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dropthedemiurge · 2 months
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Love for Love's Sake | Things you didn't notice (probably)
Finally, I am watching a good K-BL and can enjoy multi-layered meanings within language, culture and translated subs altogether (unlike with Thai series where I need to learn a new language again xD)
So I'll be pointing out some fun things that I noticed for fellow foreign viewers =) Beware of a long post!
Disclaimer: I'm not fluent in Korean, but I've been learning and using it for years + lived and studied in Korea for a while so I'm offering my perspective and knowledge but it might not be the Ultimate Truth
Episode 1
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«I prefer lonely supporting characters instead of happy protagonists. Cha Yeowoon is still unhappy. ... - Where are you going? - To see my main (최애). I mean, Cha Yeowoon.»
The word Tae Myungha used to described Cha Yeowoon, as I heard, was actually 최애 (choe-ae). It's a slang that can be translated as "my favourite" and typically is used for K-pop group members, meaning "my bias" (think One True Pairing but One True Person instead). Then, as his fellow classmate gets confused, hearing such word referring to a popular student in their school, Tae Myungha changes to "I mean, Cha Yeowoon", and it works because the word and the name sound similar.
Myungha uses this word because in the intro he stated that Yeowoon is his favourite character in the book out of all. So basically, his first reaction was "- Where are you going? - I'm gonna run to find my blorbo<3", which is so admirable. I'd also get obsessed with making happy my fav side character that was treated unfairly by creators :D
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«Kids like chocolate, right? ... (Yeowoon grabs an icecream, Myungha grabs the same, adding with surprise:) Didn't see that coming. Bi-Bi-Big (비비빅)? You eat like an old man.»
What surprised Myungha there? That Yeowoon chose this icecream->
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It's a traditional icecream that is made out of red beans. This taste is usually associated with older people (because typically kids like sweet things and older people like less sweet/bland tastes), also red beans or read bean paste is used in many traditional desserts in Korea. Yeah, who would've thought that a high schooler would choose this icecream out of all options?
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Later, Myungha gets the message "You can compare Bi-Bi-Big to big Ba-Bum-Bar (another icecream with "old man taste" from chestnuts), why the hell would you eat it?" and gets confused as the message seems missent. I am confused as well, because Myungha wasn't the one choosing this icecream and Yeowoon wasn't typing in his phone. Considering that the phone number is unknown, I can guess that it might be a commentary from the book's author who's watching Myungha playing his story game? Let's figure it out in the next episodes!
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«- You eat like an old man. - Do you play sports? - No. - Weird. You're a whiner like I've always heard. - Kids these days have no manners.»
My quick translation->
«- You eat like an old man. - Sunbae, do you play sports? - No. - Strange. You sound like one of those older jerks (꼰대). - Kids these days have no manners.»
More on the differences between Tae Myungha and Cha Yeowoon:
Myungha tried to poke Yeowoon about his "old man tastes", and Yeowoon called him out for his conservative/stereotypical thinking.
Yeowoon keeps calling Myungha sunbae (because he knows MH's a senior in their school so he must be polite), and Myungha REALLY TALKS LIKE AN OLD MAN to him ("Kids these days" in the subs does translate this style of speech correctly! I'm glad). We all know he's much older before he was thrown into high school times (~25-30yo?), but his words and intonations really make you feel like he's 50-60yo or something xD
Yeowoon doesn't like this at all, though, so he calls Myungha a sort of derogatory term 꼰대 (kkondae), which is used to described old conservative people who are set in their ways and keep nagging and scolding young people for not behaving properly. And, as a runner, he implies that there are senior sportsmen that are hazing or nagging younger sportsmen like this as well, that's who Myungha reminds him of. No wonder the affection stats fell down in the minus zone so hard!
There you go, guys, these are my comments on the first episode of Love for Love's sake! It is filmed so well, I like the idea, and I really enjoyed it (if this one gets really popular just like Semantic Error, we might get more BLs about gamers or gamedevs and I WILL LOVE IT I am so here for it, hehe)
Stay tuned for more as I watch next episodes :]
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inventedfangirling · 2 months
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My friends i watched love for love's sake and I swear i don't have a fckin clue where even to start.
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I know a lot has been said about the show already and i know a LOT more would be said about in the future, but i just can't help adding my own two cents to one of the most thought-provoking, moving and brilliantly executed pieces of art i have ever seen.
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I'm not gonna go on about just how much I loved Tae Myungha's character and how he is one of the most interesting people I've seen on screen in a long time. I'm not gonna talk about how unbelievably squishable Yeowoon is and how his duality totally ruined me that I need him to get into my pocket and NEVER leave. And oh I need him to put Myungha in his pocket while at it. I'm also not gonna talk about precious 'of course i'm gay, i've always liked girls, you don't know how to be loved' Sangwon is to me, cos if i start I can promise you I will most certainly never stop.
So for the sake of the rest of this post, I'm moving on. (NOT REALLY THO)
I just LOVE LOVE LOVE all the interpretations that people are coming up with, LOVE LOVE LOVE the show for filling in the gaps but LOVE it more for still leaving room for pretty thought-flowers to bloom around.
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You know those artworks or puzzles that have something obvious hidden in a maze of confusion and haze until somebody points out the pattern, you zoom out and realize wow it was this clear all along?? That's a LOT of what watching the show felt like to me. The pattern being how inexplicably inter-connected Myungha and Yeowoon are. Not because they are each other's blorbos, but because why they are eo's blorbos. Why they don't care for each other from a sense of sympathy, but from empathy, despite not knowing the depth of their connections explicitly.
Eventhough we do see glimpses of it from the start, it only gets more clear later how Myungha and Yeowoon really are mirror versions of eo. How the first time Myungha sees Yeowoon he's stopping him from killing himself, and then we later find out that Myungha ends up killing himself. How both of it was triggered by a series of disappointments in life, starting with a troubling family and ending with a grandmother who passes away. Of how both of them seem to really have no one else to call their own in the world. Of leading very lonely depressing lives, that seem to never have a glimpse of hope. How both of them seem closed off, but inside they really are so fragile it hurts to perceive the depth of their feelings. It all comes and hits you once you've taken the whole show in and have gotten a few 1000 seconds to think about it.
