I Finally Managed To Put My Overall Thoughts About Playboyy Into Words And Hoooooo Boy Do I Have A Lot

I finally managed to put my overall thoughts about Playboyy into words and hoooooo boy do I have a lot to say.

I watched the mdl ratings go down, the blatant hate towards the plot, the actors, the scenes, the sex. There was nothing that wasn't torn apart about this series and yet I wasn't phased for a second and I kept wondering why because usually get very passionate about defending the things I love.

And then I realized that this series is the cinematic embodiment of a very lonely path that I've been walking for decades and I am already very, very used to the shame around it.

Sex is not just my special interest, I also had the privilege to grow up with excellent sex education (thanks parents) and on top of that I never struggled with my (pan)sexual identity. Sex plays a significant role in my life. But I learned VERY quickly that I should keep this to myself if I don't want to be ostracized or bullied.

"You're autistic AND you like sex? You like porn? What the fuck is wrong with you??? That's impossible."

And all the comments I read about playboyy are exactly the same just in different fonts. Ew sex. Ew kink. Ew porn. Ew sex work. Sex can't have storytelling, plot, it's just for shock value. We all read it.

And sadly it's a very accurate representation of the role sex plays in our society. Which - ironically - playboyy exactly is about.

Playboyy is a visual collection of all the experiences of lives and people in which sex plays a significant role - even the lack thereof (looking at you zouey and all you lovely aces).

It's a collection of very important social commentary, with all the characters, sets, plots and visuals as a medium. Because this way, the points they make come across even stronger and draw out all the emotions they want us to feel - which is in the rarest cases, pure arousal. Because this is, in fact, storytelling. Even if many don't want to hear it.

Telling stories about sex is so stigmatized and shunned, it only has the tiniest place to exist freely. Just like sex itself. Every sex worker, sex educator, sex therapist, everyone who has a profession that deals with sex will tell you about it. The shame. The misunderstanding. Look at the state of sex work and porn in the world. It tells you everything you need to know.

And it's happening in the middle of the "modern" western society - Yes I'm talking about you, UK and I can't not plug this here:

DECRIM NOW

DECRIM NOW

National Campaign for Sex Workers’ Rights

*btw I am not a sex worker I'm just very passionate about letting people not just live their lives but giving them a CHOICE to do what they want or don't want to do

I existed in this tiny place for decades now and I got really comfortable in my tiny lil corner, but to see a show like this go "mainstream" talking about all the topics that tickle all the knowledge I collected over the years feels so amazing. And I can tell you, all you lil smartass purists, everyone involved in this show doesn't care an inch what you think, just like me. We're used to it, believe me.

I could go on for ages about how carefully all these topics of the show are treated but what I actually want to say is that I find it incredibly ironic that a show that depicts the struggles and stigmas about sex, exactly draws out the reactions and treatments it criticises.

If you don't want to join in on the fun, that's totally fine. I get that it's not for everyone (just like sex, he). But treating it as a piece of trash just because it's a thing you personally find icky is exactly the reason the issues Playboyy talks about exist in the first place. Hence you can thank your stuck-up ass yourself that debauched individuals like me get a gem like this to enjoy.

And the fact that it didn't just find a crew, but also the funding and the mainstream distribution proves that I'm not alone in this.

It's not my lonely little corner anymore and I'm absolutely thriving on that. Cry about it.

✨✨ Gamingmas 2023 ✨✨

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 鬓边不是海棠红/Winter Begonia

Winter Begonia is the tale of the intertwined lives of a wealthy, westernized businessman and a bratty, dramatic Peking Opera performer as they navigate the historical landscape of 1930s China.

It is a slow historical ramble of a show, to the point where I couldn't really say it has a single plot. Events just happen in their lives, and the show follows them with a pleasant steadiness. Characters go away, and sometimes they come back. Interpersonal conflicts rise and then get resolved. Sometimes you just get to sit and watch part of an opera happen. The last third of the show develops a slightly more cohesive narrative, but even then, it's still mostly a loose constellation of events related to larger goings-on in the culture.

So if you're looking for tight plots and fast-paced action, you'll want to look somewhere else. But if you're the kind of person who likes to wrap up sometimes in a gentle warm blanket of a beautiful show, I have five reasons you should give this one a try.

1. Oh, they're in love

Perhaps the most notable thing about Cheng Fengtai and Shang Xirui is that they spend the entire show smiling at one another, staring longingly at one another, and/or making each other laugh.

