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whoishotteranimepolls · 2 months

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Fandom observation nicknames and funny tags: Part One Piece

Okay, one piece fandom it's your turn and I'm going to highlight your creativity. Again this is not meant to shame or call anyone out. I am genuinely impressed with the creativity and you guys made me laugh. So again in my opinion these were too good just to be lost in the tags or in the anonymous messages, several you sent me. So expand post at your own risk. This one is unhinged

*updated as of May 4th with more tags and new characters

I have mentioned this before, but for some reason that is beyond me. One Piece fandom you guys refer to your characters as daddy and mommy (And it's in a kinky way) way more than any fandom. I think I should just start with the list of characters that have been labeled as such before I go into the creative names for individual characters. Because trust me who makes the list and who doesn't is actually funny.

One piece Daddy's: Shanks, Mihawk, Buggy, Sir Crocodile, Benn Beckman, Killer, Sanji, Rayleigh, Roger, Doflamingo, Rosinante/Corazon, Katakuri, Ivankov, Arlong, Yamato, Marco, Izou, Smoker, Garp, Sengoku, Zeff, Kuzan/Aokiji, Kizaru, Fujitora, Akainu, Blackbeard

When it comes to the One piece Mommy's: Nico Robin, Boa Hancock, Charlotte Smoothie, Charlotte Galette, Charlotte Amande, Vice admiral doll, Catarina Devon, Ivankov & Crocodile

Now due to popular demand the new category the One Piece Babygirls: Ace, Buggy, Sanji, Luffy, Sabo, Zoro, Ussop, Marco, Crocodile, Doflamingo, Kid, Law, Bepo, Killer, Mihawk, Shanks, Perona, Yamato, Kuzan/Aokiji, Kizaru, Fujitora, Rosinante/Corazon, Katakuri, Smoker, Robin, Nami, Vivi, Jinbe, Hatchan, Roger, Zeff

Now when it comes to individual characters there have been some interesting standouts but I'm just going to do some highlights because you guys have so many characters

Ace: "Depressed sunshine orphan boy with daddy issues", "ace has that grungy line cook riz you know he lays legendary pipe", " he got goofy older brother swag", "Beautiful butch dyke wife", "Ace my greasy fire narcoleptic king", "The narcoleptic babygirl", the greasy crusty desert rat. "He would be worth the burn risk", "my favorite fire donut", "something about greasy alabasta ace hits so different", "with his riz he's probably a walking STD risk but it would be worth it. Just look at him probably also probably got a couple bastard kids running around the grand line", it's ok he's still greasy in my heart worlds most feral baby boy he looks like he eats dirt I could fix him (force him to bathe regularly)

Arlong: "Y'all are too afraid to recognize the truth too afraid of his drip, his swagger, his saw nose, to admit that he's hot also live action arlong?!?!the only sexy fishmen," "arlong looks like a toxic florida frat bro," "I legitimately think there's something wrong with me sometimes due to how bad I want arlong the rancid personality enhances the appeal", "yall are p****" arlong is sexy put some respect on his name look at those lips the laugh the hair!"

Akainu: "The world's next top authoritarian," magma Daddy, "He makes donuts and I still love him"

Bartolomeo: "the man hasn't showered in probably a week he's obsessed with the strawhats he'll pee anywhere and he's an absolute dweeb he's like a stray mutt that followed me home look at his fit it's AWFUL AND FABULOUS he's gross and dumb and if something bad happens to this silly barrier- creating puppy i'll LOSE IT"

Belo Betty: "True story: Belo Betty made me, an Aroace woman have a sexuality crisis."

Ben Beckman: Dilf, "retirement blorbo", "Benn Beckman is a religious experience", "to me? beckman is the character with the most sex appeal ever. raw sex appeal. I would [redacted] if I met this man. just sayin", "He can ruin my life any day of the week", "Also lest we forget pre TS Beck a++ quality right there I just want someone smart who will also hit a guy with a gun is that so much to ask for", "This p**** wants what she wants and its always going to be Benn “back breaker" Beckman", husband material, "men are like wine in order to get a good vintage you want the one that's aged", he had that sexy blind and reckless loyalty about him", "Beckman is a fine aged vintage of wine as men should be", "DEAR GOD the things I WOULD DO to that man LIKE [redacted] and [redacted] because [redacted] and [redacted]", "idk how to explain it but he's so wife", "benn beckman? more like benn breastman ok sorry yeah anyways. said it before and ill say it again beckman exudes raw sex appeal like jesus christ. why would you not want to fuck this man ive had lesbian friends who said he would be an exception to them which is so real his tits are big he loves his captain he STUBBED HIS CIGARETTE IN A MAN'S EYE UNDER THE GUISE OF DEFENDING HIS CAPTAIN so fucking sexy mwah mwah beckman my wife you are so hot SO HOT. in conclusion benn breastman you will forever be a top sexyguy in my head oh also forgot to add. he canonically gets bitches which is so real. he could get me any day", "Oh dear I just realised I have a thing for older men with grey hair and have substance abuse issues I choose to believe lung cancer does not exist in opu", "

Buggy: Assigned clown at birth, walking disaster, "my pathetic sniveling wet clown", my Beloved, "he has blue hair and pronouns", Failboy, "the skrunkly clown", "my clown wife", "he has that fail boy cringe", "buggy has the stronger levels of foolishness and fumbling his way to success", "the cringefail clown extraordinaire buggy", "he is silly and pathetic like a bisexual divorced dad",

Catarina Devon: "my problematic lesbian sugar mommy”,

Cracker: "if Cracker just let his hair down he'd be unstoppable i fear", "get wrecked cracker", "I am so curious about the people voting for cracker let me study you please", "cracker getting murdered as expected", "you can't do my biscuit husband like that", "i find cracker really hot"

Crocodile: desert daddy, Babygirl, "He's like if tony soprano was trans", crocodaddy, crocomommy, Big titty mob boss, He's 8ft tall and I would let he ruin me,"Mr. Sandman", "the human sandcastle," "literally has sand in his britches", "son of a beach", "World's Most Expensive Sand Sculpture", "he's got 99 problems and his hook is one of them", "casino blorbo", "I would subject myself to sandburn any day for THE SIR FUCKING CROCODILE Anakin Skywalker don't go here because I WOULD love sand if it was like 8 feet tall and had a voice like that absolutely rabid he could stick his sand in so many places and I'd thank him crocodile is one of those guys i wanted to hate so bad and then went actually no i want this guy carnally Crocodile has some weird rizz goin on and i need to climb that sandcastle", "I'm so sorry but I need to eat crocodile's pussy", "With Sir Crocodile you can have Sex on the Beach. Literally. Plus he owns a casino so you could probably sip on the cocktail version too...while getting some cocktail.", "mafia vibes and style", "crocodile's got style. class. you will be wined and dined in the most exquisite way you can imagine", "He's got DADDY vibes", " One handsome mafia boss", "I love crocodile but also i wanna punch him and i feel like hes got the sandiest pussy/dick that shit will give me a rash", "my evilest baby boy", "Crocodile invented evil trans swag just saying", "im sorry az but crocodile was my dilf awakening", "in Crocodilf we trust",

Dragon: "the revolutionary scrungle dragon",

Doflamingo: "Dofy's got some wierd (potentially fun) energy but he would NOT treat you well he'd be awful", "The psychopathic pimp on a shoestring budget. Seriously dude, San Diego Zoo called and they want their flamingos back. That coat is so last season.", "fashion travesty", "Doflamingo dresses like an eye test and will probably steal your credit card by the end of the night not because he needs the money. because he finds it hilarious", "Mingo is just a spoiled frat fuckboy who's too full of himself to be interested in anyone/anything else", "a balding white man", "evil florida man my beloved they dont understand you", "Budget Pimp who robbed San Diego of their world famous Flamingo flock"

Eustass Kid: Pirate punk, "He's a sopping wet loser", "a man wearing eyeliner and nailpolish is by definition hotter", "my scrungy little fuck", he would also probably give me an STD and it would still be worth it

Franky: " Three words light up nipples"

Fujitora: "fujitora yes plz that like calm collected way he fights makes me KNOW hed take care of his partner real good", "have you seen how he slurps his noodles? I just know he could eat me out in ways I could never imagine"

Gol D. Roger: "the "Tom Selleck" of Pirates. He mustache'd the gold somewhere. You think these puns are bad wait until you hit my NSFW tags. Can't believe no one pointed those out yet, his name is a literal gold mine of innuendo. king of pirates? nah he's the king of rogering roger this roger that roger anyone he damn well pleases he has the D", "why does no one thirst after Gol like i do? youre all weak! cowards", "sorry but i am all about his dads mustache", " I can't be the only one that wants to ride that mustache"

Jinbe: "I wanna suck on the webbing between his fingers", does anyone else contemplate how soft Jinbe's tits are to lie on or is that just me?

Kaido: "beefcake beast of a man",

Katakuri: "I'm a monsterfucker at heart", "Katakuri is literally so good man he's a family man #he's badass he's got a great sense of honour you know I had to go for the mochi man", "donut king", "KATAKURI MY MOCHI MONSTER TEETH KING CHAMPION HUSBAND THAT I WOULD CLIMB LIKE A MOUNTAIN #I'M ALWAYS ON MY CLIMBING AGENDA WITH MY ONE PIECE KINGS!", "i just know this man would treat me right we love kata", "Kata definitely ticks that hot box"

King: "King is literally the most beautiful OP character you can't change my mind", "Gotta chose the melanin yknow", "king is so ajdhjdjdjchjd bark bark bark bark", "I saw King and decided he is my blorbo", "king of my [REDACTED]", " I know he's like 20 ft tall and I'm probably the size of his d*** but it would be worth it. I would gladly choose death by snu snu for one night with him"

Killer: "big tiddy murder boyfriend",

Marco: Bird daddy "Mr. Dr. Emotionally-Stable Scrungles", "surfer hippy electric blue glasses wing flapper", "DR. MMMMM", Fineapple

Luffy: "l am in the minority here I need luffy's gomu gomu no [REDACTED]"

Mihawk: The Vampire Pirate, Goth Dad, the sword father, Pirate Dracula, the big titty goth husband, "I think mihawk would treat you right. i want mihawk to treat me right", "I love his gay wine uncle energy", "I appreciate that he dresses Like That everywhere extra ass bitch", "hot vampire cowboy pirate", Morticia Addams, "Mihawk oozes 'step on me' energy",

Robin: "she has irresistible weird girl rizz", "big tiddy archaeologist gf"

Rosinante: "my insane clumsy tall dilf", "wife material", "he has cringefail dad swag", "rosi is everything to me actually. I would climb that tall clumsy king like a tree", "the klutzy mime", "he has that pathetic depressed clown vibe thats irresistible", "He's the epiome of strong but silent, he's the asshole with a heart of gold, he has everything", rosinante is hot tho and his clumsiness somehow enhances it", "I've said it before and I'll say it again I WOULD climb that clumsy king like a tall tree want to kiss him until his silly jester makeup is all over me too", "I am loyal to the guy who actively sets himself on fire",

