jpny01

Holy Cow, all the commentary about the peeping scene. What has happened to our culture? I thought each generation was less prudish than the last, but it's taken a u-turn and is going in the opposite direction at a rate I would never have expected. I'm probably considerably older than most of the people here, but sex was kind of normal when I was a teen, in fact I was an unusually late bloomer for not "losing it" until college (and even then only because I'm gay - it was huge amount of work to avoid sex with girls) - but most people today don't seem to experience it until late into their 20s or beyond. Altough judging from Cherry Magic it's unusual to be a virgin at 30, lol.

Wedding rituals in most cultures, including the West in the past, are fairly public in many regards that would be surprising today, largely because in the colonial era we steamrollered over everyone else and imposed Victorian morality on them. Remember that these people grew up in one-room houses that everyone slept in together. Parents throughout history have normally had sex in the presence of their children and their own parents. It just isn't an issue.

That couple not only were fully aware they were being observed (one or both of them had been in the observer position at earlier weddings), they expected to be observed.

You come from an unusally prudist culture, especially right now where there's an extremist attidude to consent, which while an important corrective to the past, is alien to most cultures and is starting to reach levels that aren't healthy.

These are people that grew up in a single room with their entire families, encluding their parents, which would have had sex in front of them. That was the case in the West too, until fairly recently. Up until the 1800s, the first thing the King did when he got up was pooped into a chamber pot in front of the entire court who would comment on how easily it came, or what color his pee was.

Our culture is really the to the extreme, not everyone else's (and because of colonialism, Victorian morals were inflicted on the rest of the world, and cultures like most of the East/SE Asian ones that were once very permissive, e.g. about homosexuality, are now the most hard-core against it).

Wedding rituals almost everywhere and everywhen include making things you or I may now consider private into something especially public. That couple would have been 100% aware they were being observed, and they expected to be observed, nor would they have any problem with it.

Stiff or wooden?!?!?!? He can reduce me to tears with a subtle look. OK, that's partly because he's so beautiful it hurts to look at him, but he's so expressive, and the master of playing the strong (yet vulnerable) silent type. He's always had what I like to call "it". He has more of it now than he did in some earlier work, but he always had it. Even in Water boyy I thought this was a guy we needed to see a lot more of.

I woluld stop watching if they pulled that sh#$. I'm so done with that. That and "I'm not gay, I only love ___________".

I totally get your point, and I'm old, so I had to live through EVERY gay character getting AIDS and dying horribly. Even the only gay superhero of the era (Northstar).

This isn't the 50s (or 80s) anymore, and this wasn't written in the deepy homophobic context that used to result in gay character deaths. Are we at a stage now where gay characters can never die?

In the US, gay rights and oversensitivity to this issue led to about 10-20 years of totally bland gay characters who were so perfect in every way that they had nothing to do in the series and were generally written out because their only role was to give incredibly insightful advice to all the other characters. They even made them all dress poorly to avoid stereotyping.

I don't want to see political correctness sand down the edges of interesting/dramatic characters & situations to the point of being predictable and formulaic, which is already a big problem in BL. It's bad enough virtually no gay characters are ever definitiely identified as gay or LGBTQ+ "I'm not gay, I only love ________" and they only cast straight or straight-acting actors.

One of the reasons ITSAY and the better Filipino BLs have been such a breath of fresh air is finally, we're getting at least a handful of realistic LGBTQ+ characters instead of the tall slightly older alpha seme to take care of the short, willowy, shy uke which is 99% universal in BL. You can tell what the entire plot of a series will be after the first 5 minutes.

Would the death of a straight character underscore the destruction caused by homophobia? If they had Ken and Shake go missing, then the message wouldn't have been about homophobia, it would have been about substance addiction and mental health. Ken's mother's behavior after Ken's death was normal processing of a terrible loss - a bit extreme, perhaps, but not abnormal. If would be abnormal if he'd only run away from home.

Why would a homophobe killing his/herself be eye-opening? The audience would be too pleased about it to receive the message in any case - at least judging by the almost total lack of sympthy for Ken's mother, who is also the product and victim of a homophobic upbringing and was never given a chance to process the revelation. And it's not like homophobes don't get their comeuppance in 99.9999% of BL or at least get converted to an ally, or trip and fall so that he and nother boys' faces are too close together and they stare at each other until they turn gay.)

