#someone thought chinese has very little media and it sucks

[putschki1969]

Hi Sarah!

Thank you so much for always providing such great content on your blog. It's incredibly kind of you to consistently follow the girls' activities and share the information with the English-speaking community. I know it must take a lot of effort, and I truly appreciate it.

I'm really heartbroken by the recent developments, especially the rumours and backlash against the girls. I don't believe for a second that they "betrayed" Kajiura on purpose. I just hope people can be more rational and avoid jumping to conclusions, especially when so many details are still unclear. Anyone who has been following them knows they aren't the type to be ungrateful to Kajiura. Your unwavering support for the girls really means a lot and has made me feel much better during all of this.

I was tidying up my mailbox and came across an old recording of the girls' cover of 茉莉花 (the Chinese folk song "Jasmine Flower") from their 2016 Far on the Water Live Tour in Shanghai. I'm not sure if anyone has shared it with you before, but I’d be happy if this is new to you and hope it brings a little joy to your day. It's certainly not the best quality since I recorded it secretly during the concert, and halfway through, Keiko gestured for the audience to sing along, so there's a lot of background noise. Still, I wanted to share it as a small token of thanks for all the hard work you put into supporting the girls.

Hope you like it and have a wonderful day!

Hello! 😊

Awww, thank you! ❤️ I appreciate your kind words🫂 My love for the girls is still very strong so I'm more than happy to share this love with my fellow fans. I know it can be incredibly hard to follow all the information, updates and releases if you are not willing or able to invest a lot of time and money into the whole thing.

I hate seeing all the backlash against the girls. Yes, Yuki Kajiura has every right to feel slighted and her loyal fans can be disappointed or angry on her behalf. It's understandable. But remain reasonable and stick to facts. Don't treat the girls as if they are not even human, as if they were just instruments used by Yuki Kajiura, without their own feelings or thoughts. You really think this decision for the reunion live was made lightly without putting a lot of thought and consideration into it? You really think the girls didn't weigh all their available options in advance and decided this was the best possible course of action for everyone involved even if that route would ultimately lead to them being in a position where they simply weren't allowed to speak of the matter? Sometimes life puts obstacles in our way and we have no choice but to grit our teeth and move past them to get where we want to be. Along the line, sacrifices have to made and not everything will be sunshine and rainbows. The entertainment industry sucks and there are a lot of people in high positions who don't always have everyone's best interest in mind. I am sure Yuki Kajiura, Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru are very much aware of that fact and will find a way to clear up any existing misunderstandings in a civil manner.

Everyone, please realise that name-calling the girls and accusing them of every horrible thing under the sun is unacceptable, it's just beyond disrespectful and it's no way to treat someone you claim to be a fan of. Even if your loyalty lies more with Yuki Kajiura, I assume you are still a fan of Kalafina so please treat the members with the respect they deserve and don't readily dismiss them just because of an incident we don't know any details about.

I 100% understand why Wakana, Keiko and Hikaru are currently trying to lay low in the aftermath of the announcement. Still, it's sad that they are forced into a corner like that, that they feel the need to "hide" from their fans during a time that was surely intended to be celebratory for all of us. It's been unusually quiet on all of their social media channels. Not even a random Instagram story by Keiko or a new YouTube video from Hikaru...*sighs* They obviously don't want to stir up any more trouble and are waiting for things to blow over but I personally feel that it would actually help some fans to see reason if they heard the girls speak up about the reunion in a more casual and frank manner. We'll obviously never find out anything about the internal machinations of the whole thing but it would be nice to know how the girls feel about this reunion on an emotional level. Unfortunately, the official announcement statements felt a bit too stilted and coordinated so I think they came across as not entirely genuine to many fans. Oh well, that's not how situations are usually handled in the Japanese entertainment industry so we'll just have to wait and see...

..••°°°°••....••°°°°••....••°°°°••....••°°°°••....••°°°°••....••°°°°••..

Waaaaahhh!!!😲 OMG!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!💖💖💖 No one ever shared a full recording of this 茉莉花 performance with me. All I ever had was that tiny snippet from a news report.

This is SO PRECIOUS!!✨ I ADORE every second of it! They are clearly putting so much love into every syllable of the song. I could listen to it again and again (even if the audio quality isn't too great😅). Just melting during Keiko's tender melodic embellishment. So beautiful🥹 Again, thank you for sending this to me, I really appreciate it��

[rigelmejo]

Dude I was on the language learning forms as I do sometimes, and someone was lamenting the lack of Chinese content to immerse in (watch, read etc). And how it was hard to find and they didn’t have this problem with Japanese what should they do?

Well. 1. I get their frustration on one level, as I do think Japanese content is so much more mainstream to watch in English speaking countries (at least anime and Japanese video games), that trying to find content in a language where it’s harder to just find content right on Netflix or from a friends recommendation does bring up a new challenge. Whereas with Japanese, probably you could accidentally stumble onto it or have a friend recommend you something, then at least explore deeper with some idea of what you liked/where to start finding it.

However. The person also sort of thought the lack of content was due to Chinese just not having as much content or as interesting content. Again I’m going to assume their key issue was just - it can be a new challenge finding media if you have a harder time just starting.

Because lol?? Chinese has SO much content. Like as far as language content on the internet alone??? Chinese has been eons easier to find than Japanese for me, and in terms of sites I actually use regularly is much closer to my experience of English online (there’s so much Chinese content online... so much... an incredible amount... like in chinese I’ve even found free movie watching sites FOR shows in English - like the way I find sites in English to watch Chinese shows IN chinese lol! Like you can use English to search for Chinese stuff, and literally do the reverse to find English stuff, there is so much Chinese stuff... I found more stuff in Japanese using bilibili in chinese than I could find of Japanese using YouTube In English). And Chinese drama land is HUGE it feels as active as American television, so you have endless genres to dive into and companies and actors and writers etc (there is a distinct lack of sci fi though as far as I’ve seen, but to be fair america isn’t making a Ton of sci fi compared to like Detective shows either - it’s just English speaking sci fi has had some more good ones in recent years). There is no lack of Chinese content out there. There’s audiobooks, dramas, audio dramas, talk shows, radio, fanfiction, novels, fanart, manhua, sites to find other stuff, forums, weibo, search sites, just a lot?? Like, if you think Japanese has enough internet content then there is an adequate amount of Chinese content on the internet too lol. You just may have to do a touch more initial exploration.

I just. Thought the assumption “can’t find media means their media sucks” was funny. Because also? I have not found that to be true. I know very little about Thai media. I just happened upon SOTUS cause of a friend talking about it. So like someone watching anime conveniently - I got into it. It was good, so I dug, and found a lot of amazing Thai shows (and some I didn’t love cause lol genres all have a mix of quality depending on show etc). There IS a ton of amazing Thai shows that exist right now. But if all you ever found was SOTUS? While it was great when I saw it to me, once I found more I realized there was a LOT better stuff. So like if you see one cdrama on Netflix (if that’s how you first easily find the media), that does not mean all shows will be that quality or anything like them! And just cause it’s the first one you found doesn’t mean they’re all like that ones quality.

Like I had a similar experience with jdramas growing up, so I get it. I was into anime, saw some (trainwreck) live action adaptations. And as a teenage just blanket assumed all Japanese live action media was gonna be around that quality. And then in recent years, I checked out some Japanese live action media - to see if new stuff was better. YEAH IT SURE IS (and I would imagine some old stuff was great I just gave up after one not-wonderful one lol). SO MANY AMAZING jdramas exist now! Even the ones I most feared would not be great - live action adaptations of anime’s? They’re so much better now, some of them are genuinely loved in their own right as standalone live actions. So like. One not-great show experience is NOT representative of the entire plethora of shows available and their quality. Now that I’ve realized how MANY good jdramas I missed out on? I have so much catching up to do ToT

2. If you’re in this boat of “content seems hard to find, so I feel like there’s none or no good stuff” what to do?

First ask some friends for recommendations?

Check Netflix, Amazon, YouTube (YouTube has a ton of cdramas), Viki, iQiyi app. Like how some people get into anime, maybe you just need an easy conviennent show in your recommended to get into more content.

Check out rec channels on YouTube like Donghua Reviews and Avenue X to hear about some shows and figure out the kinds of ones you’d even want to check out (I imagine other languages also have review channels like for kdramas).

Go to MyDramaList.com. Search genres you like, read recommendation list posts. if you’ve seen a show at this point already you can look it up and see in the “Recommended” section what other dramas are like it, you can see it’s genre tags to see WHAT genres you even seem to like. Use this to start DIGGING and finding stuff you might really like. Since like with anime, you’re only going to find the most popular stuff at first just based on Netflix or friends (which might not match up to your personal tastes as well as finding stuff that Is more your favorite genres).

Try out new stuff. And if it sucks, you don’t like it? Drop it, learn that about yourself, start another new thing. You’ll figure out what you like and dislike pretty fast (like I personally hate bad pacing or bad writing specifically characterization, and I can notice when the specific things I love are gonna be in a show pretty fast).

Check out genres specific to that language’s media. Because if it’s new to you, you might not know if you even like it or not, and if you like it then which things you personally prefer in it (since even within a genre there will be wildly different content and feels). For Chinese this might be wuxia, xianxia, palace dramas, costume dramas, republican era dramas, tomb raiding dramas etc.

*That’s how it worked for me, SOTUS led me to the bl drama fans, eventually they recommended Guardian so bam I guess I was learning chinese, YouTube recced me more cdramas from there to continue with, and mydramalist.com helped me find other shows with actors I liked from guardian (and other bl related shows which led me to Go Princess Go of all things for the bi lead), and that site helped me find more genres and shows I’d like, as well as friends continuing to rec things. Didn’t take long to figure out what I liked, didn’t, and to start noticing what upcoming stuff I’d probably be excited for. And now there’s so much good stuff found I don’t have enough time lol.

As for non show media: use shows as the jump off point. Just like using “easy to find shows” can be used to break into finding more shows. Once you have a show you liked a lot - look up it it’s based on a book, if it has an audiobook, an audio drama, a manhua, a donghua. Chances are it DOES have some of this stuff, because cdramas do a PRETTY regular amount of the time. Often cdramas have all or nearly all of these other story types. So jump into those, then find more novels or audio drama or manhua etc by branching off from the one you liked to others like it. Novelupdates.com is good for doing this with novels (it has a recommendations section), I imagine manhua sites have rec lists too, ximalaya starts recommending stuff once you’ve listened to a few audio on it, etc. And if you get into fandoms of those x media types, those fans will start recommending more too. And again, even if you just stick to media related to shows you liked - so often shows have so MUCH related media that would definitely keep you busy. (Like I didnt wade into non-show connected novels until I looked up more novels as recommendations afte show-related novels, like MDZS and Guardian leading me to SVSSS and 2ha and Can Ci Pin which at the time had no show adaptations, and then eventually found just-novel rec lists - which is still the main way I find fanfic).

[pumpkinpaix]

Hey, something I’ve been wondering since I first watched CQL: in ep 5, there’s a line where Wen Qing is talking to Wen Ning and says something like ‘Our family has been doctors for centuries, but I can’t cure my own brother’ (that’s verbatim from the US Netflix subtitles) and I’ve always wondered about that word, ‘cure’. As someone who lives with mental illness, I’m a little sensitive to the idea of a mental affliction being ‘cured,’ as though it’s a malady to be remedied, as though there’s something ‘wrong’ that can be ‘fixed’. The word ‘cure’ brings up all that discomfort for me, but I only know English, and I’m curious to know how accurate the concept of a ‘cure’ is to the actual conversation taking place there? I think a lot about the way neurodivergence is discussed in CQL, and I don’t want to misjudge connotation based on translation error.

hi there! so this ask is *checks* a month old yikes, but i’ve been thinking about it for a long time so here we go (finally)! :D

so here’s the scene in question:

[ID: two screenshots from episode 5 of the untamed. wen qing is speaking to wen ning. the subtitles read ‘我却治不了自己弟弟的病’ and ‘but i can’t cure my own brother’. /end ID]

with regards to your grammar/language question: 治 can mean both “to treat” and “to cure”. there are certain sentence constructions that can make it clear which it is, but not all of them do so.

for example, 治好 is definitely ‘to cure’ - the grammar there is [VERB + 好] can mean either “to finish VERBing” or “to VERB well”. so, to finish treating = to cure.

however, in this case, that’s not the construction that’s being used, and I would say it’s not clear-cut. “VERB + 不了” is “to be unable to VERB”. because 治 is ambiguous on its own, what she says here, “我却治不了自己弟弟的病”, comes down to “but I am unable to treat/cure my own younger brother’s illness”.

what I think is maybe a more complicated issue is the idea of mental illness and/or neurodivergence in CQL and how understandings of it impact our perceptions of the characters/narrative.

I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of Wen Ning’s affliction in CQL to be neurodivergence, but I’m actually quite surprised when I hear this. i believe the illness wen qing and wei wuxian refer to when talking about wen ning is his susceptibility/weakness towards resentful/yin energy, which manifests in fainting spells and long bouts of unconsciousness. to me, that is not analogous to mental illness or neurodivergence so much as something like epileptic episodes brought on by exposure to specific triggers. by CQL canon, we know that he has not always had this -- he contracted the illness after his encounter with the guanyin statue that sucked away part of his soul when he was a child, and this now gives him a weak constitution and makes him largely unsuitable for night hunting, especially unsupervised. this is what wen qing is trying to treat and/or cure. in mdzs, he does not have this condition, and wen qing never mentions anything about trying to treat or cure him at all.

given that this condition is most likely a creation for the sake of getting around censors at least in part (basically: a way to create a reason for why wen ning isn’t “dead” -- in addition, probably was also meant to increase wen sibs screentime/sympathy), I’ve always seen it as a bit of a handwavy physical condition that was tacked on as opposed to an actual statement about his character, if that makes sense.

in general, I’m hesitant to outright assign labels of neurodivergence or mental illness to mdzs/cql characters because I think that labels like that are inherently societally and culturally dependent. with the rise of identity politic rhetoric in the US and all of that kind of getting tangled up with our conceptions of being ND or mentally ill, I worry about trying to analyze mdzs/cql through such a lens because identities are so inextricably tied to environment. even if both i and a character could be “diagnosed” with the same condition, I think it would be undeniable that our experiences of such would be very different because we come from different cultural backgrounds. not just, chinese author vs american reader but like, fantastical xianxia chinese conception of a character vs chinese-american conception of identity.

alskdjfl idk if this even makes sense, but!! basically, I actually don’t think that CQL discusses or really portrays neurodivergence at all, not in such terms. I think it’s completely appropriate and valid to headcanon and interpret characters in ways that resonate with you! i certainly do, lol (morally scrupulous twin jades anyone? :D 🥃), but im nervous about asserting that any CQL characters actually are/have xyz condition because I don’t think that a discussion on that front is particularly meaningful. I know that this hesitance comes both from my own views on what neurodivergence/mental illness mean and how useful those terms actually are, and also from a very personal anger over some moral injunctions that I’ve seen people place on portraying characters’ “real” or “coded” mental states that are seriously misguided, harmful, and extremely culturally american in their claims (that will probably be a separate post though lol).

that isn’t to say there isn’t value in thinking about how one can interpret characters in one way or another, or that there isn’t value in discussing how unintentionally, a character might fall into archetypes that evoke certain identities and how that subtext might or might not impact a person’s experience or takeaway from the media! but I think all of that has to be contextualized as opposed to generalized. /o\

this.... came out a lot less coherent than i wanted it to be, but my brain is Not having it for some reason. I hope that I at least managed to answer your question/help you along in your continuing thought process!!! :D

(ko-fi)

[yehet-about-it]

I Like Me Better | 10 - An Evening Interrupted

~ A Wayv Social Media AU Series ~

< Prev || Series Masterlist || Next >

Synopsis: You’ve just moved into a new apartment with your best friend Yangyang, but you’re immediately faced with a problem: your incredibly noisy upstairs neighbour Xiao Dejun, or to friends, Xiaojun. You spend the first few weeks of your acquaintance hating his guts, but after a sincere apology and a fascinating revelation about his passions and motivations you slowly begin to see past his cold exterior to discover the real him. What will happen as you get closer to this troubled boy and how will those closest to you react?

Pairing: Reader x Xiao Jun

Themes and Warnings: Explicit language, mild sexual content, mild violence and references to drinking/alcohol. Deals with themes of toxic masculinity, insecurity, gaslighting (sort of), and jealousy…

A/N: Sorry it's late today! I forgot to schedule the post for today and it took a while to edit!!

