RainbowWhalien52

A promising yet unfulfilled journey

Prior to troubling the waters with my critique, I would be remiss not to honor the quiet revolution unfolding on screen. Ahn Ji Ho and Lee Sang Jun, rising stars in Korean cinema, have chosen paths less traveled. They assumed the personae of those whose affections stand in defiance of the heterosexist orthodoxy, and in doing so, they performed resistance. Others in the public eye might be moved to follow so commendable an example

The interplay between Ji Ho (Hee Su) and Sang Jun (Seung Won) is, without a shadow of a doubt, endearing. Sang Jun (Seung Won) is a reticent and emotionally guarded suitor, yearning to draw closer to Ji Ho (Hee Su). True to the source material, the glances that linger just beyond propriety, the verbal exchanges, and the physical proximities that tremble with implication accumulate with intentionality and culminate in a long-withheld romantic confession

Seung Won: "I don't like Ji Yu"
Hee Su: "Why did you lie?"
Seung Won: "Because I wanted to keep hanging out with you" (chapters 42-43)
A screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/7ElUfSX

Drama Seung Won, too, nudges drama Hee Su to acknowledge his true feelings and discover the solace and happiness that await him in drama Seung Won's arms

Complementing Ji Ho (Hee Su) and Sang Jun (Seung Won)'s chemistry, the adaptation gains narrative sophistication through drama Hee Su's empathetic disposition. This is exemplified in the first episode (5:10-7:04), where he lends an impartial ear to a woman's self-exploration of same-sex desire/introspective reckoning with her attraction toward another woman. He invites us into a space of uncoerced emotional authenticity

Now, it is conceivable that my observation might provoke dissent; however, I am disengaged by a dissonance between the performers' mature appearances and the adolescent roles they enact. Their mature appearances suggest individuals well into their late twenties, if not beyond. The collision of adult identity with the stylized "immaturity" of high school/teenage tropes generates a dissonance that is, for me, disruptive to the suspension of disbelief. A more coherent and plausible alternative might have been to transpose the setting into a university or workplace

I can be lenient with these matters. What troubles me is the pacing and the straightwashing of the source material to cater to the squeamishness of homophobic audiences wary of encountering too many rainbows on their screens. The central gay relationship spends the bulk of its runtime vying for visibility and relevance against the privileged "straight" script that overshadows it in both duration and execution. "Straightness" centers the stage by force, reasserting its dominance and softening the gayness for broader consumption. It has no rightful place here

The source material refrains from constructing a non-platonic Chan Yeong x Ji Yu storyline. To fabricate one where none exists, and to do so by excising the secondary gay pairing of Sun Woo and Yoo Dahm, is a move I find dishonest and regressive. A screenshot of Sun Woo and Yoo Dahm from chapter 56: https://imgur.com/a/OInfwbQ

How mind-boggling it is that our same-sex ships/pairings are condemned as corrosive to friendships, while society destroys opposite-sex friendships by defaulting to non-platonic arcs with nary a consequence

Some might rationalize the excision of the secondary gay couple by appealing to their placement in the second season. It is a dubious, flimsy excuse at best. Being classmates and friends, Hee Su is acquainted with the secondary gay couple. Their early introduction could have contributed to the exploration of identity, intimacy, or social belonging and accelerated Hee Su's journey toward self-acceptance. Sun Woo and Yoo Dahm need not have been "useless" or "irrelevant"

Timelines are malleable. The screenwriters were afforded the opportunity to recalibrate the timeline of the source material/fine-tune the sequence of events in order to optimize the seamless integration of two seasons into a compact drama format. Nevertheless, their creativity was not exercised in service of non-straight visibility. They delegitimized non-straight modes of subjectivity and relegated them to an inferior, irrelevant, or disruptive status

Those reading might pose the question, "are you a hater?" To which I will respond in the negative. Neither animosity nor resentment informs my evaluation

