jpny01

There were some good things in this ep, but overall it was really frustrating. Up was excellent in the scene where he discovers the secret - it was nice to see him do something other than be irritated and childish all the time, and I thought he was flawless.

Another good thing: Mork was on my screen. However, his scene had no purpose that I could detect.

I like Tum & Tiff, but that scene was endless. Then immediately after that they had an endless product placement.

Those I'm OK with. At least they tried to make the placement interesting, and I'm a little in love with Tum (and that outfit looked great on him).

But the final part. Holy cow. Did nobody watch the final version before they released it and notice that Sib said "Please listen to my reason" and then spent 10 minutes staring at Gene without saying anything at all? It wasn't just one gap with staring, it was several in succession. I could see his being tongue-tied at first, but he even immediately said "I had a reason." Just say the reason!

Implausible communication failures are a staple of BL, but it's usually someone storming off to his parent's chalet in the countryside & not answering calls, not STANDING RIGHT THERE staring at each other. And 99.9% of people in Gene's place would want to know why someone would do that do them. Didn't Gene even cry "why?" when he was in his car? Why did he leave his parents a day early and drive all the way home? What was his motivation? It was to ask why. If all you were going to do is stare at him for 10 minutes and then and then drive all the way back to where you started from, what was the point? It makes no sense.

I expect a degree of implausibility in a BL - maybe even want it. But this was almost shockingly bad writing.

What makes a show great is the interaction between characters, not the non-interaction between characters, or the plot requiring a character to do something completely ridiculous that takes you out of the story.

Also, I've been defending Kao's acting on the basis that he's being stiff and artificial because Sib is hiding something, but now I'm pretty sure everyone else was right. He's a mannequin that can talk.

I will never tire of Mork being on my screen, but his participation in this episode was incomprehensible without any follow-up or context. They could have taken just 1% of the amount of time Sib spent staring at Gene without saying anything and we could have got the full biographies of both Mork AND Aey. I had no idea what he was talking about, unless he's afraid Aey will try to murder Gene because Sib likes him.

True, but they had a woman talk about fixing cars, and then she immediately goes into her same-sex relationship. Lesbians being good mechanics is an extremely old and widespread stereotype, so two steps forward, one step back!

Did you see a cut version? Sometimes whoever uploaded it has it run slightly fast. I believe it was 52 minutes - that's standard. Wait - did it begin with Sib & Aey in a photoshoot, or with Gene, Sib and Tum in Gene's apartment?

The problem isn't Gene feeling betrayed, it's Sib staring at him for half an hour instead of just explaining and solving the whole thing with one sentence. It made no sense.

I'm... not uncalm, I'm asking because at least 100 people have posted similarly to you and I'm assuming I'm missing something that everyone else is seeing.

No, I totally agree with you. The mistake they made was having them hate each other too much - if they wanted to do that it needed a longer run time. The initial setup, cutting in line, was perfect - but only psychos take something that minor to such extremes. Something more reasonable could have fit into the time allotted.

I dropped that in ep 4 - if he was in it earlier than that I must have been asleep or something because I would have stayed with it - I'll probably go finish it now! In Lovely Writer I was thinking about Aey, "Why are you stuck on a mannequin when you can have THAT!"

LOL, I was assuming "the episode airing on Wednesday" - I can tell this series is going to be confusing to me.

If they had taken the ingredients they had and competently assembled them, they would have had something special. I completely agree that this was a missed opportunity, but I give points for effort, when it comes to a low-budget production like this - and I completely understand the contrary view, which I would be more likely to tend toward in a larger production.

My hope is they can learn from their mistakes in this series and do a better job on the next, which also stars the Tae actor.

The initial promo material had someone completely different for Nite 1, so it looks like they were having a lot of Nite issues. So Nite 1 was really Nite 1b.

OK, I can see that. Part of the problem is that this isn't written with realistic drunkenness. A blacked-out person can't utter a complex unslurred sentence like that. There is also a difference between being tired and being incapacitated, the difference is not clear here. We didn't actually see XS stumble around because YJ immediately picked him up. A blacked-out person can't grab someone around the neck and pull him in for a kiss, or ask "you don't trust me?" when YJ refuses. That last line requires a LOT of cognative effort. First, you have to recognize who you're talking too, second, you have to be aware of the complex context of your relationship, and third, you have to able to analyse someone's behavior and reach a conclusion that postulates complex motives. If I were drunk, and not even super drunk, and tried to kiss someone that pulled away, I wouldn't say "don't you trust me?" I would slur "You're mean!" and pout.

I'm not arguing that it's impossible to see XS as incapacitated, but I don't think it's written or meant that way.

The Church definitely delivers some mixed signals about homosexuality.

It's worse for girls though, due to societal prejudices that assign shame to women for their sexuality and more positive attitudes towards men, e.g. a girl is a slut and a boy is a stud. Also, there's no societal value assined to male virginity - in fact it's generally a negative, whereas female virginity is treated - literally - as sacred (reference the Virgin Mary).

