jarabaa

I feel the same and in my case I tend to follow Natasja's example and check the spoilers to spare myself precisely what you describe. I get very caught up in certain stories and amaze myself just how distressed I can get over a nasty ending - specifically the two you refer to. You are made of sterner stuff, obviously. But I cannot survive too many sad endings which "nearly put me in the hospital" - honestly. However, nowadays, I am not as overprotective as I was of my own tender feelings, and especially if I am really enjoying a series and admiring the writing and the production values, I am prepared to show some trust and let the story bear me along wheresoever it takes me....

Nowadays, when I find myself getting too emotionally invested in a fictional story, I just take my time with it. Maybe I take a pause for a few weeks, maybe I take the time to re-watch what I especially enjoyed. Maybe I check the spoilers ...

Very well put.

100%. Nail on the head.

I missed it, my dear! I was so bowled away by the idea of being in the stars with Yu Xi Gu ... (I think that was your location, right? What a beautiful "locality" to evoke. So imaginative.) Anyhow, I somehow did not recognise Sun Bo Xian!! Good grief, how's that possible?? Headstrong, impetuous, hot-blooded yet sweet & pure man-loving young stud Sun Bo Xiang! Is he the (IT?) expert whom Li Cheng consults in the café in order to solve the mystery? Whom he asks the question about 1 and 0 ... ? "OMG" as they say. I didn't recognise him.

When MODC was airing, I was actually IN Taipei. Unforgettable. At that time I thought Sun Bo Xiang's beloved, Lu Zhi Gang, was The Most Beautiful Man in The World. Good grief, I was quite infatuated.

No, no, no! You must not spell our beloved Yu Xi Gu's name wrongly. Thanks for the correction!

There is a subscriber here on MDL who on her profile gives her location as "In the stars with Yu Xi Gu". How clever. And beautiful. It literally brought tears to my eyes instantly.

Meanwhile, I haven't as yet recognised anyone from MODC in Close to You. Oy! WHAT have I been missing? Who appears, when? Seems to be Sun Bo Xiang, from what you and others write. And you describe him so well. A hot-headed, impetuous schoolboy who loves his man with a very pure and zealous ardour (which includes a lot of sex, of course - making the whole thing many degrees more beautiful). And you're right. Fu Yong Jie is rather like him.

Now I am hoping we catch a glimpse of The Most Beautiful Man in the World, who for me back in late 2019 was none other than Lu Zhi Gang. I was in Taipei at the time MODC was aired. I found myself standing on That Rainbow Bridge one night a couple of weeks after I witnessed Sun Bo Xiang ardently declare his love for Lu Zhi Gang on the screen ... I heard Arrowe Wei singing "I'll never understand why you had to go", the MODC closing credits song, the week of THAT final episode. Thanks for bringing back some powerful memories.

Totally 100% in agreement. You said it!

Someone disagrees with you. Or simply offers a different view which you reject. Is it necessary to go into overdrive heaping abuse on a total stranger? In print, here on this website? First, you say something offensive about the "type of person" @wei ying lover is or isn't. Next, you add a withering dismissal of his/her [in]ability to understand the scene. Then the hyped-up pejoratives - "ableist af and misogynistic" ... and finally this unlucky person who dared to take a different view of a character's conduct is condemned as a "lost cause". Wow. What on earth provokes you to pour out such vituperation? I might add: I see this all the time now on MDL, on every BL series webpage - i.e. commentators on pages like these exploding with extreme personal invective, and in the most anodyne contexts.

Someone disagrees with you. Or simply offers a different view which you reject. Is it necessary to go into overdrive heaping abuse on a total stranger? In print, here on this website? First, you say something offensive about the "type of person" @wei ying lover is or isn't. Next, you add a withering dismissal of his/her [in]ability to understand the scene. Then the hyped-up pejoratives - "ableist af and misogynistic" ... and finally this unlucky person who dared to take a different view of a character's conduct is condemned as a "lost cause". Wow. What on earth provokes you to pour out such vituperation? I might add: I see this all the time now on MDL, on every BL series webpage - i.e. commentators on pages like these exploding with extreme personal invective, and in the most anodyne contexts.

Edit: The following was written in reply to a comment formerly somewhere above which has since been erased - and it seems the author of the comment has likewise erased him/herself from this page - or maybe from MDL altogether. But I'll leave my response here! Why not?

Yes, so it is. You are very right. I recognise the truth of what you write. That is definitely what many men are encouraged to see as a normal seduction technique (in the heterosexual context). It happens. Many, many women have experienced this kind of violation, deceit, abuse.

