PlaceHolder1

BL fandom has its share of "imouto" creeps, too, both among BL creators as well as fans.

"Normal" clearly is an adjective qualifying the "straight behaviour" bit. They are saying that nothing about the characters is out of the norms for bonds between straight men. Improve your reading comprehension.

And stop acting like the LGBTQIA+ were the ones on the receiving end of harm in this situation. Toxic fujos aren't LGBTQIA+ activists. They are just entitled bastards who don't understand that their fantasies which eroticize any interaction between men aren't any holier than those of creepy dudes who eroticize women just for existing and storytellers.

People are not homophobic for not turning all male-male intimacy gay. They are not homophobic for setting firm boundaries against shipping culture and signalling disapproval of the shipper entitlement. Your cohorts are the ones who are being prroblematic, intrusive and disrepectful for forcing your delusional narratives and for presuming that you have right to dictate how other people are supposed to depict familial and platonic relationships in their stories. Or what, if one day you people fall low enough to even eroticize a father hugging his son, are the rest of us supposed to shut up and nod as you go about spreading the creepy narrative that every show that has a scene of a father hugging his son "should've been BL" and if we object and call you out for being a problem, you'll appropriate the guise of LGBTQIA+ activism to hide behind and deflect criticism?

That said, two wrongs don't make a right. The other two chatting shit out of their assess in your replies are absolutely being homophobic pieces of garbage. Report them and ignore them and I will do the same.

Those people must not have a brain, then. What BL? There's no room for any BL to happen. They are literally brothers.

I mean, it's still just as brain-dead to demand BL when characters are established to be straight or categorically not sexually interested in each other. If the shoe was on the other foot, and other people were lamenting that a beloved friendship dynamic between a BL lead and his female friend didn't turn into straight romance, the very people who lament that every show with compelling male-male platonic bond isn't turned BL would be crying about how disrepectful expectingmale-female intimacy in BL, when it is categorically impossible, to turn straight is. But, in this case, it is worse than just disrepectful and entitled. It's creepy. Like, why are they so comfortable shipping siblings....

The characters are brothers. There's no question of gay censoring, because it is impossible for anything gay to have existed in the first place. There was censoring of emotional scenes between the characters because they didn't want BL shippers clipping scenes and spreading the nonsense that this was a wink wink hush hush BL.

Actual gay dramas that need to censor the gay because of the ban deliberately put in subtext would be delighted with people picking on it and promoting it. Every one else would be reasonably annoyed if the shippers' delulu narrative overtakes the actual narrative that the creators intended. And especially, when the relationship that the fujos are trying to twist are brothers, people understandably felt highly uncomfortable.

Another industry might have just ignored the shippers or publicly admonished them. Given the level of cultural and social pressure and scrutiny that anything and anyone with any visibility in that country faces, it's understandable that the team felt pressured to modify the show in a way that would thwart the narrative of the creepy gaze crowd and signal complete disavowment of any association with "that" crowd.

What happened was the equivalent of close, celebrity friends censoring their public appearances together because toxic shipping culture around them has breached a non-negotiable limit, they can no longer tolerate that kind of attention anymore and the easiest way to break away from that crowd is to limit yourself in public so as to not give them "material". Obviously, it is not fair that these people need to be the ones to make compromises for no fault of theirs but it's a messy situation similar to how if you live in a community with terrible public safety, you need to arm yourself when you go out even though ideally that burden shouldn't have been on you.

I won't comment on whether the romance itself is toxic or not because I haven't watched the show and you say she, a child, kidnapped him and they fell in love is not enough for me to decide if there's anything problematic. Kidnapping just as a meeting trope won't be a problem. Only a problem if power gap and fear persists, develops into stockholm syndrome and then evolves into attachment. I sincerely doubt that happened. If anything, the most problematic thing about this would be if ML was also not a similarly aged child when they met.

The most problematic thing you've discussed in your comment is your own "only thing she cares about is saving her master who's been on his deathbed for 10 years. She doesn't give a shit about having a relationship with the ML" rant. That's exactly what she f***ing should do.

Having a romantic relationship doesn't mean that it is entitled to usurp the position of priority in your life. Romantic relationship must find a place to fit in the remaining space. You are a toxic, problematic bastard if you constrain or evict your older, more important and/or fundamental relationship to make space for romantic ones. A lover needs to understand that all things being equal, your filial bonds (parent-child from the child's perspective, but also includes similar dynamics like uncle-nephew, master-student, guardian-ward and so on), fraternal bonds (siblings but also friendships, brotherhood and other forms of peer loyalty) , and parental bonds (parent-child but from the parents' perspective, copy paste every other relationship from filial category but shift perspective to the older person in a parent-like position) will always come before a romantic relationship. If they can't understand that or are unwilling to compromise, you need to end the relationship if you can't convince them to stay in their line, but you must never compromise with your important relationships to feed the ego of a romantic partner.

