That’s Toxic To YOU. To Me It Is Gay Sex

i am always the bitch who's like. that's actually not true :) your brain does not stop developing at 25 or ever :) love languages can be a useful vocabulary but is not real :) a lot of the personality disorders you villainize are responses to immense pain and fear :) stop trying to sort the complexity of human experience into HARRY POTTER HOUSES pleaseee think critically abt what u are being told and who's telling u this. why would someone want u to believe that u aren't fully capable of decision making until 25? psych has been a tool to oppress since it was created, don't buy into it!

-William Blum

Instead of apologizing for liking "trashy" media, consider: what is it doing well? If you like it, if it's making you feel pleasure and interest, then it must be succeeding at something. Is it shaping a set of emotional beats that you find satisfying to watch play out? Did it craft a character you find really compelling? Is something in the styling and aesthetics speaking to you? Did it unexpectedly resonate with a mood or experience you needed to see reflected right then?

However shallow or flawed a piece of media is, if you like it, it's because of something it did well - at least well enough to affect you, on the day that you encountered it.

There are a lot of good reasons to acknowledge this. One is about gratitude and manners: someone worked hard on that thing, and if they provided something that gave you happiness and pleasure, it's nice to honor that. Another is about breaking down the insidious habit of sorting everything into simple good/bad boxes. A piece of media, like a person, can do a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right, and the things on one side do not magically erase the other.

But the most important reason, I believe, is to get in the habit of celebrating what brings you pleasure and happiness. All your life there have been and there will be people telling you that you find joy in the wrong things, that if a particular thing makes you feel good it shows that there's something wrong with you. I reject that utterly. If a particular thing makes you feel good then there's something right, about you and about that thing. I'm not saying that pleasure is the only important thing or that every pleasure should be indulged indiscriminately. All I'm saying is that pleasure is in and of itself a good thing, and deserves notice.

𝒴𝓊𝓉𝒶 ♡︎

Lee Wan & Shin Ki Tae happy boyfriends era.

What sort of world do we live in when we’re told to be grateful that the IOF has ‘only’ murdered 30,000+ civilians, ‘only’ injured over 80,000, ‘only’ starved 2.3 million people, ‘only’ destroyed 70%+ of infrastructure, ‘only’ destroyed the lives and dreams of 2.4 million Palestinians. A world where traumatising over a million children is justified.

A world where those that claim to value ‘human rights’ will tell this father, and thousands of other Palestinian parents, that the lives of their children is a price that needs to be paid for ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. The irony. It’s a society that does not value life. "pasted from linkedin profile"

It's the special episode of Takara's Treasure, and we have 💕shipper💕 in our midst!

She picked up on the vibes between Takara and Taishin in episode four while out drinking with the group, and has been writing their fictitious love story ever since.

And she could have had her own love story too, but girl said, "Eff love, get a book deal!" so I respect her focus.

But outside of her novelization of these two love birds, Taishin is still a Blue Boy.

And, although Takara is still a Black Brooder, he has continued to be much lighter since he began dating Taishin.

Because how could a man not be lighter when he has a boyfriend looking up at him like this upon his return from a three-week hiking trip?

So once Takara finds out the next day is his boyfriend's birthday, he takes them on a little date, and it's even more noticeable that this Black Brooder is not going back to his complete darkness now that he has a dedicated Blue Boy with ice cream by his side.

And that Blue Boy wants to make sure he doesn't cut off any of his fingers when he is making a special birthday dinner!

So this light Black Brooder ends the night with his boyfriend drunk and resting comfortably on his chest as they fall asleep on the floor.

Because not only has Takara changed his sheets, which used to be green.

But he has changed his attitude as he has embraced the color-coded love his Blue Boyfriend has to offer him (like constantly drinking from a blue mug!)

And he gives his Blue Boy the ultimate birthday gift when he wakes up in Takara's blue bed by calling Taishin by his name for the second time.

Because even if Takara can't always express exactly how he feels, he does let Taishin know how much his love has changed him.

