#my thing is like. i have like asian friends (as in friends in asia who are asian) and I have south american family and i just don't know any

[astrxealis]

merry christmas btw i kinda forgot to say it ere at all oopsies >_< i hope you all had/have a wonderful holiday season or week or day or month regardless of your religion and if you celebrate christmas !!!!!

i got 'the end of everything' by katie mack for xmas (i begged my parents lol) bcs i finally saw it in a bookstore after months of looking for it that i just Fell to the ground ..... i love astrophysics i love space i love science. i also love u all

[the-shiftshop]

Some Thoughts

As some of you all may know, I have recently just immigrated to the states from Asia. As a gay immigrant, the result of the elections was by far the worst thing that I could ever witness.

If you are one of these people who voted against my right as an gay asian immigrant, I hope you may realize that whatever you voted for will backfire on you one way or another. Feel free to get off my page if you think my views do not match with yours.

To my fellows, keep supporting each other. Let's not leave people behind. Voice out your concerns to friends and if possible, buddy up with them and keep safe. Especially those who also have just recently came to America like me, join your communities, find a safe space, be there and they'll be there for you too.

This page will persist and will continue writing stories. I'll write more that would comfort and give a back hug with transformation twists.

Uncle Lee

[nqueso-emergency]

soooo asian girl in asia here (i mostly see westerners enjoying this show so wanted to throw it out there that we exist too) and i've been watching 911 on and off. just rewatched all seasons when disney+ came to my country. saw buck and tommy in s7 and thought they were totally cute together. the chemistry was cooking. and finally some good bi representation that's not just something mentioned offscreen? hell yeah! i went to tumblr for gif sets and head canons and discourse and found your blog. now, as someone who has been involved in shipping for most of my life, i do see the cuteness of buck and eddie together but was never drawn to them in a way that i usually would be for other ships because i felt their chemistry was firmly in the 'friendship' category. that never stopped people from shipping before, of course, but i wasn't one of them...which is a surprise to me actually, because i'm usually there on day one saying the two boys in whatever show im watching should kiss. what i was not surprised by was that there are fans who genuinely believe buddie would become canon and that a portion of those fans are being difficult. like, i was there for johnlock and klance and hannigram (which is canon lol) and others for fan content, so i know how these people roll.

anyway.

shortly after i finished watched, my cousin started, and she is more of a 911 fan than i am. impatiently waited for s7 and everything but she's not on twitter so doesn't really know about bi buck. here's the thing: i wouldn't call her accepting because our country is quite old-fashioned and religious. like really religious. so when she saw that famous scene, she was shocked and a little weirded out. so of course, me being a troll, i restarted the episode and watched it with her again. eventually she said, 'oh, ok that makes sense why buck was so jealous! he wanted TOMMY'S attention, not eddie! it didn't make sense that buck was jealous of eddie having a new friend.' and then, since i've been reading your blog a lot, i decided to gauge her reaction to buddie and she was like, 'what? no! they're obviously only best friends. i don't feel their chemistry. but i admit buck and tommy are cute together.'

so that's just a little perspective on buddie and bucktommy from the GA on the other side of the world!

Thank you so much for sharing!!!

[d-criss-news]

Actor Darren Criss Discusses Bringing ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ To Broadway

[UHQ] Darren Criss attends the "Maybe Happy Ending" Broadway photo call at Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square on September 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

“An original, new musical on Broadway - can you believe that?”

That is the excitement that Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Darren Criss brought to our new conversation this week about his Maybe Happy Endingproduction coming to Broadway, with previews starting October 16 and its opening night set for November 12.

Previously known for his memorable performances on hit television series like Glee and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, as well as his previous involvement in celebrated live theatre productions including American Buffalo, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Little Shop of Horrors, Criss, 37, is now preparing to play Oliver on-stage, a robot referred to as a Helperbot 3 that has been long retired and is considered obsolete, now spending his days in isolation in his one-room apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea. That all changes when Oliver forms an unlikely connection with a fellow Helperbot neighbor named Claire (played by Helen J Shen).

I sat down with Criss in New York City, New York, just down the street from his Maybe Happy Ending’s upcoming Belasco Theatre venue, wondering first how this production and his interest in this rather unique character of Oliver initially got on his radar.

Criss said, “Two men that I’m very grateful for in my life, Mr. Jeffrey Richards, whose the lead producer of the show, who I have had a long standing relationship, as far as doing theatre on Broadway is concerned. We came in contact more than a decade ago when we were doing a reading of American Buffalo, which I would do basically a decade later with him. He’s always sent me cool things and cool projects. Separately, Michael Arden has been a friend for a very long day. He has been in sort of more my friends circle than my professional circle - I went to college with his husband. I’ve seen almost every single thing he’s ever directed - I think I missed one thing. These are two guys that I have always admired and appreciated, as far as their output was in the theatre community. The Venn diagrams became one circle when Jeffrey sent me an email about this several years ago. Michael was a part of it and wherever Michael is, I run!”

Being a musical set in Asia and Criss being half-Filipino himself, with several other Asian artists working alongside him on this project, I was curious if Criss takes extra pride in being able to tell a story like Maybe Happy Ending live on on-stage and soon get to share it with our world.

“Of course, I do,” Criss said. “There’s obviously a huge amount of personal ‘woo-hoo’ to the idea that this is predominantly an Asian, Asian-American company - on-stage and off-stage - but I’m always weary to categorize this as an Asian show or an Asian story. This production happens to celebrate and represent Asian-ness to a really fun degree, but there’s so much universal-ness to it and accessibility to the story that I hope in perpetuity, this is something that can be done anywhere, with anyone, at any time. I don’t think I’m trying to say that to be inclusive of all things and people. It’s me being pragmatic - this is a story about a future world - about sentient robots that really doesn’t have any particular cultural background, other than the cultural background of technology, which is based in the human experience.”

Criss added with his Maybe Happy Ending collaborators in mind: “I think all of us enjoy sharing our sort of Asian heritage with each other, and obviously, that’s a large spectrum - that’s not one thing. So, there’s already an eclecticism between all of our Asian experiences that’s fun to bring to the table. Yes, it does take place in Seoul, it is from South Korea, but this show has already had great success in Korea, Japan and China - which while all Asian, make no mistake - are very different cultures. So, if that’s any indication of the ability for this show to resonate with all people, then I think we’re in good shape.”

He is not the only person on this production embracing this collective experience. Shen says of interactions so far with co-star Criss, “I think he’s been really generous with his energy and his time. As a person who, I can sometimes feel a little young in this space, I feel like I’m new to this. I’m making my Broadway debut - there’s a lot of imposter syndrome and words of doubt that can be flooding my brain. He is always the first person to say, ‘You belong here. You deserve to be here. You’ve worked very hard - and just breathe and take up space.’ That has been so invaluable to have somebody understand what this feeling can be, of how scary and overwhelming it can be, and be like, ‘This is an exciting moment! We’re present here - let’s soak it in!’ He’s been such a champion of that.”

Arden, who is the director of Maybe Happy Ending, said of Criss, “Darren is so incredible. He can do everything - it’s really somewhat annoying. He understands things from the inside out and the outside in - and so, to meet him and the rest of this company, honestly, in the process, it just means that we get to kind of like create this thing together. It’s not like my vision upon them - it’s something that we can all create together.”

Hue Park and Will Aronson, who have led the way with the music and lyrics in Maybe Happy Ending, have nothing but respect and admiration to say about Criss.

Park said, “I think he’s just perfect for the role - his sense of humor, his acting skills, his sensibility creating this character based on our text and music. It’s just so exciting to see.”

Aronson added of Criss: “He has a boyish innocence, which really is perfect for this show - and his creativity. The great thing about live theatre is that it’s already true in the rehearsal room - it’ll be true in the theatre, once it’s running - that the actors are creating it every time they perform it, meaning that the jokes are different every time, even if the text is the same. The chemistry is different, depending on what the actors are creating in their scene together. The cast is just incredible, so of course, they’re finding that and they’re creating that.”

