#j-bl

I haven't been this pressed about a fictional character (antagonist???? she is one to me now!!) in a hot minute. Before I get into her in this ep, I wanna preface by saying that I do have the actual manga, but I wanted to finish watching the show before I went and read the manga for comparison, so that i'm going into this with basically an open mind. So I have no idea how this compares to the manga version of her.

Also if it wasn't clear, Spoilers for I Hear The Sunspot ep 7. Okay.

So it's the start of a new academic year, and we're introduced to freshman Maya, who is a Science major, is also Deaf/Hard of Hearing, and is Kohei's new tutee in the university as a result of having a mutual friend. That is the extent of what we know about her. Other than Kohei being her tutor and maybe a pseudo mentor/companion who can understand and appreciate her disability, they have absolutely no connection. They are not childhood friends or family.

Which begs the question, why on gods green earth is she so invested in what Kohei does or doesn't do, and who he is or isn't with???

Lady, he doesn't know you. He doesn't owe you anything, because you objectively mean nothing to him. So you've grown up with a really severe and isolating disability, I get it. But that's not a good enough reason to become so bitter that you decide to become judge jury executioner on every (visibly) abled person's morals. (Which is so incredibly telling, judging people on how visibly disabled they look or act, when you have a disability that is fairly invisible, unless you can see hearing aids or a cochlear implant or something like that. Interesting how that works, huh.) (Having a disability doesn't give you a free pass to be an asshole.)

Maybe, just maybe, you're allowed to act like that based on how people act towards you. But what gives you the right to walk up to the friend of a friend (??) that you absolutely know nothing about, and mete out judgement? To decide how that person is allowed to interact with someone else, a someone else that you have no claim or authority over?

Oh, but god forbid that Kohei have a friend who doesn't treat him like a social leper, who doesn't have every interaction of theirs revolve around Kohei's deafness, who for once makes him feel included and normal.

Kohei is a grown ass man, who can make his own decisions, including his own mistakes. Who are you to suddenly come into his life and make decisions for him without his involvement, consent, or approval? And who says that any person who is friends with someone with a disability has to be physically and morally perfect?

How dare you?

If I were to sum up my biggest issues with Maya, it is in the way she talks. It's entirely indicative and reflective of how she views and interacts with society. One of the first things that Kohei tells Taichi is that he is able to understand what someone else is saying if they speak slowly, partially by listening and partially by lip reading. it's a small accommodation that we even see Taichi's friends making for Kohei. That means that when anyone talks they should talk clearly, and slowly, and try to enunciate their words properly. If we look at the way Maya talks, she barely opens her mouth at all. If I didn't know any better i'd have thought it was ADR. Given she is someone who has lived with the same sort of disability that Kohei has, she would require similar accessibility needs. And yet, while she expects the world around her to accommodate her needs, she doesn't accommodate for the world. She expects people to speak in a way that she can understand, but she won't do the same.

I'm assuming that the narrative point of Maya criticising Taichi right now is so that we get to see him go on a growth journey, where he'll become more passionate and dedicated about learning note-taking and even maybe signing (and advocating for the deaf community as an ally), and not just be a passive friend who seemingly 'takes advantage' of Kohei, and in the process become the person that Kohei truly needs, and not the person Taichi thinks is good enough.

But here's the thing. I don't care if Taichi has any growth or not. I don't care if he changes or doesn't change to maintain his friendship and relationship with Kohei. I don't care if he tries to become someone that Maya (and Kohei) can approve of.

Because Kohei already likes him the way he is.

This is a story of being an adult and thinking you are nothing more than the box you're in and having someone else reach out and show you that there's a whole world out there awiting for you, so much more than you ever thought.

And the way the characters are slowly emerging from their shells, the way that Nozue started this pretending to be girl because it was the only way he could imagine doing these things and now has accepted that this is just what he wants and that he can do this without any excuses or any explanations

Nozue is learning to be himself and no one else and that journey is so, so beautiful because he is being guided by Togawa into becoming not just himself but to reveal the person that Togawa has seen beneath the person Nozue has tried to become.

This is a coming of age story that says you can come of age at any age as long as you're open to learning more about yourself.

