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absolutebl · 6 months

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BL recs (from any country) that don't have any s*x scenes? I'm too ace to enjoy them at all. Happy ending preferred, angst v welcome:)

BLs Without Sex Scenes

Oof, this is a hard one. Is a dead fish kiss okay? I do have a heat sorting on the spreadsheet of doom, and there are some with no kissing at all, but a dead fish kiss is in most of the HEA ones.

BLs with No Kisses

21 Days Theory (Thailand, YouTube) - the only thing I didn't like about this pulp was the fact that they don't kiss, so... yeah, this is my first pick for you. Very YA first love angsty, fantastic queer rep and side characters. RECOMMENDED

My Esports Genius Brother (China, Gaga?) - it's hella odd censored bromance but enjoyable. No real angst tho.

HIStory My Hero (Taiwan, Viki) - basically a BL with no sex or kissing, but also body-swap so is it BL? I can't remember the end but I think it's happy?

Silhouette of Your Voice AKA Hidamari ga Kikoeru (Japan, ????) - this 2017 yaoi adaptation is a full on BL just no kissing at all. The source manga (I Hear the Sunspot) is a favorite of mine and the casting was decent. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for you (but not in general). Grey only.

Love of Siam (Thailand, ????) ALL THE ANGST, I'm pretty sure the most they do is hug, I could be v wrong though because too sad for me to ever rewatch. Very formative to the Thai BL industry.

The Lover (BL cut) (Korea ????) sometimes you can find the BL cut on YT, it has slapstick comedic sexualized moments that are maybe a little homophobic (or something), no actual sex or kissing, but no angst at all. (Korea's working some shizz out with this early offering.)

Kabe Koji AKA Kabesaa Doujin Sakka no Neko Yashiki-kun wa Shounin Yokkyuu wo Kojirasete iru (Japan, Viki) - I watched this and I was excited about it before it aired, but I seem to have expunged it from my memory and kept no screen caps in annoyance, so that's all I got.

Love in Spring AKA Spring of Crush (Korea, ????) - a crossdressing historical that flew utterly under the radar. I decided it just wasn't really BL, but it has BL aspects and it's kinda a little queer... or something. Grey only.

Evening Cafe (Thai pulp, YouTube) - No heat and no kisses, but a decent lead pair, about a boy who works in a cafe and the new employee who has a crush on him. That’s it, that's the whole story.

A Shoulder to Cry On (Korea, Viki) - Has no kissing and many people found it really good as @isisanna-blog reminded me, thank you). It certainly has ALL THE ANGST. (I did not like it at all, but I'm a terrible judge of this kind of BL.)

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Japan ???) - this is such a lovely show, very warm and comforting and slice of life. There is very little angst, they too old for that shit, but little to no sexual content either. It's very warm and loving. A safe extremely yet queer show - and oh boy do we not get many of those. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Censored Bromances

So No Kisses (TM) for the gays but the hets might do stuff I didn't pay attention to. All these from China. Some happy, most not.

The Untamed

Word of Honor

Guardian

SCI Mysteries

Stay With Me AKA Addicted 2.0 (I never watched this so there may be rough play)

Mr CEO Falling in Love With Me

The Fairy Fox

Youth in the Breeze

Precise Shot

Advance Bravely

His Cat AKA His Cat Boyfriend

The Male Queen: Han Zi Gao

The "Ghost Boyfriend" series

Past Youth

I Go To School Not By Bus (Hong Kong short)

Recommended Shorts with no kisses, but cute & fun

The 8.2 Second Rule (Japan YouTube)

One Last Order (Korea, Gaga)

Love Advisor (Thailand, YouTube)

BLs with Dead Fish Kisses (maybe? only one, if any)

His the series: I Didn't Think I Would Fall In Love (Japan ????) - (NOT His the movie) this one has all the angst you could want in your whole life. ALL OF IT. Japan wins at emo, it's their THING.

