I never heard of or saw this petition against MDL's front page ban on gay content. If I had I would have signed…
I just put up a post on FB today questioning why in god's own name anyone of good conscience remains a Catholic. New, horrendous cases of sexual abuse have been making waves across Eastern Europe for some time, and a couple of the countries' leaders confronted the Poop, I mean the Pope, about it when he came flouncing thru town:
Someone mentioned a couple of weeks ago here that the thumbnail photo next to the title above presents Wang and Tian as demure Catholic choir boys. I saw what they meant and laughed.
However, upon reflection, it seems to me these boys aren't demure at all, but like Catholic choir boys the world over, are looking downward with reverence and awe at each other's pulsating love units.
I never heard of or saw this petition against MDL's front page ban on gay content. If I had I would have signed…
I don't want another season to be made. It only encourages the mindset that made this bloated production nothing more than a slightly-gayer Chinese censored bromance.
Director Liu Kuang Hui, who wrote and directed Your Name Engraved Herein, which ALSO ends with a deliberately baffling separation and messy, equally baffling last-second reunion, seems to have some internalized homophobia he should work through with a therapist.
YNEH was way worse than TOO though, because LKH wrote a gorgeous resolution scene that placed the lovers together at long last, then lowered the axe with an absurd disappearance of one half of the MC. No logic to it at all.
I do not trust IQIYI tbh but I hope they don’t mess this up😭🤞
EXACTLY. I don't even trust the director to have actually written this supposed script for a second season. I want to see a copy of it. Writing such a thing takes hundreds of hours. Who would spend their valuable time that way with no guarantee it would ever see the light of day, especially a well-known writer/director with other matters already on his plate.
I did not know for most of the time I was watching TOO that this was the director of Your Name Engraved Herein, one of my favorite gay-themed movies. However, it comes as no surprise because the ending of that film was just as fucked up and "all gays must suffer in the end" in spirit as is the ending of TOO. After a monumental crisis is overcome and the lovers spend a cathartic and beautiful afternoon together naked on the beach, the audience is led to believe all is well.
But not so fast! Birdy disappears from the scene out of nowhere and for no apparent reason devastates his beloved Jia Han (for the second time!) and they don't meet again until accidentally running into each other like 25 years later. It's insane. NOW, knowing the dude who directed TOO also directed YNEH, it all makes sense.
Director Liu Kuang Hu seems to have some serious internalized homophobia issues.
You are all astonishing. You are disappointed with the ending of a show, and feel that it needs a second season,…
I never heard of or saw this petition against MDL's front page ban on gay content. If I had I would have signed it in a heartbeat. Do you have a link to it?
That ban is the most shameful aspect of MDL. This site is full of gay content, but gay content is deemed too shameful to put on the front page. What year is this?
I wrote about this to admins three times last year. As is always the case here, they simply ignored my messages and I never received an acknowledgement they had received them, let alone responded. Seriously, f**k them.
I found the bullies to be extremely over-the-top; insane, maniacal caricatures, not actual bullies, to the point…
I love your story from high school. omg, that poor kid. So happy the jerk was expelled. I have to admit, I never once saw bullying anywhere near that horrific, even in four years of public high school.
For one thing, I grew up in a town of 12,000 in southern Kansas. I'm guessing even our mean kids weren't nearly as mean as you New Jersey street toughs. :) The bullying I saw was much more discrete, less physical than what you describe, which in some cases can actually be worse, perhaps because it's all psychological and under the radar.
The worst cases I can recall consisted of persistent gossip, an occasional insult, and of course, shunning. As a closeted gay kid, I somehow managed to fly above the radar and actually existed in the "popular" cliques, though it's that sort of thing where classmates who heard through the grapevine that I had come out 22 years later, likely weren't all that surprised, if you get my drift. :D
And out of pure animal, survival instinct I kept my distance from kids my age who were vaguely, generally thought to be gay.
Not only did Wang sabotage his class standing to get away from Tian in school, he is ALSO moving out of the dorm…
lol
You kill me. Over the last five years, ie. during the time since I discovered Asian cinema and BL, I've come to a much greater recognition of my yearning for the most angsty, painful, dramatic, excruciating, even horrifying developments in the fiction I partake of, from novels to plays to movies; no matter the medium. The more suffering I experience as an audience member, the happier I am. Which of course, reveals me to be a masochist. I'm OK with that. :)
But I'm also OK with happy endings. It's simply that those happy endings are all the more intensely joyous and bright because the story took me to the darkest of places first.