Dez Duron, who plays Gil in Maybe Happy Ending, said of Criss’s character and his performance so far, “Oliver is a really big role - he’s on-stage pretty much the whole time. I’ve been loving watching him tackle this role, and explore it and discover it. I’ve been a part of this project for five years, so watching [Criss] kind of like get into the script and the changes he’s bringing to it and the new life he’s breathing into it has been really inspiring to watch.”

Marcus Choi, who plays James in the new musical, said of his co-star, “So, Darren Criss has always been on my radar - we’re all very familiar with his body of work. He’s been incredible for so long, but when I got a chance to go to Elsie Fest last weekend, I really got to see him shine. He is just such a force on-stage and just oozes charisma. I mean, I’ve always been a fan but I just have a deep appreciation for him now and just how hard he works.”

Even though this can be perceived as a sci-fi production, being that it centers around robots that are no longer seen of use in the world, I asked Criss if he sees the parallels towards humanity within our real world with this story about love and still finding connection.

Darren said, “Yes! The Helperbots in our show are somewhere between servants, pets and children - and old folks. If we did a show about old folks in a home, it might hit a little too close to home - it might be a little too on the nose. I think some of the most human themes that I’ve been taken with are stories about cartoon animals or toys - things that represent the human experience in a way that I actually am more likely to internalize and pick up on. So, I think that’s what one of the great devices of the show is - to sort of displace the human experience through that of a sentient robot. Yes, we all - surprise, surprise - we all have a shelf life. We are all at some point going to be, in the eyes of society, obsolete in some respect. We all have a battery life. This is less talking about the idea of mortality and concept of transience, and the idea that we can only spend our battery life on so much, thinking about What are you going to spend your battery life on? So yes, that is going to hit audiences, hopefully, in a profound way.”

As I concluded my conversation with Criss about his Maybe Happy Ending Broadway production, I wondered what Criss would want to say to Oliver, after embodying him so far in rehearsals, continuing to better understand the character and preparing to share his compassionate story with our world throughout the fall season and beyond.

Criss said, “The same thing that I think hopefully the show will posit, which is - It’ll be okay. It’ll always be okay.”

[icantspellthings]

I don't know if the TOS did it on accident or it was deliberately planned, but so many aspects of vulcan culture so closely mimic traditional/conservative Asian culture (I'm not speaking for all of Asia but just my family)

Physical contact was discouraged, out in public we don't shake hands, no hugging, no hand holding, no kissing, not even a peck on the cheeks. I've been friends with some people for over 10 years, and I don't think I've ever even huggged them like at all. The first time a white man tried to shake my hand, I was kinda scandalised lmfao, like we've just met and you want to TOUCH my hand??? And when he did shook my hand, it felt weirdly warm, sweaty, and kinda nasty. Not a pleasant experience at all and I would rather not do it ever but alas I live in a society.

Another thing is I was also taught not to be overly emotional in public. You can laugh, cry, get angry, etc, but you have to do it quietly and unobtrusivly , or people will look at you. And by god, do I get excessively annoyed by tourists who are super excited and loud in public even though I know it's not wrong. So to me, Spock seems like he has a SHIT ton of facial expressions and vocal inflection, and everyone else just seems like they're over acting.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

hi! please share your headcanons about jay. thanks!

ooooooooh sure thing let's get it!!

(also please keep in mind that soke was literally my first time dipping back into dc after a LONG while, so i have a bit of catch-up to do in terms of characters and stories, and thus some of my knowledge might be outdated!!! also i love jay but i do consider myself still very new to understanding him and thus most of these will be silly fun :333)

damian makes fun of him for that all-black ninja-esque stealth suit he wore to sneak into star labs because there was literally NO POINT in jay trying to disguise himself like that when he didn't bother covering up his BRIGHT FUCKING PINK hair

yes i'm still mad about yes i would like to know his thought process

is it natural btw??? i've seen different takes around where people think it's dyed bc of his other version in aos:jk, but i feel like that's pretty unlikely considering it was shaved all the way down when he got taken prisoner and experimented on and it grew back exactly like that

for the record i'm not a hater i'm just saying 1) it made him a walking beacon and 2) it being natural is so fucking funny to me since he clearly didn't inherit it from his mom, which begs the question:

who the fuck is jay's dad

while jay does care for all of the revolutionaries as their ally and everyone at the truth as their boss, and as an overall friend, i think that wink and the aerie are especially close to him and they consider each other family. they were pretty much the closest thing to adult supervision jay had for a while, and he relied on them a lot when he was settling down in metropolis and figuring out how to live alone

this meant that he called them for stupid things like "if something explodes in your microwave do you call the fire department", and not-stupid things like "help me open a bank account because metropolis bank has laws that won't let me do it by myself as a minor"

they were also the first people he came out to

jay loves them even if they CAN be really annoying

jay: "are you—are you guys ACTUALLY planning on shovel-talking superman" wink: "technically, he's superman's son" the aerie: "and if he's late to the coffee shop, i'm taking points off"

i think jay would get along with tim actually

the dude is an underground hacktivist refugee, investigative journalist, and a former president's son. he's probably used to always looking over his shoulder, ready to be jumped at a moment's notice. he's got a plan for everything but the plans only exist inside his head because he can't risk hard copies being found or digital ones being hacked. he's memorized them all. they're either alphabetized or mentally color-coded. we're talking levels of elaborate just-in-case getaways and meticulously planned investigations that would get a normal reporter killed if they asked the wrong question. it's dedication to a terrifying degree

yeah tim would definitely rock with him

jay has this neat little trick where if he's in a situation in which someone's poisoned his food and he has to eat it/can't let them know he knows, he just partially phases his organs so that the food falls through his body a little bit at a time and never enters his digestive system

jon is HORRIFIED when he finds out. damian is really fucking impressed

does gamorra have its own language???? i feel like jay would be fluent in it if so. of course he would be. he'd do anything to keep part of home as close to his chest as possible

oh that's another thing i'll probs mess up on btw i am legit so confused on gamorra considering it's apparently in asia and i would assume has its own distinct culture? but jay's surname is japanese and that random kid on the boat has a japanese name so are they like. japanese-adjacent??? or is gamorra made up of multiple asian identities blended into one (read tags for clarification)

i should probably read absolute power shouldn't i

okay sorry that got WAY off topic but yeah jay is definitely someone who loved his home despite not being able to go back and did everything he could to maintain his ties

ALSO can we talk about jay being a student at metropolis college at seventeen???? did he skip a year of school when he got to the u.s.??? did he lie on forms or something??

like i don't think he's taking extra credit classes as a high school student because he was also advertising the media department when we saw him, and i don't think he'd be doing that if he was in high school

jon makes sense because he had a fake identity which COULD put him in college. but jay???

honestly lying on paper is such a jay nakamura thing to do if he doesn't want people tracking him down by cross-referencing his birthday with government records

jay nakamura's number-one tip of running an anonymous underground activist stream: hide all identifiable information from the government

(this does not work when you are widely recognized as superman's boyfriend)

also now that dick is backing the truth can we PLEASE get tim in on it. i think it'd be so fucking funny. i think he and jay would have a grand old time breaking into firewalls and digging through internet archives and exposing corrupt people

tim is like "FINALLY i have something fun to do at all those fucking galas bruce makes me go to" because jay needs some rich guy's vacation itinerary so he knows the prime time to break into his house and gather evidence for something

i just have so much appreciation for jay nakamura you guys i love him so much

[brokenlovesong]

Okay we were talking about the Asian representation in the show awhile back and please correct me if I’m wrong but I think Sarahgrace is the other half of it besides Ryo so do you have any head cannons about Marcia revolved around that. (Or if I’m wrong about the other actors character)

I know Daryl is half Philippino. But I don’t believe SG is hapa.

Either way, I think making Marcia a person of color, specifically of East Asian descent during the 60s, would work quite well with her character.

IT'S MARCIA CHARACTER ANALYSIS TIME

Firstly, let's go over Marcia in context of the musical as that's what I'm gonna base most of this off of. Bear with me, this is gonna be a bit on the long side and more of a character analysis than head canons so I'm sorry about that but my brain went on a tangent. Also sorry this took me like two days to write LMAO. But I digress. Back to Marcia.

