#its gonna take me a bit to recover from this one bois
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Alright, here we go
First and foremost I want to talk about what flying bark's animation has meant to me.
In a world where every day I see 2d animation being rejected for cheaper 3d and puppet animation at every turn, Monkie Kid's animation was the one of the first things that gave me hope for the future of 2D animation. I can't tell you how long I've been wanting a 2D animated show, growing up I wanted one so desperately, I craved good animation amongst the stiff 3D and flat storytelling, so when I got it, when Monkie Kid happened, I was so unbelievably happy. It was everything I wanted in a show, gorgeous animation, excellent voice actors, romance free and friendly to my desperate friendship-craving, romance-overstimulated brain and written in a way I enjoyed so much. I struggle to describe exactly how much I’ve adored everything this show has been up until this point. It truly is a masterpiece.
Monkie kid has kept me company during the lowest and roughest points in my life. I got to such a bad place mentally but Monkie Kid’s fast-paced, snappy, detailed, colourful bright animation brought light into my darkest mental times and not only helped me stay connected with people but kept me creating even when I wanted nothing more than to lay on the floor and never move again. I'm aware most of the flying bark team is active on the bird app and none of them are gonna see this most likely but I still just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for animating this show, thank you so much for giving it your all. Thank you so much for giving me something I’ve always wanted so perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for keeping me company at my lowest, thank you for sharing your joy of animation so I could catch some of those rays of sunlight and feel a little of that joy too. Thank you for your positivity and good vibes, thank you.
I know so many people have gotten inspiration from flying bark and I have to add myself to the infinite list. My art has improved so much thanks to their inspiration. My style has developed, I’ve had so much fun, I’ve written some of my favorite works ever based off of expressions that the characters make alone. My last amv I made because I was so grateful for the animation that we'd gotten up to that point. I wanted to showcase, to thank, to appreciate. I didn’t know it would be a goodbye. Words can't describe all that flying bark's animation and even their storyboards have done for me. When nothing could make me happy, monkie kid wormed its way into my brain and somehow kept me in one piece. I know that wouldn’t have been possible without the animation that left me at the edge of my seat, breathless and laughing over how incredible it really was every single time. Every new clip, every new episode I’d pause and rewatch again, I’d rewatch over and over, I’d take screenshots of every goofy background character, I’d screenshot every expression I could, I’d go through episodes frame-by-frame, literally one at a time for hours on end just so i could catch every detail, I’d open my eyes wider and wider to try and take in every bit I could in a way I’ve never been able to do before because there is nothing else out there like monkie kid. There was nothing as fun and as joyful as every single frame that flying bark gave us. And I am going to miss that so much.
The fact that season 4 was a sendoff is so heartbreaking to me, it's hard to describe how devastated I feel knowing something that kept hold of my hand when I was facing hard hard things in my life is suddenly gone. I don’t know how to ever express how important this show has been to me, it’s kept me going and helped me get to a place where I could breathe again. It’s connected me with some of the greatest people I know. It’s given me incredible experiences, introduced me to what animation could be and I can’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt having to say goodbye so suddenly.
I know this isn’t the end of Monkie Kid as a show. I know season 5 is still coming. And I also know Monkie Kid has lost a huge part of what made it unique and special, a huge part of its heart and soul. Without flying bark it feels like half the show is missing and although I hope I can still support the show, no one can deny the cavern-sized hole that is left by flying bark’s absence in it. The animation team has such an incredibly positive atmosphere around them that just absolutely radiates from the things they create. I am going to miss that so desperately in monkie kid. I’m going to support every other show flying bark works on, I’m still going to love their animation wherever it goes, but I am going to miss it in monkie kid like nothing else I’ve ever missed.
I do have some other thoughts regarding the new changes in monkie kid but I wanted to keep that separate from the actual farewell, so that’ll be it’s own post and I just want to end this by saying thanks for everything Flying Bark you’ve been a real one. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re already being missed so hard it hurts. Keep those good vibes and keep up what you’re doing. You all really are incredible and an inspiration to artists everywhere. We love this show because of the voice actors, because of the writers, because of the music but a great deal of people loved this show because of you. You’ve inspired a community of artists, you’ve inspired me. Thank you flying bark for everything you've given us, you gave it your all and I’m gonna carry the impact you left on me for the rest of my life.
LOVE YOU FLYING BARK. Here's to a bright future. Thanks for everything <3
#knox rambles#long post#monkie kid#flying bark#gods ima miss them#ive never cared about an animation studio so much in my LIFE#good people will do that to ya#face in hands bro#im a fundamentally different person because of these guys#ough#lego monkie kid#its gonna take me a bit to recover from this one bois
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nothing but a gentleman.
Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin x F!Reader
summary: jake is obsessed with you. you eat it up. you’re obsessed with his obsession. but also with him.
t/w: soft!jake, some cursing
"Get out of here, Bagman. You're giving me a headache."
The blonde aviator grabs at his chest. "God, I love it when you're mean to me." Those green eyes sparkle with mischief under the lights of the Hard Deck.
Jake 'Hangman' Seresin has been pining after you for months.
& you have been loving every second of it. Miramar's resident playboy has only had eyes for you. You haven't seen him spare a glance at any of the other ladies in the bar.
Believe me, they've been looking at him.
"Y/n, how long are you going to keep my boy at arm's length?" Coyote asks from the other side of the pool table. Jake saddles up next to him and feeds you the saddest pout he can muster.
"Yeah, y/n, how long?" Jake asks.
Your intention wasn't to drag this hard-to-get play out for so long. Truthfully, it's becoming hard not to give in to those strong arms. To not lean in when he invades your personal space, feeding you a smart ass comment.
Your shoulder comes up to your ear and falls back down. "Hard to say, Bagman."
"Let's play for it," he tells you. Jake saunters over to you, and leans against the pool table. Crossing his arms over his fit chest, he situates his mouth just outside your ear. "If I win, you've gotta give me a kiss, darlin'."
The way his hot breath falls across your ear causes goosebumps to appear down your arms. Jake notices, and a blonde brow raises.
"What are you? Twelve?" you antagonize.
"Oh, honey. I'm willing to try anything at this point."
"Rack 'em. Honey." You lightly shove him back, your hands reacting to the small second they were on his chest.
"If I win, you give it up," you send the man a sad look.
"Give what up?" he asks.
"All this pining'." Your hand gestures wildly around in the air.
For a moment, despair crosses over that handsome face. He recovers quickly. "Oh, I'm not worried."
Jake lets you break. Two stripes fall into the pocket. Jake comes up behind you before your next shot. His hand slides across your waist and he pulls you into his side.
Right as you pull back, Jake leans down. "Don't scratch."
The cueball follows your striped ball into the pocket.
"Damn," he murmurs. It takes a full 45 seconds to get your heart rate under control.
The jig is up once Jake get in control of the pool table. Not only is he the dagger squad's best dart player, he's got the best pool table on lock, too. There is no way he's going to take it easy on you.
Naturally, he doesn't.
"One more and Hangman gets a kiss," he smirks. He doesn't take his eyes off your as he pulls back and send the cue ball sailing.
The eight ball falls into it's intended pocket effortlessly. Followed right by the cue ball.
Shock falls across all your faces. Jake has never lost a game of pool. Ever.
Jake sets the cue stick down, and rounds the table. Standing toe-to-toe with you, he feeds you a delicious smirk.
"Darlin', I ain't gonna make you kiss me if you don't want to. Furthermore, I only want your kiss if its of your own volition." He tucks a strand of stray hair behind your ear.
Your eyes lock with his and the world stops. What a fucking gentleman.
Fisting the front of his shirt, you yank him down to your mouth. Jake relaxes into the kiss immediately and allows his hands to slide around your waist.
Jake takes control, changing the direction and deepening the kiss. Your hands move from his shirt to the nap of his neck, fingers knotting in his hair. His hair that’s gotten just a bit long.
Jake pulls back just a hair, his lips a breath away from yours. “Damn,” he mumbles, again.
“My own volition, huh?”
“I’m nothing if not a gentleman,” he winks. “A gentleman who is dying to kiss you again.”
You guide his lips back to yours.
“Kiss me, Hangman.”
master list.
a/n: been a little while since i wrote for ole jakey. i hope y'all like it!
#top gun maverick#top gun#top gun maverick fic#hangman fic#hangman imagine#hangman x reader#jake seresin x reader#jake seresin fic#jake seresin fanfiction#jake seresin x you#jake seresin
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the resentment leo would have with splinter post-krang. i genuinely think they would take a bit for them to recover and be comfortable around each other
why do i think that? here’s some reasons. this is gonna be a HELLA long analysis so be prepared. sit down, grab some popcorn, and let’s dive in
in the movie, after raph was taken, leo goes on a whole rant about how he got the key, he gets the answers, and he will get raph back. yes this is irrational and brash, but not in leo’s eyes. in his eyes, this is a foolproof plan that will work
splinter attempts to intervene, and tell him like it is. “it’s not your plan, you need to work with your team.” however, it comes out as a sharp sting to leo’s previous attitude
“My son, listen to your team. This is not about you.”
it’s meant to be sensible and wise, but to leo, it’s a jab at him. it’s a stab at his cockiness and self-centered attitude, and it reminds leo of why they’re even in this position in the first place. which he hates
most of all, it’s splinter saying it. it’s his father telling him that it’s not about him. because to leo, he’s always been last place to splinter’s affection, and it’s like splinter’s confirming it here
don’t believe me? here:
splinter talks to leo, and it seems that for a minute, he listens to his father’s words. that maybe he should really stop and listen. maybe he should stop and think of a plan, listen to his brothers’ input.
but the second splinter says it’s not about him? leo shuts down. he pulls away from splinter, and refuses to listen to him. and while splinter may be right, it was something leo never wanted to hear
it’s obvious that he has a somewhat testy relationship with his father, and splinter is trying to make up for it by giving leadership advice. but to leo? this is the guy who made him leader to seemingly mess with him, never bothered to give him attention or praise on his accomplishments, and never truly knew leo beyond his “acting as the best to save face” charade
which brings me to another reason. no, i do not think splinter was ever abusive or purposely neglectful to leo, or any of the boys for that matter. but its clear theres a bit of a rift between him and leo. i think that he kind of resents leo a bit (without meaning to) because he sees himself in him. he sees the irrational movie star who never thought ahead, and made too many mistakes to count
an example would be when leo got punched by lou jitsu two times. none of his brothers got punched, why just him? and sure it could be a running gag, but i find it also to be intentional
maybe deep down, splinter still resents leo for being so much like his irrational, unreasonable younger self. that every time he sees leo, he sees his stupid past self, and without meaning to, he at times hates leo because of it. and if he doesn’t hate him, he seems to resent him to some extent
splinter also has plainly stated that donnie was the funniest one to him, (s1ep 1, mystic mayhem) and outright laughed when leo asked if he was the favorite son (rottmnt wake-up alarms on youtube, timestamp 1:59) leo also staight-up said that he was splinter’s least favorite (s1ep 4b, down with the sickness)
so yeah, i can see the resentment leo may have for his father deep down. it could be pretty apparent post-krang, hidden behind his jokes and teases
now don’t get me wrong, they have their moments of bonding, and i do love to read little drabbles and fics where they hug and heal. however… realistically speaking, it would take a while for them to get to that stage of father-son bonding post-krang. with splinter naming him leader out of the blue, to the missing lou jitsu posters on the walls of leo’s room in the movie — and we’re definitely talking about that in a later post, trust — i would bet their relationship as father-son pre and post-movie would be extremely rocky.
another reasoning for this could be that splinter often underestimates and undermines leo’s abilities and accomplishments. far as i’ve seen, the most reaction splinter’s given to leo’s accomplishments is an eyebrow raise
for example, when outsmarting big mama, leo was genuinely proud of spending time w his dad and showing him his abilities. he genuinely thought they were working together. however, splinter didn’t say he was proud or anything, just complained he wished he’d brought donnie (s2ep 2, many unhappy returns)
“I knew I should have brought Purple.”
ouch. that mustve hurt a bit
and yes, i will admit, leo was being a bit of a little shit in this scene, and yes, he could’ve told splinter of the plan before starting to yap and blab to big mama about the plan he cooked up. however, the response splinter gives is not much better. essentially, he’s saying, “i don’t like this kid or his plan, so therefore i think i should’ve brought one of my favored children to solve the problem better.”
and before you go and tell me donnie could’ve outsmarted big mama the way leo did, think for a moment. leo fully admitted to manipulating and lying in an episode before
“I don’t lie, I just… change the truth.”
whereas donnie cannot tell a lie to save his life. i love him, but the guy is a shit liar. he has failed multiple times at it
“We are just typical normal humans.. who got lost in the middle of our normal… everyday human lives— nailed it.”
“Uh… nothing. Just having a typical, normal, mystic-free day.” “What? I said mystic-free.”
“Why aren’t you guys more upset?”
“Oh. This… hurts me. Uh… I’m very sad…?”
raph & mikey aren’t much better. mikey straight-up started sweating when he had to lie to splinter about piebald, and raph has so many different stinks/scents to him that it’d be easy for others to tell he was lying
also, mikey has doctor delicate touch. who does not know what lying or “don’t be blunt” means
and donnie’s really only being extremely straightforward with what he thinks or about what’s going on around him. so it makes no sense as to why splinter would want to bring donnie along to outsmart big mama, unless he genuinely doesn’t enjoy leo’s presence, which seems to be the case
now all of this is evidence to point towards a very unsteady father-son relationship with these two. yes, splinter seems to be a very lenient father, and i genuinely think he wants to be a good dad. however, oftentimes that leads to miscommunication and misread moments, empty promises, and overall neglecting behavior on his part, all without meaning to
so while he does try harder to be there for his sons later in the show, it’s pretty obvious that one brother — who thrived off any attention possible — probably stopped caring about that validation after all that he went through. splinter gives, but leo doesn’t take. he doesn’t bother to, because he thinks it’s either a prank of some kind, or because he just genuinely doesn’t care for his father’s input anymore.
(this was based on that one post about splinter & leo by @midwesternvibes, i just figure i revisit that bc i’m thinkin about it again)
#oh how i love this dynamic#dad who underestimates and often underappreciates (without meaning to) his son#vs son who just wanted to prove his worth to father and now has the attention of said father but refuses it#for obvious reasons#character analysis#rottmnt#tmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise leo#rottmnt leo#leonardo hamato#rise splinter#rottmnt splinter#splinter tmnt
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May I request the class 1A boys (if u write for multiple in the same fic) reacting to their gn! S/o (who’s normally insanely calm and patient) finally snapping and ends up nearly killing a villain? Like reader snaps during a fight against a villain or smth because the boys (seperate but yk) got hurt and stuff? Sorry if this doesn’t make much sense, I suck at explaining things 😭
hi! i didnt end up doing all the boys but I did the ones I think I would b able to write for best hehe, for future posts probably gonna limit it to 5 characters per post!
characters: Tenya Iida, Denki Kaminari, Eijiro Kirishima, Mezou Shoji, Shoto Todoroki, Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku Midoriya.
reader: Gn
summary: the very well known 1a student (reader) who is known for being calm and understanding almost fucking kills someone.
warnings: blood mentions, near death experience, swearing, injuries.
other details: 1A!reader, reader quirk not mentioned but they use their bare fists to beat the shit out of the villain, villain is not any specific one.
👓Tenya Iida👓
👓- Iida was fast but damn the villain was faster.
👓- this resulted into iida now basically completely motionless on the ground yet still concious.
👓- usually if it was any of your other friends you would just take a deep breath and anylis whats going on to make sure things are delt with properly.
👓- but that iis not the case this time.
👓- it was almost like something snapped.
👓- nobody could actually figure out how you managed to catch the villain, especially with their speed.
👓- but bystanders were more focused on the fact that you were now repeatedly slamming their face into the sidewalk.
👓- honestly a miracle the villain survives that shit, but they 100% had brain damage afterwards.
👓- normally iida would step in but he could only really stare at you.
👓- partly due to the shoock, but also the fact that he straight up couldn't move from his injuries.
👓- after everything calmed down and iida recovered he gave your ass a huge lecture.
⚡Denki Kaminari⚡
⚡- he was shocked.
⚡- pun intended but also he was just straight up in shock.
⚡- first off, surprising he got these many injuries without short circuting.
⚡- guess his training rlly payed off.
⚡- well at least his quirk training.
⚡- thinks its sick as hell how you just beat the shit out of the villain.
⚡- their face will never be the same again.
⚡- hes kinda into it tbh.
🪨Eijiro Kirishima🪨
🪨- literally just makes the :o face
🪨- this man got one hit that actuqally injured him at you just cut loose.
🪨- he felt like not even he could do that much damage in unbreakable. (he totally could do worse but hes just having a moment leave me alone.)
🪨- aftwards will literally beg you to spar with him.
🪨- unfortunatley never gets to fight you while ur that pissed off.
🪨- honestly when he saw how beat up the villain was he thought that it was bakugos doing for a hot second.
🐙Mezou Shoji🐙
🐙- the way you reacted to him getting hurt lowkey reminded him of dark shadow during the training camp.
🐙- very similar situation tbh.
🐙- it was just one of his extended limbs that got injured, yet you reacted as if he had just been decapitated.
🐙- froze up for a second when he watched you just immediately run up to the villain you have been fighting for at least an hour and just absolutely demolish then within a few minutes.
🐙- had to restrain you a bit to stop you from actually murdering them.
🐙- was a little shocked at the sudden swap oof personality for that short time but was more focused on stopping you from being charged with murder.
❄️Shoto Todoroki🔥
❄️🔥- ^that face.
❄️🔥- like that is just his reaction tbh.
❄️🔥- i mean its not everyday you see the person thats just a slightly more emotionally available version of you almost kill someone.
❄️🔥- especially over a small cut.
❄️🔥- the cut wasnt even caused directly by the villain, it was a broken piece of glass that was flying around with other debri./
❄️🔥- i mean-- at least you caught the villain?
❄️🔥- and almost killed them.
❄️🔥- along with free medical debt.
❄️🔥- or no medical debt?
❄️🔥- idk how that stuff works in japan bruh.
💥Katsuki Bakugo💥
💥- fight me all you want but
💥- he just straight up finds it hot.
💥- like if you look close enough this mf is blushing.
💥- who knew that the one time someone makes bakugo blush is his partner attempting murder.
💥- originally wasnt going to hold you back.
💥- the longer he watched you beat the shit out of this guy he started to genuinley think you were going to kill them.
💥- once everything settles down you started back to you normal calm persona.
💥- bro was just like ????
🥦Izuku Midoryia🥦
🥦- panic.
🥦- like you dont even have to look at him, you just need to be near him and you can basically feel how panicked he is over this.
🥦- lots of panicked words, you can barely even tell whats he's saying through the rage but also the pure speed he's speaking at.
🥦- few words that were mostly intelligable you could tell he was saying you should stop.
🥦- even if you wanted to stop your body wouldnt let you.
🥦- ended up needing to use blackwhip to get you off.
🥦- not that it did much being the villai already had a broken nose and multiple broken ribs.
🥦- probably missing teeth aswell.
🥦- izuku is lowkey terrified to somehow piss you off now.
theyre all a little short but i think I slayed
#bnha x reader#mha x reader#bakugou x reader#bnha x gn!reader#mha x gn!reader#iida x reader#denki x reader#shoji x reader#kirishima x reader#izuku x reader#todoroki x reader#x gn reader
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rating ; 18+, mdni
warnings: noncon (jisung is on the receiving side), sub!inexperienced!jisung, dom!reader, dacryphilia
imagine asking jisung if he’s still a virgin, and when he replies with a meek “yeah…” as his face heats up out of embarrassment, you offer to change that for him … it’s adorable how quickly his eyes widen at your suggestion, him shaking his head no as a response. what he didn’t understand was that it wasn’t a question.
you could see the boy slowly start to tremble whenever you would inch closer, as if you were a predator about to pounce on its prey. “w- why’re you lookin’ at me like that..?” his voice came out as a whimper, the fear in his eyes turning you on just a bit more.
“ji…don’t you wanna feel good?” watching him shake his head frantically, you couldn’t help but smile. “but…isn’t this wrong?” he couldn’t even make eye contact with you while you hovered over him. “of course it isn’t. i just wanna help, so let me.”
you palmed him over his sweatpants, his hips involuntarily jolting into your hand. “see? even your dick wants it. you should just give in sungie…” by now tears were welling up in his eyes. “i don’t wanna. please don’t make me…” he’d whimper as he spoke, pleading for you to stop. there’s no way you would though, he just looked so precious with tears running down his pink cheeks…
wiping his face with one hand while fishing his dick out of his sweats with the other, slowly jerking him off as he tries to get away from your touch…but both of you knew that wasn’t happening. “stop it, y/n, please!” his pleas were useless, the hiccups and soft sobs leaving his mouth doing nothing to falter your movements.
“shh, just let me make you feel good ji, there’s no need to cry baby…” you jerked his cock faster, his hips jolting up to meet your hand. his failed attempts to escape just made you even wetter. “no more- don’t want it, please…” poor baby hasn’t learned that begging still isn’t going to do anything yet :(
as he got closer to cumming, he got even more frantic to get away, squirming under your touch. “baby, stop fighting it— i promise when i’m done with you, you’re gonna feel so much better.” your words went unnoticed by the boy under you, his breathing getting even more ragged and turning into panting. “stop- stopstopstop, no, pleaseplease stop y/n—“ his begging did nothing to stop him from releasing all over your hand and himself, gaining a smile from you.
taking in his state, you admired what you had done to him. his eyes were red from crying, his cheeks matching them as tears stained them. snot had begun to drip from his nose. his whole body trembled as he recovered from his orgasm.
