#we're staying at 16:00 then
Text
day 8!
entrapta! (she ra)
#daily purple!!#entrapta#entrapta she ra#she ra#she ra and the princesses of power#spop#spop entrapta#we're staying at 16:00 then
212 notes
·
View notes
Text
Alastor with a non-biological teenager who died in the 80's
This is kind of based on some headcanons I posted earlier. I wanted to include some in the story, so here it is!
Again, i made him a softy here, to come for my throat😞
I apologize if there are any grammar mistakes.
TW: Mentions of death
It was strange, dying. Apparently there's a whole process that happens after..
Standing in Hell when you 'wake up'..
Processing, and finding a place to live.
Getting kicked out of that place, because they find out you lied about your age, and now living on the streets.
A girl finding out you live on the streets, and you discovering she's the Princess of Hell.
She invites you to stay at her hotel, rent free, but in exchange, you have to rehabilitate. Okay, do-able right? Wrong.
Finding out the radio demon stays at that EXACT Hotel.
The demon you wanted to avoid the most.
Sighing and accepting the fact that your stuck with him.
So, there you were. A 16 year old, standing in the door opening of the hotel, ready to be Rehabilitated.
Charlie, the girl you met on the streets, walks up to you and shakes your hand enthusiasticly.
"Welcome (y/n)!! We're so happy to have you here!" She smiles widely.
You awkwardly smile back at her.
"Thanks for taking me in.. i really do appreciate it."
"Ofcourse, it's no problem. We need more guests here anyways so, your helping me out more than your aware." She drags you inside the hotel, introducing you to the staff.
"Everyone this is (y/n), our first ever teenager at the Hotel! (y/n), this is, Vaggie, Husk, Angel Dust, Nifty, Sir Pentious, and Alastor"
You looked at everyone taking in their appearances and names.
You make eye contact with Alastor, his usual grin widens, as he tilts his head a little to the left.
"Nice.. to meet you all." You smile a little.
Alastor spoke. "So, how old are you, dear?"
Taken off-guard by him actually speaking to you, you answer.
"16."
"When did you die?" Angel dust asks.
"1983" you answer, again.
Angel whistles.
"How did you die?" He asks.
You stayed quiet for a moment.
"I drowned." Your grip on your bag tightens.
"Charlie, can you show me to my room, please? I need some time to... take it all in"
She nods, leading you upstairs.
Alastors gaze follows you.
"Wow, well done Angel. Asking a teenager how they died. real smooth." Vaggie says.
"How was I supposed to know it would upset them?"
"I don't know.. common sense?"
He rolls his eyes.
Charlie opens the door to your room, as you both step in.
"Take your time to get settled in, there's no hurry. Breakfast is at 8:30, lunch at 12:00 and dinner at 18:00 (6:00). There's also a meeting tommorow morning at 10 but you don't have to come to that if you don't want to." She smiles, leaving your room.
You sigh, and plop down on your bed.
You turn to your left, being met by Alastor staring at you.
You scream, rolling off the bed.
"What the hell, Alastor?" You say, loudly.
"My apologies, dear. I just noticed something was wrong when you spoke about the way you died. Now, i'm no therapist, but I am a good listener.
Would you like to talk about it?"
You inhaled sharply
"What's there to say? I was fighting somebody off near a pool. I killed his friend. He pushed me in, and he drowned me. That's all there is."
He hummed as you stand back up, and start unpacking.
"Did you know him?"
"Not really.. I went to school with him but that's all." He nods, as he stands up, taking the shirt you had in your hands, and folding it properly for you.
"If you need a hand with anything, just ask" He says, leaving your room.
The next morning you wake up at 7:00 am.
You sit up, as you heard a knock on your door.
"Come in" you say, yawning.
Alastor opens, enters, and closes the door.
"Charlie asked me to help you get settled i-" He stops and looks at you, noticing your hair. "-in." He stays silent for a moment before speaking again.
"My goodness, you look an absolute mess, dear."
You roll your eyes, laying back down.
He walks towards the curtains and opens them, light cutting off your vision for a few seconds. You groan.
"Time to get up, we have a trip to make." He lays an outfit on the end of your bed.
"Meet me downstairs in 15 minutes."
He exits your room again.
"Strange guy" you mumble, getting out of bed.
"And make your bed!" he says loudly from the hall.
"Okay, dad" you yell back, sarcastically. That came out quicker than you wanted it to. You hoped he didn't hear it. With no response, you assumed he didn't.
You get dressed, brush your teeth, do your hair, and all in a hurry since you only had 15 minutes.
You run downstairs, noticing yourself in the mirror. Your wearing a white button-up shirt, with a dark blue skirt that reaches to your calfs, a pair of low black heels and a black hat, with lace. Not to big.
You weren't used to dressing so.. conservative.
Alastor was already waiting at the door.
"17 minutes. your late."
"Oh, whatever. It's only two minutes."
You say, straighting your skirt, hearing a quick static sound of irritation.
He sighs and opens the door for you.
"Thank you." You step outside, the cold wind hitting your skin, as you breathed it in.
You two were walking in silence when Alastor spoke.
"We'll be going to Cannibal town, where we'll be meeting a friend of mine. I need to ask a favour of her, and I wanted you to tag along, so you could get accustomed to Hell."
"What kind of favour?" You asked, looking up at him.
"I'm afraid that's none of your concern, dear."
You hummed in response, looking around, trying to memorize some of the streets.
"Alastor, when were you born?" You ask.
"1893, January 1st. Why do you ask?"
You whistle, a little surprised.
"No reason, just curious.."
You guys arrived at Cannibal town.
Everyone looked so old fashioned.
You realised why Alastor picked this outfit for you. You blend right in.
You two enter a small communal building.
He waves at a woman.
"Oh my stars. Do my eyes deceive me? Alastor, it's been ages!" She walks up to us, kissing him on the cheek.
"And who's this? Come now Alastor, she's much to young for you. I'm just kidding, I know your an ace in the hole." you snicker.
"A what now?" He asked, confused.
"I think she means ase-sexual, Alastor."
"Yes, that!" The woman says, snapping her fingers.
"I'm Rosie, dear. What's your name?" She smiles.
"I'm (y/n), ma'am, nice to meet you."
She gasps softly, laying her hand on her chest.
"A pleasure meeting you, dear. So polite. Alastor you could learn a thing or two from her." She says, laying her hand on your shoulder and taking us to a table.
You wiggle your eyebrows at Alastor, grinning. He rolls his eyes.
"So what can I do for you two?" She asked.
"It's better I discuss this with you privately, Rosie." Alastor says.
She nods, turning to me.
"You can wait here, Dear. We'll be right back" she smiles, as they enter her office.
An hour later, they came back out, laughing.
"Sorry it took so long, we got a little carried away" Rosie apologized.
"It's okay" you said, standing up.
"Thank you for your hospitality, Rosie."
Alastor thanked her.
She waved it away.
"No need to thank me, Al. It's always a pleasure having you around. See you next time!"
We both smiled at her as we left.
"So.." i started. "What did you two talk about..?"
He raised his eyebrow.
"I'm still not telling you."
You shrug. "Worth a shot"
You two got back to the Hotel, and had dinner with the rest of the staff.
At 23:00 (11:00) you stumbled upstairs, exhausted from your long day.
You opened the door to your room, and kicked off your shoes, falling onto your bed, immediately dozing off.
Alastor entered your room, about to say something, when he noticed you were asleep. He sighed softly, walking over to you. He gently picked you up, laying your head on your pillow and tucking you in.
Maybe this wasn't so bad after all...
Thank you for reading!
381 notes
·
View notes
Text
Saturday's at Wayne Manor are family days. The whole weekend is reserved for the family to come and go as they please, but the biggest events are the Game Days on Saturday from 11:00 to 16:00 and Sunday Dinner at 18:00.
Every Saturday is a Game Day, but the third Saturday of each month is Competition Day. The kids all choose their favorite games, and everyone competes against each other. It's very rarely missed by anyone, but there have been times when someone has had to tap out for one reason or another. Alfred keeps track of who's missed how many days. Barbra keeps the tally of who's won what and how many times. At the end of the year, on December 31st, the scores are announced.
Sunday Dinners are sacred. No one ever misses a Sunday Dinner. The last person who did Jason is still getting subtle jabs and looks from everyone and that was a year ago and he had a very good reason, thank you very much! Everyone is always present for Sunday Dinner because everyone still has a room and the option to stay the night between the two days. Most usually take up the offer, but there have been extenuating circumstances that have pulled someone from the Manor.
No matter any of that because everyone is here and everyone is staying the night. That means everyone is patrolling Gotham tonight. Almost everyone. Batwoman has offered to take over Bludhaven for the night, so that's where she's gone.
Bruce plans to present his idea of messing with his coworkers when everyone gets back to the cave after patrol. All his kids know who they all are, having been trained by him, so there's no risk or accidental reveals on his part. In actuality, the kids thought of it like a game. They even had a folder for it on the Bat Computer and everything!
Yes, that night, after everyone returned to the Bat Cave, he would gather his Chaos Gremlins and invite them to mess with the Justice League with him. He'd also try and get Alfred in on it. Family bonding, and all that.
Though, making his kids sweat was its own form of amusement for him. It was 3:00 when everyone finally returned. They all ran their own routes, watched over by Oracle, and their own times, but everyone was always done no later than 3:00. It was a rule that the Gotham Rouges had yet to pick up on because Batman went back out until dawn more often than not.
Anyway, Bruce has been the first to get back and had put on an act of being upset. He usually kept his Batman persona with his suit, so he was rarely ever this stoic while he was Bruce Wayne. He hid his smirk as he sat at the head of the meeting table in the Cave, waiting for his children to change and sit with him. Duke normally was asleep by now, but he'd asked the boy to be there, letting him in on the harmless prank while they waited for his siblings and Stephanie to arrive.
Once everyone was seated, he waited a total of thirty seconds, meeting eyes with every one of his children, before he spoke. "I'm very disappointed."
Dick's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. He'd known Bruce the longest - aside from Alfred - and had likely picked up on something the second he saw Bruce and Duke at the table. "At who?"
"The Justice League," It was amusing to watch the tension melt off of all of them when he shook his head, "We all know who all of them are, as well as everyone who trained under them, but they don't know who we are."
"Except Wonder Woman," Jason pointed out, "She figured me out when I came back."
Fair, Bruce supposed. Jason was always Diana's favorite. "I think they need some help," he said, "A push in the right direction, so to speak."
Stephanie had a smile on her face that promised mischief. "We're not telling them, right? 'Cause that'd be no fun."
"Course not!" Duke yawned, "B said we'd give them a hint."
"What did you have in mind, father?" Damian asked, stoic as always, but matching the gleam in Cass's eyes.
"We invite them to the Bat Cave," he said, "Show them around a bit. The only exits we tell them about, though, should be the Lane," How the ground vehicles get in and out. "-the Zeta Tubes," Obviously. "-and the elevator. But, we don't tell them what's upstairs."
Alfred seemed very amused from where he had taken his seat at the other end of the table.
"From there," Bruce continued, "We invite their civilian identities to the next Gala. Meet them. Hint about the Cave without actually saying anything. If I know Clark as well as I know I do, then he'll, at the very least, piece together that the Bat Cave is under Wayne Manor."
"And if we play it right?" Dick's grin was manic, "They won't connect who we are."
"Won't that be suspicious, though?" Tim spoke up for the first time, "They may not have put things together yet, but they aren't stupid. They're heroes. If we give them the pieces, they're gonna piece them together."
Damian was the one to answer him. "Batman and Bruce Wayne hate one another, though there is a grudging acknowledgement and respect."
"Give them the right pieces, with a few from the wrong puzzle, in the wrong order, we could totally have them fooled!" Jason explained.
The group shared looks between each other. Nothing needed to be said because the looks and movements said everything.
Alfred smiled and shook his head fondly. "You may plan this in the morning. For now, go to bed and get some sleep."
Part 1
#bruce wayne is batman's biggest hater#batman is bruce wayne's biggest hater#the batman#batman#bruce wayne#wayne family adventures#wayne family#dcu#dc comics#dc#dc universe#justice league#secret identities#pranks#they're a family of detectives#of course they'll use their powers for good!#they're actually a family of drama queens#but don't tell the jl or their kids
294 notes
·
View notes
Text
Bradley Scanes, Max's trainer during 2020-2023 seasons, did an interview with The Red Flags Podcast (22 Jan 2024)
I took one for the team and transcribed the bits I found interesting enough to share:
[12:40] Talking about the first times Brad met Max and how important it is that you click together well:
I think it's the most important. We had a good conversation in that time, I think the decision probably set on the fact that, for half of the time I was there, he was out driving the car. But I was there, talking to his dad, talking to his family. And really got on with Red Bull and really kinda fit into that mold and did for my whole 4 years with him and it was so nice. And I appreciate Max for this, his dad for this and the rest of the family because I felt part of the family the entire time which was really really nice and you know, we'll stay friends.
[24:00] From what I saw, I saw a guy that was elite. He knew where he wanted to go. You could see the drive, you could see the work ethic. The work ethic was tremendous. And for me it was just, I've gotta create the optimal space for him to be him and him to do him.
[27:30] Talking about flexibility and adaptability being the traits that separates greats from the rest:
He's on the grid being interviewed by two or three different tv stations, or something's happening with the car, he gets in the car and drives exactly the same no matter what's going on. And that's for me what I've seen from the kinda good to great.
[28:25] Was it hard to train him this year when he was so far ahead?
No, no. If anything he was more motivated this year than any year before.
[34:55] I feel like you have to be elite at falling asleep. Is Max like "allright time to go to bed" and he's like "okay [snores]"? Can kinda turn on turn off?
Yeah, he's really good at that.
