#really really enjoy the discussion of queer readings

[al-mayriti]

man i love listening to podcasts but most of the ones i listen to are usamerican and sometimes i need to stop cause they become too statian. like i like the content but sometimes it's just. too much.

[sophie-frm-mars]

Something really powerful I saw someone say in a discussion around harm, conflict, and justice was that it's not our job to recreate the criminal justice system specifically in determining what happened between people. If someone is accused of causing harm and agrees they caused harm and has taken steps to be a safer person, that's really all an org or community space can ask for if the people they are in direct conflict with are not present. I thought this was really powerful, specifically this idea of not determining what happened between people. It doesn't matter unless you're a person involved or a mediator in a process between them. The rest is just social ostracisation as punishment.

The reason that there's a famous "anti-cancel culture" pivot from people who get "cancelled" is that the social technology of ostracisation sucks complete shit. It's torture by everyone's definition, actually. It's a punishment everyone who ever receives it agrees should never be done to anyone, even their worst enemies. Nobody who talks about this is able to adequately explain to the people who think that they aren't the bad guy in anyone's story and have never done anything wrong, so people just roll their eyes and say "here's the why I left the left pivot again", but yknow, sie wissen dass nicht aber sie tun es

We are facing impossible odds and need more robust community organising, having seen it from both sides multiple times it is very obvious that the desire to push and push until someone who hurt you ceases to exist is deeply unhealthy as well as being bad for everyone's ability to organise. People waste time in orgs that could be spent helping people trying to figure out what to do with someone that someone else read a post about.

Imagine a left wing movement in which there is a clear path to people embracing change and moving forward and get involved in helping people. It would snowball, it would be unstoppable. If we have made utopian bubbles for ourselves and our friends to enjoy all having the same politics together and we refuse to let that bubble burst and shatter and recoalesce and shatter again we never change the world around us towards our politics. The way conflict is so frequently handled in queer and leftist spaces is just policing the borders of the bubble

[bengiyo]

Heesu in Class 2: Maybe It’s Time to Stop Calling Myself a BL Viewer

After finishing Heesu in Class 2, it’s been surprising to feel like I’m in the minority for enjoying it. We’ve seen a great deal of concerted posting from fans of the webtoon about how this show betrayed its source material with its adaptation changes. Over the last few weeks, I’ve read the original webtoon to gather my own thoughts. After reading through @my-rose-tinted-glasses post on why this project didn’t work for her, I decided to sit with it for a while. I then came across this tweet from Dr. Thomas Baudinette:

I respect Dr. Baudinette’s academic interest in the genre and the useful insider insight he brings to the table. However, I will say plainly that I think this is a grossly disingenuous take, grounded in the idea that stories about queer romance take precedence over other queer stories. Additionally, it deeply misreads the adaptation choices and insinuates that a queer show that includes heterosexuality in it is somehow betraying the BL audience. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I will say plainly that I will go back to just being a queer cinephile who dabbles in BL instead of advocating for BL if this is who we are.

I am a queer person here for stories about queer truth. BL is a romance genre. While I respect BL viewers who are here to get their feelings from swoony moments, I cannot abide the presumption that a story that is inherently about the coming out experience somehow let its source material down for maintaining that connection. Every year we get into a big fight about what is or isn’t BL (see: 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, Love in the Big City, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, etc.), often arguing that BL is a branding term used to get romance viewers to show up and support queer works. I think it’s fine enough to argue that Heesu in Class 2 isn’t a BL because it uses Korean drama frameworks (@lurkingshan) for its story instead of sandblasting you in the face with pop music as two boys stare at each other, but I think there’s real value in what the show is doing for mainstream viewers.

I’ve avoided discussing the webtoon too much in my commentary, but now that I have read it I will say firmly that this would have sucked as a TV show. We know that about 40-50% of the shows we get each year are based on their source material. The webtoon is adorable and well-intentioned. It’s also a very simple narrative in which we are primarily in Heesu’s point of view, and any time we leave his point of view it’s to see only what other people are thinking about him. In my opinion, simpler narratives like the Heesu webtoon work best as films and not as dramas. 

We recently went through this with Living With Him, in which a really short manga got stretched to eight episodes and had to add contrivances to the middle to pad out the time that eventually hurt the core narrative. Thai BL is rife with secondary, tertiary, and quaternary couples to pad out time to meet the long run time demands of the airing schedule. When you’re adapting a fairly simple story, you either have to add depth or bloat. Oftentimes we get both. In the case of Heesu, it’s clear that they were only adapting the first season of the webtoon, and so they added depth.

The constant refrain from detractors of this webtoon is that it deprioritized the queer characters and their narrative in favor of straight narratives. I wholeheartedly disagree. Every single straight story in this show (and the gay ones) are meant to add context to the queer struggles Hee Su and Seung Won face, from Ji Yu and Chan Young to all three of his sisters.

Ji Yu’s music arc hearkens to the queer fear of being public with yourself and facing judgment and scrutiny. Chan Young’s tennis arc features real parental abandonment consequences that many a queer person fears. Hee Sin exemplifies how easy it is to fall for people and also deal with the constant rejection of most people not being into you (because they’re straight). Hee Jae exemplifies how toxic a relationship with your best friend can be when the romantic feelings aren’t fully reciprocal. Hee Yeong shows us what it means to be brave and face your friend after you’ve let them down romantically. Ho Sik highlights how easy it is for straight people to express and pursue their romances, and then be public with them. None of these plots exist in a vacuum; they’re meant to add context to the tension between Hee Su and Seung Won.

On the queer front, the show expanded on the initial lesbian advice plotline as a way for Hee Su to open the discussion about queerness with his siblings. The look shared between the sisters, their careful responses, and the way they treat him in the final episode after Hee Su comes out to Hee Sin shows that they talked to each other. Hee Sin clearly pulled on her prior knowledge when she insisted to Hee Su that she still loves him. Hee Jae, the grumpiest sister, was especially direct about praising Hee Su when he offered to help them take Hee Yeong to the airport. Hee Yeong told him plainly that he must remember that she is always on his side and will support him. Seung Won’s mom acknowledged that her own coming out affected him, and let him decide how open to be about his family.

The coming out sequence with Hee Sin was so powerful. He made it clear that this isn’t a gay-for-you situation. He said plainly that his crushes are on guys, and will probably always be on guys. Hee Sin’s response took me back to this incredible scene from The Fosters, in which Lena’s dad apologizes to her for saying “I still love you.” He rejects it as something horrible, in which you confirm to your kid that you could possibly stop loving them. He says he wishes he had instead said, “Thank you for telling me something so important about yourself, and I can’t wait to meet the person you want to share your life with.” 

I’m also annoyed about the insistence that the straights were given priority in this narrative in which everyone gets about the same level of on-screen intimacy. This is a show that managed to avoid getting an R rating, which means that it’ll be accessible to a much wider range of viewers without needing additional parental controls. The straights getting time means that when the gays throw the ease at which they pursued romance back in their faces, it’s actually grounded in events that transpired in the narrative. I will also say that I did NOT like the way Jiyu and Chanyoung meddled with Heesu in the webtoon, and thought conspiring with Seung Won was not kind to Heesu. I like that the drama instead uses their stories to support the queer themes as Ji Yu directly supports Seung Won.

I’d also like to say that all the Chan Young commentary troubles me. Hee Su has been in love with this boy for ten years. I actually think the show needs to spend time fleshing him out into a real person for the audience to understand why Hee Su likes him so much. He’s charming and friendly. He’s kind and thoughtful. He wants to help the people he cares about. He also trusts Hee Su implicitly. 

I do not blame him for being overwhelmed and surprised when Hee Su suddenly confessed to him, and I think there is real value in him botching that moment. So many viewers who might not have spent a lot of time thinking about how they would handle queer people coming out to them will benefit from seeing Chan Young flub that moment. What’s more important is that he did eventually talk to Hee Su and begin to repair the break in their friendship. It isn’t about being right every single time; it’s about always doing the work required to make things right. 

Finally, I really loved that Hee Su got to be mad at Seung Won for confusing him all this time. It was fun to see Hee Su, who I think was way out of line for always interfering in Chan Young’s life, face the reality that he had also been subject to that kind of behavior. This worked so well for me because we understood that what Seung Won liked so much about Hee Su was how warm and open he was. I will have more to say in the future about how many shows we’ve already had this year reject one-sided pining as inherently pure.

In the end, it’s just a really dissonant experience for me to see such a kind show getting such an energetic negative response. Like anyone else who’s watched over 300 BLs since 2016, I like seeing cute boys kiss each other and make face as much as anyone else. However, if we’re unable to appreciate using a webtoon with clear ideas about the difficulty of coming out when you’re in love with a friend in a format that far more viewers are used to, I don’t think I can rock with this anymore. I can’t even find myself associated with the kinds of people who would have called Degrassi homophobic because it wasn’t exclusively gay. 

[thebirdsandthebats]

Okay @s-p-r-i-n-g-t-i-m-e I’m sure you know plenty BUT I’m going to use your wonderful and hilarious comment on this as an excuse to talk about Bernard, bc I realized recently that there are plenty of ppl who haven’t read most of the comics he’s been in. So get ready for my long overdue:

UNPACKING BERNARD DOWD + HIS TRAUMA (for those who cannot keep up with comics but want to get to know him)

So to start, Tim met Bernard years ago ofc, when they were in high school. It’s established pretty quick that Bernard is an extremely Unserious guy LMAO, the first thing he does is literally circle Tim and try to feel him out socially, see what kind of guy he is. He’s the kind of guy who gets himself in trouble with his big mouth, and seems to enjoy poking at Tim and testing his patience. By the time we meet Bernard again in the recent years, he’s grown a lot, but at his core he’s still the light-hearted, fun, goofy guy with very strong opinions. Just less stand-offish, maybe

Throughout the time Tim spends at this school though, Bernard does experience some wild shit. He lost Darla (somebody he really cared about), he experienced a shooting at his school, and then Darla came back from the dead, kind of scared the hell out of him, and used him to contact Tim again. It was kind of played for laughs, but like. That’s gotta fuck you up. (Robin #140)

Obviously this is the kind of thing that maybeee has a lasting effect on you. And BECAUSE Tim Drake: Robin got cut so short and the writer had to rush to wrap up the series, we’re left to fill in a lot of gaps and draw conclusions about the years we didn’t see Bernard ourselves. But we absolutely get some insight as to his life after Tim left that school and we stopped seeing him in the comics. Spoiler alert: it was hard.

In TDR, Bernard discusses the the cult that he’d been in that Tim saved him from in Urban Legends. He says that “he’d accepted himself”, but others hadn’t. Obviously there’s the natural reading that he means his queerness (which has me chewing through drywall), but I think that he’s speaking very broadly too. Bernard is a very odd example of a civilian, because he’s always getting dragged into things much bigger than him. And even before that, he had his big ideas, his conspiracies, his loud personality. He tended to rub people the wrong way in high school. Then in issue #7 of TDR (the Bernard pov issue my most beloved, weird pacing aside) Bernard refers to this “oozy, sticky feeling” that he ALWAYS feels when Tim isn’t around. He says when he’s alone it’s harder to put one foot in front of the other. To keep GOING. To wake up every day.

I think that Bernard has always felt like an outcast. (Robin #121, he doesn’t fit into any clique). He wasn’t as okay with it as he acted. And I think he wasn’t getting any attention from his parents. (Batman: Urban Legends #5, Bernard’s parents nonchalance to the days leading up to his kidnapping)

So just like Bernard explained to Tim, that feeling got bad. and he wanted to let go. The chaos monsters, the cult, all of it was a means to an end. But then Tim agreed to see him again, and I think that sparked something in him. Because he started learning to fight. When he was tied down to that alter and Tim was saving him, I think it fully sank in to Bernard that he didn’t want to die. Reconnecting with Tim gave him hope and made him really feel something good for the first time in ages.

So now that they’re dating after the cult fiasco, we get to know this current Bernard. A less goading, maybe calmer Bernard. But he’s still himself, of course, rambling about his ideas and making bad jokes and sticking to his guns (he has NEVER been a pushover, no idea where people get that idea?). I think a lot of people complained that Bernard mellowed out too much in terms of attitude, but I think if he seems “nicer” it’s because 1) he’s grown now. It’s been a while since we last saw him, and he’s clearly changed a lot. And 2) because he’s dating Tim now. He likes him a lot, and he’s an affectionate partner. He wants to lift Tim up.

But the fact that he was pulled into a cult still remains. And as lighthearted as Bernard tries to be, that traumatic experience still happened. It said in Urban Legends #5 while Tim was searching for him that Bernard had welts on his arms and legs and had been acting different, so it’s not like he was just snatched up on a whim. He’d spent significant time there. For those who haven’t read much abt the ways cult trauma specifically can fuck you up, I recommend doing a search if you’re in a good headspace for that and want to understand him more. because it’s pretty bad.

And then! yeah. you guessed it. Bernard gets kidnapped again. Chained up next to a BOMB that’s counting down. RIGHT WHEN HE’S WORKING ON HEALING FROM ALMOST BEING SACRIFICED BY A CULT.

And surely this can’t get crazier. He’s almost died twice in the past 6 months. except, remember his parents? In TD:R #7, we really see a little more of his relationship with his parents. He doesn’t live up to their standards, and his dad specifically seems to just want to argue with him. The restaurant they’re at is attacked, and everything goes to shit, and. you know, I think these panels really speak for themselves.

And for the record, when it’s revealed that everyone is seeing their worst fears, Bernard’s parents fears are not about him.

So now Bernard has to deal with that. And we start to see that Bernard is really not as okay as he’s tried to be. He keeps a baseball bat by his door because he’s been kidnapped twice now. And just when he’d likely thought things couldn’t get worse, he heard the Chaos Monsters were back. I can’t imagine he feels safe. He lashes out for the first time since all this has happened and yells at Kate and Tim, because while they’re doing what they feel is necessary to save more people (AND I DONT BLAME THEM AT ALL), Bernard can’t talk about it.

