Alright, who is still rooting for SuHyeon around here?! ... coz Imma put you all in horny jail right now 😤...…
I think the director knew exactly what they were doing when casting hot actors. They're making a point about the romanticization and forgivableness of abusive tendencies in the romance genre (as long as the actor is hot), and how in real life there is no happy ending where the hot red flag turns over a new leaf. Possessiveness and manipulation actually aren't cute. The people who made this show want you to start connecting the early red flags in the first half of the show with the abuse of the second half, instead of with sexual tension.
You're getting the point exactly right. Wake up ladies, he's not the one.
The fact that some people are still rooting for the abusers (although the majority got the message by this point) tells you that the show is spot on with its imitations of other works within the romance genre.
I say this as a massive fan of Chinese dramas, but knowing the rules in China, if this drama's production was…
What? As someone who speaks Mandarin and lived in Mainland China for a while, yes this was obviously made in mainland China. Do you really think they have the budget to fly a bunch of mainland Chinese actresses (their accents are obvious) out to a different country to film it there? Even the extras?
It's at this point not a new strategy to produce something in China and then release it on foreign platforms. YouTube can be accessed in China via VPN. I sure did.
But yes it is illegal to produce this in Mainland China. They run the risk of being hit with a hefty fine, and if they can't pay it, they can face jailtime. They are taking a serious risk in producing this. Censorship has been getting worse over time, not better.
Here's a Taiwanese explainer video on BL censorship and consequences faced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIdgiHWavWQ The english subtitles don't work great, but they come back in in the second half of the video, and given that you're a massive fan of Cdramas, maybe you'll still be able to tell what he's saying in the first half idk.
Why the heck is the gender "male" here ? Isn't he non binary?
MDL doesn't have a nonbinary option in the system, sadly. Apparently people have been asking to have that fixed for a very long time, but I guess it's not a priority.
Someone spoil for me please, do they end up together romantically, or is it still debatable whether they have romantic feelings or strong friendship feelings for each other by the end? Is the only romance element to this happening in dreams?
I just didn't understand one thing in this, why were kotoha's stuff all wrapped in polythene bags?? anybody has…
It's a reference to the trash motif. When Megumi first found her she was laying in a heap of trash. The stuff in her house looks like bags of trash. An engagement ring made of trash. When Megumi waits for Kotoha in hallways, she sits on the floor next to literal trash cans. When that one dude hears Meguchi say she's dating Kotoha, he considers 'his turn' with Kotoha to be over, and right after that, he throws something in a trash can and says a homophobic thing, and Meguchi pushes him onto the trash cans for it (serves him right). Due to the sexual assault, Kotoha's self esteem is so low she considers herself trash, a commodity to be used up and then thrown out. It's common among SA survivors to think of themselves as dirty, impure, ruined, trash. She says 'someone like me doesn't deserve to be loved.'
It's specifically trash from the sea. Fishing nets. Floating plastic bags. The scenes where Kotoha feels underwater (aquarium, blue petals, water sounds, water lighting, rain, the fish with the name change) feel reminiscent to dissociation to me; Kotoha is floating aimlessly through life, not really connecting to anything, least of all herself. Nothing matters.
Kotoha metaphorically got fished up out of the sea by Meguchi (picked up out of trash in first scene, right after which we see her drying her hair), like that one teddy bear drifting away. The series makes the analogy between the bear and Kotoha explicit. To Kotoha the bear (a commodity bought by the girl's mom!) can be replaced, has no value, and she tries to stop Meguchi with the line 'you're too nice', but Meguchi sees irreplaceable value in the bear, and doesn't think she's being 'nice' at all while fishing it up. That's not her motivation.
The series strongly resists that narrative of Meguchi as the 'savior', or Meguchi doing a 'nice' thing. That's there to show us that Meguchi isn't fishing Kotoha up out of pity, charity, or out of a self-important savior complex, but simply because she genuinely loves Kotoha. Their relationship would be unhealthy and fake otherwise. The roles also get reversed in the bear scene, with Kotoha being the one to fish Meguchi out of the sea (hand grabbing motif), and Meguchi saying out loud that she wasn't trying to save Kotoha from that heap of trash in the first scene, but that she'd already fallen in love with her, and instead felt like she was the one being saved.
It's no coincidence that Kotoha wears so much blue, always the same shade, same as the petals. It refers to water, dissociation, flashback, trauma. And Meguchi usually wears red or pink (and her room, especially bed, is pink), to represent the 'love' in her name and personality. They also often get lit in blue and pink respectively.
The little otter plush represents genuine love. Otters are the only marine mammal with paws that can pick stuff up and bring it to shore, and with a reputation of being very lovable to boot. Meguchi gives Kotoha that otter shaped sleep mask the first night, when Kotoha expected to have to have transactional sex with Meguchi, but found safety instead. In the scene where Kotoha's mom SA'd her, the first version of the otter plush dramatically fell to the ground, 'genuine love' destroyed.
