#Les for President of My Heart 💖

[magpie-to-the-morning]

Omg pls tell me about 7, 8, and 11 of the character dynamics asks for the Insatiable trio?? 👀👀👀

Ahhhh Les I love these! Thanks bby 😘 Answers under the cut because I had a lot of thoughts.

7. Describe how they walk together (i.e., matching strides, holding hands, etc).

They’re often walking through places with a lot of crowds (city streets, busy marketplaces, airport terminals), so they’re not going to be able to walk all in a row holding hands. But honestly? It suits them better to shift places as they go. Frankie, the lookout, is the most observant so he’s the most likely to hang back, so you’re most likely to see Dandelion and Santi walking side by side. They’ll both look back over their shoulders to include Frankie in their conversation, though, and they’ll move ahead or drop back as they feel like it.

The men have been a unit for so long that that match their strides pretty much intuitively. Dandelion, our solo traveller, tends to go more slowly, taking in the scenery and occasionally drifting off the beaten path to examine something more closely, talk to a shop vendor, pet a dog (the boys immediately take notice), or what have you. Don’t worry though, our girl’s always tuned into her surroundings - though that doesn’t stop Frankie and Santi from keeping a careful eye on her.

They’re all very tactile, but in different ways. Santi might slip a possessive hand into Dandelion’s or Frankie’s back pocket, and he’ll absolutely steer them with a hand on their lower back (more as an excuse to touch them than fear they’ll step off a curb or walk when they shouldn’t). If Dandelion sees something she’s excited about she’ll grab them around the wrist and drag them along with her to go check it out (as if they wouldn’t go happily).

8. Do they ever share (or steal) each other’s food? How do they act/react to it?

I love that you included this one, and it made me stop to think more about them and their relationship to food.

I’ve touched on Santi being in provider mode: when Dandelion’s kitchen was practically empty, he went straight to the store to pick her up some supplies. He knows precisely what Frankie and Dandelion will and won’t eat (Dandelion is much pickier), and he gets a lot of satisfaction from making sure his mates are cared for in that way. You won’t have a chance to try to steal his food because he will be trying to shovel it onto your plate first.

Frankie will eat what you put in front of him (except pickles, those go straight to Santi), and he’ll eat it fast. Military life has taught him to eat first and ask questions later. Your next meal is never guaranteed and it’s easier to think and fight on a full stomach. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t appreciate a good meal, especially when his mate is the one cooking. He absolutely will steal food from Dandelion but it’s more to get a rise out of her than anything else (she gets very possessive over her junk food). Come to think of it, Santi will try to steal that if only to try to get her to him eat some “goddamn vegetables for a change, deseito, please, you’re killing me.”

Dandelion is a picky eater like I said, although she has found foods from all around the world that she loves (this woman is mad for street food). She’s a fast eater too, though in her case it’s a habit leftover from childhood. The faster she ate, the faster she could get back outside or to the room where she slept or safely between the pages of a book. She never learned to cook more than microwave meals or canned soup, though that’s beginning to change.

When the three of them are together, meals are long, drawn out affairs with lots of beer or wine. They’ll eat off each other’s plates, pause to lick sauce from the corner of someone’s mouth, and generally get back in sync after Dandelion’s been traveling or the guys have been on a mission. They rarely make it through dessert before heading for bed though. 😉

11. How do their arguments usually play out? Do they make up quickly?

Oof this is such a good question. Santi and Dandelion are most likely to clash openly, and heatedly. She’s been on her own for so long that she’s not used to functioning as part of a team, which can lead to lapses in communication and hurt feelings. Also not to get ahead of myself, but in later chapters I’m absolutely going to be delving into Santi and Frankie’s active military service, the nature of their elite (and secret) unit, and how it impacts the three of them, and that’s all going to be something they’ll have to work through.

Frankie, as we’ve seen, is pretty conflict-avoidant, though he also tends to have a shorter fuse than Santi and can certainly get heated in a tense moment. If he snaps at anyone, it’s most likely because he’s worried or stressed, likely for their safety, and that’s something Dandelion and Santi both understand pretty well, so they know how to navigate those situations.

I think it takes Dandelion some time to work out how to process her emotions without shutting the other two out. It also takes the boys some time to learn that if she comes to them with a problem, she’s usually looking to vent more than anything else. They know she’s smart and capable and independent, they just also want to go straight to fixer mode and find solutions for her, which is pretty much never what our girl wants. Bless.

Turns out I had a lot of thoughts about these haha. 🖤

#Les for President of My Heart 💖 #Ask games #Insatiable #Fic #My Fic #Insatiable shitposting #Long post

[telomeke]

MOONLIGHT CHICKEN: UR THE... TOMATO SAUCE???

(above) Moonlight Chicken Ep.6 [4/4] 5.05

OK, so this post did a pretty pirouette and twirled its way back onto my dashboard once again after more than a month away. OP @vegasandhishedgehog had pointed out that the graphic text on Heart and Li Ming's t-shirts together seemed to be inexplicably telegraphing the cryptic message "Ur the... Tomato Sauce"... 🤔

This time around I couldn't help but look a bit more deeply into what it might mean, especially the intriguing "Tomato Sauce" on Li Ming's t-shirt. Based on what I've found, I think it is possible to read a bit of cheeky wordplay in the English words of this scene. 🤩 But first – a detour into linguistics and etymology is necessary.