“see? wasn’t that nice, sungie?”
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"it's actually pretty easy being nice to a bitter boy like him"
-
thinking about being in a relationship with bakugou.
although he won't admit it (he'd rather hug deku than tell you he absolutely adores you), he loves it when you praise him.
now, it's not praise in his quirk, or how good of a hero he is.
just... him.
and that's how your entire relationship started.
~
the class had started, and you were sitting in the seat next to him, having been added to the class late due to some issues with enrolment. aizawa-sensei had just ended his lesson, and everyone was mingling about, getting to know each other.
you were talking with denki, who had approached you for the first time with another one of his cheesy pick-up lines.
"if you were words on a page, you'd be some real fine print."
a yellow-haired head popped into your peripheral, and you turned around, confused.
"me?"
he grinned, "who else, sweetheart?"
you stared at him, shocked, before breaking out into a fit of laughter. after you got it out of your system, you turned to him, a grin of your own making its way onto your lips.
"not bad. well, you'd be in bold, now wouldn't you?"
his eyes widened, and he stared at you for a good minute, before he burst out laughing.
"i'm denki," he smiled, stretching a hand out toward you. you took it in your own, shaking, "i'm y/n."
a growl was heard from your left, and you turned to see a spiky-haired boy glaring at the two of you. irritation shown plainly on his face, he scoffed.
"you guys are gross. throwing around half-assed pick-up lines."
you studied him for a moment, taking in the way he slouched in his chair with surprisingly intimidating grace. his hands shoved deep into his pockets, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone. the blazer that seemed to stretch thin around his biceps.
and those eyes.
those ruby-red, captivating eyes.
your eyes met his, and a shock ran through you at his intense gaze.
"your eyes are beautiful" you blurted out.
shit.
those red eyes widened, and his mouth opened just a tad bit- not enough to be noticeable from a distance, but since you were sitting to his literal right, you saw.
"hah?!" recovering fast, he snapped at you. "don't bullshit me!" turning away from you, he dropped his gaze to the papers laid out on his desk.
denki was laughing behind you, saying something about emotions and how he thought the ash-blonde didn't have any.
but your gaze was on his ears- bright red. the only tell that what you'd said had affected him.
looking down at your desk, a small smile played onto your lips.
cute.
~
as time went on, you guys moved from strangers who had just met in class to proper classmates.
the two of you were often paired up to work together since you were sitting side-by-side, and although you barely knew his name, you were glad.
aizawa-sensei had just grouped the two of you up for an assignment, and you'd decided to move to his desk so you guys could work together.
"the hell are you doing here?" he hissed, stopping his writing to shift his gaze to you.
"we needa start this shit," you said simply, gently pushing his papers so you could dump your arms onto his desk. you dropped your head onto them, before looking up and seeing him momentarily stunned.
that didn't last long.
"what the hell are you doing?! move it, dumbass!" he lifted his hand to shove you off the desk, but you ducked out of the way, almost falling off your chair in the process.
"come on blondie," you protested, "we better get going otherwise we're gonna end up failing!"
he glared at you, anger rising.
"don't call me blondie, you extra!"
sighing, you shifted your eyes to his paper, trying to figure out his name. catching sight of the word at the top of the page, you raised your eyebrows.
"bakugou?"
raising your head, you studied him. "bakugou. alright then, blondie."
"tch, whatever."
he went back to continuing his writing, paying no more attention to you. you, however, kept your gaze on him, before dropping it to his page.
the words flowed from his pencil, and you watched his hand flex and fingers tighten every so often as he kept answering the first few questions of the template aizawa-sensei had handed out.
"you have nice hand-writing, bakugou."
his hand came to a sharp stop, the nib screeching slightly. alarmed, you looked up at him, but you saw he was watching you oddly.
his ears were red again.
"the fuck you saying that for, dumbass?"
you grinned, and you met his ruby-red eyes, amusement growing.
"the name's y/n."
~
the school year went on, and eventually you guys progressed from classmates to friends. or at least, that's what you called it.
it's not like bakugou would say that himself, however he didn't make an effort to correct you.
he dropped it overtime.
it was a late afternoon, and aizawa-sensei had created units for realistic hero training. you, unfortunately, had not been paired with a certain blonde-haired boy.
however, you were more than happy to watch him fight.
standing in front of the live stream of the ongoing battle, you watched jirou get cornered by mantis, his blades speeding towards her. shouts rose from both class 1a and class 1b.
"crap, he's gonna get her!" mina's voice rang out from behind you.
however, he didn't.
there was a blur of black in the corner of the screen, and suddenly bakugou blasted his way into view. his foot coming down on her back, he shoved her out of the way, before raising his head to snarl at the fanged "villain."
"as if you'd get someone from my team on my watch."
a loud *BOOM* echoed through the speakers, and the reverberations were heard from the arena itself. An explosion erupted on the screen, blinding you, and when you looked up again you saw mantis lying on the floor with bakugou standing over him.
wow.
the fight ended soon enough, and you waited until class was dismissed to catch up with the explosion boy.
"hey, blondie!"
bakugou turned, his trademark scowl plastered onto his face.
"what do you want, idiot?"
you stopped beside him, before smirking up at him.
"you were good out there."
he whirled towards you, teeth bared. "of course i was good out there! the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
you let out a dramatic sigh, before slinging your arm over his shoulder and yanking his face down towards yours. he let out a snarl of protest, but made no move to pull away from you. you wiggled your eyebrows at him.
"i mean~" you sang out teasingly, "you looked out for your teammates. you don't have to tell me you were good out there, blondie. i know you were."
he opened his mouth to butt in, but you silenced him with a finger to his lips. he looked down at it, irritated.
"kicking jirou outta the way was one way to save her ass. but you did."
you lifted your gaze to his, a genuine grin on your face.
"you do care. you've just got your own way of showing it, huh? it's nice, seeing you looking after other people. plus, i'm almost 100% sure you're actually a big softie on the inside."
whatever bakugou was going to say didn't come. he just looked at you, slightly taken aback by everything you'd just said.
realizing that you'd said a way more than you'd intended, you cringed internally, quickly turning to look at where you guys were going rather than him.
oh crap, he's gonna eat me.
instead, he averted his gaze, an arm coming up to cover his face.
"shut up."
surprised, you turn back to him, expecting a sudden blast to your side. but you take in his body language- the way he was covering his face and avoiding your gaze, and don't say anything.
besides, seeing his bright red ears was enough.
~
it was the end of the first year at ua, and class 1a had decided to throw a party to celebrate. the dorms were alive with laughter and movement. sato and momo had decided to team up with a few of the students from class 1b to prepare a variety of different dishes for the occasion. there were activities and other things set-up in order for everyone to enjoy their last day as first years.
however, it was loud.
feeling overwhelmed by the constant noise of the party, you headed outside for some fresh air. going out in the court yard and turning into the garden located in front of the dorms, you inhaled a long breath of fresh air.
this is nice.
"what are you doing out here?"
you stayed where you were leaning against the grill blocking the fountain, knowing who it was without turning around.
"i could say the same to you."
bakugou stepped up beside you, and you looked at him from the corner of your eye.
you'd be lying if you said he didn't look amazing.
he was wearing a deep red suit, the same colour as his eyes, and a black collared shirt. the blazer was closed, tailored to compliment his build. his hands were shoved into his pockets, and you could see the material strain along his biceps.
he looked absolutely gorgeous under the moonlight.
feeling your gaze, he turned to face you. "shouldn't you be inside, enjoying the dumb party?"
"it's loud in there," you replied.
is it just me or is there some favouritism going on with him and the moon?
"mm. i take it you don't like that shit either."
"nah."
the two of you lapsed into silence, staring up at the night sky. you could feel your heart pounding in your chest, your mind racing, pestering you to tell him tell him tell him. you'd ignored it all year, creating excuses for why not to, but now there was nothing in the way.
it was just you and him.
slowly, you tilted your head up to the stars shining faintly against the midnight sky, not having the courage to face him completely.
"hey bakugou."
he turned to you, concerned. you rarely called him by his first name.
is she alright?
internally cursing yourself for being a coward, you forced yourself to face him. meeting his gaze, you stared at him for a moment, before speaking.
"you're really pretty."
what?
he takes a step back, his arm flying up to cover his face like it did all those months ago. his ears are a burning red, and a flush creeps up on his cheeks.
"you... what?"
taking a step towards him, you say it again.
"you're pretty."
his heart beats hard in his chest, in his ears, in his head. his blood rushes through him at a faster pace than usual. his breaths come out short and sharp.
"you..."
he takes a step forward, then another, and another, until he's standing directly in front of you. he angles his head down to yours, his gaze filled with an emotion you couldn't place.
"do you know what you do to me?"
your heart beats hard in your chest, in your ears, in your head. your blood rushes through you faster than usual. your breaths come out short and sharp.
"what?"
"i said... do you know what you do to me?"
you stay silent, staring at him in complete shock. taking in your frozen state, he reaches for your hand dangling by your side.
his grip is surprisingly gentle yet firm, and his rough hands warm as he guides your own to his chest.
you can feel his heart beating wildly beneath your palm.
"every time you say something about me, i get like this. about me. every damn time. and it's been driving me crazy. did you know that?"
at a loss for words, you just stare. at him. at his face. at that mouth.
he notices.
"y/n..."
an explosion surges through your body- that was the first time he called you by your name.
"can i... kiss you?"
you meet his gaze, those ruby-red eyes that grasped your attention not so long ago.
"yes."
it comes out breathless, and bakugou still has enough bravado for a small smirk to make its way onto his lips.
lets see how long it says there.
grabbing his collar, you yank him down towards you, and he catches himself on the railing behind you before he stumbled into you completely.
his mouth is soft against yours, and you feel his hand come up to rest on the small of your back, pressing you closer to him.
definitely a softie.
after what feels like forever, he pulls away from you, sucking in a long breath.
"damn."
you grin, relishing the sight of his flushed cheeks, although you knew yours weren't any better.
"oh, shut up pretty boy."
he tsked, shoving you off him.
"cut it out with that mushy shit."
but he gave you a small smile, however self-satisfied it was.
and in that moment, you couldn't have been more glad of the fact that you had chosen to compliment him all those months ago on your first day of school.
-
word count: 2.2k
a/n: ok wOw. this was 11 pages in google docs omg. i hope you guys liked it! i know i did lmao
#bakugou katsuki#katsuki bakugo#bakugo katsuki#bakugo katuski#katsuki#bakugou imagine#bakugou drabble#bakugou x you#bakugou x reader#bakugou fluff#bakugou x y/n#mha bakugou#mha#bnha#fanfiction#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#katsuki bakugou#bakugou over everything#bakugou is adorable and deserves everything#i love it so much#ugly cries
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Fuck Up
Lo'ak x Nerd Reader
Series Masterlist
Prt 4 of the Fucking The Nerd Series
Summary: it's going great till someone appears at his front step
Warning: none
Yn/3rd person pov
Its been a few months since neteyam left and lo'ak has improved a lot he doesn't fuck other girls, takes me out on dates and cuddles me after sex and lets us watch tv while we recover.
"f-fuck" i panted i riding out my orgasm as lo'ak's hands ran over my body "dam I love how your boobs bounce" he growled out and groaned out as I slowly came to a stop.
Giggling to myself as I lifted myself off of him and planted myself down next to him "I can't believe you have to leave now" he grumbled.
I smiled rolling myself off the bed to get dressed "I have to my brother is coming over for a visit" I murmured slipping on my skirt and clipping on my bra.
"I don't see why he only comes for one day" he huffed and getting up and wrapping his arms around me stopping me from putting my shirt on.
"Come on lo'ak" I giggled squirming in his hold "but I don't want my baby to leave" he chuckled kissing my neck.
"But I have to" I smiled kissing his cheek, he groaned and let me go and put on his sweats as I put on his shirt.
"Come on I'll walk you down stairs" he murmured grabbing his hand and kissed my knuckles and lead me out his room and down the stairs.
"Text me when you get home" he said opening the door and gasping as a beautiful girl stood in the door "oh hi nete" she sung sweetly it made me want to barf.
"I- ari'ek what are y-you doing here" he stuttered letting go of my hand "oh I just came to see my one and only love but whose this" she smiled but it dropped when she turned to me.
"Oh a-ah this, this is yn my a-ah g-girlfriend" he stuttered and ushered me out and only gave me a half assed goodbye before bringing her inside "back to square one".
When I got home I sent him a text saying I got home safe but he left me on read I bit my lip and decided to talk to him after supper.
-time skip-
"Uh.... hey lo'ak your phone keeps going to voice mail and I just wanted to say it hurt my feelings that you kinda just passed me off like that" I murmured.
"I-Im gonna go goodnight" I said before hanging up and stuffing it into my pocket "hey whats up pipesqueak" my brother said as he leaned onto my door frame.
"Nah its nothing it's just some boy troubles" I huffed "while I have an offer for you" I tilted my head his words intriguing me.
"Well if the boy gives you more trouble you can always come stay by me" he murmured and I actually began to think about it "yea I think I might".
-Next day-
I smiled as I walked through the school hallway and as I came close to my locker I saw lo'ak "hi" I smiled and hugged him before before opening up my locker.
"Did you get my text" I asked "oh no I ah ari'ek stayed over last night and had my phone" he murmured "she had your phone" I questioned he hardly ever let me see his phone.
"What did she mean by one and only love" I asked closing my locker "oh we used to date way before us" he bit his lip and tried to change the subject.
Till she popped up and dragged him off using the excuse of not wanting to get lost "fucking bitch" I muttered and stormed off to class.
-Time skip-
"Yn what the fuck" lo'ak yelled as he pulled me to the side of the hall "what" I whispered clenching my books to my chest.
"Why would you hit ari'ek" he muttered I looked at him confused "I didn't" but he didn’t believe me "I can't date a bully" he snapped.
I was taken a back by his out burst "b-but" I didn't know what to say "you know what just leave us alone" he growled and left and down the hall ari'ek was laughing along with kanu.
Tears streamed down my face as I left it was the last day so they didn't care if I left and I went straight home not looking up for anyone.
"H-hey bro I accept your offer"
Tag.List
@avatar4eva @lik0 @greekgods15 @sweetirilly
#avatar#avatar pandora#avatar x reader#avatar way of water#avatar angst#avatar x reader angst#lo'ak#lo'ak angst#lo'ak x reader#lo'ak x reader angst
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close to home | chapter forty seven
close to home | chapter forty seven
plot: the reader arrives at the Kingdom
series masterlist
Pairing: Eventual Daryl Dixon x f!reader
Word Count: 1,502
Warnings: violence, blood, typical twd
A/N: thank you for reading!!! I'm going to Boston this weekend to see 5sos and won't be home till Monday, so I won't be updating again until early next week--sorry lovelies!! Gonna try and update twice today if I can
When the horse led you through the gates of the Kingdom, you truly did feel like you were entering one. You felt more level-headed when they’d given you food and water on the ride back.
There were people around, and you tried to take in as much as possible. Gardens and schoolchildren were sitting outside. There was a choir singing somewhere. And there was laughter. So much laughter.
When you saw Morgan standing with a blond haired boy, you wanted to cry at the familiar sight. You climbed off the horse and set Tora down before running to Morgan.
“(Y/N),” Morgan laughed when you crushed him into a hug. You were never particularly close to him, but he was a part of your group and your family.
“Dianne said Daryl was here and supposed to stay here. Where is he?” You asked desperately as you pulled away from the hug.
But the look on his face was enough to tell you he wasn’t here. “He left this morning. I’m sorry. “
You laughed, though, for the first time in a while. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He got out. He went to Hilltop, right?”
Morgan nodded and smiled at you. “Yes. Come on, we need to have the doctor look at you. And you will need to meet the King.”
You looked at Morgan in confusion as he wrapped his arm around your shoulders. “The who?”
***
After getting an all-clear from the Kingdom’s doctor, and scarfing down as much food as you and Tora possibly could, Morgan led you to where the King was. You learned his name was Ezekiel, and he was a bit out there.
But Morgan vouched for him, so you followed him into the ‘throne room’ with Tora by your side. When you walked into the room, your eyes widened, and you grabbed Morgan’s arm at the sight of a tiger.
“What the fuck?” You breathed out.
“Fair maiden,” King Ezekiel shouted, “I am honored to have you a guest in our fair Kingdom. I welcome you. And your furry beast.”
You glanced at Tora, and started jogging up to catch her before she ventured too close to an animal that could kill her in a second. “I uh, um, thank you, sir. Your honor. King.” You stumbled over your words.
“Our dear friends from the great Alexandria told me of your situation, and what happened. Although the Kingdom did not play a part in your troubles, you have its sorrow and thought.” King Ezekiel said.
“Thank you,” You said, running your hand through Tora’s fur and trying to keep her settled. “I like your tiger.”
King Ezekiel smiled, “Her name is Shiva. And yours?”
“This is Tora; she’s been with me since before. Shiva?”
“The same as you,” The king said. He stood up and quietly told the man to his right something. You assumed it was to put Shiva somewhere because the man took the chains and led the big cat out of the room.
Then he gracefully jumped from the stage and approached you. You got a better look at his face and admired it for a moment as he scratched Tora behind the ear. “I invite you and Tora to spend the eve with us here at the Kingdom. I can imagine you must want to get to the Hilltop as quick as you can. But I insist you take the night to recover.”
You glanced at Morgan, and he nodded, so you did as well. You were almost friends. You knew it. You knew in your bones that you didn’t have anything to fear from the Kingdom or its people. Morgan was here; he obviously liked it here. You were with friends. And that made you smile the biggest smile. “We can stay.”
***
King Ezekiel requested your presence after Morgan settled you in a room across from his. You opted to leave Tora in the room for a little while because you weren’t sure where the tiger was and didn’t want to risk it.
Dianne came by with the message from the King, and she also brought you a fresh set of clothes. You’d never been more thankful when she told you to wash up first and brought you to the showers.
So now, twenty minutes later, you were dressed in a black tank top and a flannel, leggings, and a near pair boots.They were used, but it made it better, because they were already worn in.
The King sat across from you, and Morgan and a guy named Jerry sat with you.
“Tell me, miss (Y/N), how you came to be with your group? I would love to know your tale.”
You didn’t have any hesitation about telling him. Aside from the fact that you already considered him a friend, you felt like you could trust him and this place. So you told him about your life before and after the world's end. You told him about the prison after it ended and watched their horrified expression as you told them about Terminus.
You didn’t tell them about the people you lost because even though it’s been some time, all the wounds reopened when discussed.
And then, finally, you told them about Alexandria, how you got there, and what happened afterward.
Your story took you through dinner, an assortment of chicken, and the freshest vegetables you’ve had in a long time. It was mouth-watering. You made sure to fold plenty of the chicken into a napkin, so you could take it to Tora.
“Your journey is of greatness, and I am honored to have such a warrior amongst us,” The King said.
“Do you like cobbler?” Jerry asked you.
“Jerry,” The King said.
Their exchange made you laugh, and you looked at Jerry, “Yes, I do.”
***
You sat with the King, Morgan, and Jerry for quite some time before the King suggested he give you a tour. You weren’t sure there was a point to it because you would be leaving in the morning, but you accepted because he made you feel like a friend. And with Sherry gone and not seeing your family in weeks, you desperately needed it.
King Ezekiel showed you around the Kingdom, with Jerry and Morgan following closely behind. He pointed out the gardens, the apartments where most everyone resided. He should you the wells for water, in case you needed some, and the training ground for their ‘royal army’. You could see how proud he was. You believed him to be an accomplished leader.
The sun was nearly set when the tour ended outside the building you would be staying in. You thanked both Jerry and the King profusely.
“In the morn, I will have Dianne pack your supplies for the road and give you a weapon. I cannot, in good conscience, let you go out without one.” King Ezekiel said. “And, of course, my people know the way to the Hilltop. I will have a map provided and see if they can get you a car.”
“I don’t know how to repay you for this, but thank you, King Ezekiel.” You told him.
He and Jerry bid their goodnights, and you and Morgan entered the building.
“I feel like I’m in a fairytale here,” You playfully joked. “But I actually like it. It’s fun.”
“Many people do, I think that’s why they go along with it,” Morgan told you as you walked.
When you got to the doors, you looked at Morgan. “Rick was here to get them to fight, wasn’t he? And the King said no?”
Morgan nodded, and you could see the contemplation on his face. “The Hilltop stands with Alexandria. Rick asked me to talk to the King about joining, but…”
You nodded, knowing how he felt about killing. “I think he will. He just needs to be pushed. Goodnight, Morgan. I’ll see you in the morning.”
***
Dianne brought you a bag with more than enough supplies in the morning. Enough to last you for at least a week. You made her take a decent amount of it back. You couldn’t take advantage of their hospitality like that.
You met with the King for one last meal together, and while he tried to persuade him to stay, you wouldn’t budge. So he led you to the front gate, where a few guards were waiting. They succeeded in bringing you a car.
“Thank you, King Ezekiel. Really.” You said. “I don’t think I’ve met someone like you for a long while. I really hope I get to see you again.” You told him.
The King smiled and bid his goodbye, and you gave Morgan and even Jerry a hug. Then you and Tora climbed into the car. With one last look in the rearview mirror, you left the Kingdom, and headed towards home.
