jpny01

I have not seen it - it sounds like a pass based on your description. In FBTE you kind of just have to roll with it - the parents seemed aware there was something TOO close about them when they were kids, and the older one certainly took possession of his brother - then they had to wait until their mother died until they got together. If I recall, the day of her funeral. It wasn't a particularly deep film, but those were two extremely attractive men. I'd love to see an Asian version of that, except they would probably be run over by a truck at the end.

The only other thing I can think of is the short Star-crossed. Maybe if you have others you should message me as we're getting off-topic.

When someone said Tharn raped Type in the shower, it took me about an hour to construct a scenario where it would be rape. It would take a lot of planning and money. You'd have to install restraints for all four limbs in the shower without him noticing, and find a way to get him to ingest viagra - and sleeping pills so you can get him into the restraints. You could try forcing him with a weapon, but he might not take your willingness to use it seriously.

Or, you could take acting classes and then try convince him that you'll murder his family unless he allows it and consents to take viagra. But that probably wouldn't work because even though Tharn has about 20 pounds of muscle over Type, in a fight it could still go either way, and he could get killed, or Type could probably at least get out of there and call the police. Or, he could pretend to go along with it until Tharn gets on his knees, when he'd be defenseless.

So you're back to scenario one, which would require a lot of things to go perfectly for the plan to work. What if Type forgets his wallet and comes back to the room while the workmen are installing the shower restraints? There's a lot that can go wrong with the plan.

My head (both of them) nearly exploded watching From Beginning to End.

Yes - a large segment of the audience not only doesn't want to see manifestations of male sexuality, they are actually repelled by it. They want cute boys being cute with each other. It's perfectly fine if they are 100% non-sexual with each other - all there needs to be is a dedicated relationship that lasts forever and they maintain a level of fidelity that Stalin would find OTT oppressive.

Like I said, it's the female equivalent of male lesbian fantasies, with OTT hyper-romanticization instead of hyper-sexualization. I don't see how it's different. You're still exploiting people for your titillation. While I don't object to either, recognize what you're doing and get off your high horse.

There's an even more horrible aspect to all this that's intensely homophobic and misogynist to the point of bordering on evil.

The view of bottoming is so negative in BL that its often viewed as unacceptable for a man to seek out and enjoy bottoming - so the solution is to begin the relationship with a r&p$. The second worst thing you can do to a person - something regarded in every culture as among the most heinous acts possible, is presented as morally preferable to wanted to be buttf$%^ed.

That's not limited to male/male relations - you'll find it in straight dramas too where it's unacceptable for a woman to pursue and enjoy sex, hence r&p$.

And almost always, not only is this not presented as something horrible, it's romanticized.

In fanfic, you'll see a lot of r&p$ fantasy, and I think that's fine. fanfic is highly tagged with warnings, and you're actively seeking out specific things using tags in your search. If you're searching for r&p$, you know it's r&p$, meaning you're probably perfectly capable of distinguishing a trope of erotica from a normal romantic relationship. Let's face it, power imbalance can be hot. The sex scene in this show where Shi De holds Shu Yi down was smokin'.

However, these shows are deliberately marketed at teens and younger, largely from cultures that are very homophobic, that through no fault of their own are unlikely to be terribly familiar with gay life, so some of these issues are really objectionable especially as there's no way to know in advance what stereotypes they're going to be exposed to.

This is so long that I've forgotten what I was responding to.

I think the engineer thing comes from the success of SOTUS, and has been imitated ever since.

There has been a little progress lately, and the better tier of Filipino BLs break a lot of barriers, but on the other hand, the desire to market to China seems to be causing an all-around regression to Victorian morals.

In the end, producers will aim to satisfy demand - but I think demand can be based on misperceptions created by ubiquity, for example that the seme/uke dynamic has any correlation to reality, which it does not, in Japanese or any other culture. Or that falling into an accidental kiss will cause anything but blood and teeth to fly everywhere.

