#the state of Bl fandom

[doublel27]

I heasitate to do anything that will give this incredibly toxic, bullying tantrum of a post more views, but I also don't think this is okay and people should say so.

It is not an essay, it is a lambasting of someone who disagrees not with just you, but the general discourse that exists around some shows in the BL world because there were over 8 different people's ideas referenced in that post and you focused on you and @lurkingshan. Spending the time to type in 30 tags in the actual post, and another 5 in the comments lambasting someone, offering to pass to anyone screenshots of DMs, utilzing different sizes of script for emphasis that is considered yelling in the written word, and encouraging others to discuss how toxic they are and then demand your boundaries are that they don't respond after flooding someone else's inbox is very rude and inappropriate. I want to applaud @technicallyverycowboy and @lugarn who I have never spoken to before for also calling it out.

I would like to start by saying it's very clear you're incredibly upset and chose to yell at a person who never mentioned you that you perceived as attacking you. Your feelings are okay and should be felt, this response is not. Particularly because there is a whole lot of projection and defensiveness in this post, both in acting like MBDL doesn't understand fandom ettiquite, being disingenous about MBDL's actions and claim to be entirely misread and misunderstood, but let's take a look at what you and lurkingshan actually said in that post, what you misrepresented and misunderstood, and what words were used that might have suggested you were acting as an authority and dismissing other perspectives.

While you value being tagged, when Maybe-Boys-Do-Love says not "everyone enjoys being tagged" could be referring to previous interactions MBDL has had with people who asked him not to (I know i've had that or have been asked to DM) or his own personal feelings of not wanting to be tagged. I don't know, you'd have to ask him rather than assume. You feel a way about what you refer to as vague posting, but not everyone feels the way that you do. Some people prefer to not have an @ shoved at them and prefer to see stuff that could be about them and just say that if someone cared about them enough to say something to their face they would, and move about their day. You are deeply upset by other's possbily vaguely referring to your thoughts on tumblr.com and that's a valid feeling. Bullying a person due to your big feelings however, is not acceptable, and the limited number of reblogs from a specific circle of people, shows exactly how unacceptable the overall community finds this stuff.

You can ask people to @ you in posts that refer to yours and link to them. That's how you feel. On your blog. And you don't have to like how other people act on their blog, but that's also THEIR blog. They can behave how they want, just like you do. Perhaps this whole post is the opposite of what someone would want to have happen to them, in the same way MBDL's was the opposite of what you wanted to have happen.

I want to be very clear that I have seen the post that @maybe-boys-do-love made and your response. Your response is still visible to me on the post and I have reblogged the version of the post on my blog where you responded to MBLD and where MBDL responded to you because I value the fullness of the discourse. I can still see it. Anyone who goes to my blog can still see it. I'm very mystified by the fact that you can't see your response when everyone else can, but I think it should be acknowledged publicly that your point about them deleting your response is a lie you could have fact-checked by asking someone outside of your circle. You have not edited this post to reflect that was a mistake on your part and was the crucx of you deciding to stop engaging in conversation with MBDL in the first place.

However, your quick nature to dismiss criticisms of your posts both above, and in other posts, as "you attacking their faves" or "other fans who only watch shows for shipping" is as dismissive and gaslighting as the work you accuse MBDL of. This Nov. 5 post of yours includes the following quote:

ULTIMATELY, Nihilistic: what we are dealing with regarding your concern, as fans and/or critics of Series Y shows, is a conflict of values, among critical fans like ourselves, other fans who only watch shows for romance and shipping, and the economic bottom lines of the studios/agencies themselves. Some of us just want narratively good scripts, like Bad Buddy or He's Coming To Me. Others are content with having a show end with their fave pairs confirmed together in the end, no matter the process of how they got there.

This dismissal of people who disagree with your definition of good writing and good scripts is the kind of historical conversation and tone from your posts that suggests that you are a critical consumer of content and others who have different opinions are not. Much like you accused MBDL of using "we" to deflect from his own opinion, your use of "us" and "others" repeatedly in that piece gives an us/them perspective. Other is a very othering word, when others is used as a pronoun. Us lets you know you're in the in group, with the taste makers, others lets you know you're not allowed.

From the post that you're concerned was vague-blogged on, which is part of a lager conversation of Spare Me Your Mercy, and Thai writing in general, you said the following:

It seems to me that the fantasies of the fans are worth more, as an investment by GMMTV and other studios in Thailand, than actual artistic material that focuses on queerness at this point. Capitalism and mainstreaming go very well hand-in-hand when there's money to be made, and this, to me, speaks loudly to the excellent points that Shan has made above about really great queer art being anathema to center- and conservative-mainstreams. We're getting less of really great queer art in Thailand, because the dampening of queerness in Thai shows might very well mean more bucks for the studios. Finally, a last point about capitalism that I'd like to make. I've been seeing a rising number of posts and comments taking Tumblr bloggers to task for being critical (like, objectively critical) of bad shows. Many folks don't want to read criticism of their fave shows and stars. I want to note that if one takes this position -- the capitalists have won again. If you're someone who's trying to prevent critical takes from being published, well, you got got by the capitalists -- the studios, the managers who want you to be so in love with your faves that you will ponder asking a writer to censor themselves from making a critical take. You might feel ownership of your blorbo, protective of your favorite star. Those critical takes may feel, to you, like a takedown of your fave.

Again this is highly dismissive and rejects any critism of your takes as people who are just into shipping or faves. Similar to your criticism of the use of the term we in MBDL's post, here you use the term "one" here is short for anyone or everyone. You're claming anyone who disagrees with YOUR version of good writing and good scripts has been "got" by capitalism. (To be fair, I still don't know what your definition of good writing and good scripts are, and I've read all of your posts, as well as Ben's and Shan's and Twig-Tea's. So far I've got a list of common Thai tropes and themes that you don't approve of, and a tonality that is bothersome to you. Which is fair that you don't like it, but you catagorize those as bad and others as good.) Some people enjoyed the shows you didn't, and that's fine. Some of it they thought the scripts were good. Some of it they thought they weren't but enjoyed it anyway. As you stated in the above post this is your opinion and your blog, which is fair. But dismissing people who disagree with you as being got by capitalism and saying things like "ownership of your blorbo" which is to say that that's the only reason someone might like something, or that the only thing that people can like is high art and good scripts is frankly rude. And it's not even like you live up to your own standard. As you stated in the November 5th post:

Now, out of even MORE transparency, I am watching the MESS that is Kidnap right now, and listen, it's NOT GOOD. I'm fucking not even writing about it anymore, I'm just reblogging the sessy gifs. I am watching it to support Ohm Pawat, and am hoping that this partnership with Leng Thanaphon will hopefully lead to better scripts.... somewhere. (Or at least, better scripts for Ohm at a place like One31 or Channel 3. I also hope Ohm keeps up his anti-branded pair stance, but if GMMTV forces him to pair permanently with Leng, it won't be a fucking surprise, and more on that below.)

We're going to ignore that One31 is also owned by the same corporation as GMMTV here for a second, the money flows to the same overlord. We will also ignore that Jes Jespipat has stated that he wanted to leave Channel 3 for BOC, which his managment team, who is also owned by the same corporation as GMMTV and One31, because he felt BOC was full of like-minded people when it came to quality and production. Those are all easily serchable facts as is the fact that One31 and Channel 3 are mass market channels while GMMTV is a teen/ya market channel.

Those facts aside, I think it's really disingenous to suggest that you as a person are capable of distingishing between good writing and bad writing, because you a person with values, and then sometimes watch bad writing for your love of Ohm Pawat, (and who are we kidding, we all tuned in to Kidnap originally because Ohm Pawat had been returned to us). But the idea that you are capable of this thought, and actively choosing, and the way you stated above that anyone who rebutts your takes "got got by the capitalists" (bold is yours, see above and the post) if they tuned into a show for their faves that you didn't like, or thought was bad, that means they weren't doing the same kind of thinking you did around Kidnap. Or that the only way to distinguish what is good and what isn't is your way.

And the worst part of all of this is, lurkingshan and you, misrepresented the article that interviewed the screen writer, Lux and Sammon, and even @benkaben's essay for your own agenda in the post you're referring to. The exact stuff you're accusing MBDL of doing.

Benkaben's initial post that's also linked in lurnkingshan's post, focuses on the fact that there's a comment in the interview that conflates Shipping, Romance, Fanservice with NC scenes and suggests that it makes a work less serious. For those of you who won't link through to the original article, here's benkaben's words:

And hey, you don't need NC scenes for that! No, sexual intimacy is not the only thing that "proves" a romance exist. I mean heck, you could even go all the way around and have all the NC scenes in the world and still present a story where the characters aren't in love with each other, because sex ≠ romance. Absolutely. But also I'm, really tired™, of this idea that any kind of sex portrayed in media is only going to "taint" the final composition. As If sex and love stories were some dirty stain that automatically made the work lesser: Less serious, less formal, less dramatic. I don't agree with the idea that you have to sacrifice intimacy in order to be taken seriously. I don't agree with the idea that sex is by default, just fanservice and therefore it's portrayal subtracts automatically from the story.

The quote that Benkaben is referring to from the original translation is as follows, just in case you're wondering: (I am not fluent in thai and am trusting the translator understood the majority of what was said)

“Sammon's novels are primarily BL and include numerous love scenes. However, we deliberately chose not to present it as a BL story. While the characters are two men in love, we approached it with a dark drama style. The characters are gay, but we don’t offer fan service in every episode or include NC (explicit) scenes. This has been the plan from the beginning. Our decision to omit NC scenes wasn’t influenced by censorship, airtime, or the actors. It’s because the themes we are addressing are heavy and serious. NC scenes would detract from the story’s focus, which is the dark drama and euthanasia. Some fans of the novel might be disappointed, but we believe there’s other enjoyment to be found in the series, even without NC scenes.

The screenwriter states very clearly and explicitly that this was not censorship, airtime or the actors. It was not for the audience or what you can do on Thai television or giving in to the conservatives as lurkingshan argued. Lux said because the themes they were focusing on were heavy and serious, she felt fanserivce and sex detracted from the concept of euthenasia and dark drama.

In fact, I am going to pull out and highlight this line again:

The characters are gay, but we don’t offer fan service in every episode or include NC (explicit) scenes. This has been the plan from the beginning.

In this way, the screenwriter of Spare Me Your Mercy agrees with your main complaint about Thai BL in general that you spent a solid time going in on, that shows are focused on fan service over storytelling. The decision to remove the NC scenes and anything very romatnic, in the directors view, was to comply with your argument of removing fanservice in favor of storytelling.

Additionally, in this post, which prompted lurkingshan's post, you stated:

And — I believe it was also disingenuous to the two previously adapted Sammon stories of Manner of Death and Triage as well, as both of those dramas were able to hold both mystery and romantic storylines to excellent ends, with wonderful touches of intimacy along the way (MaxTul couch scene, my beloved).

Meanwhile, in the translated interview, that @slayerkitty posted Lux did discuss Sammon's thoughts:

When we spoke with the original author, she was also very supportive of this shift because she also wants to highlight the theme of euthanasia. While she herself is a Sao Y and a writer of BL novels, she understands the adaptation’s focus.

And I was honestly very confused by your post this week adding fan service is the downfall and the cause of censorship (which the director of Spare Me Your Mercy said it was not as stated above), because the director of Spare Me Your Mercy ultimately agreed that shows deserve to have a good script and not be beholden to fanservice. You disagree that his script is good. But that's his argument here.

I was even deeper horrified by this line in lurkingshan's post, which ties back to a previous post of yours:

I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

The overwhelming Western paternalism here that suggests that if something is popular in conservative countries and not in the greater queer world means it's a failure as a queer story...That's the statement there: It's popularity underlines why it was a faiulre as a queer narrative.

I think a lot about Casey McQuiston's work, a queer author in America who was raised in some of the most conservative parts of this country. Their work, specifically I Kissed Shara Wheeler is a love letter to queer folx who grew up in conservative communties who LOVE the communties they were raised in, even if that community couldn't fully love them back. I think a lot about all of the boy loves that were turned into bromances in Korea to make the bottom line so that something like Love in the Big City could get made. I think a lot about the amount of money and capital and power it takes to get a story made that a country doesn't want to get told: Saint mortgaged his house to open an entirely QL production house and make the first major GL in Thailand because no one would finance it, The author and director of Meet Me at the Blossom also put her house, and frankly her freedom, on the line to make that show. Because while we'd like to separate the art from capitalist structures, as long as we are living in a captialist world, we are going to have to find ways to both work within the system and resist it. There's a lot of jokes made about how to keep the serious tone of The Eclipse in it's serious true art vibe of telling a very serious story about the deadly nature of the closet and internalized homophobia, that Vice Versa had to have Lay's rain from the sky, because someone had to bring in the money to the company from advertisments to have The Eclipse have the cleaner vibe.

To quote the post by lurkingshan again:

High quality, well-executed, honest and authentic queer art is more likely to be protested than celebrated in places where real queer people are not safe to live free lives.

What makes queer art high-quality, well-executed, honest and authentic? What makes a place safe to live free lives?

