jpny01

I'm downrating it for the ending. I can turn your sentence around and say just because something is emotional doesn't mean it's good. It's like acting - everyone seems to like the actors that are good at crying, which is easy. It's subtle acting like Earth's in 1,000 Stars that's masterful. All the acting in this series was excellent, though - even Fern's.

Anyway, my problem isn't necessarily the sad ending, it's that it's a sad ending based on tired tropes - manipulative evil women (who suffer no consquences for their awfulness) and implausible failures of communication.

What difference does it make? In few hours he's leaving town forever. It would have been easier for Best if he hadn't said anything - now Best knows that he's lost real love instead of just an unavailable guy he liked. This was an awful ending.

It's not open ended. One of them is moving across the country for four years and they're both going to end up with different people.

Yes, this was relatable, but the last thing I needed was to be reminded of the emotional catastrophe that crippled my ability to love for my entire youth just as I'm getting to old for people to find attractive anymore.

BL is escapist fantasy. If I want to feel this way I'll just watch Holocaust footage.

I think I can answer this. The acting is superb, even Fern. The problem is the two main characters interact almost not at all, and if you didn't enjoy the first two episodes, DO NOT, oh, for the love of God, do not watch the last episode. You've been warned. Although I fear I'm too late.

You should have warned me not to watch this last. Now I have to go rewatch Brothers so I don't have to cry myself to sleep.

My grandmother died horribly of ovarian cancer at 63. I wasn't expecting that, but it was nice to see something different than the usual dying peacefully while sleeping in old age.

By which (in an obnoxiously snarky way) I mean I would rather have had a cliche ending than this disaster, which is actually just a collection of the same cliches as usual, except this time evil triumphs.

If you like to see boys never get a chance to tell each other how they feel and have their spirits totally crushed while evil women triumph in separating them forever, then yes, it's a happy ending. If you want to see boys in love get together, not so much a happy ending.

Why were they playing The First Noel during the lunch conversation? That's a Christmas carol! It was so out of place I had to rewatch the scene with the sound off because it was so distracting!

I hated this. The acting is great all around, however.

The first ep - now THAT is how to do BL. Marco & Bas were just fire, and they didn't even do anything. That they both have gorgeous bodies doesn't hurt, and Marco is just beautiful and has such a sexy voice - and then he spoke English and killed me. The conversation at dinner was so well-written.

The second episode was full of people behaving poorly. It was realistic and well-written, but not pleasant to watch. I loathe Ait. He's such an awful, selfish self-absorbed child. Why is anything James' fault? If someone treated me like he just treated James, I would not go after him - I would be done with him.

This is better than the first season. They still need to work on the car green screen, but it was at least better than the LOL one in the first season. All other aspects of this were better. Not sure about Time's acting - sometimes it's a little too mannered. But Michael & Daniel are first-rate. Everything they did was powerful - you can feel Bas' hopelessness & desperation - it's painful to watch.

TBH, I didn't notice it until you pointed it out, and even then it didn't really bother me. To me it seemed like he's wearing so much lip balm that he can't help it.

I do hate him though. What a stupid child.

I have to totally disagree with you. That was said by Bas' brother, who is a macho straight guy - it was very, very clear that that was a bunch of macho bullshit and not in any way the POV of the writers. Bas' brother also doesn't know anything about what's going on, and that line was 100% intended to show us what kind of terrible pressures Bas is under - the awful trangressive behavior of Tee, and also unreasonable family pressure.

It absolutely belongs in the script and was very important to prevent this from seeming cartoonish. Otherwise, Bas can just tell Tee to fuck off. He has more than Tee to worry about - he also has to worry about being rejected by his family.

I've only watched it once, but I just finished the ep. I will probably watch Marco & Bas shirtless on the beach several thousand times, but the kiss will be in second place for most watched. Just Marco's voice could get me pregnant, and I'm a guy.

He's a fictional character. Not liking him is not doing anyone any harm. I don't think TK (the character, not the actor) is cute and amazing, and while lying is almost always wrong, keeping your honest opinion to yourself is often better than expressing it. ("Does this outfit make me look fat?" "Yes." Often not a good idea to give your honest opinion in that situation.) But what does that have to do with liking a character? Jesus is wonderful in every way, but he's really boring as a dramatic character.

Your second to last sentence is key - Relate to him because he's human. The problem is that he's not written as a real person, he's a cartoon character from a video game that nobody bothered to flesh out. The actor is doing his best, but the writing is terrible. If you don't like or relate to the main character, it's hard to enjoy the series, in which case it's reasonable to drop it. If you find something about him that you do relate to, isn't that a good thing?