Sabo: "bc he said killing woth lead pipes and then he just kept doing it its the crazy for me"

Sanji: fail wife, Cooking Daddy, "I NEED sanji to f*** me to tuesday and make me dinner before and breakfast after", "The man will feed you the best meal you've ever had and genuinely compliment something about you", "His fighting style is 'kick the problem until it goes away' and he chugs Love Women Juice", "he can cook and fight and he's damn fine while doing both"

Shanks: Margaritaville Himbo, "Dilflicious", "the deadbeat malewife wifi user", "I am a whole lesbian but if there were a butch girl version of these men I would let shanks ruin my life", "favorite guy in the local frat" He's probably a walking STD risk but he's hot and I'm a slut that has a thing for red heads, "the unwashed bitch", "LOOK AT THAT SCRUFF ON SHANKS the three scars on his face that smile", "my Scrungle drunk bastard", I would volunteer to be his next baby mama you know shanks got a few a dozen red haired children all over the grand line tell me I'm wrong"

Smoothie: "ah...smoothie....or as i call her... one piece tsunade Imaoo", "ultimately my desire to be crushed by Smoothie's thighs won out", "SMOOTHIE. THANK YOU mommy long legs... gauhggfghgh......i want her to juice me pleeeeaaaseeeeeeeeeee /silly",

Silvers Rayleigh: "Silver Fox Rayleigh", "he's old but he can get it", "Rayleigh has that 'your daughter calls me daddy too' energy", "he's a gilf who married a literal queen", "rayleigh has spent his entire life SERVING CUNT", "Raiyleigh has that gilf energy despite having no kids", I need him in so many different ways I cannot list", "he has my heart around his little finger", "Rayleigh makes me howl like a dog I swear", "I mean come on look at his HAIR his GLASSES that incredible STARE even his wrinkles are hot", "Rayleigh got the 50 year anniversary in the bag idk why you would go for anything else", "helloooo????? Rayleigh is the hottest old guy in one piece please", "I would let rayleigh ruin me and I would thank him", "Rayleigh to me is more like a really smooth mead", "genuinely may be the hottest man of onep just like. objectively", "rayleigh you will always be famous for being the most fuckable old man ever. there may be dilfs galore out there but ur the only gilf in my heart", "that scene where Rayleigh gets out of the ocean shirtless After swimming to the island of women I actually said Daddy out loud",

Smoker: "Smokedaddy", "Smokestack. 'Ole Smokey. Smokin' Hot Smoker", "smokers allergy to keeping his Tits covered compels me", "i do love smoked sausage i'm sorry i'll see myself out", "smoker he's just so beefy like fuckkk and he's like almost 40 i just wanna be smokers lil housewife", "smoker is a beautiful lesbian to me", "smoked sausage I just *know* he's got more to work with than a cocktail weenie", "SMOKEYBEAR PAPA SMOKE MY KING i would smoke him like a chimney if you're pickin up what I'm putting down wink wink nudge nudge he really would kill my lungs but it'd be a fun time", "SMOKER PAPUCHO RICO I NEED HIM", "smoker is solid (despite being made of smoke)", "smoker. smo-yan. ultimate "guy who is allergic to wearing shirts" and honestly? he's so right for that. he needs to show off his tits! in a one piece man boob ranking he's coming number 2 (after crocodile) i said this in dms earlier today but it needs to be released to the world "fat d*ck fat tits fat ass he has it all" smoker is PACKINNNNN in every way he's genuinely so attractive, even just considering him physically and look at his sexy facial scar also (beck also has one. very good) and his slicked back short hair.....not to mention the things that are very endearing about him personality wise - he does masculinity like NOBODY ELSE. genuinely NO ONE does it like him like. he's gruff but he has a very strong personal moral code and he really *does* care..... the man's a tsundere and he's never been cruel to those undeserving like in his introduction - kids bumps into him, spills ice cream on his pants YOU KNOW WHAT SMOKER SAYS? YK WHAT HE SAYS? "my pants ate your ice cream." KILL ME NOWWWWWW HES SO FUCKING HOT IM EATING MY OWN HANDS and then he GIVES THE KID MONEY TO BUY MORE ICE CREAM. jesus christ smoker big d*ick big tits big heart i fucking love him good god", "something something vague moaning sounds I would call him smokey just to provoke him", "

Trafalgar Law: "DR. Slut", "He has them tattoos which makes me go fucking feral", "A stoner greasy boyfailure", "the edgy emo orphan boy with daddy issues", 'My tried stressed bitch", "law is hot because hes pathetic has tattoos and is the narrative's favorite punching", "i am DERANGED over a depressed formerly-suicidal surgeon",

Yamato: "I need my trans man big naturals...... I know nothing about one piece but yamato lives rent free in my brain and my heart at all times the only anime figure i have is of him and i don't even watch the fucking show", "he's new + he's trans + he's over 8 feet tall + he's a wolf god what more could you want?!", "he is filled to the brim with TRANSMASC SWAG", "it's transmasc dog boy swag for me he's my best boy", "Yamato's boobs call to me I need to motorboat yamato titties. whoa who said that", "yamato could crush me and i would thank him yes indeed", "I just found out Yamato is Literally a whole entire meter taller than me & that's all the convincing I need", "my canon transmasc king", "cant compete with is the fact that on top of beautiful yamato is just. fucking huge like i can not will not get over it every time i remember he's 8'7 in canon I'm like aaaAaaAaAAaAAAAaa kiss me on the mouth big boy", "as an aroace person. if yamato stepped on me id thank him. thank you for your time", "hes literally the whole reason i started watching/reading one piece

Zoro: "The President of the strawhat's local big titty committee", "The king of boobs", "Beautiful butch dyke wife", I would probably get an STD but it would be worth it, "his stupidity and gay attire make him very appealing", canonically the biggest tits in one piece, He got them big naturals, "Big honkabadonkaroo hoinkybadinkirs massive man tiddies Zoro", "Zoro oozes 'I won't let anyone hurt you' energy", "zoro is hot because of his big naturals

Zeff: "He will wine and dine me before leaving me lovingly bedridden the day after. And he actually takes care of his kid", "Zeff is honorable and can cook and clean and bathes and almost dies for a kid that's not his and then adopts him" He's got line cook energy. If you know you know

I definitely know I'm going to have to add to this since there's so many more characters and you all are definitely going to get more creative after seeing the list.

And a few observations. Why did Sanji make the daddy list and not Zoro? Characters that I thought would be short cliff notes turned into some of the longest sections And characters I thought would have some of the longest sections turned into some of the shortest ones. And I still think this was worse theyn JJK I just forget how unhinged this fandom can be because your unhinged craziness is dispersed amongst so many characters. And I haven't decided which fandom's next.

I now have my answer on why Sanji made the list and not Zoro. Overall the fandom is just thirsty so very thirsty. Hence the many updates to this list

Commentary added as of May 4th.

Characters that I never thought I would ever add to this post are on here and I am so confused. When I started this blog, I was warned that the JJK fandom was unhinged horny and thirsty AF. But in my opinion, the one piece fandom is much worse. Just look at this post for proof. One Piece you guys are definitely the thirstiest fandom by far I mean Catherine Devon has a section. You guys just hide it better than the JJK Fandom. Plus I do regret challenging a few of you to come up with tags as a joke because you definitely delivered

#poll analysis #fandom trends #fandom #fandom culture #not a poll #one piece #nicknames and funny tags #whoishotteranimepolls

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zepskies · 1 year

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Break Me Down - Part 8

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x Female Reader

Summary: You’re a private investigator by trade, but now you happily sit at a desk — leading a surveillance team at Supe Affairs. After managing to end Homelander in New York, Soldier Boy escapes custody. You are recruited for the manhunt, joining Butcher’s team.

Truly, you joined the S.A. for the right reasons. But after you become his accidental hostage, Soldier Boy will break down every single one of them…

💚 Break Me Down Masterlist

AN: Thank you guys so much for all the wonderful feedback on the last chapter! It made my week. 🥰 I truly thrive on hearing back from all of you — it gives me the fuel I need to finish this story!

(And it's rapidly becoming a beast lol.)

Word Count: 6,000 Warnings: 18+ only! Smut, mentions of past domestic abuse/trauma, PTSD, hurt/comfort, fluff, and a (small) cliffhanger.

Part 8: Something In the Way…

It was three more rounds before he finally let you sleep.

Or rather, you couldn’t help but drift off. Ben had said he would help you sleep, and in his words, a promise is a fucking promise.

After you’d scarcely recovered from the first round, he’d taken you from behind in your bed. You’d repaid the favor by dropping to your knees for him in the shower, after which he’d propped you up against the bathroom counter and ate you out with his talented tongue until you really did see fucking stars.

But he’d gotten what he wanted; your voice reverberated his name off the bathroom walls with superior acoustics…

And when you next woke up, to your surprise, Ben was still there. He was sitting up against the headboard and watching a nearly silent TV while he smoked a blunt.

“What time is it?” you muttered.

“Around 6 a.m.,” he replied.

For God’s sake. He had to be tired by now.

You rubbed at your bleary eyes and turned onto your side. For a moment, you just stared at his profile, wondering what the hell you were going to do if Butcher and the rest of your team actually found you.

“Go back to sleep,” Ben said. He glanced over at you after blowing some smoke. A smirk started to curve his lips. “Thought you’d be knocked out until noon.”

You too, if you were honest. Your insides felt like warm jelly.

“What keeps you up if even last night can’t tire you out?” you asked. Ben didn’t answer you. He faced the TV again and took a long drag of his blunt.

Slowly you sat up, wincing at the soreness in your muscles, in your legs, arms, and between your thighs. Your entire body felt like a bag of stones, but it was a good ache. A thoroughly sated one.

You managed to sit up next to him and reach over to lay a tentative hand on his chest. It was warm, even with the ceiling fan and AC on full blast above you. He briefly looked down at your hand, then at your face.

“What’s it really like?” you asked, before your inner filter could catch up with your brain. “The new power the Russians gave you.”

His expression changed from relaxed to tightening around the edges.

“They didn’t give me anything,” he said, puffing away.

You read between the lines of that statement, surprised that he was even that honest about what he went through in Siberia.

They carved it into him, you realized. Like a wound he couldn’t heal from. Without wanting to, you remembered the CIA files you’d studied about his imprisonment.

“Did it hurt?” you asked, moving your hand down to the center of his chest. The corner of Ben’s mouth twitched humorlessly.

“Nothing fucking hurts me,” he said. His voice was flat, and matter-of-fact. But he didn’t even look at you.

Maybe he didn’t want you to catch the lie in his eyes. But as curious as you were, you didn’t want to push too hard. Not for the first time since you got here, you realized that you weren’t really sure what you were doing.

During the day, the two of you had your own lives. You swam in the pool, trained yourself in the gym, and read in the garden. You played cards with Loco and Saul when they had time for a break (from whatever it was Soldier Boy had them doing).