I mean, flirting is all well and good but don’t fucking overcook seafood people! 

Such an important part of this is that the typical coming-of-age narrative is about being young and free and discovering yourself and in those stories everyone knows who they are by the time they're graduating university. Everyone knows their own shape by the time they head into the working wold, obviously. They have partners, they know their own heart and soul, they know who and what they are and what they want and what life has for store in them and that's when life start, life starts after you discover yourself.

But not in Old Fashon Cupcake.

Instead we're being given the narrative of two adult man, one nearing 40, and the discovery of what it means to be queer and what it means to be different and what it means when the box you've always shaped yourself to fit is the wrong one. The idea that life can happen and you can live and you can still discover yourself.

Nozue has spent a lifetime fitting himself into the box he thinks he should be in, trying to fit into every nook and cranny of 'normal' without any consideration for himself. He has filled out the box and hollowed himself out in the process.

And now he's hitting a time in his life when he's expected to have figured everything out, to be living the life he knows he wants, to be an Adult and a Man and to know what the future holds... but all he sees is swathes and swathes of the same hollow life, the same false box, the same lies he's been trying to make the truth.

Togawa is younger than him but he's accepted that he doesn't fit the box everyone expects him to, he's accepted that he has to make his own shape, find his own place. That he can live life and be himself. And in finding himself, he's learned to see people who don't. And he sees Nozue.

This narrative is so deeply, inherently queer that it is beautiful because it is about the kind of self-discovery journey that comes from a world telling you one thing only to realize that what you want, what you need, who you are, doesn't fit that path. And when you're never offered an alternative that fits you... you take that path and you make the path work.

But when you finally have a chance to see the path that wasn't? To see the path you wanted and needed but were never given... you grab it with both and you run and then you panic because this in unfamiliar and new and that's terrifying.

Nozue is peeking down a path that is everything he's ever dreamt of, freedom and friendship and desserts and a partnership and a chance at more and he is both reveling and he is panicking because he's never felt this before. He's never felt this nameless hope and joy that bubbles up and fills up the hollow parts of himself that he shaped for society.

It's such a gorgeously queer narrative, honestly. The idea that you put yourself into a box and limit yourself because you don't want to, can't see yourself as anything but the inside of that box and then someone comes along and shows you that the box can open, that you can see a whole world and suddenly you realize why the box was never enough because what you wanted, what you needed, isn't in the box. You don't fit in the box. You are so much more than the box.

Nozue has spent nearly 40 years fitting himself into the box he saw himself in, a quiet straight corporate worker who did what he was good at, ate, slept, worked and nothing else. He never dared step outside the box because you don't do that. And then Togawa peeked into the top of the box, bought him pancakes, took a photo, smiled and told him not to be scared.

And the world lit up because there's so much more than a box.

Then you need to watch Old Fashion Cupcake!

And if you need more reasons... how about the story of an adult queer man rediscovering his joy in life by playing as a teenaged girl to give himself freedom to enjoy sweets on the advice of his younger coworker and watching them flirt and grow closer and get nervous and talk and cook for each other and be miserable when they have to pretend to fit into the heterosexual expectations of society?

How about a beautiful story about growing into a queer identity no matter what age you are centered in the idea of shared food and time and feeings?

How about a gorgeously told story about falling in love with someone who already loves you but being afraid to express your love because it goes against the life you've always expected and he's handsome and a decade younger than you and free and happy and you don't want to trap him with you but you still love him so much and he loves you and you don't know what to do?

How about pancakes and parfaits and candy and homecooked meals and a perfect pierced egg yolk and food as connection, food as love, food as lust?

Just... watch Old Fashion Cupcake, okay?

The way they both stared at each other.

The way they listened to the women.

The way they kept never quite making eye contact but seeking comfort in seeing the other.

But also the way that comfort was broken by the norms they expected.

The way Nozue was trying, desperately, not to be jealous.

The way Togawa was seething in his own jealousy.

The way they were both so relieved to be alone together afterwards, drunken Togawa and softly amused Nozue.

This is the queer adult softness and pain we deserve everywhere.