jpny01

I don't think anyone has a problem with Fiat's promscuity - it's his reasons. He was using other people to deliberately hurt Leo - that's problemmatic. If he was doing it in good faith because he really enjoyed sex, then great. But to seduce people under false pretenses, and for a not-very-nice motive, that's not good. That's not slut shaming, it's false-pretense-revenge-sex shaming, which I think is appropriate.

Even that's fine - perfect angels are boring characters. But let's have him do something to atone instead of rewriting the story to paint his promiscuity as a service to mankind.

Not only that, but you can be effeminate and still be strong. They are equating effeminacy with helplessness, which is not only homophobic, it's misogynist.

You're right, in theory, but this is starting to be the "redemptive sex act of the week" show - doing it repetitively suggests that this was his motivation all along and is an attempt to whitewash what was really terrible behavior. Not sleeping around in itself, but his reasons for it - he was using people in order to hurt someone else, which is really awful. The way to address that is have Fiat regret his past and atone for it now, not retroactively absolve him.

In any case, it's backstory. Why not have a plot that moves the story of Fiat and Leo forward instead of running around in circles? Can you sum up the plot of this series in a sentence? You can easily do it for Leon and Pob, but what is the Fiat/Leo story actually about?

I think you missed J100's point, which was against colorism, not perpetuating it. Mentioning someone's dark skin is not inherently a racist slur unless you're suggesting negative qualities associated with it. For example "I was entranced by the golden glow of his dark porcelain skin" vs. "He was as lazy as I expected of someone dark-skinned". The first is not racist, the second is.

J100 was applauding the casting of someone who wasn't bleached whiter than a Scandinavian albino or with so much white base plastered onto their faces that they probably need a jackhammer to chisel it off after each shoot.

Also, we should make allowances for non-native speakers. It's not easy to refer to coloration appropriately even for natives.

I'm right there with you, except I'm sticking with it for Leon, but ff'ing through Fiat & Leo. The writing for Fiat & Leo is hard to understand - it's very repetitive an they're both unappealing.

I totally agree - I think he's carrying the show - TBH I'd probably drop it if not for him.

It's really mostly Aek, although he's the main character. It's funny you mention that - it's come up before, and it appears to be a standard Thai thing - I'm not sure why they direct actors to do that, but it can be frustrating. I had to set The Yearbook on 2x speed to avoid falling into a coma and it still seemed really slow. Once while watching Until We Meet Again, I set it on 2x, forgot I did, and didn't notice until there was a song.

I was so afraid Dr Oat was evil - I was just waiting for it. Or that he was a secret agent good-guy, but nope, just a hot doctor.

My pleasure! I don't think you need to have had bullying due to sexuality in your experience to understand what it's like because it's not that different from being a woman - just think about the assumptions people made about your math and science abilities and you're most of the way there.

"Feel better about homosexuality" is a good way to put it regarding the seme/uke thing. I wonder if maybe some of the writers are from cultures that aren't what we would call "liberated" in the West, and they can't imagine a relationship where the "feminine" person is" in charge". Or maybe they get off on the power dynamic - I'm sure there are lots of reasons. Power imbalance can be hot, but it can get old if it's the same dynamic every time. Why does Leo have to be the top? Fiat was the perfect character to break the mold with.

And what's with the "take care of" thing? Do adults need other adults to take care of them? And if they do, is that usually the husband or the wife? I think I know what 99% of women would say. So why not in a m/m relationship?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26sYBvWysg

It's almost OTT.

Well, at least he didn't have to shoot himself this time.

Earth is the punching bag of BL. If he's ever in anything where he doesn't have to be bullied, shoot himself, or cry (usually all three), it will be a miracle.

I'm still not sure how pouring a cup of water over someone in a shower is bullying. If it had been ice water, maybe, but it wasn't. That was the best kiss I've ever seen in a BL - it's not the kiss itself, it's Santa's lack of hesitation to be body-to-body with Earth. Usually there's a large amount of space between guys in kiss scenes. The way he stepped up to Earth and wrapped his body around him felt authentic and was super-cute - I was actually getting bored, and then I got a really strong kilig feeling.

If you've seen an interview with them, Santa is extremely comfortable with physical affection. That ought to be a non-negotiable criterion for casting BL roles.

If you replace the word "crush" with "obsession", you'd describe where I am.

I really, really want to see Earth play a role where he's not whiney and useless. I know he can do it, and it's an injustice to him to be typecast as "that small guy who cries a lot". I want to see him play a mafia boss.

Totally agree - I was shocked. That was one of the few where the body language didn't scream "please don't make me do this." I think what made it work so well is the full body press - usually there's at least a foot of void space between their bodies - particularly the nether regions. Even when it's a side-hug.

It's actually only 70% for all the physical things. It has to do with hormone levels we're exposed to in the womb which plays a role in determining our sexuality. A male trait is to have different sized ring & index fingers, whereas a female trait is for them to be rougly the same. Apparently there's a stronger correlation between longer ring fingers and being lesbian, but I'm sure that's not close to 100% either.

I'd read that gay men tend to classify color in a more similar way to women, i.e. more gradations of color, for example, magenta is NOT PURPLE. But straight men will just sigh and say, "fine, reddish-purple". The theory is that when we were evolving, the need to feed infants kept women close to home, and engaged in gathering, where nuanced perception of shades of the red spectrum was the difference between nutrition and painful death by poisoning.

