concepts and ideas at the reader all at once, and it’s mostly left to us to piece it all out. In just the first chapter we are expected to understand who the characters are, why they are being chased by a Bloodwitch, what a Bloodwitch even is, how this magic system works, and on top of all that we have to follow a tense action scene with knife-fighting, and explosions and diving off a cliff. I had no idea who anyone was, where this was taking place, who was related to who, who was royalty and who was an outsider, and to make matters more confusing, since we follow 4 different perspectives, as soon as I got used to one character, I was forced to meet and care about a different one. It was frustrating to orient myself, because especially at the start, not all the characters were immediately likable or immediately engaging. Merik was the strongest example of this; it took me chapters before I cared about anything he was up to, and he wasn’t irrelevant in the first 100 pages either. The other issue, was writing itself. Just to give you an example, here’s a couple of sentences from the opening: ”Thirty-two thrice damned guards, with thirty-two thrice damned crossbows” pg. 12 ”Wind kicked at Iseult’s dark hair, lifting the wispy bits that had fallen from her braid. A distant gull cried it’s obnoxious scree scr-scree scr-scree! Safi hated gulls; they always shit on her head.” pg. 13 It’s a style choice all right. Once you get used to the writing, it’s actually really fun and fast paced; I love how precise Dennard is with her language, going through the trouble of using proper names for everything from the types of swords to the types of fabrics and clothes the characters wear. The use of words like hyefor yes, or the specific sayings and sea shanties that the characters only in this universe have makes the world feel more authentic, and I like the mentions of different languages, accents characters have in those languages, etc. However, at the start, I was so confused, and it took me a while to get used to Dennard’s stylistic choices. I akin the reading experience of Truthwitch to that of Nevernight; as soon as you get through the first 100 pages, you are in for a ride. Which is exactly what this book is; a ride. It’s a non-stop action packed chase across seas, mountain passes and city streets, and even the quiet moments, are only quiet in that no one is getting stabbed. It’s such a fun book; it’s like a well executed pirate film, with all the sea-faring, boat-sinking, treatise-respecting elements. I’ve heard this book called Game of Thrones for kids, and I really don’t agree with that; the politics of this world is so simple and straightforward that it can’t in any way be compared to even the who version of Game of Thrones. Most of the court intrigue is set-dressing for the action, which for me went in the book’s favor. I liked the action, and the book was best when it focused on our small group of characters and their adventures. When it tried to expand to include the war and the politics, I found it wasn’t very deft at it, and I think Dennard knows that, because the focus of this first book was pretty narrow; fulfill the contract, get from A to B. The parts of the book that I enjoyed most, were the magic system and world-building. The magic system is very cool; it involves Origin Wells which are each connected to a type of elemental magic: air, earth, fire, water. The people who have these abilities range in both power and skill; they can be Earthwitches who specialize in botany, or iron or glass. We even get an example of this with Merik and his Threadbrother Kullen; Merik is a weak Windwitch, who can control only wind, but Kullen can control all kinds of air from winds, to storms, to people’s breaths. The background of the world with the dying wells, the prophecies about their reawakening, the Voidwitches were all really fun concepts that were set up here, and I can’t wait to learn more about; I think it was a good choice to only briefly set things up in this book, and focus on the magic more as the series progresses. Speaking of the plot, it was not perfect, but it kept me engaged. I wanted to know who were all the players involved in the mystery, I wanted to see what would happen when and if the girls make it to Lejna, and I was curious to learn who the Puppeteer is. We get some answers to these questions, and while I can’t be too angry at the book for not wrapping up well, since it is just book 1 in a series, I did want a more conclusive ending. As it stands, we are left with more questions than answers, and I’m not sure if some of the elements in this book will ever get resolved. The thing that I had some issue with too, were the decisions the characters made. I can’t possibly go over everyone; there are dozens of characters in this book, but we can talk about the main 4, starting with Aeduin. Aeduin was the characters we learn least about, and he has the least amount of PoV presence in the book. I found his powers really cool and well developed; he can smell people’s blood, control it, even in his own body to regulate bodily functions like fatigue or oxygen consumption during running. He also heals super fast, even from fatal injuries. His powers are similar to blood-bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which a really interesting concept. As a character, we get bits and pieces about Aeduin; he is impatient, he is conflicted about his loyalties, and he’s very good at what he does, which is essentially being a mercenary. There are hints of romance between him and Iseult, and if done right, it could be an interesting dynamic, but in this specific book, he was only set up as a future lead, rather than being a proper lead. Iseult is a Threadwitch, and like Aeduin I found her powers infinitely fascinating. She can see bonds between people, and the threads that tie them to everyone around them, including threads between some animals. Based on the threads, iseult can see emotions; she can also build and manipulate threads. All the threads are different; she and Safi are Threadsisters, meaning they owe each other a life-debt, and they have the closest bond of friendship. There are also Heartthreads which are romantic attachments. As a Threadwitch, Iseult has trouble understanding emotions and interpreting what she feels, because Threadwitches can’t see their own threads and