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lumosatnight · 6 months

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23 Fic Recs 2023!

This year has definitely been a year. I've devoured so many wonderful fics by so many amazing authors. Thank you @hprecfest for the super fun rec categories and for some fic inspiration! Here are 23 fics that I read and loved in 2023 (although some are quite a few years older) ordered by ship.

🌼 - fluff | 💔 - angst | 🔥 - smut

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💫 DRARRY 💫

1. A post-canon fic

The Discreet Gentleman's Connection by pluto (gayrights420) [Drarry, E, 80.4k] 🌼🔥 I had the absolute pleasure of beta-ing for this fic, so when I say it is amazing, it truly is just that. Fast burn on the smut via Floo sex, slow burn on the in-person falling in love. Satisfying in all the best possible ways.

2. A fic that made me laugh

AITA for being "obsessed" with my childhood nemesis? by @rainstormradish [Drarry, M, 4.3k] 🌼📲 Draco on a reddit forum is hilarious just on its own, but the banter and formatting really bring this fic to life. Amazingly creative, had me in stitches!

3. A comfort fic

The Eighth Tale by @letteredlettered [Drarry, E, 12.0k] 💔⏳ An oldie but a goodie. I constantly find myself coming back to this fic and having my mind blown every single time. Time travel timey-wimey angst.

4. A fic with art

Dating Draco - A Visual Game by @itsphantasmagoria [Drarry, M, Video Game] 🌼🎮 This is a fic in video game form!! Amazing art and lovely story where YOU get to make the choices for Drarry's happily ever after.

5. A favorite series

The Journal of Dreadful Things by @lilbeanz [Drarry, G, 112k, WIP] 🌼📖 Hilarious, witty, AND COMES WITH ART!! Lilbeanz draws and writes a wonderfully delightful series starting from Draco's First Year. His characterization had me in hysterics. Book 4 is starting soon!

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💫 COMMON SHIPS 💫

6. Fic with the hottest smut

Moonstruck by @prettyremus [Wolfstar, E, 3.8k] 🔥🐺 Found this gem while scrolling through the werewolf smut tag (don't judge me). I love the switch in dynamic with Sirius taming Remus's wolf through, ahem, rough sex.

7. An unreliable narrator fic

Sea of White by @dividawrites [Harrymort, E, 8.6k] 🔥🤍 Deliciously hot, creepy, and strangely sweet. Love their dynamic here, the unrestrained lust. Harrymort "die" and lose their memories, so, of course, then they bang.

8. A fic that made me cry

Far Apart, Far Away by @unmistakablyoatmeal [Hinny, minor Drarry, T, 1.6k] 💔💍 Infidelity angst has never been this good. I love the layers of emotion in this fic. Quick punchy sections that really pulled me in.

9. A Muggle(?) AU fic

Pleasant Hope by @ac1d6urn, @sinick [Snarry, E, 41.6k] 💔⛪️ Pastor Severus!! The angst, pining, and self-discovery in this fic is superb! I love the interwoven magic and detailed world-building of this little town.

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💫 RARE PAIRS 💫

10. A fav amongst faves

The Last Trial of Peter Pettigrew by @sleepstxtic [Prongstail, M, 20.8k] 💔 🐀 Holy moly, this fic!!!! Is this my new favorite fic?? Possibly. The concept is brilliant, so creative and nuanced. The Peter character study using outsider perspectives is genius. Seamlessly balances canon and new scenes.

11. A pre-canon fic

Careless by @tax-onomic [Luther, E, 1.5k] 🔥🪞 Lucius/Arthur my beloved rare pair!! I am captain of the Luther ship, and Tax's fic hits all the right spots. The pining, the sniping, the prickly personalities with emotional vulnerability underneath! And all in the middle of a hot smut scene. Perfect.

12. A canon-compliant fic

Scottish by thepadfoots [Chedric, G, 749] 💔🌟 Lovely Cho character study focused around her Asian identity and the boy she loved.

13. A fic rated G (more like T though)

Lion-Hearted Girl by MinnieQuill (odainath) [Minmione, G, 4.5k] 💔🦁 I know the large age gap might scare some, but their relationship feels very organic in this fic. The setting is grim, but there is always hope in the darkness!

14. A fic rated T

You're So Vane by @patriceavril [Romelina, T, 6.8k] 🌼💄Romilda is so delightfully characterized, I was smiling through the entire fic. Angelina is the perfect foil (and love interest) to Romilda's attentions.