#daryl x y/n#daryl dixion x reader#daryl fanfiction#the walking dead daryl#daryl dixon x reader#daryl x reader#daryl dixon#twd#daryl twd#daryl x you
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Where Hawks has a pregnant wife & she delivers easily with a healthy pair of twins, boy & girl, but she has complications afterwards. It takes hours, but the doctors say that she's a fight. She does eventually recover & despite being bleary, she basically goes, "Fuck that shit, I can't leave you alone to take care of them on your lonesone. Sorry Heihei, but you're stuck with me." She calls him Heihei when he says or does something real dumb &, according to her, the idea that she'd just give up & leave him without giving whatever Reaper that comes to collect a hell of a fight was real dumb.
"One of them has wings!" He spoke with wide eyes as he watched the picture of the ultrasound on his hands... his own pair of bright red feathers flapping and puffing at the image he held between his fingers.
"The doctor said that both of them are health." You spoke with a laugh while you sat down next to him.
Considering that both of you were still young you and him had your worries when you two discovered you were pregnant after only half of year living together. But thankfully you and your husband managed to work it out, despite Keigo's constant worrying...
Your smile dropped when you saw the serious expression he wore as he placed the ultrasound picture on the coffee table.... his messy bush eyebrows furrowed as his knee bounced slightly before coming to s stop when you placed a hand over it.
"What's on your mind heihei?" He widened his eyes a bit before chuckling at the sound of the iconic nickname you had given him before sighing.
"Deja vuu I guess... my father wasn't the best with dealing with me and honestly I think he despised my wings... I just thought that... how can you treat something so... small, and fragile like that? I mean, I almost teared up at just seeing the ultrasound..." he mumbled as you cupped his cheeks to gently place a kiss.
"That's because you are different than him. And that only means what a great father you will be." You smiled at him as his frown to be replaced by a soft brown eyed gaze to look back at you.
"You do have a way with your words dove..." he mumbled on your lips before kissing sweetly "I hope that those two get your attitude."
"Oh no, I lost that hope. They probably gonna be little shit just like you." He gasped in false offense as you laughed at his mocking hurt expression.
.
.
.
He honestly thought he almost crashed the window of his agency when he received the call... he was talking with Endeavor until his phone ringed with your number on its screen... only for him to answer and not to hear your voice, but from a paramedic.
The wind blew harshly at his feathers, hair and face. But he didn't care. He didn't care if looked good or not for the public when he discovered that in the middle of work his wife was about to give birth and he was once again far away from her.
He crashed inside the hospital and ignored all the coos of his fans for once as he almost tripped when he ran to the receptionist... who also was in glee to see him despite his fearfully and anxious expression.
"Please, I received a call my wife was about to give birth, where is she? Is she okay?!"
"Oh! You and your wife will have a kid?!" She exclaimed in shock as he mentally face palmed.
It was suppose to be a secret from the media and public... he begged you to it for you to just have a moment of peace and prevent the best you both could for you to have any stress to affect the twins.
"Y-yeah where-"
"Oh my Hawks-san congratulations!" She clapped her hands in glee while he was freacking out.
"Thanks. Where is she by the way? You already know her name so-" he tried to make his nerves with a charming laugh as she asked him to wait a minute as she talked on her phone only to minutes later to give the directions.
He bowed in thanks and rushed to the said directions only to be once again stopped by nurses and doctors.
"Where is she?! Is she okay?!"
"Sir please calm down a bit-" The male nurse tried but he knly freaked out more.
"Hawks san, I'm sorry but you can't enter right now. There were some complications and your wife had to go into a emergency c-section." The doctor spoke before gently parting him on the shoulder
"What?" He breathed in horror as his legs almost gave out.
"Get him a cup of water-" She instructed the nurses "I know is difficult, but try to remain calm, we are doing everything we can to make sure both your kid and your wife get out of this situation unharmed."
"Unharmed?! What the hell even happened while I was out?!"
"Sir I can't explain to you right now, they need me inside there. Now please sit on the waiting room and try to remain calm alright? Try to call a relative if it will help you out a bit..." She spoke gently before rushing to get her clothes to get inside the room you were in as he dropped on the chair... knees blucing at high speed as he grasped at his golden hair and pulled slightly as his eyes burned.
When a nurse handled him a cup of water he almost gagged when he spoke.
"P-Please, at least tell me if my wife has any chance of losing her life... or my kids..."
The nurse frowned at the hero before sighing the dreadfully words he surely didn't wanted to hear nor helped him at all.
"I dont know Hawks san. I don't know..."
.
.
.
It honestly took just a hour after what happened but to him it seemed he was sitting on that cursed waiting room chair for years.
When the same doctor appeared and took her mask off to show him a smile he visibly relaxed but his anxieties were still high as he stood up like a lightening bolt.
"Congratulations mister number two hero. You're now the father of one girl and one boy. Both clearly healthy."
He blinked tears away before he widened his eyes once again.
"How is she? Is she..-"
"She is fine and if you want you can enter right now-" before she could finish her sentence he stormed in and sobbed at seeing your tired figure laying on the bed while holding two bundles of blankets on both fo your arms.
You were okay... you were fine...
Your tired eyes spotted him on the entrance and a small smile appeared on your lips.
"Hello there daddy." You murmured as he carefully took steps closer to you before cupping your cheeks and peppering your sweaty face with kisses as he tried to keep his tears away.
"I'm so so sorry love.. I'm sorry you had to go through that alone, I'm sorry I couldn't be here for their birth, I'm sorry that i-"
"Heh now stop being ridiculous.. you were working and I suddenly happened, that's fine." You whispered as he kissed your forehead.
"God I thought I lost you ... the nurses and doctors wouldn't tell me and I just-"
"Did you seriously thought that I would let that happen you idiot?" You laughed weakly while he frowned "I can't just leave you alone to take care of two kids all by yourself. Sorry heihei, but you are stuck with me for good. Not even the geim reaper will take me away from you."
He let out a short laugh as he nuzzle the top of your head.
"How can you joke about stuff like that so occasionally, I mean come on I thought this was my thing..." he whispered before looking down at the two newborns sleeping on your arms.
He shakily exhaled when extended his arms as you smiled at him carefully grabbing the baby girl on his arms and sweetly carrying the blanket she was bundled up to feel the two little numbs on her small back where in some time it will grow wings.
"They're so beautiful..." he whispered in awe as you rocked the boy in your arms sweetly "Just like you..."
"Just like us..." You corrected him as he was still lost looking between both his son and daughter.
"... can I name the boy Enji the second-"
"If you dare to do that I'm kicking you out of this room right now Takami Keigo." You groaned in warning as he chuckled while apologizing.
He was still considering naming your kid that though.... please don't let him.
#hawks x reader#keigo takami x reader#takami keigo x reader#bnha heroes x reader#bnha heroes#hawks#zuffer writings
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Hi! I hope you don't mind I take your reply to my post to talk a little bit about script writing as a scriptwriter.
This is in no way an attack, I just saw an opportunity to explain something as someone who works writing scripts.
At this point I think it's becoming clear that live action only exists because Netflix wants to have its own Game of Thrones, but that they are not going to respect the core of the original series, because their goal is different. Having said this, I want to review why the changes that are being made are incorrect (if the idea is to respect the story and the characters) focusing on the 3 protagonists: Sokka, Katara and Aang.
Let's start with Sokka, whose changes are perhaps the most "controversial."
As I said in my original post, The core of Sokkas character is that he is a boy who grew up trying to be a man since his father left for war. In that attempt, as someone immature and unguided, he had sexist attitudes, only to later mature and become a real man. Great example for young boys.
No, his sexism comments didn't last long, but they changed at a key moment in the plot: When Suki appears. Avatar is a special series because it was one of the first of its time to so explicitly touch on the topic of feminism. Rebelling in every sense of the word is a recurring theme in ATLA. Sexism was literally knocked out of Sokka when he met the Kyoshi warriors. That's why the scene of him wearing the warriors' clothes is so significant and why it's so important that at the end of the season Sokka has learned his lesson, because there is a direct comparison between him and Pakku. Sokka, on his path to becoming a man, was able to deconstruct his misogynistic mentality at his young age and without an adult guidance, while a man of Paku's age, admired and respected, was still rooted in his sexist beliefs.
It was Katara's act of rebelling against Sokka's sexism that freed Aang from the icerberg. Because, again, an act of rebellion, of standing firm in the face of injustice, along with redemption, are the pillars of Avatar. Sokka's journey encompasses all of those topics, and the fact that he is 16 and not 19 is essential to his character arc.
Is not that we want him to be sexist. We want him to be flawed. Because each flaw are unique to each character. It talks about their development and also about the themes of the show.
Also "Toned down" it sounds weird because as a kid I always knew Sokka was an idiot when being sexist. But it wasn't that bad that I was afraid of him or so angry that I hated his character. Because Avatar is a kid shows even if people from all ages can enjoy it. So when they said "toned down" I was really confused. It made me feel that for them, the only way to show him being sexist way to make him do some unredeemable thing.
Katara
So. Im gonna start saying that Im not a fan of Katara. I think her character is written incredibly well, but it just not for me. In fact, i do feel like we needed an scene between Sokka and her where they can clear the air about their mom. The things she said to her brother and to Aang, the only survivor of a genocide, were too hard to not have a talk after that.
NOW, After saying that, Katara is Katara because of her backstory. Seeing her mother die in front of her and being the only waterbender in her tribe lead her to feel the need to take care of everyone, especially her brother, to be overprotective, to be compassionate. To be Katara.
Sokka himself admits that sometimes when he tries to remember his mother he only remembers Katara. While Aang is a boy who must mature faster than normal, Katara is a girl who has already grown faster than normal and her journey not only includes rebelling and protecting others, but also recovering some of that lost childhood.
Katara is the representation of water. Healing and destructive at the same time. Turbulent but benevolent. I feel the live action writers, and even the actors and actresses, do not understand that the feminist message was already perfectly captured in the original material. The creators of Avatar created complex female characters and just because Katara's story is influenced by the concept of motherhood does not mean that she is not a strong character. She is a strong character because her story is influenced by that concept. Not because motherhood in itself makes us women strong, but because motherhood, specifically for her character, puts her at crossroads and forces her to go through an arc of transformation.
Aang
I'm going to be concise and short with Aang. The decision to have so many "distractions" in his mission is because Aang is 12 years old and does not want to face a war. I think it's something so basic that it seems dumb not to understand that a young boy doesn't want the responsibility of saving the world and seeing his friends die again. I think, maybe, just maybe, understanding that is not that hard.
If they wanted to write a story of wars, blood and darkness, they should not have chosen Avatar, whose protagonist is a little boy.
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Jaime Reyes/blue beetle x reader platonic
Welcome to another blue beetle fic, It's closer and closer by the minute. Even though I have to wait an extra month as it doesn't release in Australia until September lol. But for this fic, if anyone has seen Homecoming, you'll get the idea ;) word count:849
Jaime, Your best friend, The freaking Blue Beetle !!!, holy shit. When you first found out he was Blue beetle when he rescued you from coyote, You had to calm yourself and not go full nerd. He did just save you, But once you recovered and went back to school.
"Jaime, we gotta talk" You had to whisper so that people didn't know he was Blue beetle.
"y/n I know but please not right here"
"I know I know but..." He was right you had to keep quiet but you had a million questions and zero answers.
During different points of the day you asked a question relating to blue beetle.
"Can you summon an army of beetles ??"
"No"
"Is the amour titanium or something ??"
"No, it's extra terrestrial"
"Ok ok... Is the suit fart proof ??"
"What kind of question is that ??"
After school Jaime decided to show you the powers of blue beetle
"Ok Y/n, follow me. I'll show my powers. Just please no more questions"
"Alright alright."
Jaime then brought Y/n to a rural area just near the edge of El Paso to make sure no one see's his identity.
"Ok before I show you my powers. There's one thing you gotta see."
He turned around and lifted his shirt
"What are you do.. OH MY GOD !!"
His back revealing the scarab, wedged right into his back. No surgery seems to be getting that off anytime soon
"I know, it took me a while to come to terms with it as well"
Their was silence for a bit.
"Look I trust y/n ok, they won't reveal my identity ok ??"
"Uhhh, who are you talking too ??"
Jaime sighed, It looked like he was talking to himself.
"Its the scarab, I don't know how but it seems I can only hear it and talk to it"
"That's freaky but awesome."
"It is, but It's like almost being nagged by Mom."
Quiet again
"Look scarab just trust y/n ok ??"
It would take some getting used too to see Jaime talk to scarab.
"Anyway, Now my powers, with them, I can be able to summon anything just by thinking to scarab what I want."
"Wow, that's so cool !!" Y/n was smiling wide.
"Alright, so the first thing... the armour. Originally I could only do it when I was in danger. But I figured out how to summon it at will."
Then Jaime stood there, shutting his eyes. Withing seconds. the blue beetle armour started to take over him, the pincers popping out, his face then turning into a mask, his eyes glowing yellow.
"Pretty cool right ??"
"Oh my... HOLY SHIT !!!" you were bouncing from pure excitment.
"That was awesome !!"
Jaime couldn't help but smile under the mask from your excitement.
"You ain't seen nothing yet amigo."
*queue sword*
"Final fantasy fan I see."
"What the buster sword is a classic."
"OK what else can you do ??"
Jaime then summoned arm cannons, his hands melting and reshaping into cannons.
"Hell yeah !!, these bad boys are my favourite"
"Woah !!, ok uuh, test it on that boulder"
"Say no more"
Jaime then aimed at the boulder and with one blast the boulder was completely destroyed. But as Y/n was still in awe from it they didn't see a big chunk of the boulder falling to your direction.
"Jaime the boulder, it's gonna crush y/n !!" The Scarab warned him, Jaime quickly then pushed Y/n out of the way and caught the boulder with his bare hands, Struggling for a bit before tossing it away from harms reach.
"Are you ok y/n ??"
"Holy... You. Have. SUPER STRENGTH !!!!!"
Jaime started smiling again before the mask disintegrated revealing his face again.
"That is the power of the blue beetle y/n"
"This is awesome !!"
"But y/n look, real talk here buddy. While yes this is awesome to see, you can't go telling anyone about this, not even your dad or my family. Only you know about this." He took your hand and squeezed it, in a way of seriousness. "Can you promise to keep this secret for me ok ??"
Your smile faded slightly knowing the seriousness of the cause, You squeezed his hand back. "I promise Jaime, I promise."
"Thank you y/n" He smiled and hugged you tightly. "Your a great friend you know that ??"
"Can say the same to you" You smiled as you hugged him back
Jaime saw the sun setting before realizing he's been out all afternoon.
"Oh mierda, I gotta get home before mom kills me, I'll see you at school tomorrow ok y/n ??"
"Shoot I should get home too" You saw a bus stop and had some money, so you then went to the stop.
"See you tomorrow Jaime !!!"
Jaime waved goodbye before grabbing his backpack and activating flight mode, zooming back home.
You smiled as soon as you saw him fly off, Your best friend was a superhero. A freaking superhero. El Paso was in safe hands with Blue Beetle.
Taglist:@callofdudes
#platonic#blue beetle#jaime reyes#jaime reyes x reader#blue beetle x reader#platonic x reader#reader insert
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Hi, so I wanted to ask you something since I've seen you upload some of the public access art from Sauces OG twitter. I know that's the way to do it, I'm in the patreon too and that stuff is protected. What I wanted to ask was if you had some of the OG Gallagher mansion stuff? Like the concepts etc. Pretty much all of it got deleted and I tried looking some up to remind myself of the project and not much is still around. You can privately answer or make a post, it's up to you.
Yup, that’s the way to do it. Don’t repost the privately posted patreon stuff anywhere, and make sure to always credit Sauce for their publicly posted art when shared. They’re kind enough to allow me to use pictures in my headcanon rambles and such, and I want to always give them the credit and praise they deserve for such wonderful art and creative stories and characters for us to play with. They’re awesome and deserve our support.
If you want content to see the project is still going strong, then you’re in luck! There was a recent update on the project over on the SnaccPop Studios’ twitter. Check out this beautiful background. Though, even more enticing is the voiced teaser of the project in this post. We finally get to publicly hear what Elias sounds like and get a glimpse into what the choices might be for the game.
Of course, there are more teasers up on the SnaccPop Studios Patreon, including nudes of Elias. There were some nudes posted by Sauce publicly on their now gone twitter, but tumblr might not take them as artistic nudity and might nuke my blog if I post any images that are too spicy.
That said, there have been brand new public posts with Elias’ fully clothed sprites over on twitter. Check them out here, and maybe say a kind word to the lovely artist while you’re there~
As for the older publicly posted art, there were a couple shown in a previous ask over here. Sadly, I don’t have the very first original concept art where Elias is putting a necklace on his living bride. I do, however, have a picture of big boy Elias carrying his new “bride” but he’s a bit too excited for me to share the picture here in its entirety.
Sadly, I can’t show the rest of this beautiful piece of art by Sauce to give you a better sense of just how big Elias is compared to Y/N (in more than one sense of the word), but the player stand in character here is also naked, and I’m not gonna roll the dice on whether gray anon booty will result in me being smote by the tumblr gods. Such a shame too.
You know, last time I posted a cropped spicy picture of Sauce’s, I wrote a steamy little snippet to go with it. To make up for the lack of the concept art and cropping this picture, how about I write a little Adults Only bit of spice here too? I don’t have my MC for the Groom of Gallagher Mansion solidified in my mind yet (though I do have a few thoughts) so maybe this would be a good excuse to expand my writing skills by trying to tackle some gender-neutral reader-insert fiction for once. I hope you enjoy it.
...
Elias was warmer than I expected for someone who had been dead for at least 100 years. I felt the heat rise where his bare skin touched mine. I knew that I was screwed when I agreed to tie the knot with the lonely ghost of Gallagher Mansion, but I didn’t really expect that literally.
For crying out loud, how could a ghost get a hardon, especially one so big?
Despite how crazy the situation was and how fast we rushed into this marriage, I couldn’t help but feel excited when he brushed up against my thighs as Elias scooped me up into his arms, all hot, hard, and faintly twitching when our skin made contact. He bit his lower lip in a failed attempt to stifle the noise he made that was suspiciously like a whimper.
Damn it. Why did Elias have to be so cute?
Elias lifted me just a little higher so that he could recover from the contact, taking a moment to… catch his breath? Or at least imitate it. Old habits die hard, even in death, it seemed.
I didn’t have much time to dwell on it, as I was caught by the charming smile he sent my way as he spoke my name with so much adoration that my racing heart sped up just a little more. “My dearest beloved, I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally consummate our love.”
“I can tell,” I said, and immediately I was rewarded by the darkening blue hue of his cheeks that I knew by now was a blush. I smirked as he sputtered for a moment, flustered. It was so fun to tease someone as innocent as him.
Elias cleared his throat as he composed himself. “Yes, well… how can I not be when my beloved consort is as beautiful and alluring as you?” He then smiled, almost devilishly, as I felt the fire in his smoldering gaze blaze through my already burning core. His voice dipped lower, growing in confidence as he leaned in closer. “And I can tell that you’re excited as well, beloved.”
My face burned hotter at that. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Elias noticed, considering every inch of me was laid bare before him, but I was still caught off-guard by his increasing boldness.
I was excited, despite how crazy the situation was. I wanted what was coming next, but it was impossible not to feel nervous, especially when I was expected to take something so big inside me. Could I even handle it? Would he even fit?
Still… a part of me really wanted to find out.
“Please be gentle with me,” I said softly. Sure, it was a cheesy old line, but it felt fitting right now.
“Of course, dearest!” Elias said, almost taken aback that I would assume anything less. “I would never do anything to bring you discomfort in any way.” A bit of his shyness slipped back in as he glanced away. “I might not have… experience in such…” He paused to clear his throat. “…Intimacy, but I promise that I will take care of all of your needs tonight and more.” He lowered his voice in a husky whisper as his burning gaze met mine. “All you need to do is ask, and I’ll gladly fulfill your every desire.”
The promise sent a shiver up my spine, and the way his fingers began to teasingly stroke my thigh coaxed me to spread my legs just a bit despite the precarious position I was in. I should have been off balance by the way he held me, but I supposed he was using his ghostly powers to levitate me more than he was using those muscular arms of his to hold me up.
Fuck it, I was in too deep already, so I might as well embrace this whole marriage deal and let my husband fill me even deeper.
Throwing away the last of my reservations, I grabbed his cheeks and pulled Elias in for a kiss. I think I displaced his head from his neck in my eagerness, and he jolted briefly, startled, but that melted away quickly as he returned the kiss with a passion I never felt with anyone alive. The taste of him was hot and exciting, drawing me in and making me hunger for more as he held me close.
As I ran my hands along my new husband’s muscular chest, I felt Elias start to explore me as well. I had to end the kiss to let out a gasp as his wandering fingers made their way between my legs and found my entrance.
I clung to him tightly as Elias gave me another devilish smirk, the touch of his fingers light and teasing as he circled my opening. I bit my lower lip to stifle a moan that slipped free as he slid a finger smoothly inside. I couldn’t help but squirm as he touched me so deeply, soon sliding in another finger just as easily.
Fuck. For someone inexperienced, Elias was really good with his hands.
“Oh my dearest,” Elias cooed as he skillfully played with my body like a fine instrument. “My beloved, my sweetest, my only love… You look so beautiful right now, writhing in my arms and making such cute sounds.” He kissed my cheek, then again, marking a trail to my ear. He spoke my name against my ear in a way that sent a shiver down my spine as his… breath(?) caressed me there. “Won’t you use that melodious voice of yours to say my name? Please, my dearest?”