And over dinner one evening, Frank even told you that his daughter was fifteen going on sixteen, and sweet as pie, but she could get an attitude real quick.

“You remind me of her sometimes,” Frank remarked.

You scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Frank’s answer was merely a wry raise of his brow.

You just rolled your eyes and carved into your steak. Simone’s cooking was in rare form tonight.

And at night, Ben invaded your room like it was his own.

You couldn’t help but let him in, and into your bed. You were frankly surprised that he hadn’t gotten bored of you now that he’d gotten what he wanted.

But apparently, he felt the same way as you…that one taste was just not enough.

Like now, while the radio played on the nightstand. And he had you naked and writhing beneath him on the bed.

One of his hands rested below your ribs, holding you down while his head was caged between your thighs. Your knees were squeezing his head like a grape, but of course, all he felt was encouraged.

Your moans were getting higher, more keening as his tongue worked inside your hot core. Meanwhile, his thumb circled and pressed at your clit relentlessly.

Your grip threatened to pull out a chunk of his hair, your leg wrapping tighter around his neck. “Ben…goddamn it…”

“A little busy right now, sweetheart,” he teased, taking a beat to nip hard at the inside of your thigh. It had you bucking against his chin with a gasp. His gaze raised up to yours, dark and filled with desire between your legs. Sweaty locks of his brown hair were falling over his brow.

Though you were panting for breath, you managed to sweep his hair away from his dewy forehead. His eyes traced the path of your hand, but he stared back up at you again.

“Tell me what you want while I’m still feeling generous,” he demanded. Two of his fingers found their way into your entrance, a placeholder for his mouth. “I’ll fucking finish you just like this, have you coming apart on my tongue—”

You were surprised he was giving you a choice at first. But you saw his intentions in his eyes—he wanted to fill you up regardless. His dick was straining hard against your thigh, and your core was pulsing with need anyway.

“Want you inside me,” you panted, though not without a cheeky smile of your own. “Almost as much as you wanna be in me.”

Ben smirked and wiped at his mouth and chin. “Yeah, fucking right. You know how hard you’re squeezing my goddamn fingers right now?”

He twisted said fingers inside you, making you utter a strangled sound. His smirk deepened, but he withdrew them just long enough to line himself into your entrance and slide right in, with little resistance as he bottomed out.

You clung to his shoulders as you shuddered at being entirely filled to the brim. You still weren’t used to that feeling—of being consumed from the inside out.

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered, “so fucking tight.”

You squeezed around his hips with your legs, digging your heels into his ass. Your hold was desperate, but Ben just braced himself above you.

“For god’s sake,” you blurted. “What’re you waiting for?”

Even he was breathing harder now, maybe more from restraint than exertion. His smirk was devilish though. “What’s the magic word, baby doll?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Ben rocked against you a little, but not enough to give you what you wanted. Just enough to drive you insane. On some level, you had to admire his restraint.

“Fucking say it,” he said, his gaze firming. “Unless you want me to leave that pretty pussy on fire.”

You had a hard time believing that one, considering he was the one who couldn’t seem to go twenty-four hours without getting some. But you were just desperate enough in this moment to oblige his demands.

You hooked a hand behind his neck and pulled him down to crash your lips into his. You licked into his mouth and bit sensuously on his bottom lip. He rumbled a deep, pleased sound that you felt in your chest.

And you felt his hand spanning the small of your back. Your fingers once again dove into his hair.

Eventually you spoke against his lips, “Please. I fucking need you…”

His lips twitched in satisfaction. But he read the sheer wanting in your eyes, and the bit of vulnerability in your voice. Like you hadn’t been taken apart quite like this before. Or maybe it had really been that long for you.

Whatever it was, this seemed to matter to you. The way you responded to his every touch, the way you demanded from him, was incredibly fucking hot.

So he was more than willing to help you make up for lost time.

Ben licked his already wet lips and guided you back down. He actually put his all into fucking you. Not only were you the hottest piece of ass he’d had in a long time, but it was a point of pride for him.

He wanted to be the only one you remembered—the one who’d turned you inside out and made you forget that you were supposed to hate him.

Because yeah, he was that fucking good. And you were worth the effort.

He held you tight enough to bruise as your release hit you in waves, sending hot tingles all over your body and making you freaking light-headed. Your tightening inner walls around his cock brought him along with you, and he spilled into you with a straining grunt.

Once he’d pulled out and slid onto the bed next to you, an exhausted sigh fell from between your lips. But Ben turned to you with an almost boyish grin.

“You mentioned something about the new Bond movie,” he said.

You blinked at him, for a moment uncomprehending. Then you had to laugh. “Yeah, I said that an hour ago. Then you all but tackled me onto the bed.”

He shrugged and turned on your TV.

“Put it on while I wash up,” he said, tossing you the remote. You had a feeling it was because he still hadn’t gotten the hang of the apps on smart TVs. You sent him a narrowed look, but you found Skyfall on Netflix.

“It’s not new, exactly. New to you, maybe,” you quipped.

“I already know it’s not gonna be as good as Connery, but I’ll give this British asshole a try,” he said from inside the bathroom.

“You will, huh?” you asked with a grin. “Didn’t think you were into that sort of thing.”

“What?”

He finally came back out, still buck naked, and returned to your side on the bed. He gave you a quirking brow.

“Never mind,” you said with a chuckle. You went to the bathroom to clean yourself up too, then dragged on a large shirt over a pair of underwear. By the time you returned to the bed, Ben had gotten a bowl of popcorn and, of course, a large blunt.

You knew he was self-medicating. According to Butcher and Hughie, the guy had been suffering from PTSD big time…well, you hadn’t needed them to tell you that.

Even though your interactions with him before now had been somewhat limited, you knew that he couldn’t sleep. He boozed and drugged hard, from what you’d seen of his hangovers in the morning.

The rest of it, he tried to keep a tight lid on. A byproduct of the bygone “never share your honest man feelings” era. Butcher was another one. But you were perceptive enough to see that Ben was hiding.

You were still curious though; still wanted to know what it was he hid behind stoicism and lust. And what then?

“I’ll give Hollywood one thing. The stunts and effects are fucking incredible now,” Ben said. He was glued to the car chase on the TV screen. He was almost like a little kid, his eyes lighting up with every explosion and seemingly impossible move James Bond made to evade his enemies.

It had been a while since you’d seen this movie, but then it dawned on you that there was a certain erotic-ish scene between Bond and the villain, Raoul Silva, that you weren't sure of how Ben would react.

You shook your head. Another consequence of him being from a much different time, along with his outdated views on gender roles, among other things.

No matter how frustrating he could be, you reminded yourself of the night he helped you cook. And the night he saved you.

He could change, you reasoned. Maybe. With the proper motivation—

A shootout with a machine gun on the screen jolted you a bit, interrupting your thoughts. You reached over to the bowl of popcorn in Ben’s lap and grabbed a handful. But when you heard his breathing shallow, you glanced at him and frowned in concern.

His gaze was on the TV, but his eyes were glazed over, slightly dilated. He was sitting very still, and he looked pale.

“Ben,” you tried, with a tentative hand on his bare chest. His skin was hot to the touch, and clammy with sweat.

“Hmm, what?” He turned his head towards you, but you he wasn’t really hearing you. His gaze ran through you, and above your head.

“Ben,” you said, more firmly. You kneeled next to him, grabbing his shoulder for leverage, and grabbed his face to turn it towards you. He blinked down at you.

Your name fell from his lips, almost like a question. He wasn’t able to focus on you though. You called his name again and took his face with both hands.

“Wherever you are in your mind right now, you’re here with me. Stay with me!” You raised your voice. His skin was getting really hot.

You gasped and had to let go of him when it threatened to burn you.

His chest started to glow and hum. Your eyes widened, and finally, so did his.

Ben pushed you away from him and knocked you clean off the bed. He managed to angle himself with his chest upwards, just in time for the nuclear power in his chest to carve a huge hole into the ceiling, through the entire roof of the mansion, and up into the sky.

Afterwards, Ben slumped, taking in ragged breaths and wiping sweat from his face. But then his eyes widened with realization. He looked over and saw you prone on the floor.

He slid off the bed and went to you, dropping a knee at your side and reaching a hand to your cheek. He called your name once, then twice. When you didn’t wake up, his hand hesitated, then moved to feel your pulse.

He felt it thrum beneath the pads of his fingers. You were alive, just knocked the fuck out for a bit…

So he eased you into his arms and slid your hair away from your face, unwilling to admit, even to himself, that he was worried.

Not until you roused in his arms did he let out a subtle, relieved breath.

He gave you a crooked smile. “Hey, sweetheart.”

You groaned. “What the hell…”

Your beautiful eyes opened and met his.

“You with me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” though you winced at a nod. Your gaze shifted behind him and a soft gasp fell from your lips. Ben glanced over his shoulder, and the two of you looked up at the giant hole in the ceiling that was letting the bright glow of the moon into your bedroom.

There was a mess of debris and wood and plaster all over the room. Even you and Ben were covered in a fine layer of it. He was avoiding your gaze now.

But you couldn’t find it in yourself to be mad at him.

You just sighed and offered him a smile.

“At least now I have a window in here,” you joked. “Was getting stuffy as hell."

That night, you slept in his room. You practically drowned in his large, plush bed that smelled like his cologne and aftershave.

Though you hoped he didn’t expect you to stay here from now on. As much as you were starting to like him (and you still didn’t want to admit that fact), there were times when you needed your privacy.

By the time you woke and started your day, however, Ben led you to a new room. It was bigger, with nicer furnishings, including a king-sized bed instead of a queen. It was bigger than your entire apartment back home in New York.

“Wow,” you said, turning to him with a smile. “Thank you.”

Though at that point, you knew Stockholm syndrome was real.

Ben shrugged, returning your smile a bit. “Got twenty more of these. No big deal.”

“Right.” You raised a brow, then turned to survey your surroundings with your hands on your hips.

He’d insisted on carrying all your things himself (likely due to an old-fashioned sense of machismo-backed chivalry), even though the room was on the same floor as your old one. It was much closer to his, you noticed.

Then you felt his hands snaking down your sides from behind, molding to the curve of your waist. You felt the warmth of his chest through his clothing as he pressed against your back.

“Time to break it in,” he said, with the deepening turn of his voice that too often made your insides quiver and melt into goo.

“Do you ever get tired of fucking?” you quipped. Though it lost its effect somewhat when you leaned against him, all too willing.

Ben chuckled into your ear. “Take it as a fucking compliment, sweetheart. Your pussy is the sweetest I’ve had since before I went under.”

That made you pause. You turned in his arms and looked up at his face with a challenging brow. You wondered if he was just sweet-talking you (his version of it, anyway), or if he really meant that shit.

“Don’t believe me?” he asked.

“You’ve been plowing through hookers and escorts for months. Professionals,” you pointed out. “You don’t have to lie to me just to butter me up.”

