johan!!!!!! he/him malay-malaysian artist :3 š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļø [previously starjunkyard, rebranded to thestarlotus]
i <3 art and animation and media!!!! i <3 cringe and authentic human expression!!!! I reblog a lotttttt lot... I AM NEVER IN JUST ONE SINGULAR FANDOM!!! I juggle all of my interests like those motherfuckers at circuses who juggle torches and only time will tell if i come to be engulfed by the flames
some of my art :-)
tags for if you want 2 sift thru my blogā¦ (if tumblr decides to tweak out just search up the keywords in my blog n they should come up)
> #johans scrapbook ā my art n edits!!
> #johan being crazy about (dps, yaoi md, iwtv, heated rivalry, etc) ā miscellaneous thoughts n' analyses on my favourite media!!
> #johans mailbox ā asks n Qs!!
> #johans mindpalace ā yap
art perms
no reposts! ok with usage of art in edits / layouts / etc with creds
(tag me if u do btw. iām nosy and i wanna see it)
@/thestarlotus on every other platform!! see u there :3
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i still think a lot abt ur drawing of wilson and house beating the shit out of eachother ur art is so expressive. i miss being in the same fandom as u
MONA MY FRIEND ā¦ ššš I MISS U TOO ā¦ u can visit me anytime my friend my doors r always open ā¦ i still think of house md very fondly ā¦ like an old flame from my past ā¦ 2023 - 2024 was such an era i miss her
(yuna hollander on voicemail) hey sweetie its mom. sorry i missed you. though its 8:30 and you should be home by now. anyways give me a call back when you can. theres this guy Drake that just mentioned you in his new song. seems like a pretty big deal, canadian too. just take a listen to it when you get a chance. nothing bad. i actually think it could be quite good for your image. im trying to get in touch with his manager to see if heāll let you be in the music video. unless youd rather send a cease and desist in which case iāve got patty on speed dial if thats the route youd rather go. your father says hi. anyways, love you. call me back. bye.
anyways i think shane was an incredibly colicky baby and it stressed his parents to death because it didnāt even have a cause most of the time, and the more upset he got the more upset yuna would get, because heās making her feel like a terrible mother, like sheās failing him in this really essential way, like sheās unable to do this thing that is supposed to be innate, and she knows she has trouble connecting emotionally but she always thought that it would be different with her own baby, and shane and her just work each other up more and more.
and she thinks maybe itāll get better once shane gets older, once he learns to talk, but then heās 2 and heās still not talking, and heās having tantrums that come out of nowhere and donāt have a common underlying trigger, and the ONLY thing shane likes is sprinting around the house at top speeds (he's in a toddler helmet for sure) or being swaddled and rocked, and he keeps hitting all the other toddlers at playgroup and yuna is LOSING IT and she KNOWS everybody is looking sideways at her and the pediatrician mentions getting him evaluated and she finds a new pediatrician because she isnāt a failure, she ISNāT.
and then when shane is 3 the lake by their cottage freezes over that winter and they put a pair of baby skates on him and then in about 30 seconds flat shane is halfway across the damn lake and yuna nearly gets a concussion trying to catch him. and then he comes inside and eats his carrot sticks without fussing and watches blues clues and takes a nap on her lap. and yuna is sitting there watching blues clues on silent and crying into her hand to stay quiet because holy shit. holy shit.
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I am a firm believer that Nikki Freeman saved herself.
She made the wish, presumably, that Bear would love her as much as she loved him, and only after she makes that wish does he become strong enough to let himself die. He stop trying to vomit, he goes out to see her, and he finally dies, setting her free. He didnāt do that though. She made a wish that forced him to love her enough to save her. Yes, she did this unknowingly, but it was still ultimately her action that freed her from the wish.