[48:50] On staying motivated to win:
The mindset to keep winning is there. We love winning and it's what we get out of bed for, it's what we do our work for. We want to win no matter what it is. We going to Monza, going to Belgium, we wanna win that race. We want to win every single race and if the championship comes in the end the championship comes in the end. That's the mentality he has. […] The first one was motivated by winning the first championship, the second one was motivated by seeing off Ferrari and making sure we got the second (wdc) and that we're here to stay. And then the third one we were motivated by winning every single race and setting every single record that we could.
[1:14:55] Talking about other drivers posting tough work out videos while Max posted a lighter work out:
That's the thing actually, it's a conversation we've had before because we have the markers where we need to get to. How you get there doesn't really matter. We managed to do it in the most time efficient way, in the most enjoyable way for Max and how it doesn't impact on the other stuff as much. […] He doesn't like working out, everybody knows that. But when he's in the session he gets after it. It's just shifting that mindset, he might not want to do it ever again but there's not too much encouragement needed actually in session which is always nice. It's nice to work that way.
[1:16:10] If Max pisses you off what exercise are you doing to punish him? What's his least favorite?
Single-leg squats or planks.
[1:17:35] How long can Max plank for?
Decent amount of time. I don't actually remember but we must have hit like 4-5 minutes in pre-season test and a bit longer come summer break.
#max verstappen#red bull racing#bradley scanes#a winner :)#i feel like the last two questions are the most important tbh hjhjsdk#mp#podcast
156 notes
·
View notes
Text
'Villain Wants To Bother The Little Robin' Story Event: Announcement
Event Run Date:
18.08.2023 (16:00) — 31.08.2023 (22:59)
* All timings are in JST
Routes Available:
Ellis Twilight & Jude Jazza, William Rex & Victor, Elbert Greetia & Alfons Sylvatica
Event Introduction:
I became a stand-in for the Queen, and had two of the most wicked and absolute worst people to protect me.
During the time spent together, I learnt about a surprising secret. They protected, bothered, and loved... and before I knew it, I had become a victim of love to both of them.
Event Details
Love Point Milestone Rewards
Accumulate ≥ 95,000 Love Points to obtain a special bonus story featuring Liam Evans and Harrison Gray!
♚ Love Points ≥ 35,000: Hair Accessory
♚ Love Points ≥ 55,000: Dress
♚ Love Points ≥ 85,000: Avatar Room Effect
Ranking Rewards
Players ranked 200 and above will receive the bodyguard uniform avatar outfits for all 9 suitors!
Ending Clear Rewards
♚ Early Full Premium Clear — Hair
♚ Early All Endings Clear — Eyes
♚ Full Premium Clear — His Avatar Outfit
Epilogue Rewards
Each route's epilogue will come with a special event limited chibi avatar item!
Event Participation Rewards
Players who join the event within 24 hours will receive:
♚ Multi Gacha Ticket x1
♚ Lipstick (+500 Love Points) x1
Double Time
Double time will start immediately after the event starts. Please refer to the in-game event page for the full double time schedule.
Fairytale Writer Challenge
Clear all missions in the event's mission board to receive Diamonds x100!
Route Previews
Ellis Twilight & Jude Jazza
Bitter END
Jude: Be careful when making promises with villains, Princess.
Ellis: As long as it's requested by you... I'll do anything.
Premium END
Jude: Why are you turning red? What a dirty woman you are.
Ellis: Want to do something naughty together? Okay, shall we?
William Rex & Victor
Bitter END
Victor: Ah, we're choosy when it comes to people. We're villains, after all.
William: We won't think about protecting anyone who isn't you.
Premium END
Victor: We want to devote our entire heart to you, just like you have devoted yours to us.
William: We'll listen to all your wants, lovely little robin.
Elbert Greetia & Alfons Sylvatica
Bitter END
Alfons: You truly are a foolish woman, my dear.
Elbert: Whenever she's out of my sight— I can't bring myself to stay calm.
Premium END
Alfons: Would you like a second helping? I'll be the one giving it to you this time.
Elbert: ... I want to do it again. If you don't mind.
104 notes
·
View notes
Text
The ITSAY Anniversary Show, Part 1
AND WE'RE BACK!
October marks the third anniversary of the show that rewired the BL industry, and it felt like the right time for a retrospective. In part 1 Ben leads a panel talk on I Told Sunset About You. Just us along with @liyazaki, @waitmyturtles, @wen-kexing-apologist, and @so-much-yet-to-learn
Join us as we talk about our history with the genre, Phuket as a setting, the complexities of the characters, and why this show remains so important.
Listen on Apple Podcasts!
Timestamps
The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.
0:00 - Intro
4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY?
11:31 - Phuket as a Setting
19:00 - Style and Genre
29:40 - Characters
36:18 - Teh and Oh's Dynamic
50:07 - Why do you care so much about ITSAY?
1:04:08 - Outro
The Conversation Transcripts!
Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.
We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.
Please send our volunteers your thanks!
0:00 - Intro
Ben
BWOOOOOOOOM. Okay. It Worked. You're already in it.
Nini
[laughs] That's staying in.
Ben
Welcome back to The Conversation, everyone, for our fall season. We're very excited about this season. We decided to take advantage of the reduced output of shows, at least for part of summer, and decided to do a retrospective on I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon. We also have made a lot of friends in our time on Tumblr and decided to hang out with some of them, and talk about the show so it wouldn't just be me and Nini blabbing about one of our favorite projects.
Nini
Our panel of I Told Sunset About You experts includes the lovely, the only Turtles a.k.a @waitmyturtles on Tumblr. We have Aiden @so-much-yet-to-learn on Tumblr. We have Captain Hands who is @wen-kexing-apologist on Tumblr. And the fabulous friend of the pod, our good friend mor @liyazaki on Tumblr.
So that is our esteemed panel for I Told Sunset About You in this episode. That's who you're gonna hear. In the next episode we're gonna talk I Promised You the Moon and have a different set of people on.
So, Ben, aside from the fact that it's the anniversary of I Told Sunset About You—the third anniversary—why did you feel like this was the right time?
Ben
I think this has probably been one of the most thematically interesting years that the genre has had, and I've said many times that I don't think we'd be able to get the kinds of quality productions we're getting out of the genre now without the success of I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon, and I feel like for us to move forward with this particular show I think we had to at least get that show out of our system and into the recording. It had been bothering both of us that we hadn't really sat down and talked about it even though we dropped constantly that we are fans. I think it was really useful to talk about it.
I really liked that we actually split up for it because you and I talked to each other a lot on this show, and it was really fun to talk to some other people about the show first and get some other perspectives.
Nini
We always say that one of the whole points of The Conversation is to expand the conversation outward, so we had a really good time doing these panels. We think you're gonna enjoy them. So, let's just dive right in.
4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY?
Ben
We're gonna get right into it, Our first question of the night. We're gonna start with Mor: longtime friend of the podcast. Mor?
Mor
Yes, hi Ben!
Ben
How did you come to ITSAY?
Mor
[laughs] Well I came to ITSAY actually as a relatively new BL watcher — I had very begrudgingly watched 2gether and a handful of other very typical GMMTV type shows. And I had heard that there were some higher budget higher brow BLs out there, but I'm not ashamed to admit that what initially drew me to the genre in the first place is the… kind of fluffy romance trope-driven narratives? And it was just the first time that I had encountered any kind of queer media that was so lighthearted, and typically took place in a world where homophobia basically doesn't exist, and especially as a slightly older queer, that was such a nice change of pace compared to the other queer media that I'd been consuming up until that point. So frankly, the idea of watching a more serious BL back then made me a little nervous, even though that's a lot of what I typically watch when it comes to Western media. So I put off watching ITSAY for a while until I eventually decided to just jump into it and the rest is history.
ITSAY isn't just my favorite show in the genre, it's one of my favorite shows and pieces of media period. I Promised You the Moon is too, but that's a hot take I'll expound on next time.
Ben
Thank you. Aiden, what about you, you've been around BL for a bit. How did you come to ITSAY?
Aiden
I've been in the BL slash QL sphere since the beginning, largely as a lurker. I didn't watch ITSAY when it aired, due to not being in the right headspace at the time to tackle a show with that much emotional impact. It was obviously very much in the zeitgeist, constantly in my feed, impossible to miss. So many other shows since then have been compared to it and I always planned to watch it someday in the nebulous future, but with so many things constantly airing I’d never quite gotten around to it.
So when word went out that Ben and Nini were looking for people who hadn't watched it yet to get a mix of perspectives, I figured there probably weren't many others who'd been around as long as I had and somehow hadn't watched it yet. I re-evaluated whether or not I was ready to watch it and turns out I was! So, better late than never.
Ben
I am so glad we finally convinced you to watch the show. I wasn't gonna push you but I'm like ‘oh my god Aiden’s finally watching.’
Aiden
I'm glad as well. It was definitely an excellent thing to watch.
Ben
Okay, Captain Hands! [laughs] What about you?
Captain Hands
So I got into BL like a year-ish ago, and of course being a queer person who had not seen a lot of queer media the worms got in my brain instantly! There's like a master post of queer Asian shows that is somewhere on Tumblr that I saw, I don't know what user it is, sorry! But I saw a post that had I Told Sunset About You on it as like a good show to watch but I wasn't sure where to access it at the time, so I kind of just filed it away for later. Cut to like six months later, Ben and Turtles were yelling at me to eat vegetables, Kyr-kun-chan changed her icon to I think PP or Billkin or something, Nini mentioned PP and then a thousand messages in the clown server later ginnymoonbeam and I committed to watching ITSAY for the first time, which is probably a good thing because then Ben could warn me about doing one episode at a time.
Ben
Oh right, you were the one who was like, I'm tough I can watch more than one episode at a time. No.
Captain Hands
Wrong. Very wrong.
Ben
I'm glad you also finally joined us. Last but definitely not least, Turtles what about you? How did you come to ITSAY?
Turtles
Hey folks! Ben and Nini, thanks for having me, this is so awesome. All right, so, I guess what I'm the most well known on Tumblr for is the old GMMTV challenge project that I am blogging on. I came to BLs through Kinnporsche, at least Thai BLs through Kinnporsche, I was familiar with Japanese BLs for a couple years before that. I Told Sunset About You, in regards to it making it into the project — it was obviously going to be a natural part of the challenge syllabus, in terms of anybody picking up that syllabus and learning about Thai BLs in the first place. But the entire project, the watch list is community contributed, it’s 100% created by the community of Tumblr posters who love Thai BLs and who have lots of opinions about Thai BLs including this group here. It wasn't just through the solicitation of feedback on the OGMMTVC, uh, that I came to it, I certainly had seen I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon on many lists across Tumblr as, as an impactful BL. But in regards specifically to where it belonged by way of chronology, and by way of its cinematic impact, all of that feedback came through my soliciting the community on Tumblr for creating my syllabus that is teaching me about Thai BLs, and will hopefully get replicated in other people's journeys as well. So that's how I came to it.
Ben
I'm very excited by everybody's answers about how they came to this. I want to ask a quick follow-up question since — some of us have been here since the before time and the long long ago, and some of you got started like a year or two ago? Going in reverse order real quick: what is everybody's first BL that they remember? Turtles?
Turtles
The classic, the wonderful, the amazing, What Did You Eat Yesterday? Long story short, that was the first time I had ever discovered Tumblr as well — enjoyed that drama and I was absolutely insane for it for about two years solid.
Ben
Thank you for that. Captain Hands! What was your first BL?
Captain Hands
My friends were really obsessed with Word of Honor and showed it to me, so I got really into that, and that's how I found the, like, list of other BLs. If that does not count as a BL, then Kinnporsche was the first thing that I watched.
Ben
[laughs] Aiden, what about you? I'm actually really curious to hear your answer, because you and I have been around since the beginning.
Aiden
It depends on how you define BL, really. The first thing that I think could probably qualify would be the first Takumi-kun from Japan in 2007.
Ben
Unfortunately, that counts.
Aiden
Yeah [laughs]. Unfortunately indeed.
Ben
What about you, Mor? You said ITSAY was one of your first BLs. You have any others you watched before that? Or what was your other pathway into this?
Mor
2gether was one of the first ones, which is ironic because I hated 2gether. [laughs] I don't know why I finished watching it, I was just intrigued, so even though I kind of despised it for a lot of personal reasons — just wasn't for me — I enjoyed it enough that I wanted to keep watching. I wanted to find more.
Ben
I'm absolutely fascinated by how everybody came to this. It's KinnPorsche, 2gether, What Did You Eat Yesterday? and Aiden with some of the oldest stuff.
11:31 - Phuket as a Setting
Moving on to our next question! We're going to get into some setting stuff. What about Phuket as a setting stands out to you? I think I'm gonna have Mor answer this one first because they actually visited Phuket and some of the filming locations.
Mor
I certainly did, and I made a concentrated effort to take pictures, as some of you I think have seen, of the actual scenes in ITSAY, like the famous chip crawl deck, which was a journey to find. It was an incredible experience getting to visit Phuket. The setting of Phuket is unlike any other backdrop to a BL that I've ever seen. The landscape is really a character unto itself. I get a very similar but also sort of very rare sort of feeling when I watch ITSAY as I do when I'm watching, say, the train scene in Spirited Away. It's like looking at a natural environment that's been elevated to something almost magical just because of the way it's being shot or portrayed.
I read once that Miyazaki's films almost make you homesick for a place you've never been, and that's how I felt about Phuket after watching ITSAY, to the point that it absolutely influenced my decision to go to Thailand and actually go there. And having been I can say it's just as lovely as they portray it to be — but I do know my attachment runs a lot deeper and is more personal than that, because Phuket to me will always be tied to Teh and Oh.
The specific locations they chose, having now been there and walked around and seen it — it was so smart and it really enhanced the narrative while never overwhelming it or taking away from it. Like, I was very struck that the beach that the hammock scene takes place on… it's very wide, it's very open, and you would almost miss the hammock, because the way that the trees hang so low to the beach, it really sort of encapsulates the hammock? You have to actually climb under the branches. It really I think created this effect of Teh and Oh — they almost look cocooned in the darkness, in this otherwise very wide open environment. Maybe it felt a little safer because of that, to start saying what they had been feeling and skirting around. The wide shots of the beach chase scene… and obviously the beauty of Promthep Cape, and so many other moments. Phuket just… it did so much to enhance the intimacy of the scenes, and move this story along.