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We start off with myungha's character wanting to make his blorbo's character happy, and he's in it cos he cares about him, he doesn't have to think about himself. A 'pathetic' character experiencing a lot of pain, what's not to love, Myungha thinks, not realizing that it's his own mirror self that he is feeling so much for. Myungha sees Yeowoon's problems as someone from outside and is therefore able to objectively look at it, and approach it proactively, taking so many steps to help him, my favourite (and arguably most important) of which is the effort he puts in to help form yeowoon a friend circle. Something that he couldn't do for himself cos he never even considered a possibility of that. Why would anybody want to be around him? He ruins everything right?
And then to go on despite believing that, to falling in love, to deciding to choose to save both his grandma and yeowoon, finally FINALLY taking control into his hands even if for a bit to say what he wants, to spending the last few days together, to breaking up cos he just thinks the worst of himself, cos he doesn't know better. And then to the eternal darkness, where moments before leaving, just like in his real life, he realizes he wants in, he wants to live, he wants to love, but more importantly this time, he wants to try being loved. Even if it's difficult, he wants to try.
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I love how eventhough the show is heavily Myungha focused, we get meaningful dynamics with multiple characters. Round eyed gasp inducing moments dont just belong to the two mains but also to sangwon whose line to myungha post the stalker incident just ruined me and really set the tone for whatever the show was later revealed to be all about.
I love how complicated the narrative got while still telling a more or less coherent story, how in hindsight, a lot of it makes even more sense now. How as Myungha gets closer to yeowoon his self-hating tendencies manifest in the form of debuffs and errors, because of his own brain's inability to perceive himself as somebody deserving love. His childhood trauma and the numerous rejections life has given him, because of the kind of person he turned out to be because of those rejections, all appear to stand in his way of happiness, as if he can't help being a bundle of sadness and a harbinger of problems. Even as he says he doesn't believe in destiny or fate. Or as we initially are made to believe in the game as, yeowoon's happiness, when in reality this was never about yeowoon at all. Yeowoon never existed in the first place and in "real" life, he never does.
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I was blown away by how Myungha is in fact no longer in the mortal world but that fact doesn't hurt as much as that he would have to leave a world where he could finally feel happiness, feel loved, feel cared for, even if he consciously tried avoiding them. They still came to him, they still cared for him, they still fiercely wanted to protect him, (Cos he is just a tiny meow meow, who has been hurt a lot in his life, who wouldn't wanna caress and nurse him back to health HUH) just as much as he wanted to protect them.
And coming to the question of what's the game, where is it happening and who orchestrated it? It's definitely set in the afterlife or the limbo between life and the life after. It could be the author friend doing it, or the author friend has given myungha's brain the power to control the game OR of course the possibility that this has all been happening in myungha's head the whole time.
Whatever it is, the whole point has been to take Myungha from a person not wanting to live his life, feeling so devoid of love and happiness, to a journey of love and friendship, of the importance of fostering connections, of making efforts, of helping others, but equally of letting others help you, of putting your hand out and asking for that help. And in my head I love it most when I think of it as entirely Myungha orchestrated. Of it being a desperate cry of pain to himself, from himself, to save himself. Yeowoon and the game and the missions and all of it was for him to see himself in ways he never allowed himself to be seen as, to take care of himself in ways he never has, to love himself like he has never known to. To finally run towards himself, even if pathetic and sad, the Cha Yeowoon of the game, the person waiting at the end of the finishing line was the Tae Myungha in him all along.
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You know that tumblr quote 'do it for her' but its about your future self, right? Myungha rooting for Yeowoon is sort of like that? When he's protecing him, he's protecting himself? When he's cheering for him, he's actually cheering and rooting for himself? When he's loving him, he makes space and place to love himself?
I just love the idea of a (self) love story.
Eitherway Yeowoon x Myungha supremacy.
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Extreme(ly accurate?) Interpretations apart, Love for Love's Sake is truly one of the, if not THE finest (self) love story I might have ever seen.
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As a person who avoids fics/books with mcd or shows with tragic endings, it felt absolutely revolutionary to me that my biggest joy and relief came from the fact that the main character is dead (the thought of myungha having to leave the game was too much to handle) and he gets to live in this game where he has a cute boyfriend, a supportive, caring friend group and his grandma back. it wasn't the game that was temporary or non-existent, it was actually his life outside. And that's not bad? Cos this is a story and Myungha isn't real, but as real as he is, he got his happy ending.
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The show taught us to love, to see love, to be loved and to share that love. It told us that maybe the afterlife is a videogame simulation where we all get to live in friendship and love forever, with our blorbo and our friends. There are a lot worse lives to live. And I'm glad he found it in himself, enough love, courage and hope to write himself a better one :')
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loserlesbianongsa · 2 months
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the way this story begins with myungha saving yeowoon, and by the time it ends, we find saving himself as well. myungha was the reason yeowoon didn’t fall from the ledge that day, a fall that would undoubtedly mean a sudden and ruinous end to his life (e.g. his future as a runner) in all ways but literal. and so yeowoon, in a similar sense, ensures that myungha doesn’t meet his untimely demise when he drowns in that water. that he too gets another shot at life, a life that he’s loved and loves in turn in, one that he along the way learns to love himself in no less. myungha was the reason that this otherwise grief and sorrow-filled boy smiled as the breeze turned from that of spring to summer, and so the universe devises so that he may stay to see that smile, and what’s more, at last wear one of his own. and sure, had it not been for some divine intervention by a senior disguised god, myungha would have remained dead, lifeless and floating in that seemingly infinite sea. but it was his own enormous and autonomous want for life that allowed him that long sought after game-esque redo. see, yeowoon is in many ways a manifestation and mirror of myungha’s own fears and desires. so by saving a depressed 18 year old athlete, he also saves himself. by meeting yeowoon, myungha’s sheer desire to be loved (and subsequent desire for life itself) grows then to outweigh his debilitating fear (and related distain) of it.