Cherry Magic AKA 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard AKA 30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii AKA Cheri Maho (Japan ????) - there's sort of some bed tussling and implied sex but you could imagine them just being snuggles for the mains, the sides have dead fish kiss. In general there's some angst but not much. It's fluffy and great. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Bonus: overt ace representation for one of the side characters.

Meow Ears Up (Thailand Viki) - sides may kiss? I enjoyed this pulp especially at the start, the premise is fun. I think my biggest complaint was lack of kissing.

My Love Mix Up AKA Kieta Hatsukoi (Japan Viki), a case could be made for a demi seme in this BL. So much frenetic angst around bisexual identity crisis. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

My Ride (Thailand Gaga) - my favorite Thai BL pulp the sides have a good kiss and the mains do kiss but it's v dead fish, not at all sexual, and it comes at the very end. Otherwise extremely chaste, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this BL, queer and complex and engaging.

I Want to See Only You AKA Kimi no Koto Dake Mite Itai (Japan ????) - This is a beautiful piece of cinema well acted, about two boys who are opposite personalities and grew up together. The only kiss is the one pictured above, v dead fish. Full review here.

Nobleman Ryu's Wedding (Korea WeTV) - 12th Night goes BL in this cross dressing historical that ended up feeling like a Cinderfella fairy tale, lightly dramatic and utterly charming. Full review. There is one dead fishy kiss at the end but it's otherwise aggressively pure.

If you like this last style of KBL (with a kiss at the end being okay, I have quite a few more to recommend). Until 2022, most KBLs only had one dead fish kiss in them, so you are pretty safe with pre 2022 KBLs. They tend to be quite chaste and de-sexualized. Other good examples: Wish You, Light on Me.

That's all folx.

Some of the above I may be misremembering (since I don't rewatch this kind of BL and my memory is shit). And I may have forgotten some too, so I hope comments with jump in.

Others to consider:

(source)

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lurkingshan · 8 months

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bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you-meme!

Tagged by @telomeke, thanks friend! I had to get through the weekend drama deluge before I could clear out some brain space to answer this one properly, because I never mess around when I'm talking Bad Buddy.

Name and whatever you want to share about yourself

Shan, she/her, I live in the US. I am a lifelong consumer of stories and both an avid reader and drama watcher. I write a lot of meta because when I enjoy a thing I love to dissect and unpack it, and I post on tumblr because I have the most fun when I do that with other people.

When did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom?

I watched Bad Buddy live when it was airing! I was not on tumblr then but I was lurking around fandom spaces and following the week to week discussions around the show, but not actively participating in them. After that my interest in bl as a genre only grew, so I created this blog about 9 months ago to start joining in the fun.

Favourite ship/s

Pat/Pran, of course. They are amongst my all time favorite couples that I've seen in any media, period. I will spice this up by also admitting Pa/Ink didn't do all that much for me. They were just a bit too underwritten for me; I am not someone that is wowed by side crumbs or enjoys filling in the gaps myself. But I am really looking forward to seeing Milk and Love headline their own show soon.

Favourite character/s

Going to take a stand here and throw my love Pat's way, because Pran is the character most in fandom seem to connect with. But I just love Pat. He's such a kind and loyal and devoted person at heart. He's a little bit of a himbo about his emotions, but he's also quite smart in his own way and he understands more than people realize. I love his easy acceptance of his own sexuality but also others around him. He has good instincts about people and it's no coincidence he ends up surrounded by such a good community of his own making. And I respect the hell out of his willingness to fight the constraints of filial piety to call his father on his bullshit. He is someone Pran can trust to stick with him through a lot of hard shit, and his easy forgiveness of Pran's more prickly attributes is crucial to their relationship health. For someone with such a healthy ego, Pat has no problem putting it aside for the man he loves. That's real strength, right there.

