jpny01

On the other hand longtae didn't give off any "I want you" vibes, so maybe his role will merely be to make Chief jealous because he spends time with Tian.

Rambling is good.

I totally agree - Earth has been really good at subtle body-language in this role, and I got a strong vibe that he was not into Torfun.

I think we'll have to be resigned to the heart thing being important, but Phu had a very strong reaction when he first saw Tian - whether or not he could feel the heart, or they shared the dream, or it was just love at first sight, or all or none of the above.

Tian is a mystery - he's never mentioned a girlfriend and none of his friends have, either.

I would love it if for once both mains were just plain gay and not straight guys who fall in love (beacuse that's how the world works. If it did, I would have enjoyed high school a lot more) because one of them has a woman's heart, or one of them fainted and the other one caught him which turned him gay, or they tripped and fell so that their faces were too close together and they stared at each other until they turned gay.

Does it matter if they're step siblings? It's not really any different, other than that it's a little awkward that their parents live together. And probably expect the big brother to be protecting the little brother instead of f#$%ing him.

That one was like a terrible pileup on the freeway that you just couldn't look away from. BLs tend to be full of way too many over-done tropes, but not THAT show. I think the writers scribbled plot bites on scraps of paper, threw them in a jar, drew them out one-by-one and wrote them immediately into the script. "Cute ghost." "Evil administrator." "Scary ghost." "Volleyball." Or maybe it was the did a mad lib and that's how it came out.

Wow, thank for that complete explanation! Sometimes I feel like I should sell everything I own and move there so I can live like a prince. Everything is super-expensive here. The HS movie is really good, but I'm sure it will be available for free before long. And you just reminded me I haven't finished watching Cherry Magic yet, so I'm off to go do that!

I know that this show isn't very good, but I really like it. I guess because the production quality is good and there's something really cute about it. What can I say, I'm a BL fan. It's also kind of refreshing to have a show where all the characters are good people and there are no cartoonishly evil ex-girlfriends. Or a cartoonishly evil school administrator (who's actually just sexually frustrated because her husband left her for another man before dying alone in Paris) mourning her not-quite-dead ghost son whose spirit is trapped at the swimming pool (where he falls in love with a swimmer boy who can see and touch him for some unexplained reason) while she plots to destroy a volleyball team that's busy trying to save a college boy who looks like he's in his 30s from a malignant second ghost.

They're really only showing them from the shoulder up - it's a little weird, but you'd see more if they went swimming.

This show is objectively not very good, but it has a charm I can't turn away from. Prab & Chon are so adorable together. That bed scene...

If he's hot, you betcha.

Not by blood. Prab's mother married Chon's father.

Is that a lot in the context of the Philippines? That's $4, less than a coffee (here). I was surprised at how cheap the movie was.

So I've always been a little in love with Junjun, but not so much physically. But the tug-of-war scene. And what a difference a haircut makes. Yikes.

OK, I really liked the movie. But... it kind of rehashed the themes of the series. It's like they reset to Ep 6 and played it to the end again. I'm a little disappointed with that - I was hoping for something new - more of a continuation than stepping back and advancing back to where we ended last time, Well, OK, one step beyond last time for sure.

I'm not sure why people disparage Tony Labrusca - TBH, I thought he was better than JC this round. Maybe it's partly because his character was better written than Mico, but I thought he was really impressive.

This is good. Three eps and nothing upsetting yet, so I'm growing confident. I do wish they'd avoid overdone tropes like faces-end-up-too-close-with-long-stare, which they do way, way too often. It's lazy. But fortunately it's accompanied by solid character development and doesn't rely on this tired device.

The directing and cinematography are spectacular, and the acting is good too. Also, was Earth designed by an AI from the future and grown in a vat or something? How is skin that perfect even possible? Even accounting for lighting and makeup, I've seen porcelain dolls with more flaws. He's not even my type, but I can stare at that face 24/7 and never get tired.

I think it's actors, cinematography, and directing. The writing is good, but a it still has some of the tired tropes like faces ending up too close together all the time with awkwardly long staring at each other. But these two pull it off.