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heretherebedork · 11 months
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One of the biggest and most interesting parts about JaeWon is that EunJi obviously knows he's attracted to JiHyun and everyone has already begun to assume their relationship and that their biggest problem with JaeWon's sexuality is that it reveals to them that he's wearing a mask around them. That so many of them, who assumed that he was straight and that they knew everything about him, are realizing that the JaeWon they know is a mask and how most of them cannot accept that and will fight at every turn to force the mask to stay on even as it cracks, even as it destroys him, because it makes them more comfortable.
JiHyun's friends take him coming out as him trusting them and as part of him while JaeWon's friends see any change to himself as a threat to their image of him.
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chaos0pikachu · 1 month
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Trends in BL (Sorta): Genre Trends
So I've seen a few posts discussing trends in BL and I wanted to talk about that from a different angle. Specifically discussing what trends are, how they're formed, and to not remove BL from the rest of their countries own media.
The latter is something I see a lot when discussing BL this kind've ~separation of church and state~ but it's BL and Country's General Media. As though BL lives in a separate bubble outside of all other media and thus never influenced by the media being made in its country of origin nor the countries they share direct borders or trade with. Or all influence began and ended with seme/uke dynamics imported from Japan and nothing beyond that (no, Pit Babe was more than likely not inspired by Supernatural) and it's been static ever since.
All of that is, untrue, but also a really limited way of viewing international media. These countries are places with their own history, culture, politics, and of course, media arts. BL is a part of all of that. Which also effects the trends and potential trends we'll see in BL individually (as it's going to change country to country with some crossover).
I think a way of identifying trends in BL and also the root of those trends is by looking at the media of the country of origin their surrounding countries, and what BLs have unprecedented success and what has the industry learned from them?
So I'm gonna break this down by: genre, technical and business trend(s) in 3 part posts. In this post I'm just going to talk about genre trends in Thai and Korean BL as that's what I'm most familiar with.
Basically this post got hella long, I'm not in college anymore, and my motivation was tied to the length of my Jennifer Hudson Best Of playlist. So I had to split it up, es lo que es.
[This will not be a comprehensive list of like all BL trends ever respect to y'all who do but I do not and will not watch every BL in existence, bendicion]
To start we gotta talk first about how trends in media tend to work and also what we mean by "trends". Because there's genre trends, technical trends, and business trends.
Here's a good article breaking down various aspects of all three. When we talk "trends" in film it's not as simplistic as "office romances" or "cross country remakes" of which, one is a genre trend and the latter a business trend.
Some examples of what I mean:
Shared Universe (genre trend)
3d boom (technical trend, trended a few times in the industry, first in the 1950s until the 1960s and then again in the early 2000s until the mid 00s thanks to James Cameron)
Remakes/Reboots (business trend, this is a business based decision b/c the risk threshold for a pre-established work is lower than for an original work that may or may not have financial data backing it)
Trends in media, whether they are genre, business, technical or a combination, tend to take time to build up, and also tend last much longer than a singular year (generally for as long as something is profitable).
Example: it took time for the Shared Universe genre trend to gain traction.
Batman v Superman (2016) wasn't released until five years after Avengers (2012). Following this, The Mummy (2017) starring Tom Cruise was meant to kickstart Universal's The Dark Universe was released six years after Avengers. Before that Dracula Untold (2014) was supposed to be reworked to also start The Dark Universe (both these films flopped so no Dark Universe, rip).
Since the Avengers release, we have the shared universes of: Monsterverse (which combines Godzilla and Kong franchises together, technically started in 2014, officially started in 2017 with Kong Skull Island), and the Sony Spiderverse (Venom, Spider-man, Madam Web, Mobius lol) and The Conjuring Universe (Annabelle, La Llorona, The Conjuring, The Nun).
It's been almost 12 years since Avengers was released (fuckin'a) and we're only now starting to see some minor diminishing returns (Disney had a horrid year financially last year) for this genre trend, and not even across the board.
I want to iterate that Avengers did not 'invent' the idea of a cross-franchise shared universe. Things like Xena and Hercules, or Hanna Barbara cartoons existed long before the Avengers. However the Avengers kickstarted a genre trend in film. Just because a piece of media started a trend does not mean it invented the genre or technical innovation (James Cameron didn't "invent" 3D but he did revolutionize it with Avatar and I suffered through many 3D horror movies because of it).
[I point this out because sometimes ppl be getting testy when ppl say kinnporsche influenced the increase in mafia/crime BLs with well, um, actually history trapped/manner of death came first - yes, yes we know this. And Bi No Isu came out before all of them so everybody drink some tea and relax, everybody's faves are pretty okay😘]
Okay to let's get to what ppl actually wanna talk about, BL.
(Some) Genre trend(s) in Thailand and Korea:
In Thai BL genre trends I'm noticing are: horror, supernatural, paranormal, action crime, and magic/magical realism. A lot of these crossover, horror shows typically are also paranormal - Ghost House Ghost House (2022), After Sundown (2023) - supernatural shows tend to cross over with magical realism like time travel, or other soft magic elements - Time (2024), I Feel You Linger in the Air (2023), Cherry Magic (2023).
For the horror, supernatural/paranormal genre trend, this isn't at all surprising if you look at Thailand's recent film output from 2020 to 2023: The Medium, The Whole Truth, Ghost Lab, Haunted Tales, Cracked, Death Whisperer, Home for Rent, The Maid, Waning Moon, School Tales, and others, are all horror, paranormal, or supernatural films of some sort.
The horror genre trend especially has been around Thailand for a while, as far back as 2018 with the smash success of Girl from Nowhere which only gained a larger following when it hit Netflix in 2021. I'd almost argue the horror genre trend really picked up with Girl From Nowhere as now one of the main acquisitions of Thai series and film on Netflix are of the horror genre.
