Web series like this are not allowed to be made. I don't think this series aired in China. I don't think people…
Oh really? That is funny. I know essentially nothing about the irl couple side of things so that is actually surprising to me, that there's apparently so much of it out there from China. I guess it makes sense as a way to compensate for the lack of fictional gay stories.
Web series like this are not allowed to be made. I don't think this series aired in China. I don't think people…
Well yeah... did you not expect this? How else would you explain the complete BL blackout in China after 2016? BL is extremely popular in China, and there's 1.4 billion people there so if there wasn't a ban as harsh as this, it would be a main production site. Do you think it's a coincidence that 'The Untamed' was the number one drama of 2019 in China? It's *just* straight enough to pass the censors, but the novel it was based on certainly isn't.
To illustrate, I majored in Chinastudies, and my teachers would show 'here's what's popular in China right now' during class breaktime. Both Addicted and The Untamed featured. That's how popular it is.
The Chinese government doesn't tend to intervene in culture unless something goes viral. The fact that it intervened at Addicted and BL tells you that it was extremely popular.
To get past China's auto-censors authors can just write risky words in pinyin instead of in Chinese characters. They're not stopping. But there's always a risk your work will get deleted with no warning if it gets popular enough.
Just because it's banned doesn't mean the government actually manages to fully enforce the ban. Porn in general is banned, you really think Chinese people aren't finding ways to access it anyways? Nah fam.
When I lived in China, everyone knew where to find the local prostitution hot spot. Sure, prostitution was banned. That just meant it was risky.
wait.. if web series like this are allowed to air, then why others in China not following this way? I mean all…
Web series like this are not allowed to be made. I don't think this series aired in China. I don't think people in China can even access it at all without a VPN.
Addicted/Heroin was a webseries, never adapted for tv, and it was the reason China banned queer content online. It was extremely popular and the government didn't like that. Before Addicted/Heroin, gay content was already banned from tv, but the ban didn't extend to the internet yet. So this new law was exclusively made to target online content.
Addicted/Heroin was removed from the Chinese internet entirely. Because it was released episode by episode, this meant the last episodes were never allowed to be released, even though they'd already been produced. I think these episodes did eventually get released on YouTube, which people in China can't access without a VPN.
The law banned all 低俗 (vulgar) online content, and put queerness into that category along with drug use, violence and pornography. It mentioned the Chinese word for fujoshi (腐女, literal translation= rotten/corrupted girl) by name. The government didn't want their young women to be corrupted by gay content online. It was considered harmful to society.
Even writing gay fanfiction isn't allowed in China. Of course they still do it, and just use euphemisms, but yeah no the ban goes pretty far and is specifically targeting BL (耽美).
China even attempted to ban Chinese LGBT+ people from posting about their own queerness on Weibo (China's main social media website) and straight up instantly deleted a whole bunch of people's contents and accounts (e.g. 'here's a picture of me and my boyfriend'), but there was so much protest that weibo said it would no longer automatically delete content solely on the basis that it was gay, but would still remove gay content that it considers too vulgar, draws too much attention, and might influence young people into thinking that being gay is trendy and cool.
Interestingly the ban doesn't explicitly say anything about lesbians. It's all about gay men and fujoshis. The government considers young women's interest in BL to be more harmful for society than the existence of queer people. You can be gay (as long as you play along with respectability politics) but you can't be a fujoshi.
A LOT of things in this episode this not make logistical sense but oh well.
I still really hope Bow and Kung become a thing. They're both equally ridiculous and dramatic. Perfect match.
And I like the added complexity of Lomfon getting soulmate hearing loss too. I hope they'll deconstruct the whole soulmate thing somehow, like, people can be compatible with multiple others, it happens. There doesn't need to be only one true love. Soulmates can be temporary and still have been an important and necessary part of your life. But maybe I'm expecting too much complexity and it'll just get explained away as a technicality.
After seeing a couple named 'Burger' and 'King' in some other gay Thai drama, we now have 'Tako' and 'Bell', people. Honestly, I'm enjoying this sense of humor.
I haven't watched this series yet, but asexuality is basically not being sexually attracted to anyone. It's a (lack of) sexual orientation.
Like, a gay man is attracted to men, a straight man to women, a bisexual man to both men and women (and maybe nonbinary people), and an asexual man is sexually attracted to nobody at all.