are meant to be logical and impartial; they also can’t form Heartthreads. Iseult also faces a lot of bigotry, prejudice, and racism; she is a Nomatsi, a traveling tribe which I’m going to guess is based on the Romani. As such she is hated everywhere she goes; people yell slurs at her, they sometimes attack her, and she’s not even allowed to be present in specific parts of the city. The prejudice I think was done well, but what I found lackluster was how Iseult felt and dealt with it; namely she doesn’t. The book tries to present it as something she’s used to, since it follows her around everywhere she goes. While it’s believable that someone would be used to extreme and violent prejudice against them, if they’ve dealt with is for that long, Iseult would still have feelings on the matter. She would still feel hurt, or sad, or wronged, or angry, but the book doesn't give us anything to work with, other than once scene where she tries to get Safi to back down from attacking some bigoted soldiers, because Safi’s attack only makes the abuse stronger and harder for Iseult to deal with. I think this is a real missed opportunity on Dennard’s part, which I hope will be better explored in the latter books. There are a lot more things that are set up with Iseult’s character, but not much is truly explored with her. She also spends almost the entire second act incapacitated, so we don’t spend as much time with her as we do with Merik and Safi. The parts I enjoyed most was her friendship with Safi, but unfortunately, so much of the book sees her unconscious or the two of them apart, that I really wish we could’ve gotten more from them. We desperately lack strong female friendships or bromances in media, and this one has all the potential, but just not excellent execution. Merik was the character I struggled with the most; I found him pretty bland and boring at first, and later just incredibly annoying. His playing at being a Prince and Admiral was very childish and annoying, the way he treated Safi was incredibly disrespectful and grating, and he’s never called out on his behavior by anyone. Yelling at your subordinates that you are their Prince or their Captain doesn’t make you a good leader, or a leader in anything other than rank; I think Dennard missed a solid opportunity to explore what being a true leader really means with his character. The fact that he is a weak witch was something that I’ve already seen explored with Rhy Maresh in the Shades of Magicseries, and while I didn’t like what Schwab ultimately does with Rhy in that book either, I think she did a much better job of exploring Rhy’s internal conflict of being a Crown Prince with little to no magic. Here, like Iseult, Merik just kind of seems used to it, and it never really factors into the plot, except for the one scene where he explains why his sister has his father’s favor. His devotion to his Threadbrother Kullen was nice, but overall I found him to be a nuisance of a character. He improves slightly towards the latter half of the book, and I did like the chemistry he has with Safi. They have a good reason to be kept apart, and I found both of their conflicting emotions written well and justified. I also liked that the romance was present, but it always took a back seat to the main plot and the more pressing issues the two characters faced. However, I did have major problems with the way Merik treated Safya and the power imbalance in their relationship. Safya being his prisoner for most of the book, and him constantly demanding that she follows laws and orders she has no choice on or even has to since she is royalty herself was maddening. Dennard does try to show that even when she’s in chain Safya is still defiant and at least spiritually his equal, but that doesn’t change that fact that she is LITERARY his prisoner the whole time they are together. She was kidnapped by her uncle and then Merik, and though Merik claims that he would make sure Iseult survives, neither Safya nor the readers have any way of knowing he’s being genuine or could even make it happen, no matter how much he believes it. Safya was entirely justified in doing what she does to help Iseult, and what Merik does to Safya going completely unpunished and consequence free, not to mention being awarded with a make-out session by Safya was D&D level bad plotting (maybe that’s where the GoT comparisons come in). Safya was my favorite character, in spite of the make-out session. She made the book for me; I loved how spirited, impulsive, brash and brave her character was. She was a lady with training in the courts and in street smarts, she could fight, she had a mouth on her, and she never backed down, unless she had a good reason to. I loved that she dove headlong into conflict to protect the ones she loved, that her cons didn’t always work, and that she felt genuine guilt and remorse when she put people in danger. She has a lot of internal conflict, and internalized hatred because of everything she has been constantly told; that she’s weak, that she’s not cut out for leadership, and that she’s a pawn in people’s games. She was a very well rounded characters, and to top it off she too had cool powers. The way her Truthwitchery worked was interesting; she can detect lies in statements, whether hers or others, but not also what the truth is. She can also be fooled with the right phrasing of sentences or if the person really believes in the lie. Her power was as imperfect and faliabe as she was and I’m interested to see if she can train it to serve her better and what people would have use for with her power, or at least with how her power is presented to work. While I don’t like the decision she makes at the end of the book, I am curious to see how she navigates the new status quo. Her character, if we stick with the GoT comparisons, is a blend of Arya and Sansa, so it will be interesting to see how she navigates more courtly plotting. It’s rare for me to like the lead character as much as I liked her, and so I’m interested to see what she does next. Overall, this is a solid starter book to the series. Like a lot of first books, it sets a good foundation, but I can’t say that it stands very tall on its own. It sets up a lot of the world, and it is a fun, action packed ride, but I have a feeling once I get further into the series, it will be the weakest of the books.

