jpny01

I was totally thinking that. And the younger boys were Q & X.

I agree with you, but if I phrased it wrong, I meant that I find his introversion & shyness are fine - but when you add to that his child-like fear of everything and almost total physical incapacity, it's just making him TOO uke.

And note what you said - the things that Seeiw does for Cake are all "feminine". What you're doing is defending every detail. I'm saying that every detail is fine. A person who's afraid of ghosts is fine, a person who likes to do domestic things is fin, a person who faints when they try to run three steps is... well, not fine, but I can let it go, and a person who's socially awkward and shy is fine.

What's not fine is when all those - every considerable weakness is gathered into a character because he's an uke - which in the mind of BL writers is weak and effeminite, which besides being both homophobic and misogynist, is placing the characters into tight boxes that prevent them from being fully realized. That's why secondary couples almost always outshine the main couple - they're not subject to the same strict roles and so they're more interesting and compelling .

Sieew is deliberately written as a scared weakling who can't function without Cake - he can't even get home from school alone, or run three paces. This obsession with having the uke who needs to be taken care of and the seme who take care of him - and let's be honest, it's usually explicit - the seme usually says that's how he wants it - is constraining, and after 40 years of Yaoi is getting so threadbare that I think it's time to move on to some new ideas.

I'm not so much talking about the protectiveness as his behaving like a 30-year old. I don't find their interaction authentic because Cake isn't behaving like a teenage boy, not because he's protective, which I agree is believable.

Regardless of Cake's protectiveness, let's be honest, even Jesus would want to slap Seeiw sometimes. I'm... older and more experienced than Cake, and I can't maintain that level of serene patience with my own mother, let alone my little brother or best friend. It's one of the things that bothers me about BL in general - crises, even kisses, are externally driven, not organic development between characters. People that close who are around each other that much can only get along that well if they don't care about each other at all.

I do like that the external driver is unseen - that's a nice touch. She's invisible, as if imaginary to the realness of Seeiw. If and when she shows up it will be a shock to the system, and hopefully it will bring up papered over tensions between Cake and Seeiw that have to be resolved - or not, at least yet.

In my experience, when there's one stupid bit of lazy writing, there will be more. But I don't dislike the show - I just don't have time to watch everything and this got pushed down a rank to "will watch it when winter hits if everyone likes it".

You didn't read my post if you have even the vaguest notion that I'm hate-watching this. I think the question you should really ask yourself is that why after a bad day would you put that much effort into a pointless post with a childish personal attack?

That accidental kiss killed this for me. I think maybe BL in general is just stale and tired. Really, bounced off a bathroom partition and landed lip-to-lip with somone 10 cm taller than him?

This to me is a good example of a bad adaptation. Everything is interior monologue - there's no effort put into this screenplay. The end result is very boring. It feels a little like every Japanese BL has exactly the same plot with a few variations.

Hmm. This is a tough one. It's refreshing to see a BL with realism - the terrible pain and lonliness Seeiw lives with is well-done, and Santa's improv scenes with his frieds are very natural, and he works well with Earth. And Earth played Seeiw's meltdown perfectly.

But there are two issues: one is that it's too long. We absolutely did not need 4 episodes to build up to the end of this one. It should have taken up two, which is the length of an entire movie. If it were a slow burn, I'd be onboard, but it's the same thing over and over with almost no variation. Some repetition was needed to build the sense of hopelessness and oppression tha Seeiw feels, but not 4 hours. Where it ended up is excellent - but there's a point where the impact can be weakened because it's hard to care anymore.

The other issue is that if Seeiw has some sort of social anxiety disorder, that should be explicit, because his behavior doesn't feel like he does - e.g. he doesn't like crowds, but he doesn't fear them.

