[commentary] negotiate
Apr. 7th, 2026 03:45 pmnegotiate
jade/alexandra (arthur/jade, charles/alexandra) | f1 | e | 3.3k
dvd commentary under cut!
( illegal and unethical wag yuri crossed off the bucket list )
jade/alexandra (arthur/jade, charles/alexandra) | f1 | e | 3.3k
dvd commentary under cut!
( illegal and unethical wag yuri crossed off the bucket list )
first quarter (very poor)
Apr. 6th, 2026 01:24 pmhi it's me again. I read couple of books in the past couple months... i would've read More except possession litr killed me and sucked my soul out etc etc which, it was literally good, it was a good book, i enjoyed it and enjoyed reading it and did always want to keep reading so don't ask me what/why/who/where/when like i don't knowww i don't knowwww ... wow so it's march 30th rn... sorry it's april 6th now so literally fuck my life... and i cannot say anything except that I am a bad person (which we knew) and I don't get around the block (which we also knew) ... but also i planned so well bc my reading stats lowkey look inflated as fuck bc i was cramming tf out of those books in january...
hey guys. welcome to my post. today I will be updating you on a variety of topics and items and such, such as: books_i_read (#Literacy_Yayyyy!), games_I_Played (who up silking they song? anyone want to silk my song? hey gender-averse bug, i saw you silking your song from that conveniently placed ledge over there), and BL_I_Ran_Through (yeah it's a ran through joke idk i'm not coming up with something better) (i could make a 'ran through like that uke's hole' joke but that's crass and I also don't like my ukes ran through!!! both seme and uke should be monogamous and have lost their virginities to each other but still be really good at sex. those are my unrealistic expectations informed by pornography for the genre). I hope you enjoy. like comment and subscribe. and I am open to receiving private DMs about a vis-a-vis engagement exchange relationship... we can talk rates and word counts and prices in private. let me know if interested!
Q1 in real physically published/digitally acquired books
[ in custody ] anita desai
oh this book is so fucking good... anita desai is just really fucking good... it does a really incredible job of marrying it's characters with their environments and captures the dry season and choking dust of history as well as disrepair so well, the descriptions of the landscape are just really striking and I think there is something so noxious, pitiable and yet deeply engaging with how terrible the men this novel follows are. everytime you read anita desai it genuinely drives in how much of a hack kiran desai is and how the difference in their education/culture leads to a richness in anita desai's prose that kiran desai with all her attempts at emulation/musicality never manages... like truly our nepobookerslop author... there is a real verbose quality in anita desai's work that could be offputting in how it tends to interrupt the reading experience at times, but i find very charming. the other thing about anita desai is that she is so good at doing Real Subcontinental People/Real Subcontinental Situations. another win for small not classic caliber novels!
[ human acts ] han kang, trans deborah smith
this was genuinely very haunting, and i loved the way the narrative moved between narrators, especially when she begins to self-narrate as the author ... and I think one of the things that stayed with me was that these kids were buried in their school uniforms because those were their best clothes, that was how poor these families were. I think as a reconstruction of history, it aligns with the saidya hartman venus in adonis method of like, this attempt to restore dignity to those who were so cruelly stripped of it, while also just asking if it was worth it, to participate in an act of rebellion/revolution that led to such total destruction of a life. I really am not sure how to word this, but there is a strain to nobel laureate literature that asks about the things one as a human survives as well as the things that one as a human will do to survive and I think it's a much more raw and realer way of approaching existential questions and the general realm of compared to like, philosophy. because there is something very grounded and valuable and close and deeply touching about recounting the way a young woman works fourteen hours a day and ruins her body and still has a dream of going to med school and you know she does not survive this story and you know that nothing more happens or even would happen but still this is the life she clings to and wishes to live in.
[ possession ] a s byatt
one half of this book is really really good and the other half of this book is so stuck to a specific cultural moment within the Academy that it sort actively ruins the experience of the book. as it says on the cover, it is a romance so I genuinely can't even begrudge it for the super neatly sweetly tied up ending but holy shit is the victorian romance half SO SO GOOD and the 80s british academia half like, really not. byatt has some really beautiful musical prose at times, and I love the little details of misspelling in the 19C letters but found other details like the heritage black amethyst brooch soooooo cliche... but again it is a Romance... it's actually really confusing as to what byatt feels about 2nd wave feminism esp within the academy because she does satirise it so so much but she is also taking the piss out of everything else so in the end it just feels like she was saying nothing at all [especially with how her female characters have all their stories resolved via Reward of Romantic/Sexual Connection] ... like oh okay. it was fun though! long but fun and some of the poetry was nice.
[ love in a fallen city ] eileen chang, nyrb translation by karen kingsbury
one note: I do think eileen chang's own translations of her work were much better than kingsbury's which is soooo... but this truly was a collection about love and economics and FINALLY while being TRUE TO FORM, the story that this collection was named after was the best one. it was very very good and genuinely thrilling because the first half is them having a totally insulated romance in hong kong and then suddenly? bombs?! but the only reason that it feels sudden is that their wealth allows them to completely ignore the political world around them until it no longer can and even then!!! one of the greatest literary manuevers ever [left un?]written imo. it's such a incredible narrative choice. she has this very short story about two people meeting in a tram that is sooooo #Literature_of_the_City like it goes perfectly hand-in-hand with that baudelaire poem To A Passer-by... eileen chang is genuinely very witty and incisive and also just like, it is SO FUN to see the Origin(?) or Natural uses of all the classic trashy cn webnovel tropes like the third green tea bitch wife of so and so is soooooo fun and cute to read about in Serious Literature...
[ god dies by the nile, circling song ] nawal el sadaawi
I think maybe my sadaawi experience would be improved with better translations perhaps, but I didn't particularly like either. sort of too modernist in prose for me... it was really like, poor village women gets raped, rich village man does the raping and then colludes to fuck over a fellow poor village to frame him for the rape, he gets violently murdered, and also someone is getting brutally mind fucked by the military and also tons of honour/shame culture against women and religious psychosis/guilt and female genital mutilation... I like to read 'world literature' because I want to see how the other side lives/lived and i think she did do that for me. like yayyy i can say I understood a thing or two about rural egypt in the mid-late 20C... i enjoyed the depictions of how these villagers worked and mingled in the stench of the bulls and dry fields and their own fetid sweat, but I am not sure I could stomach that much more of the 'her pointy breasts under the cloth' and totally hallucinogenic nature of how one act of violence leads to another leads to solace in mixing up childhood fantasy with memory to cope et al et al... again, I think some of these things could just benefit from a better translation. I also think I don't actually enjoy reading about violence in women though I understand that is true and factual and the very real lived reality...
[ the wizard of earthsea ] ursula le k guin
now who was going to tell me ursula guin wasn't actually black... this is what i get for going to tumblr university.... anyway this is really the lowest of her low hits.... icb you would tell someone [who is not 10] [but even someone who is 10] to read this instead of her greats hits a la THE LATHE OF HEAVEN or the one that gay [and other types of] people love like LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or even the equally didactic but genuinely just a better narrative of ANNALS OF THE WESTERN SHORE ... like maybe the other books in this series are better but genuinely this shit just fucking sucks!!! it's way worse than every other guin.... she's way better in other ones...
[ idol burning ] rin usami
bookclub for tw3... the other pick was bunny which i dnf'd after reading like 3 pages of because I could immediately tell it was going to be bad and accurately predicted [allegedly, according to eva] the ways it was going to be bad... if you know the flaws of mfa fiction you know them... not that this was that much better. the descriptions in this were more interesting and sometimes quite discomforting in a way that aided the sort of narrative goals... one of the books were the endnote is a thousand times better than the actual book but all the same it was fine... not anything in particular but not egregiously bad...
[ how fiction works ] james wood
this is really good at describing free indirect discourse in that it sort of parses and teases out the near indecipherable layers of like the [aperture, depth of field, iso] of narrative technique specifically. but at one point he literally loses steam and runs out of meaningful things to say and flaffing like 'fiction is Not Real... but can Resemble the Real... that's realism... and we like Realism because it reminds of us what is Real and Resembles Reality' like yeah buddy... it sure does.... the reading list of all the books he mentioned at the end is pretty fun though I enjoyed that... Also, I read this book because my THE NOVEL professor was like 'if u want theory of the novel stuff you should read this' because this was secretly a creative writing and mindfulness class instead of like, a real academically rigourous look into the novel. but as I've said. this quarter was about losing.
