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The last 5 episodes of Love of the Divine Tree have so much plot it is insane how much is happening. A few years ago I expect this would have been a 70 episode drama.

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"If looks could kill"

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LOVE OF THE DIVINE TREE Xue Ran Ran ♥ Su Yi Shui + kisses

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He tries so hard to be evil. But you just want to pinch his cheeks and give him a cuddle

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Ahhhh I could watch about 100 episodes of Mu Qingge slowly socialising and nurturing one (1) angry traumatised feral kitten of a devil child.

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It's important to remember that at one point during Love of the Divine Tree, Su Yishui is injured so Xue Ranran sticks him in her pocket

(it's important because it's cute)

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I am home sick from work and finally finishing Love of the Divine Tree. I had originally paused on ep 21. They are so ride or die for eachother. I love when couples are mutually obsessed in dramas.

Also Wei Ju is my favorite.

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But can they really be called your best friend if they don't laugh at your silly choices just to be near your crush? 😅

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Heesu in Class 2 (2025) dir. Park Kyung Min

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Lee Hye Ri in Friendly Rivalry (2025) EP 2

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🥞

Inspired by Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat/TsukuTabe) Volume 1 manga cover.

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Heesu in Class 2 is the Show of the Spring for Me

I’m so relieved to have a show to look forward to again. I was in such despair after Gelboys ended that I haven’t been able to even write my BL Blurb about it; I just haven’t wanted to talk about how many other shows I’ve dropped or been uninterested in starting. However, Heesu in Class 2 has quickly taken over my top slot, and it’s given me a lot of ideas about the ways BL can explore queerness without saying “I am a homosexual,” while also exploring first romance.

It's Easy to Follow

The main source of my initial excitement about this show stems from how clear its narrative goals are from the jump. We have Hee Su, who’s known for giving lots of romantic advice without having much experience, and who is also known for being in the shadow of his popular friend Chan Young. Chan Young is often confessed to by girls, but they often grow tired of his aloof nature and break up. Hee Su is holding a secret crush on Chan Young, and worries he’ll miss his chance.

Meanwhile, the class president, Seung Won, is struggling to confess his own crush to Hee Su; Chan Young is developing a crush on Ji Yu after having a nice interaction in their cram school; and Ji Yu is also developing a crush on Chan Young. Hee Su sees this mutual crush forming, misunderstands Seung Won’s behavior, and decides that the best way for him to keep Chan Young available to him is to meddle in Seung Won’s affairs and pair him with Ji Yu.

Beyond that, Hee Su and Chan Young have another friend in Ho Sik who’s pursuing a relationship with one girl in the knitting club, while another girl leaves his secret admirer gifts. Hee Su also has three older sisters, who seem to be his primary caregivers (it doesn’t seem like their parents are in the picture). His dynamic with Ho Sik feels familiar, and Ahn Ji Ho plays off all three sister-playing actresses with surprising ease. Each sister feels distinct, and the rapport between all of them feels lived-in.

What stands out so far is that each dynamic in this show has been accessible and identifiable immediately. Each interaction in this show feels intentional and contributes to the ongoing development of the narrative or the characters.

Queer Angst Without Identity Declarations

One of the ongoing struggles I’ve had for years with BL is how alien it can feel for people who aren’t naturally drawn to romance stories, especially for many of my queer friends and colleagues. BL feels so alien to them, and many of my people have complained that BL characters don’t feel real to them. Like Our Dating Sim (ODS), Heesu in Class 2 (HIC2) is the kind of BL I enjoy because there aren’t many great heterosexual explanations for what’s happening in this show. In ODS, Lee Wan’s behavior regarding Shin Ki Tae only makes sense if he lives in a world with recognizable homophobia, and I’m feeling a similar pull in HIC2. ODS never had to say the words gay, and I don’t think HIC2 needs to right now.