Ben
Apparently we're all going to have to go visit Phuket now. Turtles, when you were reacting to the series you were writing about some of the cultural crossover stuff. What do you have to say about Phuket as a setting?
Turtles
I've never been to Thailand, but I have spent a good portion of my entire childhood and adult life in Thailand's southern neighboring country of Malaysia — with my mother being Malaysian, my being part Malaysian — Phuket is an incredibly important locale for me to consider. Chinese migration from Fujian, from other locales in China, traveled in part down that Thai landscape to the Malaysian peninsula, and then ultimately settling all throughout Thailand, through Malaysia as I said, and ultimately into Singapore which has a majority Chinese population.
A lot of what I learned about Phuket in part comes from my own Malaysian heritage, but also through conversations with other amazing Tumblr users including the very wonderful telomeke, who hails from the southeast Asian region himself. Phuket, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, these are towns that happened to receive more than their fair share of Chinese immigrants, that ended up in part creating a very unique culture that we call Peranakan culture: Chinese immigrants intermingling with ethnic residents of the areas in which they settled. Teh's mom is just a fabulous example of somebody that, that holds a lot of those influences all in one person: she wears Peranakan clothes, particularly when she's hosting events for the public at her Hokkien Mee stall.
Ben
Captain Hands, Aiden, do you want to say anything about Phuket?
Captain Hands
Phuket is a small town when compared to locations like Bangkok, which is where a lot of I Promised You the Moon is going to take place. I've been thinking that the small-town vibe works very well with how often it feels to me like Teh's entire world is ending whenever Oh, like, does something that like makes him jealous. Or like, if Teh's rejected or if he makes a mistake, like you can just feel in his body how much that impacts him, and it feels very small-town to me, to like to have these little moments be so big to him.
There’s such a significant use of the Chinese language in this show, and for all the ways that like Chinese is used to tell us, like, what Teh is thinking and feeling, and for all the ways that like Teh is taking the time to try to teach Oh how to understand the language that Teh himself uses to express himself frequently — is a really poignant thing for me to pick up on considering Teh's own heritage, and like, his mother's heritage, and like the Chinese immigrant population that is a part of that community.
Ben
Turtles was talking about the cultural crossover that occurs in Phuket from all the various people migrating there. I'm from New Orleans which can jokingly be described as the northernmost Caribbean city, that has passed between French and Spanish control multiple times, and has now been occupied by Americans for one hundred and fifty years. So we have a very weird collection of cultures here as well — most evidenced in our architecture. And I think about that a lot when I reflect on Phuket — because I just rewatched it this week — it looks different from what we usually get in Bangkok.
Turtles
This show was so unbelievably layered by its visual cues, from a cultural interpretive perspective. Ben, as you pointed out to me, one of the friends, Phillip, he clearly comes from from a Islamic family, his parents are shown wearing a hijab and a songkok, and it's just very indicative of the the filmmakers giving us the indication that we're talking about… the mixing of cultures, assimilation and melting pot, all of the different words that we want to throw out there.
As per your note about New Orleans, you know, as we say in Malaysia same same lah. It's very comparative to all of these indications that they were bringing up about Phuket. Thinking about Phuket as a tourist town as well, as compared to New Orleans, having just been to New Orleans myself, I think that there's just so much to, to pull out there by way of whether you make Phuket a permanent home or not. Teh and Oh clearly exist on the borderline of that permanence as they get closer to going to college.
Ben
There's something specific about growing up in a tourist town, like you can go visit tourist locations during peak tourist season as a way to avoid people you know. Because unless they're working the location, it's just strangers.
19:00 - Style and Genre
Ben
We're going to move to our next question here and get into some style questions. How does ITSAY play with genre and stylistic expectations? And specifically, are there any works that you recall while you were watching it? Aiden, you and I had talked a little bit about this.
Aiden
For myself when I was watching ITSAY, rather than paying attention to the source materials that ITSAY drew from, I found myself thinking back on shows that I'd seen since ITSAY aired and reevaluating them through the lens that had changed from my watching it. ITSAY clearly broke open a number of aspects that the Thai BL circuit specifically hadn't delved into until then, and expanded the genre as a result.
My personal favorite impact is seeing shows set in rural locations, which were quite thin on the ground before that point, and have increased at least in visits if not fully set in more rural locations since then. Shows like Tale of a Thousand Stars, Cupid’s Last Wish, I Will Knock You, Remember Me, Moonlight Chicken. And it also, it showed grit and grime in a way that you really hadn't seen before that point in at least the BL genre. It was more common in media intended for queer audiences or art house type of content but the BL genre had always been very sanitized, very urban, very clean cut. Almost cartoonish and simplistic. And seeing something where you got to see buildings with marks on the walls that are from, you know, monsoon rain, stains, faded paint, chipped plaster, dirt on the ground, picture glass that had flecks on it, dust settled on things — that was a revelation, at least at the time. It really made things feel a lot more… settled and grounded and realistic. It felt like you could walk down the road and see these places, rather than it being a kind of constructed facade of where these shows are, that's an everyplace everywhere kind of generalization. And that followed with shows like Not Me, I Will Knock You again, Remember Me, that you got to see the grittiness, Not Me especially.
The inclusion of religion, more Chinese cultural aspects, things like that that had largely been omitted from most shows until then, started becoming involved more in the day to day life that you got to see. Things like the talk Bart where you do the alms in the morning providing the food for the monks that go around traveling from home to home.
We also started getting more slower paced shows like Nitiman, You're My Sky — which had heavy callbacks — Coffee Melody, My Only 12%. Shows with high concepts, stronger writing, better production value on a number of levels, like, ah, Bad Buddy, Triage, La Pluie, Kinnporsche. Also things with some of the more awkward side of queer life, which until then had very much not been present almost at all, outside of the more tragic kind of shows. Because again, it was that sanitized, sort of, ‘it has to be picture perfect, it has to be ideal’ kind of… nuance and vibe on the shows. And so we got things like Secret Crush on You, and I'll argue that I Will Knock You should fit there as well.
The way that it's expanded the shows that have come after — and yes we do still have those sanitized, simplistic, clean, bubblegum sort of shows — very much enjoyable when you're in the mood for that sort of show, but we've also added things to give more breadth. Things like La Pluie, Step by Step, Moonlight Chicken, that make it a much more encompassing sort of genre, able to draw broader crowds that have differing interests as well. I am thrilled to see the change and be able to tie back now to how that was driven by ITSAY.
Ben
This is one of the reasons why I was really glad we finally got you to watch the show, because you've been in the genre as long or longer than me? And it was one of the shows that you had skipped for specific reasons when it first aired and I was curious how your long view of the genre would play into your reflections upon it.
When I watched ITSAY, I ended up having a really intense reaction to the end of it — positively, as a result of some of the works that had come before. It's sometimes hard for me to connect ITSAY to other BLs that pre-date it, because those BLs are often heavily influenced by product placement and a slapstick version of humor that ITSAY is not relying on at all — it's an incredibly serious show about what it wants to cover. And that connected me back further to some of the German works I had watched growing up. Like Summer Storm, which is I think from 2004, there's a Dutch film called Boys from 2014, Big Eden from America in 2000 which uses its setting in the American hinterland really well. And I just had not seen this in Thai BL.
The closest we came to something this grounded-feeling from Thailand was The Love of Siam, which they submitted to the Academy Awards in 2007. I actually had Turtles and Captain Hands watch that this week, so before I get into my very specific reactions to that, at the end of episode 5 of ITSAY, I kind of want to hear you two, and what you have to say about Love of Siam in relation to ITSAY before we move forward.
Captain Hands
You've said before that you felt like ITSAY is an apology for Love of Siam, and I fully agree. Two kids that are childhood friends separate for a number of years, come back together, the attraction between them is instantaneous and very obvious and kind of hard to ignore? And then having it end the way that it ends for Love of Siam, is, you know, it's a choice! I can understand and see why they would play it that way, but I agree with you, Ben, that it is, that this feels like an apology for what they did to us with Love of Siam.
Ben
Turtles, any commentary you want to give?
Turtles
Me not being Thai, not knowing Thai, having not visited Thailand — for a movie in 2007 to end with a successful same-sex relationship would have surprised me. So the film ending the way that it did was not surprising, and I found the journey to get to that point really poignant. That is a very deeply Turtles read, a very deep Asian read. Absolutely no surprise whatsoever that many BL filmmakers were influenced by this movie. And as far as ITSAY goes, is ITSAY an apology for Love of Siam? I can absolutely understand that verbiage, that's not a verbiage that I would necessarily jump to using.
I could very well say that if ITSAY had ended without Teh and Oh getting together, I also would not have been surprised, especially with the way episodes 3 and 4 went. And now that I've seen Love of Siam I could feel stronger in that opinion. Now, as far as it making me feel good or satisfied with the story conclusion? That's, I think, you know that's, that's personal extrapolation there. But as far as the art itself goes I think Love of Siam communicated to me that I would not have been surprised if Teh and Oh didn't get together, if they had more personal, emotional, and also macrocultural wrangling that they needed to do. Love of Siam absolutely talks to ITSAY but I'm not sure that I would necessarily call it an apology.
Ben
Mor, do you have any commentary on genre history?
Mor
The really interesting, different thing that ITSAY did for me, as specifically a queer 30-something, a Westerner who's been in all sorts of extremely homophobic environments and, and different things throughout my life, and I've just gotten used to not having happily ever after. What I loved so much about BLs in the beginning was just, ‘oh man, we can have these light, bubbly, effervescent stories that get a happily ever after and it doesn't have to be complicated, it can just be sweet?’ And it was such a new concept for me, to see that.
So, ITSAY ended up, like, with the ending that we got, it ended up being almost healing for me? As dramatic as that sounds. And that's really why, because it subverted it. You could tell going in, this is gonna be serious. This is gonna be hard-hitting. We're gonna be getting into deep stuff in terms of these queer kids figuring out who they are, and learning how they can be together, if they want to be together. So I was sort of expecting — because of my history and what I'm what I'm used to seeing — okay, well we're going serious, it's not a good chance this is gonna end well. So to see that — which frankly was a much more realistic portrayal of queer relationships than your typical sanitized BL — that is what took ITSAY for me to god-tier media, god-tier.
29:40 - Characters
Ben
Let's get into some of the character stuff. For all that they are incredible and great characters, why couldn't it be Bas or Tarn for Teh and Oh? Captain Hands! You're up first for this one.
Captain Hands
So the easy answer for me is that it just couldn't be? Like neither Teh or Oh really knows exactly when they developed feelings for each other, and they both try to have feelings for Tarn and Bas and they just can't make it work. Teh going to Tarn at 4 am and asking her to tell him that she loves him was, for me, like, ‘Oh I need to know what it feels like to hear this from her so I can know how it, how it feels… to hear it? And to know whether or not that feels good? If that feels something, like something I want to hear.’
For a more, you know, in-depth answer, because that's my whole shtick, right? There's a couple of things that I was thinking about, mostly the Chinese language element, the color element, and then just like Tarn and Bas as characters? One of the throughlines of ITSAY is that Teh frequently writes whatever his subconscious is fixating on over and over again in Chinese. Teh can't parse through the complexity of his emotions, but he can summarize them in like words, so like ‘rival’ or ‘intimate,’ and we know that there is much more behind what he's writing, than like what is actually being put down on paper? Because Oh's not good at Chinese, Teh spends so much of this show like painstakingly teaching Oh how to understand Chinese, and like how to understand him as a person and like his subconscious? So like once Oh starts to get it and get better at Chinese is when they really start to connect more intimately. If you think about the end of episode 3 with the sniffing scene, the buildup to that moment is Oh using the male/male protagonist question — like, how you say male protagonist in Chinese, how you say female protagonist in Chinese, is male-male okay? — is him asking if Teh is okay with them like potentially becoming a couple.
And I know this is going to kill Ben to talk about the colors, but this is for the color girlies! Oh is red and Teh is blue and green, and something that I did notice on this watch through is like, Teh's home is filled with red, like the walls of the restaurant are red, his bedspread’s red, the couch, the clothing his mother wears is often red, and Oh's home is… very much blue and green, so like the sign for the Panwa resort is blue, the windows, all of the windows are framed in this kind of like, light green. These boys grew up in each other's colors. Their home is each other's colors. And so of course when they first meet, they're going to be drawn to one another because they remind each other of home. Tarn's color is purple, and so there are parts of Tarn that Teh is drawn to, but I see that as kind of being like the red parts of Tarn.
Oh likes Bas because Bas kind of acts as a similar person in his life to Teh. In episode 2 Oh says that he likes Bas because Bas drives him around, but he won't confess because he doesn't know what Bas's feelings are for him, and he thinks that Bas likes girls and he doesn't want to lose him as a friend, when that is a direct parallel to Teh. And something that I started noticing on this watchthrough is that Bas picks up whatever color Teh is wearing, but he's often like a scene or an episode behind. So in episode 4 Teh’s wearing green at the beginning of like them going to the resort? And then Bas picks up the green when he shares a bed with Oh, and then by the time that Bas has picked up that green color, Teh and Oh are both in yellow, and so like they're now matching, and Bas is is behind the curve.
From the perspective of just like, Tarn and Bas as characters, like they both value themselves enough to know when to let go, which I think is a very crucial part of their relationships with Teh and Oh? When Teh colors the hibiscus that Tarn draws red, she shuts that shit down like immediately and sends him home. And when Oh is quiet and sad on like the drive home, Bas knows immediately like why that is, and goes to Teh’s house. So like I really strongly believe that Oh ends up with Teh at the end because Bas gives him up? Oh would have kept fighting the urge to go to Teh, and like to comfort Teh and to support him, if Bas hadn't driven Oh to Teh's house and been like, ‘it's okay, it's fine, I understand.’ And, and given him that freedom.