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Word Count: 1.9k Summary: This is literally just Kun being a badass dad friend... Not my best writing, but enjoy! ;)

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You sighed contentedly as you washed up the last of the dishes, draining the sink as Kun folded the dish towel, neatly hanging it on the towel rail. You’d had a pleasant evening cooking with him, making a number of Chinese dishes you’d wanted to try, like hot and sour stir-fried napa cabbage and beef noodle soup. You’d originally wanted to do all the cooking yourself and surprise the boys, but seeing as though now it was just the two of you, you’d thought it probably best to make use of Kun’s culinary skills. Having thoroughly tidied the kitchen and boxed up all the leftovers for Winwin and Yangyang, the pair of you made your way to the living room, dropping down onto the sofa which had become your pride and joy of your apartment. “Ahh I’m so full,” you said, exhaling heavily. “That was so good!” Kun chuckled. “Yeah, it turned out quite well,” he said, shifting the cushions behind him. You internally fist-pumped, secretly a little bit pleased that Kun enjoyed your meal. To be complimented on your cooking skills by chef Kun himself was the highest honour, although you couldn’t take all the credit since he’d actually done half the work. “Mainly thanks to you,” you said, smiling at him appreciatively, to which Kun chuckled dismissively. “Ah, you did most of the work, I was just your assistant,” he said. “A very helpful assistant,” you replied pointedly. “Wanna watch a movie then?” you asked as you reached for the remote control off the coffee table. “Sure, what were you thinking?” “Hmm, I’m not sure,” you said, wearily switching on the TV and xbox. You spent the next few minutes browsing Netflix to find something to watch and once you’d settled on a film you shifted closer to Kun, reaching for the blanket which had been lying haphazardly at the end of the sofa to keep you both cosy.

A few minutes into the movie, you felt the ceiling begin to vibrate and the heavy echo of pounding bass surge into the room. Kun turned to you to give you a look that seemed to say ‘what on earth?’ and you leaned your head back, letting out a frustrated groan realising that yet again it was your neighbour’s ridiculously loud music interrupting what was supposed to be a relaxing evening. “Is it always like this?” Kun asked, frowning. You shrugged. “I mean, it’s not everyday, but it’s pretty much always this loud…” You pouted sinking lower under the blanket. “I didn’t realise it was this bad. I’m surprised you get any sleep at all. I mean how can people be so inconsiderate?” You could hear the irritation in Kun’s voice. You were pretty angry about the constant noise emanating from upstairs, but you were generally quite passive whereas you could clearly tell Kun was starting to get pissed. “Yeah, I don’t know. It sucks, but I guess we’ve kind of gotten used to it now,” you replied. “How are you supposed to get used to it when you can barely even hear your own TV over it? You shouldn’t have to put up with it.” Kun said matter-of-factly. You groaned in response, burying your face in the blanket. “Aghhh I know, but it’s not like I can do much about it, I already tried asking him…” you whined, looking up at Kun in exasperation, but he met you with what can only be described as an unsympathetic look. “Of course you can do something about it! Why don’t you just talk to him again? And actually assert yourself this time? Or if that doesn’t work just talk to the building manager or put in a complaint or something. Honestly, you and Yangyang are hopeless…” He did have a point. There was plenty you could do but you just didn’t have the guts to do it. You were rather non-confrontational and didn’t want to end up in a nasty row with your neighbour after only one month of living there, but it seemed Kun had other ideas. “Ughh Kun, you know I don’t like confrontation. I don’t want to end up with a neighbour that hates me,” you said. Kun sighed. “So you’d rather have to put up with this everyday for the foreseeable future than have some asshole who’s not worth your time potentially dislike you?” You looked back at Kun sheepishly, almost as though you were a student who’d just been caught acting up by their teacher. You knew he was right, and you were being irrational, since Dejun’s music caused you problems daily, not to mention reducing your nightly sleep to an average of 4 hours, but you just didn’t have it in you to confront the issue. There was a pause before Kun pushed the blanket off his knees and stood up. “Well, if you’re not going to do anything then I will,” he said, before taking off toward the entrance hall of your apartment. “Wait what?!” you shreiked, panic bubbling up inside you at the thought of what he was going to do, and leaping to your feet you scurried down the hall after him. Kun swung your front door open as you caught up to him, and marched out of your apartment, turning to go up the stairs to the next floor. Now realising his intentions, you halted at the door, too embarrassed to also make an appearance at your neighbours door. Instead you stayed in the doorway peering round to the stairs and watching as Kun ascended. “Kun!” You squeaked. “What are you doing?!” Kun barely paused to look back at you before continuing on upwards.

As much as you wanted to chase after him and drag him back down the stairs, by the determined expression on his face you knew there was no point, so you stayed put, but after wedging your door open with one of Yangyang’s shoes that was cluttering up the entrance, you moved a little closer to the bottom of the stairs so as to try and hear what was going on. Soon you heard the clunk of a door opening, but clearly the walls were too thick, or something like that, as all you could hear was a faint mumbling, and you could only pick out one or two words. Nonetheless, you decided to stay there and listen, waiting in anticipation for the outcome of Kun’s abrupt disturbance of your neighbour’s evening.

~ Upstairs – Kun’s POV ~

“Yeah?” Xiaojun answered the door wearing a black long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants, his dark brown hair flopping softly down over his equally dark eyes. His expression was one of disinterest, Kun thought, which only served to fuel his irritation. “Hi, I’m Kun. I’m a friend of y/n downstairs?” Kun faltered a little in his conviction. Confrontation wasn’t really in his nature, however his years battling to make it in such a competitive industry as his had taught him to take control and make a stand when he needed, so after taking a split-second to recompose himself, he spoke again, this time his voice much firmer. “We were wondering if you could possibly turn your music down. It’s incredibly loud and right now we’re trying to watch TV and it’s quite distracting. And actually y/n said it’s been a problem before.” “Huh. Why doesn’t y/n come ask me herself then since she’s the one who actually lives here?” Xiaojun challenged. Kun growled internally. The cheek of this guy. “I believe she already did, but apparently you didn’t listen, so I thought you might need a reminder,” Kun jabbed, becoming a little passive-aggressive. Xiaojun raised his eyebrows, sensing the frustration in Kun’s voice and scoffed. “What, you her boyfriend or something?” With every passing second Kun grew to dislike Xiaojun more and more, and that remark certainly didn’t help one bit, thus, deciding that he’d had enough of the shorter man’s attitude he decided to throw all pleasantries aside. He was done being nice. “So what if I am?” He said, standing taller, but to Kun’s displeasure, Xiaojun just chuckled darkly looking at the ground before lifting his eyes and smirking at the older man in front of him. “Heh, pretty bad boyfriend if she’s still using Tinder…” Kun clenched his jaw. Clearly that Lucas guy had been talking, making his tactic completely useless, but who the hell did this guy think he was? This level of antagonism was completely unreasonable, and over what? Turning some goddamn music down. “Look,” Kun said. “I don’t want any trouble, but could you please just turn the music down? Y/n’s tired all the time these days because your music keeps her up all hours and she has to get up to go to work early in the morning. Just because you’re a failed musician or something doesn’t mean no one else has jobs to go to.”Kun hadn’t intended on saying the last part of his speech, since he knew himself how hard an industry it was to break into, and it wasn’t really his style to shame someone like that, but something about Xiaojun’s attitude just made him annoyed beyond reasonable reaction and boy did his outburst hit a nerve. “Excuse me?” Xiaojun replied, his voice much louder than before and his posture much more aggressive compared to the casual position he had been in just seconds ago. But Kun wouldn’t be intimidated, and glared at Xiaojun, looking him directly in the eyes to make one final comment. “Just keep it down, or we’ll be putting in a formal complaint”. “Yeah, whatever,” was the only reply Xiaojun gave, before stepping back and shutting the door in Kun’s face. Could’ve gone better, but it certainly got the message across.

~ Downstairs – Your PoV ~

You stood in the stairwell fidgeting your hands and straining to listen to the exchange between the two men upstairs. It had only been a couple of minutes but it was making you tense nonetheless. You were silently willing Kun to waltz down the stairs saying everything was fine but suddenly you heard a voice from upstairs much more clearly. Your eyes widened and you cringed as you heard Xiaojun’s raised voice rhetorically asking “excuse me?!”, realising the conversation wasn’t going as pleasantly as you had hoped. You weren’t sure you wanted to hear the rest of it, but you kept on listening. Luckily for you however, the voices returned to the same muffled humming as before, until you heard a door slam, Kun emerging on the stairs a moment later. “Kun! What happened?!” you whisper-shouted, as though you were afraid Xiaojun might hear you, moving out of the way as Kun strode past you before following him back into your apartment. Kun stopped in the hallway briefly to look at you. “Lets just say I don’t think he’ll be bothering you anymore.” You wanted to ask what on earth had gone on, but clearly that was all Kun was willing to say on the matter, so you simply followed him back to the living room where he flopped down onto his place on the couch. “Come on then, now we can actually watch the movie,” Kun said, stretching his arm out to you as you wandered towards the couch. Obediently, you took his hand and he pulled you down next to him so you leant against his shoulder, throwing the blanket that had earlier fallen to the floor over you both, and with that you spent the rest of the evening watching the film in peace, but with the niggling thought in the back of your mind that your neighbour Xiaojun may very well have just put you on a vendetta list.

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[barnesandrogersfanfics]

Baby Love - Part 9

A/N: OMG its been a while!

Hope your all doing okay 💕

This is just a chapter full of fluff im not gonna lie! 💕

Waking up the day after the premiere i dreaded looking at my phone so i just left it on the side and headed to the kitchen to make some breakfast. I wasn't ready to read all the hateful comments again, as long as i didn't look i could just pretend they didn't exist and enjoy my day with Chris. I switched on the radio and hummed along to the song on the radio as i started cooking the bacon and eggs, i actually felt pretty good.

Once breakfast was ready and i had fed Dodger i headed to the bedroom to wake Chris up, he'd had a few drinks last night and had slept like the dead!

"Hey babe.... wake up i made breakfast" i said leaning against the doorframe as i admired the naked man in front of me... he was laying face down hugging my pillow with the sheets just covering his ass. He cracked one eye and looked at me, a sleepy smile spreading across his face as he reached a hand out to me.

"Come back to bed" he mumbled.

"Nope, ive cooked breakfast its getting cold" i chuckled crossing my arms and waiting for him to get up.

"At least come and give me a kiss first"

"I forget how needy you get when your hungover..." i rolled my eyes shaking my head but took the few steps forward and took his hand. Chris pulled me closer and rolled onto his back with a wicked grin. As he pulled me onto the bed with him we both laughed before i leaned forward and gave him the kiss he wanted. I suddenly pulled back with wide eyes looking down at him, i saw the worry flashing over his face.

"What is it? Did i hurt you?" He sat up suddenly trying to work out what was wrong. I slowly shook my head before a smile spread on my face.

"The baby just kicked.... like a proper kick. Not just the little flutters i've been feeling....shit! it did it again!" I laughed grabbing Chris's hand and placing it on my stomach where id been feeling movement.

"I can't feel anything..." he said sadly shaking his head.

"Just wait.... give him a minute"

When the baby kicked again Chris's eyes went wide before he started laughing, excitement in his eyes as he brought his other hand up to cup my baby bump.

"Shit..... i felt that!"

"I told you!"

"That was something else....." he muttered staring at my bump his eyes tearing up, I leant forward pressing a kiss to his lips quickly.

"God i love you"

"I love you too. But come on, your son is hungry.... and mama needs sustenance" i laughed jumping up and rushing back out to the kitchen, i heard Chris laughing behind me and i turned round to catch him following me as he finished pulling on a pair of sweats.

"We're going back to bed after though right?" He asked catching up and wrapping his arms around me from behind.

"I think that can be arranged".

Scott had called around lunch time and Chris had obviously told him all about feeling the baby kicking..... half hour later Scott was at the door!

"Uncle Scott is here to feel the kicks!" He said sounding far too excited when he came bursting through the door.

"Sorry Uncle Scott but your nephew is not very active at the moment" i frowned rubbing a hand over my stomach.

"Thats fine i can wait..... i brought chinese" he smiled holding up the bag of take out, my eyes lit up instantly!

"Ooh did you get..."

"Yes! Of course i got you ribs! Do you take me for a fool??" He asked looking insulted that i would even consider he forgot the ribs.

"Your the best!" I beamed over at Scott suddenly overcome with hunger at the mention of ribs! "Hey babe?...."

"I'll get the pickles" Chris called back before i even asked making me laugh, i could just imagine the looks being exchanged between the brothers but i didn't care. Weird pregnancy cravings were the norm by now. A few seconds later Chris walked in with a plate of ribs, a few pickles on the side.... as soon as the smell reached me i felt the baby kick.

"Hey Scott.... your nephew is kicking!" I called out to Scott who was still plating up his food, be came running out and dramatically dived into the empty seat next to me.

"Hey! Be careful!" Chris scolded his brother shaking his head as he handed me the plate.

"Sorry but i didn't want to miss it again!"

"Give me your hand" i held my hand out for Scotts hand and placed it where i was feeling movement "okay just wait a minute......" i said casually as i tucked in to my food, a moan escaping at how good this food was!

"Jesus, you really like those ribs don't you?" Scott laughed.

"You cant even begin to imagine the satisfaction i get from this right now" i pointed to my plate "its even better than sex!"

"Hey!" Chris moaned looking at me like i spat in his food.

"Im not saying the sex is bad.... because wow i cant get enough of you..."

"Ewww" Scott grumbled making me and Chris laugh.

"Sorry Scotty! But its true!" I took a bite of my pickle and moaned again "honestly, you have no idea how good this is right now".

As if the baby was agreeing he gave a kick right where Scotts hand was resting, his eyes went wide for a few seconds then he was leaning closer talking to my bump, introducing himself as Uncle Scott promising to be the best uncle ever!

"Scott you do know the baby cant hear you" Chris rolled his eyes at his brother as he sat the other side of me.

"Of course he can! Babies can hear in the womb Chris and this baby is gonna know his Uncle Scotts voice!"

I looked at Chris smiling and shaking my head "his right, the baby can hear some stuff.... don't worry" i grabbed Chris's hand "he already knows your voice"

"You don't know that...."

"Sure i do, he moves more when you talk" i smiled "he knows his daddy's voice".

"Promise?"

"Promise".

We eventually finished eating and Scott was happy enough that he had felt the baby kicking. We were halfway through some movie the two of them chose when Scott looked up from his cell phone.

"How was your social media this morning after last night?"

"Not a clue.... i refused to look. I was in a good mood this morning , i didn't need to read all of those shitty comments....it stresses me out and thats no good for the baby....."

"You may be surprised, i've seen nothing but nice things being said. Obviously theres still the odd comment.... but most are saying how their happy for you both"

"Seriously....?" I looked over with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah"

"Wow..... i didn't expect that after the last time i was seen in public with you"

"Anything about the baby?" Chris asked his brother who shook his head.

"Funnily enough no one has mentioned it! Im surprised to be honest i thought they'd be all over that, you weren't exactly hiding that bump of yours"

"Maybe you should make an announcement before it gets out some other way...." i looked at Chris and ran a hand over my swollen belly.

"We can do that if your comfortable with it?...."

"Honestly i just want to be able to leave the house without worrying what i'm wearing, worrying that someone will see that i'm pregnant before we've had the chance to break the news ourselves....."

"Okay..... we'll sort something out".

At some point in the evening i must have fallen asleep because one minute i was watching the movie with Chris and Scott and the next i woke up in bed. The room was dim the only light coming from a lamp on Chris's side of the bed. He was laying close i could tell from his body heat, i was just about to turn to see if he was awake or not when he spoke, but he wasn't talking to me..... he was talking to the baby.

"Hey buddy..... i'm your dad....." he said quietly and i felt him gently stroke my stomach "god i suck at this...." he sighed "i just.... i guess i just wanna make sure you know me and that i love you and your mama so much. I promise i'm gonna take real good care of you both....."

"You already do take care of us" i said quietly reaching a hand up to run through his hair....he looked up at me looking a little embarrassed.

"You wasn't supposed to hear that"

"Are you really worried that the baby won't know who are?" I asked looking into those gorgeous blue eyes of his that i get lost in way too easy!

"Well i wasn't until Scott opened his big mouth but now its all i can think about"

"Chris i promise you your son knows your voice already......"

"How can you be sure?"

"He goes crazy whenever your around especially when your talking"

"He does?...."

"Yep" i smiled moving his hand over to the other side so he could feel the constant kicking currently going on.

"See!"

"Thats kinda crazy"

"I know right?..... so can you please turn off the light and come to bed im exhausted" i chuckled, Chris quickly kissed me and bent to drop a kiss on my baby bump before switching off the lamp. He got into bed pulling me against his chest, his hand spread on the bump and mumbled a goodnight.

"Goodnight.... we love you"

"I love you both too".

I fell asleep with a smile on my face thinking about how god damn sweet this man was and i couldn't help but think about what a great dad he was gonna be.

Baby Love tags: @jennmurawski13 @mybabyboytony @ms-betsy-fangirl @vampgirl1997 @ajosieface @afuckingshituniverse @chmedic @esoltis280 @southerngracela @bethabear12 @letsdisneythings @sellulii @patzammit @katiew1973 @princess-evans-addict @deidrahouseofpain @siren-queen03 @shipatheart @little-dark-empress @barnesandrogersworld @dumblani @xxloki81xx @jesseswartzwelder @lizzyclifford13-blog @booktease21

[ohnobjyx]

so, i am from the west and before cql it never crossed my mind to check out c-ent (i guess that's almost universal for white people over here) but i started watching cql because there's a lack of lgbt media in the world and now i got interested as a consequence in the rest of c-ent and learning chinese, so i wonder if it could happen in ten years or so that the government realizes they can export lgbt content, suck people into c-ent, get money & so they might relax on censorship, could that be?

