jpny01

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.

I was just thinking - I know there's much more to N. China than Beijing, but that's the only place I've been there - I think the air quality should be a much larger concern than rain, especially in the winter. I was there in winter, got up, showered. got into a sealed car and to the airport, and just from that when I wiped my face with the damp towel the airline provides everyone (again with the damp towels), it was brown.

I've also been to Outer Mongolia (don't ask), but the air there was pristine. Most of the other major cities Westerners would have reason to go to are near the sea, which cleans the air, or Chengdu, which isn't particularly poluted - maybe they use more hydroelectric power.

I think we're unlike to see poor air quality feature in BLs as that's an implied criticism of the government.

I think you're misreading my comment. Obviously Asians aren't vulnerable to water - if they were they would have all died by now as East Asia is one of the wetter areas of the planet, and obviously you can't win a war by throwing cups of water at someone. I think it's obvious that the comment was sarcasm, but I'm sorry if it wasn't clear.

My comment is about an overused and fairly ridiculous trope - whenever a BL character is rained on, he immediately gets sick. And then is usually cured by being dabbed with a damp towel. All BL is Asian, so all BL characters this happens to are Asians. It has nothing to do with actual real-life Asians.

It's not totally alien in the West - mothers are still sure you'll die if you go outside without a jacket. But the point is that you won't, as we know from science that illness is caused by bacteria and viruses, not temperature. Sure, prolonged exposure to cold can weaken you immune system, but being doused with water isn't going to hurt you. BTW, Hirohito (emperor of Japan) had to take a freezing cold shower every day when he was growing up, and he lived to be 88.

Anyway, it's not the belief that you'll get sick that's the problem, it's that really fit teenagers are actually getting sick from getting wet in all these stories. That trope hasn't gotten to the point that it makes me crazy yet - that's reserved for accidental kiss and trip/fall/stare. The problem with those are they're the REASON boys fall in love, rather than just a plot or comedic device. People should fall in love for more substantial reasons than that.

I'm opposed to plot type tropes - you kind of have to have one, right? Or what's the story about? It's my favorite too. My point was that they wouldn't start out as enemies if they weren't going to end up together. If Shin Woo were a support character, he could be an obstacle between Tae & DaOn, but as a main character, it makes no sense except within the context of enemies to lovers, therefore it's 100% likely that Tae and Shin Woo are the endgame.

It's the little tropes that add up to be annoying, like accidental kisses or getting immediately sick from water touching a character (and being immediately healed by being dapped with damp towel).

When I was that age, there were girls who wouldn't give up, no matter how I tried to discourage them - even to the point of telling them I was gay.

Here's a BL moment: At a party, a girl who liked me dragged me off to a room - she was sloppy drunk and all over me, so I told her I was gay, and she said that just made her want me even more, then attacked. I had to physically pry her off me, told her we could talk more when she was in a state to, and left.

I went back out to the party, and made the mistake of talking to her best friend, who was really beautiful, and drunk girl was jealous of her. She marched out of the room up to me and slapped me hard on the face, which of course made everyone think I had just sexually assaulted her or something.

It's like they wanted to have a character like that but wouldn't commit to it. It's a bit of a risk to have a featureless character like this - even his appearance is sort of featureless. You can see the difference between Tae and what the actor is like in real life.

Let me try to describe what I mean - the acting is great, the writing is great, all the various elements that go into it are just fine - but the way it's directed and edited makes it difficult to watch. There are a few extraneous scenes with characters we don't care about, there are scenes that go on too long, and the mood is too relentlessly sad and dark, and it hasn't ventured into that sort of furtive love you experience at that age. I don't mean that the story lacks energy, it's the execution.

This would be less of a problem in a typical BL because they're are fundamentally outrageous and silly, so there's humor, rromance, and fantasy covering up how boring the story really is.

I think this is too ambitious a project for a first-time director, especially one that hasn't experienced any of this himself.

That's interesting - I like Daon because he's nice. Isn't it better to be too giving than to be a jerk? I get why he's annoying people, though. I think mainly because So Hee doesn't deserve anyone being nice to her, and his doing so is keeping her around to make people miserable.

For me Tae is the character I like least. I find all the other ones well-drawn and interesting, but he's too dull and featureless. That may be intentional - they've even sort of plastered over the actors looks to make him as dull-looking as possible.

Well, I needed that like I need a shot in the head.

The acting is really good - the cinematography is also good. The pacing is not good. These two episodes could have been combined into one, I think. And it's a little too relentlessly dark (in mood) - it gets oppressive, with only Nut's brother to lighten things up. Title did a great job showing Nut's desolation, but we didn't get to see enough of what he's losing - we only know Phob has feelings for him from wistful glances. I think there needed to be a few sweet moments. I was in high school even earlier than this in a heavily Christian area, and as totally repressive as it was, and how deeply in denial I and my high school love were, there were still moments that would have made you ship us hard. But here you're almost relieved they'll be apart so th pain can stop.

I have to agree with the side saying this isn't a BL - this is a gay drama. I do appreciate the realism, but maybe it's TOO real - I don't want to think about my parallel experiences at that age, which are way too similar - it's even set at a time that's more recognizable to the world I grew up in (I don't know what the deal was with that phone, though - that was from 1930). Anyway, I was in a dark mood all day, and now I'm in a lie-in-a-fetal-position mood. Sigh.

Maybe Jeff & Gameplay can cheer me up.