Flypsyde

Thanks for that, Ana!

Hey Mean, thanks for all that. I will respond in depth later. (watch out!) :D Thanks especially for the mention of the two shows...I haven't seen either one, so that's exciting. :D I'm to the point I've just about watched every BL and Asian gay-themed flick on the planet.

Have you watched a film out of Thailand called IT GETS BETTER? I stumbled across it last night on gcinee.com and gave it a go. It's flawed, but is also awesome, at least to me. I laughed, I cried, and much of the narrative is told in really inventive but not overly artsy-fartsy ways.. Plus the actiing is really good across the board. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I do my best to serve.

I was advised to skip 1-10 and watch just ep 11 after it aired...which led me to watching the steaming turd that was ep12. I think I'll go ahead and flush the rest of the series.

Basically: Who the hell cares? I don't think the writers know or care either.

The WTF moments aren't fun when they're the result of terrible writing and you're bored out of your mind.

I'm thinking the HJ escalated to a BJ and Sat's great at swallowing, so problem solved.

Wow. What a master class in how to follow up a really intriguing, darkly-hued episode full of opportunities for rich, earthy drama with a weird Hallmark Channel snoozefest that takes 50 minutes to tell five minutes of story. How embarrassing for all involved.

I felt so bad for the actors, having to act out and speak such horribly-written plot and dialogue. Plus, they had to add three-minute pauses between each line to fill out the allotted time.

Choke: "I love you and I'm sitting out here in our little Valentine's Day Fantasy Village flirting with you, but oh well, by the way, this morning I agreed to go a different direction. I'm sure you'll understand." (Fake cry, fake cry, fake cry...Choke is like Jin in Nitiman; when they cry they look like they need to take a dump.)

Just horrible. Did an entirely different set of writers do this episode compared to the last? And if Sat was such a willing slut, why was he always fighting the sex partners off in the bathroom and locker room in his memories? Wait, or maybe...oh hell, who cares?

definitely hate it. Different isn't always a good thing.

I Love this movie, which I stsumbled across quite by accident. The streaming service I was using cut the end abruptly though, so I'm not sure if I missed something? Did the bar stay open? What happened with the monk? Help, please.

Beautiful comment. Also a beautiful reminder of why I avoid twitter and most IG too. Twitter is for twits. And it can not be repeated often enough that these delicate flowers coming apart at the scenes because of the Jai/Teh smooch are a tiny minority of the fandom and are to be ignored. People who go off to that degree about a fictional program are off-base mentally and emotionally, not to mention probably being about 14 years old.

If I read you correctly though, I think you are WAY too easy on Jai. You don't direct people by emotionally and mentally manipulating them through a mine field of dangerous mind-fucks over a period of days. You don't direct people by flirting with them, leading them on, giving them false hope for romance, playing knees-ies with them at plays, lying to them, taking them on romantic walks along the river, making out with them or let us never forget, bringing plum wine to a rehearsal for just one, special actor to try. A director directs by, you know, holding rehearsals and...directing. It's his job to communicate to an actor what he wants from him and heip him develop the tools to deliver, not make out with him for a while and then walk away with, "OK, now that you've got a boner and blue-balls, my job here is done."

Teh's no innocent, but I see Jai as far, far worse. From both a personal and a professional perspective, he is despicable. I hope Oh hooks up a bomb to his car or something equally satisfying. I've seen directors like Jai in action and it's a terrible thing that almost never is addressed as it should be.

I think Jai is a manipulative asshole who should be reported for his line-crossing and fired. Lying to, flirting with, leading on, misleading, boundary-crossing...these are not legitimate ways of a director to get their actors to play a role, these are the underhanded machinations of a control freak who likes to play games with people's minds and hearts. Jai gets off on the power he has over his actors and he uses it to fuck with them.

Jai didn't "nail" anything. That days-long series of manipulations that led to the make-out scene is going to mess with Teh's head and he probably won't be ABLE to play the part. I hope that is h ow it turns out, at least. The way for a director to get an actor to play a role as he wishes is for the director to, you know, actually DIRECT.

And it can be very helpful as an actor to do loosening-up exercises, acting exercises, play and movement exercises, etc., but at some point that all becomes just so much bullshit and an actor has to PRETEND. They have to ACT LIKE...that's why it's called "acting," not "screwing up your head" by having a psycho director lead you around by the nose for days on end, inside and outside the rehearsal space.

Cool. Glad my book-length treatise sparked a few brain cells. It didn't really take that long...I just let the fingers take dictation from what the brain is spewing and off we go...lol Otherwise known as diarrhea of the fingers. :D I love thinking about this shit.

Was I rude to you? Please let me know as I'm always open to improving myself and my behavior.

