What makes a BL?: A look at Thailand's "Esplanade gay movies"
Originally posted on Reddit April 2022.
"Esplanade gay movie" is a term some in Thailand have used to describe mostly low-budget, small-studio gay-themed films that received a limited release, often at the Esplanade Cineplex in Bangkok (no relation to Singapore's durian-shaped theatre). I briefly mentioned the influence of indie filmmakers on the formation of Thailand's live-action BL genre during the early 2010s in my Early history of Thai BL post, but felt that a closer look was warranted.
The above posters are of films that had limited theatrical releases, though some are nearer to the mainstream than others. There's considerable variety in their subject matter, which ranges from fluffy young romances (essentially BL as we now know it) to erotic adult dramas, with plenty of experimental stuff in between.
There's Boring Love from 2009, a romantic comedy adapted from a very popular story on the Pantip.com forums. The story also inspired Is This Love?, one of two gay-themed student films from 2011, the other being Just in Case. These two only had special charity screenings, but are early examples in the development of school-romance BLs. Another student short film, Present Perfect (2012) by Anusorn Soisa-ngim, had a remake which was released in 2017 and became quite a festival darling, with a sequel in 2020.
As mentioned in my earlier post, as the category diverged, some of these indie productions were the first to enter BL territory, including Timeline (2013, with a sequel in 2016), Love's Coming (2014, with a 2015 sequel) and My Bromance (2014). On the other end of the spectrum, a trend of erotic dramas being produced for the big screen was also emerging with Me, My Familiar People (2013) by Rachyd Kusolkulsiri (who would go on to make Love Sick), and Teacher and Student (2014) and Father & Son (2015) by Sarawut Intaraprom, who'd previously directed Boring Love. The 2015 sex comedy Love Next Door 2 is a follow-up to a 2013 online-only original.
A supernatural/horror trend seemed to follow, with Summer to Winter (2015) by the creators of Timeline, and The Blue Hour (by Anucha Boonyawatana, who would later direct Not Me) and Red Wine in the Dark Night (Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, The Eclipse) in 2016. The latter two would also be picked up by several international festivals.
More works on the BL side include Water Boyy (2015) also by Rachyd, Sweet Boy (2016) by Sathanapong Limwongthong (Gen Y), I Love You (2017) by Phadej Onlahung (Dear Doctor) and Boyfriend (2016), an adaptation of a popular web comic also originating from Pantip.com in 2005. The last was rather curiously also directed by Sarawut, whose company usually focuses on erotic gay stuff. (Edit: It's because he was the original author of the web comic.)
Works heavier on drama include My Bromance director Nitchapoom Chaianun's The Rain Stories (2016), and Fathers (2016), which was praised for tackling the subject of gay-parent families and also made the festival rounds. And then there's Driver (2017) by Love Next Door director Thitipan Raksasat, which is an erotic drama thriller. I haven't included some better known works like Anucha's Malila: The Farewell Flower or Tanwarin's earlier films that touched on transgender issues.
While I'd have liked to make this an analysis of how these films influenced and/or interacted with the development of the BL genre, that's pretty much beyond me (and I haven't actually seen most of them). But maybe those of you who know the works could share your thoughts. (Or actually, please share even if you haven't seen them.) What do you think defines a work as belonging to the BL genre, and how it could apply to these works (as well as others, like all the stuff by Nitchapoom's Wayufilm, which I've always had trouble categorizing)? Do BL films somehow differ from the recognized characteristics of BL series, given that they are almost entirely the work of queer creators and none are adaptations of BL novels? Do gay viewers form a larger part of their target audience compared to TV?
And did you notice how aggressively shirtless these posters are?
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here have an essay i wrote after seeing some bullshit and am bravely resisting sending
One of the most common arguments against queer sexualities is that the sex is disgusting and unnatural. Obviously that's not what you're saying when you say you prefer not to watch it, but making gay sex to be a 'problem' in shows is possible to come across that way. Or saying 'if I wanted porn I'd watch porn.' BLs have stories, even the shitty ones. BLs show a love story. It's not the same thing as porn but also, even if it were, there's nothing wrong with that. It may not be to your preference, but it's not wrong.
I agree with you entirely that NC scenes are not necessary to every BL. Some BL they are very necessary though — because in some relationships sex is a fundamental part. (Thinking both of Payback and Deep In here as recent examples.) Some BL do seem to mostly include them for the sake of expectation and enjoyment. But the purpose of entertainment is enjoyment, so again, that's only detrimental if it somehow takes away from the story, which is not automatically the case.
