jpny01

Thanks - I might have been a bit OTT grumpy yesterday. The series is totally unoriginal and poorly written, but it does have some redeeming features. There was way, way too much sulking, but I thought Jom acted it very well, and his emotional outburst was well done. And I love Ball.

The crutch was funny. With Turbo, the series is more than half over so it's a bit late to introduce that idea at this point - I was hoping to see it from Ep 1.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

I've seen Friend Zone and 3 WBF - I was just looking at the MDL page fpr Gay OK Bangkok and I'm sure I know the name, but the actors don't ring a bell except for Jennie, but I'll try it out. I've never even heard ot Trasher, so thank you!

Bad Filipino BLs are the same or worse as Thai BLs for tropes, but the higher end ones ae refreshingly tropeless. I don't mind some - there are certain plot types that are going to be repeated, like enemies to lovers, and that's fine. It's the idiosyncratic tropes like accidental kisses, or how boys almost always accidentally turn gay and fall in love by tripping and falling so their faces are too close together and they stare at each other for 15 minutes that become tiresome. As if falling and mashing your faced together wouldn't send blood and teeth flying everywhere.

Wow, I don't agree with that, The first time I ever saw Brad Pitt was on a TV show and he totally dominated it. There are action and teen-aimed move starts that are bad, but Matt Damon? I think he's always been good.

I thought Alex's role in Cheat was actually more subtle and challenging - this is basically a broad cartoon. Totally agree about music - Filipnio BL wins in that category hands-down.

The third ep was a letdown - Migo did have the requisite 2 shirtless scenes, (VJ had one two, which was surprisingly nice) but the main characters are too unappealing in boring ways (other than when shirtless). The way Gino oggles men is obnoxious - you can look without your eyes popping out of your head like a cartoon - it's rude and ridiculous.

Nothing happened at all plot-wise, and everything was unimportant conversation. I guess we learned that Alex is an introvert, which would make that resort a hellscape as it's staffed by escapees from a dystopian Disney nightmare where you're exectuted if you don't have a huge fake smile plastered on your face and you aren't talking three times louder than necessary.

It feels like someone wrote a 5-ep story and then found out they'd been contracted for 8 and had to go back and fill in the rest of the time with whatever.

The music is good though - even top-end Thai productions just use stock music they get for free online, which is why every BL has exaclty the same music for any given type of scene. Filipino BLs are much superior in that regard and the same is true here.

I think in general productions ought to review scripts and ask themselves "In BL, every single time in the histoy of the genre, when anyone has unexpectedly run into someone naked, have they both screemed while staring at the penis?" If so, do something different, as if two grown men who obviously hit the gym a lot and have presumably gone through high school have never seen a naked man before. Things aren't funny when they're overused, especially if the reacetion isn't authentic or natural. Try something new. It won't kill you.

Actually, that could be a mantra for the entire BL industry.

You're kind of picking out the handful of positives in a fairly regressive medium, though. BL is fundamentally homophobic even when the characters are explicitly gay because they are placed in heteronomative roles where an invariably straight actor is cast as the "top", and an almost invariably straight but slightly softer-personalitied actor is the "bottom". Even in cases like 2gether where the bottom is larger and more muscular than the top, he faints when exposed to sunlight for more than 5 minutes and otherwise behaves like a 19th c 12-year old girl with consumption. The relastionships are always cast in terms of the seme "taking care of" the uke (I did appreciate that Pi said "take care of each other"), and effeminacy is almost invariably made a strong negative, with the most unpleasant people being flaming or trans, made pathetic and there only for "comic" relief.

I don't agree we should stable our high horses. If everyone did that we'd still have slavery. Rights don't just accrue, they have to be taken, and progress doesn't just happen, it has to be fought for. When I was a kid I would have been beaten to death if I'd come out in high school - now kids come out when they're 12 and nobody cares - but that took decades of struggle and activism.

Yes, but Hollywood generally won't cast people as wooden and talentless as a lot of these BLs do. Did you see 2moons2? I don't know where they found Pha, but I suspect it was a storage closet for broken display mannequins in some department store basement.

I would drown a puppy for 5 minutes with Mork. Not really, but I might refuse it a doggy treat. Pond is a keeper - I hope we see him in more. I was able to slog through Tonhon for Neo, athough he wasn't really in it much in the second half - but you could see from the comments section that it was pretty much unanimous that he was all that show had going for it. I didn't care much for Meen at first, but now he's just adorable - and the actor is doing a fantastic job.

Anything. I'm old and I know a million different ways - this was stupid and insulting to our intelligence.

The problem was that they were pointlessly miserable. And it was 100% Bbomb's fault and that wasn't ever acknowledged. I totally get Jin's confusion - that didn't bother me at all.

KIND OF lacking? Like the Holocaust was KIND OF like a bummer?

Good lord, the endless Som Som scenes were excruciating. And in case anyone is unfamiliar with the origin of the word excruciating, it basically means 'bytorment by crucifiction'. Now I know how Jesus felt. That was in poor taste. I apologize without reservation.

Although I'll speculate that if they'd had BLs like this in his time he would have crucified himself. And then the football match. Were all of you counting down? 3... 2...1... injury. Is this rugby or football? MMA? How many times are they going to use the same plot device?

This is the worst written BL i've ever seen. It's worse than Amore. There, I said it.