That larger media trend is now trickling down into BL with series like: Shadow (2023), After Sundown (2023), Dead Friend Forever (2023) and upcoming projects like Vampire Project.
While supernatural/paranormal series like Ghost House Ghost House (2022), 1000 Years Old (2024), I Feel You Linger in the Air (2023), Two Worlds (2024), Golden Blood (2024?) are increasing. OMG! Vampire (TBD?) will at least be supernatural but we can't say with certainty if OMGV will be horror or not as we only have a poster.
I imagine with the success of Dead Friend Forever, and I Feel You Linger in the Air we'll see the trend of horror and supernatural/paranormal series (I know some have already been announced) continued.
Then there's the genre trend towards more action and crime focused series; which more than often crossover but not all~ the time.
In terms of the increase in crime based Thai BLs I'd argue it was a joint combo of Kinnporsche's (2022) wild skyrocketed success, and the success of Manner of Death (2020). Alongside the influence of rise of crime and thrillers from Korean media (The Gangster, the Cop and the Devil (2019) and Unstoppable (2018))
Manner of Death I'd argue influenced projects like Never Let Me Go (2022), Unforgotten Night (2022), and Big Dragon (2022) if only because of their release times and taking into account the time it takes for a production to film and be edited down.
Whilst all these series came out after Kinnporsche - NLMG released a trailer in Nov, Big Dragon in Oct, and Unforgotten Night in Jun, while Kinnporsche dropped their trailer in Apr - they're series releases are so close to Kinnporsche that I don't feel confident in saying Kinnporsche 100% influenced their acquisition. Ngl it's hard not to see influences of KPTS in at least Big Dragon & Unforgotten Night if only in terms of technical film making, so there could~ be influence but I can't say that definitively. I'm gonna attribute these to Manner of Death since it came out two years prior to these other series.
Meanwhile series both released and unreleased My Gangster Oppa (2023), Red Peafowl (TBD?), Chains of Heart (2023), Kidnap (TBD?), are def riding the crime genre trend that Kinnporsche started and I'd argue series like Pit Babe (2023), Playboyy (2023) were acquired for production in part because of the crime elements included in their respective series.
Meanwhile series like Law of Attraction (2023) (crime/action) and The Sign (2023) (crime/action/supernatural) are combining crime, action and supernatural elements together.
I've said before Kinnporsche takes a lot of cues from Korean and Hong Kong crime films like Jet Li's The Enforcer, and Fist of Legend, Donnie Yen's Flash Point, Raging Fire, and Kung Fu Jungle, Han Dong-wook's The Worst of Evil, Kim Jin-Min's My Name, along with Japanese manga like Bi No Isu and KeixYaku.
Meanwhile The Sign is def taking cues from Chinese costume dramas like Ashes of Love, Fairy and Devil, White Snake (and it's many adaptions), Guardian, & Ying Yang Master Dream of Eternity. Alongside Hong Kong and Korean cop and romance shows like Tale of the Nine-Tailed, Hotel Del Luna, Director Who Buys Me Dinner, First Love, Again.
[I think the only reason Thailand or Korea hasn't jumped on the full fantasy train and pulled an Untamed is because of budget. The Sign has done very well for Idol Factory so I could see more studios trying to go in that fantasy direction if they can get the funding for it.]
Meanwhile shows like Time (2024), Two Worlds (2024), and Cherry Magic (2023) are leaning more into a combination of magical realism and a supernatural. Which is something that's been popular in Korea (Mr. Queen (2020), The King Eternal Monarch (2020)) in the past and obviously Japan (Cherry Magic (2020).
This, again, isn't a fully comprehensive list. I'm sure there's shows I've missed, and there's going to be evergreen genres that are always produced - university, high school, office all with a general romcom flavor - because they're cheap, easy, low risk and for the most part reliable.
That's not an insult to shows like Cherry Magic TH, or Middleman's Love or Cooking Crush or whatever.
Cooking Crush is just going to cost way less than The Sign it's simply a fact. Likewise Middleman's Love cost less than The Next Prince (TBD?) and was less risk as an office romcom. What helps offset the risk of something like The Next Prince is casting Zee and NuNew in the lead roles.
youtube
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[watch these two trailers and tell me they cost the same]
Think of it of like, the 50 cop procedural dramas networks are always churning out; they do so because they're cheap, easy, low risk, and reliable.
Gmmtv made Cherry Magic not for the art of it all but because it was low risk and low cost to produce with a high value return. I imagine that's also why gmmtv cast Tay and New because while I don't know who the hell they are, lots of folks in BL fandom do because of Dark Blue Kiss and the reuniting of a well liked costars will also help offset financial risk for the project. Studios will often only greenlight a project if "a name" is attached to said project.
Anyways, Korea's turn.
The data for Korea is less because Korea comes out with fewer series than Thailand. Like currently Thailand has 9 ongoing BLs in 2024 while Korea has 1 (oh City Boy Log you lonely thing you).
For Korean BLs I'm still seeing mostly evergreen genre trends: the workplace (The New Employee, Oh! My Assistant, Roommates of Ponngduck 304,), high school/university (Light On Me, Cherry Blossoms After Winter, Semantic Error, Love Class, Love for Love's Sake) and Joseon (Nobleman Ryu's Wedding, Tinted With You, Director Who Buys Me Dinner) romances - which make sense, a lot of these were the trends of romance kdramas in the early to mid-00s.
What I am hoping, is we'll start seeing the acquisition of KBLs that are closer to what's currently trending in Korea: revenge (Revenge of Others, The Glory, Marry My Husband, Perfect Marriage Revenge), thrillers (My Name, Midnight, Somebody, Celebrity, Mask Girl), more class based social commentary (Devil Judge, Golden Spoon, Vigilante, Kingdom), and an increase in both sex and violence (Somebody, A Shop for Killers).
I could totally see more revenge based KBLs in the coming years since revenge and thriller shows can be combined pretty easily and you don't need a huge budget for either. You can also set them in evergreen settings like the workplace (Marry My Husband) or high school/uni (Revenge of Others).