My contention is that preserving one of the two gay pairings is not a sufficient or ambitious act of fidelity. It is, in fact, justified for audiences to experience discomfort when confronted with deviations from the source material. The phenomenon is not unprecedented. Public discourse surrounding the cinematic reimaginings of "The Little Mermaid" (2023) and "Snow White" (2025) demonstrated how even superficial modifications precipitate public disapproval. By parallel reasoning, it follows that modifications to gay source materials would precipitate scrutiny and disapproval

Questioning the producers' call to accommodate societal prejudices against gay-centered narratives does not amount to prejudice or -phobia. The public dissemination of a creative or intellectual work instigates a dynamic feedback mechanism, wherein audience reception, positive or negative, re-enters the production process and compels producers to adapt to the cultural climate and evolve or risk obsolescence

I do appreciate the effort invested in the part-BL/part-gay adaptation. Moving forward, I would love to see BLs exclusive in focus that center and honor gay love without compromise or dilution

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Moments of brilliance, buried in mediocrity

I approached "Love in the Big City" with a heart eager and guarded, as one who steps into a garden rumoured to bloom with rare flowers, dreading the thorns beneath. And indeed, my patience soon withered/waned under its oppressive sorrow and despair. A suffocating pall of misery clung to the gay characters. The very air seemed heavy and coagulated. And yet, I cannot, in good conscience, deny the actors their due. Their performances were of such distinction, such disciplined passion, that they elevated the poor script

Of those who graced the stage/screen, Nam Yoon Su did shine with a peculiar radiance. His readiness to partake, without the least restraint of feigned modesty or hesitation, in the delicate and tender manifestations of carnal affection between men, was an uprising against the profane doctrine of homophobia, gnawing ever at the fabric of society. Each kiss, each quivering proximity, was a venture into the "forbidden" and a courageous unveiling of a man's innermost self before another. Stunned I stood, for here were men, yielding mutually and entering the blessed harmony where desire is met with desire, or flame answers flame. Few were the sights that could rival the fair and beautiful scene

Having paid homage to the commendable virtues, I must, with sober and judicious mind, now dissect the manifold imperfections of "Love in the Big City." The narrative faltered at its threshold. Therein, a "straight" identifying woman, she whose eyes roved with lecherous and unbecoming intent on men, trespassed into the charged social space of a gay bar/club, a haven purposed for the free and boundless flowering of same-sex desire (31:07 of episode 1). This is no mere lapse in judgment, but a flagrant assault on the sanctity of single-sex spaces

What cause had the authors and producers for the unceremonious reference to HIV? HIV is not divine chastisement or a gay disease. The military doctor's diagnosis presumed a manner of transmission he himself deemed improbable. "Are you a top or a bottom? The truth is, the chances of spreading HIV to a sex partner are low" (39:50 of episode 5). Whence we may conclude that to afflict a gay character with the blight of HIV, while all else in his life proceeds unimpeded by the ravages of the disease, notwithstanding its low transmissibility or the accessibility of "curative" measures, is to commit an injustice altogether superficial, contrived to stir the blood of the audience and cast aspersion on the inclinations of gay men

Methinks it a wearying contrivance that "straight" identifying women are the sole passage through which the lives of gay men are revealed. A stranger to the sting of homophobia befriended a gay man and claimed the right to utter his sorrows. Is his voice feeble? Can it not speak for itself? Or is it that the ears of society are closed to the truth, unless it be spoken by one it takes to be "safe" and unthreatening to the established order? Be that as it may, the time is ripe for gay men and gay women to gather in brotherly and sisterly concord and recount the trials and joys of their lived experiences. They could find in one another a steadfast, compassionate friend

Evermore were the gay characters denied the solace of a blissful end. I marvel not. From the dawn of civilization, gay existence has been granted provisional legibility within the public sphere insofar as it enacts its own affective erasure: the disavowal of collective joy/happiness, the desexualization and deradicalization of physical intimacy, the proscription of a viable, enduring future

There is an urgent need for narratives in which gay joy/happiness is the norm, however much they strain against the limits of the prevailing regime of plausibility. It is in their defiance of said plausibility that we can affirm the radical banality of gay flourishing, a mode of being so simple and unremarkable in its presence that it precedes the demand for justification