And I will forever be sad and insist that TD:R got cancelled too soon, just before we could get into the really juicy stuff, because things had to be wrapped up pretty quick and this was the only comic Bernard was consistently appearing in. But when Tim is giving himself up to the chaos monsters, Bernard goes out and rallies anyone he knows can help. Things were rushed because there was no more time to flesh out the story the way it could have been, but I’m including these panels just because I love Bernard Audacity Dowd using a fucking flashlight and shadow puppet to call Batman. geeking out for a minute. And then leading the battalion to save Tim with a SLEDGEHAMMER. gay people rule.

So yeah! While I see the vision of how a lot of Bernard’s trauma was meant to be semi-resolved and let him come to peace after saving Tim back, we just didn’t have the time for him to heal properly. I’d give anything to get inside his brain again. UHH IF YOU READ THIS I HOPE YOU LOVE BERNARD NOW and don’t come at me if I left something out, some of my comics aren’t with me rn. Bonus TimBer for the road:

[adventures-in-mangaland]

I'm going with 10 All Time Classics from the Captain America (MCU) fandom. I mean, they're all classics to me, at least. In no particular order:

1. This, You Protect by owlet

First installment in the Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail series, which are all amazing. It's a “Bucky escaping Hydra and rebuilding his sense of self” fic, which he does while spying on Steve. With eventual Avengers Family and a lovely cast of OCs bonding with Bucky in the meantime. It has a very distinctive perspective and writing style; Bucky's in constant internal (and sometimes accidentally external) dialogue with himself, making it hilarious and tragic all at the same time. I love it. I've recently been getting into The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells and this Bucky has a similar sassy-but-vulnerable vibe? Read this if you like that, anyway.

2. The One Who Knows by Dira Sudis (dsudis)

This is a Political Animals AU, in that no-powers Steve is inserted into the Political Animals world and Bucky is TJ. Discusses being outed and depression but is ultimately hopeful. The author is one of my all time faves and has written lots of great stories for this and many other fandoms.

3. Blue Scales by chaya

Steve is a merman AU. He's still Captain America, though. It's crack with heart, I love it.

Best line: "May your scales and your love story be our weird secret forever.”

4. Our Lingering Frost by eyres

AU where Bucky is rescued from Hydra in the 50s (?) and so is around for Steve to be found.

5. Assets Out of Containment by follow_the_sun

It's a classic to *me*, OK? Bucky goes undercover at Jurassic World just as that movie's plot kicks off. They're Hydra dinosaurs! It's just great. Also has a podfic and crossovers with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

6. Not Easily Conquered (series) by dropdeaddream and WhatAreFears

Some of the greatest fanfiction I've ever read, the whole series is epic. Anyway, it's a "Steve doesn't go into the ice" AU with added queer angst when (never sent) love letters from Bucky resurface. I particularly like the second installment in the series The Thirteen Letters, which are just Bucky's letters and are insanely well-written.

7. to memory now I can't recall by Etharei

Time travel AU! Featuring post-CATWS Bucky accidentally switching places with CATFA era Bucky.

8. If Wishing Made It So by Leveragehunters (Monkeygreen)

Genie!Bucky AU! This author is great at writing AUs with fantasy/genre elements, it was hard to choose. They've also written an excellent werewolf!Steve AU and a horse!Steve AU that I really love.

9. Into That Good Night by Nonymos

An Interstellar AU! Very angsty and tragic but with an eventual happy ending.

10. Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Speranza

Speranza must be one of the best writers in the fandom, so it was hard to pick just one of their fics. Other strong contenders were All the Angels and the Saints and The Fifties, so check those out too! But this one has a special place in my heart. Steve, Tony and Natasha accidentally time travel to WW2 London, leading to an accidental run-in with CATFA-era Bucky. The author does tragic and romantic time travel tropes so well, but with a happy ending.

I now realise that most of these are AUs, so here’s a bonus rec for a non-AU in-universe story that’s severely underrated and deserves more love:

+1

Heart, Have No Pity on this House of Bone by Sena

This story follows Bucky in-action in the Pacific Theatre. It’s very well written and, from what I can tell, well researched. Steve only appears in Bucky’s imagination and the story focuses on the horrors of war rather than romance, but it’s gripping! And it explores unrequited love, being closeted and period-typical homophobia, which I also enjoyed. I’m still holding out hope for a sequel.

[eris-norwega]

Alastor SFW Alphabet

Notes: …hey guys. so idk if you noticed but i have kind of an “announcements board” at the top of my masterlist post. this is where you can find updates on when i’m working on requests and shit, so make sure to check it! lately i’ve been kind of in an “alastor funk” and i just needed to do this as a writing exercise to get me back into it. enjoy!

Synopsis: Alastor’s nonsexual actions and quirks in a romantic or queer-platonic relationship. Mostly applies to demon Alastor, but some can be read with human Alastor in mind.

CW: discussions of trichotillomania and anxiety disorders, a dash of murder

Word Count: 2711

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Alastor’s not very affectionate, at least not in public. He’s keen on keeping you safe from the public eye; no one can know someone is important to him. Sometimes he can’t help himself, and when word finally gets out about you two, he’s a bit less concerned with PDA and will maybe hold your hand. In private though? Very sweet. It starts out slow, just small cuddle sessions every now and then, but then he realizes how touch starved he is.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Whether you meet while alive or in Hell is up to you, but to be friends with him, you have to have a certain je nais se quoi. You gotta be a little weird and quite persistent to handle him. He’s very odd and a bit hard to deal with at times. But once you’ve earned his loyalty, he’s great company. Alastor is funny and honest (brutally so). He makes a great conversationalist. You’re always getting into shenanigans together, much to everyone’s displeasure. You’re attached at the hip, causing chaos wherever you go.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Alastor will never admit it, but he does enjoy cuddles from you—he just has to be in the right mood. It took a while to get used to, but he’s so goddamn touch starved, he caved almost immediately. He loves to hold you so much, but he really loves being held too (you will never know this). If you ask him to be the little spoon, he’ll scoff and protest, but he’s so goddamn excited. It makes him feel safe. He loves it when you pet his ears. It just feels nice coming from you. He also really likes holding you to his chest and laying his chin on your head.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Alastor is a gentleman raised mostly by his mother, of course he’s good at domestic chores. Also, have y’all tasted Louisiana food? It’s the best shit you’ll ever have. His mother’s jambalaya? Amazing! His gumbo? Superb! A seafood dish? Fantastic! This man can cook. As for other chores, he’ll absolutely help you. He isn’t one to think a woman’s sole job is to be the lady of the house and do all the chores. He’ll insist on doing chores with you just to spend more time with you. As for settling down, of course he wants to, he’s from the early 1900s. It’ll probably take a long time though—he wants to court you right.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Separate? Ha! As if he would let that happen. If he really had to for some reason, you’ll notice all his walls are back up. You will probably never understand why he did it, even if it’s for your own safety. If he decides he has to break up with you, he just goes for it. No need to prolong the pain. He just rips the bandaid off. He’ll distance himself immediately afterwards. If you have to break up with him, he absolutely won’t take it well. Everything in him screams to force you to stay, but he knows if he truly loves you, he can’t in good conscience do that. Again, all his walls will go back up, not letting you know how deeply you wounded him. He won’t be the same for a while, something just slightly off about him for the next few months.

F = Fiancé(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Like I said earlier, he wants a proper courtship, and that might take a bit. Alastor is not here to rush things. He’ll take however long you need. He absolutely would get married to you, no question, but in the end, it’s all up to you how you want things to go. As long as he’s with you, he’s fine with anything.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Alastor is only gentle with you. He absolutely knows how to be, like when his mother would comfort him. Only you get to be on the reciprocating end of his softness. At least physically. He’s a little more rough around the edges emotionally and doesn’t understand how others are so freely emotional. He can be a bit too blunt sometimes, accidentally hurting your feelings. He knows this to an extent. For example, if you need physical comfort, he will dote on you physically without saying a word, because he knows if he speaks in your time of vulnerability, he might say something accidentally hurtful.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Alastor is not a huggy person, only for formalities. He only really gives and reciprocates hugs when you really need them. Cuddles to him are different. Just standing there and hugging is fundamentally dissimilar. But if you really need one, he’ll squeeze you tight and rock you side to side, one hand around your waist and the other behind your head.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Fucking eternity. Love doesn’t come easy to him. It never has. So just openly admitting that he loves you? Yeah, that’ll take a long time. Don’t rush him to say it either. He’ll get freaked out and will pull back for a little. He’ll say it in his own time. He’ll just show you physically in the mean time.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Of course Alastor gets jealous. He’s possessive as hell. Alastor will let you talk to others obviously, but if you spend too much time with your friends, or even with your job or hobbies, he’ll start to get pissy. This man needs attention, even if it’s negative. He wants your eyes on him. If someone else has their eyes on you though? They’re as good as dead. And they will be! Next up on his radio broadcast: the screams of your secret admirer.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Alastor mostly gives little pecks, especially on the cheek or nose. Sweet and short. When it gets down to actual kissing, it really depends on his mood. He can be slow and sensual, or he can be passionate and rough. Of course, you’ll have to teach him. This man has never kissed anyone in his life before you. He gets pretty good at it though! His favorite places to kiss you are, as previously stated, your cheeks and nose, your hand, but also your neck if he’s feeling frisky. In return, he likes being kissed on the lips and jaw. It just does something to him.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

Alastor is not fond of children. It’s just never something he cared for or wanted. He’s terrified of being a terrible father, so he’d just rather not deal with it at all. He’s good with kids, sure, but it’s not something he’s interested in dealing with for the next 18 years. He’s mostly nice to them out of courtesy.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Very domestic. Will greet you with a kiss to the cheek and breakfast in bed. That’s if he stays up like usual. If he actually fell asleep the night before, he’s either up at the buttcrack of dawn or is honk-shooing until way after you wake up. Is super cuddly in the morning when he’s barely conscious. He tries not to show it, but he’s super embarrassed about it later. He’s also whiny as hell. If you try to wake him up, he’ll hit you with the “give me five more minutes,” and then almost rolls off the bed trying to turn away from you. Sleepy eepy man.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

We know this fucker doesn’t sleep. Well, too bad, you’re making him stay in bed with you. Lord knows what he does at night canonically (or with any of his free time), but now it’ll be spent with you. You’ll both start to slow things down for the night: getting ready for bed, dimming the lights—that sort of thing. As you’re drifting asleep, Alastor will usually read a book quietly, sometimes out loud if you ask him. Maybe play some kind of white noise if you like that sort of thing. Cuddles? Sure. He doesn’t care what you do at night as long as it helps you get your beauty sleep. Like I said earlier, sometimes he’ll fall asleep with you.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

It’s a very, very long process with Alastor. He has been protecting himself and his information for decades now, and even with you, it’s very hard for him to reprogram that. He starts with little things: his favorites, his likes, his dislikes. Mundane sort of stuff. It’ll be a while before he gets into his past and other deep topics. He might even have to get drunk the first time he tells you about his life.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

Alastor definitely gets angry a lot more than he shows externally. He is absolutely simmering under the surface if someone just slightly ticks him off. It’s different with you though. He doesn’t want to ruin what you both have, so he’s more accommodating to your more frustrating quirks. He might get snippy if he’s in a bad mood, but if he ever blows up on you, he’ll self-isolate so hard as his own punishment.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Every. Single. Detail. This man does not forget. He saves the knowledge for gift giving and dates, or just anything that’ll make you happy. Oh, you mentioned in passing that you like, I don’t know, acorns? You’ll be getting Alastor’s best hand-picked acorns for the next month.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

Literally any first. That and when you two can comfortably bicker with each other. He loves fake arguing with you as if you were just friends making jabs at each other. Loves when you can play around and poke fun at each other. One of his favorite moments was having a sarcasm war in his bayou realm in his room that ended up with you tackling him into the mud. You both looked insane after, but you couldn’t stop laughing.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Alastor is insanely protective. He’s only ever cared about very few people, so he has to protect you at all costs. He already lost his mother to Heaven, so nothing can happen to you. Has all kinds of protection spells put on you, including a necklace or some piece of jewelry that can notify him of your location at a moment’s notice. Goes absolutely apeshit if someone tries to hurt you. Alastor does not want to be protected by you. He thinks it’s his job to protect you, not the other way around. Besides, why would the Radio Demon need protecting? Despite this, you make him carry around a similar piece of jewelry. He fiddles with it a lot.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Alastor is the best at spoiling you. His mother taught him to treat women right, and he will honor that wish until his second death. Has all the important dates memorized. Always organizing dates, either in public or in private. Loves cooking meals for you. He tries to give you everything in the world, but if he’s in a particular mood, he’ll surprise you with something a little gruesome, like the dead body of someone who gave you a weird look that one time.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Very broken, very angry, and honestly pretty toxic sometimes. Reminder that he isn’t really a great person and is a master manipulator. Extremely petty about disagreements and would rather get angry and avoid you than talk it out. When he’s stressed, sometimes he’ll snap at anyone, including you. This leads to profuse apologies later, but his anger isn’t an easy fix seeing as there probably aren’t any great anger management therapists in Hell.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Alastor tries to ask like he couldn’t care less but it’s so painfully obvious to everyone that he does. Always looks spiffy and crisp in just the way he likes it or it’s wrong. He absolutely hates his deer characteristics, especially the ears. His hairstyle is also a whole thing that I’ll explain in “Xtra,” but I like to believe he straightened his (naturally curly) hair to the point of permanent damage, and because it’s Hell, it’s just fucken stayed like that. Why did he do it? Internalized racism from when he was alive and the need to conform.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Alastor doesn’t need anyone. He’s very independent and doesn’t pin his happiness on anyone. That being said, if something were to happen to you, he would feel an emptiness, but he’ll try to ignore it with every fiber of his being until it festers. So yes, he would feel incomplete without you, but he’d never acknowledge it. Ever.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

I believe Alastor has trichotillomania and an anxiety disorder. It’s not explicitly shown in the show (I mean maybe the anxiety bit), but these are some less obvious things that I think apply to him. The reason he smiles so much? He’s terrified. He doesn’t even really know it because he pushes it down so much, but he desperately wants control over everything, and not necessarily in a power-hungry way, but that’s what he’s turned it in to. This is especially apparent during his breakdown after the battle with Adam. I believe it stemmed from an out-of-control traumatic childhood. Now, for his hair. Trichotillomania is a hair-picking disorder. My reason for his fuckass haircut? That. He has a weird undercut going on because he is always tugging at his hair back there. If he’s particularly stressed out, sometimes the only indicator is if his hair is thinning, letting you know he’s been pulling at it.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Alastor hates rushing into things. He didn’t think he could like anyone romantically, so taking things too fast would severely freak him out. Also, never humiliate him in front of others. If he’s doing or saying something stupid, talk about it in private. He will hold a grudge forever if you humiliate the Radio Demon in front of common sinners. Again, not too fond of PDA unless he’s feeling really jealous and needs to show you off.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Alastor doesn’t sleep much. Like ever. He’ll stick next to you while you’re sleeping, but he just kind of hangs around. When he does sleep, it’s because you’ve forced him to because he clearly needs it. He falls asleep almost instantly. He has weird little static snores and his smile finally drops. He looks…peaceful. He feels really vulnerable sleeping, so he usually starts by staying as far away from you on the bed as possible. However, every time you wake up, he’s snuggled up to you, much to his horror.

