any_anka

So I read the entire thing (I really command the person who translated it so quickly for international fans) and I have just a couple of casual comments:

- I'm happy that Patrick is debunking any rumours about cast changes. I want the entire cast to remain the same (ofc not including new characters), and I especially *can't* imagine anyone else as SW, JT (obviously), GTY, Pepper, JT's mother (she doesn't have that much screen time, but is fantastic every time the camera's on her) and... Qi Jia Hao. I know we all kinda hate the guy 😜 but regardless, I already can't actually envision anyone else as him other than Tim.

- Dong Qin has a pretty voice and can sing quite decently, so I'm all for him performing any of the songs.

- I really think Mou Mou fans are in a way lucky to have Patrick doing the IG lives instead of usual conventional promos done by actors. This man will *always* uncover something funny or embarrassing from behind the scenes 😂

- Also, I am totally not surprised by Patrick's remarks about Dong Qin and how prepared he'd be to the point of being able to perform other's parts (would love to see that). You can tell by watching this guy perform, every detailed facial expression or tone of his voice has purpose. I mean it when I say it, the guy just jumped into my top favourites just like that in a manner of less than a month. He is so frigging good. (And I never hype actors up just for good looks)

Oh, btw, so I requested it the second time on Netflix today😜Nothing popped up saying I can't do it, so I guess theoretically, a person can spam them about it multiple times. Just dont know how it'd be counted in the end if it all comes from the same account

It's not weird at all. BLs are not officially aired there, but local fans still find ways to watch them. And then they spend a lot of money on fan meets and merch. So from a purely capitalistic point of view, it make a lot of sense to target that market.

Wasn't WBL actually successful in China? And how about The Unknown? I think they were pretty successful as well...

I don't mind it being released in a year or longer as long as it gets released and the quality is maintained. I even prefer for them to take longer but not cut corners. I can wait. I loved the first season, I wish the second one complements it beautifully 😊

I hope you don't mind me referring you to an answer I made under someone else's comment who made a similar question.
https://kisskh.at/68995-mou-mou#comment-18942018

That's how I understand it and it was really heart-breaking for me.

I saw that video snippet! The amount of second-hand embarrassment I experienced was real... but I didn't skip, so I can't say I'm qualified much to judge the person who asked, I guess 😜 I thought Benjamin dealt really good with that question. He got so technical and descriptive about answering, the whole thing turned into comedy 😁

I remember Tim from My Tooth Your Love and VIP Only, and I think The On1y One was his best performance yet. He really creeped me out with his facial expressions (which I'm sure was the goal in all those scenes were he's portrayed like a looming source of danger).

I wasn't too crazy about his scene in ep 9 (but I generally wasn't too crazy about ep 9, minus the sports' festival, cause that was fun). I felt his monologue was too sudden and too much of an exposition dump, while the acting felt off (but that could very well be due to the abrupt editing in that scene, I've witnessed choppy editing and weird camera angles destroy decent performances from actors before). Other than that, I think he did a nice job.

No problem. Hope you'll enjoy, if you decide to watch it (personally, I highly recommend this series 😉)

The On1y One is an adaptation of a different novel. These stories look similar on the surface, but have a rather different vibe (and generally the relationship in Mou Mou is way healthier, imo). Why both have stepbrothers trope etc. (which, btw, the protagonists of The On1y One are *not* stepbrothers, the description is somewhat misleading) - I don't really know. I suppose, it's a popular theme in Chinese danmei novels.

At the risk of being a complete killjoy, I honestly feel for Benjamin. He's an obviously talented actor who just gave a ste-llar performance. It's a bit of a bummer that it's not enough alone to maintain fans' support and he is expected to do all that parasocial stuff now... (and I know that fans' interest in his social media activity is most likely all positive and there's no malice in their interest). Still...

In the same reddit thread there is this one comment that I wholeheartedly agree about how back in the day, a good work could stand on its own (or, in this case, an actor could rely on his skill). Of course it's not entirely true, actors or singers always needed promotion force, connections, agency backing them up etc., and the audience was always interested in their personal lives.

