#that plot was MADE for a gay confession and yet. we got. the nonsense.

[ssaalexblake]

i've not watched the new season of cm but from my casual gif research (aided by video clips) i'm now newly bitter over the travesty of the s14 finale, and that is Impressive bc my bitterness was strong and visceral even before this.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

April 2021 Part 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Second Chance Ep 1 - living up to its name since it looks to be a series of redemption arcs. Launched with a college confession and a broken friendship, then a flash back to them as seniors in high school. Pairings include friends to lovers, nerd/jock, and maybe cafe boss/employee. There’s a lot going on, but it’s still... quiet and sweet. The script is pretty pat but it’s still WAY more watchable than Cupid Coach or Brothers and most of the acting is solid. Ep 1 tropes included: he’s in engineering, wound tending, fast & bicurious. This could turn into what I wanted My Gear & Your Gown to be. Fingers crossed. 

Love Poison 2 Ep 1 & 2 turns out I did watch and report on season 1 (8 eps), season 2 seems equally unmemorable. Thai countryside setting, strong dialect, incomprehensible plot, camp side characters, and ghastly singing. 

Y-Destiny Ep 1 (eng subs?) - opened with the sports romance enemies to lovers (they aren’t going in the teaser order). When the couple got over fighting, the flirting was v cute, but the flipping SPONGE BATH trope had to rear its ugly head. Still, this series is shaping up to be less coy and more frank than most BL, better than expected. It feels, I don’t know, gay-er or something?  *** Sources were correct that each couple is getting (at least) 2 eps, and MDL has been updated to say this is a 15 episode series (not 7). 

Cupid Coach 12 fin - The new Nite was great and should have been a main all along. It felt like we got a tiny nugget of what could have been in about 10 minutes worth of this last ep. It was way too slow with terrible editing and a criminally bad script, but at least it ended happy. Mostly, like Friend Forever, I’m just disappointed that these two actors were done dirty by the series. Bad Cupid Coach, no screen caps for you. 

Lovely Writer Ep 6 - breaking news, there’s a het couple I like: toppy bi femme + soft boi = such a good pairing! I know, but this NEVER happens. Meanwhile, Sib’s secret is out, Gene is a bit of a drama queen, and the plot thickens. We half way through.  

Brothers Ep 9 - Kaow had a serious moment of advice giving that was truly lovely. Lots of family dama made this a superior episode to... well... any of the others in this series. Which isn’t saying much. 

1000 Stars Ep 10 fin - at the start this series didn’t grab me the way GMMTV’s last BL, Tonhon Chonlatee, did. But boy did it end 1000x better. Might have given us 2021′s best forehead kiss. I enjoyed the ultra romantic cliff-top reunion kiss, and I LOVED the stinger flirting scene. That was an absolute gift we had no right to expect. This drama is a poster child for finishing on a high note (always focus on that dessert course). Final thoughts? This was FAR more a classic romance than it was BL. There were some BL tropes used but not many and most of them originated in the romance genre not yaoi. A picture perfect ending bumped 1000 Stars much higher up my best-of list than expected. Not sure how often I’ll rewatch it as a whole, but this last episode? I’m probably rewatching it right now. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Dear Uranus (Taiwan GL) Ep 3 fin - I guess that’s it? Okaaaaay  

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 3 (AKA Ep 5-6) - we got actual legit gay culture not just BL (always appreciated) from XingSi. I’m starting to find LiCheng’s “show them we fucking” hijinks hilarious rather than annoying (not sure why, maybe I just love a rubber chicken, or maybe it was the STUFFED CORN WITH THE TASSEL that did it). 

-- H4 Moment of RANT --

Tropes included beach trip, there’s only one bed, cook for him, baby is a floppy drunk, carry baby to bed, and.... drunk non-con. Whoopdedoo. Here we go again. Did TharnType teach us NOTHING? (Apparently it taught us if the chemistry is good enough, I have no morals at all.) At least H4 seems to be taking us out of cheese into serious when it comes to assault. Or is it? 

I take back what I said last week about XingSi & YongJie being codependency + salvation trope, that only works if YongJie is the uke. He’s NOT. So we got us an obsessive predatory villain with a possible redemption arc. That’s more common in crime dramas, mafia romance, and epic fantasy than BL. It’s real hard to redeem a sexual predator in a reality-grounded universe like contemporary romance (See Kla in LBC1&2). 

Next week is gonna be a test of the whole damn franchise. Imma remind both me a you that this was ep 3 of 10 so we got a ways to go yet... but ooof, what have we wrought, BL? (I ended up doing a whole post about the stepbrother trope because of this sub plot.) Taiwan is killing me.

-- RANT ended --

Word of Honor (China) Ep 19-21 - over half way point so we got ALL the back story (in a classic 4 act story structure midway reveal). Now we know who WKX really is and his lineage. We also got some cute hugs and hand holds. Moving along at a nice clip despite being 36 eps total. Still gayest thing to come out of we-not-gay China since Advance Bravely. 

Most Peaceful Place (Vietnam) Ep 2 - takes them a while to get eng subs together and ep 2 didn’t drop until late. So I’m putting this in a Thurs time slot going forward. Miscommunication already cleared up and a 2nd couple has been introduced. The pacing on these Vietnamese BLs is always a bit... off. But it’s still better than most of its ilk, enjoyable. I’m thinking it’s a 6 ep arc. 

We Best Love 2 (Taiwan) Ep 5 - after the initial drama DRAMA of ep 2, the current external crisis at work is much quieter, giving this whole season a top heavy feel. Taken along side the first season, I think it’s fitting nicely into a 4 act structure, but that might be my bias. I hope I’m not wrong, we’ll find out next week. Shi De puttering about being domestic with Shu Yi on his back was the best execution of the piggyback trope EVER. Meanwhile, our little D/s side couple of codependency, salvation trope + mental illness is becoming weirdly appealing. I don’t know. H4 done mess with my head. 

Stand Alones 

Absolute BL AKA Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai vs Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko  (Japan) Ep 1-4 mini series. Found subs under A Man Who Defies The World of BL. IT’S HILARIOUS. It’s Japan making fun of us, but also itself for having started this whole BL nonsense - from yaoi roots to present day. It’s parody goddamn gold. Utterly cheeky unto the very last line. We are not worthy. 

Apparently the most powerful tropes of all time are: baby is a floppy drunk and the piggyback fo nobility. Oh and chocolate. {Full review here.} 

Honestly, this show may have been made with only @heretherebedork and I in mind. I don’t know if you’d even understand half of it if you don’t have a history with the manga source genre and an obsessive interest in underlying narrative devices. I haven’t seen much chatter in the blog’o’sphere on this one because, in the end, it’s not a romance at all, it’s social commentary. 

The ending line was a masterclass in lampooning a genre. I’m going to rewatch the whole thing just to catch all the digs I missed first time around. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 

Thank you Japan. I forgive you all your hair-styling sins of the last decade. 

Breaking News 

Spring Line Up:

Scholar Ryu’s Wedding Ceremony AKA Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding (Korean historical BL) April 15th 

Close Friend the series (Thai trailer) April 22. 

2gether the movie (Thai trailer) April 22 to Thai theaters.

Nitiman (Thai) May 7 on One31.

I Told Sunset About You 2 (Thai) May 27 on LineTV

Ossan’s Love (Hong Kong) June to Viu 

Gossip 

Bad Buddies released its first promo op via Arm Share, which means GMMTV is at least *thinking* about filming it. 

Fun behind the scenes gossip sesh with eng subs for Tell the World I Love You (that Perth Bas movie we are maybe getting someday but will likely be sad). 

New Thai BL Bite Me (adapted from novel Grab a Bite) dropped a teaser. It stars Mark Siwat (Kla in LBC) as uke character Ake, a delivery boy with special foodie powers, and chef Eua (seme played by Zung Kidakorn) who discovers him. It’s from the same author as Manner of Death so we might even get some actual plot. Since it’s an established BL actor who I happen LOVE, a known author, and a plot about FOOD, I could not me more excited for this one. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Some shows may be listed a day later than actual air date for accessibility reasons. Some are dropping multiples at a time but just started so I’m not sure on numbering. 

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

[duhragonball]

shadowjack12345 replied to your photo “Got a commission this week by the awesome FrauleinPflaume, and it...”

Nice to finally see Zatte, I always liked her - she's dangerous in a way we don't often get in DB.

