♡

tori | she/her | 25

[starbuck]

is this ship popular because it’s legitimately compelling or is it popular because it’s the easiest to decontextualize and write college roommate AUs about?

[starbuck]

this post broke containment and is getting ‘let people have fun and enjoy things’ comments, so i want to clarify that i hate fun and want to personally bludgeon everyone who has ever written a college roommate AU with a hammer

[bbg100]

You don't like my domestic au? But I lobotomized the characters just for you :( isn't it so nice now that everyone's happy? They all talk and forgive each other 😊 they're getting married, you know. They're pregnant, you know. Time skip soon! Two beautiful kids. After they have them they will put aside all their passions. Maybe they will never go back to the coffee shop 🤭or university 😜. Maybe they will stay at home with their children. I made this world just for you. Isn't it domestic? Isn't it perfect? Look at how everyone smiles! I am smiling :) are you?

[guiltfactory]

nothing is more thrilling to me than two men NOT fucking

[naritakyouji]

Famiresu Iko. chapter 9

Gayle Forman - Where She Went // Hera Lindsay Bird - I Knew I Loved You When You Showed Me Your Minecraft World // Lyric Hunter - A Garden

[blrecs]

19/50: and what i glimpse is love (wayama yama, "let's go to the family restaurant")

On the splash page to chapter 17 of Wayama Yama's "Let's go to the family restaurant," the sequel to her hit "Let's Go Karaoke!", Oka Satomi stares at the reader through a donut, which he holds up to one eye, obscuring half his face. His expression is oddly serious, though with Satomi, you can never really tell. In the margin text on the next page, Wayama (or at least, the authorial voice) asks us, "What do you see through the hole of a donut?"

What do you see when you look at "Famiresu"?

What do you see when you look at Oka Satomi?

I see what I see every week when I write about bl. I see a story about love.

-

If I had started this post with, "this summer we are finally getting an anime adaptation of one of the best non-bl stories about a boy coming to terms with his queerness," you'd be forgiven for assuming I was talking about the fantastic Cygames adaptation of Mokumokuren's "The Summer Hikaru Died." But I am here to argue that "Famiresu" (and, to some extent, "Karaoke" as its prequel) deserves its laurels too, that Wayama's unique talent in not saying, in guiding her readers and characters through quiet spaces where they can figure out their own stories in their own time, has made it too easy to dismiss Satomi's own "coming out" and journey to acceptance.

Yoshiki is, of course, explicitly queer (in love with his same-sex best friend), but queerness in "The Summer Hikaru Died" does not live and die there. Yoshiki is marked as "different", "abnormal": his family is different, his mother doesn't fit in, his sister doesn't go to school, he likes weird music, he feels restrained by the small town around him, he wants to move to Tokyo. When 'Hikaru' attaches to Yoshiki, with his red eyes and abyssal chest hole, it is only making Yoshiki's queerness visible and concrete. 'Hikaru' is the queerness metaphor as monster-object. Perhaps Yoshiki is able to handle him so well without totally falling apart because Yoshiki has been training all his life—or at least all his time with Hikaru—for this.

Satomi is also a boy to whom a monster-object has attached, who then must grapple with what it means to love and care for a monster. It's just that in his case, the monster-object is not a mysterious cursed being from the mountains, but rather the yakuza. Kyouji, like 'Hikaru,' hides the visible signifiers of his otherness—his tattoos—when out in public. Kyouji, like 'Hikaru,' behaves in alien, frustrating ways, as if he does not know how to act normally. To protect Satomi, Kyouji must balance the monster part of him—braining another man in an alley with a briefcase, threatening Okada—with the normalized exterior that he has adopted to blend in. But none of those behaviors can truly hide who Kyouji is: a member of the yakuza. He is marginalized, he is dangerous, simply having dinner with him taints by association. His "kind" can only hang out with each other, in a world full of its own rituals and slang and signals, a world that innocent young boys must be kept out of, in case they are assaulted or—worse—converted.

