jpny01

And everyone will blame Sandee.

The manga is too fantastial to portray in live action without becoming silly, so toning down Kurasawa's thoughts & fantasies was inevitable.

As for civil argument, that's impossible when issues of gender or sexuality come up because people would rather be smug and judgmental than understand other people's perspectives. My points are:

1. Use of Adachi's abilities should be consistent or it should be explained why they're not in effect. You brought up an example that took me out of the moment, when Kurasawa was carrying Adachi.

2. Desexualizing and sanitizing queer characters is censorship if it's done to a greater degree than it is to heterohormative characters - and I think it's inarguable that this is the case - for example 2gether. If you'll look above, you'll see lots of smug comments that not everyone needs graphic sex and nudity in BL, which has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

Ace representation is needed, but it needs to be ace characters, not desexualizing non-ace characters. The latter is discrimination, and it's disappointing so many ace people in this discussion are fine with that - even roundly attack anyone who critiques it.

Again, jumping to the conclusion that people are hypersexual because we don't want queer characters to be more desexualized than heteronormative characters as a result of institutionalized societal homophobia. Desexualizing non-ace characters is not ace representation - having ace characters is ace representation. It would be wonderful to have an explicitly ace romance. It is not wonderful to sanitize queer sexuality to avoid upsetting heteronormative sensibilities.

You are the one generalizing, by assuming that anyone criticizing desexulization is looking for sexual titilation. One more time, and this is the last time I'm going to say it, because the crowd here refuses to hear the point - there is nothing wrong with a romance that isn't about sex - most BLs are such stories. What I have a problem with is desexualization as a result of censorship or squeamishness that is applied disproportionately to queer characters as opposed to heteronomative characters. That is institutional discrimination. Period.

There absolutely should be asexual representation in a BL - wy not? I would love to see that - especially a relationship between an ace and a non-ace and the compromises that might entail - or even the inability to make it work. What I don't want to see is the desexulization of queer characters when heteronormative characters are not desexualized in the same way.

Until the 1990s in the West, there was almost no positive gay representation in the media, and not really until the last 10 years or so has there been any normalized representation, i.e. 3D characters that behave like everyone else.

You're deliberately misunderstanding what I'm saying. Having sex doesn't mean better rep, but having different standards for queer sex and heteronormative sex is discrimination. I agree, there has been zero asexuality in BL, and I said I'm all for seeing it represented. But it's perfectly common for a BL to not even include a hug between the main characters (e.g. the infamous high-five in 2gether) which wouldn't happen in a straight story. That is institutional homophobia.

I'm sorry, but you're so smugly rude and judgmental that I'm really getting nothing out of this conversation, so good day to you.

And then he'll find out and they'll meet and immediately get run over by a truck.

No, it's not, it's oversimplification and cancel-culture mentality on your part. Asexual people face discrimination from just about everyone - but desexualizing non-asexuals is not representation. Relationships between explicitly asexual people (or a relationship between an asexual and a non-asexual) would be representation and I'm all for that.

Because queer relationships are more heavily desexualized in the media than heteronormative relationships, this reflects an institutional bias that suggests there's something more prurient about queer sexuality than heteronormative sexuality and this is disheartening to many queer people.

To me, having non-asexual people not have physcial relationships doesn't do anyone any good. Asexuals are discriminated against by pretty much everyone, so there should be romances between expicitly asexual people to provide true respresentation rather than desexualizing people that are not asexual. This is similar to what I view as an insitutional heteronormative bias that makes queer sexuality less acceptable to depict than heterosexual, and it's queer relationships that tend to be more heavily desexualized than heternormative relationships. That's really my only point.

But regarding CM, I would not want to see fantasies like in the manga as it would introduce too strong a fantasy element. Kurasawa has battles with actual representations of his horniness demons, which would probably come off as ridiculous and off-putting. I would just do things like the mole, but maybe one notch higher. For me, I'm not looking for titilation, I'm just sensitive to queer sexuality being depicted with more limitations than heteronormative.

