LykeItRuff

She asked him to and he knew where Lin had put the Fentanyl.

YES, YOU ARE CORRECT. BECAUSE GAYS CAN NEVER BE ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY. The worst thing about this ending is that in multiple ways it makes ZERO sense. I hate movies like this...really good and engaging and you think the gay guy will come out scathed but justified, and then they pull the rug out from under you for no fucking reason other than that they could. Why would this thing win awards, other than for the acting/directing? Certainly not screenwriting. Terrible.

Absolutely agrree. Please read my comment above behind a spoiler button. The way this ended, in fact the entire second half, was seriously messed up.

Seriously? Please read my comment above yours and then explain how you can give this mess a 10; I would appreciate it.

I shipped Kang Chan and Jae Woo myself. TaeWoong is an asshole. :)

One of my fave Asian comedies! Lee Ji Hoon is a comedic genius. God, what a performance. Laughed my ass off, even this third time watching it.
His co-star is Kim Soo Oh's amazing pillow-lips. I totally shipped those two, by the way. :)

BRAVO!

Straight guys who play gay roles, even still to some degree in the U.S., but to a large degree elsewhere, are risking the alienation of a certain number of people in their fanbase. It is naive to claim that no one cares or notices any more when an actor plays gay here in the U.S. There are still millions of homophobic douchebags in the U.S.

On another note, Holland is a terrible actor who, gay or straight, should never have been cast in this role in the first place. I think he was hired BECAUSE he is gay...and you think that's progress, eh? Well, I strongly disagree.

PLENTY of people here are complaining about representation. That is what hiring gay actors to play gay roles IS.

As for BL, perhaps they tend to not hire OUT gay actors but I assure you there are PLENTY of closeted young men among those who ARE hired, and I'm sure most of them are known to be gay within the industry.

If you can't grasp why it's more impressive/courageous for a straight actor to risk his career by playing gay than vice-versa, then I can't help you. It is the entire reason there are so many closeted gay guys in K-Pop. They don't want to destroy their careers by coming out. I'm not worried abou smooching on the set. I'm talking about image and publicity/celebrity.

"problematic." lol

Love your screen name by the way. Hope it's not true though. :)

I think Hu Ye should have given Amber a deadline to fess up to Le. Just telling him because she wanted to didn't feel right...and it didn't seem in character either after her big sob scene in the coffee shop which somehow stays open despite their never being any customers.

That part was ridiculous but told so up-front and in our faces that I couldn't help but laugh and just go with it. The little boy's reaction to his missing genitalia was hilarious, as was his mother's. They spent just enough time on their reaction and the aftermath without getting too detailed and spiritual about it. I usually hate shows like thsi. I binged this one.

Agree. He gave her a few lovey-dovey looks. Which made it all the more admirable that he made things end up the way she wanted when he could easily have messed it all up.

You know, I don't think of it as light and fluffy, really. It took a light approach to some deep isssues but to me at least I didn't get the cotton candy and unicorns vibe. This is the first series based on a fantasy like this that I have ever enjoyed. I dropped any others I tried, and I ended up binging this one.

I like your theories. I was wondering if maybe Hae Yoon actually wished to be a girl so they could be together always, never dreaming of course that it would come true. I think as boys they may both have been crushing on the other (I certainly was already crushing on other little boys at that age) and I could see a kid that age, not having the capacity to think it through, thinking "well,, if I was a girl that would fix it."

But maybe keeping the wish and how it worked thing unclear was a deliberate choice because either way it's all a wild fantasy anyway, functioning as a platform on which to tell a gender-bending story. It was certainly interesting that the lead girl did not want to go back to being a boy when given the chance. I didn't feel like that was addressed adequately, because it seemed to me that to that point she was definitely annoyed with the change and unhappy about it. But maybe seeing TaeJoo made her realize just how fun it might be to grant him access to her lady parts. :D

Thank you for helping me digest this. I have done a lot of research online as a direct result of this show. When I used the word "trans" it was to address that Wen-Wen was actually male living in what her parents and she thought of as a female body to that point.

I almost think the show is making Le TOO calm and accepting...there are so many layers to this, much more so than if he found himself in love with a gay male with the common plumbing of a guy. But he and we don't even know what Amber has "down there" and I hope they find a way to address that and I think it can be done without getting explicit.

