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talking about love
i've been thinking a lot recently about three bl relationships that are Important To Me:
and i know myself and i'll never love anyone else
i won't love anyone else
i'll never love anyone else
i've been rewatching minato's laundromat and last night i got literally 2 minutes into an episode and had to stop and just lie facedown in my pillow. rewatching really emphasizes that this show did not need to be 12 episodes long but then at the same time it's like i would watch 12 more episodes of them. i will be counting down the minutes to each episode when season 2 starts airing. it's just that shin loves minato so much, with the earth shattering delusional true love characteristic of a teenager but at the same time with such genuine sincerity. you believe shin when he says that minato is the love of his life, not because it's a bl world where the first person you imprint on as a child is your soulmate but because shin is, respectfully, insane. his single-minded focus is more terrifying than inspiring, but his love for minato is heartfelt and real, or at least it's real to him. minato's feelings are a little less clear throughout the series, first inhibited by practical reasons (hello problematic age gap) and then by his own deep sense of shame. i remember reading complaints when the series was airing that they were drawing out the sakuma-sensei storyline across too many episodes but for me, as someone with a truly impressive shame complex, i got it. the way that shame constantly lingers in your mind, that way you feel like you'll be stuck in one place until you resolve it. when minato finally addresses things head on with sakuma-sensei and the release, his grief not over unrequited love but over the years he spent holding onto that guilt. and he would've never gotten there without shin, straightforward to a fault, showing that he is capable of not running away.
you do not have to be good.
you do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
you only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
i am sorry to break out the mary oliver quote but i think about these lines in the context of jiwoo and seojoon all the time. sometimes i have the urge to gatekeep to my star 2 from people because the idea that jiwoo did not deserve his happy ending is just Wrong. if you think that jiwoo needed to earn seojoon's forgiveness, you've missed the point. there is so much tenderness, so much compassion in the way that seojoon sees jiwoo being vulnerable, sees the bravery in jiwoo taking that step forward and in him saying, "you said when it's hard, you would come to me", and he decides that it's enough. seojoon doesn't need jiwoo to beg; he just needs to know that jiwoo can overcome his fear. i get it, because i spent 80% of the season yelling at my screen for han jiwoo to grovel and wanting to shake him by the shoulders (it doesn't help that hwang daseul's style leads to somewhat inscrutable characters), but then episodes 8-10 came along and reminded me that everything was new for jiwoo. he'd never let himself love with that much depth before and you can see how terrifying it was for him to need seojoon, the boy who was rejected by his village, who tried so hard not to need anyone as a result. how terrifying of a prospect that must've been to make him run away. in my eyes, jiwoo's cruelest mistake was not necessarily leaving, but that he didn't believe in seojoon's love for him. someone on tumblr said that jiwoo was prepared to be the villain in seojoon's story when he left, but it's clear that he fully expected seojoon to just get over it. he couldn't imagine (didn't let himself imagine?) that seojoon would love him with the same depth. but seojoon does love him that much, and he sees jiwoo for who he is, and that's why for him, jiwoo just taking that step is enough. han jiwoo is worthy of love in spite of his mistakes. slams my fists down on the table THAT IS THE POINT.
when things are hard and you want to cry,
you can lean on me and rest, yeah
this is me being serious
and i'll tell you that every day (x)
guess what else i've been re-visiting—the story about you x me. even without having to wait week to week (and eventually getting so impatient that you start reading the chinese raws via google translate) the slow burn here is So Good. the chapters leading up to the confession really captured one of my favorite moods in romance media, that phase where two people are close enough to have the beats of a couple, where both sides are aware of their own feelings but not yet acting on them. gu ze actually spells it out when he's talking to linlin and her sister, describing their current relationship as "that kind of blurred lines type of feeling". it's not quite the same situation but this vibe is what made my school president so butterfly-inducing for me...i love it. upon rereading i feel like i can definitively say that peak romance in tsayxm is when gu ze throws his umbrella away so he can have an excuse to wait for ye ruchuan. like, it's such a testament to the transition from enmies to lovers (going from actively dreading being around ye ruchuan to being unable to stand not seeing him for a day) and it's also totally the kind of move a kid who made ye ruchuan close his eyes before giving him a hug would make. i honestly love high school bls (MOU MOU ADAPTATION ANYONE??) but this may be my favorite. it's funny and sweet and ultimately tender. when i reread it for the first time, i was struck by the parallel between gu ze's dad saying "you make it really hard for anyone to like you" and gu ze's panicked mental image of ye ruchuan saying "you know why people hate you when you act like this, right?" this time, what got to me the most was when gu ze confronts his dad and ye ruchuan tells him, "it's not your fault." gu ze, who grew up being made to feel like he was unlovable, and ye ruchuan, who genuinely believes in gu ze's capacity for goodness. ye ruchuan, awkward rabbit who suffered through things alone and gu ze, stubborn and rebellious but with love to give. what's better than that...
