“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.
whenever i hear about hustle culture i always think about this post on r/antiwork
hasan minhaj, homecoming king / sing street (2016 + 2022) / little women (2019) / @/feefal_ on twitter / ferris bueller's day off (1986) / beef (2023) / the banshees of inisherin (2022) / jackie kay, "got you" / beth ann fennelly, "two sisters, one thinner, one better dressed" / michael torres, "my brother is asking for stamps" / the king of staten island (2020) / maggie stiefvater, the dream thieves / chelsea martin, "mcdonalds is impossible" / jonathan goldstein, ladies and gentlemen, the Bible!
@creatorsofcolornet event 21: family (x)
@lgbtqcreators creator bingo: quotes
everything everywhere all at once (2022) // i remain in darkness, annie ernaux // poplar street, chen chen // original writing (@scorpiogays) // electra, sophocles (trans. anne carson)
i want to live.
jonathan safran foer, extremely loud and incredibly close || sylvia plath, the bell jar || robert frost, the road not taken || t.s. eliot, the love song of j. alfred prufrock || everything everywhere all at once || doc luben, love letters or suicide notes || wikipedia || john greenleaf whittier || hamilton: the musical, who lives who dies who tells your story || mary oliver, the summer day || carlos ramirez, the fig tree
But you may want to go hunting anyway!
Japan 2015
Never doubt my ability to recommend this show. One of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes (rare in Japanese BL). The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some really cute mutual kisses.
Japan 2020
The sweetest fluffiest magical realism BL, packaged as a pinning office romance, very low heat (practically chaste) but the cutest. It’s truly great.
Thai 2024
A soft charming warm hug of a show about crushes and mind reading and self worth, with no-fuss execution from a consummate team and an OG lead pair proving why they remain eternal and deserve to grow up. Look, here’s the thing, Cherry Magic is a great Thai BL in its own right not comparing it to any other iteration. But even when I do compare (and I've seen all the Cherries and read the manga) it still stands. I personally like it slightly better than the Japanese live action, but I think that’s because I just really like Thai BL and I LOVE TayNew. Also all the kissing was both present and better than any other iteration. As it should be from Thailand.
Thai 2023
IFYLITA is an exquisite BL, from filming techniques to narrative framework (much like Until We Meet Again). Steeped in history and family drama it edges into lakorn (but no as much as To Sir With Love and with way less scenery chewing). This is an elegant and classy BL... from Thailand which normally doesn't even try for classy. The main couple (both as a pair and individuals) were excellent, particularly Bright (Yai) whose eye-work acting style is a personal favorite of mine. Pity about the ending. Oh it wasn’t that sad but it wasn’t good either. This show could easily have earned a 10/10 from me except that it fumbled the… erm… balls in the final quarter. Argh. Whatever.
Japan 2020
Atmospheric study in rural Japan meets complex family dynamics built on a romance framework of city boy meets country boy, grumpy/sunshine. It’s beautiful and icy sweet. Slow moving in places but ultimately worth the patience, low heat, low angst, and stunning.
Japan 2021
Boy joins band, falls in love with other boy. The singing is terrible, fast forward through that but with the possible exception of the hair styles, this BL could have been made in 2015 and no one would be surprised. As such, it wasn’t ground breaking, but it didn’t disappoint either.
Thai 2023
A doctor who can see the dead strikes a bargain with a wish-granting irreverent tree angel - naturally they fall in love (from Sammon: Manner of Death & Triage). Stars Fluke Natouch opposite not Ohm, but who cares because Fluke has chemistry with everybody. Once again the Thai afterlife is incredibly bureaucratic but I enjoyed the premise and the unfolding of the story (it’s not predictable but still satisfying and with nice little twist). I like that the doctor is just gay AF - fag hag bestie and all the swagger. The cast is excellent but the comedic stylings are a bit overblown and tonally off. It had sad parts and did make me cry but is ultimately happy with a great sex scene, good smiley kisses, and all the agency.