KBLs have mostly stuck with evergreen settings with a couple outliers like Kissable Lips (2022), Once Again (2022) for example. I enjoyed Love for Love's Sake but it stuck in that evergreen space of school based romance, with magical realism. Again, not surprising given KBLs are just following trends of romance kdramas of the past.
Whilst not a bad~~~ thing, it can be a bit stale and hopefully with a bit more budget/investment we'll see the acquisition of series that are more in line with what's trending with Korean audiences currently.
There's other things I'd like to see develop into trends for KBLs but they're mostly technical and business trends.
That's all I got in the tank, this post took me almost six hours to write b/c of all the sourcing and research I'm freaking peeked.
See y'all next time ✌️
Check out other posts in the series:
Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?
[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]
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lurkingshan · 1 month
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Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 4
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Hello again book clubbers! I can't believe we're already on our final week. ICYMI, this week we got a very fun visit from @antonhur, the English language translator for LITBC. You can check out the AMA he is generously doing with book clubbers here.
Here are your official discussion questions for Part 4 of Love in the Big City, courtesy of @bengiyo:
On the conclusion of the novel:
What do you take from the narrator's regrets over Gyu-ho?
This story is unlike most BL that squarely fits in successful romance. What do you take from a story like this where the narrator details failed relationships?
Treating the narrator as a queer elder or friend, what do you take from the conclusion of his story as you move on from this book?
On the book as a whole:
What parts of this book do you most want to share with friends and family?
What parts of the book are you most anticipating in the forthcoming adaptations?
As a reminder, you are welcome to use any or all of these as a jumping off point for your own posts, ignore them and post your own thing, or just participate by sharing and commenting on other people's posts, and given this is the end, please feel free to reflect both on Part 4 and on your feelings about the book as a whole. Please create new posts with the questions if you want to use them rather than adding on responses to this post--it will be easier to capture everyone's content if it's all in separate posts in the tag. I will be tracking everything posted in the [#litbc book club] tag and posting the weekly round up--look for that to go up next Sunday. Feel free to also directly tag me to make sure I don't miss your posts!
Happy reading, and I look forward to your thoughts.
Tagging: @alwaysthepessimist @becomingabeing @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas @blalltheway @brifrischu @colourme-feral @dekaydk @doyou000me @dramacraycray @dylogpenchester @emotionallychargedtowel @fiction-is-queer @hyeoni-comb @infinitelyprecious @littleragondin @literally-a-five-headed-dragon @loveable-sea-lemon @my-rose-tinted-glasses @neuroticbookworm @poetry-protest-pornography @profiterole-reads @serfergs @so-much-yet-to-learn @starryalpacasstuff @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @sunshinechay @thewayofsubtext @troubled-mind @twig-tea @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist
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shannankle · 11 months
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Queer and Crip Temporality in the Eighth Sense and Giovanni's Room
I've been thinking the last week about how The Eighth Sense represents mental health and queerness through a fractured sense of time. It got me thinking about the concepts of queer and crip time which I think the show is depicting. I've also been thinking about how the parallels between how the The Eighth Sense captures experiences of fracture and abjection in a similar way to the novel Giovanni's Room.
For reference:
Part 1: Queer and Crip Time explained
Part 2: Giovanni's Room
Part 3: The Eighth Sense
Queer time and Crip Time
Queer time is a concept that touches on the way that queer lives don't progress in the normative way that non-queer lives tend to. It's a temporal displacement from the norm that queers expectations of heteronormative progress. As a small example, think of the way that many queer folks don't experience many traditional coming of age milestones in the same form or pace as is often expected; things such as dating or going through one's desired puberty may often come much later in life.
Notions of crip time build on the notion of queer time while thinking about disability. This captures in part the way that many disabled lives run on a different time scale, much like with queerness. From the way that a flare or doctor's visits can run a person ragged, taking up their time. To the way that lying in bed, isolated from society, time expands in ways ablebodied folks rarely experience. Crip time, like forms of queer time, however, also refers to a resistant mode of thinking about disabled futures. It interrogates the ableist impulse to envision the future without disability, while opening up for thinking about what a crip future might look like.
In an important way queer and crip time, and representations of them, are both about capturing a lived experience and about imagining otherwise.
2. Queer Time and Abjection in Giovanni's Room
I want to start first by thinking about Giovanni's Room because I think both this novel and The Eighth Sense use queer time in similar ways, but are striving towards different conclusions. So I think it's useful to use Giovanni's Room as a base.
The novel by James Baldwin follows David, an American man who moves to Paris where he begins to navigate his bisexuality and internalized homophobia when he begins a relationship with an Italian bartender Giovanni. The story is told primarily as a flashback, moving between a telling of David and Giovanni's relationship and fallout and the present moment (what David calls "the night which is leading to the most terrible morning of my life") where David is passing the evening before Giovanni's execution.
While the novel structurally plays with time to tell it's story, it also embeds time into the narrative in more symbolic ways as well. Throughout the novel, Giovanni is associated with atemporality, constantly out of step with the flow of Paris life due to his poverty and queerness which require him to work the night shift at a bar. Giovanni is placed both in opposition to normative time but also dependent on it for his financial survival. He gets off work just before dawn as the rest of the city begins it's day. As a shift laborer (he works as a bartender at a gay bar) he must work within a specific schedule for survival, and his poverty and queerness force him out of step with the rhythms of normative society. In this way, atemporality is a form of abjection or social death.
At the same time, Giovanni also turns to atemporality as a form of queer refuge when he is not working particularly within the space of his room where David spends time with him. David recalls that "life in that room seemed to be occuring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning." Giovanni's room becomes a space where time has no meaning, making it free from social constructs of time. All of this, importantly, is carried by the metaphor of the sea, which on the surface marks time by the movement of the tides and the moon, but deep below the surface these tides become imperceptible. And after Giovanni loses his job, David notes how he feels as if he is sinking deeper.