Ben
I’m very fascinated to follow up on the thread about Tarn and Bas having more willingness to cut those boys off [laughs]. Anyone else have any commentary they want to talk about on Bas or Tarn? Oh please, Aiden, proceed.
Aiden
It just needs to be said that Bas is the best boy and Tarn is the best girl. Sorry, somebody had to say it.
Ben
Thank you, sir. So [laughs] I think Teh likes Tarn because she's as committed to her future as he is. She intentionally does not pursue a romance with him because she thinks it would get in the way of her pursuit of her art and architecture career. And Teh is super committed to his career as an actor. And I think that's probably why he liked her so much? This is a little bit of I Promised You the Moon slipping through. But like Captain Hands pointed out: because she's committed to what she wants for herself, she's not going to sacrifice a ton of her stuff for him the way Oh might, or that Teh might for Oh.
And Bas… I've been thinking a lot about second lead stuff because of conversations with Shan. Bas doesn't confess until really late in the game? But so much has happened at that point, that Teh is going to be able to break past that because of the earlier promise. I agree that he is the best boy. But I think Oh likes the drama [laughs] that Teh brings to his life.
36:18 - Teh and Oh-aew’s Dynamic
Ben
On to our next question! The dynamic between Teh and Oh-aew is one of the primary draws of this story. What did you connect to in their dynamic or their story? Mor, you're up first.
Mor
I'm vibrating, can you tell? [laughs] So there is so much, I think, that could draw anyone into the story of ITSAY, because the glories and the pitfalls of first love, they have so much in common regardless of who you fall in love with. But I personally connected so deeply to their story, again, as a queer person, I know a lot of other people did as well. You can't help but painfully relate to both of them — at least that was my experience, especially my younger self — Teh having so many feelings that he spends so much time being incapable of processing or acknowledging, let alone communicating? And Oh being so long-suffering and hopeful and just pining with his whole self for this mess of a boy, who doesn't know what he wants or what he's doing. I mean not that Oh really does either; who knows what they want in a relationship when they're that young? And when you have feelings for your long-lost best friend that you just reunited with, it's very complicated.
But there were just so many quintessentially queer experiences in ITSAY and in their dynamic that hit me right in my gay little heart. The tiny secret touches that mean so much, the affectionate friendly banter that all of a sudden is veering into flirting, or ‘are we flirting, like what's going on?’ and then the crippling doubt that sets in afterwards and how it can haunt you for days. This gut wrenching fear that these feelings you found yourself in can possibly affect your whole life: how your friends feel about you, whether or not your family accepts you. There's just so much that we have to consider, well beyond what our hetero peers typically have to deal with, and it's exciting and it's terrifying. It's not just incredibly validating, but like I mentioned earlier, it's healing in a way, to see such a frankly visceral experience portrayed with so much care and accuracy, as they did with giving us Teh and Oh's story, and their dynamic and how it progressed. I just feel like overall the stakes are so much higher for us? And often at so, so young and tender ages, to just explore who we are, to like and to fall in love with who we want to, and… their whole story for me, watching it unfold — this is very dramatic but it's true — for me, it felt like someone peering into my past looking at all these little hurts I forgot, these bigger ones that are still healing, and saying, ‘it was like this back then wasn't it? It was so hard. But there's so much beauty here, and you can have it too! It can be yours too. You can have this struggle, you can go through all of this, you can walk through the fire and emerge through the other side with this beautiful, beautiful thing, that maybe even is even more beautiful because of how much work and how much brokenness it took to get there.’
Ben
I'm so glad we got to let you get that out of your system, Mor. [laughs] Turtles or Aiden, do you have any commentary on Oh and Teh?
Aiden
For me the, the dynamic between Teh and Oh was very unique and… not something that I had necessarily dealt with, but the coming-out scene for Teh and Hoon resonated incredibly strongly for me. The dialogue from that scene matched almost word for word how I came out to my own brother? And the emotions, and the fear and the terror and the relief and the reassurance and the, you know, gentle teasing to lighten the mood… that felt so real. Mine had [laughs] rather less crying, at least in the moment, I definitely did later — but the text and the, the feeling of that scene just took me right back to that moment. And there's so much about this show that is authentic in a very specific way to different people's experiences.
Ben
Thank you Aiden. Turtles?
Turtles
For me, what Oh was able to get out of Teh, by way of what I called a drunken hormonal experience… just the way Billkin acted in his exploratory attraction towards Oh and how PP received it… how their physical interplay represented that budding romance, that budding attraction. The end of episode 2 on the boat particularly moved me, let alone the incredibly impactful endings of 3 and 4. I was surprised to sort of see Teh… melt, and go back and forth in his physicality at the end of that episode. Just the physicality of that exploration, and how the physicality itself then compared to and reflected on all the emotional processes that we saw between the two of them. I thought that that was so unique particularly about this show, and how unabashed it was to display such physical attraction developing between the two of them, particularly on Teh's end. That's something that I'll really take away from this show, that it displayed attraction, really really vibrating attraction, in such an impactful way.
Ben
Captain Hands, you have any commentary?
Captain Hands
Of course you know I do, I have commentary about everything all the time. So I think the thing that really drew me to Oh and Teh’s dynamic was the power of their feelings for one another, and like, especially the way that Oh acts as a magnet to Teh and like, the trance-like state that Oh kind of puts him in, so you get all these moments of Teh just kind of following after Oh, and like Oh being aware of that power that he holds? The sincerity of their characterizations and the commitment to their characters… I love this show so much for having Teh just constantly walk in circles. And how that will kind of translate into just the cyclical nature of his own personality, and like the experiences that he has, and the stuff that he puts himself through. The things he will continue to do as their relationship progresses. You can tell so much, like how comfortable these two are with each other, and how in love they have been with each other since they were kids, and that's another reason I think that they couldn't have really been with anybody else, is because they have all of this history between them? That is like so palpable, and like how much Teh wants to protect those memories, and like the feelings that he has when he's with Oh. The line that they say like, ‘don't give my time to others’ is so poignant.
Seeing the way that Teh is continuously transformed by being around Oh, hating coconut at the beginning of the show and thinking that it smelled bad, and then like having that scene with Oh on the boat at the end of episode 2, and then immediately opening episode 3 with Teh just smashing a bit of coconut meat on his face as like hard as he can, because he just wants to be like as close to it as possible and like, how it doesn't smell bad anymore, and how it tastes good now because he's starting to have these feelings for Oh. And that has radically changed how he interacts with the world around him. It’s just like so good to me to watch being portrayed on screen, especially because Teh is not aware of his queerness in the way that that Oh is? And so like, Teh not knowing why he feels the way he feels, and then lashing out because he can't put a name to like, what it is that is causing the feelings that he has, it feels very, very in keeping with like, the queer experience as you are like, learning your own identity.
Ben
The thing with ITSAY — it's not just the things that it does that are familiar: with all the important touching, the knowing that exists between you, the dealing with the homophobia, the concern about how other people will perceive you, whether or not your parents can be proud of you if you are honest about this portion of yourself. What I think makes ITSAY so special as queer media, and why I lose my mind over it? It's about the fact that these two cannot hide how they feel from each other, at all. And as a result they are the most cry baby boys I have ever seen in all of queer cinema. I just rewatched it this week. These boys are crying constantly at and about each other. Every time any one of them says anything to the other, they make the other one cry over something.
It's interesting because so much of the ‘are you are you not’ thing, when you're growing up, is about the uncertainty that the other boy is actually feeling it? And that never feels like it exists between them. Oh knew what he was feeling, but as soon as Teh starts to show interest in him, he picks up on it instantly, and eventually confronts Teh very directly about it. As Turtles pointed out, the way the intimacy between them is displayed so frankly. They spend all of episode 3 dancing around each other — we know where this is going! And then you get the back-scratching scene which leads into this arc about Teh dealing with the physical reality of Oh being a boy. Episode 4 has the underwater kiss. During the underwater kiss, Teh puts his hand on Oh's chest again, and Oh has a reaction to that, and you can see him immediately being hit with the uncertainty about Teh's attraction to girls — in the middle of the best kiss that has ever happened. And I don't think I noticed that in my earlier watches: even during this huge moment for them, they are still continuing the drama. There's a specificity to the way that these two feel queer, that I have noticed that every person who grew up with some of the Knowing, as I call it, feels so intensely about these two boys.
Mor
I'm nodding so hard over here I'm surprised I haven't lost my head at this point. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to everything you said. The sheer magnetism of their connection, that's really one of my biggest takeaways from this show. Not only the authenticity, but just how much Billkin and PP's chemistry and their talent as actors, how they were able to really, ah, just make that experience that is so true, it's so true to my experience as a queer person who definitely had the Knowing from a very young age... and had a lot of of moments like that where it just felt like, ‘what, I think there's something here, you know it, I know it, I think we both know it’ — it's hard to put it into words, but they just captured it so beautifully, so brilliantly. It took me back.
It was so accurate that it made me remember little moments, tiny little moments in my past that weren't so little in the moment, they were really big when I was, you know, ten, eleven, twelve, falling for a girl for the first time. That's part of what made it so special for me is how it really took me back to those times, and in a healing way.
Ben
Captain Hands.
Captain Hands
I was just thinking about, in the opposite sense of like, I did not at least acknowledge my queerness until I was in my early 20s? But like, definitely grew up feeling very different from people around me and like, lonely compared to people around me, for like reasons I could not explain at the time? And so like, seeing Teh have to go through and process his own queerness because it is not something that has occurred to him before, was something that I took so strongly to. I relate so hard right now in my life to the identity narratives, because it took me so long to kind of parse through what my identities are, and to like, get comfortable with them. And so seeing Teh’s kind of like, ‘can I even like boys?’ moments, that is something that was really fun for me to watch, again with like the circling, like he has no clue [laughs] what's going on in his life and he is just circling and circling and circling until he kind of comes to a point that he can connect to, and then he'll kind of run off in that direction.
50:07 - Why Do You Care So Much About ITSAY?
Ben
Final question for everyone: Why do you care so much about ITSAY? Aiden.
Aiden
I care about it because, for one it is authentic queer representation on a level that I had very rarely seen on screen — both in Thai media and and just in general. It's very true to life for a wide variety of queer people. But also I am passionate about it because of the way that it drove Thai media as a whole forward to a profound degree — but especially the QL genre. It showed unarguably that there was a market for high quality productions, and the industry reacted by broadening their offerings accordingly. Many of the Thai shows that I love most from the past couple of years clearly echo back to ITSAY in specific aspects, and there will be untold echoes that continue radiating forward from here, in a good way.
Ben
Thank you, Aiden. Captain Hands.
Captain Hands
ITSAY to me is a foundational queer show. Mostly because queer characters are allowed to be complex, three-dimensional and frustrating. If anybody from Tumblr is listening to this podcast, which I know you are, the for, by, and about queer thing is something that I've been looking at a lot as I've been watching more stuff, and this is very much all three, right? Because they're letting these characters make mistakes, and like hurt people that they care about in their quest to better understand themselves? They are allowed to be human, which is like a wild concept in a lot of the like earlier BL shows, it's part of why I don't like it personally when people say that ITSAY's not a BL, because like, why can't BL's be high quality with like, really good structure and story right? Like I don't think that it's fair to just be like, oh this doesn't count as a BL because of like the, the production itself.
And I think that just the emotional, like honesty and vulnerability that the script and the actors like showed throughout this process, really struck deep in my experiences figuring out like my own identity? There's such a commitment to everything and everybody in the show that I really liked. Watching the documentaries. I just love how much of the emotionally safe space it felt like, seeing how often the director himself was crying watching these scenes? Or like, how they would kind of wind up these these crying scenes by like, I remember like, PP being rocked back and forth in a hug by the director in the position that he's going to be in when he hugs Bas crying at the end of, what is it, episode 4 or part of episode 5 when Bas is like, go comfort Teh? All of these moments that like really show that the cast and the crew support each other, and like trust in each other… there is so much time and effort put into this show, and that is part of why I like it so much, is like you can tell how much care every aspect of this show was given.
Ben
Thank you, Captain Hands. Turtles?
Turtles
ITSAY for me reaches an echelon that only a very few Thai BLs have done for me by way of really balancing out an homage, a love letter to the culture that, that it's celebrating, along with what Aiden and Captain Hands have said so far regarding queer representation, and just hit a really incredible artistic balance experimented with with cinematic form and this serialized kind of publication way. Captain Hands, to your point about the argument about if it's a BL or if it's not a BL, one thing that I've been considering quite a bit in conversations, particularly with neuroticbookworm, has been whether or not ITSAY would have been more successful as a movie. And I've thought more about it and I think that, while there may be an answer to that that's separate from what I will say here — which is that I think it was really groundbreaking that they took this incredible idea and artistic vision and put it in serialized form, and experimented with what had been concretely developed as a serialized BL genre, and played in that sandbox.
So taking all of that together, taking all of those maybe slightly even risky decisions rooting this show in a particular voice of a culture that we hadn't seen highlighted quite in as explosive of a way as ITSAY being rooted in Phuket was, along with its gorgeous depiction of queer revelation, of queer realization. Just all of that combined into one pot of a show really blows me away.
My watching experience of it — it took me out, I couldn't multitask, I had to take all of your guys' advice and watch one episode at a time, and no show has done that for me. And so that, that's what I'll take away from it. A unique experience, unlike anything else that I ever experienced watching a Thai BL.
Ben
Before I move to Mor, I just have to say: Absolutely not! This should not have been a movie! I have watched a lot of goddamn movies. We deserved all of the time [laughs] that ITSAY gave us on this story. It would have felt so rushed if they tried to force this shit into two goddamn hours! Yeah! No! No. [Ben bangs the table] There's the table slamming. [laughs]
Turtles
Bartender, get him another drink!
Ben
I have drank like three-quarters of a bottle of wine, so, I'm sorry.
