i don't storm, i sunshower

most of my tv-watching lately has been "consuming episodes of the great british bakeoff at speeds previously unknown to man", but i remembered recently that a) i don't want to use up the gbbo episodes too quickly and b) i... fell off the torchwood train after muscling my way through season two. i liked tosh and owen and i deeply disliked the Much Drama Very Adult writing that got in the way of the interesting parts of their characters (i don't know how else to explain it, but if you've watched the show you probably know what i mean). therefore: children of earth. it's a five episode miniseason, ianto dies at the end of it and i am at least a little emotionally prepared for that (no point in warning for spoilers this was released 15 years ago), should be, tonally, about what i expected from the first two seasons.

i was not expecting the extremely self-aware commentary about the surveillance state and middle management. i've watched 3/5 episodes at this point (on track to finish before i go home for the holidays on monday! torchwood is solidly dinnertime tv) so i'm not DONE, but like. the constant use of security cameras? alice's phone getting tracked? everyone's personal history getting dug up? everyone is leverage and no one is deserving of privacy? and then frobisher, the middleman (let me tell you i was not really expecting capaldi lol but it was nice to see him), Just Doing His Job and knowing full well he's putting his OWN life, his OWN privacy, his OWN safety on the line, and trying to protect his wife and daughters all the while, and trying to do his best and trying to do things for the good of the world, and it fucks him! it fucks him over! i don't know, i just. eyes the news cycle. eyes recent united states news items. you know the one. tonally appropriate. you know? anyway it's good i might or might not report back

totally unrelated but sometimes i consider wiping all my voice recordings from tumblr or not appearing in my friends' eurovision site videos anymore or keeping my bsky EITHER personal OR online but not both. online privacy is kind of hard. i really, really need to get into the habit.

another television-related interest i've been having lately (well, technically a webdrama, i don't know if these things are ever broadcast on television): peaceful property. this is another thai BL. i've blogged about moonlight chicken on here, right? so for the unfamiliar, this one is made by the same studio (i don't fully understand how it all works) and follows a medium-comma-ex-chef, us-educated spoiled real estate heir, the chef's clueless influencer sister, and the heir's ice queen lawyer as they exorcise ghosts from haunted properties. it's funny in a sort of stupid way, i'm not OPPOSED to enemies to lovers although it isn't my go-to, and these shows are very much made to be consumed quickly rather than nurture a forever fandom and that's fine. the story as it is is fine. compelling enough. i'm interested in seeing these two guys eventually open up to each other and in uncovering the mystery behind all the ghosts on this one specific family's property holdings. HOWEVER. the thing that is REALLY consuming me is how much better this show (again. i've seen three episodes) would be if the ghost thing was a scam.

think about it with me for a minute. [i'm going to get into has-seen-the-show parlance here, sorry readers.] peach's anxiety when seeing ghosts being closer to, i don't know, mental health issues than literal ghosts (there is some kind of restaurant-related trauma in this man i can sense it. so, related to that); pang not being literally clueless and ditzy but, like, twenty-one and desperate and fishing the clothes she's selling online out of rich people's dumpsters; that viral video happening by accident but one or both siblings seeing an opportunity to dig themselves out of their financial hole; kan TOTALLY being onto them but home believes it hook line and sinker, leading up to a big reveal at some point late-series i haven't gotten that far; essentially, making pang a three-dimensional character like the other three, giving her some wits, and adding this new slapstick comedy plot of the two of them trying to solve the actual workplace hazard issue that caused the "haunting" (kan actually figures that out. every time.) while also trying to fool home (and sort of kan) into believing the ruse. and slowly realizing oh shit the vimarnsukman company really DID NOT treat its workers right all the while home and peach are falling for each other. with a healthy side of pang/kan, i don't KNOW if the show is going there although i do suspect. in this au that lives in my head pang is the central character and therefore she gets to hook up with the hot lawyer. i think she deserves it.

there's also a drama coming out in 2025 called ticket to heaven that looks like it's going to tick several of my boxes AND the main couple is played by the guys who played heart and liming in moonlight chicken so this will not be the last of my thai bl posting. sorry.

finally: merry fikmas! it's officially eurovision preselection/national final season, like FOR REAL because we are currently in the middle of albania's multi-night live performance extravaganza (that is traditionally one of the first NFs and always falls right around christmas, hence, it's a eurofan holiday). had to sit through the second of four shows tonight to live-tweet (live-skeet? we're on bluesky) it for the aforementioned blog. i don't know how much i've talked about the blog here, actually. quality of the performances wasn't actually so bad--they do these shows with a live orchestra so that always fucks--but my god did that show take forever. i finished it and felt like i needed to detox. i took a shower and vegetated on the couch for like an hour before i could convince myself to eat dinner. bonus - the netherlands announced their pick, a guy who sings in french of all things like who are you belgium? and so i'm currently listening to this guy's album, parler francais.

