I have an idea
An au where Kai never shows up to the chens noodle house meeting cuz he was mad at what Lloyd said and instead ends up going deeper into ninjagos crime scene.
* Kai gets pissed at Lloyd callling him selfish and ends up getting really drunk and misses the meeting with Lloyd jay and Cole
* On his way back he accidentally falls into one of the canals and almost drowns. He manages to get out but a passer by recognizes him and saw him fall in but didn’t see him come back up
* Kai gets back to where ever he’s staying and promptly passes out for like three days
* The person that saw him fall in calls the cops and they assume Kai drowned and begin searching for his body
* Lloyd and the others at this point are already at chen’s island.
* Nya gets a call from the police about Kai and she like them assumes he drowned.
* She begins looking for Lloyd and the others to tell them that Kai’s gone then gets wrapped up in all the Chen stuff
* Kai wakes up to find that he’s on the news for being dead
* He decides to take advantage of this and decides to just go by shogun now
* He also decides to “pretend” to be female cuz he’s to recognizable no ther reason totalyyyy (yes this is a transfem Kai au cuz I do what I want)
* Meanwhile with the ninja when they catch up with Nya they learn that Kai’s dead and are very upset about it
* Chen also fails in his plans because he doesn’t have all the elements and when he try’s to use the spell the staff explodes killing him & clouce
* Skylor is arrested and put into kryptarium for working with her dad (this is very important I promise)
* Lloyd feels really bad about Kai because the last time they spoke he said really mean stuff and he wonders if Kai fell in somehow related to that.
* Meanwhile Kai begins making connections in the crime sphere in ninjago. She wears a disguise (a mask, dress large jacket and other clothing to hide her identity) and grows a reputation for herself
* She eventually starts to notice how shitty life is for lower class citizens of ninjago city and how the criminals and the upper class take advantage of that.
* She starts helping these people (mainly orphans) and creates a safe haven for them where all of them can live safely under her protection.
* She amasses a following for the people she helped + some criminals who have kinda changed their ways and they become a pretty big gang in ninjago city (I don’t have a name for this yet)
* With the ninja morro happens but garmadon takes the place of Kai in it cuz he never got banished (just imagine morro got let out by clouse on accident cuz he still attempted to banish garm but failed) and everything is basically the same up until they confront ronin
* Back with Kai a few months before Lloyd gets possessed she ran into a girl on the street named Natalie. Natalie claims to be an orphan and Kai does what she normally does when she finds a poor starving orphan on the street, she scoops her up and brings her back to her shelter (I don’t have a name for this yet either)
* Turns out Natalie is actually ronins daughter. She used to live with her parents in Styx (ronin was still doing ronin stuff so he was constantly gone all the time and she mainly lived with her mom) until one day ronin refused to pay soul archer his debt and souls archer went after his family. Nat’s mom ends up sacrificing her self to protect nat and nat runs away after. She ends up in ninjago city all alone.
* Kai after learning this decides to go and have a chat with ronin (because no one hurts her kids the people under her protection) and she runs into the ninja + garm when she goes to confront ronin (it’s when the ninja try and steal the scroll much to garms dismay because he’s still trying to be good)
* She panics but is slightly relieved when non of the ninja recognizes her (definitely helps that she’s wearing a mask and feminine clothes) ronin does tho due to his connections and questions her on why she’s here
* She doesn’t speak and just attacks him (she’s too worried the ninja will recognize her voice and she thinks that they won’t agree with what she’s doing and will be mad at her)
* So chaos ensues and Kai ends up leaving once she realizes Lloyd’s been possessed by a ghost and decides to dip to not interfere with the ninja’s mission anymore
* The season goes on as planned but the ninja now know who “shogun” is thanks to ronin. Lloyds a bit suspicious because of Kai’s red shogun name but guesses that maybe she was inspired by Kai or it’s just a coincidence.