“Why the fuck would I lie about some stupid shit like that?” he retorted. You frowned at him.

“Because it’s not stupid,” you said.

You pushed his hands from you and turned away, but he held you fast by your wrist, pulling you back toward him. You frowned in annoyance at his manhandling.

“What’s the real reason you hadn’t fucked anyone in three years?” he asked. Though it was more a demand than a question.

“Why’re you so hung up on that?” you asked. “It’s no big deal.”

“Why are you so shocked by what I said?” he countered. He was giving you a choice: answer one question, or the other.

You let out a frustrated breath and waved your arms in exasperation.

“I was busy, okay?” you said. “Vought had me on tough hours and shitty details. I didn’t have time for a life.”

And after the things you’d seen, you didn’t much feel like interacting with people, be they supes or normal humans.

“That’s not the real reason,” Ben said. His fingers held your chin so you couldn’t look away. In the deep green of his eyes, you saw the same curiosity that plagued you.

Maybe…maybe if you gave him an inch, he’d give you one.

Metaphorically speaking.

“I didn’t like who I was,” you confessed at last. “I just…I don’t know. Nothing felt right back then. It just took me a while to finally do something about it.”

He seemed to consider that, and you.

You took the opportunity of his distraction to extricate yourself from his grip, and you ventured further into your new room. Your eyes lit up when you found an old record player sitting on a dresser, and a basket full of vinyl on the floor next to it.

“Wow, seriously retro,” you said with a chuckle. But you knelt down and started flipping through the collection. Ben followed you. With his arms crossed, he looked over your shoulder at the record you fished out. Abbey Road by the Beatles, 1969. You placed the record and set the needle at a specific song.

The drums kicked off into a familiar electric guitar melody. Then John Lennon’s voice echoed through the room.

“Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…”

Nostalgia flooded through both of you, albeit for different reasons. For you, it reminded you of your grandpa (on your mother’s side). He’d dedicated this song, “Something,” to your grandma on their 50th anniversary. He’d made sure you played it again a year later, at her funeral.

Meanwhile, this song always reminded Ben of fingerfucking Farrah Fawcett at a Beatles concert. Ah, the ‘70s. A wild fucking time.

“Good choice,” he remarked.

You flashed him a smile.

And with a sigh, you turned to sit against the dresser while the record played. You pat the ground next to you, and while Ben looked reluctant, he eventually sat down beside you. It seemed he had nothing better to do.

“I dabbled in music myself, you know?” he told you, with a smug raise of his brow. “Had a few hits on the charts.”

You grinned in amusement. “Yeah, I had to muck through every one of your cheesy-ass music videos.”

“Hey, every one of those fucking singles were gold.” He shot you an indignant look. “What, had to?”

“When I was researching you,” you said with a chuckle. He raised a brow at that.

“Oh, yeah?” He rubbed a hand over his beard and met you with a critical eye. “What else did you dig into?”

You met his eyes, and you knew he had some idea of what you were thinking.

Ben let out a breath through his nose, craving some reefer.

“Ah. That, huh?” he said. After a moment to gather your courage, you took a breath.

“Ben—”

“It’s not worth fucking talking about,” he said, a bit of grit edging in his voice.

“It is if you’re still blowing craters into ceilings, Ben,” you replied sharply. “Do you even remember what happened yesterday?”

His steely silence was all you needed to know.

“Look, I’ve gone through some shit too,” you said. “But forty years? …I know I’ll never completely understand what you went through, but—”

“You don’t have a fucking clue,” he said. His eyes were sharp, but also guarded.

You couldn’t help it. The footage you watched was playing inside your mind in perfect scenes. You remembered the sound of his desperation, his struggle. And it had been all-too familiar to you.

“Maybe,” you agreed. “But I do get having shit that flashes behind your eyes, like a bad movie. Things you can’t forget. Things that won’t even do you the mercy of letting you sleep.”

Ben was reluctant to meet your eyes, as if even that small thing would be an admission of weakness. But when he did, you knew he would see a kindred spirit.

“Things that clog up the works,” you continued. You wet your dry lips, swallowing past a tendril of nerves. “And things that should be easy get…complicated. Like watching a movie, or…”

You had to take in a somewhat shaking breath, turning your face away.

It allowed Ben to look at you a fraction softer. His mind was able to flash away from some of the past, to a more recent memory: the first time you’d pulled him into your room and let him into your bed.

You’d pleasantly surprised him a few times that night, but there was one moment where he hadn’t known what to do next.

When he saw panic instead of pleasure take over, and however briefly, he’d wondered if he truly was the monster everyone seemed to think he was.

So now, Ben couldn’t help but reach out to you. The back of his hand touched your neck. Your eyes widened a fraction when his thumb brushed down the column of your throat.

“What happened to you?” he finally asked. He seemed more than just curious. There was more behind his eyes, and enough earnestness for you to consider trusting him with this part of you…

But still, you were reluctant to give him that big of an inch.

“It’s only fair,” he pointed out. “The CIA gave you the full low down on me.”

Once again, you sighed. Can’t argue with fair.

You rested you head back against the wooden dresser as “Oh! Darling” started to play from the record. Now didn’t feel like a particularly good time for a doo-wop, but such was your reality.

“I told you about my dad, right?” you said. Ben inclined his head.

“Something about the family business.”

You nodded. “He trained me. How to read people, how to fight…but he was the first one we had to defend ourselves from.”

Ben considered that with a deepening frown. He’d had an idea this story was going that way, but hearing you come out and say it (even without really being able to say it) just made him angry. His hands clenched into fists where they rested at his sides, on the ground. Until something you said called his attention.

“We?” he repeated. You nodded again.

“My mom, and my younger sister,” you said, with a tremulous breath. “He was a drunken bastard for most of my childhood. I was about thirteen when he put my mom in the hospital, and it was…bad.”

You swallowed past a lump of emotion in your throat—mostly at the guilt. If it hadn’t been for you, and your weakness, your mom wouldn’t have needed to intervene. She wouldn’t have had to try to protect you…

“From there, my grandparents got us out of that house,” you said, with a suspect sniff. “Mom finally divorced him.”

Unfortunately, the story didn’t end there.

By the time you were in high school, your father had gotten through his court-ordered rehab and managed to get his life back together. He built his P.I. firm back up, and by all appearances, he seemed to turn his life around.

He convinced your mother of it enough that she let you work for him after school.

You hadn’t wanted to, but your father had a way of manipulating you too. He reminded you that your grades were shit (I fucking wonder why?). You had little chance of making it to college, so at least he could teach you a trade.

“I’ll even pay you,” he’d said. And you’d taken the bait.

He’d been unrelenting in your training, as he was in most respects. As a former Marine, he was rigid in his discipline, demanding perfection from you.

However, when he felt his lessons weren’t being drilled into your head, he reinforced them with his calloused hands.

And when Vought came to him, offering him a contract, he negotiated one for you too, without even asking if that was what you wanted. But you went along with it…until you couldn’t anymore.

“I finally broke contact with him when I left to join Supe Affairs,” you finished, quickly wiping a tear from your cheek. You glanced over at your captive audience with slight hesitation.

Ben looked stoic on the surface, calm even. But you didn’t know that it had taken every cell of self-restraint in him to stay quiet. Your red, shining eyes, the way you’d had to stop a few times to collect yourself—it all grated on him in the worst way.

“Christ on a cross,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his mouth and chin. “Why the fuck did you work with him?”

“I told you. I was a kid—”

“No, I mean when he got the fucking deal from Vought,” he said tersely. “You could’ve split. Found yourself a husband, got your own life. Why the fuck would you sell yourself out like that?”

Your lips pursed. “First of all, I don’t need a husband to have my own life. Second, I’m not the only one here who worked for Vought.”

Ben huffed. He wanted to call you a fucking idiot. He wanted to say, See? This is why you need a real fucking man in your life.

But with daddy issues this bad, you’d probably fuck that up too.

“Answer the goddamn question,” he said instead, though none too gently.

You gave him a soft glare. Didn’t he realize how hard it was for you to say all of this aloud, let alone confide in him?

But now that he did know, maybe he’d be more likely to open up to you. You would be able to understand him better, and maybe…maybe one day, you could convince him to let you go.

So you felt you had no choice but to answer his real question.

Why the fuck did you follow your father to Vought?

The truth was, that man had a way of getting into your head, living in your skin, and making it crawl.

“He’s a manipulative bastard,” you said.

He knew how to work you, just like your mom. And your mother was…well, damaged. You knew you couldn’t rule yourself out of that one either.

However, the thought did spark your own curiosity.

“What were your parents like?” you asked.

The question seemed to surprise him. His frustration with you melted into a more uncertain frown. You bumped his shoulder with yours.

“Come on. It’s only fair,” you teased. A smile lifted his lips, but his eyes became rueful.

“She was a good woman,” he replied, speaking of his mother. “Quiet maybe, unlike you.”

You smiled in amusement at that.

“But elegant,” Ben said. The softening edges of his smile told you volumes.

“She didn’t grow up with much, so when she married my father, she learned how to live in his world," he said. "But she still cooked and cleaned and pretty much ran the house, even though we had people to do that shit.”

“How did she meet your dad?” you asked. You knew his father’s family was from old money. He’d inherited his empire from his father before him.

Ben glanced at you. “She sang at this club…a nice one though, not some fucking dive. She wasn’t the star or anything, but my father noticed her. Said she was the only one who could pull off red lipstick without looking like a whore.”

That made you roll your eyes, which provoked an amused grin out of Ben.

“Charming,” you remarked. It must’ve really upset the old apple cart when his father married his mother. You wondered how she’d felt about Ben becoming Soldier Boy…

“Doesn’t sound familiar?” he asked. "Pretty girl in red, croonin' for a bunch of assholes in a musty fucking club?"

At first, you were confused.

And then, you realized the reason for his not-so-subtle grin. With an incredulous blush, you supposed that you and Ben had met in much the same way as his parents.

Well, that’s not creepy at all, said the more rational part of your brain.

…Or maybe, weirdly romantic, whispered the other part. The part that had probably caved after you watched Ben try and fail to chop onions for the first time.

“What was your favorite thing about her?” you asked.

“You know, all my pictures of her are in black in white…I don’t even remember what color her eyes were,” he admitted. “But I remember her voice. Smooth as warm butter. She’d hum with the radio whenever she cooked. If Dad wasn’t there, she’d belt out a tune or two. I’d sit in the kitchen and watch.”

Imagining that scene made you smile softly.

“Her captive audience,” you teased. Ben took it with a quirk of his mouth.

“What about your dad?” you asked. He turned to you with a knowing look. You both knew what the man had thought of Ben. But you wanted to hear it in his own words.

“My father was a stern man,” he said. The softness was gone, and your smile fell. “This kind of larger-than-life force when I was a kid… Of course, when I became a man, he didn’t consider me worth the fucking effort. Not even when I became a hero, and everybody in the fucking world knew my name, he couldn’t admit that I’d fucking surpassed him.”