Turtles
Get him some pasta. [laughs]
Ben
[laughs] All right, sorry. This is about you all, not about me. Bestie in Christ, Mor!
Mor
[laughs] That was fantastic, thank you. I was bangin’ my desk over here like yessss, preach, take me to church! I am here to receive.
Ben
Why do you care so much about ITSAY?
Mor
Ohhh boy. A core memory for me from the last couple of years is sitting shell-shocked, absolutely shell-shocked on my couch, silently weeping, watching the credits of ITSAY roll for the first time. Truly just unable to move for probably ten, fifteen minutes, just trying to absorb everything that I just witnessed? And all I could think was, ‘things are different now.’ Truly, that was my reaction to it, I mean, this show? It wasn't made to fulfill a trope. It wasn't made to fill a time slot. It was made to show the tender beautiful humanity that is at the core of all love stories, regardless of the gender of the person you fall in love with, and that's just not something that I can say for a lot of other BLs, or shows period? Not that they don't stand on their own two feet for all sorts of other reasons, but it's something that set ITSAY forever apart for me. Not only that that was clearly their goal, but in how beautifully they achieved it, how perfectly in my opinion they achieved it.
It was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, but it's also a show that I would feel very comfortable showing to someone who had no experience with the BL genre. Because you don't have to have any. You don't have to have an appreciation for it. You just have to be a person. You just have to be a human who has lived through tough human things, and had relationships, to find so much value, so much to relate to. I don't know how you can watch ITSAY and not have it just reverberate with you on some personal level. Whenever I discuss it with people, just like we've been doing tonight, I'm hearing things that even being — practically a priestess of ITSAY I feel like at this point — even with that I'm hearing things that I hadn't thought of before. And I think that's beautiful, that a show can be so elevated, and done so well that people from all walks of life can come to it, and come away with things that are just so true and accurate to their experience, and you learn things by hearing it, you know, hearing from them. But yeah it was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, while also giving a happily ever after, which was beautiful but it was also very hard won, which made it even more beautiful for me. The characters are real, they are flawed, but they figure it out… gives hope for the rest of us. [laughs] It raised production values. It raised the bar on what a BL can be.
We did touch on a little bit about people debating whether or not ITSAY is a BL and I just have to say, whenever I'm debating anything I go to the source. And it was I believe a Teen Vogue article that BKPP were interviewed for: they both referred to the show as a BL, so have the writers, so has the crew, and if they are comfortable with addressing it as that, so am I.
And then on a more personal note, it introduced me to BKPP my beloveds, to some of my best online friends, it got me halfway around the world to Thailand. Overall, it's an artistic and technical triumph as much it is is queer storytelling at its finest, it did everything it needed to in all the ways that it mattered, it moved me, it continues to, in a way that not much media ever has. It's got my whole heart and I could probably find something new to marvel about, you know, forever. It's as complicated and as, as simple as that for me
Ben
Thank you, Mor. I have been watching queer cinema for a very long time. Part of why ITSAY is so important to me, is no other piece of media has so consistently generated such strong visceral reactions. There's so many great pieces that you can pull out for people that many of them haven't seen, but there's something about ITSAY, where if you are aware of it at all, if you even heard its name, you know something about it, and have an opinion about it, whether you've watched it or not. And I also feel so strongly about watching Thai queer people talk so frankly about how they also had the same sort of visceral experiences that the rest of us had.
What also matters for me about this show is, like we've had some interesting moments in the west: like Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, other queer movies that have released, and we keep waiting for their impact to hit the rest of us. We felt the impact of ITSAY within a year of it releasing? ITSAY immediately impacted Korea's willingness to participate in BL, despite how conservative their film industry is. Japan re-upped their efforts on the genre… and GMMTV responding to that! We felt it all throughout late ‘21 early ‘22. It is so rare that you can point to a work that genuinely changed the way an entire genre functioned? And also really rare that you can feel that impact in its time.
And with that: thank you all for joining us on this first clown panel of The Conversation! If there's anything you want to say to the people before we go?
Turtles
I just want to say what an honor it was to be invited on this. I love loving BLs and I love loving BLs along with you all.
Ben
Captain Hands.
Captain Hands
Sorry if we weren't as funny as David.
Ben
[laughs] That's impossible. He's an unhinged 45-year-old gay man. Aiden?
Aiden
One last thought that came up: ITSAY has this level of radical compassion for every single character on the screen, and that helps the viewer to have compassion even if they may be homophobic or unfamiliar, it brings a level of love and care to those characters, in a way that we really don't get, and I have high hopes that it's something that's going to be repeated again as we move forward.
Ben
Mor, any other closing thoughts?
Mor
Oh man, I don't know, I'm just all caught up in the ITSAY wave of feels, as I, as I tend to do. This show has a unique way of shutting down my logical brain and just making me feel all the things, which is what good art should do, dammit, it really should. So, it's doing its job.
Go watch ITSAY! If y'all are listening to this and you haven't, what are you doing? Come on.
Ben
It's been three years, if you haven't watched it since 2020, go watch it again. It holds up. It's still good.
1:04:08 - Outro
Ben
And we're back. Fun fact for all of you: Nini's setup went completely to shit while we were recording, so she had no idea what the hell we were talking about. For the entire recording we're having to text her updates so she doesn't close down the recording booth. So, Nini is now reacting from post, not from the panel.
Nini
[laughs] Yeah, it was a very interesting experience editing the panel not having heard a word that you guys said, so it was all brand new to me. That is a very new experience for me.
Ben
She edited out all of the “Nini can't stop me because she's not here.” [both laugh]
Nini
Oh god, no, but it was really delightful. I had a really good time. I had a really hard time editing the panel, but there's some things that you guys brought up that really sort of tickled my brain, and I wanted to get into them while I was talking to you in the afters.
Captain Hands made some comments on why Teh teaching Oh Chinese, with Chinese being Teh’s comfort language of expression, why that matters, and how the translation scene on the side of Promthep Cape plays into that. I found that was really interesting because that is new thinking for me, after three years and countless rewatches of this show I didn't think that there could be something about it that I hadn't thought about, or that was new to me, but thinking about Chinese as Teh’s comfort language—as his main language of expression. That brought up a whole new set of things to me in their relationship.
Ben
I have a couple of friends locally whose parents have immigrated from Taiwan, and they talk about how they have probably like a kindergartener's understanding of the language sometimes, and I hadn't thought about how Teh wasn't learning Chinese for the first time—that he may have had some familiarity from growing up around his mom. That was a fresh thought that I had coming out of the panel.
Nini
It just adds a little bit more color to what exactly Teh was doing in that class, what he was doing tutoring Oh-aew. How hard he worked to make sure that Oh-aew could understand him, because Teh is not great at expression, but the few times that he manages to express himself very clearly to Oh-aew it is in Chinese. Using the Chinese flashcards on the boat, writing and rewriting words in Chinese in his notebook. That's how he's able to get his points across to Oh-aew, and he can only do that because he's taught Oh-aew how to understand him. I found that was a really good observation.
You made an observation as well that I really enjoyed about tourist places as safe spaces when you are from a tourist place, that going to do tourist things actually gives you a certain amount of anonymity that you wouldn't normally get.
Ben
Some of the normal spaces like cafes, malls, etc. are populated by people that you would run into, but, like, locals are not going on a swamp tour. And so, you can get away with things that you might not elsewhere. Like, I think about the fact that Promthep Cape is a really popular tourist location, and the fact that when they were actually filming that scene very kind tourists stayed out of the camera, but were like two meters sometimes away from the boys while they're recording one of the most pivotal scenes of the series. And that's kind of what it's like when you're in tourist places in your hometown. Like there's a bunch of strangers crowding around you, and it doesn't matter if they hear you say something because they don't know any of your people.
Nini
One thing that Aiden brought forward that I really wanted to delve into myself: Aiden talked about visual style and how ITSAY allowed things to look grungy, and things to look worn, and things to look old, and things to look a little bit dirty; and how that contrasted against the previous BL impulse for everything to be bright and clean and shiny. And one of the things that made me think about from my own experience, how upset—I don't know if ‘upset’ is the term—people tend to get from my home country when my home country is portrayed outside as anything other than bright and shiny and clean and modern. There's that whole pressure to look a certain way to the outside world, and that comes through in our media as well.
So watching that impulse sort of come through in Thai media, and then being sort of broken by this particular production. I always like when I'm watching media from other places when I can see the points of connection between my culture and another culture, between my home and another person's home, that always makes me feel more grounded in the story, even though it's a culture and a place that might be 180 degrees away from me. You can still find those very human points of connection. I really enjoyed that.
Here's one that I want to ask you. You talked towards the end of the panel about Oh and The Knowing, and you've brought up The Knowing over and over again recently, and it's something that I've really been sitting with as you've explained certain things in your life and certain things in queer life, and one of the things that struck me listening to the panel that I think hadn't struck me before is that Oh Knows. Oh has The Knowing, but Teh also knows about Oh because Teh has a complete lack of surprise when Oh tells him that he likes Bas. He doesn't even register it as, like, a surprising thing. So Teh also has a Knowing about Oh but not about himself. I found that a really interesting juxtaposition.
Ben
Teh is an actor who's masking all the time. I think he was probably a little bit surprised, but when Oh tells him that secret, Teh's only goal is to desperately reconnect with Oh. So, I don't think in that moment he cares about Oh being queer. Like, Teh’s so stupid. He's not like paying attention to that sort of stuff. He only cares about Oh not shoving him away at that moment. Like, it didn't really matter what that secret was because he was going to respond positively.
Nini
I get that, but as the time goes on, we don't see any reaction from Teh about it, which is not the reaction that I would expect a teenage boy to have.
Ben
[sighs] When it comes to Teh, he's always performing. It's possible that he already knew these things, but I get the sense that he compartmentalizes. Like, a big part of it for Teh was he doesn't want to talk about it. Because talking about it makes it real, and then he has to face the reality of it. Like, that's what happens after the underwater kiss scene is Oh wants to talk about it and Teh really, really doesn't want to talk about it. It's possible that he knew, but because he's been away from Oh and so repressed, it's not eating at him.
Nini
I'll sit with that.
Ben
Teh doesn't act like he knew, but it's very clear that Oh was important to him, and he had to rapidly come to terms with those feelings.
Nini
I think it's pretty clear that Teh didn't know about himself. It's pretty clear that his journey I Told Sunset About You is a journey of understanding things that he didn't know and understand about himself.
Ben
Part of why I like that so much of Teh's journey is unspoken is it allows it to be more universal because it lets the audience at large take from Teh what they need and project into him what they're bringing to the scene, and this works out really well for Oh a lot, too, because Oh does so much with just looking at Teh.
There's some really great dialogue in the translations of this show, but there's a phenomenal amount of amazing work done from what isn't said, and that is one of my favorite things about it.
Nini
I also agree that one of the great things about ITSAY is how much is done in the silences and it's so interesting that you talked about the silences being something that the audience can project whatever they want onto and that being part of ITSAY’s success, because it's also in a way so legible.
Normally when there's space like that for the audience to project onto we get all kinds of wild shit, like I’m just gonna be real with you. But the silences and the way that these two boys acted were so legible that even though there was all this silence between them, for all this space for the audience to project into, they generally projected what I think the creators intended because the reads were largely consistent in terms of how people were taking it in and how they were reading things.
Ben
I do think so, but a big part of that is how simple ITSAY’s story is. It's a very straightforward coming of age story in a lot of ways. That's why it works! Everything about ITSAY is inherently familiar, and it feels like an experience that people can enjoy again a decade, two, three decades from now. It's one of those classics you can go back and look at and you can probably point at where other projects referred back to it.
I feel like I Told Sunset About You is going to be one of those projects where the future of queer coming-of-age cinema is going to refer back to it as one of its seminal moments.
Nini
So all that said, if we had to write at this point… an ode to ITSAY as our closing remarks on this retrospective, what would be your ode?
Ben
ITSAY is the best show that has ever existed because it is called I Told Sunset About You. It sets up this huge drama about running to the cape together before sunset, and they make it to the cape at sunset. Oh has this incredible breakdown and just says “I don't care what we're going to be to each other, just please don't leave me again,” and Teh, upending decades of genre history and expectation, says, “If I can be anything, can I be your boyfriend?” and old wounds finally closed in my heart.
Nini
Well, that is an ode. I don't think I could be anywhere as poetic as you about it, but what I will say is that this story touched something very deep inside me. I can't imagine not having seen this. I can't imagine where I would be now if I hadn't seen this. It changed things for me in a lot of ways, and that's one of my highest praises for media. If you change things for me, if you make me look at things differently, you've won. So, that's my ode to ITSAY: you won.
And with that we're gonna wrap this one up. Our next episode will be our Last Twilight in Phuket discussion. Ben and I are going to sit down and jaw about that a little bit, and then we will be introducing a fresh new panel and talking about I Promised You the Moon.
So look out for that. We out. Say bye to the people, Ben.
Ben
Peace.
#podcast#lgbtq#i told sunset about you#i promised you the moon#ben and nini's conversations#the conversation#on art#season 4#fall 2023#fall series#thai bl#bl series#s4e1
66 notes
·
View notes
Text
Trapped Inside A Scapegoat: Astral Traveling & The Truth About Certain Demons & Entities
So I wanted to bring up some things about demons, lower entities and the dream states that we fall into when we are asleep in the night. I will never forget my first encounter of seeing the unseen, but one particular story I have in mind puts me back into a spell.. Its like a hazy feeling, I never knew how to explain the things that happened but it scared me to the point that I could never sleep past 2:30, and if I was still awake I stayed awake until dawn. Boy, high school was a drag.
Just an fyi, if you dont believe in spirits or the spiritual realm then this isnt for you. k? k. <3
On these nights I couldn't sleep, it would be because of the sleep paralysis that would happen and the weird energy I would be forced to recognize during these hours. As well as seeing things that just did not make sense, I would look at the clock to see it was either 2 am to 4 am. Never an in between.
