My BL Pet Peeves

I am a BL lover. Have been for some years and most likely will stay like this forever. I love the storylines, I love the boys, I love the snogging.

There I said it.

But there are a couple of things that are really driving me insane. So here are my BL pet peeves aka how to ruin a show, movie or a fanfic for me within seconds. 

Let’s start with pet peeve number one:

The bottom is behaving like a girl!

Yes, I can’t stand that. It’s one of the biggest no-nos for me ever. If I want to see heterosexual stereotypes I will just watch a normal show. But I am into BL because gender roles are different normally. It’s not the usual boy sees girl, they fall in love, they marry and have 2,5 children. I am extremely bored of that crap and I don’t want to see that.

I really can’t think of any couple where that worked for me. I think the main offender here are fanfic authors. Especially when it comes to Arthit it seems they like to make him into a four year old girl who is afraid of anything and won’t have any sexual contact at all. This is so far out of character for Arthit in my opinion that it just really drives me insane. Fanfics like that are discarded extremely quickly from my reading list. No one does this to my sweet, bad ass Arthit. Just because you are shy doesn’t mean you are a sissy. Pah!

But let’s move on to pet peeve number two:

Overdone fanservice

I know fanservice is part of the package and I don’t mind it that much if it’s not going too far. I mean when you look at Krist/Sing, Off/Gun and Tay/New you can see that they are great friend who just like to hang out.

Are they couples in real life? I don’t know. Would I like them to be? Possibly I would like to see them being a real couple. But what are people really expecting if they were a real couple? Them making out on stage in front of everybody? I don’t think so. So what is this whole pushing people together doing for us as a fandom? Nothing really as I am sure if any of these couples are real they would never really admit it in public because they would know what kind of a shitstorm would happen. Not one actor would be able to play in a show without their partner anymore. It’s hard for them to be without their partner at the moment already. Can you imagine what would happen if they were official???

Sometimes I feel that the whole overly fanservice is really not good for our fandom. It has the potential to destroy couples who had great chemistry. Look at Ohm and Toey. It’s such a shame that things happened the way they did and it was absolutely the fandoms fault.

But maybe we should move on to a lighter pet peeve number three:

Romance turns into Bromance

Yes, I am a simple gal. I like romance, there I said it. Bromance always feels like bl-baiting and I hate it. I am sure I can’t remember any Bromance couple that I really shipped. It’s like watching your ice cream melt in front of you without being able to eat it. It’s just perverted in a way. Just against the natural order of things.

I was a huge fan of Beloved Enemy. I think the chemistry between the leads was so on fire and even though the storyline might be a bit questionable it could have been an amazing BL. But what did these idiots do? Make it a bromance. I spent all these hours of my life for what? A bromance????

I am really simple. One kiss would have been enough for me. Just one lousy kiss. And yes, I am aware that due to the ban on China a lot of the BL stuff needs to be censored, but for me it still feels like cheating.

And my next pet peeve number four is not a lot better:

The girlfriend turns bitch or needy cow.

No, I am not a big fan of women standing in the way of true happiness which in my very narrow mind can just occur between two cute Asian guys.  But due to storyline issues there are often girlfriends involved. And that’s okay I guess. We are dealing in the BL universe a lot with coming to terms with your sexuality and of course girlfriends or girls in general will be part of that.

But what I really really hate is when they are making this girlfriend into some form of a evil overlord. Don’t get me started on Plemplem (yes, it’s Plernpleng, but in German Plemplem means crazy and that fits so much better to her).

But I have to give it to that actress as even as Pop’s girlfriend in WTD I hated her with a passion. This time she was not a bitch, but a door mat. And I don’t wanna see that. Why do we have the tendency in BL to make women and girls appear either needy as hell or simply cruel. Why is there no middle ground?

To stay in the TWM universe for a second: I want more girls like Yiwah or Fai in BL. Girls who can stand up for themselves, who are fierce AF and who are loyal friends to our cuties. Sometimes it feels like BL can be a tiny bit sexist towards women and I really don’t care for that.

I am a huge fan of BL and I have spent so many hours watching and following BL shows and movies. I have watched BL from all around the world and from all times really. There are a lot of good BLs out there which don’t drive me insane. I know I have the tendency to post mainly rant blogs, but that’s the German in me coming through (or the bitter old lady, depending who you are asking).