Old Fashioned Cupcake AND Taikan Yoho - this is the top director of stories about love between men. Two exceptional works. Witty and entertaining; full of dramatic tension and momentum; intense and revealing love scenes (esp. Taikan Yoho!) Amazing stuff.
Yes, episodes 1 and 2 were misleading and confusing. But as the series progressed, I grew to love all 3 couples. Some of the most outstanding, both romantic and erotic male/male love scenes I've had the pleasure to see. And I don't just mean kissing and bedroom action. There are also highly charged moments of holding hands, going on dates, having deep conversations, sharing food and drink, and gazing into each other's eyes. Meanwhile, does anyone know what the locations are? A real university campus or specific area of town in Seoul?
I followed this to the end, and I'm glad I did. I only did so because of the warm and positive comments on this page. Many people said things like: different, out of the ordinary, original, great music, aspects of Thai culture we don't otherwise see. All of these observations are accurate, and indeed, I enjoyed this more than I expected. I know nothing about Thai popular music, but I liked what I heard and I became curious as to what era is being evoked by Noey and his "look"? The 50s? The 80s? The retro look of Noey's room had me both confused and intrigued. Above all. the absolutely upfront nature of Thai Buddhism as the everyday spiritual culture of the people had me fascinated. Never in any BL series have we seen and heard this much Buddhism: monks, temples, merit-making, etc.
Ok I see a lot of intellectuals here who have come straight from reading morality 101 : a guide for dummies..labelling…
We all realise we're not on a quest for the truth here. Leave that for other contexts and other discussions. But your points are well made, and you offer a lot of well-observed, interesting evidence to support them. I'm certainly very, very tired of what you call morality 101, but I'm not sure it's "intellectuals" who are endlessly overusing terms like harassment, creepy, toxic, stalker - to the point of meaninglessness. It's ... moralists. Obviously. Who are different from intellectuals. In fact, your questioning of overused terms, your thoughts about harassment and aggression, your careful consideration of relevant examples: all of this is what real intellectuals get up to! Thanks for giving us something above the jargon-heavy moralising that disfigures public culture nowadays.
First encountered in Lovely Writer, where he had a bizarre, badly-written, uber-tortured part, a sad and repetitious role that went nowhere. But in Step by Step ... wow! Wow squared. The support role of Chot steals the show. As everyone has already said. Bruce is our treasure in this series, lighting up every scene. A fine actor who needs a lead role!
Very helpful to have the numerous comments here about ultra slow burn. Feels OK to me now that I know that. Feels OK because I like the characters and their interactions, whatever they're doing, and even if plot-wise they're going nowhere. Chot is of course our number 1 treasure in this series, although the lines he's given could be better. But his movements and expressions make up for it. At any rate, I find this ensemble entertaining enough that I don't feel in the need for all this "pacing" everyone misses.
from certain angles man reminded me of a hot thai ed miliband and for the rest of the series i couldn't unsee…
Hey, the real (English) Ed Miliband isn't so unhot, now that I come to think about it. Or rather think about him. Interesting insight. But added Thai superhotness would of course be a super-duper improvement. Yes.
I was enjoying everything, then ... the bracelet, the fortune-teller and the supernatural theme intervened, rather violently, and I felt totally thrown off track. So I paused. Should I stick with this?
I agree - for me, it came to a point where if I see a woman in a BL series, I immediately start dreading the moment…
Thank you for your response. I didn't seek to accuse you of saying anything - I'm sorry if that was unclear. My point was to refer to the danger of the discussion being infected by an extremely widespread and deep-seated notion - i.e. that gay men are misogynists and lesbians are man-haters. I don't know - maybe you haven't encountered this prejudice, or you don't feel it's something out there which we particularly have to guard against. Goodness knows, there are plenty of other significant prejudices out there which we have to guard against!
But even I myself have caught this one invading my own perceptions - it's very worrying.
For instance, in another similar discussion here on MDL, I found myself tacitly agreeing with the idea that gay men like to be "catty", i.e. mean and spiteful, and that they enjoy the company of women who are cruel and manipulative under the protective reputation of "witty", "dry", "outspoken", "caustic" etc. And then I thought it over, and I realised that the evidence from my own long life was that a particularly high proportion of the gay and bi men whom I've known have been rather warm, gentle, - in fact, considerate to a fault, and they've all hung out with rather similar women - open, generous, kind-hearted. Amusing and fun-loving, yes, observant and funny, definitely, - but not cruel or nasty.
I've also noticed in life that the same behaviours get differently described according to gender and sexuality - at least in the English-speaking world. Thus women and gay men are "promiscuous" - straight men are Lotharios, Don Juans, womanisers, Casanovas etc. Women and gay men "gossip" - straight men network, exchange, discuss, hang out etc.