And now, the implausible failure of communication. Is there a checklist that's distributed to BL writers? WTF? Is Bbomb mentally challenged? His phone is broken and Jin is injured - is he too stupid to understand why he hasn't heard from him? Aaargh! Is there really nothing better avaiable to make into a BL than garbage writing like this?

I can't take it anymore! Am I alone? I can barely watch ANY BLs anymore - they're all the same thing over and over and over. This series was only just so-so the first time I saw it when it was called SOTUS and was better written.

And now cue the unnecessary flashback. They're flashing back to a flashback they already flashed back to earlier in the episoide - is this for real? Do they think we're as mentally challeneged as Bbomb? Who thought it would be interesting to watch an hour of lame-ass unnecessary and repetivitive sulking?

Thank you all. I feel much better now.

Do you know how I was able to make it through the episode? Because an ad came on featuring a sining pubic hair, and I couldn't help but think it was much more creative and intereesting than this BL, and that made mae laugh to myself. Also, Boss was in it. And Fourwheels.

BL damp towels can cure cancer. And they need to, because Asians instantaneously contract fatal illnesses if they get rained on. They should also not be allowed to slice vegetables.

I found UWMA tiresome because it was put together in such a way as to drain all dramatic tension out of it. First, the main pair met and got together immediately, so there was never anything to overcome and so I never invested in them. What happened to the past couple is revealed in the first minute of the show, so I just skipped over everything with them because why bother? If the two storylines had run in parallel and then the fate of the past couple had been revealed deep into the show, like just before they met the family, that would have been so powerful. But because all these shows are adapted from novels, they are not designed for a visual medium, they lack the energy of a show like ITSAY, IPYTM or Gaya Sa Pelikula, which are full of visual symbolism & metaphor.

I did really like He's Coming to Me - it was exciting for having one of the first characters to actually identify as gay rather than not-gay-I-only-love-one-guy-forever-and-ever-Amen. And it had Ohm Pawat. Which underlines another issue. Billkin is not nearly as physically attractive as the usual chisled fat-free Thai BL actor, but he's 1,000 times more compelling because he can act, and you can feel his intellect. Why do they keep putting amateurs chosen for looks in these roles?

I skip everthing with the copy couple, the basketball couple, and Newyear couple - it makes the rest much easier to endure. I'm even considering skipping everything Phob-related, even though I love Aof.

Consent is complicated, but I understand young people today don't feel that way - whcih is why the rate at which they have sex has plummeted compared to previous generations, but that's fine with me - there will be far fewer annoying young people in future generations.

In my experience gay men dispense with the flirting and just have sex if both parties are interested. In my heyday (I'm not proud of it, just relating the facts) I can recall having sex without even exchanging a word first. If in a situation where you're actually interested in someone as a person, it's not that different from straight flirting (people are people). I feel like BLs tend to turn up the volume to ten notches past what any normal person would do. If you've been watching Y-Destiny, Nuea with Sun and Kaeng with Puth were so OTT forward with their flirting that I would have punched them in the face if they'd approached me like that (not really, but I would have said "Excuse me" and walked away) - it's as if some middle-aged female virgin had imagined the way gay men interact. Oh wait, that's what actually happened.

Sorry, that sounded bitter. But I'm getting tired of the same thing over and over and over and over, failing to represent anything approaching LGBTQ+ experience coupled with intense homophobia and misogyny.

Why not stop adapting bad novels by mediocre writers and write original screenplays? Does the audience really want to watch the same thing over and over? Is there anyone that doesn't groan when the a preview shows were getting yet another series about engineers?

Another gay man's ratings: I absolutely loathed Theory of Love and was convinced people confuse tons of crying with quality acting, likewise Until We Meet Again. Love By Chance was OK, I guess, because I handn't yet seen the fifty other BLs that were nearly identical, and Tharntype was sort of refreshing for its lunatic transgressiveness, and people actualy enjoying sex for once instead of merely enduring it, at least on the part of the uke, who usually needs to behave as if he finds his bf physically repusive. TT2 was unwatchable. And don't get me started on the ridiculous heteronormative (by 19th c standards) uke/seme dynamic.

I haven't thought about director bad-faith, but I will certainly think about it now. To me it seems more about following a formula rather than anything else. I've joked that I suspect that there's only one BL writer, and she's chained in a basement somewhere being forced to add in more accidental kisses, screeching trans characters, etc. Maybe it's more producer & director cynicism and full-on audience acceptance of the formula and expecation that they'll get it. I've even made BL Trope Bingo cards.

For the record, I don't particularly like this series, and I'm probably a bit partial to Mork because Pond is so gorgeous and has a "gentleman vibe" about him. I do enjoy everything related to Duean - I actually endured Tonhon Chonlatee (talk about toxic characters - like the worst ever) just for Neo.

I didn't get the Sikh issue until it was explained to me - I thought it was just a parody of Bollywood - the visuals included a lot of stock Indian soap moves. In the USA where I live, Sikhs are all doctors, so I was unaware there's a stereotype in Asia of them being violent. I do notice the almost ceaseless stream of misogyny and heteronormativity, though.

Maybe the first step is for BL producers to stop adapting bad fanfic novels and start writing original screenplays. What's the best Thai BL? The consensus would probably be ITSAY - and why is that? This is a visual medium - novels don't often work as screenplay adaptations. Like Oxygen, where the schtick in the novel was a guy who had lost his smile. Sure, maybe that works in print, but comes off as a sociopathic mannequin in live-action. Filipino BL has it's lows too, but I think it's served well by an LGBTQ+ sensibility and LGBTQ+ involvement in the productions.