In the US? Pose was a beautiful love letter to the Black and latinx trans community, looking at the history of Ballroom in the US in the 1980s. It was succesful in this country, as much of Ryan Murphy's work is. However, it is not safe for the Black and latinx trans communtiy to live in the United States of America. We've got the anti-trans legislation tracker and the HRC had identified 36 murders of Trans and Non-Binary people as of November 30th 2024, disproportionately Black trans women. They acknowldge this is an incomplete account due to: many deaths often go unreported or misreported, or misgendering of victims leads to delays in their identification. This does not even get into the systematic ways in which the queer community as a whole, but the Black queer community in general, is prevented from accessing key resources like housing and jobs with a livable wage.

The US is not a safe country for queer people to live free lives, not as a whole. I live in a Blue state, and am queer and a married to my queer partner. We are not fully out. We are not fully realized as queer humans. Very few queer people in this world live fully out, fully realized lives, due to colonialism and Imperialism. And that's what your argument largely fails to do, is account for the overlay of Western ideals onto non-Western media.

You state loudly that you want good Asian art, like Asian art should be a monolith. It is not for people who are not Thai to decide what good Thai art is, which is why you and lurkingshan do with quotes like this:

I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

This is, in my opinion, but you'd have to ask MBDL because he's not allowed to reply to this without violating your wishes, what he was responding to by the following:

"I just wanted to create a post that made people whose queer tastes diverge from others feel welcome to their own preferences and appreciate that there’s not a single stance in the queer BL fandom about what qualifies as good and/or queer work."

People like MBDL and @le-trash-prince, who are also queer, enjoyed the allegorical queer storytelling of Spare Me Your Mercy. The three gay men who you referenced above did not. That's...fine. that's the whole point of MBDL's message, queer people are not a monolith that all agree.

The people of Thailand, overall, enjoyed Spare Me Your Mercy. There is no way to poll what straight or queer Thai people specifically thought, but it's a key piece of the puzzle that Thai people enjoyed this show. Because that's the base audience. That's who they made it for.

But when you say, and I quote this post again: We're getting less of really great queer art in Thailand, because the dampening of queerness in Thai shows might very well mean more bucks for the studios.

You have decided that Thai shows are not great queer art any longer, and that they are dampening queerness off of the critisms of We Are and Perfect 10 Liners, that have been prevalent from your circle. I'll link this one @twig-tea wrote and another one @bengiyo wrote specifically, which comment on shows created by a queer Thai man, and the writing decisions for Spare Me Your Mercy, which were made using an argument you yourself use to suggest that shows shouldn't engage with imagined couples and fan-service. And while these are your opinions, you also, as I have quoted above, stated that:

Finally, a last point about capitalism that I'd like to make. I've been seeing a rising number of posts and comments taking Tumblr bloggers to task for being critical (like, objectively critical) of bad shows. Many folks don't want to read criticism of their fave shows and stars. I want to note that if one takes this position -- the capitalists have won again. If you're someone who's trying to prevent critical takes from being published, well, you got got by the capitalists -- the studios, the managers who want you to be so in love with your faves that you will ponder asking a writer to censor themselves from making a critical take.

I want to be clear, that MBDL writing a statement about how there are many ways to depict and appreciate queer stories is not saying you can't be critical. It's saying that there are alternative views. People saying if you hate GMMTV, maybe don't watch, are saying you seem to be miserable watching this, you can stop any time.

The thing people are rejecting in your critiques are not that you did not like something, that's fine. It is the sweeping statements that there is a right and a good way to make queer art, and everything else shouldn't be engaged with because it's ruining the genre or selling out to capitalist interests (as stated in the above linked Spare Me Your Mercy post by lurkingshan and yourself, and We Are posts twig-tea and bengiyo). Your words across all of these posts, and this one directed at MBDL are about policing other peoples actions and putting your values onto them. That is the core of toxic fandom. Expecting everyone to engage with it exactly the way you want to.

I'm of the opinion that what's good for queer Thai television is not for foriegn audiences to decide, ultimately. That's for queer Thai people to decide. And some of them may not want to make the greatest queer Thai television, some people may want to make fun queer Thai television, or silly queer Television. And that's also a wonderful thing.

Which is at the core of the argument that Dr. Thomas Baudinette started. Dr. Thomas Baudinette stated the following:

He does not state fully what those anti-social practices are. Are some of them likely toxic shipping, yes. But there's also toxic solo stans. (I do take Dr. Thomas Baudinette with a grain of salt because I also know he's a white academic speaking about a community he's not actually fully part of, and I would like to learn more about what Thai and Japanese and Korean fans think.) But his wording suggests that Thai fans are being influenced by fans of other markets: in your post you discuss the TayGun kiss of it all and there's this quote:

In this case, I would like to note that while we see GMMTV reducing blatant queer perspectives and frameworks from their shows, and promoting friend-ships or bro-ships, in the case of High School Frenemy and the SkyNani branded pair, we see GMMTV's (and Thai BL's) rise continue to grow in certain Asian countries (like China, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others) that do not allow for public displays of queerness, among other restrictions. GMMTV does not hold branded pair fan meetings in these countries, and yet, these countries are some of the channel's biggest markets for its queer shows and pairs. As well, these countries (I am part-Malaysian myself) do not have public programs of sex education. Thus, if I am to assume that the majority fan bases of these shows are young folks in countries that do not offer robust sex education, then these young folks (of any gender) might not be inclined to join in and participate in conversations about queer equality. We, thus, get the outcry that occurred after Tay and Gun smooched. God forbid fantasies were to have been destroyed because two real-life people kissed. Two men, kissing, outside of the context of their branded pairs and outside the context of a drama. Some people have never been to the club before.

To the first part, GMMTV is not reducing their blatant queer perspectives in their shows. That is factually untrue. They've added more QLs (which at GMMTV are always romances) and queer strands in their non-BLs. In fact, the number of queer shows in 2019 was 3 (2 QL and 3 Will Be Free). The number of shows with QL in 2024 was 12 plus queer themes in an aditional 3 shows. That is an increase of 5 times more queer content in 2024 than in 2019. (source: MyDramaList - filtered for GMM25 and then removing anything not produced through GMMTV). This does not touch on how many of the writers and directors for GMMTV are queer people under the age of 40 sharing their perspectives. Now you don't have to like those queer perspectives but they're not getting less queer. In fact, for the 2025 wave, which did not show a reduction in queer perspectives, but in fact showed a proposed total of 15 BLs, 2 GLs, 1 het (oh Nanon's never coming back), 1 mixed stories with some VERY explicitly queer sections, 1 SkyNani bromance, with 4 BL still outstanding, 1 GL set to air in two weeks, and 6 outstanding non-BLs from the 2024 Up and Above announcements. Second, You conflate the lack of acess to public programs of sexual education to a lack of inclination to join and participate in discussions around queer equity. You then use the word Thus to show causation from lack of access to public programs of sex education and repression of queer people to people having meltdowns over TayGun kissing. Lack of education is not why fans don't have boundaries and can't accept their fantasy bubble being broken. I promise you, Taylor Swift fans yelling at her ex boyfriends over her songs are not doing so because of lack of education about sexual ethics. It's about ownership, which is the heart of the anti-capitalist message you espouse. We allow fans worldwide, not just in specific Asian countries to behave badly becaues they've bought a product of a brand.

The concept of toxic fans is not new nor singular to Thai BL media. @chaos0pikachu has one of my favorite rundowns ever on how the tin hats existed in bandom (and GLEE) before Thai BL was ever a thing. I didn't survive Glee and the loss of Chris Colfer as an actor for us to pretend that the people who do this kind of toxic shit for us to pretend that CPs are the cause. I certainly didn't watch Once Upon A Time fans tweet @ Colin O'Donoghue they hoped his pregnant wife would just die so he could be free to be with Jennifer Morrison for us to pretend this is a BL problem. I definitely didn't watch people harrass Rafael Silva and Ronen Rubenstein out of posting their friendship as a gay and a bi man acting together because the assumption was they were having an affiar behind Ronen's partner's back for us to pretend this was a Thai BL problem due to CPs. I did not watch a bunch of people use interviews promoting the show and the fact that they kiss well to say that Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid are having an affair for us to pretend CPs make this problem.

This problem exists with or without branded pairings, but is entirely tied to idol culture and the objectification of celebrity brand and the intrenchment in being a "Stan" and we've completely lost the plot, Eminem. I still think about regularly Katy Perry asking Stevie Nicks who her rivals were, and Stevie Nicks saying she didn't have rivals but contemporaries. Modern fan culture, globally, in the social media era is set up for rivals: the Swifties, the Bey-Hive, the Katy-Cats, the Barbs, Army etc. Fan culture is like this, and without fans participating in the isolation and ignoring of these people they will continue to harrass and attack people, because as Wicked reminds us, the best way to unite people is to give them a common enemy.

I don't know if you watched the disaster that was Korean netizens sending funeral wreaths to be set up in front of SM building for the member of RII7E who tried to return after fans stalked him to catch him engaging in inappropriate behavior and dug up a middle school girlfriend, which was allowed by the company. I do believe some of this is what he's referring to by anti-social behavior. One of the most horrifying acts of behavior against a GMMTV artist was someone getting into Fluke Nattanon's car and refusing to get out. Like...that's the scariest shit. That shit should be handled. That had nothing to do with shipping culture, and everything to do with a company not enforcing boundaries.

Any time and I mean any time, a person feels that they have the right to objectify a person and control them, that is both NEVER okay and is also NEVER the fault of the person who is being treated that way. No amount of branded pairing is responsible for toxic fans who don't have boundaries. Should the companies do something about them, yes, and that's what Dr. Baudinette is referring to.

To quote @wen-kexing-apologist's essay on objectification of Asian men which you linked in the post on Spare Me Your Mercy:

We all need to, but white Westerners especially, be extremely careful and introspective with the ways we are engaging with queer Asian media

And I take this very seriously. I think it applies not just to the objectification and commodification of the actors, as wen-kexing-apologist wrote about, but also applies to the infantilization and removal of agency of the writers, directors, actors and audiences in Asian countries who are engaging in the process of making and enjoying queer Asian art, suggesting they are not active participants in the process. It is not for interfans to talk over Thai writers, directors, actors and fans of what is and is not true for them and their country's work around queer Thai art.

The long and the short of it, is if you're going to post opinions as facts and undercut anyone who disagrees with you: on what is and what isn't good Asian media, what is and isn't good Thai media, what is and is not queer media, and how people should measure it, and other queer people say out loud: we don't have to all measure queer media the same way and we can have different opinions, and this is your response...I honestly wish you peace.

Clearing The Air On This Wack-Ass Event Of Toxic Fandom That My Brown Ass Was Recently Dragged Into

(*References and endnotes are posted in the comments.)

This past weekend, I was unwittingly brought into an event of toxic fandom instigated by @maybe-boys-do-love. The following is an account of that event, and a rebuttal to misrepresentations that he made in his posts.

1) Chronology of Events and Clarification of Communication, Connections, and Blocks

Late last week, @lurkingshan posted a thought piece about separating art and commerce in discussions of queer shows, and talked, in part, about Spare Me Your Mercy and the show's ratings popularity in Thailand as compared to its narrative shortcomings. The piece also talks about the artistic success, versus the public outcry, of the South Korean queer show, Love In The Big City. I, and a few others, reblogged the post with thought pieces of our own. (If you are interested in following along, reading the second link is a necessity.)

Tumblr user @maybe-boys-do-love subsequently posted, separately on his blog, a reaction post to Shan's post and my reblog of her post (1). His reaction contained misreads and dangerous misrepresentations of Shan's and my writing.

Shan and @maybe-boys-do-love had previously mutually blocked each other (2). Therefore, @maybe-boys-do-love went around the block to react to Shan's post.

He did not make clear to his audience that he was reacting to Shan's post. He wrote his reaction post without citing or linking to Shan's post, and did not tag me as well, thus removing both myself and Shan from a discourse that we had instigated, and prevented his audience from knowing or understanding his reference point for his reaction.

Mutuals reached out to me with @maybe-boys-do-love's piece, having previously read Shan's and my posts.

I DMed @maybe-boys-do-love to note to him that I had seen his post, and that I preferred to be tagged directly in discourse. I wrote that I would write today's post as a means of correcting the incorrect assumptions he made about my opinions. I also checked with @lurkingshan to make her aware of the post and ask if she wanted to be included in a response. Shan stated that she had already blocked @maybe-boys-do-love for previous instances where he indirectly vague-posted about her and misrepresented her writing, and that she had no interest in responding, but was fine with me doing so.

I then publicly reblogged @maybe-boys-do-love's reaction post with a clarifying note, sharing the link to Shan's original post and my reblog of our original SMYM discourse. I noted publicly that his reaction post contained misreads and inaccuracies that I will be clarifying today.

@maybe-boys-do-love deleted my reblog. I do not see my original reblog of his reaction post in his reblog notes. Mutuals confirmed, from their blogs, that they also cannot see my original reblog of his reaction post.

I requested to him by DM that he reinstate my reblog. He did not. He reblogged my reblog from my own blog (sorry, y'all) with a response to me and a general defense of his original reaction post.

He denied in DMs that he had deleted my reblog. I stated that I didn't believe him, and requested for our DM conversation to end (3).

2) Toxic Fandom and Expectations of Personal Accountability in Public Forums

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of responding to @maybe-boys-do-love's reaction post, I want to take a quick second to talk about toxic fandom and accountability, because it's been a topic bubbling up particularly in the world of the fandom of Asian, and specifically Thai, QLs. My public and private conversations with @maybe-boys-do-love about this reaction incident, prior to this post's publication, have been filled with a kind of noxious disingenuousness and deceit that has given me the damn creeps.