Also, this was a ghost story, so there was a happy ending.

My problem with the show was that it really wasn't all that much about homophobia destroying lives, because it was too indirect. It was really about how important driver safety is.

Everyone treated mom like she was the antiChrist, but Ken is the idiot who was speeding and talking on the phone while freaked out. He killed Shake by driving recklessly and irresponsibly, not with homophobia. Altough I suppose his internalized homophobia is what freaked him out, but anyway, too indirect.

Also, it was just TOO dark. Ken's death was really well done from an editing/cinematography/dramatic perspective, but it happened only a little past half way through the series and then we had to sit through 3 more episodes of dismal and unpleasant to watch suffering. Plus, don't call it a BL if it's not a BL. I don't like formulaic, but I do like the boys to get together at some point that isn't AFTER THEY'RE DEAD.

This show is not great, but it's really cute and is oddly appealing. Whe you watch, you may notice that every single character in it is gay. ALL OF THEM. All the boys are after other boys - no body talks about girfriends, or puts any pressure on their friends to get girlfriends. There are no jealous evil girfriends, no misogynistic stereotypes, just boys chasing boys and being cute with boys. It's really refreshing. I'm almost expecting someone to come out of the closet as straight.

On the other hand, all the teachers are gay too, and they don't date each other. I know the age of consent is 16, but still.

I don't think that would work too well with a live-action version. Two actors in their mid 20s would look ridiculous/fake made up as 80 years olds, so to avoid that they'd need an older pair of actors for those scenes, which would not have the same impact. It's things like that that make manga and novels not the best source for live-action BL - they really need to start writing screenplays that can fully take advantage of the medium that won't loose so much when adapted.

Also, pet peeve: Japanese manga titles are really charming and they always ruin them translating. 30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii is one of the best titles of all time, and Cherry Magic sounds awful. Although in this particular case, the English title might be better because of the additional meaning of "on the line".

They are making a full drama - that's why there wasn't really an ending.

There is no ending. It's left hanging because they're doing an entire series continuation! If it's a series, it will most likely have a happy ending. You can have a sad movie, but if people sit through 10 hours waiting for love and get nothing, they start to burn things down. This is not sad at all, it's just not resolved.

Maybe "anonymous" is too strong - but someone I just met that I would not have done that with if I were sober. Anonymous sounds like I grabbed the first person I ran into in the men's room.

To me one issue is that these are deliberately aimed at teen/tween girls & young women - I know they're not stupid and can identify misogyny and have likely experienced it quite a bit, but we're all impressionable, especially when younger because we haven't been as disillusioned by life yet.

They do, not anything that is potentially dangerous (like cigarettes), and for the most part, other than movies, you don't see too much product placement because it's in separate commercials. With medications, they're so concerned about being sued if someone has a side effect that they have to list every possible side effect of the drug in the commercial - sometimes you really have no idea what the drug is even for, just that it will give you severe anal bleeding and cause several forms of painful death.

This is a real commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hp_y0wDFz0

And here's a parody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VByZc4Hn7pI

I actually think the real commercial is funnier. But it's fairly typical. More modern ones have happier young beautiful people doing happy things while their reading the side effects.

That was a very good elaboration - thank you, I hadn't thought of some of those things.

"Here you go, Mr. Producer, we've completed all 8 episodes!"

"It's supposed to be 12 episodes."

"Fuck."

That's my take. There was about 3 minutes of content in this episodes and almost all of it was the secondary love triangle. And to plug gap it looks like they worked out a deal with the Chiang Mai Tourism Board that requires them to spend at least two episodes going to every possible site in town and giving an expository tourist-guide spiel for each.

This isn't terrible, and Tae and Night are both adorable and easy to watch, but almost nothing has happened the entire series thus far. Cupid comes Tae realizes he loves Night and not the other guy, the walk a lot around Chiang Mai, and the other couple have the same conversation over and over.

Is it overused? It's in this, and Nation's Brother, and in the latter is very cleverly employed - although too early to know in this series. (You will no doubt be able to remind me of cases that I've forgotten.)