I would love to see more shows that explore asexual couples or queer platonic couples, just as I love to see the amount of shows we're getting recently that show kink dynamics. (Imagine a show that thoughtfully explored non-sexual kink, even.) Both have their place, and people are going to have their preferences for what to watch, but the problem is with saying 'this shouldn't exist.' Or, more commonly, 'this scene shouldn't be here because I don't like it.'
Originally posted on Reddit February 2022. See the original thread for the pretty interesting responses.
In discussions of BL as a genre, it is always described as originating from Japanese shoujo manga, then expanding into other media forms and spreading to Asia and globally. But Western slash fanfiction is hardly ever mentioned, and when it is, it's mostly contextualized as a similar genre, developing in parallel from the 1970s, though existing in entirely separate cultural spheres.
But are they really that separate? In the case of Thailand at least, my understanding is that the development of BL as a genre of written prose fiction evolved not only from the graphical mediums of Japanese manga and doujinshi, but was also very much influenced by Western slash fiction. Sam/Frodo and Draco/Harry were a mainstay for early sao Y (the Thai term for fujoshi) communities in the 2000s, before real person slash of K-pop idols took over (itself a Korean import also influenced by Western slash).
This fanfiction culture was pretty much inseparable from the development of original Thai BL novels, which were mostly known as "fic Y" ("fic" being a loanword used for both fanfiction and original works published online) instead of "niyai", the Thai word for "novel". There are other influences of course, and regular fanfiction also contributed to the rising popularity of web novels, which included non-BL works as well. Language barriers would also have shaped the genres' separate developments.
As BL's recent global explosion in popularity came mostly in the form of live-action works further adapted from these novels, it's understandable that slash's influence, not much of which remains overtly visible, would be overlooked, especially considering that these BL works have been emerging into the mainstream while slash remains a relatively underground subculture in the West. But it also seems a bit surprising that, given their relatedness and similarities, the relationship between the genres isn't discussed more in this age of merging cultures, or that such a strong distinction and separation remains in place, even though there's a large overlap among fan communities.
That said, these observations are from the perspective of someone who isn't really a follower of such works, so I might be missing some things entirely. Those of you who are, would you care to share your thoughts? How do you view the relationship between slash and BL, be they of any language or culture? Do you see an interplay of influences between them? Do their tropes and conventions remain distinctly different, or do they appear to be converging (or maybe diverging)? Thanks for sharing!
Additional comment:
Come to think of it, it seems the usual convention in Thai circles was Draco x Harry rather than Draco/Harry... I'll take it as further evidence for the mixing of influences - Eastern convention, Western subject matter.
I've been reading up a bit about the history of Thai BL as a genre, and it's quite established that while the first foundations were laid by the film The Love of Siam, whose release in 2007 caused a genre shock in Thai cinema, it wasn't until the broadcast of Love Sick in 2014 that BL became recognized as a mainstream media genre of its own. But a lot of detail on what developments happened in those intervening years remains quite sketchy. Here's my attempt at laying things out, both from memory and what I've been able to find online... Please don't take it as a definitive history.
First, though, a bit of background...
Yaoi, a Japanese import popularly known in Thai as "Y", became established as a subculture in Thailand, mainly among young females (known as "sao Y", the Thai term for fujoshi), in the early 2000s. Most media was initially in the form of doujinshi manga, and remained pretty much underground. (Many have told of how works had to be found in hidden unlabelled shelves in stores, and how their rising popularity even led to a reactionary government crackdown in 2005.) Gradually, online communities developed, and as "fic" writing - a term encompassing both fanfiction (mostly centred around shipping J-pop/K-pop idols) and original web novels - saw increasing popularity generally, a genre of "fic Y" emerged as well.
Meanwhile, gay relationships and identities (as opposed to stereotypes of kathoey or ladyboys, which Thai society had been familiar with for much longer) were gaining wider acknowledgement in society and general discourse. There was an emerging interest in stories depicting gay relationships, which led to the establishment of community websites such Thaiboyslove.com (2006). As the scope and audience of these stories very much overlapped with fic Y, the lines separating the genres became quickly blurred as communities of sao Y and gay readers merged together.
However, portrayals in the media lagged behind these developments, and depictions of non-heterosexual characters in TV and film remained mostly limited to kathoey (ladyboys), mainly as comic characters. While there were exceptions - the series Rak Paet Phan Kao* (2004-2005) included a male/male side couple, and some indie films (the award-winning Tropical Malady among them) explored gay issues - these remained isolated cases or outside of mainstream attention.