A lot of danmei couples depend on having at least one partner who, if not outright tsundere, is at least stoically long-suffering -- which is romantic, sure, but also exhausting in real life. These two read about as married as any danmei pair I've ever seen because they make one another smile all the time. They're incredibly touchy and affectionate from basically the moment they meet. They're not just in love, they actually like one another.

Now, don't get me wrong: These two are both absolute exhausting gremlins who deserve one another so they don't have to be anyone else's problems. But they're good-natured enough about their respective gremlin natures that when one of them lets loose with his rascality, the other tends to think it's hilarious.

They don't even have the mandated danmei breakup! They're never mad at one another for more than the length of an episode. Most of the time they're just refreshingly normal about one another (or, you know, about as normal as two drama queens can be). And when they're being not normal about one another, it's because the circumstances they are currently enduring are not normal either.

They're so in love that by the time you get to the last episode, everyone in their lives is like, gee, those two sure are in love. For the main couple in a Chinese-censored BL adaptation? That's pretty darn in love.

2. The costumes!!!

Of course I have to gush over the costumes. Several major characters are professional opera performers, and their wardrobes are just stunning in complexity and detail -- and accuracy, apparently.

But they're not even where all of the wardrobe budget went! Everyone looks great, from the dapper upper class to the household servants to the street performers.

I also can't get over how everyone looks so cozy in their winter outfits. The show really wants to hammer home how cold Beijing is, and so most non-opera clothes are either heavily quilted or furry. Not a single outfit in this show is slimming (except maybe for some of the gorgeous gowns Cheng Meixin wears). It's all about conserving body heat, which means a lot of people walk around basically wearing mildly tailored quilts all the time. I love it. I envy it.

3. Oops! All bottoms!

This is a show of very soft men. It helps that very many of them have spent their whole lives playing female roles, but even those that haven't tend to be pretty darn soft.

(And I'm not even talking about the way people keep handing Cheng Fengtai babies and he loves it.)

Du Luocheng and Shang Xirui are absolutely what happens when you get two soft gay guys who are kinda into one another, but they're both too lazy to top, so they just become best friends instead.

Fan Lian stands as a testament to how you can be the only heterosexual in the show and still be soft as hell.

The old married gays. Softness level: off the charts.

Chen Renxiang's role is that of the opera frenemy, and he's incredibly soft about it. (This actor is also apparently in the Sha Po Lang live-action adaptation! Maybe someday it will be released...)

Opera underling La Yuehong hardens up later in the show, but even when he does, there's still a tragic softness to it.

Even the baddies are soft! Pretty much all the rival opera bitches fall into the "love to hate" category -- and nearly all of them win at least some sympathy from you before they leave the story for good.

There's one more soft boy whose presence surprised me, and that is Xue Zhicheng/Kujo Kazuma, a sympathetic Japanese character. Every other Japanese character in the show is sinister somehow -- not surprising, considering the drama is set during the brutal Japanese occupation of Beiping/Beijing.

But this little guy is a gentle, well-meaning opera fan who just wants to watch his favorite performers! When his actions cause trouble, it's only because he's so well-meaning that he couldn't see how anyone could disapprove of his attempts at cross-cultural undertanding. He even comes to the rescue a few times, at significant personal cost!

Moreover, the show uses him to make it clear that there's a difference between the Japanese occupying force and Japanese people and culture. In fact, the show is pretty critical of people who conflate the two and use interest in the latter as evidence of support of the former. That is not a level of nuance I've seen from other dramas set in this time period, and I was pleased to see it.

In conclusion, the critial war shortage in 1930s Beijing was not food or medicine or ammunition, but tops.

4. A whole lotta ladies

Again, not even counting the fact that one of the two main guys, many of his buddies, all of his heroes, and several of the antagonists professionally dress as women.

The most notable of them is Cheng Fengtai’s wife, Fan Xiang'er. They've been married for years by the time the show starts, and they have a son together. Theirs is an arranged marriage that they've managed to make work so well that they've actually wound up liking one another ... most of the time. Remember what I said earlier about his being exhausting? She knows that better than anyone.

(Sidebar: If you are uncomfortable with a love story where one of the participants is canonically married to someone else, this may be one you want to skip. That said, there are several male characters in this show who have multiple wives and/or mistresses, so the metric of what counts as infidelity in this setting is ... loose.)

Beyond her, though, there are many more female supporting characters in this show, from all different socioeconomic levels, in all different kinds of situations.