If I sounded like I wanted to see Kurasawa having full-frontal BDSM fantasies, apologies - I should probably have been more explicit about what I meant.

It's not like I'm going to drop Influencers - it's certainly good enough that I can see the potential. I think maybe I'm having troubling enjoying anything the same week as ITSAY and GSP ended. We probably won't normally have two monumental masterpieces like that airing at the same time so I can go back to just "normally" good BLs and enjoy them fully.

Under the circumstances, maybe I was better able to enjoy something that's not pretending to be anything more than soft-core porn like Why Love Why than something that depends on acting and writing like Influencers, where I'm making an unfair comparison.

There are no BLs (live action) with graphic nudity. Like not one. That's not the issue. The issue is that straight romances can have a physical element but BLs can't do to institutional homophobia that is more tolerant of heteronormative behavior than Q.

I don't mean that the story is homophobic, I'm saying that there's an institutional homophobia that makes it more tolerable to depict physical aspects of heteronormatize love in the media than it does for queer love.

I'm not sure why everyone is jumping from "physical element" to "graphic nudity" and "wild fantasies". The mole scene is along the lines of what I mean.

Yes, I liked that - that's what I mean, not that I want to see him fantasizing about sodomizing him.

Yes, asexual people do exist. Can we avoid the political correctness please? They don't need to be represented by 90% of BLs.

I should know better than to try to have a polite conversation with a BL fan. I'm sorry that my very, very mild criticism is so personal to you.

Almost no BLs have sexual themes, so it's not like it's overrepresented. But I'm not saying I want sex, I'm saying Kurasawa's attraction to Adachi should have a physical element.

I'll reserve judgment, but the mind-reading has drifted off from central to the story to something that has to be written around. There are clearly the reasons you mentioned for not hearing thoughts this episode, but it means stretching the internal logic of the story - so if you're going to break the rules that you've set up, then you shouldn't have introduced those rules in the first place. Adachi's powers are not necessary to make the story work - but he has them, so he has them.

I think the problem is that they've so desexualized Kurasawa's attraction to Adachi that one of the central themes of the original story, which is Kurasawa controling that attraction, has been taken away, and along with it, the relevance of the central plot device.

To recap - I'm not saying anything in the episode was poortly written or didn't work - I'm saying the episode had to be written to exclude the telepathy in order to work, which is "cheating".

I'm fine with the hug not having thoughts because it was "explained". But when was the last time Adachi read a thought? People's inner thoughts are often 180 degrees from what they're outwardly projecting - that's the opportunity presented by this plot device, and it isn't being used (anymore). That's partly the result of the decision to make Kurasawa sexless instead of physically attracted to Adachi and having to control those urges like in the manga - there's only so far you can take the telepathy when a story is so focused on the main pairing (which I'm not complaining about - no pointless side characters chewing up the run time).

I'm actually fine with no thoughts in the hug - I thought that was handled well. But unless they're going to make a point of Adachi scrupulously avoiding touching anyone, there needs to be some thoughts. We don't need to know that some random stranger is worried he left the iron on if Adachi brushes against him in passing, but I don't think you can just drop the central plot device.

Romance doesn't have to contain sex, but love (as opposed to romance, which is actions generated by feelings) does have to contain sexual thoughts, or it isn't romantic love, it's friendship or family. There's no such thing as "pure romance", and the fact that BLs are made pure is homophobic. A straight romance usually leads to marriage & children, which the canny observer may note is most likely to involve sex.

Or in other words, romancing someone doesn't have to involve anything sexual, but there has to be sexual interaction at some point, even if it's after the last scene of the last episode. But the fact that someone does have a romantic interest in someone means they have a physical attraction, which will be reflected in the character's thoughts. If they were going to go a totally chaste route, then they shouldn't have given Adachi the power to read minds.

These are 30-year old men, not 12-year olds. Adults have sex. And if I'm not mistaken, Kurasawa's struggle to contain his sexual attraction to Adachi is one of the main themes of the source material. It could have been used for humor - it didn't need to be graphic.