Regarding the Pinoy trans stereotype, it is more accurately described as an over-the-top, flamingly performatively effeminate, male drag queen trapped in a trans body. THAT seems to be the Pinoy concept of a trans woman. They usually are obnoxious and pushy too; like, why did this one, after seeing one of our handsome leads on the street and rolling her eyes with lust, Immediately commandeer him to carry her ridiculous pile of shopping bags to the door of her apartment, where she then switched gears and acted like he was trying to accost HER and could by no means come in? Then she shut the door, reopened it and displayed yet another personality, all flirtatious and welcoming again. It was like a bad portrayal of a schizophrenic, not a nice, normal trans woman from the first floor.
The problem, of course, is that Pinoy trans women and effeminate gay men are almost ALWAYS portrayed this way. They are loud, pushy, in-your-face with their sexuality and grand, performative displays of their chosen gender expressions, daring other characters to express annoyance. In short, they are often written as clowns, not people. Were I a character in this story, I would not befriend the trans character, not because she is trans, but because she is obnoxious. Every encounter with her would wear me out. :)
Instant classic. THIS is how to make a short film. Appealing actors/characters, economical direction, no-bullshit storyline and a great OST, which I don't normally care much about.
This was just excellent. No need for me to rehash. Just watch and love it.
OK, wtf? Was this made by ten year-olds? Barely made it through the first five minutes. Who cares what this show does or does not say about anything? It is so badly produced in every way that any meanings or messages are mute. Good god, how did thing make it onto world of bl and mdl at all?
And yes, that theme song is so horrible that the singer AND the guitar should be shot.
yes Yes YEEESSSSSSFinally, somebody who said it.Look, I understand uughwhat's comment (SOMEWHERE IN THIS PAGE)…
Well, don't lose your mind! You need it! :D
I don't remember when I wrote the above if I had already seen the end of episode 10, which just pissed me off in that "gays can't be allowed to have good things" way that cowardly BLs have of ending things. What's with SM getting exactly what he's been wanting and hoping for and then saying "oh, I'm sorry, there must be some misunderstanding..." WTF? Seriously? I mean, this is right out of a parody of a BL where every trope/cliche is played up times ten, at least to me. I don't care what the resolution of that is at the beginning of episode 11, they've already screwed it big time to me and there's no way out.
And if I recall correctly from the original, which this seems to be following closely, SM really DOES reject Tin's proclamation of their love to the entire office and turns around and dumps him, I think, because "I know this isn't really what you want" or some such bullshit that would never happen in a straight romance. So I'm wondering if we're headed downt that same bizarre path as the original with Tin, obviously not in love with KK and not even seemingly GAY or BI, agreeing to marry him ANYWAY. I just remember feeling sort of ill and lots of "wtf" throughout the last few eps of the original. They had a chance to fix that here and they've chosen not to, I don't give a fuck what country it was made in.
Referencing that last statement, this is one of those critiques that annoy me in the BL commentariat: taking into account when assessing a BL where it was made, or any number of other irrelevant aspects of a show. Either a show has a good plot, good acting well-done production, good directing, etc, etc, or it does NOT. It is either good, bad or somewhere in between; it doesn't get points for being made in one place or another, or one company or another; it's either lame or not and if it's lame in some aspect, then it is fucking LAME, period. People fall all over themselves apologizing for BLs from the Phillippines or Vietnam for the same reason. I DO NOT CARE. If it sucks, it sucks. If they're not ready to make a full-out gay-themed show in that locale, then they shouldn't fucking make it. Instead, they go ahead and attach a label explaining why it is so full of flaws. I call bullshit. China gets the same treatment. Please.
Sorry, I went on a rant there and wet my pants. Time to clean up.
This show has been way too straight for too long, as indicated by your list of relationships above. The Gay is…
Thanks for the in-depth reply. Really appreciate it. I LOVE YNEH, except of course, for the ending which to me had that "gays just can't have good things" vibe about it. One of the mains with the interesting nose is a fave BL actor of mine. He's also good in Red Balloon.
The hazing in SOTUS didn't bother me, I suppose because I went thru it as a college frat pledge and put up with it because I really did want to achieve the end goal of becoming a member, I saw that as stupid as some of it was, it truly did serve to unite the pledge class as individuals working together toward a common goal, it gave me two of the best friends I ever had in life, and they didn't do anything truly physically or mentally cruel or dangerous, at least in my book, except for a couple of kids passing out from lack of water; that wasn't cool. It's true however, that if a student chose to not participate in SOTUS, I guess they would have to leave school, I would have remained in college, just not as a member of that frat.
