#that is lom to me

[kraniumet]

*the au hater voice* aus are good when they are. when they say the thing the story is saying with different set pieces. like a translation. it can bring clarity

[littlecello]

henlo

[ppeonppeonhan]

Top 10 2023 BL Kisses

If you've seen at least a couple BLs you know that some of these actors are either uncomfortable kissing another man or just didn't get enough practice kissing literally anyone. So when they get it right and genuinely seem to be enjoying themselves, it is worth noting. Soooo grab a pen and paper, and take some notes:

You Are Mine: This Taiwanese drama was problematique with the unbalanced workplace power dynamics, but this sweet upside down kiss was worth the wait.

Dangerous Romance: This may not have been their first kiss, but it felt like the most romantic. By this point, they'd shared many scenes filled with awkward sexual tension, but this one didn't have an ounce of humor, and Kanghan and Sailom just melted into each other's arms.

Kiseki: Dear to Me: The lighting for this kiss really emphasized their till-death-do-us-part themed dialogue where they vowed to die seconds apart.

Stay By My Side: Lackluster supernatural subplot aside, this Taiwanese drama delivered the most adorable kiss as the main lead was too nervous to give in to his desires without closing his eyes.

Be My Favorite: It took Kawi a frustratingly long time to pull his head out of his ass and realize he would be lucky to have Pisaeng even as a friend let alone a boyfriend. Thank goodness for Pisaeng's patience, cause ours was wearing thin.

Love Class 2: Very happy Ma Ru realized he had feelings for his bestie and wasted no time making that clear with an epic kiss that I have probably rewatched a dozen times.

Only Friends: Honestly, all of their kisses were incredible, because both of these actors went from supporting characters to lead roles, and did not skip a beat. There was no awkward beginner's kiss phase. Those intimacy workshops must've been lit.

Step by Step: Their kiss chemistry was on point, but the car scenes were the most memorable for how very possible they would've been caught in the act in the parking garage of their place of employment. Caution meet wind.

Wedding Plan: These two were about five seconds away from making a baby in that car, and if this were the omegaverse, they probably would've.

Hidden Agenda: There was hunger in that kiss on both sides, and it took every ounce of strength in Zo to shove Joke out the door once he made his intention clear.

[gunsatthaphan]

"please believe me."

[strifesolution]

it’s funny that dumeshi yogs au with nanomadia as farcille could work both ways

on one hand falin’s harpy-ness… owl lomadia fanon..……on the other hand, nano’s flux corruption being like. symbolically represented by her turning into a chimera. and they’re both a little crazy silly enough to be marcille. hmmmmmmmmmm

[horneboy]

hi guys i’m kind of hyperfixated on life on mars WHERE are all the fans at…

[alexmey-does-an-arts]

drew this in 3min after watching the lom finale a new record

[scarlet-cookie]

Praise the Great Door of All Doors !

[lomappreciationblog]

Something I have pondered about a long time is, if turning into a Flowerling locks a Sproutling out their shared mind? It raises a lot of questions, really, since the Sproutlings are connected to the Mana Tree that the Flowerlings don't seem to be...though, Flowerlings seem to possess some sort of psychic powers and their own collective consciousness, going by the Flowerlings who control the gates at Mindas Ruins. Still, given that Sproutlings are very important to the ending, it seems odd that they can evolve into Flowerlings, who don't seem to appear in the ending.

I wonder if the discrepancy here can be chalked up to the fact that these two were originally separate races entirely, because the art book shows Nao Ikeda's concepts for the two races separately. This is just my speculation though, take it with a grain of salt, but the art book does reveal some shuffling went around as development went on (say, initially Escad was gonna have angel wings to contrast Irwin, but they were found a strange design element on him, so those wings went to Daena).

I'll recheck my art book if I go home, but I remember the concept for the Flowerlings shows they were both originally elderly men and women types, but in the game the females eventually came out looking much younger. Lastly, I think the art book said the female Flowerlings were inspired by orchids?

[rumpled]

[anhed-nia]

So I'm in the middle of this research project centered on Dario Argento's OPERA, for which I have required myself to watch as many screen adaptations of the Gaston Leroux novel The Phantom of the Opera as I can take. What I have determined so far is that the Phantom of the Opera is a story everyone wants to tell, but not very many people are sure of how to tell it. In fact, it's not that easy to say what it is about archetypally. You know, Wolfman stories are typically about "the beast in man" (with femininity positioned as some sort of cure for this personality split), Frankenstein stories are usually about human nature (i.e. an uncanny creature can have more humanity than vain and bigoted humans), Dracula-type vampire stories are most generally about the problems of being an outsider (queer, foreign, etc). But Phantom of the Opera is like...well, everyone likes the love story part of it, which is more or less modeled on Dracula, with a woman torn between seductive darkness and the safety of square society. But then there are all these other parts that seem to flummox people in the retelling.

I haven't read the Leroux novel YET but the first round of movies have been interesting, and also sort of perplexing. The iteration from 1925 holds up, largely due to Chaney's creation of the Phantom which remains a top tier monster. People don't often talk about the mask though! Which looks like a cross between Peter Lorre and the Devo Boogie Boy, it's disturbing and I like it.

This Phantom was born in the dungeons during a revolutionary bloodbath and is disfigured from birth, drawing on the antique idea that a mother's trauma is translated in the deformity of her children; also, compellingly, these dungeons lie fathoms beneath the opera house where the bourgeoisie are witlessly dancing on the graves of martyrs and criminals embodied in the Phantom. The ingenue Christine is an interesting figure who breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning because she wants to give her whole self to her career; when the Phantom starts murmuring to her through the walls it's as if the spirit of opera itself has chosen her to be its avatar, which she seems to find totally rational. It's sort of cool, what other movie of this era has a likeable heroine choosing her potential for greatness over love? This is the element of the story that is the most interesting, but I'll expand on that in a minute.