So, I wanted to go in with a little story time, maybe this will help me unbox some things that happened. Because after a long ole while, after this event, my life changed... seemingly more depressive, and anxiety would be in the forefront of my reality for a long while.
Back when I was a teen, I remember cakin' on the phone with this one guy I had the biggest crush on, and it was around 2:30 at the time. At about 3:00 I told him I was tired and quickly laid down to rest.
So let me give you guys some details. I normally like to rest on one side of my body, typically on the right side and in my room I face the window. So from my memory, our conversation lasted til 3:08. I NEVER forgot the time. Sometimes Im a quick dreamer, so I go to bed pretty easily. Anywho, I remember the dream started where I was in my room. It was really interesting, me and a few people that I knew from high school (and my old school that I had just recently moved away from) were practicing some cheers because we were training to be on the cheer team. It was weird. In the dream some of them had on cheerleader gear, and some of them we're outside the front of my room where I could see them thru the window. The girls told me they would be right back as they we're going to get their things for the cheerleading competition/training, they run out the room and the next thing you here is a bunch of rumbling... theirs voices speaking from around the room but i don't see nobody. next thing you know everything goes black. the blacker it gets the louder the voices... i realize from this point their speaking in an unfamiliar language... latin almost. or whatever they were saying was backwards... at this point i was able to open my eyes and i see a dark figure standing right in front of me. What took me off guard was that its eyes, they we're like stars and had this intriguing shine to it. It was 'bald' but had a human-like body but no mouth ears and barely even a nose... I could feel it touching me, the back of my neck had chills as you can tell thats where it was touching on me. I grew scared but remembered I could get up.
And then boom. I woke up.
But this is what i thought was weird. Remember when I said I was sleeping on my side? I woke up on my back, facing the mirror. I looked at the time and it was 3:16 am.
What. The. Fuck.
I had barely slept? How could that be? All of this happened within a matter of minutes. I was exhausted. I said, 'Was this the devil?'
Quickly I ran into my grandparents room, lmao, yeah I know. I was scareeeeeeeed. My room felt cold after that. I had to go.
And for a while, that wouldn't be my last encounter. I mean, the thing went away, but there was more to come. At this point, I had to face the mirror. I mean literally face the mirror because its the center of the room and my bed faces it. But I had to sleep... This would go on for many months until one day it just.. sorta stopped. I began my journey of law of attraction, numerology, and metaphysics at this point and grew a little happier. So maybe it was destiny.
So let me get into a few things about this dark shadow being and some tips about whats going on:
Mirrors are shapeshifting portals. Their portals to other dimensions. And 'entities' can & will come through here in the access of dreams/illusions/nightmares etc.
3 am is considered the 'devil-hour' - this is when the veil to the spirit realm is unlocked and you can see more outside of the veil.
Fear and lower energies can 'attract' these beings to your door step. They can smell it on you.
That 'shadow' being could be insight to whats deep inside of yourself. Your power. Your Energy. Your light. Even on the other side it's noticed.
So when I seen this being, I was shook out of my mind. But wait.. after moments and time of introspection. I've learned that it's mirroring back at me something I never thought I would ever thought was me.
Months later I digged into astrology, numerology, found some things about angel numbers, started trying to process the spiritual realm much more clearly. Because the thing kept happening to me, and I was always an anxious & yet fearful girl, I knew there was a bit more strength in me.
When the thing came, I was trying to get out a depression when I was at my old school and once I had finally returned back to my hometown I was little happy. But at night, our darkest feelings, our inner shadow shows its weight, and also our potential.
I've tried tapping into that 'fear', and have learned there is so much more about me due to the dreams I've had of my future. It takes me back to the shadow figure from that night. Because why we're you there?
Also, what stuck to me the most was that a friend at the time told me that if you see something like that and it touches you, some sort of witchcraft might be on you... another topic, for another day I suppose.
But it always stuck with me, because... how so?
At the time when I was in high school and seen these weird entities because again, this went on for MONTHS. Every other day and night. I noticed before then I had a fear complex, thats what I'll call it. Always anxious, always sad, always depressed, been that way since a young girl. So now we get to the part where we talked about a trapped consciousness.
Because immediately when that happened, I went straight to church with my grandma ! Lol. No jokes. And later found out it was not the answer I needed. It wasn't working. Not to say going to church can't help or save someone, it just didn't have the answer I thought I needed. I went looking for some time when I would go.
What I want to say is, when you see things you cannot explain. You cannot run to the church, religion, or even a 'savior', because at the end of the day YOU have to learn it. You have to come to terms with it. And I've been learning. So so very hard, and its begin to giving me the dream & insight of what was truly around the corner.
My ancestors dream. Metaphysics, Clairvoyance, My dreams where trying to come thru in the astrals and when you are at your lowest these 'things' can come in and try to warp your mind/gifts/talents/ etc.
The final thing I will say here is that they feed off our spirits because in the lower realms they need 'fuel' to get to 'heaven' and you are the source of that. We the human are 'heaven' and some entities are parasitical and need life force to move to the other side.
So fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, depression etc is one of the lowest frequencies to be on because it is denser and its harder to move 'up'.
And when you live in those vibrations, your blocking your own destiny. Your truth, your light, your power all is unlocked once you move past it.
Another thing I will say is that not all 'lower entities' are evil. But for the sake of talking about demons and entities, I will save that for another post, to leave out any confusion.
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All Discord Server's Art Event!
Hello, everyone! I'm excited to announce that our beloved Kinioto server will be hosting its first ever event, centered around the theme of Spring and Summer Art!s Make sure to join the discord server so that everyone can take part, and remember, ALL of you are invited to participate!
Harmony in the Horizons: Spring/Summer Art Fest!
Exciting news ahead! We will be having our very first art contest themed around spring and summer! To start off this event, we're focusing on anything related to "The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All" for the seasons of spring and summer. Let your creativity soar and your imaginations roam free in order to capture the vibrant essence of your artworks! Here's all the important details you need to know about the event:
Theme:
Spring and Summer Vibes - Unleash your creativity by illustrating scenes like MitsuAya or the whole crew enjoying a picnic, having fun at the beach, or joining in festive gatherings. Let your imagination take the lead as you draw these seasons in your artwork!
Rules:
Original Artwork Only: All submissions must be original creations by the participant. Entries found to be AI-generated will be disqualified.
Aspect Ratio and Resolution: Artwork should be in 16:9 aspect ratio and have a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels.
Server Rules Apply: Submissions must adhere to our server rules, which means no NSFW contents.
One Entry per Participant: Each participant may submit only one artwork for the event.
Event Timeline:
Event Start Date: April 21, 2024 4:30 PM JST
Submission Deadline: May 12, 2024 4:30 PM JST
Voting Period: May 12, 2024 4:00 PM till May 19, 2024 5:00 PM JST
Winners Announcement: May 19, 2024 5:30 PM JST
Submission Process:
Create your masterpiece inspired by the theme of spring and summer.
Save your artwork in the recommended aspect ratio and resolution (see rules #2).
Submit your entry by posting it in #event-submissions channel.
Include a title for your artwork (if desired) and any additional description. You're also welcome to promote your social media alongside your submission!
Voting Process:
Following the submission deadline, all entries will be gathered for voting. The reading history feature of #event-submissions will remain disabled until the artwork submissions are completed to prevent anyone from voting in advance.
Server members will have the chance to vote for their favorite artworks, even the participants themselves!
Winners will be determined based on the highest number of votes received.
Prizes Up for Grabs!
1st Place: Server Banner, Artist role, custom role related to TGSWIIWAGAA, and 2 months of Discord Nitro with boost.
2nd Place: Artist role and 1 month of Discord Nitro with boost.
3rd Place: Artist role and 1 month of basic Discord Nitro.
Let your creativity flow and join us in celebrating the beauty of spring and summer through art! We're eagerly awaiting your stunning submissions. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in #event-discussions channel. Best of luck to all participants!
PS. If you'd like to stay updated on all future server events and be pinged for them, don't forget to grab the Server Event role in the #shop_roles_assign channel. That way, you won't miss out on any of the fun!
#ki ni natteru hito ga otoko janakatta#the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all#arai sumiko#aya oosawa#koga mitsuki#mitsuaya#mitsuki koga#tgswiiwagaa#sapphic#wlw
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hospital
John Price x Reader
Summary: You go visit your husband in the hospital after his latest mission.
Tags: Wholesome, Fem!Reader (but could be read as Non-Binary!Reader), They/Them pronouns, Not Beta Read.
Notes: Y/N = Your Name, C/N = Child's name.
Authors Note: First of many COD man related fanfics. I'm going to do my best. Have a nice reading.
John got injured quite badly in his last mission. Nothing that bad, just a few broken bones, mainly his left arm and right leg. Y/N decided to visit him on their free afternoon. 'C/N gets out of school at 16:00.' They thought. 'Now it's 14:56.' They thought in the waiting room. A couple more minutes and the front of the desk calls their name. They get up with their basket full of fresh fruits, sandwiches, drawing and letters from C/N. "Greetings, I'm here to visit Jonathan Price." "Alright, wait a minute." The lady looks through her computer and looks back Y/N "Mr. Price room is the number 14. May I know your relationship with him?" "We're married." She types that down. "Very well. Have a nice visit." Y/N thanks her and precedes to his room. There it was. They knock and go into the room. There he was. He lay in his bed watching the tv 'Probably soccer she thought.' He noticed them coming in and smiled at the sight of them. "You came!" 'Goddamn it!' They thought, his smile always made their knees weak. "Yes. I came." They said and put down the basket on the shelf nearby. They proceed to pull a chair and plot it down near his bed. "How's C/N?" "They're fine. Well, missing you, but, fine. I brought their letters and drawings." "Ah, sweet!" He says with a big smile. Y/N takes some letters and gives it to him. John looks through them smiling and giggling. Y/N observes his face. It was bruised and swollen, they looked down, his left arm wrapped in a cast and on his shoulder a new knife wound. They looked down his right leg also wrapped in a cast and also with new scars and scrapes. "What's wrong?" They look at his face "Huh?" "You look... In thoughts." 'Oh' They put on their "I'm fine" voice. "Nothing." "Don't lie to me love, I can see from a mile away you're in thoughts. What are they?" Y/N sighs. "I'm just... Relieved. No, I- I don't know... This time, you came back worse." He laughs "Oh? These? I'm fine! They don't hurt! Don't worr-" Y/N glares at John. "No. Don't tell me not to worry about you. Never. I will always worry about you. That's the least I can do. Other than praying for you to come back to me alive and not just your clothes and dog tag." John sits up and with his right hand he brings her closer to him. "I'm sorry my love. I know it pains you to see me injured like this, but, trust me. I'll always come back to you and C/N." They look at him feeling their eyes tearing up. "John..." John pulls Y/N closer and kisses them. It was a gentle and tender kiss, but full of passion and assurance. They both pull away and rest their forehead against each other. They stay there for a while just taking in each other's presence. Time passed and they both spent it talking about C/N and the 141. But, the time for them to leave came. John was probably sleepy from the meds, so they kissed his forehead. "I have to go and pick up C/N. I'll come back tomorrow with them, ok?" He nods. They pick up their stuff and bids John goodbye. They can't wait to come tomorrow with C/N.
Fin.
Authors Ending Notes: I hope you guys liked it! I actually wrote it down fisically and changed it a bit while transcribing it. Please do give me criticism on where I can improve. See you next time I decide to write, lol.
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
So - let's say you wanted to go DEEP into Faith No More's live performances of Jizzlobber? And see all the ways Mike can fuck himself up on stage. Well, here you go - a compiled list of all the AD tour videos with this song (that I could find) and some lite commentary. gifs are from Warfield 1992
Edit: Hanover, Germany, Jun 3 1992 - (starts at 32:20) Mike what are you doing to that poor box?
Edit: Torino, Italy, Jun 26 1992 - (starts at 46:10) Ah! I found it, Mike screaming into the void (but I think the supercut shots are from Chinese Arithmetic)
Amsterdam, Holland, Jun 22 1992 - fairly reserved, Mike plays Puff's cymbals
Roskilde Festival, Denmark, Jun 25 1992 - (starts at 32:29) gas station Mike, fighting invisible people, and we're gettin' ~creepy~
Wasahallen Stadium, Sweden, Jul 3 1993 - (starts at 41:15) more invisible fighters, and a flip!
Edit: Milwaukee, WI, US, Jul 23 1992 - (starts 27:35) shit, how could i forget Modjeska!?! Roddy is definitely dead, Mike's spine is definitely crushed, Mike's slow build headbang is everything
The Warfield, CA, US, Aug 19 1992 - absolutely batshit crazy, and somehow Mike stays beautiful
Shippensburg, PA, US, Oct 16 1992 - (starts at 55:38) somehow Roddy is more nuts during this one, not much camera time on Mike
Saint Louis, MO, US, Sept 18 1992 - (starts at 48:22) "you wanna see me naked? it's ok, i love you too"
Edit: new link - Columbus, OH, US, Sept 23 1992 - song starts at 49:00, but link starts a little early bc that guy getting tackled is fucking hilarious) Mike flips over Roddy, Roddy flips into the crowd, Mike flips straight onto his back, absolute chaos
Philadelphia, PA, US, Oct 17 1992 - (starts at 45:07) the video quality is really strange on this one? otherwise only a normal amount of nuts
Gothenburg, Sweden, Oct 30 1992 - (starts at 52:20) that light is so fucking bright, good thing Mike's grunting increases, Reese's shirt!