Hey, thanks, that means a lot to me.    Also, this is all the prompting I need to try to explain how I came up with the character.   Spoilers under the cut.

The thing that held me up early on was that I couldn’t decide if Luffa’s “career” in the past should be long or short.   I used the Bardock: Father of Goku TV special as a model of a “short” Luffa arc.    You have this character who’s only mentioned in passing (by Raditz), and the TV special fleshes him out and kills him off in the space of an hour.   Then he wakes up in the past in the 2011 “Episode of Bardock” Special, if you want to count that.    On some level, I imagined it could be possible to give Luffa a really quick run in her native era, and then send her to the future to join the TIme Patrol, like the Bardock specials.   

I worked on Chapter 126 and 127 today, so I think it’s clear that I did not go down that route.   I knew the alternative would be to really flesh out the character, having her go through multiple adventures like Goku in Dragon Ball.   That meant I had to come up with extra stuff for her to do.   The simple fact is that I really enjoyed writing the character, and I wanted to take the long road, so that later on, when she refers to her past exploits, there would be some weight to them.   

So I worked on coming up with stuff for her to do in between major plot points.   I thought about giving her some love interests, since we’d never seen a Saiyan character jump from one relationship to another, like Spider-Man in the 70′s.   At some point, I thought it might be interesting to have her run into an old flame, someone who knew her before she went Super.   

The problem with that was that when we first meet Luffa, she’s only 19 years old, and she’s been married to Kandai for about a year.    And she’s been living on the Dorlun colony for about five years.    I say this like someone else foisted this problem on me, but I’m the one who came up with all that stuff, to better amplifly the tragedy she experiences before turning Super Saiyan.   This isn’t some seasoned veteran who’s been all over the universe, loving and leaving ‘em from one planet to the next.     She’s young and inexperienced and isolated in a very small community.    

But I still liked the idea, and I hadn’t published Chapters 1-10 yet, so I still had a lot of room to set things up for later.   I realized the only way this would work would be if the “old flame” was a Dorlun who had admired Luffa from afar.    And that led me to Captain Mesas, the leader of the Dorlun militia.  

Mesas originally served only one purpose, which was to be a sort of proxy who could represent the entire Dorlun colony that Luffa had been hired to defend.   I assigned her gender at random, I think.    I just know that I didn’t put a ton of thought into it, since I was planning to kill all of the Dorluns off later anyway.   Luffa would take this personally, because she came to appreciate these people without really admitting it, and this would be demonstrated by her respect for Mesas, who was their lead warrior, and thus the most Saiyan-like of the bunch.   Eventually, I renamed her Captain Zatte, because I had settled on naming all the Dorlun characters after anagrams of metric prefixes, i.e. “zetta”.  

So I quickly came to the conclusion that the only way this “reunited with an old flame” idea would work would be if it was a Dorlun, and the only one that would make any sense would have to be Zatte, and the only way that could work would be if there was some sort of romantic tension between them.    They couldn’t be lovers in those early chapters because Luffa was married at the time, but later, there would need to be a moment where Zatte would confess her feelings and Luffa would have to feel the same way.   

And this is how I ended up making Luffa bisexual.    I didn’t want Zatte to be a man, and I couldn’t make Luffa gay, because I needed her to start out in a marriage to a Saiyan man.   Too much of the plot depended upon that.   I struggled with this decision for a couple of reasons.   

First, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, and I didn’t know if I wanted this story to be my first try, because I was already trying to do a lot of other new tricks.   I didn’t want real-world wlw’s to see this story and be disappointed by my amateurish attempt to get it right.    

Second, I felt disingenuous about making such a major change to the character for my own convenience.    I felt like I’d seen that a lot in comic books over the years, where writers would seemingly assign bisexuality to characters arbitrarily, or for “shock” value, or just to be salacious.  I didn’t want readers to think I was only doing this for shallow reasons, or to get my jollies writing two girls making out.  

But at the same time, I really wanted to do it this way, and I finally decided to just go with it and see where it took me.   In hindsight, I realize that I was just being a fraidy cat about the whole thing.   Writing wlw romance isn’t so functionally different from mlw romance, and once I got used to the idea, I realized the only thing I needed to do was to treat it with the proper respect.    And really, this wasn’t so far off from the original premise.    I wanted to make the “Legendary Super Saiyan” a woman to defy convention and to piss off dudebros.    Making her queer just continues that same line of reasoning, right?   I used to see jackasses on the internet say that women couldn’t turn Super Saiyan because they couldn’t “get angry enough,” which is pretty similar to a lot of biphobic crap I’ve heard on the internet.    I mean, I used to listen to Loveline on the radio around 2001, and Dr. Drew was acting like bisexuality was some made-up thing.    Apparently Dr. Drew went nuts somewhere along the way, or maybe he always was, but he seemed pretty progressive in 2001, and he accepted gay and lesbian callers just fine, but he told bi callers to “figure out what they want”, and that never sat right with me.   People used to say there were no such things as black swans, too.    That’s Luffa all over.     You can deny her all you want, but she’ll still kick your ass.  

I’m this close to going off on a rant about J.K. Rowling, so let me try to force myself to talk about Zatte here.    The problem I ran into almost immediately was that I wrote what I had originally planned for her, and I was very pleased with how it turned out.  And then I had to move on to the next arc, and yet, she was still there, and I knew I’d have to do something with her.    I feel like I’ve been winging it ever since, but my main priority was to set her apart from Keda, the other Dorlun character I kept around.  So I ran with the idea that Zatte is more “Saiyan-like” than the rest of her species, and maybe that makes her a little radical at times, maybe not in a way we humans might notice, but a way that other Dorluns would find unsettling.   Dorluns are survivalists, and for them “risk” is a four-letter word, but Zatte’s a thrillseeker at heart.   She wants to survive in spite of the dangers rather than back away from them.    Keda would find somewhere to hide for several months until it’s safe to come out, but Zatte would try to go all Die Hard on a situation.   Keda sticks close to Luffa because Luffa is the strongest person in the universe, so by Luffa’s side is arguably the safest place to be.    Zatte sticks close to Luffa because she’s a furry being by Luffa’s side is arguably the most dangerous place to be.    If she can survive there, she can survive anywhere.  

There’s also the whole fanaticism angle.   At some point, I came up with the idea that Zatte sees Luffa’s Super Saiyan emergence as a watershed moment in history.     I sort of threw that together, mostly to make Luffa uncomfortable and to add some tension to their relationship, but it also distinguishes Zatte from characters like Chi-Chi or Bulma, who see Super Saiyan as a lot of flashy nonsense, signifying nothing.    “Punk rocker?   Don’t you understand?   Your son is a miracle!”

That angle is kind of hard for me to work with, because I also tried to make Zatte very grounded at the same time.    I guess it’s like if you had Jerusalem Syndrome but you were very self-aware the entire time.   You make a toga out of your hotel linens and just constantly saying “Man, I’m just being really nutty right now, but oh well.”

A lot of her tactics are sort of rooted in stuff I thought made sense with the weaker characters in Dragon Ball.   I don’t really know how strong Zatte would be.    I envisioned her as being like a “mere mortal”, like Lois Lane, but in Dragon World even guys like Mr. Satan are insanely tough.   I’m pretty sure Bulma could kick Brock Lesnar’s ass if she visited our own world.   He’d F5 her and she’d just get up and slap him in the face and he’d collapse.    I feel like if Zatte entered the 23rd Budokai, she could sweep the entire thing.   That’s not what I set out to do, and it sounds really arrogant because I’d be putting her over Goku and Piccolo, but come on, that’s low-tier by DBZ standards.   If she couldn’t dominate the 23rd Budokai, then definitely the 22nd, which also sounds unthinkable, but that’s how this crazy show works.   Yajirobe could have won the 22nd Budokai if he’d only thought to enter it.   

My point is that “weaker” characters can do a lot from the sidelines if they know their limits and pick their spots, like Tien using the Kikoho on Cell and Super Buu, or Yajirobe cutting off Vegeta’s tail, and so forth.    Most of those guys hate resorting to that sort of thing, because they prefer to stand and fight in the open, but Zatte specializes in sneaky hit-and-run attacks.   She should be able to shoot ki blasts, but she sticks to firearms instead, because they’re more precise and ki senses can’t pick them up.  She likes being underestimated, to the point where her ideal battle is one where the enemy doesn’t even know she’s on the field.  