Which is partly why The Love of Siam caused such a stir upon its release. Though it came a few months after Bangkok Love Story, a heavily promoted film novel in its depiction of a gay relationship, the latter was a "hunky gay drama"† that never really sought to capture the mainstream audience. The Love of Siam, on the other hand, rode on a wave of Thai teen movies, and made every effort to appear as a regular teen flick in its promotion, catching audiences off guard. Once the initial shock passed, though, the film's message sank in, firmly leaving its mark on the social consciousness.
The Love of Siam's success is of course mainly attributable to its exceptional filmmaking, but it has also gained a cult-classic status thanks to how it deeply connected to the young gay audience. But the sao Y demographic also played a huge part in supporting the film - throngs attended promotional events featuring the main actors in images prescient of today's BL industry. This merging of gay and Y audiences also blurred the line between the genres - while questions of whether The Love of Siam was a gay movie were among the most prominent among the multitude of online discussions of the film at the time, it was probably as often stated as whether it was a "Y movie", though the intended meaning was the same.
The Love of Siam's intersection of the teen flick, gay, and Y genres would greatly influence its successors, though the effect wouldn't be immediately seen, as no major works in the genre directly followed. The attention of Y fandoms went back to focusing on shipping idols, which now expanded to contestants in the competing reality music competitions The Star and Academy Fantasia.
The next major male/male paring to appear in mainstream media would be on TV, in the lakorn Phrungni Ko Rak Thoe (Tomorrow I'll Still Love You, 2009), which generated a considerable craze mainly among sao Y, but it didn't follow the teen formula or feature characters in high school.
Interestingly, the trend emerges first in student films. Is This Love? (2011) and Just in Case (2011), by students from Assumption University and Bangkok University respectively, both feature the now-familiar high school/university settings. The setting would re-emerge in the mainstream in 2012, with the first segment of the film Home by the director of The Love of Siam. Though it can hardly be considered gay, as no overt attraction between the characters is ever shown, there's something unsaid between them, and Nay-Beam was shipped by many fans. Virgin Am I, a small-studio production from the same year, also had a minor storyline that was shipped quite a bit (and featured some serious swimsuit skinship). On TV, an episode from Club Friday The Series (an anthology drama series based on life stories from the popular phone-in radio show) also featured a male/male pair as one of three high-school stories, but didn't gain much attention.
Everything changed in 2013, with the explosive popularity of Nadao Bangkok's Hormones, which revolutionized the teen series genre, introducing a style of production and storytelling influenced by international productions. Among the characters of its ensemble cast are Phu-Thee, considered by some to be the beginning of the current Thai BL wave. They were heavily shipped, and the actors were among the first to extensively engage in real-life fanservice. Also in 2013, a male/male story was featured by the TV short film Change from the show Rak Ching Ping Koe on Bang Channel (GMMTV's satellite channel).
The first true Thai BLs, however, appeared on the silver screen. As the approach to LGBT themes of indie film productions and minor studios diversified, some veered towards a style we now recognize as BL, with a focus on a young attractive cast and simple plotlines with copious amounts of fluffy character moments. Timeline: Phro Rak Mai Sinsut (2013, not to be confused with the mainstream movie from the same year also titled Timeline) appears to be to be among the first that demonstrate clear BL elements, but though it did get a limited commercial public screening, it was mostly a low-budget production with little reach. My Bromance and Love's Coming, both released in early 2014, were more widely seen, and are firmly considered to be in BL territory. My Bromance also had a devoted following throughout its production period, thanks to being a novel adaptation. But these paled in comparison to the emerging developments on TV.
The adaptation of the popular web novel Love Sick had actually been revealed in early 2013, before Hormones was announced, but it was stuck in pre-production for a year before casting calls could even begin. As Hormones made the casting process for its second season into a show of its own called Hormones: The Next Gen, Love Sick's producers also started an online campaign to heavily promote its auditions. This built upon an existing trend of proliferating "cute boys" (and, to a lesser extent, "cute girls") Facebook pages (and Instagram accounts), which would "discover" and share pictures of good-looking teens and university students, helping many of them become internet celebrities as followers crazed after them. Through this craze, Love Sick generated huge fan engagement over who would become the series' Pun and Noh.