She's a relatively minor character, only having a few scenes in the whole show. But we do learn some key things about her character from those small scenes:

She cherry's best friend and this is shown in great detail during the drive in. she's always hanging around Cherry and is quite defensive of her, too. When Dally is harassing Cherry, she's not afraid to tell him to back off. Same with Bob when he tries to stop her from breaking up with him. Not only that, she opts to leave with Cherry instead of her own boyfriend (who clearly wants her to)

She's does not like violence, similar to Cherry. While Bev seems to enjoy watching the fighting at the drive in and actually joins in when the Socs jump Two-Bit, Marcia is very emotional about watching it. Even when Dally, someone she clearly doesn't like, is getting beat by the cop, she can't watch and reacts in horror.

Despite her loyalty to Cherry and distaste for the violence the Soc boys get into, she's afraid to leave them. The Socs push Cherry out of the group after she stands up for Pony. Cherry tries to get Marcia to leave with her, but Marcia won't. This clearly isn't a decision she's comfortable with as she's incredibly emotional when she turns her back to her best friend.

The key takeaways I have from this is that while Marcia is overall a very strong and empathetic person, she isn't fully confident in herself. She can't leave the Socs like Cherry could because they're her identity.

Now say that Marcia is someone specifically of East Asian descent. This plays perfectly into her character I feel.

The term "model minority" is one that actually dates back to the 1960s. That was when it first really started being used. It's the idea that a minority group, defined by factors such as ethnicity, race, or religion, was able to achieve a higher socioeconomic status in comparison to the overall population average. This term, from when it was first coined to this day, is most often used when referring to East Asians in America. The idea that because they worked harder they were able to succeed despite being minorities. (Quick PSA that is important to bring up whenever discussing the model minority myth is that it is just that- a myth used by the majority to pit minority groups against each other.)

The idea of fitting into the model minority expectations was something very important and commonly practiced in Asian immigrant households because they came to America to give their families that "American" life, the sort of picture perfect white-picket fence type. That's why assimilating was so important during this time. Fitting in with their white peers who are of a higher socioeconomic status.

The musical takes place in 1967, just two years after the Hart–Celler Act of 1965 was passed, which led to the increase of immigrants from highly educated backgrounds mainly coming from East Asia, in turn further pushing the idea that Asian Americans were a "model minority". (You see now why the information was important.)

Marcia lives on the West Side. She's in a wealthy family with wealthy, smart, white friends. Fitting in with her white peers has probably something she's concerned herself with ever since she was little, something even her parents may have pushed on her.

This is why the idea of walking away from the group she found her footing in wasn't something she was comfortable doing the same way Cherry was. Because walking away from them meant she would walk away from the way she wanted the town to perceive her.

However, despite this, I do wanna also mention ways being Asian may have helped her sense of self as well! Her culture is something that's unique to her. She has traditions full of rich history that none of her friends have. I think when she practices her culture (cooking important dishes, celebrating the holidays, I think she’d take traditional dance classes too, etc) it's the rare times she gets to be just Marcia. Not another Soc girl, not Cherry's best friend, Marcia. A girl with a beautiful family history full of traditions that predates her. It's in that where she's not worrying about being perceived as white or fitting into the neighborhood she lives in.

Okay this was SUPER long and low-key did not answer your question at all. Sorry bout that LMAO. But, like, if you actually read this all the way to the end, a.) thanks, and b.) hope you enjoyed!

[1-lightofjustice]

Using "Sibling Title" in Romantic Relationship Is NOT Incest

You know, interacting with majorly English community about Asian media made me realize that English doesn't have any "sibling title", something that was so common in Asia (and perhaps other continent too cmiiw), thus I noticed some of them have a little difficulty on perceiving what "sibling title" actually meant. Combined with shipping war and incest allegory, many misunderstanding are created. Somehow yesterday I happen to stumble upon two of them in almost the same moment so I wanna make this post to vent my frustration.

First is this :

The segment that they meant is when Kota called Izuku "nii-chan" and Ochako "nee-chan" after Ochako's speech.

Yes, Kota called Izuku "Big Brother" and Ochako with "Big Sister". But really, even the translator clearly explained in their translation that "nii-chan" and "nee-chan" are not only title for older siblings but also title/name for a young teen or 20-ish boy/girl (overall people still in youth). Other people on twitter (X who?) pointed out that Kota means those title in relation to him and not to Izuku-Ochako, which is true, Kota may think of Izuku and Ochako as his big brother and sister at that situation. But even if he's not, he will still use "nii-chan" and "nee-chan" titles toward Izuku and Ochako because that's the title that was correct from person on Kota's age to people on Izuku/Ochako's age. Of course, that doesn't mean Izuku and Ochako are bounded by sibling/familial relationship in any form.

For example, this is a "7 years old" kid Conan ("a young boy" in disguise, for complicated reason) called 18 years old Heiji and Kazuha with "nii-chan" and "nee-chan" while at the same time helping them to hook up. He didn't really think of them as his brother/sister like in personal level, but he still used "sibling title" because that was the appropriate ethic for him.

Next is the example in broader sense, but the point is still because they are "brothers", there's no way Gilgamesh and Enkidu have romantic relationship.

let's pretend it's not completely bizarre to input arabic perception on a story with a language that way predates arabic, with different time, culture, and setting. Let's use arabic now. Brother in Arabic is "akhi", derived from Akkadian "ahu", the language that was used on 12 tablet Epic of Gilgamesh standard version ("Ses" is Hittite/Sumerian version).

This is the excerpt from Epic tablet by Andrew George, when the word "ahu" is used to described Gilgamesh and Enkidu :

The thing is, "ahu" may meant brotherhood, but they don't necessarily mean bounded by familial forbid-to-marry relationship. The word "ahu" can mean brother of same social standing, close male associate, or the proof of companionship, for example King Tushratta used "brother" (ahu in akkadian, shesh in sumerian) to Pharaoh Egypt which they have brother-kingdom relationship. Of course they are not "family" with each other and their family can marry each other.

Even if, as the commenter said, translated into arabic, "akhi" is not meant for strictly brotherly relationship. The word itself means "brother, close male friend, male associate". In fact, there's webtoon in my country (Muslim majority) that has female lead called her love interest "akhi". And this is her pray so God can make her meet her "akhi".

Translation : "There has been 6 years passed but I still haven't meet "akhi". Please God lead him to be close to me"

Of course when the female lead called her crush "akhi" she doesn't mean that there's familial feeling from her to him that prevent her for wanting to marry "akhi". And readers from my country completely expect her to still call her husband "akhi" even after marriage.

Those "sibling title" are not and never strictly platonic. Those are title for almost-familial-but-not-really attachment, usually to emphasis social construct. It just, I don't know the exact term but I call it "polite endearment title". When it comes to romantic relationship/marriage, even with "sibling title" there will be no incest feeling involved as long as the couple are not bounded by blood of close family, share the same mother's milk/wetnurse, nor raised together from before puberty (the latter may depend on situation).

P.S : I wonder, do English users find it weird if we Asian use the exact same title for sibling and for romantic partner? Like, you guys know that Korean fangirls called their idols that they want to date/marry as "oppas" in the same word as they call their "oppa" in home, right? I am Javanese, I call my blood-brother "mas", and I expect to use that word for my husband too, like my sister who called her husband "mas" even though she's older than him.

[coimbrabertone]

A Self-Indulgent Blogpost About My Motorsports Fiction

So, this weekend, MotoGP had a good sprint while the main race was a snoozer, and NASCAR ended with a twenty-eight-car pileup followed by a plate merchant winning the race.

Which makes me not really want to talk about either of them.

I could talk a bit more on Andretti - Michael revealed today that stepping back was a personal decision after forty years of being involved in Indycar, half as a driver, half as a team owner - but I don't really have a ton more to say on that either.

So, what do I want to talk about?

Well, I kinda want to talk about my writing.