goodreads

[flydotnet]

Surprise Meeting with Fate (and Your Eyes) - Chapter 2: Building Trust

Previous chapter/Original post

Fandom: Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (Non-Despair AU) Pairs: Kaede/Shuichi, Maki/Kaito, Gonta/Kirumi, Tenko/Himiko

Chapter summary: Shuichi's more tired than he thought, his roommate doesn't want him to work even more and Kaede is still in the picture, because as Kaito says: he can't hear him over the sound of his blooming romance. Bromance and a friend outing to the doctor's are part of Shuichi's second day as a soulmate who found his match.

Chapter notes: HELLO YES I DIDNT PLAN ON MAKING THIS A FULL-ON FIC BUT HERE WE GO ANYWAY Seriously, I just couldn't let such an idea go to waste! People seem to have appreciated this one a lot, and I liked it a lot too, so I jumped the shark and went for it. I hope you'll bear with me as I attempt to introduce more characters and pairings than I did in SymCac.

AO3 version available here. (which I strongly advise for since Tumblr’s formatting is garbage)

To be honest, when he woke up that morning, Shuichi had forgotten about two things: the name of his soulmate written on his wrist, and that he had made a fool of himself in front of his roommate.

The weirdest for Shuichi was to think he didn’t need to be weary of who his soulmate was anymore. There was no more avoiding other people’s gaze to avoid getting a name written in golden letters on his wrist. All there was anymore, was to find how to deal with it in the company of his soulmate herself, the ever-so-pretty Kaede Akamatsu.

And what a soulmate she was. They were different in every single aspect he could have thought of: she was an extravert, beautiful, charming, popular and brave; he was an introvert, shy, plain-looking, lonely and cowardly. She was shining, he was buried in his own shadows. There was no way they were any compatible, yet there they were, somehow soulmates.

Of course, Kaito had gotten hold of the information easily. It started with how Shuichi had replied to a text message from the astronaut trainee: “I’m with a client, but it looks more like a date than anything else”. It had picked Kaito’s curiosity: Shuichi Saihara, speaking about a date? It meant he was both outside and with someone else his best friend didn’t know about. It was interesting, fascinating, exciting to uncover.

One thing was for sure: Kaito hadn’t missed the most embarrassing part of the day. Kaede had accompanied Shuichi to his place on the way back from the “date”, mostly because his fever had risen again from the surprise overexertion he had wanted to avoid. At first, he had refused, but she had kept insisting and he had eventually given in to her pleas and to how bad he felt after a while of walking around and make small talk with a girl way out of his league.

It would had been humiliating enough, would had Kaito not stepped on Kaede taking care of his roommate in bed. Sure, Kaito had seen Shuichi in many embarrassing situations, from delirious and calling for his uncle to ugly tears of frustration at grades, but there had never been such a thing between the two of them.

And that was more than enough for Shuichi to barely be able to look at his own roommate as they were eating breakfast.

“Hey, bro…” Kaito broke the ice starting to freeze the table as he dipped his slice of bread in his hot chocolate.

“What…? You’re going to tease me again…?”

“No, I know yesterday bothered you and all, so… I wanted to ask you if you were okay.”

Shuichi rose his eyes, puzzled.

“Just that? Then… I guess I’m fine, I’m just… weirded out by everything, lately…”

Kaito put a hand under his friend’s bangs, inspecting his temperature closely by then putting his on his own forehead.

“That girl was right, you’re still warm, Shuichi. You overworked yourself again on a case? I thought we had made a point, yesterday.”

“Nah, I think it’s just a leftover of me being sick yesterday… You don’t need to skip classes for me over it, Kaito…”

“It’s like you can read minds, bro! Seriously, you should take the day off, you look like crap man.”

“Thank you for the compliment…”

Shuichi’s nose dived right into his coffee before he knew it. He heard his roommate sigh.

“C’mon, let’s bring you back to bed, this ain’t gonna work…”

And once again, before he was even conscious of it, he was getting dragged to his room and to his bed. By chance, he had forgotten to get dressed, so he was still in his pyjamas anyway.

“You’re stubborn as hell, man…” Kaito said in another sigh. “If only you knew how to stay in bed as well as you knew your English literature, everything’d be better for everyone involved.”

“You have class soon, Kaito, you should be going instead of staying here…”

“Yeah, I know that,” he got his phone out, “that’s why I’m calling you someone!”

His face was probably already pale from the natural tint of barely going outside, but Shuichi felt himself get even paler.

“W-what someone…? Maki?”