You sighed. More than anyone, you understood the underlying resentment in Ben’s tone. The kind of young recklessness that pushed him into becoming Soldier Boy, trying to prove his father wrong.

“He thought you cut corners to do it. And while he wasn’t wrong,” you said, as gentle as possible. You held your ground when Ben looked sharply at you. “You didn’t deserve to be ignored either.”

Ben scoffed at that, as if he didn’t give two shits one way or the other. You knew better.

So the two of you kept talking, sitting there on the floor long after the record finished. You traded stories and bickered as you often did.

But when you managed make him laugh, genuine, hand-on-chest, and almost boyish, you had to try and stem off a blush as you felt a pleasant flutter in your belly.

“It’s been two fucking months since you lost him in Colombia, and what do you have to show for it?” Grace Mallory said into the screen of her cell phone. FaceTime was only glitching slightly, at least.

On the other side of the looking glass, Butcher was annoyed.

“He’s like a coil of smoke,” he said. “Pulled a motherfucking Houdini act. I have half a mind to think he’s gettin’ some help. Other than the ex-military cunts he recruited on the road.”

Grace thought for a moment. “Give me five minutes.”

Butcher hung up before she did. With a purse of her lips, she searched for another number in her contacts. Some personal assistant answered the line.

“Get me Stan Edgar,” she said.

“Well, he’s actually in a meeting right now—”

“Now,” Grace snapped. “Unless you want a CIA squad storming the tower for withholding evidence.”

In less than thirty seconds, Stan’s familiar monotone greeted her.

“Good afternoon, Grace,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“You fucked up, Stan,” she replied, resting back in her office chair. “This doesn’t bode well for you.”

“To what matter are you referring?”

“You know exactly what. I’m going to ask you this once,” she said. “If I don’t get a straight fucking answer, I’ll have no other recourse but to rake through your records all over again. And we both remember how pleasant that was.”

“We’ve done nothing but comply with the government’s demands.”

“Right,” Grace scoffed. “Listen to me. If I find out that you’ve withheld information about Soldier Boy’s location—or even so far as helping him evade my grasp—I will dig so far up your ass, you won’t be able to fucking breathe.”

There was a pause on the other line.

Eventually, however, the little toad spoke.

“You’ll have the coordinates shortly.”

Grace’s mouth curved with a grim smile, and she hung up.

Meanwhile, in his office at Vought Tower, Stan sighed and turned to his Chief of Security, Jon.

“Should we send them the comprehensive list of Soldier Boy’s safe houses?” he asked.

“No. Just the one in Colombia,” Stan said. “But Jonathan, it is time for our contingency plan.”

Jon met Stan’s gaze with a nod.

“I’ll give the order.”

AN: 😬 Welp, things are going to start getting bumpy from here lol.

Next Time:

His frown deepened the moment he saw you, which you didn’t quite understand.

“Ben,” you said, even though it was an effort to do so. Every breath was like a hot knife cutting deeper into your side.

Your eyes closed at the pain, and at tears that burned down your cheeks. It also cut through the brain fog enough for you to realize this was bad.

It was very bad.

Keep Reading: PART 9

Soldier Boy Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List:

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@secretdreamlandmentality @kristophalis @wonderland2022 @waters-2567 @emily-winchester @shelh93 @sl33pylilbunny @spoonmynoodle @chernayawidow @buckybarnes-1917 @asgardprincess97 @sometimes-i-sing @itsyellow @karnellius @kimberleymjw @is-this-a-febreze-commercial @iamsapphine @sanscas @se-fucking-hun @lassie-bird @jessjad @yepimthatperson @fromcaintodean @stoneyggirl2 @spnfamily-j2 @redqueenoffalconcrest

#something in the way #soldier boy #the boys #soldier boy/ben #soldier boy x female reader #soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #the boys season 3 #soldier boy/ben x reader #the boys au #enemies to lovers #frenemies to lovers #private investigator!reader #the boys amazon #soldier boy fic #soldier boy smut #break me down #Part 8 #zepskies writes

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greenapplebling · 17 days

Text

*talking about fictional crushes part 2*

Cater, smugly: I can't help but notice that you guys keep mentioning redheads. I can't help but notice~

Ace: Listen, I didn't realize before but I'm looking at my list-

Kalim: Cater, they said smart and redheaded

Cater: *snorts* Damn, Kalim...

***

Ace: Did you guys watch Ben 10?

Trey: Gwen?

Ace: Yeah! Again, smart, redhead, can kick my ass-

Cater: Wow, masochist much?

Ace: I like them feisty, man. I love someone that hates me...

Everyone: ...

Cater: Riddle-

Ace: I'ma stop you right there

Ace: *coughing* Anyway, like Gwen, I usually like the smart ones

Kalim: Is it bc they balance you out?

Ace: Coming from the airhead?!!

Jamil: The pot calling the kettle black?

Ace: A dumb bitch calling another dumb bitch dumb bitch?!

Trey: The fire is coming from inside the house...

Kalim: So mean...

***

Trey: Wait- Kalim, are you into goth boys?

Kalim, panicking: Nonono, listen-

Cater: You've been making fun of him for liking big tiddy goth gfs and now he's getting back at you

Kalim: LISTEN, listen! I'm not into goth boys, I'm actually into a very specific hairstyle... Okay, like, bangs? Bangs, bangs, bangs make me feel some sort of way...

Cater: *nods* That feels on brand with you

Kalim: ??

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pasta-in-the-pudding · 3 months

Note

Jane the Killer,Ben Drowned,Homicidal Liu and Eyeless Jack with Filipina!Proxy!S/O Who Teach Them How to Speak Tagalog? also I Lived in Philippines(so Yeah But Don't Tell Anyone about my Country)

I love getting to write for Liu he's so underrated :(

Also, I am not from the Philippines nor do I know anyone who is so I'm gonna be basing this off of some light research so if I get anything wrong, let me know!

Thank you so much for requesting!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jane The Killer

Jane loves getting to learn about new cultures

She isn't super into learning new languages, but for you, she would love to!

When you start teaching her, she writes little notes in this vintage leather notebook she bought a while ago, she just didn't have a use for it

She also writes all her notes in sparkly purple ink <33

She's surprisingly a very fast learner, she is speaking simple sentences within two weeks

I think that once she is fluent enough in Tagalog, she would mainly use it to gossip about people without other's understanding

Or alternatively, she will whisper romantic things to you in Tagalog

Eventually she will build up enough confidence to send you special love letters when she is away on a long mission

All written in dark purple ink and sealed with a dark purple wax seal, of course

Not only is the sentiment sweet, but she knows that only you will be able to read it, making it even more special to you

In general, she uses her newfound Tagalog ability to fluster you and romance you like the hopeless romantic she is

Ben Drowned

Ben has never really had an interest in learning a new language, and is too lazy to put in that kind of effort

Yes, even for you, as sad as that sounds

BUT! He will ask you from time to time how to say certain things

"Hey babe, how do you say 'stupid cock sucking loser' In Tagalog?

That's kind of a joke

Kind of

Most of the time he will ask how to say things for you

For example

"How do you say 'can I kiss you' in Tagalog?"

He's so stupid, but its ok because he puts his little tiny bit of brain into being there for you

Homicidal Liu

Liu, being Columbian can speak a little bit of spanish himself

It's not much, because his mom only taught him a little bit, but he doesn't really mind

So when you come around, asking if it's alright to teach him your native language, he gets super excited!

A new way for you guys to bond and spend time together? And he gets to learn a new language while doing it? Hell yeah!

He is very enthusiastic about the whole thing

Once he gets enough to put simple sentences together, he tries out saying things in Tagalog just to surprise you

To which you get excited, even if he gets it a little wrong, because you know he's trying

And seeing you get excited gives him the motivation to keep learning the language

He eventually, like Jane, uses this to whisper sweet nothings into your ear that only you would be able to understand

He uses this new pond of knowledge mostly for romantic purposes tbh

He just loves you so much !!

Eyeless Jack

Jack, being the nerd he is, is always down to learn something new

He sat down and learned French once just because he could

He is very rusty now, but if he wanted to order a salad then he totally could

While you are teaching him, he barely talks

All you hear from his end is a bunch of scribbling in a notebook as he writes down every word you say

He also goes out and buys a bunch of books either on or in Tagalog, that way he can study more when you are sleeping, and so he can try out some of the words he's learned in an actual real world experience

Once learning about the language, this puts him down a rabbit hole

He then learns about the history of Tagalog, history of the Philippines, culture and traditions, folktale, food, etc

Which comes as a shock to you when he suddenly asks for you to make Lumpia, or if you can't make it, if you can go out together and get some

He insists that if you go to a resturaunt, that it be one that is actual authentic Philippine resturaunt that way he isn't getting some watered down version of traditional foods

He must know everything about everything

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the-conversation-pod · 7 months

Text

In Your Lavender: The Wedding Plan Episode

AND WE'RE BACK!

We originally planned to discuss Wedding Plan alongside a few other shows but abandoned that quickly when we realized we both had a lot to say about this show. Come join us as we discuss whether MAME has shown growth, what it means that the lavender marriage term has existed for over 130 years, the importance of lesbians in this story, and the fundamental nature of the closet.

If you've been missing how heated Ben gets, now's your chance!

Timestamps

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

01:16 - Intro 03:00 - Wedding Plan and MAME's Previous Crimes 15:18 - Realities of the Closet and Fandom Misunderstanding of the Show 29:23 - Things We Love About Wedding Plan and Final Ratings 37:26 - And Another Thing! The Wedding Plan Special

The Conversation Transcripts!

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

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

01:16 - Intro

NiNi

Welcome, welcome. [sighs] Go ahead.

Ben

Oh no, it's fine, you said welcome, I'm not going to do it this time. They won't get it for the Wedding Plan episode.

NiNi

[laughs] All right. Welcome, welcome to the—

Ben

I'm just kidding! And we're back!

[both laugh]

NiNi

Welcome! to the episode that was supposed to be a secret admirers episode, but instead is now the Wedding Plan episode, because everything else was a bit crap. We wanted to talk about this because we could not believe that this came fully formed from the head of MAME, of all the creatives. We were shocked, I think, but…the fandom was also kind of shocked, and we'll delve a little bit into how that played out when we get into the segment but, when I looked at the trailer I was like, ‘mm, okay, this could be cute.’ Did not expect to be…devastated, emotionally [laughs] at certain points.

Ben

I don't really think I watched the trailer properly. I went in a little bit hostile, because MAME’s got a whole thing for boundary crossing. And I was worried going in that this show was just going to be about some rich guy punking around his wedding planner, and then like, cheating on his wife. And that's not the show we got at all.

NiNi

Let’s dive into it so you can hear what we had to say!

03:00 - Wedding Plan and MAME’s previous crimes

NiNi

We are talking all things Wedding Plan. Now Ben, you and I had agreed sometime back that no matter what happened we were never going to talk about a MAME show on the podcast. And here we are [laughs] talking about a MAME show! And there's a really good reason for that.