Favourite episode/s

Joining the pile on for Episode 11, my beloved. When I tell you I was sobbing the first time I watched it. Tears just pouring down my face from the moment Pat told Pran he understood they had to go back all the way through Pran's song for Pat and their return home. It's one of the most moving sequences I have ever seen in a romance, the way they came to the realization of what they were facing, chose each other anyway, and decided they were going to find a way to stay together, even if it couldn't be in exactly the way they hoped.

Favourite scene/s

Oh gosh, there are just so many. The aforementioned sequence in ep 11, both major rooftop scenes, that lone tear tracking down Pran's face at the end of episode 4, Pat confronting Ming. On the lighter side, there's also the brainstorming roleplay from ep 3, pretty much every courtship scene where they flirted via PPL, the FINGER LICK, the final episode wrestling match and sex acrobatics. Every scene between Pat and Pran was just aces.

One thing you would change about the show if you could

*cracks knuckles*

Okay, fam, just remember, you asked! Bad Buddy is one of my favorite shows of all time, but as I have discussed with @waitmyturtles at length, it is not perfect and I have some serious quibbles with it from a writing standpoint. My top 3:

Wai outing Pran and then Pran spending the whole episode apologizing to him. Nonsensical, infuriating, and the show didn’t do the work to make us understand Pran and Wai’s friendship enough to accept that. I still hate poor Jimmy's face to this day and I blame that on Aof.

Pat gets shot as the deus ex machina to resolve the Wai plot. Villain comes out of nowhere in the same episode, the whole situation is tonally discordant, no follow through and the injury is treated like he got a paper cut in the aftermath. It's just lazy writing. Honestly, send all of episode 9 to the trash heap.

Finale fake out. Aof undercut his own themes about the struggle of the closet and sublimation of your own needs in service of filial piety in order to play a prank on the audience. Dumb waste of half the finale’s run time that actively worked against the message he sought to deliver, and that ep 12 preview nearly ruined ep 11 for a lot of people. Luckily the second half of the finale was so strong it made up for it, but I maintain the fake out was a bad choice that I would definitely go back and change.

What are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people?

I am a meta girlie at heart so I am always most excited reading deep dives. I cannot possibly remember all the good shit I have read on Bad Buddy, but I'll give a shoutout to the BBS (gender neutral) girlies keeping the meta alive to this day @telomeke @ranchthoughts @dudeyuri @dimplesandfierceeyes @chickenstrangers @miscellar @grapejuicegay. I am always so excited when I see new posts about this show on my dash and I had a great time clowning with you all on OS2.

What are your favourite fanworks you've made?

I wasn't here when the show was airing so I actually don't have a deep library of my own meta for this show (not that made it onto tumblr, anyway). But one of the fun things about being in bl fandom is we get to make connections across the shows we're all watching, so I'll give a shoutout to this post I did drawing a line between Pran and Jae Won of The Eighth Sense.

A song that makes you think of BBS (not in the show)

It's gotta be Same Page? by Tilly Birds. It's not actually played in the show, but Pat briefly references it when he's teasing Pran in their final scene together, and y'all, look at these lyrics:

Me missing you is missing Me missing you is missing along the way Me missing you is missing Me missing you is missing along the way Do you realize how much I am agonized? I only want to know If you and I are on the same page I really want to know if you have a change of heart Or is it just me thinking? Or is there something missing? Like how my feelings never reach you

Feels pretty appropriate for a long-distance couple with more separation ahead, doesn't it? It's fine, I am very normal about this.

youtube

Thanks again for tagging me, Tel, this was fun! I am adding @neuroticbookworm @blmpff @manogirl @invisiblegarters @slayerkitty @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle in case you want to play, and anyone else I tagged above who hasn't done it yet, consider yourselves tagged!

#bad buddy #tag game #shan unleashes her unpopular bbs takes and prepares to get tomatoes thrown at her

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gorgon-the-artist · 9 months

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Okay. So this is rant. Not exactly about be my favourite as a show but about their depiction of asexuality.

I don't understand why the writers couldn't have mentioned asexuality and how some people are happy in relationships which don't mainly have to do with sex.