I dunno, I’ve always wondered if I was getting her “right” all this time, but now that I summarize it all in one place, it doesn’t seem as disjointed as I feared.   I had all these different things I needed her to be and do, and most of them involved finding ways to justify her continued presence in the story, but maybe it’s all worked out after all.   Sometimes I feel like Zatte is the Yoko Ono of this fic, but the Beatles suck, so I shouldn’t indulge in their crude analogies.    I Zatted my way into this mess, and I’m happy to Zatte my way out.    

[azoreaneve]

The fucking Epilogues, tales of dubious coherence

I’ve ranted about The Epilogues in general but I figured it would be ideal to make a rant just for the characters because ooo boy this is the biggest reason most of us end up disliking these fanfictions.

   🍬&🍖 John: honestly actually came out okay. Him becoming depressed made sense and serves as a reason why he’s not reaching out to everyone nowhere near as much as he did. Was okay and I liked him.

  🍬Jade: oh god, why did she suddenly become such a bitch?? (no pun intended) They blame it on the doggie hormones but, ugh, that still does not excuse how she suddenly becomes blind to Dave and KK’s discomfort! I find it easier to imagine she was pretending to be blind, no one is that stupid, not to the point of marriage and discussing kids. Even grimbark Jade was nicer! Also she doesn’t have a tail in the canon and yet here she does??

   🍖Jade: well she's gone for the most part, if that's how you avoid the 🍬 bs then so be it...

   Rose: while she’s sick she still seems like our Rose. Afterwards, in 🍬 she just becomes this distant figure and we don’t hear that much about her? It’s the ghost of Rose: someone who now only cares about her marriage I guess. And in 🍖 it's just, such a fucking pain to read her sections, and it's not even mostly because of her but, ugh!

 Dave: he literally went back into the closet??? I’m pretty sure by the end of the canon he had accepted he was gay/bi now but I guess that was thrown out the window. He also has a huge obsession with Obama that I don’t recall being a thing before? On 🍬 he can’t stand up for himself when it comes to the Jade situation and just has a pseudo-shit life, haunted by the “what could have been”s. Then at the end, on a sequence that completely came out of left field, he legit meets Obama, confesses to being gay to him, and is made to ascent to his Ultimate Self when there were no prior signs of that ever becoming a thing (no sickness, no mention of being aware of his other versions, very wtf). In 🍖 they do show these signs and DaveKat becomes this kinda weird thing that exists. Idk but this Dave didn't concern me that much. I was probably getting a bit too jaded at that point, after dealing with all the 🍬 nonsense.

   Jane: I don't really see her wanting to become this bitchy bossy corporate bitch as she grows up but I wouldn't mark it as impossible. I can even shrug at her wanting to regulate troll reproduction but raping Jake and then dragging him into an abusive household in 🍬?? Enstating some dystopian corporate fascism, pretty much following the steps of the Condesce?? HAVING SEX WITH GAMZEE??? And even keeping him at home like he’s part of the family now and giving him (her?) milk?? That whole plotline was more intense than most darkfics I’ve read, holy shit. Jane had already gotten the shaft in canon with a bunch of her plot points going nowhere, like her planet quest, or her whole detective thing getting ditched, and she spent a lot of time being possessed by a computer so in the end was not surprised to see her get the shaft again. We see much less of her in 🍖 but she's like the same character there.

   🍬&🍖Jake: he started becoming a punching bag at the end of canon and grew up to become Jane and/or Dirk’s punching bag, wow. I’m greatly distraught at how much his almighty ass is talked about, and yet we see NONE of it! NADA! Would have also liked to see Brain Ghost Dirk make an appearance. No way Jake was dealing with all his shit without occasionally meeting him.

   🍬Roxy: whatever happened here, that was not fucking Roxy wtf, that was an empty ghost of a person who, at the very end when she reconciles with John, started sounding like Roxy again. What an absolute shame.

   🍖Roxy: they are kinda okay at first, when with Callie, but then they become a he and he reminds me a lot of Tumblr transtrender groups because he's just kinda mimicking Dave, like Roxy's got no personality of his own. I want to believe he just didn't find himself properly yet. This is far from the canon Roxy, especially when he says all that shit about societal gender expectations? Like, bitch, the chesspeople weren't judging the way you dressed and acted wtf.

   🍬&🍖Dirk: more Dirk splinters should practice their 3rd favourite hobby of decapitation. It was fun to have him take over the narrative at first in Meat but he just spiralled down into a huge douche, sometimes straight up sounding like Caliborn. Don’t you miss when Dirk was just a lost kid wanting to become a better person? Don't you miss it when he wasn't such a massively insufferable pretentious cunt?

   🍬Kanaya: Kanaya definitively exists. She feels like she was washed off of some of her charm. Otherwise not much to say, we also don’t go into much detail on her.

   🍖Kanaya: she was turned into an annoying worried wife. Wow. And then gets tricked just like that. Hey remember when Kanaya's personality didn't revolve around her wife? I miss that.

   🍬&🍖Beep-beep-meow: he's annoyingly more PC (not the only one but since it was Karkat, known for shouting rude shit at everyone, he was the more grating case). Overall they don't do much with him and he just loses a but of his shine in both cases.

   🍬&🍖Terezi: she got the bad ending, what else is there to say? I did like her tho. She's still not taking much shit, not even from the prince.

   🍬Gamzee: oh you mean the clown that haunted the fuck out of 🍬 and made some of it both hilarious and extremelly disgusting? Yeah that was someone wearing the skin of Gamzee for sure.

   🍬Vriska: I'm just so fucking tired of Vriska. I get that people love her but I couldn't care less about her. At least she's making comedy now in HS^2 instead of being just a bitch.

   🍬Aradia: eh she's fine and having fun.

   🍬Sollux: ffs why did they have to bring the worse and more useless pre-retcon Sollux. I fucking love Sollux and want to see the version of him that isn't always brooding and can't do shit. I want the post-retcon Sollux who's a cool guy half the time. And then at the end he gets abandoned because honestly? Maybe that's what pre-retcon Sollux fucking deserves.

   🍬&🍖 Calliope: I hope you enjoyed seeing like 0.5s of alpha Callie before they hide away forever because of scary Callie, who becomes hella annoying in 🍖.

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

hey so remember like last year when i was re-reading misadventures and fixing typos? (well, i say that, but it was just an excuse to re-read it and write some absolutely absurd commentary on it...) i found old notes in my phone from january with even more so guess i may as well post it because people seemed to find it funny at the time, it’s basically just The Misadventures of Aish Realizing Things though

[yeah so here’s the original notes i’m not even gonna change anything even though lots of Lore has happened in the show and we Know things now, you just get to see what january aish typed]

ok well let’s go then chapters 31-35 oh god

oh yeah the ML Blackout! I remember that

hm it’s occurring to me maaaaaybe I should post a bit of a warning on this chapter. like “yes this starts off stupid and cracky and fluffy but takes a complete 180 in the middle and you will end up sobbing.”

or maybe I should put that as a disclaimer on the whole fic cause it’s one hell of a ride

THE AROACE SCIENCE JOURNAL YESSSSSSS THAT COMES BACK LATER

yeah the reason why the early parts of this chapter are very lighthearted is honestly because the fic was getting a bit too bleak, I needed something cheerful, so paper planes and arm wrestles it was

wait... isn’t this just that scene from Anansi??? where like Nora challenges Nino to an arm wrestle but then he wins because Someone Else Nearby Did A Thing

also this is Peak characterization, damn Aish, you rly outdone yourself, congration

any time I drop the word “inkling” into a fic it is always 100% a splatoon reference

MAX WOW TONE DOWN THE GAY

heh... BI-ceps...

oh my godddd Max trying to play off his ogling as “ah yes I am scientifically studying Kim’s arm muscles ofc, it’s science I swear” is SO frickin funny I’m already losing it

Alix: “scientifically speaking I’m hot therefore you have to lose this arm wrestle” hshdhdghshskkjkdhshs

^literally the kind of nonsense every single teen I know spouts irl

including me when I was a teen, I just said things

(I still just say things)

you can’t bring up the sports bra thing goddammit, I agree it’s cheating because it has the power to one-hit kill anyone in the vicinity

I love how Max thinks his crush on Kim is “under control” while like. visibly swooning over him

OH MY GOD THE PILLOWS SHHDJDHDHDHSKHS

OKAY SO LIKE I was supposed to put the thing about Kim snogging a pillow in chapter 20 but I forgot or something and then I just had to get it in somehow, oh it kills me dead just thinking about it, I’m dying, I’m dead

and the fact that he admits to it as well, holy moly

KIM

K I M

THAT’S GAY

OH WOW

this is the moment when Alix’s Kimax shipper heart was suddenly feeling validated like “omg wait Kim DOES like Max??? like for real??????”

awwwww Kim, Max doesn’t have those kind of superpowers, you just have a crush on him that’s all <3

THE SKATEBOARDING SNEK!!!!!!!!!!!!

