UnaSpenser

I’m impressed.

I have been watching these Thai BLs for years now, wanting to be supportive of the representation. Sometimes, it’s been a tough haul, with horribly written stories. (Rape as the beginning of a relationship. So many female characters depicted as neurotic and toxic as hell, e.g.) To date, my favorite was one of the earliest ones; the BL cut of Lovesick. The central pair had such a genuinely sweet, mutually respectful, and patient relationship, and the people around them were generally supportive, once the boys came out.

When all the GMMTV crew of actors were so young and new to acting, there were a lot of not great performances to sit through.

I’ve watched as the stories have evolved and the actors have grown. All the fan obsession of CPs, etc. Some of them definitely had chemistry together, but still the acting was not stellar.

Bad Buddy has the best pair of actors as the leads. They are both quite good and draw you right into their characters. They feel like they pretty naturally inhabit their characters. Though I don’t speak Thai, I can hear that the lines are delivered more fluidly.

It’s also great to start seeing the focus of a story not necessarily be about the fact that there is a same sex relationship. That’s almost a non-subject. As it should be. We need to normalize having all kinds of relationships and gender presentations just existing within a story. (Also nice to see the inclusion of a lesbian relationship, with no fuss.)

Here, the core of the story is the family feud, what really happened, and how that feud has affected the young men. It gives us so much more to latch onto emotionally. We aren’t just rooting for them to be accepted for their sexuality (still a very real struggle, I know. But, normalizing means not necessarily centering it. Make is matter-of-fact.) We are curious about what the history really is and heartbroken at how the boys have been tools for the parents’ enmity. We relate to them as we would any other character, having nothing to do with their sexuality.

Also, we see how the toxic environment they grew up in actually bonded them. Who else could ever understand what they’ve experienced? There is no one else they could turn to as they try to find their way to healing. Remnants of the forced rivalry in their dynamic are turned playful, as they grow into something more healthy. They are simply lovely together.

This is good storytelling.

This is the first of the Thai BL dramas that I would heartily recommend to friends who ask. Some aspects - the college campus setting and the weird “faculty” dynamics - could still use some improvement, but, overall, this is a solid story with solid acting. So refreshing. May these productions continue to evolve and, hopefully, help normalize representation beyond the cis hetero forced narrative we’ve all been subjected to for so long,

That’s silly, since so many people become parents after abortions. Its the reality of life. People abort pregnancies for any number of reasons. It doesn’t mean they won’t be good parents, once they choose to take on that role.

Perhaps his situation is an opportunity for Korean society to come to terms with this. But, then, he may not want to be at the center of that public discourse. His choice.

She should be insecure. He did not want to marry her and she used their families to force him. She has no right to be in his life against his will. He needs to dump her.

So…. I really like so much about this drama. But, Infind myself avoiding it because the Liu Ran character and the clear indication that the writers are going to have Hongyi “fall for her”.

She’s a not-so-bright spoiled brat who coerces him into an unwanted marriage. She assumes she knows how he feels better than he does. She ignores his feelings and all of his boundaries and forces herself into his activities. She is supposed to come off as cute, but what’s she’s really doing is grooming him.

There is no way that such an intellectual man, who gets completely drawn into puzzle-solving and designing things, would want someone like her in his life. He couldn’t ever have quality conversations with her about the things that interest him.

Mostly, though, you can never trust someone who coerced you into a relationship and who ignores the way you feel. That’s not something you get over. And because she’s been successful at getting whatever she wants (regardless of how others feel or how it impacts them), she isn’t going to become someone who operates any differently. She’ll always be narcissistic and insisting on having her way. That’s not a relationship. The other person is just an object t be used for her own ends.

I can’t stomach it. I don’t find it amusing and I wish writers would stop couching toxic relationships as comedy.

They are neighbors, who end up having encounters where they help each other. The girl is not a teenager. She is repeating her senior year, which would make her 20 or 21 (students graduate HS at 19 or 20 in much if SE Asia.) They get to know one another and she falls for him and asks him to wait for her to finish her education to become a doctor.

The series ends here. The WEBTOON skips to when she’s an adult and they meet again.