“E-Elias,” I panted, and was immediately rewarded as he pumped his fingers in deeper, sending a jolt of pleasure through me. “Oh fuck, Elias!”
I tried to buck into his hand, but the position made it impossible for me to move much. I was at my husband’s mercy, helpless to do anything but writhe in his grasp and hold onto Elias tightly as he played a concert with my body, coaxing his name out of me again and again. He cooed my name in return as he spoke sweet words of love and praise as he drove me closer and closer to the edge until he sent me over it, screaming his name.
I may have been screwed by marrying Elias, but right now there was nothing I wanted more.
@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur
#The Groom of Gallagher Mansion#TheGroomOfGallagherMansion#Elias Gallagher#Reader-Insert#x Reader#Ask#Sauce-y Art#My Writing
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question can you infodump about your Little Guys (atbb) to me because ive been following for like a year and i still dont totally understand them past papyrus au. they are really cool tho
oh my god ok so. first off atbb is the acronym for my ask blog @ask-the-bone-boys that's been on hiatus for a little over a year now. it was born in 2018 out of the annoyance of everything au-centered being sans and also a way to explore how the classic "aus get stuck in the original universe" fic trope would go if it was somebody from the "original" story leaving their universe instead. and also an excuse to make papyrus miserable to be fully honest
also also im going to preface this by saying i ship selfcest and there is some selfcest in this story ok if anybody has issue with that then uh. oopsies (i can explain the way i view it at another time if anybody;s interested but im already gonna ramble like hell here so not rn)
with that groundwork laid im gonna put this under a cut lmao dont click this
for the sake of organization- part 1: RUSS
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING so some very basic backstory for this Undertale Papyrus specifically is that he and his brother are twins, they grew up bouncing around several foster homes until they decided to run away to live in the woods on their 14th birthday, where they lived in a bigass tent for three years until Papyrus got badly injured and they had to get help from the townspeople, who uh kinda unofficially adopted them and thats how "they just showed up one day"
then more time passed and around 3 years after getting to the surface Papyrus was booted out of his universe by Mysterious Circumstances. he got a very bad introduction to the multiverse because the place he landed was my own version of horrortale, undermunch. there he meets Spooks!
i have a whole side-fic where you can read in better detail how this goes but basically monsters don't turn to dust in this world and also Spooks is a cannibal, which Papyrus doesn't know until he realizes he was fed spaghetti made out of a rabbit monster. IN addition to that, Spooks has very different magic from other aus, that being it's pretty much all concentrated into a kind of blue-magic-venom that comes out of his teeth like a snake.
Long story short Papyrus has to escape from Spooks somehow, and that's how he learns he's able to move through universes by himself. It still takes him a while to learn how to without being in a life-or-death situation, but that's ok because almost every other universe he goes to after that puts him into a life-or-death situation :>
and then FINALLY he gets spat out into a variation of Underswap, where he meets Honey. this one's a bit spoilery because i haven't finished writing this fic yet BUT its ok because this will be so so so disorganized. anyway so Papyrus is scared of Honey at first because he's been getting completely fucking obliterated by the multiverse (his leg is broken and he's wearing a chest plate he stole from a different papyrus who died in front of him) but Honey is relatively patient with him and lets him stay on his couch on the surface. This is where Papyrus gets the nickname Russ!
Russ is dealing with a broken leg when he shows up in this universe, so he stays with Honey for a little over three months while he recovers from that as well as (some of) the multiverse traumas he'd been collecting up to that point. The main things that he still can't shake are nightmares, trust/attachment issues, and EXTREME food paranoia. he refuses to eat anything he hasn't prepared himself, and even that can be a struggle. Also, because of how long he spent without getting it properly treated, his leg never fully heals.
He starts getting really really homesick the longer he stays in this universe. It builds up over his whole stay, but only starts to get Very Bad after he gets the cast off of his leg. Honey's home is extremely similar to his own home, and sometimes just seeing him and his brother interacting with each other makes Russ upset.
OH I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE CODEPENDENCY ok so at some point Russ just starts completely clinging to Honey and Honey doesn't know what to do about it so he just kinda. unintentionally feeds into it and this turns into Russ sleeping in Honey's bed and blah blah blah eventually this becomes a problem for Honey because he doesn't know how to address Russ's homesickness and clinginess without hurting him somehow even though Honey is extremely stressed and actively burning out
Then Russ overhears Honey venting to Undyne and feels. crushed. And he reacts incredibly rationally! By avoiding Honey as much as possible! But it does not take him long at all to break down and the two finally have a chat about boundaries. They work out a plan together that Honey thinks will genuinely help and Russ thinks will get himself off of Honey's back. The plan is that they'll figure out how to control Russ's world-hopping ability and get him back home.
The idea is that if he's able to control when and how he leaves, he can control where he goes. Then, when he inevitably lands in his home, he'll pop back in Underswap and tell Honey how it went. Because he can control it! Of course!
Honey gives him one of his hoodies and a photo camera to remember him by. Russ tries to figure out what it was in the past that might have helped him jump universes, which was the desire to be just about anywhere other than where he was at that moment. So, he just, thought about going home instead!
And it worked! And he left Honey's universe! And then he realized he didn't land at his home at all! And when he tried to go back to Honey's universe, he went somewhere entirely different as well! And he never saw Honey again! Wahoo!
This is the point where he just becomes a complete mess I'm not gonna lie to you, he starts drinking even though he really really REALLY hates alcohol, he only eats enough to stay conscious, he gets into fights just for the adrenaline rush, and only stays in one universe long enough to confirm it's not his home before either leaving for the next one or collapsing somewhere and hoping he doesn't get attacked while he sleeps for two hours
then he lands in Edge's universe and this needs a part two now OOPS
#trousled rambles#EMPHASIS ON RAMBLES#atbb#undertale#papyrus#russ#wasnt gonna use main tags but you know what. the papyrus tag could use this kind of enrichment i think#glanced at it today and must've reported like 10 posts for spam in 15 mins#at least i put my long shit under a read more!!!!!!!!!!!!#ahem. anyway yeah it is slightly embarrassing that i have to break this into multiple parts but i put. so much thought into the lore here o#at least russ has the bulk of it so the next ones wont be so insane#i'll keep going in a bit but i think i need a break from typing and also to. eat somethjing lmao#edit oh my god i forgot ALL of the tws guys sorry#cannibalism //#broken bones //#eating disorder //#codependency //#alcohol //#self harm //#(not outright stated but he does deliberately harmful stuff yknow)#ask to tag
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Keep You Safe - A Marcus Moreno Statesman!AU
Pairing: Statesman Agent Marcus Moreno x Statesman Agent Reader x Agent Jack "Whiskey" Daniels
What’s this? Pat’s writing fanfic now? Well… no, not exactly. 😅 Consider this a loose concept for a fic that I’d want to write if I had a knack for writing, inspired solely by Pedro’s Emmy’s look. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of Marcus Moreno and the costumes from the Kingsman movies. My brain’s been unable to think about anything else for the last couple days so I'm hoping that setting some of my headcanons free will help free up some brain space haha
Not really any warnings, it’s all pretty brief anyway. Highlights include: pining/unspoken feelings, fake dating, a love triangle dynamic that evolves into polyamory. The Boys keep their canon backstories for the most part. Reader is gender neutral.
The set up:
After sustaining an injury during his last mission, Heroic-turned-Statesman agent Marcus Moreno finds himself on temporary desk duty. He’s promised his daughter that he’ll stay out of harm’s way until he fully recovers. Desperately needing to feel useful while stuck behind the scenes, he's excited to receive his next assignment - as your new handler.
You have been a Statesman field agent for a few years now and have gone through your fair share of handlers - this isn’t your first rodeo. Nonetheless you appreciate Marcus’s unique experience and perspective as a former superhero. He’s kind, patient, and respectful, and the two of you become close rather quickly (while still keeping things professional).
While you’re away on missions, Marcus spends most of his time with Ginger, monitoring mission statuses and tech needs. His powers and weapons knowledge make him a good fit for the tech specialist team. Marcus and Ginger get along so well that their coworkers begin to joke that Ginger is his work wife. And yeah, they’re good friends, but she’s seen how he gets when you’re gone, steadfastly studying the wall of screens. He only has eyes for you.
Eventually, you get assigned to an undercover mission where you’ll be posing as one half of a romantic couple. Your lucky partner? One Jack “Whiskey” Daniels. You’ve worked with Jack a couple times before and while you find him to be a bit much sometimes, he’s charming and thoughtful under all the bluster.
Marcus, on the other hand, is apprehensive. He hasn’t met Jack yet but he’s heard the gossip around HQ about our flirty, larger-than-life cowboy. Ginger’s not-exactly-glowing comments about him certainly don’t help either, but she assures Marcus it’ll be fine.
Cue the mission with all its potential for tension and pining:
from Marcus having to watch the person he secretly has feelings for “fall in love” with someone else. Seeing the mission unfold and realizing that Jack’s not quite what his reputation suggests
to you actually slowly falling for Jack throughout the course of the mission (because it’s a fake dating story after all) but also having Marcus’s voice low and steady in your ear, always reminding you of his presence and the task at hand
to Jack knowing this is a fake arrangement (and that you and Marcus kinda sorta have a “thing” going) but wanting it to be real anyway, feeling his heart stirring for the first time in a very long time.
And obviously there’d be all the classic tropes. Couple practice. First kisses. One bed. A fancy gala. You know.
Maybe at one point, Jack becomes briefly incapacitated and Marcus has to step in and take his place for a moment to keep up ✨the ruse✨ Because they do look awfully similar from afar and who’s gonna notice really...
Something something the bond between two men, who’ve both experienced the loss of their previous partners, unexpectedly finding new love. The both of them witnessing the lengths the other is willing to go to to protect that love.
And then eventually the three of them work it all out and get together and fuck nasty. the end :)
#marcus moreno x reader#agent whiskey x reader#marcus moreno x reader x agent whiskey#Pat makes moodboards#and headcanons now I guess#headcanons? plot points? idk what to call them or what to do with them. I just need to get them OUT lol#no fic just vibes#possibly art or more moodboards at some point idk#keep you safe au#x reader
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Welcome Back My Boyfriend!
AND WE'RE BACK!
It's finally time to discuss Our Skyy 2! We were playing hurt this night: Ben was still recovering from dental surgery (please forgive his voice during this episode) and Nini was nursing a headache. Still, it didn't stop us from discussing all eight shows and talking about the crossover for an hour!
Nini and Ben assess the entirety of Our Skyy 2 and rank the offerings from worst to first.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Google Podcasts
Timestamps
The timestamps will now correspond to chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.
0:00 - Welcome
1:15 - Intro
6:07 - Vice Versa
14:23 - Star in My Mind
19:20 - Never Let Me Go
28:00 - A Boss and a Babe
36:45 - The Eclipse
49:50 - My School President
1:00:24 - Badd Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars
1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2
The Conversation: Now With Transcripts!
We received an accessibility request to include transcripts for the podcast. We are working with @ginnymoonbeam on providing the transcripts and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader.
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!
0:00 - Welcome
Nini
Hello, hello! Your QL fandom aunty and uncle are here with giant sunglasses, brown liquor in a flask, a folded five-dollar bill to slip into your hand when no one is looking, lukewarm takes, occasional rides on the discourse, deep dives into artistry and the industry.
Ben
Lots of simping! I’m Ben.
Nini
I’m Nini.
Ben
And this is The Conversation. About once a season, we plan to swan in and shoot the shit on faves, flops, and trends that we’ve been noticing in the BL, GL, or QL Industry. Between seasons, you can find us typing way too many words on Tumblr.
1:15 - Intro
Nini
Hi, Ben. How are you tonight?
Ben
I'm battling my own body's slow recovery from dental surgery but it doesn't matter because we have so much to record so we're sticking to the schedule!
Nini
But, we're gonna be okay. You've got meds, I've got meds—a.k.a. beer—for this headache. We're gonna be fine. We're doing it live. So, what are we talking about tonight? We are talking about Our Skyy 2… What a journey. Ben, explain to the people the concept of Our Skyy.
Ben
Welcome back, my boyfriend! That's it.
Nini
[laughs]
Ben
Jojo started this off and summed it up perfectly. Our Skyy originally served as a sort of epilogue project for the initial run of GMMTV BLs.
In the first run we had the Puppy Honey crew with OffGun, the SOTUS pair with Krist and Singto, the InSun pair from My Dear Loser: Edge of 17, Tay and New from Kiss the series—before Dark Blue Kiss, and Drake and Frank from My Tee a.k.a. ‘Cause You're My Boy.
Nini
So, that's the concept of Our Skyy. So, when GMMTV put out its 2023 offerings last year: Surprise! Our Skyy 2. They are giving us epilogues for 2020, 2021, and some 2022 shows. We're gonna dive into these.
Ben
With the original Our Skyy it was kind of chaotic. So, every crew kind of just did what felt right for their characters.
Like, Pete and Kao basically went on a date that was mostly uncomplicated—something their characters needed.
OffGun did a body swap which was just so they could let Gun pick on Off for a bit.
In and Sun got closure—unsurprising, Aof was on that one.
‘Cause You're My Boy: they just kind of did just a hot mess that was weirdly endearing, which is exactly what their show was.
And SOTUS did like the the next most logical thing for Arthit and Kongpob, which was them kinda saying goodbye as they were heading into a long distance form of their relationship because Kongpob was pursuing higher schooling outside of Thailand, if I remember correctly?
In a similar vein, this particular Our Skyy run that we're going to be talking about very much captured what I think the core spirit of the original work was, and each team came back to it—for the most part—with something to say that was consistent with their original offerings.
Nini
Yep.
Ben
We went Never Let Me Go, Star in My Mind, The Eclipse, Vice Versa, My School President, A Boss and a Babe, Bad Buddy? and then A Tale of Thousand Stars.
Nini
I also think that the airing order was very interesting and maybe we'll get a little time to talk about how they chose to air what they did when they did. This Our Skyy, I think, wanted to lean a little bit into the crack. Every single outing had a little bit of a crack element to it—and I quite like that. I enjoyed that. I had fun with that—for the most part—and we'll get to the ones where I did not enjoy that.
Ben
I do think that the Our Skyy project leans into fan service, and not in an inherently negative way? They want the people who enjoyed this show to have fun coming back to the show, and it’s been notable for me that, for the most part, I found that if someone really liked the original show they also really liked their Our Skyy outing. So like, for those of you who've listened to me or followed me, you know what shows I didn't like or despised when they aired and—unsurprisingly—my takes are fairly consistent.
Nini
Maybe it's the corners of the internet that I've been perusing, which you always tell me to stop looking at…I feel like the more that people liked the OG show the more upset they were with the Our Skyy. Maybe that's just the people are being wrong on the internet corners of the internet that I like to occasionally look through. [laughs]
Ben
[laughs] I don't go there.
6:07 - Vice Versa
Nini
Let's delve into it. Let's start talking some specifics. So, if we're going from worst to first my worst without a doubt was the Vice Versa Our Skyy. I am on record as not having watched Vice Versa because I was not interested in Vice Versa. I have tried and failed so many times with Jittirain stories that I knew that I was not going to enjoy this one, and so I never watched the original. But, for the sake of the podcast, I watched every single Our Skyy including this one, except I did not finish this one. [laughs] I started watching it. I was mostly annoyed, and then something happened that just… I just said, “Oh, absolutely not,” and I stopped watching it.
So, the trope—the, the crack trope—for the Vice Versa Our Skyy; the fan fic-y, fan service-y trope is: Add a Kid. I think it's Puen? Puen and Talay have been together for a while now. They're working hard, working a lot. They don't have as much time for each other. And so Talay comes up with the idea of doing a month of special days where they pay very close attention to each other and they do special things together. And it's a really sweet idea and honestly if that had been it I would have been fine. There would have been no problem.
But then they add a kid, and the way that they add a kid is what pisses me off. One of their friends… essentially delivers his nephew into the care of these strangers… so that they can play house? But it's also like a trick that Puen is playing on Talay. Because this kid just shows up at the house and Talay thinks that it might be his kid. Like, the, the setup of Vice Versa has always—as I have said before—every time I think I know what Vice Versa is about, Ben lets me know that I don't actually know what Vice Versa is about. But there's some way that Talay thinks that this kid is his somehow.
Ben
Would you like the context for why he believes that kid is his?
Nini
Sure, hit me with it!
Ben
So, they basically spend two years in the other world with Nanon and Ohm’s characters in their bodies. Ohm's character, Tess, is an asshole who absolutely ruined Talay’s life for the two years he was in his body. He sabotaged and ruined every personal and professional relationship that Talay had.
When he got back to his own body he had to spend years fixing his own life. Which sucks, because while he was in Tess's body he basically fixed Tess's life. It's really upsetting for me that Puen, who claims to love Talay, who watched him suffer for all of the things that Tess did to his life would genuinely let Talay believe that Tess saddled him with the responsibility of an unplanned kid… because he thinks his boyfriend doesn't pay enough attention to him… like he makes his boyfriend work outside in a tent in Thailand to do graphic design on an iMac.
Nini
You were really really mad about the tent. [laughs] I remember when we were watching this. You were really pissed about the tent.
Ben
I'm—I'm not over it.
It's humid in Thailand! Why would he be outside with a Mac? Oh my God—
It's frustrating because… On the one hand, I understand the impulse of, like, how do we get these guys to consider a new form of domesticity together? But, like, why do we have to use an actual child? Why can't we use, like, a dog, or a cat? Not coercing a child into letting strangers bathe him, and treat him like he's their son, and sleep with him in their bed. It’s so, so weird… and really unhinged… and it made me like a bunch of characters even less than I already did!
It was aggravating. It's frustrating because Puen did this through the whole show. Like, he doesn't trust Talay. He lies to him. He manipulates him. Talay and he are both in entertainment and Talay was against a huge deadline the night of Puen’s birthday, and he couldn't take a break from his work to meet his deadline to go do flirty, boyfriend things with Puen.
Puen expressed this frustration directly the next day in a way that I thought was totally valid and then Talay goes, ‘You are correct. Here is the plan I've come up with for us to make sure that we don't take our own relationship for granted, and keep working at it.’ And they have a really great month doing cute boyfriend date things while trying to maintain their careers. And so the whole secret baby felt completely unnecessary.
Like, we need something to happen for the plot to justify Jimmy, Neo, Aou, and Sea hanging out together. So, we have to introduce a secret baby, I guess?
I hated it…[laughs] Like, people joke that I don't often give low scores because I don't usually watch crap. Like, if something is, like, really really bad out of the gate I am like, “Oof! I don't have time for this!” and I'll usually drop it these days, because I got too much to do. But, like, I gave the show a 3 because I was deeply put off by the coercion of a child and the audacity of it all. Because, like, you know what your boyfriend went through because of Tess.
Why would you pull on that really traumatic thread from five years ago and make him believe that Tess had done this to him as well—knowing that Talay has a strong sense of responsibility, and would of course try to do right by a potential child.
Like, it's hard to even talk about, like, any of the cute relationship things that may have come out of this because, like, they should divorce.
Nini
I did not enjoy this when it was revealed that the kid was…tricked. I turned it off, and I did not watch the end.
For every special of Our Skyy, I gave it a drama score and a crack score. My drama score for this was a -5, because I was entirely unamused—like wholly unamused. This is not what I came to see in any way. I don't care if the kid is cute. I don't care if they're all cute together. They're literally using a child to fix their relationship—
Ben
And, explicitly, the child's parents did not know that this was happening.
Nini
—which makes it worse! So, I gave it a drama score of a -5, which is of course an overreaction but it's still getting a 0. Crack score, I gave it a 10, because it is actual crack? Like, this is probably the crackiest thing that happened in all of Our Skyy. But…it's not enjoyable as crack! So, let's give it a… 5 for crack… So, 0 for drama, 5 for crack gives it a score of 2.5, which sounds about correct.
Ben
Yeah, not good.
Nini
Yeah.
Ben
Pass.
Nini
Not good. Tens or chops? One chop!
Ben
Two chops!
[both laugh]
14:23 - Star in My Mind
Nini
Let's leave Vice Versa behind in the dustbin where it belongs and let's move on to the next on the list: Star in My Mind. Hoo!
Ben
[laughs]
Nini
Ben, I can't even remember what happened, I was so bored watching these episodes, like, dead bored. Star in My Mind is also a show that I did not watch the OG show. So, I had no idea what it was about and was going in blind. And, I think that I was correct to not watch the OG show, because… if it was anything as boring as this, I didn't need to see it.
Ben
[sighs] So, the Star in My Mind special is basically just the gang going on a little vacation together, and then New tries to subvert the “You're together now. Let's throw in a jealousy element bit.” Like, you put a note on here that the trope for this one is “trick your friends into going on vacation.”
So, their friends try to tease Daonuea into believing that maybe Kluen has eyes for some girl, and Daonuea gets jealous about this, and then a fight ensues and the friends get all upset. But we in the audience know that the guys are faking this fight. They knew what their friends were up to, but they were kind of flaking on this vacation. So, he uses this fake fight to force them to go on vacation with them.
Whatever.
Like, I think the part of this that was cute was New just throwing away the whole jealousy trope for BL, and then having the gay characters just be like, ‘Yeah, this is stupid. Anyway, we're going to absolutely use this against them because these bitches will not buy their tickets and I'm [gonna] force them to.” And, like, that part was kind of fun.