I actually had this discussion with someone - I was trying to find an non-broken umbrella in the bucket by the door.

Me: The umbrellas are all broken.
Straight Guy: [Calling from the next room] The red one works.
Me: [Checks for red one] There's no red one.
SG: Yes, there is.
Me: No, there's not.
SG: [Stomps into the room, annoyed, grabs umbrella from bucket] It's right here!
Me: That's burgundy.
SG: How could you possibly not assume I was talking about this one when all the rest are black or blue?
Me: The rest are black or NAVY, but I ASSUMED that there HAD been a red one, but that someone took it already, because this is NOT RED, it's BURGUNDY.

That is definitely a tough question, but I'll do my best - but warning, it's long (!).

The sterotypical things I don't like are ones that I think undermine the romance. For example, boys always seem to fall in love because one trips and the other catches him and they stare at each other for 15 minutes. Why can't they fall in love because they really like each other? Why is it away some accident that causes it?

That's somewhat related to the "I'm not gay, I just like [insert name]." I know that to many people that seems romantic, because it's loving someone beyond the bounds of gender identity. Anyone that feels that way is probably totally unbiased against LGBTQ+ people, which is very commendable and a happy commentary on social progress.

However, the trope is not motivated by acceptance, it's motivated by homophobia, and is connected to the way lack of consent is used in BL.

You've probably also seen how men force women in romance quite often, and why men are always the pursuers (except for evil and "morally questionable" women) in traditional romance. That is because it's not traditionally morally acceptable for a woman to pursue and desire sexual pleasure. If she's forced, then she's not a hussy. This is obviously repugnant, because it's saying sexual aggression, even to the point of rape, is less morally objectionable than female sexual desire.

The same applies to men - it's fine for a man to be a "top", but it's not acceptable for a man to actively seek to be penetrated for pleasure - hence the frequent use of force, or you've probably noticed how the uke often acts like he doesn't want the seme to touch him - even Fiat is doing that with Leo - and that might be why that seduction scene fell so flat. They wouldn't commit. You know First can be sexy as f@#$, but then that's aggressive and way too gay because Leo will be, well, f@#$ing him. In both BL and straight romance, force isn't just common, it's romanticized. (There' is a distinction between force, and being rough - the latter is consensual and just fine.)

You'll notice that the person who says "I'm not gay" is almost always the seme - because you aren't gay unless you're a bottom. (Which is obviously not true - I just mean that's the perspective being taken by people who write these things).

Also, while there are certainly genderfluid, pansexual etc. people, it's not ALL people - "love knows no gender" means that all love is valid, no matter which gender you love - it doesn't mean that the gender of another person doesn't matter to whether or not you can love them, because obviously it does, for something like 95% of people. I'm gay, and it doesn't matter how fantastic a woman is, there is 0% chance I can love her romantically, even if I trip and she catches me.

And, a lot of us have had to fight hard for the rights we have, and it's been under the the LGBTQ+ banner, and when it's suggested that identity is meaningless, it's a bit insulting. I'm assuming you're a woman and my apologies if that's incorrect (I'm only assuming it because it's statistically likely on a BL discussion site) - so you have to fight for equality every day, too - would you want to be told being a woman is meaningless and an obsolete category? (OT, but gay men have concrete biological differences from straight men, from trivial [different direction of hair whorl, ring finger longer on straight men, index finger on gay men] to significant [differences in brain structure, stronger sense of smell.])

So that returns us to one of my problems with this series - why all of a sudden has Fiat become so passive and lost all the kick-ass fire he used to have? Because before, he was pursuing Type, who is an uke, so the implication was that Fiat was a seme. But we're told now that he only did it to upset Leo, who is depicted as an Über-seme, so Fiat must be an uke, and so he can't be masculine and aggressive anymore - he has to be shy and retiring, and be shocked when Leo kisses him on the cheek.

I get that the seme/uke dynamic is part of BL, but it's not very true to life. A bottom can be taller, older, and more "manly" than the top, or there may not be a top and bottom (versatile), etc. In BL, can you think of one case where the the uke was taller than the seme? Maybe one or two cases where the uke is older (Gen Y is the only example I can think of), and zero cases where the uke is more traditionally masculine. So now Fiat has transformed from an aggressive star athlete into a whiney 12-year old girl, because he's been squeezed into a tight uke mold.

So in a way, my problems with this series are what seem to me to be abuses of what were interesting characters, which is robbing a good actor like First of an opportunity to shine, while playing into homophobic - and sexist - stereotypes.

I hope that rambling mess made sense.

Because this is a comments section and we're here to discuss what we like and what we don't like. I could just as well say "if you don't like comments that have opinions that are different than yours, why do you find the energy to comment and read about them?

Why not instead expend the energy to tell me why you disagree with me? People have changed my mind with their perspective - that's the point of discussion, not to live in an echo chamber where everyone has to say the same positive things or they get bullied.

Also can you point to where I said I don't like the series? In fact I started with a positive comment about how well-done I think the Leon/Pob storyline is done and the nuance of Leon's gentlemantly personality. I just think the writing for Leo & Fiat is flat and doesn't do the actors justice.