Oh sure, now I remember. Thank you so much for taking the time! When this was referred to in the show and in comments, i thought "wait a minute, did I miss an affair or something with Teh and Kim...? lol

WARNING: THIS IS INSANELY LONG.

Your comment/reply sparked a great deal of thinking on my part, so I just let it all spew into this comment, which goes on unceasingly for days. Please forgive my verbosity, but I blame you for inspiring it. :D If you don't read the whole thing, that's fine. It's WAY too long which is why I hid it under a spoiler tag. I don't want the entire commentariat to know how crazy I really am. :)

Yep, you caught me, I am a dude. lol I have a couple of Lesbian MDL friends on here and I thought they were dudes when they friend-requested me. haha It's interesting how we can correctly or incorrectly interpret the vibe we get from a person's written comments. BTW, I'm not going to do a thesis on it or anything but the phenomenon of gay women being caught up in BL World is a fascinating thing. Not that they have to justify it, they don't, but I'm curious about where that comes from.

My comment about being "a bad person" for identifying/sympathizing with Teh was mostly in jest. The vast majority of the BL fandom currently see Teh as a particularly unattractive turd, so my identification with him logically places me floating around in the toilet with him, right? I don't know exactly why I feel sympathy for him. I have thought back and I don't think I've ever been in his position of being physically unfaithful to a partner. I've only been in two long-term relationships since coming out. The first evolved to be wide-open as long as we were adventuring together (I'm not particularly proud of that, but there it is and there's of course a lot more background than I can fit in here) and the second was completely monogamous, lasting seven years. In between and since, I have basically been a big ol' ho.

There was never any cheating that I know of, certainly not on my part, and I know I would be very upset if my partner did what Teh is doing, so my sympathy for him isn't because I identify with him. I'm thinking/hoping that maybe I've evolved to a level of maturity from which I see all of us, including myself, as being flawed just by our very nature. HOW flawed and in what areas, is a matter of degree and personality only. NONE of us is without faults.

I like Teh very much and have some things in common with him. I was a theatre major in college and the vibe of those scenes rings true, except that I never, thankfully, had an unethical, scheming jerk like Jai as a
director. He knew exactly what he was up to from the beginning with his line-crossing journal exercise. And what kind of director brings booze TO a rehearsal, to share with one particular actor? A douche-bag, that's what kind. Going out for drinks after is one thing, but I apparently view the rehearsal space as a sort of special bubble in which actors should feel safe in trying/experimenting with anything within the ethical realm of ;acting experimentation. But even from within, there must be limits to protect the bubble.

I've never participated in a flirtation with a director, but there's really only one I was ever attracted to and that attraction faded quickly as we got into the rehearsal process. But I have seen LOTS of cases of directors crossing lines right and left like Jai and the actor going right along with it. The worst thing is that it's impossible to hide from other actors and crew people; everyone knows what's going on inside the bubble. So people lose respect for both parties who it's essential for them to work with and it creates lots of gossip and drama that distract from the task at hand.

So yeah...writing all this out, it seems like I would think of Teh as a jerk too for participating in the mess he's in the middle of, but I don't. First of all, the director has ALL the power. The only thing an actor can do to retaliate and resist would be to quit the show and tattle on the director, but who really wants to do that? Actors love to act and it's especially wonderful to land a juicy, lead role to portray. All that would be lost in the quitting. I think the thing to do first would be to pull the director away privately and lay down the law about not being OK with the line-crossing and let them know that if it doesn't stop the next step is to report them to higher-ups. Even then, there's no guarantee that the powers that be wont do all they can to cover it up and take the side of the director if they lie and claim nothing is going on. BUT that's not Teh's dilemma: He's pretty much all for the line-crossing. lol

Teh is vulnerable to all this because his relationship with Oh has been stale for quite a while. I believe we're in Junior year already, and Oh has changed in ways not attractive to Teh. The orange hair and old-lady fashion choices are not just a surface thing. They indicate to me that THIS is more the real Teh than the more reserved, conservative dude he was when the two first got together. Remember the red bra scene in ITSAY? That was a fantastic scene and to me foreshadows where Oh is now...he's allowing himself to express his feminine qualities. Which is fine, but it is a BIG change. If my partner suddenly went with bright orange hair and those clothes, I would be self-conscious every time I was in public with him and maybe somewhat in private too. That hair looks awful on Oh and it can't just be ignored. And Oh has to know that. How can you go with bright orange hair, which you know will draw attention everywhere you go, and not understand that your partner will be regularly in the center of that too? Did he consult with Teh before taking that step? From what I've gathered, I don't think so, which is kind of rude and insensitive. I think it's fun that young people currently dye their hair regularly (unfortunately a lot of oldies are in on the trend too, and it's not a good look) but there's degrees of color choices too. Oh went about as extreme as you can get. For instance, I think it would have looked cool to have some orange streaks/highlights put in his natural dark hair. But as another commenter mentioned Oh went full-on Ronald McDonald on The's ass. Teh also sees Oh as flaunting and taking his family's wealth for granted. And relationships can be difficult to manage when one party is rich and the other is poor.