Hi, anon! Just for your info, your ask made me think a lot in the past few days. I’m happy to see that there are more people hooked on c-ent! If I’ve to be honest, I consume much more c-ent than western. There’s a certain beauty and poetry that it’s really different from western dramas.

Okay, there are several parts in my answer, so I’d like to tackle them one by one:

Background and language

LGBT content and public stance

Money (I strongly recommend you to read this one and the next, this is your answer, anon)

Success

If any of you are interested, click to see below the cut!

Disclaimer: except actual numbers (some are from official reports, others from articles), the post does have a heavy coating of “my opinion”. Beware.

1. Background and language

If I’m not mistaken, anon (if I am, I’d like to be corrected), you may have watched only CQL and maybe The Guardian, which is another fairly popular among int-fans (I haven’t watched it yet, no spoilers, please!).

These two had a combination of factors that made it easier for int-fans to accept them: fantasy world + well-received lgbt subtext (wangxian!) + less amount of poetic and lyrical language + the plot is surprisingly good (at least CQL from my knowledge). But it’s not the case of the rest of the dramas, and it may not be of the future BL dramas.

When I say “fantasy world” (c-fans often debate in which historical period CQL is based upon, but mxtx never bothered too much with that kind of details), I mean specifically that there isn’t a preexisting set of rules that the viewer may not know about. It’s often commented how CQL never explained how their world works (so a lot of it is fanon) and that viewers had to learn the niceties and the conventions of the world by watching the show.

It’d be a slight problem if the show was set on a historical period and even in a modern setting. C-dramas in general, since their target audience is Chinese, never bother introducing any kind of background or cultural convention. This would be just a little problem, after all, if watching tv shows contribute to our knowledge, we get an unexpected gain. But for many people, if the background or the references are difficult to understand, they may feel discouraged to keep watching it.

(And the rythm of the c-dramas is often extremely slow for western standards, since you have 40-50 episodes to develop a single story, instead of one season of 12 episodes). 

The main problem I see is the language barrier. Something I (and mostly c-fans that speak English or int-fans that speak fluent Chinese) marvel everytime I think about it is how people could stand the subtitles. I’ve yet to find good subtitles (though the ones from the official Youtube channel do a passable job and I’ve heard that on viki the subtitles are good too).

The meaning is often twisted (if not outright reversed sometimes), the poetry is lost, the difference between levels of formality is also blurred, the way Chinese people address each other is also not respected (I’m looking at you, Netflix subtitles). So you can’t ignore the damage the language barrier does to the reception of a tv series.

You’ve said it yourself, anon, that CQL made you interested in Chinese as a language. Chinese, from my point of view, is a fascinating language, but it’s so difficult to translate.

Among other things, the main language barrier is the use of 成语 (cheng yu). They are traditional idiomatic expressions, usually consisting in 4 characters, and originated from ancient literature. Commonly they are created by succintly paraphrasing or summarizing the original text, so they convey information a lot more compactly than normal speech or writing.

From what I know, there’s a logistical problem: a cheng yu of 4 characters is often read in around 1 second, but if the translator wants to include the most complete translation, that get all the nuances of the phrase, it can often end up in a long phrase that take quite longer to read (I saw once a cheng yu literally translated and well... 无语).

This use of chengyu spreads from historical to modern to fantasy tv dramas. CQL’s dialogues use less of them (the novel was plagued with them), making it easier to sub. They also make less use of poetry and literature references that so often appear in historical dramas (just the reference, no context whatsoever, I despair sometimes too), thus making it easier to convey to int-fans.

2. LGBT content and public stance

You wrote at the end: “the government realizes they can export lgbt content, suck people into c-ent...”

This would be assuming that the government acknowledges it is lgbt content. Which they don’t. 

When they were making the adaptation from the novel to the tv script, they were very carefully thinking of how they would introduce the series to the regulation department that controls everything that gets aired in China. In fact, the target audience they specified was “teenagers and youngsters” because of its xianxia themes, its fantasy world and the whole adventure after WWX’s resurrection (but we know that the real target audience was female and mainly in their 20s).

So officially, even though it’s based on a BL novel (and the general public knows it), the government only acknowledged it as an xianxia drama. Even if someone points the BL elements out, they are ambiguous enough that they can avoid the questioning. And since it brings money, as you say, they may turn a blind eye to the people who points it to them now.

There’s another point of your ask I want to highlight: “if it could happen in ten years or so...”. Ten years is a lot of time. I trust their society to take steps in a much more lgbt-friendly direction in our globalized world, and maybe things will be different in a decade’s time, when the younger, more open-minded generation starts to take over the control. Censorship will one day be relaxed or even disappear (from my pov, this is possible with more time and a great change).

(We can’t forget about the propaganda here... so I’m unsure of how this issue will develop in the future).

However, I don’t think the change will come from the government realizing that it is very profitable, and this is the last point I wanted to talk about.

3. Money

Disclaimer: it’s difficult to find out how much a tv series makes as a profit, since they keep making money to this day, this minute, this second. It’s also difficult to find the information, since I don’t work in the industry so I’d to make due with what I have.

I won’t lie, anon, when I saw your ask the first time, I thought: they have no need. You talk about the government realizing that they can earn money with lgbt series, but the reality is, CQL, while one of the highest earning dramas from 2019, it’s not the only one capable of that.

Recently it was issued the list of the Top 10 Most Influential TV Dramas of 2019, in which CQL was top 7. “Not bad!”, one would say.

I’ve taken the data from a few others so you can make a comparison in their profit.

A c-drama usually earns money by selling the license rights to different platforms, commercials and merchandising. In the case of CQL, you can add the concerts, fan meetings and the different events and articles.

Top 1 in the chart was 都挺好 (All is well, I really recommend this one, it’s one of the best dramas I’ve watched). This drama was aired from March 1 to March 25 in 2019. The data from April 3, 2019 is a copyright profit of 667,000,000 ¥ (a total of 14,500,000¥ per episode, the total of what 2 tv stations, Tencent, Youku and Aiqiyi paid for license rights).

Around the time CQL was finishing airing (on Tencent), the copyright profit was around 156,000,000¥. For transparency: this data is from August 20, and CQL finished airing on August 25, while All is well data is from a week after the finale. However, I doubt that in a week CQL could reach a profit of 500,000,000 ¥ to match the profit of All is well (I don’t know how much Netflix paid them for licensing rights, but it may be a similar sum).

Top 5 in the chart is 庆余年 (Joy of Life, in this one XZ had a secondary role). This was has a fanbase too in int-fans, though smaller than CQL’s. The company that’s the main stockholder for this series made a profit of 4,420,000,000¥  in 2019, approximately 48% is copyright profit. The series that brought more profit was Joy of Life, though, of course, they produce more series.

By the time they finished airing, CQL had made a profit of around 400,000,000¥ (estimated), with predictions of it getting to 800,000,000¥ (taking into account license, commercial profit, merchandising and the concerts). I haven’t been able to find how much they made in the end, but it must be around 900 millions to a billion yuans.

I know 800 millions it’s a lot of money (more than what I’ll ever see), but if you take it and compare it with the 667 millions All is well made with just licensing the series, one can understand that a series like All is well is much more profitable than CQL.

However, there’s no need to rank in the top 1 to get this kind of profit. 如懿传 (The legend of Ruyi), a series from 2018 that was the continuation of a drama that had been wildly succesful in 2011. It ranked 5th on douban, but didn’t make it to the top 10 chart of the most influential TV dramas (in spite of a superb leading actress and supporting actors, the plot and the poor production didn’t get it as high as it could have been).

BUT. Just license rights to 3 platforms made them earn 15,000,000¥ per episode. For a show that wasn’t as successful as people had predicted it to be, their profit is quite decent (the production cost was also quite higher than CQL’s, so maybe the net profit wasn’t so high for a 90-episode drama, but they didn’t fail in this investment).

Nonetheless, not everything revolves around money. In my opinion, more than direct economic profit, for CQL their main gain was the fanbase they amassed, that has skyrocketed the actors’ careers, let them make a lot of profit with merchadising and the concerts, and the series still profitable to this day. They have also contributed greatly to the increased presence and popularity of Asian content in the West, which isn’t a small acomplishment.

(As I’m writing this, I’m also watching last week’s episode of TTXS. Guys, the garlic commerce in just 1 county made a profit of more than 9 billion yuans in 3 months. Just so you all have a reference.)

4. Success

Nothing guarantees that a BL drama will be successful. Though there isn’t a lot of BL dramas, The Guardian and CQL aren’t the only (nor the first) BL novels to be adapted into tv series.

In fact, just in 2019, there were 59 BL media (novels, games, manhuas) to be adapted into TV series. Of them, 3 have finished filming and have been aired. Of the 59, I had only heard of Winter Begonia, which has a historical setting and the two male leads are famed actors (one of them is YZ, dd’s motorcycle friend). So just the BL theme doesn’t ensure the success of the drama.

And yet, we haven’t caught news of it here. I didn’t know there were so many (for a country that has a strict censorship, 3 BL dramas in a year is a lot) until I was getting information for this post.

That’s why, in my opinion, if someone said “hey, let’s relax a bit the regulation, since CQL was so liked by the fans”, others may say “but out of 6 BL dramas, only CQL was successful... so it must not be the BL theme after all”.

CQL has many many factors that makes it as good as it is, wangxian being one of the main reasons I fell in love with CQL, but it’s true that it isn’t the only key to its success.

In summary

(I appreciate it if you have been able to read until here).

CQL (and The Guardian, in a lesser degree) had a very distinct set of factors and conditions that made it possible for it to have great success with int-fans. However, there is a trend: only dramas that have been highly rated in China to start with were able to stand out in western countries as well. In my opinion, that’s because people aren’t so different: what the general public likes is very similar, no matter if it’s eastern or western countries.

In fact, CQL has been more successful among the same kind of public everywhere: mainly female, from around 15 to 30 years old.

Moreover, this target audience is very restricted. It’s just a matter of numbers that a drama like All is well, which target audience goes from mainly females from 20 to x years old, is more likely to be successful (yes, at my home, all of my aunts, my parents and I have seen the drama, while only I have watched CQL).

I think I sometimes ramble a lot, so I’ll write down my point here: the entertainment industry is profitable just with the Chinese audience. If a good drama ends up getting famous Western countries, is just 锦上添花 (“adding flowers to the brocade”) or “the icing on the cake”.

CQL is the exception, not the rule. As a drama last year, it broke a record, going on hot search for 49 days on a row in China. It’s a incredibly rewarding show, and, because of that, incredibly lucrative as well. However, since all its accomplishments are very rare, I don’t think this boom will be easily reproduced with just any other drama.

So, to answer your question about whether the profit they can gain with BL dramas would make them reconsider the censorship issue... why would they?

(I’d put everyone to farm garlic).

[butterbeeryuta]

gong cha order no. 11: honey grapefruit juice + aloe + 70% sweetness + less ice + large size

2017

Jaemin is the type to show his affection and love as much as possible. He is also the type that needs a break, and needs to be alone to think and recharge. From his past dating experiences, not many was able to understand his need to be alone. They eventually break up with him because he was ‘too distant’ or some shit like that, even if he gives the world’s warmest hugs and smiles. He did get sad about that; he doubted himself, he was disappointed in himself for making people run away from him because of his ways to deal with shit. And yes, he did think that he was going to be alone— until he met you, regardless of how cheesy this sounds.

You two met under... unusual circumstances. Your two met at a clinic for a yearly medical checkup which was required by the university. And well... you were terrified of needles. Very terrified. So you bet your ass that when the nurses were about to check your blood, you were screaming your diaphragm out.

‘OKAY, OKAY, WAIT WAIT WAIT! Do we have to do this? How about you just wait until I accidentally cut myself from shaving, then I’ll store the blood in a container and give it to you? Or maybe when I pop my pimple and blood starts to come out, that should be fine right?’ You said with pleading eyes. The nurse in front of you sighed for the nth time, explaining to you for who knows how long why she needed to extract blood from your veins. After about 3 minutes, you sighed again, and closed your eyes shut, waiting for the incoming sharp pain. But that didn’t happen.

‘Excuse me but I have a class in 30 minutes, and I really need to get my blood test done so I can go’ a deep voice said behind you, and you mentally thanked this man for interrupting, because you were not at all ready yet.

‘Sir, please stay outside and wait until I’m done. It will take no longer than 10 minutes—‘

‘Ma’am it has already been 35 minutes, this should have ended a long time ago’ he interrupted the nurse. Due to your curiousity, you turned your head back, only to see a pink-haired guy in round glasses— and he was very, very pretty. Just as you were about to admire his face a little longer, he opened his mouth— and it ruined everything.

‘Hey, can you quicken up a bit? I have media studies in about 30 minutes, and I don’t want to miss it because Professor Han is hot as fuck. So, would you please?’ Rude motherfucking rat—

‘Excuse me but if your brain could comprehend shit, you would have realise I’m scared of thin, sharp metals poking through my skin just for my blood to be sucked out like a vampire. No idea who Professor Han is, but you can tell him or her that a pretty patient has been taking time in the clinic, and you will have to be excused from class—‘

‘You don’t know who she is? Bruh, she’s like... the best professor ever, how do you not know her?’ He asks in disbelief.

‘I take biochemistry, why will I know who the media studies professor is?’ You question, furrowing your eyebrows at him. He only scoffed at you, continuing to talk about how wonderful of a professor this Professor Han is.

‘Okay, but you don’t know Professor Matsushiro in organic chemistry. Not only is he a living anime, he’s bilingual and fluent in both lanauges, and that’s one sexy trait— OW, THE FUCK!’ The nurse rolled her eyes, but also felt slightly relieved that she managed to take your blood while you were bickering with the pretty boy in front you. You immediately stopped talking, and whinced in pain instead— which is something the boy noticed quickly. He suddenly felt bad for making you hurry up for his selfish need to see his favourite professor. While you were on your way to leave the room, the pink haired guy told you to wait for him by the receptionist— and you listened to him for some reason, even if you just wanted to go home and watch a drama.

Turned out, the guy's name was Jaemin, and he was a first year student like you. You two exchanged contacts then, and well, got together 3 years later. During that time, Jaemin was in his last year, while you had one more year to go since you took a medical course. From fighting over professors, you two became really good friends, then well, he fell in love with you. You were the first person to respect his private space, and told him something which he will always remember: it’s okay to be alone and have that space to yourself, but it’s important to let others know you’re not trying to push them out of your life. Funnily enough, that was also the time you fell for him. You never cared for someone this much. Or you never wanted to at least because you were scared to have your heart broken, so you never gave it to anyone. Which led you to your first argument.

2020

If you could remember clearly, it was the third time in a row when you declined Jaemin for a date you realised that your ‘friendship’ was a bit more. You told him you had a Biology test the next day, so you couldn’t go— so Jaemin decided to visit your apartment with takeout Chinese food. Yeah, you were in your pyjamas watching Shrek. Definitely not related to Biology. Thank you to your roommate, Ryujin, for opening the door.

‘____________, don’t you have a Bio test tomorrow?’ It hit him that everytime you declined, it was a lie. He thought that he did it again: he pushed you away. He felt bad, but he was also angry considering you were the one that told him that he should remember to not push others away even if he wanted alone time. You didn’t see a point in lying to him anymore, because he probably already realised. So you told him; you were scared. You didn’t even realise you were a crying mess.

‘I’m scared Jaemin! I’ve seen friends whose hearts were broken, and I didn’t want to go through that. That’s why I never dated. And knowing t-that I like you a lot too scares m-me because w-what if I also hurt you? I could n-never forgive myself for damaging someone as sweet and k-kind as you. You d-deserve someone who isn’t as selfish as me J-Jaemin.’ Your eyes were tired from the amount of tears that rolled down your face. You were expecting him to leave. You didn’t think anyone would want to stay with a person like you, a person who can’t trust anyone.

‘I am 0.71 seconds away from marrying you ____________’ Jaemin says. And before you could even ask what he meant, Jaemin closed the gap between the two of you, his chapped lips meeting yours as a sense of warmth spread across your fragile body. His soft hands reached out to cup your face, wiping away the hot tears. You didn’t know what to do or say afterwards, but you liked the intimacy. You liked having him around. You love Jaemin, and he loves you too. He rested his forehead against yours the moment he pulled away. Your eye met his warm brown orbs, and you noticed something: his eyes were filled with love.

‘_________ you’re one of the most precious and loving person I’ve ever met. I don’t care how long it will take you to allow me in your heart. Bet it a month, a year, a whole ass decade? I want you in my life forever, so please don’t push me away’ he says as he smiles at you. You hugged him tightly, whispering a ‘thank you,’ and well, it’s a memory engraved in both of your minds forever.

