#derail

[supplyside]

derailment

[yaoigremlin]

Recent Reads: 11/11 - 11/16

[blrecs]

13/50: you got a childhood friend or lover in me ("try & i love you," "derail," and "love song of the cracker ball")

Sometimes when you don't like a trope you end up devoting your entire week reading Futekiya's back catalogue of the trope and come up for air on a Sunday realizing you should probably say something about it. So, let's talk about childhood friends to lovers.

The splash page of the first chapter of echo's "Try & I Love You" features main characters Ren and Takumi imitating the poster art of a romantic movie they later go on to watch on their first date. This is the movie Takumi convinces them to pick it over Ren's suggestion (some sort of MCU parody) because "if we don't watch something like this, we won't feel the love, right?" The movie is a disaster; they both are so dissatisfied that they end up going to see Ren's pick immediately after. Worried that they've slipped back into friend territory, Takumi and Ren hold hands ("Friends don't do that, do they?") only to realize that friends, in fact, do hold hands, or at least they did, as friends, when they were younger. What else, then, could they do to differentiate themselves from the mere friends they used to be? Hugging, hobbies, hanging out, compatibility—these are all shared by the "lesser" couplings of friends or fuck-buddies. So, Takumi concludes, it must be sex after all. Or is it?

I was not blown away by "Try & I Love You," but I very much appreciate its existence. Unlike many other iterations of the "childhood friends to lovers" storyline (some of which I'll discuss later), it is the rare, unadulterated version of this trope: two childhood friends who harbor no romantic interest in each other before they decide in a moment of "why not?" to date each other. Accordingly, the plot consists entirely of Takumi and Ren struggling with what dating means for their friendship, if it means anything at all. In chapter 2, Takumi complains to his coworker that "it doesn't feel like we're lovers at all." They are too comfortable with each other and know each other too well. Instead of going out, they rent a bunch of movies and watched them at home. Instead of a popular cafe, they go to an all-you-can-eat-crabs buffet. They cuddle and make miso soup for each other after a night of drinking and go to a gyoza festival where they feed each other and even though Takumi's heart pounds at seeing Ren's happy face, he still wonders, "What if I tell Ren I want to date like real couples?" What the hell are you talking about, the reader may be yelling at this point. Are you not already dating like a real couple?

This week I was chatting about relationships and heteronormativity with my good friend Caitlin, who always has something smart to say. She reminded me that part of rebuking heteronormativity is "figuring out who you are versus what you think you are based on stories." In the case of "Try", the stories are contained in things like the movie Takumi and Ren imitated in chapter one, a romanticized fantasy narrative about how love should be performed and how dating should feel. Love feels like butterflies in the stomach, demands certain date spots and behaviors, and most importantly should not be comfortable during the honeymoon period. It should include some sort of physical manifestation of sexuality, because in these stories, you have sex with one person and that one person is the partner you date exclusively. These stories are predictable and iterative patterns of behavior that, for many people and for Takumi and Ren, make us doubt love even when we are staring it in the face.

In our society and in Takumi and Ren's, these stories are also straight ones, the heterosexual part of heteronormative. Ren's ex-girlfriend Sayaka breaks up with him because she realized she is attracted to women, and in the aftermath, Ren realizes he was distracted by years of heterosexuality into thinking that his feelings for Takumi cannot be the same romantic feelings he has for Sayaka, simply because Sayaka is a woman and Takumi is not. Later, when Takumi misunderstands Ren's motivations for dating him, Ren comes to a second discovery, even more radical than the first: that the issue is not whether Sayaka is a woman or that Takumi is a man, but that Ren wants to stay with Takumi, even if it means chasing and begging and fighting for a chance.

If love is anything at all, echo argues, it's not in sex or kissing or holding hands. At its most basic core, it must reside in the desire to be with the other person. For Sayaka was similar to Takumi in the ways that attracted her to Ren: they have fun together, they like the same things. But Ren was willing to give up Sayaka, simply because she said she loves women. And Ren wanted to date Takumi, even if Takumi never expressed an interest in men.