Edit: I've now started watching the drama and I guess this is also relevant.
There's also 'aromantic'. Aromantic people do not experience romantic attraction to other people. They generally don't want to date anyone.
A person can be aromantic and asexual; or they can be asexual but homoromantic or heteroromantic etc; or they can be aromantic but homosexual or heterosexual etc.
The asexual character in this series is homoromantic. He is gay and asexual. This means he is romantically attracted to men (dates men), and is not sexually attracted to anyone (does not want to have sex with anyone).
Some asexual people still choose to have sex, for various reasons, but I don't know whether that will be relevant to this drama.
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To illustrate, I majored in Chinastudies, and my teachers would show 'here's what's popular in China right now' during class breaktime. Both Addicted and The Untamed featured. That's how popular it is.
The Chinese government doesn't tend to intervene in culture unless something goes viral. The fact that it intervened at Addicted and BL tells you that it was extremely popular.
To get past China's auto-censors authors can just write risky words in pinyin instead of in Chinese characters. They're not stopping. But there's always a risk your work will get deleted with no warning if it gets popular enough.
Just because it's banned doesn't mean the government actually manages to fully enforce the ban. Porn in general is banned, you really think Chinese people aren't finding ways to access it anyways? Nah fam.
When I lived in China, everyone knew where to find the local prostitution hot spot. Sure, prostitution was banned. That just meant it was risky.
Addicted/Heroin was a webseries, never adapted for tv, and it was the reason China banned queer content online. It was extremely popular and the government didn't like that. Before Addicted/Heroin, gay content was already banned from tv, but the ban didn't extend to the internet yet. So this new law was exclusively made to target online content.
Addicted/Heroin was removed from the Chinese internet entirely. Because it was released episode by episode, this meant the last episodes were never allowed to be released, even though they'd already been produced. I think these episodes did eventually get released on YouTube, which people in China can't access without a VPN.
The law banned all 低俗 (vulgar) online content, and put queerness into that category along with drug use, violence and pornography. It mentioned the Chinese word for fujoshi (腐女, literal translation= rotten/corrupted girl) by name. The government didn't want their young women to be corrupted by gay content online. It was considered harmful to society.
Even writing gay fanfiction isn't allowed in China. Of course they still do it, and just use euphemisms, but yeah no the ban goes pretty far and is specifically targeting BL (耽美).
China even attempted to ban Chinese LGBT+ people from posting about their own queerness on Weibo (China's main social media website) and straight up instantly deleted a whole bunch of people's contents and accounts (e.g. 'here's a picture of me and my boyfriend'), but there was so much protest that weibo said it would no longer automatically delete content solely on the basis that it was gay, but would still remove gay content that it considers too vulgar, draws too much attention, and might influence young people into thinking that being gay is trendy and cool.
Interestingly the ban doesn't explicitly say anything about lesbians. It's all about gay men and fujoshis. The government considers young women's interest in BL to be more harmful for society than the existence of queer people. You can be gay (as long as you play along with respectability politics) but you can't be a fujoshi.
I still really hope Bow and Kung become a thing. They're both equally ridiculous and dramatic. Perfect match.
And I like the added complexity of Lomfon getting soulmate hearing loss too. I hope they'll deconstruct the whole soulmate thing somehow, like, people can be compatible with multiple others, it happens. There doesn't need to be only one true love. Soulmates can be temporary and still have been an important and necessary part of your life. But maybe I'm expecting too much complexity and it'll just get explained away as a technicality.
Like, a gay man is attracted to men, a straight man to women, a bisexual man to both men and women (and maybe nonbinary people), and an asexual man is sexually attracted to nobody at all.
Edit: I've now started watching the drama and I guess this is also relevant.
There's also 'aromantic'. Aromantic people do not experience romantic attraction to other people. They generally don't want to date anyone.
A person can be aromantic and asexual;
or they can be asexual but homoromantic or heteroromantic etc;
or they can be aromantic but homosexual or heterosexual etc.
The asexual character in this series is homoromantic. He is gay and asexual. This means he is romantically attracted to men (dates men), and is not sexually attracted to anyone (does not want to have sex with anyone).
Some asexual people still choose to have sex, for various reasons, but I don't know whether that will be relevant to this drama.