[contact-guy]

“#I read so many gay Victorian love letters and books to get the tone right lol #Plato‘s symposium reference was THE way to signal you liked men in the late 19th century“ would you mind sharing some of your sources? 👀 I also want to write gay Victorian fanfiction am just naturally curious about the victorians

Omg 1000%, let me cite my sources:

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteeth Century by Graham Robb - this book is a treasure trove of well researched information. A lot of queer history focuses on men and I really appreciate all the stories about women in this one. It’s 20 years old and by (as far as I can tell) a straight author, so there’s some limitations - a total lack of awareness of bisexuality and trans identity - but I really enjoyed it regardless. There’s also like four pages where he discusses Sherlock Holmes as an iconic gay protagonist that changed my brain.

Fanny and Stella by Neil McKenna - a heavily researched story of two trans femmes in Victorian England, the crossdressing trial that scandalized London, their sisterhood and surrounding community, and the love triangle they were involved in. It’s written in a VERY fun and gossipy way, with a ton of primary sources, and is such a compelling story! This author also wrote a book about Wilde I haven’t read yet.

Gay History and Literature by Ricor Norton - it’s a website, not a book (I can’t find his books except at really high prices!) but it’s an obsessively compiled list of…basically…what it says on the tin. There’s a collection of gay love letters and newspaper clippings that are fascinating to read!

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Oscar Wilde, heard of him? This is my favorite Wilde story! It’s about the theory that Shakespeare’s sonnets were written to a young man, and how the desire for proof drives a man to death, and the frustrations and joys of looking for yourself in long-dead writing.

Before Queer Theory: Victorian Aestheticism and the Self by Dustin Friedman - reading this book felt like making my brain lift weights, but it was really interesting - it’s about the Aesthetic movement and how modern queer identity began in the nineteeth century.

Maurice by E. M. Forster (not technically Victorian but close) is a story written in 1913 about gay love (published in 1971 and dedicated to “a happier time” 🥲). It gave me some ideas about how a confession could play out. Plato’s Symposium is used as a pickup line, of course.

[nevermoreconfessions]

i might get jumped for this but i have always seen chapters 49-51, specifically the struggle between lenore and montresor, as analogous for sexual assault. and seeing how many people ignore the uncomfortable implications of that scene makes me feel like im kind of going crazy. am i alone in this?

montresor describes lenore as a “wild mustang” he’s “fixin’ to tame for the thrill,” violates her by invading her memories, repeatedly holds her down, and is clearly shown to enjoy degrading, abusing and objectifying women. & it just unsettles me a bit that these elements of his character are so infrequently discussed. i know it’s an uncomfortable topic, and that montresor himself is seemingly also a victim of sexual violence, but im really tired of seeing people babygirlify the sadistic misogynistic predator without stopping to think over some of his canon behaviors. im genuinely not trying to police anyone’s personal choices or interpretations but i do find it odd as it implies that somehow my reading of that situation was either an uncommon one or that people just don’t care. i’d like to know which it is bc those chapters are so nightmarishly evocative that they make me feel a lil bit ill tbh

tldr i think montresor is a weird freak and i wanna know if im alone in my interpretation of his fight with lenore

CW: SA

To be honest, I never quite picked up on this, but you've opened my eyes. I went back to read on what you've pointed out —

And yeah. Wow. I'm deeply uncomfortable. Quotes that stuck with me were :

"Go on, take my hand. . . Aw, shucks, I wasn't asking nicely,"

"There's nothing to win from this sort of intrusion! Have you no shame at all?"

"We had a good old time, didn't we?"

"If you ever get lonely, let me know. I could probably find a use for you."

I think it's also very important to note how Lenore's queerness ties into this. She's a "wild mustang" to "tame," just another version of "I can fix you."

As a lesbian, that really stuck with me.

I think that, while we're acting as readers, and we're witnessing the fight between Lenore and Montresor, we tend to see the scene as face-value. I don't think many people are ignoring it — I also took it as face valve. I was deeply uncomfortable reading it for the first time, I remember, and couldn't explain why. Now that I reread it, the implications are clear as day.

I don't think you'll get jumped. I think you're right.

The more I go back and reread the episodes, the more I hate Montresor. Like, genuienly hate him.

[ken-tfc]

MY INTRODUCTION

HIIII my name is Kennett or Ken and i do art (alot.)

I'm a dude but idc about pronouns so refer to me however you feel like 👍

im the co creator of undertrack and a few more aus that im obsessed with hehe.

i like requests and asks ALOT, please dont spam my inbox with requests though like max 3 a day from one person bc i cant keep up.

in my posts you may find queer relationships and shipping in general so DNI if you dislike ships or if youre one of those "canon only" mfs (I’m a multishipper dont expect consistency)

SIDE BLOGS:

This blog is very much all SFW other then some jokes and maybe some slightly suggestive drawings, the worse stuff / anything I think might need a warning goes to -> @ken-tfcsuspage

Commission blog: @commission-ken - https://www.tumblr.com/comission-ken/779992025417285632/pinned

In my posts you will find other fandoms than just undertale (but it is my main)

bounderies:

please dont give unwarrented critisism unless im drawing one of your characters or specifically asked for it!

2. please dont tag me or use my characters in media discussing SA (you know who you are)

3. you may trace or use my art as bases as long as you PROPERLY credit me!

4. Do NOT feed my art into ai or claim it as your own >:/

FIND ALL MY ORIGINAL POSTS (not reblogs) UNDER #kennettrememberstopost

thats it for now!

also if you draw any of my character or use them in anything you dont need to credit me but i do like seeing it so a tag would be nice anyways!!

UNDERTRACK INTRUDUCTION

under track is an au made by me and my friend @fivebecomesnone !! And our honorary creator @youregonnahavetime

Undertrack is an AU that features the survivors of a destroyed Universe.

As their universe was collapsing they created the train as a last resort to survive, once gathered onto the train they found out that instead of just going to a different universe and restarting life it was better to stay moving because they didn’t really wanna settle down. Currently they’re always travelling between universes transporting whoever has a ticket! (There’s a whole system for this, you can see examples from five’s post.)

IF YOU WANT MORE TECHNICAL INFO LIKE TICKET SYSTEM OR WORLD FUNCTIONS MAY I REDERECT YOU TO @fivebecomesnone BECAUSE THEYRE REALLY GOOD AT EXPLAINING !! (Also they made the system) They can also explain how to make tickets for your own characters if you want to make that!

We’re currently working on a lot of content for this AU so expect more posts along the way. Find all content of it under #undertrack !!

(Ps if you want to draw your undertale ocs and AUs into the train as a passenger feel free to do so hehe, also you may request me to draw that if you want a little doodle of it)

Thanks for reading chat, enjoy!!

[love-takes-work]

I've seen a fair number of people interpret Rebecca Sugar's (and the Crew's) decision to put Ruby in a dress as subversive, and I want to discuss why that feels like a clear miss to me.

Every time--every single time--I've heard Rebecca Sugar talk about the queer relationships on this show, it comes with this expression of wholesomeness, and often glazed with a sheen of wistfulness, flavored something like "I needed this as a child and young person, and I didn't have it." Much of Rebecca Sugar's work to bring this wedding (and other unapologetic queer relationships) to the screen was framed as an emergency--as in, we HAVE to get this out there for those kids we used to be, because we know they're drowning.

Yes, it's funny sometimes when people make jokes about Sugar deliberately "adding more gay" or "making it gayer" as a big eff-you to the people who spoke against it, but that doesn't sit right from where I'm standing. It took so much strength (and resulted in so much battle damage) to fight that fight, yes. But from everything I can see from the interviews and conversations I've seen and read, this wasn't served up in a "ha-HA, take THAT!" kind of way. These characters having these kinds of relationships should have been a non-issue, and the fact that their very wholesome kids'-show wedding and very sweet kiss and very adorable love for each other was seen as Political when it should have been just two characters in love is so sad to me.

I've seen dozens of people suggest that Ruby is in a dress and Sapphire is in a suit "to fuck with the bigoted censors in other countries" or "to give the finger to gender roles," but again, I think it is simpler and sweeter than that. Rebecca's said that Ruby in a dress is how she feels in a dress. Celebration and exploration of feminine-coded stuff felt wrong to Rebecca for a long time, like it wasn't hers, because she wasn't really a woman and didn't want it forced on her. As a result she was robbed of all the beauty that should have been a non-issue, from what TV shows and toys she was supposed to enjoy as a kid to what kind of person she was supposed to marry and what she should wear as an adult.

Ruby never got a choice about how she looked really. Once she got to choose her presentation for a significant event, this is what she chose. It means so much more to see that than to construct it primarily as a reactionary measure, as if it would somehow foil the sinister censors in more homophobic countries (who, incidentally, are not therefore forced to show Ruby in a dress even though they tried to hide that Ruby was a "she" or that she was in a romantic relationship with another "she"; y'all, they just don't show the episode).

We see plenty of other examples of gender-role-related expectations being casually stepped on and squashed, like when they took the trouble to give traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine "clothes" to some watermelons to make the audience think there was a husband and wife watermelon only to have the wife be the warrior and the husband stay home with the child. With stuff like that, yeah, sure, maybe it's designed to make you think "oh isn't that very feminist of them!" Or maybe it's more "well why do I see this as a 'reversal' when it's just a thing that happened?" This show is full of ladyish beings who fight and have power. And as for Steven. . . .

Nobody has negative reactions onscreen (or even particularly confused reactions) when Steven wears traditionally feminine clothes, and it is (of course) also not presented as a "boy in a dress gag"--it's not supposed to be funny. When they go all in slathering Steven in literal princess tropes throughout the final act of Season 5, we understand that it's because the powerful Diamonds expect him to be Pink Diamond, not because the show is trying to girlify him or embarrass him or even make the audience think positive thoughts about boys in girls' clothes. It's more neutral than that in my interpretation: "these are literally just pieces of cloth, and while some of them have meaning, they don't inherently have a gender." I don't see this as transgressive. It's just in a world where putting on what you want to wear doesn't HAVE to be a political statement. (Though obviously it CAN be, and plenty of people wear a variety of clothes as a fuck-you to whoever they want to give the finger to. I just don't see that as happening here.)

Don't get me wrong; Rebecca Sugar certainly knew about the politics (intimately) and has lived at many of their intersections. She was not ignorant of how queer people are seen in this world. She was silenced as a bisexual person because her identity supposedly didn't matter if she was with a man and planned to be with that same man forever. She was shunted into "omg a woman did this!" categories over and over again, which she wore uneasily as a nonbinary person while accepting that part of who we are is how the world sees us. But what is it like if everything someone like her embraces is seen as a statement synonymous with "fuck you" to someone else?

She is married to a person who happens to be a man and happens to be Black. Her relationship isn't a "statement" about either of those aspects of his existence; her love is simply something that is. She is Jewish working in a society that's largely Christian. Her cultural perspective to NOT center her cartoon around Christian holidays and Christian morals; her choices to make an alternate world in this specific way is simply something that is. Her queer perspective as a nonbinary bisexual person has helped inform the Gems' radical philosophy of "what if we learned to explore and define ourselves instead of doing the 'jobs' we're assigned and being told it's our nature?" Her decision to include queer people in a broadly queer cartoon isn't designed PRIMARILY as a battle against baddies, or to drown out all the relentless straightness, or to deliciously get our queer little paws all over their kids' TV. It's an act of love.

So this is just to say that though I DO understand that sometimes subversion and intentional transgression are very necessary, I do not think that's the HEART of what's going on at this Gem wedding. We got a wholesome marriage scene between two of the most lovely little flawed-but-still-somehow-perfect characters, and I very much want to see their choices as being about them. About how Ruby feels in a dress. About how Sapphire feels about not having to always wear a dress. About them incorporating a symbol of their union into their separate lives so they can have some independence in their togetherness. About them celebrating their love by letting Steven wipe his schmaltz all over them.

There are many choices in the show that ARE carefully constructed to counter existing narratives, you know, giving the Crystal Gems' only boy all the healing, pink, flower imagery; having a single-sex species that's ladyish with all the members going by "she"; featuring many nurturing male characters who cry and cook and raise kids without mothers; pairing multiple fighty ladies with gentler guys; and importantly, intentionally loading up the show with stories, characters, and imagery any gender will find appealing despite being tasked with expectations to pander to the preteen boy demographic.

But it's very important to me that the inclusion of queer characters and the featuring of their choices be seen primarily as a loving act, and way way less of a "lol screw the bigots." I want our stories to be about us. Yes, I know it's a necessary evil that sometimes our stories are also about fighting Them. But every time I see someone say they put Ruby in the dress to "piss off the homophobes" or "stump the censors" I feel a little gross. Like the time I picked out an outfit I loved and my mom said I only dressed in such an obnoxious way to upset her, and I was baffled because my aesthetic choices, my opinions, my choices had nothing to do with her. Yet they were framed like I chose these clothes primarily to cause some kind of petty harm to her, when not only was it not true but I was not even that kind of person who would gloat over intentionally irritating someone.