There is something dangerously close to aromanticism in Takumi, and part of me thinks echo could have gone the full nine yards with that. "Up until now, I've never been in a relationship because I fell in love with them," Ren admits to Takumi. Later, he explains, "I think girls are cute, but I've noticed that I don't want to know more about them, nor do I have romantic feelings for them. I don't feel anything in particular when I see my fellow men, either." But here echo stops short, and creates a unique "gay for you" twist but for alloromanticism: Ren's feelings for Takumi are uniquely romantic and inspire him to want to be with Takumi. And that's fine; we are in the boys love genre after all. But after the confession, "Try" loses its odd appeal and becomes a kind of awkward sex romp, with Ren getting angry that Takumi is trying to practice anal sex on his own and an epilogue where it turns out that Takumi is actually an insatiable beast over, of all things, Ren's sleeping face. I can't help but wonder what, say, ymz would have done with Takumi and Ren's relationship—but, well, "Good-bye, Heron" already exists.

On the other hand, Aiba Kyoko's "Derail" is "childhood friends to lovers" by way of false advertising. Hikaru and Haru are not childhood "friends" at all, but rather two lovers who have used childhood friends as a front to hide behind. Haru is a gloomy playboy who has spent most of his life devising ways to keep Hikaru unreasonably close to him, and Hikaru is a classic maladjusted people pleaser who uses his nice guy persona to hide the fact that he derives almost all his self-worth from being wanted by Haru. Both of them have the makings of psychopaths in another story, but here they spend their energy playing tortuous mindgames in their own heads while from the outside they progress, totally normally, from friends to dating to lovers. That neither of them have any real friends other than each other becomes increasingly obvious, because any third party would have called out this relationship for what it is from the start. Oh, your childhood best friend sleeps with you in the same bed and forbids you from bringing girls home? Oh, your childhood best friend makes googly eyes at you over breakfast and lets you jerk him off? Come on, man. Be so fucking real with me right now.

The issue is, of course, that the default assumption of heterosexuality has Haru believing he needs to be playing some sort of Soulslike game with Hikaru's feelings before he can get to his goal of dating, while Hikaru believes he's unilaterally trapped Haru like a codependent spider in a web of neediness. As Haru says, when people in tense situations are pressured to pick between two unreasonable choices, they're convinced they must choose one of them. So if you are two men who want to be in each other's lives forever and to be each other's number one, heteronormativity has you believing the unreasonable choices are either to (1) not do that, which isn't an option, or (2) slide everything under the cover of "childhood friends" and hope no one, least of all yourselves, takes a closer look. This is a losing proposition, but Hikaru and Haru are so busy believing the story they tell themselves and everyone around them of being "childhood friends" that they simply cannot realize they are in an impossible situation, being forced to make unreasonable choices. They must, as one might say, find the secret third thing, which is not so secret here: just admit you love each other and leave the rest of us alone!

Unlike Takumi and Ren, I don't think Hikaru and Haru were ever friends or at least haven't been friends for a long time, too caught up as they were in stretching the boundaries of acceptable "childhood friends" behavior. And I think there's a part of their creator that agrees with me. Amusingly and in contrast with "Try," the epilogue of "Derail" features the two of them going to a hotel for a date, not to have sex, but rather to spend an evening playing video games and relaxing. This might be the closest we ever get to a "lovers to childhood friends" reverse trope, or at least as close as we'll ever get without reincarnation or isekai.

Suzumaru Minta's "Love Song of the Cracker Ball" splits the difference by featuring one character who is learning how to turn a hypothetical openness to the other gender into a very real interest in one specific male friend and another character who is doing his own one-man show of "Derail" but, like, more normal about it. Wako and Takeo have been neighbors and childhood friends for a very long time, and Wako had been depending on remaining Takeo's friend to stay Takeo's number one. When that position is threatened by Takeo suddenly musing that he'd be open to dating a guy, Wako loses equilibrium entirely and ends up confessing his long-time crush to Takeo, who of course suggests they try dating. Wako is somehow even less prepared for this possibility than he was for getting rejected, but after a lot of hand-holding and hijinks and a poorly thought out plan by Wako to figure out what inspired Takeo's gay awakening, they manage to make a proper relationship of it.

(Before we get further in this review, can I just say that I loved this story? Wako and Takeo's friendship feels so lived-in, where you can tell they are two characters with a past who are used to dealing with each other, with Takeo able to pinpoint even Wako's wildest insecurities and Wako never letting Takeo control the pace, even when, towards the end of the story, it threatens to destroy their burgeoning relationship. Suzumaru draws big, dynamic expressions for her characters that bring them to life, making even frail Wako feel explosive, and isn't afraid of making her characters not look handsome if it serves the comedic timing. In particular, I love the panel at the end of chapter 1 when Wako yells "good fucking job!" Wako's face is ugly from the exertion of screaming, and Takeo literally looks like he could fall off the rooftop stairs and into a Crayon Shin-Chan panel. Wako and Takeo's friend Manaka is my favorite side character and would deserve his own spinoff if he wasn't imbued with the pansexual appeal of a certified pretty boy. He does a surprisingly good job playing emotional referee, and it speaks to the strength of their friendship that he never once seems worried that his friends will stop needing him after they start dating each other.)