“What the heck is that?” “My snake.” DYINGGGG

Kim trying to figure out if the snake is sitting or standing is a whole mood

ohhhhhhhh my gosh poor Alix trying so damn hard to subtly ask Kim if he likes Max and Kim’s just. so DUMB he doesn’t even get it no matter how obvious she is

she’s even trying to pull out those stupid amatonormative “so is he MORE than a friend???” questions just to get this idiot to figure it out because she knows allo-romos are Like That and he still doesn’t get it,,

[future aish says: the word is alloro, past aish. it’s alloro]

AND SO NOW SHE ASSUMES THEY’RE NOT INTO EACH OTHER BECAUSE SHE THINKS EVEN KIM CAN’T BE THAT STUPID

YOU UNDERESTIMATE HIS STUPIDITY

oh no... oh NO.... the letter.... here we go....

btw yes Gabriel had Kim’s grandad assassinated, it was indeed his doing

...isn’t this lowkey the plot of The Lion King?

or Long Live The Queen

hmmm let’s just say in the sequel poor Kim really will have to deal with the stresses of ruling a country >:D

NO MY POOR SON HAVING A BREAKDOWN, I WANT TO HUG HIM

(also can I just say like... this chapter is actually well-written for the most part? I’m actually kinda impressed)

unfortunately I know the feeling of wanting, needing to return home, but it fills you with dread... *hugs Kim forever*

Kim crying all over Max both hurts me and sort of heals me because Max is so sweet and comforting about it ohhh my heeeaaart

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

THIS IS LOWKEY A LOVE CONFESSION I SWEAR, IT’S SO CUTE

chapter 32 being called “Un chat noir” is kinda dumb af but also it just so happened that I accidentally had the chapter called “Coccinelle” be chapter 64, aka exactly double of 32, so that was kinda neat

Plagggggg!!!!!!!!!!

and Wayhem lol, I think I’ve already mentioned how originally this noble was just some random irrelevant unnamed OC until I decided way later it’s gay stalker fanboy

oh yeah that’s how the nobility recognize the royalty, I forgot lol

(also nobles from countries with widespread newspress or tv will recognize them from news reports and stuff I guess)

the fact that Plagg just hates Wayhem is funny to me for some reason

MISADVENTURES

HOLY SHIT I ACTUALLY THREW IN THE ACTUAL WORD

except it was in reference to Adrien... let’s just say that The Misadventures of Imperial Prince Adrien may or may not make an appearance in the sequel >:D

...the Adrienette is literally just in this fic so that people would read it, ngl

hhhhhhhhhhhh okay it’s true Alix is an aro idiot who doesn’t know anything about romance but for once she’s RIGHT, Kim IS in love with Max, but she assumes she’s wrong hshgshdjhdnsnsh

oh my god noooo timeline twin go away and stop giving me nightmares

I still love how they hate each other, that’s some top-notch self-hatred right there and I need to get on their level

[future aish note: no past self!! be nice to yourself!! you are a cool bean!! own it!!]

YOU FOOL... EVERY CLASSMATE WOULD TAKE A SWORD TO THE HAND FOR ALIX, WHY WOULDN’T THEY

ỳïķèš,,,

honestly I probably should stop being lazy and actually go back to like idk chapter 8 and put in an actual monopoly game (it had to have been before the oracle sessions in ch10 at least)

fun fact!! I have indeed very nearly had a fist fight over the last dark blue card in a monopoly game!! also I blatantly cheated, and the main opponent locked someone else (an 8 year old btw) in a cupboard... it was Wild(TM)

me and my irl friend actually came up with the butterfly thing when we were at the cinema once, she made up this random angry gardener OC who stepped on a butterfly after being fired or something lol

I mentioned Rose liking unicorns!!!! before Captain Hardrock!!!!!!!

shdhdhkshs Alix is such a moody emo brat in this fic I adore it

“The only real difference between you and me is one dead butterfly.” goddammit that’s the creepiest fucking thing, I’m genuinely shaking

technically it’s a butterfly’s fault for ALL the timelines which means that we’re all one butterfly away from death at any moment

cheerful stuff

no, no, you’re not trying to block it out on purpose... I’M trying to block it out on purpose bc I’m highkey shamelessly projecting

god I wish my timeline twin would manifest in the astral plane and punch me in the arm too

“Count yourself lucky you’re not a pillow, idiot.” in-context this is contender for Most Cursed Line I Have Ever Written In My Life

and yes Alix was about to straight-up swear

Mylène rollerskating is extremely blessed and good

pfffffffff Max you coward, I stand on swivel chairs all the time

*me, chanting at the spider in my room* KIMAX! KIMAX! KIMAX!

Kim literally making every excuse to not put Max down is amazing honestly

Kim and Max’s origins story is sooooooooooo cute wtf

THIS IS SO BLESSED OH MY HEART

HE’S JUST STANDING THERE CUDDLING HIM I’M

DECEASED

I,,,, swear to god,,,,,,,

so like. I know it’s now canon in the show that Kim really is as oblivious to his feelings as I wrote him in this. but MY GOD. IT’S FRIGGIN PAINFUL

KIM YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH MAX, FULL HOMO, THAT’S WHY YOU’RE FEELING LIKE THIS, IT’S NOT THAT COMPLICATED DAMMIT

oh yeah I wrote the kimax bits rly early and my old url was @queenkubdel haha

aight now a no-kimax chapter, but at least it’s a goodun

there’s that catradora-esque weather girls frenemyship again

Kim having a full-on breakdown when he finds out Alix’s hair isn’t really pink is actually really blessed, no lemme explain

so this universe has magic, right?? so he thinks to himself that the reason his friend has pink hair is because she must be some sort of anime protagonist or Really Important and Cool or something, and it never even occurred to him to doubt her

in other words he’s betrayed because he WANTED HIS FRIEND TO BE A COOL SHONEN HERO

which is both hilarious AND very sweet

...oh wait I’ve scrolled down and it turns out I literally explained all that in the fic itself hhdgjdvzjdjhs

and yeah honestly I can’t blame poor Kim for taking it so badly, he’s still reeling from his grandfather’s assassination so it’s natural his emotions are not exactly Regulated atm

actually when are his emotions ever regulated

1703-1899 hm... might change that since the fic takes place in 1957-1960 so even though it’s a commissioned history of the empire it was before Gabriel was even born so like why would he even care lmao

“Great Western Ocean” so pretentious, just say the Atlantic omg

I’ve been playing way too much civ because the first thing that came to mind was that everyone’s denounced Agreste due to the high warmongering penalties of the industrial/modern eras

Chloé and Kim is one hell of a brotp okay I still firmly believe that

also Chloé still loves her rococo fashion, she’s just toned it down enough that she can fit through doors and it’s not quite as “in your face” towards commoners

listen I know in the show Kim still liked Chloé for a while after Dark Cupid but in this he got over her quicker because his crush on her wasn’t as deep in the first place

Kim literally tells Chloé he gave the brooch to Max and yet STILL doesn’t realize he likes him!!! KIM!!!!!!!!!!