I've kinda wanted to do that for a bit now, but I always thought that one: it was a bit self-indulgent to promote my fanfic on here too much, and two: I wasn't sure if people would particularly care. Well, I talked to some friends about it, and they encouraged it, so I figured...why not?

Thus, today I'll be talking about my motorsports fiction, my racing fanfics that I primarily post on AO3. I've completed one story Life at the Speed of Formula One, I wrote a 1950s Grand Prix one-shot called A Beautiful Race, and I'm currently writing two stories: An 1980s CART Indycar story called The Fastest of the Prancing Horses, and a 2000s NASCAR story called Racing in the Golden Age.

For this blogpost, I will mainly be talking about LatSoF1 because it is finished and because as my first real motorsports story, it more or less set the mold for the rest.

The link:

So...where to begin but the tags?

I have this story labeled under two fandoms, Original Work and Formula 1 RPF, why is that?

Well, it boils down to the fact that I don't quite think it fits firmly into either category. It is an original work about Formula One, but it's not really RPF either.

RPF, for those unaware of fanfic terms, means Real People Fiction.

In my stories, however, I've decided to fictionalize living people, particularly those central to the plot. There's a few reasons for this, one is that I felt odd having my OC (original character) interacting with real drivers - and admittedly a part of that is that I didn't really want this to read like a self-insert fic, where my Mary Sue gets to race with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel and all that - especially when I'm going to tackle things like tabloid rumors and opinions on homosexuality and driver feuds in these things.

The long and short of it is that I feel more comfortable having fictionalized driver Felipe Alvarez as an antagonistic figure rather than Fernando Alonso himself.

Does that matter to people reading it who are just going to connect the dots and see Alvarez as Alonso anyway? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Let's get back to establishing the context.

The story begins in 2007, with Kazakhstan-born ethnic-Russian driver Tamara Shchegolyayeva signed to Williams banked by Kazakhstani oil and gas companies.

Let's unpack that a bit.

Why 2007?

The initial idea of the story, before it branched off into something larger, was to cover the tight and dramatic 2007 championship battle from the perspective of someone in Formula One but outside of the proper title battle. Almost like a third-person view on the title challenge from a first-person perspective.

Tamara Shchego-what's it?

Okay, so admittedly Kazakhstani driver with a really long name probably isn't the most believable package for a late-2000s Formula One driver, but I think that's part of what made this idea interesting to me.

I'm a geography and history nerd, so I'm drawn to off-the-wall places where so many different cultures and histories intertwine. Kazakhstan has the Silk Road, the Mongol Empire, Russian Imperialism, and Soviet Communism all in its history. Its people are like a microcosm of all of Asia with East Asian, Turco-Persian, and Indo-European phenotypes all present, with people ranging from literal nomads to Kazakh Muslims to ethnic Russians.

Thus, I decided that it would be interesting to write a protagonist from there.

However, Formula One is also...Formula One. So how does a person from there get to the cynical, cutthroat world of big money global motorsport?

Well, I made her the daughter of a petty oligarch and sponsored by oil money.

This also allowed me to explore a number of things. The legacy of Russian Imperialism, the question of where she belongs - I placed her ancestry right on the tripoint border of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, had her born in Kazakhstan, and had her grow up and live in Monaco - the morality of oil money, the morality of sponsorships in general, and, eventually, of being a gay woman in a male-dominated, conservative, globe-spanning sport.

I won't pretend I covered these areas perfectly - and at least in some cases, I wrote Tamara as having complicated, potentially problematic feelings on things - but I think it was at least interesting.

Fictionalized Drivers.

My general rule with people in the story is that the more involved in the plot they were, the more I'd differentiate them from the drivers they were based off of.

Thus, German Nico Rosberg became Finn Tommy Koskinen. The background was generally the same - Finnish father, German mother, raised in Monaco - but by distinguishing him from the driver he was based off of in these ways, I felt more comfortable having him interact with Tamara, to show his opinions, to have a teammate dynamic with her.

This extended to Anthony Harrison, probably the most fictionalized of the drivers. Based loosely off of Lewis Hamilton, Anthony is the son of a black American army mechanic and a white Englishwoman, growing up in that background to become a top Formula One prospect with McLaren.

He enters the plot as a fellow rookie to Tamara, and eventually, the two of them bonding leads to tabloid rumors that they're a couple. A bit of drama that Tamara wants no part in, but foreshadows a later storyline that turns her career upside.

Kazakhstan and Russia.

I mentioned before that Tamara struggles a bit with representing Kazakhstan as an ethnic Russian, but as part of her caught between two worlds storylines, I also had her struggle with her Russian identity as well. She's got it in her blood, but she wasn't born there, didn't grow up there, and has no love for the regime there.

This got more complicated because, in real life, Russia escalated the war in Ukraine a month after I started this story.

One of the cited reasons was Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine.

That made writing about a Russian from another post-Soviet country awkward, and I wanted to find a way to address it within the context of this story.

Thus, during the 2008 season in LatSoF1, I talked a lot about the Russian invasion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia, where Putin and Medvedev tried more or less the same tricks. Using Russian minorities in those countries to justify naked landgrabs.

This allowed me to solidify Tamara's position as someone who was born in Kazakhstan and is of Russian descent, and loves the people of both countries, but does not love either regime.

And come 2009 and 2010, the final two seasons featured in the story, and she gets away from depending on either country for sponsorship.

So, that's a whole lot of background out of the way, now...let's talk about how I wrote the story itself.

Writing Races.

LatSoF1 was my first real racing focused work and therefore in the early days, there were some adjustments to how I wrote things.

I decided on two races a chapter being the norm, thinking it would be an efficient way to get through the season without getting bogged down too much in yapping about a fictionalized version of a real race.

And to a degree, it did its job.

However, I did also end up more or less skipping the Malaysian Grand Prix that first year as I jumped to the race results. I don't think I'd do that now. I'd write about how the race was going overall and what Tamara was doing and then end on the results.

How did I get the results? Well, to keep things grounded in reality, I based Tamara's 2007 results on what Alexander Wurz achieved in that 2007 Williams irl. I can get the results real quick on Wikipedia, maybe go to Racing Reference for an obscure race or if I need more detail, and another thing that helped a lot for LatSoF1 specifically is the old F1 season review videos. I watched the reviews for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 in the making of LatSoF1.

For CART stuff more recently, it's been a bit harder to find some specific information for like qualifying sessions from 1989. Some of that stuff is preserved on VHS rips on youtube and I've used those before, but what I've found to be helpful is actually some skills I picked up as a history major in college: old newspapers.

The LA Times and Chicago Tribute have tended to be my personal favorites because they have a significant digitized backlog, and don't require signing up to read through it like the New York times.

Hell, earlier this very day I was looking for some information on the Galles-Kraco merger ahead of the 1989 season - I wanted to know if Kraco stayed in the Compton garage or if they moved in with the Galles team in Albuquerque - and finally found the information in a brief mention at the bottom of an LA Times article.

This one, to be exact:

Thank you very much LA Times for making random stories from June 1989 accessible.

So yeah, sometimes it's easy and I can just get what I need off of Wikipedia and work from there, other times I need to go digging deeper, but the point remains: I find the real results and use them a s a baseline.

All that being said, it would be a bit boring to just slap my OC's name on a real driver's results and call it a day, so once I find what I need, I tend to change things around a bit.

First thing that comes to mind from LatSoF1 is the 2007 European Grand Prix, where Mark Webber finished third, just barely holding off Wurz.

In LatSoF1, Tamara got him in the last corner and took a podium finish.

That being said, I made sure not to get too carried away either.

At the end of 2007, Tamara finished on 18 points with two third places (Canada and Nürburgring) being the highlights of her season. In comparison, Nico Rosberg - and indeed Tommy Koskinen - finished 2007 on 20 points, whilst Wurz irl finished on 13.

Five points gained on real life is hardly Mary Sue behavior imo, so i don't consider that too obscene.

Who did I take those points off of? Well, I tried to keep that pretty even-handed as well, switching Mark Webber's third for Martin Weaver's fourth place in Europe.