To be clear, he’s not pursuing her, at all. Not in the least.

What? Is he lying to her? He wanted their relationship to be out in the open. She’s forcing him to hide it. I’ve been away from this for awhile, so I don’t remember much now, but if you’re going to claim that being as bad, you need to back that up with examples of what he’s doing.

For me, it’s that he agreed to the secretive arrangement. He should have seen that as a huge red flag and said, “no. I deserve more respect.”

It’s a slog getting through this, in the second half. I have not seen the last 2 eps, yet.

I wanted to like it. The actress for the FL was great in Back Street Rookie. I enjoy fantasy and thought this would be fun. But, here, she’s wasted on a character that has zero character development. She never learns, never behaves in ways which match the supposed deathly seriousness of the situation. Screaming during a stealth rescue. Falling for obvious traps, etc. Not respecting the wishes if the person she supposedly oves, in regards to his own body and fate. She has the least info about what is going on than anybody, but always ignores their plans and does whatever she feels like. It gets tedious.

All of the characters are monochromatic, giving the actors not much to do with them. Almost all of them don pretty much one facial expression throughout.

Way too much sappy internal dialogue. The love story is just boring. I’m not feeling it. One ornithology interactions in childhood doesn’t make a relationship. They have so little synchronicity and their personal agendas conflict. I find myself not caring and feeling that no character in this is suited for romantic partnership. Which is okay, so just leave it out!

Needless supporting character death. It didn’t make sense and felt like some kind of forced “dramatic moment”. Meanwhile, the character had the most potential to be interesting, because there was a sense of a story to his past , but they just dropped it.

One thing writers really need to be careful about with costume dramas that have a palace or ruler aspect: monarchy and authoritarianism aren’t actually desirable things. For viewers to care about vies for the top position, they must make at least one of them look like a compelling option for compassionate leadership. That’s lacking here. The antagonist is the only potential heir to the throne who seems competent at administering a government. The other option is more hapless. He’s known all along that his brother covets power, but has never done much to make it look like he’s a meaningful option. Has only been interested in the arts. Not paid attention to state management. So, what is the viewer supposed to have any vested interest in?

I’ll see it through because I’ve come this far. The only hope for interest is that the antagonist doesn’t actually have bad intentions. That he’s doing what he’s doing out if personal need and has a plan to settle things well, once his need is addressed. Otherwise, a rather lackluster, mundane story, with nothing new and no really memorable performances. So sad. A lot of wasted potential.

I'll check that out. Thank you.

They seem to have just gotten cringeworthy, after what was a fun beginning. I skipped to the end of that episode, but then I couldn’t deal with the “I need to have access to you 24/7” dynamic and the over-the-top baby voice cutesiness. It doesn’t fit either of the characters as depicted, up to that point. So, I dropped it.

Why do so many S Korean dramas derail themselves?

Thank you!

Exactly.

Can someone tell me how long the “let’s keep this a secret and I’m going to be violent about” scenario lasts? I hate this trope and don’t find her getting violent to be funny. I’m stuck in early episode 11. If I know it ends soon, I’ll trudge on. If not, I think I’m done.

Women can be agents of misogyny. It’s called internalized oppression.

adding to my critique of how this is handled:

The wife, the victim of spousal abuse, is asked by her sister why she doesn't leave her abusive husband. We don't get the real life answers such as "I don't if I could make it on my own financially" or "I think it would be to hard on my daughter' or the VERY real, "I'm afraid he would find me and kill me." She apparently has no fears, because, instead, she says, "because I pity him."

I was floored. Its as though the writer(s) had a pathological need to refuse the victim her victimhood and the powerlessness that ensues with chronic abuse. And a pathological need to turn the abuser into the victim. She pities him. "who would love him if I don't." So, she's some heroic martyr sacrificing herself so that this man can be loved.

I just can't. I find this whole story to be almost criminal in the way it is written.

it's no small problem that not once in the entire series are the words "self-defense" uttered. That not once does anyone suggest to the aunt that she is a victim of an attempted murder, is traumatized and needs help. That the FL knows her father was violent and read the scene where he was trying to kill her aunt and mother and she is still just angry with them for killing him. (Would she rather he killed them both?)

