Rules: pick your top 5 favorite sub-genres and the show that best exemplifies it. Feel free to explain your choices ☺️
Game created by and tagged by @embersinthefirelight 😘
I love this opportunity to celebrate diversity in QLs! It's amazing how we've expanded past the obligatory college romances that used to be 90% of BL.
I love a series that pushes past regular drama, and gets darker and more intense. Life and death stakes, double-crossing, secret agendas, lovers who have to literally fight to be together. Regardless of it's more crime-oriented or mystery-oriented or even toxic yaoi-oriented, I love the thrill.
We've gotten a lot of good thriller or thriller-adjacent shows of late, but I think the recent standout for me is the vastly underwatched The Bangkok Boy. But I also have to call out Not Me for the utilization of the twin switch trope, because secret identity is one of my absolute favorite thriller devices.
As I've gotten older, my appreciation for horror has deepened, especially as I've delved more into the intertwining of queerness and horror. I have such a long list of queer horror to read.
The tricky thing is that I don't like gore, it just grosses me out too much to immerse myself. So for me it's very much about the vibes, and the suggestion of what is lurking in the shadows.
Khemjira was a standout for me, and maybe not for the reasons people would expect. The moment that really told me this was a good horror was the quiet moment after Khem visited his mother's grave in the first episode, and then turned to walk out of the cemetery, and we saw the massive number of ghosts who were lurking and watching. There was no music stinger, no immediate threat, but that moment of realizing what Khem is surrounded by and aware of due to his curse is beautifully chilling stuff.
I also have to call out Dead Friend Forever for the well done blending of so many traditional horror tropes with the true horror of how a person's life can be destroyed by casual cruelty, selfishness, and indifference.
The older you get, the more you long for romance that doesn't center 20-year-olds. Just like other forms of rep, the interest is out there in the audience, but it doesn't suit the goals of capitalism, so we have to grasp at our crumbs of representation. I wish we could have more, both for us older fans, and to prove to the young ones that life can still be vital and meaningful at any age.
I have to go with the Takeda Kohei cinematic universe for this one, I hope he keeps this up until he's 90.
This one depends deeply on the overall premise, and the tone of the humor, but when done well, a good romcom hits that sweet spot like almost nothing else can.
Semantic Error is a classic already for a reason, and for recent offerings, My Romance Scammer had a style of humor that I really enjoyed.
I love, love, love what-if scenarios, and that chance to see what is possible when you take a character and pop them into a physics-defying unexpected situation, whether it be time travel, or a whole different version of reality. Considering how popular this is as a premise in manga, I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen more in QLs, but maybe it's only a matter of time.
Love For Love's Sake did a unexpectedly heartfelt version of this with a video game reality, and Rearrange broke my heart and healed it back up again with some time travel.
Bonus - The Genre I Desperately Want to See More Of
Please, QL gods, give us some good hard sci fi. Yes, the alternate reality stuff is sci-fi-ish, and we've gotten a little bit of fuckable android representation, but I want full on sci-fi. I know the budget thing is a problem, but you can do a lot with two gay people stuck on a space ship. Just sayin'.
No pressure tags for @mikuni14, @thisonelikesaliens, @thisautistic, @scarefox, @babyangelsky, @negrowhat