Let's start by talking about what Wedding Plan is about. Ben, do the honors.

Ben

Wedding Plan is a story about a wedding planner named Namnuea, who is the ace at his event planning company, and a fan of McDonald's, who very much sponsored this show. He is tasked with planning the wedding for a very attractive man and his soon-to-be wife. Complications ensue immediately, because their wedding is coming up in three months and these two have no idea what they want to do for their wedding, and only the groom is the one making the choices.

We can tell very quickly that the groom, Sailom, is flirting with Namnuea; Namnuea is not stupid and picks up on this. The attraction between them is very mutual, but the complications around him being a client and a groom frustrate Namnuea. The reveals that eventually come out make this show to be way more than just a closet case trying to hit on his wedding planner.

NiNi

Reveal the reveals, because I feel like it's impossible to talk about this show in any meaningful way without knowing what the twist is.

Ben

Right! So Sailom and Yiwa, his bride, are in a lavender wedding. So for well over one hundred and forty years, we've had a term to describe queer people choosing to present themselves as heterosexually entwined for mutual benefit and safety. In this case, Sailom and Yiwa hail from fairly wealthy families that are extremely restrictive. The two of them recognized their own queerness at a very young age, and understood that they needed to hide that information. While on a trip in Europe the two of them recognized the queerness in each other when they both had a strong emotional reaction to seeing two women publicly kiss. And then became each other's best fucking friends for life, and decided to protect each other. Yiwa ends up developing a very meaningful romance with a woman named Marine, and she convinces Sailom to marry her so that they can both get out from under their families. They have a long-term plan to divorce.

So when Sailom is flirting with Namnuea, Yiwa is 100% aware of it, and extremely supportive of it, because she doesn't want her friend, who she treats like a brother, to be lonely all the time.

NiNi

That basically sums it up in terms of the mechanics of the plot. But guys, the reason that we're here talking about a MAME show, is, this hit me right in the fucking throat, man. It was so real, in a way that I've never gotten from a MAME show. It felt like MAME almost apologizing to BL for some of the shit that she's done? It felt like MAME trying to gain some understanding and learn some shit, and show that she had learned some shit?

Ben

Just so that we get a bunch of stuff out on the table for listeners: what are some things that MAME has done that you think she should apologize for? [laughs]

NiNi

Ah, [laughs] where do I even begin? MAME work tends to lean very heavily into…traumatizing already traumatized people? I have mixed feelings about a lot of MAME’s work. There are sometimes I'm just like, oh fuck you. And then there's sometimes where they're like, I see where you're trying to go with this but you didn't have the skill. And then there are times I'm just like, ma’am, get the hell out. Something like this that I don't have any mixed feelings about, I just feel strongly positive about it…it's never happened to me before with her work, not ever. And it made me recalibrate in my head—a little bit, because it's still only one show—maybe where I should place MAME as a creative.

Ben

I have a list.

[both laugh]

NiNi

Go on ahead! Read!

Ben

Let's start with Love By Chance. There are four goddamn couples in Love By Chance. Only one couple is remotely stable! We really only talk about Ae and Pete, because we do not need to talk about the other three. MAME loves to question the line between crossing boundaries and romance. There’s Tin and Can, who were the focus of Love By Chance 2—

NiNi

Which I did not watch.

Ben

Then there's Kengkla and Techno, and Kengkla is paying Techno's brother for information on him to eventually date rape him—I mean, that happened in Love By Chance! Then there's Tum and Tar, who are brothers, and Tar was a victim of horrendous acts by a character from TharnType. Moving on to TharnType, a show that I will not watch, for multiple reasons, some of them fandom related that we are not going to get into in this podcast. But the idea that Tharn is going to teach Type that he's actually into men without his consent? Yikes. I don't care how it ends up resolving. The wall is real fucking high for me on that one.

Ben

Didn't they have a spinoff with the other guys from Don't Say No? I'm not talking about that. Then we get to Love in the Air, which I mostly enjoyed, but why do both of the ukes in that show have to get kidnapped in their final episodes? [laughs] Why? It's so unnecessary! Rain and Sky were straight up kidnapped as the final complication of their show. It's insane.

NiNi

I did not watch Love in the Air. So every time you say that I'm just like, ‘that's a thing that actually happened?’

Ben

So this is the difference with Wedding Plan. Wedding Plan is so straightforward. There is no major complication to Wedding Plan. Everything that happens in this show flows naturally from the base conceit that two people involved in a lavender wedding are dealing with some difficulties and frustrations as that approaches, and then make logical choices for their characters, in response to everything that's going on.

And it kind of surprised me how much I ended up really loving this show. It's interesting for me that Yiwa and Marine’s relationship is the reason why the wedding is occurring. I've never really cared about heterosexual weddings in a lot of these shows and stories that I watch, but I feel so much about the way Lom and Yiwa care about each other and protect each other. Lom is agreeing to this sham wedding that's going to eventually lead to a bunch of complications in his life, because he's trying to protect his friend.

Normally in a story like this, there'd be all this tension about the groom struggling with his sexual identity, and what he wants for himself, and the girl's going to get hurt along the way—‘he feels loyal to the girl, we can't just do her like that!’ In this show, Lom is withholding information about the specifics about his relationship with Yiwa from Namnuea because he's protecting her. The crux of the romantic drama of this show was about a gay man in the closet protecting a gay woman in the closet.

NiNi

Yiwa and Marine's relationship is the key to the whole story, but the relationship between Yiwa and Sailom is the core relationship. The fact that they're doing this for each other, the fact that they care about each other so deeply, the fact that they basically decided long ago that they were the people who mattered to each other…and then as people come into their lives who are maybe somebody they might be interested in building a life with, it becomes a decision for everybody as to whether this person gets let in. I would have loved to see how it went when Yiwa decided that she wanted to be with Marine. I understand that's not the point of this particular story, but I would have been fascinated to see how that played out.

By the time we join the story Marine’s on the inside. She's 100% bought in. Marine has made the decision to be in the closet with Yiwa, which is sad in one way, but it's so freeing for them in another, because of what Sailom has done for them. They can be happy. And they are happy! They're happy and they're in love, and they're part of this family of the two of them and Sailom. It made me smile just watching them be with each other as a family unit. And then Lom meeting Nuea. When you're going to bring somebody into a secret like that, you have to be 100% sure. And not just you, everybody has to be on board with it. [laughs] It's not polyamorous, but it's—polyamoresque [laughs] I guess is the best way to describe it. Everybody has to be on board with what's happening. It's not just a question of ‘do I like this person?’ It's a question of ‘is this person a safe person?’ It's a question of ‘do the other people involved in this like this person?’ It's a question of ‘is this a person who I can share this secret with?’ but it's also, as it comes down to later in the story, a question of Lom knowing that he couldn't ask. He couldn't ask Nuea to be a part of the secret. He could just tell Nuea what was happening, and he could just hope and pray—and I don't even think that he dared to hope. And I think that's what the crying was about when Nuea decided that he was going to become part of the family? Lom broke down when Nuea said to him, ‘I'm going to help you keep your secret.’ Because he knew he couldn't ask it of him. And the fact that he freely offered it just brought Lom to tears.

15:18 - Realities of the closet and fandom misunderstanding the show

NiNi

This show is amazing. The show is emotionally sound, the show is beautiful, and I got so mad [laughs] watching this show get misunderstood. And if I was mad, Ben was incandescent. [laughs]

Ben, you take the floor and tell ‘em why you mad, son.

Ben

I'm going to talk about the closet for a little bit. It felt like a lot of the people who are reacting to this show have not been in the closet. I was in the closet for 11 years. Your brain does not work in the same way on the inside, and I'm going to say frankly to anybody who thought Lom should have told Namnuea a lot sooner than he did? When you've been in the closet for 13 years, you do not tell someone you have a crush on, in two months of knowing them. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. The reason they're in the closet is because there will be severe and painful consequences for failing to maintain a heteronormative status quo.

The big thing that separates Lom from Namnuea is, Namnuea is out. The truth about who Namnuea is cannot harm him. Namnuea develops feelings for Lom, and tells his boss. And she says, ‘there's nothing wrong with you having a crush on the guy, like he's hot. You know what the professional boundaries are though, do you need me to step in and take care of this for you?’ and Namnuea said no. When Namnuea fell for Lom, before they hooked up, he called his mom and said, ‘mom I think I fucked up.’ And she's like, ‘sometimes we fuck up baby boy, come home if you need me.’ And after he hooked up with Lom that's what he did! He went home, and he told his mom flat out: ‘the thing I told you about? Yeah I think I went too far.’ And she held him, and let him be a mess about it, because she understood that he already knew that he put himself in a really untenable situation, and she didn't pile on. They protected him. Namnuea can be honest about who he is, and whenever he tells the people who matter to him about something that happened, they close ranks around him and protect him. At the point at which Lom is trying to chase after Namnuea, every woman in his life pulled out their claws and was ready to slit that man's throat. They were all ready to throw hands with this man!

But when you're in the closet, your brain doesn't work right. You are under constant surveillance to maintain the heteronormative veneer over your life. The show does not make this hypothetical. Their friends and family are snapping pictures of them in public, and questioning every relationship they have with someone other than Lom and Yiwa. Lom is sitting at the table with Marine—Yiwa stepped away for a work call, and someone’s snapping a photo like, ‘why is Lom on a date with this other girl? She's trying to steal Lom from your daughter.’ Or ‘I saw Yiwa hanging out with her best friend, are they gay? I took some pictures and now I'm telling your mom.’ When you look at the reason why these two are so vigilant about being in the closet, that's literally what they're experiencing! It's super heavy-handed in this show, but it is exactly the kind of shit that I lived through. Being in the closet because you know that there are consequences and there are dangers breeds hypervigilance.

And I'm going to say it really plainly: all of the really negative takes I saw about Lom that were really unsympathetic to what this man went through? Made me, as a 30-something year old gay man who survived being closeted, really extremely uncomfortable. And I really need you to reckon with whatever you were going through that made you turn on a closeted gay man, and view him as the evil aggressor party in this particular relationship. Because goddamn!

The reason why he chose Namnuea to be his wedding planner was because he had a crush on him! And when you're in the closet you need plausible deniability. Lom is toeing the line. He can hang out with Namnuea and flirt with him, because he's talking to his wedding planner. Nobody's going to question him being around a gay man, because he's his wedding planner! And that's what the homos do, is they plan events for the rest of us! Because they're very good at it. The reason why he's being an irritating client is because he wants Namnuea to talk to him more. If he's a good client, Namnuea’s not gonna talk to him! Because Namnuea’s professional, and busy.