Tamara also took Ralf Schumacher's eighth place in Australia from Roland Ziegler. Another eighth in Turkey off of Robert Kubica/Piotr Kaminski, a third eighth place in Italy off of Jenson Button/James Buxton, and a fourth eighth place in Brazil off of Jarno Trulli/Ivan Tripoli.

Pretty even-handed overall. No one driver was bullied for his results, and I didn't cause any massive swings in the championships.

Speaking of all those drivers I just named...

Fictionalized Names.

How did I come up with driver names? It varies.

Some names, particularly for people who didn't feature too much in the story, were just playing around with their real name. I'd put Martin Weaver for Mark Webber and James Buxton in that category.

Other names are little inside jokes I have with myself. I can't think of any from LatSoF1 off the top of my head, but in my CART story, real life driver Rich Vogler is renamed after Saints Row 2 antagonist Dane Vogel.

Why? Because I love Saints Row 2 and that popped into my head when I saw Vogler. Vogler-Vogel, it makes sense.

A good amount of names are ripped from players I had in Football Manager saves. Piotr Kaminski (Robert Kubica) I had at Cracovia in a save on FM21, and later on that same manager moved to Napoli, where I had a Japanese winger named Yoshikazu Higashiyama. I loved that player so much I used his name for Kamui Kobayashi once I included him in the story.

And other names are in reference to other drivers. In the late 2000s, Red Bull had a fetish for drivers named Seb: Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastien Buemi, Sebastien Loeb, Sebastien Ogier, and of course Sebastian Vettel.

In LatSoF1, that's replaced with a fetish for drivers named Max, in reference to their current boytoy Verstappen: thus, it's Maximilien Lecroix for Bourdais, Maximilien Longpre for Buemi, and Maximilian Renner for Seb Vettel.

Oh, and I made Longpre a Luxembourger in place of Buemi who is Swiss. Why? Because I like throwing in a comparatively underrepresented country every once in awhile.

Fringe Benefits.

On a lighter note, this is something I enjoyed about LatSoF1 a lot: it was a Formula One story, but being set in the near past, there was so much little stuff I could touch on. Tamara would have thoughts on geopolitics, video games, TV shows, other racing series, other sports, she'd get to tour a nuclear reactor at one point, she's get to rock some cool outfits, and she'd build up a bit of a car collection.

It was cool!

Most of the stuff I wrote before LatSoF1 was like historical fiction or Star Wars stuff, so it was nice to just be able to write about a person who, outside of an extraordinary job, is more or less just a regular person.

When I was getting into MotoGP for the first time, I could write a scene about her discussing MotoGP with some Italian engineers.

When I was watching Chernobyl, I got to have her tour a Soviet nuclear reactor in Saint Petersburg.

When I wasn't loving Formula One as much as I used to, I had her dabble in sports cars and Indycar during a bit of a sabbatical I had her in.

Speaking of, that brings me to...

What I'd Do Differently Now:

I started LatSoF1 in January 2022 and finished it in June 2023. I still consider it to be one of my best works and I'm proud of it, however, part of writing - and this is for everyone, not just me - is that you're always learning more. I'd say my writing back then was good, but I think it's gotten better now - certainly not perfect, but better - so...what would I do if I was doing it now?

The first two things are more technical:

One: I think I'm better at breaking up big blocks of text now, alternating between paragraphs and short lines, which I think makes for a more readable experience.

Two: I was getting better at this as I was writing LatSoF1, but I still think I could've been better about dialogue. I think dialogue is a bit of a weakness in my writing, one I'm working on, but a weakness nonetheless.

I probably could've done a better job with dialogue in LatSoF1.

Beyond that...I struggle at having my protagonists do things that are out of my character. Part of that is inevitable - write somebody long enough, particularly in first person, and parts of you will bleed into that character whether you like it or not - but it also led to me dropping one and a half plotlines.

One and a half? Let me explain.

There is a part of LatSoF1 after the 2008 season where Tamara loses her sponsorship in F1 and goes on a bit of a downward spiral. I initially had the idea that she'd develop a drinking problem during this point and eventually recover for it, to the point where she wouldn't drink podium champagne and would always just spray it before handing it off to the team.

I chickened out on this because I didn't feel comfortable writing about someone struggling with alcoholism given that I don't drink.

Then we move onto the half.

I initially wanted Tamara to be a bit more promiscuous once she comes out, and she'd have a few different girlfriends and maybe a few one-night stands throughout the storyline. It the end, I chopped this storyline way down.

Roksana is her first girlfriend, she has a one-night stand with Daniella, and then she's with Ysabella for the rest of the story.

Alexis was supposed to be another girlfriend, but in the end she's just the Ferrari PR that follows Tamara around for that little half a season she did there.

Again, my only romantic experience has been monogamous, so I chickened out of writing something I didn't know.

Now, who knows if writing out of my comfort zone would be any good, but I do wish I tried.

As I move on from LatSoF1 and onto new projects, I'm trying to be better about writing outside of my comfort zone. Right now with the CART story I have Vincenza Taghzouti becoming more assertive and combative in the media, arguably taking a bit of a villain role as she battles the American "boys club" of established drivers.

Meanwhile in the NASCAR story, Lilith Zilinskas has been more promiscuous and had a bit of a self-destructive streak for awhile, and now is dealing with her ex-girlfriend reentering her life...with a daughter, no less. This lets me explore some of the themes I chickened out of doing with Tamara, and also adds in a bit of a parenting aspect in the current day that I've never touched on before.

I'm excited to see how these attempts play out, and I hope that by the end of them, I'll have sufficiently differentiated my three protagonists.

Anyway, this has been a long and self-indulgent blogpost, but I very much enjoyed writing it. Please feel free to ask questions below, because I could go on much, much longer about my writing if given the chance.

[accessible-tumbling]

Video description: The Quora site is displayed and the narrator, who has a British accent and is speaking quickly and excitedly, opens by reading from it: "My MacBook Air weighs 2.3 pounds. If I download more files on it, will it make it heavier?

"This is Quora," he continues. "A place where once grand intellectual questions would be mused over. But if you recall, 2 years ago we sadly bid farewell to our friend, Yahoo Answers, a place where those sorts of questions didn't happen, and in that time it seems many Yahoo users have made Quora their new home.

"Do chimpanzees get pregnant? Does anyone live on the sun? How high do planes fly when landing? What percentage of people are going to die? Do lesbians get periods?"

(A response to that question is read in a gruff tone:) "Oh, come on! Where the hell are you getting that question?"

"You are sleeping with your partner and suddenly realize that he/she is a ghost. What would you do? Are there werewolves in Texas? Why does the sausage have two ends? What happens to the time it takes to actually time travel into the past/future? Which hole does an actress push out a baby in a birth sense?"

(Another answer is read:) "She doesn't. She acts."

"I heard that in the Middle Ages, nobles used to wipe their butts with ducklings. Is that right?"

(Response, gruffly:) "No!"

"Is it true that pregnant women should not sleep during a lunar or solar eclipse as it may cause harm to the unborn?"

(Response:) "No. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

"Can I sue Germany for putting my grandfather in prison for 7 years in the second world war?"

(Response:) "No, no, no, no, no!"

"Can you think of a sentence that contains the words 'book' and 'crabs'?"

(Response:) "Well, yes, I can."

"Why does the 'bros' abbreviation for 'brothers' end in 's' instead of 'th'?"

(Response:) "Because that would spell 'broth'."

"Do rich people get embarrassed that their servants know what their stuff in the toilet looks like?"

(Response:) "This is a very weird question."

"What happens when we wash vessel and use it with water in which a lizard was dead? Is it poisonous? What can we do?"

(Response:) "Uhh..."

"Why does the United States promote homosexuality and not consider what happened in the petrified village of Pompeii?"

(Response:) "Wha…?"

"How can I have sex with Asia?"

(Response:) "Pretty sure you mean an Asian girl."

"Is Israel on the world map? Are the Irish really from Ireland? My son speaks Arabic. (in a panicked, shouting tone:) What do I do? Does India have airports?"

