#TheWayIWantedAFemmeFemmEndgameAndNotAnotherRelentlesslyDullM4M

[blbeloved]

UPDATE TO GELBOYS FINALE THOUGHTS

So we’re to believe it’s credible that the most sensible, ethically clear-headed and self-aware person in GelBoys has several times told Bua he doesn’t like him like that, even to the point of cruelly rejecting his ethnicity and physical looks when he knows how emotionally fragile Bua is, because he actually loves Bua all along and really only liked F4M as an overly concerned friend?

A F4M who told him at every turn what he feels for Chain he has never felt for someone he views only as a best mate, and with utmost finality that if another man appears on the horizon (even the unsafe Chian) he’d be grasping that corrosive brass ring first - is the reason Baabin has been rejecting Bua all along?

These incredible inconsistencies are clearly not about being teenagers; it is the conservative adult creators who’re being too immature to go where their original, searing rendition of gay male intimacy in late capitalism, would logically lead the narrative. The characters might all still have ended up in these pairings, but for the creators to present these outcomes as neutral or even romantic given their journey there, is a huge red flag.

This makes the ending of GelBoys one that inspires despair rather than hope, a defining characteristic of great BL narrative including those with “bad endings”.

This series has been triggering for many people, some of whom wrote it off immediately because the discomfort was so personal, for reasons previously stated (https://www.tumblr.com/blbeloved/778646173333471232/gelboys-ep-6-musings-the-feminist-ethic-of-care). Less because it reminded them of their painful teenage coming of age histories, and more because this rocky emotional context is still the reality of too many adults of any gender who have sex with men.

It’s standard operating procedure for how straight men deal with women with low self esteem. After years of stringing along, emotional torture, and assaults to their dignity they turn up out the blue when the woman is at her lowest, with flowers and a ring. The woman crying and accepting this arrangement on a more permanent basis is celebrated throughout the entire culture as “love” but people with life experience and critical consciousness read it as TRAUMA.

The prospective husbands just don’t typically pledge to continue the sadistic neglect in a patently unequal relationship going forward. These relationships last no longer than a snowcone unless one of the CP consistently sublimates their desires to conform to the preferences of the more-valued partner which is how women have typically “solved” this problem.

When you hear people talk about situationships eventually becoming relationships this is overwhelming the dynamic they’re celebrating.

These characters moved me profoundly because I deal with adults who suffer from these ongoing wounds every day.

We know how Chian treated Bua when he was his love interest; he has at no time given F4M the same care, respect and deep understanding of his needs - spoken or unspoken, that he gave to Bua even as Bua treated their friendship as instrumental to his own psychic wants for validation from Strangers.

In the same way, we didn’t get to see Baabin so much as unwittingly show love to Bua, only empathy, concern and of course care, even as a casual acquaintance in close proximity to someone else suffering. Bua, for his part, has not shown Baa anything remotely like a romantic inclination (being horny together does not equal love), up to the Chian/Fou4Mod/Baa confrontation scene.

Ep 7 therefore fails to make either coupling a convincing endgame because a coherent scaffolding to anchor those particular outcomes within a romance logic does not exist in the first place. There is disquiet and consternation among viewers because the set-up was actually quite immaculately constructed but the cynical ending obliterated that promise like a sandcastle in high tide.

I used to be excited that a Fou4Mod/Chian endgame would obviously mean a S2 because it acknowledges the most dangerous conflict has only now started - now I’m not sure if I would want to see it given the political reversal the creators instigated in Ep 7, undoing the scorchingly realistic commentary on masculinity, alienation and late capitalism GelBoys seemed to be giving in Episodes 1-6.