I am currently hooked on Past-senger. I don't know how possibly may have a happy ending but I am enjoying its lightness and humor. Did you notice Bamee house is the house of Tonhon in TonhonChonlatee?
I have tried Love syndrome III because I like its protagonists but it's terrible. How can the acting be that bad? I know from other series they are not that bad.
How the Koreans manage to give us such a steady string of wonderful stories such as Unintentional love story and The eighth sense? They always leave me with a nice aftertaste I don't get anywhere else.
Anon, Taiwanese BLs are my favorite, but I appreciate Thai QLs because so many are produced compared to the ZERO I've gotten from Taiwan in 2023. ZERO! The last BL Taiwan offered was HIStory 5: Love in the Future, which shared the time travel theme with Past-Senger, and as much as I love Taiwanese BLs and the HIStory franchise, I think Past-Senger did a better job with it.
Quantity does not equal quality, so Thailand having over fifty QLs a year doesn't necessarily equate to great stories or production value, but, much like Vietnamese and Filipino QLs, there is always a solid foundation with some heart at its core. Also, Thai series are easily available, for free. I haven't nor will I watch Love Syndrome III because I will hate it, and not in a fun hate-watch way, but some who watched it liked it because that's the beauty of variety; we have more to pick from based on what we like and there is something for everyone.
Past-Senger, with its Tonhon Chonlatee house, has its issues, and there are plenty including spotty sound, a clumsy final quarter, and odd pacing, but as you mentioned, it does humor well, and it takes the time-traveling aspect seriously compared to HIStory 5. When Kiew lands in the future, he is constantly reminded that he is out of place and not meant to be there, while HIStory 5 spent the first episode on that idea, then quickly moved along.
Korea tends to go back to the past (Tinted With You and Once Again) or for reincarnation (First Love Again and The Director Who Buys Me Dinner), but there is always in underlying melancholy to these since the narrative makes it clear these are "right person, wrong time" stories. Korea loves a time skip like Japan loves to make its guys run. But the issue most people as well as I have with Korean BLs is they are too short to properly develop the plot, the characters, and the resolution. For me, something is always rushed or lacking.
Yet Our Dating Sim has done the best "left him because I love him" plot out of all the QLs I've watched, and I think Star Struck might do well with it also. Both also demonstrate the Korean staple of "right person, wrong time" with time jumps that I just complained about, yet they are done well here.
As much as I stay rooting for Taiwan, I appreciate a range of queer media because every show is doing something different; therefore, each show has the possibility of doing it better.
Gameboys and Hello, Stranger, both Filipino offerings, gave us love stories about the pandemic DURING the pandemic, but unlike my Taiwanese See You After Quarantine?, I feel like some dismissed them simply because they were Filipino even though Gameboys was one of the biggest BLs of 2020 with its mask-off scene.
I have trash taste. I didn't like Bad Buddy overall and I have intentionally never watched a MAME series, so you don't have to trust one word I wrote here, but all of this is really to tell you that as great as Korean dramas are, I encourage you to continue dabbling in other countries' offerings every now and then. I'm a HIStory 4: Close to Me whore first, and a human second, but I loved being surprised by how Bed Friends handled healing from trauma through a sexual relationship, how Moonlight Chicken presented generational and economic differences through a queer lens, and how Kabe Koji and My Beautiful Man showed how distorted views of self-worth can drastically harm the people who love us.
Gems are everywhere. We just have to be willing to shuffle through some dirt to find them. Consider Love Syndrome III your dirt, but perhaps a Mame series will be your gem.
9 notes
·
View notes
this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.
good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.
sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.
so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.
one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.
4K notes
·
View notes
one of my favorite (/sarcastic but not really cuz its like funny idk) things in fandoms is when people make ocs or self inserts or 'x readers' being shipped with characters, but the oc/sona/reader is literally just another character from the source material.. its like youre shipping the characters but didnt want to admit it, so you made a kinsona and branded it as something else..
and its NEVER subtle, actually its super blatant every time and im always shocked when nobody points it out..
i have seen uncountable saiki k x readers where the description is like:
"saiki meets someone whose thoughts he cant read for the first time, and even though he doesnt trust her at first, she keeps proving that she is kind and has good intentions!" you mean nendo? reader is girl nendo?
"this time, he meets a girl whose thoughts honestly match up with her spoken words almost perfectly for the first time!" hairo. youre shipping saiki with girl hairo.
"saiki meets someone whose thoughts are too fast and jumbled to re-" ITS AKECHI, THATS AKECHI, ITS LITERALLY AKECHI.
"saiki meets someone whose just as immune to teruhashi as he is for the first and only tim-" this is hairo again, awe bae you secretly LOVE haisai ?!?
