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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) dir. Francis Ford Coppola

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#A MOOD

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In The Garden: Latest Gardening Tools & Accessories - Julia Berolzheimer

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HE HONGSHAN 何泓姗 | The Glory Fanmeeting Event

He Hongshan: more photos here drama promotion: more photos here

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@thedayaftereveryday

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Babka

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might seem like a harmless quirk but once you start typing in exclusively lowercase you can never capitalize anything again outside the designated midsentence Gay Emphasis Zones or anyone following you for longer than a week will think you’re about to commit murder

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The most terrifying monster isn’t the one under the bed—it’s the one the protagonist becomes to survive. Let them stare into the mirror and flinch at what stares back.

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Nyaduola Gabriel and Rejoice Chuol by Olivier Kervern for Holiday Magazine October 2023

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I saw a comment on MDL about be loved in house along the lines of "can we talk about how the seme used to be a uke". I kind of automatically cringed but I know you use these terms in your analysis so thoughts?

Defining Seme/Uke

I tend to use seme/uke because I come from reading yaoi in the early 00s.

I like to consider them the following:

seme: the active pursuer in the narrative (from the original attacker meaning of the word)

uke: the passive resistor in the narrative (defender)

This means I think of them as archetypes (useful only when talking about fiction, not useful when talking about real life). It's about who is in CONTROL of the relationship's story.

As opposed to:

top/bottom/verse: terms which come from the gay/queer community and pertain to sexual preference and (should) have nothing to do with narrative power dynamics. To be crass top/bottom is about who gets penetrated. It's referencing sexual position and physical acts, not characterization or narrative. The bottom is NOT the weak one or the girl. For heavens sake!

Dom/sub/switch: terms which come from the kink community and pertain to the power dynamics of a relationship, dominant vs submissive, (which may include the physical but doesn't have to).

I think casual use of seme/uke as conflated with top/bottom is a PROBLEM with both these narratives and the discussion around them. (I recognize that this originates in yaoi.) Mainly because het consumers conflate (egregiously & incorrectly) top with male/masculine and bottom with female/feminine.

As a sex worker friend of mine once said, anyone who thinks the person getting penetrated can't be completely in charge has never been with a Domme.

For me the language around D/s actually better correlates to seme/uke under the context of modern BL. (For the record I belong to both the queer and kink communities.)

I use seme/uke because it is the established term for BL same sex romantic pairings under the context of narrative analysis. (Using hero/hero would get confusing, for example.)

Be Loved In House: I Do, is there a Seme/uke shift?

In thinking of the three characters ShiLei/YuZhen/ZiTong solely in terms of who is pursuing whom, who makes the first call in terms of declarations and physical touch, who seems to be more in charge of the relationship etc. AKA: who is active, then:

ZiTong = former seme of

YuZhen = current seme of

ShiLei = uke of this narrative

BUT I think BLIHID's main couple has a REALLY weak seme/uke dynamic from the get go. ShiLei does a lot of active pursuit, also he's very self actualized. He is only in the submissive position (story wise) because he is grappling with identity and not yet comfortable (or aware of) liking a guy. Also as a BL, this story needs him to Tsundere uke. YuZhen is coded gay from the start, which means story-wise that he's in the relationship's emotional power position because he knows what he his and what he wants, damaged though he might be.

I talk about Taiwan specializing in a weak seme/uke dynamic and this is part of it. Their BL is a lot more: gay romance using BL tropes in order to communicate a narrative. (But they're also grappling with a lot of left over BL taboo baggage from Chinese and Japanese BL pre 2016.) And because Taiwanese BL does high heat, top/bottom often comes into play too. (HIStory series) So with Taiwanese BL in particular seme/top/dom and uke/bottom/sub gets horribly confused and conflated in watchers, particularly those who aren’t queer (or for that matter Taiwanese) themselves. Or who thoughtlessly/passively consume BL mostly for the titillation of it.

Speaking in terms of kink, ShiLei and ZiTong have way more dominant personalities. YuShen clearly has a type so far as personality is concerned. He likes his men bossy. But I would say with YuShen+ShiLei there is no D/s component.

Speaking in terms of sexual, I'd guess they're all verse, or maybe not into penetration (common in the gay community because, guess what, sex doesn't have to be about one person sticking genitalia into another. I KNOW straight boys, I'm blowing your mind right now.) Honestly who knows? ShiLei is probably letting YuShen lead in their first encounter because YuShen is more experienced, who knows if that's their long term preference. We never saw ZiTong and YuShen together and I have personally lost count of the number of agro bossy boys who turn that shit off in bed and become pillow princesses - so who knows what ZiTong likes.