The end result is that he's just a giant wuss who's annoying. It takes me out of the story that they've made him the Über-uke. This then leads to what feels like an inauthentic dynamic between Seeiw and Cake, with Cake behaving like a parent, or at least a much, much older brother with a pre-teen sibling. It's jarring because Santa is constantly transitioning between behaving like a real boy with his friends and this definitely-not-a-highschool-boy persona (the difference is improv & scripted).

Seeiw is too weak and infantilized, and Cake is too adult and patronizing - this is the result of BL's addiction to seme-uke. The situation would have been more relatable if Cake were a normal boy and treated Seeiw like one - extremely close, but actual boys.

A big caveat is that we've never seen anything from Cake's perspective, and we don't know what he feels - but I'm not sure whatever that is can make him act like he's 30 with a frightened child.

Santa's improv scenes with his friends are excellent - and though he and Earth work well together, the way Cake treats Eiw is not high-school and sometimes it feels really out of place. We've never seen his perspective, though, so it's hard to know what motivating him.

Yes, that seems to be the casee. I'm not sure why anyone would hate Earth. His characters are all annoying, but it's not like he wrote the parts.

Well, we'll see how big a deal he makes - I hope this doesn't degenerate into the usual "implausible misunderstanding" cliche - but being shocked is OK with me, (as long as he gets over it) and when he said he didn't want to hear about Kim's past, he probably hadn't imagined it was with his subordinate.

What's strange to me is that Kamol didn't look into any of this before he started with Kim - he seemed to know everything else, and he IS a crime lord, so you need to be careful about these things.

But Kim should have known this would not go over well and should have insisted on telling him. If the ex weren't in their lives, it might not seem like a big deal, and Kim probably had no idea who he worked for when they dated. But when Kamol asked him to take care of Kim & Baiboon, nobody said anything and neither Kim nor what's-his-name were at all surprised to encounter each other in this context, so I think Kamol does have some ground to stand on when it comes to being upset.

I guess this already IS in the category "implausible misunderstanding."

At least I'm not stalking an actual person to follow them around criticizing them. Why are you so bitter and negative?

Thanks - I wish the series were fast-paced, because there are a lot of funny moments, intentional and not. If they weren't between large stretches of boring & repetitive material. (e.g. We get it. Danil doesn't want Kim around.)

They don't necessarily have to follow the book, though. How close has it been so far? Also, is the book serious, or is it deliberately OTT like the series?

Unless there's a time jump. Usually I think those are lazy writing, but in this case, we don't really have time to cover Kamol's transition to legitimate business and there's no other way around the Baiboon/Khom romance. The actor is 21, so it's at least possible.

If nobody criticises anything, nothing can ever improve. I'm sorry you're such a delicate and angry person. You can get treatment for that.

And again, with no apparent irony, you're only noticing criticism and none of my praise, so it's you that's seeing the negative in everything, not me.

I'm offering criticism of a work of fiction - and not a very serious work of fiction, and not very serious in my criticism. You - with no apparent irony - are attacking an actual human being and feel some need to insult them.

The thing is, when you're someplace where everyone has the same opinion as you, it might feel more comfortable that you never have to have you ego damaged because some total stranger doesn't agree with you, but you also can't learn anything or broaden your perspective.

It's actually great to be me - I enjoy being here and I've made lots of friends, many of whom have given me a lot of great insights into things I've missed or didn't understand, and that's helped me appreciate things that I didn't at first pass.

Did anyone gain anything from your comment? Do you feel better? If so, you're welcome.

I totally agree - this was a really disappointing episode. I did laugh a little at Danil's totally unnecessary shower, but I do appreciate the cinematographer, who I'm guessing is a dirty old man. The actor who plays Danil is really cute and charming in real life - same for Danai.

In the interest of honesty, I did two countdowns. He tricked me the first time and I felt a bare instant of euphoria as I thought that maybe, just maybe, THIS was the time when it wouldn't happen. But alas.

I liked Eps 1 & 2 more than I expected to - largely due to Nouel, I think, plus the plot was still different enough that it didn't feel stale - but this ep we fell right back into the rut.