As an ace person, I relate to Kawi's sentiments about sex. Obviously that doesn't make him ace but stay with me here.

It's clear that the cast majority of bl watchers dont know about the sexuality at all so most people didn't even think what Kwai was talking about was valid.

Also Pisaeng and Max saying that 'how do you know if you don't try' echoes a sentiment that I think most ace people have heard in regards to themselves.

That's not to say that ace people who have sex do not exist. Demisexuals and various other sexualities on the asexual spectrum are proof of that.

But INCORRECT demisexual representation could perpetrate that all you need to do is find the 'right person'.

I think when representing the ace community people need to be careful to understand the nuances since acesexuality means different things to different people.

Only now are bl characters allowed to even say that they're bisexual or gay. How long do we need to fight to get someone, anyone to say they're asexual? Or even accept that the sexuality exists?

All in all, the first part of the episode was great. The other three parts? I don't know.

#be my favorite #gawin caskey #krist perawat #kawi x pisaeng #rant #asexual

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absolutebl · 2 years

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I may have asked this before but we're seeing more of a blurring between BL and queer genres. Do you think we'll eventually reach a point where BL just becomes queer?

My dearest you opened up a can of... worms. Erm, can of pink milk? Eh, anyway. I got ranty and sentimental.

Will BL Get More Honestly Queer?

You mean will BL be made by queers for queers with a queer lens? Maybe one or two (stuff out of Taiwan most likely, maybe Thailand) but those will be the exceptions not the norm.

But in general, no.

That's not its market. It's still a product that has to be profitable, which means it needs a broad market share.

Now while I personally think the world is not only queerer than we expect but queerer than we CAN expect; the world, and its business practices, doesn't act that way.

I'm not sure this is entirely a bad thing though, and Imma try to explain.

I want global normalization more than anything.

Quickly Some Background Info

1. Statistically speaking, numbers of people who identify as queer is rising (especially in countries that have legalized gay marriage). This is not because there are more queers, this is because there is a general shift in acceptance and because it is now safer to be out in these places. But there still just aren’t that many of us.

Part of that has to do with pop culture. But most of it it safety.

2. We queers will still always be drastically in the minority (especially if queers continue to bifurcate, dive into tribalism, otherize, and ostracize - i.e. the gays vs the lesbians vs the bisexuals vs ace vs trans. Or force outings and self-identifications in order to participate in the culture, shit like that.) If we aren’t a cohesive group there are even fewer of us.

3. Because we are a minority, purely queer serving recognition by the entertainment industry will always be niche (small indie and specifically queer brands). Our spending capital is too small (and too varied in taste) for most major brands and production houses. A thriving entertainment industry is a capitalistic endeavor that requires large target demographics.

Normalization

Here's the pitch. I genuinely believe that Will & Grace did more to normalize gay acceptance in the US than most other shows before or since. It came at the right time, packaged sanitize gay (and gay stereotypes) in a prime time slot to a massive family market. (I may or may not have written about this academically a time or two.) It's not a good show, it's not at all queer friendly, but it was effective. It made gay okay.

The path to cultural acceptance is insidious. It's through misrepresentation and tokenism. It starts with kill the gays (at least the straights are crying for our suffering) and punish the queers and moves into punching down humor and romcom snarky besties. Eventually, it becomes representation. This takes years, decades. I’m not defending it. It just is.

Yaoi and then BL is an entirely unique form of this. It has so many issues precisely because it comes without a queer lens, but slowly and surely it's being called out on this by queer folk and internally starting to check itself.

Slowly but surely it's gonna get better and better about it, while still serving its largely non-queer consumer base (see Not Me and Bad Buddy). It will never become fully queer because the watchers want the sanitized (or eroticized or fetishized) version of gay.

And I'm okay with that and here's why...

There are only 30 countries where same-sex marriage is legal and still 69 countries that have laws that criminalize homosexuality.