When our pledge class became members of the frat we actually took measures to tone down the already pretty low-key pledging procedures. There were already none of the incredibly insane alcohol-binge-drinking shit you hear about, which can be deadly. It became more of a nuisance than a real pain-in-the-ass thing. Like: "Here, you have to jump these little two-foot tall hurdles, just to show us that you really want in." lol
I've never been in Shin or Oh or your position regarding a betrayal/cheating situation or a rape or anything else, but I certainly get the impulse to never forgive and withhold that from the perpetrator. That is why it is so impressive to me when Oh does the opposite and chooses compassion and forgiveness. He is doing the best thing for himself too. By holding a grudge and refusing to reconcile with Teh, he was also punishing himself by disallowing the experience of love, relationship and joy.
Question: Would you recommend watching Love, Victor and the sequel? I have not done so. I always appeared as kind of candy-coated Disney fare in its promotional aspects.
hmmm...I'm not certain what you are asking, exactly, but I don't generally care for bromances, as the coy, "are they or aren't they" thing just strikes me as stupid. So perhaps part of the reason I didn't mind this one is that the series was so short I didn''t have time to get sick of that. BUT...they two leads are handsome and appealing, good actors, good story, good support actors, a lot of interesting story told in a very short time, good direction and production values so yeah....I liked it despite its bromantic nature. If there were more episodes and their relationship did not progress toward a romance, I would definitely tire of it.
Story, acting, directing, pretentiousness, predictability, cliches/tropes used in lazy ways we've all seen a hundred times before, cliche' Pinoy characters like the over-the-top, bizarre trans neighbor and other various stereotypes, that the synopsis claimed these were two straight guys but they were as gay as can be at the start of the show, preachiness and on on and on. Glad you liked and enjoyed it, but I dropped it after three episodes as things were already headed downhill and gave it a 3. I'm tired of seeing the same old style and unoriginality from PInoy BLs.
So homosexuality is lumped in with drugs and mental disorders?
You're being overly sensitive. Who lumped it in with drugs and mental disorders? How is it "lumped in" with those any more than Hanna's modeling BS or EB's emo-tendencies or Tae Woo's horrible acting abilities? But given that this was made in Korea, where people still regularly jump off buildings rather than come out as gay, the fact that homosexuality was addressed at all is pretty awesome. And this was three years ago.
Not sure what to make of this one. I think I watched it a year or more ago when first discovering BL and watched about three of them a day. lol
I like that somebody tried some new stuff, and I like that it kept me interested enough to keep watching. Overall, I like Tae Woo and Ji Han but found the other three as annoying as they were engaging...so I kept going back and for between rolling my eyes and following every move. I liked the friendship vibe between Tae Woo and Hoo, especially at the beginning before Hoo began losing me. EB maybe was too much of an artsy/depressed/emo chick from the very start to seem like an individual more than a type. I don''t see why she and Hanna would be friends.
The ending, with everyone gathering under some tree after Tae Woo's "long trip" to share that they were all achieving fabulosity as a model, dancer, actor, singer and Parisian university student, was hokey and contrived. Several scenes, like when the cops showed up at the last second before Tae Woo got tatted, were not believable either.
Tae Woo: Handsome and very cool; a natural leader. Ji Han: Nice gay guy. Not sure how or why he was suddenly hanging out with the other four. Hoo: Handsome but idiotic and I don't buy him as straight. EB: Clinically depressed. I would definitely keep this one on a suicide watch. Hanna: Bubbly but not nearly pretty enough to be a national-level model, despite the script. Every one of the girls who wanted selfies with her in Seoul were prettier than her. lol Why did Hanna wear her mom's pajamas to Seoul? I was SO hoping Ji Han would score with Tae Woo when the latter showed up at his place drunk for the night. That would have been a really interesting plot development but the writers chickened out.
If there were a second season of this, I'd watch it but not expect much.
I take their conversation/decision like "we had girlfriends, now we like each others and we both same gender.…
If only this show were 1/4 as deep as you two are pretending to believe it is. Just awful story-telling. And if the story and its telling are bad, who cares what great universal issues the writers thought they were tackling with it? Reading your discussion is like reading a Doctorate-level thesis paper deconstructing a Kindergarten play about a happy caterpillar.
Benjo and Emil identify as straight. The inference is that, except for their relationship, they are not attracted…
Your comment is far more interesting and worth the time reading than the series it seeks to analyze. I just can't get a care on for deep meanings and back-messages, etc. when the story-telling, writing, direction and acting is this embarrassing. It has that Pinoy Preachiness that is always a quick turn-off for me. Dropped after three episodes.
