I find it soo endearing how awkward Faifa gets in this scene when Wine casually lays on his lap! But the thing is, this is not a one off. It happens whenever Wine has been the first to initiate contact.

He is shocked every time. He takes a moment to regroup before he hugs Wine back. He almost seems flustered. Like he's not used to being hugged. Like he's not used to receiving this kind of affection at all (or probably doesn't expect it directed to him).

Which is so weird when you think about it, because Wine is not the first to do anything very easily, especially show his admiration (and towards a guy! my sweet, previously closeted, gay baby 🥲). Fa is the one who eased him into this kind of comfort from day 1!

He casually pats his hair, touches him, hugs him, kisses him and just showers him with love. He's the one who broke Wine's barriers. He made Wine comfortable with accepting physical touch (at least from Faifa).

So, of course Wine thinks it's okay to do it back! And yet, when it's reciprocated...

Faifa is surprised

Soon after the last episode of Shine ended, the fandom space on X erupted in dissatisfaction that quickly turned into anger, especially with respect to Trin's character arc and the Tanwa/Trin romance arc.

Although the showrunners consistently described Shine as a gay series, many fans accused BOC of exploiting MileApo’s BL fame and using familiar marketing tactics to lure BL audiences, only to deliver something that refused to play by BL rules. That tension between promise and expectation sits at the heart of this entire backlash.

A translator’s thoughtful thread about Shine’s artistic choices was met with anger and mockery, and soon the show’s writers, translators, and even production staff became targets of harassment. What began as a conversation about interpretation turned into a campaign of bullying. Watching that unfold has been disheartening, especially because the translator’s words revealed something vital about Shine’s artistic intent that many people refused to hear.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why that reaction feels so strong and why it also completely misses what makes this series so special.

To me, the backlash around Shine isn’t just about one ending. It’s about two different ways of understanding queer storytelling.

Heteronormative storytelling norms, especially in romance and BL genres, are the kind we’ve all been trained to expect. It demands that characters grow, fall in love, overcome obstacles, and end with closure in a very specific way. Even when the story is queer, we’re often measuring it by straight narrative rules: does it give us a happy ending? Is the arc complete?

But queer storytelling doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it resists neat arcs. It lingers in tension, ambiguity, and longing. It values imagery, atmosphere, and emotional truth more than tidy resolution.

That’s what Shine does. It refuses to flatten itself into a BL fantasy. Trin’s story isn’t unfinished. His journey doesn’t follow a straight (literally and narratively) line from problem to solution. He embodies what the translator called queer aesthetics, which means he exists outside the usual rules of narrative progress. It is ambiguous, and so much of it takes place away from the eyes of viewers.

A lot of people are angry because they expected a BL ending: clear closure, emotional payoff, and fan-service catharsis. When they didn’t get that, they called it bad writing. But it’s not bad writing; it's a different kind of art that lives and breathes outside of heteronormative rules.

Shine was never a fan-service series. It’s political, layered, and deliberately queer. Its creators valued message and vision over meeting fandom demands. That’s not arrogance. That’s courage.

When audiences call that refusal flawed, what they’re really saying is, “I only recognize queerness when it behaves like heterosexual romance.” That’s the tragedy of the backlash; it turns queer resistance into an error.

(i cant take any screenshots yet because i have to watch on a different browser, so pardon the lack of visuals) this is long but worth it i think lmao

The Good:

first and foremost: the way you can see, in real time, kuji sympathizing with azuma coming to the realization his mother will eventually die of old age. they both lost one parent to a different cause, but this is something kuji had experienced firsthand; the slow decline and eventual loss of his father. and he can see azuma mentally reckoning with that inevitability with his mother, and then decides to insert himself into the situation, explaining what needs to be done to make life easier for her and helping right away. all of this without either character ever making a point of "Oh, Kuji can relate to this, huh?/I can relate to him." We don't need it. His actions and expressions tell us everything we need to know. its subtle and delicious and meaningful, i loved it