But at its core, when you were an actor, or a singer, or a writer, you could just generally be that. Now, everyone needs to be a social media personality. And I'm not saying social media are bad. Surely there are some celebrities who definitely benefited from them tremendously, but it kinda sucks it's the standard now.

I'm both an introvert and a shy person. I used to be shy to the degree of borderline social phobia. And while I managed to have my shyness somewhat under control, I still need to recharge in the comfort of my own company after every social interaction 😜 So yeah, I do feel for Benjamin, if he's expected to do live streams or post videos of himself regularly now. Poor guy 😜

Yeah, they couldn't interact in public. I remember watching one of award shows that year. They were both present, even had some spotlight on them (if I remember correctly, one was performing, the other one had a short interview conducted with him) but they sat sits apart and had no interactions whatsoever. So yeah, there was clear "hush-hush" attitude about the drama itself.

Still, you can hardly call what happened to them detrimental to their careers, since even back then, they were receiving attention/promotion, just not in relation to the drama. People here were worried that LDQ might not be a part of the season 2 because it could hurt his career, so my post was an answer directly to those claims about career-hurting influence of BLs.

I don't know anything about the author being "exiled". But in all fairness, not a fan of her works and didn't really follow what she was doing in the direct aftermath of the ban. I do remember that Advance Bravely was released not such a long time after. However, it was already bromancified at that point.

On your second point, I understand what you're saying. I suppose it all comes down to how I wish things were... as you called it yourself, "an aspiration". I acknowledge my "idea" to be somewhat utopian.

As for MDL: arguing discrimination in promoting certain type of content might be difficult, as it's more elusive, but I think asking about exclusion of one (fairly popular) platform is a legit question. But anyway, since you wrote to them on multiple occasions, I feel I'm just speaking the obvious and wasting your time.

Looking for "allies" amongst "BL crowd" might be a bit misguided... Some watch it for the... let's call it aesthetics, some because they're tired of regular straight romance plots and its tropes, some attribute those "straight characteristics" to two men being together, some have their own ideas about being supportive, some are just gay. You might find people who would, as you say, care, but ultimately, consuming BL as an entertainment is just that - entertainment. There's no activism in watching two guys kiss.

I'm using the search function for the algorithm, too. Even though it sits there in my "Continue Watching", my Watchlist, my review lists...

I felt so silly doing it. I'm happy I'm not the only one 😜 (no pun intended)

Thank you so much!

So the director seems to be really set on this IMDB rating, huh?

I laughed at point "8. PE Teacher with no IG account: Thank you for the support everyone". So I guess people were thirsting over this guy outside of Viki comments as well 😂

Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't really watch Thai shows much), but Thailand has a completely different system. They (usually) put their dramas on YouTube, where you can watch it for free. They put a lot of product placements inside, which already secures them some money. Then, if the show has a "mild" version and "uncensored" version, they would put the uncensored one on some payed streaming platform - wanna see more, pay up 😜

Thai BL actors can do a lot of promos together, because aren't they usually signed under the same agency? So it's easy to coordinate numerous fanmeets and once the CP is established, even ship-bait the audiences to watch another drama (and spend more money) with the same actors as a couple. (Personally, I think this system is quite terrible for actors. The shipping-culture seems just as crazy as in kpop fandoms plus the actors' growth is stunted, they are not given chances to explore their talents and try new acting challenges while being limited to one genre and one acting-partner for years).

But either way, it's nearly impossible to do it if you don't have the entire industry set up in such way.

I'd like to believe that the investors of The On1y One were aware of that and accounted for that fact. Even more so, since it was obvious from the beginning that the actors won't be able to do much (if any) promotional events together, considering two members of the cast are residing in China (and one of them is the ML).

I think they might've miscalculated as to how much Chinese audience will be against this drama. I mean, after all wasnt The Unknown fairly popular in China and one of the actors' fame even got boosted quite much? I just don't understand why they (Im saying they, I mean whoever is in charge of The On1y One promotions, PR etc.) won't drop some links for people who might wanna buy those magazines or merch. I think there's quite a large group of ppl that don't even realise what these interviews and photoshoots are for... The sales from international fans most definitely won't be nearly as high as they could be if Chinese audience was on board, but some ppl might've still paid money...