TL;DR I have, after deliberation, settled on a score of 6/10

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Gay subtext meets historical drama

"She already knows how to make women fall for her without consciously thinking about it ..." (episode 6, 17:43)
"I never knew those two [women] could have such chemistry, they are bringing out the best in each other" (episode 6, 51:47)

The stage of "Jeong Nyeon" is no common theatre. A theatre it is where women reign supreme and assume a duality. In their duality, they are both the subject and object of romantic contemplation, the lover and the beloved, the wooer and the wooed. They circle one another, and, unawares, trace the contours of homoerotic tension that hums beneath gesture and glance

The removal of Kwon Bu Yong and the life she shared with Jeong Nyeon is a cowardly bow to societal prejudice. Nevertheless, the production is worthy of acclaim for its deliberate creation of a homosocial sphere in which same-sex longings find fertile ground

"The stars that once graced the [female] gukgeuk stage went on to continue their paths as artists, pansori singers, outdoor theatre performers, or even film actors. They have merely dispersed, not disappeared, and they will shine on in the vast night" (episode 12, 1:14:12)

That the curtain has fallen on Maeran's story need not spell the end for female gukgeuk. The genre deserves to rise from the ashes, and girls/women should have the chance to soar on its stage again

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A little light in the dark

Misfortune, of late, has been my sole companion, and I, wearied to the bone, did long for any fleeting solace to dull the ache within. It was then that "Duang with You" entered my life, as if summoned by fate's own hand to mend what the cruel world had torn asunder

Within the unfolding of each episode, I found my solace. And as the narrative progressed, so too did my understanding of TeeTeePor's genuine love and devotion. A fire smoldered between the two men, you see. Equal they stood, and together they passed through the corridors of passion. They had no use for the coarse mechanics of words, when they were taught a nobler language: the silent script of stolen glances, the electric grace of fingertips tracing sonnets upon bare flesh, and the solemn vow of kisses laid with pious care on willing lips that answered in kind. So precious was their union, that I could not but rejoice alongside them at their joyous culmination

I am grateful to TeeTeePor and the production team, whose enlightened minds and genius have conjured a work of art both humane and restorative. They have left an enduring impression on me and the world of storytelling, and for this, I thank them heartily

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A critical look at "Kpop Demon Hunters"

Narratively fractured and creatively barren, "Kpop Demon Hunters" reassembles genre conventions into a spectacle of commodified affect, where the promise of cosmic struggle is subsumed by performative decadence. Consider the hunters who, paralyzed by lust, pervert the moral architecture of their sacred duty and salivate over the demons they are sworn to vanquish

The movie incriminates itself through the imposition of non-platonic paradigms on male-female idol dynamics and the transfiguration of malevolent entities into archetypes of desire or victims of circumstance. Among the demons, Jinu being a salient example, many owe their damnation to a consistent disregard for the welfare of others. They have forsaken their familial bonds in pursuit of self-preservation and manipulated the truth to cultivate a favorable self-image

Rumi: "I know your story. You were a good person, and you still are"
Jinu: "I lied to you. I made a deal with Gwi-Ma to get myself out of that miserable life. I left my family alone while I slept on silk sheets in the palace with my belly full every night. I left them" (1:9:50)

Having condemned his family to destitution and starvation so that he might live in safety, Jinu endures punishment in the afterlife. Why would we mourn his suffering? No amount of retrospective remorse can rewrite history or nullify the ethical transgressions he committed

To forgive, or not to forgive? This is not a question posed to courts or the public, but a war waged behind closed doors and in the chambers of the wounded heart. Should Jinu's family, the aggrieved parties, extend forgiveness, it would be an act of courage and a near-divine suspension of justified anger. Should they withhold forgiveness, it would be a dignified reclamation of agency, a solemn tribute to what was lost, and a refusal to be coerced into premature reconciliation by societal or doctrinal demands. However, they could very well have departed to heaven. We are left with no clarity on where they stand in the matter

The story still performs a psychological sleight of hand. It acknowledges the demons' past atrocities only to repress their significance. The audience is conditioned to internalize a distorted moral hierarchy that valorizes temporary catharsis over justice, and conditional empathy over accountability. "They didn't deserve it," they would insist. The truth is, the demons in question are not misunderstood or fallen angels whose small errors brought about their condemnation

Rumi: "If this is the Honmoon I'm supposed to protect, I'm glad to see it destroyed" (1:14:42)

Rumi, who seconds ago endorsed the destruction of Honmoon, appears at the Saja Boys' concert with a newfound determination to protect it. Her abrupt shift in sentiment and subsequent behavior remain unexamined, to the detriment of character believability and emotional payoff

"Kpop Demon Hunters" suffers from a systemic breakdown across all creative domains. The characters, the dialogues, the songs. They dissipate into mediocrity

A critical divergence in reception has emerged regarding the songs, with fans asserting their qualitative superiority over the works of established Kpop groups. This position is one I do not share. Established Kpop groups, BTS, Stray Kids, ATEEZ, MAMAMOO, ITZY, FIFTY FIFTY, etc, have released songs characterized by melodic sophistication and lyrical depth. They are amenable to repeated, ritualistic listening. On the contrary, the songs from "Kpop Demon Hunters" are intolerable and unbearable to listen to beyond a single auditory exposure

Measured against the refined standards set by established Kpop groups, I believe the widespread popularity of "Kpop Demon Hunters" is disproportionate to its merits

TL;DR On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the movie a 2

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Certain tropes are irreconcilable with the ethical parameters of fiction: the omegaverse edition

It is, alas, a most grievous and lamentable truth of our age that omegaverse, this fantastical contagion of pseudoscientific absurdity and regressive social constructs, has insinuated itself into the heart of modern storytelling. It spreads unseen, infecting the printed pages of books, the fevered scribblings of fanfiction, the illustrated panels of comics, and the staged passions of dramas with its delusions of dominance and submission or morbid obsessions with pregnancy. Vast sums of money and countless hours of human endeavor are lavished upon its propagation, whilst BL/gay works of true merit are suppressed by censorious hands and condemned to wither in the dim corners of public consciousness

Though my heart swears fealty to BL/gay narratives, it rises in rebellion at the mere invocation of "futanari" and its progeny, gender bender and omegaverse chief among them. These, I maintain, are inimical to the values I hold sacred, and provoke in me a persistent discontent for four irrefragable reasons:
1. Their homophobia,
2. Their exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics,
3. Their dogged adherence to a pro-birth ideology, and
4. Their blasphemous misbranding as BL or gay content

I will give a quick rundown of my reasoning

*The homophobia*
-2 points

Society has deified procreation. It kneels before the cradle as before an altar, not to adore the life within, but to venerate the future cogs and pistons that life will supply to the great engine of commerce and control. A child is a promise of continuity; of goods consumed, of taxes paid, of orders obeyed. Therefore are the chaste, unfruitful same-sex unions held in contempt or branded with infamy. By the sovereign decree of nature, and save that the body be preserved from the hubristic touch of technology, gay relationships feed not the insatiable maw/ravenous belly of the state, nor replenish its dominions with fresh subjects to be bound in servitude

Trembling before the specter of non-procreative love, the orthodox mind succumbs to a desire both perverse and unseemly, in the form of a fantasy bent on transgressing the boundary that nature has fortified between the two sexes. Where reality forbids, imagination conspires to feminize the male body, burdening it with female anatomy (e.g., vulva, vagina, uterus) or the curse of child-bearing; and masculinize the female body, burdening it with male anatomy (e.g., penis, testes) or the curse of begetting. To speak in terms befitting the subject, the male character is stripped of the dignity of his sex and made into a female vehicle of propagation to endure the profanation of a womb swollen with unwilling life. The female character is likewise stripped of the dignity of her sex and made into a male vehicle of propagation, thereby impregnating others and binding the next generation to the selfsame inherited violation

Characters are wrenched from their natural state and recast into a chimeric duality of neither transcending "gender" nor representing it. They achieve, at their highest, no more than a strained hermaphroditism, and descend, at their lowest, into a grotesque impersonation of the opposite sex. They are captives of a creed that exalts birth above all else, and in its service, they are denied the full estate of personhood. Their worth measured in the barren metric of fertility, they are degraded to the rank of breeding stock or chattel, factory-grade, mass-produced, and expendable once the quota of offspring is met

The omegaverse forces of pheromones, cyclical heats, and feral ruts further dissolve the sovereignty of self. No longer may one choose whom to love or how to love. All are condemned to perform the rites of heteronormativity/heterosexism, their every exchange preordained by the body's involuntary impulses and betrayals

These dystopian perversions of the human body are confessions of a society that, in its slavish devotion to the cult of procreation, cannot conceive of love beyond the machinery of lineage, and that would rather overcompensate for its incomprehension through the most monstrous of fantasies or metamorphoses than expand its horizons

*The exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics*
-2 points

It is a recurring folly of humanity to covet the unattainable or pine for that which is denied unto it. Men cast covetous eyes on the generative power of the womb to sustain life within (womb envy), and women, in turn, cast covetous eyes on the phallic emblem of patriarchal authority and privilege (penis envy). Possessed by envy, they attire themselves in the guise of the opposite sex. Their minds conceive of a singular form wherein both sexes are mercilessly conjoined, whether named futa, omega, or a Frankenstein's monster of sorts. They reject the ancient wisdom that the differences dividing men and women are not blemishes or flaws to be excised or mended. The male body is complete in its own right, and the female body no less so

*The pro-birth ideology*
-2 points

The contention that omegaverse is but an airy nothing, a flight of fancy, or a fantastical delusion born of unbridled imagination, does little to abate the depth of my disapprobation toward its propagation, or the alarming eagerness with which it is consumed. The trope conceals beneath its non-human/brutish exterior and hierarchical savagery the fetishization of the pregnant form, preaching a gospel of fertility with such fervour as to border on the tyrannical

I dissent from the common praise of birth/pregnancy. I am persuaded in my own judgment that to procreate is to commit an act of cosmic violence. Violence, by any honest measure. Out of the void, where no tear is shed, is torn a creature frail and defenseless, thrust into a world beset with fears unspoken and desires unslaked. Not for sustenance alone does it hunger, but for comfort, for delight, for purpose or reason to endure. And each of these must be tended with vigilance. Were neglect to corrode the chain of deprivations, the self that bears it will suffer and wither in kind

With the selfsame hands that condemn the innocent to gnawing want, suffering, and decay, do natalists feign compassion, bestowing crumbs of comfort and claiming for themselves the title of saints or benefactors

The unborn is yet a stranger to hunger and to craving for the vanities of the world. Why disturb their peace? I shudder at the manner in which the hypocrisy of procreation is sanctified in every cradle, every nursery rhyme, every fantasy. And I implore, with due humility, that the domain of fiction be spared this horror. The image of anyone giving birth is too grievous a cruelty to be entertained in reality or fiction

"Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall, ...
... For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain for ever pain;
And none escapes life’s coils
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life" (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus)

Where one is seized by the longing to rear a child, the honourable path would be to adopt, to extend a hand to an existing child who has known the coldness of neglect, and to warm them with the hearth of a true and loving family

*The misbranding*
-2 points

The capacity for gestation, in my estimation, is an exclusive attribute of the female sex, contingent on the hormone-mediated activation of the ovaries to release the ovum, and the uterine lining to receive and sustain the fertilized ovum. A "man" who conceives has already ceased to be such, having taken on the inner constitution of a woman, even as her outward appearance resembles that of a man. "Heat" itself pertains to cyclic fertility patterns in monestrous (single-cycle) and polyestrous (multi-cycle) species, and falling into its frenzy implies a departure from humanity. It is, all things considered, a misnomer to ascribe the terms "gay" or "BL" to the straight-with-extra-steps, bestial fictional pairings wherein characters possess the womb or the power of conception by the crude mechanics of heats and ruts

TL;DR 2 points are granted for effort, and 8 are deducted on account of the omegaverse themes and the reluctance to commit to a gay narrative

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