and then we have kuji confessing without confessing multiple times? mwah amazing chef's kiss. you can see how much he loves azuma yet refuses to Say it. also the way he turned down the request for a kiss from azuma when it seemed like azumas usually kind of teasing/just physical, but instead waiting until they were out of the car for a more romantic, intimate moment. and then of course he fucks him (even if we dont get to see it :/) to distract him later anyway because when it comes to azuma he has no spine

and AND the parallels to their fathers both being translators in a sense, kuji's father as a profession and azuma's dad as a way to interact with his son (this was present in the manga but the live action depiction of it brings it home). something im mixed but mostly positive on was the choice to never show us azuma's father as well; in the manga he's at first depicted with an obscured face/no eyes to indicate azuma views him in a more hazy, romanticized way than his sister and mother. the show adapts this by only giving us azumas words to judge him by and nothing else, and i overall think that worked

this was in the first two episodes as well but i must reiterate the performances are also once again totally stellar (theyre actually so good that they kind of made the newbie actor playing tamaki kind of look bad lol). so much depth and things unsaid that you can clearly understand anyway. kuji's indescribable fondness for azuma, his quiet desire to help him. azuma burying his pain under a a lackadaisical attitude, but sloooowly opening up to kuji and letting him in. all just masterful

The Bad:

i think in general this episode needed to be spread out over two instead of all crammed into one. i understand they probably had limitations around that, but there were a lot of abrupt, unexplained skips forward in time, little moments from the manga that REALLY added more depth to this mini arc, and i dont mean to be a pervert but unless they immediately start episode 4 with the sex scene, we kind of needed to see at least the foreplay for that. its an instance where the sex is kind of important for the characters getting closer. i like how sex was used in episodes 1 and 2, but they Need to have more because that IS one of the primary ways these two characters communicate; they feel more comfortable communicating feelings with their bodies than their words, and if its cut off so quickly every time its going to become a compounding problem

This one scene, the virginity reveal, is the axis on which the entire story tilts. It’s not just a shocking confession; it’s the moment the narrative stops being a simple “assassin vs. target” setup and becomes a tragic, obsessive romance.

🚗 The Setup: Road Trip to Murder (but make it romantic)

Two yakuza men, one car, and one “hot spring trip” cover story. Kataoka knows there is more to the story than him laying low after screwing up an order. Odajima: He's been ordered to kill Kataoka.

Ren Odajima (Hiroto Takahashi): The assassin, calm and reserved, but carrying grief for his dead friend Asahi and a kill order in his pocket. He’s basically “driver, caretaker, and executioner” rolled into one.

Kinji Kataoka (Masanari Wada): The target, sleazy, shameless, and manipulative, but secretly yearning for a simple life he knows he’ll never get. He’s attracted to Odajima’s cold, no‑nonsense vibe and immediately starts poking at it like a cat with a new toy.

🔪 The Hidden Mission & Revenge

Odajima’s motivation? Revenge. He believes Kataoka is tied to Asahi’s death. This trip is supposed to be his final act before he checks out of life altogether. He’s resigned, hollow, and ready to die. Kataoka, meanwhile, is busy turning the car into a mobile seduction chamber.

😬 Intimacy and Coercion

The story opens with Kataoka performing a sexual act on Odajima while he’s asleep. It’s non‑consensual, and Odajima’s reaction is resignation, not outrage. That sets the tone: intimacy here is coercive, morally compromised, and dripping with power imbalance. Kataoka treats Odajima like just another corrupted soul to use on the way to death. Odajima goes along, but it’s bleak.

💥 The Virginity Reveal: The Horror Heard Round the World

Then comes the bombshell. Odajima admits Kataoka was his first.

Kataoka’s face: Absolute horror. Not “oops, awkward” horror, existential horror. His whole “we’re equally broken” narrative collapses.

Boundaries & Humanity: This is the line he didn’t know he still had. He could justify exploiting someone already corrupted, but realizing Odajima’s innocence forces him to confront the last vestige of his own humanity. For the man who had accepted his own death, suddenly the thought of taking an innocent life or taking his innocence is unbearable.