Asian cinema has made me MUCH more comfortable with tragic and open endings, as long as they are coherent and well-presented. There are at least two well-known BLs I downgraded from what might have been a 10/10 to a 1/10 because of the most sadistically homophobic, bait-and-switch endings I have ever seen in any medium I can recall. I later learned this was a "thing" among Asian BL writers; they were OK with telling gay stories as long as any happiness the boys experienced was crushed by sorrow in the end.
Regarding another BL I left on the list despite its horrific and absurd ending, I allowed it to make the cut because there is a perfect spot near the end where the story SHOULD have wrapped things up. The last two times I watched it, I stop it right there and refuse to acknowledge the messy last 20 minutes exist. :D
This is likewise true of many older gay Asian films, well hell, American gay films too: Gay happiness could be presented as long as it was obliterated by the movie's conclusion. There is one such film I have kept on my 30 Best Gay Films list despite its soul-murdering ending, because the rest of the film was just so fucking good. The conclusion comes out of nowhere, relates to nothing that went before, was foreshadowed in no way whatsoever, and is slammed down on the audience out of spite, I guess. If you ever meander over to my custom lists and are bored, see if you can pick the one I'm talking about. In this case I do watch the devastating ending because it is so well-acted and of course, feeds my need for agonizing emotional pain. :P
Another reason I left it there was because it's 23 years old, and just the fact that a film with an explicit, non-coded gay love story at its center out of 2001 Asia exists is quite a marvelous thing.
The On1y One has no excuse however; it was made in 2023.
Not only did Wang sabotage his class standing to get away from Tian in school, he is ALSO moving out of the dorm…
Apparently, I heard the word "moving" and made the leap to assuming this was in reference to moving out of the dorm. It's just a hiccup of my life experience I suppose: To me "moving" denotes moving from one's current living situation to another. I missed Tian' second question "when are you moving to class B?"
Anyway, I posted an unqualified mea culpa to my misunderstanding of that scene somewhere in this thread, addressed to the commenter who called me on it.
I was fascinated by Tian insisting on not only helping Wang move to the new classroom, but taking the lead on it; being in charge. I loved the way he kept his eyes on Wang's the entire time, with that observant poker face of his, as if daring him to admit what he was really up to; that he had failed the test on purpose to cowardly distance himself from Tian. And also making it plain that he KNEW what Wang had done.
I'm not challenging this tic of Tian's personality or character, but his near-immediate "I will wait for you..." regarding Wang after the move was made, because who of us is not weak in some way? However, it came awfully quickly after the heart-rending stairway scene where Tian was alone and dealing with the reality of what Wang had just done. I had felt that in that scene he was accepting what had happened as the new reality, but I thought he'd come to the conclusion this was a bridge too far, that Wang had put up a wall and that was it.
But all of a sudden Tian was proclaiming his willingness to "wait." To wait for something that had not been promised, nor showed any sign of becoming a reality, feels like an exceedingly codependent thing to do, and I perceived Tian as stronger than that. To me, he's a person who would think "I have done all I could and I have been rejected emphatically. This is over. I will degrade myself no further. I will close this chapter of my life and move on." Instead, he proclaims his fealty to permanent victimhood.
Thoughts?
Such a botched ending.
On edit: Benjamin's acting in the lunch scene where he asked Wang when he was moving and got express confirmation there would be no last-minute reprieve, that Wang would no longer be always in front of him in class, and worse, that Wang was set on playing out this ridiculous pretense to its heartbreaking conclusion; was masterful and excruciating. To see the tears in his eyes as he fought to control himself was soul-rending. I had tears running down my cheeks and snot running down my upper lip.
That sort of acting is very difficult and rare: To be able to convey so great a level of torment using only one's eyes, perhaps a slight change in the set of the lips, and angle of the head, is remarkable. Lesser actors, which means MOST actors, would resort to facial contortions and quivering lips to do what Benjamin did almost motionlessly. I can't overstate the respect I have for his talent and hard work as an actor.