[ luster ] raven lallani
for class. an mfa novel that wasn't written like total shit. as in, had somewhat of a unique prose style. did that make the book good? no. but was if better than the usual mfa slop thus elevating the experience completely? Yes. it's like going to a tims and they've actually cleaned out their ice coffee machine. like no it's not good but yes also it is so good comparatively. i think the most enjoyable parts of this novel was were it was just doing low art / high octane absurdism and the bad parts were the realism 'meaning of life' type shit... like i don't want or need or wish another novel about [ young woman has sex with man realises that she is worth more than the sex she has with men ] it's none of my business... i don't care... i appreciated the weird sisterkinship she has with the guy's wife but genuinely this book was at it's best when it was like 'isn't life sometimes so crazy and weird and abrupt and full of strange coincidence?' instead of the other half of it...
[ no one is talking about this ] patricia lockwood
also for class. lin mentioned patricia lockwood ten million years ago and she is invoked often enough with elif batuman but what makes elif batuman good and genuine and funny and delightful in her errant moments are what I precisely dgaf about lockwood, which is that lockwood is a poet by training ! she's a poet and you can tell !!! and so there's this thing where the individual sentence has to be non homogenous or whatever ocean vuong was saying [completely ahistoric btw] and certain discord and tension within the section/paragraph because that it what you want a poem to do. you're always controlling for stops and pauses and abruptness but fundamentally, imo, that' s not what makes a novel's prose good. anyway this book was internetty, which is a quality i knew i would not enjoy and do not look for in books. it's also emotionally manipulative as a whole, which is not a bad thing but what ends up happening is that her end note, where she reveals the name of her baby niece, is on the whole way more emotional and way more deeply affecting than the whole damn book!
i guess this book had the same problem content wise as idol burning which is like, so this is my life and my lived experience [and other books Have been able to use these things to their benefit, #The_idiot] and i just don't care for the way you've described or experienced it because it's not telling me something new or illuminating it in a new way...
[ annihilation ] jeff vandermeer
also for class. okay so I read half of this and then the rest via wikipedia.... it was fine. I have known better scifi and honestly ... perhaps truly a book that amounts to the wikipedia summary of, to it's detriment or benefit. obviously it's better-written than most popular scifi [a la the newish stuff of brandon sanderson/andy weir] but also genuinely so disappointing to have the middle plot twist reveal be like 'i, a clear asexual aromantic in a very lesbianistic set up, have a husband who i am on this expedition to look for' also the prose is not accomplished enough to sell the cosmic/weird horror vibe it tries to go for... which it's literally more descriptive and rich in environment than most scifi so i guess that's part of it's success... but i should finish it properly before i say anything too definitively... it's literally that i was reading this and going 'omg... i love scifi.... i wish i could reread the sparrow right now...'
[ denison avenue ]
for class. genuinely a book that pissed me the fuck off because there's an entire century of literary tradition that it's trying to work off of/replicate/capture and if anyone involved had read a single modernist novel it would've been so much more successful in what it was trying to do. as it stands, the op was like 'this was originally an instagram project' and Yes, it does read entirely like instagram caption prose. congratulations for yet another successful rupi kaur rip off that doesn't even outdo rupi kaur!
[ this is going to hurt ] adam kay
ooooh. this one has been on my personal tbr foreverrrrr... or for a while, since an edit of ambika mod from the show goes viral every now and then... it was so painfully obvious this was meant to be funny and snarky in a british 2010s humour way and wasn't. but the parts that weren't him trying to be funny were very good and really worth reading i think. if anyone remembers the new yorker article that came out about the NICU baby 'murder' case where a nurse was essentially framed for failures of the system, this is just another look into that system and how much it punishes everyone involved and squanders itself. one thing that was so funny is obviously the egregious amounts of pussy jokes in this [the author was in ob gyn] so when I watched the show and litr within the first 10 minutes, I was like 'whoa... bespoke #woke choice of making yourself gay in your autofictional show about yourself' which genuinely could've been one of the funniest things anyone has ever done [since he wrote the show!!!] but no he's just gay in real life and he was cautiously straightbaiting in his memoir...
Q1 in motion media
>so the last real video game I played fr fr was hades 1 on my laptop when it released. before that, like the remains of edith finch on my friend's laptop in hs, and before that, infamous 2 when I was like 13/14. I am an avid enjoyer of watching games. which is why I will also make this the movie+tv show section because all of them are basically long form moving visual narratives to me. I just have not had a console [with video games i want to play] in like over 10 years. anyway so recently, i acquired a guy who bought a switch a couple years ago and never played it and was like, 'hey babe, do you want to play my forgotten never used switch since you are the Real Gamer between us' and i was like, Well... I shouldn't because I will forsake all of my academic responsibility to fuck that shit up for 14 hours a day. so dear reader, please guess what I did.
hollow knight: silksong
okay I have to preface this with (a) I don't care about spoilers, I hate not knowing more than I enjoy being delighted by a narrative twist; (b) I am not one of god's pure gamers. or maybe I am truly the only pure gamer because Idgaf about narrative i only care about gameplay if i'm playing a game. if you want me to ENJOY your story I am better off watching someone else do it on youtube, bc if I am playing the game I will be button mashing the shit out of the dialogue to get back to PLAYING THE GAME!!!... also. as someone who loves To Know, I love to watch a 100% speedrun of a game to know what to do/where to go, because to me the part that is important about playing a game is Do I Have the Skill To Do The Same? if a game litr is just someone pressing a button to go next, like someone else can do that for me that's none of my business...
as someone who loves Environments and Exploration as well as combat, would I say the metroidvania, say even, the dark souls of metroidvanias, are the genre for me? I don't know. results nonconclusive... currently I have 85 hours in the game, I have defeated the top2 most infuriating bosses a la: Groal the Great, and Savage Beastfly 2, both who I did not find *that bad* by the end of it. obviously I got through both the cogwork core and mount fay, and am currently failing the fuuuck out of the abyss climb section so yayyyyyy for that. inshallah she will succeed soon... the fights i've enjoyed the most are LACE, i LOVEEEEEE fighting lace SHOUTOUT TO LACE... she is so fun they overtuned the fuuuuck out of this boss. phantom was also really fun but I was definitely overpowered .... i liked widow obviously, and am saving the last sinner fight for no reason. okay my thing is that I lowkey have gotten to the point in the game where there's only boss battles left for me to do and that's like... Fine I Guess but I miss the exploringggg... so I keep not fighting bosses.... I enjoyed the platforming parts more than I thought I would.... I fucking love the music and the visuals of this game. I LOVE HORNET!!!!!!! whom I have loved since like 2020... so yeah ofc...
imo so much of my pleasure about this game comes from the fact that one of the most anticipated and biggest releases of all time is a game about WOMEN and MOTHERHOOD and in a serious and meaningful way and KINKEEPING and COMMUNAL CARE which is so so awesome especially for like mainstream [non indie] video game, which is a genre that is still in 2006 re: gender politics... anyway it's fucking awesome and has many awesome awesome characters one of which is kicking my ass, SECOND SENTINEL!!! anyway I'm content with the knowledge that I'm a gamer but I can't even be like 'this is my favourite game' because I don't have enough games under my belt to be making such definitive statements. there's no way that I'm not having fun but dangggg can it be rough.
no other choice
oh this movie was so fucking good park chanwook !!! i love that this genuinely is a black comedy and it makes such good very prescient commentary. fucking love that it ends with his daughter playing the cello for them as he loses his hearing for this job he's literally killed to afford. i love the final shot of their house/compound where you realise it's literally secluded from a very suburban row. GOD!!!!! also everyone in this movie does a killer performance, especially the two wives.
emma 2020
still one of the greatest and most perfect movies of all timeeeee IDC IDC if you disagree you are going to hell... yes this may be personal shade sorry I just don't get it NO ONE is allowed to dislike my favourite most perfect movie of all time...