Looking at the series alone, especially in comparison to Hormones, it seems surprising that Love Sick became as popular as it was, given the much lower quality of its writing, acting, and the production in general. But it's a testament to the devotion of the fandom and the sheer numbers of eager audiences waiting to consume live-action BL. Hormones may have helped create a huge demand for new teen series, but it was the BL itself that made the audience stick with Love Sick despite its issues, including the internal drama that led to the production team being changed for the second season. It also helped that Love Sick the source novel was one of the most popular stories out there, making it the perfect choice for an adaptation, though the creators, unsure of the format as they were wading into this entirely new territory, tried to balance the story and make it a more typical teen series by adding female characters and storylines. This of course turned out to be entirely unnecessary, a lesson subsequent works took note of.
Today, Love Sick's success is widely seen as the turning point which kickstarted the BL industry as we know it. However, Love Sick was actually part of a trend, and while it was definitely the most influential, it was by no means the only BL on TV that year, partly thanks to the launch of Thailand's digital TV system which opened up a lot of content slots that new channels needed filling. Love O-NET, broadcasting on the THV channel, was released three months before Love Sick, and several other TV series and TV short films from 2014 and 2015 also featured BL couples as main or side characters. Among them are several Rak Ching Ping Koe and Club Friday episodes, as well as Room Alone, GMMTV's first effort in its shift in focus towards producing its own series for the group's new channels, One 31 and GMM 25.
As TV proved to be much more monetizable, the genre's cinematic output dwindled in comparison, though 2015 did see the release of Water Boyy (with its unforgettable swimsuit promotional images) and sequels to Love's Coming and Timeline, as well as the genre works The Blue Hour and Red Wine in the Dark Night (which aren't really BL, but are probably worth mentioning as they star familiar actors). Most theatrically released films since then have leaned more towards LGBT than BL, with a few exceptions.
This brings us to 2016, which is when the Thai BL industry really took off, with GMMTV being the first heavyweight player to enter the field and other creators also establishing themselves. Mainstream publishers established Y-specific imprints, picking up stories for publication which previously would have mostly been self-published. The momentous shift marked the beginning of a new period for the industry, the history of which will probably be more familiar to many, and is beyond the scope of this review.
What do you think? Are there important observations I missed, or other milestones that should be mentioned? It would be interesting to more specifically explore the influences of these early works and see how much was derived directly from the genre's Japanese origins vs homegrown among the Thai fandom, considering the usual pattern of stories by women writers being adapted and directed by male creators, but that is beyond my knowledge.
* I've used the official Royal Thai General System of Transcription for series titles, as the spellings used by fan sites are really inconsistent
† As put by u/froggydays in a thread reviewing Present Perfect (2012), which I haven't quite been able to place in context. I understand it's a student short film?
Handsome Jack enters Borderlands 2 as the voice of Hyperion and the man trying to impose his version of order on Pandora. He's already rich, powerful, heavily armed, and in control of a huge corporate machine, so the story begins with him speaking from a position of near-total confidence. What makes that confidence memorable is how personal it is - Jack doesn't speak like a distant executive or a faceless tyrant, he jokes, taunts, overshares, gets petty, and keeps inserting himself into the player's experience so aggressively that his personality becomes part of the atmosphere of the game.
A lot of his role in the story comes from the way he frames power as righteousness. Jack doesn't think of himself as merely ambitious or ruthless, but as the person willing to do what weaker or stupider people won't. Pandora gives him the perfect excuse for that mindset, because it's already violent, chaotic, and full of people who are easy to dismiss as beneath saving. He can take every atrocity he commits and fold it back into the same self image: the only competent man left trying to civilise a wasteland.
That's why he works so well against the Vault Hunters. Borderlands is full of criminals, mercenaries, maniacs, and opportunists, so Jack can't stand out through cruelty alone - he stands out through the intensity of his self-justification. He wants control, admiration, and victory, but he also wants moral ownership of the story; he needs to be the one who gets to decide what counts as heroism, what counts as sacrifice, and whose deaths are acceptable. The violence is always doing double duty for him; it removes obstacles and reinforces the believe that he's still right.
The later games deepen that picture rather than replacing it; the Pre-Sequel and Tales from the Borderlands make it clearer how much of Jack's identity is built around wounded pride, paranoia, and the need to be seen as exceptional. Power gives those traits more room to grow, but they're already there long before he reaches his peak. By the time he becomes the main villain, he feels like someone who's spent years building a version of himself that can excuse anything, so long as he remains the hero in his own telling.