I've had tussles with other bloggers before about our disagreements of the art and economics of Asian QLs. The discourse has been almost always so much fun, often argumentative, sometimes gritty, sometimes passive aggressive, and sometimes parasocial involving the celebrities and creators of these shows.

I have always kept discourse respectful, and I pride myself with integrity on responding to any point that has been shot my way. I have been blocked for my takes, and I have encouraged others to block me if my takes are not to their liking, and they attack me for them. I encourage folks who don't like my takes to curate their Tumblr experiences, and take agency for what they agree with and want to read.

If I rant about someone's potential faves -- someone's fave shows or couples -- I put trigger warnings on those posts (here and here are two examples, and the most immediate link above also has a TW), knowing there's a lot of sensitivity out there over content. I trust the judgement of readers to read those trigger warnings and to skedaddle.

In other words, I take full responsibility and accountability for my writing, and I expect my readers to engage with me in good faith in return. I'm proud of the critical posts I've made over the last two and a half years here on Tumblr, especially my exploration of the history of the Thai BL genre through my Old GMMTV Challenge project.

I posted recently that the Asian QL scholar, Dr. Thomas Baudinette, believes that the number one threat to the growth of the Thai BL industry is toxic fandom and the prioritization of problematic markets.

It's funny that I posted that a few days before this incident happened. The specific elements of toxic behavior as demonstrated by @maybe-boys-do-love, as stated above, are that he

a) subverted blocks to read and respond to Shan's post without citing her, b) he did not clarify for his audience what he was reacting to, thus rendering untruthful his real intentions in writing his post, and c) his actual reaction post contained misreads and misinterpretations of Shan's and my analysis.

I'd like to name some elements of toxic behavior and fandom that occurred in the public communication I had with @maybe-boys-do-love to highlight them in order to emphasize the disrespectful nature of this incident.

In his reblog of my clarification post to his original reaction post, @maybe-boys-do-love writes,

"I also want to respect that not everyone wants to get involved in a back-and-forth on here."

Because of previous DMs, reblogs, tags, and comments on and of my work that @maybe-boys-do-love has made, I know that he is very familiar with my blog and my writing. We have previously communicated publicly and privately. I do not know why he would make an assumption that I would not have wanted to be tagged in his original reaction post, reacting inaccurately to points I made in my Spare Me Your Mercy post, considering that he and I have a public history of prior engagement. 

This assumption (remember the adage about assuming…) makes so little sense to me that I can only conclude he is coming from a stance of a disingenuous and untruthful defense.

More concerning, @maybe-boys-do-love follows with:

"I just wanted to create a post that made people whose queer tastes diverge from others feel welcome to their own preferences and appreciate that there’s not a single stance in the queer BL fandom about what qualifies as good and/or queer work."

Again, as @maybe-boys-do-love is familiar with my blog, I do not know why he would assume that my work is insular so as to not welcome different perspectives and discourse on my opinions -- as he and I had actually engaged, in the past, on our opinions of other content, and that there is overwhelming proof on my blog that I love engaging in discourse with others.

The statement that "there's not a single stance in the queer BL fandom" about my work is disingenuous, disrespectful, and toxic.

If it's not clear in the most obvious way -- and it may not be clear to some -- I am a personal blogger, posting my opinions and analysis, on a personal blog. My blog isn't Encyclopedia fucking Brittanica.

@maybe-boys-do-love indicates in his reblog that his mutuals helped him get around his and Shan's blocks. 

He also identifies as a "flaming gay guy" to characterize his position for his love of Spare Me Your Mercy, leading him to go around the blocks to comment on Shan's original post.

"Friends of mine shared the post with me knowing the love I, as a flaming gay guy, had for Spare Me Your Mercy."

I want to note that in the context of this characterization, I myself reached out to three gay male friends (one Asian friend, and two white friends married to each other). (There's nothing that IRL people love more than an Internet beef.) These three individuals range on the flaming spectrum, and assured me that @maybe-boys-do-love's position does not count as spoken monolithically for the gay male community (4).

Which leads me to my last point (for now) about toxic fandom. As iterated above: these Tumblr blogs we write on are personal blogs, homes to personal opinions, created by individuals.

The danger of trying to leverage group-think or group-speak to validate toxic opinions and toxic engagement with others is high within fandom discourse. I see it all the time on X in BL shipper circles. Maybe @maybe-boys-do-love's friends were too cowardly to write reaction posts of their own, and asked their friend to write one on their behalf. If that's the case, @maybe-boys-do-love can show us the receipts. But I'm guessing that didn't happen.

Within group and family therapy arenas, and human relations and business environments, counseling often focuses on "I-speak" -- the practice of using the "I" pronoun to claim accountability for facts, opinions, recounting of details, and so on. Using the "we" pronoun to justify a position -- without identifying who your "we" is -- weakens a stance, and at the same time, creates panic and fear within a group or community. It's a tactic often used in gaslighting or supremacist situations to generate collective fear over incorrect facts and threats.

This tactic is useless in a scenario like this, when there is ample published proof that @maybe-boys-do-love published a misrepresentative reaction post that did not link to the original source, deceiving his audience; he subsequently tried to monolithically speak for others, and to leverage and claim community to justify his doing so. It's wrong, it's disingenuous, and it's toxic.

I wouldn't want this guy speaking for me, and I hope readers of this post wouldn't want him to, either.

3) Responding to Misrepresented Points in MBDL's Reaction Post

Note: Much of @maybe-boys-do-love's reaction post reacted to points that @lurkingshan made about Spare Me Your Mercy and the Asian QL genre. I have consulted with Shan on my responses and she has approved them.

My entire rebuttal is long. An abridged version is below, and the entire rebuttal is linked here at this private link.

I want to start my response to misrepresented points in @maybe-boys-do-love's reaction post by highlighting the most noxious misread he made. He writes,

"and just a friendly reminder that a simple BL romcom is equally as queer of a story as a story about HIV."

Much of @maybe-boys-do-love's reaction post seemed magically conjured out of his ass to assume or imply that certain points were made by @lurkingshan when they were most certainly not.

NOT ONCE IN @lurkingshan's POST WAS LOVE IN THE BIG CITY DESCRIBED AS A "STORY ABOUT HIV." IN FACT, HIV WAS NEVER MENTIONED AT ALL, BY ANYONE, IN THE ORIGINAL POST, OR ANY OF THE REBLOGS AND ADDITIONS.

That was a heinous and noxious misread and reduction of @lurkingshan's post, wholly inaccurate and misrepresentative of the tone and content of Shan's original writing, and more revealing about him and his perspectives about the shows, than anyone he was pretending to fight.

And nowhere in @lurkingshan's original post did she claim that a BL romcom was not as "equally as queer" as any other story.

I want to respond specifically to an analysis of capitalism and markets that I made in my reblog of Shan's post, that @maybe-boys-do-love then reacted to.

"just a reminder, if we wanna talk about capitalism, that the whole idea of a work being better or worse, queerer or less queer, more valuable or less valuable based on it’s reception in numbers (either higher or lower) is not something Marx and Engels would be into, since they ascribed to exchange value over use value. The labor put into the work is where it’s at—and all of these shows had plentiful hours of (queer) labor put into them! But not everyone who talks about the wrongs of capitalism on here is actually interested in the finer details of how capitalism operates, the full political and economic realities of the companies making these shows, nor the individuals who are forced to fight for change within capitalism’s global structure."

This was such a convoluted, random, and inaccurate reaction to my post that I had to send it to a family member who is an actual professional economist (again, remember, IRL people love internet beefs) (5). He assured me that Karl Marx and Fredreich Engels would NOT have wanted to get tangled up in this beef.

But, anyway. I'm not a communist, and when I speak about capitalism and the markets to which Asian QL content is marketed to, I'm not analyzing the quantity of labor put into these shows that needs to be exchanged on the various Asian markets in order for the shows to be made. That's a very specific sightline into production budgets that maybe tingles @maybe-boys-do-love's brain. I think he was just trying to sound smart.

I want to be clear that he reacted to nothing I wrote in my post. This was a made-up stream of something that only established how he watches and judges shows.

But because I used the word "capitalism" in my post to talk about how GMMTV and other studios are addressing queerness and queer perspectives in their shows, @maybe-boys-do-love found reason to take issue with my writing, and to assume an air of intellectualism to establish a false sense of superiority -- by posting drivel.

All responses can be found at this link.

4) Conclusion and a Public Request to Respect Boundaries

As I wrote above: I wrote this post to make a public record of rebuttal against misinterpretations made about my writing by @maybe-boys-do-love.

I will publicly request that @maybe-boys-do-love do not contact me again. Do not reblog, tag, or comment on my posts.

If I have to block @maybe-boys-do-love, I will. However, I want the ability to read any further reaction he might have to this rebuttal, especially if he continues to besmirch my writing inaccurately and disingenuously.

As he demonstrated that he could not respect Shan's boundaries prior to this incident, I will say publicly now:

RESPECT MY BOUNDARIES.

And I want to thank the many mutuals who reached out to me during this incident to offer your support, and to notify me that this public incident of misrepresentation was taking place.

[musicalmoritz]

It’s canon Mitsuba’s gay?

I’m gonna use this as an excuse to yap because Mitsuba’s queercoding is either weirdly downplayed by fans or used solely for BL shipping purposes so I want to talk about it through the lens of what it means for his character, role in the story, and relationship with Kou

Yes, Mitsuba is canonically gay

Things don’t have to be explicitly stated in order to be canon, subtext is a major part of media analysis. This is something a lot of fans miss which leads to a misunderstanding of the source material. I do have some credentials for this, I’ve taken two undergrad college literature classes in which the subject of queercoding did come up multiple times. Meaning analyzing queercoding has literally gone towards my degree so I feel like my opinion holds some weight (not as much as that of an actual English major but yk I assume I’ve had more education on it than the general TBHK fandom)

There are multiple ways to queercode a character, sometimes it can be as simple as feminizing a man or masculinizing a woman. Though that method might be a bit outdated nowadays with gender roles becoming less strict, it’s still worth keeping in mind when analyzing queer characters. Another way is through romantically colored scenes with characters of the same sex, or by having them hint at disinterest in the opposite sex. Mitsuba checks off all three of these boxes and then some

First off, Mitsuba is attracted to men. This is made extremely obvious through his relationship with Kou but I’m gonna explain it anyways because unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of fans say they’re just platonic

Mitsuba and Kou went on a date. When this is brought up, fans typically jump to the excuse of “but Kou said it wasn’t a date,” which is where my American Lit class is going to come in handy. One of the major things we learned is that authors have to understand that everything they write has some sort of real world connotation. If you write a scene with a doctor, you have to understand that your readers already have preconceived notions of what doctors represent. You can choose to either lean into that or subvert it, but you have to be aware that as soon as a doctor enters the scene, readers have already made assumptions about that character

The word “date” is clearly being used in a romantic context here. When Kou texts his friends and brother about it, they all assume he’s talking about a romantic date. While in the actual context of the scene, Mitsuba and Kou aren’t quite ready to use such a strong label yet, the romantic wording here is still very intentional. AidaIro would not have labeled this moment as a date if they didn’t want readers to view it in a romantic light, because they understand that their readers are going to associate dates with romance. Japanese censorship is really strict, it’s hard to publish stories with explicitly queer characters unless the series is labeled as a BL or GL. And so Japanese manga writers often have to find roundabout ways to express that characters are gay without outright stating it- such as suggesting that they’re going on a date with a character of the same sex

In the printed volume for Vol.20, there’s an editor’s note that mentions that when Kou and Mitsuba are making plans to hang out at the school festival, it holds a romantic implication for the Japanese audience. Cultural differences are important to keep in mind, to western fans this scene might not raise any eyebrows but for its primary audience, it is confirmation that Mitsuba and Kou are romantic. I also find it interesting that the editor felt this context was important enough to warrant clarification

And frankly, their relationship doesn’t make a lot of sense if it’s solely platonic. Male friendship is something TBHK writes very realistically, the male characters aren’t as touchy-feely with their friends as they are with their female love interests. Yokoo and Satou don’t directly ask Kou how he’s feeling when they notice he’s upset, instead they give him a task to distract him- similar to how men in real life cheer their friends up through quality time rather than talking through their emotions like women do (not every man ofc but a good majority of them). When Teru is down, Akane doesn’t hold him and reassure him the way he does with Aoi. There are no grand declarations of ultimate “friendship” the way you see in fan servicy series like Haikyuu. Instead, he used his and Teru’s rivalry to indirectly motivate him to get his head back in the game. When Hanako is sad, Kou cheers him up by making donuts for him and then giving them to Nene so she can pretend she’s the one who made them. This is a very healthy portrayal of male friendship, and Mitsuba and Kou are nothing like this

Mitsuba and Kou both cry and vent to each other multiple times (the Mitsuba Arc, the Picture Perfect Arc, the Nightlife Arc), and instead of comforting each other indirectly they do things like offering to die for each other. You would never see Akane offer to die to make Teru feel better, nor would you Aoi and Nene or Kou and Hanako. It stands out so much from other friendships in the series, even Kou’s friendships with other characters. That is a conscious writing decision, AidaIro make a point to show Mitsuba as an exception for Kou. It’s worth noting that in the same chapter where Yokoo and Satou cheer Kou up indirectly, Mitsuba attempts to directly have him talk about his feelings