s'all for now youll be hearing from me soon

ITEM THE FIRST: MOONLIGHT CHICKEN
got to the end of it!!!! as a newcomer to the bl genre, i'm fascinated by the chokehold alan/gaipa has on the ao3 tag because... it was sort of gestured at in canon but mostly because those actors are often paired up together? i want to watch more bl but don't really know how to shop around for another one i'll like (i've watched 2 so far! moonlight chicken and our dining table!). i joined a discord but there's so much going on in it and it's so... fandom-y, for lack of a better word. there's a stereotype about women who watch bl or whatever and i know that to some degree i fit that stereotype but it's a weird environment to be in and idk if i like it. someone in one of the channels recommended eclipse, triage, and a thousand stars. triage is apparently a time loop story, and i do love a time loop, so maybe i'll watch that? because my other options are to check out only friends and last twilight, which is what my tumblr mutual who turned me onto these 2 prior shows keeps putting on my dash (thanks, man?). i will say i watched the first 1/4th of an only friends episode and did sort of enjoy it but i just know the plot is going to devolve into a level of drama that'll be difficult for me to watch.

ITEM THE SECOND: SURVIVAL SHOW ROUNDUP
subsection a: i finished produce x. oh my god what a slog that final episode was. i've gotten my top 11 together (comprehensive survival show top post to come once pdjp finishes airing) and now i need to finish writing my weird little produce series retrospective to... post on dreamwidth, i guess. i guess this is the place i put my long-form ramblings now. yeah.
subsection b: pdjp had eliminations, and i lost one of my faves, koyama mana. i am, however, pleasantly surprised that iida shizuku and sutani yurara made it; they've definitely been sleeper faves for me. i didn't realize how much i was rooting for shizuku until her rank was announced.

ITEM THE THIRD: JUNIOR EUROVISION
i don't post about it much here, but i'm a big eurovision enjoyer, enough so that i'm with a fan newsblog called That Eurovision Site. yeah that's literally what it's called, none of the fansites have particularly creative names it's fine. i got to do the livetweet (which was way easier back when tweetdeck was still a thing, rip) and damn that voting sequence was a marathon!!!
i'm also going to take this moment to complain about the guy who runs the fansite. he's very passionate and very driven but he's also very prone to making decisions without consulting literally anyone and asking just a little bit too much of us. i'm not sure if he has a job or anything but like... the rest of us have lives, tim.

ITEM THE FOURTH (AND FINAL): SINGING WOES
it's almost december, which means we've entered concert hell! this week i had a rehearsal yesterday (i'm subbing in for my friend in his quartet), then ones tomorrow wednesday and thursday; then i get a little off week before an absolute gauntlet of monday rehearsal, tuesday gig, wednesday rehearsal, thursday dress/gig, friday gig, saturday gig. and also i work three days that week. it's gonna be fun. no, for real. stressful but fun. that week is spread across 2 ensembles and i've got a friend who's in both with me so uhh, we're going to be seeing a lot of each other.
one of my choirs (wednesday choir/mendelssohn) also got offered to do carmina burana with the orchestra this spring and i REALLY wanna do it, except it's the week right before i go to compete with both tuesday choir/boys and thursday choir/delaware, and both carmina and contest would require me to take at least three days off of work and i'm just not sure if i can afford the loss of pay. i'm probably going to say i can do carmina anyway and then pull out later if i have to.

these days (a tumblr mutual kept posting about it, i like to watch tv in 15 minute increments while i eat), and... well i guess i should preface this by saying i'm not that plugged into bl fandom at all. totally new genre for me. so idrk what the culture around it is like. but i've done a little bit of shopping around online about this show, just to see what people are saying, and people are saying... some weird things about yutaka's issues, basically. namely that his feelings about his family aren't realistic and we aren't given enough evidence for that on screen.

(worth noting here that 1) my biggest "yutaka's issues" beef is that we don't see enough of him not eating around other people and we're just made to accept that as part of the premise and 2) i have not read the manga so keep that in mind while i do my silly little character analysis.)

but i think that yutaka's feelings around his family really do only need to be gestured at! namely, because he's adopted, and the rejection that he faces very quickly from his adopted brother was likely compounded by whatever feelings he had surrounding his birth family. when you're young it's very easy to take a lot of stuff to heart especially if it already fits within your worldview. if he had feelings of inadequacy or brokenness surrounding his experience as an adoptee (which would make sense), even a small comment like that would take root very strongly.

i also read him as being autistic mostly because of his fixation on food and not letting other people see him eat and eating the same stuff all the time and wanting to get the food he makes for tane absolutely perfect. which would also explain some of the "one comment from his adopted brother once was enough to shame him into not eating in front of other people for the next 15 years" business. he wants to fit in and he wants people to not... insult him and he takes his brother's comment to mf HEART. and the other social anxiety stuff (not having friends, struggling to connect with his coworkers, being afraid of minoru) can fit in with that reading of him. this headcanon has made me consider writing fanfic for this show at least twice now? probably won't do it but the thought is there.