I find Nikki as a person distinct from the wish genuinely very compelling, just as a character. She apparently isnāt into sappy romantic gestures, and would find the idea of citrine being āsunshine in a rockā lame. At the same time, sheās not cold hearted. In fact, sheās openly very affectionate: she calls everyone she meets babe, jokes around with Ian, tells Sarah she loves her, gives money to the homeless, pays for her friendās drinks, and thanks Bear for being someone she can talk to. She calls up Bear to talk about both their days and convince him to come to trivia night, then checks in to make sure heās okay when she finds out why he didnāt want to come. Even though sheās not into sappy stuff, the book sheās writing is a love story. Sheās straight up with Bear about the fact that Sarahās into him and tells him in no uncertain terms when heās crossed a boundary by calling her āfreaky Nikkiā. On the whole, the fifteen minutes we spend with her paint the picture of someone who is wholly genuine, and, it seems, someone who really values honesty. Which is why Bear messed up so badly by lying to her. All she asks is for him to be honest about if he has feelings for her, even says ānow is the time to tell meā and he still canāt tell her the truth. And, she can clearly tell thatās the case. At the end of the day, it doesnāt matter whether she wouldāve said yes to a date because he didnāt ask. She mightāve gone. She might not have. But instead of risking her declining, Bear chose that heād rather her be with him no matter the cost.
The most disquieting part of my experience with Obsession is after watching it, thereās a part of me (that might just be the law student) that is thinking of the ways to word the wish to get a result that doesnāt undermine Nikkiās autonomy and consent.
And like, by even asking that, by focusing on the result of a wish rather than thinking about how bear could have just not been a coward and told Nikki how he felt when she asked him, I am undermining her consent. Even something like āI wish I knew how Nikki felt, and if she would be open to dating meā directly goes against her consent, because she said āif I like someone, youād never know.ā
I think the film is deliberately vague about if Nikki liked him back, but regardless, if she did like him, she didnāt say anything, and I think part of that is bearās cowardice. In a world where she liked him, he needed to grow up some before sheād entertain a relationship. Heās scared of honesty, scared of loss and the idea of truth preceding it. Heād rather have a fantasy than the real her, who has autonomy and the ability to reject him.
Like thereās something to the very premise of ābe careful of [what/who] you wish forā that primes you to think exactly like bear. Really masterful storytelling.
The conceit of wishing deals with the entitlement of these ānice guysā like they want the reward without the risk or the work.
Sorry if Iām rambling, I just want to process my experience of the film
I really do think Entity! Nikki is a childish existence and on top of it I think that's why it feels so bad to see her becoming traumatized from being with Bear when his wish ripped out parts of her that made it impossible to love him. Not! Nikki exists as sparknotes of her former self with the missing pieces filled in by Bear's own personality and habits, but she's still being traumatized because fundamentally Nikki and Bear's relationship is defined by her saying no and him not caring. It why I see the ending scenes of the movie as really nauseating because Not! Nikki is this new being without life experiences gauging her personality and behavior off of Bear's reaction and she starts to associate her genitals with violence. Entity Nikki is crying in the corner and starts to force herself to sleep at night and give Nikki full control because before that scene E! Nikki has the real Nikki's nightmare about how Bear raped her. It makes me feel sick since she's like a child that can't comprehend what's happening or why this is all hurting, and why she feels terrified by someone she loves. She doesn't understand why she feels so violated when one of the scenes with her and Bear is her assuring him he didn't violate her cause that's what Bear wants her to be telling him
"We played with this idea of, is she fully seeing through her own eyes what's happening and doesn't feel in control,Ā orĀ if it's kind of like teleportation where every time that she pops back in, it's from the moment that she popped back in before, which is why whenever she's in the house, she comes out and she's like, 'Wait, where am I?ā So we played with both of them, and now that I've watched the film back, I think that she does both. I think that in the very beginning, whenever she doesn't understand what's going on, she's teleporting, and once she realizes what's going on, Nikkiās a fighter, and so her urge to fight the wish just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and thatās why she has the grief at the end, because she's watched it happen. She's felt it. She has to deal with it. It wasn't her fault. Her life has completely changed. And she just lets it all go." ā Inde Navarrette (x)
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getting emotional at the thought of shane and ilya stumbling into that flint of desire conversation. ilya goading shane asking if he jerked off to posters of hockey players in his room when he was a teenager, trying to get a rise out of him and make him blush. but shane, extremely earnest in that way of his, says when i jerked off as a teenager it was just like a bodily function, i wasn't really thinking of anyone. the other boys would talk about beautiful actresses or look at dirty magazines but they never made me feel anything really. and ilya is still making fun of him poor shane you didn't think of anyone because you were waiting for me, hm? it's only me? and shane. in that earnest way of his. says yes. eyes shining. says i didn't know, not really. until you looked at me in those showers. i didn't know it could feel like that. and ilya obviously has to fuck him violently about it immediately
āthe most beautiful thing about (syd and carmyās) relationship is their true unconditional belief in one another. they see the beautiful things in one another that the other one is not able to witness in themselves. [ā¦] in a lot of ways, they saved each other. the piece in the opening episode of season 3, where carmy gets the call about mikey and serves the scallop to syd without ever having met her ā there is this invisible tether that was not witnessed by either of them, but it inspired syd, and whether carmy knew it or not, this thing was loved and enjoyed by someone that was birthed from this very traumatic moment. thereās just this beautiful, invisible tether that has always existed and will always exist between the two of them.ā JEREMY YOU GET ITTTTT
what do you think it is about the other specifically that draws them to each other
oh WHAT a delicious question thank you for asking it!! okay let's think through this.