The only thing which you write which I might ... challenge is the observation that the "dumb female" who "can't take no for an answer", forced into the plot, is a "trope" which is "more prominent of BL". It's that notion which I invite you to question. Right now, I can think of A LOT of positive, warm, interesting female characters in BL series: friends, colleagues, sisters, schoolmates, managers, neighbours, aunts, grandmothers, teachers, therapists, etc! And I have to wrack my brain to think of those negative female characters whom I too in the past once considered "prominent" or "typical" in BL. Maybe there were a few of them around 5 years ago - when there were only a few BL offerings out there. But not in recent years. I would argue, based on the evidence, that rather nice girls and women, quite positive characters, are a prominent trope in BL!
Oh my goodness. When they suddenly slipped into those scenes from A Tale of a Thousand Stars as the four consume their fried pork at the table and Phupha reads and looks at Tian's drawings, I was astonished how emotional my response was. Suddenly we were back in that series, and I was absorbing those scenes as they appeared on the screen in front of me each week. Hearing the familiar music from AToaTS was probably the most elemental thing of all - I was quite unprepared for it, and it transported me to another world and overwhelmed my emotions. I actually shed tears, absolutely spontaneously - it was as though I was in that village on the mountain, once again, smelling the wood smoke, with my friends Phupha and Tian, discreetly observing them as they fell in love. I had no idea that A Tale of a Thousand Stars occupied such an important place in my heart.
I agree - for me, it came to a point where if I see a woman in a BL series, I immediately start dreading the moment…
Hmmmm. I understand the points being made here. But what I am unsure about is linking nasty female characters to hatred of women and then linking this to the BL genre. And that's what happens. There are unpleasant female characters once in a while in certain series, and then instantly this is claimed to be typical of BL, a prime characteristic of the genre, and big problem in BL story lines. And then it gets very, very close to "men love men because they hate women", or "gay men love men because they are scared of women".
Defining gay men as "misogynist" is itself an overworked trope, a very well-established way of attacking and defaming gay men. It also attacks a lot of women - the many women who are friends of gay men, often enjoying very close and sustaining friendships, and the women who enjoy following stories about love between men, = BL. It's a way of telling those women that they are misguided and self-hating, that they wrongly give their attention and indeed devotion to misogynistic stories about men who love other men, that is, men who are defined in many cultures as men who fear and hate women (just as lesbians are defined as women who fear and hate men).
It's a phenomenon which has to be identified and challenged very openly. And it's all over MDL.
First of all, are anti-women storylines really characteristic of BL series? If I think back over the series I've watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, it's hard to think of any "typical" evil female characters. Instead, I can think of many positive, interesting, appealing female charcters - in almost all the series I've been watching. It would be more correct, based on the evidence, to say that BL stories are more likely to include these appealing female characters.
Second, I say "based on the evidence", because I can think of many more nasty female characters in mainstream "straight" stories outside of the BL genre. Yet no one says that these unpleasant women are "typical" or "characteristic" of "heterosexual" storylines and plots.
Third, if negative female characters appear in a story somewhere, let us say a BL plot, is this really a calculated insult to women, a way of offending and deriding the loyal female fan base? Again, the vibe here, the undertone, seems to be "gay males hate women so they get off on insulting them". An idea that is well represented here on MDL. But the reality is that women do not necessarily feel offended or defamed by negative female characters. A lot of female viewers and readers love seeing women as scheming evildoers and villains - in film, literature, all sorts of genres. Many of the nastiest are and were the creation of women - authors, screenwriters, directors etc. There is something about bad women that's stimulating, intriguing - even absorbing.
So, when and where a nasty female character pops up in a BL storyline, I think we should be very cautious about saying what she represents. She may well be anything but "representative" or "typical" - she may actually be rather exceptional. Also, there may be nasty male characters in the same production - yet we don't generalise about them. Next, the author and or director etc may be women themselves. And those of us who ARE women may not actually feel insulted and offended by a negative woman character.
Men who love men do NOT hate women. Misogyny or gynophobia is not the reason they enjoy sleeping with men. And the entertainment actually created by gay male writers, playwrights, librettists, screenwriters, producers etc is in fact exceptionally highly populated with very in-your-face heroines, powerful female characters, big roles for women, divas, etc.
Oh my. So glad I discovered this. So ... therapeutic! I'm between episodes 9 and 10. But reading the comments here, I know that we're not suddenly going to have a ghostly mother reappearing and telling Minoru to abandon Yutaka, nor will a hitherto unmentioned evil girlfriend suddenly materialise to do something similar, nor will either of them win a scholarship to leave Japan immediately to study in a monastery in Tierra del Fuego for 5 years. Etc. No, I don't think so. I shall approach the finale therefore with a warm heart, much hope and a confident spirit - but some sadness as I can't bear the idea that this is the last episode of seeing Tane on my screen.