15. A rare pair fic (less than 2000 fics on AO3)

Snakeskin by @cntrl15 [Bellastoria, E, 3.7k] 🔥👠 Talk about a rare pair! Astoria/Bellatrix only has 2 tagged fics on AO3: this fic and the drabble I wrote based on it. But read this fic, and you'll see why I felt the need to write more in this universe.

16. A fest fic

Master of None by @nanneramma [Snormac, G, 5.5k] 🌼🧘 Severus is so wonderfully cranky, and Cormac is fine AF. The surprise pairing of 2023 that I never knew I needed and now I'm obsessed with!

17. An under-rated fic

Sun, Shadow, Shade by @naomijameston [Snuna, G, 700] 🌼☀️ Post-war fluff. Sunshine Luna is the perfect match for sullen Snape. A short and sweet fic for this underrated ship.

18. A canon-divergent fic

but somebody's gotta do it by nocturn [Pangulus, T, 920] 😄🧟‍♂️ This fic will make you say WTF but also huh, okay that totally works. The concept is WILD but Lyra executes it wonderfully. Pansy drags Regulus out of the inferi lake and they flirt a little while he gets de-corpsified lol.

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💫 POLY SHIPS 💫

19. A dark fic

In his embrace by @loneamaryllis [Snarrymort, het!Snarry, E, 48k] ⚡️👀 Dark and dirty but so so good. A Voldemort Wins AU where fem!Harry is taken as prisoner. Snape's mindset as he tries to save her (and is forced to rape her) is so twisted and mesmerizing. Mind the tags!

20. A thought-provoking fic

Icarus by @thistlecatfics [Millvansy, M, 20.0k] 💔🍾 War trauma, addiction, codependency! This fic is messy with emotions but has a strong, beating heart underneath. I am in love with Parvati as she deals with Pansy's addiction and Millicent's denial — three beautiful, imperfect girls.

21. A holiday fic

A Time, Dark and Divine by @moonflower-rose [Dronarry, E, 17.0k] 🔥⛱ HOLY FREAKING FUCK!! The sexual tension in this fic is off the freaking charts. Drarry seducing Ron while on vacation in Portugal. Sign me the fuck up!

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💫 GEN 💫

22. A favorite fic under 5k

The Scrunchie by @saintsenara [Lightning Era Girls, G, 4.5k] 💖👭 Such a lovely look into some of the female background characters, all following the path of a single scrunchie. Lisa, Padma, Parvati, Hannah, Sally-Anne.

23. A fic with an ending I can't stop thinking about

Through the Middlegame by @sandervansunshine [Astoria & Peter, T, 6.6k] 💔♜ Devastating, heart-wrenching, tragic. 10000% would recommend. Kylee has already heard me screaming in the servers about this fic. If I could get a fic tattooed straight onto my brain, this would be it.

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💫 BONUS RECS! 💫

A podfic

Plenitude by @wilfriede, written by eldritcher [Amelmione, M, 14 min] 💔🥀 Amazing voices, amazing music, amazing ambience. Wilfriede really brings one of my fav Hermione/Amelia Bones fics to life in this podfic!

A comic

War Prize by @mrviran [Snegulus, Reggiemort, M, Comic, WIP] ☠️🐍 The panels are awe-inspiring. I am HOOKED on this comic. The murder and the TENSION. Ughhhhh so good. I am so invested in Severus's arc!!

A self-rec (completely self-indulgent)

For I Have Found Salvation by @lumosatnight [Snarry, E, 7.1k] 🔥✝ My first time writing Snarry! Priest Kink, church sex, and blasphemous religious imagery. Priest Severus is oh-so-tempted by Teen Harry. So fun to write and even more fun to go back and read as a guilty pleasure.

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⚡️ Want more fics to read? ⚡️

Try my rec tag: #lumosinthelibrary

Year in Reading, b-day oneshots, WLW Library

#2023 fic recs #hprecfest2023 #year in reading #hp rec list #drarry #wolfstar #harrymort #hinny #snarry #prongstail #minmione #snuna #dronarry #lumosinthelibrary #2023

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macrolit · 6 months

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NYT's Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

FROM FROM by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A HOUSE FOR ALICE by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

THE ILIAD by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

KANTIKA by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

MONICA by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

THE NEW NATURALS by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

NOT EVEN THE DEAD by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

THIS OTHER EDEN by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

THE UNSETTLED by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

WITNESS by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.