(Response:) "Putin came to India in 2014 swimming in the ocean. I have a photo to prove." (A flash of a picture of Putin swimming can be seen briefly at this point in the video.)

"Where do animals live? Why are things? What is my date of birth? Do you know a microscope? Real mathematicians (in all caps): I have 5 live cows and then I multiply them by 0. How then do you come and tell me that I end up with 0? Where did the 5 go? Which is larger: 0 or 2+7? Math math what is angle?

(Narrator comment: "I do believe this Quora user was intending to ask 'what are the names of the most powerful angels?' but…) What are the names of moist powerful angles? I'm an atheist who believes in God. What should I do? Why do atheists watch fiction movies? During airplane turbulence, how do atheists keep calm?"

(Narrator comment: "This question I could only find an old link for, even Quora went nowhere, not even, that is way too stupid:) How do atheists know what foods are 'sweet' versus 'sour' or 'bitter'?

"I am 11 and stand at 5 foot 2. Am I obese? Do celebrities fart? What's the meaning of a single white egg left at my door? (narrator's comment: that is weird.)

"My mom slapped her own bum in front of me what does that mean? Is this correct, 'similarvgbhujkljhgtyhujk'? Why is Zelda so 'thicc' in Breath of the Wild? Do demons always say 'I am a demon' when they are introduced? Is it possible to balance your entire body on your penis?"

(Response:) " Yes, but I'm scared of heights."

"I saw the cop the gay eating a raw bird in my backyard. What should I do?" (Narrator comment: "I became a bit obsessed with this question, it's so indecipherable and googled it for clues to find apparently there was much debate on the site about whether this was a weird autocorrect from 'cat'. Which word was supposed to be cat?")

"Can deaf people laugh out loud? Can deaf people do surfing? How do def people know what facial expressions look like and how they're used outside of American Sign Language (ASL)? If so, how do they learn about them if there's no way to see someone else make that face?" (Narrator comment: "I mean, I don't think there's any intelligent questions actually left on this site, is there? Who's asking 'Can music cause candle to light?' Obviously, no!")

"Do people still eat mashed potatoes? (Yes!) Can semen travel up your foot? (No,, it cannot.) Is the word 'stay asleep' alwasy spelled 'J'? (I don't even know what that means.) Do lobsters pee from their faces? (Uh, ugh, are you mad? Obviously no!)"

(Response:) "Yes, as others have pointed out, many crustaceans have two different types of excretory organs, both near the head. Usually only one is used, depending on the age of the animal. Lobsters and crabs, etc, use their urine smell like cats, to mark territory, warn rivals, etc." (Uh..oh.)"

The screen goes white and the scene transitions to footage of the narrator walking up to a door. He places an egg on the mat, then runs away.

End video description.

[what-have-i-unleashed]

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT!

I want hmmm let me think... your most lukewarm thoughts about popular ships like cream, errorink, killermare, etc.

Do you think they would be popular if they were created nowadays?

yeah, i think they'd still be popular. i'm not super insular because i also lurked on twitter and especially asian fandoms (mostly east asia - they tend to use twitter a lot. i refuse to touch facebook or vk for other asian fandoms, but i know they're mostly active there).

cream, errink, and killermare are crazy popular in east asian fandoms you cannot fathom it lol. tbf asian fandoms tend to be... "traditional" (idk if that is the correct word to describe them). what i mean is that they're very loyal to old concepts, especially if creators are vocally supportive of a ship. errorink is supported by both creators (in a "they'd be friends" kinda way). cream also falls under that. and killermare... i'd say it's a popular dark ship of killer - same reason why kist is also semi-popular (though not as popular as dustard, which is supported by one of the dusttale creators).

as for my own opinions on the ships themselves, i'm pretty neutral about them tbh. afaik, none of the original creators of the characters personally condemned or asked people not to ship these characters together, so that's a good thing in my books for these ships.

cream is, at least to me, kinda overdone, though i'd say it's one of my top ships for cross honestly, though i'd personally prefer crink since their divorce arc is just too funny.

errorink is a classic. i don't actively seek out content for them, but i appreciate it. same with afterdeath honestly.

killermare... hmm yeah i'm neutral about it. the interpretations are wildly different depending on who's handling it. it's also not a ship i actively seek out, but there have been some good content i've come across sparingly that really changed my brain chemistry about them lol. personally, i'd prefer them to be "shippy" (homoerotic tension that is) rather than an established/endgame ship. it's the same for me with driller truly. idk, but i think dream and nightmare seem more interesting as concepts to me than characters? it's more interesting when they represent something in the story than when they're the focus themselves. just my two cents.

[joys-of-everyday]

I just watched ContraPoint’s Twilight and so clearly, I need to write about BL. She even told me too! (2:42:40)

Firstly, if you know anyone who goes “why is BL so xxx (derogatory)”, this is an excellent video to point them to. Yes, it’s 3 hours long. That is how thoroughly it defends BL Twilight.

Secondly, I don’t particularly want to discuss whether I agree or not with the finer details of every statement Natalie makes. In broad strokes, it is an excellent video.

I hope from point 1, 2 it’s clear that I don’t want to reiterate too much that the video covers, so if you have time to do anything, I recommend going to watch it. That being said, I think there are interesting points to go deeper with the slightly different perspective of BL, so I’ll jot down some loose thoughts.

DHSM

So apparently… Twilight is yaoi coded? I’ve never watched or read Twilight in my life so maybe I’ve been sold the wrong impression.

Yaoi, and then BL, has always been constructed on narratives of power and its subversions. Pio makes an excellent post here linking to a neat interview which covers, from a different perspective to Natalie (who focuses on straight romance), some of the conversations around power and fantasy.

Natalie defines a framework in which this narrative exists: Default Heterosexual Sado-Masochism, or DHSM (1:26:47). This is a series of dichotomies that are often associated to each other: masculine, active, subject, lover, dominant, top… vs feminine, passive, object, beloved, submissive, bottom… Yes. It’s seme vs uke, gong vs shou. The criticism and defense of such narratives have been well-trodden, and Natalie gives a good account. I’ll leave that for now.

What I find interesting, and what Natalie mentions, is the natural scope of BL to subvert DHSM itself. Notable is the myriad of tropes that seek to subvert the common dichotomy – the feminine seme, the muscular uke, the younger seme, and so on, so forth. Or works where both parties play the roles of gong and shou – WWX’s active pursual of LWJ’s affections… hell, almost the whole of MDZS is LWJ being reactive to what WWX does, flipping the dynamic in its entirety.

But I think that even in its most standard, vanilla DHSM version of BL is already subversive of these expectations. The almost infamous “but I’m a man!” uttered so often by the uke when faced with the affections of a man (wow, gayness, how terribly exciting) can be interpreted as mild homophobia, yes, but it occurs to me now that it is a subtle marker of agency. The uke is surprised to be the object of desire. And thus we learn that object/beloved is disjoint from womanhood, even if the work doesn’t go as far as to untangle it from femininity.

Is that surprise in itself referencing the default view that men are not objects of desire (women are), and therefore problematic? Who knows. Then again, it do be the case that you can’t comment on a thing without presenting the thing. (*cough* Scum Villain *cough*)

Ah Power

“Is it really fine though?” says Natalie, halfway thought the video. (1:23:07)

I’ve defended BL to the moon and back. I still would. But always there is a little person sat in the back of my mind reminding me of all the moments I cringed. The overwhelming DHSM, the casual misogyny, the slightly bizarre takes queerness… Don’t get me wrong, there exist BL works flying in egalitarian gay space communism, and BL isn’t like… uniquely bad among media despite the frequent bashing it gets (have you watched the average shonen?). But I like BL. That’s why I know intimately all the issues it has.

My gay male friends tell me that BL often disappoints them because it’s not reflective of their experiences. Fair enough. I think a lot of BL (by the nature of what it is) is on the whole reflective of female (and Asian) experiences/perspectives. While I have no intention of telling anyone what they can and can’t write, it… idk, feels strange, that so much of society’s perspective on gay men (overwhelmingly so in Asia, and increasingly so in the West) is shaped by… not gay men.