Surely it was something fresh but at the same time confusing as wellThe second couple didn't also had a proper…
I think its budget was insufficient to portray what they intended at a professional level of excellence. I dropped out somewhere in the third episode, so maybe it became fantastic after that.
Surely it was something fresh but at the same time confusing as wellThe second couple didn't also had a proper…
For me, that is one of those Thai shows that came off like a community theatre production centered on subject matter it simply didn't have the resources to pull off convincingly. But that's me.
I found Wang the more handsome on first sight, but within the first hour, Tian's overwhelming screen presence, charisma, and sexual aura had me seeing Wang as bland-looking. Plus, his acting is a couple of levels above that of the Wang actor.
I'd have to say Wang is the more conventionally handsome one, but Tian is the far hotter of the two.
I agree with that. I didn't pick up on Tian trying to tease Wang (I've been trying not to giggle over his name thru the entire series. Second only as an Asian dick-like name to "Dong." I know; I'm excessively immature.) with his shirtlessness. He seemed oblivious to what Wang was feeling...and seeing in his head. :)
Which reminds me...how weird was it that we got that boner-in-the-morning scene, which I found hilarious and refreshingly raunchy, especially in the context of the rest of this show, and then NOTHING else along those lines the rest of the show? l. I don't count the bare butts on sports day (lamest episode of all!) because while they were nice to view, there was nothing erotic going on there, just standard boys-bare-butts humor.
This series could have benefited from more boner-type frivolity.
News 
2 
1 
You should def see YNEH. I hate the last 20 minutes, but what goes before that is one of the best gay feature films ever.
https://www.facebook.com/tim.otte.9/
Correction, he did not write YNEH, he only directed it.
However, upon reflection, it seems to me these boys aren't demure at all, but like Catholic choir boys the world over, are looking downward with reverence and awe at each other's pulsating love units.
Who sees what I see?
Director Liu Kuang Hui, who wrote and directed Your Name Engraved Herein, which ALSO ends with a deliberately baffling separation and messy, equally baffling last-second reunion, seems to have some internalized homophobia he should work through with a therapist.
YNEH was way worse than TOO though, because LKH wrote a gorgeous resolution scene that placed the lovers together at long last, then lowered the axe with an absurd disappearance of one half of the MC. No logic to it at all.
I did not know for most of the time I was watching TOO that this was the director of Your Name Engraved Herein, one of my favorite gay-themed movies. However, it comes as no surprise because the ending of that film was just as fucked up and "all gays must suffer in the end" in spirit as is the ending of TOO. After a monumental crisis is overcome and the lovers spend a cathartic and beautiful afternoon together naked on the beach, the audience is led to believe all is well.
But not so fast! Birdy disappears from the scene out of nowhere and for no apparent reason devastates his beloved Jia Han (for the second time!) and they don't meet again until accidentally running into each other like 25 years later. It's insane. NOW, knowing the dude who directed TOO also directed YNEH, it all makes sense.
Director Liu Kuang Hu seems to have some serious internalized homophobia issues.
That ban is the most shameful aspect of MDL. This site is full of gay content, but gay content is deemed too shameful to put on the front page. What year is this?
I wrote about this to admins three times last year. As is always the case here, they simply ignored my messages and I never received an acknowledgement they had received them, let alone responded. Seriously, f**k them.
For one thing, I grew up in a town of 12,000 in southern Kansas. I'm guessing even our mean kids weren't nearly as mean as you New Jersey street toughs. :) The bullying I saw was much more discrete, less physical than what you describe, which in some cases can actually be worse, perhaps because it's all psychological and under the radar.
The worst cases I can recall consisted of persistent gossip, an occasional insult, and of course, shunning. As a closeted gay kid, I somehow managed to fly above the radar and actually existed in the "popular" cliques, though it's that sort of thing where classmates who heard through the grapevine that I had come out 22 years later, likely weren't all that surprised, if you get my drift. :D
And out of pure animal, survival instinct I kept my distance from kids my age who were vaguely, generally thought to be gay.
You kill me. Over the last five years, ie. during the time since I discovered Asian cinema and BL, I've come to a much greater recognition of my yearning for the most angsty, painful, dramatic, excruciating, even horrifying developments in the fiction I partake of, from novels to plays to movies; no matter the medium. The more suffering I experience as an audience member, the happier I am. Which of course, reveals me to be a masochist. I'm OK with that. :)
But I'm also OK with happy endings. It's simply that those happy endings are all the more intensely joyous and bright because the story took me to the darkest of places first.