#new york times #100 books #reading list #2023 #books #reading #have you read any of these titles?

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frankencanon · 6 months

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It has arrived...!! 🦊❤️‍🔥🐲

Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone by Allison M. Kovacs (@muffinlance)

#fox's tongue and kirin's bone #oohoohoho im so excited!!#muffinlance #novels #books #fantasy #novel #book #reading list #book reccs #book recommendations #book recs 2023 #novel recommendation

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byghostface · 2 months

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Rq who is nika? Had some art tagged daminika cross my dash and I am Intrigued

Nika alias Flatline, a character created by writer Joshua Williamson and artist Gleb Melnikov, was introduced in Robin(2021) run—where Damian Wayne as the fifth Robin running off home attended the Death tournament on Lazarus Island.

Nika is the first opponent Damian faces on the island and she proceeds to take his first life with her signature move— ripping his heart out with her bare hand (no one actually dies, people would have three lives during the tournament on the island).

She is a Russian metahuman girl and a martial arts fighter, with the power to absorb the skills of people who had died in her hands.

Flatline(+Damian) arts from Gleb Melnikov's Twitter(X)

Here's the reading guide/list of her! Made by @/ redhoodtwt on Twitter(X)

Reading order↓ (text ver.)— Mainly appears in Robin(2021), Lazarus planet: Next evolution, and Batman and Robin(2023), with some mentions and cameos in other/different issues

Rebirth- Robin(2021)#1-8, Robin(2021)Annual#1, Robin(2021)#9~11, Deathstroke Ink.#7, Robin(2021)#12

Shadow War- Shadow War: Alpha #1, Robin(2021)#16~17, Batman vs. Robin#2, Lazarus planet: Next evolution#1

Dawn of Dc- Free comic book day 2023: Dawn of dc- Knight Terrors#1, Batman and Robin(2023)#1, Batman and Robin(2023)#6~7…(current ongoing run)

Another Flatline summary and reading list made by @/ batquinz on Twitter(X)

And here's a quick rundown of Nika and Damian's relationship thread on Twitter(X) Made by @/ nightwingstyles

Some daminika covers that I love! (they have a lot of ship names, and the most popular ones are: daminika, flamian, gravebird🪦🕊️, graverobin🪦🐦, birdskull🐦💀)

Cover art- Robin(2021)#2/ #7/ #15(1:25 variant cover)- Artist: Gleb Melnikov/ Simone Di Meo/ Mario Foccillo

And currently, Nika is in the new issue of Batman and Robin(2023)# 7!

Thank you for reading and taking an interest in Nika!! Hope you will like her as an amazing cool character!!!💀♥️

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twig-tea · 5 months

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Top 5 moments of yearning in 2023 bl (no cheating you can only pick 5)

WOW. wowowowowowow. Wow. It's almost as though you saw my other answers before asking this (which I know you didn't because this came in first and I am Slow). Rude.

First, I need to establish a very important distinction: Pining (my beloved) is when you think or are determined that it will never happen; yearning (also my beloved) is when you think it could and are really struggling to hold yourself back from just going for it right now for Reasons. The possibility of fulfillment is the main difference.

Second distinction: Yearning is not necessarily sexual tension. It can be an element of it, but yearning is about wanting something, whether that's sex, closeness, acceptance, or something else. It's about wanting existing barriers to drop that are preventing you from having the thing you want most in that moment, whether they're internal or external, physical or metaphysical.

Finally, as much as I would love to talk about only my favourite shows exclusively forever, you did ask for my top five moments rather than top 5 shows that contain yearning, so I stuck to the rules. All that is to say, there are a couple of series on this list that I don't actually recommend lol

With that out of the way:

Top [For Real Only] 5 Moments of Yearning in 2023 BLs Because Shan Hates Me

1. Jae Won yanking and then patting down Ji Hyun before putting him in a cab, The Eighth Sense

Basically this whole show is yearning (except for the brief interlude for pining). I chose this moment because this was the first moment I was certain they both actually knew what was going on and it was clear to them both that they could have this, at least in theory; the tension felt palpable, and I really wasn't sure whether they were going to hold back or not. Jae Won is supposed to be saying goodbye, but he can't keep it in to the point where he just can't stop touching Ji Hyun (that backpack pull that happens immediately before this, guh), and Ji Hyun is also so clearly soaking it up. When the cab pulls up and they just keep staring, there was a real question in my mind about whether they were going to break and just go for it or not. For these two it's not just about sex; they yearn for version of one another they are when they're together, and they don't want the spell to end.

