I Just Love This Image

History 3: Make our days count. (Spoilers included)

I loved everything about this show apart from the last episode.

I mean yeah, Haoting bullying Shigu them trying to date him is a bit weird but i think it was well explained. He didn’t do most of the bullying, that was his friends being overprotective. Then when he stopped Shigu from attending his exam, he realised the severity of what he had done. Yeah, he could have done better but his character is immature and selfcentred. It fits well with his character. He then goes through a regret stage where he realised that his actions were wrong.

He is a immature teen boy whose never had to deal with responsibility. That shows. So yeah, he could have done better but these flaws make his character so real and interesting. Shigu learns through him to enjoy life and have fun. While Haoting learns from Shigu how to take things seriously. They both go through so much character development and I love it. It makes everything so real and potent. Like yeah, Haoting made Shigu moss and exam. But Shigu forgives him and doesn’t hold on to grudges. They both learn together, which is realistic and wonderful.

Then there’s Sun Bo and Chigang. Yeah the age gap is a bit weird. It took me a while to warm up to them because of that. But I’ve known people with larger ages gaps in their relationships. Sun Bo is seventeen, turning eighteen in the show so he becomes legally of age. Chigang does not pressure him at all, he actually refuses to start a relationship with him because of the age difference. He is not with Sun Bo because he’s younger. It’s not like that. In every one of their shows, History explores real romance. The age gap between Chigang and SunBo is smaller than the age gap in History2:Right or Wrong.

Both Chigang and Sun Bo love each other as a person, not because of sexuality. SunBo even mentions that Chigang is the first man he’s ever liked. And if it was just about sexuality on Chigang’s part, he would have turned Sun Bo down due to his age (which he technically did anyway).

In all, I think both relationships are human and realistic. Relationships, in any given form, are messy. If I was to hold a grudge against everyone whose ever been mean to me, I would have no friends. Haoting realises his mistakes. Shigu learns to live rather than just survive. Sun Bo learns how to love and fight for his love. And Chigang learns how to let himself be loved.

The only thing that I don’t like is the last episode and Shigu’s death. But death is tragic and sudden and unexplainable. Somethings accidents happen. Yes! Shigu shouldn’t have died and it was a shitty ending, but death doesn’t care about life. Tragedy happens all the time. The History company aim to show life like and realistic shows, and that means tragedy and shitty endings.

What I always love about History shows is that it feels real. Like these are actual stories. (Not including trapped or any history 1. That is all a fantasy. Amazing, but the most unrealistic of their shows despite the epicness of the dramas). It makes me connect with them more. The banter, the flaws, the character development. All of it is golden and poignant.

All these boys deserve the world. No matter what mistakes they make.

I thank History for all their dramas.

Hey do you know what upsets me?

That Bodhi Rook is an underrated character in the star wars franchise. Like all the other Rouge One Crew gets additional content, like Cassian gets his own tv show. But the man who made it all possible? The dude who all we know is that he’s 25, Jedhan, was a cargo pilot, grew up with his mother and took up gambling while in the Empire. And though that’s at least better than some, compared to what the rest of his team gets its just sad.

And aside from the franchise barely recognizing him I feel like the fandom doesn’t either. Like for fanfics and fan art it’s a literal effort to find anything where Bodhi is the main focus and not a secondary character. My man doesn’t deserve that. I personally have like a small coin pouch full of ao3 fics on Bodhi but compared to the amount of Cassian, Jyn, Baze, and Chirrut fanfics it doesn’t seem to matter.

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have a “key” relationship in the movie like Jyn/Cassian or Baze/Chirrut, but to me that makes him even more interesting. The outlier, the pilot, the only one of the Rouge One crew who dies alone, doing whatever he can to help. The one who unintentionally(but helpfully) got the rebellion’s attention on the death star files. Who got one of the most horrifying scenes in the movie(in my opinion) with the bor gullet, and kept on moving.

Bodhi Rook is amazing and I wish more people can see that.

The dedication inside The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky is hilarious. And probably a mood.