I got the gay vibe right away too - and they made it pretty obvious in this episode. In the first ep it looked like Torfun was into him (because if you are of any persuasion that's into men, it's more or less impossible to not be into him, because Jesus H Christ. Just the porcelain skin is enough, forget the hot body, super-handsome features, the strong-yet-vulnerable thing, that smile, the hot body... )

Sorry, got distracted. Anyway, it looked like Torfun was into him, but there was no vibe at all that he was into her that way. That was a little cruel when Tian said "I don't know what his type is". I think he knew EXACTLY what he was saying there.

I'm glad too that they're not going to have a love-triangle with a dead woman. They're going to do it with Longtae, I'm guessing.

What is going on in BL? I'm totally mystified by the weird hostility. I've been accused of working for the HS producers because I liked the show, and suspected of being the anti-Christ because I thought "the other one"was kind of repetitivie and boring.

My taste is for shows that have structured plots and take advantage of the medium with visual metaphor and symbolism, so programs like HS, GsP, and ITSAY do it for me, and shows that don't have that type of layered meaning leave me a little cool.

That doesn't invalidate other people's tastes or preferences, it's just an expression of my tastes and preferences.

Can anyone help me understand the hostility? I found the latest episode of Manner of Death (a show that I like) disappointing and I was accused, without any apparent irony, of being a hateful person. WTF? I'm struggling to understand how what to most people is a pleasant leisure activity can become so central to a person's sense of self that minor criticisms of a show can be taken as a mortal insult and assault on who they are as a person.

If the gay couple is Ohm and Mek I will spontaneously combust.

We colonized the Philippines for 50 years and there's a huge Filipino population here (I'm in California), so there's a lot of cultural back & forth. (Imperialism is bad, but it can create lasting ties.)

I totally agree about 2gether - I thought it started out well , with both leads "guys" (instead of one of them being a male dropped in a traditional old-school romance female role), but then they had sudden personality transplants to fit into the formula, and a woman entered the plot to stir up incomprehensible jealousies. 6' tall pile of muscle Tine would now faint when he mildly exerted himself, etc.

Thanks for a great discussion! Sometimes people take it personally when you don't like what they like (even if you do like it, but not as much), but I find I learn a lot by listening to other people's views and it can give me a new perspective on something I might not have completely understood previously.

That was a bit jarring - especially how he was so mean about it. But the actor did a great job.

That all makes sense to me. There is an element of fantasy to the BL genre, so I can understand that all the English can distract from that. I do get a little distracted by it, especially when the subtitles retranslate an English word someone said into a different English word (e.g. there was one where people were referring to a "sofa" and they kept translating it as "couch"). And I totally get your point about COVID. That's starting to bother me, too. I want to escape from COVID, not have it all over one of my favorite leisure activities. It was interesting the first time or two they did it, and then it got old (if there's a specific reason to include it, fine - but I don't like it to be there just to be there). Plus, it won't age well.

They are aimed at simiar audiences, but Thai BL is more aimed at women than Filipinio BL, and almost all Thai BL are written by women, so that might make a difference in perceptions, too. That's not a problem for me regarding Thai BL - but I do think they have gotten too formulaic so there's freshness missing - like I groan "Englineers AGAIN?!? Etc.

ITSAY was so highly regarded because, besides the high-quality everything, it put a fresh spin on things, even though it had the "typical" elements of enemies-to-friends and high school students. For example, Billkin's character was really weird (in a good way) and PPs was more effeminate than is usually allowed - they felt like real people with consistent characters and it was wonderful. It also helped to cast talented, experienced actors - sometimes there's too much reliance on amateurs.

Filipino culture has much greater links with American culture than any of the other Asian countries, so maybe their BL is familiar in a way that is distracting if you're more into the Thai (heavily Japanese-influenced and fantasy) feel.

One last thing - Filipino BL more often strays into dark emotional territory, and doesn't always have happy endings. That can be a bit jarring.

In short, I get what you're saying, and there are big differences between Thai and Filipino BL that can make a person heavily favor one over the other. For me, I like both, but at the moment I've been prefering Filipino because of the greater variety and less homophobic & misogynist elements.

Also spoilering for length!