So all the manipulations of the director, leading up to and including the makeout in the rehearsal space, took place against this vulnerable,unstable situation with Teh and Oh. And don't forget, Jai's been reading Teh's journals, which include lots of intimate stuff about him and Oh, so Jai knows all this and is acting as he's acting even though he knows he is likely helping to permanently wreck their relationship. Teh has written in his journal that despite his current misgivings he loves and cherishes Oh and plans to love him forever. Jai the douche doesn't care.

I think I'm sympathetic to Teh also because I've been in the rehearsal process many times and that environment can become very emotionally intimate and special to all involved. I have often not wanted friends or family to sit in on a rehearsal because their presence spoils the vibe of trust and community within the bubble. If I ever direct a show again, I would ban non-actors/crew from all rehearsals right up to opening night. I would just want my people to feel completely safe to experiment. But Jai's "acting exercises" to me were suspect from the beginning. He claimed he wanted the two actors to "be comfortable" with saying "yes" to a request from the other actor before actually saying "yes." BUT to me it was obvious that if you said "no" the director was not going to be happy about it, so his exercise was a form of coercion and a form of making clear to the actors that HE alone is in control. To follow an instinct to say "no" would be seen as an indication that the actor is not fully into the process and is maintaining inhibitions the director deems as without value.

If it were me in that exercise I believe I'd be totally on-board, right up to and including ass and crotch-grabbing if that's what it came to. UNLESS I was in a relationship. Even within the bubble I would see that behavior as a form of infidelity and disrespect for my partner. I'd say "I am not comfortable with that because I'm in a relationship IRL and the bubble is wonderful but it too exists within the real world and what goes on in the bubble can have unintended consequences outside." There is a reason there are SO many romantic/sexual affairs among actors, arising from the process of making a film or stage play. Very deeply-stirred emotions make their way from inside the bubble to the outside world, which can become to seem mundane as compared to rehearsal-life within the bubble.

So all that's the background, Teh/Oh are under pressure as a couple already, the bubble has been created, and you have a manipulative creep as a director. I'm glad he broke off that rehearsal room kiss, even though he did it because he's an asshole (have I mentioned he's an asshole?) BUT i believe he always intended to lead Teh to that point and then cut it off as a form of exhibiting his control over Teh and as a way to humiliate him too. Like I said, I'm glad he broke it off for the sake of Oh and Teh, but it was a very cruel and humiliating and heartless/crushing thing to do to Teh. Teh was all worked up and ready to totally go with the flow, he thinks his make-out partner is totally into it too, and then...in an instant it's made clear that he's been made a fool of. The only one who thought this was real is Teh. What a slap in the face. I really hate Jai.

I can't believe how much I'm writing, but apparently I need and want to, so why not...? I feel sorry for Teh for all of the above-stated reasons. He's ready to experiment with how he feels and what he is open to regarding his relationship with Oh, he's testing the waters...I've been tempted many times to do the same. I know the powerful emotions/compulsions the theatre process can create, which compound those temptations. I think I've been fortunate though, in that when in the rehearsal process I was usually NOT in a relationship and when I'm with someone I'm a very loyal partner. I've had attractions and emotions stirred, but I saw and felt them for what they were and did not act on them. Not everyone is able or willing to resist in that way.

Over the last few years I've come to realize I just don't feel the need to JUDGE people, which is not the same as EVALUATING people and their behaviors. Those who judge say Teh IS a bad person, he should have a lousy life, never, ever be forgiven by Oh, and ulltimately, burn in hell for eternity. This perspective tells me much more about the judges than those they are judging: They are insecure, they carry unresolved resentments against people who they feel wronged them, and judging others makes them feel better about themselves. JC said something about "not pointing out the speck of dust in another's eye until you've taken care of that huge wooden beam sticking out of your own." Evaluating, however, means looking at, considering all factors, searching out reasons that a person acted in a particular way and being completely open to forgiveness. Evaluating is about the ACTION the person took, not the person's overall worth. Teh is a good person doing a bad thing, and he needs to put a stop to it. BUT it's also true that we can learn a LOT about changes we'd like to make in ourselves through the very uncomfortable means of fucking up royally as Teh is doing. Hopefully he will come out of this a wiser, more tempered and considerate person than he was before. I hope be sees his mistake and begs Oh's forgiveness for his behavior and infidelity (just a kiss so far), but it would probably be good for Oh to let him squirm and plead for a few weeks before granting it. Doing so would help Teh understand the gravity of his betrayal and the value of what he put at risk by caving to his baser instincts.