And Lom admits it. He says in episode…6 I believe, because I just rewatched again, that hiring Namnuea was just, in his mind, a little bit of fun before he got married. He would flirt with the guy that he had a crush on, even if it's a little fucked up to do that, and have a little fun before his wedding. He was not expecting to fall in love with Namnuea. But he's got a competency kink! And Namnuea is so good at his job. And he likes his job! He likes seeing people happy at the things that he planned for them, and he takes care of people. Lom loves these things in Namnuea. This even played out in their sex. He was happy that Namnuea was not a virgin. Very tasteful, sir.

NiNi

It being MAME, I will confess, that up until maybe somewhere around the beginning to middle of episode 4? I wasn't sure where they were going with this.

Ben

Let me tell you, I was waiting for her to do some convoluted bullshit as of episode 7. [laughs] They're like, ‘the bride’s run off!’ and I'm like, there's really only one way this should play out. Closeted people make plans. Yiwa is also not stupid. There’s this moment in episode 6—and this is again intentional, the editing on this show is actually really crisp. We get the really poignant scene on the bridge, where Lom talks about the knowing, and Namnuea’s like, ‘we need to fuck right now.’ And then, if you have access to iQiYi, they did! And then we get the scene where Namnuea agrees to be in the relationship, and all that that means.

The very next scene is Yiwa’s mom showing up at Marine's apartment to accost her and slap her. Which is immediately followed by Yiwa running back to the condo, and the way she enters that apartment? She genuinely thought that Marine might have left her. For as happy as they seem, Yiwa never underestimates or undervalues the stress that she's putting Marine under. When she enters the room and Marine hasn't run away, but is just laying in bed, clearly spent from all of this? That's the moment that breaks Yiwa. And then we flash forward three weeks to the wedding, and she's run off with Marine and leaves a note.

Lom knows her! He was not phased by this at all, when—after he's done putting on his jilted groom act, he's laughing. He's like, ‘I know what that cheeky girl did, I can't believe she did this without telling me. Look at this stupid note! I can read between the lines.’ [laughs] And then they call her, and she's like, ‘I knew you would understand my note. That's my boy, don't fuck this up! I'll take this on for you.’ Yiwa takes on the social pariah role here, of being the lesbian who ran away the day of the wedding, leaving Lom at the altar, ‘how dare she?’

The power here is that Yiwa doesn't give a fuck anymore. That's the whole thing about heteronormative shame: it only matters where you can exert that influence over people. Yiwa and Marine said, we cannot exist the way we want to, so we are leaving and going somewhere else. That is a choice a lot of us choose to make: to leave our home communities, to go build community with other people elsewhere. And then she gives Lom the ability to spin that, to soft launch his relationship with Nuea. Because they don't come out as a couple for like six months after that. They put on the act of Lom being a drunken mess for months—he's fine. He's just spraying alcohol on himself and then going to work with his hair unkempt.

NiNi

Episode 7’s so delightful. But anyway, continue.

Ben

And he's just hanging out with Nuea, and he just tells people, ‘yeah, we bonded over the wedding stuff because we had a lot of work to do really quickly for the wedding, and you know he felt sympathy for me afterwards. And he took care of me at a really difficult time, and I feel comfortable with him. I loved Yiwa, she was the only woman I was ever willing to marry.’

Not a lie! But also not the exact truth.

NiNi

I loved the big lie at the end, because it was basically Lom, Yiwa, and everybody in the situation putting two giant middle fingers up at their society, and the people around them. Aside from the people who, as you rightly said, would have protected them anyway. So all the women in Nuea’s life, and the people who he works with at the wedding planning company—basically the people who earned the right to know the truth know the truth. And everybody else gets two giant fucking middle fingers and the big lie.

Ben

It's a little bit like the ending with Bad Buddy, about them breaking up publicly but still being together? It's the same question: who is allowed to know? Something for you to think about, if you didn't get this show and you hated Lom and all this sort of stuff—ask yourself if the queer people in your life trust you. Would you be brought in? Would you be trusted with this information? Lom's mother realizes along the way what was going on the whole time, because she's not stupid. And she says quite plainly—because Lom has not properly come out to her yet, he's been hinting at it, he's like, I feel comfortable with him—and she says, ‘I'm still doing what I need to do to process this, but just promise me you won't leave.’

What she recognized is that she was playing a zero sum game that she could lose. That her son could make the same choice as Yiwa. She recognized that he and Yiwa were likely withholding important information about themselves, from their parents, for a really long time. And that can be really unsettling. It's something I went through in my family when I started coming out, that people were very put off by how I just…hid hugely important portions of my life from them, for most of my life. And she recognized that if she pushed too hard, she would get nothing.

NiNi

It really is the Bad Buddy conundrum, because this is where their parents are at the end, where they know, but if they're not willing to fully be on board? Then they don't get to fully know. And they don't get to be fully involved. Lom's mom knows, but until and unless she's willing to wholeheartedly accept Nuea there will always be now, at this point, a barrier between her and her son. All she can ask of him is that he doesn't leave. But beyond that, she doesn't get to ask anything of him, until and unless she is ready to fully accept every part of who he is. I can't believe that came from MAME's pen.

29:23 - Things we love about Wedding Plan and final ratings

Ben

Something else I really love—I really love the community around Nuea, particularly his family. I love when he goes back to Chiang Mai, and he sees that his little cousin is also out and proud now and has a hot boyfriend. And I love that Sun, Ryu’s boyfriend, is immediately engaged in in-law solidarity with Sailom. Nuea’s family hates him, and he's like, ‘valid.’ Like, ‘If you want to stay here, you got to work.’ ‘Okay.’ And he just works. Nuea's family is protecting Nuea from someone who they think doesn't respect him. Everything mean that they're doing to Sailom is because they are protecting Nuea, and it's really not that much, what they're asking. They're basically just giving him a difficult time, until Nuea decides what to do with him. But Sun is helping him the whole time, he's like, ‘this family's very difficult, I got you bro.’ And that pairs really well with the phone call that Nuea has with Yiwa and Marine, where Yiwa is like, ‘Lom and I do love each other. That is my ride or die: it's been me and him for a long time. I'm not going to pretend that he is not the most important man in my life, but he's not who I'm building my future with.’

And I love that for Yiwa and Sailom, it is love between them. The heteros just misread it. They don't have to fake an admiration for each other. I love that Marine talks to Nuea, and talks about the sincerity of their feelings, and how she's okay, at this point. Because she's the only person that Nuea can really accept any sort of perspective from, and I'm really glad that they had that moment and that was just them.

NiNi

I love that in that moment she doesn't try to convince him of anything. She just says, ‘I can't tell you what to do. This is a crazy situation: here's what I accepted about this, here's why I accepted it. These people are good people.’

Ben

Right! She says their love is sincere.

NiNi

‘Yeah, but whatever decision you make I completely get, because I made my choice. You're gonna have to make your own choice as well.’ She spoke to Nuea very candidly, and I truly appreciated that, and I think that Nuea definitely appreciated that too.

Ben

I love the reveal about Sailom's hands always being cold because he was nervous.

NiNi

Ehhhh [laughs] It was one of those romance things that I'm just like ‘eh!’ about, but it was adorable. It was.

Ben

I really like Pak in this role. A lot of the times when MAME writes her ukes, they tend to be a little bit on the demure side, and they usually need a stern counterbalancing presence for them? I really like that Nuea did not need that at all. I also liked how queer Namnuea felt. He very much feels like a gay boy.

NiNi

I love stories about love and family, and this is one of the ultimate love and family stories. For me, and I can't believe I'm saying this, when it comes to love and family, it's going maybe a half step behind Moonlight Chicken this year for me? I can't believe that just came out of my mouth about a MAME show. But that's really truly how I feel about it. For me, it was a 10.

Ben

I ended up giving this show a 9.5. It's one of the ones that's going to linger with me for a while, and I think a big part of it was just how much everyone else really hated the show. I think we went into this show with a lot of MAME blinders on—I knowingly went into the show hostile. I don't really like a lot of what MAME does. But, respectfully, watching a MAME show—the writer famous for writing romances about boundary crossing—and being mad that her characters are crossing boundaries? Is a little bit disingenuous of a place to write your criticism from. That's her shtick.

Nuea crosses those boundaries too! Nuea had agency, and I really resent the way a lot of the takes damsel him and make him seem powerless. He's not! He is the one with all the power here. It's why Sailom is pouring everything he can into, every time he says ‘I like you, Nuea.’ Sailom is such a sap, and y'all really hated that man. And I really need y'all to reckon with that. Like if you listened to us and you hated Sailom, please, examine your life. [laughs]

NiNi

I have a smidge of sympathy up until episode 4, for anybody who struggled a little bit with Sailom. But only up until episode 4. Because somewhere to the beginning, middle of episode 4, it was very clear what they were driving towards? And then at the end of episode 4 when Sailom and Nuea hook up for the first time, I said to myself, ‘Okay. I see where this is going.’ And then when they get to Chiang Mai, and Sailom finally tells Nuea what happens, because Marine and Yiwa have given their okay, and Nuea said, ‘Duh. Clearly that's what's going on, I already knew that.’ Nuea wasn't fooled by Sailom.

Ben

No, Nuea basically guessed 90% of it accurately. The only thing he didn't really guess, was that they were both in on it. Let me say this as well while we're here: in terms of queer solidarity, Namnuea never once outed Yiwa when he caught her out with Marine. He did not mention that once. Not at all. He ain't tell none of his hoes. He ain’t tell none of his people. He caught those two out, was like ‘oh shit, is my gaydar broken?’ And then he didn't say shit about that. He didn't even hold that up in his whole thing with Sailom. And I respect the fuck out of that man for that, because that’s not his thing to say.

NiNi

The show is amazing.

Ben

It really is.

NiNi

It's, for me, an easy cruise into some type of VIIB Award at the end of the year.

Ben

It's gonna be a difficult year for us, when we're sorting out acknowledging the incredible work that's been done, but this is one of them.

NiNi

Delightful, emotional, deeply gratifying, deeply satisfying. Ben gave this a 9.5, I gave it a 10, let's call it a 9.75.

Ben

It can get a 10 from The Conversation.

NiNi

You heard it here first, folks: Ben says it can get a 10 from The Conversation. MAME gets a 10 from us, and nobody is more surprised than us—

Ben

It’s true.

NiNi

—that that is a thing that happened [laughs] on this show.

Ben

I feel so intense about this show. I get so mad about the discourse around Sailom. He's one of those characters, like, if you don't like him? I don't like you. Fuck off.

[both laugh]

NiNi

And that’s…a word!

37:26 - And another thing! The Wedding Plan special

Ben

And we're back! I have so much more to say, I am not through. [laughs]

NiNi

So before we get into Ben's ‘and another thing!...’ Let's talk a little bit about the Wedding Plan special, because there was a special episode, that cost $8.

Ben

[laughs] I paid $7 for my rental.

NiNi

However much it costs, it costs money. Which I'm slightly salty about because MAME had McDonald's money on this, she didn't need ours.

Ben

In her defense, she has done this on literally every show. Except for Love by Chance…and Don't Say No.

NiNi

McDonald's money. That's all I'm going to say.

Ben

And she cashed in! Good for her.