+clueless
completely massacres the entire point of emma by not having any of it be cher's fault... so actually it's terrible and i hate it...
the secret agent
really good acting and really great cinematography and SHOUTOUTTT TO THE GLOBAL SOUTH BELT this movie is sooo good at conveying humidity and heat through the choice of shots and the costumes, like the very thin translucent shirts and slobby shorts for everyone is such great costuming... I liked all the narrative choices and manuevers, but the future/present story is the weakest bit...
wuthering heights
this movie was so egregiously bad that I started reading real actual wuthering heights in the middle of my viewing. and it was genuinely so much better. and it wasn't even funny!!!! kind of the only hysterical part was genuinely when it become a charli xcx music video for a little bit and even then I just got so mad about all of the narrative choices being made...
hamnet
this movie has 1 good scene and it's when hamnet goes 'something's there in that corner, watching' and it changes so the audience is now watching from the corner and you realise you are the Predatory Vulture of Death feeding on the emotional pain/torture of these children and it's really really good... otherwise is genuinely total shite, I think I like joe alwyn as an actor, paul mescal's gay earring staying in was certainly A Choice, the cinematography is really good and beautiful but the movie is just awful as a whole. i like really was so ready to cry so much and I only cried 1 time. like the emotional manipulation movie can't make me cry more than once? be fucking forreal rn i cried at PROM 2011 which remains so stark in my mind as a aberrant occasion bc it really highlighted to me how i have the emotional integrity of 1-ply tissue paper.
zootopia 2
this is only making the list because I have to tell you guys that H's sister watched this movie 11 times. nicke wilde is a wwx variant btw.... his ukeism could be off the charts if they let it...
kal ho naa ho
genuinely a movie where srk is so handsome and stylish in all the dance sequences, but especially pretty woman like the little bit of belly was soooo chic! also like SLAYFUL SOUNDTRACK. and naina is sooo cuuuteee in looks and personality like i loved that she was so angry and annoying and stubborn and headstrong, like so sossososo cute moebomb. it was really an early innovation for polyamory/challengers-style trios but they didn't quite stick the landing and i was genuinely so baffled by the ending like Ok So what? like i just felt the emotional resolution was not resoluting...
rocky aur rani
this movie is genuinely such a good comedy it's unreal ... of the most unintentional is the totally shit bangla the bengali family speaks, but like rani having her own theme song that riffs whenever she has a #Girlboss moment is so crazy. and also: One of the wokest movies to ever come out of bollywood. ANDDDD the main couple not only have hella chemistry but you actually root for the competent smart girlboss x himbo with a heart of gold. the fucking dola re dola climax sequence entire sequence is SOOOOO GOOOD!!!! like genuinely emerald fennel fucking WISHES her total opulence and visual overindulgence looked like that. but genuinely why does rani have a gay stay at home dad and lesbian breadwinner mom and a grandmother who endorses cheating. I also really felt like the final emotional climax/fight was really well earned and the way rani defends herself + the eventual resolution is really well done because it's fucking true no matter how much you hate your boyfriend's sexist pig dad you can't be raising a hand against him!!! but also true he has to apologise first for you to apologise... also loved the respective grandmothers and rocky's mom and sister... this was a rewatch and I was lowkey playing skong the entire time but it genuinely was so good.....
the pitt
genuinely seeing the discourse about this show has been 10000000x times going 'is this everyone's first time watching a TV show?' my top3 to no ones surprise are: javadi, al-hashimi and mel.. also like insane that javadi is genuinely the most simple character to understand and lowkey genuinely the only person who has no real flaws other than nepotism [which she can't even control] and somehow we still get befuddling takes about her.... like... Ok..... I LOVE DR. AL-HASHIMI I BELIEVED IN HER AND WAS ON HER SIDE SINCE DAY 1!!!!!! like insane that you have spent an entire season with an extremely empathetic autistic woman who likes to follow rules and protocol [mel] but it's suddenly repulsive and terrible when it's coming from another woman in s2? like is it because she's in a position of power now? is it because she's brown? it's not the ai thing for sure because they whiteknighted the fuck out of that. i just think it's crazy that i've seen trinity santos getting read as autistic before al hashimi like.... okay let's all hate rigid rule followers for no reason.... they definitely gave her and trinity the most compelling stuff to work with this season, so shoutout to them ... and i also genuinely can't even be switzerland about trinity santos like i'm giving it her overeager defenders even if they ship garsantos and thinks she's a bottom like she genuinely has done nothing wrong and is always reacting to situations in a really normal and RIGHTEOUS way like of fucking course you want to see your MALE coworker get crucified for being a terrible sexist pig to you and instead you get to be culpable in letting him get away with STEALING DRUGS FROM HIS HOSPITAL ... like i litr don't know how people don't immediately clock the gender politics and feel sympathetic towards her reaction, even without knowing about her trauma or like anything else. like you would be mad as shit as just as vindictive and feeling terrible and unforgiving in that situation!!!! LIKE HAVE YOU NEVER FELT LIKE SHIT BECAUSE A MAN TREATS YOU LIKE SHIT FOR THE CRIME OF BEING A WOMAN SHAPED TARGET WHO FEELS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK NEAR HIM ? sorry.... anyway mohan's writing really has been so let's starve a horse, lead it to poison water, wait for it to slowly almost die, then shoot it 6 times. like oh okay! so i understand the frustration but her fans are lowkey as delusional as langdon fans... obviously because javadi has done nothing wrong and only been super competent and able to #handle it, no one gaf about her.... i also realised i do enjoy whitaker as the actual pathetic sopping meepy character he is on the show and not whatever fanon delusion is fuelling him. my request for fanon delusion is that we need trans girl denise whitaker in a will-they-wont-they bully-victim dynamic with her rooommate the prickly trinity santos PLEASE GOD IF YOU CAN HEAR ME..... genuinely that 'oh you like having me around' argument was SOOOOO.... i CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY,... WHITAKER TAKE E RIGHT NOW YOU CAN BE SAVED.... obviously robby breaking down and causing damage destruction everyone by lashing out is really good tv and i enjoy seeing it, dana is lowkey whatever, but i really liked emma and also really liked the digby case and everything that happened there :) digby was genuinely so so sweet...which is why i liked it, i didn't care for the Nurses are good people for treating a homeless person like a real person like I sure hope you would!, mel and mckay were given Nothing to work with but it's okay i'm going to be riding that stud4butch parker ellis x mel king high until s3 when they become canon that's #MyTruth.... the thing about both characters is that people love to ship propagandize them and it really hurts because like mel and langdon are Fine on the show, I don't really care, it's nice that mel has a friend but we really could crack at it again with trinity like at one point i believe it can happen i really doooo...
this is going to hurt
I think this show is actually really really well written and i think the [talks to camera]-bit really really good and really works with it and i think it made a really good choice of adaptation to split his character traits/stories between multiple protagonists, and I think there is something so well done in showing unpleasant/unlikeable/uncharming people and the conditions that made them so and how much >That doesn't matter to anyone who doesn't know!!! idk, also it's like a british show so everyone's a good actor. ambika mod really is good in this role... idk for a show that's about showing how much the system wears down on the most noble and heroic tasks/people to eventually make everything they are and do unheroic and unnoble is really really good... it's just really really good. but maybe it has a terrible second half idk haven't gotten there yet
Q1 in BL
I did lapse into a depressive episode for the feb-march period where at one point I was scouring through mgg for a reason to live... that happens to Us All... i loved to show off my insane reading/already read stats on mgg as proof of my #Real_Fujo card but um ... so they nuked that shit... rip </3 stuff I've been enjoying lately:
Tatsuki to Tamaki yoshida yuma
I saw the cover and I was like 'this is definitely pseudo-BL bc i haven't seen it in the yaoi tag, and lo and behold! it was. it has decent art and I think it's funny and charming and enjoy all the dynamics being presented and i think it's really self-aware in a good way, bc at one point one of the characters does an aside about enjoying the SL and wanting that to be the main cp over the actual cp and I was like >OH! So you do mean to write this in a way where, I, the susceptible reader would also be doing that!!!.... also i loooove the editor character at one point there's a panel where she holds out her own nui doll to take a picture of at a tourist spot and i'm like OP YOU GET EVERYTHINGGGG... i also think they have a really strong grasp on what their characters are and what they do and that sort of stability/direction is really nice to see.... ig it's kind of the rocky aur rani of this batch...