* When Kai gets back she learns that some of her group members got arrested while trying to stop a fight between two other groups and decides to brake them out of kryptarium
* Cue skylors entrance
* Skylor manages to try and escape in the chaos of Kai’s brake in and almost escapes but is cornered by some guards
* Kai who’s crawling through the vents to get out while her group members have already escaped stops when she sees skylor getting cornered. Cue the love at first sight thing and she decides to help Skylor escape cuz she’s so pretty
* Skylor accepts Kai’s help and they escape and Kai brings her to her shelter
* Skylor has had a lot of time to reflect on her self during her imprisonment and is now glad her dad died cuz she really hated being evil
* Kai and Skylor grow closer together as Skylor joins the group and eventually Kai confesses her true identity cuz she trusts Skylor
* Skylor is confused at first because the ninja put her in prison and evreything but is ok with it because of how different Kai is
* Skylor is transfem in this au too! She she helps Kai realize that she’s not pretending to be a girl and helps her except herself
* They eventually form a romantic bond and skylor takes up a new persona to work under (I don’t have a name for it yet) to match Kai’s shogun persona
That’s all I have for now but this was all rattling around in my brain and I had to write it down
Other important stuffs
* Kai’s more morally grey in this au
* She kinda becomes similar to Jason Todd in the way she acts with her shogun persona
* She basically unofficially adopts all the orphan kids she lets stay in her shelter they all call her big sis sho
* In her group she has her close lieutenants (all ocs that I’m still thinking about names for) including skylor as her right hand woman
* She is a wanted criminal because she has broken some laws
* She doesn’t really use her powers or spinjitzu unless it’s really dire circumstances cuz it could be trailed back to her life as a ninja
* She’s kinda scared of seeing her the ninja again because she feels like she’s betrayed everything they stand for by being morally grey and doing borderline bad things
Feel free to ask me questions about this au (might help me come up with more ideas for it)
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Indian BL? FROM 2017????
There's an Indian BL from 2017 that I just watched. And I have incoherent thoughts
Before I continue, massive thanks to my bestie @anixknowsnothin for telling me about this show and proofreading the post for me. You don't even watch bl so I have no idea how you found this, but I'm incredibly grateful nonetheless
Here's the link to where I watched the show from, there's a glitch in the first episode subs where the subs seem to be from another show entirely, but it's only for the first ep and about 50% of the dialogue is in English anyways, so it shouldn't be hard to follow.(My ask box is also always open if there's a specific dialogue/scene in Hindi that you want the translation of)
Edit: The link seems to be region locked, so to watch it you can use a vpn and set your region to India, otherwise the episodes are available on youtube, albeit without subs
Note:- this post is going to have a few mild spoilers throughout, but I'll flag major spoilers in red
It's no secret that India is fairly behind when it comes to queer love shows if we compare it to other Asian countries. While it has a handful of great queer shows and movies, it's still quite a small quantity. Additionally, before this, I'd never watched an Indian show that felt like I was watching a bl (if you have recs, please send them my way!!). I'm not going to get into the technicalities of what feels like a bl and doesn't, because honestly, I'm not completely sure myself. For now, I'm just going based off of vibes and feelings, and this show felt like a bl through and through.
Titled 'Romil and Jugal' after its main characters, the story is a modern, desi, bl remake of the classic story...
Romeo and Juliet
Well, Bad Buddy was the first Thai bl I ever watched, so Romil and Jugal being the first Indian BL I watched just feels right, no?
I didn't actually know that the story was based off of Romeo and Juliet till the second episode, because I didn't bother looking for a synopsis, and jumped right in. However, it's links to Romeo and Juliet quickly became apparent, around the same time I started to see similarities between this show and Bad Buddy. I also did not know that this show came out in 2017 before I googled it, having already watched the entire thing, which was a pretty huge shock, because this BL is progressive by 2024 India standards.
Alright, enough of my rambling. Here's a synopsis of the show in case you haven't heard of it. (I couldn't find an official one, so I did my best to write a spoiler free synopsis)
Ramya happens to start talking to a slightly older woman at an airport, who believes that there is no romance in the younger generation. To prove her wrong, Ramya decides to tell the older woman her brother's love story. The story from the past is shown to us as Ramya narrates it to the woman in the present.
Jugal is a closeted 19-year-old who lives with his parents. One day, a family moves into the house next door, and Jugal immediately falls for the son, Romil. The two of them attend the same college, and eventually become friends. The two of them eventually get together, but have to face the challenges of a homophobic society and having parents that hate each other.
I was a little skeptical of the show going in, but the show surpassed all of my expectations in the best way possible. It's no masterpiece, and it has its flaws, but it was far better than what I expected. It had both comical elements and darker themes, and it did not shy away from exploring the darker themes at all. Oh, and it has a few musical numbers. What did you expect? This is India after all.
The show is 10 episodes long, with 20 minutes per episode, and so it does unfortunately fall into some of the pitfalls that shorter shows tend to fall into, namely underdeveloped relationships and rushed endings. I did end up feeling a little bit like it didn't make sense for the pair to sacrifice and suffer as much as they did because they hadn't known each other for very long, and I felt like they should have been given more time to fall in love with each other. But it also could be argued that the show stays true to the play, and Romil and Jugal are dumb teenagers who make mistakes and stick with each other through them. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.