I mean, if this involves ruining and devaluing friendships over romance then very valid reason to hate the show.

While there are certainly some who are just resentful simply over the existence of an FL depriving them of the freedom to imagine a gay angle, most comments just hate the FL's character and the actor's performance. I've seen several comments saying that they would've preferred the SFL as the main love interest. In summary, the dislike is more than just some salty fujos.

Just the description of those two movies is enough to tell me that they aren't bromances by any stretch of imagination. 😂 Nothing friendly going on there. The description already gives away the horniness without even needing to watch. It's BL.

Nah, as someone who dislikes romance and has only ever watched one for all the things except for the romantic relationships themselves, Untamed won't cut it for me. It is a romance, the adaptation wants you to know it is a romance and even just knowing that it is censored BL won't allow you to look at the characters' relationships as anything but. You know the leads don't love each other for pure familial or friendship reasons. They are close because they are attracted to each other. I can watch romances and even enjoy them when the story is larger than the leads' romance and the leads have a life and motivations regardless of each other. They have other important relationships and things to do outside of their romantic arc. So, I can skip through romance scenes and watch other things. But the Untamed is a "lover over everyone else" and "all about the lovers" type of romance, (happens to be precisely the kind of romance that grinds my gears the most) and no matter how you censor it, you can't hide it without fundamentally changing the story. They also have not tried hard enough to censor it in the first place. The exclusivity, the sudden elevation in priority over every other relationship in a way that isn't justified by the history, the preferential treatment and the plot in service of the relationship is very indicative of the romance genre and if you don't enjoy it, the censorship isn't going to be enough to disguise that off flavour.

If you do want a danmei adaptation that a romance-phobe will enjoy, Word of Honour. At least, the first roughly 15-20 episodes I can guarantee, that's as far I've watched. Because the relationship between the leads themselves is just decorative. The plot happens outside of them and they, more or less, go from place to place just so there's an excuse to let us into the different things going on in the world. The most consequential, significant and emotionally moving relationships, as far as I've watched, have been family, loyalty, brotherhood and parent-child like bonds. Even the leads themselves aren't obsessed with each other to the point that they begin to act in ways that make no sense for their backgrounds or suddenly begin devaluing prior and/or important relationships in the name of romantic attraction. None of the "I don't love anyone as much as I love you, I don't care about anyone but you, you fix me, you complete me" bullshit. Just a "you are important and I care about you" so far. The leads have a life and motivations almost completely independent of each other. They act for themselves and the relationship contributes, not the other way around. Their scenes together are mostly about them chatting about things going on in their lives and talking about their problems. A very "two damaged and war-worn middle aged men bonding over life, grief and loss and supporting each other as they try to heal and rebuild" type of vibe. Honestly, if you can ignore the flirting and sexually suggestive framings, you can safely think of them as friends. But even if you can't tolerate it, it doesn't matter because their relationship isn't the focus at all.

Yeah, bromance in the way general audiences understand it. That is, stories where friendships hold the narrative weight and centrality that in romances, sexual relationships occupy. But not in the way, BL drama audiences use the term as a synonym for censored/modest BL.

Eeesh! Put a warning for incest on this! FL is the ML's daughter-like younger sister, no two ways about it. This shouldn't have been a romance at all. But "imouto" creeps be creeping.

They say it because they legitimately think so. Statistically, men are just more likely to not care for romance in general. Girls would be just as likely but you guys have historical baggage and too much peer pressure. Guys who don't like romance but watch yuri do it for the same reason that girls love BL so much. Fetishization. With the exception of the troll types who'll go to BL forums just to write sexist or homophobic bullshit, guys who don't care for BLs and/or romances in general will just ignore BLs. Guys who like romance because they actually enjoy the genre would still watch BLs just as they would watch yuris or straight romances. The difference being that they'll judge it with the same lens that they will judge straight romances with. They don't have the fujoshi perspective going in. BLs aren't special in their eyes just for having mlm romances.