The queerness of this show isn't a sneaky, underhanded act trying above all to upset a bigot or celebrate someone's homophobic fury. It lives for itself. Its existence is about itself. It's so we can see ourselves in a show, and it's so people who aren't queer or don't have those experiences can see that we exist, we participate, we want very similar things, and definitely are focusing way more about celebrating our love at our own weddings rather than relishing the thought of bigots tearing their hair out and hating us.

It's dangerous to turn every act of our love into a deliberate movement in a battle strategy when their weddings just get to be weddings.

I think there’s this idea that that [queer characters] is something that applies or should be only discussed with adults that is completely wrong. And I think when you realize that talking to kids about heteronormativity is just like air that you breathe all the time, it’s kind of amazing that that is not true in any other capacity. I think if you wait to tell kids, to tell queer youth that it matters how they feel or that they are even a person, then it’s going to be too late! You have to talk about it—you have to let it be what it gets to be for everyone. I mean, like, I think about, a lot of times I think about sort of fairy tales and Disney movies and the way that love is something that is ALWAYS discussed with children. And I think also there’s this idea that’s like, oh, we should represent, you know, queer characters that are adults, because there are adults that are queer, and you should know that’s something that is happening in the adult world, but that’s not how those films or those stories are told to children. You’re told that YOU should dream about love, about this fulfilling love that YOU’RE going to have. […] The Prince and Snow White are not like someone’s PARENTS. They’re something you want to be, that you are sort of dreaming of a future where you will find happiness. Why shouldn’t everyone have that? It’s really absurd to think that everyone shouldn’t get to have that! --Rebecca Sugar

[drdemonprince]

sorry if this is too long but i really appreciate your perspective and would love some advice

i have a mixed gender friend group irl, however i am the only transmasc in the group (the rest of the group is queer transfems, queer cis women, and our token cishet guy) and ive run into a little issue in that im quite close to one of the cis girls of the group, and we occasionally have deep chats about our queer identities (we're both aro, im ace, shes bi) . these chats are great and i really appreciate her as a friend but one thing shes always bringing up, even in unrealted conversations is how much she hates men .

im not a transandrobro so this isn't gonna be one of those "im one of the good ones" or "i feel guilty for being transmasc" asks dw. the issue came up when i was discussing how i was going to start T pretty soon (i pass decently well without it already but as more of a butch/androgynous type look) and as we were talking about the changes she was acting... genuinley scared and disgusted??

especially when i talked about how i will likely grow more body hair, and how T affects scent and stuff. she was almost horrified. "yeah but you dont want that right? youll shave it?" . i already dont shave my body hair (she does) and i cant help but feel scared that one of my closest friends is going to find me revolting once i start transitioning medically.

i didnt even mention bottom growth after that because i was so scared of what her reaction to that would be.

idk if you have any experience or advice for this? or any reading on the subject? ive found that its only the cis women in my friend group who are acting this way as well. i feel like maybe its because theyve secretly been viewing me as "just" a masculine woman this whole time. i id as nonbinary with the group, but secretly i really do think im a trans man, but based on the disgust with those things im reluctant to come out again.

Honestly this is a really common way that cis women microaggress against trans mascs! Those two identities have competing privilege/oppression intersections and a lot of really wild shit can play out as a result, as well as due to the projection that can happen because both groups have shared a social identity at some point (whether we liked it or not). It may not be fixable, but I think you need to set the tone that this kind of negative commentary on your transition and body is NOT acceptable, and to do so EARLY, so that you are establishing ground rules for how you will be treated.

Example conversation:

You: So I started getting some hair on my neck around my Adam's apple.

Her: Ewwwww, but you're going to shave it right?

You: (pause and look at her seriously). Gender transition is something I'm very excited about and that's very good for me, you know. I am happy about everything that's happening and I hope that as my friend you would be happy for me too.

Let's say that she continues to be somewhat shitty about your transition multiple times. Here is how you might escalate without totally blowing your lid.

Her: Wow, your [voice is so deep/your acne is getting so bad/your hair pattern is changing/whatever thing she is being shitty about].

You: (stop whatever task you're doing if any to give this full attention. lock eyes with her, maybe even sigh). I have told you multiple times not to comment on my appearance. It makes me very uncomfortable. I don't enjoy spending time with people who comment on how I look.

I think your focus should be not on correcting her feelings, which she needs to go like stare at a pond and reflect about on her own, but instead reign in her shitty commentary completely -- and if she won't do that for you, then you will need start ending conversations/walking away/not inviting her to things/whatever other boundary setting strategy you like. I would prioritize nipping the personal comments in the bud over the "men are so disgusting and evil" kind of commentary, because I think that matters more and seems to bother you more -- but if it were me? I would also be pissed that she wasn't including me in the category of "men" when she was talking about them, and would say things like "I'm a man too, you know." Or "Yeah, WE can be kind of annoying/boorish/smelly sometimes." This isn't some transandrobro NOT ALL MEN thing, it's an anti-transphobia don't misgender me thing. And perhaps by taking accountability for all that manhood is -- the good and the bad, the euphoric and the just neutral, you will influence her in a positive way to think about these things more neutrally. If not, well, that's her fuckin loss.

[mecharust]

There is this thing in fandom spaces I noticed where it doesn't really feel like a community anymore but more... corporate. The transformers fandom is not an exception. An artist having hurt feelings over their fanart being copied is not something that needs to be discussed under "what is legal" or not. We are not businesses trying to sue each other we are all people that like the same toy line.

As artists, the line of inspiration and plagiarism can be a fine line, however just like most things in life- Proper communication and acknowledging the humanity in each other is the proper way of dealing with issues like this. If you hurt someones feelings your first priority is making sure what that person needs to not feel hurt anymore. Not trying to damage control the situation to appease the public eye. BE CONSIDERATE OF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE SHARING A SPACE WITH.

I see people that make these fandom spaces feel weirdly cold and uncaring, So i decided to also take the time to mention and discuss my inspirations that helped me form my own voice when it comes to my transformers related art & writing- Because I think we as artist should learn on how to give back when we take inspiration:

DerrickJWyatt:

Starting off with the late Derrick- I enjoyed his unique and recognizable art style even outside of transformers, but it was Transformers Animated that became my first exposure to the franchise when I was watching cartoons- It's unique setting made me experiment with how I want my AU to feel like. I studied the concept art when I was trying to get a grasp on how I want my designs to look, which helped me create my own unique design philosophy that still feels like it is transformers while also being its own thing. His twitter is still up for those that want to see his doodles and fun ideas.

@disformer:

Incredible artist with the ability to make drawing robots look so effortless, which if you are an artist you'd understand how having the ability to make something look effortless- requires a lot of effort. The resources they posted are so incredibly helpful- This video he made saved my life when trying to draw these stupid robot ppl- recommended to anyone who hates drawing squares and is lazy <3.

@combaticon:

The- and I mean THE transformers writer. If you haven't read her work you are missing out because her writing comes from such a genuine place, where even tragedy and uncomfortable feelings are written beautifully to capture the complex and messy experience that is life. Writing that embraces queerness without sanding off the edges to make it appealing to the masses. Combaticon writes stories that can only be written at home, for you and your friends. It makes me enjoy sharing my own writing to connect with others in the same way her work spoke to me.

@drill-teeth-art:

Amazing and creative artworks that highlight body positivity not seen much in fandoms. Drill-Teeth creates Transformers designs that all look incredibly interesting, distinct and unique! Also just incredible artworks done digitally as well with a pen and paper. I have been getting into drawing more on paper myself because of the amazing work I saw drill make. (However my analog art could use some work </3)

There are more I could mention but I would probs be sitting here all day- I hope any artist who reads this decides to think about how they can give back to a community that inspired them. Peace and love everyone

[ms-demeanor]

i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

[dross-the-fish]

Dealing with casual aphobia feels so weird because it doesn't look like the kneejerk horrified homophobia or transphobia you normally get from bigoted people so it's easier to ignore for awhile but I find that it does eventually get under my skin. "If you're alive you have a kink, everyone has kinks they just don't talk about it!" - No? I don't have kinks or fetishes, I don't even really have a sense of physical attraction and with each passing year my interest in having any kind of sex at all disappears. My relationship to sex is not the same as that of Allosexual people. "Celibacy is admirable! It's commendable," -It's not really being celibate if the interest isn't there. I'm not abstaining from anything. I don't think there is any virtue in abstinence or that there is a moral superiority attached to the presence or absence of sex. Being sexual is normal and healthy for most people. "You're a prude" -No, I'm just not horny. I have no strong feelings about how active other people are. It's no different from realizing I don't like chocolate cake so I just don't buy chocolate cake ever. I don't want to ban all discussion or consumption of chocolate cake. Why does that make YOU so uncomfortable? "You should see a doctor! That can't be healthy!"-I'm not unhappy with my lack of sexual interest. it's only a problem for me because other people keep acting like it is. "But you write NSFW!" -Sex as a topic is still interesting and it is a facet of some character's identity. I think it's worth discussing and exploring how some characters communicate emotions through sex. I even enjoy reading about it sometimes. I just don't actually want to have it. "You just need the right partner!" My current partner is the right partner. Sex is just not part of the equation because it never needed to be. "But asexuals CAN have sex" -why is it always this and never "Allosexuals can live without it."? And if you truly can't live without it stop trying to hook up with asexual people!

"That's not fair to anyone who starts a relationship with you" -been in a happy queer-platonic with my aromatic partner for 10 years, thanks.

[the-conversation-pod]

The Untamed Episodes: The First Life

AND WE'RE BACK

It's been a hot minute since we dropped an episode, so we're back to talk about a project that has stuck in fandom for years. We finally got NiNi to watch The Untamed, so grab your snacks and come listen to her talk about everyone's hair along with our friends @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm. We'll be discussing censorship in media as we try to run through the big overview of Wei Wuxian's first life.

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:00:55 - Introduction 00:03:55 - Censorship in Media: A Global View 00:12:37 - The MoDaoZuShi Phenomenon 00:24:33 - The Big Picture 00:33:36 - The First Life 00:40:07 - The First Life: Thoughts and Impressions 00:46:21 - The First Life: WangXian and Other Fucked Up Love Stories 01:01:17 - The First Life: Various Random Musings 01:11:02 - Outro: Notes From the Future

The Conversation Transcripts!

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

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

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

Ben

I'm Ben, the media critic.

NiNi

I’m NiNi, the VIIBs queen.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

So if you like to dive deep into queer stories…

NiNi

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

Ben

If you just enjoy simping for attractive people…

NiNi

We believe in simping!

Ben

Tune in!

00:00:55 - Introduction

Ben 

And we're back. This week we're doing a little bit of a retrospective. We're gonna be covering The Untamed. Friend of the pod, pod team member, and troll of the pod, Shan—who is of course here. 

NiNi

Say hi, Shan.

Shan 

Hi, people!

Ben 

Shan mentioned during our Diamond League episode that this was a huge oversight in the pod's discussion history and so we successfully bullied NiNi into finally watching it. And she managed to watch the whole thing.

Shan 

I'm so impressed.

NiNi 

It was a struggle. It was a lot. There were some episodes in the middle where I was just like, ooh, okay, I'm just gonna have to push through. But I made it.

Shan 

You sure did.

Ben 

Because The Untamed is such a large project to discuss, we brought an additional clown along with us. Everyone welcome back Bookworm. 

Say hi, Bookworm.

Bookworm 

Hi people!

Ben 

Bookworm, despite how busy she is, has been following Shan's [laughs] recommended BLs list for like two years now. And then for about, like, a one month period, we completely lost Bookworm to reading all five of these books. And then during Christmas of ‘24, I think, you guys watched all of The Untamed in like a week.

Bookworm 

We did it in two weeks, I think. Six episodes a day.

NiNi 

That is commitment.

Shan

Bookworm has very short windows where she actually has a lot of free time. So we took advantage of the holiday season.

Bookworm 

She trapped me between Christmas and New Year's.

Shan 

I just strapped her to a chair, and said [Bookworm laughs] we're watching the episodes, let's go.

NiNi 

She's good at doing that. 

Bookworm 

Sure is. 

NiNi

That's how she got Ben to watch Goblin.

Bookworm

Wow, that was a moment. That was so good.

[NiNi laughs]

Shan 

I'm feeling really proud of my accomplishments.

[NiNi laughs]

Ben 

Goblin was at least better than Coffee Prince, ‘cause there was a moment when I was watching Coffee Prince, around like episode 10, where I'm like, I'm over this show!

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan 

He was so mad because he was waiting for the turn and it hadn't come yet and he was getting so frustrated.

NiNi 

Episode 10 of a kdrama? That's not when it happens. Come on!

Shan 

He just didn't understand the rhythms yet. He pushed through, and then he came around and ended up loving the show.

Ben 

Goblin did a much better job of not losing me during the episode 10 phenomenon because they had great Bonds Between Men content. Every time I'm like, “ooh, I'm getting a little tired of this modern angst shit,” they're like, “here's a scene from the past with that one guy you love.” There he is. There's my boy.

NiNi 

I think that's a good segue into what we're gonna talk about here, Bonds Between Men, because this is a show that works on multiple levels deliberately because of details that we're gonna talk about. So let's dive into talking about The Untamed.

00:04:14 - Censorship in Media: A Global View

Ben 

Normally on this show, as you all know, we would do like a “Ben, what the fuck is the show about?” and I'd give some kind of snarky blurb about it, and then we get into it. Because we're talking about the biggest Chinese BL that exists, we're gonna unpack a ton of the context around our understanding of Chinese censorship. 

Shan, you've done a bunch of the background on this one. Take us in.

Shan 

So first, just an acknowledgement up top that censorship exists in all media. That there are standards in every country that have to be met for anything that is aired, on public television in particular, in movies. This is not a thing that is unique to China. And most Asian dramas are censored to some extent according to whatever the social norms of their home country are. 

That said, Chinese censorship is especially strict. It's considered one of the worst state censorship models in the world. The Chinese Communist Party monitors everything that comes out. They're very often concerned with curtailing political opposition and promoting Chinese nationalism—if you include more of it, you can get away with doing stuff they don't like. They want to prevent negative depictions of Chinese history. They're also very often just doing basic morality policing around sex, in particular. So, even in heterosexual romance media, this applies. You see very little sex in cdramas, even when they're het. Angle kisses, stuff like that still exist even in het media. Of course this is even more severe for queer media. Typically, you're not even gonna see things like onscreen kisses in queer media out of China. 