you are my world bbong
I love buff uke, I love pathetic sopping wet pretty boy seme, op definitely understands what is erotic and sexy about a built male body, it's fulfilling most of my conditions even though i lowkey despite tsundere uke. however we did just get to the rape plot which i really didn't think was going to happen but it is omegaverse bl i guess.... anyway i really like it so far and op has created a dynamic i think is soooo delicious [mostly in part due to how the seme is acting] so yayyyy yiippeeeee.
courtside courtship samjang shaman
MY GOAT 1PICK OF THIS BATCH. i love the art i love the way it's coloured i think the expressions op draws for the seme and his siblings are so fucking funny as are their interactions, i love my ukes and plots a little absurd with it AND I LOVE A TENDERHEARTED SEME!!!!! this is literally so so delicious and good for me and i really have been waiting on this official trans stockpile for a while and I am excited for me!!!!
golden light for you baetodi
oh i really can't say that much about it bc i am knocking against the concept and older uke and stupid young puppy seme, but the uke is litr so handsome and my type so it's good for me because of that... and i do like yakuza mafia plot like ofc i love dumb mindless violent dog uke like that's catnip to a guy like meeee ... i also do love a mentally fragile delicate suicidal seme [coming up later] but this guy does not stay in that state for long enough... i also love a young girl side character soooo cuuute to meeee
family liver registry soru
speaking of cute little babie girl children... i'm sorry i'm easy i litr love a co-parenting bl it's so funny to meeee... litr the little sister is so facking cuuute and i love her gag with the made up mascot character of choice ... nice dynamics nice set up nice art im enjoying everything. it's randomly supernatural and it did feel like Well? What Ok peggles but i like when the seme is a victim to Ploys and Schemes and Susceptible to Evil Influence better than when the uke is so that's a plus... also i love the exact kind of idiot the seme is so that's also enjoyable to me...
the taming chada
just put the buff handsome black hair uke and delicate frail prettyboy seme in the bag. just put the fries in the bag bruh. we all know what i like and this is fulfilling the base requirements. i actually don't like size difference that much but it's fine.. it's not like Bad i also love the class difference/servant-master cosplay so it's going to be sooo sad when it ends but let me enjoy it while i can...
the 11th school trip do haneul
i like the art and character design. pretty regular webnovel mystery solving bl set up... another one to the bag of emotionally fragile delicate semes that have to be treated with care and handled carefully... i will not be reading this again until the extras come out so like, see you in 100390404 years... I'll be here.. enjoying bl for ever...
office hero LattePanda
shoutout to LattePanda my goattttt.... beautiful textures and lines and always understanding plain/handsome black hair uke and prettyboy seme ... and this time he's psychologically tortured and cold and distant and ill of health.... LITERALLY WHAT MORE COULD I ASK FOR!!! i also love the one-sided reincarnation love trope i love when a guy suffers romantically it's always good for me....
sorry that these reviews were so scant in detail but like most of these are only 20-ish chapters rn I don't have much to say!!!
so hopefully there was something for everyone... that's my q1 wrap-up. did personal things happen to me also? probably. actually can everyone please please please go look at my alhaitham plate rn!!! if that attachment does not work LMK i will move it onto gdocs. not only is that an image my mother has received [to which she replied: why didn't you make me anything?] but she has been told a few other harmless facts, so everyone take bets on what she's doing with that information.
hey guys. welcome to my post. today I will be updating you on a variety of topics and items and such, such as: books_i_read (#Literacy_Yayyyy!), games_I_Played (who up silking they song? anyone want to silk my song? hey gender-averse bug, i saw you silking your song from that conveniently placed ledge over there), and BL_I_Ran_Through (yeah it's a ran through joke idk i'm not coming up with something better) (i could make a 'ran through like that uke's hole' joke but that's crass and I also don't like my ukes ran through!!! both seme and uke should be monogamous and have lost their virginities to each other but still be really good at sex. those are my unrealistic expectations informed by pornography for the genre). I hope you enjoy. like comment and subscribe. and I am open to receiving private DMs about a vis-a-vis engagement exchange relationship... we can talk rates and word counts and prices in private. let me know if interested!
Q1 in real physically published/digitally acquired books
the stuff I read: in custody, human acts, possession, love in a fallen city, circling song, god dies by the nile, the wizard of earthsea, idol burning, how fiction works, annihilation (incompletely), denison avenue, luster, no one is talking about this, this is going to hurt. most of these were by women! so wait YAY SLAYYY...
[ in custody ] anita desai
oh this book is so fucking good... anita desai is just really fucking good... it does a really incredible job of marrying it's characters with their environments and captures the dry season and choking dust of history as well as disrepair so well, the descriptions of the landscape are just really striking and I think there is something so noxious, pitiable and yet deeply engaging with how terrible the men this novel follows are. everytime you read anita desai it genuinely drives in how much of a hack kiran desai is and how the difference in their education/culture leads to a richness in anita desai's prose that kiran desai with all her attempts at emulation/musicality never manages... like truly our nepobookerslop author... there is a real verbose quality in anita desai's work that could be offputting in how it tends to interrupt the reading experience at times, but i find very charming. the other thing about anita desai is that she is so good at doing Real Subcontinental People/Real Subcontinental Situations. another win for small not classic caliber novels!
[ human acts ] han kang, trans deborah smith
this was genuinely very haunting, and i loved the way the narrative moved between narrators, especially when she begins to self-narrate as the author ... and I think one of the things that stayed with me was that these kids were buried in their school uniforms because those were their best clothes, that was how poor these families were. I think as a reconstruction of history, it aligns with the saidya hartman venus in adonis method of like, this attempt to restore dignity to those who were so cruelly stripped of it, while also just asking if it was worth it, to participate in an act of rebellion/revolution that led to such total destruction of a life. I really am not sure how to word this, but there is a strain to nobel laureate literature that asks about the things one as a human survives as well as the things that one as a human will do to survive and I think it's a much more raw and realer way of approaching existential questions and the general realm of compared to like, philosophy. because there is something very grounded and valuable and close and deeply touching about recounting the way a young woman works fourteen hours a day and ruins her body and still has a dream of going to med school and you know she does not survive this story and you know that nothing more happens or even would happen but still this is the life she clings to and wishes to live in.
[ possession ] a s byatt
one half of this book is really really good and the other half of this book is so stuck to a specific cultural moment within the Academy that it sort actively ruins the experience of the book. as it says on the cover, it is a romance so I genuinely can't even begrudge it for the super neatly sweetly tied up ending but holy shit is the victorian romance half SO SO GOOD and the 80s british academia half like, really not. byatt has some really beautiful musical prose at times, and I love the little details of misspelling in the 19C letters but found other details like the heritage black amethyst brooch soooooo cliche... but again it is a Romance... it's actually really confusing as to what byatt feels about 2nd wave feminism esp within the academy because she does satirise it so so much but she is also taking the piss out of everything else so in the end it just feels like she was saying nothing at all [especially with how her female characters have all their stories resolved via Reward of Romantic/Sexual Connection] ... like oh okay. it was fun though! long but fun and some of the poetry was nice.
[ love in a fallen city ] eileen chang, nyrb translation by karen kingsbury
one note: I do think eileen chang's own translations of her work were much better than kingsbury's which is soooo... but this truly was a collection about love and economics and FINALLY while being TRUE TO FORM, the story that this collection was named after was the best one. it was very very good and genuinely thrilling because the first half is them having a totally insulated romance in hong kong and then suddenly? bombs?! but the only reason that it feels sudden is that their wealth allows them to completely ignore the political world around them until it no longer can and even then!!! one of the greatest literary manuevers ever [left un?]written imo. it's such a incredible narrative choice. she has this very short story about two people meeting in a tram that is sooooo #Literature_of_the_City like it goes perfectly hand-in-hand with that baudelaire poem To A Passer-by... eileen chang is genuinely very witty and incisive and also just like, it is SO FUN to see the Origin(?) or Natural uses of all the classic trashy cn webnovel tropes like the third green tea bitch wife of so and so is soooooo fun and cute to read about in Serious Literature...