This Bit Might Make You Cry

Because of BL, just maybe, that housewife in Texas smiles when the gay boys in front of her hold hands, instead of finding it disgusting and spitting on the street. Because she secretly watches BL when her husband is asleep.

Because places where being gay was once literally, actually, cultural taboo are become (just) homophobic and that's gonna be a fight, but at least that's fightable, where taboo is not.

Because people pin images and make gifs of gay boys kissing in BL, and those tiny insidious things transcend firewalls. And maybe the first few times when she sees it, she winces, but maybe the sixth time she pins in to her secret board and thinks, “hey that’s actually kinda sweet.”

Because of BL, when her kid comes out to her, maybe she remembers those horrible parents in that one BL series and how badly they handled it, and how much it hurt the child. So maybe she’s a little less harsh about how his coming out effects her status and identity.

Because in places where BL watchers vote, and they're mostly women so they don't vote everywhere, when marriage equality comes up and no one is looking over her shoulder, she might vote yes. Because she watched fucking TharnType get married and she thought it was cute.

And that's fine.

Because we REALLY need her. Them. All of them.

Yes, we personally, as queers, need these narratives, badly. We need the happiness that they show us.

But we really really need the normalization they provide to non-queers.

Supporting articles of interest:

The Development and Influence of Parasocial Relationships With Television Characters: A Longitudinal Experimental Test of Prejudice Reduction Through Parasocial Contact by Bradley J. Bond (University of San Diego, CA, USA) January 30, 2020)

Streaming Content Influences Koreans’ Perception of Sexual Minorities by Lee Si-jin for Asian News Network, July 12, 2022.

In Conclusion

Don’t be a shit to straights who like BL. Think of it as an opportunity to be kind and to educate. BL can open their eyes and we can turn wonder into allies. And some of you might be far too young, or feel far too safe now to remember, but holly shit do we need all the allies we can get. Especially on a global scale.

And guess what we get to do in response to all this?

We get to give back love.

That's a privilege.

Because they are gonna make it a hell of a lot easer for us to exist and to love with dignity.

That's our right. But it's not one most of us actually have.

BL is genuinely fighting for us. And maybe it’s warped and crippled and not truthfully queer or exactly what we want. And it probably never will get there.

BUT IT IS FIGHTING FOR US.

One of the guest talents in Until We Meet Again.

(source)

#absolutebl rants #rants #queer rights #pro normalization #fight the good fight #and i mean GOOD #pro bl #asian bl #thai bl #taiwanese bl #tharntype #queer allies #will & grace

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absolutebl · 3 years

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10 Best Kisses in Thai BL

Type kissing Tharn after playing with his hair in TharnType - Type’s emotional agency and affection finally come out in this kiss from probably the kissiest couple in all BL

Dean kissing Pharm for the first time in Until We Meet Again - it’s a goddam icon with that red thread and the way Pharm’s arms sneak around Dean’s neck

Fighter kissing Tutor on the rooftop after the countdown in Why R U? - the symbolism of Fighter being blinded to his own sexual identity and then admitting it to Tutor outright after the kiss, gah

King kissing Ram in a drunken rage at the end of My Engineer - flipping heck, such a good kiss, then the way Ram takes it over and turns it back on him, you know Ram is going to be an intense lover, it’s his only way of communicating

Win & Tops kissing each other after their hug in Ingredients the series - the only mutual on this list, neither initiates, it just happens and it’s so cute + the way each character reacts is so pitch perfect

Forth kissing Beam in the hospital bed in 2 Moons 2 - Forth’s aggression is so well done in 2m2, and it suits friends-to-lovers so much better than other romance tropes because Beam knows exactly what kind of person Forth is and this kiss is him finally accepting that

Tul kissing Hin after 20 odd years of wanting to in Love By Chance 2 - they have so little screen time and such killer chemistry, I wonder sometimes if they were left to the wayside because TinCan comes off as utterly flat by comparison