"Cracker Ball" is a spin-off of "Cupid is Struck by Lightning," and while it isn't necessary to read "Cupid" to enjoy "Cracker Ball," Takeo and the decisions he makes make a lot more sense when you have. In "Cupid," Takeo is a side character who is brought into volume two to add spice and intrigue to main characters Ao and Shingo's relationship. Arrogant, brash, and determined to teach his underclassman a lesson, Takeo comes out the other side of "Cupid" realizing that he wants what Ao and Shingo have: a love so important that you'd be willing to be retraumatized just to prove that you need and want to be the other person. That's why he's so upset at what initially looks like Wako being homophobic, only to be totally disarmed when Wako declares, "I am the one who loves you the most." "Cracker Ball" softens the blustering egocentric Takeo we see in "Cupid" (though that may be because "Cracker Ball" is partially through the POV of Wako, for whom there can be no better man than Takeo), but the animating drive of Takeo is still to be someone's number one. When the veil of heterosexuality is lifted, he realizes he's had that all along in Wako. 

Takeo is the most straightforward of the six men we see in these three series. Unbeholden to shame or crippling anxiety, he ends up cutting right to the bone of the childhood friends trope. When he corners Wako in chapter 2, he doesn't mince words and poses the questions that all friends-to-lovers pairs must answer. What can you do when you are already family, when there is already a bond that cannot break? What is beyond that, and why is it worth reaching for? "Childhood friends to lovers" is so powerful because it is a story that asks the characters to risk so much. It is a story that believes being together is worth potentially altering something that already works, because that is the only way to together explore something that may not. It is about moving into that uncertain future together, with a person both familiar and strange by your side. It is a man you have known all your life, but suddenly, he looks different. He is on the other side of a line, and that line is love. But he holds out his hand, and when you grab it, you see him for who he is. "See?" he says. "There is nothing to be scared of."

You can read all three series on Futekiya.

[corneille-moisie]

remember when i was making my annoying visual kei songs rotation ? well, all along i was looking for that one song that was like nyanya nya nya nyaaaa nyaaaa nyaaaanyaanyaaa, in pitch bent voice, and like, of course i couldnt remember who it was or the song title, so i had kinda given up on finding it cause i wasnt gonna ask my ex-friend about it

well.

i was sweeping and suddenly my brain was like DERAIL.

and i was like DERAIL.

and, yup, i found it.

Visit Original Link

[lilium-dragomir]

[askvectorprime]

What happened to Damus in IDW2? Did he ever become Tarn?

Dear Tarn Troubled,

Damus was one of the very first Cybertronians to be forged in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Threefold Spark and the ratification of the Nominus Edict. His earliest memories were of emerging into a broken, empty plaza populated by a sparse crowd of war-weary Cybertronians, whereupon a haggard Nominus Prime quickly handed him off into the care of his mentor Derail, who—though well-intentioned—was too busy working construction rotas and helping to track down Threefold Spark holdouts to truly spend time with his new mentee. It should come as no surprise that Damus struggled to relate to the people around him, and so with no clear path forward, he immersed himself in Codexa’s archives, learning everything he could about Cybertron’s past. In the days of reconstruction, some forward-thinking Cybertronians came to realize that their empire had been built upon the misery of other races, but Damus never had to directly confront the cruelty that lay beneath the Expansion’s glorious imperial veneer: as he pored through the Cybertronian archives, he saw unstoppable Titan fleets waging war, brave explorers planting flags on virgin worlds, awe-inspiring works of art and music, verminous alien aggressors brought to heel by their so-called “betters”… and he quickly began to resent Nominus Prime for robbing him of the world he should’ve known, a world had never truly existed.