see y'all after my honeymoon <3
and i know myself and i'll never love anyone else
i won't love anyone else
i'll never love anyone else
i've been rewatching minato's laundromat and last night i got literally 2 minutes into an episode and had to stop and just lie facedown in my pillow. rewatching really emphasizes that this show did not need to be 12 episodes long but then at the same time it's like i would watch 12 more episodes of them. i will be counting down the minutes to each episode when season 2 starts airing. it's just that shin loves minato so much, with the earth shattering delusional true love characteristic of a teenager but at the same time with such genuine sincerity. you believe shin when he says that minato is the love of his life, not because it's a bl world where the first person you imprint on as a child is your soulmate but because shin is, respectfully, insane. his single-minded focus is more terrifying than inspiring, but his love for minato is heartfelt and real, or at least it's real to him. minato's feelings are a little less clear throughout the series, first inhibited by practical reasons (hello problematic age gap) and then by his own deep sense of shame. i remember reading complaints when the series was airing that they were drawing out the sakuma-sensei storyline across too many episodes but for me, as someone with a truly impressive shame complex, i got it. the way that shame constantly lingers in your mind, that way you feel like you'll be stuck in one place until you resolve it. when minato finally addresses things head on with sakuma-sensei and the release, his grief not over unrequited love but over the years he spent holding onto that guilt. and he would've never gotten there without shin, straightforward to a fault, showing that he is capable of not running away.
you do not have to be good.
you do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
you only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
i am sorry to break out the mary oliver quote but i think about these lines in the context of jiwoo and seojoon all the time. sometimes i have the urge to gatekeep to my star 2 from people because the idea that jiwoo did not deserve his happy ending is just Wrong. if you think that jiwoo needed to earn seojoon's forgiveness, you've missed the point. there is so much tenderness, so much compassion in the way that seojoon sees jiwoo being vulnerable, sees the bravery in jiwoo taking that step forward and in him saying, "you said when it's hard, you would come to me", and he decides that it's enough. seojoon doesn't need jiwoo to beg; he just needs to know that jiwoo can overcome his fear. i get it, because i spent 80% of the season yelling at my screen for han jiwoo to grovel and wanting to shake him by the shoulders (it doesn't help that hwang daseul's style leads to somewhat inscrutable characters), but then episodes 8-10 came along and reminded me that everything was new for jiwoo. he'd never let himself love with that much depth before and you can see how terrifying it was for him to need seojoon, the boy who was rejected by his village, who tried so hard not to need anyone as a result. how terrifying of a prospect that must've been to make him run away. in my eyes, jiwoo's cruelest mistake was not necessarily leaving, but that he didn't believe in seojoon's love for him. someone on tumblr said that jiwoo was prepared to be the villain in seojoon's story when he left, but it's clear that he fully expected seojoon to just get over it. he couldn't imagine (didn't let himself imagine?) that seojoon would love him with the same depth. but seojoon does love him that much, and he sees jiwoo for who he is, and that's why for him, jiwoo just taking that step is enough. han jiwoo is worthy of love in spite of his mistakes. slams my fists down on the table THAT IS THE POINT.
when things are hard and you want to cry,
you can lean on me and rest, yeah
this is me being serious
and i'll tell you that every day (x)
guess what else i've been re-visiting—the story about you x me. even without having to wait week to week (and eventually getting so impatient that you start reading the chinese raws via google translate) the slow burn here is So Good. the chapters leading up to the confession really captured one of my favorite moods in romance media, that phase where two people are close enough to have the beats of a couple, where both sides are aware of their own feelings but not yet acting on them. gu ze actually spells it out when he's talking to linlin and her sister, describing their current relationship as "that kind of blurred lines type of feeling". it's not quite the same situation but this vibe is what made my school president so butterfly-inducing for me...i love it. upon rereading i feel like i can definitively say that peak romance in tsayxm is when gu ze throws his umbrella away so he can have an excuse to wait for ye ruchuan. like, it's such a testament to the transition from enmies to lovers (going from actively dreading being around ye ruchuan to being unable to stand not seeing him for a day) and it's also totally the kind of move a kid who made ye ruchuan close his eyes before giving him a hug would make. i honestly love high school bls (MOU MOU ADAPTATION ANYONE??) but this may be my favorite. it's funny and sweet and ultimately tender. when i reread it for the first time, i was struck by the parallel between gu ze's dad saying "you make it really hard for anyone to like you" and gu ze's panicked mental image of ye ruchuan saying "you know why people hate you when you act like this, right?" this time, what got to me the most was when gu ze confronts his dad and ye ruchuan tells him, "it's not your fault." gu ze, who grew up being made to feel like he was unlovable, and ye ruchuan, who genuinely believes in gu ze's capacity for goodness. ye ruchuan, awkward rabbit who suffered through things alone and gu ze, stubborn and rebellious but with love to give. what's better than that...
see y'all after my honeymoon <3