Edit: Stockholm, Sweden, Oct 31 1992 - (starts at 50:40) Mike and the mic stand DO NOT get along, Mike jumps into the astral plane
Edit: Munich, Germany, Nov 11 1992 - (starts at 55:37) What's FNM's opinion on giraffes? "I'll fuck it"
Aschaffenburg, Germany, Nov 17 1992 - (starts at 57:25) "what does it SAY??" I am almost certain Mike kills someone when he flips into the audience...he jumps SO HIGH
Edit: Koblenz, Germany, Nov 19 1992 - (starts at 55:25) funky video edits on this one, but...is he humping the monitor?? jfc mike
Brixton Academy, England, Nov 26 1992 - (starts 57:24) that little 180 jump Mike does kinda kill me - otherwise not a lot of Mike time
Sheffield, England, Dec 5 1992 - (starts 57:55) almost didn't add this one - video is either dark, out of focus or wildly astray for most of it
Milan, Italy, Dec 17 1992 - (starts at 53:46) ok - I could write a whole dissertation on this - bc WHAT THE FUCK MIKE
The Warfield, CA, US, Jan 20 1993 - (starts at 54:20) the band chanting "fuck me" at the beginning is still good, not as bonkers as Warfield 1992 but his voice is deeper, darker, and does make me wanna fuck...wait...is he just slamming himself at the monitor??
Hollywood Palladium, CA, US, Jan 22 1993 - (starts 56:10) the camera angle switches partway through and we somehow end up behind them? and then it cuts to the end 😭, but Hawaiian shirt Mike
Wellington, New Zealand, May 13 1993 - (starts 1:05:56) god i love 1993 Mike's voice, but i do not know how his throat does not end up broken
Christchurch, New Zealand, May 16 1993 - (starts at 1:05:57) seeing Mike just frolic into Jim's frame is pretty great, that's a squat right there
Berlin, Germany, Jun 4 1993 - (starts at 54:44) red shirt mike barely keeps himself from landing head first into the drum riser, this one seems...angry?? and flips in 1993!
Lisbon, Portugal, Jun 26 1993 - oof the sound on this one is real bad, but Mike is in fine form - jacking off the water bottle, and he definitely lands face first
Phoenix Festival, England, Jul 17 1993 - Jim's last show, and Mike is appropriately unhinged™
Bonus: someone did a supercut of best bits
#mike patton#faith no more#jizzlobber#they did this song a few times in the kfad tour#and at brixton 2009#but no videos exist of those i think?#anyways you're welcome#now choose your favorite and get back to me#i appreciate every videographer just zooms in on roddy for the end#and that mike always takes the guitar solo to take a big swig of water
41 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi. I really admire your writng and love all your fic very much. Really,as a reader i cant wrap my head around how incredible your writing are. But as a fellow writer, it got me thinking how you balance your day working-personal life-reading-writing. I just enter corporate life and it was exhausting. How do you manage your time to write and is it hard for you to keep your interest in writing while working?
Thank youu and no, i think your chrismast deco look very beautiful. If I visit your house i would love staying around the tree with a dim light and a warm tea.
Thank you so much for the message. That's incredibly kind of you. You are welcome for a cup of tea any time!
I will break down my day under the read more.
05:40 - partner wakes up for work (waking me up)
06:10 - partner leaves for work and I get up
07:00 - in the car to work
07:30 - at work. I don't get paid until 08:30 but I literally would not be ready for the kids if I came in at that time, plus I'm already awake (and definitely a morning person). I'm usually alone in the class until around that time so I tend to have an audiobook on while I'm getting the class ready. I teach in a different classroom every single day, so I have to be organised.
16:00 - finish work
16:30 - home for a cup of tea and usually go on social media/write
18:00 - cook dinner which usually takes about an hour
After that, I either spend time with my partner, read, or write. The only day I haven't written something was when I had to be at work until nearly 9pm for a halloween party, but generally, I write every single day.
I will be honest in that I don't really have a social life. I've only really got one friend and she lives 60 miles away. I cancelled my gym membership because I hate going after work in winter and I've been so ill for the last couple of months that it was a waste of money. At the weekends, my partner and I might go to a coffee shop or a walk, but most of the time I am writing. It's nothing I have to force. I look forward to writing every single day. If I found it a chore, I wouldn't do it. Sometimes, I am super tired from work too and have a low output, but in those times I'll lay on the bed or take a bath with some music on and still be imagining scenarios. If you are exhausted, don't push it. If I've imagined a scene enough then I know exactly how it will play out to make the writing easier. My brain almost thinks in a writer mode now, like instead of seeing the scene, I'll also be narrating it.
I am constantly thinking about my writing. When I drive, I am imagining scenarios/dialogue. If I go for a walk alone, my headphones are on to dissociate and imagine. For me, it's all consuming. Weirdly, none of my new colleagues know I have any books and I've just mentioned it in passing to my family because we're not close and they don't really care. Even my partner has no clue about character names or anything because he hasn't read them. It's got to the point where I have RSI in my hand from typing so much. Today, I've written about 5000 words and have written 100k words for a single book since October.
It is hard for me to switch off sometimes. I do wonder if I have some sort of ADHD because I have to be doing something at all times. When I'm at work for my planning time, I'm usually doing all 8 jobs on my to do list at the same time, like this page is loading so I'll start this email then go back to that lesson plan then reply to that other person. I cannot just sit and watch tv, I either have to be sewing, or writing by hand, or typing. The only time I do nothing is when I sleep lmao. I've always been that way though.
In terms of reading, I've really struggled this year. Most books have been 2/3 star reads for me - which is really unlike me. I'm usually super generous with 5 stars. I've had to force myself to sit and read a lot because I'll just scroll on my phone otherwise when I'm bored.
I wish I had kids, but I don't, and thankfully my partner also cooks and cleans so if its his turn to cook, I can carry on writing. Sometimes it has caused arguments so I try to make a conscious effort to put my laptop down and spend quality time together. Writing is just everything to me. I love it. It's all I ever want to do. But, I'm also not a night person, so my laptop is usually off before 9pm and I'm asleep by half past 9 nearly every night ha.
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Arrival of the Wedding Guests
16 September 2023 - 10:00
Luke SNN: "Good morning, everyone. It's a beautiful sunny morning here in London, and we've got some exciting news to share today."
Isabel SNN: "That's right, Luke. The city is all abuzz with the arrival of wedding guests for the much-anticipated royal wedding. It's been quite the spectacle so far."
Luke SNN: "Absolutely, Isabel. The sun is shining, and the city is adorned with colorful banners and flowers, all in celebration of the union between Princess Marie and Amadeus."
Isabel SNN: "Guests from far and wide have been arriving since dawn, and they are certainly turning heads with their elegant attire and stylish hats."
Luke SNN: "Indeed, Isabel. The whole city is embracing the joyous occasion. We've even heard reports of local vendors selling special wedding-themed treats on the streets.
Isabel SNN: "Now let's go over to Nickie who is there for us at St. George's Chapel. Good Morning Nickie."
Nickie SNN: "Good Morning everyone. It's heartwarming to see the city come together like this."
Isabel SNN: "Speaking of guests, Nickie, have there been any notable arrivals?"
Nickie SNN: "Oh, absolutely, Isabel. We've spotted diplomats, dignitaries, and celebrities from various countries. And let's not forget the well-wishers who have lined the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the royals and the guests."
Nickie SNN: "And now, as the clock ticks closer to the ceremony, the esteemed guests are starting to make their way inside the grand venue."
Luke SNN: "Yes, Nickie. The anticipation is building as everyone finds their seats amidst the elegant décor and beautiful floral arrangements."
Isabel SNN: "The venue is truly a sight to behold, a blend of tradition and modernity. The guests are greeted by a stunning display of opulent chandeliers, fresh flowers, and an overall sense of regal charm."
Luke SNN: "And the chatter inside is lively, with guests sharing their excitement and well-wishes for the couple."
Nickie SNN: "Indeed. It's a gathering of influential individuals, diplomats, and close friends, all here to witness the union of two hearts."
Isabel SNN: "And let's not forget the exquisite fashion on display. The guests have gone all out in their sartorial choices, from the vibrant dresses to the impeccably tailored suits."
Luke SNN: "Absolutely. Fashion is certainly a highlight of any royal event, and today is no exception. The elegance and style in this room are simply breathtaking."
Nickie SNN: "It's like a fairy tale come to life, isn't it?"
Isabel SNN: "It certainly is, James. And as we all await the wedding ceremony, the excitement is palpable in the air."
Luke SNN: "Well, we'll be covering every moment of this historic event, so stay tuned for all the updates on the royal wedding of Princess Marie and Amadeus.
Isabel SNN: "Yes, indeed, Lucy. It's a beautiful day, and we're honored to share it with our viewers. Stay with us as we continue to bring you live coverage of this momentous occasion."
#sims 4 royal family#ebodsims#sims 4#sims 4 royal legacy#sims 4 royal story#theroyalfamilyofbrittania#sims 4 royal simblr#ts4 maxis cc#sims4 royal wedding
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Chill Tangled Depths map completion on EU servers! Now with date!
The poll's been closed, we got a date and time!
What will happen?
100% map completion in Tangled Depths!
No mounts required.
No prior waypoint unlocks required.
Itzel Lore IV: Itzel Poison mastery required for 100% completion, but you can still participate if you don't have the mastery.
I will probably get lost at some point. Apologies in advance.
When will it happen?
On Sunday, 04.12.2022 at 16:00 CET (GMT+1).
Make sure to get the right time for your own timezone! (This is 14 minutes after the Chak Gerent meta event ends. I'll try to progress the Rata Novus event chain far enough for the city defenses to be deactivated before we start. Don't want to have to deal with that while we pass through. And then pray we aren't forced to switch map instances.)
How to join?
Type /squadjoin Neljje in chat or /whisper Neljje should you encounter any problems joining.
I will not be listing the squad in LFG, but it will be open to join for everyone via chat command, and invites will be open as well. My tag will be visible to squad members only. I'll open the squad 30 minutes before we start.
We start near the Order of Whispers Camp waypoint [&BA4IAAA=]. This is the first waypoint you automatically unlock when you enter Tangled Depths from Auric Basin.
See you in the jungle!
Poll results, questions and additional info under the cut!
Date and time votes were relatively even but we got a winner in the end. I hope many of you will be able to attend at the time!
Never say never! I can't make promises of course but I'm always down to clown in TD :D Even if it's not another planned group event, if you ever need help completing the map don't hesitate to hit me up here on tumblr or ingame and maybe we can work something out.
You can still join, you'll just be missing two points by the end. You won't get lost on the route and we won't move on without you, I'll just have to ask you to wait for a moment while we hop into the poisoned area, grab the two points there and come back to where you're waiting. We won't be moving on to a new area through the poison.
Thank you for your interest! And save your thanks for when we've found out if I'm actually not creating a gigantic disaster :D I've never done something like this before.
Chak probably, chak gerent probably not.
FAQ (with questions nobody actually asked):
What exactly is "chill" map completion?
No optimized speed routes, no rushing, we make sure we stay together as a group so noone feels like they might get lost or can't keep up. For the route itself I deliberately chose a few "whacky" ways over the "fast options", just because I think it might be more interesting. A scenic tour through the jungle, if you will. See as much of the map as possible during completion without making entirely pointless detours.
If anyone wants to watch the vista cutscenes, I would like to ask that people are patient and wait.
So, no mounts...
Obviously I will not hold you at gun point not to use any mount under any circumstances, but I do ask noone rushes ahead so we don't get sprinkled all over the map. That's how people get lost. I personally will not be using mounts, unless it is to pick up / help people (turtle passenger seat etc). Or I fall. You know. That happens. Ahem.
I don't feel confident in my platforming/jumping abilities / I'm scared I won't be able to keep up.
If you ever struggle with gliding or any jumping passage, and you can't use any mount to make it easier for you, please do not be embarassed to ask for help! I'll try my best to either get you through this in the turtle mount or grab my mesmer and portal you through the passage. No questions asked. We're all here to have fun!
That said, while this is a HoT map and therefore we do have some gliding and jumping passages that are unavoidable*, most of the way is just walking. So please don't be too intimidated! I'll tell you upfront, the start of the route is probably by far the worst and most chaotic part. I apologize for that.
*(different routes have different possibilities of course, but I tried to keep a balance between interesting ways, minimal backtracking and staying on the intended paths)
Help! I lost the group and don't know how to get back to you. Real Tangled Depths moment.
Stop moving. Tell us roughly where you are. I think by now I'm fairly competent trying to decipher where people are lost. I'll come and pick you up. Alternatively I'll have to point you to the nearest waypoint we unlocked and grab you from there. (Look I know this sounds like a silly point to make but believe me I've had this happen more than once.)
And lastly... for the really interested (you do NOT have to understand this, don't worry), that's the rough plan if all goes well:
If people are still up for it once we're done I may have a little something planned for the end (nothing spectacular) to conclude the tour in a special place that not everyone might have seen before. Depends on how we're all feeling and if the map events are playing along.
Thanks for reading!
#budgie plays gw2#guild wars 2#if i dont forget i'll reblog this another time when i open the squad on sunday
48 notes
·
View notes
Text
There was a point in the 00's where my uncle turned up with a load of wooden swords in his van at Christmas. Turns to my brother and goes "you want some swords?" I bounce out of nowhere and go "YES I DO" much to the shock of my entire extended family who have never quite managed to grasp this barely washed teenager wasn't the most feminine female on the planet. But my uncle is like "sure." And brings them in. I recognise one as Clouds sword from FF7, and there's a gun blade which I assumed to be from another FF game, though I wasn't sure which one. A few others I didn't recognise and some standard play ones which were excellent as far as I was concerned. We're very pleased with this.
Fast forward to about 2016, I'm in college and I've made some friends. We're all 16 to 18. At the end of the year, not being the most normal of people, we have a little cosplay/costume party in a park where we dress up as characters, or OC's, etc, featuring the younger siblings of two of our friends because they were all incredibly cool by our standards (nerds). We all have vague dreams of making movies and TV at the time, so we film ourselves being idiots, put together a random story for it (Random was the style at the time) and have a blast. It's on YouTube somewhere but you don't get to see it for various reasons not least I cba to find it.
