Long term relationship + self actualization + family life

This show applied a ton of BL tropes as a series of romanticized peeks into modern gay family life and I LOVE me tasty slices of gay domesticity (like Japan’s Kinou Nani Tabeta? or Thailand’s Ingredients) its so terribly wholesome. It was such a smart move (with only have a short amount of screen time) to jump in with an LTR and an established couple, and then provide key moments of their past as flash backs. Taiwan can do this kind of thing particularly well because they are so good at establishing relationship chemistry - so the LTR is entirely believable.

This one delivered on honest queer rep as well, with a surrounding queer fam and actual Taipei pride footage. Taiwan’s 2020 Pride was called March for the World because Taiwan had controlled C19 better than any other country at the time, so they were the only country able to hold pride safely. They did it for all of us. I don’t feel like they got enough recognition for this.

This would have made my top 10 BLs of 2021 if they had ended it about 5 minutes earlier. As it was, they gave us a relationship cliffhanger and I can’t forgive that. I leave myself open to retroactive upping the score, though, if we get a 2nd season, but Taiwan isn’t consistent about that.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

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This was a collection of two episode vignettes, slightly linked, and thus not a series as such.

Since this was an episodic compilation series, not an actual series, some I rate higher than others as BL.

Ep 1-2: Tue - sports enemies to lovers 7/10
Ep 3-4: Sun - teacher/student poor little rich kid 7/10
Ep 5-6: Mon - player/virgin 5/10
Ep 7-8: Thurs - ghost story 5/10
Ep 9-10: Weds - players learning love 8/10
Ep 11-12: Sat - time slip friends to lovers 5/10
Ep 13-15: Fri - second chance at love 8/10

Average: 6/10
I enjoyed this for what it was but I’m not sure it’s worth judging on a level with proper series because there was no opportunity for full story arc. However, each couple was given no more or less time than some Vietnamese or Korean BLs, so I rated each pair and then averaged.

Because I generally dislike this director’s style, I didn’t expect to enjoy Y-Destiny as much as I did. It used BL trappings but had a certain raunchy crassness to it that came off as more genuinely gay then most BL, which I appreciated and probably explains why the Weds installment was a favorite. I also really loved the YoonLayPerth not the least of which because a three person ship is a hard path to walk under any circumstances let alone in Thai BL.

But taken as a whole?
It was uneven, some chemistry was better than others. And because this is a series, one is tempted to compare couples, which makes those that were less good seem more less good. In the end, It was mixed and so were my feelings. The parts I liked best were the moments when we got to see the friendship group interacting, and I wish this had been more v-gay Friend Zone soap opera with interweaving arcs for multiple couples drawn out over a series rather than episodic installments. Still, I hope we get to see more of many of these actors in the future.

Bonus for Lovely Writer nodding to Y-Destiny with Aeoy and the phone in the final ep. Cute.

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Sam is the Master of Pining

Foundational Romance Tropes? Enemies to lovers + long term pining + sunshine/tsundere

There’s some pretty epic pining in BL, and while Sarawat certainly wins for Thailand and Kurosawa for Japan, Gao Shi De pines for Olympic gold in We Best Love. The way he looks at fierce kitten Zhou Shu Yi broke my heart.

Is there a better pairing than soft af seme and tough af uke? Not in my book (probably because my book started with 90s yaoi.)

The story line is compressed and watered down because this is Korean BL so each season is too short. But the acting and production values are top notch, and in the end the performances are so good they entirely sweep away a flawed plot and thin narrative arc. It’s rare for me to like a show DESPITE the story, We Best Love stands with To My Star as one of the few. It's GREAT.

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Total hot mess

Foundational Romance Tropes? Enemies to lovers + cat & mouse

For the casual BL fan Gen Y was a bloated drunken mess of a show that wasn’t sure what it wanted to be at the start with WAY too many characters and couples. When it found its stride and trusted in MarkKit to carry the weight, friendships to provide the foundation, and parody to push the pace it had moments of glory.

