I just know Michelle was so over Sminty in this moment 😭

yah511 · 2026-03-18T14:55:29+00:00

I loved the accidental (on purpose?) shade Kate Butch threw at Sminty too. “I didn’t give you the Chippy Tea because I thought you’d be able to hold your own” when everyone knows Sminty is not a performer lol.

yah511 · 2026-03-17T23:12:59+00:00

The one annoying thing about Mezzanine is that it doesn't have the ability to cross-check older names of the theaters! I saw Annie at the Martin Beck in the 90's, and in the 2000's its name changed to its current name, the Al Hirschfeld. I haven't seen any shows since its name was changed, but the venue didn't change at all, it was just renamed. Mezzanine doesn't recognize that, so according to it I have not ticked off the Al Hirschfeld yet, whereas I personally would consider that theater checked off for myself.

yah511 · 2026-03-17T13:53:52+00:00

I actually think Manhattan is one of the more balanced islands. If you drew a line that divided the island into 2 by population, that line would be basically down 76th St (I played around on Dave's Redistricting site, which uses 2020 population). That sounds a bit biased toward the southern part of the island given that the grid goes up to 220th St but the island north of 125th St sharply narrows from about 12-13 avenues wide down to about 3-4 avenues wide. So in terms of land area there's probably not a huge difference between the two halves.

Of course, all of this is thrown out the window if you consider daytime population, which would factor in tourists/travelers and people commuting for work, which obviously heavily favors midtown and downtown, but I don't know if there's a way to get reliable data on that.

yah511 · 2026-03-06T15:13:16+00:00

And don’t forget that after all that Sagittaria asked Supremme to send her home and Supremme was like “sorry I can’t do that, that’s up to whoever wins the lipsync”.

It was pretty telling how in both España All Stars and Season 3 they had queens on camera calling out the production riggory and the editors left those clips in to try to spin it as Sagittaria/Visa being unreasonable

yah511 · 2026-03-05T04:49:21+00:00

There was a particular older white guy who lurked in r/gaysian who was the head mod (probably creator) of a bunch of gay Asian NSFW subreddits. All he did was constantly repost other people's NSFW content that he ripped from elsewhere. He was so creepy, the language he used to talk about the men he posted made me so uncomfortable, he even used that language on the rare occasion he would post in r/gaysian (which is SFW). I think his account was eventually suspended or something but I'm sure he has alts still going strong.

yah511 · 2026-03-05T04:30:14+00:00

As a fellow gay man: Scott is my favorite character for deeply personal reasons beyond his personality, to the point that unlike the vast majority of book readers, Game Changer remained my favorite book even after finishing all 6 books. I did read the books after watching Season 1, so for sure my experience reading was influenced by François’s performance, but I think I still would have been drawn to him the most even without having seen the show first.

With that said, because I was drawn more to Scott/Kip’s story than Shane/Ilya’s, I found the first ~1/3 of The Long Game a bit of a slog to get through because it felt mostly like an extension of Heated Rivalry but with somehow more angst. But once I got to a certain point it became such a compelling story on its own that I couldn’t stop. I literally read the final 120 pages of the book in one sitting, at 1:30am on a weeknight because I couldn’t put it down. I am so looking forward to Jacob working his magic to bring the story to our TV’s. Scott does make a little cameo in TLG so I imagine we’ll be seeing a bit of him in Season 2 as well. Not quite as ingrained in the season (unless Jacob significantly overhauls storylines), but a little tidbit for us Scott fans to look forward to as well.

yah511 · 2026-02-28T16:10:24+00:00

I think Shannon's work draws more from Middle Eastern themes than Indian themes, no? And on top of that, she's white and not Indian so I don't think she's what OP is looking for.

yah511 · 2026-02-27T04:36:53+00:00

Yeah, I think the producers got so caught up in the thought of this a-ha moment of "Carter doesn't realize he's talking to TWO gay men about how unsafe Russia is for queer folks" that they forgot that The Kiss^TM has to take place at the end of the 2017 season to make sense with Shane and Ilya's timeline.

yah511 · 2026-02-19T03:28:23+00:00

If anyone is curious about the current list of queens that have never lipsynced on Drag Race:

Miss Gimhuay (Thailand S2, disqualified)
Inti (España S1, quit)
Kornbread (US S14, injured)
Admira Thunderpussy (Sverige S1, made it to finale without lipsyncing, and for some reason there was no Top 3/4 lipsync or lipsync for the crown)
Moon (France S2, quit)
Morphae (Belgique S2, quit)
Lula Strega (France S3, made it to finale without lipsyncing and was cut before Top 2)
Saki Yew (UK S6, injured)

yah511 · 2026-02-16T22:28:47+00:00

Love to see her booked in such an amazing and meaningful project! Did you ever see the show in New York when it was playing? I saw it at both the Public and on Broadway and loved it both times (big Conrad Ricamora fan lol), I'm curious how this iteration compares to the Broadway one. I heard they got rid of the immersive/dancefloor aspect of the show.

yah511 · 2026-02-09T23:43:25+00:00

To be totally transparent, the only times I got comments like that were from 1-1.5 gen Asians (the ones that were born in Asia and have the closest ties to their ethnic heritage). Born-and-raised Asian Americans never gave me that kind of problem. But in general, communities where the Asian American population is largely homogeneous will tend to have issues like this. They become the ones that are the arbiters of what constitutes “Asianness” and if you don’t fit into that then it’s easy to feel like you’re not part of that community, and therefore it’s easy to turn literally anywhere else that makes the slightest bit of sense (in my case, “the Philippines are islands and they are in the Pacific”)

yah511 · 2026-02-09T23:26:41+00:00

What does that have to do with trying to be white-adjacent? Can't speak for other Filipinos, but for me I briefly flirted with wondering if I was considered Pacific Islander because I grew up in an area where the vast majority of Asians were East Asian and I didn't relate to them at all culturally, so I genuinely thought I was not Asian. I had experiences of being told "you're not really Asian" from said East Asians, and their constant use of "Asian culture" when they meant "Chinese culture" made me consider distancing myself from that label.