The fallout: Kataoka flips from predator to protector. The sleazy, shameless manipulator suddenly feels responsible. He wants to shield Odajima, not consume him.

This is the moment the story stops being “assassin vs. target” and becomes “protector vs. mission.”

Odajima: “You were my first.”

Kataoka: [horrified gasp] “I have sinned against romance itself. My entire brand of sleazy shamelessness is now illegal.”

Ship: confession booth on the high sea

Audience: feral screaming because one line turned a hit job into a tragic protection romance with trauma‑bonded tenderness.

Love and Death: The Core Dynamic

Odajima: Torn between his kill order and his growing attraction for the man he’s supposed to murder.

Kataoka: A man who had accepted his own demise is now suddenly desperate to live because he’s found someone he wants to protect.

The virginity reveal is the hinge. It transforms their intimacy from nihilistic mutual use into something terrifyingly real. Kataoka begins to love Odajima for his vulnerability; Odajima begins to see Kataoka as more than a target.

In conclusion: The Journey to Killing You is not just a yakuza BL road trip. It’s a story about how intimacy can destroy self‑delusion, how love can grow in the shadow of death, and how one horrified gasp at a confession can flip the entire power dynamic on its head: boundaries, humanity, and all.

The Journey to Killing You (Anata wo Korosu Tabi) or, “Why This Yakuza Road Trip is Basically a Soft D/s Tragedy in Disguise”

So, cards on the table: The Journey to Killing You is not marketed as a D/s story. There are no leather harnesses, no safewords, and no neon club scenes. But the power dynamics? The control games? The way dominance and submission keep flipping between coercion, care, and moral boundaries? Yeah. It’s giving soft D/s narrative in a yakuza trench coat.

1. Clear Power Imbalance, aka: “Boss/Subordinate but Make It Sexy and Murderous”

Yakuza hierarchy: Kataoka is the young wakagashira (high‑ranking leader), and Odajima is his subordinate. Professionally, that’s already a Dom/Sub structure.

Mission of death: Odajima has been secretly ordered to kill Kataoka. Which means he’s both the obedient underling and the guy holding the ultimate veto power over Kataoka’s life. That’s a deliciously twisted Dom/Sub paradox.

Emotional imbalance: Kataoka = shameless, blunt, takes what he wants. Odajima = cold, empty, emotionally shut down. Translation: forceful pursuer vs. detached, resigned target. Classic D/s trope fuel.

2. Themes of Control and Non-Consent, aka: “This Ain’t Fluffy BL, Babe”

The show literally warns: this is toxic, gritty, not a cute consent‑is‑the‑norm romance. Kataoka jumps Odajima before even remembering his name. Early intimacy is coercive, morally compromised, and framed as part of the imbalance.

Even the official synopsis says Odajima “at times fulfills Kataoka’s desires.” That’s service language. That’s submissive framing. That’s “I’ll do what you want, even if I’m dead inside.”

3. Mutual Addiction and Shifting Dynamics, aka: “Oops, We Trauma‑Bonded”

As the trip goes on, they become addicted to how they feel together. It starts as toxic attraction, slides into reluctant intimacy, and then, against all odds, deepens into something resembling love. This is the classic arc of a dark romance: from coercion to connection, from “I’ll use you” to “I can’t live without you.”

4. The D/s Core Dynamics

Dominance as responsibility: Kataoka’s early “control” is manipulative, but the virginity reveal flips him into protector mode. Suddenly, dominance = guarding Odajima’s boundaries, not trampling them.

Submission as choice: Odajima starts out resigned, passively submitting to circumstance. But as intimacy deepens (grave confession, the reveal), his submission becomes selective. He chooses when to yield and when to resist. That’s agency.

Power vs. consent: The narrative interrogates non‑consensual contact at the start, then reorients intimacy toward care. The tension becomes: can control exist without harm? What does “care” cost in a world built on violence?

5. Scenes That Scream D/s Subtext

Caretaker assignment (driver/attendant): Role‑based submission. Starts as obligation, morphs into care.

