#mlcts

[heretherebedork]

Hands that confront, hands that speaks, hands that comfort, hands that love.

[heretherebedork]

Moonlight Chicken is about moving on, about finding community, about learning to love, about learning to let go, about realizing you were never alone, about trusting in love, abut overcoming your internalized prejudices, about the power of relationships (romantic, platonic and familial) and how they are shaped in day and in night and in life and in death and in loss and in gain and in change and in choices, it's about your family and it's about what family means and it's about loving with your whole heart and smashing down your walls and opening up even when you know you might get hurt again.

[heretherebedork]

And this is who Li Ming is. He is the new generation. He questions if he has to love his mother, though he will be grateful to her and he knows he must be. But he questions if he has to love her, if he has to go with her, if he has to care about her beyond gratitude for giving birth to him. But he does not question his love of Jim, he knows that he loves his uncle who has raised him, he knows that he is loved and that he loves in return.

And there is the heart of it all. That they understand each other, in the end, even when they're arguing and even when they're upset, even when they toe the line of what love lets you do to the people you love and who love you in return. Even when Li Ming is pushing Jim because he's hurt and afraid and angry at a world that doesn't accept him as he is and doesn't give him anything in return for his effort he still loves him, still loves his uncle in a way he doesn't know if he loves his mother.

[heretherebedork]

Li Ming acting as a translator for Heart to his own mother, translating his signs because she never bothered to learn in the three years he's been Deaf, Li Ming having to be Heart's voice when he doesn't want to speak the words because he doesn't want it to be true, because he loves his friend and he wants to protect him, wants to comfort him, not facilitate an argument with his parents.

Li Ming learned sign language for Heart in months of knowing him. He translates his words and he aches because he knows how desperate Heart is for that connection with his parents, with the rest of the world, with people around him.

And then to have Jim, out of fear and out of love and out the need to protect him, not to support his choices? Li Ming feels just as unheard as Heart, just as silenced, even though he and Jim are speaking the same language.

But watching Li Ming give freedom to Heart and promising to never stop is what gives Jim the chance to step up to Wen, to reach out to him, to bring him home because he sees what love can do, what love can be, what mountains and languages love can learn.

They are all changing each other, love stories that wind and wend and find each other, light up each other and guide the way to a leading them to new stars.

[heretherebedork]

Hands hands hands because hands mean so much to them, hands are language and hands are comfort and hands are powerful and hands speak and hands can be silent and hands are together and they are nothing without their hands.

Li Ming has learned so much for Heart and Heart has opened up so much and together they are facing a world that doesn't want to hear their voices but they will make themselves heard, they will not be ignored, they will not be silenced, they will not be muted, they will not let the people who are supposed to raise them up push them down and their dreams are theirs and no one else's and they will shape them together with their hands.

[heretherebedork]

Affection and love and teasing and comfort and dancing and freedom can be found anywhere with the right person because they will bring it to you.

[heretherebedork]

Heart's parents are finally, finally, finally learning sign for their son. They saw Li Ming talk to him, understand him, translate for him and they're finally trying and you can see his joy, see the way he is just so happy to be able to understand his parents again, to not need to save every word they've written because those aren't all he has any longer.

[heretherebedork]

Li Ming and Heart are both used to being unheard and Li Ming being Heart's voice when Jim doesn't listen to his but Heart's mother hangs on every word but still rarely looks at her son and Heart watching Jim try to pull Li Ming away from the argument but needing him there so he could be understood, so he could understand because only Li Ming was willing to include him in the conversation but also only Heart has the power to keep Li Ming there and let him talk to his mother the way he did.

Li Ming had all the power of translation but Heart had all the social power and only with both of them together could they make themselves heard and understood.

(Jim and Heart's mother are the problem and the past. Jim cannot let Li Ming risk himself offending the people in power and she cannot bother to learn to communicate with her son but they both expect their views to be respected as the right ones simply because they are adults.)