I watched a German series in which a straight high school boy found himself falling in love with another dude, only later to discover that he was a TRANS dude who was completely pre-op and binding his chest every day. He freaked at first of course but they came back together and in one scene, the morning after they had slept together, the trans boy asked the formerly straight guy if it was "OK" about what he had down there. And the response was something like "yeah, sure...it was fine..." Just didn't make a big deal out of it. But if you think about it, a straight guy with a pre-op trans man might be perfectly happy with the plumbing he finds himself dealing with. :D

Hang in there with the student pronoun thing! Have you ever mis-pronouned someone and gotten attitude about it? Do you feel that any of it is kind of a fad? Are you in an urban area where I would guess the pronoun thing is more accepted?

Thank you for mentioning the way Asians refer to themselves in the third person. I noticed that from day one of my experience with gay-themed Asian flicks and BLs but thought it was limited to moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunties, uncles, etc. I've not noticed young characters referring to themselves in the third person though...hmmm. Do they?

I especially noted the moms referring to themselves in the third person when guilt-tripping their sons they just found out are gay into magically turning straight or, worse, just getting married to some poor thing, having kids and living a lie. It just irritated the hell out of me because I assumed the third-person was a play on the kids' emotions and a means of reminding them who raised them and who they owe..

"Maybe one day we can all just be humans, and stop trying to
Categorize every aspect of our daily lives. The US is definitely the nation of rebels." Could you expand a bit on what you mean by this, especially the U.S./rebels part?

I was/am just enough of a smart-ass/rebel myself that if I were in high school now I would probably demand pronouns according to my mood or day of the week, just to piss off all sides of the issue, which was always my goal as a teenager. I am a cis-gay male but lived in the closet for 37 years which is why I have kids. I am very happy that more and more gay/whatever kids can clive as who they are these days but I also know that homophobia still runs rampant, especially in the red states and I grew up in one of the reddest and dumbest: Kansas.

This is the FIRST series with one of these crazy-ass fantasy gender-change plots that I actually watched more than one episode of, and I ended up binging it. The lead actress is tremendous; just the right blend of male/female qualities for the part and even though the set-up is silly she and her counterpart totally sold it to me.

The details of the wish-come-true element are still unclear to me, but once I got past the first episode I found it so well-presented and the characters so engaging that I said to hell with it and went with the flow. :D So I'm going to read thru comments below and maybe someone else has a theory that works for me.

My questions/theory are in the spoiler comment below.

Bravo! 8.5/10

So did little Shin Hae Won wish that he would become a girl so that he and Tae Joo could be together always, and then the leaf landed in his palm and it became true at midnight? If so, that was not really made extremely clear. I'm sure you WOULD still freak out if it actually happened and your weinie was gone when you went to pee in the morning, but still...she never said "damn...I actually got what I wished for..."

Other theories? I thought maybe Tae Joo wished for Hae Won to be a girl for the same reason but the leaf didn't fall in his palm so the wish would not be granted, correct?

I can't believe I'm an old fart and I spend all this time dissecting teen-romance/BL series, lol, but I love it.

I'm as cynical as they come and this show touched me deeply. I binged the damn thing. lol

Wow, now why didn't I think of that: gender non-specific pronouns! What a simple solution, but of course it would be a huge sea-change to have all English-speakers switch suddenly to non-specific pronouns BUT if we were re-inventing English from the ground-up, pronouns that apply to everybody would be the simplest way to go. Shows what brain-washing can achieve, that that didn't even cross my closed, Western mind. :D

I was not aware that most of Asia uses gender non-specific pronouns. Interesting.

Do you mind me asking where you live and teach? I have read that here in the U.S. a lot of kids are doing the pronouns thing but since my kids are in their 30s now I haven't been exposed to that. I've wondered what the percentage might be. Oh, I feel sorry for you...if must be stressful trying to keep the different pronouns applied to the correct persons.

Maybe I'll run my competition by Merriam-Webster. :D

"people are inconsiderate and go..." I'm sure in some cases that's true, but not many among someone's close circle of friends, or else they should not BE their friends. As someone who writes a LOT for a living, I also believe this new thing of using the PLURAL pronouns "they," "them," "their," is clunky and confusing as applied in the individual/singular usage. These have ALWAYS been plural pronouns and now all of a sudden a small group of people and their allies want to give those words DOUBLE their meaning AND...expect everyone else to fall in line and adjust quickly or ELSE.

I'm of the opinion that Merriam-Webster or some other dictionary company should fund a competition to come up with BRAND-NEW pronouns applicable to only to non-binary people. As for trans folks, I honestly don't think it takes that long for people in their circle/sphere to adjust to a transition, given that if they are FTM or MTF the change is going to be obvious in their appearance.

Finally, yes I definitely think there are a certain number of attention-seekers among trans. non-binary and Intersex people who enjoy stirring the pot. That's nothing new. Such people have always been with us.