NiNi

[laughs] Anyway, so let's talk a little bit about the Wedding Plan special. Ben, tell the people what it was about.

Ben

The show's fucking called Wedding Plan. It was the fucking wedding, guys, let’s—we're not going to beat around the fucking bush on this one. It was the wedding for the gays! It was really beautiful. The basic premise is, the guys have been dating properly for what feels like a year, year and a half at this point. They're taking a trip to go back to see Namnuea's family. Before they leave, they have one final check-in with Lom's mom, where she meets Nuea properly as Lom's boyfriend. She doesn't take it very well, but Sailom does not give a shit.

Meanwhile Sailom is working with Wiwa Square to organize a secret wedding for Namnuea. Hilariously, Im still does not like Sailom, and I thought that was an excellent character detail. So they go and travel back to the north, and Sailom has Nuea taking him around—I think they were in Chiang Mai?—to check out sites and locations while everyone else has moved to Namnuea's house to set up for this wedding that Namnuea doesn't know about. Lom proposes to him, they end up having the wedding the next day. It's this incredibly beautiful ceremony, it’s very traditional Thai, I believe. There's more I want to say about some of the stuff that happened at the wedding, but that's the basic premise: Lom organizes a wedding for Namnuea, and his friends plan it in secret. Which I actually think is lovely for a wedding planner, that he didn't have to plan his own wedding.

NiNi

That's the crux of it. You guys know, I am not the one the two or the three for these weddings. I believe in marriage. I believe in the importance of marriage. I am generally not a fan of the weddings. But, this one? It was beautiful, I do have to say. It was a beautiful wedding, everything around the wedding was beautiful. When I was talking about Wedding Plan in the main part of the show, I was talking about how much I love love and family. And that was what the wedding episode was about, it was love and family. Yiwa and Marine were there at the wedding, being Sailom's family, because while his mom is starting to come around to Nuea, she's still not there yet. So she doesn't get to be a part of this. So Yiwa and Marine are his family. They show up for him. They are hosting on his behalf. It's beautiful. It's just so beautiful.

Ben

I did not praise Pakpai enough in our recording; Pakpai’s reaction, as Nuea, to Yiwa appearing before him, for this wedding that he had just found out about? Is one of the most perfect expressions I’ve seen all year.

NiNi

Because he hasn't seen them since they left for England.

Ben

I am a gay boy who believes in community. And believes in gay people taking care of each other. And that means that I have worked in solidarity with lesbians. And it is such a beautiful thing for me, in this year of really good shows, to see two lesbians in a critical role in the lives of gay men. There's something so special about the unconditional, ride or die love between Yiwa and Lom, and how that extends to Marine and Nuea, and creates this very special little family unit. I cannot overstate how important it is to me that Nuea almost cried because he was overwhelmed with emotion getting to see Yiwa in front of him again, and for a wedding that he had just found out about. That was his first reaction: awe, and then he burst into tears because he loved her so much and had missed her for that long. That is so beautiful!

As for the other things in the special…The ceremony itself is really beautiful. There's a lot of really great moments in there. There's this very special moment between Namnuea and Im, where she comes to pay respects, and he takes her hand, and he says ‘I love you’ in this way that conveys a very special history between the two of them? That sent me over the edge and I burst into tears right away. [laughs] I do not know what those two have been through together, but that ‘I love you’ was one of the most effective I love yous I have ever experienced in this genre, and it was not between romantic leads at all.

NiNi

We always go up for the non-romantic I love yous in BL. lt's the Jim and Li Ming thing all over again. Namnuea’s co-workers being there for him at his wedding, the way that they put it together for him, the way that Marine and Yiwa stepped in to be Lom's family, the way Nuea’s actual family stepped in as well. There's a gorgeous scene, after the actual wedding ceremony, where they do—I suppose this is another traditional part of a Thai wedding, which is a bedding?—where Nuea's parents are with them in the room, and talking to them about love and commitment and marriage, and that's the part that put me into tears.

Ben

It was really funny, because like we had not really seen any of the dads in the show. Moms were a big deal in the show. Nuea’s dad is just this sweet man! It was overwhelming for me, how just beautifully sweet this man was, and the way he was pouring love out to Sailom, because he's like, ‘I never thought Nuea would get to have this.’ Nuea, the wedding planner, who spends so much of his time trying to make sure other people's dreams come true? I was floored by his dad just being there: ‘I just wanted my son to be happy, and I'm so thankful that you were able to do that for him.’ And I was like, ‘I don't know who you are sir, but good job!’

NiNi

It was really really gorgeous, and just so many other things…also the stuff that's happening between Sailom and Nuea. The way that Sailom proposes, and the way that Nuea knew it was coming but he still got surprised by the way that it happened? That was gorgeous. And then again, after the wedding and after the bedding, when it's just the two of them in the room, and Nuea does the thing where he pays respect to his husband? And says that that's something that he always wanted to do? The way that these two take marriage so seriously, and especially the way that Nuea feels about it. Because like I said, Nuea is a wedding planner; he sees weddings every day. He sees these rituals and ceremonies and everything every day. And I can just imagine him sitting thinking to himself, ‘one day, one day, and this is something that I want to do with my husband, and this is something that I want to do with my husband’—I can just imagine that. And then meeting Sailom and falling in love with Sailom and actually getting to marry Sailom, and being able to do that, and the way that he is so emotional about that. Mmh! Got me right in the feels.

The reason that I tend not to like weddings is because a lot of the time I find them so artificial, so stage managed and overproduced. I'm talking about this not just in terms of weddings in fiction, but weddings in real life. So, watching something so sincere, something so genuine, something so personal… t’s a production, yes, all weddings are, but it was real! Everything about it was so real, it was so emotional, it was so…[sigh] it was great. It was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I cried more than once watching the special. It just added to the joy of discovering Wedding Plan and this whole little universe and these characters.

Ben

There was a lot of little stuff happening around that. Like, one of the things that I think MAME is actually pretty good at, is really caring about her supporting cast in a useful way? She's very good about understanding why that character is there. There's Yiwa and Marine getting to have a private moment, being a little bit sad that they didn't get to have this, a Thai wedding with the people who love them around them. And I like that they got to have, like a quiet bitter moment about that. And I like that they didn't put that on Lom and Nuea, it's not something that they need to be consoled about, it's just one of those things that hurts about being queer sometimes, and that's part of the choice they made. They did take on that hurt, to give the boys a chance to be together, but it still hurt, and I like that the show never forgot that. This show cared about its lesbians, they mattered to this story, they weren't there just to check off boxes to make sure that we covered all of our bases. They were still telling their story.

I love Sun and Ryu listening at their goddamn bedroom, and then having to be chased off. Great comedy. But also I loved it, I loved that there were younger gays excited about gays slightly older than them getting to have their moment together. It was such a special execution of that.

I genuinely like that the Wedding Plan special episode is treated as a special episode. I like where the show ends for itself. I like thinking about the wedding as a special epilogue for the story, and not necessarily as the actual finale of the story. I think it's better as epilogue content.

NiNi

I have to agree! So all in all, when it comes down to Wedding Plan, looking back at it now, I think we definitely stand by how we felt about it. I think that… I have, you know Ben has, gotten even more in love with it? And even more, I think, defensive and vocal about it, because it's good! It's just good. And I don't like people saying it's not! That's it for me.

Ben

This is the number 4 or 5 show of the year for me.

NiNi

Yeah, there you have it.

Ben

Currently it's behind—in no specific order because we're not at the VIIB Awards yet—Moonlight Chicken, My School President, La Pluie, and probably The Eighth Sense? It's that good!

I am in this genre for queer cinephile reasons. I am here to connect with people for gay reasons. I'm not in this for, like, taboo, or to see cute boys kiss each other because it's titillating in and of itself. I exist as a queer person, it informs my decisions on the regular, and it was such a relief to see characters that were not incidentally gay, so that we can imagine two idols bumpin’ uglies.

I really love Sailom and Namnuea so much. Sailom got updated to blorbo status so quickly. Every week I'll just send NiNi a gif of Sailom and be like, ‘they really hated this man!’

[both laugh]

NiNi

He's not even kidding, this literally happens.

Ben

[laughs] It’ll just, just be a great gif that somebody made of Sailom and I’ll be like, ‘they really hated this man!’

Something else I want to say quite plainly here, and I would like you, as listeners of the podcast to reckon with this—and I would really like to talk about this, so please talk to me on Tumblr about this: Part of why I think Wedding Plan did not hit for people, is that Namnuea doesn't look like a girl, and doesn't behave like a girl. He behaves like a kind of femme man, and he feels very gay, in a way that is distinctly masculine. Additionally, the show doesn't really conform to a seme-uke dynamic very well, because Namnuea does seme things—like I noticed in episode 2 that he does a kabedon on Sailom. And I know that bothered a lot of the people who are obsessed with loyalty to the tropes. Namnuea is so self-assured, and I don't necessarily think that that resonated for the people who are in this for BL reasons and for regular romance beats. And I wonder a lot if that was their big problem.

I would really like to have a secondary conversation with the folks who listen to us about this particular dynamic, because I do think it's worth us unpacking why people—as much shit that gets talked about MAME—refused to engage with the show. This is legitimately one of the top queer narratives of the year. And we snubbed this show. I have watched people talk shit about MAME and her writing for five fucking years, and when she writes a whole show that is basically the byproduct of all of our feedback, we snubbed it! When MAME returns to her roots, I don't want to hear none of y’all who snubbed Wedding Plan saying a goddamn thing about her.

NiNi

I'm so mad at you for saying when MAME returns to her roots. Like this was clearly a fluke.

Ben

She's gonna be like Jafar! She's going to be like, ‘let's see how snakelike I can be, bitches!’

NiNi

So you definitely are of the view that this is not a change for MAME, this is just a detour.

Ben

I don't know! I don't know, like I was not expecting Wedding Plan. This show has so much goddamn heart to it, and it was gay! In a real way!

NiNi

I think you need to start subscribing to my vibes-based scoring method.

Ben

What? Absolutely not!

[both laugh]

Nah, it's always about the recommends. Legitimately, it's a 10 recommend. Everyone needs to go fucking watch this show. This is essential viewing for this year. This show represents a fascinating growth point for MAME; because we've criticized her for five years and she made something that is one of the most wholesome gay things I have ever watched in the genre. And we snubbed it, and threw it away.

To the cast of Wedding Plan: you all did a fantastic job, and I hope you all had a really fun time together. I want to thank every single one of you for the work you all did, because you all collectively created one of the most compelling community support systems I've ever seen in queer TV, truly. Especially to all of the women who are on that cast. BL women get messed around a lot, and don't often get to do a lot of great stuff, and every single one of you did a fantastic job.

NiNi

That is going to wrap us up on the Wedding Plan episode. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Y’all better watch this fucking show. Peace.

[both laugh]

#podcast #lgbtq #wedding plan #wedding plan the series #thai bl #bl series #MAME #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 3 #fall #fall series

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