Unfortunately, in Giovanni's Room Baldwin depicts this queer refuge as unsustainable. Temporal norms demand that the body must labor and do so on a specific schedule or social death turns into literal death. After losing his job when his boss tries to exploit him sexually Giovanni sinks further into poverty before killing his former boss and facing execution. At the same time, conformity is also framed as death. David ultimately struggles with his attraction to men. At one point he sleeps with a woman to test his manhood noting afterwards that at this point "I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine." Baldwin sets up a tension, where the characters can neither escape the norm nor conform since both bring death.
3. Queer and Crip Time in The Eighth Sense
Like Giovanni's Room, The Eighth Sense relies on a fractured and displacement of time to convey the abject nature of queer experience, particularly through the editing style and the way this conveys JaeWon's experience. Of course, I would argue that The Eighth Sense leans towards a more optimistic resolution (at least so far) while interweaving an exploration of trauma, mental illness, and disability with queerness (in comparison to Giovanni's Room which primarily interweaves social class).
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Throughout the show JaeWon faces the strain of normative time and a lingering feeling of too-lateness. He is on the cusp of graduation, like many of the seniors he is expected to take the next step soon of finding a job and entering the rhythms of the workforce. We can feel the strain of this in many ways. For example, the fact that he would like to try out a different career path (photography) but tells his therapist that he feels it is too late.
This too-lateness, of course, also ties into both his queerness and his experience with trauma. Experiencing his brother's death and feeling that he was to blame, that he was in every way too late to save a life that meant so much to him. This affects his relationship with JiHyun after the accident. Once again he failed someone close to him. And in his eyes we can see how he has given up, that in his mind it is all too late. Too late to choose the happiness JiHyun brings him, too late to remove the mask he wears around others, too late to trace a future that doesn't just repeat the past.
The stylistic way in which the show edits and chops up time shows this fracturing well, capturing the way trauma can crip time and the way non-normativity can lead to an internal sense of abjection. Much like Giovanni's Room we see the pressure of normativity and the way this fractures JeaWon, and of course the show subtly gestures to one potential end point when his therapist asks if he has been considering extreme options.
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In another similarity to Giovanni's Room, the strain of normative time is contrasted with spaces that offer queer escape, where time expands and normative progression is cast aside. The ocean for him is in some ways that space. We see this most in how JiHyun becomes a safe space for JaeWon. He tells his therapist that he is "happy with him" to which she responds "I can tell that he offers you a place to rest." As @respectthepetty and others have noted, this is shown visually as JiHYun brings light to JaeWon's world.
It is also captured on their beach trip in episode 6. The dreamlike quality and temporal jumping can be read as a way of conveying the refuge of queer and crip space that throws of the shackles of normativity through a sense of atemporality. I think we might also consider the therapists office as a quasi space of crip refuge. While these scenes are still darkly lit and not so dreamlike, they similarly serve as a space where JaeWon's trauma is not fully hidden behind a mask or himself in shadow.
It is largely the ocean which centrally stands in symbolically as this space of refuge for JaeWon and of course as JiHyun comes further into his life, the two merge as JaeWon brings him to the ocean for their trip. Yet, as episode 6 closes, we see this space of refuge, much like in Giovanni's Room prove unsustainable, marked by the threat of death and loss when JiHyun is hurt and this refuge slips away in JaeWon's eyes. He is sinking deeper.
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Once again we are faced with both paths leading to abjection and death. However, while the last few episodes have not aired yet, I do believe that The Eighth Sense pushes for a different conclusion than Giovanni's Room and we see this in JiHyun. Like David in Giovanni's Room he comes to find himself in the big city, but instead of internalizing homophobia, he challenges himself to be brave. He is building a network of caring people, many of whom are themselves outcasts in some way, finding new ways to think about queer futures. Even his choice to work sidesteps the grueling constraints of capitalist labor by finding a place where he is valued by his boss (note how often she assures him he doesn't have to work, it's a choice). Again, the final episodes aren't out yet, but I believe the show is building to an alternate conclusion, one where JiHyun and JaeWon can both find it in themselves to choose a future, a future that is crip and queer and not too late, but rather infinite.
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absolutebl · 10 months
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Heya, I’ve lurked on your blog for a while (not signed in lol). Love everything and I adore the insights into linguistics, I have a lot of linguistic nerd friends who I fear are becoming Tired of me asking questions and this is a great resource so I can ask deeper questions.
Anywho, I’m trying to compile a list of scenes or lines where the characters themselves speak on BL, like the international impact, the effects on LGBTQ+, anything. I know Cutie Pie did it in that boardroom scene where Lian says something relating to BL, in Step by Step someone says BL couples profit off the identity of LGBT+.
All this to say, I’m wondering if you have any favorite lines or scenes that get meta and talk about BL!
A list of scenes or lines where the characters themselves speak on BL
Gottcha, here are my favorites from last year:
I call this BL getting meta or self referential. I tracked it as a trend in 2021 my #1 pick & 2022 my # 2 pick, so that's the place I would mention those shows that do this. Also there are some more screen caps of my favorites.
Most of my personal favorites would come from Absolute BL 1 & 2. There is a reason I named my blog after that show.
We had full on meta shows too, wither that had a BL within a BL or BL actors or were all about BL like Call it What You Want, Lovely Writer, etc...
I will also call your attention to GMMTV's 55:15 Never Too Late, it has a gay sub-plot that also deals with BL directly, you might find it interesting.
I'm not really tracking it this year except when someone drops one in a series I like and I screen cap. It's become so common now!