The yakuza have always been a deeply homosocial trope in fiction, but in "Famiresu," Kyouji's status as yakuza so dominates Satomi's anxieties about being with Kyouji that it becomes its own queerness metaphor. Satomi clings to a normal, non-yakuza life like a straight man in a bl clings to heterosexuality, even as he unconsciously twists his life into an abnormal shape for Kyouji. It's not a coincidence that Satomi and Kyouji's meetups have the air of an adulterous tryst; Satomi is married to his normal life and Kyouji to the yakuza. As a result, they cannot text each other too much or meet up too often, and must constantly lie to other people about their relationship. Instead of compulsory heterosexuality, Satomi struggles with compulsory normalcy. When Kyouji asks him about his dreams for the future in chapter 5, Satomi can only come up with the vague notion of becoming a civil servant. He has no real attachment to it as a concept; it's obvious that the real draw is that being a civil servant is the exact opposite of what Kyouji does. All this leads to the great yakiniku breakup of chapter 9, where Satomi tells Kyouji they shouldn’t meet up anymore. Normal people don't hang out with yakuza, just like normal men don't fall in love with other men.

If "The Summer Hikaru Died" begins with Yoshiki's explicit queerness before exploring a queerness metaphor in 'Hikaru,' then volume one of "Famiresu" is the queerness metaphor that becomes an explicit exploration of queerness in the chapters which will likely make up the second (and final?) volume. In Chapter 10, Satomi has one of soon-to-be-many gay mental breakdowns and then spends the rest of the chapter asking anyone who will give him the time of day, including Yahoo! Answers, whether it's gay for a man to hug another man (answer: definitely yes in Satomi's case). Finally the issue with Kyouji is not that he is a yakuza, but that he is a man.

This being Wayama, however, it isn't an issue for long. "Famiresu" is not a romance, even if Satomi and Kyouji like each other, any more than queerness is defined simply by one man being in love with another man.  There are so many kinds of love and affection in "Famiresu," none of which are normal, but all of which are real. Masanori's friendship with Kyouji is hardly normal, and his relationship with his father definitely is not. Satomi's coworker Morita appears to be in the habit of hugging men often and suggests that Satomi was simply grateful for the grub, while Satomi's classmates Mana and Maruyama seem oblivious and/or unfazed by Satomi's wild man-hugging hypotheticals. "No one cares if you like or don't like someone," scolds the anonymous answer at the end of chapter 10, embodying the entirety of the Wayama-verse worldview. Instead of worrying about liking or not liking, normal or abnormal, stop wasting time. Wake up early, study, eat breakfast, vote, shit, sleep. Text your 43-year-old situationship. Ask him to bring you 20 pork buns and two cheesecakes.

In other words, live your life.

-

What do you see when you look through a donut? Or put another way, is a donut a wholeness through which a hole is punched, or is the donut only whole because of the hole? Do you see the hole as an absence, a missing thing, a lack, or is the hole instead a defining characteristic, without which the donut would not be complete?

Is there something wrong with Satomi and Kyouji? Or is that wrongness something that defines them, without which they would not be themselves?

Do you see the hole? Or do you see the donut?

A horrible thing once happened to Oka Satomi. He went to hell to look for a monster. Once there, he was able to do what Orpheus was not and brought a man back from the dead. Like the little mermaid, he gave up his voice to save a man. It felt like love; it was probably something very close to love.

Chapter 17 doesn't frame love with loss; it frames love through loss. For Satomi to get to "I like Kyouji," he had to finally admit what has been haunting him this whole time, the coffee stain on the painting of Satomi's heart that he has been trying to rub out since the beginning of "Famiresu." He had to finally revisit being fourteen again, the heart-pounding terror he felt when he thought Kyouji was dead, and the terrible heart-pounding he felt when Kyouji told him, "I'm not gonna die and leave you behind." A "normal" person would not have crashed a yakuza karaoke competition to mourn a not-quite-friend. A "normal" person would have walked away and gone to his choir festival. A "normal" person does not need to experience love and death as two sides of the same coin to understand something about himself.

But what use is clinging to "normal" now? Hadn't Satomi already made that choice for himself four years ago, when he walked into Karaoke Heaven with Kyouji?

