- is the development of relationships: actual, end-game romances. The western TV model has been, for ages, to start with chemistry/sexual tension and then just... let it keep going, more or less indefinitely, well past the point where you'd expect the dynamic to evolve or stop.
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Which means that, for all their strengths, western TV shows frequently suck at purposefully developing a romantic relationship from beginning to end. It's always about relationships, plural, sex and breakups and obstacles, b/c they're always trying to keep their options open.
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Whereas with c-dramas, when they want to show a main pairing romance, they just... do that. You get full development and full catharsis. There'll still be angst and drama and heartbreak, but it's not *arbitrary* - it's all engineered with the endgame in mind.
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I've been saying c-dramas, but from what I can tell this logic is also common to k-dramas, j-dramas etc - which is also why, I suspect, BL adaptations are actually a *thing* in those TV traditions, even though, culturally, there's often greater pushback to queer content.
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BL stories are, by their nature, romances; they might take place in magical settings, amidst sweeping political drama or schoolyard bullying or any one of innumerable genre settings, but the romance is always foregrounded between the characters - and it has a set endpoint.
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When western TV does queer shows, it doesn't do romances - by which I mean, it doesn't have a single focus on a single couple who just so happen to be queer, doing their thing in whatever setting. Instead we get ensemble, real world shows About The Queer Experience.
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Very occasionally, we get a historical miniseries about a specific historical gay who may or may not have a romantic happy ending, but the focus is still on them Existing While Queer; and we do get queer couples & characters within genre shows, but they're not the lead romances.
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As of very, very recently, we're starting to get queer romance *movies*, on account of how film, rather than TV, has been the preferred mode of showing romance-on-screen in western tradition, but there's still this terrible hesitance about it - and again, it's always real-world.
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Whereas The Untamed, to take the example I started with, is gay xianxia. Yes, there's an epic romance between two men (who can't kiss on screen because literal government censorship), but there's also flying on swords and zombies and murder and politics - it's a genre FEAST.
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Which isn't to say that BL adaptations are ten a penny throughout Asia - they're still a niche market, and especially in China, they're still subject to a great deal of censorship. But they represent a type of queer content that is utterly absent from western TV -
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- but which many of us queer genre fans absolutely LOVE. It's the kind of thing we go feral for in novels, but which never gets put on screen here. So if you've been wondering why so many of your queer geek friends are suddenly yelling about c-dramas: this is why!
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Even where censorship takes kissing and sex off the table, the idea of an epic, long-form show with a queer romance at the center of a complex, chewy, often fantastical or otherwise genre-heavy story? It's catnip. Utterly irresistible. And the west *isn't doing anything like it*.
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In conclusion: I have fallen into the abyss of Guardian, The Untamed, Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty and Word of Honor. I can't get up but that's fine, I'm very happy in my new habitat. Please slip food under the door at appropriate intervals.
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