However, I am a man, and I was never taught that to get a woman drunk is a normal seduction technique. Never. And it likewise never crossed my mind as a gay man that it might be a normal or acceptable means to get together with a guy. Additionally, although I have decades of experience being a gay man in different societies, I honestly do not recall hearing even once of such a story, that is, a man getting another man drunk or drugging him (which we see twice in this series) in order to try to have sex with him while he's more or less unconscious. I had a job some years ago where I acquired in-depth knowledge of the day-to-day realities of hundreds of gay men's lives here in London, and I honestly do not recall any accounts of this sort of abusive "seduction technique" being attempted by a boy or man in a bid to have sexual contact with another guy. So although it's a rather over-used plot device in this series (and elsewhere in the BL world), it absolutely does not reflect some universal reality of gay men's lives in Taiwan or anywhere else.

Er ... steady on. That's a lot of rather sweeping-sounding claims about "BL", "gay stories", "realism", "gay guys being gay together" .... plus what you represent as the dangerous "convoluted nonsense" of a "vocal majority" here on MDL. I have re-read your comment a few times and I don't know what you're aiming at. The "same damn conversations with both camps over and over again" - I won't dare to ask who or what this refers to, because it will sound like an invitation to go "over and over" it again. But I really am not clear as what you're getting at.

And I cannot possibly see the "production of BLs" somehow beginning to "take direction" from any group of people writing comments on this website. From what I can see, BL series are the creations of all sorts of writers, production companies, commercial sponsors, actors - in a variety of very different Far Eastern Asian countries. The process of creating BL stories and series is so diffuse, complex, multi-vocal and, above all, so entirely situated in totally different national and linguistic settings that it is very unlikely to be directed by any group of viewers writing comments in English on this website.

Plus I don't see how there can be any such thing as a uniquely authoritative, insightful minority "who actually get what it is, what it does and who it's for". It is, and it does, innumerable things; and it's ultimately for all sorts of people. Meanwhile, whilst I recognise that you are "not interested", for my part I don't feel any objection to realism or moral lessons or "gay guys being gay together" - phenomena which all have their place in the BL genre, alongside countless other things - such as Buddhist spirituality, broad Thai slapstick humour, celebrations of food and cookery, various kinds of contemporary Thai and Taiwanese (plus Korean, Japanese & Filipino) pop music, constant product placement devices, dramatic irony, evocations of ghosts, pleas for social inclusiveness, melodrama, public health information, etc. I enjoy more or less all of it. And I'm not aware of a minority favoured with direct, pure access to what it's "actually" all about. We're all involved in understanding - and creating - what it's all about: including the realists, the moralists, the gay guys and other groups you don't seem to care for.

Of course it's a very valid feeling. That is, the feeling that one's sense of attraction, maybe even the whole experience of falling in love, is unique to one individual - and not a comprehensive statement about sexuality or gender. I have no doubt many people have this feeling. And even more people apply this interpretation to their feeling - in some cases because it is a way of avoiding saying to themselves "I'm gay".

Certainly that's how it was in my case. I have to say that the reality for me was very "black and white". I was definitely gay. I thought about boys in very erotic ways all the time. However, to say "I'm gay", though a very fair reflection of my reality, was .. terrifying. Because of a very important factor which you mention: homophobia. You are not at all dumb, "Jessica Brown", you're never dumb, and while "I don't like men, just you" can be a very valid way for a man to describe his experience of being attracted to another man, or indeed loving him, it can also be an assertion that arises from a fear and dread of being "homosexual", or even worse, publicly identifiable as such. When I realised my intense feelings of same-sex attraction, plus my yearning to fall in love with a boy, I was still quite a young boy myself - living in a society of monolithic, pathological homophobia. To be homosexual was unmentionable, an identity associated with criminality, sin, evil, etc. Affirming the truth of my gayness just wasn't an option. Instead, it was infinitely comforting to imagine that what I felt was some special, utterly unique sense of attraction or mystique focused on one ... individual who happened to be male.

And so homophobia absolutely was the reason that I chose (again and again) to apply a deceptive, inaccurate interpretation to my feeling. Secondly, when we find this assertion "I don't like men, just you" repeatedly placed in the mouths of male characters in various BL series, it seems pretty clear that we're hearing it because the writers (producers, directors, maybe actors?) absolutely do not want the character in question to be identified as gay or homosexual. Instead they feel that a basically heterosexual character who claims somehow to have fallen in love in an utterly unique way with some other male individual is infinitely superior and preferable to a man who is identifiable as "a homosexual" - the lowest of the low.