[ god dies by the nile, circling song ] nawal el sadaawi
I think maybe my sadaawi experience would be improved with better translations perhaps, but I didn't particularly like either. sort of too modernist in prose for me... it was really like, poor village women gets raped, rich village man does the raping and then colludes to fuck over a fellow poor village to frame him for the rape, he gets violently murdered, and also someone is getting brutally mind fucked by the military and also tons of honour/shame culture against women and religious psychosis/guilt and female genital mutilation... I like to read 'world literature' because I want to see how the other side lives/lived and i think she did do that for me. like yayyy i can say I understood a thing or two about rural egypt in the mid-late 20C... i enjoyed the depictions of how these villagers worked and mingled in the stench of the bulls and dry fields and their own fetid sweat, but I am not sure I could stomach that much more of the 'her pointy breasts under the cloth' and totally hallucinogenic nature of how one act of violence leads to another leads to solace in mixing up childhood fantasy with memory to cope et al et al... again, I think some of these things could just benefit from a better translation. I also think I don't actually enjoy reading about violence in women though I understand that is true and factual and the very real lived reality...
[ the wizard of earthsea ] ursula le k guin
now who was going to tell me ursula guin wasn't actually black... this is what i get for going to tumblr university.... anyway this is really the lowest of her low hits.... icb you would tell someone [who is not 10] [but even someone who is 10] to read this instead of her greats hits a la THE LATHE OF HEAVEN or the one that gay [and other types of] people love like LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or even the equally didactic but genuinely just a better narrative of ANNALS OF THE WESTERN SHORE ... like maybe the other books in this series are better but genuinely this shit just fucking sucks!!! it's way worse than every other guin.... she's way better in other ones...
[ idol burning ] rin usami
bookclub for tw3... the other pick was bunny which i dnf'd after reading like 3 pages of because I could immediately tell it was going to be bad and accurately predicted [allegedly, according to eva] the ways it was going to be bad... if you know the flaws of mfa fiction you know them... not that this was that much better. the descriptions in this were more interesting and sometimes quite discomforting in a way that aided the sort of narrative goals... one of the books were the endnote is a thousand times better than the actual book but all the same it was fine... not anything in particular but not egregiously bad...
[ how fiction works ] james wood
this is really good at describing free indirect discourse in that it sort of parses and teases out the near indecipherable layers of like the [aperture, depth of field, iso] of narrative technique specifically. but at one point he literally loses steam and runs out of meaningful things to say and flaffing like 'fiction is Not Real... but can Resemble the Real... that's realism... and we like Realism because it reminds of us what is Real and Resembles Reality' like yeah buddy... it sure does.... the reading list of all the books he mentioned at the end is pretty fun though I enjoyed that... Also, I read this book because my THE NOVEL professor was like 'if u want theory of the novel stuff you should read this' because this was secretly a creative writing and mindfulness class instead of like, a real academically rigourous look into the novel. but as I've said. this quarter was about losing.
[ luster ] raven lallani
for class. an mfa novel that wasn't written like total shit. as in, had somewhat of a unique prose style. did that make the book good? no. but was if better than the usual mfa slop thus elevating the experience completely? Yes. it's like going to a tims and they've actually cleaned out their ice coffee machine. like no it's not good but yes also it is so good comparatively. i think the most enjoyable parts of this novel was were it was just doing low art / high octane absurdism and the bad parts were the realism 'meaning of life' type shit... like i don't want or need or wish another novel about [ young woman has sex with man realises that she is worth more than the sex she has with men ] it's none of my business... i don't care... i appreciated the weird sisterkinship she has with the guy's wife but genuinely this book was at it's best when it was like 'isn't life sometimes so crazy and weird and abrupt and full of strange coincidence?' instead of the other half of it...
[ no one is talking about this ] patricia lockwood
also for class. lin mentioned patricia lockwood ten million years ago and she is invoked often enough with elif batuman but what makes elif batuman good and genuine and funny and delightful in her errant moments are what I precisely dgaf about lockwood, which is that lockwood is a poet by training ! she's a poet and you can tell !!! and so there's this thing where the individual sentence has to be non homogenous or whatever ocean vuong was saying [completely ahistoric btw] and certain discord and tension within the section/paragraph because that it what you want a poem to do. you're always controlling for stops and pauses and abruptness but fundamentally, imo, that' s not what makes a novel's prose good. anyway this book was internetty, which is a quality i knew i would not enjoy and do not look for in books. it's also emotionally manipulative as a whole, which is not a bad thing but what ends up happening is that her end note, where she reveals the name of her baby niece, is on the whole way more emotional and way more deeply affecting than the whole damn book!
i guess this book had the same problem content wise as idol burning which is like, so this is my life and my lived experience [and other books Have been able to use these things to their benefit, #The_idiot] and i just don't care for the way you've described or experienced it because it's not telling me something new or illuminating it in a new way...
[ annihilation ] jeff vandermeer
also for class. okay so I read half of this and then the rest via wikipedia.... it was fine. I have known better scifi and honestly ... perhaps truly a book that amounts to the wikipedia summary of, to it's detriment or benefit. obviously it's better-written than most popular scifi [a la the newish stuff of brandon sanderson/andy weir] but also genuinely so disappointing to have the middle plot twist reveal be like 'i, a clear asexual aromantic in a very lesbianistic set up, have a husband who i am on this expedition to look for' also the prose is not accomplished enough to sell the cosmic/weird horror vibe it tries to go for... which it's literally more descriptive and rich in environment than most scifi so i guess that's part of it's success... but i should finish it properly before i say anything too definitively... it's literally that i was reading this and going 'omg... i love scifi.... i wish i could reread the sparrow right now...'
[ denison avenue ]
for class. genuinely a book that pissed me the fuck off because there's an entire century of literary tradition that it's trying to work off of/replicate/capture and if anyone involved had read a single modernist novel it would've been so much more successful in what it was trying to do. as it stands, the op was like 'this was originally an instagram project' and Yes, it does read entirely like instagram caption prose. congratulations for yet another successful rupi kaur rip off that doesn't even outdo rupi kaur!
[ this is going to hurt ] adam kay
ooooh. this one has been on my personal tbr foreverrrrr... or for a while, since an edit of ambika mod from the show goes viral every now and then... it was so painfully obvious this was meant to be funny and snarky in a british 2010s humour way and wasn't. but the parts that weren't him trying to be funny were very good and really worth reading i think. if anyone remembers the new yorker article that came out about the NICU baby 'murder' case where a nurse was essentially framed for failures of the system, this is just another look into that system and how much it punishes everyone involved and squanders itself. one thing that was so funny is obviously the egregious amounts of pussy jokes in this [the author was in ob gyn] so when I watched the show and litr within the first 10 minutes, I was like 'whoa... bespoke #woke choice of making yourself gay in your autofictional show about yourself' which genuinely could've been one of the funniest things anyone has ever done [since he wrote the show!!!] but no he's just gay in real life and he was cautiously straightbaiting in his memoir...