Which implied he was going to get a very bad time for being crap at taking care of himself.

“Kirumi?”

Which implied he was going to be bombarded with questions about his self-care or be met with an awkward silence.

“Gonta?”

Which implied he was going to get smothered in strong hugs and weird natural remedies nobody else but Himiko, Kirumi or him would trust in.

“My uncle?”

Which implied he was going to be forced to take an actual day off and get a paternal scolding with it.

Kaito scoffed in amusement.

“Naaah,” he replied as he picked a pink sticky note from the bedside table, “I’m calling that girl from yesterday. She seemed adamant to know you more!”

Oh no. That implied even worse things for him.

“Don’t do that!! Kaede has so much more stuff to worry about than me…!”

He coughed, to which Kaito handed him a bunch of pills and a glass of water.

“Take your medicine before you talk about your well-being, bro. I hate reversing the roles, y’know.”

Shuichi took the medicine and glass with a slight smile, a soft “thank you” and took the pills. He had, also, forgotten about his asthma. Moments later, he saw his best friend type down the number on the sticky note Kaede had left there the day before “so he wouldn’t forget to call her back and give her his number” right before he had fallen asleep.

“Hello? It’s Shuichi’s best friend, Kaito Momota! We’ve seen each other yesterday after you brought my bro home.”

He nodded before smiling wildly.

“Yeah, I’m doing great! But I have to leave for my training soon, could you take care of Shuichi for me today? He’s still tired and sick, and I’m scared he’s going to go to work-and-or-class anyway if I leave him alone. I can repay you the favour another day!”

He showed an even wider grin after a minute or so.

“You really can?! Thank you so much!! I’ll slip the flat’s door key under the rug, okay? If you really can’t, ring the bell, Shuichi’ll come to open to you. Thanks again, Kaede! You’re saving us big trouble there!”

Kaito hung up and looked at his flatmate.

“Heard that? Your girlfriend’s gonna come here to take care of you for the day!”

“Kaito… Kaede isn’t my girlfriend, and I’ve already told you, she’s a busy pianist who has other stuff to do than taking care of than me…”

“Sorry, bro, can’t hear you over the sound of your blooming romance! I’ll be going now, don’t wanna be late to my training y’know! Plus my cab’s already here, and I can’t let my Maki Roll wait for me! See ya tonight, take care!”

With that, Shuichi heard the entrance door to the flat slam behind his best friend, and that was it. How was he supposed to go to work if Kaede was to come here? He hadn’t even warned his uncle’s office about taking a day off, same for his professors! It wasn’t too late, he figured, as he just laid back in bed again.

He took his own phone, turned it on and dialled the necessary numbers. What a chore, especially since he hated phoning people, but also lacked the motivation to write them emails they wouldn’t read in time anyway.

“Hello? Ah, Uncle Shinichi, it’s… It’s Shuichi…” He gulped. “How do you know I’m sick…? I haven’t gone to the doctor yet…! Huh, my voice? I guess it’s weak today… I’m sorry, I don’t think I can come to work with my roommate keeping an eye on me… It’s fine with you? Thanks, Uncle… I’ll do… Have a nice day…”

“Hello, sir? It’s Shuichi Saihara, in second year in the Literature and Human Sciences course… It’s to inform you I won’t be here today… I know, I have a presentation due on tomorrow, I’ll be there… Oh, don’t worry sir, I’m just sick, I should be fine by tomorrow… No, I’ve not gone to a doctor yet… I’ll do, sir… Have a good day, sir…”

A sigh of relief exited his lips. It seemed like it was okay for him to be missing for a day, even if it bothered him to no end. What was he supposed to do on a Tuesday when he had nothing to do but look at the ceiling? Maybe he should get dressed and go to a doctor, that could be useful…

As he got dressed and made his way to the living room-kitchen hybrid he shared with Kaito to recover some stuff to go, he came right by a now familiar face and her bright, charming, spell-casting smile. Goddammit. His legs felt like jelly, probably from his lingering fever.

He couldn’t help but look at what she was wearing. A dusky pink coat, wool leggings and heeled boots with laces tied in a knot at their top. She looked, as always when it came to her it seemed, lovely. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, hidden behind her back, buried under a beanie with a pompom on top of it. Why was he even studying her outfit when he couldn’t have cared less about Kaito’s extravagant shirts, stellar jackets and galaxy-printed boxers?

Kaede let out a small “oh” of surprise when she turned back from locking the door, before beaming him another magical smile.

“Hello, Shuichi! How are you?”

“Ah, huh, hello Kaede… I’m… fine, I guess…”

“Your roommate called me, telling me you were still sick… You were planning to go somewhere?”

“To the doctor, actually. I’ll need a medical certificate if I want to justify skipping class today…”

She took off her gloves, walked up to him and put her own palm on his forehead, just as he put on his coat.