Mark kissing Kit’s neck after he was injured in Gen Y - I know it’s not a lip kiss but neck kisses are a personal favorite and SO RARE in BL that I’m sticking it in, I do love their aggressive kinky bitting kisses, but this is the first really tender one

Pete grabbing and dragging Kao back to kiss in Dark Blue Kiss - my favorite thing about PeteKao is that Tay and New manage to portray a legitimate LTR and this kiss is a perfect example of that

The final kiss between Sarawat & Tine in Still 2gether - we all waited a really really long time and it was perfectly done, also seeing Tine with sexual agency was, frankly, a relief

For me the kiss needs to have emotion underpinning it, as well as a chemical draw, and a physical appeal. I need to sense that these two characters genuinely like each other in all three ways.

I ran into an interesting video once about actors kissing and what makes for a good screen kiss. There’s chemistry, of course, but there is also something in the way the two have to breathe with (and kind of into) each other. Like a synchronized dance. When I harp on about actors and physicality this is part of that.

So I based my picks are based on seeing

emotional + physical + chemical

all represented on screen together.

As such, you will notice some vacancies.

Honorable mention to:

Kong & Arthit’s first kiss in SOTUS for Kong’s little smile. Krist & Singto have good emotional and chemical connection but I never got any physical chemistry from them. I still love SOTUS because I just pretend they’re ace, but it does impact their kisses.

Ae & Pete’s first kiss in the car in Love By Chance because of the raw awkwardness and the sweet conversation that surrounds it. I love these two best in all BL, but while Saint gives us all three, I rarely get physical from Perth. While this works under context of the narrative, it’s a reason none of their kisses made my top 10.

Missing Babies

Phun & Noh in Love Sick are one of my all time favorite pairs, but aside from one off-cut kiss (when Noh grabs Phun in the hotel room) they mostly don’t and when they do it’s not good. Same with Fuse & Tea in Make it Right. I suspect this is mostly to do with the fact that the actors were minors at the time.

You all know I LOVE Oxygen, but I don’t think Slo & Gui ever gave the necessary physicality, much as I adore their emotional resonance. Similarly, while I LOVE Can kissing Tin in front of everyone on the football field, the two actors have no chemistry. Sorry, that’s just how i feel.

It does deserve to be mentioned though, because it is the only public ownership kiss we have in BL. (It’s an EXTREMELY common trope in western het romances of course - it comes from “kiss the bride” ownership.)

Top 3 Not Thai BL Kisses

1. Hsia Yu Hao & Qiu Zi Xuan and their amazing net kiss in HIStory 2: Crossing the Line. Just, so stylish. I limited myself to Thai BL only, because otherwise I would have had to include this kiss and bump someone else out of top 10, and I just couldn’t stand the idea. But yeah, these two demonstrate a perfect execution of emotional + chemical + physical in short form drama, and they have to be acknowledged for that achievement.

2. We Best Love’s Shi Yi kissing Shi De for the first time. I don’t have a good screen cap of Shu Yi’s confession kiss but it’s so good, it hits all three elements but manages to also have pining, frustration, realization, hope, fear, and competition elements. They are both crying and they lean into each other in a way that’s both gentle, loving, and desperate.

3. The final kiss in To My Star between Seo Joon and Ji Woo is the the only Korea-made BL to make this list (no big surprises there). Korea and Japan are notorious for the “dead fish peck kiss” which is almost a “why bother at all?” situation (to be fair it’s not just BL but all romances). What TMS did was play on that expectation. It gave us several of these sad little kisses, and then twisted it so we could see that they were all the result of Ji Woo’s walls, and that after those walls crumble he is soft and sweet and all the attraction is mutual. It did that by giving us a truly beautiful last kiss that used emotional + physical + chemical combined with teasing affection (a bit like Sarawat & Tine’s final kiss in Still 2gether). TMS is one of those BLS that REALLY benefits from rewatching, and the kissing is only one aspect of that.

Okay, that’s it. Who’d I forget?

