love that ilya is actually kinda confused when he meets shane for the first time but then as soon as shane goes for the SECOND handshake in a 2 minutes interaction his whole body language changes and hes like oh. OH hes flirting with me,, and he was !! ! (sighs) shane hollander youre so cute and lovable. ilya didnt stand a chance
i cant believe i said 2 minutes on my og post thinking i was exaggerating how short the interaction was just for it to actually be less ! !! !!! (46 seconds between handshakes, shane hollander youre a slut)
Me at age 13, exhausted at school after staying up all night to read fanfic: I canât wait until Iâm an adult and I can stay up reading without any consequences!
Me, an adult, exhausted at work after staying up all night reading fanfic: Fuck.
Itâs been a point of debate for twenty-seven years and counting, ever since Mulan was released to American theaters all over the country on June 19, 1998. You still see debates about it on the internet, you still see people aggressively insisting that Shang is 100% heterosexual and only fell for Mulan after she was outed as a girl, you still see people making bisexual edits of Shang and holding him up as a âbisexual iconâ and accusing Mulan (2020) of practicing LGBTQ+ censorship by removing Shangâs character.
My personal belief is simple: Shang was in love with Ping, but the cisgender and heterosexual filmmakers were not thinking about bisexuality when they wrote his and Mulanâs love story.
Sound confusing? Yes. But Iâll try to break it down for you in simple terms, so youâll hopefully understand where Iâm coming from. Hopefully, it might even make you want to rewatch the movie and look for what Iâm talking about, because I think itâs very obvious if youâre just paying attention to the film itself, not internet discussion based on nostalgia.
The thesis is this: Shang was unconsciously drawn to Ping, Mulanâs male disguise, but only believed his attraction was âbrotherly loveâ. He felt brotherly affection and respect for Ping at first, as indicated by him smiling at Ping for âhisâ impressive progress in the second half of âIâll Make a Man Out of Youâ and looking back at Ping for the âYouâre a great captainâ comment. These feelings slowly started to change off-screen, somewhere between the training montage over three weeks (âIâll Make a Man Out of Youâ) and the time passing montage of the platoon traveling (âA Girl Worth Fighting Forâ), as he felt more and more drawn to Ping during their off-screen friendship and comradery in the army.
This friendship culminated in Mulan/Ping reaching out to Shang and telling him, âIâm sorryâ, as condolences during his grieving for his father at the ruined village. Shang touched Pingâs shoulder to acknowledge that âhisâ condolences meant a lot to him, and he valued âhisâ friendship.
After Ping saved Shangâs life in the avalanche, Shang realized he had fallen in love with Ping. He showed this by touching Pingâs shoulder again and, this time, smiling at âhimâ and telling Ping âheâ has his trust. This is tantamount to a love confession from someone as reserved, stoic, and Chinese-coded as Shang. He does not smile at any of his men unless itâs sarcastic (âYao, thank you for volunteering.â), and is not friendly with any of them except Ping. Ping is the sole exception to his very nature, the one person he thought he could trust and even love after his fatherâs death.
But of course, that was when Mulan fainted from the sword wound Shan Yu gave her, was treated for her injuries, and had her secret exposed as a result. And Shang is catatonic, devastated, and so angry and hurt by the fact that not only did his true love lie to him the entire time they knew each other, but also the fact that he has to kill her for being a woman who joined the army despite knowing the law against it.
Shang spares Mulanâs life because she, as Ping, saved him during the avalanche. He leaves her behind with her provisions because he cannot bear to look at her anymore.Â
And it is when Mulan bravely leads a rescue mission to save the Emperor, and proves she loves Shang by saving him from Shan Yu, that Shang realizes he truly loves Mulan, and wants to be with her, because he does not care about her gender. He cares about what he saw in her heart: her kindness, strength, courage, and intelligence. He never cared about what was between her legs; all he wanted was her love, and in the end, he got it.
Thatâs what makes Mulan and Shang a perfect match, in my opinion. They deserved each other so much, and they got to be together in the end. A kiss would have been nice, but in the end, it wasnât necessary. They already proved their love without one.
I never thought I'd say this but Rick being so involved in this tv show was the worst thing that could've happened to it.
First, it makes close to impossible to critique anything without The Cult of Riordan jumping you and shutting down each and every discussion with responses like this one.