They’re also incredibly possessive over one another, in a way friends usually aren’t. When Kou was in the Red House, he was shown his greatest desires, and Mitsuba appeared in one of these. Kou said he knew Mitsuba would appear, which is interesting because at that point he had already picked up on the house showing him what he wanted. But what does he want? He wants Mitsuba to rely on him entirely, to be completely useless without him. He wants Mitsuba to be “no good without him,” to need him so badly that he begs him to die so they can be together. I’m not exaggerating, these are lines pulled straight from the chapter (paraphrased but still). Later on in the Nightlife arc, Kou breaks down when he discovers Mitsuba has been relying on Tsukasa for life-saving help. As for Mitsuba, he wants to die by Kou’s hands. He says it wouldn’t be satisfying if anyone else killed him, and that he would be happy if Kou were to be the last person he spent time with before he died. He tries to trap Kou in a picture perfect world just like Hanako does with Nene, because he wants to live a normal life with him. It’s also shown in one of the extras that Mitsuba cries when Kou ignores him

They’re also drawn very romantically, again we don’t see Teru and Akane this intimate with one another unless they’re fighting. We especially don’t see Kou this intimate with anyone other than Mitsuba, and while Mitsuba is sometimes clingy with Tsukasa we certainly never see him posed romantically with a woman. This comes back to authorial intent and real world connotations, AidaIro know that male friends aren’t typically this close, and therefore casual affection like this will be interpreted in a romantic light. We see them hold hands/wrists multiple times too, Kou gives Mitsuba a piggyback ride in one scene, and in ASHK they had a classic “pinned against the wall” page

I’ll also mention the AUs, because those indicate a lot about the characters as well. In Hanako-Kun of the Opera, Kou poisoned Mitsuba so he could take him away from the opera house and protect him from Tsukasa. He basically kidnapped him. He also stayed with Mitsuba at the opera house for a seemingly long period of time despite hating opera. Aaaaand they’re childhood best friends in this au and Kou took care of Mitsuba while he was sick

Then there’s the Ghost Hotel, where Kou is a werewolf who takes bites out of mummy Mitsuba during full moons. Despite this, the two appear to be friends and Mitsuba helps Kou out around the kitchen. Cannibalism is consistently tied to romance throughout TBHK, most notably with Hakubo and Sumire but other romantic pairings have cannibalistic moments or official arts. During the zombie mokke chapter, Nene panicked when Akane tries to eat her because she assumed it would put her in a love triangle with Aoi. So yeah, cannibalism in TBHK is directly tied to romance and we see that with Mitsukou both in canon and in this au. Speaking of which, I’m not even gonna get into the symbolism of Kou holding a heart out to Mitsuba. Connect the dots for yourselves

Now that we’ve got Mitsukou out of the way, let’s talk about Mitsuba’s disinterest in women

Remember how I said one of the ways queercoding is done is by having a character hint at disinterest in the opposite sex? Yeah, very rarely are we going to see a queercoded male character outright say “I have no attraction to women.” Instead they say they just never saw the appeal in dating, or that they never had time to settle down. In more obvious cases, we have scenes like Reiner from AOT joking that Ymir isn’t all that into guys

I couldn’t find the second scene but there are TWO extras where the subject of Mitsuba’s disinterest in women comes up. C’mon guys I’m trying not to be mean here but you have to be blind, oblivious, or in denial to not pick up on that. Whyyyyy would they mention Mitsuba not having a crush on any girls twice if it weren’t to suggest something about his preference?? Coupled with his appearance (which I’ll get to later) and relationship with Kou, these scenes carry a lot of weight. Even if those other aspects weren’t included, scenes like this would still indicate he has no interest in women (which would make him gay or aroace, though due to his relationship with Kou the aroace thing is kind of ruled out)

Compare this to a scene where Mitsuba thinks he’s being asked out by a man. He doesn’t say “hmmm nope no guys, I’m cuter than all of them~” he specifically says “I’m not interested in guys with lame earrings.” The way this is worded implies that Mitsuba is discussing a type, though it’s v much a comedic scene and we know from everything else that he absolutely does like guys with lame earrings, it’s still worded in a way that makes him appear queer. If he were straight, they would have had him say he’s not interested in guys at all (like Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs, John Watson from BBC Sherlock, Finn Hudson from Glee, idk there are a lot of male characters that are explicit straight sorry for the crazy random list). Also note how he teases Kou about it, he knows that Kou is fond of him and doesn’t hesitate to use that against him (like when he was comforting him during the Nightlife arc)

They don’t go overboard with Mitsuba’s disinterest in women because, well, that’s not really necessary. Two scenes is already a lot, and he doesn’t have any romantic relationships with women in canon (even as a crush/a joke scene). It’s rare for TBHK characters to have absolutely no scenes expressing interest in the opposite sex, since the series is partially a romance. But Mitsuba consistently only ever shows interest in one man, and when girls are brought up he’s quick to brush it off. His mom did think Nene was his girlfriend when they met, but this was depicted as a very awkward and comedic scene. Because the premise of Mitsuba having a girlfriend is objectively hilarious

(Due to Sousuke’s young age it’s reasonable to assume he wasn’t out to his mom yet, he’s around the age where most kids are closeted. It’s even possible that Sousuke hadn’t come to terms with his sexuality yet, though it’s still a prevalent part of both his character and No.3’s)

Now let’s move onto appearances. I want to give a quick disclaimer, not all gay men are feminine and not all feminine men are gay. Androgyny is also very common in anime and doesn’t automatically mean a character is gay, but there are cases when it’s used for queercoding. Mitsuba is one of these cases

Mitsuba is a very feminine character, this is addressed as soon as he shows up in the manga. He was bullied for his appearance (and personality), but unlike his personality he never tried to change his feminine appearance. He kept his hair long, continues to wear scarves and cardigans and earrings. No.3 wears these things as well, and I would argue has a more feminine personality since he seems to be more open about his emotions and idk. I struggle to categorize feminine and masculine traits because imo that’s subjective but there are things society deems feminine vs. masculine. The problem is that I really dislike the whole “men are strong and women are emotional” thing but ehhhh I guess I have to talk about it for this. Hmph. But yeah although Mitsuba isn’t exactly the biggest sweetheart ever, he does act somewhat feminine compared to the other male characters (as I’ve said he’s p much the only man in the series who attempts to work through emotional conflicts directly)

Once again we circle back to intent, AidaIro know that a male character dressed in pink with pink eyes and long pink hair is going to raise some eyebrows. Even by androgynous anime standards, it’s a bit much. And good for him, although not all gay men are feminine, some are and that’s also fine. I can’t speak on how well he represents feminine gay men because I’m a lesbian but he does dress similar to some of the feminine gay men I’ve known irl (or slightly less feminine in some cases…I knew this one dude in high school who used to wear corsets to class and he was so badass I hope he’s doing well)

I could get into how Kou is a bit feminized too with the whole housework thing but this ain’t abt him. I will say that Kou is still a very masculine character but despite this his character is feminized in some ways compared to the other men. I’m not really here to discuss whether that’s good or bad, I’m just stating the evidence as it is, you can make your own conclusions as to how you feel about it

So how does being queer impact Mitsuba’s character arc?

When I get around to writing my analyses of all the TBHK characters I WILL be talking more in depth about the queer allegories with Mitsuba’s character but for now I’ll give ya’ll a quick summary. Supernatural characters have been used for years to represent queerness, the same could be said for villains and any character trope that represents a feeling of “otherness.” Sometimes it’s more broad like X-Men, where the superpowered characters are used to represent all types of minorities (though I believe X-Men is more closely tied to race, there are rampant queer themes as well). Then there’s books like Interview with the Vampire that get more specific with it, where Louis denying his “true nature” as a vampire is used as an allegory for him denying his queerness. Well I’m here to tell you that Mitsuba and Louis de Pointe du Lac are in the same boat

Mitsuba differs from the other supernaturals because he desperately tries to hold on to feelings of normalcy. He wants to be a normal human and live a normal human life. He doesn’t want to be othered, to be outcasted from society for something he can’t control. We don’t see Hanako, Tsuchigomori, Mei, or any of the other supernatural characters struggle with this. You could argue that Akane does but his situation is more related to learning to empathize with others than any internal battles within himself. Hanako may have moments of wishing him and Nene could have something more, but that’s more about romance than his identity.

This desire to be “normal” is unique to Mitsuba’s character, and it’s a very queer desire. Being an angsty teenager who hasn’t fully accepted themself yet and hasn’t realized that being queer is not only normal, but a beautiful experience. It’s also so interesting to me that as he’s trying so hard to be normal, it creates a push and pull between him and Kou. He wants to be normal for Kou but he also feels that he’s hurting Kou just by existing, that this could only end bad for him. Oh the inherent guilt of having your first gay crush and feeling like you're corrupting them hist for pining from afar

So, can you ship him with women? Technically you can do anything, shipping isn’t illegal and we all have free will. Should you ship him with women is more subjective, I personally think no!! Queerness is not just a sexuality, it’s an identity that deeply impacts who you are as a person. It shapes your experiences and your view of yourself, and in an allegorical way it has certainly done this for Mitsuba. Yes, bi people are queer as well and this is still true for them, but bisexuality is not Mitsuba’s experience. Mono-attraction exists and that specification is very important to gay men and lesbians. For some people sexuality is fluid and that’s beautiful, but it doesn’t work that way for everyone

Some queer fans don’t care if gay characters are shipped with members of the opposite sex, and they’re entitled to their own opinions. It makes me immensely uncomfortable tho, so please block me if you ship Mitsuba with women. That goes for any ships between canon gay/lesbian characters and the opposite sex. I respect people’s right to have opinions but that doesn’t mean I have to like the opinions themselves, and I don’t have to engage with anything that makes me uneasy. That goes for all of you btw, never let people convince you that you have to put up with shit you hate on the internet lmao, this is not real life babes. Block and move on

TL;DR

Mitsuba is too gay to function

[help-itrappedmyself]

Danny Punches a Clown 4.5

Little snippet as a thank you for 100 followers (Part 5 is in the works)

Masterpost

~~~~~~~~~~

“You are absolute morons.” Red ranted as he picked himself up off of his brothers. “You couldn’t just leave it to me, noooo. You all needed to see him for yourselves. Ignoring the fact that he is clearly traumatized, exhausted, and scared. Probably hasn’t slept since getting kidnapped and escaping from the Joker. Not to mention whatever happened before he even got to Gotham. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

Dick and Jason both seemed fully chastised, but were also back up and ready to go find him again.

“Boys, I have him on a camera in a warehouse two buildings down from you. He didn’t get far and he is bandaging wounds right now.” Oracle said over coms.

“Well he can’t run very far.” Dick stated. Red glared at him.

“Can you guys just give me a minute to try and talk to him without a crowd?”

“Nightwing, take Robin back to the cave on his bike.” Batman orders. “Red will be using the batmobile to transport Danny, I will use your bike to monitor. Hood, Batgirl, finish up patrol and meet back at the cave.”

~~~~~~~~~

@that-random-fangirl, @sebas-nights, @whataspectaclebear, @wolf-iz-2000, @bl-webtoonweeb @daydreamsandcrashingwaves @molasses-being-slow @kiana996 @randomafterthought @icarusinstatic @fandom-gremlin-1987 @littlebreathoflight @blep-23 @okami-love @dasha022 @wolfeyedwitch @mushroomymoss @nonbinary-disaster @imsotiredfanficlovertm

[thebroccolination]

HAS THERE EVER BEEN AN EXPLICITLY VERS ONSCREEN COUPLE IN A THAI BL SERIES?

There’s discussion going on in multiple KristSingto fan circles at the moment that their new series could be explicitly vers, with NC scenes showing both top/bottom dynamics (TamtawanPathaphi and PathaphiTamtawan or TamPhi and PhiTam).

And I want that even more than Top!Krist. :D

Like, the established and fixed top/bottom dynamic exists with real life queer people, but it’s also a big preference of many BL fans in countries like Japan and China—where a lot of Thailand’s BL money is coming from. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never really seen a widespread celebration of vers couples in BL among East Asian fans during my time in East Asian fandoms. Not to say there’s none, but it’s not what the people seem to be demanding, y’know?

So if KristSingto go for an explicitly vers dynamic, I will have yet another reason to admire them.

Because yes, SingtoKrist was technically the established dynamic despite the name, but they’ve never really followed it to the letter. Probably because they were established early enough that the structures they were expected to follow were much looser, so they had more freedom with their image. Kongphob is implied to be the top in the SOTUS series, but we never actually get firm confirmation onscreen because there aren’t any explicit scenes. And in the Baby Bright specials, Krist’s characters are the ones pursuing Singto’s, but those are lesser known outside of KristSingto’s fandom.

Even though there are many vocal fans who prefer SingtoKrist and say that’s how it’s always been, a lot of the earlier fanservice played with dynamics, too. And honestly, a lot of fanservice was initiated by Krist.

And it does feel like they were hinting in a pretty vers direction last year during their Peraya Party Begin Again event with their erotic dance to Jeff Satur’s “Dum Dum.”

SO, this has made me curious: have there been any visually confirmed vers couples in Thai BL series?

Like, I know that some couples are implied to be vers, but I can’t think of any that have portrayed a vers dynamic where they both top and bottom onscreen.