I also don't find it all romantic that the FL is so selfishly wrapped up in her own shit that she just uses her BF for emotional support for herself and then abandons this man who has a history of being abandoned. And that showing up and waiting for him to ask her to stay is the romantic way in which they get back together.

Also totally uncool that, even though they tried to play as though this wasn't the dynamic, in the end, the HS friend succeeds in making her feel that she had done something wrong by ending her friendship after such a serious breach of trust. A breach of trust which nearly drove her to suicide. "You can still eat on a table that is cracked" is some bullshit. That cracked table is going to fall apart and need to be replaced. Plus, the friend had, in current time, still demonstrated totally toxic and manipulative behavior. There was nothing at all that warranted her deserving friendship, other than guilt tripping her victim.

What people are calling warm and romantic here I'm finding very disturbing. There is no real healing. There is tons of victim blaming. And the poor aunt who was totally traumatized was just disappeared - without getting the health care she needs. They just send her off to a miserable and lonely death, while everyone else goes on to have love lives.

How is this a heartwarming story?

This is a story of the fallout from a case of brutal domestic abuse.

First, the intense scene which is the catalyst for the entire story:

----
A wife - mother of a young daughter - is being abused by her husband. His violence has been escalating. The wife won't leave him, though her sister has been imploring her to.

The sister enters a scene where she witnesses the husband punching the wife in the face, repeatedly. Her entire face is bruised and swollen. She's clinging to his leg, begging for mercy. The sister intuitively charges in to stop him. He then turns on the sister. He is declaring that he's going to kill her. He's about to take an iron to her head, when the wife pushes him over a bannister. He isn't really hurt from it, but now he's even more enraged. The two women try running away, but he chases after them. They get in the car, intending to drive away. They are thwarted, because the car is behind a garage door which must be manually opened. He has come after them with a golf club. He's bashing the car windows and screaming that he'll kill them. In the midst of all this trauma and chaos, the sister accidentally hits the gas pedal at the wrong moment and rams the man into the garage door, killing him.

-------

Up to this point, we have an all too realistic depiction of a choatic scene of deadly domestic abuse. Kudos to the actors for such a terrifyingly good job. It was hard to watch.

But what ensues is both baffling and socially irresponsible writing.

Without skipping a beat, the wife pulls herself together, tells her sister to leave the scene, to go have a normal, happy life and to raise the couple's teenage daughter. She has the sensibility to clean all of her sister's fingerprints off of the car and proceed to call the police and get arrested for murder. Murder. For which she is sentenced 7 years in prison.

The wife/mother then proceed to cut her daughter out of her life. So, the daughter lives thinking that her mother killed her father and then abandoned her. It will be 10 years before the sisters tell her what happened.

Meanwhile, the sister leads a miserable life. She feels guilty and punishes herself.

Some of this would be somewhat understandable as the fallout, but there is a glaring omission from this storytelling: the wife was so clearly battered when she was arrested. Even if, somehow, the courts would not recognize that she was the victim of longstanding abuse, they could see that she was seriously injured. That this might be a case of self-defense. But, not once, in the entire damned story do those words get uttered.

WTAF?!

Nowhere in the story is the subject of trauma, therapy, recovery ever mentioned. The wife does say to her sister that the man deserved what he got, when she realized that her sister has been drowning in guilt (though really she has been drowning in PTSD.)

When the aunt can't stand the silence any longer, she writes her story. She can't apparently face her niece, so she has a third party give her the story. The niece never reads the entire thing. She sees that her aunt killed her dad and she's just angry.

Some of that anger makes sense as a first response to realizing that her mom and aunt had deceived her all this time. It would also make sense if she hadn't understood that her father was violently abusive. However, she says to her mom, "I know why you hated him. I didn't like him much myself. But, he was my father." And for the rest of the story, she holds it like this: that her aunt killed her father. Not once does she acknowledge that her aunt acted in self-defense. Or that her father would have killed her mother eventually.