But not everyone stuck with it long enough to get those nuggets. And then once MarkKit were together, it dropped the ball in the fourth quarter and lost its way again.

If you trusted Gen Y to push the ridiculous only so far and to save itself with poignancy it had scenes of self-referential genius. It managed to gently mock the very tropes of BL it was embracing, while still being soft and genuine and never mean or petty.

But it only really worked if you had tremendous patience and it ended with a stuttering splintered mess of dropped story threads. Gen Y alienated watchers and even those of us who liked it understand why.

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I loved it, but not as a BL.

This is a true lakorn with scenery chewing performances, especially from the mother characters.

It is a Thai tellenovella + Gone With the Wind but gay.

I loved it: A glorious central brother relationship (the best, made me cry), het romances, class divide + gay *gasp* main romance, the campy drama of it all. Arranged marriage, rebellion, cut sleeves, dramatic death with curses and regrets, beautiful if inaccurate costumes, secrets unraveling, cover ups, sparkle murder, sex herbs, coils within coils including snakes and death by glitter (is anything gayer on this earth?). It’s a WILD ride.

It’s not BL. It’s not a romance, it’s a family drama Thorn Birds style but it does end happy for our gay boys.

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FWB to lovers

Office frienamies transition a flaming hot one night stand into a f-buddy relationship, that is essentially built on a puppy/cat dynamic (and kinks into it at one point). Our puppy is loyal, smitten, and protective with endlessly worshipful eyes, while our cat is snarky, prickly, and deeply damaged (ALL THE TRIGGERS). I have been waiting for James to hold down (or be held down in) a BL for years! I like that there’s a dark underbelly (*snicker*) of trauma to this one, it has a slightly a Japanese feel which suits mature characters and an office setting. King’s yearning worried eyes are glorious. Poor thing, he totally adores this beautiful broken fragile boy and doesn’t know how to capture his attention. I admit Net was the one I worried about with this pair. James was always gonna be great. It turns out, I didn’t have to worry. I love it when high heat is used to serve the characters and the narrative, as well as us fans. (In other words, take away the sexualized part of this relationship and the whole story would fall apart.)

So in the end, NetJames did give lovely high-heat with excellent chemistry and tuned-in performances of surprising depth, unfortunately the story ultimately failed them. Had the show had the strength of its convictions and kept to a tighter, darker, harsher 8 eps it would have been the first high heat to earn 10/10 from me, but once they fussed with it, it dropped to a solid 8/10.

Could have been great but they overworked it. Still if high heat is your thing, this one will not let you down.

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sports romance, messy gays be messy, cohabitation, crush, love triangle, tsundere

Enemies to lovers meets forced proximity (boarding house) in which I couldn’t decide if the unlikable main character was stupid or depressed (story of my life, see also Physical Therapy) but I can’t take yet another emo POV.

There was no chemistry from the leads and great chemistry from the ex-friend/second lead.

Saint’s dad punishing him, when he doesn’t realize it’s because Saint is gay and heartbroken, really had meat to it as part of a basketball story. But it was such a tiny part of the overall show it felt like eating a meal when all I liked was one ingredient.

I’d like to see the actor who played Saint (Offroad) in other stuff but otherwise this one can fade and be forgotten. It was a mess, and not a hot one. Fatally flawed.

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AKA 2 Moons 3 AKA 2m3 - a trope riddle mess, but I like the main couple anyway

Tropes: E2L, obsession, popular/nerd, university set, pining seme, sunshine/sunshine, openly gay seme, bisexual uke

A Thai pulp that felt like it came out 5 yrs ago with many of the flaws inherent to that time and studio system, including manufactured angst and convoluted plot, but an ultimately sweet main couple that (as a pairing) feels a bit more modern and is satisfying to watch together.

Random additional thoughts:

Basically we open with a recap of 2 moons 2 (NOT 2 Moons original), some are scene for scene re-shots, which acts as an introduction to the new actors in the same roles.

