Honglou Meng

I've never seen a straight Kdrama, but based on what I hear, I don't want to! I don't mind tropes, sometimes even love them, but they have to be done well & entertainingly.

I *love* SKAM. Esp. the first season, and to an extent, the second and the third. (Let's not speak of the fourth.) The gay season is brilliant, but I found it still quite tropey. But SKAM is tropes done *right*.

I do think CMBYN is worth watching, at least once. The director is very good, the music and atmosphere brilliant, and the ending incredibly moving. It's just the two men have no chemistry, and they are not good actors. The movie is also quite coy about gay sex.

The other two are not worth anyone's time, I would say. It is mainly written to pander and appeal to straight people.

Lol. Really? I have never seen a straight KDrama before!

Well, I've seen the first season of the first two, and CMBYN a couple of times. Heartstopper is science fiction for me: an unrealistic fantasy of what model behaviour towards sexual and gender minorities should look like. But it seems to be healing for some people, who have had a hard life. YR is just silly, and not even camp.

I loved CMBYN the first time I saw it. But the more I think about it, the angrier I get, which is not a good sign. I won't say you're missing out much.

I can't quite say. They are certainly not prudes when it comes to depictions of gay sex or anything, and are sophisticated in their views on gender and sexuality. However, I do think it's telling that Heartstopper was written by an asexual woman, and YR by a straight woman, and both appeal largely to straight women, and far less to gay men.

Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. It's when straight people start telling me what is and isn't homophobic that I get upset.

I'd say they have some reservations, such as the coyness around gay sex, given all the attention film lavishes on straight sex. But mostly, yes, they do. But it is my straight friends who absolutely adore it.

It is the same with shows like Heartstopper & Young Royals. My gay friends can't abide by them. My straight women friends eat it up like Christmas bundt cakes.

Haha, I don't disagree with you. I don't think Timotay is a good actor at all, and both he and Armie Hammer (who has only his last name to recommend him, and who nevertheless did not live up to it in a gay film) were woefully miscast. What I responded to in the film was the James Ivory script, which the Catholic homophobia of Lu-ca ruined. (I also loved Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar, the latter of whom is a gay icon.) I have often called the film homophobic, which wins me no friends anywhere. 🙃

I mean, I'm sort of aware of it, in the sense that Jane Austen fans do this all the time, and it gets very tedious. (Austen would have been the first person to laugh at such people.)

But it is only on MDL that I first came across the idea of using the source material as a justification for covering up the flaws, inadequacies, and bad writing of the live-action version. Just because a plot or a character makes sense in the manga, it does not mean it does in the series, nor does it absolve the screenwriter from his or her responsibility to give their viewers a coherent story and well-written characters.

Funnily enough, people don't have the same gripe in the opposite direction. Call Me By Your Name is a terrible book. The movie is much better. If we follow the MDL logic, we should actually want the movie to be much worse, just because it isn't faithful to the book. Ho hum!

I'm not yet bored! But yes, the pace has become quite languid. Next week looks promising though.

I'm glad my post resonated with you, though I was sad to read that you still have to be in the closet. It is, alas, a journey all LGBT people (myself included) still have to go through. I hope you can one day be out and proud, and all the people near and dear in your life accept you for who you are.

By the way, on the BL subreddit, you can find out a fansub for the show, and links to it. Look out for a post by the user smittenkittyyan. Just make sure it doesn't get passed on to any other streaming websites.

Oh my god, yes, how could I forget? Apparently, all over Korea and Thailand, there is a chronic shortage of napkins, and/or an abundance of cerebellar lesions that make using your hand impossible. Mind you, if I was the seme in question, I wouldn't wipe someone's mouth so much as devour it, and use it as an excuse to rip his clothes off... but there you go.

On Gonin: yes, I watched it after I went through your lists! I normally can't stand mafioso movies, and I *loathe* Tarantino. But I really enjoyed Gonin.

I thought of it too, but yes, in my mind, the first commandment is the all important one!

Haha. Something tells me that they might not have one?

Awww... thank you! Actually, I like fantasies too, and I don't mind tropes at all -- sometimes even love them -- as long as they are well done (Semantic Error, for example). In most cases, alas, they aren't.

Hahaha, quite literally. It was the first thing I did this morning in bed. 🙈

Thank you! My point about US looking the other way when it comes to Japanese war crimes is less an objective statement than speculation as to why Christianity is so toothless in the film, and why the Christian priest is shown as so corrupt (though no less so than the shamans). The view itself is not mine, but one I know to be held commonly enough in Korea.

Lol. Only in a JBL (or KBL) will a grown ass man in his 30s still not know how to kiss another human being.

Of course, things are different in Thailand. One moment they won't know how to kiss, the next moment they're in soft-core gay porn.

I love the realism of BLs. 😅

I did the same with Sugar Dog Life and "I-su-mi-kun". I passed out and woke up in North Korea! :)

Honey, what was that kiss? 🙄

Other than that, a wonderfully silly show.