I'm in my breakup era with New right now. I can see, again, him trying to do something here. New is currently over BL. He’s tired of it. You can feel that in Star in My Mind. Like, he's completely bored with all of this. And so what could have been, like, at least a cute trip, just looks like five straight dudes hanging out in the woods for like an hour.
Nini
I think my notes say “it's two hours of a bunch of dudes vibing without vibes.”
Ben
Yeah, like, it wasn't great, and I don't really like coming for actors like that. But, Dunk is still uncomfortable with on-screen intimacy—or at least it feels like he is—particularly compared to Joong, who does not suffer from being camera shy when it comes to this kind of work. And so while I've seen them in behind-the-scenes stuff, and their variety stuff, and Joong and Dunk are great bros, I'm still struggling with Dunk as a romantic lead because he doesn't kiss well.
Nini
New didn't even phone this in. Like, I think he sent an email? Maybe it was a snail mail.
This was just—it was boring, which I think might be worse than bad? What do we even say about it?
Ben
Nothing! There is nothing to say! Like, Pawin was there. He didn't kiss anybody. [laughs]
Nini
I mean… that's really all that you can say about it. It was a waste of Pawin, like.
Probably the only thing that I enjoyed about this was Joong's several pissy faces when Khabkluen is salty because all his straight friends keep interrupting his gay couple time to hang out when all he wants to do is make out. And, like, the pissy faces that he makes are delightful, and they're the only reason this has a score.
I give it a drama score of 3, because what was it even about? And I gave it a crack score of 4, and all four of those points are for Joong's pissy faces which I thoroughly enjoyed. So, It was a 3.5 for me not because it was bad but because it was boring.
Ben
I think a show has to be offensive to me in some way for me to go lower than 6 and Star in My Mind is not. It's just boring and because I've been in these gay streets a long time, I've been offended. A lot. And, I will accept boring. It's a 6. It's forgettable. We don't have to talk about it anymore.
Nini
And we will not.
Ben
[laughs]
19:20 - Never Let Me Go
Nini
We're going to move on to the actual fun and interesting ones now. [laughs] There's a definite quality bar in Our Skyy 2. There are Vice Versa and Star in My Mind, which are below the quality bar. And then there's everything else, which is above the quality bar. Now, we're talking about games of inches here.
Never Let Me Go. So, the Never Let Me Go fanfic trope for Our Skyy was they did a time travel story that was also a—.
Ben
Fated mates.
Nini
—that was also a fated mates, and also a role reversal, and also like a body hopping. Like, there were—there was a lot going on here. It was not boring. Everybody was clearly having a fabulous time making this. And, I actually really enjoyed it. It was two episodes. I could have watched maybe four to six episodes of this no problem.
This was actually incredibly interesting. It was a lot of fun. Pawin, and Pond especially, clearly had a great time.
Ben
That's true.
[both laugh]
Nini
Pond had a fabulous time. So, the plot of the Never Let Me Go special… You go ahead.
Ben
All right. So, it's been a couple of years since we left the boys in Never Let Me Go, and Nuengdiao has been studying elsewhere. He's coming back to Thailand, and Palm has quietly been setting up shop in Bangkok so that when Nuengdiao comes back to Thailand he can be closer to him. He doesn't want to just stay out by the beach because he wants to see his boyfriend more.
[Cat begins wailing in the hallway near Ben’s mic]
Nuengdiao was a little bit caught off guard by this, and didn't like him making decisions for them. They run into a fortune teller who tells them that if they don't fix what was originally broken, they won't make it in this life, either. And then the fantasy hijinks kick in, where they are sent back in time to their original pairing… into the bodies of their past selves. And in their past—in their first past together where they become a couple—Palm is the rich lord, and Nuengdiao is essentially sold to him as a slave. Also, Pawin is there in an earlier version of his character.
And so they have to play their roles. Palm is having way too much fun bossing Nuengdiao around. And also just trying to have sex with him in the past. Over the course of this they end up realizing that they have to help Pawin’'s character hook up with Mark Pahun's character, and so all of the girlies who've been waiting for that ship to reunite were fed.
Nini is correct. Like, this ended up being really fun, because we got to see Palm and Nuengdiao kind of become like the gays who have it together for other gays.
Nini
It had that crack story but there was also another story going on alongside the crack which I really enjoyed—building on Nungdiao and Palm's actual OG series story—which is that Nuengdiao believes that Palm should make his life about himself, that he should make his decisions about the things that he wants to do without considering Neung. And that they can still be together but Palm shouldn't plan his life around him. When he comes back to Bangkok, it's to tell Palm essentially that he's decided that he's gonna stay away for a longer period of time. He's gonna do graduate school as well.
And, this is actually a conflict between them that sort of leads into the whole time travel thing, but it's actually a really interesting conflict between them because it builds on their series story in a really interesting way. I enjoyed watching them navigate it and figure it out while they were also navigating and figuring out how the hell to get out of the past. I mean the internal logic of the story just about holds together. It's fun. It's enjoyable. It's emotional.
Ben
If he looks at you for seven seconds he's into you and we're all like rooting for this under an umbrella.
Nini
It's fun. It's cute. It's got a little bit of a message to it. It's enjoyable. The characters feel like themselves. At one point we get a little montage of smash cuts of Nueng and Palm: they alternate crying over each other's dead bodies through the ages.
Ben
One of them definitely felt like a nod to Aof’s work where Jojo was poking fun at him.
Nini
They were actually dressed like Jim and Wen in Moonlight Chicken complete with Phuwin wearing sunglasses, his corpse wearing sunglasses at night when he's dead and Pond crying over him. It was really funny. It was delightful. That little smash cut montage was really fun and actually upped the crack score a little. Time travel is crack, no way about it. I was fully going to give it a good crack score anyway. But that little sequence upped the crack score by at least a point. It was just very funny.
And then watching Pawin overexaggerate his “khrub’s” and fall in love with Mark Pahun's character, who's like a jewelry seller at the market. And then when they come back to the present and he's Phum again, they meet Phum at the house—which has been maintained—the lord's house has been maintained throughout the ages.
Ben
Because it had been passed down to his ancestors’ family now because they were all, like, gay besties together.
Nini
Yeah, and like, Phum and Mark Pahun's character are together in this life, too—and they're really cute—and Phum's like, “Yeah, I was a shit to you in high school. I'm sorry about that.” [laughs] It was nice. It was fun. It was enjoyable. I gave it a drama score of 7.5—I think that's reasonable for it. I gave it a crack score of 8.5 so it works out to an 8 for me, which I liked. I liked it.
Ben
I really liked a lot of this. I liked how much fun Phuwin and Pond had in the traditional garb that they were wearing. I like how much fun they had with how often they had to be shirtless. I really enjoyed them writing vows to each other in the past because they didn't know if they would be able to escape. Basically fully committed to each other. That was really beautiful, and not something I expected from Jojo. I was really surprised that Jojo did something that genuinely tender. That really worked for me.
I gave it an 8. It's one of those 8’s where it's, like, if you liked Never Let Me Go, this is going to make it feel a little bit better because the idea that the drama of Never Let Me Go is yet another instance of these two characters trying to be with each other across space and time is super romantic—and that's the kind of shit I love in my big dramas. And I was not expecting this particular show to make me go, “Wow,” [sighs] and look back at the, the original show and go, “Okay. I can see that.”
It was deeply enjoyable. If you liked Never Let Me Go enough, and you feel mildly dissatisfied by it, and you just kind of want some closure to walk away from, watch the special. I felt very good about Palm and Nuengdaio by the end of that, because they felt a little bit more grown. And I kind of like where they left the characters with Palm just being like, “Whatever, I have a rich boyfriend and I've worked very hard. I'm just gonna go hang out with you in Germany for a little while, and then we'll figure it out from there.” And I'm like, more power to you, bro.
Nini
It seemed like yes that they were just going to vibe and enjoy each other, And, after everything that those two went through? Sure! That seems like a great place to leave them.
28:00 - A Boss and a Babe
Nini
Also in the, for me, 8 category—so there is a tie here—A Boss and a Babe. This kind of…surprised me, because I ended up, with the OG show, being really disappointed by where we landed with it. But I really liked the Our Skyy.
Ben
This is a little bit weird because I think in terms of whenever the rest of you hear this. We're actually, I think releasing this before the episode where we talk about A Boss and a Babe. So, spoilers, a bit, for that particular episode, but, uh, we were…less than impressed with A Boss and a Babe.
Nini
For sure.
Ben
However, we actually had a decent time with their Our Skyy outing. Nini why don't you walk us through the setup for this particular outing.
Nini
So, the fanfic trope for the A Boss and a Babe outing of Our Skyy is, I guess, “walk a mile in my shoes” kind of thing? Gun and Cher are happy together. They're sweet loving boyfriends… but the office is in shambles. Because Gun is stressed out and he's stressing everybody at work out. And because Cher knows everybody at work because he used to work there, he has been hipped to the fact that his man is stressing everybody else. And so he goes on a mission to try to get his man to stop stressing everybody at work out.
So, trying to make him understand that he needs to dial it the fuck back. And the way that he eventually comes up with after trying a few other ways, is that they are going to spend a day walking a mile in each other's shoes. So, he is going to spend a day being the boss, and Gun is going to spend a day being the intern so that Gun gets an idea of the stresses that his employees go through. And Cher is just like whatever I'll just be the boss, and Gun is like, “Oh, it's not as easy as you think.”
And it actually turns out really fun and interesting to watch them do this. Of course it's a weird, horny sex thing because everything is a weird, horny sex thing with these two. But [laughs] it's, it's fun. It's light. It's interesting. It's…enjoyable. It's a strong conflict. It's a stronger conflict than we get in the actual OG series. It works. I think it's that because it's so short New doesn't really have time to fuck it up.
Ben
[laughs] So, like, I was frustrated because Gun’s being kind of a difficult boss, but being fairly reasonable about why he's a difficult boss. He's like, “We work in a difficult industry where we spend a great deal of time working on something, and then we release it to the public, and then it can flop. And so I have been funding people's jobs for anywhere from two to 12 months working on a project, and we really need strong turnaround for this because these people's jobs are riding on the success of this. So they do need to take their jobs seriously, and when they are given feedback or are given specific directives, they need to accomplish those directives.”
There's like really interesting tension there between, like, the boss's perspective of, “Y'all can be mad at me, but you want me to cut your checks, right?” versus, “Bro, we are not going to work well under these fucking conditions.” Like, that tension was delivered really well! Gun's perspective comes through in a way that doesn't feel pandering to anyone, and I was like he is a little bit off base in the way he talks to people, but the things he's concerned about are valid for where he sits.
It just pissed me off low-key because, like, we never figured out what Thyme’s whole deal was in the original show. Like, his friend who used to be part of the company. And it feels like that was his job here—was to be like the bridge between Gun and the team. To translate Gun’s directives and frustrations into directives for the team so they could accomplish them and to keep the team motivated. And, like, Cher was helping with that for a while but now that Cher is, like, doing other stuff, like, that has gone away. That's the biggest thing with this one. Like, this was such a solid concept that it made me even more annoyed at how the OG show just sort of fumbled every thread that they were holding.
Nini
Yeah, I have to agree. Like, the workplace conflict on this was really strong and solid, and the workplace stuff in the OG show was kind of weak. And part of the workplace stuff that was great in this was showing that, yeah, Gun does need a balancing force at work. But also, aside from that, surprisingly, Cher is not an idiot. [laughs] Like, Cher is actually pretty competent. He's not, like, ready, clearly, to be the boss of a place like this. But he's not an idiot.
Like, one of the things that happens is that Gun tries to set him up a little bit by having, like, a client come in and try to, like, have a discussion and talk to him about, like, partnering on a game or something and like talking about ideas and all that kind of stuff. And at first you think that Cher is going to blow it. But then he delivers. He comes into the meeting. You know, he takes a minute to get his bearings and understand what's going on, but then he has actual good ideas? And he can speak to the people in a way that works for the business.
So, it shows they could probably at some point in the future after Cher has learned more, they could probably run the business together. Because I think that they bring the different perspectives that's required, but, just like Ben said, that also makes me, like, really mad that we didn't get more of the Thyme stuff in the OG series because, to me, that feels like this was what Thyme’s role was. And that just completely got cast aside. So, on the one hand, I thought this was actually pretty good but, on the other hand, it made me think even less of the OG series and I was already struggling with the OG series.
Ben
[sighs] And that's where we are. It sucks because, like, again, like, Force and Book are good. And the cast of this particular show? Very good. They hold together an otherwise weak show but, man, you just really want to see what that cast looks like when they have a really good show under their belt.
Nini
Yeah, and this gives you, like, a kind of an ‘in’ to that. So my score: this was drama score of 8 because I thought it was a solid conflict. Well executed. I give it a crack score of 8 because, quite honestly, once the whole role reversal thing started. Like, if I worked for Gun’s company, I would have taken, like, vacation until that was over because it was just…It was a little too “bring your kinks to work” for me personally.
[both laugh]
I would have been like, yeah I don't need to see this. I'm gonna take a day off, and tomorrow when I come back, hopefully everything will be normal. Combined like drama score 8 crack score 8 average 8. What did you give it?
Ben
I gave it an 8, and we were joking with some of our other friends about how most of us gave it an 8, and I think it was ginnymoonbeam who was like, “We all gave it an 8, but these are all very different 8s.”
[both laugh]
Nini
Yes, that is definitely true. These are different 8s that we are giving it. My 8 is like, “Damn it. Now I got to go back and revise my score of the OG series and put it even lower.”
36:45 - The Eclipse
Nini
Moving along from the 8s and now we're starting to get into the top of tops. The top top top tops of the Our Skyy pantheon for me. And next up is The Eclipse. Ben, I'm [gonna] need you to give the people what we're talking about here.
Ben
The Eclipse picks up, it feels like, the summer after the boys have graduated from high school. So, they're away from Suppalo—we're not going to deal with any of the Suppalo nonsense anymore. It's just the two couples, Wat, and…Pawin's character for some reason, because he's always palling around them. They're getting together to help Wat shoot for a film project that he wants to submit to a competition. But we pick up, originally, with Akk and Ayan who were doing boyfriend things, and we are seeing the ongoing deprogramming of Akk continuing. And over the course of the filming for this, we see that Akk and Ayan are basically stand-ins for Golf's very complex ideas about the way our private and public lives inform each other, and how both are inherently political.
Akk and Ayan over the course of this are having a struggle about whether or not they should care what other people think. Akk thinks that to be part of a civil society you do have to care about how your actions and behaviors impact other people. Ayan, who has seen what a civil society does to people, thinks that that is bullshit and that he should be more concerned about himself and the people he cares about, and not the nebulous feelings of others. And then calls Akk directly out at one point about how his concern for others turned him into the worst version of a cop possible.
And it gets really ugly when they're working on Wat’s film project. These two are having a truly fundamental struggle about whether or not the two of them are even compatible because they do not see eye-to-eye politically. You get the sense that Ayan hoped that, once freed from the Suppalo prefect thing, Akk would start to see things more his way. And Akk hoped that Ayan would stop fighting with him so much, because Akk really just wants to do soft, cuddly things with his boyfriend. But Ayan gets off on fighting with Akk. [laughs] So he is always antagonizing him for sex reasons.
Nini
It's one of those early relationship conflicts when you're still figuring out how to be with each other. When you're dating at the beginning, you put your best foot forward. In this case, with the two of them, they put their absolute worst foot forward when they were getting together. But there's still that thing about the version of you when you're courting is…different, somewhat, than the version of you when you're not courting. For them, the issue is the version of them when they were courting was exactly who they are, but they didn't think that that was who they were.
So, like you said, Ayan really thought that out of the pressure cooker of Suppalo, Akk would be a different person, and then he's, like, coming to realize: No, this is really just who he is. And Akk is having that same realization about Ayan. They have to decide essentially—and they do decide via Wat's film—whether what they are to each other is worth bridging that gap between them. The answer that they come to is: yes it is—in a really phenomenal scene that I enjoyed so much.
Ben
Let me tell you. First and Khaotung are just really, really good together. Like, it's amazing how they can play these two characters coming to a precipice of fundamental political disagreement to the point that they looked at each other and they're like, “Is this really who I'm going to be with?” And you can see this almost weird resignation as they turn to face each other and embrace, where there are no easy answers to this.
They don't see eye to eye politically on a lot of really fundamental things, and yet they still want to choose each other each time. And that is delivered so well. Like, it's hard to watch The Eclipse with your brain off. I watched a lot of people try to do it during the original show and they struggled, because it is not a brains-off show. Golf has a lot to say about the state of their country and is using whatever platform they have to voice some of these ideas, most notably about how sitting on your phone writing mean tweets is not action. That you need to get into the work. That you have to get into the streets with other people. You have to participate in the work. Even if it's just in the support of getting the people who do do the work the tools and food they need to do the work.
And it's really fascinating that even in this little two-part special, which as far as some people thought, was just First and Khaotung making out for two hours because these boys kissed a lot in this special, they managed to say a lot. Golf managed to express their deep love of Thai cinema with the references that Wat was playing out.
It also managed to get across how much these two boys really like each other, and it was kind of fun to see Akk and Kan working their way out of their internalized homophobia. Like it was not surprising to me that Akk and Kan wanted to do a lot of touching with their boyfriends.
Nini
I really liked how it all came together: how Golf used their love of not just Thai cinema but queer cinema to sort of pull the threads together of the fight that Akk and Ayan were having. The petty fight and the serious fight, because they were having a fight on two levels. They were having a petty fight about—well, maybe not petty—but they were having a surface level fight about Ayan paying attention to Akk and being lovey-dovey and soft with him, versus Ayan wanting Akk to be tougher with him because that's what he likes. And then that going to the deep level of the political, and then, on top of that, that being pulled together by the concept of film. And then even throwing in for us a little side story about Wat and what film means to him, and how he's not necessarily supported by his family—but he kind of is a little bit but mostly not—and how he has things to say and he feels strongly about those things
Like, they managed to do a lot with very little in this special and I really, really enjoyed it. It was very deep for what it was. Very thinkable piece. I really liked it. And then on top of that, they also get to have a little bit of coming-of-age nostalgia moments about leaving high school and moving into the real world. There's so much packed into those two hours. I was really impressed with how much they managed to get in there and have it feel organic.
Ben
I was incredibly impressed by this entire outing.
Nini
I liked the special on its own. I liked it in connection to the OG show. I liked it as a continuation of the OG show. I liked the things that it had to say and the way that it carried through its themes. I was impressed by how much it managed to fit in. I gave it a drama score of 9.5. I really thought it was very, very good.
Ben
But there was singing so she took half a point.
[both laugh]
Nini
I gave it a crack score of 8. The trope really was I guess “secret surprise” because the frame that this is all put in is Ayan preparing a surprise for Akk’s birthday, but it's a secret surprise where he's pretending that he doesn't remember and he's not going to celebrate Akk’s birthday, which is a little weird which is why I took the half point off really, because I hate that secret surprise trope.
Ben
It's one of those things where I don't really like it for Akk, but if fits with Ayan’s sort of, like…Ayan is the queer kid who reads too much theory. Like, he knows more than you. And so he doesn't always see you, specifically. Like, he outs Thua in the first show thinking he's helping him. Like, he kind of is but, like, he outs Thua and oversteps, and it's the same thing here with Akk. Like, he wants to surprise Akk. Like I don't think you should be surprising Akk, because so much of his Suppalo experience is about being guided by the things that are not being said that he's supposed to just interpret.
If you're trying to deprogram him, you need to not do that to him. And the reason why, like I—I mostly let it go is because, as dense as Ayan can kind of be because he's too fucking smart for his own good, when Akk admitted in, like, the first fifteen minutes of the show that he hoped that they were gonna do cute boyfriend frolicking in the fields and taking pictures together, and Ayan was like, “Oh, I thought you were just kidding about that.”
And Akk was like, “No! I was serious.”
It's like, “All right? Well shit! Grab your camera!” And they frolicked!
Nini
[laughs]
Ben
He gave his boyfriend the cute boyfriend shit he wanted to do, even if he teased him a little bit about it first.
Nini
I did like that too. I like that they don't have it together yet but they're willing to listen, and they're willing to do what it takes, I think. But, like I said, I'm knocking out a half a point for the secret surprise because I hate that trope. The crack score is an 8 because there's these set of dream sequences which are homages to Thai film and queer film, and I thought they were delightful. There's the Brokeback Mountain one and then there's the Golden Eagle one which is a Thai film then there's the Ong Bak one which is another Thai film and then there's another—
Ben
If you have not seen Ong Bak and you like action film, please go see Ong Bak.
Nini
I have not watched Ong Bak. Of course, Ben has because he's a boy.
Ben
I am a boy! Tony Jaa is amazing!
Nini
[laughs] I really liked that Golf gets to throw that in there as well. And it's fun. The Golden Eagle one especially is delightful. [laughs] It really is. So that's 9.5 and 8. Let's call that an 8.75. Ooh the maths is coming back! It's coming back! An 8.75 for The Eclipse.
Ben, what’d you give it?
Ben
I gave it a 9 because it's really coherent and that mattered a lot for me, because we had watched a lot of—I don't remember the exact order—but I remember just not being, like, necessarily, like, great at this point because a bunch of them were kind of…stuffed…or boring…and this wasn't. I was fully engaged the whole time, because Golf has such clear ideas in their work and they're all working together at various levels that they really wanted us to not miss.
49:50 - My School President
Nini
Moving on from The Eclipse onto the next rung on the ladder up: My School President. So the My School President fan fiction trope was AU, alternate universe, for all of the characters. I had a fucking blast with this. Ben, explain to the people what happened.