I think Batman is genuinely thrown any time someone he dates as Brucie Wayne is legitimately attracted to him because he’s acquired such a reputation among women as Gotham’s Most Prolific Beard that if a woman asks him out he assumes she’s a lesbian trying to keep the media from outing her.

I don’t have a canon basis for this I just think it’s neat.

tsc was a comedy actually, look:

aka Jean Moreau being salty for 350 pages

(I have so many of these, I'm 100% gonna make a part 2)

In a universe where twelve year old Vegas meets fifteen year old Pete and they spend a few hours together. Those few hours make a lasting impact on Vegas.

It changes everything.

Here we go, my first VP fic.

All done and dusted.

I had the idea of what if they met as kids and Pete’s first loyalty is to Vegas. So this little fic came out of it.

Might expand on it later. Not sure. But I hope you enjoy.

Time of Fever VS Unintentional Love Story

The Issues I had with the Plot and Characterisation.

(Will include spoilers for both dramas).

While both dramas were written by the same person, they each have different directors and as such, they have very different feels.

With Time of Fever being the prequel drama to Unintentional Love Story’s second couple, Donghee and Hotae. The short series/movie has many things that differ from the second drama. Some of which make sense and some which don’t.

These are my thoughts on the similarities and differences.

Plot line

While in Unintentional Love Story (which will be referred to from here on as ULS to save me typing too much) Donghee and Hotae are the second couple and therefore get much less screen time compared to the main couple, the viewers are still shown snapshots to their backstory that make their tangled and messy relationship have some sort of sense on screen.

In ULS we are introduced to Hotae by Donghee. It is clear from the get go that the pair have a tangled relationship.

As the show goes on we a granted glimpses of their past to explain why they have such a tangled relationship. It is show than Donghee was abused and kicked out of the house by his father. We are also informed that Hotae’s house is where he would go for refuge. His friendship with the slightly younger man having persisted through childhood. Donghee calls Hotae’s mother ‘Auntie’ in a way far more familiar than the other locals. Even without Time of Fever we know that they are closer than their first meeting would have us believe.

Yet despite the moments we are shown, it is unclear what happened between them to cause the rift between them. We know that something happened, probably something romantic that crossed the lines of their friendship, yet it is unclear in ULS and the pair do not have enough screen time to explore it further.

This is where Time Of Fever comes in, I assume.

Here Time Of Fever confuses the plot points we are already given.

The only way I can think of Time of Fever (TOF) matching the backstory scenes shown in ULS is if there is a time gap.

In the beginning of TOF Hotae is at his father’s funeral. The death of his father being the cause of his and his mother’s return to the sea side town they left two years before, and back to their old house. The same old house where Donghee seems to have been living in by himself for a while now. It is unclear precisely how long.

The fact that he is staying in Hotae’s childhood bedroom, with their belongings mixed together before Hotae has even moved back yet gives them a level of closeness beyond what was shown in their flashbacks in ULS.

The only way I can think of both shows fitting together is if the flashbacks in ULS were set when they were 15/16 and before Hotae moved to Seoul for two years. It would explain their closeness and also fit in Hotae’s absence and the affect is has on Donghee (which I will expand on later).

If Donghee was abused through most of his teen life for being gay and then kicked out of his home before Hotae moved away, then it must have been around his mid teens.

That means he was probably living in Hotae’s empty childhood bedroom for around two years by himself.

Which is just tragic to think about.

I can guess that Donghee had feelings for Hotae before he moved as well. Both shows mention them being childhood friends.

Then Hotae moves back and the events of TOF happen. Donghee’s feelings grow too much and he flees to Seoul, only to return years later. Hotae left behind with a broken heart and a bitterness at being abandoned. That would explain some of their troubles in ULS, especially if Donghee has only recently set up his coffee shop and Hotae was still adjusting to having him close. It would also explain the keepsakes of memories from their teens together that Donghee keeps in his cafe in ULS, which were not even mentioned or touched upon in TOF. (I wanted to see the part where Hotae wins him the watch again).