Hee Su could choose to hide his feelings from Chan Young for valid platonic reasons, but the inherent fear for closeted folks is the rejection of your entire being when your friend can’t reciprocate your feelings. When heterosexuals reject each other, it isn’t inherently laced with the rejection of queerness itself. More than just navigate awkward friendship boundaries when a romance isn’t possible, queer people must navigate whether they can even be friends with a straight person anymore.

Hee Su could have treated the lesbian classmate like her crush on a girl was unremarkable. Instead, he brought up her situation with his sisters in a way that felt a lot like testing the waters on whether his sisters could accept a similar truth from him. His sisters’ serious regard for the issue, and Hee Jin’s response that the confirmation that the crush could like another girl insinuated that the pining lesbian still had a chance, further confirms that this is not a world where everyone is bisexual by default without anyone having to look directly into the camera to declare themselves gay.

Hee Su panicked when Chan Young’s latest suitor (though she might have a crush on Hee Su) asked him if he liked Chan Young. He’s also currently receiving threatening messages from an anonymous sender about what they presume to know about him. I absolutely loved episode 4 ending without resolving that, or confirming the identity of the sender, so the audience can experience a miniscule fraction of what being closeted feels like.

Then there’s Seung Won. Beyond his own crush on Hee Su and admiration for their home life, he had the opportunity to hide a truth about himself from Ji Yu when she brought up how he looks at Hee Su. I like that their friendship is one that’s strong enough that she can laugh at the absurd situation he’s in without him feeling embarrassed about his truth.

All of this gives us a useful framework to use hets.

The Hets

What we gain for placing this story outside of the BL Bubble is the ability to reckon with the presumptions and consequences of expected queer responses to angst. I love that Hee Su has a crush on his straight friend as Seung Won has a crush on Hee Su. In any sort of romantic story, the audience generally sides with the protagonist, and tends to side with their baseline perspective on things.

Hee Su has a nonproductive crush on his best friend. I might grow frustrated with the unspoken impasse in this story if I didn’t have Seung Won’s crush, or the budding romance between Chan Young and Ji Yu as additional complications in this story. Chan Young not noticing what’s going on with Hee Su would prove frustrating if Hee Su wasn’t also actively working against his best friend’s goals.

Moreover, it’s hard to support the inherent validity of Hee Su’s feelings, with the additional demand that Chan Young must pick up on them (or even reciprocate them) without disrespecting Seung Won’s feelings as well. This love rhombus works because Hee Su is not the only sympathetic character in this situation. If Chan Young must respond and reciprocate Hee Su’s gay feelings as our protagonist, where does that leave Seung Won? We must instead focus on what the characters do in pursuit of their goals and the resulting consequences.

Chan Young clearly loves Hee Su, and listens to him closely; but the boy is straight, and he won’t likely reciprocate Hee Su’s feelings. He’s not teasing Hee Su just because they have a physically affectionate friendship, which he also seems to have with Ho Sik. Hee Su himself noted that Chan Young’s response to Ji Yu is new and unlike anything he’s ever seen from him.

As for Ji Yu, I love that she’s been given a full personality. She’s another character being misunderstood by her peers as a snotty rich girl, when we’re shown that she’s a poor girl working a part time job on top of cram school while building a music career. This girl is busy! We see her pick up on Chan Young’s interest, and she responded in kind. That the feelings between them are so easy for them to feel and express serves as a frank comparison to Hee Su’s gay angst (though Hee Su and Seung Won could learn from the Episode 1 Lesbian and confess!)

Ji Yu also didn’t recoil at the possibility that her longtime friend Seung Won might have a crush on her. She was surprised, and respected Seung Won’s avoidance about it for a while before trying to approach him properly about it. Her eventually laughing at him over his situation with Hee Su works for me because she treated him seriously.

I also can’t hate Chan Young for being straight. He clearly values his friends, and he’s got an active sports storyline for me to follow! He’s clearly going to hurt himself over his newfound determination to succeed in tennis now that he’s motivated by his crush on Ji Yu.