I focused on streaming sites, because the director was talking about streaming sites as well. They put their drama on multiple different platforms (without putting it on YouTube for free, like even Youku did with The Unknown), which is why I assume they DID hope to gain some profit from there eventually... Which is also why I don't understand no one intervened when YouTube had all the eps just casually posted by multiple accounts.

Oh well, I ranted and complained and ultimately I lost my point 😜

I guess I'm just kinda disheartened, because I feel like this show could be doing so much better commercially than it is doing right now with all the attention it got.

Yeah, I think targeting the streaming platforms is a way to go, after all...

I watched it on Viki and Gaga, but still requested it on Netflix some time ago (and I would've watched it, if they had it there as well 😜 if only for comparing subtitles).

In the meantime, the rating on Viki went down to 9.1...

Addicted was literarily a door to stardom for Johnny Huang.
Shi Boyou (Patrick Shih) from History: Crossing the Line landed a lead role in a Chinese movie *after* History.
I just started watching a new cdrama that has Edward Chen in one of the supporting roles (he's the one who played A-Han in Your Name Engraved Herein).

The video played in the streets is literarily a promo for a Chinese magazine, for which LDQ and Benjamin had their photoshoot.

The writer of Addicted is doing so "bad" that she had Stay With Me filmed based on her novel and then even made some additional money selling the rights for the rest of the story 😉 Oh, and also Advance Bravely was a drama based on her another work.

Oh... ok. Thank you.
I'm afraid that with attention spam of modern ppl, nobody will remember in 6 months that we used to want the 2nd season so bad😜

Oh well, maybe until then the company (whichever one that has legal authority to do so) takes interest to intervene on YouTube for them to remove all those pirated episodes of the show. It *had* to affect the show's performance, especially in terms of how valuable it appears for all payed streaming platforms.

Are Taiwanese BLs really so low-value though? I'm surprised. I'd risk a statement that people might not know Bubble Tea is a Taiwanese invention or that Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pie, Sense and Sensibility director) is Taiwanese or even where Taiwan is on the map 😜but they would know HIStory franchise, or WBL or YNEH. I thought BLs from Taiwan had a pretty strong "brand" at this point.

Also, Taiwanese productions don't seem to do so poorly on - at least - Netflix. There are multiple different Taiwanese shows and movies available on Netflix where I live, Victim's Game (a crime story) will soon have a 2nd season even. Then if you go on Viki, on the other hand, all top most popular Taiwanese dramas are BLs.

Yeah, I saw that. There's no info about march in the initial post, I guess it's in the comments then? (which I can't read not being on X).
Ehhh, this drama will make me go on all social media I was staying away from for mental hygiene 😜

When I read your comment abt MDL policy, I found it kinda hard to believe... but when I went to see if I can add a platform to a page (I'm new to MDL, so things are not so obvious to me), I found out there are tons of streaming sites I've never even heard of, but Gaga is indeed not there...

I usually try to be sceptical/give sb benefit of a doubt etc., but if BL dramas are indeed the second largest traffic driver and yet never get any promo/visibility, it *does* seem very suspect.

If someone wanted, say, write to admins, make an inquiry or sth - where would you write? To the general support email?

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't mind BL/GL/LGBT not being a separate genre. It's all about love in the end (as long as there are ways to find - e.g. by tags - content that resonates with a person).

Being categorized as a BL can sometimes backfire on a drama, anyway, if people don't get the usual tropes out of it. There was this (lovely, in my opinion) Japanese coming-of-age/slice-of-life drama that showed growing up, dealing with unrequited love etc. One of 4 main characters was a gay boy having a crush on his best friend . It wasn't suggested or hinted at. He totally had a crush on him, and ended up confessing (the whole thing was actually really wholesome - he didn't get his love reciprocated, but wasn't pushed away by his friend either). Generally neither of characters had a happy ending in their love endeavours, as part of growing up (including straight ones).

It has a very low - by Viki standards - rating of 7.6 and a huge chunk of reviews where bombing it for not being a BL (as it was categorized initially), even though big part of it was that gay boy's experience.

Sorry for that digression, you became an accidental addressee of my rant.