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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
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Stupid Boys Stupid Love (Vietnamese Series)

By Golu
Before I start writing the review if this series, I have to say that the show had the most androgynous looking actors I have ever seen. I still cannot fathom if some of the characters were male/female or gender neutral. Its just an observation from me and I am not sure if that was intentional or not. Another noticeable thing fo rme was the kids school uniform. I have never seen such a school uniform and it was such a welcome and refreshing change from the white short and grey shorts of the Thai BL dramas (just kidding). This is a sweet and fun and silly mini series of 4 episodes of 20 minutes each, which is a very easy breezy watch about a coming-of-age story,

This is a story about 5 friends and starts with Nghia drama about trying to kiss his best friend Minh. At that moment, he realizes that Minh is now just not a friend, but the individual to whom he is deeply attracted to in a sexual way. This of course can be very confusing. Nghia tries to convince Minh that he is more to him than just a friend, but Minh pretends to just dismiss his overtures. Until one day Minh finally confesses that Nghia should stop playing with his emotions since he is gay and it will be easy for him to fall for him and eventually the duo get together. The other story of a boy(?) Tien completely smitten by a girl named Tu, who is a budding fashion designer. Tu is aware of Tien's feelings for her, but she still manipulates (in a flirty way) her influence to try and get her to admit her feelings, so she could then admit hers. And finally we have the fifth person, a shy and timid and loner student, who is bullied in school by his step brother. One day the coffee shop owner where he works stands up for him and the teenage boy immediately falls in love with her. At the end of this series, we see these two talking and perhaps trying to develop into something more.

My favorite thing about the show was Nghia trying to get Minh's attention and make him fall for him. He is clumsy, silly yet very relatable. It is an adorable romp with added adolescent clumsiness and the series captures the teenage behaviors quite accurately. All along, the assumption was that Minh was either disinterested in Nghia or ‘straight’. In reality, he is GAY and is falling, hard, for Nghia and this constant teasing is making him fall in love with him even more. Obviously, he does not want to be hurt if Nghia is just teasing him or just playing with his emotions. This came as a complete shock to me, and I found it to be so unexpectedly adorable. The other two stories are also given decent prominence, but personally, of course, I was interested in the gay love story. It is a story of five friends who are in high school and are finding, and to some degree, exploring their feelings for others on a more intense level. It affectionately seems like ‘puppy-love’, but it is presented in a surprisingly progressive fashion. The show may not be everyone's cup of tea honestly and many may find it stupid. But somehow the teenage and adolescent silliness felt real and the makers tried to capture their sentiments being endearing, charming, seeing the world through beautifully myopic eyes, yet profoundly cruel.

Overall, I thought the show was quite decent watch. It doesn't require a lot of investment time wise and took me to my teenage years when you may have a crush on someone and how our attractions to others felt so good, exciting, and all ours and sometimes quite sudden and almost always unrequited. And the series captures that well. (6/10)
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