Damus might’ve become an archivist, or at worst a contrarian academic, but his early education took a turn for the worse when the people of Cybertron discovered his unique, deadly gift. When correctly modulated, his vocal harmonics could subtly interfere with the regular electromagnetic impulses that governed ordinary machines… and those that powered a pulsing spark: with enough time and training, he could literally talk anyone to death. Like the Insecticons who’d preceded him, Damus was foisted off into the care of the Cybertronian Science Ministry, where he became an object of curiosity for many of Cybertron’s intellectuals. Eventually, once they’d learned everything they could from this latest prodigy, Damus was released: however, his newfound reputation meant that few Cybertronians would associate with him, and fewer still would offer him the kind of academic position he’d hoped for. Damus eventually collapsed into the dregs of society, where he spent most of his days chasing one high or another… until the day the idealistic Termagax founded a new political movement intended to return Cybertron to its glory days.

As one of the first Ascenticons, Damus became an ardent adherent to the Ascenticon cause; after all, Termagax was the first Cybertronian he’d met who was unafraid of his lethal talents. However, in time, Termagax’s resolve began to falter, and after a string of political defeats that culminated in Termagax abandoning society altogether, Damus sunk back into depression. Soon, however, a new leader arose to take up the mantle of Ascenticon leader—a charismatic firebrand named Megatron. Determined to restore “Cybertronian greatness” by any means necessary, Damus stood by Megatron’s party even as a string of violent incidents began to turn the public against Megatron’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. At first, Damus was repulsed by the kind of thuggish, indiscriminate violence exemplified by “The Rise”. In time, however, some part of him began to rationalize its necessity, then begin to take a kind of perverse glee as more and more Ascenticon rallies collapsed into anarchic violence. After all, had Cybertronians not won their cosmic birthright through conquest, as the strong asserted their dominance over the weak?

When Megatron finally made his true intentions known and overthrew the Senate, the Decepticon leader had already sent Damus to assist Jhiaxus as the ex-Senator spearheaded a Decepticon uprising in the city of Tarn and successfully conquered the region. What Jhiaxus didn’t know, however, was that Megatron—correctly suspicious of the lieutenant—had deliberately sent Damus along as a mole to pass information on his doings back to the Decepticon leader and “bring him to justice” should Jhiaxus’s ambitions get the better of him.

As the triumphant Decepticons tightened their hold over the region, Jhaixus began developing a series of full-body upgrades that would hybridize traditional Cybertronian design standards with an experimental bodytype that metabolized both energon and highly-refined nucleon fuel rods. Jhiaxus successfully tested a prototype version of the design on himself, and it should come as no surprise that Damus was the first Cybertronian who volunteered to become the “perfect Decepticon”. Damus emerged from the surgery stronger, faster, and more alive, his unique abilities now greatly enhanced. To commemorate what he proclaimed to be an inevitable Decepticon victory, Damus adopted the nom de guerre “Tarn”, to honor the city where the future of Cybertron had been created… but, before Jhiaxus could begin mass-producing an army of “perfect Decepticons”, Elita-1’s resistance unit attacked! Along with Hot Spot, Cliffjumper, and Wheel Blaze, Elita was able to sabotage the technology and deal Jhiaxus a crushing defeat, permanently stymying any hope of creating an unstoppable army. That did not bother Tarn, however: he proclaimed himself an army of one, a one-man “justice division” who wouldn’t stop until these unruly Autobot saboteurs faced Decepticon law.

[animefeminist]

Bonus Podcast (with Transcript) 2023 August: Sexy Stories with Adult Characters | Patreon

Official Post from Anime Feminist

Our monthly bonus podcast is out! We chatted about the sometimes frustrating search for sexy titles starring adult characters, and share a few of our faves.

[pareidoliaonthemove]

You ever wondered what a trains version of a flat tyre looked like?

Well, wonder no more. Found this wagon with severe damage to all eight wheels after the handbrake had been left on for over 400 km.

Shunting it into a siding vvvveeeeerrrrrryyyyy ssssslllllloooooowwwwllllyyyy, was nerve-wracking, as it was threatening to fall off the tracks at the slightest provocation. How it didn't derail is beyond all comprehension.

The extra metal on the wheels is called 'scale', and is caused by the wheel rubbing against the brake block, the wheel heats up - often enough to cause bluing of the steel (I have seen wheels glowing red hot) and it 'skims' metal off the top of the rails forming very thin layers of very fine, razor-sharp high-grade steel. If you could find a straight edge, you could use it to shave. If you get enough scale build up, it will lift the wheel enough that it can slide off the rail, causing a derailment.

Messy all around.