Chlodemption arc yesssssssss

also she’s a lesbeean

(ye Pollen will be in the sequel don’t you worry)

god I’m so proud of her <3

it feels believable too, so I’m proud of myself!! (I’m trying to be nice to myself before next chapter where I will no doubt roast myself so badly I’ll never recover)

outdated laws about marriage... jeez was that cursed foreshadowing or what

YES IT’S IVAN, I LOVE THIS BOY, HE’S SO GRUMPY AND ANGRY ALL THE TIME AND HE HATES KIM

...actually wait this is sibling culture

I literally speak like this to my brother and he’s my best friend so in conclusion Ivan thinks of Kim as an annoying brother

Jalil why are you a historian. just go be a psychologist and stop your sister accidentally hecking up the country

omg the Antarctica thing, I’m just imagining Jalil in the freezing cold with a massive coat on and getting chased by penguins

I love how the timeline twin’s plan was “escape school, force Adrien to get a venomous pet, then abandon him immediately in the middle of nowhere” and later on it turns out she skipped step two and just ditched him lmaoooooo

being so ace that your brain goes straight to “death and murder” before anything else is the biggest mood, I speak from experience

Jalil knows... he had that conversation with Kim in chapter 20... he Knows

“a bit unsupportive” um that is an extreme understatement good grief he was more savage than ME

RISE OF THE KIMAX SHIPPERS

oh don’t worry the venom death still haunts me too

chapter I Hate You... “A rather rotten winter party” well it should have been named A RATHER ROTTEN CHAPTER DO YOU KNOW HOW IMPOSSIBLE THIS ONE WAS TO WRITE OMG I HATE WRITING MYSELF INTO CORNERS

you see I had to have a motive for the timeline twin to explain things properly so that I could put in a really really dumb pun later but that meant I had to unfortunately suffer many allergic reactions again

[future aish note: forgot to mention, i also needed a motive for kim to stop eating chocolate forever, so i had to Curse this chapter as a sacrifice in order to save his life later on]

alright, alright, here we go, I’ll stop procrastinating and just get this over with

oh yeah it’s chapters like these that the fic’s rated T lol

the Adrikim friendship is indeed important... for later... like, plot-relevant levels of important... life-saving levels...

“some event” is the Peace Ball actually and I can’t wait because that chapter’s actually a good one

KIM BRAGGING ABOUT KISSING ADRIEN LAST YEAR IS SO FUCKING FUNNY OH MY GOD I’M LOSING MY MIND???

like last year he was LITERALLY LIKE “oh boo hoo I cannot tell anyone about this because Adrien is Ã Bøyê” and now he’s just like “yeah I kissed a hot boy and what about it???”

to be fair he is on an extreme sugar rush from all the chocolate he ate, which will... be a plot point in just a moment...

PILLOW GIRLFRIEND

I’m the amused nobles, they are me

oh my god Kim we get it you want to kiss someone (Max) and you don’t want to outright say it

holy shit do any of these kids ever think before they speak??? not to sound like the timeline twin or anything but alix... you could have avoided this if you’d bothered to use your one (1) brain cell

[future aish note: bold of me to assume that alix has a brain cell]

Kim wants to now fight his PARALLEL SELF oh my god, get on my level Kim, I want to fight my actual self like right now so there

stfu all of you, this is poisoning my liver

Max is the biggest mood and at least mildly sensible thank god, but he really shouldn’t have left those two alone for even a second

I AGREE PLATONIC LOVE IS UNDERRATED

the chair... the fucking c h a i r... I’m already lying down but I need to lie down harder just to process the absurdity of this

(I think I was gonna have Alix fall off the chair just because that’s hilarious but I forgot)

look I can’t take heartrate seriously but if you ever write it then you are legally required to put in kissing contests or you’re doing it wrong

fudgin Adrienette kiss offscreen and irrelevant

DJWIFI!!! AND ACTUAL PROPER DJWIFI!!!! I was sick of seeing it treated as some kind of pair-the-spares beta couple so I flipped the script and had them literally call out that trope while treating Adrienette as irrelevant instead, which is also why the sequel will be extremely djwifi-centric

“super swanky bae” please stop misusing commoner slang I’m begging you

THERE’S THE PLOT POINT I WAS TALKING ABOUT

Theo was right here, he witnessed with his own eyes how much chocolate Kim ate, so he knows for a fact that if you give Kim chocolate he will scarf it down without a second thought... so hypothetically if one sent him poisoned chocolates... dyou see where I’m going with this...

oh and Theo still has like every job btw

Alya!!!! no!!!!! hire him again!!!!!!!! then he won’t send the chocolates!!!!!!!!!! aaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

there goes me hinting how alyadrininette is the ultimate ot4 again

...do I really wanna scroll down and keep going? no I don’t but I guess I gotta, and relive every one of my most embarrassing school sleepovers in the process

full offence to everyone bothering to read this but kissing sounds gross, actually

(for the record it was probably like... 10 seconds or something idk it was Not Long At All)

“probably not more than 5 minutes” omg I just said it was 10 seconds??? hmmm m okay like 20 seconds maaaybe, Kim just has no sense of time perception

neither do I based on my microwaving skills

SHIT THIS IS LITERALLY A SCHOOL SLEEPOVER

INNOCENT DUMBASS AROACE ASKING “what does that mean? what’s this? what’s that? it’s okay you can tell me :-)”

omg I forgot the snake was there ahshdhdkshfs I’m the snake, probably wants to launch itself out of the window so big mood

most of the fic so far had Alix being really aro so I was like damn... gotta make her really ace too

(if I ever bother writing the Kimdine AU then you actually get an aro character who isn’t ace, because we need more of them, but I won’t say who) (okay fine it’s Luka)

I tend not to be too British in my writing so as not to give the Americans heart attacks whenever they see someone referring to their mother as “mum” etc, but like... sometimes you just gotta throw in the word “snogging”

(I’m typing this out on my phone rn and it has exactly 69% battery, I hate this and also hate that I felt the need to mention that)

THE HOCKEY THING MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN BASED OFF A REAL LIFE THING. *SWEATS NERVOUSLY*

honestly I was soooooo tempted to actually write The Talk bit, it would have been the funniest thing ever, but I was also 99% sure I would have to change the rating to M (despite it not even remotely being smut lol, just a regular biology lesson) and there was no way I was doing that, pretty sure I pushed the T rating at some points as it is

[future aish: god i am still so tempted to write it. man, i’m tempted. it would be the funniest thing. but no... i have sworn not to write anything above a T rating so guess i won’t.]

YEAH THE THROWING UP THING TOO WAS DEFINITELY NOT BASED ON REAL LIFE OR ANYTHING *MORE NERVOUS SWEATING*

(it genuinely wasn’t a flowerpot though. it’s my life’s goal to throw up in a flowerpot and I still haven’t achieved it.)

all of this is an Ace Mood(TM)

also I love how elaborately I’ve worded this, like yeah idiot royal teenagers are too royal and posh to ever bother just saying the word “sex” like a normal person

to any 17 year old aces: you aren’t too young to know, I told myself that aggressively when I was 17 but now I’m 22 and I’m still just as ace as I always was sooooo yeah

I also hope I can wake up tomorrow and forget I read this trash

well tbh... it’s not total trash... it highkey reminds me of my school days, like, maybe that was subconscious or something... god who even knows

jeez if timeline twin slapped me in the face I’d just keel over and die from sheer terror, other than that that’s HILARIOUS

timeline twin: “YOU HAVE ONE (1) BRAIN CELL NOW P L E A S E CONSIDER USING IT”

fuckeninf hell listen,,, so when I was writing this chapter I didn’t know I was aro... I mean, I was kinda questioning it?? but all I knew was I was ace, and that me not knowing that as a teenager almost totally screwed me over because like

to be normal or to feel normal there’s things you do or say that you don’t want, and things you know would happen or whether you want something or not you’ll take it because you think you’re expected to, because otherwise you’ll have to confront yourself with the fact that something is wrong with you and you don’t know what or why or how to fix it

and being aro on top of that is misunderstanding how to navigate close friendships because of this fundamental fear that if you want to be close with someone then friendship can’t suffice, that how much you care about them doesn’t matter

and things I did or almost did, or had the chance to do and only stopped because (awfully enough) crippling anxiety which ironically saved me (let’s just say the dude turned out to be a creep)... yeah basically this is all a callback to that aroace teenager feel where you can’t help not being true to yourself because you don’t want to, because you don’t know what’s wrong or right, only what’s “normal” and the ache of knowing that you’re not, no matter how much you try

and I didn’t know I was aro while writing this but in hindsight it’s easy to see how that played into it too, and writing this definitely played a part in me realizing I’m aro and was somehow trying to work through some very pent-up feelings about friendship and closeness with people, as well as pent-up feelings about being ace and how that tied into everything too

...in short, do not phuck the pharaoh or you will get HOUSE ARRESTED and DIE

(jk jk she’ll just be awkward around you forever lol, and then SHE’LL get house arrested and die, because you’re not commoners so your actions actually have consequences you dumb idiots)

this entire thing is just a whole mood and lowkey my teenage years holy fuck holy fuck I hate that I’m only just realizing how bloody hard I was projecting

I literally read a post the other day about how unrequited love is only ever usually explored from the perspective of the person who’s in love, whereas aros are usually on the receiving end of it and it’s a tragedy in its own right that you might do things that wind up driving you apart because you can’t bring yourself to love them back but you can’t tell them because of the fear that it’ll push them away... and I gotta say, I totally nailed it 💪

...you know what I’ve changed my mind, chapter 34 is good actually, and now I need to make a time machine and go and hug my 17 year old self for living this, and then hug my 20 year old self for writing this, I’m sorry I was mean to this chapter it’s very relatable and I shouldn’t keep beating myself up over it

thinking makes me miserable too!! that’s why it’s optimistic nihilism only lads

impulse control, hmmm... someone who’s good for him, hmmmmmm... it’s almost like someone like that is right there and exists and is already in love with him 😏

so apparently timeline twin’s idea of “fixing her life” is burning all her bridges and then hecking off to the Kazakh wilderness for over a year

did Alix just... ask the snake if it’s aroace too???