WinTeam have an implied switch to TeamWin in the “Hemp Rope” novel, but the closest we get to that in the series is the part where they slam each other (gently) against the lockers while they’re making out in episode two. In Dark Blue Kiss, Sun asks Mork if he wants to switch that night, but we don’t actually see it.

So I don’t mean implied or even outright stated, I mean like visually confirmed with both dynamics physically portrayed onscreen.

Because it’s fine to show fixed top/bottom dynamics between couples onscreen. That happens in reality, and there’s nothing inherently unequal about the acts of penetration vs. being penetrated. But it would be nice to get some vers representation as well, for balance. Maybe it would help open some minds and diminish a bit of the rabid anger that seems to arise when the dynamic fans see onscreen isn’t the one they “prefer.”

[neuroticbookworm]

Engagement of QL Fandom in Indian Queer Media

I was tagged by @lurkingshan and invited to respond to an ask she received from @impala124 that noted the absence of India in the Asian queer media spaces and discussions, and questioned the reasons behind it. @starryalpacasstuff has also responded to it in a great post (check out the reblog additions for a treasure trove of Indian queer media recs), discussing, among many things, Korea’s culture export aiding their queer media ventures, access to Indian queer media, and the quality of Indian queer media. @twig-tea’s addition discussed the ease of access of Thai BLs via YouTube and how it prompted Korea and Japan to re-enter the genre.

My thoughts on Indian queer media are complicated and involve several detours to understand Indian media culture, its economic power, and how it navigates international viewership. For context, I am an Indian cinephile who grew up watching a wide variety of Indian media in terms of both language and genre. I naturally transitioned into watching Western content as globalization of the 2010s brought HBO and Comedy Central to Indian screens, and later sought out queer media, Asian media and Asian queer media on the internet.

Indian Media Industry - A Primer

I know there are a lot of countries right now that produce QL media, so I am gonna mainly consider Thailand, Japan, and Korea, the three countries most prolific with ql, for the purpose of this discussion. All of these countries, while regionally diverse, have managed to considerably homogenize in language and culture over the course of history and colonization. India, on the other hand, is still significantly and distinctly diverse in language, culture, religion, food, media styles, social norms, and on and on. India has 22 official languages and thousands of regional ones that are used in various capacities everyday. This diversity is then reflected in the media produced by India, with multiple powerhouse film industries dominating box offices simultaneously. Bollywood is the biggest one and obviously well known internationally, but Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali-language film industries are successful in their own right and consistently produce box office hits and self-sustain in the larger Indian media landscape. This makes domestic media highly regional in India. Even today, in the age of social media, it takes a box office success to the tune of hundreds of millions of rupees for a film to break out of its domestic audience and cross over into other Indian states.

This diversity has also led to the different industries developing media styles unique to them. I watched this video a while ago of a creator documenting his experience of dipping toes into Indian Cinema for the first time, and he ends up covering three movies from three different industries, because the pathos of each of them is so fundamentally different yet effective in their own ways. This diversity also applies to the television industry, both traditional cable TV soaps, and the modern shows made for streaming sites. And all of this, *waves hands*, presents a set of challenges like no other country faces for both Indian queer creators and Indian queer media audiences.

The Challenges for Creators

Since the Indian media industry is not a big monolith and is made up of multiple film industries, queer creators who are trying to get their foot in the door will face a unique uphill battle in whichever regional industry they’re trying to break into. And trying to research, learn, and understand each and every single one of them will take me and my non-existent research team years, so the simpler thing to do would be listing the factors that have worked for other countries to foster their media industries to produce QL content, and discuss if India could replicate them. The list goes like this:

Japan’s rich history in yaoi

Thailand’s use of BL as a soft power to promote tourism

Korea’s culture export via kpop and other media

While India does have religious mythology that discusses sex, gender and queerness, it is often subtext with a lot of intersectionality. Does Ardhanarishvara represent fluid gender, or a symbol of harmony, or both? The debates are endless. Japan’s yaoi roots are as deep as they are explicit. And this rich history could be why the Japanese domestic audience is open to queer media even when the country is still conservative.

Thailand’s rise as a major player in the QL industry is remarkable, but there is a case to be made that the country’s media industry was directly and indirectly boosted by the government’s interest in establishing revenue from tourism, and exporting culture to international audiences via food and media. While the revenue from tourism in India is substantial, the Indian economy is not built on it. And the Indian media industry is thriving and regularly makes bank with their already established content models, so the producers have a pretty low incentive to deviate and fund queer media.

I bet every coin I own that not a single one of us on this hellsite have successfully eluded the allure of Korean media in our lives. The Korean media industry is a well-calibrated machine that shall and will target every single human into funneling their time, attention and money into the Korean culture and economy. And I think queer creators looking to make queer content in Korea would’ve had good incubation in an industry that was looking to make as much content as possible. And once again, while Indian movies have significant international box office collections, that is not where the Indian media industry, and just India in general, makes its money. The priorities are just not the same. And to be perfectly honest, India is nowhere near the level of Korea at producing and exporting television shows to international audiences.

All of this is a long winded way of saying that the conditions required to foster a QL industry in India are not the same as what we have seen work so far from the other major players. And sadly no one has really figured out the winning formula yet.

These are just a few reasons, and I haven’t even discussed nepotism and how painful class mobility is in India, making it even harder for new queer creators to break into the industry. There’s a reason why movies with queer representation like Badhaai Do, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, and Kapoor & Sons all feature characters in the upper middle class or above. Hell, they’re even played by actors whose portfolio is already filled with daring and experimental roles, or by first- or second-gen nepo babies who would literally have nothing to lose from the potential backlash for playing a queer character. Poor, queer characters in Indian media have never been a part of a fluffy romance as far as I know. They are reserved for the gritty dramas where intersectionality of queerness, poverty, class and caste could be examined.

The Challenges for the Audience

And once again, all of this, *aggressively waves hands*, makes things harder for even the domestic audience to engage with Indian queer media, let alone international audiences. Kathaal - The Core, a 2023 Malayalam movie about a queer man in his fifties coming out of the closet and contesting in his village body elections, was a box office success in Kerala, and I can tell y’all with complete certainty that not many people outside of Kerala would’ve even heard of it. And this was not some small indie venture – in fact, the lead characters were played by Mammootty and Jyothika, who are both absolute legends in their own right in the South Indian film industry.

Super Deluxe was a 2019 Tamil-language black comedy film that tells four interwoven stories that run in parallel, and one of the stories is about a trans woman who, pre-transition, was married and had a son. She returns to her family as her post-transition self after years of disappearance, and the film engages in conversation around sex and gender, through the innocent questions of her young son. The movie is gorgeously made, and outrageously sharp and witty in its commentary on society’s views on sex, morality, religion and family. And once again, I don’t think it is well-known outside of the domestic and international award-circuit audiences it was promoted to (last I checked, it was available to domestic audiences on Netflix).

Sometimes, even the domestic audience might miss the queer representation in their regional media when it is indie enough to not get aggressively promoted. The Hindi-language anthology movie from Netflix, Ajeeb Daastaans (2021), featured a story where two women from different caste and social class meet at the workplace (the sapphic story, Geeli Pucchi, starts at 1:17:05, if anyone wants to check it out). It served biting commentary on the intersectionality of queerness, misogyny, caste and class. And once again, I’ve never found a person with whom I could discuss it with (other than my mom, with whom I watched it).

And sometimes, even when a massive show with queer representation is well promoted and well received by critics, it still manages to fly under the radar in Indian queer fandom spaces. Amazon Prime India spent a lot of coin on the show Made in Heaven (2019) – and it was worth it. The show follows the lives of two wedding planners, Tara and Karan. Karan is closeted (except to his close friends) for most of the show, but after he makes some powerful enemies in his line of work, he gets publicly outed, which puts him on the path of dealing with his family’s shades of acceptance, queer rights activism, and reconciling with an old friend. The car scene in episode 9 made me cry, and yet I’ve never read a word about this show from Indian QL fan blogs here on Tumblr.

Following every film and TV show that releases in one language, across all modes and platforms, and keeping an eye out for queer representation is hard enough. Doing it in multiple languages is downright impossible. And then personal preferences come into play. Personally, I enjoy nearly all genres of media, but I am primarily an angst monster, so I seek out and watch sad shit on the regular. All four examples I’ve listed in this section are good queer representations, but they are deeply sad, rage-inducing, heartbreaking and realistic. If one wanted to watch an Indian queer romance that’s inside the bubble, I’m not sure if they can even find one – I have certainly not come across any. Even the queer Bollywood movies designed for a box office run, paying homage to iconic Bollywood romance sequences, were still outside the bubble. When a niche audience like the QL fandom collides with a complex media-churning machine like the Indian media industry that is fundamentally not designed to cater to them, all we get is a lot of puzzled looks and question marks.

A Thought Experiment On The Future Of Indian QLs

Now that I have established the challenges, I want to engage in a little thought experiment – if we were to receive a steady stream of Indian QL content, what would it look like, and how can the fandom engage with it?

If we are looking for content from a stable production entity for Indian queer media, like Thailand’s GMMTV, Japan’s MBS Drama Shower, and Korea’s Strongberry, we would be waiting for a long time, at the very least a decade or two. What we could get are small indie queer shows like Romil and Jugal, squirreled away in a streaming platform exclusive to India and only accessible internationally via VPN. Another example is the list of sapphic shows @twig-tea shared with us a while ago, here. These are gonna be low budget, probably-not-great-quality shows reminiscent of early GMMTV.

Another variety of QL content we could get are the Bollywood queer romance films and TV shows. They will be cheesy and tropey and romantic, and might interact with the bubble, but probably mostly from the safety of an upper middle class setting. This means they would eventually run out of fresh perspectives they could tune into in their limited scope and the stories might turn stale and repetitive (I’m deriving this from the general state of things in the Indian media landscape over the last couple years). International access might be a little easier than the previous case, but not as easy as going to YouTube and hitting play.

The third and final variety are the gritty dramas with heavy social, cultural, religious, gender and class commentary that Indian cinema industry has always made, and has upgraded in the recent years to include queerness. Once again, the access will be hard, but if we are looking for queer stories that also show the audience what it is like being queer in India, beyond the glitz, the glam and the colors of pre-packaged Indian experience often sold to the West, this is where we will find it. Most of it will be sad, but we are a sad bunch who constantly make sad shit, so it will be on brand for us.

And all of these different varieties of content are gonna need to be picked up and promoted by the Indian folks in the QL fandom who are tuned into these regional industries. India not being a cultural monolith that is easy to package and ship is precisely why we have all these beautiful and crazy and sometimes even contradictory styles of media that are offered for us to explore. And therefore, the fandom engagement on Indian QL content would also vastly differ from the fandom engagement for Japan, Thailand and Korea. A dedicated fandom captain might not emerge, but rather, a collective group of folks tuning into and promoting finds from their regional industries would be the way to go. In addition, if this content is not available in English, we would need fan subbers to provide translation expertise to even make it accessible, something we see often for Japanese media on Tumblr.

I know from observation that watching media in a different regional language could sometimes be as foreign to Indian audiences as watching media from other countries. The language, traditions, mannerisms, social mores and food would all be different from region to region, but I guess it would be a good litmus test to observe how well the fandom acclimates to a culture that is so eye-wateringly diverse and not as constantly promoted to them.

When I was texting @waitmyturtles discussing how we can approach answering this question (remember when this all started with a question, some two thousand-ish words ago? Yes, that question), at a point in our conversation I exclaimed "Ugh, everything in India is too complicated!" This long-ass post of mine is in no way the complete account of why things are the way they are in the Indian queer media landscape. But all I know for sure is that it’s not simple. And I really do not want anything related to India to be simple, because being unbearably frustrating and complicated is not a bug, but a feature of India. The road to Indian QLs is unique, but I will do my best to check the paths and share and recommend them to my friends whenever possible. And I invite my fellow Indian QL fans to do the same.

[firstkanaphans]

My dear Sarah, Do you know exactly what is happening with FK? I was ia for a week because I had a thesis to finish. I just entered TikTok now and saw a post saying jealous First and people sharing how Khao has stopped loving him or something like that. I am so confused! something about him moving on with Prem or something? How does being ia for only one week bring so much chaos?

Oh, boy. Buckle up, Anon. It's been a weird week.

So it all started when the boys were in China. In case you aren't aware, China has very strict censorship laws which make it illegal to promote homosexual behavior. That is why any fanmeets hosted in China are done solo. BL actors are not allowed to talk about their BLs or be seen in any professional capacity with their onscreen partners. Some companies are stricter about these guidelines than others; GMMTV seems to be one of the strictest.

Because of these rules, FK were not allowed to hang out together in public while they were in China and for some reason, instead of acknowledging that hey, they're in China where doing such things is, in fact, illegal, people decided to freak out and say they must be fighting instead. This was only exacerbated when Dunk posted some pictures of him and Khaotung—which is allowed since they've never kissed on-screen—and people felt like they were leaving First out (he was already back in Thailand). They then started saying, without any evidence at all, that First must be jealous.

After that, promotions for LOL started and poor Prem got himself thrown into this mess by innocently saying that he would like to collaborate with Khaotung during the concert. When FK did their own promos a few days later, First decided to tease the fans who had been teasing him by pretending to actually be jealous of both Dunk and Prem, but even though he explicitly stated multiple times that they were just joking around, some people didn't believe him and still think they are actually fighting.