The Chaney edition benefits a lot from keeping things simple. The 1943 version with Claude Raines has a little bit too much going on and the story doesn't get a lot of time to congeal between so many long opera sequences; this movie really takes the opera part of the title seriously! Actually they're the best thing about it, mostly because of Nelson Eddy who is extremely beautiful and a real opera singer, and who projects this blazing desire for Susanna Foster that is incredibly convincing. Like I'd normally say they have great chemistry, but I think it's just a lot of power radiating from him specifically.

Ahem.

Uh anyway. This movie picks up the reoccurring (but not universal) idea that the Phantom is a genteel and sophisticated composer who has just fallen on hard times, who goes mad when his latest concerto is stolen. He is disfigured while struggling with the plagiarist and installs himself under the opera house where he can haunt his former protege Christine, who is already torn between dreamy Nelson Eddy and her stuffy cop boyfriend. One of my favorite things here is that even though this film is extremely quaint and old fashioned, everybody hates cops; this Christine is less a self-determined careerist than someone who is under pressure from her artist friends who find it profoundly repulsive that she is dating a policeman. Meanwhile the Phantom is just way too gentle and sappy, which is extra disappointing because Claude Rains's Invisible Man is so fabulously chaotic and sadistic, it made me really aware of the Phantom that could have been. This one doesn't properly represent the high society vs. underworld dichotomy that Christine should be torn between. So what is this movie about? There's so many guys in it and a few different themes flapping in the breeze. Is it about love? Is it about self-actualizing through art? Is it about the cutthroat world of showbusiness? It doesn't have that much to say, ultimately, and it just seems really unmotivated. Also I don't like this mask, sue me.

The Hammer edition is even more disappointing, considering the studio's previous successes with Universal Monster remakes. Here Christine is torn between a suave opera producer, the lecherous composer who has plagiarized the Phantom, and yeah the Phantom. Too many guys, it confuses whatever the dynamic and themes are supposed to be. Michael Gough as the plagiarist is so much more evil and threatening than poor Herbert Lom's Phantom that it's hard to stay focused on the main point here. Curiously the Hammer version is rather unromantic, with the Phantom just slapping Christine around until she sings his tunes right; that is kind of refreshing in a way, although it also means that the film lacks tension, which contributes to its being surprisingly anticlimactic. The best guy in the movie is actually Thorley Walters whose character serves almost no narrative purpose at all, he just hulks around with this WTF? look on his face and it is kind of adorable. I guess I like the gross mask in this one, too.

But the Hammer version has one interesting strength, which is that Christine is singing the lead in a new opera about Joan of Arc. Just like Joan, Christine hears a disembodied voice prophesizing her ascent to power. The best thing about the Phantom lore is the idea that the woman has this latent power that can either be activated by the Phantom, or suppressed by her square boyfriend (the relationship being mutually exclusive with opera stardom in many iterations). She isn't just a love object to be possessed, she herself possesses of some kind of devastating energy that needs to be awakened and channeled--or contained and forgotten, if she decides to get married and stay home or something. This is pretty cool, and it is interestingly realized in Dario Argento's OPERA, in which (spoiler alert I guess) a killer stalks an opera singer with the aim of catalyzing her own latent psychopathy. This idea is at the center of my thesis and I'm looking forward to fleshing it out, although I'm kind of dreading all the other PHANTOMs that I have committed myself to watching. I really don't want to deal with Andrew LLoyd Webber at all, but after I get through at least the Joel Schumacher one of the those I'm going to reward myself with a rewatch of PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE which I'm going to guess right now is the best retelling of this story after the Chaney one. I'm counting on Paul Williams' music to be catchier than Webber's.

I'm whining about my own decisions, I know, but really the main hardship of this project is that now I keep getting the Vandals' punk theme song from PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE stuck in my head, and let me tell you that is very unwelcome. Here it is, if you've decided you're done being happy and sane:

[theprodigalpragmatist]

do you se e him!? san

i see san…i witness san…but oh shit, oh fuck, he’s listening to somewhere over the rainbow, he can’t hear us— SAN NO!!! 💥🚶‍♂️🏫

[gunsatthaphan]

"I think I've been here before."

↳ requested by anonymous ♡ 

[yeah-alright-brill]

Obsessed with the fact that the vast majority of characters with heterochromia are all animated fantasy nonhumans/edgelords/quirky cute girls:

And then you have. Chris. He likes uhhh football and movies, and his special ability is...doing the worm?

And he's only like that because by fluke, Marshall Lancaster genuinely, unironically has the condition.

[gillianthecat]

omg omg, I was not expecting Shin Woo POV episodes, this is so thrilling!

Darling, I'm sorry I maligned you by thinking that dildo-rific encounter was your love-at-first sight moment. You actually fell in love long before that.

But also babe, you are so incredibly awkward. I love that your big plan to make friends was to bump (hard!) into Tae Kyung in the hall. And then when that didn't work (shocking!) give up entirely, immediately. My sweetest shyest little boy 🥺

(But also how cute is it that what we believed were Shin Woo's first words to Tae Kyung turned out to actually be Tae Kyung's first words to him! "Watch where you're going." Aww.)

[alexmey-does-an-arts]

once again i am utterly insane about the cinematography in the lom finale. the barrier of seperation between sam and every other person in 2006. the way he slouches unlike everyone else because he has been fundamentally changed

the only scene with warm colors is when he's speaking to his mother, but there's still that barrier between them because even she will never truly understand.