the mellow tigger's musings

Today's theme song comes to us, thanks to a "BL" (boy love, aka yaoi) show on Viki. I mentioned Viki.com back in August for their extensive list of these dramas intended for heterosexual women.

The show is "The Eighth Sense", and I was going to mention it today anyway. It is excellent material. It's not at all like the usual cartoonish BL dramas with their melodrama plot and whimsical sound effects. Those shows are intended to be "over the top", much like the 1960s Batman live action show. No, this particular show is much more serious and believable and touching. It's one of few shows that I've given a 10-star rating in the Viki app. Definitely watch, if you have any curiosity at all about these BL series. Although... it may spoil all of the others when their cartoonishness doesn't really compare to the all-around quality of this one. I actually laughed out loud for one scene near the middle of the show, where a woman (Korean) tries ordering pepperoni pizza and tequila from an English-only bartender. She's a hoot, and watching her in that scene made me happy.

At the end of episode 9, this song plays. "The Story" by Conan Gray captures the essence of the series with great precision, as if it was written for the show, although the music arrived several years before the tv series. This YouTube video has 21 million views, so why have I never heard of this song before watching the BL drama last week?

Oh, and I'm afraid that's just the way the world works.
It ain't funny. It ain't pretty. It ain't sweet.
Oh, and I'm afraid that's just the way the world works.
But I think that it could work for you and me.
Just wait and see.
It's not the end of the story.

If you have extra time, scroll through the comments on the YouTube video. There are lots of messages when the music arrived online 4 years ago. Then a gap, and suddenly a swarm of messages commenting how lovely the song is, and they arrived at YouTube after hearing the song in "The Eighth Sense". It's a perfect song for that show.

Enjoy the theme song for today. It's bittersweet, but it's very nicely done.

Somebody here on Dreamwidth mentioned Viki.com nearly a year ago. I looked it up and eventually subscribed in February, I think. I spent these last 2 days doing absolutely nothing except for watching shows on Viki. It's has been a wonderfully lazy recharging of mental fortitude after the last week of work.

Viki is interesting. There is no English dubbing for any of their shows, but they do all come with English subtitles. It's been interesting to learn which English words or phrases are in common use in Asian countries. These shows come from many countries (Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and probably others), representing many languages.

I originally came here to watch the good Three-Body sci-fi show about the impending arrival of an alien species at Earth. Sadly, Viki's sci-fi library just isn't very long yet. Another decent show, though, is Seo Bok, about a genetically engineered human.

What has kept me subscribed, instead of the science fiction, is the "BL" dramas. When I first looked at the list of categories in their library, I had no idea what "BL" was, but it turns out to be "Boy Love" stories. That's right, a whole catalog of television stories about gay men... sort of. Mostly, the shows are okay but not great. It's sort of like a cross between the Lifetime channel (which is famous for low-budget copy-and-paste tales) and spanish telenovelas (famous for ridiculous plots and overacting). Mostly, they're not wonderful tales, and mostly for the same reasons:

• Sometimes based on comic books, the plots can be unrealistic. Many characters make the worst possible decision or misinterpretation, because that creates a fun plot, right? It's fine in moderate doses.
• Intended for heterosexual female viewers, the writing is often very weird about the relationship dynamics. Some shows come across clearly like they were written by straight men for viewing by straight women about relationships of gay men while trying to justify straight male dominance in a world where it has clearly lost any sense of justification at all.
• Based in eastern relationship dynamics, it's often explicit that one man in a pair is the high-status and overly-successful man while the other is lower-status and gets socially dominated by the other. It's a dynamic that I'm not keen on, personally.
• Taking a cue from western video arts, it's too often the case that violence is required, and the more violence there is, the more likely the show also will be more open about sex. Almost every show is very chaste with the kissing, even. Fine. At least the stories are there in abundance, which is a new experience to this western viewer.

Social dramas aren't something I would normally watch, but Viki's BL library is just so extensive. Here's a heartfelt "thank you" to the heterosexual women of asian countries who provided a reliable demand for this stuff.

More later about specific recommendations for shows. I've watched a lot of them and certainly have favorites.