There's a phenomenon that is sometimes seen in cross-cultural commerce – I don't know if it has a name, since I'm not trained in linguistics or anything of the sort – but whenever a hitherto unknown product or ingredient is introduced into a culture, locals will try to give it a name that resonates or sticks. And often that name will be along the lines of "this thing is the X country or foreign version of our more familiar local Y thing" (sorry for all the technical jargon here, hah! 😂).

You can see this in Southeast Asia: the Dutch may have been responsible for introducing many new food items to the Malay archipelago because a number of food items around the region are labeled "Dutch" even though they don't originate from the Netherlands.

The soursop fruit (originally from the tropical Americas and the Caribbean) is called durian belanda in Malay (meaning Dutch durian, because both fruits are spiky). In Malaysian Cantonese, potatoes are sometimes called ho laan syu (Holland tuber) and green beans ho laan dau (Holland beans), the latter echoing the way haricots verts are sometimes called French beans in English.

In Malay, turkeys are called ayam belanda (Dutch chicken), which nicely parallels the French word dinde – when turkeys were introduced to France, they were called (among other names) poulet d'Inde or chicken of India (possibly because India was seen as a source of exotic prized goods, or maybe because the birds, native to the Americas, were thought of as originating in the West Indies or les Indes occidentales). Poulet d'Inde eventually got shortened to just dinde though.

There's something similar going on with the tomato in Thailand. As its original homeland was the Americas, at some point in time it must have been a new and unnamed vegetable (botanically a fruit) when it first appeared in markets there.

So in Thai, tomatoes are called มะเขือเทศ (ma kheuua thaeht), and in keeping with the principle of adding some qualifier (that denotes external origins) to a local counterpart, the word เทศ (thaeht) means foreign or outlandish, while มะเขือ (ma kheuua) actually means EGGPLANT.

Thus the Thai word for tomato translates literally to foreign eggplant (or perhaps, outlandish eggplant).

For the text-savvy in this digital age (and that must surely include teens Heart and Li Ming), the eggplant emoji is laden with phallic innuendo (I'm not going into detail, but here's a visual 😂):

🍆

Remembering that in Thailand, Thai equivalents of weiner and wee-wee can sometimes be used as cutesy nicknames for boys (see this My School President write-up linked here, also Uncle Tong calling Junior กระจู๋ or gra juu in Bad Buddy Ep.11 [1I4] 10.38), it's possible to read the "Tomato" part of Li Ming's t-shirt – because of the outlandish eggplant reference – as a subjectively cute pet name along the same lines. Maybe the effect is meant to be something like: "You're a weird little weiner" (expressed with affection through Heart's loving eyes, mind you 💖).

Plus there's also the theme in Moonlight Chicken of young Li Ming growing into adulthood (despite Jim's constant efforts to infantilize him), while comfortably claiming his own sexuality in the process (and with Heart playing a pivotal role in this). Heart and Li Ming's t‑shirts pointing out the innuendo and imagery of the tomato/eggplant could also be a nod at that, with the outlandish definition of เทศ/thaeht suggesting that since Li Ming is gay, this eggplant/gra juu is not like most other ones (although he's not at all the exception in Moonlight Chicken! 😂).

Noting too that Li Ming is hyperfocused on escaping to the West, him being labeled Little Weiner of a Foreign Persuasion also does kind of fit. 😍

In this light, the word sauce just adds to the naughtiness of eggplant, while it also carries connotations of piquancy, sass and/or the essence or distillation of something.

And so the "Tomato Sauce" on Li Ming's t-shirt can possibly be read as symbolizing his indomitably feisty (gay) spirit, his faraway aspirations and his place in Heart's life as a cherished young boyfriend (worthy of a cutesy, if unspoken, pet name).

Am I over-analyzing again? Perhaps. But at the very least I think it's still a fun way of looking at Li Ming's t-shirt, and I wouldn't put it past Director Aof and screenwriter Best Kittisak Kongka to be playing with stuff like this. 🤩 They already did something similar with Li Ming's Sesame Street "Everything I Know I Learned On The Streets" t-shirt (see Ep.3 [4/4] 6.42), a metaphor for his uneasy juxtaposition at the amorphous line between childhood (represented by the kiddie vibes of Sesame Street) and incipient adulthood (as signaled by his streetwise self-confidence, gained independently perhaps from Jim). And there was also the wordplay around his "St. Rene" t-shirt (written up here).

Tagging @vegasandhishedgehog because you're the eagle-eyed OP who first noticed Heart and Li Ming's t-shirts, and as always @dribs-and-drabbles because you're foremost the one I think of whenever there's anything t-shirt related in BL! 😍

PS It's not the first time a vegetable was used as a metaphor for larger issues in Moonlight Chicken – see my write-up at the end of @airenyah's My School President Thai linguistics post that I reblogged here, for more info on Jim's winter melons in the market (although he was being decidedly less playful there! 😍). Li Ming also steals the scene away from Jim and his produce, once again displaying more adult maturity than his loong will give him credit for. 💖

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#moonlight chicken #li ming's t-shirt #tomato #tomato sauce #eggplant #thai linguistics #wordplay