jpny01

I would be happy if they were the main couple and there was nothing but them. They're such a perfect contrast in every way.

I find myself liking this. It's not good, but the actors are hot and the comic timing is excellent by BL standards. I absolutely love the secondary couple - I wish this were about them.

It's not a BL without them, Sigh. (That was a tired sigh.)

It's working now, I think. I just watched it.

Thank you, that's much appreciated! You're about the same age as I am, I think - I was about in the same place during the Marcos era.

Have you ever met a male? As soon as robots can pass as human, we're not going to bother with anyhing other than robots.

None of the Asian countries are much better - boys don't walk around holding hands and confessing their love to each other in Japan either. BL always minimizes homophobia, although the genre is often homophobic (irony).

The cast of this is beautiful. The main guy and the secondary couple...

I thought the implication was that he was unusually big, but I'm not sure. Or if that's not it, I wonder if it's the power dynamic between them - boys shower with other boys all throughout school, but it's always equals your own age. Maybe it's awkward in a different social setting.

When I was a teen you couldn't dance together listening to music with headophones because there was a wire connecting the earpieces. AND THAT'S THE WAY WE LIKED IT. But seriously, being a teen is about the same - just some of the details are different.

Try to imagine what it's like when someone has to send you an actual physical letter when they're far away and how frustrating it is waiting - instead of refreshing you're screen you run out to the mailbox after the postman comes - once per day. And the only way to talk other than in person was with a phone call. And the phone is attached to a wall. And your mother can pick up another receiver in the house to spy on you.

You're weird. :)

Yes, but you can use phones and social media without making the viewer watch the entirety of the typing. I know they're going for realism, but it's still a visual medium and there are plenty of ways to do this without consuming so much time.

Fomo?

That's exactly where I am. I love the directing, the naturalism, and the acting. The story is so dull and shallow that it's a bit of a struggle to get through - probably mostly because of what seems to me an excessive amount of phone/social media. Watching people type on their phones is not riveting.

But I think it's worth sticking with.

I absolutely loved the fist ep, and couldn't get through the second. Watching people message each other is less interesting than watching paint dry. This is superlatively directed with an unusual naturalistic style, but there's no substance or anything that distinguishes the story.

I 100% agree with you about the series having to stand on its own. If you haven't read the source material and hence the series makes no sense, then it's a bad screenplay.

But the series doesn't necessarily have to follow the source material in detail or even thematically. For example, The Godfather is one of the best films of all time and its central theme is family. The book it's based on was awful and just a shallow mafia drama.

Isn't it possible the screenwriter & director are deliberately injecting ambiguity into the story because people and relationships are complicated? So many people here want everything to be black and white to the point that they force it to be even when it isn't. People complain about what's-his-name deciding what they eat. Yeah, because he's cooking. If someone takes the time to cook, I don't question what they make. Do you? Unless they're deliberately cooking something you hate or are allergic to, the response to someone cooking for you should be gratitude. That's a minor example, but that more than one person brought it up says something.

The point is that people sometimes do bad things - we all do - but if I do something bad, then I'm not necessarily a villain for the rest of my life, I'm a good person who made a mistake or lost control of himself at a particular moment. Obviously there are some things that go beyond that and are so bad that they're not forgivable.

That's just a general statement. In this particular case, I'm not really sure. If feels like they want it to be both ambigious and explicit, and I wonder if it was supposed to be explicit and they "wimped out" and ambiguated. I don't think I've ever used that word before.

The person who cooks gets to decide what to eat - when my... person who cooks cooks, I don't really have a say in it. Unfortunately he's a terrible cook, whereas that doesn't appear to be the case here. I fgeel like sometimes the audience wants to see things in black and white, but well-written characters never are, nor are any of us in our character and behavior.

It's not a real rape. It's a drama. There are lots and lots of reasons to question it in a drama, as opposed to real life, which this is not.

TBH, I've never encountered a society more prudish than the American, and I'm including the Muslim world.

I think maybe another key word is "young" as in "young female audience" - I think maybe they get too many "bad touch" warnings, although my experience is limited to upper-middle-class white people and Asian-Americans. Waiting can be appropriate in a high-school story, but most adults don't really wait that long, even straight couples. For gay men, the question is, "do we wait until AFTER dinner on our first date to have sex?" or "Should we exchange names first?"

But all that aside, a key component in a romantic relationship is sexual compatability. You're committing to only being with one person - in theory for the rest of your life - so if they are into scat and you're not, what then? Wouldn't it have been better to find that out before committing?

Final note: adults who are in love an into each other sleeping in the same bed with nothing happening. Not only do I have a 100% sex occurrence under such circumstances, I've never heard of anyone not having sex under those circumstances. With a straight couple, if a woman isn't ready to have sex with a man and she spends the night in his bed, he is Not Going to Be Happy with Her. Then he'll have to go to the bathroom to "release tension" and she'll likely view it as cheating.