Here's overused: Two straight guys, one of which has a girlfriend who will prove to be evil, are enemies. They have an altercation/collision involving a trip/fall which causes them to end up with their faces too close together, and they stare at each other for an awkwardly long period of time until they turn gay. Sound familiar? That's because it's in almost every BL ever made. Even some really good ones. What's even worse is that it's lazy writing and takes the place of organically developing a relationship. Besides which, that close up you can't really see his full face, so being able to look into his pores shouldn't be a larger sexuality self-revelation to you than the number of times you've probably seen him smile or shower after PE.

I will concede, however, that sometimes the drunk sex thing is related to (but not as bad as) the rapey relationship start thing, done because it is not societally acceptable in many of the BL-producing countries for a man to voluntarily engage in and enjoy phycial love with another man - in the passive role. Being the active male is OK. Because you're not really gay unless you bottom. Sigh. That leads to another tired trope - because he doesn't bottom, the Top is "not gay, I only love_______")

Also, you make a good point about COVID. Showing him using hand sanitizer does not cancel out seriously violating social distance protocols with a random person.

For me, the overused cliche that almost made me drop this series was the accidental kiss. Do you know what would happen if you fell with that much force and mashed your faces together? Blood and teeth everywhere. Just once I'd like to see that result. Maybe someone can do a BL parody.

Anyway, I have certainly had drunk anonymous sex more times than I've had accidental kisses (that number being zero) or fallen with the faces too close thing (also zero).

I almost dropped this in the first episode, for three tired tropes: 1) a "straight" main who is pining over his girlfriend, who 2) trips and falls into an accidental kiss which turns him gay, and 3) OTT ridiculous trans characters oggling boys incredibly loudly.

But I'm glad I stuck with it, because there's a very serious (and well-acted) trans character that looks to be a main character, and the acting it really pretty good overall, especially considering these are all or mostly amateurs.

The sound is bad, but I generally forgive that because it's hard to do right on a very low budget, and they're using real locations in an urban area, which is doubly difficult.

The editing was really good and didn't waste time on irrelevant action - for example Nico goes for the hand sanitizer when he gets home and there is not a second more than needed to show that. A lot of the other low-budged productions would have made us watch the whole process, and probably his arrival, entrance, removing his shoes, stowing his things, etc.

I agree - for example, although I know it was supposed to be shocking, it might have been better if they'd set up the parental homophobia instead of launching into it like that - but that scene was certainly well-done. Sometimes fights are laughably bad, but nobody was laughing here...

I can't help but notice this has not earned very high ratings. Is it really that terrible?

EDIT: I watched it, and it isn't that bad. It's not exactly good either - it needs editing and there are technical problems, but there's something here with potential.

Mainly the smaller of the two leads (Jordan Gonzalez), who is so hot I can't stand it. There's a fantasy sequence... you'll need to watch it alone, preferably with a tub of ice nearby in case you think you might be about to burst into flame. You don't see things like that too often in BL. The character goes REALLY far in his fantasy, but it's tastefully done, not graphic or gratuitous (well, maybe a little) - I think something like that needed to be there so you know how consuming his passion is. One of the things I like about this series is that the actors commit and don't hold back.

The acting is pretty good, but suffers from pacing and editing issues. The larger of the mains has a discussion with his mother that will leaving you wondering if someone accidentally deleted all the footage and they had to cobble together whatever bits and pieces they could find.

In the second episode, the main theme becomes downright oppressive. The music in general is not always appropriate, like in the aforementioned fantasy sequence. It would have been OK for the music to be dark like that, but not big boss music from the end of a video game level more approprate for an action scene.

I'd probaby give it a 6 at this point, but it's worth watching just for Jordan.

Mirriam-Webster: "to speak about unpleasant things in an honest way."

Words and expressions have multiple meanings based on context. In this context, it is literally impossible for us to be discusing objective truths.

As I said " I think this was a 10 ep series that got stretched out for commercial reasons," you have to work really hard to assume I was trying to assert an objective truth. But I appreciate the effort.

Update: Well, the BL has moved front and center, so yay! And little brother is so adorable.

That makes sense too, but why bother calling anyone at all?

Also, how does everyone keep teleporting all over town like that? Pued sure got there fast, and Por must have a zeppelin or a teleporter because he keeps showing up everywhere without making any noise. I guess he could be driving a Prius or something, but that seems out of character.