Food for thought.

Another question that sometimes strikes my darkest hours is… why yaoi and not yuri? Why BL and not GL? Well it turns out that a lot of women (the main target audience, if you weren’t aware by now) are into men (Surprise!), so I guess that’s not particularly surprising. Then again, it seems reasonable to think there’s an element of wanting a blank slate. Woman is Other, said idk… Beauvoir. For a woman to woman, there must be a reason she womans. A female character cannot exist without navigating – explicitly or implicitly – social structures that work against her. Even a world that removes those barriers with the good old worldbuilding becomes commentary on today’s society. And ngl, the last thing I want to be thinking about when reading my escapist fantasy is the unfortunate circumstances we live in (*big sigh*).

Is that internalised sexism? Should I think deeply about my biases and my apparent inability to think of women as just people? Maybe. Sorry, my political correctness is not high on my mind when reading smut.  

The seen seen, the desire desired

Who are you attracted to in BL? Some say you (the obviously female reader)(I’m feeling exceptionally sarcastic today, but I realise this doesn’t translate well to text) are meant to relate to the uke and feel attraction towards the seme. From experience… this doesn’t track. Often because erm… the audience of BL isn't all straight women it turns out.

But an interesting point that Natalie raises is the capacity for a reader to relate with characters in what are perhaps unexpected ways (cf Part 6: Identity). BL often jumps between the perspective of seme and uke. If straight fantasy gives women the opportunity to relate with both the desire and desired, then BL gives the capability of being everything at once – the powerful beloved, the pursued subject, the desire desired - through both the uke and seme. After all, how common is the sentiment “I don’t know if I want to fuck him or be him”? (I’m gonna digress and say I don’t think people mega-braining multiple POVs as they read BL, but I will highlight the way BL tends to portray both parties as loving and beloved.)

There’s something inherently voyeuristic or polyamorous about BL. Natalie states that blank slate characters are blank slate as to not generate envy – blurring the identity of the uke enough that they become indistinguishable from the reader. This is not the template of BL. The uke is often just as developed, if not more developed in character than the seme, with the reader’s capacity to relate to multiple POVs meaning they can see the uke from the outside, as separate, as object, as Other. Either the reader disappears in the narrative, everywhere and nowhere at once, or is tucked between them (“I want to fuck/be fucked by both.”).

Representation

In general, I prefer to be excited about what we do have rather than nitpicking the individual. Works that subvert tropes, tropes that subvert tropes, authors trying to better understand the queer community, conversations around what media representation we want to see etc. etc. get me excited. BL broadening its scope from escapist smut fantasy (tbc, nothing wrong with that) to more “mainstream” slice of life/fantasy type works is something I welcome. Some bits of BL fandom have been some of the nicest I’ve seen. It’s a community that I think is special, and whether I think media should be child friendly aside, I think it has the capability to be a really positive influence.

It strikes me that while BL isn’t reflective of the most standard gay male experience… it is, in some way, a gay male experience.

And I say this in a way that is literal for me and my trans brethren, but also maybe this is true more broadly, in an abstract sense. Natalie suggests that women relate to big, hulking alpha men in romance with a masculine element of themselves. When/if you relate to characters in BL, do you relate to them with a masculine element?

Well, not always and not everyone, and the gender of the characters themselves are often more complicated. ig what I’m trying to say, is that BL might not seem like an accurate reflection of the world to some, but it is a reflection of something, and maybe we should value that.

And as a final remark, I don't think anyone needs to intellectualise their interests as hard as I sometimes do. Keep enjoy what you're enjoying. You're doing great :)

[olderthannetfic]

I don't want to sound like, "Oh, I know so much more than you peons do," but I think something that some people are missing in the How Do People Feel About Racial/Ethnic Acronyms? discussion is that they exist for specific purposes and were created under certain circumstances. I'm not one for POC (People of Colour, US), BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, US), BBIMP (Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Melanated People, US), BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic, UK), or others, but I'm a mixed African/Asian person living in East Asia. I'm neither from the US or the UK; these terms aren't really about me, they're about racial and ethnic minorities who live in those specific countries, and were created under a political climate and a history where they made sense at the time. I'm not a fan of how (BI)POC is used in a lot of English-speaking online spaces—seriously, just say Black people, we all know you're not including non-Black non-white people when you say "POC"—but neither do academics and actual activists and such. They're terms that do actually have their uses.

I mean, yes, there is a major problem with communities pushing non-Americans to use American terms Or Else, and that sucks and it needs to stop. But these acronyms have their uses. I see it like how I don't personally like being called Black, because I'm very much an African, but my Black French friend hates being called Afro-French because to him it's like saying he can never really be French. Different strokes for different folks.

Although I do have to rehash that there is a problem forcing people to use terms they don't want to because that's the "woke" thing to do. Don't force non-white people to say things they don't want to and self identify in a way they don't want to. "Coloureds" is literally an ethnic identity in South Africa; (white) Americans who froth at the mouth over that need to get over themselves.

That's just my two cents anyway.

--

[somuch-4-stardust]

okay i fear part of the reason im back on tumblr is so i can talk about my characters... so LISTEN UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or dont i will be yapping....

these are ocs but i reject calling them that because i despise the term (jk not really cuz its accurate to what they are... but i believe people do not respect ocs as much as they should like. not mine necessarily but yall have some awesome characters and they should be treated as such. like yknow if u went to jrr tolkien and said omg i love yr OCs from lord of the rings technically yr correct but it would be odd)

anyways. the series is called truth hurts (fun fact: theres a spin off alternate universe called lies kill in which everything just goes REALLY badly) and it follows a group of teen/young adult monsters as theyre losers and awful

the main guys name is max and hes emo and has eating issues. hes egyptian american and his mom is a mummy witch thing (long story. her name is iris ily iris). hes lowkey psychic and all his friends think hes a skeleton (like.... reanimated dead style) which is really funny cuz hes not hes just malnourished. hes 17 btw i think. i dont remember whatever

his best friend is selene and shes a werewolf and she lives in a community of werewolves and their families- werewolfism is a gene that doesnt always activate so not every1 in a family is a werewolf. so selene has 5 siblings and only 1 of them is also a werewolf. ANYWAYS! her family and max's are super close except being a werewolf is SUPER SECRET so she doesnt tell max and thinks he doesnt know. he totally does tho and thinks shes just super shy about it. selene is 19 african american and like if pinkie pie was an asshole sometimes. she loves fashion and is super messy and bright and awesome

the bffs leave to follow around their favorite band (more on that later) and they meet siblings salem and crow. btw yes i know my names are awful. i love them so much. anyways salem is a goth witch and in search of other witch covens (its another long story) and crow is her little brother. hes autistic and nonverbal and really likes dragons and the barbie movies and chocolate. hes 12ish and salem is 21 i think... they're both this african/native american/asian mix thats hard to explain because the witches are almost a complete separate race???? since they came to america from west coast africa and east asia like pre 1500s... ANYWAYS!

my personal favorite because i ahte him and want him dead is caesar. hes also called casper for a while. guess what ... hes a ghost! and he has a psychic connection with max because theyre lowkey highkey soulmates. basically caesar dies at 16 (murdered by his pastor. i really want to talk about this but i wont right now........) and gets sent to purgatory which is just a vast expanse of white. usually the dead who get stuck in purgatory go crazy and kill themselves within a year BUUTTTTTTT psychic max is able to visit caesar when max is asleep, which keeps him sane. two years later max and caesar find a way to bring him back (sort of....) and he joins the crew. also theyre gay. tfw you meet some guy in your dreams and save him from going insane and become his only tie to reality. anyways caesar is sort of 19 when he gets back but also he is still physically 16. hes my white blonde guy because you guys know how i am about blondes

and the forever forgotten (seriously none of my friends care about her) last member is marin. they're a selkie/mermaid/water creature (she calls herself a selkie but theyre not very similar to selkies in typical lore). theyre this wide eyed ginger 14 year old who is sort of a girl but the selkie species doesnt really folloow the same kind of gender so shes a she and a they and she doesnt care. she left her watery home of the great lakes to explore the world of humans and theyre super sweet and wonderful and also a little scary.