Thai 2022
A Thai pulp that felt like it came out 5 yrs ago with many of the flaws inherent to that time and studio system, including manufactured angst and convoluted plot, but an ultimately sweet main couple that (as a pairing) feels a bit more modern and satisfying to watch than they started out. This will probably go down in history as one of the few BLs where I genuinely didn’t care about any of the side couples. All that said I find this show oddly appealing and rewatchable and I have no excuses for that.
Japan 2022
This is a beautiful, well acted piece of cinema, about two boys who are opposite personalities and grew up together. Gifted and serious Sakura pines after outgoing eccentric manic pixie dream boy, Yuma. It is very pretty and this is the kind of atmospheric elegantly performed BL that only really comes from Japan (complete with dead fish kisses - what you though Korea invented them? oh no).
Thai 2022
BL does Groundhog Day featuring a doctor stuck in a time loop who must save a poor little rich boy from death by seducing the stuffing out of him, then PLOT TWIST, poor little rich boy must do the same for doctor! Unfortunately... stuffing keeps leaking. I thought the plot was engaging if a little redundant and occasionally exhausting. The pairs were all well done, low heat but with decent chemistry and the support characters were likeable (or unlikeable, as required). If anything, the romance arc detracted and distracted from the main plot, but that doesn't stop this from being a genuinely good show.
Thai 2019
Bodyswap involving unicorns making a teenage girl into a boy makes this questionable as a BL (because, ya know, gender). But the fact remains that James is killer in the lead, and I (who do not like bodyswap) loved this damn show. Look, there is actual plot, hotties at boarding school, "bully the one you love" trope, some weird VR shit, very bad CGI, and yes, the boys end up together... whether they boys or not, so to speak.
Some of these shows may appear on a smaller streaming service, like WeTV, or they may be on a legal platform in your territory. I hope it goes without saying you should check there first.
(source)
This list updated Spring 2023, not responsible for cool stuff that went missing (or was added to a platform) after that date.
It's it last in a series the rest of which are:
okay if you're really cool about things, i can be honest with you. before you read further, decide if you're a girl's girl. if you're cool and actually cool or like not cool.
men don't talk in my book because i was fuckken tired of the way they're the center of every fucking story. i was tired of how every story takes a moment to let them talk. men can shut up for literally one fucking book.
unfortunately not everyone is cool. professionally what i usually say is i didn't want to add violence to the world. the only men in my book are abusers, so they don't get to talk. they don't get to take up space. they ruined my life, they don't get to have their words echo anymore.
because like, yeah! you find practically any story about a person surviving trauma and... there's a man at the center. men are often rescuing us from these things. a "good man" is always standing around, being a good man, proving to the victim that good men are the real men. that her experience was unique rather than universal.
the redacted text has not been taken well by all of my early readers. there is this weird, crouching growl that keeps occurring with men-of-a-certain-age. why don't we hear his side of the story?
when i sat down to write everything that happened to me, i couldn't look at the frank brutality of my abuser's words on a page and think to myself: i actually let him speak like that. i had to redact his words from the manuscript. i then left it redacted. no victim is going to read this book and hear the person who hurt them. it is a book for the victims to speak. abusers shut up challenge, forever. for eternity.
my father once told me, chuckling, i should just have a page of redaction where i let the man just finally talk. it is funny to joke about how we should make a whole page in my book about a man that hurt me. this was not the only time someone commented - it feels like you're hiding things. how do i know you're actually a victim if he doesn't get to speak?
there are books where women aren't even present. i even genuinely like some of those books. like, who doesn't like the hobbit?
i keep running into people defending this imaginary man. the default narrative is so true to some people that they will defend any man, just by virtue of the assumption - "if he's acting like that, you had to push him." certain people need definitive proof that you didn't accidentally make your partner into an abuser. they need to decide if you deserved it, because they want to be able to judge you.
which makes sense, i guess, from a hind brain perspective. if you can figure out "why" someone was cruel, you can protect yourself against it. if you defend the bully, the bully might side with you. i don't really know their explanation for feeling this about a character in a book. trust me, i wrote the guy. he is not going to protect you.
i guess i just - there was a time in my life where i desperately wanted anyone to defend me. where i could have really used someone saying holy shit are you okay instead of what did you say to make him act like that to you.
