etoks21

Pretty much agree with your first paragraph. I don't mean to say smooching is the end-all, be-all of a BL, just that there is no reason in 2023 that great production, great acting/direction/writing, and realistic portrayals of gay intimacy have to be mutually-exclusive, as if having one means you can't have one or both of the others. It's ridiculous, yet way too many BL fans buy into that and thus settle for less with most series than they should.

What puts me off about the no-kissing thing is that it's incredibly, nakedly homophobic as a directoral tactic when you're entire story is about GAY people. When cameras swirl away at the moment of a smooch and the actors lean in like mannequins, stiff as a board, it doesn't just put me off, it pisses me off. This is not something you see in straight romances. If you're going to make a gay story to make money, then show a gay story or f**k off.

I do NOT watch BLs for smooching alone, otherwise I would be plastered to every god-awful BL out of Thailand and I watch almost none of them. Hate them, in general. The so-called "NC" scenes, as so many MDLers call them, are usually laughable anyway.

I have a lot of stage acting experience but zero film experience so you are much more knowledgeable about the elements you mentioned above. I found both leads here appealing and after 40 minutes I'm not willing to throw in the towel. Actually I find the good ol' boy downright hot in a primal sort of way. He's not a pretty boy, which is refreshing. I find the mom amusing. There's already a lot of cliches and tropes, but given the name, that's what i expected. Two comments below this one is a post I left earlier this evening if you're interested in what I do or do not like about LT.

May write more tomorrow but for now I'll close by saying "Semantic Error" is one of my fave K-BLs, and "A Shoulder To Lean On" one of my least. Blueming is my preferred K-BL by a mile. Good acting, writing, direction, creative-even stylish-production, music, I was all in. LT is no Blueming. I'm curious to see if you have any "favorites" lists on your profile.

Why Japan? I was afraid, based on the title, this would be Thai-style fluff, but I enjoyed the first two episodes, for what they are. There are a number of j-bl movies and series I like but too many of them seem awfully afraid of gay, you know, kissing.
I do fear more and more Korean BLs, as we see more and more of them, are going to be doing "fluff" just like Thailand, as if we don't get enough of that crap in five new Thai shows per week already.
I was perusing up-coming K-BL descriptions today and one stars multiple members of yet ANOTHER K-Pop boy band. The K-Pop agencies have figured out lots of little girls like to watch cute little boys PRETENDING to be in love and no sex allowed, please. Yuck.

This is surprisingly charming. The series title had me on cutesy-alert. Nothing worse than OTT Thai-style BL fluffiness.

Love the creative, against-type casting. The 27 year-old looks 15 and the 20 year-old looks 35. The older has handsome/delicate features and the younger has handsome/strong features. He's a great example of just my type of Korean hottie: Not runway-pretty, but possessed of a sexual energy you can feel in the air. Even so, once YC said he was 20 I was able to believe it. He doesn't seem like a 30 year-old actor cast in a high school role as we see too often in Korean movies and series. Likewise, the actor is playing YS as sufficiently mature that I buy him as 27 even if he does look younger.

YC's mom is a stitch. lol

Love that YC is the first one picking up on that certain "feeling." :) Also thankful we're getting 40 minutes per week, not just 20. Had that been the case I was going to hold off and binge it. But I'm already enjoying this show so I won't be able to do that now.

Notes:
"Love Tractor." Sounds like something you might name your favorite sex toy.
Hilarious they actually went there at the beginning in regard to the stereotype of Koreans eating dogs. lol
Yes, YC is sweet in contrast to his stature, but at this point he's' coming off as a bit intellectually disabled. Which could be interesting, but I don't think that's what they're going for here.
I hope we see at least a few of the many DOWN sides of living in a tiny, rural community, as opposed to everything and everyone being kind, generous, and endlessly giving as we're clearly meant to believe. I grew up in a small town. Everyone thinks they know everyone's business, gossip is rampant and so is judgmentalism. I've always found people in large cities to be more welcoming than in small communities.

It's always a good idea to not compare an adaptation to its source material, nor expect them to be identical in any way. Not doing that saves me a lot of frustration. Think of them as two completely unrelated works. I know that's not entirely possible to do, but thinking that way helps.

