Revenged Love actually isn't omegaverse, but ABO Desire is.

Not that I'd recommend Revenged Love. Despite not being omegaverse, I think Revenged Love does more gender stereotype-y things than ABO Desire. Revenged Love does the whole 'very toxic top relentlessly pursues unwilling and legitimately scared bottom, who still eventually reluctantly gives in' -type sex-negativity. It's really not for me. That is one of my least favorite tropes: sex as a scary and shameful but necessary duty that the feminized partner is obligated to perform for the pleasure of the masculinized partner, because 'that's just what romantic partners do'. Comphet, but with the woman swapped out for a feminized guy. I haven't managed to finish Revenged Love yet. I will one day, probably, but it's a struggle.

In ABO Desire though, I actually think they're trying to break/flip/fuck with gender stereotypes. The alpha is the one to magically get pregnant (typically impossible in omegaverse), and the omega was faking his omega-ness the whole time, and he stays quite femme even after the reveal of his superpowers and his top-ness. It even has a (barely present) pairing between a female alpha character and a male omega character. ABO Desire was my first foray into omegaverse (outside of video essays by Rowan Ellis and Strange Aeons), so I'm not at all familiar with the genre, but I think if it's used in order to break gender stereotypes then I can definitely vibe with that. But if they just do the traditional alpha x omega thing then no thank you. For me the purpose would be to exaggerate gender roles to make it clear how absurd they really are, and to name them explicitly so that they're easier to subvert.

But the secondary couple in ABO Desire is very stereotypical, and there's a bunch of consent issues in both couples, so... yeah. It's not ideal.

ABO Desire got a lot of hate from terfs in MDL comments before it started airing, with the excuse that it would reinforce gender stereotypes, but those same terfs loved Revenged Love if you looked at their profiles, and if you pushed them on it, it turns out they were really just disgusted with the idea of pregnant men for transphobia reasons. So yeah, I'm not ready to cede the omegaverse discursive ground to them. I think omegaverse can be used in progressive ways and in conservative ways, like most genres can, really.

I used to hate the masculinized top x feminized bottom trope more than I do now, because it used to be ubiquitous and really formulaic, especially the early Japanese ones (and A Man Who Defies the World of BL makes fun of that formula in a brilliant way). But now there's more diversity, so I'm less icked out by it. It feels less pigeon-holed. In the end feminine gay guys who are bottoms do exist irl and they should get a piece of the representation pie. But the early Japanese formula didn't actually even really give us that.

I notice that positive representation of flamboyantly feminine gay guys has always been quite rare in BL. In early Thai BLs like 2gether they were there, but they got heavily villified/reviled. Like, the main character was 'one of the good ones', contrasted with loud flamboyant background characters who took their queerness 'too far', who often had a darker skin tones, more weight on their bones, and who were often vaguely transgender. Violence against them got played for laughs, and it was just... not pretty.

The bottom in the traditional BL formula isn't flamboyant, he is feminized by being represented as younger, softer, prettier, smaller, weaker, purer, kinder, lower in status, more insecure, more passive, a damsel in distress, maybe even demure (Or only a subset of those attributes). I know 'demure' is a meme word now, but I think it went viral as a desirable adjective to be because 'demure' was exactly that conservative feminine ideal, the same ideal that BL bottoms kind of embody in the standard formula, as the perfect stand-in for a respectable female character worthy of love. Case in point, both seasons of Fourever You. In 2gether the top even keeps referring to the bottom's 'boobs' as if he has any. He really is a stand-in. I'm not a big fan of that type of gender politics. (But in the end maybe media has to meet people where they're at and if this helps some conservative women be the teensiest bit more flexible about gender, fine I guess.)

I loved how The Eclipse subverted that 'respectable versus cringe' dynamic. It had the stereotypical group of loud flamboyant characters that got heavily bullied and villified by the rest of the school, but they were bravely rebelling against the restrictive social structure of the school (read: society) and the narrative presented them as being in the right, and the main characters were on their side by the end. Honestly that's such a good show. Dealt with internalized homophobia head on.

Japanese stories, especially older ones, often put ukes in drag at some point, which the character is then horribly embarrassed about, e.g. Love Stage, and School Trip. There is a forced feminization/emasculation aspect to it, which feels uncomfortable to me. But a show like Marahuyo Project or Therapy Game, where the character fully owns their femininity, love that, heck yes for confident gender-nonconformity. Also, Colorful Love, not a BL, but an exploration of male femininities and self-acceptance that I just friggin' love. And Ore No Bijoka, about a straight guy with social anxiety who overcomes it by becoming a drag queen hostess, excellent!

That was a lot of shows. In conclusion:

• Gender in The Eclipse, Marahuyo Project, Therapy Game, Ore no Bijoka and Colorful Love: Yay!

• Gender in 2gether, Fourever You, Love Stage, Revenged Love and School Trip: Nay!

• Gender in ABO Desire: eh I can see the attempt. Some hits some misses.

That's also the division between 'stuff I recommend' versus 'stuff I don't'.

Sorry this got really long. I have a lot of thoughts on gender haha.

Uhm. My own least favorite trope? Stepbrothers I guess. And bury-your-gays.

milo:

Everyone was talking about them both at the same time so I confuse the two.

Yeah makes sense, they were THE two very popular Chinese BLs, that even partially aired at the same time.

milo:

because I don't even think of Hioki as like a super feminized character, yk?

Yeah, in terms of personality not very, but I think in terms of relationship dynamic, kinda yes, he is. He gets headpatted, carried, (false alarm) damseled, pampered, grabbed again and again, dragged by the hand, food tenderly removed from his face, he's the little spoon in snuggling, I think he gets almost fistfought over at some point, iirc they do the bridal style 'boyfriend is blown away by prettiness' sparkly pan up outfit reveal for Hioki's yukata, they play on the height difference a bunch, etc. To me it was very clear who fulfilled the role of 'girl' in that relationship dynamic at all points. These are all BL staples of course.