I mean it definitely is, but...

UGH SNAKES DON’T BLINK, I’M STILL SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS

chapter 35, thank god, the title “Finally!” is very apt

(because I can finally change the music from Death Valley to something else lol)

oh poor Max, his heart goes on a real rollercoaster these few chapters doesn’t it? it’s okay buddy, in like 10 chapters you’ll get your man...

NO BUT SHE H A S FIGURED IT OUT!!! SORT OF!!!

I just misread “despite” as “despacito”, I’m going to bed and continuing this tomorrow dammit

alright I am now funky refreshed and ready to roll, let’s get this kimax party started

Max is angsting internally like “no one’s realized I like Kim :( well except Juleka but she’s a lesbian so she doesn’t count” ashgdjsghskk that mlm/wlw solidarity is holding out I see

YES ALIX YOU DO NEED TO TALK TO NATH MORE, THAT’S YOUR FREAKING BEST BUD IN THE SHOW MAY I REMIND YOU

this is all so Irony it’s murdering me dead

okay yeah I’m gonna be really honest and salty here for a second, this bit where Max is annoyed that Alix takes Nath more seriously as a contender than him was me being a bit salty over the fact that like... kimnath/tomato ketchup is a great rarepair but got so weirdly popular amongst people who didn’t seem to care about Max as a character at all despite how close he is with Kim in canon, and as a Max Stan it made me sad because he’s already not very appreciated in fandom

[future aish note: HE IS NOW BABEY!]

THERE IT IS

I WANT TO HUG MAX TOO, BLESS HIM

I also want to hug Alix because godddds I’ve been in that situation where if you were allowed to just TELL the idiots that they like each other then all their problems would be solved but noooo, you’re sworn to secrecy... *sigh*

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t change, ever...” me: *thinks about the sequel and cackles evilly while cracking my knuckles* well,,

A R O M A N T I C

listen it was VERY IMPORTANT to me that I actually put in all these actual words in the fic and made them relevant, like gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc (I think the only one I didn’t was trans, oops?? gotta remember that for the sequel, at least Nino IS trans in this even though I never said the word)

[future aish note: i feel like i didn’t say pan either, or nonbinary... more stuff for the sequel folks! i can’t put in everything but i may as well try!]

bc you see all these tv shows where a character is bi but they say they “don’t like labels” or a character with no love interest get suddenly paired up with someone random at the end... like NO I wanted to do the OPPOSITE of that bc people’s identities are IMPORTANT so I wanted to MAKE IT RELEVANT 💪

and even though I didn’t yet know here that I was aro and highkey projecting, there’s already a fair few fics dealing with asexuality but not aromanticism?? so I rly wanted to make the aro side of things important

almost relieved??? Max, you buffoon, she IS relieved, extremely

Malix friendship is good and severely underrated and I still haven’t forgiven myself for not putting more of it in this

“He was never eating chocolate again” HO-HO-HOLY SHIT THAT’S SOME FORESHADOWING RIGHT THERE

Rose is a distinguished bi who doesn’t realize Kim is a disaster bi

Kim oh my god you can’t just out Adrien “just about functional bi” Agreste like that

I love that Rose calls Kim a casanova even though he’s very much not... how many people are even into him over the course of the fic? Max, Adrien, it’s implied Marinette used to be, Lila is ambiguous, same with the lacrosse guy later, oh yeah Ondine highkey lmao along with 90% of the teenage population of Saharan Africa, Kim himself in about 2 chapters time...

Rose giving Kim the gay talk is so blessed omg I need more interaction between these two

“If you swung one way you were gay, if you swung the other way you were straight, more than one way made you bisexual, if you didn’t swing any way at all then you were probably just Alix...” I will literally NEVER be able to outdo this line, this is Peak

hmm I don’t think at any point in the fic Max says to Kim that he’s exclusively into boys... I guess he said it offscreen then lol, point is He’s Gay

OMG KIM, YOU FINALLY REALIZED WHAT THE NOSEBLEED SCENE MEANT, GOD BLESS YOU

this is like in Syren when he realizes the mermaid is Ondine and that she was trying to tell him she likes him... except this is the gay version of that

yeah Rose I really do need to get more sleep, that one was directed at me and I know it was

Kim being all like “fellas is it gay if you take off your shirt and a guy swoons at you 🤔🤔🤔”

no, no... Max is definitely a complete trainwreck at romance, just slightly less than you

god freaking dammit not the sports bra again,,, I s2g later in the fic all Ondine would have had to do is to show up in a sports bra and Kim would immediately go full ot3 mode no questions asked,,,,,,,, (I mean he does see her in a swimsuit but that’s not the same??? sports bras are in a different league okay shush)

psssssst!!! you should read heartbroken!!!! it’s a kimax fic and it’s so good!!!!! this was a lowkey shoutout!!!!!!!!

genuinely tho, even if Kim hadn’t liked Max too here, he’s being so sweet about it?? he’s worried about his poor friend’s emotional state and wishes he could have done better to help!! gahhhh their friendship/relationship is just So Blessèd

hsndhkdhdkshdh I only noticed it after finishing the fic and occasionally skimming back through, but so much of the time whenever Alix shows up Kim’s all like *ungrateful* “oh not you again” like WOW that’s one way to greet your friend?? mood tho

[future aish note: i did the exact opposite in No Romo, funnily enough! kim’s not in it much but whenever he sees alix he’s like “friend!!! friend!!!!!” and she’s just like -_- “oh it’s that guy again”]

he’s not even paying attention to her omg she’s trying to save the timeline here you idiot

POOR ALIX how frustrating,,, and also I’ve literally been there,,, the woes of being a wing-girl indeed

and now Kim wants to fight himself, why am I not surprised

aND YES HERE’S WHERE IT HITS HIM, THE EXACT FUCKING MOMENT

WHERE HE’S SUDDENLY LIKE “OH WAIT MAX’S LOVE FOR ME ISN’T UNREQUITED??? I LIKE HIM TOO HOLY SHIT????”

aaaaaaand he immediately asks the aro for love advice, why is he like this omg

gosh this is sooooo sweeeeeet

I did not let up, did I? just went ahead and made this as cheesy and cutesy and over the top as I could because It’s What Kimax Deserves

(there wasn’t rly much Kimax content yet in the fandom at this point so I had total free reign and went all-out with it)

sfjsgskdhs and there goes Alix getting her wing-efforts sidelined again

“I’m never asking out someone on a whim again. Or, uh, confessing that I like someone on a whim either.” so uh... you know how I said I’m considering making the sequel Kimaxdine? well if I do then uh. hm. this might change. because reasons.

I don’t know why I made nothing Alix ever says make sense but I’m glad I did because she’s so freaking funny

I swear I talk about Max’s eyes being “magnified in his glasses” multiple times in this fic, either that or I’m having serious deja vu

Kim’s so cute dammit!!! now that he knows he likes Max he’s just swooning over every little thing and it’s!!!! adorable!!!!!