A caveat: Some of the women (one in particular) are at times frustrating as hell because they're too often written as jealous shrews who believe all the terrible gossip they hear and act on it without having actual adult conversations with anyone first. I dislike this trope, mostly because it relies on making some smart women artificially very stupid for the sake of forwarding the plot. I have little patience for situations that could have been solved five episodes ago if somebody had just been willing to ask clarifying questions.

That said, I can't be too mad about that, because there are many, many more women who are not written like that. Some of them are good and loyal! Some are sneaky and self-interested! Some are callous and manipulative! Some are meek and traumatized! Some make terrible decisions! Some make terrible decisions but, like, you get it! You know, just like in real life?

The answer to better representation is almost always more representation. When a character is the only one of whatever they are, everything they do is kind of an indictment of that category, especially when that category has a history of stereotypical negative representation. When there are several others, the characters stop being representatives of that category and start being just plain characters.

5. It just feels good to watch

Don't misunderstand: This is not a happy fun time show where everything in sunshine and roses all the way down. There are plenty of tense and emotional parts. Not everyone we like makes it out of the drama alive. Not all love stories get a happily ever after. People disappoint one another all the time. Awful things happen when soldiers occupy civilian populations. Poverty is a bitch.

But the show itself remains a nice viewing experience. It's absolutely a feast for the senses, what with all the music and costumes and sets and props and old-fashioned cars and everything.

The story is very straightforward. It's never trying to do any complex schemes or mislead you before some big reveal. I imagine this could be a good show to put on in the background while you're doing something else. You're never going to be too desperately confused about what's going on if you zone out for a minute -- and if you are, just hang on for a bit, because by next episode, it'll probably be onto whatever storyline comes next.

I have not read the novel, and I cannot judge anything against its standards. However, my friend who has read parts of the novel tells me that the adaptation is much preferable, because in the novel, you get to hear everyone's internal narration -- and everyone's internal narration makes it clear they're all bratty, insufferable assholes. That is not the case here! Or, rather, they are often bratty and/or insufferable, but from outside their heads, it's a lot more charming.

Finally, it's legitimately a very good love story. Shang Xirui is the only person in Cheng Fengtai's life who loves him for who he is, not what someone else needs him to be. Cheng Fengtai goes from being enraptured by this beautiful little weirdo to basically wanting to wife him. They spend a lot of time taking care of one another, sometimes in the only ways they know how. They're capable of operating independently -- there are several episodes where their storylines diverge completely -- but they'd prefer not to. They've just each found their soulmate, and that's all there is to it. (The red thumbprint in the palm is about the most romantic thing I've ever seen.)

I'm a little surprised by how little I hear English-speaking fandom talk about this one, especially since (see below) it's a widely available, high-budget show that even has a Shang Xirui figurine, and there's no question about how in gay love these two are. But if you hop over to AO3, there's only 257 works total in the Winter Begonia tag, a scant 57 of which are in English, and if you've tried looking into the Winter Begonia tag on Tumblr, you know it's pretty quiet 'round here.

I can't be sure, but I'd assume that's partly because this is both a) a relatively low-stakes drama, and b) so enmeshed with actual historical events and concepts that you'd have to do at least a baseline amount of research before making any fan media. I would imagine that for some folk, this is a barrier to entry.

And it is 49 slow, gentle episodes long. I saw Tumblr posts asking which episodes are important, because the posters don't want to or can't commit to watching the whole thing. But the answer is ... all of them? none of them? There's no plot you'd be getting or missing with specific episodes. There are very few things I can think of that would even qualify as spoilers. It's just a walk through a couple very eventful years in the main pair's lives. I understand if folk aren't up for that, but if you are, this is really a gem.

Have I convinced you to give it a try?

I would say that Winter Begonia is perhaps the most easily watchable of any c-drama I've come across. Here's where you can find it:

iQiyi

Viki

Amazon Prime

YouTube

We watched most of it on YouTube, where the subs were perfectly fine. However, there was one episode where we had to switch platforms because the English subs were all out of synch, so we went to Amazon and they were fine there too. Other than that, I don't really have a sense of which translation experience is the best. Try them all!

(PS: If you feel like putting on a tinfoil hat, I'm just going to say, they look at one another like that in real life, too.)

View Benyapa as Aylin & June Wanwimol as Luna

[Official Trailer] 23.5 องศาที่โลกเอียง (2024)

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

dan tweet

25/12/23