The show was weird but interesting at first but then it just was getting too pretentious and ridiculous. 6/10
That's a good summary of where it took me. I dropped it after episode 3. All the Pinoy BL cliches/tropes/stereotypes didn't help. The highlight of the series was the morning boners, which are very realistic, but those came in the first five minutes and it's been downhill from there. Pinoy BLs OFTEN get too direct and preachy in their message. They don't let the story convey a message, they spell it out for you in rainbow colors on a giant banner at a pride parade.
This is awful. Can't believe there's a second season. The guys are in no way straight. Third episode and one's calling the other "baby." Stereotypical transgender side-character who is a screaming cliche, drag queen, persecuted but brave and noble, etc. Writing's terrible. The professor is just bizarre...some kind of male/female/transgender/non-binary/throw-it-all-in-a-blender-and-stir...person. The poor/rich thing has zero subtlety to it. These guys have wanted each other since the visitor walked in the door and took off his shirt and they openly flirted...so where's the suspense in getting us to where we all know we're going? I'm dropping it before it pisses me off more. Enjoy!
The friends were shit - outing someones relationship is not a game - gay or not :/
Well, to me, that dismissive, faux-intellectual verbiage you used once again here is...pissy. Who's trying to reach a consensus. It's a discussion. Anyway....you've already made several demonstrably false claims that the friends were "forcing" Jin and Bbomb to do things and accusing them of things they did not try to do, so yeah, you're right, there's no point in a discussion when one party makes up stuff to base their argument on.
Do you get this annoyed at characters and situations in straight dramas or those involving other unethical behavior like murder and kidnapping, or do you reserve your outrage for BLs?
Just started this...finished episode 2. lol This has many of the odd little touches that make Filipino BLs distinctive...or stupid, I'm not sure which...maybe both. We're told in the synopsis and in some comments below that these are two straight guys. PLEASE, give me a break. I don't care what the synopsis says...straight guys do not, when one of them takes off his shirt, stare hungrily with naked desire on their faces, OR stand there and smirk at the other while raising their eyebrow suggestively. Also, straight guys do NOT have TWO best friends who are gay, nor do they obsess over Louis Vitton tennis shoes. Michael Jordans, yeah, not LV.
And if a straight guy is bi or gay but closeted, they also do not do any of the above-mentioned things, because the behavior would be a dead-giveaway to their secret. So in the first episode this BL completely undermines its premise. These are NOT straight guys. They are gay or bi but on the down-low, complete with girlfriends and in the closet, but doing a lousy job of covering their tracks.
The problem, of course, is that Pinoy trans women and effeminate gay men are almost ALWAYS portrayed this way. They are loud, pushy, in-your-face with their sexuality and grand, performative displays of their chosen gender expressions, daring other characters to express annoyance. In short, they are often written as clowns, not people. Were I a character in this story, I would not befriend the trans character, not because she is trans, but because she is obnoxious. Every encounter with her would wear me out. :)
This was just excellent. No need for me to rehash. Just watch and love it.
9.5/10
And yes, that theme song is so horrible that the singer AND the guitar should be shot.
I don't remember when I wrote the above if I had already seen the end of episode 10, which just pissed me off in that "gays can't be allowed to have good things" way that cowardly BLs have of ending things. What's with SM getting exactly what he's been wanting and hoping for and then saying "oh, I'm sorry, there must be some misunderstanding..." WTF? Seriously? I mean, this is right out of a parody of a BL where every trope/cliche is played up times ten, at least to me. I don't care what the resolution of that is at the beginning of episode 11, they've already screwed it big time to me and there's no way out.
And if I recall correctly from the original, which this seems to be following closely, SM really DOES reject Tin's proclamation of their love to the entire office and turns around and dumps him, I think, because "I know this isn't really what you want" or some such bullshit that would never happen in a straight romance. So I'm wondering if we're headed downt that same bizarre path as the original with Tin, obviously not in love with KK and not even seemingly GAY or BI, agreeing to marry him ANYWAY. I just remember feeling sort of ill and lots of "wtf" throughout the last few eps of the original. They had a chance to fix that here and they've chosen not to, I don't give a fuck what country it was made in.
Referencing that last statement, this is one of those critiques that annoy me in the BL commentariat: taking into account when assessing a BL where it was made, or any number of other irrelevant aspects of a show. Either a show has a good plot, good acting well-done production, good directing, etc, etc, or it does NOT. It is either good, bad or somewhere in between; it doesn't get points for being made in one place or another, or one company or another; it's either lame or not and if it's lame in some aspect, then it is fucking LAME, period. People fall all over themselves apologizing for BLs from the Phillippines or Vietnam for the same reason. I DO NOT CARE. If it sucks, it sucks. If they're not ready to make a full-out gay-themed show in that locale, then they shouldn't fucking make it. Instead, they go ahead and attach a label explaining why it is so full of flaws. I call bullshit. China gets the same treatment. Please.