for ilya, i think that there is initially no emotional connection at all. he's attracted to risky sex with ill-advised partners. BUT he also probably isn't going to go cruising for male hookups in the US at least at first (i'd imagine that the language barrier + learning to navigate different cultural norms would make it harder for him to evaluate what's a sexy risk that gets him off but isn't ultimately THAT dangerous vs. a risk that could blow up his career). so when he meets shane, it's like, the perfect level of danger. shane is a bad idea, but shane is also giving strong 'press here and i might reveal something interesting' vibes from that very first gym scene (poor shane lol you get the distinct sense that he's never been in the presence of someone with that much sexual magnetism and has no idea what his face is doing). ilya then pulls some strings to get them to shoot that commercial together so he can explore that hunch further... and then, when he's reasonably sure shane's at least open to the idea, he acts on that hunch (ie jerks off in front of him in the showers... still so insane lol ilya rozanov the man that you are).
i think that for ilya, it's both a surprise and a turn-on to realize almost immediately how sexually compatible they are. ilya's a little bit of a bully in bed; shane likes to be bullied a little (shane likes it a LOT, as it happens). shane's needy and desperate for it in a way that makes ilya feel hot, sexy, powerful, in charge, etc., which are all feelings that feed ilya's desire for control. he wants to be in charge of sex and shane wants him to be in charge and that's hot for both of them. but there's no deeper connection there. ilya's got other stuff going on, and also, he's very experienced setting up sexual arrangements with people that don't involve any messy emotional entanglement (that's how you stay safe from emotional vulnerability!). you kinda get the sense that ilya's like cool, well, i've got a sure thing in hollander, so i'll keep him in my rolodex and look him up when i'm in montreal. (i legitimately do not think that ilya was expecting shane to play hard to get for two years after that! i do think that shifts his conception of shane a little bit and sharpens his interest!!)
ultimately though... in terms of what keeps drawing ilya back to shane over and over again... i think he's drawn to shane's emotional sturdiness, for lack of a better word. shane's a nice person who has been well loved his entire life. he doesn't seem to experience much shame about his desires. it's easy for him to submit for ilya because he doesn't expect to be hurt or humiliated. why would someone do that to him? why would ilya do that to him, when they have a nice time together and make each other laugh and have really, really good sex? he trusts ilya not to hurt him or make fun of him or otherwise weaponize shane's desires against him. i also think that like, he really just doesn't see ilya as an asshole at all. he gets that ilya plays a role on the ice/in his public life just like shane plays a role. but the real ilya, the ilya he gets to see when they hook up, is a really gentle, attentive, careful lover. i think that shane really clearly telegraphs his warm feelings of trust to ilya, perhaps especially in the scene where they have penetrative sex for the first time. and man that's like a drug to ilya (guy who's grown up believing he's a lazy, irresponsible piece of shit is treated like a responsible, attentive, caring person who is worthy of someone else's trust) even as it's also terrifying to him (like ok, shane thinks this now, but if he gets any closer he will inevitably see the truth about ilya, and it's unbearable for ilya to contemplate seeing shane's warm affection for him replaced with his father's disgust, and that's why ilya has to aggressively push shane away anytime he gets too close).
so i guess the tl;dr version of the above is: ilya is drawn to the way shane makes him feel -- part of that is shane making ilya feel strong and in control (shane submitting to him in bed), but gradually, as they get to know each other more deeply, it's shane making ilya feel like a better version of himself. that's my preliminary thesis based on what we've seen so far... but tbh i think it's an incredibly tangled mess in there emotionally for ilya.