China's case is understandable. They, legally, can't get away with it anymore. So, unless they censor it, those BL stories aren't getting screen adaptations. What I don't understand is that in these other countries where there clearly exists no institutional enforcement stopping them since those industries regularly keep publishing explicit BLs, why would you do these censored adaptations at all? Even with Chinese productions, before the official ban, they released several explicit BLs but simultaneously, were picking up BLs and making censored adaptations of them. If you are allowed to make BLs, why not just do so? Or else, if you don't want to make BLs, why pick up a BL to adapt? There are plenty of actual platonic comics and novels that can be adapted . And we desperately need more and more real bromance/sismance/mixmance stories in media to tackle the recent shift to romance-centric culture and put focus back on family, friendships, other platonic relationships and communal bonds. If friendship focused stories are what they want to do, they can just do that. Why choose to start with a BL at all if you don't want romance? For those who wanted friendship, knowing that it was intended to be BL, ruins its value. For those that wanted romance, it, not being an explicit romance, is unsatisfactory.

"26 year-old son has a baby pink comforter on his bed, you can pretty much assume he's gay."
The f**k are you talking about? Way to lecture about prejudice by being bigoted yourself.

Every straight guy who hasn't been bullied, shamed and made to feel emasculated for interests and choice that some rando labelled "feminine" or was just a chad who didn't give a flying f**k about labels defined by patriarchal, misogynistic old men will definitely have plenty of stereotypically feminine interests and preferences. Because guess what? The person most fundamental to his existence, the person who is literally his foundation, who has had the most direct influence on his formative years is his mother, a woman. Even if you don't have a sister as your collaborative partner in your growth and development, most of us were raised by a woman who was our primary caretaker. All of us will inherit habits and interests from our moms regardless of how much it makes our bigoted dads uncomfortable and judgemental. If you grew up with sisters and are close to them, you will imbibe more "feminine" habits from them and they "masculine" habits from you. You may end up making female friends as you grow up, gain female mentors, look up to role models who happen to be women, and admire female celebrities. You'll inevitably end up absorbing habits and cultural influences from all of them. It's not unnatural or odd for straight men to have some stereotypically feminine preferences. In fact, not having any is unnatural and a red flag indicating that the individual may be under some unhealthy, abusive pressures.

As for gay men, men who are also sexually attracted to other men and men who are exclusively sexually attracted to other men have existed since forever, in every culture, in every degree of social connectivity. Gayness predates gay culture and gayness has nothing to do with access to gay culture and gay identity. In a highly globalized, highly social culture, where affiliating yourself with a cultural label and a sub-culture brings you peer validation, it may be becoming increasingly normalized to for a gay person to involve themselves in gay sub-culture and adopt lifestyle choices of gay celebrities. But for a large part of the world and for most of the history, a man who liked another man didn't necessarily feel the need to identify himself as different from his straight brethren. An average gay man/bi man is raised under the same expectation, same pressure and the same influences that an average straight man does. For most of history, a gay/bi man used to be as likely to exhibit feminine interests as a straight man is. A closeted man under homophobic pressures like the case of the character you're talking about will be even less likely to display those behaviours not more.

The presence of stereotypically feminine interests is not a certificate of homosexuality and the absence of them is not an indication of heterosexuality.

God, no wonder the moral character of a lot of BL media and their community forums is so messed up and toxic. You'd expect BL media and it's audience to be more thoughtful, more responsible and more careful with the messages they communicate and the attitude they display. Considering they love to sell themselves as being associated with human rights activism (fricking flimsy though their connection is), you'd expect better than for them to take up the same problematic outlooks that they claim to be fighting against and just flip it around to target others.

"his character Bank has not enough charisma and personality and not believable enough to convert a straight boy into loving another boy". Verbatim from one of the top reviews. How many times have we seen this entitled attitude that disrespects people's boundaries reflected in BL media and audience alike? Would you people dare to write and cheer about a "girl being hot enough to convert a gay man"?

Dozens of such toxic, problematic attitudes that intrude upon people's rights, boundaries and dignity, which would never find popular support in a show that had nothing to do with LGBTQIA+, suddenly becomes normalised and romanticized simply because the characters behaving in that manner are gay. BL audience which, usually, struts around self-righteously getting into the faces of fans of genres that are more heteronormative male oriented and lecturing them about how they should do better, immediately loses all moral backbone and stoops to "rules for thee, none for me" when it comes to policing their own backyard.

THIS HAS F****ING INCEST!!! What's wrong with the world!! Why the hell aren't there any warning tags on this nor is there a single review alerting people about it! Disgusting garbage triggered my PTSD from Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei.