Eternal Love of Drama

Yes indeed. And the way that history and politics and ethics are even taught is of no benefit to anyone in the population whatsoever

But as we can see that experience of only a few days on red note has been the beginning of consciousness for many Americans including whites who are recognising who they real enemies are - not minorities, not single mothers, not immigrants, not other poor people, which I hope will be a serious turning point for everyone

I saw that.

Education in the US has always been severely Censored and everything to maintain delusion fed to them like pre-digested pablum in media made for 4th grade level cognition.

That’s why when you come on any Chinese BL page here you see the evidence of rampant ignorance and a head full of propaganda to the extent banning CRT and feminism was entirely superfluous but I guess there was nothing left to ban

It took well educated socialists on red note who were in their right minds because they weren’t suffering from depression, depression drugs, homelessness, toxic individualism, loneliness and bad nutrition, to educate the people in the “land of the free” that their freedom was not only illusory but was their prison.

Long May it continue til Americans get the determination to fight for a more humane existence

Yes the impolite fascist is creating waves but he is also calling attention to the ways the polite fascists have made it possible for Americans to be at this juncture

I hope it will start a conversation about how those initiatives were captured by elites and did not stem the direction of the flow of poverty, homelessness, mass incarceration, mass indebtedness among the people these initiatives were purported to help.

We in the economic development field always say a policy for the poor is a poor policy. I hope the conversation about universal policies and about socialism that has already started with Americans discovering the red note app will get Americans to stop believing that symbolic measures are going to be their salvation even individually and that they need to demand change in material ways that they can touch and feel in their lives and witness happening to everyone else around them. This is civilisation

Thank you for this review. It was very useful to see it through the eyes of someone else who enjoyed it and likely understood it more than I did.

I found the trauma excessive (a style reminiscent of the director/writer of Your Name Engraved Herein) and the idea of the bedridden, elderly, impoverished lady suddenly metamorphosing into this level of demonic at this particular stage in her life a bit far-fetched.

I do understand what they were trying to do. I just couldn’t prevail for the long haul

If you mean for facts on Taiwan Province history and politics I can reccomend some accounts I follow on Twitter for daily updates:
@CarlZha
@Jingjing_Li
@qiaocollective
@nellodee
@notXiangyu
@RebeccaYChan
@AndyBxxx

I don’t think KJ Noh is on Twitter but here is a good spoken summary on Taiwan https://youtu.be/FgmNPcdqloo?si=wXT_UoIYF7w8bXpd

For resources the Qiao Collective has a website with history, Constitutional information and United Nations documents and also documents China specifically made the US Government sign declaring they also know what country Taiwan Province is part of (lol) https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/taiwan

And finally some documentaries on the Chinese Civil War which the KMT lost before running away to hide on Taiwan Island massacring many indigenous and other residents before subduing the population there during decades of authoritarian dictatorships with the help of the US
https://youtu.be/oZmGmQM2_pc?si=5ZOy7nPBfL8oV82u

https://youtu.be/g7XkFaGFxLo?si=kYcZC2_byPVNWI4w

Thanks I’ll take and look at it

I think IPYTM has very different politics from ITSAY, certainly the writer does, and the narrative was closer to traditional BL logics. Also the director does not seem to understand the audience he’s trying to exploit. As a community of mostly bottoms 😀 we do not take lightly to cheating, we don’t find it sexy or adding spice to life. We see it as an assault to the dignity of the people in the relationship, something that profoundly threatens the viability of that relationship into the future, something we do not easily overcome, and most of all as an egregious abuse of power which would’ve been built on a long line of other transgressions. We are not our grandmas.

Yes I noted before I left Thorns was going to back the moral of the story into a liberal homonormative narrative that is - everything that’s wrong with gay men in Thailand can be solved by gay marriage and I really roll my eyes every time they wheel this out. It’s part of the westernisation and consequently the radical De-Politicisation of Thai BL that is killing it because all of our solutions have to end in that one place where we know from data and experiences in the countries that have had gay marriage longest that is not true. There was a time Thai BL actually used to zero in on issues around masculinity, gendered power relations and even class; now these things are either obliterated or trivialised and used as aesthetic‘s, rendering them useless in terms of the meaning and weight they carry in the narrative. I really don’t like this because it kills the transformational potential of BL.

I think you’re one of the few people in BL fandom that can get it when I say individualistic set-asides are not the solution to classed oppression. We only have to look today at the rapidity of DEI scrapping by Trump which would have been much more difficult if this was a universal right, such as of all people in the country to form family unions etc, of which the Cuban Family Law is the world-beating set of constitutionally enshrined social equality provisions. But then I guess that would force them to look at and confront the neoliberal dystopia that the vast majority of Thail people and of course disproportionately LGBT people, are actually living in that will not be assuaged by them being married (don’t get me started on Spare Me Your Mercies).

A bit complicated to discuss here but it seems like the narrative imagination in BL storytelling has become depressingly narrower and more Conservative instead of more progressive and expansive, as more corporate Capital has come into the Thai industry and controls every aspect of its messaging

Honestly I couldn’t finish PoTs I didn’t like that Director’s last work, IPYTM, in fact I hated it. He seems to have lost the BL plot but still wants to mine the Bl audiences.

To be fair this movie was not BL per se but I don’t think I like where he’s going with his work; seems very similar to the Your Name Engraved Herein. Not a fan of using trauma in queer media in that way. Sorry. What did you think?

Haa I don’t blame you. The Butler actors are good but the director’s/writers politics are another matter altogether

I meant an Olympics of boasting superiority about queer media (with no substance to back it up) but I also agree on the imperial attacks since 1917. Long live the revolution and long live Russia!

Sad to see the Banderites and the Stay Behind Nazis forces still wreaking havoc on Eurasian self determination after all this time. They’re working on undermining Slovakia, Georgia and Serbia as we speak.

Yes congrats to the great Cuban Comrades on having the distinction of the most Gold meddled, and therefore the most outstanding Olympic athlete of all time - Mijain Lopez! I do hope they drop the monstrosity of terrorism designation against Cuba. One of my mentors is an Ambassador there so I try to keep on top of the developments there. We were on an amazing holiday there a while back and enjoyed memorable dinners at the Grand Hotel

I will certainly put Marahuyo Project on my list. I adored GameBoys (1) and was lucky enough to watch it Live in the golden era of Filipino BL.

I am not a great fan of Wuxia myself, in fact I actively avoid it but I’m glad someone made me persist with NiF and while I have enjoyed many others, this one is the grandfather of Danmei adaptation. K&H and WoF are Republican Era dramas which I do enjoy for the intense politics and these two have a lot of heart stopping action too but the romance is the very best and very clear.

We are aligned on Anti Reset. Butler started well with a good premise but is not the same calibre. Since this is the second one on the same theme I would’ve preferred that the ending would not have the boy mating with a robot (the mating in Ep 4 had some other problems esp the “humour” the morning after). I feel that that is not a healthy ending. I was ok with it the first time, because the storytelling was a lot better and tighter and the narrative was coherent, but I think twice in a row is sending quite the wrong message.

This is quite an important point and I find myself making this same one quite a few times a year. The way people carry on about Chinese censorship of queer media one would not believe it was only in the last few decades that places like the United States and the United Kingdom were broadcasting explicit LGBT stories that weren’t just about AIDS and included romance, on public television.

And with all that superiority Olympics they still don’t have even one single uncensored The Untamed in the west. In the land of the free and the home of the brave. Only China did that, and it is still only China that will spend many multiples of millions of dollars more than any of the other BL industry in Asia and certainly than the west in bringing epic queer stories - kisses or not, to the screen. Yet whingers write off the entire country as “homophobic”.

This is nonsense and yes entirely ignorant because of politicised propaganda obscuring the extensive military and imperialist propaganda in western media that they are simply oblivious of

Yes I agree as I said I think they are young and lack discernment as well as cultural sensitivity so I understand them. One day they will be able to win eir vistas and also support queer creators who have to do extra to get brilliant work out even if not in ideal circumstances.

I also think I am a special fan of mafia BL - my favourite of all time is a Chinese BL called Killer and Healer. I really enjoyed History 3:Trapped before that. Have you watched Nirvana In Fire? If you like pithy, adult epic homoerotic, cerebral, ancient wuxia dramas you might like this one. I always think of Nirvana In Fire as what Game of Thrones wanted to be but failed.

I’m enjoying Way Home but haven’t had a chance to see Turn Back This Time as finishing up some overhangs from last year. Loved, loved, loved Blue Canvas of Youthful days - just perfection. From Taiwan I quite liked Anti Reset. Heard some Filipino mutuals talk about Marahuyo on Twitter but had been avoiding due to the quality drought there. Will put it on my list. Xie xie ni.

Oh I mustn’t leave without checking if you’ve seen War of Faith with Wang Yibo and Wang Yang; that is Yibo’s finest work yet and the chemistry for the Wang/Wang ship is just 🔥🔥🔥 - highly reccomend a drop-everything-else-and-watch this one 😄

It was a lovely GL. Everything was gorgeous to look at and to be immersed in.

I enjoyed it immensely every episode and even though it started light and silly, it got heavy and emotional near the end in the right ways and ended happily.

I also happily recommend 👌

@ariel alba Thank you for this round up of Chinese queer Cinema developments. I 100% agree. I just finished watching Silent Sparks and really believe that one will be in awards territory on the mainland. I was trying to remember the queer cinema platform, I heard about elsewhere, and could not summon the name - Queerpanorama. Xie xie ni

I’m also very impressed with what mainland creators are managing to do despite a small obstacle course and is even more impressive when you compare it with Bill productions coming out of other countries which faced much fewer restrictions yet still turn out dozens of Series that no one can finish

Please don’t take the rampant Sinophobia and wilful ignorance on here too seriously. I think many of them are young, not exposed and just don’t like to read so therefore their analytical skills are not impressive.

I’m very interested in your other threads, and I will find time to read through them and take note of some of the platforms and titles that you have so generously taken the time to suggest

I’m loving this. Cute, funny and relaxing even the music

A nice short GL romcom. We don’t get many like this 😍

This is a simply beautiful and moving series of stories all eloquently told.

Of struggle, humility, love, sacrifice and of course JOY!

I teared up many times and would recommend to others for instant reconnection to what it means to be human, across all our differences and the various ways we come to be instilled with national pride and hope for humanity

Stories we hardly get to see in the west and all from the point of view of the little woman, man and child of China. Long live 🤛

@ManiChan Imagine because their heads are full of nothing but air they think we suffer the same problem too 😅


INSANE! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

How about telling fan cops when they’re insane?

@Wisteria44 Then as a woman you should be the 1st to acknowledge it is highly misogynistic for a person of any sex or sexuality to be harassing women, in a women’s space, to police women’s choices, and even their very thoughts

Glad we’re on the same page 👍🏼

Ok that’s good to know ✌️