Ben
I'm gonna pre-react to the criticism, unfortunately.
My School President is a high school story about pursuing your long-term crush and the final year of your high school experience. There was no way My School President was going to get an epilogue story. So instead they flipped the seats of a bunch of the characters.
So, in this version of the My School President story, Gun is the school president and Tinn is the member of the school band. This time named Lion instead of Chinzhilla. Instead of Tiwson being the school president's best friend, they keep Por, who is his bestie in this. Tiwson is a member of the band. Sound and Win switch positions in this, where Sound is the long-term member of the band. Win is the new hot boy who shows up who they recruit. They also decide to flip Yo and Pat in the story with each other, even though they're still both in the band. Gim becomes the principal, and Photjanee becomes the operator of the milk ice cream bar.
And in the process of this, like, the same beats from the show. We still hit them, but they play out very differently because the core characterization of these couples don't shift. Which forces us to reckon with certain aspects of the characters that kind of get glossed over in the idealism of the original My School President run. For example, Tinn is so much braver than Gun. Gun is kind of a coward who is gripped by an intense sense of self-doubt, and it starts off almost immediately. Like there's some political commentary with the way Gun is selected as the school president. 250 votes were cast by parents to make Gun the president instead of going through the school voting process instead, which works as a quick shorthand for the show, but also works as a commentary on Thai parliamentary politics.
And so like he's not the school president because he wants to help Tinn. He's just sort of pushed into the position by his mom, and so the moments that they hit along the way, like the dancing together scene. That plays out differently because Gun backs off and ends up dancing with someone else. The whole Questions thing they did to get close to film the thing goes differently because Gun won't ask Tinn directly, but Tinn does ask him, but Gun backs down.
It was interesting because, like, everyone still chose each other. But, like, in a weird way Tiwson and Por were the strong couple of this outing, anchoring for the rest of them.
Like, in the original show Tinn and Gun are so obviously together that the force of their mutual attraction sort of just creates opportunity for the rest of these relationships to bubble up. This time around, Tiwson and Por are working together in the background to help Tinn and Gun get together because they want to come out as a couple. Which I thought was an interesting switch-up as well.
Nini
I really enjoyed that, despite shifting the characters around in terms of their positions and roles, that the cores of the characters remained exactly the same. And you see how the same people living a different life would become a different person. Like you talk about Gun being kind of a coward and he is kind of a coward even in the OG show. Tinn’s the brave one, and Tinn has to be the brave one because Gun's the one who's gonna back down. But also the Gun of the alternate universe—the multiverse of cuteness as it is called—the Gun of the alternate universe hasn't spent his whole life on stage being judged and knocked back. And developing that thick skin that he talks to Tinn about in the OG series, so he is much less resilient than the Gun of the OG series. And that makes a difference in how he navigates his crush on Tinn.
Similarly to that, Tinn in the AU has not had the strictness of the OG Photjanee forced on him the whole time. The strictness and the straight lace-ness because things are a little looser for him. And so he feels more able to take the ball and run with it when he realizes how he feels. They redo the scene of them spending the night at the school and walking around, and this is where Tinn turns the Gun and is like, “Look, do you like me?” which is something Tinn wouldn't necessarily have asked in the OG series.
But then Gun, faced with the opportunity to actually lock it down with his crush. He says no and he runs away which is not a thing that Tinn would have done. If Gun had ginned up the, the actual courage to ask Tinn if he liked him Tinn would have been like [inhales] taken a deep breath and been like, “Hell yell, let’s date.” It's really interesting watching how they take the same characters and, just by moving their positions in the story, they create a story that's different.
Ben
And yet all the people still choose each other. They basically state the big idea at one point. The Gun character says maybe in another lifetime things would have gone better, and the Por and Tiwson of this universe slap that idea down and go, “Yeah, but you're not in those universes. You're in this one. Make the most of the life you have.”
Nini
I really enjoyed this outing. I enjoyed what they took the opportunity of the Our Skyy special to say and to do. I agree with you. I don't think that an epilogue would have worked. My School President is so of its setting. I do not think that moving the boys into college and following them there—I don't feel like I would have been interested in seeing that because that's not the point of My School President.
My tagline for My School President was “perfect high school romance” and I think that's where it should stay.
Okay, so my drama score for My School President was 9.5, and I took off a half point because nobody made out. And, I'm sorry, I am shallow. I wanted somebody to kiss in this special. I didn't care who. Just somebody. So I took off half a point. But the crack score is a 10 because I mean it's an AU. There is nothing crackier than that, so that works out to what, like a 9.75? Yeah, I'm good with that.
Ben
So, I gave this one a 9 because it was a little heady and My School President is not a really heady show for me. But the whole AU concept was. Now, I liked it, but in terms of, like, recommending it to the people who liked My School President, it's kind of hard because they wanted more of what they loved in My School President and this is not exactly that? So, I gave it a 9.
But I'm also with Nini, like nobody kissed in this one. And, again, young actors. I'm totally fine with them not kissing, but…their characters in the original show have really specific kisses, and, if they were more experienced and veteran actors, we would have gotten a different type of kiss from these characters because they are coming at each other very differently. And we don't get to offer that particular comparison here. So, minor knock for me as well.
Nini
We didn't even get to talk about the best part which was them doing a fake music video for a fake Aof song that incorporated Aof’s top three hits in the music videos, which are He’s Coming to Me, Bad Buddy, and A Tale of Thousand Stars.
Ben
We didn't even talk about that.
Nini
Tiw and Por got to do A Tale of Thousand Stars. Sound and Win get to do Bad Buddy. And Gun and Tinn get to do He’s Coming to Me. So they, they paid homage to their granddaddy in "Aof" Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon. Three of the greatest GMMTV BLs, and also the ones that sort of set the stage for My School President.
1:00:24 - Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars
Nini
Onto the main event, and the main event of Our Skyy 2 was "Aof" Noppharnach giving the finger to GMMTV and saying, “Fuck you, I get four episodes to talk about what I want. And what I want to talk about is queer elders coming to terms with themselves, and I'm going to use anybody I want to talk about that.” AKA the Bad Buddy - A Tale of Thousand Stars crossover event.
Ben, break it down for the people.
Ben
Whereas every other one of these projects except for My School President was in many ways an epilogue this is a mixture of…it's an epilogue or a post-show story for Tian and Phupha, but for Pran and Pat it's set between Bad Buddy episode 11 and Bad Buddy episode 12. It's the senior year for Pat and Pran. They are still closeted and having to keep up the architecture-engineering rivalry, though it looks like they've tried to smooth things over over the years because most of the beef is about who's bringing…brooms to…the charity project now. [laughs] But they're having some consternation because both groups need to put on a play as part of their class president activities, and after the normal Bad Buddy hijinks kick in, Pran reveals that he wants to adapt Tian's diary A Tale of Thousand Stars into a play for the architecture school.
And once they decide to follow this route, their teacher says that, because they don't have permission from the people whose story this actually is, they need to go find them and get said permission. Pran decides that they're going to go to Pha Pun Dao to talk to them directly, tell them how important it is that they want to tell this particular story.
Before they can leave, Pat is forced to hang out with his engineering buddies and, because he has to pretend like he doesn't like Pran, he says something akin to, “That Pran guy. He'd be useless without me. I'm always having to help him.” Pran felt some kind of way about that and decided to leave Pat behind and go to Pha Pun Dao himself—much to his own chagrin—because he loves that boy, and got so nervous when he was walking around by himself without Pat.
And over the course of these four episodes, Pat and Pran learn a little bit more about themselves and their dynamic—but mostly they really help Tian and Phupha work past some really fundamental struggles that they were having as a couple that Pat and Pran realized that they had moved past a long time ago.
This crossover really elevates both works because Aof is obsessed with the idea that queer people make each other better and, by the end of this, we as a fandom seem rather split about it because those of us who liked both A Tale of Thousand Stars and Bad Buddy were able to appreciate how both stories impact each other. But, it seems like if you were really only into one of those stories, you resented the crossover in one way or another.
Nini
I think that's one reaction to it, but, I mean, we've seen among the clowns even people who were really into Bad Buddy but not so into A Tale of Thousand Stars really coming around on Tian and Phupha by the end of the special. I don't think we have like a Vice Versa situation in that, and we can discuss all the reasons that might be, but I think that definitely the crossover has made people who maybe didn't appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars as much really appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars and Tian and Phupha more now.
Ben
So where do you want to pick up with the beginning of this discussion?
Nini
I think I want to start with the idea one of our fellow clowns first espoused, and really sort of set me off on this thought process, that this special—this whole crossover—is all about Phupha. Because, of all four characters in the OG shows, the only character who didn't really get an arc was Phupha—this is Phupha’s arc. How do you feel about that as an idea—as a concept?
Ben
Since we're gonna start here, I'm gonna come out swinging.
Nini
Do it.
Ben
If you hate that Phupha is the focus character of this particular special, I need you to examine whether or not you actually care about gay men.
Phupha is a poor, hyper-masculine, closeted gay man, who's older than the other characters. He's about 35 at this point. There are so many queer people out there that you're never going to know about because they cannot live their lives loudly.
We're recording in June right now. Pride month. Phupha’s not gonna show up at Bangkok Pride because 1) he's not coming to Bangkok, and 2) that's just not the place where he feels safe. It's not the place where he feels seen. It's not where all of the quiet gays are gonna go, or where the gays who have to be closeted for one reason or another are going to be. And it's easy to forget them because they're boring or they're less fun.
I like that the story ends up being about: “How do we help Phupha break out of his own shell a little bit and let Tian love him just a little bit more?”
Nini
Phupha is this sort of stoic, very stern, character. I mean they lampooned that a little bit in the OG series for A Tale of Thousand Stars, and they lampoon him a little bit in the beginning of the crossover here, deflating him a little bit—kind of puncturing the whole stoic seme thing. But this is kind of who he is.
This is, as you say, he's older. He's got real responsibilities. He's got a community to protect. He's…got people that he cares about that he needs to take care of. He is not the kind of guy who is going to, like you say, go to Bangkok Pride. He is the kind of guy who maybe has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with—definitely has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with. He is that guy who is trying to do the right thing all the time. And so often the right thing means him subsuming his actual desires in some kind of idea of him denying himself being what's best for the community.
And one of the things that the crossover brings forward, particularly in the person of Pat, who is diametrically opposed to the idea of subsuming himself for anybody. He only does it for Pran, and only, like, grudgingly. But, to put somebody like Pat, who is just loud and proud and just completely does not care about any ideas of masculinity or propriety or anything like that, and put that character in conversation of any kind with Phupha. It's so delightful to watch that happen because, of course, Pat immediately gloms onto him. He follows him around like a duckling—he imprints on him.
He's like, “Oh, yes, Stern Daddy. I really, really like this vibe that you're givin’ off here. I'm just going to follow you around and bother the fuck out of you.”
I think it was wen-kexing-apologist who said that Pat's entire job in the special is to terrorize the local elder gay. I Love it.
Ben
Pat and Pran. They both looked at Phupha, looked at each other, and then both said at the same time ‘WOULD.’
[both laugh]
Nini
I did see that. That was funny because it's true. They hang a lampshade on it at two points 1) when Pran runs into Phupha for the first time—him really having, like, a gay boy moment. [laughs] Like, the whole, like, slow-motion, turn-around, like, gasping gay boy moment.
Ben
He's read the, the diary and he's like “I get it.” Immediately!
[both laugh]
Nini
And then, to have Pat's moment come, where—because Pat's flirtation language is competition. So, of course he basically challenges Phupha to a duel in the form of a drinking contest. And then they wake up shirtless next to each other and think that they might have maybe…done something—
Ben
They definitely did some stuff.
Nini
They made out. Just a little bit. They kissed a little bit.
But I—I loved that! I loved that they were both really into him. Like it was clear that they were both attracted to him. It was very gay and very fun. But also they're just like, “No, I get it.” They—they both looked and they were just like, “Tian, I get you. I understand why you live in this village with [both laugh] no running water, and you have to sleep under a mosquito net every night. I get you! I understand you because, for this man, I would do these things.” Like, they get it.
It's kind of delightful.
Ben
I like how, when Pran first gets to the village, and Phupha passes out, Tian runs up and Pran’s like ‘who are you’ and Tian's like, “No. Who the fuck are you?”
[Nini laughs]
Ben
And, like, if Tian had been allowed to have a knife…
Nini
Pran would have been stopped at that point—fully stabbed. “Like, who the fuck are you and why are you talking to my man?” [laughs] Like, Tian lives in the village because he doesn't want anybody else to see Phupha.
[both laugh]
Nini
Because he knows the minute any of these whores take a look at his man, if it's going to be a problem.
Ben
In terms of the serious stuff. So, they've shown up to convince them to sign these papers. Going into this Pat and Pran are fighting a little bit because Pran feels guilty, and part of this journey for him was maybe seeing, like, if he actually needed Pat as much as he does. And he learns very quickly that he is not at his best without Pat.
It's funny because Pat always knew this. Pat seemed to know already. Like, he says it in like episode 5 of Bad Buddy that he was not at his best when Pran was gone.
But Pran wants to prove he doesn't need Pat's help, and when Pran shows up to try and convince him to sign Tian's like, “Fuck yeah! I wrote the diary so people would…maybe want to become teachers and appreciate what I have out here. Absolutely!” Phupha's like, “No, y'all not going to present me as some lovesick fool on your little stage.”
And then Pran tries to talk to Phupha a couple of times and fails massively at it. Tries to lie to Phupha. And then Pat blocks the shit out of that by calling out the bullshit right away, because he's pissed at Pran for running off without him. So he's sabotaging some of Pran's efforts. And it isn't until the two of them start working together that they actually start making any fucking progress because…that's who they are.
Nini
But I think there's also, like, a really valid point to the fact that Pran—he tries to talk to Phupha about it at first and Phupha is not having it. You're right. But one of the reasons that Phupha is not having it is because he's looking at these kids and he's thinking, “These kids do not understand me. These kids have no idea of what my life is like. These kids have no idea of what our lives are like. These kids have never faced any kind of serious challenge. These are two dumb kids. I'm not gonna give them time of day. They don't get to tell my story.”
And then, by the end, the thing that actually gets Phupha to agree to let them tell his story…is Pran actually dropping the bullshit—as you said—and saying to him, “You think I don't know what it's like to feel insecure? You think I don't know what it's like to feel like my partner deserves better than me? You think I don't know what that feels like? Oh, believe you me, I know what that feels like.”
And, because at this point Phupha has spent an enormous amount of time with Pat, he's like,
“Okay, yeah, maybe you do understand what I'm going through.”
And the way that that works out in the end—and I mean we're kind of skipping back and forth through the story at this point—but the way that that works out at the end is Phupha saying, “Okay, you get to tell my story, but you have to tell my story because you understand me.” His condition for signing off on them doing the play is that they play the roles of him and Tian, because they understand him. I thought that was really—a really great way to follow that thread through the story. I really enjoyed that part.
Ben
I like the subtle way Aof played with our expectations about who would identify with who. Like, they made Tian and Pran resemble each other. Tian was like, “Fuck this twink,” right away as soon as Pran showed up.
[Nini laughs]
But then, like, Pran helps him. Pran helps him in the class and Tian softens very quickly to Pran.
Because of how physically macho Pat is—like, there's this expectation that he and Phupha are gonna be super similar to each other—and there's an interesting subtle commentary that Aof does there in that it's the more creative one, who's way too close to his mom, who's more like the hyper-masculine dude, because both of them are masking in their lives.
Like, Phupha is hyper-masculine because that's what's expected of him. And like people pick at Phupha about this a little bit, but he is trying to live up to the role that he is told he's supposed to fulfill. And Pran also suffers under the expectations of who his mom expects him to be, and it's interesting for me that Aof, over the course of these three episodes when they're all together, Aof says Pran and Phupha have more in common because they are carrying so much homophobia on their shoulders, and that's why the two of them probably understand each other best.
Nini
Using the yaoi tropes again, a talk about who is the seme and who's the uke in the story in terms of who's the pursuer and who's the pursued, and…if you look at it, like, then you can clearly see that it's Tian and Pat who are aligned because Pat pursued Pran and Tian pursued Phupha. They are the semes even though it seems that Tian would be an uke. He's not. He actually pursued Phupha.
So in the narrative sense. He's the seme. It's just very fun, this playing with the idea of what is a seme and what is an uke. And, again to use the yaoi terms—which you know I don't like to use ‘cause I don't really know the yaoi or rock with the yaoi. But, that idea of who is…pursuing the relationship, leading the relationship—like that's Tian and that's Pat.
And in terms of who is being pulled along by their partner in a kind of a way that's Phupha and that’s Pran. So, I do like how Aof leans into this…because again, it subverts expectations in a particular kind of way. But also it makes so much sense.
Ben
There's two subtle things that I really want to point out, and I want to talk about them a little.
First, Pat and Pran use titles for Tian and Phupha the whole time. And the other thing is about how nobody really knows anything about anybody in this. So, like, we're gonna call them Tian and Phupha, Pat and Pran, because we're inside of these people's stories with them. But it's interesting to me that Pran and Pat never cross a familiarity line with Tian and Phupha in the brief time they're with them. They refer to them as Teacher and Chief only the entire time.
Nini
I like that because it's a nod to their roles as adults because Pat and Pran are still kids. They're still college students, and Tian and Phupha are adults to them. But, in some ways, Pat and Pran have progressed much further in their relationship than Tian and Phupha have because they've been through more—just from the nature of their whole history. And they've crossed barriers and boundaries and, and parts of their relationship that Tian and Phupha are just confronting or haven't even confronted yet. And I liked that.
I liked, also, that interplay of the younger ones being the ones to teach the older ones something. I really like that because I feel like that's what's happening now not just in—not just in queer circles—because that's definitely happening in queer circles. But also just in terms of generalization. Like, if you're not a complete douche and you're our age—well I say our age. I'm about 10 years older than Ben. Not ten, but…when you've crossed a certain Rubicon in the adulting game. Let's put it that way.
Right now. The kids are teaching us like a whole bunch of stuff as long as you're not a dick, like, and you remain open, the kids can teach you all kinds of shit that you never thought was possible to learn about yourself at this stage in your life. And I really like that Aof played with that because Aof’s about my age, and I like that he is the kind of person who understands that the young uns have things to teach us as well. Like, we have things to teach them—clearly and obviously—and we want to make a better world for them—clearly and obviously. But also, there's so much shit that we can learn from them when it comes to just fucking unclenching, because that's what happens here! Like, all of this is in service of Phupha just fucking unclenching.
Ben
And this is what I mean about having other queer people, like it isn't just about your boyfriend. You need queer friends. Like, Tian blossoms almost immediately when he realizes that Pat and Pran are a couple—that they're not just friends. As soon as Pat flirts with him a little bit at breakfast and Pran shoves a spoon into his mouth, you can see Tian instantly relaxes and it's like, “Okay” and is more receptive to what these two are here for. And for Phupha. Like, yeah, it's one thing to just be into Tian and that be a thing, but to have someone like Pat roaming around actively flirting with him all the time, that also forced Phupha to reckon with who he is.
And it's funny, because, like, Pat and Pran are actually closeted. They basically, like, admit it to Tian and Phupha as a sort of a de facto thing. But, like, the two of them are away from the world where they have to hide. So they're on top of each other. They're constantly touching each other. They're flirting constantly…
Nini
They're fucking in the tent twenty feet away from them. [laughs]
Ben
We'll get there in a second. We’ll be there in a second. [Nini laughs] But they're so obviously obsessed with each other. And like Nini said, like during the rescue bit, Kampung is not in the tent with them where he's supposed to be. And so the boys are like, “Oh, I guess the kid decided to go stay with Phupha and Tian. Great! My foot is hurting me because I twisted my ankle, but let's get it in!” And then in the morning Pat limps to breakfast asking, “What's my score for last night?”
Nini
I love that they just fuck their way through all their problems. It's delightful. I enjoy it.
Ben
One of the sad things with Tian and Phupha is…they have to keep waiting for the other person to be asleep to be affectionate with them, and that's one of the big things that I'm really glad that they start to work through towards the end of this. Like, I'm really proud of Phupha for listening to the man who he loves, and the person who is inspired by the man who he loves.
Like, it’s so fascinating. Like—like Pran ran on this whole trip thinking he was Tian, met Phupha, realized he was Phupha, and was able to reach across that gap and say, “Please trust me. We got you.” And Phupha said, “Okay.”
There's a lot of consternation in the fandom right now about taking score between Pat and Pran about who sacrifices more, or what should or shouldn't be said. I'm not particularly interested in that particular conversation. Pat and Pran love each other. They're adults. They've committed to each other. Sometimes you're gonna be with other gays and you're not going to understand how they work, and you just have to accept that their dynamic is their dynamic. It's not about who wins. It's about who cares for you—and they clearly care for each other.
Nini
I think part of what it is, as well, is—it sounds bad, but go with me on this right? I am a great proponent of therapy. I believe in it. I am in therapy. I have been in therapy for years. I recommend therapy to everybody. But there is a certain level of therapized that I think is not necessarily good for us…And that is as somebody who believes in the power of therapy to change and save lives. I think that this idea that everything is pathologized, that you always have to be on the lookout because somebody's trying to get you in some kind of way—I think that it can be harmful to relationships and to our understanding of relationships in certain ways, because not everything that is unbalanced or imbalanced is harmful.