2026

‘Jaemin get the door!’

‘_______ I’M WIPING OUR SON’S ASS, HE’S A POOPING MACHINE!’

‘DON’T FUCKING CURSE IN FRONT OF MINSEOK!’ You screamed as you ran downstairs to open the door. You fixed hair and straightened your clothes to look somewhat presentable before you opened the door, only to see your son’s favourite uncle, Donghyuck.

‘________! How is my favourite married couple doing?’ He asks as he brings in an obnoxiously large present behind you. Was it Jaemin’s birthday today? Was it your son’s birthday today? GOD I’M A TERRIBLE PARENT.

‘I’m good— I mean we’re good.’

‘Still not used to the married life huh? No worries, it’s not that different. Jeno and I still do act the same, except it’s legal.’ Hyuck says, which only made you smile at his words. When you were brought in Jaemin’s life, he immediately introduced you to his friend circle. Of course, the other 6 boys were all lovely and kind, but you became the closest to Hyuck because well... you were the one that made him realise that he had a thing for Jeno. You nodded at Hyuck’s words, until you noticed the large purple packet behind him.

‘Umm Hyuck... what’s that behind you?’ You asked biting your lip, not ready for what he’ll say because you think it’s going to be bad either way. What’s funny was... he hesitated to speak the moment he opened his mouth. Is he hiding something?

‘A-actually, t-this is for u-um—‘

‘IT’S NOTHING! IT’S NOTHING! LEAVE HYUCK, BYE BYE!’ Your husband screams as he rushed down the stairs with Minseok in his arms. You grabbed the packet behind Donghyuck, opening it before either men could scream at you and—

‘THE FUCK JAEMIN YOU ASKED HYUCK TO BUY A GAMING CONSOLE? WE BOUGHT A NEW ONE 4 MONTHS AGO?’

‘BABE, IT’S THE NEWEST EDITION!’

‘SHUT UP’

[eyes-like-a-pisces]

Rules: Answer 10 questions, tag 10 people and make another 10 questions.🧜‍♀️

Questions from my astrological twin: @maiden-song 💕

1. if you could choose to glimpse the afterlife, would you?

Yes, I would. I think a lot about It.

2. under what circumstances do you think you past life was lived?

I could have had many past lifes. I think I was a native american, cause I've always felt bonded to their tradicion and same with China, cause when I hear the sound of Erhu - traditional chinese instrument, something wakes up in me. I've also always wanted to see Sweden & Finland, so maybe I was doing something there... I mean, I could do anything. I see myself in biblical times, as well as middle ages. I could be a renaissance artist, as well as dying of hunger during victorian era, or something, and that's probably why I'm still careful with money, haha. For my latest one, I think I could have been a hippie in the 60/70s and had some drug use experience, cause when I was a child I used have dreams about taking drugs, even if I didn't know anything about It. I also had some experience with psychics (and "psychics"), my mom had a past life regression and she told me she saw me few times... I don't take anything for granded, but reincarnation is one of my favourite theories.

3. what three skills would you instantly master if you had the choice?

Playing every instrument, speaking every language, singing beautifully

4. would your rather no passion or no pain?

No pain. Everything is needed in life, but you know, enough is enough.

5. if you had a chance to leave this world and go to another one, would you take it?

Depends of the world and who I would meet there. Even if this world can be cruel and disappointing at times, I still have some love for him and humanity.

6. if you could smell like anything in the world, what would it be?

Like the first day of spring, when you go outside and the air smells different. Or a storm.

7. do you feel like common interests or philosophical comparability are not important?

They are very important. I can't imagine a relationship without similar interests, views. You either get bored or fight constantly. I think that the whole point of searching a partner is trying to find things you got in common. The more similar you are, the more understood you feel and more you are attracted to them. That's my experience at least. That's a very basic example, but as you may noticed, I'm very much into music and I was dating a guy, who wasn't into music that much at all. I thought It doesn't matter at first, but then I started feeling like I'm missing my favourite way to connect with other person. Once I met a guy who loved music as much as I do, I'm sorry to admit It, but my partner became unattractive to me.

Similar interests and views are needed at the beginning, to bond with somebody, and later, to simply enjoy spending time together (thanks Captain Obvious). I mean... chemistry and good will are not enough for a relationship to last. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you have to be identical and agree on everything - some differences can be inspiring, balance your relationship and teach you something new. It's also ok and even needed, to have some separate hobbies, things that you like to do on your own. There are also other important things, like, if you equally care about each other and if you are on the same page in general, but I can't imagine not agreeing in the key points and things that are the most important to you. And the only person who can decide what is the most important is the person who is in that relationship, no matter if It's about interests, philosophy or religion. But beside a romantic relationship, I think It's good to be surrounded by different people and listen what they got to say.

8. if there was one mystery you alone could learn the answer too, what would it be?

The mystery of life in general. Why we are here, is there any destiny, how we are connected, how this universe works, what happens after death...

9. in your opinion, is there anything more important than love?

No :) (I'm not talking about putting your relationship before other things. I'm talking about love as a big force and meaning of this universe)

10. describe a new planet you would live on, if you could.

I want things to be diverse, monumental... Maybe another moon, why not. As a concept of the world, I wish there would be peace :) everybody has their safe place to live, will to live, passion, purpose, someone to love and who loves them back. Amen.

Questions from @mybloodiedvalentine 💕👯

1. What is an unpopular opinion you hold you about which you feel strongly and with which you seem to notice a lot of people disagree?

Nothing specific comes to my mind at the moment (that I haven't mentioned before). I sure have some, but what's unpopular opinion in general and what's unpopular opinion on tumblr, are two different things. Maybe, that the "tumblr positivity" is not really helpful. Like: "in case you need to hear this: you are smart, you are loved... ". How do you know that? Those are just empty words. But It's better to spread positivity than negativity, of course.

2. What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever told you that you can recall?

Oh, I had a few situations like that... This is so lovely, when a stranger wants to just be genuinely nice, not just catcalling you...For example, when I was with my 3 girlfriends at the club and 2 ladies in their 40s where like: "excuse me, we just wanted to say that we can't stop starring at you all, cause you are the priettiest girls in the club." And we were like: aww, omg, you are beautiful too, come dance with us. And we were all dancing in our witches circle ignoring all sweaty men around us, haha. Or when my mom went to the the same hair saloon as me and asked hair dresser if she remembers me and she said that she does and that I'm nice and intelectual. I'm her faithful client now ;_; (Sorry for sucking my own dick, but It was nice to remind myself about these situations).

3. Has a piece of art or music ever made you cry? If so, do you remember a specific moment? 

Crying to music is my passion. The latest intense moment was few days ago. I was loading a dishwasher at night and I played some music and then "lover you should've come over" by Jeff Buckley came on and sudden wave of lonelliness hit me so hard, that I just had to put down the plate, hide my face in my hands and weep ✌

4. What’s your favourite piece of clothing?

Idk, maybe my Penny Lane coat :)

5. What’s a random childhood memory that fills you with a deep sense of comforting nostalgia? 

Sledding with kids during a very cold winter in my home town, until It got dark and snow looked like sprinkled with glitter and having my freezed feet warmed up with a hair dryer, when I came back home, haha.

6. What is/was your favourite thing about your mom? If not your mom, your dad? Or best friend?

My favourite thing about my mom is that she's tolerant and open minded. I didn't have to lie to her or pretend I'm someone I'm not because of that. My favourite thing about my dad is that he actually cared about being a parent, even tho my parents divorced. I respect that he has unwavering morals and huge knowledge about a world - biology, astronomy, music, art...- subject doesn't matter- but he is very modest about It.

7. What’s something you learned on your own of which you’re proud?

Playing guitar

8. When was a moment in your life you remember laughing the hardest?

I was playing cards since I was a kid. After few years, when I was about 13 y. o. I got the first poker, a royal flush. When I saw my cards, I'm not sure why, I just coudn't believe my luck, I started laughing so hard I almost died.

9. What do you like to do when you’re having a hard time mentally that invariably calms you down?

Really depends of the kind of situation and if It's triggered by something or just a longer period of time feeling in a certain way. The is no a magic trick, but some things might be helpful. When It's concrete situation, at first, when the feelings are really intense, then I just can't calm down. Every try to do so, has a reverse effect. Like, I CAN'T THE FUCK CALM DOWN and It makes me even more angry. Brain needs about 20 min to chill, if It's not triggered, so It's better to be left alone and just go mad a little until brain will have enough haha. Have a good cry, listen to some music, have a lonely walk, write my feelings down etc.

I like to listen to Teal Swan on youtube. She's a spiritual teacher. I know, It might not sound encouragingly, but she actually seems very down to earth. She has a video about like, every emotion and every problem ever. She's very good in naming feelings, rationalizing them and It makes you feel more understood. And It calms me down as result. ASMR doesn't work for me, but I remember that at some point I liked to listen to sounds of the nature, like rain, waves etc + guided meditation to fall asleep.

Music always helps in general - listening, playing guitar, singing. I also like to take an oil and do a face massage. I'm really sorry if I sound like an instagram influencer 🤢, but when you feel bad for a longer time, you frown and there is a tention in your jaw, it can be really relieving. I follow instructional videos on yt.

When I have a longer period of going into downward spiral, then every way to distract my brain is good - TV shows, internet content that is not related to my life situation (although, sometimes It's good to distance yourself from social media), for example, I like criminal podcasts, cause they are occupying enough to distract a miserable brain, meeting somebody, going to a place I've never been before. + any kind of shedule, reason to leave the house, any goal, anything positive to look forward to and having even the simplest things done, is a blessing (even if sometimes It's the last thing I wanna do). I also tend to be much sadder in the evening, so I just go to sleep. When nothing works, then It's time for the professional help.

10. Do you have a favourite holiday memory?

Discovering Cocteau Twins.

Best regards if u actually read all that chatter, but those questions were so interesting, that I couldn't limit myself to one sentence answer (in most cases).

My questions are:

1. Who or what was the most influential for your music taste?

2. If you could time travel, where and when would you like to go first?

3. If you could be someone from an opposite gender for a day, how would you like to look like and what would you do?

4. Do you have a style icon/inspiration? Or a favourite designer? Desribe your dream clothing style

5. What's the song by a band/artist from your country that you could recommend? (From your hometown or state eventually)

6. What is the most rebellious thing you've ever done?

7. Has ever something in your life happened, that you coudn't explain with logic?

8. What 5 objects someone could use to summon you?

9. What is your favourite name from your culture's language? And outside your culture's language?

10. What's a song you normally wouldn't admit you like or different from music that you usually listen, but still enjoy?

I tag: @winterdryad @bowiepop @nightmare @confusion-in-the-sea-of-sorrow @l0w-budget @numberoneblind @mirandasinclairs @mysticbride @leperwitch @comeacrossthedesertnoshoeson @hexafu @mielmelancolie @arcane-delight

[god-hunter]

I’m Still Evolving. And I like it!

Hey Tumblr!  It’s been a while.

I haven’t written in over a month, because honestly life’s been pretty similar lately.  I’ve fallen into a steady routine of taking care of myself.  Physical work outs have waned in place of working out mentally.  And what I mean by that is, I’ve been continuing my Self-Work with my Diary Entries and just recently caught up to 2019.  That was a Hell of a trip.

But I didn’t get on here to rant about that.  Instead, I wanted to acknowledge the now, since for the past few weeks, it seems like all I’ve been doing is living in the past.

So, what’s been happening since mid-August, or whenever that last entry was?

Well, that date with the Social Distancer never happened.  I was annoyed about that, but not enough to want to actually get into it on here.  I didn’t really care too much and I still had Needy Girl coming over every week, so that was fine.

But yeah.  In the time that I’ve been taking down my notes and taking my time to write out 2018, taking some healthy time in between and then doing the same process for 2019, I’ve basically been applying to jobs!

That Thursday Interview was garbage, actually.  I was there for 5 minutes, because I didn't really know much about Excel and asked for too much.  But whatever, no point in wasting anyone’s time.  I wasn’t in love with the job description anyway.

I’ve been applying to all sorts of things, and honestly I’ve gone through the motions.  Some days are better than others.  Sometimes it seems like jobs are plentiful and it’s so easy to get an interview.  Then other times it seems like the competition is just as steep as it ever was, and I’ve even gotten to the point where I’m not getting the jobs I Don’t want.  So put that where you will...

But for now I don’t care about any of that, because I’m on an Upswing. I know that I’ll keep plugging away and find something eventually.  Also, now that I’ve gotten a lot of that Self-Work out of the way, I really do feel Mentally, better.  I’ve sort of, cleared the air for myself about the past.  I’ve been honest with myself about my own mistakes, and.. I don’t want to say unforgiving of her errors, but definitely acknowledging them and kind of letting them go.  Because now so much time has passed that the break up was actually 7 months ago!  I stopped counting.  That’s a Really good sign!!

I hit a drought when it came to ladies, but that recently opened itself back up. Someone actually swiped right on me on Tinder 3 weeks ago!!!  This was a bigger girl, and not an immediate pick for me, but I said, “Why not?”  And ya know what?  It was a good choice.  We’ve gone on 3 dates since then and we have a 4th one tonight.  It turns out that we have more in common than I originally thought.  She’s interesting, and for now it seems that we’re both in the same place about this.  We want to keep it casual and just fun, while the rest of the world sucks.

Better details would be that we talked about 3 times on the app, about just movies and random interests.  But then she threw me her number to keep texting while she had an overnight shift at work, and I dunno..  something just worked while we kept talking.  Conversation was actually interesting and we agreed to have our first Zoom Date later that week.

That Zoom Date happened to be on a Thursday as well, when I took a great interview.  I was there for an hour!  This office building was impressive and a little intimidating.  It was your typical movie scene with glass dividers between desk set ups, I was in this nice conference room surrounded by glass at the head of the table, while my interviewer was a Woman that was basically my age, at the other end of the table.  But there’s no point in going into more details, because I didn’t get it.  I did like this job position though.  It was for a Client Coordinator and I would definitely like to do something like that in the future.  Especially for the right pay. But anyway, it’s needless to say that I had something to talk about that night on the Zoom Date!  So I broke the ice by talking all about the interview and we laughed about stuff.  She was clearly very nervous, but I got to see her Cat, she saw mine.  She did the inevitable Zoom Tour of the apartment.  I didn’t really do one, because my place was a mess, but she didn’t ask either.  It didn’t matter, because everything else was going very well.  We got more comfortable as we brought things up and found out that we both like a lot of in-depth reviews on YouTube or just watching Let’s Plays or Video Game reviews.  We even got into Dream Analysis and she talked about some real stuff without getting depressing.  We’re definitely on the same liberal scope, which is refreshing.  But she’s also not overtly political. We even talked about past hook ups gone wrong (started by her, not me) which is more of a friend thing, but still the conversation was very comfortable.  We stayed up pretty late that night, but eventually said goodnight.  We both knew we’d definitely do this in person which ended up the next week.  The Zoom Date helped us skip steps.  We didn’t meet for dinner or anything.  Instead, we just took it straight to her place for Sushi and a YouTube party.  We made out at the very end of the night.  That was nice.  She appreciated that I didn’t just go all in right away, but took time to actually hang out with her first.  [That Sushi was delicious by the way.] Oh yeah, we’re into the same music which is SUCH a huge plus to me. Yeah..  we definitely have a little spark, which is nice.  But after what I’ve been through.  I really can’t jump into something so fast.  And she is in full agreement with that too.

Our next in person date was at my place, where we basically did the same thing over Chinese.  It was some YouTube reviews and watching this Comedy Challenge show that I’ve been telling her about since we started talking.  She really loved it, so that was nice.  We shared fruit and chocolate dip too, which was great.  I like that she’s trying to behave (and frankly doing better than me) when it comes to eating, because health has become very important to me within the last 2 or 3 years. 

Take tonight for instance.  We’re going to have a big salad and charcuterie for dinner. (fancy cheese and meat plate) with wine.  She also told me about this trippy movie that I saw last night on her suggestion and we’re looking forward to diving into the meaning of it and stuff.  That’s the type of stuff that I’m really all about. Philosophical Musing and all of that. Oh yeah!  She respects the Hell out of my Self-Work writing that I’ve told her about.  At very first, she just admitted that she wished she wrote more, but the fact that she was a writer means that she still has it in her.  She’s a thinker, and I like my Women who can be analytical about their Media or the World.  It’s important. It’s interesting.

Just don’t over-analyze me, or us, or anything. (At least within reason).

So who knows?  So far, so good.

There was more to say until yesterday, but I’ll bring this girl up too. An old Highschool Flame actually hit me up on FB.  To keep the story way uncomplicated, we’ve basically known each other for 20 years, she’s an adjusted Single Mom now, so it’s clear she’s been through some shit, and I’ve clearly been through my own. So somehow on FB, we’ve been complimenting each other and I was the first to just message her a hello, which turned into walking on a trail and meeting her son very quickly.