In this show, I genuinely like the control Chan Young and Ji Yu offer, along with Ho Sik and Hee Su’s sisters, as a baseline for what heterosexuality looks like in this show’s world.

Wrapping Up

Honestly, I’m having so much fun with this show. It’s been so refreshing to have a show to look forward to on Fridays and Saturdays with the current drought I’m in. Ahn Ji Ho is so great at the physicality of his character, and he’s got excellent control over his facial expressions (I was cackling at his emoji-esque glare at Seung Won). He has consistent scene chemistry with every performer in this show. More than that, it’s just really nice to watch a show that told us exactly what it was about in the first episode before delivering on that experience every single episode. This show is really good, and it’s so rare that I’ve been able to say that lately.

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friendly rivalry is coming to netflix on sunday!

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She's my ex, ex, ex wife.

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BURIED HEARTS 보물섬 — 2025, dir. Jin Chang Gyu   

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Hello! I hope you are doing well. Lately I have only been interested in watching xianxia. And the recent ones like The Blossoming Love, Love of the Divine Tree and A Moment but Forever have really been doing it for me. Would you have some recommendations similar to these?

Awww, thank you! I am not sure which ones you've watched, but here are some of my faves:

Love and Redemption - everyone loves this one and with good reason. It has a strong FL and beautiful ML, multiple lifetimes of devotion, intricate world building, interesting themes, awesome secondaries, f u to fate, and it's just a great ride.

Love and Destiny - no relation to L&R but this is a great tale of a god of war accidentally awakened a little early and an immortal of interesting background. It's an age gap romance so mmv but I loved it.

The Legend of Shen Li - it has the same cottage core vibe that Tree has in some of its setting and like Moment features adult protagonists who actually have experience and life and goals and meditates on the meaning of love and living and eternity and divine constrain like TBL. One of my all time faves.

Lost You Forever - it really has such interesting things to say about family and love and damage and living despite it. I think it goes a bit downhill at the end but probably less so for someone who hasn't read the novel and the bulk of it is such a masterpiece.

The Legends - if you like saucy BAMF demoness and her devoted disciple, this one is for you.

The Blue Whisper - it has shades of established world order being evil, loving someone you shouldn't, and all the other good stuff.

Till the End of the Moon - I hesitate to recommend it because it is objectively a hot mess narratively, but it's such a gonzo tale emotionally and visually, that I will still throw that in.

Love Between Fairy and Devil - on the off chance you haven't seen that one, this is my n1 xianxia of all time and perfect in every way, imo.

Fangs of Fortune - I can't really say it's a xianxia (I can't even truly say what genre it is) but it does have gods and demons and rebirths so I think it would at least qualify as adjacent. It also is visually stunning and has such things to say. It was my favorite drama last year (that and JoL2)

Ice Fantasy - visually eye popping, great ensemble cast, ride or die OTP with a tough lady and a good man, this one is less known because it's a bit older but I adore it.

Three Lives Three Worlds Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (also known as Eternal Love) - I think this is THE xianxia for a lot of people, myself included. Starts slow but then grips you and it doesn't let go.

The Last Immortal - this was criminally underrated but it combines a great cast, a lovely love story and a take on what it's like to be left behind.

Novoland Castle In the Sky - more xianxia adjacent than xianxia, this is still ridiculous fun mixing fantasy and steampunk, winged people and flying ships, and Zhang Ruoyun's performance as ML elevates the whole business.

Legend of Heavenly Tear: Phoenix Warriors - and now for something TRULY gonzo - aliens in spaceships meet period China. This is in no way a xianxia but I wanted to throw it out there :P

PS The one xianxia everyone loves except for me is Ashes of Love. I don't hate it or anything but confess to being bored throughout.

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My least favorite thing about Undercover High School

Was when they jumped out the windows of the sex motel and landed on the discarded sex motel mattresses in the alley. I hope you have your shots!