They also put limits on things like magic, which is very relevant for the story we're gonna talk about today. It has to be depicted so as to avoid seeming more powerful than the state or promoting superstition. This is very often why characters who use magic are not really allowed to have happy endings. You can't show a character thriving because of their use of magic in Chinese media. So sometimes magic is changed out completely in these stories for quasi-scientific explanations, or magic is used and then the characters have ambiguous or sad endings in order to counterbalance that.

On top of those censorship norms, there's also law around pornography. Pornography is completely illegal in China. Technically, since the mid 2010s, homosexuality is not criminalized legally anymore in China, but there are a lot of really vague laws that still exist around abnormal sexual behavior, quote unquote, and obscenity, quote unquote, that allow for queer media to be targeted by censors. 

In terms of Chinese BL shows, there were a handful of them prior to The Untamed that did make it to air. Most of them adapted from novels—we'll get a little bit more into that in a minute. In 2017, in the middle of the airing of Addicted, is when the censorship crackdown on BL really took shape. That show was very popular and was actually depicting things like kisses between men and it immediately got terminated, yanked off the air, and then the censorship laws got much stricter. 

Y'all probably remember that, NiNi and Ben. I think you were around in fandom when that went down.

Ben 

I sure was.

NiNi 

I wasn't quite there yet, I watched Addicted after the fact and I didn't have the context.

Shan 

You were confused, right? [laughs] You're like, why is this show such a big deal?

Ben 

Both of those guys kind of disappeared from acting for years afterwards. 

Shan 

They got blacklisted. 

Ben

They're only just now starting to work again.

Shan

Yeah. So that show got yanked off mid-airing right after the first kiss aired on TV. And then after that, you never saw anything like that. Even the few Chinese BLs that managed to get released after that, you don't see things like on air kisses or acknowledgement of sex at all. 

It's hard for a lot of these shows to get made in the first place. Even after they get made, a lot of them don't end up going to air or they start airing and then get yanked off TV very quickly. There are many, many danmei adaptations sitting on the shelf in China. There are shows that have been made and will never get released. It's a really rough environment for creators who are trying to make this queer content and get it out in the world.

Ben 

Let's add some additional context, if we can, about censorship outside of China. Since we have two Americans and two non-Americans here. 

Bookworm or NiNi, do you have any specific cultural memories of censorship in media from your home countries? ‘Cause I have a few American ones I will of course bitch about.

NiNi 

I'm gonna let Bookworm go first because India and censorship? This is a big one.

Bookworm 

I know, right. So in India, the most prominent kind of censorship that I've noticed in media is almost a self-censorship by the creators themselves around things that deal with caste or religion, and we very rarely get homosexual depictions, but whatever we do get, it's almost always a tragedy. I've never seen a gay character have a happy ending in Indian media yet. When we have inter-caste romance depiction, for example, the story will struggle between the realities of how caste can affect these relationships and how it will be received and how difficult their lives will be made, and giving them a happy ending. In India, even though openly we say that it's bad and we shouldn't be clinging to the caste systems now in the 21st century, it's still there. And even though it's not said out loud, most of the powerful media producers and people who can fund this, they tend to be people who are from upper caste. So, if you make something that is openly against their caste, it's just never gonna come out. 

So, when I watched The Untamed, it was very relatable to watch something where they wanted to do more, but you can see that they just can't.

NiNi 

In Trinidad, we don't have a very big recorded media tradition. A lot of our art is theatre-based. And you can find pretty much most things in the theatre, but it's mostly for comedy sake so there's a lot of sex farce, that kind of thing. In terms of recorded media there isn't that much, but what there is, you don't really see, like, actors kiss that much. But that’s not a censorship thing because t's not like they would not be able to air that. It's just a question of the traditions being different. There's no standards boards or things like that, but we don't put very much on the air anyway.

Ben 

In America they would just lie. 

NiNi 

All men do is lie. [laughs]

Ben

They pretend that the advertisers or the nebulous white midwesterner won't want to watch things like Pose, or if a gay actor says something out of line they hurriedly cancel their show despite the show being really fucking good. Having to pick up the scraps that the establishment here is willing to make each year is incredibly frustrating. There's a lot to be said about top-down state level censorship, but I don't think it's inherently worse or better than this.

Shan 

Well yeah, there's state censorship and then there's censorship due to trying to attract sponsors and advertising dollars. But it ends up in the same kind of results of not having honest depictions in media. And I think American media is very susceptible to the latter.

NiNi 

There's also some interesting things there between how sex is censored and how violence is censored in Western media. I wouldn't say that it's not censored, but you can get away with a lot more violence than you can with sex.

Ben 

I have a lot of feelings about the MPAA, so we're not gonna get into that, but let's just point out that you can have somebody run through a building shooting up everybody and get a PG-13 rating as long as there's no blood. But if two gay people even look at each other too long, that's an R rating immediately.

Shan 

Rated R, mmhmm. This stuff is not new, it is not unique to any one country, it exists everywhere. But currently, in 2025, China has one of the strictest state censorship models. And so that's the context under which Chinese BL is made. And, the context under which The Untamed was released.

00:14:54 - The Mo Dao Zu Shi Phenomenon

Ben 

All right, now let's get into Mo Dao Zu Shi properly. This has been around for awhile.

Shan 

So, danmei is the term that is meant to describe Chinese literature that features male/male romance within a whole bunch of different genres. It's a very broad term, danmei. It just means male/male romance. These typically are published as web novels, usually serialized, written mostly by and targeted mostly to a female audience. 

Danmei exists in a kind of a gray space legally in China. It's both queer and pornographic, so it's technically not allowed, but there's not really an enforcement mechanism. The authors stay anonymous because of course, if they're caught publishing this stuff, there could be serious repercussions. 

A lot of danmei novels have become available in recent years to an international audience. First, via fan translations that were done just purely out of love. And then those translations got passed around via the online whisper network of international folks who were interested in these stories. And this genre became so popular that there are now official English translations of some of these books being made. There's a publishing company called Seven Seas that has acquired the rights for many of the most popular danmeis and are publishing them over time. And so that is how this book, Mo Dao Zu Shi, aka Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, became much more widely available to an English speaking audience. 

This book originally started in 2015 and the writer is Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It was so popular that it has been, over the years, translated into over a dozen languages. It was first passed around the international audience via a very popular fan translation, and then became officially published in English starting in 2021. Made the New York Times bestseller list, expanded the audience for this story even further. This is a story that is set in a genre called xianxia which is a popular Chinese media genre about humans in historical China who are called cultivators, which basically means that they do martial arts enhanced by magic. They have paranormal, spiritual, physical powers that help them achieve immortality.

This story was so popular that it's had a bunch of adaptations. It's had a webcomic, an audio drama, an animated series and a spinoff to that, an audio book, a mobile game, and of course, The Untamed, the live action show, which we are gonna be discussing today. And there are additional adaptations still being announced. We just found out that there's gonna be a Japanese stage adaptation in the theater, which I'm very curious to see what that's gonna be like. 

So this is an extremely popular story that has really gone global through fan word of mouth. It's a huge deal in terms of its reach and its enduring popularity with fans.

Ben 

You have no idea how much time Shan and Bookworm spent trying to get all of these notes in order. 

Shan 

It's a lot to cover! 

Ben

[laughs] We had a whole side thing with Twig about, like, a canceled international tour that was gonna happen before COVID.

Shan

I didn't even know about that.

Ben 

Let’s establish when everybody came to this. So, I came to The Untamed through normal Tumblr BL sphere around episode 25ish of the drama, I believe? 

Ben

Shan, when did you come to The Untamed?

Shan 

It's hard for me to remember now. I've been so up in this story’s business for years now that it's really hard for me to actually untangle in my brain when I got to certain versions of it and how. But I didn't watch it live. I definitely binged it after the whole thing was out. So I think I probably first watched the series in 2020 or 2021, read the novel and then watched the series again. I was watching a lot of Asian dramas. I had started getting into BL and Netflix just told me to watch this. They put it right on top and I was like, “oh this is interesting, I haven't seen anything quite like this before.” It's kind of remarkable that I'm just sitting over here in the United States and Netflix is telling me to watch this Chinese BL web series. 

This aired in China on Tencent Video. But it was so, so popular. It became one of the highest earning dramas of 2019. Over time, it passed 10 billion views. Netflix picked it up in late 2019, brought it to a much broader international audience. And that's how people like me saw it. This is a story that in both novel and show form spread fiercely by word of mouth. People just loved it so much that it kept getting picked up and brought to new audiences.

When did you first hear about this show, Bookworm?

Bookworm

I think I was just vaguely aware of a very long Chinese drama that was on Netflix. I possibly could have seen it on my recommendations before getting into watching BL at all. I started watching BL only in 2022. So I definitely was not in the fandom when this released live. 

So how I was introduced to this, the time was December 2023. And I just went to Shan’s DMs to talk about how my BTS bias was going to the military. And she was like, here you go. 

Shan 

Something to distract you. [laughs]

Bookworm 

“Here's a picture of this man who's so beautiful and always wears white for some reason. You can think about this man.” And it was like, “what do I do to know more about this man?” And she was like, “I know exactly where I should send you.” And she just directed me to all the books. So yeah, that's how I spent my 2023 holidays, just locked in my room like a gremlin inhaling all the books.

[Ben laughs]

Shan 

I did not remember that I showed you Wangji because V was going to the military. [laughs]

Bookworm

That's exactly what happened. You trapped a freshly grieving army wife!

NiNi 

it just amazes me how Shan is so good at tempting people. She knows exactly how to get people to do things. It's a little bit scary.

Bookworm 

The whole thing was done in 10 days. I genuinely don't think I slept for more than maybe four to five hours. [laughs]

Ben 

[laughs] You did not. You were talking to us in a haze. You screaming about sections.

Shan 

The thing about Bookworm is she also likes to live blog her book reading. So we were along for the ride. [laughs]

Bookworm 

That's right. Every time something happened, I bothered them. It's kind of their fault. Shan put me through it. Like, she has to suffer.

Shan 

I had to be there for emotional support after doing that to you.

Bookworm 

Exactly.

NiNi 

That's the thing, Shan's gonna, like, be the temptress that is seducing you with the apple, but then she'll be right there with you when you fall apart. [laughs]

Bookworm

Exactly.

Shan 

It's my duty.

Ben

NiNi, what did you know about this whole experience from just sort of seeing it in the background noise of BL constantly for the last five years before you sat down and engaged with it?

NiNi 

So I don't think it's any surprise to anybody who listens to this show that I don't watch cdrama, but this show is sort of inescapable. I have friends who are not BL fans, who are not Asian drama fans, who watch this and rave about it and talk about it all the time. This thing is a fucking monster and completely inescapable. And I was just like, “eh yes, I know everybody says it's good. It probably is really good. I don't know how I feel about censorship like this. I don't know if this is something I wanna watch, if it's gonna frustrate me.” I was aware of it out there in the world and aware of how big it was. But, “eh, not sure it's for me.” And then after the Diamond League, I was basically Shan’d into watching it. [laughs]

We're gonna use Shan’d from now on, like to Shan somebody.

Bookworm 

That is a good verb. We are gonna use that.

NiNi 

We're gonna coin a new term, to Shan somebody.

Shan 

I'm just here to enrich your lives with this amazing media that you need to see. And NiNi ended up enjoying this way more than I thought she would. So I was very pleased.

Ben 

We're gonna jump ahead slightly and tell on NiNi. NiNi is now watching Word of Honor.

[all laugh]

Shan 

She sure is!

Bookworm 

She is!

NiNi

I am. [laughs]

Shan

The evil plan is proceeding very nicely.

NiNi 

I will say though, Word of Honor is like the Passions to the Days of Our Lives that is The Untamed. 

Shan 

Yes! 

NiNi

And anybody who does not understand what that means, I'm so sorry for you.

Shan

It's exactly right.

Bookworm 

It's me. I'm the one who doesn't understand what that means, but it's fine.

Shan 

These are American soap operas that NiNi is referencing.

Ben

American soaps that have been on forever.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi 

Basically, Days of Our Lives is wild, Passions is lower quality and wilder.

Shan 

This show, this story, the book, all of it. It's ubiquitous if you hang out in fandom spaces online. You cannot avoid it if you are in those spaces. It is one of the biggest fandoms. It's certainly the biggest BL fandom on the internet.

Ben 

When we watched this in 2019, I was minding my own business, watchin’ shit like Until We Meet Again and Trapped. And then they started posting all these gif sets of all these Chinese boys with really long wigs and very clean outfits. There was a lot of screaming. I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Why is every goddamn lesbian on tumblr howling about this show?

Shan 

Why are the girls freaking out?

NiNi

And we all know from listening to this show that Ben listens when lesbians talk.

Shan 

That's right.

Ben 

I was like, I don't know what is happening, but every goddamn girl in BL is losing their minds over a censored Chinese BL in 2019. Have we not learned? [laughs] And they wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. And I'm like, all right, that's enough. Around episode 20 to 25. 

I got intrigued by the Bonds Between Men stuff. There are some gif sets at the time. Like, this looks like Man Angst. Hold on, I'm intrigued now. Let me go check this out. 

I remember going through The Untamed loop. Being kind of overwhelmed with details in the first few episodes. And then we went, “okay, we're in a flashback sequence. Guess we'll be here for like an episode or two.” We weren't. And then I ended up catching up with where the show was around episode 38, which was great timing for me. Like, I ended up catching up to the show right around the time we got into the present. And I was like, “I have context’ and then watched the rest of the show [laughs] live with everybody else and had a pretty good time. And then like a week after it finished, I ended up watching the show again. Because I feel like I needed to reprocess it.

I don't think I was prepared for how sticky the show has been for fandom itself. I guess I shouldn't have been because fandom really loves to fill in the blanks on stuff. That's their favorite thing. I grew up watching a lot of Chinese action and a lot of wuxia films, so I had a good time, but I was not expecting this to be the show for everyone. I like the show a fair amount, but I was very surprised by this becoming one of the biggest BLs of all time.