In the scene where Meguchi confesses her feelings to Kotoha, it's raining and Kotoha has no umbrella, so she'll get wet. Kotoha says she hates rain (it was raining when her mother SA'd her) and she feels safer with someone close to her (Meguchi has umbrella). After Meguchi confesses her love, Kotoha gets scared of the feelings getting too real, and she proposes sex, so that she can run away from the feelings and reduce the relationship to being transactional again. Then Kotoha steps out into the rain, without umbrella. Another reference to being underwater.
Kotoha is stuck in a cycle and resistant to change. She thinks having transactional sex and no actual personal value/love is her destiny/curse. She's scared of changing that, and doesn't believe it to be possible anyways.
Instead of changing, she tries to impose her curse onto Meguchi. After she meets her mother again she pushes Meguchi into the 'trash' in her room and forces sex on her, with the little plush otter (genuine love) having been stuffed in a plastic bag by Kotoha, having been turned into a commodity ready to be thrown out as trash. The otter plush silently resists by looking at it happening, judging it, representing an alternative. But Kotoha dissociates/has a flashback and does it anyways. To Kotoha that's just the way things are. It's all she knows. People are commodities to be used up and love is fake and temporary. She relapses. And right after, she tells Megumi the reason she calls her Meguchi was to remove the 'love'.
It's up to Meguchi to change Kotoha's core beliefs, by continuously insisting 'I really love you, Kotoha', to prove that such a thing is really possible.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that 'Furuhashi Kotoha' means 'old bridge, writer' (as is made clear in the series), and that all the most healing/changing scenes for Kotoha happen while they're standing on a literal old bridge. What do bridges cross? Water. (And Kotoha's mom's last name contains 'bridge' too, so 'old bridge' could refer to an old connection she'd rather be rid of). Kotoha struggles with having a sense of self that she gets to decide/write for herself, away from her old curse/name. When Meguchi asks her what she'd like to be, the new identity Kotoha wants is to become 'a bride' (=she wants to become someone worthy of receiving genuine love). Meguchi proposes marriage to her on that bridge.
But then Kotoha gets scared again and leaves Meguchi in the trash, again. Change is hard. She thinks to herself 'Megumi wouldn't love me if she knew the truth about my vile past/identity/destiny', 'I am not worthy of love'. And so it's up to Megumi to prove her wrong again, by finding out what that past/identity is, and still loving her anyways. When Megumi does prove it she says it out loud 'Whether you're Kotoha or Yotogi, I love you anyways.'
On second watch it's all quite on the nose. I recommend watching it a second time. You'll notice a lot more.
(I have no serious personal experience with SA, but I do know PTSD and dissociation, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm not completely talking out of my ass.)
Since Thailand produces more gay shows in total, it's going to have more shows at each end of the spectrum.
I guess I'm just annoyed that when a Korean or Japanese company produces a sub-par show, people don't start disparaging the whole country, but they do when it's Thailand.
When a Thai company produces a great show, people credit the individuals who worked on that show (as they should), not the whole country. But when a Japanese company produces a great show, people go 'OMG Japan never misses and can do no wrong, it's just better than other countries at portraying subtlety or raw emotion or whatever bla bla'. It's weird. It's so weird.
1
You're getting the point exactly right. Wake up ladies, he's not the one.
The fact that some people are still rooting for the abusers (although the majority got the message by this point) tells you that the show is spot on with its imitations of other works within the romance genre.
It's at this point not a new strategy to produce something in China and then release it on foreign platforms. YouTube can be accessed in China via VPN. I sure did.
But yes it is illegal to produce this in Mainland China. They run the risk of being hit with a hefty fine, and if they can't pay it, they can face jailtime. They are taking a serious risk in producing this. Censorship has been getting worse over time, not better.
Here's a Taiwanese explainer video on BL censorship and consequences faced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIdgiHWavWQ
The english subtitles don't work great, but they come back in in the second half of the video, and given that you're a massive fan of Cdramas, maybe you'll still be able to tell what he's saying in the first half idk.
Is Copter still using he/him pronouns?
https://kisskh.at/782446-call-me-by-no-name#comment-20844376
It's specifically trash from the sea. Fishing nets. Floating plastic bags. The scenes where Kotoha feels underwater (aquarium, blue petals, water sounds, water lighting, rain, the fish with the name change) feel reminiscent to dissociation to me; Kotoha is floating aimlessly through life, not really connecting to anything, least of all herself. Nothing matters.
Kotoha metaphorically got fished up out of the sea by Meguchi (picked up out of trash in first scene, right after which we see her drying her hair), like that one teddy bear drifting away. The series makes the analogy between the bear and Kotoha explicit. To Kotoha the bear (a commodity bought by the girl's mom!) can be replaced, has no value, and she tries to stop Meguchi with the line 'you're too nice', but Meguchi sees irreplaceable value in the bear, and doesn't think she's being 'nice' at all while fishing it up. That's not her motivation.