But I do have a collection of images i keep of my favorites that I reuse here in my blog regularly, here they are:
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Absolute BL
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Ai Long Nhai
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Cherry Blossoms After Winter
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Our Dating Sim
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Step By Step
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Eclipse
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Mr Cinderella
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My Secret Love
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Our Days (has a BL within a BL)
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Our Skyy 2 NLMG
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55:15 Never Too Late
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Paint with Love (another BL within an BL)
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starsickkk · 9 months
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Teen Vogue Excerpt – Why Queer Characters in LGBTQ Movies and BL Dramas Find Solace at the Beach
BY K-CI WILLIAMS JUNE 29, 2023
The Eighth Sense, a BL drama from South Korea, lives and dies by the beach. Oh Jun-taek plays Jihyun, a college student from a small town who struggles to acclimatize to metropolitan Seoul. When Jihyun joins the surfing club, he bonds with his senior, Jaewon, played by Im Ji-sub. As they fall in love, the beach becomes their spot for sleeping under the stars and even kissing in the ocean. “The beach is kind of like a tool that connects us,” Ji-sub tells Teen Vogue over Zoom, in his native Korean. Jun-taek adds that the “beach is very wide but Jihyun has been living in a world that has been very small,” and although “the ocean itself is very cold, the ocean was actually very warm for Jihyun.” It’s a site of transformation for them both, just as water metamorphoses between its forms.
Ji-sub names the beach as a “special spot” for Jaewon, “where he can relax and heal mentally as well.” Jaewon’s younger brother tragically passed away a number of years before we meet him in the series, and the trauma still sits with him. “I didn't realize how broad a range of emotions can be felt when you love someone until I played the character Jaewon, because it's something that I personally didn't experience,” Ji-sub says. Jaewon welcomes Jihyun into his place of significance, illuminating his dark spaces and ultimately bringing the pair together.
Jun-taek alludes to the title of the series, recalling our senses as human beings. Interoception, often called the eighth sense, is the brain’s perception of the body’s state, thanks to signals transmitted from our internal organs. Understanding these signals can help us regulate our physical and emotional state, though at the same time, trauma can inhibit those pathways. “The beach kiss scene was the sequence [in which] someone with pain and bad memories, PTSD in the past, turns into love and being healed by Jihyun,” Jun-taek says. “Although you have bad memories or trauma…you can be healed. Do not remain, do not stay with the pain.”
Inu Baek, one half of The Eighth Sense’s writer/director duo, attributes the beach to a specific cultural symbolism. He refers to the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s 2015 advice for South Korea to adopt comprehensive protections for all citizens, which would prohibit discrimination against the queer community. “We have not been able to enact the anti-discrimination law in Korea yet,” Inu tells Teen Vogue. He wanted to “give the Korean audience a message because Korea has experienced lots of disasters in the ocean” that are still ever-present traumas for citizens, such as the Sewol ferry tragedy — the show even pays tribute to those lost with a covertly placed yellow ribbon. “The beach symbolizes the hope of the harmony of this country,” Inu says.
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A still from The Eighth Sense. COURTESY OF THE EIGHTH SENSE
The show’s other writer/director is Werner du Plessis, who offers the beach as a representation of “the ebb and flow of relationships, the way that they move, the way that they’re never consistent,” but also a “space that is simultaneously peaceful, while being extremely dangerous, like the ocean is such an unknown.” And also, quicksand exists. Intrinsic to our genesis as queer people is navigating identity, from day dot. As the intersection of two worlds, toeing the line between who society expects us to be and who we truly are inside, the beach is “such a beautiful metaphor for queer people,” Werner says, “because it’s exactly the way that we’re designed.”
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pandasmagorica · 5 days
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15 Day BL Challenge: Day 5: Biggest Flop
Here's the full list of challenges
I'll take this as being the show that I was greatly looking forward to and wound up being seriously disappointing. By this, I'm not talking about shows which flubbed the ending *cough Last Twilight cough* or shows which had a really cringe choice somewhere along the way *cough Fish Upon the Sky Episode 4 cough*.
That makes it tough to choose, because if something doesn't engage me throughout, I'm likely to drop it. Actually, if something doesn't engage me early, I'm likely to drop it. And it hardly seems fair for me to list something I abandoned by the first or second episode.
So, nothing immediately comes to mind. Let me take a look and my viewing history, and see if there's something that jumps out at me.
*** dead air ***
Okay, the series that I was most looking forward to, was disappointed in but stuck with till the end, and was ultimately least satisfied by is a toss-up between Color Rush and Vice Versa. Interesting that they're both science fantasy, a genre I love. Maybe because I have a higher bar for that genre I'm more judging about how well series do in it.
I can't say I get the love for Color Rush that seems to be pretty widespread. The series felt flat to me. It wasn't bad, it's just there wasn't much there there. The probe never seemed to be in danger, which took away a lot of the tension that I would have expected to be there. It would have been so much better if the mono Yeon Woo had been this close to killing his probe Yoo Han and somehow they worked it out. Or maybe that is what happened and the series was so flat I've forgotten.
Vice Versa, on the other hand, spent so much time in product placement that it was constantly a distraction. The usual complaint I hear about the series is that they spent so much time on the screenplay subplot and not enough on the difference between the two universes. Actually, that choice made sense: the mains had no idea whether they would ever get back to their own universe or whether the portkey idea was even true. What choice did they have but to make their way in the new place? The universe differences seemed random - a tide that goes out (or was it comes in) only once a month? - but that's also true of the film Yesterday, and I loved Yesterday. But every time they spent several minutes on a product placement, my interest flagged. And after Bad Buddy, there's no way GMMTV can't claim to know good product placement. The show got me caring enough about Talay and Puen to stick with it to the end, but it sure was a disappointment.
Do I go with Color Rush because I remember so little about how it ended? Or do I go with Vice Versa because I had so much invested in it only for it to just barely deliver?
I have to pick one, don't I?
*** open ending ***
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troubled-mind · 1 year
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There was something about the shop assistant in the episode 6 that reminded me of Triage's Jinta and I was like - hold your horses girl, too many shows in a short period of time are messing with your head.
However it was at this moment that she knew that I realised that something is off about the episode. Well, I am not in a it's all a hallucination team but I do think we are experiencing the story through Jae Won's medication-addled brain (hazy focus, weird lighting, broken up editing etc.) and we can't be 100% sure that all of the events really happened the way we saw it. Maybe parts of it didn't happen at all? Who knows. It kind of felt like someone was trying to piece elements together after a night of heavy drinking.