Psychology
A narcissistic structure is all over Jack. Grandiosity is the obvious part, but it goes well beyond simple ego; he sees himself as exceptional, uniquely capable, and entitled to shape the world around his own judgment. He doesn't only enjoy praise, he organises his whole life around the assumption that his vision should dominate everyone else's - Hyperion, the moonshot station, the Warrior, the campaign to "save" Pandora, even the way he speaks to other people all reflect that. He expects deference as a baseline and reacts very badly to disrespect, defiance, or anything that makes him feel small.
The NPD lens also helps explain why his cruelty is so tied to humiliation; Jack doesn't hurt people only to remove obstacles, he often hurts them in ways that reassert hierarchy and restore his own superiority. He degrades, mocks, taunts, and talks over people constantly. The violence is physical, but it's also narcissistic in the more specific sense that he needs other people reduced beneath him. If someone embarrasses him, betrays him, or resists the role he's assigned them, the response is often excessive because the injury is landing on his sense of self as much as on his plans.
Antisocial Personality Disorder/ASPD is also a plausible part of the picture. Jack is deceitful, exploitative, and entirely capable of torture, murder, coercive imprisonment, and mass death without meaningful remorse. Angel is the clearest example - he keeps his own daughter restrained and used as a living battery for years, tells himself that this is necessary, and still frames himself as a loving father while doing it. The combination of charm, instrumental violence, lack of guilt, and easy dehumanisation supports the ASPD reading, but the reason it doesn't fully explain him on its own is that Jack is much too emotionally invested in status, narrative control, and personal grievance for Cold Predator to cover the whole character. He's not emotionally empty so much as he's emotionally warped, self-absorbed, and vindictive.
He's also deeply paranoid. Jack needs control partly because he can't tolerate the idea that someone else might be acting beyond his reach. That gets worse over time, especially once betrayal and injury start stacking up. The move from ambitious Hyperion climber to full dictator is driven by more than simple success - he becomes more suspicious, punitive, and convinced that only overwhelming force can keep the world from turning on him. That worldview lets him interpret nearly any resistance as proof that he should become harsher.
The most important thing psychologically is how tightly he fuses self-image with moral legitimacy. Jack can't simply be a tyrant, he has to be the tyrant who thinks he's civilisation. He can't simply be a killer, he has to be the killer who thinks everyone else forced his hand. That's why his dialogue works so well - even when he's being openly monstrous, some part of him is still arguing a case, still narrating himself as the necessary adult in a universe full of idiots, animals, and ingrates.
Strengths and Flaws
Jack is highly intelligent, and the intelligence is practical rather than decorative. He understands systems, logistics, image management, technology, and how to turn resources into power very quickly. Hyperion under Jack isn't effective because he's stable or moral, but because he's sharp, ambitious, and willing to use people and infrastructure without hesitation. He can see scale well, which is part of why he becomes so dangerous once he has enough reach.
He's also extremely charismatic. Jack's humour matters here - he's funny, quick, and able to keep attention on himself almost effortlessly, which gives him a huge advantage over villains who rely only on intimidation. He can make cruelty sound casual, make propaganda sound entertaining, and keep followers emotionally engaged through sheer force of personality. Even people who hate him usually remember him vividly, and that's very much part of how he survives and dominates for as long as he does.
Another strength is his willingness to act decisively. Jack doesn't tend to linger in indecision once he's settled on a course, which gives him a lot of momentum, especially in a setting where many people are chaotic, selfish, or disorganised. He can commit resources, escalate fast, and keep pushing. In a different moral framework, some of the same traits would look like leadership, but in Jack, they serve conquest, punishment, and self-glorification.
His flaws are severe and inseparable from those strengths. The biggest one is grandiosity; Jack thinks his judgment is enough to testify almost anything, which means there's very little internal check on his worst impulses once he has the power to act on them. The same confidence that makes him effective also makes him blidn to his own absurdity, blind to the limits of his understanding, and certain that anyone opposing him must be stupid, evil, or both.
He's also viciously vindictive. Jack doesn't let injuries go. He broods on disrespect, betrayal, and resistance, then folds them into a larger story about why harsher violence is now justified. This is one of the reasons his relationships rot so badly - once someone stops reflecting the role he wants from them, he becomes much more interested in punishing them than in understanding them.
A third major flaw is that he treats people as extensions of his own narrative; followers, family, enemies, lovers, rivals, and even whole populations get sorted according to what they do for Jack's story about himself, which is why he can sound affectionate one second and appallingly cruel the next. He's responding less to who a person is than to whether they're feeding or obstructing his self-image, which makes genuine reciprocity almost impossible for him.