Virginity reveal (“you were my first”): Boundary recognition. Kataoka’s horror = his last shred of humanity surfacing. Dominance becomes protective restraint.

6. What It Is (and Isn’t)

It is: A psychological D/s romance where dominance = responsibility and boundaries, submission = chosen vulnerability and strategic yielding.

It isn’t: A stylized BDSM story with protocols and safewords. It’s a soft D/s narrative: power, care, consent, and control woven into a yakuza tragedy.

(Edit: Since making this post, I've compiled a list of all the queer Indian media I can find here (it's also pinned on my blog). India may still be relatively absent from discussions on queer media, but it doesn't have to be that way, and change starts with us!)

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

(This is an older one, originally posted at Reddit in 2022, but it should still be accurate. Hope you'll find it useful, as uniforms in Thai shows often provide context that international viewers might not recognize.)

To begin, here's a summary of the Thai school system. There are twelve years of basic education (after kindergarten): six years of primary school (prathom or P.1-6), and six years of secondary school (mathayom or M.1-6), the latter of which is divided into three lower and three upper years. The age range roughly corresponds to the US system, so the years P.1-6 will often be translated as grades 1-6 and M.1-6 as grades 7-12. Most stories set in school will take place during the upper secondary years, which is often translated as high school (though this is rather approximate as it spans three years rather than four). Students typically enter M.4 aged 15 going on 16, and graduate at the age of 18 (or nearing it).

School uniforms are almost universally compulsory, used by all but a few alternative schools (university will be discussed further below). They mostly follow a very distinctive form, which has barely changed since the end of World War II, as there's a default format that's mandated by law and followed by most schools (though schools may elect to specify their own style of uniform). There are official industrial standards that govern the material, thread count, etc. of student uniforms that can be sold, and an entire industry is built around them.

Ik it feels random to obsess over this scene (but at this point, it's a part of my personality to obsess over random scenes), but it screams to me how much Jinn still cares about Jerome's perception of him. It matters to him more than he lets on, because when J asks why, this is his reply:

It's... well, it's a wonderful cocktail of misogyny and internalised homophobia (kinda) that I cannot ignore. He obviously enjoys strawberry ice cream, as we found out in J's visions and ep 3's trailer. But at this point, he would never admit it to Jerome because, for all Jinn knows, this could be another reason J starts teasing him.

For all he knows, this could be another episode of when they were 7 and J holds it on his head forever. So he says what he thinks J would want to hear. Maybe to protect himself. Maybe in hopes that Jinn accepts him in ways that he has rejected before. Maybe in hopes that what happened when they were 7 wasn't about him being gay (since J seems okay with dating guys after all) but about how he said what he said.

Ironically, though, J's response to Jinn's dismissal is this:

Ha! Like, okay. He's obviously right. I'm glad for the callout. But he seems defensive of dream-Jinn (vision-Jinn?) almost, and ends up scolding this sweetie.

And he looks like a kicked puppy!

Like he tried doing something J would approve of, only to be told off again!

He probably knows that Jerome is not the same guy they were when they were 7, but the emotionally hurt child in him doesn't. He wants approval. He wants to know he's normal. And he wants that from J (unfortunately).

Despite all these years of their "rivalry", Jinn's eyes have always been on J. He's always been looking at J. And ep 3's promo only makes that more evident.

He's one of the first ones to notice something is off with Jinn

And then Mai says something along the lines of "Maybe he's always been like that. You just didn't care to notice before."

Let me just share a few screenshots here of the boy who apparently does not care to notice-

Doesn't Care👀.zip

If anything, he cares too much. He cares about how J feels, he cares about how J is, and he certainly cares about what J thinks of him. And that's why he hates Jerome

This man looked at the show that was the tipping point of the first big anti-gay censorship wave in China in the 2010s, and decided to remake it and intentionally self-censor, just to see if he could attract the "Chinese BL is superior because it doesn't rely on kisses or NC scenes to show the emotions" audience to Thai BL?