They aren't fighting. They've never been fighting. And now they're having to field questions like "Why did you stop loving each other?" from actual "professional" reporters because people are too dumb to take a joke.

Honestly, this whole thing has annoyed me greatly and I wish we could just move past it because it was clearly always a joke and yet people are treating it like it's real and it's starting to have an actual tangible impact on their careers, which sucks. Maybe this will be the impetus GMMTV needs to stop sending their BL actors to China. See what happens when you make them pretend they aren't gay for three days, GMMTV? The whole fandom breaks down.

[wei-ying-kexing-apologist]

Well, I was tagged in this reblog (linked for context because that post is wayyyy too long already and I’m prone to run on sentences) so I am going to respond to the part of this that @doublel27 quoted me on. 

I want to make some things clear before I start: 

Critiquing shows does not mean I always hate those shows, few shows are perfect, and for me it is worth discussing what a show did and did not do well. 

I do not care if people like the shows I do not like, and I do not care if people do not like the shows I like. It is extremely rare that people agree on everything in the same piece of media. Everyone is entitled to their own enjoyment of their preferred media and I guarantee you that Shan, Turtles, Ben, Twig, etc. etc. will say the same. Also, since you mentioned Twig’s post about We Are, please let me direct you to the episode of The Conversation where Twig, Ben, and NiNi talk together about their differing opinions on that very show. And in case you were genuinely concerned about Ben and Twig’s feelings on the quality of Thai BLs this year, you can stick around for the second half where they talk about Knock, Knock Boys! Hopefully that will assuage your fears.

Some of the issues I have with vague posting are (a) it can lead to confusion, especially in a case like this where, according to you, maybe boys do love posted a response to eight different people’s commentary simultaneously without attributing which op’s thoughts he was responding to at any point. (b) By bundling eight responses in to one post without @ ing people, it makes it seem like he has misinterpreted other people’s commentary or taken something in intentionally bad faith (c) other tumblr users in a fandom will let people know when an “unrelated post” makes commentary specific enough to be recognized as a response to someone else’s statements thus drawing them in to the conversation. It’s why I prefer to be tagged in responses to the thoughts I share. This is a public forum, whatever I post in here is able to be reblogged, tagged, or commented on. If I didn’t want people to interact with my posts…I wouldn’t post them. If you don’t feel comfortable tagging people who you are responding to, then at least acknowledge them in your writing. We love a cited source.

I don’t love policing language, but since you were more than happy doing it in your post, then I’ll say one thing here: the tone of maybe boys do love’s post does not read, to me, like it is intended to welcome people who appreciate that there is “not a single stance about what qualifies BL as good work.” It reads like it is “reminding” the supposedly eight people he is vague-posting about that they are being unreasonable in their expressed opinions. It especially does not read with the primary intention of welcoming others when Maybe Boys Do Love’s response to Turtle’s initial reblog was to comment on her “respectfulness” and Shan and Ben’s lack thereof simply because they blocked him on Tumblr. A thing which people do every day for any number of reasons. But I digress.

As for my part in your response, you referenced a statement from my tumblr post A Pause for Reflection: Part 2- Only Friends, Racism, and the Commodification of Queer Asians: 

“We all need to, but white Westerners especially, be extremely careful and introspective with the ways we are engaging with queer Asian media”

On the seriousness of this statement, doublel27, you and I are agreed. I think it is valid to state that this should apply to the decisions of writers, directors, etc. of BLs. And I also agree that preventing infantilization and removal of agency from writers, directors, actors, and audiences is a good addition. That said, I do not think critiquing media is in any way shape or form an infantilizing or agency-removing act. 

I do, however, think you are falling victim to the western paternalism/white saviorism you are so upset about by going on to a South East Asian woman’s post and chastising her about not speaking for a South East Asian audience when you are a white westerner?

Also, I think there I might be missing a step in your logical progression when you say “I’m of the opinion that what’s good for queer Thai television is not for foreign audiences to decide, ultimately. That’s for queer Thai people to decide.” It would amaze me greatly if this hypothetical monolith of queer people in Thailand were to be 100% in agreement about what constitutes good queer television. Personally I see your belief that no one outside of queer Thai people is allowed to critique queer Thai shows as actually undermining the legitimacy of this genre as a source of entertainment for audiences outside of just queer (in this case) Thai people. Media is frequently made with an intended audience in mind, but that does not mean people outside that target audience are barred from engaging with it. No one is saying “this is a bad queer Thai show and I am deciding that for all queer people” they are saying “here is what or why I did not like the decision they made about x,y,z."

If you are going to quote me, then I hope you also read the first half of my Pause for Reflection posts Taking Pause for Reflection- Part 1: Respectable Promiscuity and Only Friends where I talk about respectable promiscuity and discuss the ways in which respectability politics have resulted in “current LGBTQ+ political movements shifting away from highlighting sexual liberation as an aspect of queer culture, in order to make queer people more palatable to the overarching heterosexual society. And how that bleeds through in to the kinds of media that exist, the types of queer people portrayed within that media, as well as how often gay sex is shown, the type of gay sex shown, and the number of gay sex partners depicted. (Read: generally infrequently, generally vanilla, generally one).” Just so you are aware of where I stand in all of this and what people like Shan and myself are talking about when we critique the decision to remove sexual content from queer stories for the sake of storytelling or viewership.  

I haven’t mentioned this one in awhile but I used to talk a lot about my perception of queer content being able to be categorized in By, For, and About Queers formatting. For example, a film like Pariah (2011) is a story about a queer person created by a queer person with a narrative that feels like it is made for the enjoyment of queer people above all others (but of course anyone can watch).

^I think this was made by abl, who I am not tagging because I do not want to drag them in to this conversation, but whose image I still want to cite.

This is obviously subjective, and I’m not saying it should always be used, but I know some people can find it nice to organize things by categories. 

Again, this is subjective but I’ll give a short list of a couple of BLs that I personally would categorize as being For queer people- by which I mean it feels like a love letter to queer people, I can see something of myself and my experiences in it, and I would not be surprised if the primary intended audience was queer people:

I Told Sunset About You

The Miracle of Teddy Bear

What Did You Eat Yesterday

Koisenu Futari

Here is a short list of some BLs I would personally categorize under About queer people- that is, queer people are the main characters but the piece feels like the primary intended audience is not queer people:

Kiseki: Dear to Me

KinnPorsche

My School President

Spare Me Your Mercy

That does not mean the shows about queer people aren’t queer stories, but it does mean the intention behind the work is different. Which brings me all the way back to Spare Me Your Mercy since that’s what started all of this in the first place: 

Lux Sirilux in an interview before the show came out stated:

“Having NC would steal the attention of the story because what we were going to talk about was dark drama and euthanasia.”

She also says: 

“The characters are gay, but we don’t offer [fan]service in every episode or include NC (explicit) scenes."

(I got these statements above from this post by clariredaring who I am not tagging in this because I do not want to pull them in to this whole ordeal any more than they already have been).

Lux is absolutely allowed to make the decision to remove NC scenes from SMYM if she believes that it will detract from the vibe and the overarching theme. Sammon is absolutely allowed to approve and accept the removal of NC content from the Spare Me Your Mercy television show. No one is arguing that. (And I feel comfortable speaking for Shan here at the very least because we talk about shows a lot and I know what her post was actually saying as it relates to viewership). I already wrote a post about my feelings on this matter where I discussed why I feel that choice went wrong in this case. That does not mean anyone else has to feel that way, and I’m not forcing anyone to agree with me. And if people disagree with me, fine, they are welcome to discuss with me why they feel like the story worked as is if they want to and ignore me if they don't. (And literally as I was writing this a great example of someone disagreeing with me came through in this post by elimstillnotgarak who I will not be tagging in this simply because I don't want to drag someone who is not involved in this in to a very different discussion). But there is a level of disingenuousness that comes with the statement 'you should not say anything negative ever about the stories you have watched from cultures outside of your own.' I'm not saying this is the belief you hold, but I am saying that is how I interpret your statements about not speaking for a queer Thai audience.

And, as someone who has written multiple essays breaking down sex scenes in BLs, let me just say that I believe there is a fundamental difference between NC scenes and fanservice. I think there are instances where fanservice can result in positive changes (The Magnus Archives, for example, updated their ending after seeing how much fans were shipping Jon and Martin together and I think the ending was better for it) but I think there are a lot of times when fanservice actually does undermine the narrative. As for NC scenes, there are definitely ones that detract from the story at hand, and there are ones that I think people throw in as a bandaid in the hopes that they can get higher viewership (Playboyy and Battle of the Writers are examples of that imo) but I think there are a lot of times when NC scenes actually improve the narratives they are a part of expressly because they can tell you a whole hell of a lot about a character’s relationship and feelings to another person in a very short period of time. 

For me, I think Sammon and Lux here engaged in respectability politics operating under a belief that NC scenes between these queer characters would take away from the larger story they were trying to tell. And I think that the believability of the romantic relationship between Kan and Tew suffered for it. This is a show that already was written for a larger general audience because most of Sammon’s work places some medical mystery narrative at the front and center (which makes sense because she’s a doctor). 

And personally doublel27 I feel you are drawing a false equivalency between critique and infantilization and I would appreciate it if next time you quote me, you make sure you read the entirety of the post so that you can better understand that I will continue to be critical of people who submit to respectable promiscuity and make the choice to tone down the queerness in their story because they are worried it will distract the audience at large.

[rogumi]

JPN Nintama Fandom Hashtags & Etiquette no Dan

Since the fandom is increasing in numbers, both in its country of origin and in western spaces, I thought I could help people better understand some of the hashtags more widely used on Twitter/Bluesky and other places. And maybe give some more insight on the more basic etiquette expected of you in Japanese fandom spaces. This is, after all, a predominantly Japanese fandom space and you're bound to interact with users who don't speak English at all and aren't familiar with our fandom culture. Let's be polite!

First, let's tackle the hashtags and how Japanese fandom users use them.

A twitter user, Yada-san, kindly summed up the most popular hashtags in their post here, and I thought that was such a nice summary I could just translate it and hopefully give you a little more cultural insight as I go.

#忍たま Mainly used by the official accounts and such. You can find official information and updates here. Yada-san specified since official accounts use this tag, they refrain from using it themself. You'll find this sentiment is shared among a lot of otaku, specially women who are into either the BL or yume subculture. (And going by word of mouth, the fandom online is mostly adult women lol.) #RKRN (From the title of the manga, Rakudai Ninja Rantarō). Since a lot of fans feel uneasy using the "official" tag, this is the tag most use for their gen fanart. Yada-san says "personally, I don't think it's a good idea to post shippy content to this tag."

#rkrnプラス The yume tag for the fandom. Here you'll find yume art/fic and scenarios in general. Yumes in the fandom usually use the 🌸 emoji.

#nin_draw Now this tag is quite popular and causes a lot of confusion to newcomers. Some people think that since it's such an active tag, it must be the main fandom tag but that'd be incorrect. What happens is that every 2 days, the manager of the account nin_draw on twitter will post a new prompt (usually a character name or the name of a committee or a group) and then you have 60 minutes to draw it. Everyone is free to join! You just have to make sure you follow the rules. They have quite a few, but basically. No NSFW, no ships unless they are canon, no ninmyu, no kemomimi or animals, no modern aus, no genderbends, no aged up or aged down characters (unless we've seen those versions in canon). Basically, they want to keep things gen and as close to canon as possible.

These are not rules anyone can force you to follow, but if you ignore them it will make users uncomfortable and more likely to ignore you/mute your or straight up block you.

(Yada-san mentions a tag for people wanting to connect with other Nintama fans, but I'll skip it for now.)

And what about ship art, you ask? Yada-san states "I post it by clearly stating the ship name and without any of the other tags. If the art is too risque or it might need more warnings, I either mark it as sensitive or post it on poipiku. However, determining what's appropriate or not can be hard at times, and I still have a lot of room for improvement in this area."

And that's it for the original tweet!

Now, for a more general overview of etiquette in the Japanese fandomsphere. You may have noticed through a lot of it, Yada-san offers suggestions or examples of what they do rather than say "don't do that!" and that's very common in the fandom in general. Nobody will confront you directly (at most, they might through an anon messages) but they will most likely just mute you/block you/ignore you.

Some users give foreign fans more of a leeway but others don't. A lot of them are very unforgiving of people who use official art as icons. This stems from NHK itself not allow sharing screenshots on social media, a rule most Japanese fans follow. Consistent with this, if they see you posting screenshots and gifs they may steer clear from your account. Again, we live in an era in which we are in constant communication with people from other countries, so some users are more forgiving about this than others. Remember that this is just a guideline, and in the end, whether you follow it or not is up to you.

You also don't want to use other people's art as icons, unless specify in their profile that it's okay. That's a surefire way to get blocked by an artist you like. On the same vein, don't repost OR trace art. Recently, there was an issue of a foreign fan tracing art and they thought they could get away with it since Nintama is such a small fandom in English speaking circles... don't be that guy!

Also if you're an adult you may want to add your age to your bio. Sometimes, just putting 18+ won't be enough since Japanese users don't want to risk someone still in high school seeing their works.

As for Pixiv, the Yume tag is 忍玉-夢 and the BL tag is 忍玉-腐.