Relationships
ANGEL
Angel makes Jack's self-justification impossible to ignore. He can call himself a hero while massacring strangers, because strangers are easy to abstract, but Angel is his daughter. He keeps her imprisoned, exploited, and psychologically contained for years while insisting that he's protecting her and that he loves her. Their relationship tells you almost everything you need to know about Jack; he's capable of attachment, but the attachment is so saturated with control, entitlement, and self-deception that it becomes another form of domination. Angel matters to him, but he still destroys her life without hesitation because her existence has become too useful to his power.
NISHA KADAM
Nisha is one of the clearest examples of Jack in a relationship where cruelty, ambition, and mutual enjoyment all line up. She's not there to humanise him. She helps show what kind of person can meet Jack on terms he actually likes. Their dynamic works through appetite, violence, status, and shared pleasure in domination. With Nisha, Jack doesn't have to pretend to be gentler than he is, because the appeal is the harshness. That makes her useful in understanding him, because she strips away the more sentimental defenses he sometimes uses elsewhere.
RHYS
Rhys shows Jack as legacy, aspiration, and infection rather than only as a living tyrant. In Tales from the Borderlands, Jack becomes the voice in Rhys' head, and that setup reveals a lot about what Jack represents beyond his own lifetime. He's a fantasy of competence, superiority, control, and ruthless effectiveness that can still tempt someone after death. Their relationship is compelling because Rhys isn't simply Jack's victim - he's also vulnerable to the appeal of becoming more like him, which says a lot about how Jack works on people. He doesn't only terrify, he seduces through status and self-certainty.
MAD MOXXI
Moxxi brings out Jack's vindictiveness and his inability to handle rejection. Their history gives one of the clearest views of him in an intimate context where things didn't stay under his control. Her disgust for him and willingness to move against him help underline how badly he behaves once a relationship stops serving his preferred self-image. Around Moxxi, the charm is still there, but it's much easier to see the cruelty underneath it because she refuses to be impressed.
Just for Fun / Typology
MBTI - ENTJ
The clearest part of the type is Te. Jack is forceful, managerial, outcome-driven, and very comfortable using people, systems, and institutions as tools. He thinks in terms of control, efficiency, domination, and how to get the world into the shape he wants. Even his cruelty often has an administrative quality to it; he organises violence, he doesn't just lash out.
Ni also fits strongly. Jack doesn't simply chase power moment to moment - he's working from a larger personal vision about what Pandora is, what he should be, and what kind of order he intends to impose. His grandiosity has direction. He wants a future with himself at the centre of it, and he's willing to commit huge resources and enormous violence to bring that future into being.
MORAL ALIGNMENT - Neutral Evil
Lawful doesn't fit cleanly because Jack has no meaningful moral attachment to rules, order, or institutions beyond their usefulness to him. He can run a corporation, build systems, and present himself as civilisation, but the structure is never the real point - the point is Jack's control. He'll use law, technology, armies, bureaucracy, and propaganda as long as they keep him on top, and discard any of them the second they stop serving that purpose. Chaotic also misses too much, because he's far too organised, strategic, and power-conscious for that.
Evil is straightforward; Jack is manipulative, murderous, sadistic, and perfectly willing to destroy lives on a massive scale for power, revenge, convenience, or ego.
Conclusion
Borderlands never lets Jack be only a joke or only a monster. He's entertaining, which makes his cruelty more memorable, and he's psychologically coherent enough that the entertainment never empties him out into a cartoon. The narcissism, vindictiveness, humour, paranoia, and need to be the hero of every scene all pull in the same direction: he's a man who can do almost anything as long as he can still tell himself it proves he was right all along.
He's also one of the series' best examples of how charisma can make evil feel lively and even seductive without making it ambiguous. Jack says what he is constantly. The problem is that he says it in a way sharp, funny, and self-justifying enough that people keep listening.
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So people don't want Por to become "too feminine" like the rest of the DMD bottoms(and Cooheart) but JossGawin are too masculine and straight looking and God damn people need to control their homophobia and misogyny.
I really really really need people to stop obsessing over characters/actors/mascots(?) and if they are top/bottom/seem/uke. First, it's weird. Second, the binary thinking is extremely heteronormative and reductive. Embrace queerness and stop trying to shove everyone into pre-determined boxes. Also it weirdly reminds me of when people ask: so which one of you is the woman and which one is the man?
sometimes i think about gathering all of the top/bottom essentialist weirdos in a room and telling them about the amount of straight guys who like to get f-ed in the ass so i can watch their brains explode. i think it would be really entertaining.