The series strongly resists that narrative of Meguchi as the 'savior', or Meguchi doing a 'nice' thing. That's there to show us that Meguchi isn't fishing Kotoha up out of pity, charity, or out of a self-important savior complex, but simply because she genuinely loves Kotoha. Their relationship would be unhealthy and fake otherwise. The roles also get reversed in the bear scene, with Kotoha being the one to fish Meguchi out of the sea (hand grabbing motif), and Meguchi saying out loud that she wasn't trying to save Kotoha from that heap of trash in the first scene, but that she'd already fallen in love with her, and instead felt like she was the one being saved.
It's no coincidence that Kotoha wears so much blue, always the same shade, same as the petals. It refers to water, dissociation, flashback, trauma. And Meguchi usually wears red or pink (and her room, especially bed, is pink), to represent the 'love' in her name and personality. They also often get lit in blue and pink respectively.
The little otter plush represents genuine love. Otters are the only marine mammal with paws that can pick stuff up and bring it to shore, and with a reputation of being very lovable to boot. Meguchi gives Kotoha that otter shaped sleep mask the first night, when Kotoha expected to have to have transactional sex with Meguchi, but found safety instead. In the scene where Kotoha's mom SA'd her, the first version of the otter plush dramatically fell to the ground, 'genuine love' destroyed.
In the scene where Meguchi confesses her feelings to Kotoha, it's raining and Kotoha has no umbrella, so she'll get wet. Kotoha says she hates rain (it was raining when her mother SA'd her) and she feels safer with someone close to her (Meguchi has umbrella). After Meguchi confesses her love, Kotoha gets scared of the feelings getting too real, and she proposes sex, so that she can run away from the feelings and reduce the relationship to being transactional again. Then Kotoha steps out into the rain, without umbrella. Another reference to being underwater.
Kotoha is stuck in a cycle and resistant to change. She thinks having transactional sex and no actual personal value/love is her destiny/curse. She's scared of changing that, and doesn't believe it to be possible anyways.
Instead of changing, she tries to impose her curse onto Meguchi. After she meets her mother again she pushes Meguchi into the 'trash' in her room and forces sex on her, with the little plush otter (genuine love) having been stuffed in a plastic bag by Kotoha, having been turned into a commodity ready to be thrown out as trash. The otter plush silently resists by looking at it happening, judging it, representing an alternative. But Kotoha dissociates/has a flashback and does it anyways. To Kotoha that's just the way things are. It's all she knows. People are commodities to be used up and love is fake and temporary. She relapses. And right after, she tells Megumi the reason she calls her Meguchi was to remove the 'love'.
It's up to Meguchi to change Kotoha's core beliefs, by continuously insisting 'I really love you, Kotoha', to prove that such a thing is really possible.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that 'Furuhashi Kotoha' means 'old bridge, writer' (as is made clear in the series), and that all the most healing/changing scenes for Kotoha happen while they're standing on a literal old bridge. What do bridges cross? Water. (And Kotoha's mom's last name contains 'bridge' too, so 'old bridge' could refer to an old connection she'd rather be rid of). Kotoha struggles with having a sense of self that she gets to decide/write for herself, away from her old curse/name. When Meguchi asks her what she'd like to be, the new identity Kotoha wants is to become 'a bride' (=she wants to become someone worthy of receiving genuine love). Meguchi proposes marriage to her on that bridge.
But then Kotoha gets scared again and leaves Meguchi in the trash, again. Change is hard. She thinks to herself 'Megumi wouldn't love me if she knew the truth about my vile past/identity/destiny', 'I am not worthy of love'. And so it's up to Megumi to prove her wrong again, by finding out what that past/identity is, and still loving her anyways. When Megumi does prove it she says it out loud 'Whether you're Kotoha or Yotogi, I love you anyways.'
On second watch it's all quite on the nose. I recommend watching it a second time. You'll notice a lot more.
(I have no serious personal experience with SA, but I do know PTSD and dissociation, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm not completely talking out of my ass.)
And uh yeah the comments here are a lot. I'll be heading out.
https://kisskh.at/29483-touch
https://kisskh.at/26624-top-girls
https://kisskh.at/36335-whisper-of-summer
https://kisskh.at/17353-girls-love
https://kisskh.at/29486-the-girls-on-rela
'There's no rule that says I can't' and 'I wasn't talking to you' have to be some of the weakest retorts in existence.
Some Thai shows suck (like this one), and others are great (Spare Me Your Mercy).
Some Korean shows are shitty clichés (Blossom Campus) and others are great (Love in the Big City).
Some Japanese shows are shitty clichés (Cosmetic Playlover) and others are great (Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru).
Some Filipino shows are shitty clichés (Sky Valley) and others are great (Marahuyo Project).
Some Taiwanese shows are shitty clichés (VIP Only) and others are great (History 3: Trapped).
Since Thailand produces more gay shows in total, it's going to have more shows at each end of the spectrum.
I guess I'm just annoyed that when a Korean or Japanese company produces a sub-par show, people don't start disparaging the whole country, but they do when it's Thailand.
When a Thai company produces a great show, people credit the individuals who worked on that show (as they should), not the whole country. But when a Japanese company produces a great show, people go 'OMG Japan never misses and can do no wrong, it's just better than other countries at portraying subtlety or raw emotion or whatever bla bla'.
It's weird. It's so weird.