Q1 in motion media
>so the last real video game I played fr fr was hades 1 on my laptop when it released. before that, like the remains of edith finch on my friend's laptop in hs, and before that, infamous 2 when I was like 13/14. I am an avid enjoyer of watching games. which is why I will also make this the movie+tv show section because all of them are basically long form moving visual narratives to me. I just have not had a console [with video games i want to play] in like over 10 years. anyway so recently, i acquired a guy who bought a switch a couple years ago and never played it and was like, 'hey babe, do you want to play my forgotten never used switch since you are the Real Gamer between us' and i was like, Well... I shouldn't because I will forsake all of my academic responsibility to fuck that shit up for 14 hours a day. so dear reader, please guess what I did.
spoilers for: hollow knight silksong, da pitt, this is going to hurt, kal ho naa ho, rocky aur rani, wuthering heights the movie [i was held hostage], the secret agent, hamnet, emma 2020 (again!)
hollow knight: silksong
okay I have to preface this with (a) I don't care about spoilers, I hate not knowing more than I enjoy being delighted by a narrative twist; (b) I am not one of god's pure gamers. or maybe I am truly the only pure gamer because Idgaf about narrative i only care about gameplay if i'm playing a game. if you want me to ENJOY your story I am better off watching someone else do it on youtube, bc if I am playing the game I will be button mashing the shit out of the dialogue to get back to PLAYING THE GAME!!!... also. as someone who loves To Know, I love to watch a 100% speedrun of a game to know what to do/where to go, because to me the part that is important about playing a game is Do I Have the Skill To Do The Same? if a game litr is just someone pressing a button to go next, like someone else can do that for me that's none of my business...
as someone who loves Environments and Exploration as well as combat, would I say the metroidvania, say even, the dark souls of metroidvanias, are the genre for me? I don't know. results nonconclusive... currently I have 85 hours in the game, I have defeated the top2 most infuriating bosses a la: Groal the Great, and Savage Beastfly 2, both who I did not find *that bad* by the end of it. obviously I got through both the cogwork core and mount fay, and am currently failing the fuuuck out of the abyss climb section so yayyyyyy for that. inshallah she will succeed soon... the fights i've enjoyed the most are LACE, i LOVEEEEEE fighting lace SHOUTOUT TO LACE... she is so fun they overtuned the fuuuuck out of this boss. phantom was also really fun but I was definitely overpowered .... i liked widow obviously, and am saving the last sinner fight for no reason. okay my thing is that I lowkey have gotten to the point in the game where there's only boss battles left for me to do and that's like... Fine I Guess but I miss the exploringggg... so I keep not fighting bosses.... I enjoyed the platforming parts more than I thought I would.... I fucking love the music and the visuals of this game. I LOVE HORNET!!!!!!! whom I have loved since like 2020... so yeah ofc...
imo so much of my pleasure about this game comes from the fact that one of the most anticipated and biggest releases of all time is a game about WOMEN and MOTHERHOOD and in a serious and meaningful way and KINKEEPING and COMMUNAL CARE which is so so awesome especially for like mainstream [non indie] video game, which is a genre that is still in 2006 re: gender politics... anyway it's fucking awesome and has many awesome awesome characters one of which is kicking my ass, SECOND SENTINEL!!! anyway I'm content with the knowledge that I'm a gamer but I can't even be like 'this is my favourite game' because I don't have enough games under my belt to be making such definitive statements. there's no way that I'm not having fun but dangggg can it be rough.
no other choice
oh this movie was so fucking good park chanwook !!! i love that this genuinely is a black comedy and it makes such good very prescient commentary. fucking love that it ends with his daughter playing the cello for them as he loses his hearing for this job he's literally killed to afford. i love the final shot of their house/compound where you realise it's literally secluded from a very suburban row. GOD!!!!! also everyone in this movie does a killer performance, especially the two wives.
emma 2020
still one of the greatest and most perfect movies of all timeeeee IDC IDC if you disagree you are going to hell... yes this may be personal shade sorry I just don't get it NO ONE is allowed to dislike my favourite most perfect movie of all time...
+clueless
completely massacres the entire point of emma by not having any of it be cher's fault... so actually it's terrible and i hate it...
the secret agent
really good acting and really great cinematography and SHOUTOUTTT TO THE GLOBAL SOUTH BELT this movie is sooo good at conveying humidity and heat through the choice of shots and the costumes, like the very thin translucent shirts and slobby shorts for everyone is such great costuming... I liked all the narrative choices and manuevers, but the future/present story is the weakest bit...
wuthering heights
this movie was so egregiously bad that I started reading real actual wuthering heights in the middle of my viewing. and it was genuinely so much better. and it wasn't even funny!!!! kind of the only hysterical part was genuinely when it become a charli xcx music video for a little bit and even then I just got so mad about all of the narrative choices being made...
hamnet
this movie has 1 good scene and it's when hamnet goes 'something's there in that corner, watching' and it changes so the audience is now watching from the corner and you realise you are the Predatory Vulture of Death feeding on the emotional pain/torture of these children and it's really really good... otherwise is genuinely total shite, I think I like joe alwyn as an actor, paul mescal's gay earring staying in was certainly A Choice, the cinematography is really good and beautiful but the movie is just awful as a whole. i like really was so ready to cry so much and I only cried 1 time. like the emotional manipulation movie can't make me cry more than once? be fucking forreal rn i cried at PROM 2011 which remains so stark in my mind as a aberrant occasion bc it really highlighted to me how i have the emotional integrity of 1-ply tissue paper.
zootopia 2
this is only making the list because I have to tell you guys that H's sister watched this movie 11 times. nicke wilde is a wwx variant btw.... his ukeism could be off the charts if they let it...
kal ho naa ho
genuinely a movie where srk is so handsome and stylish in all the dance sequences, but especially pretty woman like the little bit of belly was soooo chic! also like SLAYFUL SOUNDTRACK. and naina is sooo cuuuteee in looks and personality like i loved that she was so angry and annoying and stubborn and headstrong, like so sossososo cute moebomb. it was really an early innovation for polyamory/challengers-style trios but they didn't quite stick the landing and i was genuinely so baffled by the ending like Ok So what? like i just felt the emotional resolution was not resoluting...
rocky aur rani
this movie is genuinely such a good comedy it's unreal ... of the most unintentional is the totally shit bangla the bengali family speaks, but like rani having her own theme song that riffs whenever she has a #Girlboss moment is so crazy. and also: One of the wokest movies to ever come out of bollywood. ANDDDD the main couple not only have hella chemistry but you actually root for the competent smart girlboss x himbo with a heart of gold. the fucking dola re dola climax sequence entire sequence is SOOOOO GOOOD!!!! like genuinely emerald fennel fucking WISHES her total opulence and visual overindulgence looked like that. but genuinely why does rani have a gay stay at home dad and lesbian breadwinner mom and a grandmother who endorses cheating. I also really felt like the final emotional climax/fight was really well earned and the way rani defends herself + the eventual resolution is really well done because it's fucking true no matter how much you hate your boyfriend's sexist pig dad you can't be raising a hand against him!!! but also true he has to apologise first for you to apologise... also loved the respective grandmothers and rocky's mom and sister... this was a rewatch and I was lowkey playing skong the entire time but it genuinely was so good.....