(I should note that H3: Trapped, Manner of Death, Long Time No See are not on the list because I don’t consider them BL.)

New entrants:

Second Chance kiss between Fah and Paper in ep 3 is just so full of tea angst and anxiety. It’s a pitch perfect YA style first kiss.

Self doing a deep dive in what makes for a good kiss in BL from a watcher’s perspective. Too much details? Is there ever?

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absolutebl · 2 years

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I recently watched a video that made me think of how in BL Tops often have more “masculine” stereotype traits ex. Shirtless scene, plays sport, strong, the chaser, etc. While the Bottom has more “feminine” stereotype traits ex. Cute, likes cooking, resist the relationship, less muscular, etc.

Do you know any shows where the Top has more “feminine” traits or where it’s flipped so the Top is more “feminine” and the bottom more “masculine”?

I prefer the terms seme/uke.

But yeah I hear ya, here’s an absolutely typical example:

Any BLs where the seme has more feminine traits?

No, not really. We are getting more of this in m/m romance now that gay romance novels are becoming actually more queer but BL isn't there yet. BL is very heterosexually dysmorphic, especially from Thailand. In short, since the seme is “the man” he is not allowed to be feminine by the conceits of the narrative. (I should say this is also true in het romances out of Asia. Heroes are required to be REAL MEN, so to speak.)

Anygay, I talk about this kind of thing here:

Defining and analyzing seme/uke in BL (and why I use these terms and not top/bottom or Dom/sub) Be Loved In House: I Do made me do it.

How do they determine who will be in what role?

So there are visual BL tropes associated with the two roles that are pretty established as belonging to either one or the other. You named many of them. But here's a full list: Tropes that are seme/uke dysmorphic. This makes BL, which is defined by its tropes, particularly vested in maintaining a heterosexually dysmorphic seme/uke.

If you want softer semes then you'll need to look for BLs with no (or weak) seme/uke dynamics. This often also translates to no real top/bottom impression given to watchers.

The two are not the same though. Top/bottom/verse are terms from the gay community that have to do with sexual preference and have nothing to do with personality, and SHOULD have NOTHING to do with characterization. Seme/uke are narrative archetypes and have to do with storytelling and the yaoi tradition upon which most BL is based.

I'll give an example: FighterTutor in Why R U? are clearly verse in the sack, but Fighter is the seme character.

BL couples where there is no seme/uke

There are a few instances of Aggressive & Autonomous Ukes in BL where the uke forced by the narrative to undertake the seme role. Those are kind of fun. But the seme usually maintains his "masculine" association. And often these are sided characters.

This all has to do with the fact that most BL is produced with a het not a queer lens. In other words it is assumed audiences can only comprehend romance if it is based on a chassis of man/woman. One of the biggest damages BL does to the queer community is perpetuate this stereotype.

There are instances of feminine gay men being predatory and active pursuers of relationships, but in Thai BL they are usually clown archetypes, comic relief, and plot devices played for laughs (punching down humor). Yes, I am thinking of Green in 2gether.

If a BL ever does do what you are asking for: give us a seme who is out gay and somewhat soft and feminine I WILL LOSE MY MIND.

Meanwhile, here are a few you might want to check out that almost get there:

Hsia YuHao & Qiu ZiXuan in HIStory 2: Crossing the Line - Taiwan likes to futz with seme/uke

Du & Phuc in Hay Rival, I LOVE YOU - Vietnam

Win & Tops in Ingredients - Thai

Ace & Sky in My Day - Pinoy

Tee & Mork in My Tee - Thai

Mitsuomi Kozuka & Yamato Kumai in Restart After Come Back Home - Japan

In Soo & Min Sung in Wish You - Korea

TangYi & ShaoFei in History 3: Trapped - Taiwan

Paper & Fah in Close Friend - Thai

Seryou & Yuzuru in Seven Days - Japan

YuZhen & ShiLei in Be Loved In House: I Do - Taiwan (My original blog post on seme/uke was spawned because of these two)

(source)

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