And that, above all is why the "I don't like guys at all, I just like him" line often has to be challenged, questioned. It may be a nuanced, sensitive summing-up of a man's feelings for another man, but ... (in real life, e.g. my own) it can also be an agonised flight from acknowledgement of one's own gayness, or (in a BL drama) it can be a way of trying to steer a character away from what's seen as a distasteful, problematic gay identity.

Once again, I find evidence demonstrating why I so much enjoy your contributions. Your choice of words is so refreshing, your "opinions and way of thinking" always aware, constructive and interesting ... and now I discover that you're "only 19". I would hesitate to write it "only 19", but ... you wrote it yourself. Anyhow, I'm all the more impressed. Blown away is the right impression, I think.

I left the US decades ago when I myself was approaching my 19th birthday - and sick and tired of being dependent on others for rides (lifts as we say here in the UK). I never learned to drive and way back then in my youth I was likewise (in my teens) in a suburban area with no public transport. There was no way for me to go anywhere at all. So as soon as I could, I got out and went Far Away.

Hmmmmm... I'm 100% gay and as far as I can recall I invariably find your comments perceptive and entertaining and generally excellent. Can't remember ever hating or hating "on" anything you ever wrote. Not sure how you arrived at your negative assessment here of gay people's responses to your insights. I generally look out for "Jessica Brown" and not just look out, look forward to.

Plus you have an especially appealing easygoing, philosophical approach - very valuable and much appreciated where there are two many "commentators" (e.g. even on this page) who quickly become inflamed and then send one another rather hostile, abusive messages. It seems to happen all the time, at the drop of a hat. Maybe this is the "hating on what I say" which you refer to. Well, there's a lot of it, but I can't say I remember anyone responding to any of your comments in a hostile or abusive way. Anyhow, keep up the good work, don't be discouraged, stay cool Ms Jessica Brown, my favourite already very cool commentator. Keep fighting, as they say in all these series.

You aren't misrepresenting anything. Your account of episode 7 is correct and insightful. Its message is profoundly homophobic. Being gay is depicted as a miserable life and one which a boy can simply abandon by kissing a girl and trying to be straight. I think that that is really the message of the whole series. Ultimately, it's all about a relationship between a boy and a girl.

I won't give away the ending but the message of the series is that the gay guy (and every gay guy) should quit being gay, kiss a girl, and try to be straight. The whole series is about a relationship betwee a girl and a boy. The boy may be homosexual in orientation but he hates being gay and is deeply unhappy. Being heterosexual, meanwhile, is represeted as the happy norm, a state of perfection which we should all strive to adhere to. Just to clarify ...

Unfortunately, that is all that young gay people will see "represented" of gay (male) life in this series: struggle. The overall message is that being gay is miserable and inferior, that girl/boy relationships are the meaning of life, and that any boy who thinks he's gay should kiss a girl (in front of the whole school, maybe) and go back in the closet and turn straight.

Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. But episode 7 didn't contradict the whole message about the series. Episode 7 WAS the message of the series- namely: being gay is miserable, any boy can and should go back in the closet, kiss a girl, and be straight. That's the message.

Really? They depict the "world of homosexual people" as utterly negative. The whole series is about a relationship between ... a girl and a boy. The boy may be gay, but he hates being gay. When he goes back into the closet and kisses the "girlfriend", the whole school cheers - and we who are watching are expected to cheer too.

Heartwarming??? I'm not sure. Your own comment suggests that in reality it's far from heartwarming. You address the key moment in the series. That moment is a supreme moment of homophobic victory. No one here is gay. Being gay is depicted as miserable and hard. The one character who seems to be gay is a boy whose relationship with a "girlfriend" is the subject of this series - and when he goes back in the closet and reasserts his will to be straight (= wholesome, romantic, normal etc), we, the viewers are obviously expected to leap to our feet and applaud. Anything but "heartwarming". More like horrifying.

Coming of age, maybe. But not coming out. And not "LGBT" either. OK, maybe B. Not G, that's for sure. Jun's life as a gay boy is painful, damaged and sad. The series is all about a basically straight relationship - between a boy and a girl. When Jun goes back in the closet and kisses a girl in front of the school, everyone applauds. We, the viewers, are obviously expected to leap to our feet and applaud too. But I wasn't cheering or clapping.