the pitt
genuinely seeing the discourse about this show has been 10000000x times going 'is this everyone's first time watching a TV show?' my top3 to no ones surprise are: javadi, al-hashimi and mel.. also like insane that javadi is genuinely the most simple character to understand and lowkey genuinely the only person who has no real flaws other than nepotism [which she can't even control] and somehow we still get befuddling takes about her.... like... Ok..... I LOVE DR. AL-HASHIMI I BELIEVED IN HER AND WAS ON HER SIDE SINCE DAY 1!!!!!! like insane that you have spent an entire season with an extremely empathetic autistic woman who likes to follow rules and protocol [mel] but it's suddenly repulsive and terrible when it's coming from another woman in s2? like is it because she's in a position of power now? is it because she's brown? it's not the ai thing for sure because they whiteknighted the fuck out of that. i just think it's crazy that i've seen trinity santos getting read as autistic before al hashimi like.... okay let's all hate rigid rule followers for no reason.... they definitely gave her and trinity the most compelling stuff to work with this season, so shoutout to them ... and i also genuinely can't even be switzerland about trinity santos like i'm giving it her overeager defenders even if they ship garsantos and thinks she's a bottom like she genuinely has done nothing wrong and is always reacting to situations in a really normal and RIGHTEOUS way like of fucking course you want to see your MALE coworker get crucified for being a terrible sexist pig to you and instead you get to be culpable in letting him get away with STEALING DRUGS FROM HIS HOSPITAL ... like i litr don't know how people don't immediately clock the gender politics and feel sympathetic towards her reaction, even without knowing about her trauma or like anything else. like you would be mad as shit as just as vindictive and feeling terrible and unforgiving in that situation!!!! LIKE HAVE YOU NEVER FELT LIKE SHIT BECAUSE A MAN TREATS YOU LIKE SHIT FOR THE CRIME OF BEING A WOMAN SHAPED TARGET WHO FEELS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK NEAR HIM ? sorry.... anyway mohan's writing really has been so let's starve a horse, lead it to poison water, wait for it to slowly almost die, then shoot it 6 times. like oh okay! so i understand the frustration but her fans are lowkey as delusional as langdon fans... obviously because javadi has done nothing wrong and only been super competent and able to #handle it, no one gaf about her.... i also realised i do enjoy whitaker as the actual pathetic sopping meepy character he is on the show and not whatever fanon delusion is fuelling him. my request for fanon delusion is that we need trans girl denise whitaker in a will-they-wont-they bully-victim dynamic with her rooommate the prickly trinity santos PLEASE GOD IF YOU CAN HEAR ME..... genuinely that 'oh you like having me around' argument was SOOOOO.... i CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY,... WHITAKER TAKE E RIGHT NOW YOU CAN BE SAVED.... obviously robby breaking down and causing damage destruction everyone by lashing out is really good tv and i enjoy seeing it, dana is lowkey whatever, but i really liked emma and also really liked the digby case and everything that happened there :) digby was genuinely so so sweet...which is why i liked it, i didn't care for the Nurses are good people for treating a homeless person like a real person like I sure hope you would!, mel and mckay were given Nothing to work with but it's okay i'm going to be riding that stud4butch parker ellis x mel king high until s3 when they become canon that's #MyTruth.... the thing about both characters is that people love to ship propagandize them and it really hurts because like mel and langdon are Fine on the show, I don't really care, it's nice that mel has a friend but we really could crack at it again with trinity like at one point i believe it can happen i really doooo...
this is going to hurt
I think this show is actually really really well written and i think the [talks to camera]-bit really really good and really works with it and i think it made a really good choice of adaptation to split his character traits/stories between multiple protagonists, and I think there is something so well done in showing unpleasant/unlikeable/uncharming people and the conditions that made them so and how much >That doesn't matter to anyone who doesn't know!!! idk, also it's like a british show so everyone's a good actor. ambika mod really is good in this role... idk for a show that's about showing how much the system wears down on the most noble and heroic tasks/people to eventually make everything they are and do unheroic and unnoble is really really good... it's just really really good. but maybe it has a terrible second half idk haven't gotten there yet
Q1 in BL
I did lapse into a depressive episode for the feb-march period where at one point I was scouring through mgg for a reason to live... that happens to Us All... i loved to show off my insane reading/already read stats on mgg as proof of my #Real_Fujo card but um ... so they nuked that shit... rip </3 stuff I've been enjoying lately:
Tatsuki to Tamaki yoshida yuma
I saw the cover and I was like 'this is definitely pseudo-BL bc i haven't seen it in the yaoi tag, and lo and behold! it was. it has decent art and I think it's funny and charming and enjoy all the dynamics being presented and i think it's really self-aware in a good way, bc at one point one of the characters does an aside about enjoying the SL and wanting that to be the main cp over the actual cp and I was like >OH! So you do mean to write this in a way where, I, the susceptible reader would also be doing that!!!.... also i loooove the editor character at one point there's a panel where she holds out her own nui doll to take a picture of at a tourist spot and i'm like OP YOU GET EVERYTHINGGGG... i also think they have a really strong grasp on what their characters are and what they do and that sort of stability/direction is really nice to see.... ig it's kind of the rocky aur rani of this batch...
you are my world bbong
I love buff uke, I love pathetic sopping wet pretty boy seme, op definitely understands what is erotic and sexy about a built male body, it's fulfilling most of my conditions even though i lowkey despite tsundere uke. however we did just get to the rape plot which i really didn't think was going to happen but it is omegaverse bl i guess.... anyway i really like it so far and op has created a dynamic i think is soooo delicious [mostly in part due to how the seme is acting] so yayyyy yiippeeeee.
courtside courtship samjang shaman
MY GOAT 1PICK OF THIS BATCH. i love the art i love the way it's coloured i think the expressions op draws for the seme and his siblings are so fucking funny as are their interactions, i love my ukes and plots a little absurd with it AND I LOVE A TENDERHEARTED SEME!!!!! this is literally so so delicious and good for me and i really have been waiting on this official trans stockpile for a while and I am excited for me!!!!
golden light for you baetodi
oh i really can't say that much about it bc i am knocking against the concept and older uke and stupid young puppy seme, but the uke is litr so handsome and my type so it's good for me because of that... and i do like yakuza mafia plot like ofc i love dumb mindless violent dog uke like that's catnip to a guy like meeee ... i also do love a mentally fragile delicate suicidal seme [coming up later] but this guy does not stay in that state for long enough... i also love a young girl side character soooo cuuute to meeee
family liver registry soru
speaking of cute little babie girl children... i'm sorry i'm easy i litr love a co-parenting bl it's so funny to meeee... litr the little sister is so facking cuuute and i love her gag with the made up mascot character of choice ... nice dynamics nice set up nice art im enjoying everything. it's randomly supernatural and it did feel like Well? What Ok peggles but i like when the seme is a victim to Ploys and Schemes and Susceptible to Evil Influence better than when the uke is so that's a plus... also i love the exact kind of idiot the seme is so that's also enjoyable to me...
the taming chada
just put the buff handsome black hair uke and delicate frail prettyboy seme in the bag. just put the fries in the bag bruh. we all know what i like and this is fulfilling the base requirements. i actually don't like size difference that much but it's fine.. it's not like Bad i also love the class difference/servant-master cosplay so it's going to be sooo sad when it ends but let me enjoy it while i can...
the 11th school trip do haneul
i like the art and character design. pretty regular webnovel mystery solving bl set up... another one to the bag of emotionally fragile delicate semes that have to be treated with care and handled carefully... i will not be reading this again until the extras come out so like, see you in 100390404 years... I'll be here.. enjoying bl for ever...
office hero LattePanda
shoutout to LattePanda my goattttt.... beautiful textures and lines and always understanding plain/handsome black hair uke and prettyboy seme ... and this time he's psychologically tortured and cold and distant and ill of health.... LITERALLY WHAT MORE COULD I ASK FOR!!! i also love the one-sided reincarnation love trope i love when a guy suffers romantically it's always good for me....
sorry that these reviews were so scant in detail but like most of these are only 20-ish chapters rn I don't have much to say!!!
so hopefully there was something for everyone... that's my q1 wrap-up. did personal things happen to me also? probably. actually can everyone please please please go look at my alhaitham plate rn!!! if that attachment does not work LMK i will move it onto gdocs. not only is that an image my mother has received [to which she replied: why didn't you make me anything?] but she has been told a few other harmless facts, so everyone take bets on what she's doing with that information.
f1 ships that are real in the text but idrgaf
Apr. 4th, 2026 05:16 pmyes i got into f1 ten months ago no i do not care for any of the big government assigned yaoi—EXCEPT for 3316 fake ass made-up fake so fake it ends up being kinda real ship that is textually held together by the overblown cliche childhood rivals karting lore and max's retcon shoujo-tinted horse blinders charles love-vision. nonetheless i begrudgingly acknowledge respect the textual reality of canon relationships / friendships on the f1 grid bc i am a scholar first and foremost. so here are the ships that are "real" to me, i.e. have so much textual basis i would consider it canon, never said that it was good or that i liked it tho.
( if 'girl whatever' was a list )
( if 'girl whatever' was a list )
Did BL Fall Off? – 2026 q1 review
Apr. 1st, 2026 03:29 pmclickbait title 😂 well i suppose i'm half-serious...? as an avid bl slop consumer for the past 10+ years, lately i have noticed that bl reading my beloved routine pre-bedtime activity for so long has fallen off a bit. undoubtedly my somewhat recent descent into f1 yaoi (i know) is partially to blame, but combined with The Great M*ng*g* Listpocalypse of Jan 2026 i feel like it's just been harder for me to find the will to keep up with it, especially any series that i was only following out of habit anyway. having finally intermittently & manually added some of them back these past two months, i thought it would be appropriate to recap and review my current reading/read/want to read while the numbers are still fairly manageable. "recently" to me is defined as within the past six months.