I was tempted to write that day, but I wanted to see how it played out first.  Well, that day not only did I get along great with the kid, but she whispered in his ear and he invited me to Pizza Lunch with them, which was adorable.  He really liked me, actually sat in my lap and hugged me at the table..  It was sweet.

But we tried this again, just the 2 of us yesterday on a 2nd trail walk, and it was a no go.  I’m skipping her random FB message saying, “This is gonna sound weird, but thank you for being the kind of male I can have around my son.” Hmmm.  If I didn’t catch a vibe before, I certainly did, then.

But I was super cool about it.  Set up a Friday hang out in time, and I was pleased to hear that it would just be us while her son was in school.  This was the perfect time to feel the vibe and find out if this was just a friend thing or actually a date.

But again, I’ll keep it short.  It was just a Friend Thing.  I noticed 2 things.   1.  She sighed when I said, “I swear, the weather is always like this when I go on a date.”  She didn’t say anything, but that sigh, practically said it all. 2.  She brought up other dudes.  

From there, I admitted that I’ve been dating too, and she was all excited to hear about my stuff.

Then later, I brought up her message and said I wasn’t sure if there was a vibe or not.  She didn’t say no, but... she did make it clear that things were getting serious with this one co-worker she was dating or whatever.  And then she was back-pedaling and saying stuff like, “Wait.  Let me just make sure it’s not getting weird.”

So yeah.  This was just friends.  And that’s fine, because she’s awesome!  And so is her kid.  And I’ve already got this casual thing that I like a lot.

I was upfront with old flame.  I told her that I want to keep dating for the rest of the year.  Keep meeting people and experiencing new personalities.  And if things get serious along the way, sort them out as I may.

Our hang got cut off while she dove more into my old hang ups.  [Someone told us to get out of the parking lot because it was private property...]. But either way, it was still a very fruitful hangout.  And even though the rejection was disappointing, it wasn’t necessarily unexpected.  Honestly, it would’ve been too out-of-nowhere, and even Reboundish.  I’ve learned that if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

But this is what it’s about!  Keeping your eyes and heart open.  I swiped on a bunch of people last night with no expectations.  [When you treat it like a game, you’re less bound to get hurt.]. That one doesn’t merit explaining, but I just can’t stand how shallow and callous people are.  So what’s the point in being invested at first look?  Just swipe and see what happens.  If you get the message, then you can start to feel things once they check those right boxes. But in order to find success in that, you gotta know what those boxes even are, right?

So anyway, yeah.  I’m a lot more pragmatic about things. I’ve got a Tinder Girl now and things are going well. =)

I’m also still hanging out with Needy Girl, who I’m working on making less Needy.  She really needs to sort out her shit and move on.

We had a whole talk about how she’s been mistaking hooking up for dating and I feel bad for her in a way, but there’s just something about her that doesn’t check all the boxes.  Attraction is definitely part of it, but it’s mostly personality. She’s just not confident in herself enough.  She’s hurt and super sensitive.  She’s got this shy, cute, naive thing going for her on top of all of our shared interests.  But that’s not enough.  Especially with how she started things with me, making me the Other Man, and throwing in this Cheating Atmosphere.

I said it before, but that is not a good Foundation for a Relationship.

And again I’ve reiterated for her that I don’t really want a Relationship right now.  At all!

So, Communication is Key.  I’ve said it before with the Ex and even though she was in full agreement, somehow we let enough small things go that they turned into big things.  Stuff that was swept under the rug became huge Resentment Issues later.  So, fuck knows, man...

Alls I know is that things are very different now.  And I like it that way. I’m still Evolving.

[frekydeki]

Cupid Can’t Fall in Love

Part 1

Summary: (AU) Eternal and true love is a business transaction for you. Soulmates are simply two file folders tied together with a golden bow. But when eight folders come across your desk, your job gets a little bit stickier with each passing day. Being a Cupid isn’t so easy as it sounds...

Pairing: (Jihyun x Reader) 

| Part 1 | Part 2: Upcoming 

It’d be beautiful. The golden grass, the falling sun, the gentle and warm wind, the serene silence… It would all be so beautiful if he wasn’t staring into your eyes so tearfully. You trace your eyes over his blue hair and follow the line of his jaw, then his neck, over his collar bone and to his heart. Your e/c eyes widen to the size of the moon; a glowing arrow burns frantically in his chest. You harshly draw in a breath and smack your hand over your own arrow, hammering in your heart.

         You can’t process the tear trailing down your cheek as you turn your eyes away and up to the scattered clouds in the sky. Why? How did this happen? It’s got to be a mistake…

         It’d all be so beautiful… If only you could fall in love.

         How… Did it come to this?

Working for Aphrodite isn’t the most exciting employment option. When you were first born, you took a little bit more to your father’s side, preferring to kick ass here and there. But after a run-in with a seething Achille’s, – you told Zeus to just kill the guy but he insisted you talk it out – you got your butt kicked so bad that even Ares himself worried over you. Your mom said your warrior days were over that day. Nobody defies the word of Aphrodite, after all, and that’s why you’re holed up in this stupid office. Battle armor feels much more natural than the pencil skirt and blouse you’re wearing, but this is what you have now; platform heels, scrunchies, paper cuts, and the sound of typing like chinese water torture to your ears. Lucky you, though! You’ve put in your two millennia to get a personal office, away from all the typing and scratching on parchment; its maybe one of your greatest achievements in the past two thousand years since Aphrodite and Ares put you on the bench.

         This tiny little office is your hell a little bit away from hell, you like to say. You still have mental break downs and panic attack under your desk, and you’ve forgotten what wood your desk is made out of; but at least you get some damn silence. Except for the obnoxious banging on your door that’s happening right now. Is it eight already? The dread of a thousand punished souls in the underworld escapes from your lips in a groan; you barely even filed the cases you finished yesterday. Nevertheless, you roll in your rock hard chair – Hera was kind enough to make you a small cushion, even if it looks like a grandma’s afgan turned cushion, you and your butt love it – to swing your door open at a dangerous speed.

         The young blonde before you smiles and points towards the soft close door.

         “Isn’t it great Ares installed those personally for you?” Her raspy voice sputters to you quickly. Her scrawny finger then points to the coffee mug in your hand, “Hey, is that coffee.”

         “Yeah, what el-“ Your hand becomes lighter as she snatches it from you and takes a long swig.

         “I haven’t slept in like three days,” She babbles to you as she puts the coffee back into your hand and turns to the cart littered with folders, “Finals are next week and I haven’t studied all semester.” You’ve grown used to the incessant mumbling that Angelia lets loose every morning while handing in your cases… She’s like this every week, even without finals. “Becoming a god sure isn’t easy work!” She loudly laughs before continuing on about offerings and the rules of appearing to humans.

         “You know, Angelia, if you didn’t spend all of your time programming social media sites for humans, you’d be able to get your work done.”

         “How else is a messenger god supposed to stay relevant? Dad already does all the messaging between gods, so there’s no work for a dumb college god like me.”

         “You’re in college… That’s your job right now.” Your lidded eyes meet hers as she blows a loose strand of curly hair from her face and drops two folders onto your lap.

         “Yeah but I’ll disappear if I loose followers.”

         “No. You won’t. You’re a god born of two gods, not a god born of need. There’s a clear difference. We survive whether or not humans worship us individually. Plus there’s other jobs for gods to do other than meddling and fucking around.”

         “Yeah but I wanna be a messenger god!” She whines as she drops four more folders onto your lap. “Only eight new assignments today. Lucky you.”

         “L… Lucky me?” You screech at her. “I already have two hundred and eighty- eight active cases!” She surrenders her hands and pursues her lips at you.

         “I don’t decide who gets what cases.”

         “Yeah but you could also maybe throw in a word to Aphrodite and be like, ‘Yeah, boss, don’t you think MC already has enough assignments right now?’ You know, maybe stick your neck out for a friend once in a while?” Angelia continues to stack cases on your lap, unphased by the explosive temper you let loose every morning, and you keep on crying up to her, “Are you listening to me Angelia? I’m drowning in stress right now! If I were a nymph I would’ve shriveled up and died three hundred years ago.” With your pouting expression and whiney voice, you can be compared to a kid whose mom put her favorite cereal back on the shelf.

         “But you’re not a nymph. Yay! You won’t shrivel up and die.”

         “But if I were a nymph I would have. Doesn’t that concern you? I could die!”

         “Gods don’t die.”

         “Yes we do!” You snap up to her grinning face, “And the leading cause is stress!” The over caffeinated girl isn’t moved by your whining, so you switch to a bargaining strategy quickly.

          “Okay, hear me out,” You begin with a lowered voice, “Maybe if you just slip these onto someone else’s desk, and then pretend that you didn’t notice when Aphrodite asks you “What the hell?” By then that Cupid would have already started the assignment so there’d be no point in bothering me to do it.” Angelia drops the last heavy file folder on your lap and shakes her head. You blink as the weight of your coffee is lifted from your hand again.

         “No can do, my friend.” She begins as she sips loudly from your coffee mug, before her face scrunches, “Too much creamer.” Angelia puts the mug back in your hand, all the while you watch her with eyes the size of the moon; is she serious right now? Of course you know there’s too much creamer in there; you just had a late morning so for all you care she can take her scrutiny and shove it. “Anyways, Aphrodite and Eros both said - very strictly, I might add - that these files are meant for your hands only. Anyways, I’m only part time, here. That all is way above my pay grade.”

         “Angelia,” You suck in a heavy breath through your nose to try and curb your frustrations with the shrugging girl before you say, “You suck.” At that, she laughs heartily. She giggles her good-bye to you over the sound of her clicking heels as she moves to give the next guy his shackles for the day. “Hey!” She turns over her shoulder to acknowledge your head poking out of your office, “You tell Aphrodite that if I get any more cases this week I’m going to go ahead and fall in love, ya hear?”

“Yeah, right. Someone like you, fall in love?” She snorts, “Not even Eros would take that assignment.” You lift your lip, eyebrows pinching together, and shout back to her:

“Go bother someone else… I’m gonna be here all night because of you.” She waves and smiles pleasantly, which you return half-heartedly. The door shuts gently, and you groan back over to your desk.

         Eight files don’t sound like much to the human ear, but these files hold every single aspect of the subject’s life, so it looks like the holy bible. It’s not that you mind the read all that much – it’s like a nice little short story – but it’s the paperwork and scheming that you hate with every fiber of your explosive being. You look to the mirror hanging on your wall after glancing through one of the files – these were all a little bit bigger than the normal case – and decide to put your work order in for their vial’s early; it’s going to take a while to gather their life essence. You grab a drachma and turn it about in your hand as you scribble the eight names onto separate blue ribbons.

         “Ánoixe.” You cough, watching the solid mirrors surface begin rippling like water after a stone is thrown into it. “Eudorus.” The rippling increases before orange begins to reflect in the mirror; it slowly stops to reveal the freckled and smiling face of your good buddy. “How are you this fine morning?”

         “Don’t play coy with me, MC. I know you’re only here to give me more work.” Your lips snap shut before you laugh lightly.

         “I’m sorry. I usually wouldn’t bother you about it until tomorrow but… I just got eight new assignments and they’re really big files. I thought I’d give you a head start on getting their essence for me.”

         “Eight!” He cries at you, his freckled cheeks becoming red and eyes watering. “You’re already drowning in work already!” He purses his lips and puffs his cheeks as he mumbles under his breath, “Mom really has to stop giving you so much work. You’ll keel over soon because of lack of sleep.”

         “Can you do this for me? I’ll buy you dinner tonight?” He smiles at you.

         “I’d do it even if you didn’t offer food, but since you did you can’t take it back now. Give me the ribbons and I’ll give ‘em to you at dinner.” You push your hand through the mirror, flinching as the humid air of his workplace gathers to your hand.

         “How do you even breathe in there Eudorus? It’s so humid.”

         “You get used to it after a little.” He stops as he eyes you, his lips parted and brows slack in what you can only dreadfully identify as one thing; concern. “Are you getting enough sleep, MC?”

         “With all these cases on my desk, I can’t afford sleep.”

         “We might be gods and all, but we need our sleep just like the humans.” You grin as you roll your eyes playfully.

         “You’re starting to sound like Apollo.”

         “If he sees you like this MC he’s going to tear you a new one about taking care of yourself, and you know he’s going to crack down on your eating habits! You’re worse than Hades sometimes…”

         “I know, I know… I’ll just avoid him at all costs.” Your half-brother grins at you before he waves the ribbons held lightly in his smooth hands.

         “I better get to work on theses. And you better to, if you want to cut down on those piles on your desk.”

         “You’re right. Have a good one, Eudorus.”

         “Yeah, you too.” You watch as your red-headed brother disappears, and the mirror hardens again. Staring at your reflection, you realize you really do look like you’re on your deathbed. Your skin is a shade or two lighter from its usual hue, hair messily tossed into a bun, your bags much more prominent, and lips pulled down in a frown much more than usual. You look away quickly, recalling Angelia’s words from earlier…

         “Yeah, right! Someone like you, fall in love?” You stare critically at the stack of finished reports you need to put in their rightful files; you will never have one of these for yourself… It’s strictly off limits for you as a Cupid. If you fall in love, you lose your job. Sometimes it makes you mad, other times sad, and some rare times, you’re glad.

         Filing cases is the easy part of your job; all the hard work’s done, now all that’s left is topping off the paired folders with golden ribbons and filing them into your large bookshelf for review and approval by Eros. Eros, that sleaze. It’s been at least a millennium since you went through the trouble of pairing him with Psyche and he still has the nerve to waltz into your office and flirt with you shamelessly. Plus, he gets to keep his job despite being head over heels for his wife; who cares if he’s a primordial? He should be held to the same standards as everyone else!

         That’s not what matters at the moment though, you guess. Getting these cases off of your desk is the priority! You managed to close thirty cases last night, so you just need to focus on getting them all patched up nicely. You glance to the new files on your desk; once this is done you can stick your nose into the new assignments. 

         “Is this a joke, mom?” Saying you sounded as loud as Zeus when he and Hades butted heads would almost do a disservice to your anger. You are livid, fuming, downright insane with rage. Her beautiful violet eyes snap up to your own as she gracefully pushes her blonde hair from her face and folds her hands in front of her.

         “Is what a joke, MC?” Most of the time, her voice would’ve calmed you down to the point of rational thought, but not today. You’re ready to body slam her into Tartarus. You wave the files frantically in front of you and drop them onto her desk, eyes on fire and steam running out of your ears. You’re an Ares level threat right now.

         “What the hell are these assignments?” You screech. Opening the top folder you drop the picture of the blonde on her neat, tidy desk. “Yoosung Kim, 21, college student. He’s fucked up right now, mom. He recently lost his cousin, who, might I add, is also one of these files. How the fuck am I supposed to make a dead woman fall in love? And how the hell am I supposed to make someone like Yoosung fall in love while he is like this?” She opens her mouth to respond but you slap another picture in front of her. “Jumin Han, 26, an executive who doesn’t know the half of relationships and trusting another person. I can’t work with this yet! And don’t you even get me started on Saeran and Saeyong, have you even looked through these files? And Jihyun? What the fuck is going on with this guy?” You feel a large hand plop down on your shoulder. A growl nearly comes from you as you look up to your father, his yellow eyes telling you to try and calm down. “Well when the hell did you get here?”

         “I was here the whole time MC. You just marched in, ready for the kill.”

         “Well if she wouldn’t hand me such bullshit cases on top of all my other cases I wouldn’t feel like murdering everyone on this damn mountain!” Ares chuckles as he shakes his head in amusement.

         “You sure are my daughter, but you’re almost worse than me. What have I always told you, little soldier?” Your mouth draws into a thin line, before you mumble your response so lowly that no one could understand you. “No matter how hard it gets, it is your duty, and so you shall finish it.”

         “It could also be Eros’ duty. Or Agata! She only has like, ten assignments right now.”

         “Yes, my dear. But Agata is also very new to working as a Cupid.”

         “She’s been in the department for two hundred years!”

         “These cases require experience and power greater than that of a two hundred-year-old nymph.” You draw your lips into a thin line and eye your mother critically. What the hell does she expect you to do with this? You’re originally a war goddess. You were meant to fight, not shoot people with metaphorical arrows and make sure they fall head over heels with each other!

         “This is the life you have now, MC.” Ares begins, for like, the millionth time this month. You grind your teeth and step away from him. You know that you have to content yourself with working in a quiet office, watching others fall in love, constantly typing on a computer, wearing these stupid pencil skirts and bows…

         “But I hate wearing these damn heels!” Is all you can screech, childishly. Aphrodite giggles as she stands and walks to you.

         “But they make you look so beautiful.” You send a harsh glare up to her; of course, she doesn’t even flinch cause your glares are as harmless to her as a feather is to a rock. “I trust you to handle these assignments better than anyone working here… Even myself. I wouldn’t have given them to you otherwise.”

         “How do you suggest I start these, then?”

         “Drink their essence and see what they need.”

         “I’m not a damned therapist.”