Why is it a bad thing for a woman to be potrayed like that? I mean Taehyung is potrayed worse. Nasty people exist…
Good question. Especially as this series already has at least three very positive, quite engaging female characters - a record, maybe! At least one nasty woman is permitted.
I honestly wish people wouldn’t watch this solely for the BL couple. This series touches on soo many important…
Where is the "BL part" that is "most talked about"? And where's all the talk? Sorry, I missed it all. The series does indeed touch on many things. More than that, it rather fully addresses many things. But love between men wasn't one of those things, no way - it's a possibility only glimpsed in the case of two rather marginal male characters. The series is about Alex, a straight guy, and most of the "talk" I see here on this page is about Alex and his story, or about time travel, or the general sex education message of the show etc ...
But even I myself have caught this one invading my own perceptions - it's very worrying.
For instance, in another similar discussion here on MDL, I found myself tacitly agreeing with the idea that gay men like to be "catty", i.e. mean and spiteful, and that they enjoy the company of women who are cruel and manipulative under the protective reputation of "witty", "dry", "outspoken", "caustic" etc. And then I thought it over, and I realised that the evidence from my own long life was that a particularly high proportion of the gay and bi men whom I've known have been rather warm, gentle, - in fact, considerate to a fault, and they've all hung out with rather similar women - open, generous, kind-hearted. Amusing and fun-loving, yes, observant and funny, definitely, - but not cruel or nasty.
I've also noticed in life that the same behaviours get differently described according to gender and sexuality - at least in the English-speaking world. Thus women and gay men are "promiscuous" - straight men are Lotharios, Don Juans, womanisers, Casanovas etc. Women and gay men "gossip" - straight men network, exchange, discuss, hang out etc.
The only thing which you write which I might ... challenge is the observation that the "dumb female" who "can't take no for an answer", forced into the plot, is a "trope" which is "more prominent of BL". It's that notion which I invite you to question. Right now, I can think of A LOT of positive, warm, interesting female characters in BL series: friends, colleagues, sisters, schoolmates, managers, neighbours, aunts, grandmothers, teachers, therapists, etc! And I have to wrack my brain to think of those negative female characters whom I too in the past once considered "prominent" or "typical" in BL. Maybe there were a few of them around 5 years ago - when there were only a few BL offerings out there. But not in recent years. I would argue, based on the evidence, that rather nice girls and women, quite positive characters, are a prominent trope in BL!
Defining gay men as "misogynist" is itself an overworked trope, a very well-established way of attacking and defaming gay men. It also attacks a lot of women - the many women who are friends of gay men, often enjoying very close and sustaining friendships, and the women who enjoy following stories about love between men, = BL. It's a way of telling those women that they are misguided and self-hating, that they wrongly give their attention and indeed devotion to misogynistic stories about men who love other men, that is, men who are defined in many cultures as men who fear and hate women (just as lesbians are defined as women who fear and hate men).
It's a phenomenon which has to be identified and challenged very openly. And it's all over MDL.
First of all, are anti-women storylines really characteristic of BL series? If I think back over the series I've watched in 2023, 2022, 2021, it's hard to think of any "typical" evil female characters. Instead, I can think of many positive, interesting, appealing female charcters - in almost all the series I've been watching. It would be more correct, based on the evidence, to say that BL stories are more likely to include these appealing female characters.
Second, I say "based on the evidence", because I can think of many more nasty female characters in mainstream "straight" stories outside of the BL genre. Yet no one says that these unpleasant women are "typical" or "characteristic" of "heterosexual" storylines and plots.
Third, if negative female characters appear in a story somewhere, let us say a BL plot, is this really a calculated insult to women, a way of offending and deriding the loyal female fan base? Again, the vibe here, the undertone, seems to be "gay males hate women so they get off on insulting them". An idea that is well represented here on MDL. But the reality is that women do not necessarily feel offended or defamed by negative female characters. A lot of female viewers and readers love seeing women as scheming evildoers and villains - in film, literature, all sorts of genres. Many of the nastiest are and were the creation of women - authors, screenwriters, directors etc. There is something about bad women that's stimulating, intriguing - even absorbing.
So, when and where a nasty female character pops up in a BL storyline, I think we should be very cautious about saying what she represents. She may well be anything but "representative" or "typical" - she may actually be rather exceptional. Also, there may be nasty male characters in the same production - yet we don't generalise about them. Next, the author and or director etc may be women themselves. And those of us who ARE women may not actually feel insulted and offended by a negative woman character.
Men who love men do NOT hate women. Misogyny or gynophobia is not the reason they enjoy sleeping with men. And the entertainment actually created by gay male writers, playwrights, librettists, screenwriters, producers etc is in fact exceptionally highly populated with very in-your-face heroines, powerful female characters, big roles for women, divas, etc.