shane version under the cut!
i think ilya, for shane, at first represents the possibility of having something he expected he would have to spend his entire career denying himself. i don't know what kind of life shane imagined for himself as a pro athlete who wanted to sleep with men, but i'm betting it either involved complete celibacy with men and unsatisfying relationships with women. maybe he'd get to have a handful of risky, fraught one-off hookups over the years with men he'd never see again. instead, he gets ilya. they're not boyfriends, or even friends exactly, but they are in a relationship. by that i mean: they have a connection that they both choose to consciously nurture over a period of many years. they come back to each other again and again. they choose each other over competing priorities. they're in regular communication when they're apart. they tease each other and have inside jokes. and they also have really, really hot sex where shane seems to feel almost totally free to explore his desires without fear of being shamed or embarrassed for the things he wants. you know i want the unsafe insane dubiously consensual BDSM in fic but in the actual canon of the show i think what we actually get is pretty safe sane and consensual sex between two people who respect each other's boundaries and communicate pretty well through sex (even if they are not communicating AT ALL outside of sex). anyway this is all to say that: shane thought he wasn't going to have ANY of that, possibly ever, and instead he gets it, with a lover who is in many ways incredibly compatible with him, both sexually and in terms of intuitively understanding the pressures/realities of their shared career. also ilya is smokin' hot and shane VISIBLY goes weak in the knees anytime ilya so much as looks at him so that doesn't hurt.
i think where it gets complicated is like... obviously... where we are now. ilya is attracted to shane's security and willingness to trust, but he's also scared of it and he repeatedly does things to protect himself from shane getting too close that end up hurting shane. and shane is like... he's a guy who is under a lot of pressure from many diferent directions, but he's not giving tormented, repressed gay who hates himself. he hates feeling pressured to lie to the people he loves, sure, but he doesn't seem to internalize any of that as "i'm a bad person and i deserve to feel like shit." shane KNOWS he doesn't deserve to feel like shit, because he has healthy self-esteem and healthy models of relationships around him. and when ilya starts doing things that make shane feel like shit, shane pushes back. he doesn't just roll over and accept it. ilya skips out on the afterparty after losing rookie of the year to shane, when they've already been hooking up for a while? shane confronts him about it -- it's not cool to withdraw your attention and affection from me just because you're mad that i won and you didn't (obviously there's more going on there for ilya, but shane doesn't know that). ilya tells shane he bores him, ghosts him for six months, and then has the nerve to feel him up on stage as a joke and laugh at shane's visible distress in the bathroom? shane's like fuck you, actually, you don't get to treat me like this. want me or don't, but you don't get to string me along. ilya asks shane to stay over at his house, then delivers a long speech about how shane's just one of the countless options he has and is honestly a pretty boring one, and THEN has the nerve to call shane by his first name during sex? shane ends things, because it's not okay for somebody to mess with your head/heart like that.
i think shane really, genuinely likes ilya, and what keeps him coming back is these glimpses he gets of the real ilya underneath all of ilya's layers upon layers of bullshit. i think shane senses that the "real" ilya, or the version of ilya that ilya himself wants to be, is the guy who will tease shane goodnaturedly but never humiliate him. the guy who is gentle and careful and attentive during sex, even when that sex involves playing with power dynamics or doing things that might, with a different partner, feel scary or vulnerable. the guy who is a shit-stirrer on the ice but is a good captain who works hard and cares about how he's perceived by others. but at a certain point, if ilya can't figure out a way to let go of his bullshit and actually be that person, shane's going to have to cut himself loose from this. it's making shane too miserable, to see these flashes of what he could have, of what they could be like together, and then to have to watch ilya sabotage it and push shane away in increasingly painful ways just because he's scared. it's making ME miserable (in the most delicious ways because i love the angst i love the pain i love the mess).
anyway i cannot WAIT to see how jacob tierney gets us out of this one because hoo boy!!!!! but i have a feeling it's going to involve cracking ilya rozanov open like an egg and finally letting shane see just how much ilya's actions are driven by his excruciating certainty that he is rotten all the way through, in ways that no one could possibly look past to love him.
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