         “Hear, hear!” Ares uselessly calls as he resumes his seat on the couch. He shrinks a little when Aphrodite sends him a harsh, menacing glare; if there’s one thing all the gods have learned, it’s that Aphrodite – and possibly Persephone – are the scariest when they get mad.

         “Yes, but you will know where to go. I can assure you.” You puff out your cheeks and cross your arms.

         “Fine, but you owe me three weeks of vacation since I can’t go next week anymore!” You hiss as you take the files she’d gathered in her hands before you even simmered down – it’s like she knew she’d win you over – and stomp to the door. “I had tickets to the premier of the new marvel movie! Do you know how expensive those are?” You cry, ready to slam the door shut, but giving your mom one more, half-hearted stare.

         “You’re a goddess, sweetheart. You have an endless supply of money.”

         “That doesn’t mean I want to waste it!” And you move to slam the door shut, but it slows just at the end. You swear your eyeballs set on fire as you realize that your father installed yet another soft close door because of you.

         What’s your plan? Dive in head-first and get blind-sided at every corner like Zeus? No way, just thinking about that has you ready to start another war. You need a plan, a good plan, and as much information as you can get. Meaning you’re going to have to work with their guardians. Pompous, inconsiderate, above the law shit heads is what guardians are. In your millenniums, you’ve avoided most, if not all, contact with them. You don’t work well with big heads; they always mess things up because they’re always right, narrow-sighted, and rash. Add to that the state that these wards are in, you can’t imagine these guardians will be the best help… But you’ve got to take whatever you can get.

         And that’s why you’re sitting at a large table of seven guardians, enjoying a measly meal of chicken tenders and fries; ambrosia is too damn expensive these days. But you suppose that as the times have changed, your offerings and followers have fallen to a measly, absolute zero. No worshippers? No ambrosia. It’s a good way to stir up some envy here on Olympus.

         “So, what do you need, Cupid?”

         “I need to know about your wards.” You sigh as you plant a folder in front of each guardian. You point to the empty chair and raise your brow, “Where’s Mina’s guardian?”

         “Uh, she’s out on sick leave.”

         “I thought you guys were invincible?”

         “Well, after all the times she’s worked, I’m sure she needs a break for a little.” Aeneas snaps at you. You roll your eyes; guardians were specifically designed to do everything but need a break. You’d have to check in with Zeus later to see what the hell is going on with her.

         “Okay, whatever.” Continuing, you decide to get straight to the point, “Tell me everything you know about your wards. Why are they in the state they’re in?”

         “Some wards are harder to guide than others.” Jac gently speaks. You look to the soft-featured man, nodding your head. You know that… You’ve always treasured Jac as a guardian, he’s one of the few to look at you on equal grounds.

         “I know. I’m sorry if it felt like I jabbed at you. Could you all maybe explain to me what you’ve learned does or doesn’t work with these wards?”

         “Of course… We’ll do as much as we can to help…”

[pumpkinpaix]

You do realize that not allowing Wei Ying the ability to just freely be a bottom, and hell, even a little feminine is being problematic in itself, right? Acting like either of those are shameful things for a man to be, just because he's in a relationship with another man, is gross. Acting like they absolutely HAVE to switch to fit some standard that women or non gay men feel the need to hold them to is not being politically correct. It verges closer to being fetishizing. Not trying to be mean js

hello anon! i assume you’re referring to this post of mine (and potentially also the linked post within? though that one is more specifically about translation, so maybe not).

if so, i have to admit I’m… a little confused? i’m not sure where i said or implied any of the things you’re talking about, but i still want to address your accusations thoughtfully since they’re important things to consider.

if it wasn’t clear, i was only trying to explain my personal discomfort with assigning a fixed sexual role to wei ying (though this goes both ways—i would have said the same thing about lwj had the question been reversed) due to its complicated position within a larger cultural context. i say in that post that I don’t have this problem with a ship like crowley/aziraphale from good omens specifically because saying “aziraphale is a top” (or “crowley is a bottom”) simply isn’t as politically charged as saying that about wei ying or lwj because of how each ship relates to the source material and the cultural context that surrounds them.

good omens, while not a perfect show (i’m going showverse specifically bc i haven’t read the book in a long long while), makes a lot of concerted effort to be queer-friendly and is clear about its queer-friendly intentions, both publicly stated by the creative team and shown through its narrative choices. i’m generally familiar with current queer theory in the west, and i feel safer and freer to headcanon and write whatever i want because i’m not as concerned about the political statement my personal thoughts and choices re: a fictional character is going to make in relation to canon.

mdzs/the untamed is not that. we can argue about it all day, but i can’t in good faith really imagine either was written or made with real queer people in mind, given what i understand about queer rights on the chinese mainland, and also specifically about how queer people (mostly mlm) are portrayed in genres like BL. so i, personally, feel that i want to be careful about how i position myself with regards to that. if i decide wei ying only bottoms, like is implied in the mdzs novel, how does that read? what, if anything, am i implying about real mlm? regardless of my intentions, i don’t think i can escape all the cultural baggage that comes with it. the personal is political, as they say. alas!

does that mean that i think wei ying HAS to switch? no!! but by that same token, i don’t think he HAS to bottom either! what i want is to promote more respectful diversity in the way a character like him can be portrayed or headcanoned when the original text is so thoughtlessly restrictive, so that maybe in the future i would feel fine about writing/headcanoning him as anything i want without getting bogged down with all of this. that’s the dream, are you kidding me?? respectful portrayal of a bisexual chinese character that i personally love??? of course i have intense personal stake in that lmao, how could i NOT. on that note, regarding your first point, i can’t “dis/allow” wei ying anything because wei ying is, again, a fictional character who has no agency and whom i cannot personally ask about his preferences. none of this has anything to do with respecting him—only how our treatment of him impacts real people.

i never meant to imply that being a bottom is shameful—i meant that when a mlm character is LIMITED to being a bottom BECAUSE of preconceived, heteronormative notions about mlm relationships by content creators, that is uncomfortable. neither bottoming nor being feminine should be considered shameful, of course not, but we don’t live in a perfectly equitable world, and historically, those are traits that are associated with shame by larger societal forces—my point is that we don’t interact with media in a vacuum. even if i’m not saying “bottoming/effeminacy is shameful”, someone is. because that previous ask was focused on wei ying and bottoming, i understand why you might think that because my stance on it wasn’t unequivocally positive/validating, it sounded like i was implying it was shameful because that’s what we’ve all been primed to assume. if i rewrote the response to that ask, only this time talking about lan wangji being pigeonholed as a top, would that have made my stance more obvious? because again, it goes both ways.

you say that i’m trying to fit mlm into a standard that i, as a non-mlm, am imposing upon them, but i really have no idea where you’re seeing that in what i’ve written. if you still think i’m doing that, then i want to state here that that is the furthest thing from my intentions.

the top/bottom dichotomy that exists in mdzs is just an expression of a larger trend that sees and fetishizes mlm as defined by their sexual roles, especially asian mlm (looking at you, seme/uke terminology). i cannot see it as existing divorced from that. what i really want, more than anything, is for this to not even be a conversation i feel like i have to engage with every time it comes up. it sucks that queer people’s identities and private sexual choices are politicized!! i, too, just want to live!!! i don’t want to feel like i have to endlessly, carefully debate mlm’s sex positions as a political statement, but i also don’t think that i can stay silent as a bi woman(?) while they’re used and disrespected for others’ gratification. they’re my siblings too.

here’s the thing: i like bottom wei ying! I love feminine wei ying! i want to read fic containing both of those aspects! i want to write fic like that! in fact, i probably will! is everything i make and say going to be perfectly unproblematic? of course not! everything is problematic because everything is nuanced and everything is complicated. all i can do is try my best to make sure what makes me happy isn’t at the cost of someone else’s human respect.

so, i hope that makes my position more clear? i’m not trying to say that everyone has to do exactly as i do, or think exactly as i think. i just want to encourage more complex, critical engagement with media because i think interrogating why and how we like what we like helps us grow. i get that sometimes we just want to enjoy things, and that’s okay! i get it, it’s exhausting!! feel free to block me and never interact with another one of my posts again if they make you too angry. i love mdzs, and i love the untamed just. so much!! i haven’t felt so overwhelmingly moved by a piece of media in a while, and i happen to express my love by…. well, doing things like this, which i’m FULLY aware is not everyone’s cup of tea. (sometimes, it isn’t mine either!)

i just want to end by saying that i’m certainly not trying to outright condemn anyone with these posts. this is largely prompted by my own personal, discomfited reaction to comments i’ve received on my fic/things i’ve seen tossed around by the fandom at large. i absolutely don’t think any of the people making those comments are bad people (i mean it!!), but that doesn’t mean i can’t still feel conflicted about it to the point where I feel i need to address it. i can’t police the way someone else enjoys their content, and i’m really not interested in trying. i’m trying to control the way I engage with and present myself to fandom. haha, as wei ying said, to live my whole life with a clear conscience. that’s all i can do.

EDIT 16 APR 2020: My views have changed since I wrote this post. I will not delete this post because it reflects my views at the time it was posted about 7 months ago, but I now feel very differently about the issues discussed here. Hopefully, my views are more nuanced and carefully considered in the present, but you know! Please keep that in mind when you read this.

[a-cai-jpg]

a drama review you never asked for

So yesterday, I started a drama by accident. 

before we begin, here is a little glossary: Itazura Na Kiss = Playful Kiss (Korean), It Started with a Kiss (Taiwanese), Love in Tokyo (Japanese) Naoki = the main male lead in Itazura Na Kiss, stoic, bitchy brainiac whom everyone is in love with Kotoko = the main female lead in Itazura Na Kiss, a clutz, sucks at school, is in love with Naoki Yanmo = the main male lead in Le Coup de Foudre Qiaoyi = the main female lead in Le Coup de Foudre

I say by accident, because it was a weird series of events that led me to click on the first episode of Le Coup De Foudre, and by the time I realized what had happened, I was on episode 26 and it was 1:20 in the morning.

Help.

I finished it today before noon because I watch drama in the fucked-up way where I kind of skip forward by 5 second increments when they talk about things I don't really care about or when they're narrating life lessons.

(I always wonder if I'm missing something integral to the drama-watching experience when I do this because I do this 85% of the time, but it's either this or I get distracted going on social media cause I can't freaking sit still.) 

(idk i think i still get most of the drama though. right?)

But I don't know, I really liked the drama. Not in the way where I want to revisit every scene on Tumblr and proclaim my love for it in the tags like I do with some. It's one of the dramas where I watch, and it just kind of sits heavily in my heart for a little bit and tells me to appreciate who I have around me.

Le Coup De Foudre begins with the ending, where the two characters are already together. They reminisce about their relationship from the very beginning, and that's how the drama progresses. I think it's that feeling, the in media res, the frequent analepsis, that strengthens the poignancy of the nostalgia.

It kind of reminds me of brewing tea.

(lol, midway through a scene, i felt a pang in my chest because i felt so bad for the female lead, and i paused the video and sighed in contentment and was like, "ahhh yes i feel feelings again.")

(sos)

So, I have been describing Le Coup De Foudre as the better version of Itazura Na Kiss--the better version of a plotline we have seen very often. The drama begins in a high school, stretches past college, and ends when both leads find their place next to each other as they leave school-life behind them.

And obviously, during high school, the female lead is failing all her classes whilst the male lead scores number one in every class. And of course, circumstances draw the two together, and the male lead grudgingly begins to tutor the female lead.

But, where Itazura Na Kiss has a male lead who is emotionally manipulative and has a side-hobby of rendering the girl to tears, Le Coup De Foudre has a male lead who is certain of what he wants and faces his feelings head on. There's no tugging back and forth and no unnecessary drama, but instead, a very natural progression from sitting next to a girl you like to finding each other again years after high school graduation.

When I watched Itazura Na Kiss (or the many iterations of it, either in different languages or under a different name cough cough A Love So Beautiful cough cough), there was an anxiety clouding the female lead. She treads carefully, trying to present herself in a version that makes the male lead happy. The male lead, on the other hand, is at a loss of how to address her feelings and thereby, ends up acting like an ass.

(Disclaimer: I don't actually remember much of the dramas. It's been a while.)

In high school, he is not mature enough to handle his feelings for the female lead alongside the stress of living up to his parents' expectations and figuring out what he wants to do in the future. In college, he is not mature enough to handle the admittedly annoying advances of the female lead alongside the new social terrain of unversity. Post-college, he is not mature enough to handle his new marriage alongside his stressful job at the company. From high school to post-college graduation, the male lead does not learn how to navigate a relationship where both parties' feelings matter and instead, focuses on what he thinks a relationship should look like. 

The female lead isn't faultless either, though her archetype has evolved throughout the years. In It Started with a Kiss and Love in Tokyo, she was a caricature of what her character should have been. In A Love So Beautiful, she graduated from being utterly ridiculous to being a little clumsy and a little too head over heels for a not-great guy, but the viewer can't help but be a little fond of her.

In Le Coup De Foudre, she becomes more. Her character stops being defined by her love for the guy.

I like Le Coup De Foudre because before lovers, they are friends first. 

(like. come on. that's kinda cute right.)

It's the softly veiled kind of affection that gets me. Like, when she pauses at the doorway to the classroom, and unlike last semester there are many more desks for her to choose from, but she decides to sit next to him anyways. Or, when he says something stupid and hurts her feelings and is stressing out about how to apologize, but she breaks the ice first and gives him a water bottle.

See, Yanmo is very much the same stoic, brainiac character Naoki was. But unlike Naoki, he is not afraid of his feelings. He doesn't want to hurt her, but his EQ isn't great so he inevitably does so anyways. Yet, he recognizes when he does wrong and takes the initiative to awkwardly ask her twin brother how to apologize. He admits to his mom that he likes her far, far before she even realizes she likes him. He gets drunk on a mouthful of vodka by accident and remembers this dumb thing she said about guys with ties being hot, so he grabs the tie of a fellow student and says he wants it because "guys with ties are hot." He faces his feelings in the immature way a high school student who's never been in love does, but he doesn't deride them. He doesn't think they are beneath him, or that he has larger aspirations and he's just taking a small reprieve from them to be with her.

(this is the kind of stoic male lead I like!!!)

He doesn't leave her behind, running to catch up. Instead, he's always quietly waiting for her.

And when they get together, he lets her fool around. He lets her take all the blankets, he challenges her brother to Chinese Clash of Clans and beats him senseless when he bullies his sister, he jokes with her in that deadpanned way of his, brings her soup when she's writing in a hotel, picks her up on the roadside on a rainy day, and doesn't reprimand her. 

I think this sort of character who plays on the trope of the stoic, smart kid, but fleshes him out so that he cries and laughs and puts other people before him is what makes this relationship dynamic work. There's no icky feeling like in Itazura Na Kiss, where the audience is constantly questioning whether or not Naoki actually loves Kotoko, because in this drama, it's so, so clear that Yanmo loved Qiaoyi since high school.

:/

The other characters are well-written as well. Qiaoyi sucks at math, but she's not stupid. She's shy, but she's not afraid of pursuing what she puts her mind to. She cares a ridiculous amount for other people, but she's not naive, and it's ultimately a combination of these traits that helps the characters save Yanmo's company from bankruptcy. Like I've mentioned before, Qiaoyi isn't defined by her love for Yanmo. She loves Yanmo so much that she pledged to think about him only six days of the week, and then four days, and then two days, and then eventually it'll be just one day of the week, but it never really happens. She loves Yanmo so much, but she lives the life she's supposed to live, accepting that even if he's not by her side, she still needs to work hard for her dream. 

There's no second male lead, so there's no dramatic I LOVE HER MORE THAN YOU EVER WILL screaming match where the first male lead stands there and clenches his teeth because he doesn't know how to proclaim his love. Instead, there's a loving older twin brother who dotes on Qiaoyi but doesn't forget to jokingly remind her that their parents picked her up from the trashbin. Instead, there's an emotionally mature first male lead who tells Qiaoyi he loves her and will be hurt if she likes someone else.

The second female lead is gorgeous and instead of kickstarting a nasty jealousy arc, she becomes one of Qiaoyi's closest friends. It takes a while, but she eventually recognizes that maybe she's liked Yanmo since a young age, but she never really fell in love with him. Instead, she falls in love with Yanmo's uncle who is the same age as him. Uncle isn't a good looking dude, but tbh, Cheng Youmei is pretty enough for both of them.

Uncle is the number one Yanmo/Qiaoyi fan. I like him.

Le Coup De Foudre is great, but I feel kind of bad criticizing Itazura Na Kiss, because it did make up a large part of my childhood.

(i was so offended when the wall outside my house fell and my fam was evicted and we had to live at a motel and not at a hot family friend's house smh) 

Also, there's always this little voice in my head whenever I say some TV show isn't good (which is very often because I'm a pretentious brat) telling me to stop being a hypocrite.

See, when I was in middle school, one of my favorite TV dramas was Meteor Shower, which is one of the many iterations of Hana Yori Dango. 

(LOL Meteor Shower is a whole other can of worms)

I remember I watched it when I was in Shanghai for summer vacation, and then when season 2 came out, I was again, in Shanghai.