While both plots can fit together, they don’t fit together well. There are plot holes left unexplained and changes within the characters that do not make sense. That leads me onto the next section.

Characters

In the beginning of ULS Hotae is abrupt, almost angry with Donghee. We later discover that this is due to jealousy over Donghee’s friendship with Wonyoung. Once this is discovered he warms up and takes on almost a puppy-like devotion to Donghee, following him around like he is the light to his inner moth.

Hotae has this charming boyishness to him. He is impulsive, stubborn and a bit of a bad boy. He has tattoos and his relationships always seem to end with his girlfriends smacking him with their bags.

Between the two shows, his personality in fact does not change. He is the same in his twenties as he was in his teens. In fact, TOF portrays his start into serial dating very well. He dates out of a need to try and smother feelings for Donghee. He does not actively pursue these girls, in fact he drops them the second he has the chance to spend time with Donghee, but he goes along with their confessions and dates almost like a way to pass the time. He does not really care about them but more out of a need to conform. To maybe figure out within himself why he yearns for Donghee so bad.

TOF also explains why his character hasn’t changed. He felt abandoned by Donghee, someone he loved, less than a year since his dad died and he had to move again. While not as prevalent as the romantic main plot, TOF does a wonderful job of subtly building up this sense drowning within Hotae. Despite his cheerful persona he portrays to Donghee and his mother, the moments without Donghee are sullen and almost drained. He only smiles with Donghee.

He is a teenager, probably only around 17/18 who has had to deal with a lot of life changes very quickly. This is especially visible in the scene where he cries when he doesn’t win his first swimming match since he moved back. He is cheered up by Donghee and the plot moves on but his internal struggle with change is brought up again in episode 6. There he ruins the art room where he and Donghee would spend time. He destroys the room out of grief for being left behind and exclaims that he won’t change.

So he doesn’t and by the time we get to ULS he is still motor the same. With a few more tattoos and a motorbike, and a few part time jobs. Yet he didn’t go to college and he failed his last year of high school, which would have happened after Donghee left. He stays in the same seaside town and does what he has always done.

It is only with Donghee back in his life that we start to see him open up again. The more Donghee allows him back into his life, the more Hotae begins to change. He begins to learn Spanish and he grows to be friends with Wonyoung. This is a rather large change because in TOF it is clear that he has no close friends other than Donghee and in ULS it is unclear whether he had any friends prior to the start of the plot.

So when it comes to Hotae, TOF only expands on the character first portrayed in ULS. The viewers are given more of an understanding of his trauma and how much his love for Donghee drives him.

(It makes me want to give him a hug).

However, with Donghee TOF was not as clear.

In ULS Donghee is introduced as sassy, fiercely independent, stubborn and kindhearted. He seems to be the clingy, slightly annoying friend who would have your back in a heartbeat, judging by how he interacts with Taejoon. They have a banter that has a familiarity that must have taken years to achieve. (Especially with such a guarded introvert as Taejoon). It is truly a shame that we do not know the backstory of their friendship.

While Donghee is comedic yet a loveable friend character to the main couple in ULS, he is different with Hotae. He is also rude, bickering with him and pushing him away like a feral cat hissing and stretching at any sign of someone coming close. In ULS he avoids Hotae’s flirting and affection like it is the plague, actively cursing him out and telling him off.

So why in TOF is he so quiet?

That was the part that confused me the most. He went from apparently being a wallflower in TOF, who only studied and pined over Hotae, to an independent and confidant gay man in ULS. As a teen it seems he was filled with internalised homophobia and fear over his feelings for Hotae. So much so that he runs away to university in Seoul.

So what changed??

In the flashbacks in ULS, which I theorised earlier as happening before TOF canon, he is shown to be as confidant and verbally abrasive at any sign of affection as a teenager as he was as an adult. He talks back, he wrestles with Hotae and he plays around with him.

Yet in TOF he is quiet. He does nothing more than study and he barely touches Hotae first.

The only explanation I can guess to his abrupt character change would be due to the trauma of his abuse and the fear of his feelings for Hotae.

