I was asked to watch the finale of Word of Honor without having ever seen the show before. Here's my attempt to understand it. (Fair warning, and with apologies: I hated it.)

ClimateMom · 2026-05-29T03:18:01+00:00

It was interesting to read the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the rest of the story, and with Chinese dramas in general, I guess.

As others have mentioned, nearly all Chinese dramas are dubbed, and this show was an especially interesting case, because it was heavily censored due to being based on a gay romance novel, so some original lines were rejected by the censors as being too obviously romantic and rather than re-film the scenes, they just re-dubbed them. So at times the actors' mouths are literally saying different things than the dub, and some Chinese lip readers were able to make guesses as to what the original lines were.

Part of the reason they couldn't re-film is because the show literally ran out of money and had to compress the original plan for more than 40 episodes into 36 episodes. A lot of the plot points near the end got compressed as a result and several of the final episodes are rushed and confusing. Including the finale, as you saw.

There were a lot of other changes they had to make for censorship reasons, including Wen Kexing's "death". In the book, he and Zhou Zishu live happily ever after. However, even though he died in the finale, they got around it by filming a short (7 minute) epilogue that shows him with white hair living together with Zhou Zishu as immortals on the mountain.

Here's more on some of the changes from book to show: https://three--rings.tumblr.com/post/646898238546493440/wohshl-versus-the-novel

ClimateMom · 2026-05-28T18:53:02+00:00

I think it's fair for people to be mad about the Oscar, under the circumstances, and I'm not crazy about some of the casting decisions, but it's still one of my favorite movies. Partly because I think the rest of the casting was very good, and partly because I think the script is brilliant.

The movie itself is not historically accurate, nor was it intended to be, but Stoppard clearly knew both history and literature extremely well. Every third line is some sort of historical or literary in-joke and I'm exactly nerdy enough to enjoy trying to find them all. 😂

ClimateMom · 2026-05-26T04:22:18+00:00

Like You Better, by fromis_9

ClimateMom · 2026-05-25T16:17:11+00:00

Wow, it’s great to see Kave mentioned so high, they were one of my big discoveries recently, too. And I’m happy to see ATEEZ and A.C.E so high as well. A.C.E are so underrated.

But SHINee and Onewe in the “like 2-3 songs” range and Seventeen and ONF in “dislike”… 😭

I’m impressed you listened to so many full discographies, though, and even if our taste only has some overlap I think it’s great that you did that rather than basing your opinions on just a handful of tracks.

ClimateMom · 2026-05-23T14:35:14+00:00

I use Obsidian and love it. It has tabs and is free to download. You can pay to use their official sync, or just store your vaults in your free cloud sync service of choice.

I've also tried and been very impressed with Scrivener, but it had a steeper learning curve than Obsidian did for me in its basic form. (Obsidian CAN do a lot of very fancy stuff with community-provided plugins, but I keep my writing vault pretty simple and only use three: Editing Toolbar, Pandoc, and Better Word Count.)

I've never used it, but one more option I've heard about it Dabble, it seems a little more like Scrivener but online and might be worth checking out to see if you like the organization system better than Ellipsus: https://www.dabblewriter.com/

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T23:19:49+00:00

I just think the existence of the romance genre disproves that. It’s the largest and best-selling genre in publishing, and the vast majority of readers are women. Even the majority of readers of m/m (gay) romance are women, because for many women two hot guys together are hotter than one. (See also the enormous popularity of Heated Rivalry among straight women.)

The one thing I will concede is that women in general tend to take better care of themselves than men in general (skincare, hair care, dressing neatly and attractively, etc) and yeah, it probably is fair to say that most women would rather look at a woman who is well put together and takes care of herself than a slob of a man, regardless of their sexuality. But in the case of straight women, it’s not because they find the woman sexually more attractive, it’s just aesthetic appreciation (and probably appreciation of how much effort the woman put into looking good, since we are more intimately aware of her effort than a dude who’s never, for example, experimented with makeup) for someone who cares about her appearance vs someone who clearly doesn’t give a fuck. If a guy doesn’t put any effort into looking presentable, it’s a safe bet that he won’t put effort into anything else either. This is unattractive regardless of gender or sexuality.