“He was right, you’re still warm. Let’s get you to a doctor, okay? My car’s parked in front of the building. It won’t take us more than a few minutes to get to one.”

He just nodded, because he was getting a bit dizzy. Once he had made sure to get all the stuff he needed, he went downstairs with her, waving a tiny hello to Rantaro who was making his way to college.

Once in her car, Shuichi noticed a few things, and that despite his daze. The outside wasn’t pink: in fact, it was white, so it was discreet, fortunately so. The interior was black, slim, decorated with clef-shaped and note-alike items.

“Welcome to my little car!” Kaede greeted him to the passenger seat. “Do you mind if I put on some music? I like to have some background noise while I drive, and I won’t force you to chat with me if you’re sick.”

“I don’t mind…”

She turned on the car and started driving off.

They were, barely moments after that, at the nearest doctor’s office. The waiting room wasn’t too busy, but there were still a few people before them, including a grandmother who accompanied her ill, crying grandson and an expecting couple, probably there for a small check-up or, rather, for the ill-looking husband who still had something in the corner of his mouth.

There was something weird with doctor offices, and it was how you felt sicker when you waited for them. At first, Shuichi thought it would be a good occasion to finish reading the novel he had started and which he had forgotten in his overcoat’s pocket. However, he quickly realized he felt drowsy and had trouble focusing on anything, so he slipped the book in his pocket again and made a mental note to read it later.

“Shuichi?”

Kaede softly called for him, looking at him with soft eyes, when he noticed he was lulling on her shoulder. He jumped back into a proper position, embarrassed.

“S-sorry for that…! I didn’t realize I was starting to fall sleep…”

“It’s fine. You look tired, so I don’t mind you sleeping on my shoulder if it’s more comfortable than the seat. It’s our turn soon, that’s why I was calling for you.”

“Oh, okay… Thanks for telling me, I’ll try staying awake until we’re called…”

Minutes later, they were both called into the doctor’s actual office. That was when his senses started to get a bit foggy from the fatigue. He didn’t even wonder about what use what he was getting asked to do could possibly serve towards a diagnosis of his condition.

The doctor excused himself for separating Shuichi from Kaede, bringing him in the nearby examination room. It did a perfect job at looking as such: white walls, tools, smell of disinfectant products, examination table. He sat down on the latter upon being prompted to do so.

“Mr Saihara, please open take off your shirt so I can start examining you.”

It’s with a bit of shyness and a will not to unveil too much that he started unbuttoning his shirt, eventually taking it off. He hoped Kaede wasn’t peeking: he was slender at best and scrawny at worst. Wait, why would he think she was even attracted to him to begin with? He was nothing but a stick. She couldn’t be a pervert either, so there was no point in being afraid of that. Huh. That sure was weird.

Tongue checking, ear checking, heartbeats, breathing cycles, coughing, eye checking, temperature… It got weirder when the doctor requested to take his measurements after allowing him to put on his shirt again: weight, height, basic information from his medical files. He still shrugged it off: maybe it was needed for medicine doses.

Once all of this was done, the doctor invited him to go back to the main room, where Kaede had patiently waited for him. He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t have waited for him, that it wasn’t much, but he was still happy to see she was still there, for some reason. Moreover, she still had a slight, soft smile to give him that never failed to warm him up, even if they had known each other for two days.

He’d have to investigate why she had such a strong impact on him. The last time it had happened, he had just met Kaito, in high school, when the latter invited himself to his table at lunch because “you shouldn’t be eating alone, man, even if I don’t know you”.

Was that what it meant to have a soulmate?

“Mr Saihara,” the doctor called him back to reality, “I need to ask you a few questions before I can make a sure diagnosis. Would you mind answering them?”

“Not at all…”

He felt a bit dizzy again but prevented his head from falling onto Kaede’s shoulder right next to it.

“Have you slept much, lately?”

“Huh… Not really…? I’ve been busy with work and college, so I probably neglected my sleep…”

“Have you kept an eye on your alimentation?”

“Made sure to eat at least breakfast, lunch and dinner… Classic student stuff, noodles, some junk food here and there, but I try to limit that, so I usually eat rice for dinner anyway…”

Kaede’s eyes were a bit stern on him.

“Shuichi…” she whispered, seemingly upset.

The doctor wrote down some of the answers he gave out, until he went through them all again.

“Mr Saihara,” he told them both, “you have a rather bad case of overwork and general fatigue due to an important workload and a lack of sleep. You mostly need some rest and to take care of your life habits and it should be fine in a few days. I will also give you some antipyretics, since according to your medical information you have fevers easily.”

Kaede’s eyes locked onto his again, this time displaying pity. Oh, joy.

“Here is the list of medicine you will need,” the doctor continued as he gave Kaede a freshly printed out piece of paper. “Any question?”