It would make sense if he retreated into himself when Hotae moved away. Two years can be a long time and that can explain why Hotae does not comment much on Donghee’s character change when he moves back. Other than a comment or two about how Donghee doesn’t smile anymore, he doesn’t seem to notice how Donghee seems to be too silent and submissive.

I can only theorise that his time at university allowed Donghee to connect with other lgbt people and deal with his internal homophobia and self hatred. That the years between TOF and ULS allowed him to grow up and return to the personality he had before.

Because if my plot theory is wrong then his characters in TOF and ULS seem more like two different people than the same person.

When Hotae kisses him in TOF Donghee avoids him for days and make him sleep on the couch. He barely says anything.

Yet when Hotae merely gets in his personal space in ULS, Donghee smacks his arm or pushes him away with a curse and a scolding.

It seems too much of an abrupt character change to me. I really hope my headcanon is right and that Donghee managed to regain some of his behaviours before he was abused. That would be happier, that he managed to rediscover himself despite the trauma.

Either way, I still love him.

I love both dramas and their dynamics in both.

If you have read this far then I apologise for rambling on for so long.

I love these dramas for both their differences and their similarities. I just wish the plots added up a bit more. Instead of answering my questions Time Of Fever only seemed to give me more.

I love Donghee and Hotae and I really need to see them have a happy ending. (Wishing for a third drama where they actually get together. ULS ended hopefully for them but I need more).

Feel free to comment if you agree with any other things I have noticed or theorised.

I’M WHEEZING AT ZHI GANG TRYING TO BE THE #RESPONSIBLEADULT HERE:

AND THEN HAO TING AND XI GU GIGGLE SHEEPISHLY IN APOLOGY, BUT IT HAPPENS AGAIN:

In Strongberry We Trust

I had a private ask about Strongberry recently so here’s some thoughts.

Strongberry is probably the most established KBL studio, they started in high production shorts/microfilms (as, indeed, did all of KBL) and still specialize in them. They also do some GL. They tend to have very good chemistry, work with professional actors (not idols), and will go high heat. They are now a division of Matchbox, and have been around and steadily producing content since 2017. The CEO is adorable. As of this post (Nov 2022) they are airing a new BL on their YT channel Choco Milk Shake.

Fandom slogan?

#InStrongberryWeTrust

For the fact that they pick odd premises but always seem to execute beautifully. Their stuff is either on YouTube, Gaga or pay to play on Vimeo, and they do move it around so my links might not always still be working. Vimeo earns them the most money. They are a small, struggling, queer-friendly studio, please support them and their content by not pirating or watching illegally. 

Here’s my ranking of Strongberry’s offerings.

1. A First Love Story

2021 YouTube short in 2 microfilms 

Tropes: childhood friends to lovers, home setting, soft tone, grumpy/sunshine pairing

Strongberry are true masters of their craft and yet A First Love Story is still one of the best things they have ever produced. It’s the only microfilm every to make one of my year end top ten list. It’s two episodes of about 8 minutes each that manage to perfectly portray the sweetest friends-to-lovers confession ever. It’s joyful, and gentle with its characters, and a little hot. How on earth do they manage to leave us yearning for more yet completely satisfied at the same time? It’s like the perfect amuse-bouche, that one finger food at that one cocktail party that you will never forget. You are a ridiculous human if you haven’t spent 16 minutes with these two boys. Go watch it now. Or go watch it again. It’s time VERY well spent.

2. Long Time No See

2017 Gaga KBL length series (total 1.5 hr, some places packaged as a movie)

Tropes: secret love, enemies to lovers, secret identity, assassins, catfishing, mafia, higher heat, grumpy/sunshine pairing 

One of Strongberry’s few longer pieces and I often wonder whether this is strictly BL. It’s about assassins on either side of a terf war who fall in love not knowing they are on opposite sides. Or do they? Good fight sequences, mature characters, high heat, very suspenseful, AND an HEA. If you like KinnPorsche you will LOVE this one.