instead, over dinner, a friend-of-a-friend i just met is pouring herself wine. i heard you wrote a book, she says. she gives me the kind of chilly smile i associate with knives. i heard it's unfair to men.
you found out today that a phrase you have used before was coined by an abusive man. this felt like getting your teeth taken out. it made you sick and sad and tired, but not surprised.
bad people tell you to be careful when you talk badly of bad men, that it could "ruin" a life. you had your life ruined by a bad man, not that it ever matters to them. your real life having real consequences is not valued as highly as the potential of his future.
this has always been a frustrating little mathematics problem for you. you've missed school and had to call out sick at work and had panic attacks that lasted for weeks. it stole sleep and food and friends from you. you cried in public, fucked your relationships up. and the whole time: your present has never mattered so much as the great what if! of his future. like - one life (your life) is already ruined, should we really ruin two?
so you live with the consequences and he doesn't, and that's just like, something you need therapy for. you once discussed this with one of your friends over coffee. she chewed the wooden stirrer, looked off into the distance. "once i became a victim, everything that happens to me afterward is automatically less interesting in the eyes of the general public. it is always about him. he changed my identity. to survivor. to statistic. meanwhile this whole time - i am a person."
you learned in college that three out of five of your favorite artists and authors were actually abusive assholes. these days, you are no longer surprised. oh, is that what was happening behind closed doors? of course it was, he was a "genius," and she was just a girl. you are talking about him in art history, so obviously his career was absolutely ruined, for eternity. that's what happens, right? they strike your name from the record and refuse to remember you? nobody really knows her name, but hey. that's what you get for being close to celebrity.
you got into an argument about it, which was a bad argument, because it made you cry. he said what, you want us to just ignore all the things this man did because he made a few women uncomfortable? and you'd balled your fists up and choked on it. later, in bed, you agonized over the response you'd been trying to articulate but never found the right moment to deploy: you are ignoring what any person could do if they weren't being fucking abused. maybe her talents far exceeded his and she was just never allowed to fucking use them. maybe we only see genius in white men because they purposefully fucking squash and silence any other people with talent.
but you'd cried about it instead of saying that, because you are the cost. you are the talent and potential that he took. you used to be brave and smart and clever and unafraid. like a lich, he stole years of your life.
quiet on set made you sad and sick and tired, but not surprised. unfortunately, one of the things he said was true: an entire network of people allowed it to continue. this is not news to you, because you have seen entire networks of people make the same fucking excuses when the same thing or-worse happened to you. and your particular story isn't even in hollywood. it was just a guy. it was still difficult getting people to stand up for you.
you and your friend wait in line for your coffee. like a standup joke, one man turns to the other and says "can't wait for every bitch to come crawling out of the woodwork complaining about harassment. it's another metoo." and you think - oh, that's the network. your boss tucks her hair back and whispers that while your skirt is cute, you're giving the boys the wrong idea. that's the network. when you'd told your "friend" about what happened, she'd said oh you must have misunderstood, that would never happen. and that's the network.
you woke up this morning panting, because years later you still have panic attacks. oh, it's not a network, actually, it's a web. and you, little moth: are you still surprised you're caught in it?
What are some BL couples who you DO think could actually have a long haul perfect ending and not burn out two months after the show ends?
(Also if possible, could you drop the show titles aswell? Thanks)
Ha, yeah I intentionally didn't include the titles in that last post because I was being negative. Since these are positive... here you go!
Advance Bravely
I know right? One from China. But yeah I think they're very opposites attract but still well balanced and suited to each other. Plus "stern but indulgent Daddy + spoiled brat" is a favorite dynamic of mine.
Guardian
He waited 10,000 gd years. It has to work out. Despite censorship.
Old Fashion Cupcake
They both mature enough to be very motivated.
Tokyo in April Is
They suffered for that love. It's an enduring eternal kinda thing.
Cherry Blossoms After Winter
Taesung is NEVER letting him go. Never.
Long Time No See
Not only are they staying together, can you imagine anyone trying to separate them?
