Red Hood: Okay you little shit. Give me three reasons why I shouldn't fucking shoot you right now?
Danny: I only need one. You would miss.
Red Hood: I would miss. At point blank? You fucking serious?
Danny: Yup, point blank doesn't matter. You would still miss.
Red Hood was very tempted. His gun was loaded with rubber bullets. The worst the kid would get would be a big and ugly bruise right on the forehead. Like the once he gave his brothers when they were especially annoying, mostly Dick thou. That would teach this little shit of an overconfident teenager a lesson.
Danny just got separated from his class during the school trip and wandered into Crime Alley, interrupting a drug deal and getting then discovered by the local Crime Lord after he beat up the bad guys. Really, he had just wanted to buy a shake real quick.
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tori: “when i do unspeakable violence its fair and valid because i need to overcompensate for how weak and squishy i am and my lack of nonlethal solutions is because im *too weak* so its also self defense anyway. also its not like im really killing *people*.”
everyone else: “cool motive, still murder. also tho you have murdered SO many ninja???”
tori: “mr. the frog we have all agreed a ninja is not a people.”
this is about (a)synchronicity but also keep in mind this applies to mutagenicity too. at some point someone will have 2 explain to tori that she is, in fact, a monster. PLEASE stop scaring the chunin
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City Boy, BL, and when Queerness is "Allowed"
Alright. @stuffnonsenseandotherthings tagged me in a post about City Boy and asked if I'd seen the show, because I hadn't mentioned it. I chatted with them in the comments for a bit and came around to what I want to say about this show.
For those who haven't heard of it, this is a Korean BL framed as "real"; the four actors play characters with the same names as their real names, their social media accounts treat the events of the vlog episodes as real to their lives (both their personal accounts and the show accounts, as far as I can tell), nothing on the channel says this isn't real, and the show is framed as though it's actually happening and is filmed by the actors themselves as slice-of-life, with some 'found footage'-style additions. The season is over, but the accounts still post shorts with the actors acting as the characters, and they still do lives "in character".
First, I've seen the show, and it's very well done. The acting is good, the chemistry is good, the visuals are good, the kissing is good, the story is good. If they hadn't framed the show this way I would have been shouting about it. If you want to check it out, it's on YouTube for free with subs. Check out stuffnonsenseandotherthing's post linked in the first paragraph for more about the show if you're curious.
But I was uncomfortable with the way this show has been made and marketed, and so I've stayed quiet about it.
Here's the thing. In addition to the very real problem that fans have with separating the actor from the character, chemistry from real feelings, and business gay performances from being freed from the closet, there is also something really insidious about the way people are allowed to be gay in play only, but real gay men are often hated on by fandom. The things "straight" (I put in quotes because a lot of assumptions are made all the time about BL actors) actors are allowed to do that gay men are not is infuriating.
Several months ago two of the men who appeared on His Man S1 decided to create a BL together. These are two gay men who were "shipped" by fans but did not actually date in real life. They filmed a vlog in the style of 'what their 1 year anniversary date would look like' (clearly labelled that way, but the video itself was immersive), and they got so much hate that they took down the video and backed away from making any more, and made a public apology. The criticism was that it was "cruel" to the feelings of one of the men acting in the video--infantalizing, insulting, and just more evidence that fans do not understand the difference between reality and performance.
I should say, the main shipped couple from S2 of His Man who did get together also make vlogs--real ones about their actual lives--and they seem to be thriving, thank goodness. They have more subscribers and around the same number of viewers as Cityboy_Log. But they had the power of being promoted by the show they were on partially behind their success, and they get a lot of suspicious comments about whether they are 'faking their relationship for views'. They are affectionate but not performing any heat the way City Boy does, and while they both seem pretty shy and not like they're dying to make out on camera anyway, I'm certain they have to temper what they do and show on camera in order to maintain their paid partnerships and magazine spreads. Ironically the same actions that are getting the actors of City Boy attention are what would likely get SeongHo and JunSeong "cancelled".
Anyway. All this is to say, CityBoy_Log is well done but I worry about it as a concept, and what it's setting its actors up for (and what its encouraging in fans). One change of not using the actors' real names would have been enough to make me cool with it, but it is what it is. If you're going to watch it, please watch it knowing that it's not real, and knowing that Korean gay men would not be able to make it either as fake or real content without being rejected by the audience.
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