"Childish" and "immature" are also forms of "name-calling."
And if "jerk" rocks your world you need to get out more.

Consider that your refusal to admit a mistake and correct it with one click of the "spoiler" button is more than a little bit childish and immature as well.

"Stranger that I do not know" is a repetitive statement. Strangers are by definition people that we do not know. :)

lol Only in Asia would Ye Chan be considered as having "dark skin." lol

Jerk.

If you don't know anything about the film then how about not writing anything about the film? Never occurred to me anyone would be dying until I stumbled across your BS spoiler/oh no, it's not a spoiler. "You just know Japan did it again. He's dead." You deliberately wrote that as a statement of fact rather than a speculation so you could spoil the film while claiming to NOT be spoiling the film. As the commenter above wrote: "What's wrong with you?"

Alternatively, you could have put "Possible spoilers" above the rest of your comment, but you didn't do that because that would ruin your chance to spoil the film for others who would skip your comment, such as myself.

Would have been nice to go into this flick without preconceptions. Thanks for SPOILING my chance to do that. Jerk.

This was pretty good, except for THREE separate incidences of people just by COINCIDENCE running across other people unexpectedly in Seoul, which is ridiculous even if it was just one time. Seoul's population is 26 Million people. You do NOT just run across others by coincidence. Too many SK films and dramas rely on this silliness.

Also, wth aren't a lot more films and dramas set in Busan or other major SK cities? I know the SK film industry is based in Seoul but good god, that doesn't mean every story has to take place there. As much as I love Korean cinema and some dramas, not many, it's getting a bit boring to see the same skyline over and over and over.

This was pretty good, except for THREE separate incidences of people just by COINCIDENCE running across other people unexpectedly in Seoul, which is ridiculous even if it was just one time. Seoul's population is 26 Million people. You do NOT just run across others by coincidence. Too many SK films and dramas rely on this silliness.

Also, wth aren't a lot more films and dramas set in Busan or other major SK cities? I know the SK film industry is based in Seoul but good god, that doesn't mean every story has to take place there. As much as I love Korean cinema and some dramas, not many, it's getting a bit boring to see the same skyline over and over and over.

From the start he hadn't fallen head over heels yet. Why would he do that when he assumed it was a one-time thing?

God murders 44 babies every single minute, worldwide.
"Fallen world..." lol
Why am I completely unsurprised you're a religious nutjob applying his delusional moral standards to everyone's lives but his own?
The God of simpletons, as you likely conceive of God, does not exist.
But if God DID exist and is allowing 44 "babies" to die every single minute, then God might as well be a murderer because he/she/it could save them, right?

I do have a question, since you're clearly a font of religious and scientific knowledge: Does the little clump of cells that exists say, two days after conception, have a soul? If God kills that baby via miscarriage at one month after conception, does that mean that soul goes to Heaven and will never live a human life? Or does that soul get recycled, or what?

By your logic, shouldn't we be having funerals for miscarriages, even if God kills the zygote at three weeks gestation? There'd be lots of money to be made in the manufacture and sale of little, thimble-size coffins.

Do you have a medical degree? Are you an OBGYN? Scientist? No, no you don't and no you aren't, and no you aren't. I'll take the word of the vast majority of such professionals over that of an Internet anti-choice troll. lol

Worldwide, there are 23 million spontaneous miscarriages every year, or 44 miscarriages per minute. This number does not include stillbirths, not that you know the difference. Thus, by your twisted reasoning, "God" murders 23 million "babies" every year; 44 little humans every minute. Add stillbirths to that and we're at around 30 million baby-murder crimes committed by "God" every year, correct?

If "God" him/her/itself is OK with that number of baby-murders I'm not too worried about the comparatively few committed by humans. But you're not here to save babies, you just want to feel that tingle in your naughty places while spouting self-righteous, ignorant bullshit.

But your rantings ARE entertaining as well as revealing and incredibly stupid, so keep it up.

I call them "Pillow Lips." It's a Korean thing. The student who was bullied had me thinking unclean thoughts about those pillow lips of his.

Who's "we," moron? Certainly not educated folks who don't enjoy sniffing other people's panties like you do.

When a woman is pregnant, most people say "the woman is pregnant."
lol Your holy-warrior, anti-choice schtick here is so lame. Are you sure you're not some loser writing from mom's basement in Alabama, USA?