2. Khun Lu and Ken almost kiss while naked in bed, Chains of Heart

I'm still not entirely sure I know what happened in that show, but the yearning between these two was palpable the whole time. In this particular scene, Ken has just seen a hint the previous night that Lu is in fact Din, his missing-presumed-dead lover, and he's already previously rejected Lu on the premise that Din is still alive and is the only man he'll ever love, even though he feels drawn to Lu. Up until then, his yearning was for Din, though he also felt something for Lu. Now suddenly he's presented with the possibility that he's already reunited with his lover, which is all he wants, though he's unsure that's what's happening. On the other side of this equation, Lu has been wanting as much of Ken as he can charm, trick, or beg for. He just wants him now, here, under the pretense of this new body, because he knows Ken will never be safe if Din is thought to still be alive. At the same time, he is torn between wanting to be near Ken to keep him safe and wanting to stay away to keep him safe. Yearning barely covers it.

3. The post-sex breakdown of Yai and Jom in I Feel You Linger In The Air

This scene was particularly painful because the yearning only hits harder after his orgasm, rather than the catharsis Jom was probably expecting. In this scene they weren't just yearning for one another physically like in earlier parts of the show; they are yearning for a future they can't have together but both want and in this moment feels like it should be possible. Yai really looks like he wants to meld into Jom's skin. The way that sex does not break the yearning is quietly devastating. Is there anything worse than having everything you want in your arms but knowing you can't keep it?

4. Patts desperate to get through to Saengai on the other side of the door, La Pluie

@liyazaki the tumblr gif search is not crediting you properly so adding a tag to you here!

Listen, Patts has been yearning for reciprocation from his soulmate for years before he meets Saengtai, and it did not at all stop once they met, it just changed in quality. He's always yearned rather than pined because with soulmates comes the expectation that it will work, because of 'destiny'. We saw him say in a flashback that he thought his soulmate could be platonic, and I do believe him when he says to Nara that he'd be fine with that, because what he really yearns for is to be understood and wanted for himself (hence the heartbreaking line "is it that hard to choose me?" that comes before this). The fact that someone had a "destined" connection to him and rejected him for years took a real toll on this man. The way he claws at the door in this scene will stay with me into 2024.

5. Minato and Shin at the Onsen, Minato's Laundromat s2

As much as I dislike where this season went, a yearning list would not be complete without Shin and Minato. We spend a lot of time with Shin's yearning in this show, but we get glimpses that Minato is actually yearning too throughout the season and especially at the onsen. In this scene, he tries to get drunk to get past his own insecurities, but it doesn't work as well as he wanted. This scene was all about Minato articulating all the ways he also yearns, and how it's overwhelming for him--and how that overwhelm is frustrating. I love this outpouring of Minato's frustration around his own internal blockers to what he wants. Also Shin swallowing in this gif makes it perfectly clear he is also Suffering. Perfection.

Bonus and it doesn't count as cheating because it's not a BL SO THERE:

Sam and Mon comforting one another after Sam's grandmother found out about their relationship, GAP

This show was such a mess but my god these two women wanted one another so badly, and I appreciated the hell out of that. It felt like yearning rather than pining until near the end, because all through their getting together phase they insisted on such an intense level of denial that they didn't even seem to worry about what they wanted being impossible, they just knew they didn't have it yet. So they did things like bite one another and pretend it was platonic and wonder why they weren't satisfied. I was thinking about going with an early scene where they barely resist the urge to make out, but instead I went with this one because I think it's a double-whammy. in this scene, Sam is trying to get Mon to tell her what's wrong, and Mon confesses that Sam's grandmother saw her at her house and asked her to leave Sam. Instead of pulling away, Mon clings to Sam, and Sam apologizes to her for not being there for her. Sam thinks she can talk her around to accepting Mon. "Don't worry; I'll talk to her. We'll get through this". The yearning here is for them to be together and safe; accepted by their families and happy, and not feeling this pain. I don't recommend this show, but there is something to be said for the way it showed the impact of intergenerational trauma and the very real yearning so many of us feel to just be accepted as we are.

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