If you're interested in a ship but aren't sure what tag people use, I highly recommend looking at the pixiv dictionary entry for Nintama BL ships! If you're not familiar with the characters names or how to write them in Japanese, the Nintama English wiki has the kanji for the character names as well.

⚠️ ⚠️⚠️ The name order in which ships are written in Japanese is really important! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Unless the artist states they are into reversible ships (riba/リバ）it's safe to assume they are fixed and the first kanji/name of the ship indicates the top. So don't go to an AB artist asking for BA! That will, again, get you ignored/muted/blocked.

And I think that's it for now! I got tired and can't think of anything else haha. Hopefully this was helpful. I can't overstate how much these rules aren't enforced by anyone but the users' preferences, but if you don't follow them it may be the reason why people are not engaging with you or blocking you.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask me on this post, via ask, or in the Tasogaredoki Jou discord server! Take care and be a 良い子。

[ikeoji-subs]

Zettai BL Ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL Ni Naritakunai Otoko 2024 - Episode 2 Eng Sub

VS SMELLS and VS AGE GAP RELATIONSHIPS

For downloading instructions and where to find the raw files please check our masterpost

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translation notes:

about Fish Cake Man (7:28)

As we state in the subtitles, this guy’s monologue isn’t something we’re equipped to translate and if we did, it probably wouldn’t make much, if any, sense to English-speaking viewers. We learned from Snow’s Japanese friend that he's a comedian who is famous for doing this particular bit. After we had already finished most of the subtitles, I rewatched seasons 1 and 2 of the show and found that he was also in the other two seasons. In the first season, when Mob is explaining about how he's a side character and intends to keep it that way, he looks at a gardener on his university campus who is pulling weeds, illustrating that the world of BL needs to include some people who are unlikely to ever become main characters. That’s this dude. He appears again in season 2, when Mob is scouring the university for signs of Kikuchi after reading his goodbye letter. In every appearance, he's shown wearing the same sort of nondescript work clothes and cap and seems to work in some kind of maintenance or cleaning capacity at National BL University. –Towel

His name is Nou Misoo (脳みそ夫) which means brain tissue. I believe there's a pun here I'm missing but you can check out his sillyness on youtube, instagram or tiktok. –Snow

about “the gods decided to smite me” (10:24)

The first version of this line said that Mob “received divine punishment” for his Mob Move. That was already a great line! But I thought it had the potential to be a little more specific and evocative in an English-speaking context. At first, I was just trying to think of something a bit more specific to replace “received.” I thought of a few possibilities, including “I was smitten by divine punishment.” But since “smitten” is barely used anymore except to describe someone who's in love, it had the wrong connotation. Then I thought about how another tense of the same verb, “smite,” avoids those connotations and has a kind of King James Bible quality. But if I was going to say “smite,” I’d have to change the sentence from passive voice to active voice (which is generally best anyway) and give the sentence a subject who is doing the smiting.

I thought a unitary, capital-G God would make it sound a little too Biblical, possibly tipping it over into sounding overtly Christian. I knew that some religious traditions practiced in Japan, like Shintoism, included multiple gods. So I tried “the gods decided to smite me.” This seemed to balance out the Old Testament-ish aspect of “smite” a bit. The end result seemed more vivid than the earlier version, and it seemed like something Mob would say.–Towel 

about “select shop” (11:30)

Observant English speakers might notice that when the guy who used the same shampoo as Mob talks about where he got it, he uses a term made up of English loan words. He says he bought it at a “serekuto shoppu" (in English, a "select shop"). While both parts of the word are borrowed from English, the term you get when you put them together isn’t commonly used in the US. I ended up replacing it with “boutique,” which gets across some of the meaning. But I’ll explain in more detail here. 

It turns out that a “select shop” is a kind of smallish shop with carefully curated items that all fit a certain aesthetic. A business like this might be called a “lifestyle boutique” in America, but it’s slightly different from any business model used widely here. The big selling point of a shop like this is the fact that they’ve already vetted and coordinated these products. Their offerings are tailored for a particular niche, so that if you’re into the general idea a select shop is going for, you’re likely to be interested in a lot of what they’re selling. The items for sale will also have been hand-picked by a professional who’s able to find just the right thing in a way that a typical consumer wouldn’t be able to. 

You can imagine what kind of college student would not only shop at this sort of place but declare it proudly. Even if Mob was going to fall in L with a B, this guy would be a bad fit.–Towel

about “a listless ne’er-do-well” (19:04)

The more literal translation of this part goes “a man like this, without ambitions or vitality.” It’s a nice turn of phrase, definitely, but I thought if I could localize it a bit it might evoke more of the right feeling. I thought it would be more typical in English to express this in terms of an adjective plus a noun describing the kind of person he’d appear to be, rather than saying he was without these qualities. From “without ambition” I got “ne’er-do-well” and from “without vitality” I got “listless.”–Towel

Tag list: @absolutebl @bengiyo @c1nto @come-back-serotonin @lurkingshan @my-rose-tinted-glasses @porridgefeast @sorry-bonebag @twig-tea @wen-kexing-apologist

[baiwu-jinji]

"In the novel Stars of Chaos, a character who is initially a ‘noble (and gay) barbarian’ is ‘assimilat[ed] into Han civilization via homosexual desire’ after the other male protagonist falls in love with him, which thus ‘enacts a Chinese version of homonationalism’. That is, the (Han) Chinese nation-state’s willingness to embrace such gay others bolsters its diagetic moral standing. [...] Ni argues that Stars of Chaos, along with another danmei novel, the zombie post-apocalyptic Dawn of the World (二零一三, written by Feitian Yexiang in 2010), reflects a broader shift in Chinese danmei fiction towards more explicitly nationalist themes, in response to increased government censorship. Such a move yokes together ‘homoerotic romance, deemed 'illegitimate' by the government, and narratives of national salvation, arguably the central theme of modern Chinese literature. Thus, danmei writers themselves demonstrate awareness that their work is subject to state scrutiny, which looks favourably on celebrations of Chinese nationalism. [...] brand nohomonationalist discourses, which are written about texts with explicitly queer origins (and still readily available subtextually queer readings) tied to a broader BL culture of production and fandom, seek to reframe the exuberant embrace of dangai content away from the draw of the male/male pairings and lead actors, and corral its immense popularity within nationalist narratives of Chinese cultural and technological accomplishments."

-"Brand Nohomonationalism: Guofeng (‘National Style’) Framings of Boys’ Love Television Series in China"

[3grey-morals5]

hcs-scp/035&049🤩🤩🤩 (hc1)

uhh...idk I'm just putting shit here atp. Just kinda putting stuff down as I think abt/remember it. Please note this is a bit shippy, but it isnt like.. Dumbed down and cutesy. i try my best to give both chars a more mature and thoughtful feel - stay close to the scp aEsThEtIc of seriousness

THIS IS ALL MY IDEAS FOR IT. NO IT MAY NOT BE TRUE TO TH3 CANON.

-035

this pertains to the collection as a whole, but it's kinda like. There was a original 035 right. That was the jester/black lord consciousness, and it was alone until they left alagadda and the mask started having more hosts. Each new one added the consciousness of that host into the "hivemind" of other hosts.

Due to this system of consciousness , past memories from the other hosts and original, the BL(black lord not boy love) are sorta like a weird game of telephone. For example, the bl liked 049 in alagadda, and that got passed on- but through the different telling of stories the perception changed. So, they mostly recognize 049, but don't know why he's so important so they're left guessing.

smells interesting. Like those dried flower things that give of a nice smell but also to a point it's too sickly sweet or has a unpleasant after smell. Coupled with the hosts smell ofc, but the mask on its own smells like that and a bit earthy too. It's seems nice at first but the more you smell it the more it deteriorates into ...eugh.

This is kinda relevant more to my alagadda hcs, but explains the "goop" coming from them. In alagadda, ESPECIALLY in lords, their is a surplus of unwanted (or wanted, that will be gotten to in the future) humors. For example, the red lord has too much red humor(blood I beleive?) That overhauls all other emotions or humors into JUST mirth. They physically cant feel anything other than that. This goes for the Bl too, there was just so much black bile causing anguish that that was all they could feel. Thus, deteriorating them mentally and physically bc..I mean if you were in constant upset it would take a toll on you. How to fix this? Bloodletting! Er, BILE letting. It helps balance out the humors, to be able to feel more than just their assigned humor. Somehow in the transition from alagadda to the "real world" there was a constant flow able to break through the mask, thus 035 is able to switch emotions very fast and not dwell on just one. Well not more than a normal being would.

In constant mental turmoil due to contaiment,multitude of hosts, nature of said hosts, ect. Causes extreme mood swings, lashing out, psychotic behavior, ect. Like. Not even a headcanon really but they're actually insane. Prone to rash decisions that don't consider future repercussions, unhealthy attachments, Yada Yada Yada.

Moral compass is completely fucked but still tries to do what they pertain as GOOD. Leads to alottt of awkward situations with the staff bc like. Got a Lil dirty secret? Mask mf knows. And you know very well he WILL leak that shit like a furry fandom beware but with 10x more salt in the wound.

will lie withought shame. Not really a headcanon cause this is common knowledge but I just wanna push that this mf is NOT a truthful bitch. 100% a scam artist in a modern setting, and at one point swore up and down that they invented an idea or product just for the fun of seeing how far it could go.

fun fact: Dýo (THE Scp035) actually came up with the idea for the bicycle far before it's alleged creation? The mask states: "My dearest ------- is so slow in his gait! I beleived it would assist him in an easier - and if I may say, more amusing way of transport"

Alagadda related, but..haha. lord. Emo ass lord./pos Look at you all "cut my life into peices" and wearing all black with black hair and a black feather but still got that pale ass face like uve seen a ghost thrice in the last few seconds. In my version they're the youngest of the 4 and...certainly act like it. At least from the media, me being an only child I don't know what siblings are like.

Despite their very VERY disturbing looks, the bl is actually a fairly nice guy(keep in mind this is BEFORE all of the new hosts so it's just one conciousness). The most pessimistic guy you will ever meet, but still a nice one. The palace is dreary asf but is quiet and relatively easygoing as long as you follow some set rules. Anguish dosent like going out much, prefers to stay in doors and refuses all their fellow lords(mainly mirth) attempts to have them join in on the "fun" preferring to instead stay stuck in the past and wallow in self pity. The only way this was turned was at the start of the bile-letting by a doctor (049) and that gave him the actual capacity to feel other than anguish- growing fond of his "savior" and attempting to court him (eventually succeeding. They had a relatively good relationship before all went to shit) he still had alot of sadness, but was more active and lively much to the suprise of palacegoers and dismay of other lords - and of course, the ambassador.

There is much more I would like to add for 035, them being my favorite for...5 or so years now? Has given me plenty of thinking time to develop new ideas for them. I still have much left to say but this is getting upsettingly long and I wish to move onto 049. (Then for a treat, you may have some hcs of their relationship- the good and bad)

-049

Im not gonna assign mental illnesses or disabilities i know nothing about to characters, but there is certainly something going on here.

Began with small signs at childhood. Normally level headed but could snap at family and friends out of the blue, anxious behaviors, visions/illusions or whatever they're called, along with hearing voices and following impulse. They eventually were housed in solidarity by their parents out of worry for their child, (now around teenage) worsening their condition. Sometime during the start of the plauge, they were able to escape and made their way into society.

Really does think he's doing good! Like.. really is trying!! But it's not good at all!!! Primarily self taught with shit he finds around and learning from other doctors, which ahem, eventually are killed to use as patients when the mental instability sets in again and he starts to view them as sick or evil in some way. Not sanitary(obv) but even worse so because he is constantly mucking around in body pits trying to do something covered in rot and gross never changing, rarely eating..just a real sight.

Some way or another made it to alagadda. Yay? Something in the way the city feels is calming, and depresses his mind into a more manedgable and "normal" state where he is able to think clearly. The peak in his career where he learned the most, did the most good, and was a TRUE doctor.

Spent a lot of time in the library, then wandering around in very little free time usually giving remedies to townsfolk suffering from whatever ailments eith the supplies he had. Eventually supplies were sponsored by Anguish when they grew close, and he was able to make quite a name for himself within the citizen community. Retained humanity and compassion which was relatively new in the city, and that drew many in

All good must come to an end though, and being banished from alagadda back in the normal world (with 035 but he's not as important in this awesomesauce 049 discussion) did a huge number on his health and basically reset all the progress he made. Turning ..well, crazy, once again and running even more rampant with the new knowledge he learned. This is where he began actually being able to revive.

A very gentlemanly fellow on the outside but it's a whole fucking shitshow on the interior. It takes alot out of them to constantly stay in check(a skill he's learned with his years) but every once in a while it slips and he just bursts or goes into autopilot(not good either)

Very insecure and untrusting, and while looking a lot more sincere and well rounded/not impulsive like 035, he really isn't a polar opposite. Lil bro is anxious point and laugh at his dumbass.(relax snowflakes, I have diagnosed anxiety I can make this joke 🥰)

No I don't have as much stuff for 049 as 035, as I find him more tricky to write for and thus am spending more time trying to round out my perception of him. Anyways. Here's some cute and also sad 035x049 shit idfk it's almost 1 am I'm so tired of typing if you're actually reading this ily

-good!!!! During alagadda

was very one sided at first, mainly Anguish puppy dog eyes over his cool goth bird crush who LITTERALLY made him feel something other than anguish with procedures and all.

