jpny01

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.

The production company is doing another BL, with the guy playing Tae in it, which is great because I love him

Vietnam is the only country that routinely uses more effeminate gays in major roles - if you haven't seen Nation's Brother, one of the mains is fairly effeminate, but also a strong character. I agree with you - we need more roles for non-straight acting characters, and especially trans characters that aren't ridiculous and pathetic like they almost invariably are in BL.

I loved Prab's burn the previous episode - it's an important issue to address in Asian society. I live in California in the SF Bay Area that's about a third Asian, and we even an expression "Asian F" (The American system of grades is A is the highest and F the lowest, with plusses and minuses sometimes applied, like C- or B+) An Asian F is an A- I've had friends grounded for getting one. Anyway, in the context of the series, Prab shielding Chon from the teacher over this issue was a very big deal, which is why it was a turning point in their relationship.

My interpretation is that Mork is in the closet and that has caused past issues between them. Why Aey returned the kiss is a mystery, other than HAVE YOU SEEN MORK? If he were a total stranger and walked up to me and kissed me, there's zero chance I'd have any objection.

I have no idea what's going on with Gene and Sib, and I've frankly lost any interest. I'm not sure if Sib is being directed to be so flat in his acting, or if he just can't act - but if it's the former, we can't be half way through a series with almost no movement in the relationship of the main pairing and still have me care - it feels like hamsters running in a wheel, except even the hamsters are bored.

Even in really small moments, Aey has captured me since the first ep - I think it's because Bruce is an exceptional actor and every expression and gesture is loaded with feeling - I think he's badly underrated because of his looks - he's not exceptionally conventionally cute or handsome, and is more effeminate than most BL actors - but I think he's one of the very best and tbh his story is what keeps me watching.

I think the situation itself holds more power, and since Gene is the writer inserting herself into the story, we have a tendency to sympathize with him, even though he's kind of an immature dick. Anyway, in the Gene scene, he's watching the actual object of his affection being kissed by someone else. In TT2, it's hard to have much sympathy. You don't really need to get married to be in love or share a lifetime, and in any case, whether or not his brother is getting married doesn't change that something is happening that nobody cares about and that he's upset about something that nobody cares about that he could probably fix with a serious conversation instead of throwing passive-aggression at Type all day.

But frankly I wasn't moved by the Gene scene either. Who cares? Aey and Sib are just acting, and Gene has already seen that Sib is reluctant to kiss Aey, and Sib has both explicitly said and demonstrated relentlessly - I mean RELENTLESSLY - that Gene is the only person he's interested in, so if Gene is angry, he's immature and absurd, which does not make me care about what he's feeling. There are millions of people starving or dying of COVID and some guy from a privileged background is upset because someone is doing their job. How intimate is a kiss in front of a hundred people with camera and lighting people and equipment all around and a director telling them how to do it?

Directing certainly matters, but so does writing - I had hoped this would be a clever satire, and while it does have occassonal moments, the show doens't seem to be able to decide if it wants to be a satire or a very, very coventional BL, and it usually veers towards the latter. The thing I like best about this series is the title of the fake BL. I also liked it when Tum was in the changing room, and everyting having to do with Aey is compelling to me, but if Gene and Sib were killed in a car accident, I'd shrug and say now there's more time for Aey and Mork.

Acting also matters, and other than Aey, nobody in this is really moving me. Up and Kao are good at doing two or three things, in Kao's case heavily dependent on his looks - you can't help but look sexy AF leaning over someone in a muscle tee with arms like that - but we're halfway through the series and almost nothing has happened - ironically we've only had real movement with Aey, who I thought was just a stock villain character.

I probably have expectations that are too high, but based on the trailer this was the BL I was most excited about this year, and it's not what I was hoping for.

He's certainly not lacking in the looks category - and maybe it's better to say his bag of tricks is limited - he does what he does well, but it gets flat and repetitive, whereas Earth in 1,000 stars can say "good morning" 1,000 times in a row and each time would be unique and make me feel like crying.

"Lazy writing" is an expression that doesn't mean lazy like a teenager refusing to do chores, it generally means a lack of creativity that leads to overuse of tropes and exposition instead of showing us a story.

But I also agree with your analysis about them trapping themselves and making it the only way out.

I dropped the series a couple of eps ago and came back here to make sure I'm not missing a big improvement - nope, definitely not missing anything. The only thing this series has had going for it is one of the few non-ridiculous trans characters, and even then it's not really a positive, because she has nothing to do with the plot and is just there for representation - which is not representation, it's tokenism, and is starting to bog down Filipino BL, and especially this one. You aren't being "woke" by throwing the whole rainbow into a show, you're being preachy and pretentious. Having a character like Miray in Stranger's Kiss is inclusion - this show is just a bunch of upper-middle class brats whining about their First World problems. Who retreats to a beach cabana to have Royce Cabrera service them for several months because they have a few minor personal problems? Is this the writers indulging their own fantasies, or good drama? It's definitely not the latter.