That's why there's so much non-consent in Asian dramas - it's better for a woman to be raped than for her to actually pursue and enjoy sex - likewise a boy being raped is not as bad as a boy seeking and enjoying bottoming.

There is a legitimate reason to be resistant to this trope because it's rooted in misogyny and homophobia, whereas in a Western drama that's almost never the case, at least not for decades.

The reason I have no objection here is that this is an adult drama and nobody is pretending that what Yong Jie did is OK - it's quite clear in-drama that everything thinks it was f@#$ed up - it hadn't been romanticized and waved away - yet.

Also, this development was not hidden. One of the trailers was entirely about the brothers couple and it was clear what the themes would be - so if you're so strongly opposed to those themes, then you had the opportunity not to watch, so it's a bit sanctimonious to judge people who watched it and viewed it as shades of grey rather than black & white.

It is not sanctimonious, however, to express strong disagreement in a non-judmental way. The lines are blurry and there is large margin for disagreement.

Where I'm flabbergasted is how anyone can possibly think Xing Si does NOT have a sexual attraction for Yong Jie. There I don't think there's much room for argument - every time Yong Jie touches him he swoons. And the beach scene was conclusive in that regard.

I don't think BL audiences like ambiguity and dark complexity like this - usually BLs are very straightforward - bad guys are bad guys, and for Yong Jie to be a bad guy, Xing Si can't want him sexually.

In that case, Xing Si is resisting because he thinks he's be taking advantage of Yong Jie, whereas Yong Jie is an adult and can be party to that decision. It might be nice to start with a conversation rather than spending 10 years on an incredibly complex plan to seduce him, and he had no right to do what he did - but it would look much worse if Xing Si only viewed him platonically, in which case Xing Si was unaware of what was happening in the love scene, which would be rape.

But as I said, I don't see how it's possible to miss Xing Si's desire for Yong Jie, so to me it's a horrible violation of trust, not a rape. And that conclusion is partly because being drink lowers your inhibition to do things you want to do, it doesn't generate desires that are not there.

I'm procrastinating instead of doing something I need to do, and I blame you.

For me, in the enemies part, they hated each other TOO much, to the point that they were awful people. Then the change was too abrupt. It's really hard to do enemies-to-lovers in such a short timeframe - there isn't time to have them gradually warm up to each other, and so they relied on a really stupid and tired cliche rather than organic development of their relationship. I didn't mind the editing, although I agree there were a couple of abrupt transitions. "Ok, I guess it's nighttime now."

If they had been a bit less horrible to each other at first, it might have been more successful, like maybe if their dislike had been due to a misunderstanding - but it was because one of them was unspeakably rude. The bad boy has to be a good person in bad circumstances. If he's just a rude asshole it doesn't work, or to make it work there needs to be a longer character ar so that the other member of the pair brings out the good side of him.

Does that sound like how you saw it?

Because of Chap? If so, I can't blame you there!

Does that violate some rule or something? It's it good that it will be around a long time, or is something you want to see more scheduled to air after this series is over?

It is not allowed to have a series run fo a long time or something? I'm not sure why everyone is commenting on this - I feel like I'm missing some important detail.

But I can't argue about Chap - my eyes popped out of my head the first time he appeared on Lovely Writer.

I didn't understand what you meant - do you mean the couple was not good? Or "so-so"? What you wrote means "very good".

They can't do that. YooPerLay would be TOO hot. Our screens would melt. Although YouPerLay really, really works as a portmanteau.

OK, so that was not good - but also not terrible. The change in relationship was extremely sudden, and caused by the most absolutely tired cliche you could possibly imagine, and although I'm not spoiling, I probably should tag this because you all know exactly what I'm saying without me saying it.

You can't go from visceral hatred to where it went in 1 second. At least not without rewinding and showing how the characters really feel under the hatred.

I will say that when they're nice to each other, it is really sweet, and they have good chemistry, albeit partly because one of them is gorgeous (the guy who plays Mork in Lovely Writer). It was also refreshing that one of them had a natural "reaction" to being touched by the other - I thought that wasn't allowed in BL.

Anyway, this is the sort of story that needed to be longer to work - 50 minutes is not enough to go through such a massive change. It would have been better to have them warm up when Tue gets sick.

It's funny, I was thinking, "Where is the magic damp towel? The BL damp towel can cure cancer!" but it duly showed up, just later than usual.

Finally, a comment on the show itself rather than the airing strategy! I'm taking a break from watching at the moment because I hate it and am hoping it gets better. It doesn't sound like it will. I know everyone loves the tsundere thing, but when the characters start out that horrible to each other, they come off as horrible people and I don't care if they get together - I'd rather they die in a car accident - preferably soon. Then their hot brothers can bond at the funeral.

Friends-to-enemies works better when the situation makes basically good people hostile to each other, rather than being hostile to each other because they're rude assholes. I haven't seen enough to judge the acting - they're doing fine at snarling at each other, which is all they've had to do so far in the first 13-min or so.