Sorry, I went on a rant there and wet my pants. Time to clean up.
The hazing in SOTUS didn't bother me, I suppose because I went thru it as a college frat pledge and put up with it because I really did want to achieve the end goal of becoming a member, I saw that as stupid as some of it was, it truly did serve to unite the pledge class as individuals working together toward a common goal, it gave me two of the best friends I ever had in life, and they didn't do anything truly physically or mentally cruel or dangerous, at least in my book, except for a couple of kids passing out from lack of water; that wasn't cool. It's true however, that if a student chose to not participate in SOTUS, I guess they would have to leave school, I would have remained in college, just not as a member of that frat.
When our pledge class became members of the frat we actually took measures to tone down the already pretty low-key pledging procedures. There were already none of the incredibly insane alcohol-binge-drinking shit you hear about, which can be deadly. It became more of a nuisance than a real pain-in-the-ass thing. Like: "Here, you have to jump these little two-foot tall hurdles, just to show us that you really want in." lol
I've never been in Shin or Oh or your position regarding a betrayal/cheating situation or a rape or anything else, but I certainly get the impulse to never forgive and withhold that from the perpetrator. That is why it is so impressive to me when Oh does the opposite and chooses compassion and forgiveness. He is doing the best thing for himself too. By holding a grudge and refusing to reconcile with Teh, he was also punishing himself by disallowing the experience of love, relationship and joy.
Question: Would you recommend watching Love, Victor and the sequel? I have not done so. I always appeared as kind of candy-coated Disney fare in its promotional aspects.
I like that somebody tried some new stuff, and I like that it kept me interested enough to keep watching. Overall, I like Tae Woo and Ji Han but found the other three as annoying as they were engaging...so I kept going back and for between rolling my eyes and following every move. I liked the friendship vibe between Tae Woo and Hoo, especially at the beginning before Hoo began losing me. EB maybe was too much of an artsy/depressed/emo chick from the very start to seem like an individual more than a type. I don''t see why she and Hanna would be friends.
The ending, with everyone gathering under some tree after Tae Woo's "long trip" to share that they were all achieving fabulosity as a model, dancer, actor, singer and Parisian university student, was hokey and contrived. Several scenes, like when the cops showed up at the last second before Tae Woo got tatted, were not believable either.
Tae Woo: Handsome and very cool; a natural leader.
Ji Han: Nice gay guy. Not sure how or why he was suddenly hanging out with the other four.
Hoo: Handsome but idiotic and I don't buy him as straight.
EB: Clinically depressed. I would definitely keep this one on a suicide watch.
Hanna: Bubbly but not nearly pretty enough to be a national-level model, despite the script. Every one of the girls who wanted selfies with her in Seoul were prettier than her. lol
Why did Hanna wear her mom's pajamas to Seoul?
I was SO hoping Ji Han would score with Tae Woo when the latter showed up at his place drunk for the night. That would have been a really interesting plot development but the writers chickened out.
If there were a second season of this, I'd watch it but not expect much.
The highlight of the series was the morning boners, which are very realistic, but those came in the first five minutes and it's been downhill from there. Pinoy BLs OFTEN get too direct and preachy in their message. They don't let the story convey a message, they spell it out for you in rainbow colors on a giant banner at a pride parade.
The guys are in no way straight.
Third episode and one's calling the other "baby."
Stereotypical transgender side-character who is a screaming cliche, drag queen, persecuted but brave and noble, etc.
Writing's terrible.
The professor is just bizarre...some kind of male/female/transgender/non-binary/throw-it-all-in-a-blender-and-stir...person.
The poor/rich thing has zero subtlety to it.
These guys have wanted each other since the visitor walked in the door and took off his shirt and they openly flirted...so where's the suspense in getting us to where we all know we're going?
I'm dropping it before it pisses me off more.
Enjoy!
Do you get this annoyed at characters and situations in straight dramas or those involving other unethical behavior like murder and kidnapping, or do you reserve your outrage for BLs?
And if a straight guy is bi or gay but closeted, they also do not do any of the above-mentioned things, because the behavior would be a dead-giveaway to their secret. So in the first episode this BL completely undermines its premise. These are NOT straight guys. They are gay or bi but on the down-low, complete with girlfriends and in the closet, but doing a lousy job of covering their tracks.