OK, but even granting you that (which I don't - I think the insecurity was retconned), how does that explain Shu Yi not forcing a confrontation? Even if he was too shocked to say anything in the park scene, you're saying the guy who would shout his love from a bridge and march up to a CEO in front of his entire company and slap him across the face would fly all the way from Taiwan to the USA, then fly all the way back without confronting GSD, and automatically assuming a person that's always been gay is suddenly in a straight relationship? And let's not say insecurity. These are both CEOs. They can't hold those positions without by shying away from everthing at the slightest obstacle.

And how do we explain the existence of the internet, social media, and their mutual friends, any of which could have easily clued them in? All Shu Yi needs to do is google GSD and he'll see he's single, childless, and lives alone. He could probably just check FB to see who the woman was. I'm old and even I know how to to that.

I agree that there's little other choice but to go that way NOW, but that doesn't change that this was written poorly. It could have been one episode or two at the most of anger, preferably including rough hate-sex (sorry), followed by a conversation that normal human beings would have where they figure out what actually happened (which is apparently still not important to them), and then moving forward with their relationship and doing battle with Dad.

If we continue to be satisfied with cute boys being cute to each other, that's all we're going to get. There's no reason we can't have cute boys being cute to each other with well-written and produced series (this one is defintely well-produced - I'm not criticising that here). The scene on the bridge was defintely cute and charming, but did we need to have the rest to get us there?

Certainly not too SOON. To easily, yes, too soon, no. It should have been resolved 4.5 years ago, but apparently both of them forgot the internet exists or that they have lots of mutual friends.

Flypsyde is funnier than me, so I'll leave this to him, but I've actually been involved with fanfiction and written some - and my observation is that a really strange and formulaic impression of gay sex has developed and is endlessly repeated, wherin one is the Bottom, the other is the Top (usually explicitly stated in the trigger warnings), and huge amounts of preparation are required and explicitly and repetitively described (insert one finger, then two, then three, etc.) - but usually written mechanically, as if this is the proper procedure so that it's not r@p$ or something. I've never once in my long life experienced anything like that. Usually a drink, lube, and inserting slowly sufficies. Like everything, there a lot of "it depends" involved.

I've never written a scene with the three-finger thing, and OMG has that been controversial. "Isn't that r@p$?" "Why is he so selfish?" "I thought he loved him - why is he hurting him like that? " "You should have included a BDSM tag" "You're doing it wrong."

Women are way, way more interested in that subject than male fans. This male fan is burned out on the strict seme/uke construction of every relationship in BL and resistance to anything that doesn't fit that mold. Have you ever seen the taller one be the bottom? Or the bottom be the capable one who takes care of the top? I mean other than performing his domestic tasks for him.

BL is devolving into Victorian-era romance between the dashing hero and consumptive 12-year old virgin girl with a shy (invariably shorter) boy dropped in the girl's role. I think that will be the trend for a while because production companies want to market to China.

Another thing I've been seeing a lot of lately is zero tolerance for step-brother romances. There's a BL currently airing where two boys who don't like each other suddenly find themselves step-brothers because their parents got married after secretly dating. How on earth is that incest and sick?

I've been accused of defending incest for this! There's not even a big age gap (1 year). There are some obvious reason not to do this, e.g. it doesn't work out and you have a messy breakup and the impact of that on the family, but this is BL - romances are eternal, so no issue there. Romances are so eternal that fans can't even tolerate the ACTOR being with anyone else either in real life or onscreen.

It's also the sweetest and most loving relationship I've ever seen in a BL.

And I won't even get into what people classify as r@p$, but it's basically anything that doesn't involve an engraved and notarized request for consent after a lifetime commitment is made.

I also can't count the number of times I've been told after commenting it would be nice for the show to have some physical aspects of love depicted that if I want smut I should go watch TharnType.

The fetishization of male/male romance and reducing it to cute boys being cute to each other is no less objectifying and exploitative than the lesbian fantasies of straight men - so while I don't object to either, I do get sick of people standing on pulpits condemning anything that makes them personally uncomfortable, totally without irony failing to realize they're doing exactly what homophobes do.

Wow, I'm apparently cheesed off about this. Now look what you've done! I'm too riled up to fall asleep. I think I'll go rewatch TharnType to earn my daily smut points.