(even back then, I thought season 2 was trash.)

When I watched season 2, I lived with my aunt. Because I lived with my aunt, and because my aunt is one of those more-pretentious-than-me people who watches British television and has a wine cooler, I remember switching the channel to something else every time she came by my room.

Which is pretty ridiculous considering I was literally watching a PG television show and not porn.

The reason was some time in my childhood--I don't remember when--I asked to watch a show--I don't know what show it was, it might've been Happy Camp--and my aunt looked at me, appalled, and was like, "You watch that kind of trash? Isn't that kind of show for idiots?"

And I was just kind of like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As you can tell, that conversation has stayed with me. My aunt is living with our family right now, and even now, I feel a little sheepish watching my dramas or listening to my music.

(let me explain. my aunt came downstairs one day, and was just casually like, "Liszt is pretty good, huh?" and i was like lol um what.)

(she sits on the toilet and listens to the orchestra as she pees.)

(help.)

This is partially why I have these questions. But the bigger reason why is because I took a shower and great thoughts and questions come when you take a shower.

Is a television show created with the simple intention to entertain the viewer somehow less than one with an overarching message?

How do you judge what is a "good" and therefore, worthwhile show and what isn't?

There is a Chinese drama that's received high ratings, but many people started questioning whether or not it deserved those ratings, because it was a simple love story between two people and wasn't particularly meaningful.

But, if the ratings are given by the audience, then shouldn't that mean that it is a good TV show?

(but then, when have the masses ever been the best judges for quality? cough produce 101 cough)

But, if public opinion is not the best judge for quality, then what is?

The opinion of experts?

(that's so pretentious.) 

But also, if something is produced for free, mass consumption, shouldn't its success be measured by its reception? And shouldn't its quality, thereby, be measured by its success?

I've always had this question about books too. Like, what determines the books we read in a high school English class? Why are these particular books considered the Greats?

Why is Shakespeare so famous?

(don't brick me)

When I was in Shanghai and browsing a bookstore, I heard someone say, "Let's just come in for the AC. Most of the books are 畅销 books anyways, and not worth reading." The group she came in with agreed.

I have seen the words 畅销 before, because I watch a ridiculous amount of TV dramas derived from 畅销 books, but I never searched up the definition. Based on the person's disdainful tone and the way people talked about 畅销 books, I assumed it meant young adult, or genre fiction. Something like that?

But when I asked my cousin what it meant, she said, "Oh, it means bestseller."

And I was like. ???? What.

Evidently, readership and mass opinion have not been perceived as good judges for quality.

Fiction is judged by the usual narrative devices--plot, characterization, flow, theme, etc. But, ultimately, I think it is important to look at reception as well.

Why does a particular story and/or TV drama receive higher ratings and viewership than another? Is it the fault of the audience or of the directors/scriptwriters/actors/production company/country's censorship laws cough cough CHINA cough cough cough/etc.? 

I think analyzing the narrative devices is an exciting conversation, but in media, there are more factors involved than just the author's mind.

And that isn't a conversation that you can easily have when your aunt looks over at you watching SCI: Journal of Mysterious Cases and scoffs. 

(cEnSoRsHiP and LaCk Of FuNdS!!!)

(this is part of a larger discussion around genre fiction and literary fiction and literary merit that i loathe)

(but i feel like i'm in it. i'm in the part i hate omfg)

I feel like a big part of why I feel sheepish watching dramas at home is because ultimately, what you like is an indication of who you are.

Like when people say you get to know a lot about a person by looking at their bookshelf or Spotify playlist.

But, see, this is a very unidimensional way of viewing the world. All these things are indications of who you are, but not definitions of who you are.

There are multiple levels to this sort of perception. There's recognizing this is what you like, generalizing it to who you are as a person, and then making a value judgment on you about it. 

(i.e. You like Harry Potter. You like genre fiction. You are shallow and have no taste in literature.)

But this process should end at step one.

Honestly, there's nothing wrong with watching trash television. Keeping Up With the Kardashians is difficult to put down once I start because I'm so intrigued by the otherworldliness of their lives. I routinely follow YouTuber drama because it's interesting and I'm nosy. Sometimes, I just want to watch two people fall in love and be dumb and cute and not get anything out of it, because life is complicated enough.

There's nothing wrong with watching trash television or a TV drama with unrealistic, poorly written characters, but I do think it's important to recognize the larger flaws of storytelling, especially when it has to do with portraying the human condition.

Media does an incredible part in shaping someone's perspective. I don't think there's anything wrong with portraying violence, rape, bullying, or suicide in television (provided there's a trigger warning), because it is an integral part of life. But, I think it is crucial, and also the social responsibility of content creators, to foster a better future through media. Media shouldn't justify or glorify these actions, but rather, acknowledge that they are negative and show the real world repercussions of them. If you are going to bring up these societal faults, you have to address them as well.

(this is easier said than done, especially when it comes to the smaller issues in life.)

Itazura Na Kiss is a drama that, in my 2020 mindset, falls behind on that standard. Not because it glorifies bullying, but because it portrays an emotionally manipulative relationship between two characters, where the girl is defined in relation to the guy, and that's that. Happily ever after.

But, Itazura Na Kiss also received incredible reception and was remade into a number of dramas and most recently, a movie. This is what concerns me. As our social consciousness evolved to respecting female characters and seeing them as more than an accessory to the male lead, how come the 2019 movie did not show that?

I can understand Itazura Na Kiss gaining traction in the past, just like how I can understand Grease being a very popular movie in the 70s and 80s despite being incredibly sexist. I struggle to understand it in 2020.

This is why I like Le Coup De Foudre. It takes all the tropes that were popular in 1990 and modernizes them so they become palatable to the 2019 audience. It creates two incredibly human and multidimensional characters and introduces them to a simulation where they meet in high school, 2006, one desk by the window.

(see, isn't it that kind of writing that's breathtaking and akin to the power of god?)

song rec: lil ghost - don’t call me davinci

[douchebagbrainwaves]

PARTLY BECAUSE YOU DON'T NEED A BRILLIANT IDEA TO START A STARTUP THAN REALIZE IT

Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to be running out of money.1 If even someone with the same qualifications who are both equally committed to the business, that's easy. Microsoft. You knew there would be.2 I wonder. You don't need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a way that doesn't suck. And yet the grad students seem pretty smart. That's ok.3

Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto.4 I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be the ideal place—that it would basically be Cambridge with good weather, it turns out you have to have at least one person willing and able to focus on one type of ambition. We felt like our role was to be impudent underdogs instead of corporate stuffed shirts, and that the weight of a few extra checks that might be easy for General Electric to bear are enough to prevent younger companies from being public at all. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to go with Ron Conway and bet on people and those who prefer to bet on people. It would cost something to run, and it might be worth a hundred times as much.5 Some smart, nice guys turn out to be easier than I expected, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company with a valuation any lower.6 We talked to a number of VCs, but eventually we ended up financing our startup entirely with angel money.7 If you believe everything you're supposed to when starting a company. Yes, because they give them more leverage over developers, who can more easily be replaced. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves.

The English Reformation was at bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it seems so foreign. When you get a couple million dollars from a VC firm, you tend to, because that's where smart people meet. The church knew this would set people thinking. It would cost something to run, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did.8 That last test filters out surprisingly few people. It used to mean the control of vast human and material resources. Usually the claim is that you should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little Web 2.9

No one dared put on attitude around Robert, because he was obviously smarter than they were and yet had zero attitude himself. No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but the most important may be that once you have users to take care of. Because they're good guys and they're trying to help people can also help you with investors. But that assumption is often false, and this is the right way to search for components. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do.10 It would be too easy for clients to fire them.11 Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking. Could you describe the person as an animal? So parents are giving their kids an inaccurate idea of the language by not using them.

Usually there is something deeper wrong. So the acquirer is in fact getting worse performance at greater cost. When you offer x percent of your company for y dollars, you're implicitly claiming a certain value for the whole company. He says the main reason is that people like the idea of being mistaken. One of the founders might decide to split off and start another company, so I figured it had to be carefully planned.12 It's not a charity, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate then. Suppose it's 1998. Of course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably have a separate note with a different cap for each investor.13 It's worth trying very, very few who simply decide for themselves.14 The trouble with lying is that you get a lot of people need to search for components, and before Octopart there was no good way to do that is to visit them.

In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations it's because we're right and they're wrong. But can you think of one that had a massively popular product and still failed? It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s.15 That depends on how ambitious you feel.16 David Filo's title was Chief Yahoo, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo.17 If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence. Clearly you don't have to find startups. More generally, design your product to please users first, you leave a gap for competitors who do. Online dating is a valuable business now, and they're all trying not to use words like fuck and shit within baby's hearing, lest baby start using these words too. Morale is tremendously important to a startup is that you need someone mature and experienced, with a business background, may be overrated.18 But only about 10% of the total or $10,000 of seed money from our friend Julian. I realized it would probably have to figure out where to live by trial and error.19

Perl may look like a cartoon character swearing, but there are cases where it surpasses Python conceptually.20 Don't do what we did. Of the two versions, the one where you get a lot of data about how they work. What drives people to start startups is or should be looking at existing technology and thinking, don't these guys realize they should be doing x, y, and z?21 And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. How much stock should they get? Programmers like to make a winning product. There could be ten times more startups than there are, and that is exactly the spirit you want. There's a hack for being decisive when you're inexperienced: ratchet down the size of your investment till it's an amount you wouldn't care too much about losing. The reason Cambridge is the intellectual capital is not just that there's a concentration of smart people, but diluted by a much larger number of neanderthals in suits. They'd face some challenges if they wanted to make web apps work like desktop ones.

Notes

I could pick them, but the idea is the only cause of the year, they can grow the acquisition into what it means to be a lost cause to try to be a good plan for life in general we've done ok at fundraising, but that it's boring, we try to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a spam probabilty of.

What if a company tried to raise money? This is an acceptable excuse, but I call it ambient thought. Many more than determination to create a portal for x instead of themselves. So, can I make it easy.

Only in a rice cooker.

We wasted little time on a saturday, he wrote a hilarious but also the perfect life, the top 15 tokens, because there are few who can say they're not ready to invest more, and stonewall about the paperwork there, and b when she's nervous, she doesn't like getting attention in the US treat the poor worse than Japanese car companies have little do with the government, it could change what you're doing. But in most competitive sports, the world in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be some number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. Particularly since economic inequality in the Baskin-Robbins.

It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid the topic. They bear no blame for any opinions expressed in it. Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference.

But it was cooked up, but what they made, but investors can get for free.

They look superficially like the one hand and the valuation of an investor? If the startup isn't getting market price.

William R.

There are successful women who don't aren't. The more people would treat you like a probabilistic spam filter, dick has a similar logic, one variant of compound bug where one bug happens to use some bad word multiple times.

Even though we made a bet: if he hadn't we probably would not change the number of customers you need to be about web-based applications. Everything is a function of two things: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they would implement it and creates a rationalization for doing so.

Is what we measure worth measuring? But this takes a startup idea is stone soup: you post a sign saying this is not pagerank commercialized. So if you're a YC startup you have a standard piece of casuistry for this point.

Deane, Phyllis, The First Two Hundred Years.

Anyone can broadcast a high product of some brilliant initial idea.

One new thing the company is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. The original edition contained a few old professors in Palo Alto, but they're not. Travel has the same attachment to their situation.

But although I started using it, whether you realize it till I started using it, and so effective that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality is not a remark about the same advantages from it. Html. But the change is a constant multiple of usage, so you'd find you couldn't do the equivalent thing for startups. 32.

Obviously, if the present, and mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. Those groups never have to put it this way that weren't visible in the 1960s, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but I'm not talking here about academic talks, which is probably not far from the Dutch not to be in most competitive sports, the fact that the VC.

At YC.

It's unpleasant because the proportion of spam. One source of food. The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

Even as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would give you fifty times as much the better. In a startup with debt is a negotiation.

There are fairly high spam probability. Once again, I'd open our own startup Viaweb, and that there's more of it in action, there are only pretending to in order to attract workers. Though you should probably be the technology everyone was going to visit 20 different communities regularly. Html.

[ummaannex]

on art, activism, and how much instagram fucking sucks: a conversation with curator Eva Respini

For people my age and younger, talking about the internet is like talking about gravity. Omnipresent, widely accepted-- but largely impossible to understand, and absolutely inescapable. Though for myself and most of the people I know growing around it has been a part of our lives, this isn’t the case for everyone.

The museum’s exhibition of “Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today” casts a sometimes humorous, oftentimes bewildering, but mostly what I see as a withering eye at the internet’s constant assault on our everyday way of life. Its curator, Eva Respini-- the chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, where the exhibition originated, sat down with me to talk about what motivated and inspired the exhibition and whether we all really are as doomed as it can make us feel.

Sena: Can you tell us where you’re from, and a little about your line of work?

Eva: I actually don’t have a hometown. I had a very peripatetic upbringing-- I was an immigrant. I was born to an Italian father and a Norwegian mother who met in Thailand. I was born in Paris, and I’d lived in 6 different countries by the time I was twenty. I came to the United States for university, and essentially stayed. So I’ve lived my adult life in the US (though I am the only member of my family to live here) but really have come to where I am in my work and who I am as a person with a really global perspective.

Sena: As someone who’s had kind of this global upbringing, and with the internet being something that a lot of people view as pretty American, or western at least—what’s it been like to communicate how the internet has affected artists from a more global perspective in your Art in the Age of the Internet exhibition?

Eva: Well, the thing about this exhibition that was really challenging, is that so much could be included. My job and work as a curator is to select, and to give a platform to a certain number of artists. I’m bound by architecture, I’m bound by budgets, I’m bound by very real constraints of what I can show, what I can bring, what I can ship—and from a conceptual point of view there are many, many artists across the globe that would have been great, and still could be great in this topic, but I had to boil it down to what I thought was right for the context in which I work.

So the show is pretty international, I thought it was really important to have perspectives from a variety of different global points of view, and that’s to speak about how the internet is not widely available. It’s widely available in the US and most of Western Europe, but there are large regions of the world where internet access is not available for a variety of reasons…and there are certain works in the show that speak to that reality in one way or another—

Sena: Like the ‘Great Firewall’ piece.

Eva: Like ‘The Great Firewall,’ yeah— which is by a Chinese hacker, artist, activist, who made a work about those restrictive parameters around the internet in China, and made a fantastic piece which serves as almost a sort of…path to resistance against these restrictions placed by the Chinese government…But there are other artists who speak to the possibility of the freedom of the internet. For example, artists in the Middle East whose pieces speak to what happened in 2010-2011 with the Arab Spring and the uprisings there. Where different social media platforms and citizen journalism gave insight for those of us who were not on the street, allowed people to bypass traditional media outlets which were only broadcasting one point of view, and allow the world to see what was really happening.

Sena: So, building from that point—in your tour yesterday night you said that the exhibit wasn’t one of the internet, but about the internet. Can you speak a little more to how you think the internet is impacting how people engage, how we interact, how we organize—and what you think that means for where we’re headed?

Eva: I mean the internet has just fundamentally changed who we are—and everything about our culture—personal relationships, how we date, how we shop, how we eat, how we travel.. but I think also, more importantly every industry whether it’s manufacturing, research, academic work… has all been fundamentally changed by the internet.

And I think what we’re understanding now is that the internet is essentially a set of social relationships. It’s a sociopolitical construct, and that’s what I’m really thinking about with this exhibition…and that has not just changed our culture and how we live, but also how we see ourselves and how we understand ourselves in others. And I think most alarmingly recently, how we understand our reality and the truth. We’re understanding that the internet and the echo chamber bubbles that have been created by it, have far-reaching influences. Policy, politics, how people vote, or don’t vote, or aren’t able to vote. We’re understanding the more nefarious underpinnings to what—when the internet was first founded in the 1960’s, essentially was a more utopian ethos of interconnectedness and universal knowledge. Being able to share knowledge across this platform through space and time. I think we see now that this more utopic ideal certainly has not come to pass.

The flipside of that is that we also see a great deal of activism recently which has been given a platform through the internet. The #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter—a lot of this activity was either started on or given a platform by the internet. So, in that sense it gives me a little hope too that there is still some sense of being a democratic place where anybody’s voice can be lifted.

Sena: A lot of the themes featured throughout the exhibit are centered around women—and I remember you saying that you wanted to make sure to center the work of women that have been kind of sidelined as the internet and internet culture have come to prominence through the years. Can you speak to that sidelining and how things may or may not be different now?

Eva: I don’t think it’s any secret that women and people of color in many fields, but especially in the art field have not had the due, or the visibility and platform that their white male counterparts have had. What I found in my research, is that in the mediums of video, photography, and digital media—there are a lot of women working. A lot of women working alongside men, but a lot of women also working quietly on their own, and without their due.  I think there’s something about those mediums—because they’re not the traditional mediums of painting or sculpture with their long history. To do them you don’t have to go to the academy, or the art school. There’s sort of a sense that you can practice those mediums in a way that may allow for a wider variety of practitioners.