At last 049 (bless his heart he was so sheltered he dosent have much a grasp on the concept of love or whatevs) was like maybe this guy wanna be more than friends. Much to bls relief this attempt at courting bad been going on for far too long in his humble opinion.

Spend an ungodly amount of time together. Like enough to raise suspicion if they weren't extremely careful with all of it. If thus shit got out...(it did) it would be over for lovey dovey couple

Lots of time spent in the palace gardens...mmm grey lavender is such an appealing smell to experience while you're giggling shrouded by bushes trying to keep your relations with your first love hidden like Romeo and James or some shit. Anguish taught him to dance like the citizens at balls did, and it was very much appreciated - a big pass time of theirs. 049 still kinda has to sleep? Bl dosent, but he likes to just read silently while doc uses his much larger body as a pillow. (And maybe wake him up out of sheer boredom, much to docs dismay)

049 enjoys preening with the use of anguish 's bile as a sort of shampoo. It slides right off his feather and hair and takes all the little mites with him. In turn, doc will scratch places that are "hard to reach " can bl get them himself? Maybe. But he would much rather a professional do it.

Anguish was giddy at the start of their courting and would write poems at their anniversaries (one week, one month, 2 months, ect) doc would always try to read them but eventually would have to have bl read them due to the handwriting. At times bl couldn't even read what he scribbled down only hours earlier. These weren't a few stanzas either, these were LONGASS poems ok. He has alot of free time.

Physical touch is a blessing when you spend alot of you lives being seen as sickly and gross, so they usually will have some sort of contact. That is, if doc isn't in a sour mood and feeling extra prickly.

They sure as hell respect boundaries though. Bl knows the signs of a doc that isn't in the mood to get poked or messed with, and doc in turn sees when anguish isn't in the best mood to be given sass. He is always down to be poked and messed with but God forbid someone roll their eyes at him when he's almost enraged

-bad :(((((( after alagadda

Their worst traits feed of eachother. Bad.

Heh..I'm a fool guys....I like good relationship sm that I forgot to hc bad...oopsies. jk but not ill have them in the future but dawg it 1 30 am I wanna go to bed!!!

If there is errors in this I am very sorry. I am also very sleepy and aore and that is why there is errors. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR ONG??? Hope u enjoyed. Adios :3

[houkagokappa]

Bless Mokumokuren for outright stating that the genre tags for Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu have never changed, i.e. the official site never dropped the "BL" tag from the series as it got more popular to reach a wider audience. It's been a persistent rumor in the fandom, and one I'm afraid will start circulating again once the anime starts airing.

If you mainly follow English language sources, please remember that whatever tags different anime and manga sites, databases, aggregators etc., either add or leave out don't always reflect the author's intent and the official sources, and should NOT be used to argue for what genre or demographic a certain work belongs to. It can just be random people claiming whatever they want based on their own interpretations and I've seen plenty of errors and real time changes to them based on new chapter developments, that might help catch the attention of some people, but don't suddenly change the genre of the work itself.

Not having BL as a genre tag also doesn't mean that a work can't include any boys loving. The queer themes have always been present in HGSN, and if you're up to date with the manga, they've been outright stated. Having queer characters or a queer story line doesn't automatically mean that a work is BL or yuri, and not including those tags doesn't mean that it's just "baiting". This gets brought up so much I think Mokumokuren's gotten tired of it, because the other day they clearly spelled it out for everyone, assuring that the story is queer, although it's not tagged as BL or focused on romance.

Here's what they shared on their Bluesky account:

The genre tag and advertising direction on the official website have never changed since the beginning of serialization. From the beginning, it has been consistently promoted as a "coming-of-age horror" within the official reach. (It's also true that the official reach is very limited…) Whatever the genre tag is, and even if this story isn't a romance, as the author, I guarantee that it is a queer story. There seems to be a persistent false rumor going around that "the author suddenly removed the BL tag from the official website by the 3rd volume," but the truth is that there was never an official BL tag from the beginning. (This is not to deny any queerness.)

And further back:

My opinion that the genre of The Summer Hikaru Died is something that the readers are free to think about on their own remains unchanged, but I view it as a story that sympathizes with those who have been left out of stories about love and sex, so I describe it as "coming-of-age horror." I think the key is the fear of not being “normal” and not having a place to belong, which is common for all kinds of people regardless of their attributes. I think it's fine for queer stories that aren't romances to exist. That's why I've been careful not to position it as a love story from the start.

Let's stop obsessing over tags and allow queer stories to exist and thrive, even when they lack a clear romantic plot or subplot and are more subdued.

[hcgossips]

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Injured or drunk?

Apparently, he continues hiring paps to  register a SUPPOSEDLY “casual” sight we all notice, by now, is planned and articulated to happen. This last video shows that. He looks so..... artificial pretending the pap is not there and that he wasn’t the one to hire he/she to be there. This trip is promotional.

By the way, he has given the impression of slovenliness and dullness for a while and I think it’s on purpose. Appatently, he definitely is having trouble dealing with criticism and he might want people to just let him behind and leave him alone. He’s intentionally getting sloppy with looks.

In this last video, someone called attention to his walk. The two possible explanations we came up with were because of his injury or for being drunk. Both possible. But, having in mind he stages all his public appearances, hiring paps to register them, I have a third option: He is staging.

Yes, he might be staging that walk for gossip, because injured or drunk, he easily falls in the victim scope, the same way he’s doing with looks. Now, everything about this guy looks staged, artificial, thought so as to generate gossip, algorithm, fighting for a thread of spotlight. Pitiful!

I understand that in Hollywood, if you don’t show, you don’t glow. If you don’t appear, you are forgotten. But, this is too much.  Creating and investing in a total fake private life 24/7, to promote a fake image... That’s too much.

But, I don’t believe he’s doing it exactly for spotlight, not anymore. This spotlight attention he always purchased is, NOW, the means to what he NEEDS to achieve: He needs to pretend nothing has changed, that he’s really engaged to the h**ker and has to continue ignoring the shame, trying to influence you to have mercy of him.

Do I feel pity for him? Yes. But, not sorrow. For the way they dealt with this last PR was immoral and unscrupulous. And, I am aware that he’s reaping what he sowed and that he continues repeating the same mistakes for stubborness, shame and pride. His Ego is always ahead and for sure, dignity never came before fame. Those were empty words.

Something else I noticed. As soon as the discussion over fandom sueing him started to have attention the Spain photos came out and a stan appears to be desperate in trying to prove the fake is real. For these stans, I ask: What does Cavill’s farm business have to do with his PR stunt with the promiscuous? Nothing!

This trip to Spain is a false vacation and a new opportunity to include the bl*w j*b  promiscuous to promote the fake relationship. Just think. If they were really engaged, together, they wouldn’t have to keep proving it through promotional sights.

If they are really together, but this relationship is harmful and damaging for his public figure, all he had to do was to keep it private. No need so much effort to turn it public nor to promote it. If, despite his miserable looks, he continues promoting it, it’s because it’s a contract demand.

This woman is a redneck promiscuous and I doubt he would want to expose her as his girlfriend or wife, even if the relationship was real. The bl*w j*b photo  incapacitated and crippled this PR stunt to be convincing, despite their innumerous attempts. And, he became stuck in a contract.

Someone is stubborn and needs to promote this shenanigan as true no matter what. Why? We all see the circus this is. So, why is it so imperative to Cavill to continue sticking to it if this is clearly making him sick?

The images are clear. He looks much older, showing wrinkles he didn’t have in a short time, his facial expressions are notoriously droopy, indicating stress, sadness, regrets and resentment. No one can deny that. It is clear there’s something very wrong about this last PR, but also, about Cavill’s mental health or emotional state, despite having some pages use filters and AI in pictures.

[humaninpogresss77]

In regards of Thai GL Shows

I truly believe that there's a negative consequence of the Americanization and globalization of concepts like queerness on the internet.

Because a lot of people has made the conclusion to think that every country and every place has the same level of growth regardless of representation in media, with years of development and improvement that the main stories presented in the United States shows and movies are shown.

Even now in 2024, there's situations where shows with sapphic main characters are easily cancelled, the characters killed or there's still story lines that make no sense after decades of having this time to improve(in 2024 there's a show, a very good one apparently that is still presenting a bisexual cheating trope).

I think that is obvious to contemplate and criticize these shows and stories because the writers, producers and everyone involve in these stories has time and ways to learn from previous projects.

Thailand is doing an effort. An effort that started it back in 2022 with Gap the series. It has been just 2 years since Thailand started a fully committed sapphic industry.

And the foundations are not the best, I give you that. The fact that most of the shows are some way to copy paste from the BL shows; somehow they have decided to capitalize in the chemistry of their actresses through in real shipping and the fact that apparently they are adapting the material of a single author(actually I want to send some books to see if they adapt them).

All of these indicates what is happening with the stories so far, that has create a disconnection with some of the main stories with what could be a major international fandom.

But I want to point out how significant they are right now in the idea to produce these shows and movies, and how it seems they want them.

The new freenbecky show and movie has been directly promoted by the government of Thailand(this is not directly a positive aspect but compared how other countries interact with sapphic shows in overall is something at least better).

And they are giving the time to work with them, creating an industry.

Almost all their shows has multiple queer couples and characters.

Besides some specific story lines, some shows has work mostly to focus on women and queer characters.

Even if some shows take a lot of time in other stuff; their focus is the love of the main characters that are sapphic women.

Is there any show besides the L word that has given us those treatments or something that still exists right now?

I don't know, like I said, they are not perfect; but seeing what they are doing and everything they are trying to accomplish; I think they deserve our attention.

[amzie-gossen]

Oh, I’ve HAD IT with the absolute plague that is the “every JoJo character is gay” nonsense! It needs to STOP.

Everywhere you turn, some insecure, self-deprecating fangirl or attention-starved fandom kid is crying, sobbing, shoving their head into the sand with this forced, tired, frankly embarrassing narrative. Why? Because they think acknowledging masculinity in a non-Western way automatically makes someone gay? Because two men respecting each other’s strength, boundaries, and bonds is too much for their fragile minds? Because they can’t see power without sexualizing it? The lack of depth, empowerment, and even basic media literacy in these takes is beyond frustrating.

Let’s be crystal clear:

JoJo is not a BL series. Never has been. Never will be. Araki himself has outright stated this multiple times.

Men can be close without it being romantic. The fact that people think otherwise is so pathetic that it’s actually offensive.

Strong men ≠ gay. And masculinity doesn’t need to be torn down or rewritten into something "softer" to make it palatable.

It’s not even just about the characters. The fangirls that engage in this nonsense have an insane level of self-esteem issues that they try to mask with quirky fandom nonsense. “Oh, they’re all gay, so I don’t have a chance, teehee!” — GIRL, SHUT UP. Why do you hate yourself? Why do you willingly remove yourself from your own fantasies and interests? Why do you put yourself beneath the very characters you love? Stop simping from the sidelines like a loser. Stand up. Take what you want.

Somehow, it’s always the weakest, least confident, most approval-seeking people pushing this nonsense. If you can’t even own your attraction, your tastes, or your fantasies without making excuses, you’re just proving how much of a coward you are. It’s giving “I’m not like other girls” but in the most spineless, self-sabotaging way possible. Stop embarrassing yourself.

This isn’t a “homophobia” issue; it’s a lack of self-respect issue. If you want to see characters a certain way, fine, that’s your business—but don’t make it law. Stop forcing it down everyone’s throats, stop erasing canon relationships, and for the love of Araki, stop using it as an excuse to treat yourself like a side character in your own damn interests.

JoJo characters are powerful, layered, intense, dominant, and full of presence—and that’s what makes them damn attractive. If you’re too insecure to handle that, then maybe it’s time to grow a spine and stop hiding behind headcanons and fandom hiveminds. Enough is enough.

[mondstalgia]

Gonna talk about what's happening on weibo on Tumblr too because it's so...fucking stupid.

Fans have sighted a woman with Louis and Nat at the airport on their flight home after the fanmeet, whom they assume is Louis girlfriend (he had his arm around her shoulder). Now they are claiming he betrayed Nat and many delulu fans are saying they won't support him anymore (including fansites which shocked me).

Louis then wrote a long instagram post basically explaining that he loves acting but doesn't want to hide who he is because in the end he is also just human. Personally I found it very mature and beautifully written, the way he always expresses himself has always been amazing. Unfortunately angry fans are misinterpreting it as him being selfish and blaming fans, which is ridiculous. He doesn't even mention fans, he talks about himself and what he wishes for in his life.

Personally this feels like a setback to times where idols and actors were seen as something beyond humans and dating was seen as a scandal. Currently he is receiving so much hate which I find ridiculous and dangerous. He didn't betray anyone. Nat was also literally there with them.

In interviews they have always stated that they talk a lot and even share secrets, there is no betrayal. If anyone knows Louis then it's Nat, way better than any fan ever could. Their private lives are non of our business, including their actual partners. Claiming that them living their lives is some sort of betrayal is insane to me, I'm too old for that kind of delusional talk. Unless someone committed a crime this reaction is absolute insanity.

I'm worried about his mental state, he's always been a bit gloomy, I actually do hope he has someone he loves who can support him through this. Poor guy, he just wants to do what he loves. This is so typical of the BL fandom, it makes me sick.

If you have the time maybe leave some supportive words on his social media ♡