Pairs are:
PhaYo - uke has glasses
ForthBeam - no distinguishing features
MingKit - uke has braces
But these are all side couples, and we have a different new main couple of loser moon + ultimate hot guy too-lazy-to-moon, TatchLom.

Gay af Tatch has a huge crush but only knows how to neg. Honestly, this is so common in BL it should be a seme character archetype.

This BL pulp acts like a show that came out 5 years ago (considering the source material I'm not at all surprised). It’s full of ALL the flaws & tropes:
faen fatale
stilted dialogue & bad sound
blushing maiden trope
awkward acting & stiff (in the wrong way) physical chemistry
nonexistent yet also convoluted plot
punching down humor
They even have the thing where the boys’ makeup on jaw line isn’t blended properly.

On the bright side, when the main couple starts liking each other, they communicate properly, talking about why they behave the way that they do, and why they flirt that way. It’s actually a really sweet relationship. They also both have nice wingman, and friends trying to be supportive and giving them good advice. The main couple gives me Nitiman vibes only with better resolution. No bad thing, frankly, I have a soft spot for Nitiman.

There’s a noted correction for dub con, permission around sex, and one of them is openly gay, and his not liking women turns out to be a defense and a plot point in a good way.

There is a lot of unnecessary manufactured drama and angst. For the sides this was basically the definition of their plots and they intersected not at all with the mains, so you can safely skip them. The plot is dumb.

That said, a small part of me enjoyed some of the drama around the twins and Tatch’s broken friendships prior to university, and I wish that was more of the whole plot and we got less of manufactured misunderstanding couple angst. That said it descended into some TharnType Mame level kidnapping nonsense at the end.

This will probably go down in history as one of the few BLs where I genuinely didn’t care about any of the side couples.

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Viki lists this as HIStory 2: Ep. 5-8

This is a sports romance (volleyball) with a good boy/bad boy pairing. There no clear seme/uke dynamic which is nice to see in a BL. Ostensibly it's high school set but Taiwan doesn't care about age appropriate actors. It's a very soft sweet romance with some ridiculous easily overcome conflict. There's great kisses but it's medium heat. The side dishes are using the dreaded stepbrother trope but they’re very tame, and there’s no other triggers in this BL. It’s very soft for Taiwan. It's not just my favorite of the HIStory franchise, it’s one of my favorite BLs. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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TharnType 2: 7 Years of I Can’t Even

This was basically fan service. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but...

I don’t get this author's writing and I never will. I don’t understand how she can consistently produce some of my favorite BL couples (AePete) and my least favorite - sometimes in the same series, sometimes in the same couple. It’s exhausting.

I had serious issues with TharnType but I do like MewGulf’s chemistry. It’s not the actors’ fault the story failed them. TT2 did it again, only with kidnapping and abuse instead of rape. *sigh*

TT2 also gave me Champ & Doc whom I adored, and hit us up with 3+ superfluous other couples. Like LBC and LBC2 the pacing in TT2 was uneven, the pairs confusing, and the side dishes with the most chemistry were given the least complexity and screen time. It was ultimately unsatisfying.

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One of my all time favorite fated mates BLs

Korean BL Color Rush leaped onto the scene at the VERY end of 2020 and blew my mind. Despite being a typical K-BL short run of short episodes, it was given more legs than 2020′s Mr Heart or You Wish with a strong core concept even with 8 episodes of only around 15 minutes each. Color Rush (with a total run time of c. 2 hours) felt more like a movie than a series and managed to satisfy me because of this cinematic approach.

It drew heavily on yaoi manga staging and storyboarding, we can see this in many of the over the shoulder shots, actor stances and postures, and framing techniques. Since I love this style, it contributed to my enjoyment of the series without distracting me.

