BAD BUDDY Episode 7

You Make Me Dance Episodes 1 & 2

To me, dancing is a longing I have my heart.

You said your wish is to cook a favorite dish for someone you like. As for me, when I have a lover, I always let my lover win. When was I ever your lover? You might not be now. But you will be soon. 

Bringing more Mark and Joke comparisons because there are SO MANY.

This post will be about posture, and the way War works his characters to be perceived differently purely by the way he stands on his two feet.

Oh, the perfection with which he prepared both of these characters is out of this world.

Let me illustrate:

Joke, when he stands, stands taller; leaves no room of doubt he’s the chillest, coolest, most confident person, and cares very little how people are perceiving him at the moment,

as long as he feels awesome. [his insecurities are not rooted in the way he looks or the way strangers perceive him]

His head is kept high when he speaks. If you watch the show again, you’ll realize he’s always looking ahead and up unless he wants to go unnoticed,

and meets people’s eyes unwaveringly as he works his way through his elaborated ruses to get what he wants.

[We’ll talk more about how that changes with the object of his affection, Jack, on later posts]

Mark, my beloved, on the other hand, stands to look smaller than he is; not on purpose, of course, as it’s a deeply rooted thing within the character itself.

He does not look people in the eye for prologued periods of time, more of often than not looking away when he speaks to anybody.

Yes, that gradually develops as the show progresses, but shyness is an essential part of this character.

His posture is not completely relaxed; it’s slightly tense which casts light into the character’s personality:

Mark wants to be standoffish and cool, but his innocence and sweet, gentle demeanor are truly his worsts enemies.

He tries, though, throughout the entire show, to make it happen, but breaks off of it the moment someone (Vee or Mark’s dad) does or says something that awakens strong emotions.

When that happens he fails, because Mark cannot, for the life of him, hide his true feelings.

A stark contrast to Joke, an absolute master in hiding who he really is.

All in all, Joke’s posture comes from a confidence rooted in a combination of maturity and not giving two single flying shits

And Mark’s posture comes from a confidence rooted in a combination of innocence, self-esteem and guts.

War has done a hard deep dive in both characters; created entirely opposite personas and made both Mark and Joke have so much depth and detail to them a million more things could be said about them.

There are hundreds of little details that War has added to each of his characters. He truly has thought about every single mouth twitch down to a T.

Every head movement, his micro expressions, and even the way he speaks, even though it’s the same language, the same words.

Everything about these two characters is completely opposite. And yes, the fact that they are both making opposite fashion statements adds a lot of weight to their differences, obviously, but that’s not enough at all to create what War has created.

Just imagine eighteen year old Mark in Joke’s crop tops and feeling incredibly self-conscious, and twenty (five? six?) Joke in Mark’s fancy, neatly tucked-in dress shirts and wanting nothing more than to take them off. (Joke has worn that type of clothing before only while pretending to be someone he isn’t, so it does not count. When he’s himself, he opts to wear all baggy items)

I could go on forever, guys, but this post is already too long, so I’ll just say one more thing:

I’d die for this man.

More on these things later, I guess!

Thanks for reading, remember to be nice!

Color Rush (2021). Directed by So Joon-moon.

It’s Psychopath Diary - The Actual Rom Com Edition: Alternate Diary of Seo Inwoo @ Ao3

disgust™

Why aren’t you sleeping on the bed? I want to sleep on the floor for one last night.

Can you talk more about “I don’t want to fall for a man” because I am curious about your thoughts!

OOooh YES I CAN!

So I am an out and proud bi woman, and I grew up in a household where my parents (even my terrible one) told me it was okay to be gay. 

BUT I also grew up in a conservative town full of anti-gay rhetoric and lots of conservative ideas, so no matter how much my mum told me “it’s okay if you like girls” everything outside the walls of my house told me that that wasn’t true. 

I didn’t hate gay people, I wasn’t outwardly homophobic, in fact I outwardly was very supportive of the lgbt+ community, but the internal homophobia was VERY real. I convinced myself that everyone looked at girls like that, that even if you’re not gay, everyone knows that girls are just attractive, that’s just a fact. In my defence, it is, but I digress. 

There’s an annoying trope that comes up in so many Thai BLs like “I’m not gay I just like [INSERT NAME HERE]” because as everybody knows, you’re 100% straight if you are in love with, live with, marry and grow old with another man. These are indisputable facts. 

Almost none of them ever say they are bi or demi or pan, it’s pretty much always “not gay just you” or “oh I’m gay now, weird that” despite expressing interest in only women before that, and firstly that’s a massive amount of biphobia so jot that down. Secondly, it’s an incredibly heterosexual way to portray lgbt+ stories, and it’s honestly just boring to see at this point, like I had such high hopes for Tonhon Chonlattee and then it played itself out in the straightest way possible and I was just sort of baffled? by the time it finished. 

But Zhou Shu Yi doesn’t say “I’m not gay” he says “I don’t want to fall for a man”. When he tells Gao Shi De he has feelings for him, he doesn’t say “I’m not gay I just like you” he says “Because it’s you. I have no choice.” and those are VERY VERY different things. 

“I don’t want to fall for a man” is the kind of phrase that I think almost everyone in the lgbt+ community has thought some variation of. It’s something I thought a lot growing up - “I don’t want to like girls” “I don’t want to be a lesbian” “I don’t want to have a crush on [insert name here]”. I imagine - although I can’t confirm this - that it is NOT a phrase that straight people would be so intimately familiar with. For straight people who never question their sexuality, the statement would be “I’m not gay” not “I don’t want to be gay”. 

Why would you worry about wanting something if you know you don’t?

It’s a fear response to knowing you have those feelings but not wanting to address it: “I don’t want to feel that way because if I admit that I do, then it’s admitting that I’m different and that my life is going to change.”

And when Gao Shi De says “I thought you didn’t like boys” Shu Yi doesn’t say “I don’t, I just like you” he says “Because it’s you.” It’s not a dismissal of queer feelings or people, it’s an admittance that Gao Shi De is the thing that makes him stop wanting to suppress the thought of falling for a man, that he’s already fallen so there’s no point trying to run away from it anymore. 

Honestly it’s some of the best bisexual/demisexual representation I’ve ever seen? On this tiny Taiwanese BL with nowhere a big enough fanbase that deserves WAY more? and I just… It made me feel SO seen, it acknowledged a part of queer culture that I don’t often see on TV, even in BLs and I think that’s beautiful.