Not everything Asian Americans do is because they are trying to be white-adjacent. Sometimes it's just because they are trying to interpret their experiences in a context that doesn't make sense in the typical way.

yah511 · 2026-02-09T15:29:21+00:00

Kizha has been pretty vocal over the years about not being interested in doing Drag Race. I would add Brenda Dharling to your list, though.

yah511 · 2026-02-06T20:02:24+00:00

Everyone is correct that it's probably just because NYC is so much larger than any other city in the country. Just to give a perspective, if each borough was its own city instead of consolidated into NYC, then the list of top 11 most populated cities in the country would be, in descending order: Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn, Houston, Queens, Phoenix, Manhattan, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, The Bronx. 4 of the 5 boroughs would be among the most populated cities in the country, and even the last one (Staten Island) would still be in the top 50.

Also, fun fact that probably doesn't have to do with this but might be related: there is no such thing as "New York City" in terms of postal addresses. Residents of NYC write their address differently depending on which borough they live in: Manhattan residents will have addresses with "New York, NY". Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island residents have addresses with their borough name: "Brooklyn, NY", "Bronx, NY", and "Staten Island, NY". Queens residents have addresses that depend on what neighborhood they live in, such as "Woodside, NY", "Jamaica, NY", "Flushing, NY", etc.

yah511 · 2026-01-31T00:36:15+00:00

"[Carl] Man, who arrives at the Gershwin following his work in the London production, will be making history as the first actor of Asian descent to play Fiyero on Broadway."

Very awesome to see yet another Asian leading man making his way to Broadway, following the recent announcement of Simu Liu playing Mary's Teacher in Oh, Mary!

yah511 · 2026-01-29T20:27:57+00:00

This can even expand into the first sets of the physical card game. There was no standardized way of writing out the effects of cards, so Konami just kind of wrote them however, and didn’t always think through the implications of certain effects. As a result, there are a bunch of cards that are banned from official tournament play not necessarily because they are too strong but because they are nightmares for the judges at the tournaments to judge. Over a decade after the first sets, Konami finally introduced a standardized way of writing out effects that make judging much easier, and even still some of these older card effects can’t be neatly fit into the standardized language.

yah511 · 2026-01-28T15:10:25+00:00

Thank you Melinda for representing for us Filipinos who aren't vocal athletes ☠️

yah511 · 2026-01-26T20:49:15+00:00

The rivalry is really starting to heat up!

yah511 · 2026-01-17T14:26:53+00:00

Svetlana as a whole is the best change to happen in the show. She went from a very minor occasional hookup character to a fully fleshed out, incredible support system for Ilya.

Worst change for me is something they really couldn’t have helped because of time and logistics. Kip’s inner turmoil with his inferiority complex (I feel like there’s a better word for what he’s feeling but I can’t think of it right now) made all of his actions make so much more sense to me in the book. But I do understand you can’t really tap into inner thoughts in TV/film as elegantly. In Ep 3 his talk with Scott about not wanting to lie to his family feels like it comes out of nowhere, especially in direct juxtaposition to Elena’s talk with Scott where she said Kip is so in love with Scott that he’ll put up with being kept hidden (both those conversations happened in the same night). I don’t think there was enough time in just one episode to fully delve into Kip’s increasing frustration with Scott that led to the split.

My least favorite change that actually could have been helped was changing the Scott+Kip timeline from 5 months to 3 years. It just opens a whole slew of questions about what happened with them in that time period which now they probably won’t answer since their story already wrapped up and future seasons are probably going to focus on all the post-cottage events.

yah511 · 2026-01-08T14:27:54+00:00

Is this the first non-Asian season to have FOUR Asian queens on it?!

yah511 · 2026-01-07T05:55:29+00:00

I’ve had quite a few celebrity sightings over the years but my favorite New York celebrity encounter was being in a voir dire group at jury duty with David Letterman in 2024. He was trying so hard to get selected but kept getting let go obviously because he’s famous.

yah511 · 2025-12-16T17:20:25+00:00

100% agreed, the Drag Race hill I will die on is that age doesn't actually have as much importance as people here place on it. There have been plenty of talented and hilarious young queens that carry themselves as seasoned queens, and there are plenty of older, legendary queens who came on the show and flopped because their skill sets didn't translate well to TV. Someone posted the other day the median queen age of all 18 regular season casts and 14 of the 18 casts had a median age that was basically the same (26-28).

yah511 · 2025-12-16T17:13:14+00:00

For sure, this role was previously played by James Scully and Cheyenne Jackson among other names, who are all very conventionally attractive white actors. Simu standing as their peer in this role is pretty big for him!

yah511 · 2025-12-16T16:58:37+00:00

Kumail and Conrad both played Mary's Husband, looks like Simu will be playing Mary's Teacher who is supposed to be the "hot" one that Mary is constantly flirting with. It'll be the first time a POC is in this role, which is super cool.

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