I found that there were a lot of women who have been very prescient. Judith Barry, Lynn Hershman Leeson—these are among the women who I see as very key early figures who in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s who were making really radical work which still feels contemporary even today…and that became a kind of theme that emerged—it’s not where we started but I think the internet is a space that allowed a lot of women to come and have a voice and a platform.

Sena: Pivoting a little—one element of the exhibit is this idea of performing the identity online and self-performance…I did a little research, and you have a sort of massive Instagram following!

Eva: *laughs*

Sena: Your page is pretty awesome by the way.

Eva: Thank you.

Sena: But with you existing as this sort of public figure—and one whose profile is growing, do you think you fall victim to those same sorts of traps of identity performance? Do you think you present yourself pretty honestly online?

Eva: You know it’s funny, because recently I’ve been thinking about quitting all my social media. I quit Facebook a long time ago, I quit Twitter, and I only have Instagram. And the reason I started Instagram is because I thought it was fun, I’m a visual person, it’s a visual medium, I enjoyed looking at it. It came out of a sort of genuine, personal place, like I think it does for most people when they started social media. It was about connecting and seeing what other people were seeing, and I think especially in the beginning, it was a very creative medium and still is—but it’s become very commercialized now. It’s all ads! I feel like whatever algorithm that’s organizing my feed is one that is making me feel less and less connected to the people I sought to originally connect with. So—I think it’s still a pretty genuine expression, I think at this point if it’s no longer fun for me, I’ll just…

Sena: Call it quits.

Eva: Yeah, stop. Because it’s not for me. It’s not about advertising myself. I get paid through my job—I don’t need it for revenue—so if it’s no longer fun that’ll be it for me.

Sena: Widening that lens a little bit, what was your relationship with the internet growing up, especially having lived in all these different countries and places. What sites were you on, when did you get into it?

Eva: Well I’m old enough to remember what life was like before Google, before smartphones, before social media.

Sena: The dial-up days!

Eva: Oh, yeah. I mean that noise...

Sena: It’s like burned into your brain.

Eva: Exactly! I think I only got a cellphone when I was in college—just to give you a sense of where I fall generationally. I still have that kind of memory of not pre-internet exactly-- but pre-internet in terms of the way we understand and interact with the internet now.

I was never particularly interested in technology, I was never a computer science person, I’m not a programmer. So for me the interest in the internet has always been through images and kind of social and political conversations. The social media stuff I was interested in like Friendster and MySpace, was all about “What bands are playing?” or “Who can we connect to?” It was much more about social interaction rather than coming at it from a technical background—something I do not have. And I think that’s a reflection in the show as well—that you can see my interest is, well how has this technology, how has this platform-- created these kinds of social relationships that exist currently and shape who we are as a society.

*this interview has been edited for clarity and length*

--For those who haven’t seen it, the UMMA is putting on an art experience centered around the exhibit tonight at 7-- there you can see more of Eva’s incredible exhibition and eat free food, so...

[bears-n-bottoms]

Hello, friends~

As many of you know, I put Kim Jongin on blast a week or two ago, because this is the second (2nd) time he's uploaded a picture of himself in dreads to his IG, and I was Sick And Tired™. I've been riding for Jongin since he was masquerading as a dom top (if you don't know, you don't know), so that shit rly hurt my feelings.

Anyway, there's no real reason for me to be bringing this up, I just wanted to assert that Jongin wearing dreads is Wrong.

Moving on…

What I *actually* wanna talk about is what has been a v hot topic in EXO's fandom for years - how badly managed/promoted EXO is.

Now, before I begin, I will not entertain the idea that SM is somehow mistreating EXO because they aren't getting as much of a promotion push than their juniors. While it does suck that SM seems to just throw EXO albums at us and expects us to be content, you will not call that mistreatment.

NCT and Red Velvet getting a bigger promotional push than EXO is not mistreatment, it's just business.

Business that I'd like to explain to y'all, because I've been thinking about recently this, and it rly does go deeper than ~EXO doesn't rly need it anymore~.

So!! The year is 2012. Unbeknownst to my Black ass, SM is gearing up for the debut of their newest boy band, codename EXO, with a ridiculous ass teaser campaign.

No seriously, 18 teasers and you haven't even unveiled a debut song yet?!?!?! Flagrant.

I wasn't with EXO since The Beginning™, but close enough; I happened upon EXO-M's version of What Is Love while looking for sumn to watch on tv, and my wig was immediately blasted to space dust. What is Love wasn't the first K-Pop MV I saw that night (it was either B.A.P's Warrior or miss A's Touch), but it was the one that stuck with me.

See, I had no idea who or what a K-Pop was outside of vaguely knowing a few idol groups friends tried to put me on previously. It was *Jasmine voice* A Whole New World~ for me, and EXO was on the fast track to becoming my very first bias group. MAMA was an overdramatic mess that I absolutely fucking loved, and you couldn't tell me their debut EP wasn't The Shit™.

A heaux still Rolls Like A Buffalo™ to Two Moons, bitch!!

Fast forward one (1) year, and EXO are back (as twelve) with their first album (and K-Pop's first million seller in over a decade) XOXO. Girl, when I tell you replayed that album like it was the one thing holding me together… I was a whole MESS!! I'd become more of a full fledged K-Pop fan in EXO's absence (more on that later), but I was overjoyed to have my boys back.

Now, why am I going over this?!!? This is all fairly common knowledge among EXO L, but many of the current generation EXO L rolled up on EXO during their EXODUS/Love Me Right era. Which was 2015. So you have a bunch of EXO L who, first of all, are part of a whole new generation of K-Pop fans who consume K-Pop very differently than those of us who were fans back in 2012.

K-Pop standom these days is very social media focused, with many of our favorite idols having SNS accounts of their own where they interact with us. K-Pop fans these days are practically spoiled with content when idols aren't promoting/on tour. It rly feels like idols never truly ~go away~, because if they did, it'd leave an opening for someone else to take their place.

Something we saw when group B.A.P filed a joint lawsuit against their management agency and disappeared for a whole year.

This is where, I think, a lot of the "EXO Isn't Promoted" foolery comes from; EXO are not heavily on social media like many of their current generation contemporaries are. They don't do v lives like them, and have very few reality shows focused on them. Coupled with the fact that much of the content we do get from EXO is behind a pay wall, I definitely understand where the frustration comes from.

But let me add another layer to this, kids. It's my belief that SM doesn't feature EXO like that, because EXO were supposed to redeem SM in the public's eye for the JYJ/Hangeng lawsuits. But they, instead, embarrassed the absolute shit out of them.

Ooh, I bet y'all are all sat at attention now.

Level with me here, folks - EXO was SM's first debut since the Hangeng/JYJ cases blew up and rained doo doo flakes upon SM's reputation. SM had just renegotiated contracts with all their debuted acts to show that they aren't the monsters that JYJ and Hangeng were making them out to be. EXO was supposed to be SM's redemption arc, but there was one little problem - a 6ft stunner by the name of Kris Wu.

Fun fact - Suho, Jongin, and Kris were my original biases in EXO. Bet no one saw that coming.

Kris was always an oddball in EXO. Sure, he definitely fit the look of a K-Pop idol, but man's had far bigger aspirations. Ones that routinely got him in trouble with management. Remember that year long hiatus EXO took after their debut?!?! Rumor has it that it was caused by SM exiling Kris back to Canada, because of tensions between him and one of EXO's managers.

EXO returning as twelve was also, allegedly, because SM wanted to keep tabs on Kris, while also trying to bolster EXO K's popularity in Korea. Allegedly, tho.

Kris saw being in EXO as a way to jumpstart a career as a Chinese entertainer, but he ultimately decided that it wasn't worth it in the end. In May of 2014, he filed suit against SM to have his contract with the agency terminated.

Once again - why am I bringing this up?!! This is all common knowledge in EXO L circles. Well, it was extraordinarily shocking at the time.

As I've stated previously, EXO was SM's first boy band since the JYJ/Hangeng lawsuits. They had just finished renegotiating contracts with all of their active idols to comply with new rules and standards set in place by the government. For all intents and purposes, SM should have had no problems, like the Tinashe song.

But they did.

Kris, in many of the infamous press releases he released in reply to what SM was saying to the media, painted a very familiar story to many of us. He alleged that SM greatly limited his creative freedom, and treated him like a manufactured product. I remember him saying he felt like a box, at one point, and that hit me hard. He also alleged that SM worked him so hard that he developed myocarditis (a heart condition), and that there was rampant favoritism (claims that would also be backed up by a lawsuit launched by Luhan).

It was not a good look for SM, fam.

As a result of Kris' suit, the fandom was split. You had one camp that supported Kris, and another that supported SM/EXO. It didn't help that many of the EXO members spoke out against Kris, with Suho (the leader) saying he was being irresponsible and he needs to come back so they can work this out.

Messy™

Later that year, Luhan went onto launch his own suit against SM (which was more supported by the fandom *is totally not bitter anymore*), citing almost exactly the same complaints as Kris while also going so far as to allege that the Chinese members had different contracts than the Korean ones.

And if you thought that was bad enough, seemingly RoD member Tao decides he's done with the bullshit too, and files his own lawsuit against SM. DURING EXO'S CALL ME BABY COMEBACK PROMOTIONS!!

TALK ABOUT MESSINESS, SIS!!

Say what you want about Tao, but he rly does know how to cause a scene, and I admire that.

So yeah… Talk about a public relations nightmare.

Korean netizens were firmly on SM's side during this entire trial, but Kris, Luhan, and Tao managed to deal an even greater blow to SM's rep than JYJ/Hangeng did. Not that I think it's right, but it's plenty clear why SM doesn't rly feature EXO much anymore.

Not only are they getting older (Xiumin just enlisted a month ago), but SM is clearly trying to move past EXO, as a group. Which idk how they're gonna do that when they routinely refuse members who are not Baekhyun or Jongdae solo opportunities, but whatever. With NCT taking off (pun intended) everywhere except Korea, it's going to be quite a while before the EXO name gets retired.

[angelinuhh]

you seem really knowledgeable about race-related issues w/ the rpc so i thought i'd ask: is it just me, or does the rpc seem to have a problem w/ actually acknowledging and using japanese fcs?

ty ! but when it comes to race issues, i genuinely have a lot to learn.

 to answer your question—— i do believe the rpc has a problem acknowledging and using japanese fcs. but– in the same way the rpc has a problem engaging with most types of poc. however, if you (or anyone else) feels differently, please enlighten me. i would love to know. 

in the meanwhile, i did some… statistics and analysis for you below the cut. thank you to the 21 roleplays from which I used their taken character information. 

A STUDY IN THE USAGE OF JAPANESE FCS (a la the RPC 2019)

for a fuller and better understanding of your question, i decided to do a little research. i wanted to see which japanese fcs were being used, how often japanese fcs were being used, compare this to real-life numbers and more. 

STEP 1. GATHERING DATA 

trawling the tags, i came up with a list of rps. from there, i excluded any rp with under 20 muses— though i do note that none of the rps under 20 muses had more than one japanese fc. and then, i noted every single time i saw a japanese fc being used and the frequency of japanese fcs in the rp. i also went ahead and identified what country’s entertainment industry they were in (western/american, japanese, korean) and if they were of mixed descent.  

STEP 2. RESULTS

Based on these 21 RPs, the AVERAGE % of Japanese FCs is 1.53%.

OF NOTE, if there is any japanese fcs in an rp, the average is boosted to around 2.59%. With the exception of 2 RPs, every single RP that had any japanese fcs in it was within .2% of this score… aka, while there are some failures in our sampling (non-random), all of the members of our sample were fairly similar in terms of % of japanese fcs. 

The most popular fcs to see were RYAN POTTER (½ japanese and a western fc), NANA KOMATSU (full japanese, in the japanese industry ), & KAYLEE BRYANT (¼ japanese and a western fc). 

nearly all the fcs with multiple occurrences were mixed fcs from western entertainment. in addition, nearly all the fcs from western entertainment were mixed while the ones from eastern industries were full-blooded.  

STEP 3. INTERPRETATION. 

according to worldometers, the actual percentage of japanese people in the world is equivalent to 1.64%. the census shows that the percentage of japanese people in the us is 0.4%

so yeah. based on my crappy data, we’re doing okay. 

and tbh. im actually. really shocked and impressed by that. 

on one hand, it makes sense. while i would love to see more japanese fcs used (catch me… making gif icons of chiharu okunugi and saila kunikida in my free time all day), i’ve never noticed anything egregious abt japanese fcs in particular and this does back up the argument. 

 but… on the other, you’re right. i feel you 100% on the fact that we have a problem. as someone who is asian and in the rpc, i feel like it is important to emphasize that we need to and we CAN DO so much better. my data, as presented thus far, is skewed heavily in favor of “everyone’s doing the right thing! and everyone’s writing these people as japanese!”– when really that’s not the case at all.

for one, just because the percentages show that japanese fcs are being played, this does not guarantee good portrayal.

secondly, changing the definition of japanese… will change the results extensively. for example, this dataset includes people who are less than ½ japanese (booboo and fivel stewart (japanese, chinese, korean, ½ white + claims of blackfoot), ming lee simmons and kaylee bryant (¼ japanese) ) while they are still japanese, they ARE also mixed. and it’s hard. to make that decision. whether they should count as japanese portrayal and representation. 

i’ve also noticed that not all these characters are even played as japanese. in particular, kaylee bryant’s japanese heritage is sometimes ignored and she will be used to play played a white character, while booboo stewart is usually either native or just… ambiguously asian. neither of these things are good. 

and thus… if i stop giving people the benefit of the doubt and actually look for japanese portrayal instead of just … any japanese fc, this will put us  BELOW average.   

WHY WE MIGHT FEEL THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT USING OR ACKNOWLEDGING JAPANESE FCS (also WHY WE R VALID TO)

mixed fcs have privilege. and while we can love and support them and validate their identity, it is sometimes hard to see ourselves in them or to immediately identify them and acknowledge them as representation. sure, ryan potter is great. but even he’s spoken at length about how being hapa/hafu benefits him. 

other races (cough… just white people and maybe kpop fcs) seem to have a lot more variety in terms of fc choices. there’s a hundred different white fcs in use. in contrast, when there is japanese representation, it is usually the same people. if you go to ten rps and they each have one japanese fc, that’s dope. but if each of those ten rps just use nana komatsu… then you’re going to feel like. people don’t use japanese fcs. 

people might be writing shitty japanese stereotypes or portrayals. 

regardless if… all or none of the above is what you think, if you feel like an ethnicity is being slept on in the rpc. you are not wrong. you are also not alone. this is not the only group that feels this way. a big reason i run @vietrpc is for similar reasons. i wanted to see more viet faces. i wanted to see more diversity. but— lbr, the frequency of just lana condor in an rp will probably equal to the frequency of vietnamese people in the world. even though, lana condor is the only viet person ppl play (s/o to jessica vu, hyulari + karrueche for trying tho). 

i’ve seen black muns do similar things when they say that people don’t play black muses. while most rps i’ve seen do have some sort of black characters in it. they just happen to be… the most ‘passable’, the most ‘acceptable’. we all love zendaya, but when she’s the only black person that ever gets used in the rpc– that’s not great. it is so easy to feel like… because these are token fcs, that they don’t count. 

( note: i haven’t done the math. but i would probably put money down on that people don’t play black muses… to a level that’s beyond what asians in the rpc face. and there’s a lot more going on with this issue than there is w/ viet or japanese representation. i just wanted to reference it, because it is a similar topic.)

look. the rpc sleeps on poc. we know that. even if they use our faces. they still suck at doing it right. 

part of it is most of the rpc is western. and… lbr… there’s really not that many asians in western media. people just don’t like using fcs they’re unfamiliar with. and they’re not willing to immerse themself in the japanese entertainment industry or whatever.  that’s just going to be a thing. 

part of it is. cough. racism. wow, look at the time. 

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lastly. 

ok ngl that was… more work than i expected but it was really rewarding to see the data like that. if anyone enjoyed reading that or seeing that and wanted to see more, lmk. you could even help out tbh. i think it would be interesting to do this for other races. 

my lab reports always include my errors, so, if i had to redo this, i would have a larger sample and choose a random sample of 20 from it. i would do all my data in excel so i could see how my data was affected by removing people who were less than ½ japanese. i would also maybe include… a poll on how people write their characters. inclusive of the following questions.

what is your race? (you may answer with non-japanese/japanese or your specific race)

what do you do to write this character? what references do you draw upon?

is your character japanese

this would weed out the white-washing ppl n ppl who just don’t play a multiracial character in that way. 

if your fc was changed to that of another ethnicity, would your backstory change? 

would the way you play your character change?

on a scale of 1-4 with 1 being not important at all to 4 being very important, how important is your fc’s ethnicity when it comes to writing and developing your muse?

these open-ended questions would help me understand the portrayal of japanese characters in the rpc

if you can contribute anything to this conversation, my inbox is always open. i’m glad to hear it.