"saiki sees his old childhood friend for the first time in years after an incident caused them to be apart and then they fall in lov-" WHY DID YOU EVEN WRITE THIS AND NOT CALL IT SAIKECHI.
its even funnier when they say its like that characters little sister, but the way they write it is still literally just the character, like their personality, dialogue, even their relationship, is the same..
not all of them fit this exactly, but the ones that take a boy character and turn them into a girl oc to ship them with a boy, it reminds of how in equestria girls they couldnt make applejack and rarity endgame so they gave them boyfriends who looked IDENTICAL to each other.. thats what youre creating, guys, youre creating heterosexual rarijack.
212 notes
·
View notes
If I've said it once I'll say it again. I'd love to see Vander's memories of Silco run contradictory to Jinx's memories of him. Both their respective last moments with Silco should filter their other memories of him with bias.
Maybe Jinx's memory Silco would be slightly more whole, the sequences of events make more structural and logical sense. Maybe her memories are literally rosier in hue thanks to the pinkish glint of shimmer coloring the scene.
Meanwhile, years of torture and isolation have at best turned Warwick's memory into Swiss cheese. He can remember names and faces okay...ish, but the more it makes him angry (or just in a way he can't process) the more the memory distorts. Warwick remembers Silco, but he can't remember Silco young. He can give Silco an unscathed face, but he still adds lines of age because his most vivid memory of Silco was his last.
I want Silco to tell Jinx one thing in her memory, while Warwick's memory plays out a whole other sequence of events. But it's only fun if Silco's story in Jinx's memory is the one that makes more sense. No one is reliable narratir, still some people are more reliable than others.
Bonus points if Warwick's deteriorating memory reflects how trauma could affect Vi's own memory down the line.
28 notes
·
View notes
What's so fun about BruJay as a ship is Jason's sheer obsessive devotion to Bruce. Jason is possessive over Bruce, to the point he doesn't care about the deaths of others so long as he has Bruce's attention. A part of the UTRH arc this isn't talked about enough is that Bludhaven fucking explodes mid-way and Jason won't let Bruce see if Dick is alive.
batman (1940) #650
A lot of discussion about UTRH paints Jason as this anger-driven cold, calculating machine up against Bruce when it's so clear that his love for Bruce is what drives him at his root, even if he won't acknowledge it. He says it himself, he would've done anything if it was Bruce who'd died instead of him and his anger is rooted in that possessive devotion not being reciprocated.
batman (194) #650
BruJay as a ship always to be, to some level, unrequited. Even if Bruce loves Jason back in that way, he'll never be that obsessed with Jason. Jason will always view Bruce's love for Dick or Tim to be a distraction, proof that Bruce isn't dedicated enough to him. Jason has the need to always have Bruce's attention, even when it could come at the cost of Bruce's other loved ones. Something something cannibalism as a metaphor for love in how Jason wants to consume Bruce's whole existence. He can't let Bruce leave him again, can't let Bruce love or grieve anyone else. Forcing Bruce to choose between Jason and the Joker isn't just about confronting Jason's killer, it's about confronting the other person who exists as this duality with Bruce and consumes so much of Bruce's life. That's the role Jason wants to fill, calling himself Red Hood and forcing Bruce to look at what he's become. But still loving Bruce and wanting more than anything for Bruce to reciprocate that love in the way that Jason understands. I just think it's good soup and rife with Dynamics that are underexplored with them.
37 notes
·
View notes
I swear Perfect Propose is creating unhealthy expectations for ideal partners. Find yourself a partner who will:
Cook for you and feed you. 😭
Gently wipe your mouth for you because you eat like a slob. (I love this trope even though it's theoretically ridiculous.)
Carry your drunk ass home.
Wipe your tears with their shirt when you're having a breakdown.
When a slice of life jbl gets it right, they really hit it out of the park. This series is just the right combination of sweet and heartbreaking. I desperately want Kai and Hiro to find their self-worth and love themselves more. I want to wrap them both in flannel blankets and hug them.
58 notes
·
View notes
Heya, I know your inbox is overflowing so you don't have to answer this immediately, just whenever you feel like it, take care of yourself first 💙
Any head canons about when Etho and Cleo were dating?
HaTO!Cletho weren't exactly the extremely lovey dovey type of couple, but definitely the type of couple that trusted each other enough to be dependent on the other when they otherwise can't be with other people. Being the few people that had to strengthen themselves to get through everything before, during, and after the Titan War without too much help, they're always restless and felt the responsiblity to always be the strongest as the eldests. They saw each other as one of the few solaces in a world whose demise is dependent on their choices and actions.
They definitely had sessions where they both just needed to sneak out of curfew to take a breather by the forest. Mayhaps always ended with just them on the dirt quietly looking at the stars, not feeling the need to be too alert because they're confident the other cares enough to not let anything happen to them.
To public view, they were definitely the couple to bicker and argue though (affectionately)
Their break up era would've been nasty as hell. It could probably count as the second Titan war. Their making up era would've been the sunshine after the summer storm.
23 notes
·
View notes