I watched a couple of gender role reversal (RR) shows as well, and these are exactly the kinds of societally gendered interactions those shows love to flip. So no I wasn't that surprised that he got put in drag at the end, for me it was more of an 'Oh this again? I thought JBL had moved past this by now? Is the book old?' To me 'School Trip' fits perfectly into the traditional Japanese BL formula, so perfectly that in my notes I called it 'the platonic ideal of a traditional JBL'. It does all the tropes, nothing more nothing less. It does them well, mind you, which is why it's popular.

'Clueless plain guy gets ambiguously pursued by hottest, richest, most popular guy in school' was the most common formula when I was reading Japanese inspired BL webcomics as a teen. And of course it was, it's just the evergreen Cinderella fantasy. Plain Boy & Prince parodies the trope (quite well), by flipping the POV to the popular guy. So for me the show felt unoriginal, like I'd seen it a hundred times before, but if it had been my first time seeing that story play out, I probably would have loved it too :)

My done-ness with that type of story is also why I dropped Utsukushii Kare. But I've seen so many glowing reviews that I will give that another shot some time. Maybe it subverts the trope after the point at which I dropped it, idk.

milo:

Adding all of these to the ptw list LOL. ty for the reply !^^

Hope you enjoy them haha :)

milo:

I guess I am not immune to a well done trope lol.

Nobody is haha! Tropes are popular because they're fun and they work! If you wrote a piece of fiction that didn't do any tropes at all, it would probably turn out boring haha.

milo:

I mean, the main character is literally a stalker who has like daydream fantasies about shooting up his school??

Yeah this really had incel school shooter vibes, didn't it? That scene was the last straw for me. And the bullying was weird. But I will finish the first season at some point, because I want to know what people see in it.

I think there are a lot of people who just like fictional toxic domineering tops. I haven't figured out why yet. I mean, the whole 'dark romance' genre is incredibly popular too, right? Maybe it's what men are sort of supposed to be in a version (one of many) of the conservative imaginary? Like, being gentle and considerate is 'unmanly' so they lean into dark brooding stoic toxicity? But then in utsukushii kare iirc he goes and cries in an alleyway, so that can't be it for that specific show. I don't know. I'll have to finish it first.

AmnesiacMotorcyclist:

maybe love triangles?

I feel you. The amount of BLs I've watched/read that just introduce a random love triangle when the story starts to get boring TT. It always lasts for like only 1 episode too, and it's always the same lol.

The PitBabe conversation is interesting, I've always wondered about that show. I've heard a lot of different stuff about the degree to which they use the omegaverse aspect and it definitely seems tamer than some others. The situation you described with the Babe character sounds like an interesting gender role situation. I still don't think I'd watch it tho lol.

AmnesiacMotorcyclist:

I just hope we don't get to a point where half or even more than half of the BL's being made are vertical.

I think there's so many of them because they're cheap to produce. So probably, yeah, we will get to the point where in terms of total number of titles, half of BLs are vertical, but in terms of runtime or funding, nah.

What I hope is that they're not all going to be AI and hard to distinguish at a glance from the real deal.

Ryn:

What I hope is that they're not all going to be AI and hard to distinguish at a glance from the real deal.

I had a reversed feeling towards Private Galaxy, because I had a hard time believing it's not AI, probably just bad acting. Beautiful as the actors are, this is not enough to keep me engaged. But I think that they'll keep trying to push AI in the entertainment in general, as it's not sticking as they expected in IT (I work in the area and it's mixed feelings everywhere at how useful/harmful it really is to boost productivity and replace workers, at the same time delivering code that is really hard to understand and maintain, turning developers into babysitters most of the time).

multitudebr:

But I think that they'll keep trying to push AI in the entertainment in general, as it's not sticking as they expected in IT (I work in the area and it's mixed feelings everywhere at how useful/harmful it really is to boost productivity and replace workers, at the same time delivering code that is really hard to understand and maintain, turning developers into babysitters most of the time).

My dad is in IT and he uses AI all the time. It's frustrating. He works in a national company that makes/manages/oversees software for regional governments, and he says they're considering just vibecoding an important new application they've been working on, because the company they hired to do the actual coding didn't do well. And if vibecoding this application goes well, they'll do it with more new government applications. So yeah, pretty terrifying lol. I hope it goes wrong sooner rather than later, so that the damage is at least minimal and we can still revert back to actual human coders.

Tbh I think AI in entertainment is kind of doomed. At least video is. Video generation is infinitely more expensive than text, and people consume art as a way of understanding other people's experiences of the world, which AI does not have. There's a reason most slop producers hide the fact they used AI, because they know people don't want to watch that and feel betrayed/fooled if they find out something they watched is AI. I don't think it can be profitable in the long term. As long as it's free, it'll flood the market, but AI companies can't afford to keep losing billions year upon year, and as soon as you'll have to pay 200 dollars a month to produce your slop, the average Joe looking to make a quick buck off it is gone.

multitudebr:

I had a reversed feeling towards Private Galaxy, because I had a hard time believing it's not AI, probably just bad acting

Based on the almost 5 minutes I just watched to check, I think some of those shots might be AI (e.g. at 1:20 that back-lit slow-mo turn around), but it's mostly real people. Still wouldn't watch it though.

One of the girls' faces in Candy is AI-generated, because one actress dropped out halfway and they didn't feel like reshooting. That's not speculation, they say so in the extra episode before the series really starts. It's weird and you can very much tell. In some scenes she has human facial expressions and in others she doesn't.