Nobleman Ryu's Wedding
I just think they gonna live in obscurity in the middle of the woods with their books forever.
Our Dating Sim
Of course they're gonna last, that was the whole point of the show.
Oh Boarding House
I think they both had to come around to each other with a lot of self-examination as to what it meant for them, their identities, and their lives. That kind of thoughtfulness bodes well for longevity.
(This is an under-appreciated gem. IMHO)
Be Loved In House I Do
Yeah they just so into each other but also adoring but understand each other's quirks. There's no meanness or pettiness to either of them. Double down on affection + chemistry is a good recipe for longevity.
DNA Says Love You
They came back for, and waited for, each other.
HIStory Obsessed
It's in the title. This level of mutually obsessed disfunction only ends in death.
HIStory 4: Close to You
Problematic side couple. Dito the above.
Thousand Stars
It's high romance of the eternal forever kind.
2 Moons Ambassador
They are *that* couple. "I married my college sweetheart and am incandescently happy forever in a disgustingly sappy way" that shouldn't work but does.
My Only 12%
Again, they suffered too much not to make it work. They are basically each other's half, it codependent, but that's the point.
Ingredients
They define domesticity. The true key to most couple longevity is the ability to actually live together.
Oh My Sunshine Night
File these two under the "once he had a taste, its' forever." The seme is too bossy and too possessive for anyone but the one he picked. This one lasts because Rain would MAKE IT last.
Oxygen
Dito the above, only softer.
Until We Meet Again
Of course. I mean, OF COURSE OF COURSE. That's the point. Dean's entire existence would be a failure if they broke up.
(source)
One of my early internet friends was a refugee child of Rohan, a fact that we took very seriously because we were like 12
One of my friends worked in a Wellington library. Her boss was the Witch King of Angmar.
This is the second "Witch King of Angmar is a librarian" contribution so I'm fully accepting it as fact at this point.
He’s googlable. Brent McIntyre.
I refuse to fact check anything. I just read comments on my posts and integrate them into my belief system based on vibes alone.
Favorite films watched in November 2023:
btw archive dot org is SUCH a treasury when it comes to out-of-print poetry anthologies… i am having the time of my life, truly ❣️
some of my bookmarks:
Yeah, trains are pretty much the most efficient transit system known to man and it is maddening that we chose other methods at any chance
it was racism!! it was good ole american racism!!! this cannot be forgotten. any discussion abt this topic without racism front and center as the PRIMARY REASON for this change is toothless and impotent.
the auto companies created the term "jaywalking" to demonize walking on streets, associated it with stupidity and "undesirable people", and offered automobile ownership as the solution. they convinced the white upper and middle classes that public transit was a waste of money and did they really want to sit next to Those People on a trip to the park? and CONVENIENTLY built highways through communities of color and immigrant communities, neatly displacing them and gentrifying the surrounding areas in one fell swoop. it was because of RACISM and CLASSISM. the auto companies weaponized racism and classism to sell privileged white people on a stupid technology that actively harms everyone on the planet themselves included.
electric trains are an efficient technology that does a lot of good for communities and is extremely necessary in the coming years of climate catastrophe but we canNOT discuss this with discussing class and race and protecting people affected by pro-public-transit policies while implementing them. we MUST protect vulnerable communities liable to get ousted by luxury apartments built next to the new metro station. rent controlled apartments and redesigned zoning laws are a MUST.
For reference on the history of jaywalking
tell me why this budgetless gay youtube series made for fun by a group of friends has the best editing and writing of anything i’ve watched in a year.
also tell me how this single scene can contain every single one of the top three most iconic lines in history.
not to be cosmic or anything but who was i before watching this?
The bride I seek is to know she's the one at the first sight. My life and my heart will belong to her.
She's the only one who can walk alongside me in this world. I will only marry her in my life.
I thought about the saying, 'looking once and remembering for 10,000 years'.
Ling Buyi, if you dare abandon me today, I, Cheng Shaoshang, swear to Heaven that I will never forgive you.
I, Cheng Shaoshang hereby make an oath that Ling Buyi and I will never walk away from our love in this life.