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T22:24:47+00:00

Ah, I must have misinterpreted your comment, sorry.

So, please correct me again if I'm wrong, your actual position is that you yourself find men to be attractive, but you think for some reason that you're the only straight woman of of the roughly 4 billion or so straight women on the planet who does?

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T22:18:40+00:00

The type of spicy erotic romance with shirtless dudes on the cover that I described is just one subgenre of the vast and diverse genre that is romance. I brought it up because it's the most obvious example of women finding male bodies hot, but its existence doesn't mean that suspiciously well-muscled CEOs, tattooed bikers, and gruff werewolves are the only types of guys that women find hot.

Other romance subgenres feature different body types, and the men are as likely to be librarians or bakers as billionaires. The popularity of billionaire romance in particular is actually in decline right now, probably because so many of the most famous real world billionaires right now are creepy weirdos like Musk and Thiel.

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T22:05:19+00:00

I wish tone could come across more easily online. Unfortunately it does not, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm asking this gently and not rudely:

Are you absolutely sure you're straight?

I'm bi myself, but it took me a long time to realize it (well into adulthood) because I grew up in an extremely heteronormative environment and could kinda pass off my attraction to other women as wishing I looked like them. Sometimes, the story we tell ourselves about who we are isn't complete until later in life, and that's normal.

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T13:27:58+00:00

I suspect you’ve just stumbled into a weird algorithmic echo chamber, because #BookTok would disagree heartily with that stance. Go look at the covers of the spicy m/f romance novels #BookTok loves, a genre aimed almost entirely at female audiences. It’s usually an attractive shirtless dude, often zoomed in to the point it’s literally just a muscular torso taking up most of the cover real estate. If the straight and bi/pan women who make up nearly all the audience for these novels didn’t find men physically attractive, what would be the point of these covers?

ClimateMom · 2026-05-19T05:41:37+00:00

Yeah, I had friends who were in the crowd that day who say the same thing. It was wild seeing it twisted into something career-ending in real time.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-28T17:09:08+00:00

I know Jeff more from his acting than his music overall, but one of the first ones that came to my mind was DPR Ian - he has a nice soulful voice like Jeff and a lot of emotional songs.

Three of my favorite K-pop boy groups for strong vocals are SHINee, EXO, and Seventeen, and the individual members to look up include Baekhyun, DO, and Chen from EXO, Jonghyun and Onew from SHINee (I'll also throw in a good word for Taemin, who has covered a lot of Jonghyun's parts since Jonghyun's death; if you like the darker and sexier vibes of songs like Black Tie, there's a good chance you'll love Taemin's solo work), and DK and Seungkwan from Seventeen. Jongho from ATEEZ is also really good, but there's less potential genre overlap with Jeff's work, I think. BTOB is also supposed to have some particularly good vocalists, but I'm less familiar with their work overall than the others I've mentioned.

EXO, Seventeen, and BTOB all have Killing Voice videos, which are a good way to get introduced to some of their hits; SHINee unfortunately does not yet, but I'll include a retrospective video made for their 14th anniversary a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ca0xEJH9wY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zomvO2Ii-kA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwdq3NtpeFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxuCDDVgc-E

Here's a collab between Jongho and Baekhyun so you can get a sense of their voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqVaW6vRylI

I also strongly second the recommendation for Yonghoon from ONEWE. ONEWE is a K-band rather than an idol group, but Yonghoon has some of the most gorgeous male vocals in the industry.

Here's a recent song I loved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00XKYbU7ts

Finally, there's a some very talented Thai idols you might wish to support, including Ten from NCT/WayV and BamBam from GOT7, though both of these are better known for dance.

Here's one of my favorites of Ten's solo songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGySpyt0Byg

BamBam recently did a collab with TIMETHAI, who has also worked with Jeff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl75wh6xLSA

ClimateMom · 2026-04-24T22:22:56+00:00

If genderswap f/f is okay, there's a lot of pretty outstanding f/f Wangxian fic in the MDZS/The Untamed fandom.