I care and most intelligent, thoughtful, non-self-righteous people care. A lot.

Plus, clearly you're on this thread trolling for reactions with your Morality Police act. F**k off.

BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!
Thank you for this. I am an American, but not necessarily proud to be a citizen of the U.S.A. because this country is in MANY ways deeply fucked up. Good god, Donald Trump somehow was president for four years and might be again! There are millions of imbeciles, bigots and religious fanatics here. We have mass shootings nearly every week.

All that said, however, and as much as I LOVE Asian cinema/drama, especially the gay stuff-to the point I rarely watch anything out of Hollywood or New York anymore, in the three years since I discovered the rich universe of Asian music, movies, and drama, I have become increasingly horrified by the vindictive power of the insane "Netizens" and especially psycho-conservative Korean society which enables them. Most horrendous of all are the frequent suicides of young Korean entertainers who are driven beyond the point of being able to cope and choose suicide as an escape. It's just unspeakably heart-breaking.

I found Jonghyun-era SHINee on YT by accident and was enthralled with their music videos and concerts for two weeks, then discovered that Jonghyun, who had become my favorite of the five, had taken his life nearly three years earlier. I was wrecked, sobbed like a child more than once. Only then did I begin to learn how devastating is the scourge of suicide in Korea as a whole and K-Entertainment in particular. It's nearly impossible to believe what hateful idiots on the Internet can do to people's lives.

In the U.S., as fucked up as it is, at least for the greatest part, entertainers who have drug/addiction problems, legal issues, private romantic disasters, etc do not necessarily have their careers and reputations destroyed as a result. People can recover, get their act together, take care of their legal problems, whatever and come back stronger than ever. This weird Asian feeling that successful entertainers OWE it to the public to live a perfect, faultless life in return for their money and fame, is almost entirely non-existent here. Drug problems are seen as addiction/medical issues and treated accordingly. Legal problems are dealt with by the court system and oftentimes celebrities continue their work as their situation makes its way through the maze. Then, if they must pay a fine or go to jail they do that, then come out and make a new movie, put out a new album, dance a new dance.

If anything, people who recover/change/pay for their mistakes, then return to a productive life are ADMIRED for what they've done, not destroyed for it. Romantic and other personal problems make for salacious, feeding-frenzy public gossip in the press and on the Internet here but it doesn't have the bizarrely exaggerated weight of Puritanical morality applied to it that it does in Asia.

At times I have considered boycotting Korean movies, music, dramas BECAUSE of this twisted culture of judgmental, intrusive, abusive 24/7 microscope the country puts its artists under which causes so many to take their lives as a desperate means of escape. But I know I will not do that, simply because there is SO much breath-taking talent and so many films/dramas/music from Korea that enriches my life to a huge degree. If I cut myself off from that, in a way I would be handing the Netizens and all other twisted fucks who think like them yet another victory. So screw that and screw them.

So every time another "idol" (I hate that word. It puts entertainers on an implied pedestal that no one should be expected to live on.) takes their own life I mourn for them and hope that little by little, there will be fewer and fewer of these cases as Korea slowly moves its Puritanical cultural leanings out of the Dark Ages and into the light.

One of the sickest things about K-Pop is the comment threads below articles announcing the latest suicide of an actor or singer. The breathless, faux-mournful posts are always the same: "Be happy, my new angel." "You are now my twinkling star in the sky." "Rest in peace, I will miss you." The comments are always the same and extra sickening because it seems this public ritual of performative celebrity-mourning has become part of the overall K-Pop entertainment experience. I left a few distraught comments under Jonghyun videos when I first found out he was gone but after learning how common these deaths were and how trite my messages, though heartfelt, seemed among all the other ones just like them, I took mine down.

I didn't mean to go on this long, but this is a meandering way of saying I hope the actor above finds his way back to great success in his career and much happiness in his personal life. And screw the Netizens!

lol A zygote/collection of cells that could potentially become a fetus which could potentially be born as a baby is not a "child." God.

There was never a baby. It was a zygote, an embryo at most. Grow up.

Good god. Whether or not she had an abortion is no one's business but theirs. And abortion was decriminalized in Korea in 2021. Get a life of your own and leave others and their private matters alone.