jpny01

They should just ask the community for help - I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers.

Playing a complex character is way more challenging and rewarding than playing a perfect little cute person.

The level of judgment in this thread is really something, The way everything is described as "trash" and anyone that disagrees with them is morally bankrupt sounds a lot like the way people used to talk about gays - that was not a fun time.

Everyone who hated gays was just as convinced they were right as people who think anyone who likes the YJ/XS storyline are rape-promoters.

160 years ago, slavery was OK, and people were willing to fight a war to defend that position. 100 years ago, most women thought women shouldn't vote, and almost all men did. The idea that Blacks are equal has only been widely accepted for about 60 years, and that's still far from universal. Sodomy was not decriminalized in the USA until 2004, and when I was a kid, NOBODY would publicly say homosexuality was no issue. It was classified by the medical community as a sickness and you could be forcibly institutionalized and subjected to electro-shock therapy.

In 50 years, people will probably think we're all monsters for eating meat.

If something isn't hurting anyone, then it shouldn't be anyone else's business. Regarding the question of XS & YJ, it's up to XS to decide what YJ did to him and how he wants to handle it, just like it's up to a woman to judge if she's been raped, not the man who thinks it was consensual.

That is a straw-man argument. What almost all of us have been saying is that there are different levels of wrong, and blanket condemnations are not really reasonable. Has anyone at all said Yong Jie's behavior is OK? I can't recall anyone saying that.

This show is marked R and not only are there warnings of disturbing content, the warning pops up prior to each scene with adult content.

Are you saying that all bad behavior should be banned from the media because someone might copy it?

Almost all the people watching these shows are women, so the danger of them going out and anally raping someone are fairly slight. It's still possible, but a bit technically challenging.

I think he's correct to be concerned that any physical relationship with Yong Jie would be coercive - that's clearly not true in this case, but I don't think that's so much a matter of self-doubt as normal behavior.

Being closeted is definitely about self-doubt. I'm guessing that his father already knows he's gay and accepts him, but will be freaked the f#$% out that he's having sex with his brother. Dad seems fairly perceptive, but you never know.

Why is it a fault in the writing if a character is complex? I'm not sure I got what you meant.

Regarding XS, I agree about internalized homophobia, but I don't think he doubts his feelings, he just thinks they're wrong (regarding YJ). There is a large age difference, and he feels
that any physical relations with YJ would be coercive. When he got drunk, afterwards he was afraid that his desire for YJ had become obvious and YJ had gone along with it because of his status as an authority figure. That's the correct position, but in this case Yong Jie is much stronger than him and is really the one that's in control.

I didn't think it would be when it started, but it really, really is.

Yes. :)

I remember almost nothing about Oxygen or any of the other "Standard Formula" BLs - they all run together to me. This series I will definitely remember.

This series is quite a bit different than the others, because there's a huge age difference and they've been a family for quite a while - but I think the trope is used a lot because two boys thrown together with someone involuntarily and have no choice but to associate. It's almost always a pair that have already had a negative encounter and then their parents suddenly marry. It probably has a touch of the allure of the forbidden to it as well.

I tried to summarize all the important visual symbols in the Discussion section, and tried not to include any judgment but just relate what I think they mean.

There are two I still need help with. One is the bathtub scene - a lot of people thought that was romantic, and I can't see that at all - even when I disagree with people, I can usually see their perspective, but not here. Mu Ren is majorly drugged out, his eyes are all weird, the light is red and with smoke (cold bath, no steam) suggesting an infernal quality, and where Li Cheng's hands are going are seriously inappropriate under the circumstances. Even the way Mu Ren was pawing himself (down below) was strange and violent, and his body arrangement had religious overtones.

I read this as Li Cheng feeling guilt and shame. I don't think he did the things he dreamed about, but most likely it reflects what he wanted to do. I thought how skinny Mu Ren is was to portray him as vulnerable, although it might just be coincidental because they wanted to cast someone right off the page of yaoi. BTW, I looked up minimum healthy body weight, and assuming he's 6' tall, that's 136 pounds or 62 kg. If he's 5'10", it's 129 pound/58 kg. I think he's lighter than that, so maybe too low but "you should eat more", not "stick an IV in him."

The other scene is at the end of ep 4 - the subtitles said "I'll let you stay here", but I think his meaning was "I can enable your staying here". Do you think that's right? Is there a Mandarin speaker in the house? "I'll let you stay here" doesn't really make sense.

Are you watching that storyline, or have you dropped it? If you dropped it, you may miss a few redeeming qualities that Yong Jie has that are not really delved into until Ep 4.

Normal people can benefit from therapy, especially if they've been through everything he has. After seeing all the backstory my opinion of how disturbed Yong Jie has softened quite a bit - but Xing Si is still too all-consuming to him, and I'm not sure that's healthy, and the way Yong Jie deals with situation is really rather extreme. His plan does accomplish everything that it needs to for them to be together (overcome Xing Si's resistance, get their father's approval, etc.), and to be fair these are some tough barriers. Whether or not they should be overcome is a different question.

I thought the whole second half of this episode was a masterpiece, and the layered imagery, blurring of lines, and reversal of of the power dynamic is so well executed that I think it goes into the box of top BL episodes. The acting is really good, the writing is tight, everything is tied together.

But Xing Si is wrong, and the story depicts it that way, i.e. he thinks it's his fault but it's absolutely not and that's very clear. Showing something isn't endorsing it.

Did you not see the part where Xing Si slapped him, sent him away, and refused to speak to him? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm wondering if you skipped over it. Younger brother was most certainly called out for his behavior. When you say "called-out", do you mean something more extreme?

Xing Si and Yong Jie are the first couple. Li Cheng and Mu Ren exist for comic relief and for contrast against the primary couple. The only time they are anything but cartoons is when they're engaging with the main plot.

I didn't think they romanticized the bathroom scene at all. Li Cheng was deeply disturbed by his dream. There are people that have condemned Yong Jie for the drunk scene that somehow think the bathroom scene, when Li Cheng was engaging in extremely horrible nonconsensual behavior. It was even deliberately shot as red and infernal, not romantic. Even the way Mu Ren was grabbing himself was strange and violent, not sensual.

I recommend a rewatch - there's so much that's easy to miss in the early eps that are obvious now in hindsight. I'm even typing it all up as a guide.

He's my favorite character in a long time. I never block people, but I've had to start to just to get rid of all the pollution in this thread. I'm looking for a post from a couple of days ago and I can't find it in this mess!

Wait, one-dimensional?!? I can see not liking him, but I don't understand what you mean by that - he's one of the most complex characters I've seen in a BL in a long time.