It is hard to say what Satomi and Kyouji have. The only thing we can say about it is that it is not "normal." When Satomi asks Yahoo! Answers, he does not get useful answers. When he searches on the internet for an explanation, he comes up empty. When he is approached by Okada with photographic evidence, he cannot explain. When he hugs Kyouji on the street, no one even registers what is happening. Strangers walk past them, uncomprehending.

In the end, love is nobody's business but your own. It is a thing and only a thing between two people, who must set their own definitions and walk their own paths. In this way, all love is abnormal. There is no normal love. In the end, the only way Satomi can arrive at an answer is by talking to Kyouji. It is only through Kyouji asking him, what do you want us to be? that Satomi can face his own feelings and arrive at an answer.

"I like him." That's all we have.

That's enough. That's everything.

You can buy "Let's Go Karaoke!" from Yen Press. Its sequel is licensed only in my dreams, but you can buy the Japanese digital release of volume one here and follow the Comics Beam releases here.

[roycohn]

that coldplay CEO scandal would never happen at a the national concert bc your dick doesn't work on military grade SSRIs

[dramastream]

HONG KYUNG as Lee Hong Sae REVENANT 악귀, 2023

[zhoudadudugongjin]

the five hottest things a fictional man can be are 1. highly intelligent 2. terminally ill 3. emotionally unavailable 4. full of trauma and regrets 5. lying about their identity

[lacnunga]

There are some characters where giving them therapy and cleaning them up is the fanfiction equivalent of buying antique furniture and painting it white

[loumandivorce]

there will be a show with two guys in a fucked up power dynamic that is the core of their relationship and all the posts will be like "i love them but i hate the power dynamic" and all the fic is like "what if there was no power dynamic" or "what if the power dynamic was switched". like okay actually i think the imbalance is fun and awesome. anyone else

[leavemeuntold]

food as a symbol of suho and sieun’s relationship in weak hero class 1

this is inspired by @dearmyloveleys’ analysis of the symbolism of food in whc1. please go read their post first, or at least after—it’s beautiful, insightful and will make what i’m about to say make much more sense.

food is involved in a lot of suho and sieun's pivotal moments of connection. the first is when sieun apologises to suho for trying to hit him when he prevented him from crossing the line.

this interaction lays the ground for the relationship the two of them will build over the rest of the first season. it's the moment suho refutes sieun's assumption that he is just another one of the boys at school out to get him. unknowingly, he creates the first crack in sieun's walls.

the food sieun goes on to buy him is a lunch at the school cafeteria (comedy king). although it's not at all what suho meant or expected, he has no problem eating it. over this meal they share, they get to know each other, and we get to hear the first little joke sieun makes in the show:

through food, they make their way into a conversation, through conversation they make their way into humour, and through humour into connection.

suho loves and enjoys food so much, it’s genuinely one of his biggest joys in life. and what he does immediately as he gets closer with sieun is feed him and share with him this joy of eating good food.

when he feeds him that ssam wrap, he says “hands make the food taste better”, but what isn’t explicitly said is that being fed by hands that love you is something different and something more.

suho makes it intensely obvious that the way to his heart is food, and food is what he ends up using to bulldoze his way through sieun's walls. and this loud and eager manner of suho's works on sieun instantly. as op pointed out, the smile in his eyes says everything: no one has ever shown him care so unrelentingly, no one has ever refused to give up on sieun so adamantly. and it means everything.

sieun takes notice of suho's intense love for food very quickly, which is made clear when he brings suho the ox knee soup he so craved to the hospital—and he doesn’t just bring food to suho, but yeongi as well.

that’s how this whole situation gains another dimension: it’s not just about sieun being attentive to suho and showing him care through food, it’s also about how suho affects sieun and begins to bring out of him the warm-heartedness that has always been there, but never had anywhere to go.

he notices and says as much: “you’re so warm-hearted. your eyes. the way you act, talk. and your face.” but what he doesn’t know is that this is his effect. he is not the one who made sieun loving and warm, but he is the one that gave him a place to finally express it, albeit in his rough, yet quiet and subtle way.

and the smile this earns him from sieun is a smile of relief, of being seen, of joy and freedom, it's sieun revealing his heart to suho for the very first time—and the way there was utterly interwoven with food.