anyways. the whole gang basically is following around max's special interest favorite band- the lost boys. they're vampires but the world doesnt know because they think its just a bit cuz theyre an emo-goth band. they have nothing to do with the lost boys movie (or is it a show????) which i accidentally plagiarized despite never seeing or hearing about the movie until it was brought up by my friends. anyways theyre called the lost boys cuz their stage names are peter pan, wendy, slightly and nibs. real names being silas raven damon and archie. silas (lead guitarist) runs a clothing brand called 'truth hurts' and max is insanely obsessed with it(some of you know exactly what was inspo for this.....). silas shares that there will be different and exclusive truth hurts merch at every city on TLB upcoming tour so max takes all his savings out to road trip across america with selene and follow the tour. raven is transwomen with insane vocals (she uses her gorgeous low voice for singing but speaks in a more traditionally feminine higher pitched voice) and shes dating silas. damon is the bass guitarist and the oldest vampire in the band (was turned like 300 years ago). archie is IRISH! and the drummer. hes funny.

also salem and selene hate each other for most of the series but thats only because they absolutely are in love. max and caesar are doomed and in love forever. marin briefly has a crush on a fairy but they dont date. shes sort of aroish. crow will get a wonderful girlfriend a couple years post truth hurts series.

[stormblessed95]

Here to tell the whole world to stop living through some rom-com style, heteronormative fantasy of Jikook. Last night’s live seems to be such a big deal for so many of you and I am here like, buddy?? You all really thought ,one fine day, JK would wake up and be like, my ring finger has JM on it, as in JIMIN??? If they are in fact a couple, there’s simply no way they will come out any time soon, if at all. Jk is 25, he’s very successful, but he’s still very young with at least two decades of career ahead. JM is just 27, known as the idol’s idol, pretty much acknowledged as a role model for the idol space. They live in Korea, and the current regime is anything but pro LGBTQIA+. As many sus moments as we have seen, they are still in the CLOSET, if they are intact together? They aren’t gonna kiss each other in public and make it official you no? At least not for the foreseeable future.

I can’t emphasise this enough- it may seem all sunshine and rainbows, because we all are wearing tinted glasses, but being queer in a queerphobic country with cameras on you 24*7 isn’t even remotely fun. It’s even harder if you have images to live up to and roles to play. As someone who has been living in Asia, I can promise you, the tables would turn so fast if they even approach the subject. They were just recently Busan expo ambassadors? You know that means practically having supremely close connections with the government? Their families, the communities they are a part of, the group, the company, everyone would have to face such strong repercussions. I am a nobody and my nonhet sexuality is a nightmare to navigate. I have lost friends and families over it. Imagine doing that while being hella popular?

Just wish them happiness and move on. If they are together, they are. We have no control over it, only over the narrative. Please just please don’t expect a mega coming of age film. It’s embarrassing. We have no right to be hurt because he said what he said. Either it is the truth or he’s trying to protect something. Either ways, respect it. Also, they are K-pop artists after all, of course they are very globally renowned, but after all they are K-pop stars. Their narratives, their medium, their stories, we will never have first hand access to. We are seeing them through a tunnel, because we just don’t have access to many things. For instance, JM is so so popular in SK and many other Asian countries and pretty much receives endless love. Like the culture minister of the country says “everyone knows JIMIN”. He isn’t tortured or tired, he’s very loved and he knows it. JK just because first Korean artist to perform at WC, he’s made the country very proud. We see them as these characters in this world, they aren’t. They are full people, with agency. Let them do what they want to. Twitter is vile and bullies playground. But that doesn’t make it a reality. They get hate, and they probs see it. But they also get love and know it.

Meant to post this yesterday. Sorry I'm late anon. Jikook distracted me 🥰

[bengiyo]

Hello hello ~~

Through wen-kexing-apologist's recent post about The Birdcage (which seems to come from your syllabus for baby gays) I got to the original series of reblogs which resulted in said syllabus. I read most of it (not everything because Real Life has my time hostage), and as someone who has seen her fare share of queer media I have now a pretty long to watch list.

As you wrote about how you enjoyed the romance of queer media I have a question.

Recently I have come across a Netflix movie trailer called Love at First Sight. With such a basic trope as a name I checked it out hoping the title to be misleading and to see something surprising in the plot. The disappointment I felt when by the end of it I realized it was exactly what the title sold: the most basic boy meets girl and they have to look for each other throughout the whole movie.

One of the things I really appeciate about queer media (and mainly BL probably) is the possibility to explore different kinds of romances and emotions. Both positive and negative. From Not Me to Heartsopper to Double Mints. I feel that being "out of the norm" they explore such emotions and situations in a more interesting and relatable way (and add to that that I, as a woman, cannot stand women characters making a 360º personality change once they fall in love)

So here's my question: what unusal or out of the ordinary romances would you like to see more of in BLs/queer shows/etc?

I personally would like romances with disabled characters to be more explored (I'm really looking forward to Last Twilight) or polyamory. Also more GL.

I admit this might be a very biased ask, it comes 100% from my subjective view, and I have yet to watch most of the movies in your syllabus for Baby Gays.

Anyway, I hope you have a great day and that this long ask won't bother you ❤

Well look at this ask! Let me get into this!

The Syllabus is on a Google Doc

First, I sincerely appreciate you watching me and @shortpplfedup go back and forth about stuff. For yours and others' convenience, I did put the Queer Cinema Syllabus in a Google Doc for @wen-kexing-apologist

Some Recommendations

If you're looking for a film with a disabled protagonist and also a bit about women, I would recommend checking out Margarita With a Straw (2014), Sleep With Me (2022) (I watched on Gaga), or if you're willing to tolerate hets Isa Pa With Feelings (2019) (currently on Netflix) or Silent (2022) (Viki)

If you're interested in more polyamory, I genuinely think that Quaranthings Season 2 (2021) does some really fascinating stuff worth checking out. We had complicated feelings about Me, My Husband, and My Husband's Boyfriend (2023), but I liked it.

What do I want though?

I think this is a harder question for me to answer than I was expecting. I see myself as a guest when I'm watching a lot of content from Southeast Asia. I will voice my opinion on what I like and don't like, what I'm taking from these shows, and how they're affecting me. However, I don't really consider myself the target audience. I watch the shows as legally as possible and help generate engagement, but the "interfans" they care about are the English-speaking Asians in their region, not really me I feel like.

So when I think about what I want, I don't feel a yearning for any of the BL-producing Asian countries' film industries to make it for me.

I want to see the shit I like in the West get made. I want to see Black queer people presented complexly (Here is my regular plug for For The Boys). I'm a fat black gay nerd. The last time I saw a fat black gay nerd that I liked in an American production was Fire Island (2022).

I'm a 33-year Star Trek fan who still thinks we need more GAYS IN SPACE. I'd like to see more productions like Sort Of (2021- ) where complex queer friend and social groups navigate just existing in the world and finding love and meaning. I'd like to see less of reboots of classic shows like Queer as Folk be about a horrifying mass death event in the city I live in and the spaces I frequent (I refuse to link to it).

I want to see TJ Klune's, Ginn Hale's, or Lynn Flewelling's works adapted to series. I would like to see more wide release queer shit in the West not be overwhelmingly about fit, attractive, young white guys.

I want distribution for queer stories to not always have to go through four years of distribution hell because of the film festival circuit.

I want the West to try to make BL! I don't care if it feels cheap on the front end. I just wish more of us would be willing to throw support behind web shows. We did it for Awkward Black Girl! We can do it again!

This is turning into rambling, so I'll say that I don't necessarily have strong feelings about what I absolutely need to see. I like connecting with the specific humanity of stories, especially if they're about queer people. I didn't know I needed Moonlight (2016) until I saw it. I didn't know I needed Make the Yuletide Gay (2009) or Black Sails (2014-2017) until I watched them.

I just want more people with ideas to get a chance to turn them into something cool for us.

What about the rest of you? Please tag me if you have things you're hoping for.