“Yeah, huh… How long am I off work…? I doubt rest includes working or attending class…”

“You are right, Mr Saihara. I have given you a week off from both work and class, since I have heard from Ms Akamatsu that you were still a student.”

“Oh, great… Just great…” Shuichi whispered under his breath.

Once they were out of the doctor’s office, the bill paid, Kaede offered to go back to the car and go to the pharmacy to get the medicine from the list. Once in her car again, the silence from the way there got broken by anything but her radio playing classical music.

“Shuichi,” she asked him, glancing at him with worry on her face, “is everything all right? You look sad.”

“What makes you think I’m sad…?”

“I wouldn’t know how to describe it, but… You look like you’re really bothered by something. Is it just me?”

“No, you’re right, I’m really bothered by something… I called in for the day, but I promised my History prof I’d be there for my presentation tomorrow, but doctor’s order says I’m off for an entire week… I don’t want to cancel it…”

“Aw, you’re worried for your oral… I’m sure your prof will understand, Shuichi. You’re a good student. At least that’s what Kaito told me yesterday when he told me a bit about you.”

“Oh, so you talked with Kaito about me…”

“Yeah! He told me you were a very good guy, who loved literature and who put others before himself! You know, as scary as this soulmate thing is, I’m really glad and relieved it’s with you I get to share it… I don’t know why, but I just feel better when I’m around you.”

“Same here… It’s just better when you’re around, for some reason…”

She accelerated as soon as she noticed he was curling on himself for warmth. She also insisted on getting his medicine for him, but he still went with her because he really didn’t want her to pay for him when they were nothing more than freshly friends. Quickly after, they were back to his flat, him in the sofa, her by his side, carefully reading the instructions the doctor had given out and inspecting the medicine.

“Sheesh, Shuichi, you need to take care of yourself!” She scolded him as she prepared him a glass of water for the pills. “You have to eat correctly and sleep long enough! I’m sure Kaito tells you that a lot, but that proves you really need to do so instead of just saying you’ll do that later! Your health is very important!”

“I’ll… I’ll try paying it more attention… I’ve been busy lately…”

Yet, even when she was angry at him, Kaede shined him a bright and comforting smile.

“You’re such a hard worker, Shuichi… I’ve seen your room when I went to fetch you a sheet,” sheet she then proceeded to put on his legs, “and it’s a mess of books and case files. I may call a friend over so she can help us fix this, but for now, you’re ordered to rest!”

She patted his shoulder.

“I’ll make you a small something, please wait for me here. If you need anything, just call me!”

When Kaede came back, barely minutes later, she had a small cup of steaming milk in her hands.

“Here you go! It’s still a bit hot, but my mom always made honey milk for my sis and me when we were sick or tired. I thought it could be good to give you a cup too!”

“That’s very kind of you, Kaede… Thank you very much…”

Shuichi folded his legs back to his torso as he blew some of the steam off the cup, before taking a sip of it.

He could get used to this soulmate thing, if it meant feeling good when he’d usually feel miserable.

Fear not, the other ships will arrive later. (especially Makaito, believe me)

[rainstormcolors]

Prideshipping for the ship meme (Are you surprised?)

I apologize for thewait! Thank you for your patience! Though to be honest, this exercise is morefor my own sake in building ideas and adding detail to these ships, and ifother people happen to get something out of it, that’s only a bonus. (At somepoint I’ll be answering for Heartshipping too.)

And of course theseare only my interpretations/opinions.

There are two waysPride can be approached: either Seto makes visits to the Netherworld, or Atemthrough some means exists in the modern world. I’ll try to acknowledge thedifferences where appropriate in my answers.

I think Seto makingroutine trips to the Netherworld would be an alright choice for the couple.It’s intriguing how Seto is both so independent as a person and yet so co-dependenton Atem, but I think a long distance relationship would work out well for thetwo. Seto needs space but would understand he has someone who loves, desires,and supports him even as they’re physically apart. Likewise, I think Atem wouldbe satisfied in what they share. I characterize Atem as more calm and at peacepost-canon and I think he’s both loving and independent, and he’d cherish howdeeply Seto feels for him and how they’ve both followed each other from thestart.

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What they watch during movie dates and what kind ofsnacks they get from concessions.

Again, I don’tthink Seto watches much television or movies. But for some reason, I imagineAtem might really dig documentaries. It’s not just about absorbing informationhe hasn’t yet learned of the modern world. Rather I think he may actually enjoythe act of learning itself, given it’s in an entertaining package. I think he’dlike watching other genres of film too, though more casually. It would takesome time for him to develop his own tastes with it, since he wouldn’t be astired with clichés and tropes as most people.

Seto might bringdownloaded media to Atem in the Netherworld, and they’d sit on the palacerooftop over a candled city and under the deep starry sky, leaning into eachother as a floating panel of light plays the movie. Seto might become bored andbegin making plans for his work, but he’s still sitting there and Atem is restingagainst him and their warmth pools together, and when the film is over Atemasks him to maybe bring some new movies for next time. “Maybe one with moreaction so you don’t get bored.” (Atem noticed.)