when they feed each other, they not only sustain each other, they connect, they tell each other something more than what can be expressed in words, and through food, they both slowly carve themselves a home inside the other's heart.

while we’re here, i need everyone to take a second and look at sieun watching suho eat:

(no need to analyse this. that's sieun's first love. i feel crazy.)

moving on:

if we are to look at suho as someone who spreads joy and light through food, a big part of this being him delivering it to people, then the instance in which he brings sieun along to help him at his job is just another, more active way of him showing sieun how to express the care he feels for other people and spread joy himself; by making him do it the exact way suho himself does it.

it’s a subtle bonding moment like no other—doing something positive for the people around you together (even if they paid for it, lol.)

an instance that might go unnoticed the first time you watch (i know it did for me) is when for suho's birthday, sieun cooks him seaweed soup.

really, it symbolises a crucial moment in their relationship. the first time we see sieun give food to suho is the cheap school lunch, the second time is ox knee soup and the third is the seaweed soup.

lined up this way, these three instances can be viewed as symbolic of the stages of sieun and suho's relationship.

when sieun buys suho that school lunch, it's nothing special—it's cheap, likely not that good, and bought out of a sense of obligation.

the ox knee soup is a meal sieun orders, picks up and delivers himself—and it's the exact thing suho craved. it's thoughtfulness, gratitude, friendship and fondness, all expressed through a meal delivered to suho's hospital bed.

the seaweed soup is food sieun cooks himself for suho. it's the final stage, a most intimate act a person performs for the people close to them. made with his own hands, it one of the most subtle ways to show care and love. bearing in mind that only hours after this, sieun goes into a fight completely alone against an entire group in suho's place, this meal serves to symbolise the fact that their bond has become unbreakable, that they would risk it all for each other.

and the most shattering part of this: the same way we never see suho eat the soup, sieun never gets to express all the tenderness, love and care he feels for suho directly to him. he's taken away from him too quickly for that. all of that unexpressed warmth, devotion and affection stays brimming inside sieun, until we see it spill out of him in the form of violence, pure rage and then life-altering grief.

to end off, i want to discus one more instance in which food comes into play as a symbol in whc1, in arguably one of its most devastating scenes:

first, it’s suho who declines, and we see sieun’s face drop—

—and it’s not just in temporary disappointment that he can’t make plans with a friend. it’s in a sense of unease that signals that this is the moment after which nothing will ever be the same: suho blatantly refusing to go get food, when from the beginning he has been the one always loudly and enthusiastically suggesting it and without fail agreeing to it.

then, beomseok declines as well. we could look at this as just another instance where no matter how there sieun is and how much understanding and friendship he offers beomseok, all beomseok ever saw and wanted was suho, so if he’s not going, he has no interest in going either.

both of the boys leave the classroom and sieun is left alone once again, dread blatant on his face, audible in the piano tune in the background that turns slow and quiet, until it fades out completely—and that’s when we know: this was the last good moment the boys will ever have together. it was the beginning of the end.

whc1 has managed something i haven’t seen in a while—to quietly and implicitly tell a story of such depth, to pour such symbolism into every line, every shot and camera angle, every expression on the actors’ faces and through this make the blatantly violent and loud scenes that much more impactful in a new and different way.

especially when it comes to the characters’ inner feelings and their relationships to each other, barely anything is ever told explicitly, and still nothing goes unnoticed if you’re willing to pay attention, even as a casual viewer.

i’m so grateful to every person who worked on this show and i hope they know we see with just how much love and care it was created.

thank you op for inspiring this <3

[stuckinapril]

kitten I’ll be honest the finality of everything in this world haunts daddy like a second shadow

[papayajuan2019]

i hear keeping it bottled up inside is all the rage now

[naturalbornbiter-deactivated202]

i hate that being emotionally unavailable is so associated with masculinity. which is why i must stay emotionally unavailable. for feminism.

[bigandretired-deactivated202501]

[userkirian]

stop romanticizing your self imposed suffering! leave it in the closest recycling bin!

heather havrilesky // disco elysium // richard silken // Mary Oliver // Jumo Avilés // Jen Mazza // Joan Didion

[thatgirlmegan]