And I think that one of the problems that I'm having with…not so much the show, but the fandom reaction to it is…that yes, Pat and Pran’s relationship looks unbalanced from the outside. It probably is unbalanced in certain ways. But that doesn't mean that it's harmful. But there's this idea that because of—again this is a, a therapized lens that unbalanced equals harmful, and I don't think that's necessarily the case.
One of the things that I really don't grok onto and, to be fair…I am very…I am a Bad Buddy fun. I am a Pat and Pran fan. I am a fan of the characters separately and together. And one of the things that…I am really personally sticky and icky about is this idea in certain parts…that Pat and Pran do not love each other equally, or Pran does not love Pat enough, or Pat loves Pran more—all these ideas of particular kind of imbalances between them. And my whole thing is—Who are they and what do they need and what do they want from each other? What does Pat actually need from Pran? Is he getting it? He absolutely is.
So this idea of keeping score between the characters—or keeping score in relationships in general if you, if you broaden out to the idea of relationships—I feel like it doesn't serve. I feel like it's…reductive. And I feel like looking at these characters through that lens is not the way that Aof is portraying these characters, or wants the audience to look at these characters. Because I think that Aof is a person who is…very tuned into certain ideas that he wants to portray—certain things that he wants to portray about queerness and queer community and queer relationships—and…I think that to reduce probably the greatest queer relationship that he has put on screen in Pat and Pran to score keeping, when score keeping is a part of their history that they have deliberately stepped away from because they were forced into it. I feel like it misunderstands what he's trying to do and say with these characters…
And that's just my opinion, and I will admit a hundred percent that I am very precious about these two particular characters. I'm very precious about a lot of Aof characters because I feel that Aof writes characters in a way that I understand them intrinsically. But these two characters in particular I feel very precious about. And, I feel like to see them like that in the context of somehow keeping score between them is to not see them at all.
Ben
Pat only cares about one score and he asks Pran for it directly every morning.
Nini
And that's a fact. [laughs]
Ben
And that's the big thing for me! Like, they were kind of having a fight and most of it was Pran’s insecurity because Pran is a little bit embarrassed about what he's asked Pat to do for him. And they get over that almost immediately. They get to Pha Pun Dao. They see Tian and Phupha and they're like, “Oh, man. These guys are older than us, but they're like…four episodes behind us. [laughs] So, we got to catch these gays up quick!” And they—they instantly get over whatever their beef is and they start playing out their kinks the way they always do. They start cosplaying as Tian and Phupha…and flirting with each other.
Nini
And they do in the end have a little bit of a resolution to their…really not much of a fight, fight. And, there's two resolutions, really.
The first resolution is the resolution they get in Pha Pun Dao which is, “Look, I can't fucking live without you, and you can't fucking live without me, and we agree on that. So, let's dead the shit.” And they did! And it was fine, because the shit was never really live in terms of a fight being live in the first place. They were fucking their way through that whole fight…and that's how they deal with things, and it works for them, and it's fine.
And then they get a second resolution that Phupha gives them—a gift—which is, “I get to be in the open with you, even if it's just on stage. I get to be a lover in public.” And it works for me.
Ben
They even tried to redeem Wai a little bit.
Nini
It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts.
Ben
[laughs] He doesn't drop the curtain this time. Instead, he's like, “Give the people the kiss they need!”
Nini
It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts. [laughs]
Ben
And it's interesting, too, in terms of that particular gift. It works out in a couple of ways because Phupha gets to see a bunch of people react to their story. People are loving it. Lesbians are crying over them. One of the lesbians is moaning, “Why don't they just fuck already!”
[both laugh]
Ben
He gets to see people love them through this play, and then this gives Pran something that he's wanted: Pran his on socials after the play seeing people making fanvids about him and Pat. Which is something that he wants. He wants to be in the open with Pat because he knows that's what Pat wants, and this is the closest they're gonna get for now. And he is relieved to just see that.
But again, Pat is not worried about that. He's like, “Oh good, good. Did you get what you want?” and he's like, “All right. Let's stop fucking around with all this other stuff. Can we kiss as ourselves now?”
And they do!
Nini
We've talked a lot about Pat and Pran here and we've kind of scratched the surface on Tian and Phupha. But I really want to get into Phupha because the main thing that the special is doing is unlocking Phupha for the audience, because—like I said—all the other characters have had their arcs in the OG series that we're looking at. Only Phupha has really been holding the line, so to speak.
And this is Phupha's unveiling. It's his opening. This is Phupha getting harassed by a baby gay. Terrorized, actually, by a baby gay. Realizing that, “Oh my god. The baby gays came to town, and they fucked in a tent twenty feet away from us, and the world didn't fucking end. So maybe…I, too, can fuck my man and the world won’t end.”
[both laugh]
And then he proceeds to do just that.
Ben
I really like the way Aof went about doing it. Phupha primps himself up, rents an expensive vehicle, picks up Tian, and then goes with Tian to a cute cafe and lets Tian show him off a little bit, even if it made him a little bit nervous to be fawned over.
Nini
He let Tian, like, dress him up! Like, he let Tian take him shopping! He let Tian babygirl him a little bit. He let Tian spend a little money! It was nice!
Ben
That felt like a big deal because he mentioned it. He's like the money on one of these dishes could feed the village for a week in Pha Pun Dao, but he lets it go. Tian is actually a rich kid. This is part of what Phupha knows Tian gave up to be with him and so, when they're in Bangkok, he relents. He lets Tian dress him up like a Ken until Tian is satisfied with the look. And unsurprisingly, Tian chooses something very sleek, masculine, and comfortable for Phupha.
And then Phupha shows up and meets the parents. This is a huge deal too because Phupha was nervous about this because he feels like he took their son from them, and that he overstepped because Tian's dad was once a superior in the military. And all they say is, “We're gonna give you the thing that's most important to us. Take care of it.” And they acknowledge his filial piety to his father when Tian—when Phupha—admits that the reason he's a forest ranger is because his dad loved that mountain and felt a need to take care of it and the people who maintain it. And they were like, “Respect that.”
And then he proposes!
Nini
Okay y’all know how I feel about the BL weddings and the BL proposals. Y’all know that I am usually kind of, like, sitting in the corner, like, with my hands over my eyes. But this one, y'all, I was deep in my feelings. The tears came out. It was beautiful. I fucking loved this proposal. It was perfect.
Ben
I think I liked it because it wasn't a grand gesture in front of a bunch of people.
Nini
That's exactly why I liked it. [laughs]
Ben
It was for them. It was Phupha finally saying that he wasn't going to hold back anymore, and then they had loud obnoxious sex in the hotel room.
Nini
I just like that the loud obnoxious sex started like way before this. Like, the loud obnoxious sex started—like the idea of loud obnoxious sex of course was started by Pat, because that's Pat's entire brand. When he was walking around in the forest with Phupha, like, pretending to worry about Pran when he knows Pran is gonna be fine, and telling Phupha, like, “I mean I'm just going to sniff him out and, like, what do you mean you're not going to sniff out your man. Like, don't you know what he smells like? He smells so good.”
[both laugh]
Ben
You know, I don't think that's underlined really loudly in the show but like Pat says it quite plainly to Tian. He's like, “We don't need to go roaming around. Phupha’s experienced and good at his job, and Pran's really smart. We should really just stay here.”
[both laugh]
Like, nobody believes in Pran more than Pat.
Nini
Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Pat is like, “Listen. He's gonna be fine. I'm not particularly worried about him.” Like, both times. Both when he was wandering around in the woods with Phupha and when he was trying to get Tian to sit his ass down and be a heart patient like he's supposed to be. Both times he's just like, “I am not worried about Pran. Like, can we just focus on what the real problem is here. The real problem here is that your man is going unsniffed. Y’all are having a fight that y'all don't need to be having.”
I loved Pat’s whole energy in Pha Pun Dao. He was just like, “I'm just gonna vibe. I'm just glad to be here. I like being able to be out in the open with Pran. We are literally a million miles away from Bangkok. I can just be out here and just love on Pran the way that I feel like lovin’ on Pran—”
Ben
“I'm here to test the structural integrity of the teacher's house.”
Nini
All of that! “I'm here to fuck in a tent and ask the next morning if I did good.” He was just vibing the entire time, and then he got the bonus vibe of running into Phupha who he has—I'm sorry—a major fucking crush on. He does. It’s canon. We're gonna leave it at that. He brought the sex pest fairy godmother energy to Pha Pun Dao, and he's just like, “Listen, y'all are having a fight. Have you tried fucking about it? I have found that to be a very—”
[Ben laughs]
“—I found that to be very helpful method of solving problems. Y’all should just fuck! Give him a good old sniff. He smells real good. Have you noticed that?”
And it works! Like, Phupha at first is like, “Oh my God, get this kid away from me.”
Ben
Pat said, “Dick is not magical. It doesn't fix you. But! You look like you could use a little bit of a stress release.”
[both laugh]
Nini
And he's not wrong. And I love that despite the fact that Phupha spends the entire time being like, “Oh my God, child, get away from me. You are so annoying.” The minute Patt leaves, he's just like, “Okay. I'm [gonna] try what the kid said.”
And he does it!
Ben
He goes back to all of their most romantic moments that he downplayed previously and gives them to Tian. Tian doesn't even know what to do with it at first because they've been so cold for a while.
Nini
He takes Tian back to the waterfall, and he's just like, “You said that I sneaked to look at you and I did but I ain't sneaking now! I'ma look.” And then he goes further than that. He said, “Not only am I going to look. I am going to make sure that you get a good look.”
Ben
[singsong] Take a good hard look!
Nini
And like, like you said at first Tian is like, “What is happening here?” because Phupha is being so open, which I don't think he's ever been before.
Ben
And, like, Phupha was kind of manipulative about it because he made Tian relent and so Tian thought he was being, like, punished at first. Like, Phupha was teasing him because Tian's never made his attraction really quiet.
And then they finally get the stern dicking they've been needing. And Phupha…steals a line from the kids: “What's my score for last night?”
Nini
It was so fun. And Tian is just like, “Your what?” Like, Tian is fully enjoying this and I love that for him because one of the things I think people forget throughout the course of A Tale of Thousand Stars is that the Tian who starts the tale—he's sexy! Tian at the beginning of the story, he's got this edge to him. The sexy edge, and that kinda gets whittled away a little bit in Pha Pun Dao. But, that's still who he is.
And I like that at the end of the tale when we get here to the epilogue that he gets to be that again. He gets to pull out that sexy edge that is part of him and use it on his man. Like, he babygirls him, he takes him shopping, and then, when he lookin’ all nice, he leans into him and he be like, “You're real handsome. Do you have a boyfriend?” And I'm just like this is Tian! This is Tian that I remember!
Ben
And then he pushes Phupha in that bed, and he's like, “I've been waiting for five years. I'm ‘bout to get what's mine.”
[both laugh]
Nini
Phupha’s like, “What are you doing?” He's like, “Don't worry about it.” [laughs]
Ben
He’s like, “Don't worry about it, babygirl. I’ma take care of you tonight.”
[both laugh]
Nini
And I love that. I love that so much. Phupha is, like, panicked about it for a minute, and he's like [sighs]. He's decides. He's like, “Let go, let flow.” He's like, “All right. This how you want it?” and Tian's like, “Uh-huh,” and he's like, “All right, let's do this!” [laughs] I loved It. I loved it so much.
I love that at this stage of his life Phupha just learns to like—you know what? He's like, “Sometimes you just gotta un-fucking-clench.” And he just, he lets it all go.
Ben
I don't usually like talking about sexual positions around here because…of the way people project onto them, but I really like the implication in the final scene that this might be the first time Phupha really switches with Tian in a way that's also him emotionally… because you do have to unclench if you want to enjoy that particular act.
Nini
[laughs] In more ways than one!
Ben
It works really well because of the proposal. Like, Phupha's putting it all in the line. He's actually putting himself on the line. And he's going to be a complete partner to Tian, and is also going to relent and let Tian have some of the things that he wants.
Like Tian is happy in Pha Pun Dao. He doesn't hate their lives there. He just says, “I want you to come home and see my parents once a year. It's important to me. I just want you to come down for that. And when we're here, let me treat you nicely.”
Like, even if their lives aren't gonna always be there—like Tian may someday have to take care of the responsibilities of his parents getting older. But, I feel better about them facing that now as two people who are fully committed to each other than Phupha’s whole waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop thing all the time.
Nini
I just…really liked…getting to see…Phupha just…be… We never get to see him just be. Once he internalizes what Pat and Pran say to him, at every point from then what we see is him getting to just be. Yeah, in a slutty way—which I personally enjoy. But also just not worrying so much about what the things he's doing say about him. And yeah, there are, like, moments of that, like, when they get to the play and the curtain goes up, you see him starting to, like, freak out a little bit. But as the play goes on he relaxes.
I like that he leans into both the relaxed energy and the slutty energy, because I feel like the slutty energy is incredibly important. Like, one of the things that I really enjoyed about the final episode of the crossover was that mosquito net moment because—
Ben
Oh my God…finally.
Nini
That's so many things! That's Aof acknowledging that he was maybe slightly too precious with their sexuality in A Tale of Thousand Stars. That's Aof acknowledging that, maybe yeah, they should have kissed there. That's also Phupha acknowledging a bunch of stuff. That's also Tian getting to recast those moments in his mind.
Ben
I also love that Aof basically gave them the Bad Buddy post-credits scene.
Nini
Now, everybody’s saying that, but to me I just remember that the A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene wasn't sideways either. Like, they wrastled in that A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene. Like, Tian had to ask for the dick but he got it.
Ben
I'm just very satisfied by the outing this time.
Nini
I really, really enjoyed it, and I think that a lot of the Sturm und Drang around it is because of these ideas—again once again—these ideas about balance, and feeling like it was maybe unbalanced between Pat and Pran, and Tian and Phupha. But I don't think those ideas of balance are relevant to what Aof was trying to do here. I think that using Pat and Pran—who are a solid, established couple who we know are pulling through anything because we've seen their future already—using them as a conduit, or a catalyst, or a support to pull Tian and Phupha through a hurdle that could break them. I was fine with it in the end.
Like, I went through a lot of like—you know. I mean, you know because you were in these discussions with me and you and the clowns, like, sort of pulling through, like, how we feel about this.
Ben
Everybody else is having a difficult time. I was vibing so hard for like—[laughs] for like two weeks! Everybody else is like, “Oh I don't like this episode!!” Like, everybody was mad after episode 3! Me…I thought that episode was great. They're like, “I hate how long they were lost in the woods.” I'm like, “Well, that was the whole point.”
They were lost in the woods. They were all circling around an issue, and the issue is really simple. Like, just sit still and let other people find you. Because that's what you need to do, baby gays, sometimes, it's sit still so we can fucking find you! And help you!
[both laugh]
Ben
All right! Let's talk about the actors.
Nini
Watching these four get to vibe together. I want to see it. And not just the four of them vibing together, but…the…pairings because they gave us like a mix and match. So, they gave us every single pairing that you could get out of these four actors, and everyone was delightful and delectable. And I enjoyed every single one of them, but I particularly enjoyed pairing Ohm with Earth.
Ben
I really liked… the pairing of Nanon and Mix, and I don't know what we need to do to see those two work together again, but I would like to see the two of them take on meaty characters together.
Nini
I mean they're gonna be in The Jungle together.
Ben
Are they? Well well well…
Nini
Yeah, maybe you might have to watch The Jungle. [laughs]
Ben might have to watch a straight show!
Ben
No…we just did that! It sucked!
[both laugh]
Ben
I loved Mix in this. Like, we've seen MIx and Earth together a couple of times, and you talked about this during episode two. Their drunken walk home together felt like Phupha and Tian, not Jim and Wen.
Nini
They made it feel so different, even with similar framing, even with similar camera work, even with the same actors, and the same director. They made that moment feel completely different from Jim and Wen's moment doing the same activity, and I—hats off, I bow down. I appreciate actors—y’all know that.
Ben
I like how all four of them managed to make their dynamics feel lived in.
Like, Pat and Pran felt settled. Like, they have some long-term difficulties to deal with—some of which are never gonna go away—but it was kind of interesting for me knowing that they're rock solid by the end of BB 12 that you can see them starting to get there now. Where Pran is nervous that this can't work forever because Pat is too loud. He…needs to be loud about stuff.
But, like, you can see the signs here of them giving themselves openings. Here, like with the play, with Pat going home to his dad later and giving him the liquor that Pran got in Singapore, loudly climbing through Pran's window when he comes back to Bangkok…to go play with his guitar in his room.
Nini
Pat needs to be loud. Pran knows Pat needs to be loud. And the journey that they're setting off on through the special—I can't even say that it culminates in Bad Buddy 12 ‘cause it doesn't. It continues in Bad Buddy 12, but it culminates at some point in a future that we don't get to see. And there's something to be said about Aof putting that way-way off…and the things that he wants to say to the baby gays and the elder gays.
Hoo! Man, I've been feeling Aof lately. Like, Moonlight Chicken, like, unraveled something in me. And going back to some of his earlier works in the light of Moonlight Chicken because part of the whole point of the crossover—and of crossovers in general—but in this particular crossover is intertextuality. When we were talking about Bad Buddy. When we were, like, thick in the things of Bad Buddy. We're talking about text and subtext and metatext working together to tell this story, and the thing that didn't become a part of that story—there were hints of it, mostly in the Pa and Ink storyline—but the thing that was hinted at, but not really fully grasped onto, was intertextuality.
Like, the conversation that different pieces of art are having between themselves. And one thing that this special—that the crossover delves into now—is the intertextuality.
Ben
I particularly like it because you have two leads interacting with each other and I find that sometimes we can get a little too archetypical about the leads of shows. By forcing the audience to consider who Pat and Pran are relative to Tian and Phupha, it forces you to revisit how you've been viewing them the whole time. Like, Pran thinking that he was Tian, and us maybe getting a little too caught up in that. Because, like we called it at the end of the first episode! We're like, “Why does he look so much like Tian? That feels off.” And it was off!
Oh. I wasn't trying to make a pun there.
He's not like Tian. Like, as soon as I saw them I was like, “Why would they compare him to Tian? He doesn't feel like Tian to me?” I was right! And so, we get to the end of this whole shebang, and I am having a blast. Like I'm watching people having to sort themselves out like “Did I like this? Did I not like this?”
I was drinking a mojito, having a good time, after this ended. I was drunk at the reception hanging out with some lesbians.
Nini
I mean in the end is it not the place that you want to be? I feel like it all worked out super well, and one of the reasons that it worked out super well is that these two stories had to be in some ways told together. And yeah, one got a little subsumed to the other. But that's the way that it had to be at this point in time.
Ben
I think it was pragmatic.
Nini
Yeah, I think if we had caught up with them and done this crossover at a different stage in each of their relationships a different problem would have come to the surface, and maybe a different arrangement of the two couples might have happened. And that's also something that we need to think about in terms of the specifics of when in the story narrative and the timeline of the stories that Aof chose to set this particular crossover.
When it comes to Aof I'm always thinking about what he's trying to do, because one of the things that has been very clear to me throughout his oeuvre, but particularly in Bad Buddy, is that…he is always going to tell the story that he wants to tell. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into certain narrative structures. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into audience expectations. He wants to tell certain stories, and that's what he's gonna do. And that was made very clear to me with Bad Buddy 12, because that defied every narrative expectation—every audience expectation—to speak a truth that Aof had on his spirit.
Ben
The other thing for me—this is the part where I’m gonna get a little bit grumpy again. It is expensive to make television. Like, the biggest thing that stands out to me with all of Our Skyy is how stripped-down all of it looked.
Like they filmed in like one or two locations at most it felt like half the time, and they had really short filming schedules, and everybody had to be good very quickly. There's not a lot of runup time. It feels like people just brought whatever they still had left from the last performance and they just ran with it. Everybody had to be really good, and it's expensive to film on that mountain. And so Aof needed to justify that particular crossover, by using the most potent talent he had.
Like, there's a huge Bad Buddy fandom. There's a pretty solid contingent of people who like A Tale of Thousand Stars. And for A Tale of Thousand Stars to get something good, he needed to merge the Bad Buddy budget with the Thousand Stars budget.
But also, they didn't want to touch their ending, which is why he sets Bad Buddy before its ending, but Tian and Phupha only at the beginning of their romance when we leave them. They have more work to do, so they can have an epilogue story that really hammers into some really interesting stuff, which we just spent the last hour or so talking about.
But it's done really efficiently! Like for the most part we all seem to enjoy Our Skyy, and they manage to do that with their limited budget. Like Pat and Pran are in a different room because it's probably cheaper to use this room. There's less people in Pha Pun Dao this time. Au is running around in the background as an extra! Wasn't he the damn director of the Kwan and Riam play? [shushes] Don't pay attention to that. A bunch of guys are running around with masks on—that's probably just crew members!
Nini
I did sort of love that chewing gum and string energy these productions can bring that is really sort of the heart of the Our Skyy franchise. I feel like I like that because to me that means it's for the art. If you're going to do this on chewing gum and string it's because you really fucking care. Like if you're going to do a story like this on string and chewing gum, it's because you really want to tell this fucking story. And in the end that's where I land on the vast majority of Our Skyy 2.
Ben
So what's our final verdict on Our Skyy then? Worth it? Not worth it?
Nini
Before we get to our final verdict on our Our Skyy, we didn't give our final verdict on the crossover.
Ben
Oh, it's a 10. [slams desk and laughs]
Nini
It's a 10! It's a 10! It's a 10! Let's just—let's just—let's let it go. Right? It's a 10 for drama and a 10 for crack because what is more cracky than a crossover? And so it averages out to 10. Have I got quibbles with it? Yes. Do they, in the grand scheme of things, matter to my enjoyment of it? Absolutely not. It's a 10—point blank period.