Shan 

It's not only the fill in the blank stuff, but it's also that there's just so many characters, so many relationships, so many dynamics that are just great fodder for meta and fanfic and just, thinking. There's just so much here and I think that's why it has endured for so long.

00:28:42 - The Big Picture

Ben

Okay, we are going to now attempt to talk about the show.

NiNi 

I'm glad you said attempt, bestie, because there's just so much here.

Shan 

Please don't get mad at us for whatever we inevitably leave out.

Ben 

Let's just get that out of the way. We will not be able to discuss everything that happens in a 50 episode drama adapted from a five book complex novel series. We will be covering some highlights of things that are interesting to us and doing some comparisons along the way.

This is a pretty big story and at its core, it's a mystery. So, if you've been holding off on watching this and you feel some kind of way about spoiler culture—I personally don't subscribe to it—but we will be talking about the details of this show for the rest of the episode. So, if you'd like to resume this later, go ahead and pause, grab a shit ton of snacks, go watch The Untamed, [laughs] and then come back.

[all laugh]

Bookworm 

Be prepared to not sleep for a long time.

NiNi

Two weeks is the bare minimum. 

Ben 

You have been warned. All right. So, The Untamed is primarily a story about a talented young cultivator named Wei Wuxian who was kind of in a high ranking role within one of these major clans that organize themselves around cultivation. They have a role in their society where they help manage supernatural phenomena and protect regular people from supernatural and ghost related bullshit. 

There is an expected way that you're supposed to practice and study cultivation. The most powerful clan who wears a lot of red is like, “that's it, we're taking over everything,” and then begins murdering everyone. A lot of things happen. Wei Wuxian ends up developing demonic cultivation in the book, rediscovers it in the show—we'll talk about that later—and helps the not-red clan defeat them, after which we end up in the complex politics that follow after a major power shift. 

Eventually Wei Wuxian dies in a major confrontation after he kills thousands of people, and then 16 years later in the show, he is brought back, reuniting with some of his close friends and allies—because this is a BL romance/not romance—as they go on an investigation to figure out why this cursed hand is trying to kill everybody. 

That is the simplest overview I can give of a very complicated show.

Shan 

You did good, bestie. That's about the best you could do.

NiNi 

I did not look at the timer when you started talking, so I do not know exactly how long that took.

Ben

It was about three minutes. I was trying to do it under three. There are a shit ton of characters in this. Wei Wuxian is a very likable protagonist with very clear relationship dynamics with every character. So there's a lot to really dig into.

Shan 

I think you should reiterate for folks what the experience of watching The Untamed is like. There's this very famous tweet that I think we should give some credit to that described it perfectly.

Ben 

We'll post the screenshot and a link to it in the transcript. Gavia Baker Whitelaw, is a film critic who runs her own podcast, she has her own Tumblr blog, I'll link to hers on here, she goes by @hellotailor. I'm a big fan of Gavia's writing, I really like the way she engages with media. Gavia went through the same experience as the rest of us in early 2020 of like, “what is this show?!” [laughs]

So Gavia starts watching The Untamed and is live blogging on Twitter. “What is this nonsense that I'm watching? What is happening?” And the user who went by Dr. Kate Wild at the time writes, “There's three stages to watching The Untamed. Stage one, this is nonsense. This is very bad.”

That's like episodes one and two.

“Stage two, this is quite watchable nonsense.” That's around episodes four to eight. 

And then “Stage three, I have never cared about anything more in my life.” [NiNi laughs] That happens for different people at different times. 

Shan

NiNi, it was taking her a while to get to stage three. And I said, “Don't worry, NiNi. Stage three comes for all of us at different times. You will get there.” And she did. [laughs]

Ben 

When was stage three for you, Shan?

Shan 

Okay, so first of all, I am a Lan Wangji devotee. I love that man. He owns my heart. So from episode one, as soon as he appeared, I was like, “okay, hell yeah, that's my guy. I'm here, I'm seated.” But in terms of when the story kinda took over my brain, I think that really happened for me during the arc where Wei Wuxian is liberating the Wen prisoners of war and he meets Lan Wangji on the Qiongqi Path in the rain and they have a very sad and tense conversation before Wangji decides to let him leave with the prisoners, but does not leave with him. 

That scene—which by the way is unique to the show—just drilled itself into my brain so deep and I was never normal again, ever, and I never will be. That was the point when stage three took root for me and I became obsessed with this media, and that obsession will last for my whole life.

Ben 

I think it was during the cave arc when Wei Wuxian made Lan Wangji vomit blood. I'm like, “that's way too fucking gay. I have to watch this little man for the rest of the show.” [laughs] 

Shan 

I feel like most people are super in by that sequence, too.

Ben

That whole section is pretty good though, between the handling of the hostage arc, the blow up in the cave, and then the sacking of Lotus Pier. That's a really strong section for people who really like historical political dramas. There's a really strong sense of inevitability at the point at which Wei Wuxian in particular is thrust into the situation, because he's not a passive person. But you can feel the next 15 episodes about to unfold.

Shan 

What about you, Bookworm?

Bookworm 

For me I think it's different because I read the books first and the books are structured quite differently from how the show is structured. So the show does it very linear. Once you jump into the flashbacks you just keep going for 33 episodes and then you emerge, as Ben said, with context. But in the books it interweaves between the present and the flashbacks and the structure kind of gives way to the author releasing information in like very small amounts to keep the tension and intrigue going. 

I'm just the kind of person who starts screaming from the very first moment a question appears on my book or on my show. Like if there is something that needs to be revealed, I need to have it. Just tell me. I don't care if it's a 50 episode show, I don't care if it's a 10 book series. I just start vibrating from the moment I see the puzzle that needs to be solved. 

So in the books, Wei Wuxian, when he's in Mo Xuanyu’s body, people are not gonna recognize him as Wei Wuxian. So he was just like coasting on that and he was doing all sorts of shenanigans with Lan Zhan. But we get to a point where Lan Zhan calls him Wei Ying and he just freezes and he's like, how did you know that it was me? And Lan Zhan just tells him, “You're gonna have to think for yourself.” And that's it. That was stage three.

Shan 

Classic. And that dynamic keeps coming up over and over again through the whole story.

Bookworm 

I was like, “oh my god, how did he know? Just tell me, just tell me!” So that was my stage three. 

What about you, NiNi? 

Shan 

NiNi’s came later, right?

NiNi 

Mine came very late. Stage three for me came when Wei Wuxian is hanging off the cliff and Lan Zhan is trying to save him. And this implacable man just breaks and his face just completely changes. And I'm just like, “okay, I'm in.” 

Shan 

Yeah, it was definitely Lan Zhan’s emotional break for you, right?

NiNi 

Oh, most definitely. From the outside, he appears controlled, even though it's very clear to anybody who's watching this show that this man is losing his mind at all times. And in this case, he just cracks. Because he's about to lose this man and he knows it. And that's when I was just like, “okay, I'm in.”

00:39:30 - The First Life

Ben 

We gotta get into the overall set of arcs that we went through in the show. Wei Wuxian is our viewpoint character and we've gotten really caught up in the romance between him and Wangji. But at the core, this is a political power drama where there's a lot of different players vying for control. Wei Wuxian is the wild card because he actually doesn't value political power that much. We at least need to establish, like, what does everybody else give a shit about.

Shan 

We're gonna divide this because there's two different time periods. So let's start with the first life of Wei Wuxian, the first time period. 

When the show starts, we are dropped into the story in a very confusing manner. Wei Wuxian is resurrected. He's in a new body 16 years after he died. He doesn't know why the fuck he's back or what's going on. He runs into lots of friends and allies and enemies and frenemies and he is running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He's confused. We're confused. You're not really supposed to understand what's going on in those first couple episodes, but there's actually a ton of information packed into them. As Ben said, once you have context, if you go back and watch them, there's so much information in those first couple episodes.

NiNi 

This is the “this is nonsense” stage.

Shan 

Exactly. This is the stage one. Where you're like, “What the fuck is going on? Why are all these people running around like this? I don't understand anything.” [laughs] It's intended to be kind of disorienting. 

Then you jump into this long flashback, which is about 30 episodes long. So you get the political power struggle between the great clans. There are five of them: the Jiang which Wei Wuxian is part of, the Lan, which Lan Wangji is part of, the Nie, the Jin, the Wen. That main political power struggle is driven by the Wens trying to do a hostile takeover of the other clans. They burn the Cloud Recesses, they storm the Unclean Realm, they sack Lotus Pier, and then the war—the Sunshot Campaign—is a response to that, the other clans joining hands to try to stop the Wens from trying to take over the cultivation world. Lots of complex dynamics between the clans going on there that we will not get into that culminates in this Battle of Nightless City.

Alongside that political power struggle, we have Wei Wuxian's rise to power and his fall from grace. He is incredibly smart. He's a cultivation prodigy. He is also not as reverent about the traditional ways of doing things. He's very interested in unorthodox cultivation methods, including demonic cultivation, which is very much looked down on. As the war played out and as the Wens take control, he was part of fighting them alongside his struggles with controlling his own power. He took great exception to the aftermath of the war, the treatment of the Wen prisoners of war, the more innocent Wen clan members who were not part of this, who are just regular folks or weak cultivators, medical cultivators who didn't actually hurt anyone but were treated badly because they were Wens by the other clans. So he intervened to protect those folks. That is what led to him retreating from the cultivation world to the Burial Mounds to live with the Wens, resurrecting Wen Ning and ultimately setting himself up to be a scapegoat and get ambushed by the other clans, because they were very unhappy with him.

Alongside that, we have a couple very personal storylines going on. One to do with Wei Wuxian's family relationships and the implosion of his clan family, the Jiang family. They are his adopted family, the heir, who is Jiang Cheng, and sister Jiang Yanli, these are his adoptive siblings. It's a very fraught family relationship. His adoptive mother resents him partly because of who his mother is and partly because he outshines her son, the sect heir. When Lotus Pier—their family home—is attacked, both of the Jiang parents die. The clan is basically decimated, Jiang Cheng loses his core, and Wei Wuxian decides to pull a real big noble idiocy. Sacrifice his own life, basically, for his brother, give him his core, tell nobody he did this, and then start cultivating on the demonic path to try to come up with another source of power as part of his survival. His relationship with his brother is, in particular, one of the most interesting and dynamic and complicated relationships of the show. And he has a very, very deep love for his adoptive sister, which of course ends up coming back to bite him when, as a result of him losing control of his powers and starting this battle at Nightless City, his sister is killed in the chaos. Huge traumatic event, causes him to go off the deep end and destroys his relationship with his brother. 

Alongside all that, one more big storyline, of course, is the unfulfilled romance between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. We get alongside all this political power struggle stuff, some actually really lovely moments of them. First, meeting each other as teens, Wei Wuxian very infatuated with Lan Zhan right from the beginning, but didn't really understand what his feelings meant. Lan Wangji, of course, did understand what the feelings meant [laughs] and was not happy about it. 

NiNi 

Oh he was so mad, friend. He was so pissed. He's like, “Why do I like this wastrel?”

[NiNi and Shan laugh]

Shan 

“Goddamn it! Why is it you?” 

So yeah, big gay panic on poor Wangji's side and big oblivious nonsense on Wuxian’s side. But then we see them over time bond over their shared values. They actually believe in a lot of the same core ideas. They end up doing adventures together. They defeat bad guys together. They survive together and support each other. They kind of develop, like, a deep friendship that on Wangji's side is always very consciously also romantic love and on Wuxian's side is a little bit more oblivious. 

When Wuxian loses his core and starts doing demonic cultivation, there is a divide that comes between them. Wangji does not understand these decisions. Wuxian will not tell him why he's doing any of this stuff. So they end up in this very tense dynamic where they're fighting all the time, but they don't wanna be fighting because they really care about each other. They spend some time together and attempt to reconnect, but of course everything ends in despair when Wei Wuxian basically jumps off the cliff after his sister dies at Nightless City and gives up on his life. And that is how the first life arc completes.

00:46:32 - The First Life: Thoughts and Impressions

Ben 

What I think works well with the drama, I personally like dropping us in and just being like, there's a lot of shit going on. You guys are gonna have to figure out a lot of shit over time. And I actually, in retrospect, like the very long 30-something episode flashback sequence. I think if they had tried to maintain the back and forth nature of the source material, the audience who maybe missed an episode or two here or there would be confused as hell. 

I also think it's a pretty clever choice because you start in the present and there's way too much shit going on. And then they flash back like, “so anyway, they're in school.” And everybody's like, “okay, I understand school. Let's meet some kids.” I think that's a really smart adaptation choice. Everybody may not understand what's going on in the world of cultivation, but everybody knows what it's like to be bored in a classroom with a stuffy old man telling you to write a bunch of rules down.

NiNi 

I kinda had the opposite reaction. I understand why they structured the story the way that they did, but for me, if they had started at Cloud Recesses, I would have been fine. And I feel like I would have had less of a who's on first kind of thing going. It took me a really long time to clue into what the story was even doing, because I was so confused. I didn't even understand that the Cloud Recesses stuff was a flashback at first. To me, if they had done the story more linearly, I would have gotten it. I understand why they did it the way that they did to set up a hook and to do this reverberation throughout the story of showing that these things happen over and over again. But for me, I would have been fine with a more linear narrative.

Shan 

Part of that is also just your unfamiliarity with cdrama tropes and, like, the signifiers of things like age and timeline shifts and class stuff. One thing I think is really funny, NiNi, is that you cued in so quickly to what the hair was telling you, which I thought was just so funny. [laughs]

NiNi 

This is the only reason I survived. I was reading the show and all the characters through the hairstyles. So I saw Wei Wuxian and his wild little tendrils and I was like, “okay, this guy's a rebel.” And then Lan Wangji with his very structured beehive. I was like, “okay, I know who you are, sir.” And then all the different characters, depending on how their hair was styled, I could get a sense of who they were as a character. If this person is mischievous, if they're playful, if they're, like, rules focused, I could get all of that through the hair. So that was actually really good. [laughs]

I could not remember anybody's names for the longest time. So I was in, like, the chat saying, “what is Beehive doing?” Or “Tendrils is acting a fool today.” And they would know exactly what I was talking about.  [laughs]

Shan 

It really worked for you. 

