whitney (design kinda mid but its alright ill deal with it)

ramblings on Li Ming (and Heart) and homosexuality

moonlight chicken has so many things to offer in terms of technical beauty and interesting themes but what i cannot stop thinking about is the different ways they approach homosexuality in the story.

we have Wen who has a rainbow flag on his desk and pictures of him and Alan on the wall. Wen, who openly flirts with Jim and has no qualms talking openly about his one night stand. Wen, whose step father knows about his sexuality and is close enough with him to discuss his love life.

Kaipa we don’t know too much about. But his mom knows and is supportive and some of the vendors and the chicken family seem to know. But if anyone was questioning in what reality this show is set with all the class discussion and corona featuring, his part of the story shows that homophobia exists and he is worried about how he fits in with his own family, the expectations of his mother and possible the awareness that he makes the family he has “different”.

Jim is arguably even more visibly gay than Wen in terms of what we see throughout the show. He opened the shop with his ex, they prayed at the temple together and even though he objected due to proprities sake eventually they loudly declared their love to each other and the whole neighbourhood knows. Wen somehow feels like he is living in the remnants of a bubble: his circle of friends seems very queer, his closest friend and the whole gym seem to be all part of that as well. This only might change now with him questioning his work and breaking up with Alan: some gatherings he won’t attend anymore apparently.

And finally, we have Li Ming. At school he doesn’t seem to open up to his classmates on most things and additionally is in the closet. While there wasn’t anything alluding to homophobic rethoric being spread at school we can see how the heteronormativity gets to him and feel that there must be good reason as to why no one knows. And it could just be how Li Ming is judging the situation based on vibes, we don’t know. His mother is or at least was homophobic but at the same time he is raised by his gay uncle who is surrounded by other gay people. And I love how it feels like this might have given him enough security to be comfortable with his own sexuality but how it also isn’t enough to shield him from the world at large.

With so many great shows coming out of Thailand and most of them getting more and more political it just feels so real and 2023 to me that Li Ming is part of a generation that knows who they are but still have to battle with the shadow that homophobia has cast way before they were born.

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

Not caring about Alex Rider as an Artemis Fowl fan is a struggle but I'm being so brave about it

Facing my fear of movie theaters by going to the first showing of the day sgdggdgd

I think I'll be the only person there which would be awesome tbh

AND I dont have to break my streak of having seen every hunger games movie in theaters :D I'm excited man

https://x.com/megansstats/status/1751747785647337777?s=46&t=QiKHdDdvKoMxWGyakqTvxA

Of course I saw this!!! Megan’s got angels watching over her ❤️. The fact that all that came out simply because barbz photoshopped her nose to look bigger than what it actually is in order to say that she had work done is so weird, but very typical of them. But they’ve always been a pretty disgusting fanbase. I’ve even had issues with them before and I don’t argue with ANYONE online 😭… they’re like hit dogs who move in as soon as they smell blood. All this for a woman married to a registered offender 🚬.

https://x.com/quinveer/status/1751721132745470056?s=46&t=cKo2jnMIiVKeu8vnu79EyQ

my chemical romance plays in twelve minutes 

adding my quiet contribution towards manifesting another Gender tonight 

May or may not have a kind of.

Fanfic thing. Spike and Cere don't fall in love but it ends with her thinking of him as a friend that she owes a lot to and he's like "...I mean. Nah- you don't have to do anything."

But I just need to write the whole thing, fix some things that don't sound right to me, and then mentally battle with myself whether I should really post it or not. 😂

tater and i have moved past the emotions and are going down unhinged memory lane for a moment but i WILL say this. kotlcblr in peak pandemic times changed so many people's lives for real. it was THE transitional period. and i may still be here but you and i and everyone all know it's different now... i've talked about it with so many friends. but it was!!!! so much!!! so many things were going on in all of our personal lives and something great was that it was very much a home to a lot of people and like. What We Needed at a time that we needed it, yk? where like. no one was obligated to talk about the things going on in real life but everyone was free to be silly and have fun. and if someone needed some help there was usually someone online to offer it. and then like people do when they grow up & out of something they moved away to bigger and different things with entirely different tones and themes and mediums with wildly bonking back and forth meters of writing quality. JUST LIKE AMPHIBIA i am holding your shoulders like. i am fully aware that the things that i have seen u watch are not nearly as simply animated as this and also that i wouldn't have watched it if not for my little siblings but that show has touched upon something so like. golden. like they Got It, whoever they are.the found family doesn't stay together forever! sometimes u have to grow and change and move away and never speak again but that doesn't mean that the love you had matters any less

It was! It was such an of the moment thing. Both because of the specific people, which is something that applies to this moment of keepblr now, and because of the situations we were all in? Because we were all (or almost all) young and undergoing this massive worldwide stressor with no real control over what our lives looked like--or at least that's how it felt. And so there was all this energy and unrest and comfort seeking that led to such strong involvement and connections with each other.

And then the world started repealing its restrictions and trying to move on (regardless of if it was smart to do or not) and so we had more going on irl again and weren't cooped up seeking connection. And then we were also getting older and so a lot of people joined other fandoms or left tumblr. Which is fine! it's just bittersweet to think about

Which!! Is just like amphibia. As for the style thing, I know I'd get over it and get used to it once I started I just. Haven't started. But everything I've heard about it has been very good! Especially cool to see comparisons to real life. Sometimes people are only part of your life for a brief part of it, and that time has to end and you'll miss it but you have to grow and move on. But it still mattered so so much, even though it ended. Maybe even because it's not like it used to be.

So so many thoughts, this is also making me think about irl friendships and such which is. oof!

dude ive been like hella depressed over how my teachers and adults treated me like shit or were hard on me as a kid or had no sympathy for me not because there was something wrong with me but because they were racist

cw homophobia & casual racism

highlights of my work day include:

one of my coworkers (who should know I’m queer bc she follows me on instagram and yet sought me out specifically to share this) coming into the library just after 8am to tell me that another teacher was asked by our acting principal to remove the pride flag* from her classroom because it was making another staff member “uncomfortable”

another one of my coworkers saying that she thought meghan markle was a gold digger and the only reason she felt sorry for her was “because of the black thing” but somehow not putting the pieces together that the media had primed her to dislike meghan markle specifically because she is black???

*I’m 99% sure the pride flag in question is one of those small hand-held ones that you would see in a pen cup, e.g. about 8 inches tall, we aren’t talking like a full-on regular flag sized pride flag here**

**it’s also extremely likely that the new CAMPUS MINISTER is the one who made this complaint in which case may she rot! in hell!

ran into someone i haven’t seen in a long, long time at 7/11 of all places

Is my mental health the worst it's been since leaving uni and being diagnosed properly? Yes! Are me and jo trying to do everything to avoid becoming homeless and placed in emergency housing even though no other authority seems to care very much about that? Yes! But did I have the ingredients for a mountain of bruschetta and did it make me feel a little better? Also yes!

the guy who sits next to me in intro to drawing looks just like this guy i knew in middle school but like a foot shorter so he has normal proportions which is really funny to me for some reason

we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.

when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.

the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.

my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.

when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.

and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.

in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.

im now a final destination (2000) apologist btw