Taiwan Versus the World

All countries that produce BL have some struggles around seme/uke. Here’s more on Taiwan’s relationship to these archetypes. 

Incidentally Taiwan likes a weak seme/uke with their het romances too. Like Japan they enjoy exploring taboo and power dynamics (older woman/younger man, or step-siblings for example).

Thailand: mostly likes a strong seme/uke dynamic in their BL, fetishizes height differences, conflates seme with top and uke with bottom, but mostly avoids confusing this with masculine/feminine. I think this last is partly because they have a pretty active third gender concept in Thailand around culture and language.

The Philippines seems to hover somewhere between Taiwan and Thailand in how seme/uke meets queer meets kink. One of the reasons I love My Day the series SO MUCH is there is no seme/uke dynamic at all. But it's open season there right now, none of us have any idea what direction Pinoy BL is headed in, and they clearly don't either.

Japan: is holding on to their seme/uke roots for their BL (such as it is now, which is very little) and makes no effort to reconcile that with modern queer practices, language, or culture. Japan never caves though. They have cinematic styles they settle into and then stick with. When I talk about their BL as "old school" this is what I mean. Given is airing right now and seriously could have been produced in 2010 and no one would be surprised. (Maybe the hair is a little better now. But only a little.) That said, if you watch their queer cinematic not-BL stuff like Kinou Nani Tabeta? or His the movie seme/uke is a non-starter.

Korea: is an interesting case because K-dramas (like K-pop is with music) borrow narrative tools ruthlessly from anything that works well, intentionally catering to an international consumer, and serving their point of view packaged to market. They are clever and intentional with their BL. If strong seme/uke is popular, that's what they'll serve us. If it's not, they'll give us something else. They are feeling out the audience right now with Light On Me. Light On Me is basically a perfect combination of traditional BL tropes as a K-Drama romance. (Honestly it's like someone decided we needed Seven Days + True Beauty, and THEY WERE RIGHT.)

If you watch K-drama het romances they often have a very strong seme/uke dynamic just imposed on man/woman. Korea likes a romance where one party is protector. A lot of their language around love is also around protection/care/responsibility (and not the mutual kind, it's very D/s), the woman waiting for the man to make the first move, etc... this corresponds comfortably to seme/uke so I would expect Korea to like (and lean into) the seme/uke dynamic as they produce more BL. (If they continue to do so.)

Anyway it's a very long way of saying that like all things narrative and language seme/uke is ever shifting and evolving and when applied to BL reflects the culture of the producing country and it's taste in romance as well. 

BL couples where there is no established seme/uke dynamic:

Hsia YuHao & Qiu ZiXuan in HIStory 2: Crossing the Line - Taiwan

Du & Phuc in Hay Rival, I LOVE YOU (somewhat less so in Monster in Law) - Taiwan

Win & Tops in Ingredients - Thai

Keen & Tum in A Chance at Love - Thai

Ace & Sky in My Day - Pinoy

Ram & King in My Engineer - Thai

Tee & Mork in My Tee - Thai

Mitsuomi Kozuka & Yamato Kumai in Restart After Come Back Home - Japan

Ai & Ni in Tonhon Chonlatee - Thai

In Soo and Min Sung in Wish You - Korea

Further reading?

MORE seme/uke discussion including some coaching from P’Absolute on your sex life... as I atempt to answer the question: How do they determine who will be the Seme or Uke? 

Heat & Angst in BL + Terms Explained 

Healthiest Depictions of Uke in Thai BL 

Healthiest Depictions of Seme in Thai BL 

Visual tropes that when executed in a BL tend to always favor either the seme or the uke

How staggered couple framing can be used to emphasize or subvert semi/uke in cinema. 

(source) 

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(trying to find a new way to get mad about sabrina carpenter) that's not even how you walk a dog. you hold their leash. not a big handful of their fur

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i can’t stand “it’s not that deep” attitudes like even if it really really isn’t that deep just PLAY WITH ME. just fucking PLAY. have a meaningless but deep analytical conversation with me. just like think about shit for fun. does anyone else like to think about stuff for fun. it’s so lonely

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This could’ve been such a good Baihe/GL drama, and yet…

THE GLORY 雁回时 (2025) dir. Yang Long | Ep. 10 Hanyan & Chai Jing