Ben
It didn't waste my time. They set out a really interesting premise: what if Tian published his diary? What if “lonely queer looking for meaning and community” Pran found it? What if he met them? What do they do if they meet each other? Like, they follow through on that in a way that gave us so much to talk about for two weeks.
And it was fun seeing the whole fandom come alive and see people revisit characters! It was fun seeing people change their opinions on Phupha, and even Earth and Mix as the result of watching this. That was so much fun.
Nini
It was delightful. It was enjoyable. It was meaningful. It was narratively enjoyable at least for me, it was a 10. I loved it and one of the things that I love most about it is that Pat gets to lick Pran's finger this time.
Ben
Oh my god.
Nini
I mean, it's just the slutiness of it all! Pat gets to lick Pran's finger. Phupha gets to touch his titties in a sexy kind of way. They get to make out with that damn mosquito net, and I enjoyed every single second of it. I laughed, I cried, I…felt warmth deep inside.
1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2
Nini
All that said, in terms of the overall—let’s give an overall score for Our Skyy 2. Ben, what do you think?
Ben
With the caveat that you should only really engage with the Our Skyy content if you liked the original show, it's a 9.
Like, I didn't like Vice Versa and I didn't like Star in My Mind when I watched them the first time, and so everything I didn't like about those shows was present in their Our Skyy offerings. I don't think it's very fair of me to be especially mean about their Our Skyy offerings when they are in line with what the audience has been taught to expect. If the audience likes that more power to them. But for the six shows that I genuinely liked, I had a good time with these.
Like, the weakest shows in this that I had a hard time with on the front end were A Boss and a Babe and Never Let Me Go. And I really liked what Jojo did with Never Let Me Go, and I thought that A Boss and a Babe actually had a really interesting story this time. But I loved The Eclipse and I thought Golf was great with this outing. I thought the cast was great in The Eclipse outing, and I felt like that about Bad Buddy and A Tale of Thousand Stars, and I felt like that about My School President.
I had a great time! It gets a 9 overall. Like, there are quibbles—it's not always the best thing, and it forces you to maybe look back at a show and alter the way you felt about it. And if you'd rather lock the show in a mental prism of where you last left it, maybe don't watch these offerings? But if you grow and change, and you kind of want to imagine what your characters are like if they also grow and change, then maybe it's worth checking out for you.
It's a 9. Highly recommended.
Nini
For you, the score is always about a recommendation. For me, it's always about do I like this? How much do I like this? And for me, for the vast majority of Our Skyy, I fuckin’ loved it. So I also give it a 9. I don't have any caveats about recommending it to anybody or anything like that. I just had, for the most part, a whale of a fucking time. And so, it's a 9! I enjoyed myself!
So kind of in our own form of intertextuality harkening back to our Season 2: Electric Boogaloo episode of the Spring Series, and talking about sequels. So, Ben, after Our Skyy 2, how are you feeling about sequels?
Ben
Enthusiastic? [laughs] I mean, come on, man, like, this was fucking good. We need to think about how these characters stay together. That can be so rewarding to think about and it's good for the audience to think about it.
I hope we see Pat and Pran in 10 years after their little sprout has blossomed, and maybe they're considering something else. I'm totally down to return to characters every couple of years for check-ins. That totally works for me, and I think that there is value in transitioning the types of stories we tell with characters over time, because they're going to face a variety of situations over time, so it can be so, so rewarding for us as viewers to go on those new journeys with them.
Nini
How do I…feel about sequels? Again, it's the same way I always feel. I feel like when there's story still to tell, I'm ready to see it. I'm ready to hear it. And if I feel like there isn't anything left to say, then I'm not interested. That's largely where I landed with the Our Skyy episodes for the most part where I felt like there was story left to tell. I thoroughly enjoyed getting that story and then those, like Star in My Mind, where I felt like there was no story, I wasn’t really interested.
So, do I feel pumped about sequels and the whole idea of following these boys into the “staying together” part of things? Yes, that's something that I'm always going to enjoy, and if that means conflict, I am fine with that. I enjoy watching them navigate that, whether the conflict is minor or major, I am having a blast with that in my mind.
And…I can't wait for Our Skyy 3.
That is going to wrap us up on the Our Skyy 2 episode. Y'all are going to hear the edited version of this, but I just want you all to know that we've been talking for three hours, and we've been having a great time. See y’all in the next one. Say bye to the people, Ben.
Ben
Welcome back, my boyfriend!
Nini
[laughs] Bye.
#podcast#our skyy 2#bad buddy#a tale of thousand stars#my school president#the eclipse#vice versa#star in my mind#never let me go#a boss and a babe#thai bl#bl series#ben and nini's conversations#the conversation#on art#season 3#summer 2023#summer series#Spotify
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Alright we're gonna do our first big compilation of my longass notes for a friend of the blogs fic, obviously we mUST start with The Thunder Answered Back by @spicymiilk
Fair warning, I would read the whole fic before reading my notes and laughing/crying along with me. I do think you can go chapter by chapter if you wish. Also a fair warning, I usually cull my notes before posting a fic comment; I really let myself go wild here. Proceed with caution.
Chapter one I didn't have too many notes bc I was deep in it and also there wasn't too too much cringe. Idk if this is well known about me, but I can watch like, hardcore porn or gore and not flinch. I used to watch Animal Planet vet shows while eating cheese its when I got home from school, just munching away while they did surgery on little puppies. But if you write even a tiny bit of cringe it takes me like 5 business days to recover. I fully cannot look at the screen. I will leave the room if an awkward conversation happens in my tv show. I also can't not react to cuteness as well. These notes were mental escapes a lot of the time in this fic, like mother of GOD I want to die even imagining these conversations. Mortifying. Anyways.
Unhinged things I would say on the google doc but here!
DIALOGUE, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It can make or break a piece and it CARRIED in this one. It's so very cringe and realistic lol. Dialogue is usually the hardest for writers but I don't think our man here has this problem lol.
Great setting as well, I can feel the heat. A setting you can physically feel is so immersive, it sucks you right in, and my ass has never been to Italy but I've been on a dock and I've been in a hot thunderstorm and I can feel it all.
Obsessed with the way Spider steps into the house and Neytiri's like "dinner, gayboy??" like she was on his ass instantly skskskks. HER LITTLE SLIGHTS AT HIM?? EXPLAIN, LOL. WHAT DID THE CHILD DO? Reminds me of the time my friends mom asked me to stop calling her Chris and I didn't understand why and just blurted back "Okay, Chris." It's just so funny to me when she hates Spider in modern fics, because there's no systemic context it's just her beefing with a small child oddly lol. Having read the whole fic now, it's just Quarich's racism connection, I believe.
I am obsessed with the plight of the boys. Obviously Spider needs to leave, but I'm hoping Lo'ak escapes the military industrial complex lol. I'm so torn. I had Sully fam on the brain, and I wanted Spider's continuing relationship with them all so badly. Maybe I simply need for them to ask Spider to stay with them? Like "live with us for a year buddy, get yourself ready for college. You can do anything king but also ur part of the family, now go deflower our son."
Here is that clarifying question I asked: Did Kiri and Spider have sex??? Or did Mandy tell her about Spider's dick? OR BOTH? I simply could not figure that out. Also missed opportunity to name that character Ninat for the lols. The next generation of Ninat's beefing with and over Sully men.
Now that you've given me my answer, truly hilarious comedic content for everyone around.
Kiri, at night: want to hear about Spider’s dick?
Lo’ak, charcoal and paper out, ready to create an impressive sketch: ew, no, go ahead.
Chapter two, FUCK OFF Jeytiri flirting karaoke is adorable, that’s hilarious. The whole scene made my heart happy bUT NOT HAPPY ENOUGH not enough comfort I need more of it.
Spider turning to Lo’ak who's aLREADY LOOKING AT HIM cause they’re both like “oh you mentioned love, let me look at my best friend,” I’ll die.
Lo’ak literally BEGGING Spider to sing so he can swoon in the corner. I love this headcanon that seems to be cropping up of Spider being like a really good singer, it's very interesting to me.
JAKE UNDERSTANDING SPIDER I’ll die. Jake’s adopted that child you can’t convince me otherwise. Dude, even Neytiri fucking sees him as part of the family, I’ll scream. The tooth gem thing??? Iconic. Loved it. She’s giving Spider specifically cookies??? I’ll die. She's included him in all their shit. Not just anyone can do family game night karaoke. The karaoke, I am obsessed. Adorable. The Kiri and Lo’ak banter means the world to me. Their limp wrist agenda, the limp wrist bullying. What will he do when he can’t hold that against her? She must be unbearable to him in return when Spider isn't there. We love a homophobic gay. It's like what I said about my roommate i slept with twice (who follows me on here and we all better hope doesn't perceive this post); "I only get offended when SHE calls me slurs because I know then it comes from a place of true homophobia."
Kiri is literally begging Spider to understand Lo’ak wants him. BEGGING LO’AK TO UNDERSTAND SPIDER WANTS HIM. Kiri trying not to die at how obvious they both are. Kiri, going to beat the shit out of Lo’ak for asking about Mandy of all people bc of how far he's gone to avoid learning about that. I STILL AM UNCLEAR AS TO IF HIS ASS ACTUALLY DIDN'T KNOW SPIDER BROKE UP WITH MANDY OR HE WAS JUST BEING AN ASS.
Also fuck u for underestimating the importance of Tuk to Spider, he wants Tuk to remember him please I swear.
Also I have noted you have hinted at Spider’s praise kink. I can see it clearly. Nothing more will be said on that topic, but sometimes a praise kink simply makes sense for a character.
'IT COMES OUT MORE LIKE GAY' that was just for me, I know. So was Ninat's kid, obviously. Now that it's cONFIRMED for me I love to know that I am the target audience of all locorro fics ever.
Spider: *calls Lo’ak baby and gets embarrassed*
Lo’ak: *rebooting*
Lol Spider punching Lo’ak for saying slurs is so funny. Lo’ak's like if I say it I ain’t it, and that's on falling for the guy that is punching me for saying the slurs.
This little "I knew" reveal was CERTAINLY not what I was expecting. Not at all. A delightful little twist huh? A little trope subversion? AN EXPLICIT DRUNK CONFESSION IS SO HEART-WRENCHINGLY AWFUL OH MY GOD. WHAT HAPPENED THEN WHAT DID THEY D O I MUST KNOW. "It’s not a big deal bc I… like u too obviously lol." That's the end of the sentence and the end of the communication. I was driven insane by that, I just finished XO Kitty, worst show ever, and I was reminded how much I despise when communication would solve legit every problem but it's handled realistically here. Communication is so hard for the boys Kiri will throw hands. And I brought your inhaler with me obvs cause I’m in love with you.
I’m sad about an asthmatic fist fight but it’s so appropriate. I am sad tho. I am a hurt/COMFORT bitch where is my COMFORT. I don't think my body is ready for a nocorro fic from u @spicymiilk my blog is about to become all comforting headcanons and we're going to ignore the plethora of Hunger Games ones I got today.
Now we have to sit here in this world where Lo'ak thought Spider was emotionally(?) cheating on Mandy with him if he thought they were still dating, the fucking clown idiot fool.
FINALLY, for the third and final chapter, with some bonus answers Andrei has given to my demanding all caps questions.
I’m so mean, I’m laughing at the idea of Kiri waking up at an ungodly 7:34am to Lo’ak ugly crying over Spider’s fake bed on the floor like he’s gone off and died in the war. She’s just like the pizza box community meme like uhhhh. Now I know this must happen oFTEN so I again figure that she must have gotten really good at sleeping through his ugly sobbing.
JHUST FUCKING LEAVE QUARITCH THIS IS SO ANNOYING GET OUT OF MY PLOT I’M TRYNA SEE KIRI’S TEXTS, ugh I'm so biased I despised how much he was in this chapter he should choke I wish asthma was contagious. Although, for some reason Quaritch calling Spider Lo’ak’s wife did things to me personally, The sweet homosexual love line then took me out back and popped me (I mean this in a like, Italian mafia putting me down outside way and not like, doing poppers outside a club although for some reason both are giving the same energy).
Neytiri murdering Spider for both turning her son gay and also making him sad can be something so personal. I still am in denial of every universe where she doesn't like him, and in this one I just love the idea of them slinking back to Italy having eloped or some shit where Spider now has to build that relationship but now having deflowered and stolen her son in the night. Hilarious. They must bond over talking about how stupid he is. They're so similar, how can the people with Jake and his clone not be.
Lol I also forgot Lo’ak got a black eye, that makes Kiri’s texts earlier so much funnier. Kiri was like they made out so hard he was struck with love. Developed a bruise. His gayness punched him in the face.
SPIDER KILL YOURSELF IM IN YOUR ROOM KICK YOUR DAD OUT IS SO FUNNY TO ME THE KYS SPECEFICALLY KILELD ME.
Oh my god the crying was all a lie, a fantasy, I’m so disappointed. More realistic, sure, but still. I am unclear as to if it was rEAL.
I had the cunt thing spoiled for me when I was catching up on posts I missed; never did I imagine lol. Almost as hilarious as Lo’ak telling Spider to die because he didn’t look at him, gay.
Spackle covering the hole in the wall, hmm, I wonder who punched that there?? Also abusive Quaritch giving romantic advice is making me want to puke up all my organs. I know Andrei says say the hole in the wall was nothing, but you can't have an abusive dad character and then mention a hole in the wall and nOT have us thinking that Quaritch punched a hole in the wall. Every reader is gonna think that.
Lol those Kiri texts and what she says is sO MEAN god I totally get why she did it but omg way to ruin a man over something that is not his decision or his fault. She’s just so so mad about the gays being dumb. Can’t believe she finally coughed up this info. Also the way Quaritch could probably hear all this through the wall makes me wanna die.
Speaking of Quaritch, what an interesting portrayal of their relationship. As a Quaritch hater, there's very few fics where I don't just fully skip long interactions with him. I gotta have really been sucked into the world, and I was with this one. I can't tell what of my feelings on the characters have made me biased on the relationship and what are my feelings on what the text portrayed. The feeling of too late in their relationship is there, overwhelmingly and devastatingly, but part of me found myself unconvinced by the attempts from Quartich. I literally can't tell if it's my own bias (most likely) or if it's my own lack of explicit background knowledge.
What we do learn of the past we learn in fragments, passing lines from Spider's internal monologue. They aren't the focal point of the story, but they are deeply important to the world created, and it leaves me with a feeling like I'm in an unfinished paint by numbers; I don't quite have the full picture. (Again, as I always say to you in my beta notes Andrei, these are incredibly harsh comments for fic. It's just good enough I'm treating it as though it's more lol (bc it can be)).
As to why everyone is finding Kiri mean; yeah she's neurospicy and we do clearly get the vibe that they talk to each other in this way, this casual banter that doesn't really mean anything. That being said, casual "kill yourself" or like "this is all your fault" and shit like that when the character is clearly upset and angry comes across as serious. Knowing Kiri as a character I didn't think she was, but reading it took me aback because as a standalone I don't have that context. In arguments and serious moments those words pack a punch, especially to a reader in such close third as we are with Spider in this one. We are WITH him and seeing only his thoughts and perspectives, his hurt is front and center so it's easy to feel hurt and defensive as a reader. I digress.
Lo’ak’s like every man in a crime show calling his wife to hear her voice one last time before he goes to to the dangerous mission and almost dies. He's like "I'll hear Spider's breathing and then know the US military is the way for me." Spider, the barrier between Lo’ak and the goddamn US military. That’s so funny to me. This is another reason to feel confused by Kiri's vitriol; it's not Spider's fault what Lo'ak chooses to do with his life and it is unfair to blame him. One line of her doing it I get, but she does it several times and the only excuse we get for her is from Spider.
Kiri is better than me I’m an awful secret keeper. But also maybe she could’ve coughed that bad boy up earlier, huh?
Tbh tho, on a serious writing note; it’s so well written because from the beginning we know exactly what is happening. They both like each other and Kiri knows both sides. That was obvious to me. You tell us from the get go that Spider is leaving when he turns 18, and that Lo’ak is leaving to join the military, WE KNOW WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN. And yet the train chugs on and each event sets it in motion instead of derailing it, leaving us with an inevitable tragedy we all saw coming. Well done. If I was giving line edits on a publishable work, I’d say speed up the timeline. Make the whole fic (so excluding prior events like the party) all happen like. A few days before Spider leaves. I want to feel it all in real time, up close, as it happens. No breaks in time. I also want that memory convo with Lo’ak earlier lol, so that the realization of it can hit later. And honestly, if it wasn’t fic I’d leave it with the Kiri and Spider convo. No happy ending. BUT NOW LET ME GO READ MY WELL DESERVED HAPPY ENDING. U would've been SICK for not including one.
Extremely uncommon fanfiction Jake Sully W here. It should be more common I am an unapologetic stan.
Them going to find each other is so funny to me. Kiri was personally sending them on a wild goose chase as revenge.
OH THERE IT IS THE COMMON JAKE SULLY L. Although driving your gay ass son to do an airport rom com moment at 5:45am is actually quite the parenting w, where the fuck was Neytiri she would’ve been much more efficient. I mean she wouldn't have let him go, but she would've been efficient about it.
The idea of Lo’ak making his final decision to go to the military earlier in the day and then not actually doing it until he wakes Jake up at 2am makes me cackle. Jake: you go get that dick son, your mother can kill us both later.
ALSO WHY’S HE PULLING HIS SHIRT COLLAR SO HIGH, HMMM, ANDREI??? Showing up to meet his grandmother absolutely dEFILED. Does Lo'ak even have a change of clothes, that monster.
It’s 2:18am (when I originally write this), I have work tomorrow as I do literally every day of the week, and I’m just smiling to myself at this shit. Criticism: not enough of them being happy and also I didn’t get to learn what depraved things Spider wanted to do to Lo’ak that he drunkenly told him about that Lo’ak then had to live with torturing himself (and Kiri) over for months.
Andrei's response on what Spider drunkenly said to Lo'ak for the people: The depraved things are as follows— spider sat his ass in Lo’ak’s lap, completely and utterly gone, and waved poetry about Lo’ak’s long and strong fingers for at least ten minutes. He also made sure to mention his borderline tank top kink. Lo’ak definitely did not internalize that
I just have to say; I should've expected that. Those two gay ass losers to simply lose their minds over tHAT, which is like nOTHING. A REGULAR CONVERSATION I'D DARE SAY. ONE OF THE FIRST CONVERSATIONS I HAD WITH ONE OF MY ROOMMATES WAS ABOUT HER HAND KINK, SO I RECIPROCATED BY SAYING I THOUGHT THE DWARVES IN LOTR HAD GOOD HANDS. LO'AK WAS DEAD, SIMPLY MURDERED, A BLUSHING FOOL OVER THAT.
Lo'ak, stumbling into his and Kiri's room: Spider confessed his love for me and said... depraved things.
Kiri: OH MY GOD WHAT DID HE SAY.
Lo'ak: He said he likes my tank tops... I can barely speak of it out loud.
Kiri: Oh. 🙄
Also lowkey Kiri has to be enraged they’re normal now that they’re away from her. ALSO DOESN’T THAT BITCH LO’AK HAVE SCHOOL?? Hilarious all around. Lo’ak brings Spider back because they cannot be apart and then keeps him in his and Kiri’s room for the next year until he finishes high school. They see how long they can go without Quaritch finding out Spider’s nearby. Kiri hates them so much, especially now that they fuck in her space.
Andrei said in response to this: Lo’ak finished school in Florida!! Pulled a fast one on the school system and said hey I’m smart enough to finish like two classes here. Kiri didn’t speak to EITHER of them for months. Neytiri would call to check up and Kiri would be whining in the background about how she’s betraying her
They make up when Spider saves up to get her a ticket to visit them for a summer 🤸
The idea of Lo'ak never returning is so funny to me in so many ways. First of all, Spider dropping him off and picking him up like he's the sexy older boyfriend in every romcom ever. Second, the idea of Spider bullying him for having to go to school still. Three, they just squat with Spider's grandma, and she's like god I expected one gay loser not TWO. Four, Neytiri calling to check up just resulting in her and Spider both bitching about Lo'ak and Kiri respectively here is how the Neytiri and Spider fanboys can win-
Also, the idea of someone having to tell Neteyam about this makes me want to cry real tears of laughter. He’s in his first semester of college someone free him.
Andrei said: Let neteyam live in blissful ignorance. He knew Lo’ak was a raging homosexual for their entire lives and the second he saw spider he was like. Oooohhh okay. And then he never looked again the mental strength required to deal with it was just too much
Kiri, on facetime: so Lo'ak followed Spider-
Neteyam, opening a textbook in his Harvard dorm room or some shit:
#these are v fun please let me know if theres another fic u want these on lol#i do have to say tho they aren't for the faint of heart as sometimes i get like#somewhat critical or cw-majory-y about techniques or structure of texts or characters#i just know my besties like it but if that's not for you my notes posts aren't for u either#anyways if you read all this and didn't go read this fic ur crazy first of all#and like me way too much#but go read!!#i hope this is what u guys were looking for when you said you wanted these? more to come maybe#miles spider socorro#spider socorro#lo'ak sully#locorro#kiri sully#jake sully#neytiri sully#tuktirey sully#miles quaritch#neteyam sully#ninat#avatar#avatar the way of water#james cameron avatar#melissa og#melissa on avatar (cameron)#fic recs
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