CURRENTLY READING
- dreadful night - mo-an (75 chapters, ongoing)
time loop horror game simulation story with a seme who is sooo The Killer (not to be confused with the “real” killer in the horror story.. but he does still kill people!!) and obsessive about the uke and a uke who is like can we please focus on the task at hand stop trying to fuck me!! perfect dynamic. tbh when i first started this manhwa it felt like op was cosplaying having the mind of a mastermind a bit, like where is this all going…but then season 2 hit and i was like wait maybe op does have the mind of a mastermind #real not clickbait? #TrustTheProcess. even though the story is still mildly confusing and would probably be greatly enhanced with a reread or reference to fanmade gdoc of plot points and theories, dreadful night is pretty engaging; it has a fairly compelling mystery thriller plot and a good amount of cockenbahls. if i had to nitpick i would say the pacing and balance are a bit spotty though, for a while in the first season op was edging and blueballing us so bad and then when they finally were allowed to fuck, it was entire chapters of smut followed by barely any plot progression before we would go back to entire chapters of fucking again, and i would be like can op pls get back to plot PLEAA… which is a rare sentiment from me truly but i guess it goes to show how badly i want to see the story resolved lol
- the thread that never burned - goodmen / monnyang (35 chapters, ongoing)
gorgeous art that i honestly think powerscales all of op's other works so bad though it still does have the typical egregious size difference that is signature of her seme-ukes. plot is fairly predictable but it’s enjoyable in a way that feels light and easy despite there literally being mafia business and non/dubious consent and kept wife(shaman) trope? the full page dream-like sequences from the historical era backstory really add to this bl's visual appeal.
- guiding hazard - sunsun / chungnyung (74 chapters, ongoing)
guide/esper bl from the same artist who did angel buddy, consistent art as always. kind gentle seme who wants to take care of the headstrong uke that refuses to be taken care of…tale as old as time. uke has an ugly rapist ex that doesn’t know when to quit…when he finally gets his comeuppance i imagine it will be so gratifying but for now we must dither in the uke’s abandonment issues induced “i don’t deserve love” trauma spiral bc he thinks the seme is too good for him. pack it upppp like i swear to god if we don’t wrap this shit up in 15 more chapters…
- semantic error side stories - j soori / angy (2 chapters, ongoing)
i didn’t know there were side stories until recently! i remember enjoying the main series when i read it a couple years ago, seme is typical asshole with a heart of gold and uke is so amazingly autistic despite op repeatedly saying he’s not. but he is. lighthearted and comedic enough, iirc main story was r15 so you don’t really get explicit smut but the story carries on well without it anyway.
- jinx - mingwa (95 chapters, ongoing)
in mingwa typical fashion we have boomerang brows asshole seme and pushover doormat chronic victim uke ft. thee most cliche noncon to love(?) plot progression ever. jinx is a one step forward two steps back kind of story which is so frustrating but nothing new given that wbk from bj alex lol. i will say i like dan’s character design better than the bj alex uke (i forgot his name lol) but that really is not saying much given that i don’t even like op’s art style that much. so it really begs the question what am i still doing here? well… sometimes you shop for things you like at the things you hate store to test ur abilities. or something. i am hate-reading in the name of ostensibly giving her another chance 🫶
- my guildmate next door - angela, honey trap / bijak (110 chapters, ongoing)
also known by the title virtual strangers. sometimes i have to pause reading this for a few updates because the secondhand embarrassment i get from seme being a stupid idiot baby who has never socialized with normal people in his entire life is actually insane. i think this is dubbed as the orv bl in some parts of the internet due to faint visual similarities to manhwa depictions of yjh and kdj but that is literally where the veryyy tangential similarities end. i actually do like uke's personality a lot but seme pisses me off so bad like bro is ragebaiting the fuck out of me!! sorry it’s actually not that serious. but i need him to grow up like yesterday.
DROPPED / PAUSED
- a tree without roots - lapo (97 chapters, ongoing)
i keep meaning to come back to this but i get scared... not in the sense that anything overly violent or actually scary is going to happen but. i don't know. i'm scared. younger blonde seme that keeps his ex-guardian older uke captive… heeseo is literally top that doesn’t understand why the bottom won’t love him despite behaving extremely scarily and abnormally… the dynamic is actually so :slurp: emoji i really should get back into reading it.
- between the lines - hodot (85 chapters, ongoing)
- backlight - gangddo (65 chapters, ongoing)
- dash - ijen / skye (41 chapters, ongoing)
spoiled the plot for myself by reading a good amount of chapters from the bl novel, it seems like a pretty decent popcorn bl centered around athlete/manager + swimming + omegaverse, i'm just not super inclined to get back into it rn but i remember thinking the webnovel was a breezy easy read.
- negative love - gyeon (53 chapters, ongoing)
got baited by seme named jaemin… likely place for me to be. but this one is just… not very engaging. seme jaemin is very much creepy killer in this, which theoretically should be so up my alley, but i think everything is just falling slightly flat. uke has asshole ex that belittles him which i guess is supposed to make jaemin look so much better in comparison but i just kinda feel like this one is going nowhere.
- kiss me if you can - zig / giho, sanho (37 chapters, ongoing)
another bl i put in timeout for cringing me out too much. art is fine, i just wish seme would stop acting like that. getting jealous of uke's SISTER like brother can we please get a couple of braincells up here. chase is really so beautiful blond (and also coincidentally purple-eyed) seme though, maybe i'll pick it back up again if i can turn off my brain enough to stop rolling my eyes.
- case file compendium - meatbun doesn't eat meat (webnovel, completed)
i’ve tried to read this like 3 or 4 times and i’ve just never gotten past chapter 100 absolutely no hate to meatbun tho. this also has all the tropes i should like on paper: crazy obsessive rich younger seme that is lowkey the killer, stoic doesn't-know-he's-beautiful uke, mild (for bl standards) age gap, some kind of background mystery, handwavey magical realism, etc… i think i just haven’t managed to find a good epub and lock in lol i’ll get to it some time.
RECENTLY FINISHED
- love loop - gungjwi (10 chapters, completed)
- cash or credit - goodmen (71 chapters, completed)
same artist as thread that never burned, it’s mafia prison bl so you know that consent is nonexistent but honestly a fairly enjoyable brain smoothening popcorn bl for the cockenbahls. op does get egregious with the proportions and art especially as the chapters progress but it is something that i can overlook and quite frankly expect from her at this point lmao.
- mr. a's farm (s1) - nachioboy (24 chapters, ongoing)
not even sure i have the words to describe this one but. wow. i honestly respect that op is unabashedly a freak. genuinely looking forward to see what crazy shit is in store for s2.
- alpha predator - shui qian cheng (webnovel, completed)
i don’t know... started reading this upon nizrec like 1.5-2 years ago and stopped when the translator disappeared 60 chapters in. finally picked it back up randomly a couple months ago using another translation that i assume was edited mtl or just lower(?) quality but regardless it was a swift read and honestly not as good as i remember. typical wife-chasing story, i suppose the handful of cockenbahls chapters did hit.
TO-READ (mostly oomfrec)
- the 11th school trip - do haeneul / mingnyu
poppyrec! i heard this is a time loop one and i do love myself a good time loop so… hopefully i will add it to the rotation soon. it looks promising...
- curveball and splitter - bad pharmacy
beautiful looking art i saw on twt… #1 bait taker in the world i’m looking. also in my sports yaoi era so 🧐
- 18's bed - cheongdam, munseullo / jatae
the 3-4 month period where ciel was begging half of us to read this 😂 um.. ill get to it.
honestly i cannot say i rec many of these like this is not a rec list, to be clear. just A list. of choices i have made. shopping at the slop store for slop. lowkey i do feel like my gen & hetslop manhwas have been mogging a bit but feel free to drop recs for me here or down below 🫶 maybe it will convince me that bl is so back...or maybe it never fell off?