Maggi64

Regarding K-BL's and complexity, agreed. They are still not as one dimensional and void of themes as the Thai, Pinoy and Vietnamese BL's, but also nowhere near the complexity of the J-BL's.

I'm also glad you mentioned "My Beautiful Man" specifically, because we haven't seen anyone but the Japanese dare to deal with the sort of themes that took on (eg, Hira's obsession and solipsism) and prickly characters (eg, Kiyoi's pushing and kicking when he can't articulate his feelings). "The Pornographer" also dared to give us one helluva prickly character with a writer who orchestrated a 6 month long lie. And for sheer perversity you can't beat "Double Mints" and "Dangerous Drugs of Sex."

So, ok, K-BL's are not as complex as the J-BL's. Nevertheless, they are still better than Thai, Pinoy, Vietnamese and, sorry to say, Taiwanese BL's too (even the formerly great HIStory series sucks now). I'd rank "Blueming" as the most complex K-BL to date. It dealt with one lead's low self esteem stemming from childhood obesity; both leads putting on fronts for self protection; divorce; and, finally, the building, losing and regaining of trust with a beloved.

My 2nd fave K-BL is that same director's "Where Your Eyes Linger," but not for it's complexity so much as for the heat between the leads. Those 2 K-BL's, plus the C-BL "Like Love," and the V-BL "Follow My Sunshine" are on my Top 10 BL List. The other 6 on my list are all Japanese. It makes sense for over half my Top 10 List to be J-BL's because Japan originated the entire BL Genre to begin with. Incidentally, my 6 J-BL's are:

My Beautiful Man
The Pornographer (entire trilogy)
Old Fashioned Cupcake
Life: Love on the Line
Double Mints
His (the 1st one)

Reading your post about the show was more entertaining than watching the show itself. Thank you for the laughs!

Wait, what perms? The potter has slightly wavy hair, but that's it. Also, I've always wondered, do some Asians have naturally wavy hair or is it always a perm when we see waves?

We've got JWY spying on the potter and searching for clues at his house. We've even got an executive telling JWY, "Get close to the potter. Get inside his heart and mind to find out what he's thinking." Such rhetoric makes one think we're dealing with a great con-artist scheme with millions at stake. Nope. We're actually dealing with some dude's boss wanting a couple of clay pots.

Bingo. They have zero sexual or romantic chemistry. The side couple generated more in the mere 5 min we've seen them interact. There is not nearly enough of them.

Ki-tae never said he was doing them anonymously. I'm sure he signed his name. That's how he got offers from the other guy who interviewed him as well. If one wants to advance their career, they'd have to use their own name, right?

I haven't seen white stage makeup this thick since "Ocean Likes Me." These are beautiful men, so why so go so heavy with the makeup? And why use a camera filter to make their complexions look even more alien?

No worries. And listen, I am so dumb that I thought Park and Lee were their first names because the Koreans list those names first when writing them. The Japanese also confuse me by putting the surnames first.

When did we see him going on a blind date with a girl??? I assumed he'd dated a boy in college. He said he knew he had a crush on Lee Wan ever since Lee Wan vanished, so he'd have been in the mental realm of wanting a man. Accordingly, he'd have dated a man in college, right? I mean, if the pronoun is either/or, I'd go with it being masculine. Except you said he's shown dating a girl. I need to find that scene. Where is it?

Yes. In fact, the webtoons were the entire basis for his recommending Lee Wan to the company. He showed them Lee Wan's work. Then Lee Wan discovered that Ki Tae had recommended him for the job in Ep 2.

Wait, these are all different initials.
P.S.H.
P.J.C.
L.S.G.
L.J.H.
Why did you say they are the same?

The show got even better in eps 5 and 6 so, naturally, the MDL rating got lower. Ugh.

THE GOOD KIND OF FLUFFY!

Bad fluff is when it feels airy and empty, like cotton candy. It's overly sweet, cheap sugar that's spun into a large puff, but with no substance to give it weight. Good fluff, however, has a sense of weighted warmth, charm and heart in there. Our Dating Sim? Oh yea, this show is good fluff all the way!

Oooh, that tension between Ho Tae and cafe guy sounds hot. I like a homophobe who's actually repressing hidden homosexual desire. We saw that in a character in the Chinese BL "Uncontrolled Love" from 2016 (ie before the ban). Have you ever seen it? When homophobes get over their repression, they fall hard!

You wrote: "strange that the beginning of episode 5 didn't start at where the story was at the end of episode 4"

I did whole post about this. I said we didn't know how it ended on the soccer field because it cut to the office in Ep 5. So I said, "Let's pay a game and guess what happened on that soccer field that we did not see." People had some really funny replies.

I also tried to read the novel of Uncontrolled Love and stopped. I preferred imagining the characters the way they were in the movie and felt that if I kept reading, I'd have the book's awful versions of those characters in my head. For instance, the orphaned pal KeLuo is a sweetheart in the movie, but a gross rapist in the book. Xie Yan is also more abusive in the book.

The director did a stellar job with this and maintained a quick, crackling pace; created a consistently fun vibe; and pulled charismatic performances from his leads. Which is why it's so odd that the director is not listed anywhere. Does anyone know who directed this?

I can't read Korean, so can you tell me what that twitter post says? Does it say something about its ratings?

You nailed the ultimate irony -- which is that the actual authors of BL's would have no idea what the hell these academics are talking about. The women who write BL's simply want to communicate love stories that replace the "Knight in Shining Armor" with a seme and the "Damsel in Distress" with an uke.

That's especially the case with the BL "Uncontrolled Love" which this professor writes about later in this article. He spun elaborate webs to create a thesis about a film that what was essentially a simple fairy tale wherein a Rich Aggressive Knight (seme) seeks to own and protect his Sweet, Orphaned Damsel in Distress (uke). Lemme tell you, if you've seen "Uncontrolled Love" then you know what I mean about the uke being a Damsel in Distress. The dude gets beaten up and smacked around by half the characters in the movie.

At any rate, this paper is actually one of the more grounded ones because it correlates BL's with economics, and that's a concrete entity. You should see the papers that are entirely theoretical, such as correlating BL's with women seeking safe spaces. I often read these papers and think, damn, these people are clearly not even fans of the BL genre. Because they don't get it, and they sure as hell are not having any fun watching it.

Thank you for replying, and thanks for reading the thread! It's been lots of fun.