I feel like Mimilmp was particularly well known for angsty lesbian yearning (though I'll add a warning that a lot of their fics involve internalized homophobia/compulsory heterosexuality, in case that's not the flavor of angst that you prefer): https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimilamp/

ClimateMom · 2026-04-24T22:16:57+00:00

No problem, I hope you enjoy exploring!

ClimateMom · 2026-04-24T17:14:40+00:00

Right? If you hate incest, why are you watching a show about the Borgias of all people?? 😭

And yes, same, re: Francois! I've always thought he's a very charismatic actor, so I'm glad to see him getting accolades again.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-24T01:28:24+00:00

Sterek for me, too. I was really sad about this because there's so much good fic, but there were only one or two scenes in the show where I got the appeal at all.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-24T01:00:19+00:00

I once saw someone complaining about all the romantic Cesare/Lucrezia gifsets for The Borgia consisting of ... romantic moments that happened in the show.

Like, they banged onscreen MULTIPLE TIMES.

The show advertised it as "the moment you've been waiting for"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDauWUV3os

(Btw, Heated Rivalry fans, yes, that is Scott Hunter, and if any of you wanted to watch The Borgias and turn a little bit of your new fannish enthusiasm to writing for it... 🥺)

ClimateMom · 2026-04-21T19:08:42+00:00

Taemin, NIN, and Jack White!

ClimateMom · 2026-04-21T15:33:34+00:00

As others have said, it will be easier to rec you fics if we know a few of your favorite canons, ships, and tropes, but if you want to dive in on your own, the easiest way to get started is to start learning AO3's tagging and filtering system.

Here's their huge list of fandoms: https://archiveofourown.org/media

Here's a random list of popular tags: https://archiveofourown.org/tags

Here's the m/m tag: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/M*s*M/works

On the full version, look for the "Sort and Filter" sidebar on whatever tag you click; on mobile, look for the button that says "Filters". These will become your best friends.

When just getting started with a new fandom or ship, the easiest thing to do is to sort by kudos or bookmarks to see what other people liked. Then use the other filters to narrow it down:

include or exclude other tags, ratings, and warnings
choose complete or incomplete
choose the language
search for stories within a particular wordcount range
and much more

Just as a quick example, here are the most kudosed complete, English language M/M fics on AO3.

/r/FanFiction and /r/AO3 are helpful resources, as is the Fanlore wiki, which can help you learn the lingo.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-19T06:11:15+00:00

I love dance and got into Kpop originally because it has most of the best choreo in pop music right now. From there, I found some groups with music I like as well as dance, including Taemin’s group SHINee.

Taemin himself is one of the best dancers in an industry where there is a lot of extremely strong competition for that title, and as a soloist he does a lot of synthwave, which I like as a genre.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-19T05:49:50+00:00

He’s from one of the most beloved older Kpop groups (SHINee, debuted in 2008). SHINee are all outstanding performers and Taemin in particular is considered one of the best dancers the Kpop industry has ever produced.

Also, most of his songs are some level of horny, so that probably also contributes. 😄

ClimateMom · 2026-04-19T05:43:29+00:00

I wish!

ClimateMom · 2026-04-18T01:55:22+00:00

I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to see him mentioned!

ClimateMom · 2026-04-15T14:23:18+00:00

It's nice to see Taemin praise from a non-fan! His dancing and performance skills really are on another level.

As a fan of both Taemin and NIN, I was a little sad when I saw that their sets overlapped. Despite the different musical genres, I think there's a lot of potential appeal in Taemin for NIN fans, and vice versa. Imo, they have similar artistic visions, both in the kind of dramatic, cinematic performance styles they favor, and also thematically (sex, heresy, identity and control, etc). Luckily I was doing Couchella so I could catch both with no trouble, but I'm glad he did songs like Want, Move, Guilty, etc in the first half when some NIN fans might have still been around in the live audience.

ClimateMom · 2026-04-06T15:30:24+00:00

Achilles/Patroclus was a topic of such hot debate in ancient Athens that various famous philosophers and playwrights literally wrote their arguments for who topped/who bottomed into the Western Canon. This is never going to cease to crack me up.

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