3. Some More

2018 Gaga microfilm

Tropes: friends to lovers, hyung romance, self acceptance, countryside setting, soft tone, age gap, country boy/city boy

One of my most favorite of Strongberry’s shorts, about a city boy on a bike tour who gets injured and rescued by a taciturn, but (as it turns out) very gay, farmer. Mentions of pride, adorable supportive cousin. SO CUTE with excellent chemistry and featuring tropes I can never get enough of. 

3. Private Lessons

2019 Gaga microfilm

Tropes: student/teacher, jock/nerd, hyung romance, obsession, crush, university setting, May/December, age gap  

Given it is age gap and teacher/student (AKA P’ABL’s catnip) it should rate higher on my list, but the chemistry is slightly off. Stil I do love this one for the dynamic. Certainly worth watching especially if this is one of your fav yaoi tropes.

4. Step For You

2018 Gaga microfilm

Tropes: friends to lovers, sports, university setting, crush, jock/nerd, soft tone

About a reporter from the student newspaper who has to interview an older dancer and falls in love with him. This may not have been my first Strongberry, but it’s the first one I remember watching. 

5. Please Tell Me So

2021 YouTube microfilm (AKA That’s My Mr.Right!) 

Tropes: crush, obsession, cafe setting, sunshine/sunshine pairing 

Cute barista (played by Han Hyun Jun star of Love Class) has a crush on his customer, musters up the courage to ask him out. 

6. My Pistachio

2018 Gaga microfilm

Tropes: friends to lovers, crush, hero worship, hyung romance, university setting, play within a play, grumpy/sunshine 

7. As if You Whisper

2019 Gaga movie

Tropes: friends to lovers, self acceptance, music industry setting, grumpy/sunshine pairing

8. Confidential Coffee Break

2021 Vimeo microfilm

Tropes: mature romance, long term relationship, self acceptance, university setting, one act

It’s a monologue piece about two closeted older gay professors discussing changing times and the nature of acceptance (self and others) in modern day South Korean academic environment. 

9. Hold Me

2021 YouTube microfilm

Tropes: friends to lovers, self acceptance, high school setting

10. Sweet Curse 

2021 Gaga short

Tropes: horror, paranormal elements, ghost story, possession, obsession, gay friendship group, everyone wants that one boy, bad/good

This is a low-gore atmospheric horror, with some very high heat. I’m not saying it’s in the top 10 just because of that, but I am saying when Strongberry does high heat it v good and v gay. 

OTHERS

My Personal Trainer - 2019 short Gaga. It v silly and v gay. Influencer has crush on his personal trainer. 

Secret Roommate - 2020 short Gaga, Cohabit, self acceptance, home setting, family, coming out 

Fingers After - 2021 microfilm Vimeo. Cohabit, morning after, home setting, pining, sunshine/tsundere pairing. 

Secret Spectacles - 2017 microfilm Gaga. Very silly again, friends to lovers, paranormal elements, university crush.

Table Manner - 2018 microfilm Gaga. Cohabit, self acceptance, home setting, long term relationship 

The Summer Pasta Recipe - 2021 short YouTube, reunion, self acceptance, grumpy/sunshine.

There my be a few more I don’t know about, MDL doesn’t seem to have a sort function for production company. 

Choco Milk Shake 

2022 YouTube KBL length series (total 1.5 hr) 

Tropes: cohabit, F2L, paranormal elements, home setting, soft tones, sunshine/tsundere. 

Two pets, a cat and a dog, reincarnate as humans to visit their old owner.

Two Other KBL shorts worth checking out:

Just Friends? 

2009 Gaga short 

I consider this one of Korea’s first actual BLs. Boyfriends, one of whom is on military leave, trying to decide on coming out and their future together. Bonus for out gay director and queer activist. 

Being Me 

2018 short Gaga 

A summer of love for two long term besties who have basically always been boyfriends, but when a girl tries to date one of them, they finally realize it. Beautifully filmed and a STELLAR ending kiss. 

(source) 

wait, So we're not crazy???