In some supposedly noble moment, she doesn't want the aunt to turn herself in as the actual murdered. But, in reality, its a selfish moment of not wanting the public spotlight on herself again. She still hates the aunt. Ultimately, the aunt is so wracked with guilt and so unable to face her niece and her sister that she leaves. Its literally written as "she's going far away". She disappears from their lives, with untreated glaucoma, from which one eye is already blinded.

After the sister leaves and the daughter spends some time away from her hometown, we're given a warmhearted ending where everyone, except the disappeared aunt, goes on to live happy lives.

And I hate all of them. The aunt is the biggest victim in this story, but the writers make her out to be a perpetrator. Even as they are trying to claim some compassion for the aunt, they are leaving the audience with the perception that it is the correct thing to see her as a killer who deserves punishment, rather than as a survivor, who is living with PTSD after a deadly case of self-defense.

I was in shock that, in this day and age, a domestic abuse case would be presented this way. This drama is being aired via a major media outlet in S Korea and being shown on Netflix and other internet streaming sites. They know thay have a massive audience. A massive audience of women and young people. Yet, they are not even going to introduce the words "self-defense" or the concept of justifiable homicide? They aren't going to mention trauma? PTSD? psychotherapy?

This victim-blaming isn't one-off in this story, either. The daughter has a friend who betrayed her in such a way that led to bullying and extreme ostracization in school. It drove her to an attempted suicide. Yet, 10 years later, the friend - who had a delusional notion about the daughter having tried to "seduce" the boy she was interested in (who had no interest at all in her) - is presented as the victim of the daughter's hate. There is a bit of explaining that the daughter was reasonable to end their friendship because it was such a horrific breach of trust. The friend, even 10 years later is manipulative and conniving and (lamely) attempts to seduce the daughter's current boyfriend in some kind of retaliation. Still, the writers push the daughter character through some contortionist thinking, such that she believes that maybe she's been too harsh on the friend and that it would be okay to reestablish the friendship.

This is their definition of forgiveness: victims forgiving and/or retroactively rehabilitating the nature of their perpetrators. (The sister claims she has dreams remembering all the ways in which her brother-in-law had been nice to her. And this is why she feels guilty for killing him. She doesn't have nightmares of the fight for her life.)

I want to smack this writer in the face and demand that they be blacklisted for such socially irresponsible writing. It has taken so long to get laws in place to protect victims of abuse and recognize that when they kill their abuser its an act of defense; that they are sufferers of cPTSD and need care and are not culpable as criminals. This story sets the clock back on that realization and paints self-defense as a crime and has everyone treat a traumatized victim as guilty of "killing a family member." A daughter who know her father was violently abusive does not hold him responsible for the outcome of his own behavior and sets all her hatred on someone he tried to kill.

This is a huge setback for victims' and women's rights. Portrayals like this should never be told, any longer. They never should have been offered in the first place. Its a tool of misogynist patriarchy to present this subject matter in this manner.

I'll be checking who the writer is from now on and boycotting this writer. I hope others do the same.

WTF?! Rarely do I get thus pissed off by a story. The irresponsibility of writing this subject matter in this way has me seething. This is not a story which should be shared. I'll explain in a reply marked as spoiler. CN: domestic abuse, unattended trauma, and victim-blaming.

Quirky and sweet, making great use of minimalist production. Well worth a watch.

I’m only at ep 7. Mostly enjoying it and how well it has set up the viewer to be wondering who is really who and what is each person’s real agenda.

The acting is all pretty good. The make lead does very well with the layers of emotionality that he has to control.

The glaring weakness is how the FL character is written. She’s the personal guard of the emperor and it’s not clear that she can actually win a sword fight. She’s so bad at being stealthy that she gets caught when eavesdropping. She’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so she doesn’t naturally pick up on what’s going on, thus messing things up for the emperor, repeatedly. So, how does she qualify for the job? Much less being promoted to lead his entire team of guards and his secret army?

The actress is fine. It’s the way the character is developed. It makes no sense. It’s so farcical that it distracts from what’s going on, at times.

I’m going to stick with it (hoping this aspect improves) because the chess game of it all seems well-executed, for now.

But, why do Chinese writers have such a hard time writing solid female characters who seem realistic in the role and setting they are in?