One thing that I loved the show for was that it showed us that the relationship is not all sunshine and rainbows. They argue, they break up, they get back together, and they do argue even after that. But every time, they eventually work through the issue and reconcile. The show even depicts Romil dealing with internalized homophobia and struggling to reconcile with the fact that he will never be who his family wants him to be. Although I do wish they'd have had more time to explore this, I'd say it was decently depicted and handled. The show really delves into how children are forced to uphold their family's wishes and are constantly put under pressure to make them proud. Although it clearly affects both of them, it's more obvious with Romil, who is expected by his family to date and marry the daughter of his father's boss, whom they think he is dating. There's a metaphor along this theme too, where Romil pretends to like the mango shake that his mom has been making for him since he was a kid, even though he hates it, and when he tries to tell her, he has to act like it was a joke to spare her feelings. The show also goes into the communal mindset of basing your actions off "what will people think?", and you can see how a lot of the characters' actions throughout the show are haunted by this question. Some of Romil and Jugal's earlier disagreements are due to this very mindset.
The show also very candidly depicts the extreme homophobia of society in India. Romil and Jugal had to constantly hide who they were, always having to keep up a mask and I felt that reach somewhere deep inside me. When the pair come out, the show really shows how ugly homophobia can be in India. Their parents immediately disown them. They're mocked in college and wrongfully suspended for a fight that was provoked by other students. Very, very few people stand with them, and the pair very quickly realize that now that they are out, they simply cannot live in the city anymore. So with the help of Jugal's best friend and her mother, they flee to Mumbai, where they get jobs and live as paying guests with a friend of the aforementioned mother. But, even in Mumbai, the masks stay up. They have to act like cousins, for fear of being persecuted. The series depicted the worst-case scenario that so many of us live in fear of, so watching it was something of a cathartic experience for me.
Another thing that the show did quite well is showing how different people and their mindsets can be. Jugal's best friend, Ahalya, and her mom are very supportive, and they help the pair out quite a bit. Ahalya's mother provided a safe house for the pair and helped them find a fresh start. Meanwhile, Romil and Jugal's parents are incredibly homophobic. There was a scene that really stuck with me, (mild spoiler ahead, skip to the last sentence of the paragraph) where Ahalya's mother came across Jugal's mother, who prided herself on being educated and well-read, searching up how to cure homosexuality. Ahalya's mother then tells her off for calling herself educated yet believing that homosexuality is an illness. It is so important to me that the show depicted both the violent homophobia that permeates Indian society and the surprising, warm acceptance that one can find.
One final thing that I loved about this show so, so much is just how authentically Indian it feels. Asian cultures share a lot in common, but they also have their differences, so seeing a show where I can imagine encountering the characters in real life is really amazing. Rather than something big, it was little things sprinkled throughout the story that warmed my heart. The story felt like something I could hear the local aunties gossiping about. The way it depicts queerness in India hits incredibly close to home.
One thing I've learned watching Asian bls is that the ending of a show can make it or break it, but with this one, I'm stuck. The best way I can describe the ending is absolutely insane and incredibly Bollywood.
I believe this show was supposed to get a second season because the last two minutes of the show leave us with a massive cliffhanger. Now, it's been 7 years, so a second season is unlikely, so I'm simply pretending that the last two minutes of the show never happened. But the ending has so much more to it than just this (Major spoilers for the ending up ahead. I mean it when I say major, this is like going into Bad Buddy knowing that they're going to trick their parents in the end).
About halfway through the show, I remembered what play it was based upon and realized that there was a very real possibility that Romil and Jugal would die. The first half of the last episode leads up to this, telling us that they died when reconciling after an argument in the middle of the road when they were hit by a truck. We get a super emotional scene (yes, I cried) where the two families somewhat reconcile in their grief as they go to the police station to identify the bodies. Except... they're not dead, which is revealed when Romil's father hugs Romil's (not) dead body. They reveal that they planned this to show their family that they still loved their sons. I did say it was like PatPran tricking their parents in the end, didn't I? So the families reunite, Romil and Jugal get jobs in New Zealand and get married, and return to India for a wedding celebration (yes, I cried. again). The ending does feel slightly rushed, but if I'm being honest, it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Believing that your child is dead for a bit is a somewhat justifiable reason for a sudden change of heart. There's a part where Romil and Jugal tell their parents that if they choose acceptance, they can reconcile, but if they choose to remain prejudiced, Romil and Jugal can simply get back on the stretchers, because they'll be as good as dead to their families anyways and it is *chef's kiss*.
All in all, the show was surprisingly heartfelt and poignant. It had me laughing, kicking my feet and even crying. There's a lot more about this show that I could talk about, but I'm going to stop here for now, and I'll try to write more on it later. This show really does deserve more recognition than it has, and I'm almost mad at myself for not knowing about it before. Am I being really biased when talking about this show? Absolutely. But I do think that this show is a worthwhile watch, and I'd really like to see what other people on here think of the show, especially because I'm aware that I am biased towards this show.
I'm tagging a few people who I know might be interested/have some thoughts about the show because this is a show that I really want to hear other people's opinions on and have conversations about, so I hope you guys don't mind!
@waitmyturtles @lurkingshan @bengiyo @neuroticbookworm
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