Asian cinema has made me MUCH more comfortable with tragic and open endings, as long as they are coherent and well-presented. There are at least two well-known BLs I downgraded from what might have been a 10/10 to a 1/10 because of the most sadistically homophobic, bait-and-switch endings I have ever seen in any medium I can recall. I later learned this was a "thing" among Asian BL writers; they were OK with telling gay stories as long as any happiness the boys experienced was crushed by sorrow in the end.
Regarding another BL I left on the list despite its horrific and absurd ending, I allowed it to make the cut because there is a perfect spot near the end where the story SHOULD have wrapped things up. The last two times I watched it, I stop it right there and refuse to acknowledge the messy last 20 minutes exist. :D
This is likewise true of many older gay Asian films, well hell, American gay films too: Gay happiness could be presented as long as it was obliterated by the movie's conclusion. There is one such film I have kept on my 30 Best Gay Films list despite its soul-murdering ending, because the rest of the film was just so fucking good. The conclusion comes out of nowhere, relates to nothing that went before, was foreshadowed in no way whatsoever, and is slammed down on the audience out of spite, I guess. If you ever meander over to my custom lists and are bored, see if you can pick the one I'm talking about. In this case I do watch the devastating ending because it is so well-acted and of course, feeds my need for agonizing emotional pain. :P
Another reason I left it there was because it's 23 years old, and just the fact that a film with an explicit, non-coded gay love story at its center out of 2001 Asia exists is quite a marvelous thing.
The On1y One has no excuse however; it was made in 2023.
Anyway, I posted an unqualified mea culpa to my misunderstanding of that scene somewhere in this thread, addressed to the commenter who called me on it.
I was fascinated by Tian insisting on not only helping Wang move to the new classroom, but taking the lead on it; being in charge. I loved the way he kept his eyes on Wang's the entire time, with that observant poker face of his, as if daring him to admit what he was really up to; that he had failed the test on purpose to cowardly distance himself from Tian. And also making it plain that he KNEW what Wang had done.
I'm not challenging this tic of Tian's personality or character, but his near-immediate "I will wait for you..." regarding Wang after the move was made, because who of us is not weak in some way? However, it came awfully quickly after the heart-rending stairway scene where Tian was alone and dealing with the reality of what Wang had just done. I had felt that in that scene he was accepting what had happened as the new reality, but I thought he'd come to the conclusion this was a bridge too far, that Wang had put up a wall and that was it.
But all of a sudden Tian was proclaiming his willingness to "wait." To wait for something that had not been promised, nor showed any sign of becoming a reality, feels like an exceedingly codependent thing to do, and I perceived Tian as stronger than that. To me, he's a person who would think "I have done all I could and I have been rejected emphatically. This is over. I will degrade myself no further. I will close this chapter of my life and move on." Instead, he proclaims his fealty to permanent victimhood.
Thoughts?
Such a botched ending.
On edit: Benjamin's acting in the lunch scene where he asked Wang when he was moving and got express confirmation there would be no last-minute reprieve, that Wang would no longer be always in front of him in class, and worse, that Wang was set on playing out this ridiculous pretense to its heartbreaking conclusion; was masterful and excruciating. To see the tears in his eyes as he fought to control himself was soul-rending. I had tears running down my cheeks and snot running down my upper lip.
That sort of acting is very difficult and rare: To be able to convey so great a level of torment using only one's eyes, perhaps a slight change in the set of the lips, and angle of the head, is remarkable. Lesser actors, which means MOST actors, would resort to facial contortions and quivering lips to do what Benjamin did almost motionlessly. I can't overstate the respect I have for his talent and hard work as an actor.
I'd have to say Wang is the more conventionally handsome one, but Tian is the far hotter of the two.
Which reminds me...how weird was it that we got that boner-in-the-morning scene, which I found hilarious and refreshingly raunchy, especially in the context of the rest of this show, and then NOTHING else along those lines the rest of the show? l. I don't count the bare butts on sports day (lamest episode of all!) because while they were nice to view, there was nothing erotic going on there, just standard boys-bare-butts humor.
This series could have benefited from more boner-type frivolity.
OK...truce?! :D