Whatever that was it definitely looked like a product of a one messed up mind and it will make the stuff that indeed took place hit Jae Won like a truck (I do believe in those last 5 minutes).
What's left for us? Keep calm and listen to trot!
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dropthedemiurge · 2 months
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You know what things in Love for Love's Sake finale make me go crazy?
The fact that Myungha worked three part-time jobs to earn 300k won and he bought back Yewoon's trophies and medals (that his abusive father sold to get more drinks). Myungha thought it would help him reach his goal and make Yeowoon happy, but he didn't ask Yeowoon if that's what he wanted! Which led to Yewoon rejecting his effort and leaving him in tears because he wanted Myungha with him, equal and loving, not working and being unreachable as a parental figure. Talk about completing the side missions but failing the main quest.
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The fact that Yeowoon passed by the ice cream store, not buying their meaningful ice cream because Myungha wasn't around.
But when Myungha disappeared, he kept bulk buying and eating rice with curry because that's the dish that Myungha used to make him, even if Yeowoon barely rembered it.
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And what about THIS heartbreaking parallel? One trip to the sea to end your life, and the second one is to start a new and happy life.
(and those bubbles in dark water! I thought at first Myungha and Sunbae were discussing phylosophical and life questions in front of an aquarium or just a funky screensaver but no, it's never that simple with this show!)
(i am not going to bring up the parallel between Myungha going to see his mother twice because it recontextualizes everything even more and it'll be too sad)
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TALKING ABOUT MORE PARALLELS, Yeowoon happily responding that he's running to find his "blorbo" perfectly circled back to the beginning of the story, of the game. Again, I'm insane about how good and solid writing of this story is.
Let's end on a happy note:
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Yeowoon finally untensed his lips :D :D :D
(just kidding but their smiles during kissing are killing me)
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inventedfangirling · 2 months
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thinking about love for love's sake and the sense of unease that pervades every single episode of the show, that which almost completely disappears from view when you're in those pockets of pure happiness✨️ that every episode is peppered with. i can physically remember still how wide my smile was, how my eyes crinkled so much i could barely see and tears came out, how much unbridled joy i felt that i almost wondered if it would somehow overflow out of me and how that literally is the lesson myungha learnt about the meaning of life, to wade through the troubles to find those moments of happiness, to cherish them and accept them as they come, to consider himself worthy to experience all of it... so really if you think about it love for love sake is a meta about life about meta about life and this is a meta of that meta of that meta. metaception really.
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bengiyo · 1 year
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A Shoulder to Cry On Ep 5 Stray Thoughts
Last week, the boys began openly flirting with each other. Da Yeol won an archery tournament, but thought his rival threw for his sake. However, we learned that his rival's shoulder was too injured from archery to continue. Da Yeol and we also learned the sad history of Tae Hyun's family after Tae Hyun hurt himself.
Episode 5. Not Passion, but Acceptance
Hm, Tae Hyun didn't look back. It's not mutual.
I'd like to thank Korea for not joining Thailand in the Realistic Vomit train.
This archery club does not feel like a team.
I've been wondering about the stepdad. When did he agree to let Tae Hyun live alone? He clearly keeps a close eye on the money he spends.
This breakdown with the aunt feels a little forced.
Also sad that Tae Hyun doesn't think he possesses the capacity for love anymore.
Did this man really bite his arm?
Kang So Young knows there is no heterosexual explanation for this.
This other bitter bully is getting on my nerves.
Kinda feel like the coach should address all this badmouthing going on with the team. Still, she's not wrong that Da Yeol lacks drive.
Well, the bully didn't physically impair Da Yeol before the competition, so now I wonder how he'll be cruel.
My goodness tomorrow looks dramatic.
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heretherebedork · 8 months
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Love Class 2 gave me a poor working boy who's in love with a social butterlfy friend that leave him feeling abandoned and a man searching for the tutor he loved only to find him broken and hurt and closed off when he finally does and I love this entire show so much.
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From Minwoo who's struggling with feeling not just ignored but unimportant and loving someone who seems to love everyone and cannot give you the more you want even when he does.
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To An who is fighting inner demons to come back and has been suddenly pressed with part of his past that he doesn't know how to handle as the person he has become rather than who he was.
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From Maru who quit his job to seek freedom and who searches for Minwoo but never gives him everything because he is constantly distracted by the world around him and all the people that he sees pull him away as he drinks.
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To Hyun who has been searching for An for three years and wants him back, wants him to come back to him as they were, and is going to fight for every inch of their relationship because he never forgot.
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gillianthecat · 2 years
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Here's my list of BL and BL-adjacent (censored, bromance, or non-BL queer romance love stories) shows I've watched in the past few months since a fanfic writer's move into The Untamed fanfic got me started on this journey.
It's just copied from my notes app, I'll let you guess what all the symbols mean. It's mostly in order of when I started watching them, and it's possible I forgot to write some down. Some of them I started and never finished.
++[The Untamed]
+~[Ultimate Note]
+~[Sound of Providence]
++[Guardian]
+{[word of honor]}
+Absolute BL
+Kinnporsche
*I Told Sunset About You
+I Promised You the Moon
*Bad Buddy
-{2gether}
~Color Rush
-{Tharntype}
~{Lovely Writer}
-{Oh! My Sunshine Night}
-{until we meet again}
~{minato shouji coin laundry}
*Old Fashion Cupcake
*Utsukushii Kare (My Beautiful Man)
+~Cherry Magic
~{Vice Versa}
+My Love Mix-up!
+Love Mechanics
~-En of love: love mechanics
*Semantic Error
+{{War of Y}}
+~Secret crush on you
~{Senpai This Can't Be Love!}
++(Lan Yu)
*[The Devil Judge]
+{{The eclipse}}
~{{Love is in the Air}}
*Blueming
current as of 8/23/22
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