All of this is made more grandly horrific by the fact that Oh is being so wonderfully faithful and supportive to Oh. Him offering to do the poster was a powerful act of generosity and an indicator of his desire to be a part of Teh's theatre-world. Thing is, right now, Teh doesn't WANT him to be a part of it. It's like Oh is invading his secret, secure hiding space for experimentation. I was still in the closet in college and had a girlfriend who would rarely, but on occasion, sit in on a play rehearsal. I hated it when she was there. I felt inhibited by her presence, unable to be completely free and open. I think Teh feels that way about Oh invading his theatre world.

What else...? Totally agree that ITSAY and IPYTM are head and shoulders above almost all BLs and really shouldn't even be considered in the same category. Those two series feel like high-quality, well-funded feature films, not silly, low-budget student films which describes a lot of the BL canon. The lighting, cinematography, set, set-dressing and costume crews all deserve major kudos for how real the story feels. Small things make a huge difference in film: real people don't go to bed with the room lit up like the sun, real people don't live in spaces rented just for the filming with nothing on the walls, no knick-knacks, posters, debris, whatever to make the set look like a HOME, for instance. Locations have been great too, especially in ITSAY.

Thanks for suggestions on web sites, etc. I hate DailyMotion. I decided just last week that I would rather wait than be subjected to those horrible ads that completely break the mood of the show being watched and come at unpredictable times so you're not prepared for them. I will only watch shows there that I am desperate to see and can find nowhere else. I'm aware of DramaCool and the rest. Currently I pay one subscription for blofficial.com and I also watch a lot of stuff thru gcinee.com.. I think all their content is pirated so I don't feel great about it but whatever. :)

Thanks a lot for the youtube link. I often hesitate to watch such things during the time I'm watching a series or film. I feel that its content/knowledge may well spoil my ability to maintain the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy any kind of fictional program. But on your recommendation I will give it a go.

Hope I haven't put you off too much with the length of this comment/epistle. I love writing and I love thinking through my perspectives and opinions as I go. The ACT of writing itself often changes how we see or feel about a lot of things. We realize and understand much better after writing things out.

I identify more with Teh than Oh but I'm glad you said it first. I've been wondering if that means I'm a bad person.

Thanks for your reply, Mean. You seem more knowledgeable about the BL Fan Universe than I. What other online platforms might you suggest to increase my enjoyment of these shows and keep my abreast of what's going on? I wouldn't mind another comment section of two, but only if they're populated at least half by sane, non-prude, pro-sex, pro-drama humans.

Your IQ?

I agree with much of what you said. The director set Teh up with all the personal time together outside of rehearsals, the flirting, taking him to a play, the intimate discussion in that insanely romantic spot at night by the river and bridge, followed by plum wine and another round of heavy physical flirting disguised as an acting exercise. My radar went into overdrive when the director first handed out those journals and asked the actors to include their most private, intimate feelings in them and that he would be reading them. As an actor I would have not been OK with that. Jai had already crossed a line.

I don't get why watching Jai flirt with and manipulate the female actor on the stairs didn't put Teh off. It would have made it obvious to me how much of a player the director is, and that what was going on between me and him was nothing special and unique. This is how Jai the asshole works. IRL, if his behavior was reported to the administration, he would be fired.

I don't excuse Teh's behavior and a partner's bad fashion choices don't justify infidelity, but yes, I have some sympathy for Teh as a flawed human in a difficult situation for him to navigate alone. But it sure was hard to watch Oh be so wonderfully faithful to his relationship and supportive of Teh's theatre endeavors (designing the poster, which, to me was not good but whatever) and then see Teh shit all over those sincere efforts by making out with the director. I'm just thankful they weren't on the floor banging away when Oh peeked into the rehearsal room. That's what I thought we were going to see as the camera panned backward across the room, revealing more and more of the floor space.

Teh is a fascinating, deeply layered character and I feel there is a lot about him I don't know. He seems to be holding Oh and their relationship in reserve while he flounders around, looking for something more fulfilling. He doesn't know what that more fulfilling thing would be exactly, but he's open to options. This is of course not fair to Oh, who should be told what is going on. BUT for the millionth time, if all characters in dramas always did the right thing, there would be no story.

I do think Teh still feels deep affection for Oh, but those changes in Oh's means of self-expression, his seeming to take his wealth for granted and their too much time apart are really putting heavy pressure on the relationship. For me the best thing for Teh to do would be to directly tell Oh that he needs some time outside the relationship and ask for a break, with both of them free to do as they please for maybe six months or so after which time they would have another discussion. But right now he wants to have his cake and eat it too and it's all going to hell over the next two weeks..

Perhaps this season will end with them apart. They can always be reunited in season 3.