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Which one gets in to a fightwith the other’s parents.                                                                    

If we’re in themodern world, neither one has a living parent. In the Netherworld, there’s allkinds of possibilities to play with here.

If Atem’s fatherwas present in the Netherworld, I think Atem would be close to him. He soclearly carried affection for his father’s memory in the series’ final arc. ButSeto would keep his distance from Aknamkanon.Aside from Seto’s sharply asocial nature, I think he’d feel like he wasencroaching and he’d also feel out of place within that father/son bond.

I consider Atem andYugi to have a brotherly affection for each other, and based on the ending toDSoD, it seems Seto’s warmed a small bit to Yugi. (I’m a sucker for Rivalshipbromance regardless.) I imagine Mokuba would figure out his brother is gay andinvolved with Atem before Seto actually comes out to him, and Mokuba would besupportive.

There’s somethingvery complex going on between Mokuba and Seto and Atem in DSoD (it’s awhirlpool of love, hate, fear, and hope) and there aren’t immediate answershere and the water would need to smooth. Mokuba and Seto already had a complexrelationship; Atem and Seto already had a complex relationship. I can’t reallydistill it so simply. But I think they’d come to an understanding. I think apart of Seto might be ashamed, while Mokuba dearly wants his brother to findsome patch of happiness even if Mokuba carries a splotch of resentment. (Ithink the fandom takes it for granted that even in the anime it’s impliedMokuba and Seto have a strain on their relationship—that doesn’t change thefact they love each other deeply.) I think Mokuba might have mixed feelingstowards Atem initially, even if he keeps them to himself, but there’d be timeto heal and bond.

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What kind of street performance they’d put on to raisemoney if they were stranded somewhere.

Aren’t they bothfamous? They’d sell autographs!

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How they’d be as parents if theyhad-a-kid/someone-forced-a-kid-on-them.

I’ve made it clearI interpret Seto as being keenly uncomfortable at the prospect of fatherhood,due to his history, his Gozaburo-complex, and the issues in his mental health.I see Atem as a character going either way. If his lover doesn’t want children,he’d be happy with not having children. If his lover does want children, he’dbe happy with having children. He could see himself being a good father and hedoesn’t mind children, but children aren’t a goal for him. Having children issomething he’s open to but not actively interested in, is my take on the character.

I’ve brought up thesad circumstance before of how Seto’d be forced into fatherhood, but also howhe’d prove to be a far better father than he had feared. He’d be quiet, softer,a bit distant. He’d have times where he’d lose his temper and have to suddenlyleave the room to calm down, but he would care achingly for that child. He’drub the child’s head gently, help them with their homework, carry them to bedwhen they’ve fallen asleep in the car.

I think Atem wouldprove to be a damn solid parent actually, warm and encouraging yet firm. Thisis in the realm of the mortal world, but maybe he’d take the child out fishingor bring them to museums. Atem might prompt the child to make a drawing forPapa Seto or he’d build colorful Play-Doh sculptures with them. He’d emboldenthem to make friends and put themselves out there. And he’d also be the one totell them to be kind to others, to be fair and use judgement, and scold themwhen they’ve done wrong.

Atem plays theactive firm parent, and Seto the quiet soft parent, but the child is well lovedand the three form a cozy family together.

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Who would cause the most trouble during a camping tripand how.

I would say thecouple isn’t exactly the type to go out camping but then I did just read theaskee’s fic, The Newly Revised Book of the Dead, wherein Atem and Seto spend a decentamount of the story essentially camping. They both strike me as practicalorganized people (maybe not in the emotions department, but in work andhobbies), so I think they’d be able to tackle camping just fine. Though Atemwould enjoy the adventure more than Seto would.

In reality, I thinkthe two would take walks along the river’s edge, watching the beads of lightbob and shimmer on the water and seeing the birds skim the air. They maybriefly hold hands a few times.

Atem might try toconvince Seto to go horseback riding. As a joke, he’d tell Seto the horse’sname is Gingersnap and insist, “You have to say her name if you want to gainher trust.” And Seto would ask, “Why is a horse in Ancient Egypt namedGingersnap?”

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What they would give each other as both a serious giftand a troll gift.

Seto is so cluelessabout gifts, so he’d ask up front what Atem wants for his birthday orChristmas. Atem is a bit more brave with gift-giving, making guesses and givingthings purely for surprise. If in the modern world, he might give Setohardcover books or a framed photograph of the wild ocean or maybe a handsomewatch. And Atem might teasingly buy goofy Duel Monsters memorabilia for theirhome, like a Blue Eyes White Dragon bottle-opener or a stuffed Kuriboh. MaybeAtem leaves the stuffed Kuriboh in Seto’s home office for him to discover, andwhile initially Seto is indifferent, overtime the toy becomes somethingprecious to him and he keeps it nestled beside his pen set.