Secondly, and other people have said this before (including Rick himself), he's using the show basically as a rewrite â and unfortunately, he's a much worse writer nowadays. Maybe pjotv would be better in the hands of someone willing to treat it purely as an adaptation, and not a chance of a soft reboot of the books and to spite the movies
i just finished good morning call s1 and watched the first ep of s2 and holy shit i hate urehara and nao so muchhhh. this show is so infuriating but i canât get enough of it đđ
everyone gives nao shit for acting like a child all the time and jumping to unnecessary conclusions but UREHARA LITERALLY SUCKS. he doesnât communicate with her barely, shows her any attention, and treats her terribly most of the times. nao literally had better connection and relationships with every other guy while urehara barely acknowledged her. i was strapped to my seat waiting every single goddamn episode for him to finally show an inch of affection during the last 2 minutes of each episode. the show is ridiculous and if you want to feel like youâre going on a never ending stomach turning rollercoaster then you should watch.
crazy how this was two years ago. i ended up dropping good morning call after the first episode of season 2 because it was too emotionally damaging. i decided to come back to the show a few days ago and have successfully finished the show.
season 2 was amazing! nao and ureharaâs relationship matured a lot and they were doing so good! so many cute moments! then natsumeâs bitch ass had to come in and ruin everything. he fucking sucked, nao and urehara let him stomp all over their relationship and they treated him kindly like he didnât just ruin all the character development that they had. urehara should have murdered his bitch ass for kissing his girlfriend not once but TWICE. he was truly the villian of the season and deserved a good ass beating. PUNCH HIM AGAIN UREHARA. how could you kiss your best friendâs girl as sheâs crying about her insecurities, what can kind of douchey asshole would do that? oh yeah fucking natsume. i was so tired of his bitch ass there was no need for him to be in every single scene after nao rejected him PLEASE GO AWAY.
the ending was fine, iâm glad it ended with urehara FINALLY telling nao how he felt. i wish they did the classic drama thing were we get the flash forward to them married with kids but thatâs just me. i might lowkey go back and watch season 1. overall though 7/10 for me :p wishing you the best urehara and nao! and a big FUCK YOU to natsume đ
i think we are all forgetting something when we talk about how toxic patrick, tashi, and art are â or when we decide one is âworseâ than the other. they all have moments of seeing right through it, seeing each otherâs toxic behavior for what it is, and STILL want and need each other in this possessive, envious, visceral way.
1. in the way beginning, tashi is clearly flirting more with art than patrick, and patrick is visibly annoyed. art sees right through it and even challenges him like âokay, letâs leaveâ, and has this little smirk on his face because he knows patrick wonât give up on tashi.
2. tashi immediately sees the visible tension and love between art and patrick, and literally orchestrates their first kiss. she sees right through their repression, and even calls herself a âhome-wreckerâ but still entangles herself with them, especially patrick because heâs clearly the better tennis player at that point and that is tashâs ONLY true love. tennis. thatâs what she desires most in him, and patrick knows that. he even calls her out on it in the dorm room scene. but they have this mirroring fire in each other that neither of them can give up, not until patrick breaks the balance and bails â tashiâs injury is literally a metaphor for the balance shattering between all three of them when patrick leaves her.
3. before this, patrick sees right through art trying to break them up, and even admires that quality â maybe even feels smug and flattered because art is jealous and feels left out from both tashi and patrick. patrick has known this all along, we saw it in the âtick-serveâ scene, where he even swears to tashi he wonât tell anyone but he still tells art, who is desperate to feel a part of them and patrick wants that, too â even keeps that close intimacy with art that we see in the churro scene (swoon swoon swoon).
4. havenât you noticed that arts desire to be great is only ever tied up in patrick and tashi? how he needs to beat patrick to win tashis affection, how he needs to win in tennis so that tashi can live through him, how he lives up to his potential in the ending only because tashi and patrick push him to it, in their little fucked up ways? he knows this â he even admits that heâs playing for tashi, that he knows sheâs living through him. he even admits heâs playing a fucked up little game with patrick when theyâre in the sauna. yet he still does it. again, he knows whatâs happening, sees right through them â still does it, still loves them.
5. when tashi calls patrick to come pick her up he knows itâs not just to tell him to throw the match â and despite how she battles him about it, they still have sex in the car, because he already knows. heâs so fully aware of her and her game and heâs so willing to be caught up in it, the same as art.
just some examples of how they all have moments of clarity and agency and yet they still choose to be entangled in one another because theyâre all fucked up in their own, individual ways, and theyâre all living through each other for their own specific needs. arts is to be seen as worthy, as great, but only through their gaze. tashis is to have the career that was stolen from her. patricks is truly to be in love and in lust with both of them, because we even see that from the beginning that tashis love alone will never satiate him; it has to be arts love, too. that scene in the sauna when he thinks heâs lost it from art is the most sad and fucked up we ever even see patrick. on top of tashi asking him to throw the game â heâs so defensive of arts feelings.
in short this is an actual love triangle (and i would go as far as to see it as a polyship). you canât erase one without the whole thing unraveling, and you canât say one character was the âworstâ without picking apart the motivations and pointing to the fact that their bad behavior was never a secret or left unchecked.
even at the end, patrick signals to art that he slept with tashi â art knows and they still have that intimate completion at the end, all three of them. art living up to his potential and embracing patrick fully (id argue this could even be a metaphor for embracing his bisexuality), patrick having both tashi and arts affection again, and tashi playing a phenomenal tennis match through her little white boys â in such a visceral, emotional way that she cries out like she did in the beginning and the last frame is her smiling.
in a fucked up way, they all get what they wanted out of each other.
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