Honglou Meng

Hahaha. I'll join you on the "fairy" land. :)

Clever. But I'm not the one who insists on the existence of the "real" world. The people who use the words "it's realistic" do. I would also never use "realistic" as an adjudicator of excellence.

Also, say thanks to whichever Bodhisattva helped you on your way to Enlightenment -- but please ask them how they know reality is an illusion if they have not left it and stood outside of it? If they have left it, how do they know it was the *real* illusion? If they remained, how do they know that reality was the *illusion*?

Fortunately, we have Zhuangzi to get us out of this mess with his butterfly parable. I encourage people to look it up!

Proust must be turning in his grave, which is precisely what one of the responses to your comment also proves.

I didn't know this bit about the father. But it doesn't instill confidence.

I get that. I watched Takara no Vidro purely for Iwase Yoji, which barely had a good episode. Mercifully, like all JBLs, it was 20 mins. long and just 10 episodes. Plus there was no loud background music. If this were the case with TOO, I'd continue too! But I'm too old for this... :)

There should be a 10-year ban on people here using the word "realistic". It merely betrays the fact that people don't live much in the real world. There... I said it.

#justmysenseofhumour

Hang on. Can you enlighten me on what is supposed to be the "trauma" here? The fact that he discovers his father's gay, the act of catching them in the act together, or the divorce?

You see, I, like etoks below, was willing to give it a shot. My friend ZeeZee saw right through it. He's with you. He still won't talk to me, and says he's now boycotting both Thai and Taiwanese BLs.

I vaguely remember Light, and it being alright. I generally don't watch shorts, unless they are by Jonathan Glazer or something (Did you see "The Fall", his short film?), but I think it's the one which begins where the cop and the student shout across a picket line? Didn't know there was another cameo there!

Ooh, I don't know the potato-eating ghost-show you're talking about. Is it Taiwanese, or Thai? I just googled for ghost Taiwanese show, and Stay By My Side came up. Is that the one? I'm watching Sugar Dog Life purely to learn Japanese. I *love* age gap romance, but not when there is no chemistry. (Mitsukasensei was even worse. The first time in a BL where I wished they wouldn't kiss. Yuck.) I dropped Kiseki: Dear to me. (Kiseki in Japanese means a miracle. It's a kiseki that I got through that show as far as I did. The men were *hot* though.)

Sigh. Long live HOTE!

I will never get over how the actors, in the heat of Bangkok and Taipei, wear sweaters, jean jackets, or even wintercoats in order to code their wealth and sexual position. Gets me every time.

This! Short, but quality BLs over long, but turgid BLs anyday. (And, while I'm at it, while even short BLs can be ruined by bad script -- looking at you, Takara -- even a very good long BL can be made dilute by needless filler. This was already the case with TOO from the beginning. By Ep. 9, it was just pure nonsense.)

You see, I didn't care for Unknown. I didn't mind it, it was pleasant enough, but I didn't like it. Why? Stepbrothers. (See any TBLs). Mobster (See History3: Trapped). Bad at being mobsters (ditto). Forced Separation (See any TBL). Time Jumps (see most BLs). I did like the fact that the younger "brother" was taller and seemed to be the "seme". But then they botched up that love scene so spectacularly the first time around -- though they released a better cut in another version -- I thought, this is the beginning of the end. The only thing unique about it was they used a Japanese sepia tint instead of a colour palette from Windows XP. (In Thai BL, it's still Windows 95.)

At this rate, I don't even need my gangsters to be realistic. I just need them to be interesting. Speaking of, because of your recommendation, I saw Gonin. Now, that's a gangster movie. Telling that it too is Japanese.

:) To be honest, they are the only reason I sometimes suffer through shows. To amuse myself (and others) with reviews.

Oh, my friend. I quit yesterday, and updated my review:

https://kisskh.at/profile/br011185/reviews/389043

I'm just going to look at cute pictures and videos of Benji elsewhere instead. :)

If we stuck to fidelity to the book as a yardstick, one could never adapt a single Dickens novel. And Les Miserables would be longer than twice the length of the Ring of the Niebelungen.

I'm so glad my radar for turgid BLs is still intact. Glad I quit. Yes, I'm gloating. Yes, it's unseemly. No, I don't care.

Lol.

You're making me so glad that I dropped this! A bandit? Are you kidding me?

Yes, from the very beginning, Wang has been coded as the "uke", and Tian as the "seme". And how do you mark them as such? Wang has the pout; Tian is the grouch.

Also, is the Thai replacement writers thing true? Or are you just being cheeky? (Geddit?)

Of course you can ask! :)

It can be. For me, that's part of the thrill. But with time, I also got somewhat used to it. I do take lots of precautions, however, and take PrEP, have been vaccinated, and get tested regularly.

I have been fortunate, however, in having escaped a homophobic world, and to be now living in two countries with equal marriage and firm anti-hate-crime legislations put in place. I couldn't do this in Qatar, say, or Uganda.

That is a logical fallacy. The terms of your analysis derive from the human race and human behaviour. Which means, by induction, you are analysing a character as if they were a human being, and as if they were real -- which is a statement so obvious that I didn't think I needed to state it. Even when we talk about cartoons, we talk about them as if they were real human beings. The whole idea of literary analysis (or televisual analysis) is predicated on this principle. It is not for nothing that such analyses come under the label "humanities" at schools and universities.

In any event, I'm going to stop here, because I worry I'm not going to persuade you, and that you might only double down further.

It's amazing a therapist did that. That's wonderful. And oh yes, what haven't I heard to dismiss mental illnesses... the worst must be "pull yourself by your bootstraps." British people say it all the time, and I can't stand it.

I didn't say otherwise. You were the one who generalised that people who seek sex without knowing the other person must be "foolish" (even if brave), is necessarily putting themselves in dangerous situations, and must be depressed. I'm just attempting to correct these generalisations.