(I wonder if this is how it was with Kimdine in the show? it does seem like Kim already liked her but just hadn’t noticed...)

huehuehuehue Kim later on you do indeed recklessly propose to Max on the spot... in like 18 chapters or so

also the fact that Kim thinks things through better when he’s around Max is just the total sweetest and also what Alix was basically trying to aim for

I love Kim showing off that he can pack all his stuff in half an hour like buddy, the porters can literally help you with that, you’re royalty remember

omg I’d forgotten I left a note here later for binge-readers!! being all like “drink water and eat food and go to sleep uwu”

lmao guess I’ll take my own advice then and leave it there for now

[future aish note: same, goodnight]

[amalgamezz]

Submission by Anonymous

(I tend to leave all submissions on Anon for the sake of the sender’s privacy unless they state otherwise, but if you don’t mind being outed, please let me know.)

Hellooo

I only started following you today and I instantly love this blog so much? What sorcery did you use? 😂 Seriously though, reading your posts made me go through a wave of emotions.

I used to run a Jumin blog so I feel a strong connection to this blog, it just made me so happy today that I discovered it. I was kind of defensive of Jumin back then, so I might’ve said some stupid things which might’ve be seen as aggressive to non-Jumin fans (not my finest moment), but I do acknowledge his flaws, and that’s why I really love your assessment of his character. I think you do a better job at spreading positivity and fun towards Jumin in the fandom than I did 😂😘

Anyways, I wrote this because I have a particular memory from the past which I find interesting. One of the things I have in common with you is how I feel about DJHIG meme (I’m so glad Cheritz cleared that up btw). I used to be salty and ranted about it a lot, sometimes using sarcasm or satire. I didn’t call them out for being homophobic, because I think that’s a strong word and didn’t really want to use it, I just said it was inappropriate and unfunny. But guess what? I was the one that was called homophobic for being pissed off. I find this amusing because from your rant tags, I conclude that usually the responses are “it’s not homophobic” or “we’re just having fun”

So, back on track, after seeing my rant about the meme, one of the meme lovers private messaged me. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but pretty much she was berating me, accused that I only get pissed off because I would hate Jumin if he was gay/if Jumin’s character was associated with gayness and that made me homophobic. I was just like : ?? Where.did.that.logic.come.from?? She also said that if Jumin was canonically gay, and the meme was Does Jumin Han is Straight, I would be fine with it. At that point, I started wondering what planet she came from, as she clearly missed the whole point of the rant. After that, I re-explained to her what I meant, but she was probably still upset, so I got blocked.

I just thought that the whole thing was peculiar, and I’m kinda curious of your thoughts, so that’s why I shared it with you haha

Btw, I think you’re a nice person, at least from what I’ve seen so far. I’m glad that you’re serious enough to look at real life issues that might have an association with a piece of fiction, but not being hypersensitive. Because, well, many people nowadays scream “misogyny”, “abuse”, “rape”, and other bad terms without exactly logically analyzing the situation or even understand the meanings of those terms. I take a strong stance on claims having to have evidence before it gets thrown out. I’m not saying you’re always right, but I’m glad that you are willing to see things from both sides of an argument. (Even if the subject here is mostly from a piece of fiction, it’s still admirable)

You remind me of my older sister, I miss her 😊 I’m an awkward person so sorry if this submission got cheesy and weird real quick, I don’t really know how to start conversations hahah, I just ramble on and on about what’s on my mind

Have a good day, m'lady 💕

Welcome, dear one. Please take a sit and stay as calm as you can. We have bad news for you.

Warning: Looong post, DJHIG (yes, I’ve made it a TW now), Me trying not to be salty (trust me; I tried)

We suspect that you are under the effect of an unnaturally dark and deathly powerful spell, which we, unfortunately, have yet discovered the cure or identified the source. However, it has been scientifically proven by our headmaster Han that every reblog, like or comment that you make on this blog will significantly delay-- who am I kidding? I’m not gonna do this lol

Ahem, joking aside.

Hello there~ Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m so glad to hear that you enjoy reading my blog ^^

At first, I'd like to make a confession. MM is the very first fandom I’ve ever so deeply invested that I even made a Tumblr account for it. If you told the three-month-ago me that I’d have a discourse over a fictional character, I’d thought it was a joke lol. Originally, this blog was not even supposed to be about Jumin. Well, tbh, it was more like a small personal corner where I threw shade and I threw a lot at the game’s plot holes and, occasionally, the fandom’s issues while lowkey surfing for high-quality smuts. I honestly have no idea how it had come to this, but apparently, I’ve already fallen so deep and there is no turning back now lol

Also, thank you for trusting me to be a nice person despite the quite dubious morals of mine. May I make another confession? When I first approached Jumin (or any other characters), I viewed him more of a character I’m interested in analyzing rather than the one I gonna romance with. I never thought I’d fallen for him to begin with; it just sorts of happened in the process, haha. Anyway, the flawed Jumin is the one that I already love, not the idea of him; so there are no reasons for me to go around, making excuses for his shitty behaviors as if he was perfect or innocent. I don’t do that; I don’t just have to; not to mention how counterproductive it would be. I enjoy seeing all sides of an argument because you’re right, I know I’m not always right, and I’d be happy to be proven wrong. I love (civilly) debating over stuff since it’s fun; it’s stimulating; it’s an INTP curse. But... when people purposely twist him into something he isn’t, I'd start getting a little bit salty, which sometimes may come off too aggressive to others. Admittedly, the last discourse happened due to my insensitiveness. My point would still stand, but I also learned that I should choose a more considerate approach and (try to) be less salty from now on.

Well, maybe except for the next topic...

DJHIG. God, I will never run out of salt for this one. If you guys are ever curious about where this amount of salt even comes from, this post is currently my favorite salt mine. Gotta love those not-so-homophobic comments/reblogs.

The reasons that I hate this shitty meme, or anything equivalent to it with a burning passion:

1. It erases aromanticism/asexuality by assuming one’s romantic/sexual orientation based on their lack of interests in dating/frick-fracking, and as an aroace myself, I am offended. It is a personal attack on my own identity; and guess what, people still goes “Let us have our fun.” I could go on and on with this, but heh, given how the current society treats us, I can’t even bother anymore at this point.

2. It IS homophobic. There is no other way round to put it. Even if Jumin Han WAS gay, it would be homophobic. Why, you ask? You are using his sexuality as a punchline. You are pointing and laughing at him because you are thinking haha HE.IS.GAY, because you find being gay is something funny to you. Now, tell me, how is that not homophobic? Please don’t even get me started on those who think they cannot be homophobic because they have gay ships (my head hurts already; apparently, being too salty will make you dehydrated). It doesn’t matter whom this meme is about, or what their sexual orientation is. If Seven is bisexual and ‘Does Seven is Bi?’ happens, it is biphobic. FGS, just don’t degrade other people’s sexuality into a joke just for you to laugh at. And, please, don’t make assumptions about it either because it is wise to acknowledge that they probably know their own business better than you.

3. It is commonly used in the case in which Jumin is usually being oversexualized, which means you guys are very close to associating a pure gay relationship with a fetishized one. Do I even need to explain how screwed up this is? This is not shipping, guys.

...Anyway, my apologies if this is getting too long. I... got carried away. You are so kind for thinking such highly of me; thank you for sending me such a sweet message ^^ Please don’t feel pressured if you ever wanna come for a chat. I honestly would befriend with anyone who is willing to endure my nonsense lol

I hope you have a good day, Nonny :”)

[imtheperfectvoid]

oh worm??? somebody else has danganronpa salt to share???? gimme ALL OF THEM! unleashthat shit!!

Holy Shit Anon - Okay fuck it Let’s get Salty about Danganronpa

Posting the Answers under a Read More! (Spoilers are Ahead for Those who Haven’t finished V3)

Salty Ask List

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

I mean, I can Get Most of The Popular Ones, even if I Don’t personally Ship Them, but like. There’s a Few Smaller Ships that Some People Love that I can’t Quite Understand - like, Apparently Souda/Mahiru is Kinda Popular in the Japanese Fandom?? I don’t Understand that One At All.

2, Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

S*UDAM. Fucking S*UDAM. I just. I Cannot see them Romantically at All - and I Adore the Thought of Them as Brothers (either Friends or Literal Adoptive Brothers - shoutout to @ultimatesoulfriend​ and Our Soul Brothers AU). Some other OTPs that I Prefer as BrOTPs: Akane/Nekomaru, Sonia/Gundham, Sonia/Souda, Shuichi/Kaede, Naegi/Kirigiri, Komaeda/Hajime, Fuyuhiko/Peko, Kiyo/Angie, and Probably some Others that I’m just Not Thinking of At the Moment

3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

Not yet, Thankfully! I Manage to Follow only Good People who don’t Condone Pedophilia or Incest or Abusive Ships!