We enjoy ourselves so much we decide to do something a bit more the next year, but bigger. At this point we have split up a bit. One has moved to uni, and one has moved away with their family, and some people just don't want to be involved. Thankfully due to uni contacts we now have MORE idiots involved. So when the family of many goes on holiday, the eldest two stay behind and we invite various people to come stay and we make our shitty sequel. It has team rocket, doctor who, a power ranger, the silly OC I had made. There was a whole sequence with Sasuke and some rabid fangirls, and a side quest with Link and Zelda. Blowfield from 007 was our villain, mostly. Though I won out in the end by escaping with the TARDIS.
So what does this have to do with the swords?
Well we've got this whole Link sequence, and at the time I didn't know much about Zelda, but hey, I have all these wooden swords right? Along with a collection of various other props. So my friend comes round one day and I pull all these wooden swords out a cupboard and my friend goes "THATS IT!!!!"
???
Turned out one of these swords I didn't recognise was the Master Sword all along.
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
Mysterious Benedict Society Liveblog Season 2 Episode 2: A Bit of a Light Chop
And... we're back. Looks like no one has seen my liveblogs yet and my post still aren't appearing under tags, so for now I'll be blogging straight into the void.
Edit: wait hold up I think they might have fixed it in that case hello everyone!
0:57- Time for our fancy cruise! Yes Sticky, enjoy yourself. Nothing more despised then stowaways? I don't know about that. Oh it's Captain Noland! He was in the book. That I read. Several years ago... It's been awhile so at this point there's a lot I'm being reintroduced to. Oh my gosh I love Captain Noland. Anyone who monologues that dramatically is bound to be entertaining.
2:40- "always wanted to live through a mutiny" Constance girl, you'll be the one leading it.
3:25- so... that's not the tether ball team, it's a water pollo team. Is Martina on that team? Oh wait no it's those creepy women curse my face blindness but thank you to the camera man for zooming in on them dramatically.
4:30- ~STOWAWAYS~ I just- I love the drama of this. Oh my gosh I love Captain Noland. "I need them walking the plank" "That is no longer legal. Was it ever ethical" "metaphorically" - yes. This man has no idea who the stowaways are but is totally 100% drama ready. I love it. MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF THEM. Oh here we go!
6:30- OH HERE WE GO! (7:00) Oh my gosh his smile is so creepy. He's become so unhinged in such a short time. Poor SQ, now he's gone from having a distant cold angry dad to one who has purchased a first class ticket to crazy town.
7:30- why is he suddenly being nice to #2? Oh my gosh what silly manipulation is he trying now. That's right number 2. Don't take his stupid tea.
8:00- YES JILLSON and JACKSON! Not SQ or Martina, but I'll take it. PFT "we don't trust you" "well earn it- everyday day and everyway" oh Jackson never change. No why get the full picture, just run in any direction! Steal the golf cart! He's gonna hypnotize you into staying if you don't get out now.
9:30- oh I see. So Reynie is a bit clingy and Sticky is a bit distant.
9:40- YES CONSTANCE BACKSTORY. Not the polar bears and clowns RIP.
11:00- That's right, Rhonda, Milligan and Ms. Perumal, you deserve to fly in style.
11:30- Oh my gosh, Jackson looks like he's in tears, wait I treasure you? Hold up I always thought they were siblings, are they a couple? Are they ever gonna tell us?
12:00- Do the lemons ever mean anything? Oh my gosh this is the cultyest cult to ever cult. And seriously, "make each other"- is Jillson and Jackson's relationship just going on in the background? No number 2 don't eat the lemons! Skin and all too. What if they have some poison that affects the brain? Oh my gosh when life gives you lemons- is he gonna make them drink lemonade as part of his stupid pun game? Probably.
13:30- "are you talking about the bathroom" Number 2 is the best.
14:00- "their worry will soon lead to action" yes Mr. Benedict knows his kids.
16:00- Awkward. And yeah, I think them being ceiling fan haters was a long shot Reynie.
16:50- oh right no sugar because they dumped it out. oh my gosh Noland is being tortured by this situation. RUPTURED A SUPERTANK - What- Captain Noland is ready to drop his tragic backstory, finally someone who isn't gonna make me wait several seasons.
17:30- Perfect storm: some stowaways and no sugar. Oh my gosh Situation Alpha. This is phenomenal.
18:00- "no one thinks we're the stowaways" you're 4 kids unsupervised with only one change of clothes your the most stowaway-y stowaways to ever stowaway.
18:44- Oh great. The Sticky outgrowing his friends plot is growing, wait is he trying to impress his old friends. Honey, you are a genius you don't need to try this hard. NO KATE DON'T TALK TO THE SCARY WATER POLO LADIES. "That is why we play for a living" oh dear. Never mind, yes Kate get the info and call their bluff when you realize they are not legit.
21:00- He's been obsessed with being liked. Yeah no kidding. "Almost as sweet as your brother" oh shut up Sebastian. When did Curtain even have time to write a book? Was it the year in exile?
25:00- oh Milligan trauma dumping. No sadly it's not simple. Maybe Ms. Perumal can help him get his memory back.
26:00- Don't grab the fence, it will shock you. Trust me, I saw the trailer. And every other show with this plot. Also it's Curtain what else would he do.
26:33- CALL SQ BACK? CURTAIN WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THAT BOY? YOU BETTER NOT HURT HIM! Yes the Benedict busts in on Curtain scene we've all been waiting for. "Protecting the Vibe" Curtain's literally just messing with his brother at this point.
27:20- Yeah his movements and voice cadence are extremely unsettling. Sure call it neuroscience if you want, or deplorable, I call it being a punchable creep. Heartbroken? Oh poor benedict. He needs to run into SQ, they both need some love right now. Also, I wonder which brother is really jealous of who here? Benedict jealous of Curtain for having everything when he made unethical choices, or Curtain jealous of Benedict because he has a stable group of friends and family that love him without him needing to control them? Much to think about.
29:15- um hi Sebastian. You're looking creepy this evening. Nothing behind those eyes.
29:48- Oh good maybe Captain Noland and Cannonball can ham things up for us. NOT THE SILLY CARTOON PICTURE- I- I love these two. I don't know if this is what they were like in the books, but I might have to do a reread.
30:50- oh no not the fake water polo team. This poor newly wed couple is gonna come back to their room destroyed if those kids don't get under the bed quick. What that's it? We didn't even get to see if they entered the right room or not? Ugh this is frustrating, but ultimately good that I can't binge all at once because I would.
I love it. Wish that we got Garrison, Martina, and SQ back, but I love it. I need Garrison to get her revenge (unless she's been pulling the strings that whole time of course), and I need to know where SQ is right now. Curtain you monster, your son is a talent and will not be happy drawing yellow squares for the rest of his life.
#the mysterious benedict society#mysterious benedict society#tmbs disney#tmbs#mbs season 2#mbs s2#mbs#mbs disney#mbs liveblog#tmbs liveblog#the mysterious benedict society liveblog#Mysterious benedict society liveblog#sq pedalian#sq curtain#nicholas benedict#nathaniel benedict#number 2#number two#kate wetherall#milligan wetherall#reynie muldoon#sticky washington#constance contraire#ld curtain#ledroptha curtain#dr curtain#mr benedict#a bit of light chop#mbs season 2 episode 2#tmbs S2E2
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
It’s a double feature and Choices were made at Scholastic.
The Winter of Red Snow, 1777-1778, Abigail Jane Stewart
and
Cannons at Dawn, 1779-1781, Abigail Jane Stewart
By: Kristiana Gregory
Protagonist Age: 11-15/16
Started- 10/17/2022 and 10/19/2022
Finished- 10/19/2022 and 10/24/2022
Summary:
The first installment in this duology starts with Abigail Jane Steward just living her life with her parents, older sister, younger sister, and brand new baby brother with the Continental Army rolls in to winter at Valley Forge.
She witnesses the tough conditions and harsh reality face while having access to major historical figures and events. Her and her older sister (15ish I think) sew coats for soldiers in the hopes of Catching a Man and the family takes in a pregnant teen widow who they (appear?) to essentially adopt (but she all but disappears in the sequel).
Hope is high and everyone is happy when Spring and Summer come, the army leaving as the temperatures rise. END BOOK ONE!
The only direct sequel in the series picks up almost six months after the last one with Papa having left to join the Continental Army. That night their house burns down so they go to Philly to live with cousins who aren’t there anymore so they stay with a random widow.
They decide to find Papa and follow the army but big sister decides to stay to be close to her soldier boy which results in a letter a couple of months later that she is pregnant and married now. Following the army is miserable and taxing. There are lots of time jumps but by the time our 13 year old protagonist is 15, she’s married and has a baby around her 16th birthday but the war is over. HUZZAH!
#ReadingThoughts
Timeout. I’m guessing that sunrise would have been about 7:30-8:00 ish and they have been up since 4:30? And it took Papa that long to get back with the midwife but Abigail can see the midwife’s house? So it must only be a few miles at most. I suppose weather and road conditions were a factors but this timeline seems suspect. This would not be a solid alibi in a court of law.
Was there a grade system based on age in the 1770s colonial school system or is this a contrivance to make connections with the intended readers?
IT IS A 28 MINUTE WALK FROM THE STEWART HOUSE TO MRS. HEWES? Why did it take a wagon HOURS to make the round trip?
I don't like what they’re doing with how Billy Lee (enslaved by the Washingtons) talks. He is directly reports to General Washington and we don’t need to make him sound like he’s in Gone With the Wind.I am suddenly worried for future books...
What “private underthings” do they have besides shirts and trousers? Breeches that look like trousers and cover about the same amount of skin? It’s not like they have 18th century briefs.
The concept of bounty shirts and coats amuses me. “Ah yes. I will sew something and embroider my name in it so then whoever gets it (who will of course be a handsome soldier boy) MUST fall madly in love with me.”
I don’t think knickers weren’t a thing yet. They were breeches.
I don’t think that Martha Washington spent this much time in the kitchen.
We're bonnets a thing in the 1770s? I know caps and hats were but I'm not sure about bonnets. And at this point I don't think caps tied under the chin like they might have in the past. The style doesn't really allow for it.
Sister Sally wants to pet the stray cat. I am Sally.
Oh sister Elizabeth. You may be barking up the wrong tree. I don't think any young man serving directly under von Steuben is going to want to settle down with you.
Were beards in style? Were they fashionable?
I love the image of Alexander Hamilton yelling swear words as he's translating because von Steuben is pissed off.
I feel bad for Elizabeth that the dog is wearing the coat that she made for Pierre but that's kinda funny. Wrong. Tree.
And for the sequel. Buckle up.
Why are they sharing a bed with Mama? Nevermind. It helps if I keep reading.
Where are teen mom 1 Helen and baby Olivia... Nevermind. Found 'em.
Campbell!? I believe that is Abigail's future married name if I remember my epilogue correctly. Is there a romance afoot!?
We have a love interest, folks! I repeat, we have a love interest. I feel he's too old but he hasn't shown any intent yet so he's on thin fucking ice.
Ah. We're explain away things from the first book in a hand wavey way. Got ha.
ELIZABETH! NO WEDDING? ONLY A QUICK PRONOUNCEMENT? BECAUSE YOU'RE PREGNANT!? Teen mom 2 alert!
Sir. I know where this is headed but I need you to stop flirting with a 13 year old immediately.
A hat's a hat. I don't think tricorn hats had political affiliations before slogans were being printed on then.
You're so worried about Willie not having a hat, Abigail, when you passed up a perfectly serviceable hat one entry ago.
I'm confused. On 114 Benedict Arnold is court-martialed but here he's been given command of West Point? Will verify.
I know why he (Benedict Arnold) won't give the okay for repairs.
#PapistPineBoughs
No one, including her mother, thought to check on why the pregnant teen felt like shit on the march? I mean, all that moving and walking must have been good for inducing labor but come on. Also, teen mom 3.
Okay. She just feels shitty. That doesn't automatically mean pregnant. Yeah, you ruled out other symptoms but that's a leap. At this point can they 100% confirm pregnancy before the baby moves? Teen mom 4
You'd best work to keep those feet dry or else you'll have trench foot.
Thoughts on the Afterward
Nothing groundbreaking. It was sweet that they noted that after Abigail dies her soldier boy got sick and dies (of a broken heart).
Overall Thoughts After Reading
It's fine. Nothing compelling. I was also singing Hamilton whenever a figure from the show appeared. It also really made me sad that von Steuben isn't in the play given that he was close with Hamilton.
I think Kristiana Gregory does a fine job but there's not much else to say.
This is one of the books I read as a wee thing so there's some fondness but I didn't remember a ton except the 40 egg cake and bleaching laundry with piss.
The epilogue is juicy enough but I'll be interested to see how the next book ends.
As for the sequel, I wouldn't say that the Revolution is painted in a glowing light but it was certainly Right and Just.
The think I'm stuck on is the 4 teen pregnancies. You can't really get into sex and pregnancy in a book for middle readers so why? It's unnecessary for 15, 16, 17 year olds (ages taken with a grain of salt) to be married and pregnant. 1 I'll allow but I don't thing that was the norm, even in the colonies. I would have ages everyone up 5 years, then you don't have an 18 year old flirting (albeit inadvertently and without sexual intent but still flirting) with a 13 year old or a barely 15 year old getting married and having a baby at 16. But aging Abigail up doesn't fit with the audience. This just makes me want an edgier show/series where it's the same premise, but it's aimed at adults so we can take on more serious issues
Rating Scale
Book 1: 7/10 Bounty Coats
Book 2: 4/10 pregnant teens (Which is the same number mentioned between the two books?
Other Possible Contenders: caps not bonnets, chamber pots to bleach laundry, unpleasant sounding marches
Photo Credit:
Cover: Still me!
6 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
thefounder-online
The Founder FILM (2016) ONLINE SUBTITRAT IN {ROMANA} HD
laxativetea-blog
baby
knives-swords
KNIVES & SWORDS
karlhavoc
I Don’t Even Want To Be Around Anymore
ashnameeena-blog
Untitled