NiNi

It really did work.

Shan

NiNi was tracking as Wangji's beehive was getting bigger and bigger.

NiNi 

It was massive at one point. I was like, “oh, you are really trying to intimidate people now with this.” Like, that's what's happening here.

Shan 

It's true. Like, their hair changes with their status and with their age, right? So as Wangji attains higher status in the cultivation world, his hair pieces get more elaborate and huge. It's actually a very effective visual language.

NiNi 

It's like the Texas rule: the higher the hair, the closer to God.

Ben 

I mean, you're genuinely not wrong.

Shan 

No, it's real. I'm something that cued for you.

NiNi 

It really paid off for me at the end when Wangji comes to Wei Wuxian and his hair is all down and soft. I'm like, “oh my God, he's so in love.” 

Shan 

That's when NiNi just started melting. 

NiNi 

I did, I absolutely did. He had no beehive. He was entirely defenseless, basically, in front of this man. It's a great visual language for when you have this censorship that you can't say certain things and show certain things. Showing what was happening between the characters through the hair was very effective. For me, anyway.

Bookworm 

One of the key moments when NiNi really queued into the beehive and the tendrils thing was when, after Wei Wuxian was thrown into the Burial Mounds and Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji was searching for him, he just walked up to the Wen headquarters and the reveal was just slowly, you see his hair and then he just keeps walking with his sword out and NiNi just was like, “Oh, he has the biggest hive I've ever seen. You guys are done for.” [laughs]

NiNi

Like, these motherfuckers are dead! 

Bookworm

Dead.

NiNi

His beehive is up there, okay—

Shan 

Beehive is up. The sword is out.

NiNi 

He came to kill somebody, that's what's happening right now. [laughs]

Ben 

I think what works so well for me with the show and especially on, like, secondary or tertiary watches, is because you start off being told this is a tragedy. It, I think, puts you in the right mood when you're watching the past stuff. The show opens with people literally fighting each other for a plot token. We're watching cultivators in the midst of a crisis literally stab each other to grasp what they hope will make them stronger than other people. So we're ready for everything that's gonna go wrong because of the opening sequence. It's very well structured and why I think the show got away with so much. We know Wei Wuxian’s gonna die. We know that his brother is gonna be furious with him at his death and we know that this guy who's wearing all these white clothes is gonna be very upset about it when that happens. This set me up very well to anticipate a lot of what was coming.

You end up meeting all these characters in the past and then some of these people are just straight up dead 16 years later. And it's like, well, how did these people die? I thought the war was over. And this leads to the next phase of power play stuff that's happening.

00:53:00 - The First Life: WangXian and Other Fucked Up Love Stories

Ben

While this drama is censored, there is all sorts of really fucked up gay energy all over this story. 

Shan 

Let's talk about how impressively they managed to communicate the romance without being able to show anything explicit.

NiNi 

The romances, because I clocked about four romances in this thing and I was told that I was correct, so I'm so proud of myself. [Nandy and Shan laugh] There's two het romances and two queer romances. The het romances are between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan—

Ben 

I love that they low-key hated their brother-in-law. [NiNi laughs] Like, that's such an appropriate brother experience.

NiNi 

There was nothing low-key about it, bestie. High-key hated. 

Shan 

Zixuan is very immature. He likes Yanli, but he's embarrassed that he likes her. And so he's kind of mean to her. And she, for some fucking reason that I never understood, just really likes him anyway. Which is why her brothers hate him. They do eventually get married and for their extremely brief marriage seem to be happy together.

NiNi 

So brief, so sad. We'll get into that a little bit later.

Ben 

Their marriage is arranged originally by their parents because their families have been allies for at least a generation or two and this is an attempt to strengthen that, and so the parents want these two kids to like each other. It's actually beneficial for the political goals of the families that in the end the kids actually do like each other. But there's complications. People never understand Wei Wuxian's relationship with Yanli, people constantly misread his relationship with her. And then there's the genuine issue of of Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian fucking despising Zixuan for being such a dick to their sister all the time.

NiNi 

I keep thinking about the whole inn thing where he takes over the entire inn and they can't even get a room. It's so fucking dumb. And he's such an asshole about it. [laughs]

Bookworm 

This is the storyline where I was glad that this was here because amongst all the fighting and the flying and the magical shit happening, like fighting a giant tortoise and being generals in war and all of that, this is where you're like, “oh, they're teenagers. Oh, they're so stupid.” [laughs]

NiNi

That's so true! 

Shan 

It's a good reminder that they’re all teenagers.

Bookworm 

Every time Jiang Yanli gives a pass to that man, I'm like, “oh my god. What?”

Ben 

I'm like, “girl, him, really?”

NiNi

You're like, Yanli, stand up! Stand up, girl.

Shan

It gets even wilder in the context of the political power struggle going on and the scapegoating of Wei Wuxian because that's her fucking brother and the Jins are going after him! So it's very wild to me that Yanli decides to marry into the family that is actively hunting her brother. Like, girl.

Ben 

I get the sense that she never understood how serious that was and I think she felt like her one big tantrum solved the problem.

Shan 

I do think that they set this character up well for that to be believable. She is not a strong cultivator. She is not very involved in sect politics. She is a very caring person who just loves who she loves and doesn't really want to deal with the idea that they won't get along. So she just doesn't allow it to be true in her head. And Wei Wuxian loves her. So, he was never going to say to her, “I don't want you to marry that man who's trying [laughs] to hunt me.” Because he wants her to be happy. 

I think her character makes sense. But she's a character that I can never personally get on board with, because I'm just like, “girl, your choices are so bad.” 

Ben 

I feel for her the same way I feel about the messy hets in Coffee Prince. Like, we needed, like, another like pat but tragic het story to make sure that we could get away with this very queer story.

Shan 

That's a good segue to talk about the other very subtle mini romance between Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing. Not in the books, by the way, this was added only for the show. And I think Ben, when we were watching, you commented that you thought it was really there to add an additional layer of heterosexual plausibility and plausible deniability for the show.

NiNi 

I feel like that was part of it, yes, but that is also a romance that doesn't happen. Jiang Cheng is definitely in love with Wen Qing. Wen Qing feels sort of the same, but Wen Qing is also an incredibly practical woman and Jiang Cheng is not saying anything that is going to help her. Like at one point, after everything's gone down with the Wen clan he was just like, “You should leave your clan.” Which is basically him asking her to marry him, and she's like “Dude, really? How do you think this is gonna go? My clan killed your parents, you are the heir and then you're going to bring me there as your wife? That's not gonna work.”

Shan 

I thought it was a really good way to illustrate the rock and hard place that Jiang Cheng was between for all of this show. 

NiNi 

Oh my god, I love this character.

Shan 

Right? He did care about the Wens. He did wanna help. But politically, there was only so much he could do and what he could do was not enough. He knew that. She knew that. They had to accept that. Given the circumstances he was in with a mostly decimated clan, very young and suddenly thrust into having to lead and rebuild the Jiangs, he just didn't have the power and the resources to do something like offer protection to the Wens. He couldn't do it. And he was not willing to risk the total decimation of his clan in order to try.

That's why he and Wei Wuxian ultimately broke, right? Wei Wuxian knew that. Which is why he left the clan to do it on his own. It's really good conflict because you can see that people care and they wanna try, but they just can't do what they think they should or what they want to. Wuxian did do those things and he paid for it, big time.

Ben 

See, and this is why I like it so much. If we're gonna have to do gay tragedy in a story, I need hets to suffer too. [laughs] Nobody's happy! The Jiang family relationship sucks. The leader of the Jin clan is a womanizer and an abuser who doesn't give a shit about all of his bastards he leaves all over the place. He's a gross, nasty man. The only happy heterosexuals we had died within a year of having their baby. 

Ope, nope that's not fair. Mianmian’s doing okay. Good for her.

Bookworm

Mianmian’s doing great. How dare you! [Ben laughs]

Shan 

She's the one happy het person in this show. [NiNi laughs] She's the one.

Bookworm 

The only sensible one.

NiNi 

Because—

Ben 

She supported the gays. 

NiNi

Mianmian stood up for the gays, exactly.

Ben

That's right!

Bookworm 

Yes!

Shan 

And because she left the clan. She said, “Fuck this shit, I'm goin’ rogue” and did her own thing.

Ben

One of the reasons why I think some of the other censored stuff fails is they just don't have enough hetero plausible deniability in them. You have to give the straight audience a bone if you're trying to get stuff past the powers that be. 

Shan 

Let's talk about the third love story that is technically never explicitly confirmed in book canon, but that's in my opinion only because the book is from Wuxian's point of view and he doesn't have the visibility to see it. That is, of course, Meng Yao and Lan Xichen.

NiNi 

My God.

NiNi

The most tragic of all the tragedies.

Bookworm 

Oh no! No no no!

Shan 

Go off, Bookworm.

Bookworm 

I just don't agree with the tragic part of it because for somebody in Lan Xichen’s position, he is so oblivious. He was played like a fiddle by this man. This is, like, dialed to a hundred in the show because the way Meng Yao was played in the show, you see him on screen just smirking around. And I'm like, “This man, he doesn't have good intentions. You can't trust him!”

NiNi 

For me, that's the tragedy. The visual language and everything, like the acting is telling me this is a villain. But I trust Lan Xichen so much that when Lan Xichen trusts Meng Yeo, at first I'm just like, okay, well, there must be a reason. If he trusts him, maybe I'm reading this all wrong or maybe this is a plot because he trusts him so completely. And he is destroyed for that in the end. Like, absolutely destroyed.

Shan 

I actually love that reflection, NiNi. I think that's a really fair way to read it.

Bookworm 

I just want to quickly add that NiNi basically got Nie Mingjue’d into this. Like she basically did the same thing that Nie Mingjue did.

Shan 

[laughs] That's really true. Nie Mingjue, their other sworn brother, who goes along with trusting Meng Yao—even though he clearly doesn't—only because Xichen asks him to.

Bookworm 

And then he got his head chopped off for it!

NiNi 

He got got. [laughs]

Ben 

It's so fun watching people watch this show. NiNi's like, “ooh, I love this Dimples of Doom boy.” And I'm like, okay, she's falling for the dimples. And then he stabs the battalion commander in the middle of a battle. And NiNi's like, “oh, I guess I can't like this boy anymore.” [laughs]

NiNi 

Then he had a really good explanation for it. And I was just like, “okay, maybe I can.” This is the thing!

Shan

He's good at what he does.

Bookworm 

She saw that man stab the commander and then Mingjue called him into the room to throw him out of the sect, and do you remember what NiNi said? She said, “Can you at least treat this man for the stab wound before you throw him out of the sect?”

[all laugh]

NiNi 

By the end, I was like, no, you should have killed him. Banishment was too good. You would have saved a lot of people if you had just killed this man in that moment.

Ben 

I do not feel sorry for Xichen, because there were so many signs and he actively ignored all of them.

Bookworm 

Yes.

Shan 

We'll get into the second life arc, but like it took until the very, very end for him to accept, despite all the evidence he saw, despite everything he witnessed over two decades of being friends with this man. 

To be clear, Meng Yao, who becomes Jin Guangyao when he moves up in the world, he's married to a woman. But Xichen is basically in this hopeless love with him. They're both clan leaders. They cannot become a couple in a real way, because of their position in society. And because of that love, he is so susceptible to manipulation. He just believes whatever Meng Yao tells him, even if it doesn't make sense. He will believe Meng Yao's words over his own lyin’ eyes. 

Ben 

Wangji and Wei Wuxian: “We have evidence that this man is the most evil.” Xichen: “Okay, but have you considered that I love him? Jot that down.”

[all laugh]

Bookworm 

Oh, I hate him!

Shan 

That is exactly what it is! It’s so wild.

Bookworm 

Oh, my god.

NiNi 

That is not even an exaggeration, that is almost exactly how it goes down.

Bookworm 

I think it's a good connective theme between all three of these romances, that people have their own ways to separate the politics of the person that they like. And when they want to protect them, do they wanna choose diplomacy, do they wanna choose brute force, do they wanna choose compromise, what route do they take? You can see that Jiang Cheng, when he came to the proposal, he must know that that's not gonna happen. But you can see that there is this need to protect this woman who he knows is innocent. He also knows that he has this huge weight of clan politics, that he's now the clan leader and his clan is severely wounded and he has to make responsible choices to weigh between whether I choose my clan or whether I choose to do everything I could to protect this person, which is what I want to do in my heart.

My problem with Xichen is he doesn't really separate what the politics or the clan is going through and what Meng Yao is basically feeding him. You shouldn't be this gullible to a person who is basically another important figure in another clan that you know is doing just shady shit. You know they're having prisoners of war. You saw them use them for target practice. You saw them abuse the prisoners of war, beat them and kill them and all of that and this man is a part of that clan. Not just a part, he is pretty high up in the ladder. 

Ben 

He's also a known spy.

Shan

Yes!

NiNi

Exactly! Precisely!

Bookworm

I know! Exactly!

Shan

You're right, Xichen does not have an excuse. He witnessed this stuff with his own eyes.

Ben 

I don't care how prettily he blinks in frustration. He's stupid. [laughs]

NiNi

Bookworm, I found what you just said really entirely fascinating because I think that one of the reasons, then, that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji works is that neither of them are directly in line to take over the clans. Wei Wuxian is an adoptee. He's not ever gonna take over the Jiang clan. So he does in some ways have to make his own way. And Lan Wangji is the second son. He also has to go his own way. So the politics for them, they're still the politics of clan loyalty and all of that, but they don't have the leadership responsibilities that all these other romances are involved with. 

So what they can do and particularly what Lan Wangji can do to protect Wei Wuxian is far beyond what any of the other romances can do to compromise, protect, whatever. Lan Wangji just basically decides, that's my man, and nobody's gonna touch him. Even when I am mad at him, even when I don't understand what he's doing, nobody is touchin’ that man, ‘cause that's my man.