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

Once again, S*udam. BrOTP Only for This Guy. I Also Absolutely Hate T*gafuka, Any Junko Ship (esp Her with Komaeda or Mukuro), Any Haiji Ship (like Seriously Guys - Dude’s a Literal Pedophile), Mikan/Hiyoko, Kiyo and His Sister, Kiyo/Angie, All Those are Bad to Me.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

K*mahina and Sai*uma are the Only Two coming to Mind - they were Fine at First, but The Fandom is just So Overly Saturated in Content for Those Ships and It’s. Exhausting. I was Never a Big Shipper of Either of Them to Begin With, but The Oversaturation just Kinda Killed any Potential for Me.

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I’ve never Gone from Hating a Ship to loving It - usually it’s more of Ships that I Never really Considered or Thought Much of until I Saw Content for Them and Fell in Love With Afterwards. Irumatsu’s a Good Example of That, as is Goshi, Amaguuji, Nekodam, and Several Others.

7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

See Answer to #5

8. Have you received anon hate? What about?

Thankfully, again, No - but I Also don’t really Get Involved with Discourse Much so I Tend to Dodge getting Anon Hate bc of That

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

Hiyoko’s Mean without being Funny Most of the Time, Haiji is a Literal Pedophile and a Major Dick, Tsumugi is Too Dull (even if That is Her whole Schtick), and I Cannot Bring Myself to Care for Most of the DR3 Characters aside from Juzo and Seiko - Chisa’s Okay too, but Kinda Meh for the most Part for Me.

10. Most disliked arc game? Why?

Ultra Despair Girls. All the New Characters were Either the Actual Worst or Simply Meh aside from Komaru and Hiroko, we got Zero Fucking Show of Any of the Remnants of Despair aside from Komaeda and Some Izuru at the End, and it Just felt Lacking Overall. The Best Things that came Out of DR:AE were Komaru and a Much Better Toko.

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I feel like Ryoma is Vastly Underappreciated in the Fandom - Love that Dude to Hell and Back. Idk how Popular/Unpopular Hagakure is In the Fandom, really, but I really Enjoy him A Lot and Not many People Seem to Talk about Him (aside from Really Tired and Overdone Weed Jokes).

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I’ll take Arc to mean Trial this Time, so I’ll Say that I Honestly Enjoyed playing through Chapter 6 of V3 - regardless of My Opinions on The Trial and the Twist of V3 Itself, the Actual Playing of Chapter 6 was Pretty Fun and I Enjoyed Piecing everything Together during That Chapter and Exploring the School Fully and Whatnot.

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

Idk if it’s Necessarily Unpopular, but I Don’t really See the Appeal in Rantaro? Like, He’s Cool and A Good Dude, but People Seem to Love Him and I don’t? Really get Why? He’s just kind of. A Dude. he’s Nice and Chill and Definitely Pretty but like. That’s about It.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

Again, not Necessarily Unpopular, but I Think there’s More Good to the Fandom than People Realize - Granted, the Shit that’s Bad is Baaaaad, but There’s a Lot of Good in this Fandom Beneath all the Bullshit and the Drama and the Weird, Weird Shit.

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

I still Stand By my Opinion that the V3 Ending wasn’t As Bad as People are Making it Out to Be. Yeah, it Wasn’t Stellar by Any Means and it Could’ve been a Lot Cooler and there were Some Notable Plot Holes and Whatnot but! Despite All That! I still Feel like, now that I’ve Sat on It and Really Let myself Absorb the Ending and Process it, I Still Enjoyed it, for What it was Worth.

16. If you could change anything in the show games, what would you change?

DR1: Only Big Thing I’d wanna Change is Hagakure should’ve Died in Taka’s Place - i Love Hiro, but I love Taka, Too, and He was Really Deserving of DevelopmentDR2: Sonia Should’ve been the One to Murder Mechamaru. like, Again, I Love Sonia, but Having Her as the Murderer would’ve left So Much Room for Her, Souda, and Even Gundham to Have some Amazing Development form the Experience, Especially Souda - He could’ve Gotten the Fuck Over himself and Not been So One-Note in his Characterization and He could’ve Learned to be Fucking Respectful of Women and Possibly even Befriended Gundham in the Process!! Plus Having Sonia as a Murderer to Save Everyone?? Amazing.DR:AE: just. Delete this Game. That’s the ChangeDRV3: Give Korekiyo Shinguuji the Goddamn Writing he Should’ve been Given. God that Dude had So Much Potential for an Interesting Motive or a Cool Twist or Even a Sad Breakdown where His Amoral Views are Suddenly Turned on their Head and he Shows that He’s Incredibly Afraid of Death - but What did We Get? Weird Creepy Incest Time. Actually, better Yet, just. Get Rid of All the Weird Incest Stuff in V3 in General. it’s All Bad and Weird.

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

Okay so Now that I’m Thinking about Kiyo’s Godawful Writing, I wanna Talk about How I would’ve Loved to See his Twist involve Him Dealing with his Amorality and his Indifference to Life and Death. like, Imagine if He Broke Down during the Trial and said He’d Killed Angie because it Turned Out he was Actually Afraid of Dealing with the Spirit World, because He’s Very Spiritual and Doesn’t Want to Anger them or Upset them  - especially since His Sister (whom He Wasn’t Incestuous With - Not on My Watch) is Now a Spirit and he Feels that Trying to Resurrect the Dead is Desecrating the Balance of Life and Death. Hell, maybe He even Felt Envious that They could Supposedly Bring back a Dead Classmate here but he Could Never bring his Sister Back, so he Lashed Out at Angie in a Rage. and Maybe Tenko Witnessed him do it and He had to Kill Her to Keep her Quiet or Something (get Rid of the Weird Seesaw Nonsense).

idk I just. Really Really Liked Kiyo’s Character a Lot up until That Point and it was a Major Letdown that I’m Still not Over.

18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?

I mean, When it Comes to Shipping, if you Don’t Ship Something, it’s Not because you’re “in Denial” of Anything or Necessarily Biased (and Shit, even if You are, then What’s the Problem? I’m Biased against S*udam because I Have an AU where they’re Brothers and I Like that Way More than Putting them Together Romantically). Not Shipping something that’s Popular is Whatever - Ship what you Want, so Long as it Isn’t Abusive or Incestuous or Pedophilic or Anything like that.

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

the Fucking. People who are Just Mass-Producing Discourse All the Time. like, Everybody who Attacks People and Sets up Literal Entire Sideblogs Dedicated to Hating Certain Characters. How do you Have the Energy and the Care to Be at People’s Throats all the Time, Y’all? That’s Insane to Me. and Especially Shoutout to that One DR Confessions Blog that’s Always in the Tags and is Practically Nothing but Discourse - That’s the Worst Offender that I can Think Of at the Moment.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?

Ohhh man, That’s Gotta be Goshi. I Cannot think of A Purer Ship than Those Two and it Warms my Gay Lil Heart to Pieces.

21. What are your thoughts on crack ships?

I Think they’re Fun! Like, Daiyakure? Good Shit! Fuyusouda? Excellent!! Soniakane? Stellar!!! A Lot of my Ships Personally are Kinda Crack-y, so I Thrive on That Shit

22. Popular character you hate?

I don’t Hate Him, but I’m Pretty darn Tired of Seeing Ouma Everywhere.

23. Unpopular character you love?

Again, Ryoma Hoshi is A Good Boy and Deserves So much more Love

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

I Would - and Have - Absolutely Rec DR to a Friend! It’s a Fun Series with Engaging Story, Fun Characters, Good Mysteries, and A Lot to Love!

25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

I’d Definitely Change the End of V3, but I Really haven’t Thought Extensively on How I’d wanna Change it. All I know is, If they Really Wanna Keep the Ending they Have, then Kiibo Really should’ve been The Protag and Not Kaede or Shuichi.

26. Most shippable character?

my OC Jato lmao I ship Hajime with. So Many People. like, He’s so Easy to Pair with People and they’re All so Good!! Another Close Contender would be Gundham or Souda bc I Like Them with Several People, Too (but Never Each Other)

27. Least shippable character?

Hifumi, Teruteru, or Ouma - I don’t Ship Any of Them with Anyone for Various Reasons