And his entire world is much brighter because of it.

the many personas of kim theerapanyakul (x)

ta and barcode looking at the camera like they’re on an episode of the office while bible is teaching them maths

+ the zoom in 

Japanese QL Corner

In which I cling to the last vestiges of two of my favorite shows of the year, write a eulogy for one of the most disappointing, and rejoice over the entry of a new fav. These shows are available for weekly streaming on Gaga unless otherwise noted.

Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding

Farewell to a wonderful show. @isaksbestpillow has posted all seven episodes as of last week, so if you've been waiting for a binge, now is your chance. I already said a lot about why I loved this one, so I'll just use this space to urge you again to watch! This show is a goddamn delight.

Takara's Treasure

The main narrative ended last week, but this week we got a sweet little epilogue and one more visit with Takara and Taishin. I enjoyed the brief glimpse into their near future and getting to see Taishin turn 20 with his very first fuzzy navel, though I was a bit sad we got a repeat of the finale's themes rather than treading new ground for their relationship (I could not have cared less about the fujoshi writing RPF). This was a lovely show and I will miss these characters.

Happy of the End

CWs: Assault, child abandonment, child molestation, childhood sexual slavery, dubcon (including between the main characters), human trafficking, rape, sexual coercion and exploitation, suicidal ideation/possible attempt, unsafe S&M practices, violence

A very rough week for this show in terms of the content--please mind the triggers above because these are explicit depictions and it can be hard to stomach. I am waiting to see where this show is going with its themes before I make a final judgment, but watching the fourth episode in particular, some parts felt like crossing the line into gratuitous trauma porn that provided little additional illumination. We'll see how it shakes out in the end, but please take care with this one. I continue to find the characters and relationship dynamics compelling, and I am invested in Haoren and Chihiro's attempt to have a relationship despite the metric ton of baggage they are shouldering between them. Neither is equipped to even have any idea what a healthy relationship looks like, but they see something in each other and they want to try. That tiny bit of hopeful but likely doomed thinking may be all we have to cling to in this story.

I Hear the Sunspot

Sigh. I am sad about what this show could have been. For me, the finale definitely did not succeed at sticking the landing and making the last six weeks of wheel spinning feel worth it, and this show is going down as one of the big disappointments of the year for me. As you know if you've been keeping up with this weekly post, I loved the first half of this show, and Taichi's original characterization, so much. And I don't understand what happened here. The second half has felt like a completely different, confused, demonstrably worse show. Taichi hasn't felt like himself in weeks, the plots with Maya and the job at Sign were poorly grounded, inconsistently executed, and offered little pay off either thematically or in terms of character development, and the romance writing was a complete failure. It was actually painful to see Kohei run after Taichi and confess to him again, and the directing and editing of that sequence was so muddled that I had no idea what I was supposed to understand about Taichi's emotional journey or why this was the moment he was suddenly able to reciprocate. After all that brooding and his big speech about communication, he did not communicate much of anything to Kohei in the end. And I'm supposed to be content with leaving them here? Deeply unsatisfying on just about every level.

I understand from @twig-tea that while the story followed the beats of the manga's first two volumes at a high level, this production chose to remove many of the contextual details that actually made sense of the characters' behavior. It also seems they didn't understand they were setting up character arcs that did not get resolved until a later volume the show will not cover, thus ensuring the story would end at the wrong place. Just a baffling set of adaptation choices, and so much wasted potential. It's a shame.

Love is Like a Poison

But at least we have a new favorite coming in hot a week sooner than expected! I absolutely loved this first episode, in which we meet Shiba, our cold-hearted lawyer with delusions of grandeur and a sexually charged fixation on his house plants, and Haruto, our flirty scammer who has his number. This show is really well written and packed a ton of story, comedy, and deep characterization into its first episode. It's a promising start! For now it’s only available grey outside of Japan; I am hoping it will get picked up for proper international distribution soon.

Tagging @bengiyo to add this week's anime update.