It also broke ground in many ways for BL:

1. It neatly avoided some of the pacing issues of K-BL with a magical realism component that forced intimacy in the first episode (in-world justified use of the fated mates or soulmates trope).
2. They cast a known (former) K-pop idol in the seme role - Hwall from The Boyz. Not all that unusual (see Wish You) but they gave that idol a near perfect role for him and he executed it beautifully. He is a dancer by training and the role required him to do most of his emoting via physicality.
4. It was concept driven, in that it had a strong fantasy component, like Cherry Magic. However, Color Rush used the fantastical as an aspect of visual story telling (Cherry Magic was audio) which allowed it to be less soft, sweet, cute and more tense, sinister, dramatic.
5. The narrative backbone was an insanely perfect allegory for queer first love and the coming out experience without beating us over the head with it.

Thai BL may be my stan, but Color Rush is my bias, and it topped my list of BLs to beat going in to 2021. Okay I’ll stop using K-pop lingo now but basically I really flipping LOVED COLOR RUSH.

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One of my all time favorites

It’s one of the best Japanese BLs (live action manga) ever made and that’s because it has a lot of the breezy style of the later Thai BLs, without losing its yaoi roots. The leads have a certain comfort with each other which yields up excellent on screen chemistry. It has a low heat level but there are some sweet kisses (we are in 2gether/SOTUS territory).

Popular first year Seiryo (Seryou) has a policy of going out with any girl who asks... for one week. On a lark, third year Yuzuru (Yusuru) tests to see if that policy also applies to boys. Seiryo agrees that it does.

Yuzuru is very pretty and attractive but so brash and honest that girls always end up dumping him because his personality doesn’t match his looks.

As the two boys date it becomes clear that Seiryo really likes the blunt side of Yuzuru, and Yuzuuru starts to fall in love with Seiryo because of this. He’s so happy to be liked for who he really is. Seiryo thinks it’s all just a game to Yuzuru, but he’s falling hard too. They both want it to last more than a week.

Seiryo is young and reserved but yearns so much to be loved and give love, while Yuzuru is the best possible version of an obtuse tsundere uke without being immature or a brat.

Their miscommunication comes to the story honestly and is sourced in their characters. The actors put these personalities into their physicality too, with Seiryo moving in an elegant if cautiously stilted manner while Yuzuru is relaxed and sprawling.

It’s utterly adorable.

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a bodyguard BL, got censored mid series, has a VERY weird end

Tropes & Quick notes:

E2L, bodyguard mixed with sports style romance workplace (gym) and home set.
Some action sequences.
Teacher/student, protector/spoiled prince dynamics.
Trigger for hazing, but there is no sexual contact between leads so it never gets into dubcon etc...
Themes of revenge, salvation, infiltration, and domesticity.

This is kind of a bodyguard romance, but it got censored mid series, and has a VERY weird ending. I actually kinda like this show (they VERY PRETTY) but it is very much chopped off at the d***, so to speak.

Basically?

Hottest bodyguard on the planet decides he must "protect" hottest spoiled prince on the planet from (no really, completely) unknown forces of evil, mostly shirtless and occasionally in the shower or rain (still shirtless).

China pretended this wasn't gay by putting them in bed together regularly and then dumping them into a lime pit and not allowing them to finish, so I won't either...

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opposites attract, workplace romance, grumpy/tsundere, enemies to lovers

For me the mains were unlikeable and the actors had poor chemistry. So while this offered a lot of what I thought I wanted from a Thai BL - mature characters, workplace setting, adult themes - I’m wasn’t wild about the execution. I suspect Thai pulps are better when they stick to university/high school. This one felt like a better version of Loveless Society (not hard). The main couple's sex scenes were kind of sweet but I’m just not into them.

The side dishes (Yoon & Yacht) gave us more chemistry and a better kiss but had little screen time. It was interesting to see them portray BL actors being shipped and then confessing to actually dating each others. I’m not sure how I feel about the handling of it but it was different from Lovely Writer, and I guess it's nice to see different takes.

In the end, this show was nicely grown up but boring and became a matter of endurance for me. I can’t ever see myself rewatching this one and that weighs hugely in my enjoyment of any series.

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