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Who moves in with them as an unfortunate third wheelroommate.

In the Netherworld,Seto himself is kind of a third wheel to the palace, isn’t he? I feel like he’dact stiff with Set, Mahaad, Mana, all of them. It’d take a while to warm tothem at all.

If Atem and Setoare together in the modern world, Atem’s friends may spend the occasional nightin their home. Yugi and Anzu would be very polite guests, while Jonouchi andHonda would visit Atem but they’d tend not to stay the night.

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How they feel about handholding and sudden kisses in theear-cheek vicinity.

I characterize bothAtem and Seto as private in tenderness and also not touchy-feely to begin with.PDA does not happen with them, and even in private they don’t cling to each other.But they’ll lean into each other when they read and they’ll cuddle in bedtogether, and it’s sweet and warm, and it’s enough to know what they mean toeach other.

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Who’s always snapping photos and who’s pack-rattingclutter.

I don’t thinkeither is taking many photographs. Nor is Seto into collecting small materialgoods. I’ve already mentioned Atem buys silly Duel Monsters merchandise half asa joke, half because he honestly finds it charming. I feel like he might taketo collecting certain knickknacks too, items he finds fascinating or cool.

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Who hogs the bathroom in the morning and who causestoothpaste related drama.

Seto and Atem areboth pampered rich kids, and neither of them cleans toilets. In theNetherworld… how do bathrooms work? Do they have magically running water? Orwill Seto be making a fuss about how barbaric and unhygienic it is, at leastfor the first few visits until he gets over it up?

Atem might be the typeto leave the bathroom door cracked when he uses it and this mildly annoys Seto,and Seto will shut the door if he passes it.

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What their matching costumes were for that one party.

Seto is an assholewho refuses to dress in a costume. This one is kind of stumping me actually,because I don’t think Atem would really care much about dressing up as a pair.They can be the boring killjoys of the party together: that’s their matchingoutfit.

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If I think they’d get married and why or why not.

The answer to thisquestion is very dependent on which version of Prideshipping we go with.

If Atem exists inthe modern world, I don’t think marriage is on either character’s mind. I don’tthink either one is particularly romantically-minded nor do they feel the needto announce their bond in paperwork. What the case might be is one day theyrealize they’re fifty-years-old and have been together for over thirty years,so why not? But the ceremony would be small and short and more just to have iton the record. If anything, it’d be their friends and family who are moreexcited by the news and the ceremony. Maybe Atem would go along with theexcitement and have some elegant decorations strung around the room and foodplatters set out for their sake.

On the other hand,I think the two would marry with more passion, more personal investment, ifSeto was making visits to Atem in the Netherworld. The two have times of beingseparated physically: they want something to signify they’re always together inheart—they want a symbol of it. There’s something possessive here too, likeleaving a mark on each other. The ceremony would be small and quiet, as Setoand Atem are both private people in their tenderness, but it’d be warm andmeaningful.

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Who has over a thousand unread emails in their inbox orfive hundred icons on their computer desktop and how the other reacts to thisgross mismanagement.

Seto is a CEO of amammoth corporation, so I think it’s fair to wager he has a lot of crap on hiscomputer. Atem doesn’t care; Atem only even recognizes like three of thoseicons.

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What their hidden artistic talents are and howappreciative the other is of these talents.

Again, I think Setosketches blueprints for things he doesn’t intend to build, maybe fantasticalthings that can’t be built, as a way of clearing his heart on harder days.Maybe Atem watches him sketch, and he’s watching in silence for a while, and thenhe comments softly, “You’re very good at drawing.”

Maybe one day Atemasks if Seto would try drawing this thing or that. Maybe Seto does draw it forhim.

I imagine Atem as amore athletic type, someone who likes swimming and horseback riding andfishing. I feel like he might try painting or drawing but not have much talentfor it. “You’re much better,” he’d tell Seto.

But Atem is good atswiftly solving problems and thinking on his feet, conjuring creative solutions.It’s a talent Seto has always admired in him.

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What they consider each other’s most attractive qualityand/or their favourite thing about the other.

Atem is like a point of brilliant clarity for Seto, and yet he’salso a symbol of so many spiraling things: the past, hatred, failure, connection,death, passion, and most intensely–most brightly–he represents hope. Atemawoke Seto from his numbness, inspired Seto and gave him the tools he needed tosave himself from despair. Even now, Atem harbors a kind of radiantconfidence and calmness that braces Seto and grants him brightness.

For Atem, Seto validated his existence as his own being, notYugi but a whole other person, a deeply valued rival. What Atem admires in Setonow is his passion, how he refuses to give up the battle until he finds ananswer, how strongly his spirit fights. Seto chased Atem from the start and henever gave up.