I'm a gay man, which gives me no special authority on what it's like to be gay, only what it's like for me to be gay. But I might connect with a gay character because he's gay - maybe something about him feels true to life, or at least mine. So is that wrong? Should I only like him if he's cute an amazing? Wouldn't that make me shallow?

I was in Ulanqab. It was really strange - there was a large government building, a couple of other buildings, and a Howard Johnson's, which was really bizarre - in the USA, that brand is a really low-end "motel" that you would only stasy in if you're too tired to continue driving, but there's one in the middle of nowhere in Inner Mongolia.

Some day I'd love to hear the true story of what happened with Addicted. TBH, I wouldn't be surprised if what pushed it over the line was Gu Hai's consequence-free use of official connections for corrupt purposes and cronyism more than the gay content. It's probably combination of that and the gay - also consquence-free fairly brutal bullying.

One thing that really made me laugh is that there's a key love scene (after Timmy Xu takes a shower) where in the uncensored version Gu Hai gives him a hand job, but in the censored version it looks like he full-on rapes him because they cut it off just after he throws him onto the bed. Very counterproductive censorship.

No problem. I was using sarcasm to criticize a silly plot point and didn't make it clear that I was being sarcastic, so my bad, and sorry again.

Don't forget Ohm in He's Coming to Me - that was a serious first because he was the taller one, and thus presumably would be the seme if his partner weren't a dead person.

For me, I don't care how crazy and unrealistic the story is - romance with a ghost? Fine. Every boy in the entire student body chasing other boys? Fine. In YYY one of them was an alien and had a spaceship. Fine. But within that crazy world, the people still need to act like, well, people, with realistic and consistent characterization, so I'm with you.

With the "I'm not gay..." line, not only is it totally divorced from reality (Uh huh, you're straight but having sex with another man who you plan to be with forever. OK.), but the reason for it is homophobia. Nobody watching a BL is homophobic (other than internalized self-loathing). There's no need for this trope.

BL manages to be homophobic and make almost every male character technically bisexual while still somehow managing to fail to provide any bisexual representation - Fiat's character being the only example I can think of, and I agree, by far (really, really far) the best thing in that series.

True - but they could just say nothing at all and not define themselves - is there a need to make a point of claiming to be straight? "I'm not gay, I like girls. I'm having anal sex with a man who I will remain with for my entire life, and quite possibly future lives, but really, I like girls, so no need to look behind the curtain."

No, I was so depressed at that age I was barely functional, and it wasn't until later in adulthood that I really reached any of my potential - with the help of medication.

Shadow needs light to be shadow. If there's no joy in Nut's life and relationship with Phob, then there's nothing to mourn losing, and certainly not to still be stuck on 20 years later. I was so in love with my "Phob" that I don't think I ever got over it, and he was if anything more repressed (it was a long time ago). But there was definitely a physical electricity. When nobody was around, we would lie wrapped around each other, I can remember him being in a sad mood where he even grabbed my hand to hold it in a minivan where other people could possibly see it.

With Nut and Phob, I don't see any sign that it's more than a friendship for Phob, other than one or two furtive looks he gives Nut after they've split. When you're in love, there's a desire for touch - even if you keep it to a point where there's plausible (self)-deniability.

As for Mean, perhaps there is something internal that brings him back to BL, but it may as likely be cynicism - he has a built-in audience that will watch this because he's directing it, and maybe he had an opportunity with a BL that he wouldn't be able to get with a different genre. Or, it may be he's not as straight as he says he is. I have to take him at his word, though, and this series isn't feeling to me like it's run by someone who really understands what this is like - unlike ITSAY where I felt it deeply.

I think Title is amazing and he's communicating a pain that resonates with me, but I'm not getting any mutuality. Maybe that's what we'll be getting in the rest of the story - insight into what Phob is experiencing.

BTW, I liked the track scene - that's not one I was thinking of. I don't think ALL scenes are too long - but there are a few that aren't important that probably shouldn't be in it at all. Given that everything we've seen so far as a prelude to the main story 20 years later, did we need them to break up twice?

I don't think this is bad by any means - it's still better than just about anything else airing right now - it's just missing something that's making it hard for a large number of people to watch, including me. I'm waiting to see how the "main" story goes before deciding what I think overall.

OMG, that is incredible - you're right! I'll be whoever wrote this did read that. Now I feel like I grok Tae better.

The ACTOR is very, very attractive. But to me the way they make him up for this series hides that. I feel like it's a deliberate choice, but I'm not sure I understand why. I guess my problem with Tae's character is it's too... sanded down, maybe?

If feels like they sort of wanted him to be on the spectrum, but didn't commit to it, so he just ends up being clueless and not very intelligent rather than a smart guy who's autistic to some degree. I think it would have been far better to write him consistently as on the spectrum.