It's rude to ask a real person, of course, and it's intensely infuriatingly hypocritical to discuss it when its the same people who go nuts over gender-coding or speculation over sexuality or gender.

I loathe the obsession with the seme/uke dynamic, which is not remotely true to life. It's some bizarre Victorian-era sex role archetype where a frail boy is dropped into the 12-year old consumptive virgin girl role. Even when they cast a 6' pile of muscle like Tine in 2gether, he faints every 20 minutes if the weather is mildly hot.

So in general, I think it's not cool. I think it's true that people tend to one role or the other, and there are people that are nearly exclusively one of the other, but more normally you do both. For example, with me it depends on the guy and our relationship.

But you absolutely cannot tell who is a top or bottom until you get to the bedroom. An comprehensively flaming man can be a power top, and a big muscular athlete can be a big ol' bottom. I dated an effeminate violinist who had a social anxiety disorder, was 6" shorter than me, 10 years younger, and in bed he was a domineering top, I dated a PE major who was 6' 2", a stack of muscle, and a hungry bottom. It has absolutely nothing to do with your outward appearance or personality. For some people, it just doen't feel that good to bottom, for others, nothing else works for them.

And beyond that, a bottom is not particularly likely to need to be "taken care of" by the top - he may be a corporate executive and the top could be a perpetual grad student with no useful skills.

And that's not even addressing that many or most men are "versatile" although if they say that they are on grindr they're a bottom (humor for the gays there).

Just once - I'd settle for just once - I'd like to see a BL where the slender soft-spoken freshman plows the senior alpha-male athlete. Can you imagine the chorus of WTF! if in Until We Meet Again Fluke had flipped Ohm over and pounded his a$$?

I'm feeling that way about 1,000 Stars, but I tend to get gang-piled when I bring up artificial and implausible melodrama.

There was a fair chunk if time a couple of eps ago where Sam stood at a window with his shirt off for no apparent reason. If the show is going to make no sense, I'd prefer they trend in that direction.

I don't know what's happening, but BL fandom is starting to feel fundamentalist Christian. If you're blackout drunk, sure, you can't consent. If you're (both) sober enough to have sex, you can consent. Period. Obviously there are situation where the consent is dubious, but none of those have to do with drunkeness (e.g. power relationship, mental illness).

I agree with you - there wouldn't be any point to having a second season if they're just going to sit around baking and watching TV together cuddled on the couch. I just wish the drama made more sense. They have mutual friends who know both sides - it's totally implausible that they could have completely lost contact with nobody trying to help them.

Some people are content to watch nothing but cute boys being cute together. I think someone should create a new genre for them - "cuteness porn" or something. I'll bet it would sell well.

There's defintely class, but we don't have enough info to make the call on homophobia. However, note that the lackey said Shu Yi is in love, but didn't seem to think it was noteworthy to mention the gender of his object of affection. And, Dad challenged Shi De to make himself worthy (even if it was a trick) - he could have just said "No son of mine is going to be gay and I'll have you both killed if you go near him again." Nor did he ever bring the topic up with Shu Yi. If he were a homophobe, I doubt he would have gone for a drink with Shi De after the big confrontation.

That doesn't mean homophobia isn't there - but at this point it would be making an assumption rather than basing it on what we've seen so far.

Whatever's wrong with it, it most certainly is not boring! Just the visual quality is so spectacular it would be enjoyable with the volume and subtitles off.

Serious LOL, I didn't catch that at all - that is major pettiness indeed - I wonder what the original Mandarin line was. It would be funny if there was a voiceover adding "China". Maybe in the google robot voice.

It's a very fair point - and very true about the management. My brother writes screenplays and it's pretty amazing what changes are often demanded - sometimes you have to ask, if you wanted something completely different, why did you pick this script in the first place?

And another issue is that producers want you to include elements of productions that were successful, and they resist elements that are new. That probably lends to the formulaic nature of BL.

There are times when I think there's actually only one BL writer, and she's held at gunpoint somewhere and forced to throw in more and more accidental kisses and engineers.