01:10:06 - The First Life: Various Random Musings

Ben 

Before we leave the first life stuff, let's do a couple of quick hits. Favorite moments from the first life, starting with the school shit through the Battle of Nightless City.

Shan

My favorite moments tend to be tied to Wangji, of course, and his emotional landscape. So, the standout moments that feel really crucial to his character arc are where he reaches this emotional cliff that he falls over, and that happens for him several times. It happens when he is sitting with Wei Ying making a lantern—

Ben 

I knew she was gonna fuckin' say that.

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

Shan 

—and he draws him a rabbit on the lantern, which makes him smile. But the more important moment there is that he listens as Wuxian makes a vow for how he wants to live his life. And Wangji turns to him and looks at him like, “oh shit, I see you. I understand you now.” He agrees with the morality of the values that he holds. And that's a huge moment for him. They were in this stage where Wuxian was being a pest and Wangji was having his little gay panic and they were kind of adversarial with each other. And that moment really shifted things for him emotionally where he was like, “I understand him. We are actually on the same page about the things that matter. And I cannot go back to not knowing that.”

And then, as they have their adventures together and they get to know each other better, moments like in the cave with the tortoise, where Wangji kind of explicitly acknowledges his romantic feelings—not in a way that Wuxian can understand and receive, but he definitely does. And then the rain scene on Qiongqi Path, when he makes a choice to not stop Wuxian from leaving with the Wen prisoners of war, but also not join him. I think that was a huge moment for him where he came up against his own limitations about what he felt he could do for Wuxian. He was not actually willing to break from his clan and help him, but he didn't stand in his way. 

And then of course that all culminates in his attempts to bring Wuxian back into the cultivation world that ultimately go sideways because of the machinations of the Jins, and the moment where he is forced to let him go when he is falling off the cliff. That is the moment where his heart just shatters. And then, we'll pick up with him 16 years later and all his regrets.

Ben 

Alright, Shan, no crying yet. 

Shan 

I'm doing great.

Bookworm

Bookworm!

Bookworm

I will fight Shan for Lan Wangji if I have to.

NiNi 

I think we all will.

Shan 

Don't even try it.

Bookworm 

Most of my favorite moments will also be tied to Wangji. Shan already mentioned a lot of them, but we still have a couple. After we see Wei Wuxian lose his core, get thrown in the Burial Mounds and learn demonic cultivation, when he shows up in that Yiling supervisory office wearing red eyeliner and a black robe on—

Shan

It just naturally goes on, the evil spirits put the eyeliner on. 

[NiNi laughs]

Ben

It’s one of the many ghosts in the sword.

[all laugh]

Bookworm

Just full emo get up and gets his revenge on Wen Chao while Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng is watching. That scene was very well depicted, it was very well shot, was very well acted. I really liked the tension of Lan Wangji realizing that something is different and you can see his heartbreak, you can see him calculating what's going on. You can see him just being so happy to finally see Wei Wuxian. He was gone for months and he just showed up in the middle of a war. And my man wanted to just, I don't know, grab him and kiss, but no, this guy wanted to murder. That was his first priority and it broke him. That is one of my favorite moments. I mean, obviously, I'm very normal. It's fine.

[NiNi and Shan laugh]

There was the moment after the archery competition. Phoenix Mountain Hunt. We see Wei Wuxian just lounging in a tree and Lan Zhan shows up and they finally, finally have this conversation where they try to ease some of the tension that they've been holding because of Wei Ying’s, like, reticence to engage with Lan Zhan, when he asks what is wrong and Lan Zhan going insane basically trying to figure out what is happening with Wei Wuxian, why he's not following the sword path, why he has turned to demonic cultivation. I think that that is one of the iconic moments in the show and of course it has a whole discourse about the “soulmates” translation. 

Shan

I think the actual word is zhiji and it doesn't have a direct literal English translation. So, no translation is really capturing it correctly.

Bookworm 

But it was translated as, I think, soulmate for the show.

Shan

Lifelong bosom companion!

NiNi 

And they were roommates!

Ben 

He's my boon companion.

Bookworm 

I really liked that conversation and how it diffused a little bit of that tension that they were holding, and then of course everything goes to shit. But at least they were happy for a brief moment.

NiNi 

I think for me, there's three things that tie together into a line. The two caves and then when Lan Wangji meets Wei Wuxian in Yiling Town and he invites him to come back to the Burial Mounds for dinner.

Ben 

There were two caves! [laughs] Oh my god!

Shan 

There were, that's legit.

Ben 

Goddamn, there are a lot of caves in this fucking story.

Bookworm 

The caves belong to the gays. It is what it is.

NiNi 

I think those three points in the story form a very interesting line because the first cave is the Cold Pond Cave and they meet up with Lan Wangji's ancestor who developed the Lan clan's signature martial arts magic style and she basically explains to them their mission, what they have to do, this thing about the plot MacGuffin, the Yin Iron. But it's so interesting to me, when they came out of the cave, it's like Wei Wuxian instinctively understood that they don't tell anybody about what happened in the cave. I found that was an interesting change and dynamic to their relationship and also very gay. 

And then when they're trapped in the cave with the Tortoise of Slaughter—

Ben 

She really could not get over that fucking name.

NiNi

I could not. [Ben and Shan laugh] The Tortoise of Slaughter, okay. Yeah, so they're fighting this thing and Wei Wuxian basically goes into its shell and finds this sword which is the first step on the path to his demonic cultivation. Everything that happens from the moment he touches that sword took him directly to his break with all the clans and ending up in the Burial Mounds in the first place so that when they see each other after such a long time apart, after everything, and he's just like, “Hey friend, how are you? Come to dinner at my house. You're gonna go fight a monster? Fuck that. Come over.” It's, like, basically like the “Hey big head” text of all time. And I was completely into it. 

Ben 

Hold on, I just got triggered.

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

NiNi 

It was such a romantic moment for me. You feel Lan Zhan's feelings the entire time, but it's really the first time that you feel Wei Wuxian's feelings for Lan Zhan and how they confuse him. He knows that he has these strong feelings and he wants Lan Zhan to be around him and in his life. But it's almost like, he doesn't know what to call it or at least he can't face what to call it.

Ben 

I like moments in the past where people's personal ethics and loyalty to people who have helped them directly makes them ignore the responsibilities they may have to their clan. So, the first one for me is when Wen Ning poisons his own clan to help Wei Wuxian rescue Jiang Cheng.

Shan

I knew it was going to be about Wen Ning. Ben loves Wen Ning.

Ben 

I really do. You mentioned him twice earlier and I held it in. 

Shan 

She did so good.

Ben 

That moment's earned. Because Wei Wuxian showed him regard and kindness earlier and he returned it in kind. 

The next big moment I like is Yanli's tantrum when she's like, you better keep my brother's name out your fucking mouth. Because that was really fun for a character who's been very reserved, who doesn't really challenge a lot of people. We have not really seen how all of the trauma they've survived directly impacted her. I really liked her in that moment, putting her foot down, like, “fuck you, I don't care.” You can see Wei Wuxian barely holding onto his control, and the only two things holding him back are his sister and his not-boyfriend. And then, like, within five episodes, neither of them will be present, and everything's gonna go to shit.

NiNi 

Yep, pretty much.

01:20:53 - Outro: Notes From the Future

Ben 

It's Ben and NiNi from the future! 

NiNi 

All the way in the future. So far in the future. 

Ben 

This episode is too fucking long. We're sorry, guys. We had a lot to say and we got Bookworm in the booth. It's also The Untamed. It's a very fucking long drama. So we're gonna take a pause here after the end of our discussion of Wei Wuxian's first life, and we'll pick up in the next episode with his second life. We appreciate you all for joining us. 

NiNi 

Yeah, we talk too much and so, there's gonna be two episodes. So see you guys in the next one! 

Say bye to the people, Ben. 

Ben

Peace! 

[mxjackparker]

Masterpost of my articles and other publications on sex work, for those interested in hearing a sex worker's perspective who want a place to start or who enjoy my writing and want a reference point!

The writing below comes from my own website as well as several magazines and outlets, covering a wide range of topics. Descriptions are provided. All articles are free to read!

Art by heyweeirdo (@ heyweeirdo on instagram)

The law (decriminalization, the nordic model):

Dear Home Secretary: A Plea for Sex Work Decriminalization No More Perfect Victims: Solidarity and Incarcerated Sex Workers “Bottoms and Tops We All Hate Cops” - the way queer people and sex workers need to have solidarity and refuse police presence at events, and the history of rejecting police by both groups. Decrim Means Decrim NPCC Sex Working Guidance - a breakdown of current guidance given to UK police on sex work. Age Verification Bills and the Chilling Effect A Guide to (Legally!) Lying About Selling Sex How the Online Safety Bill Will Harm Sex Workers Criminalized Friendships Sex Work and the Labour Movement in the UK

Stigma:

Whorearchy 101 - all about the hierarchy that sex workers are placed into and who faces the most stigma (and why). When We’re Not Murdered: The Dangers of Deviance Secret Sex Work: When Sex Workers Don’t Tell Our Partners Aileen Wuornos and the Danger Sex Workers Face

Trans people:

The hidden trans men in sex work (Irresistible Damage magazine) - how trans men are invisibilized in discussion about sex work despite frequently engaging in it, and the problems we face as a result. Transmasculine Guide to Sex Work Sex Deception Guidance: The Impact on Trans and Intersex Sex Workers - about the recent guidance for the law in the UK around considering "deception as to sex" a form of rape and the impact on sex workers. Working While Trans: What it’s Like to Transition at Work How to Support our Trans Sex Working Siblings - aimed at other sex workers! Trans Solidarity with Sex Workers Losing Online Platforms Means Trans Sex Workers Lose Out Trans Masc Workers and the SWERF to TERF Pipleline Why “Feminist” Anti-Trans Advocates Also Hate Sex Workers The Pressure to Pass - what it's like for trans sex workers who have to cater to chasers for their income. Transmascs Rentboys and Why We Hate Ourselves How to Book a Transmasc Sex Worker

Advice/info for allies:

Is It Okay To Say Whore? - what language is often considered offensive when speaking about sex workers and why. My Friend is a Sex Worker and I Have Questions! What Can I Do to Support Sex Workers? So, You Have Feelings for a Sex Worker? How to Talk About Minors Selling Sex Sex Work Slogans What is Survival Sex Work? The “Happy Hooker” Narrative Empowerment vs Objectification: A False Dichotomy

Sexual health:

How Sex Workers Keep Working on Our Periods Selling Unprotected Sex Hookers Carrying Diseases? Intentional Condom Breaking - clients who break condoms despite sex workers insisting on using them, or stealthing.

Issues Sex Workers Face & Personal Experiences:

Pre-Prostitution Jitters - how I deal with the stress I experience before selling sex, especially after a break. After Client Aftercare - what I do to take care of myself after seeing clients. Nowhere to Hide: Facial Recognition and Sex Work - the impact of facial recognition on me, as well as sex workers more broadly. An Open Letter to Sugar Babies Post-Client High - the adrenaline rush that often comes after meeting a client and getting paid. Who Has Time For Sex Worker Rights Activism Anti-Capitalists Selling Sex Paying to Advertise: The Costs When Selling Sex Clients Cancelling Attention Deficit Hooker Disorder - A discussion about how many sex workers have ADHD and why that's the case. Lesbian Hookers - why lesbians sometimes choose to sell sex to men. My First Brothel Experience How Underage Sex Work Really Feels

Porn:

How to Build a Healthy Relationship with Porn Viewing Porn as a Sex Worker Who Makes It How To Get Rich Making Porn - why the promise that sex work is easy money is a lie, and the reality of what people are likely to earn. Porn and Sex Addiction - a breakdown of the concept of porn and sex addiction, discussing why the framing of "addiction" doesn't work for these issues.

Studies and data:

No Data on Prostitution? Just Make It Up! - A look at the ways people who write about sex work or create legislation to regulate and criminalize it often make up the data they use to justify themselves. The Problem with the Data on Sex Work

Racism:

Wealthy White Women and Sex Trafficking Anxiety Stop Saying “The World’s Oldest Profession” - a discussion of why the phrase "the oldest profession" is racist. Racism Among Sex Workers

Advice for writing about sex work(ers), in both fiction and non-fiction:

How to Write Sex Worker Characters Fiction About Sex Workers How Non Sex Worker Characters Can Be Relatable to Hookers Responsible Reporting on Sex Work

SWERFS:

The Ideal Nordic Model Poster Child Why Julie Bindel is Wrong About Sex Work Bullshit Radical Feminist Arguments About Sex Work Trauma Fantasies about Prostitution - how SWERFs fantasize about sex workers being harmed and use this commentary to convince others to support their legal positions. “All Prostitution is Rape”: A Response Who Are You Calling a SWERF? - why sex workers are sometimes mislabelled as SWERFs for discussing our own trauma and how to recognize actual SWERF rhetoric.

Pop culture:

Feminism 101 and Barbie's Plastic Ceiling Love is Blind (and Whorephobic) - on the topic of the attitudes among contestants on Love is Blind towards sex workers and sex workers among past personalities on the show. Hazbin Hotel: An Analysis on Sex Work Themes Sex Work Themes in Interview with the Vampire We'll Make a Game with Dragons... and Hookers! - Dragon Age Origins and how it treats sex workers. RuPaul's Bigotry is a Drag

This covers the majority of my articles about sex work, though there are a few more on my website!

Published works:

If you'd like to read something longer and more comprehensive about an element of sex work, I have a couple of books published! Working Guys: A Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology - a book containing essays and personal narratives from 21 transmasculine sex workers, alongside chapters explaining common issues trans people face in the sex industry. (£5 for the e-book, £15.99 RRP for a physical copy.) Contemporary Prostitution: Study of a Social Question - a translation of the original French book from 1884, by Léo Taxil, all about what prostitution was like in the 1800s in Europe. Physical copies available at online bookstores! (Free or pay-what-you-can for e-books!)

My newest book, Hooker Mentality, is not yet out but you can read more about it here and sign up to be notified when it becomes available for pre-order if you want! It's a book containing thoughts on society from a sex worker perspective, including hookers' insights into the systems which control us all and revealing why so many of us become radically left-wing after we start selling sex.