#Plus and Minus

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

The last few days have not been good for many of us and the future looks darker than ever before in our recent history. So I'd like to give you all a big virtual hug (and maybe get one or two back) in the medium that's my best escape from this cold, shitty world out there.

Love For Love's Sake

The Tasty Florida

Cherry Magic Thailand

Pit Babe

Till The World Ends

Something In My Room

Cooking Crush

Kidnap The Series

Plus and Minus

I Promised You The Moon

If you need more hugs, you can find them here.

[heretherebedork]

Ah, Taiwan, the land of cameos in BLs. Also, there no hets to be found here. Everyone is queer!

[respectthepetty]

Dear Taiwanese BLs, never stop giving me the "blinding light of love" moment.

I love a good old fashion color exchange but something about a blinding light appearing out of nowhere to signal the feelings are out in the open, people are thinking clearly, and the love is exposed just hits the spot.

Or you can give me that sweet sweet heart bokeh effect

[asiandramas-takeover]

This is insane!!!!

[brazilian-whalien52]

I choose characters that date older men with a big age gap. Yes, I am fully aware that some of them aren't actually old (some are even below 40), but I took in consideration the age compared to their love interest and the way the character act. For example Minato acts like an old men and he has a really big gap compared to Shintaro, the same as triage. But the preference while choosing (with the limited slots) were those, that's why for example lovely writer didn't show up, although you can still vote in other)

[yikes-all-over]

Do you think that everytime Taiwan Releases a BL the giggle with the knowledge they have me on a choke hold?

Like the hoes gon love this. And it's me, I is the hoes that do indeed love it.

[blmpff]

HANK WANG igs 20.03.24

[rin-moved]

PLUS & MINUS dir. chiang ping chen

[spicyvampire]

All they do is guess star in other Taiwanese bl instead of doing BLIH 2

[lurkingshan]

Talk to me about noble idiocy! I know it is one of your most beloathed tropes... what makes you dislike it particularly? Are there examples or variations that you find more tolerable? Or ones that you feel are especially egregious?

Wow, what a gift. Thank you for inviting me to rant about my beloathed, noble idiocy.

So first, what is it? Noble idiocy is a very well worn drama trope that in its barest definition means that a character does something stupid for ostensibly noble reasons. In most dramas, it shows up in the form of one character destroying a relationship for the other person’s “own good.” It is usually justified under the notion that the noble idiot is trying to protect their beloved, and it most often shows up as the final act conflict in romances. As a drama viewer, I hate this trope for so many reasons.

Let me count the ways:

The trope is predicated on the notion that the noble idiot knows what is best for their partner and is entitled to act in their interest, usually without their consent or knowledge

It’s also a trope based in a failure or outright refusal to communicate, which is always a frustrating thing to watch

Committing an act of noble idiocy is a breach of trust in a relationship that is hard to believably come back from, as it requires deeply hurting the person you claim to love and feeling righteous about it to boot

It’s also just infantilizing and shows deep disrespect for one’s partner and their agency to make their own choices

Most dramas don’t actually hold the noble idiot to account, uncritically accepting the notion that they believed they had a good reason for what they did and thus should be easily forgiven

Consequently, an act of noble idiocy often destroys any faith the audience has in the relationship and the inevitably tacked on happy resolution falls flat

The trope is very often used cheaply as an easy shortcut for conflict when a drama is running out of steam or isn’t sure how to fill its runtime, and thus tends to feel false and sometimes even like a complete violation of character

So yes, noble idiocy on my screen is an automatic groan for me and usually takes a drama down in my estimation because it’s just such a lazy, overused trope. But there is a spectrum and some versions are more palatable than others. For instance, if the noble idiot has extremely well-established reasons to think they are not good for their partner, the drama has been naturally building to a break, and the partner is well aware of what is happening and why, I find that much easier to swallow.

A good example of this take on the trope is Just Between Lovers, a kdrama about healing from a traumatic incident and its aftereffects. Gang Doo, the male lead, feels he is holding his girlfriend back, and so he takes a job that will send him away for awhile to give her a chance to move on. She doesn’t want him to leave, but she is fully aware of where he is going and why. So while she’s frustrated and hurt as she watches him go, she isn’t left wondering what went wrong or thinking this is about anything but his trauma, which she already knew about. She knows it is because he loves her so much that he is leaving. As a result, their reconciliation was believable.

The next step down is the just plain stupid variation, in which the noble idiot doesn’t realize there will be fallout for their failure to communicate their intentions when they decide to abruptly leave their partner. This version showed up in Because This is My First Life, a kdrama about a contract marriage, when the heroine, upon falling in love for real with her husband, decided she didn’t want a fake marriage anymore. She decided to end the relationship and take a short time away so they could start fresh. The problem? She didn’t tell him that’s what she was doing, she just left him with no explanation. The male lead, a neurodivergent person who had struggled to open up to her in the first place, was deeply damaged by this abandonment. It’s an act a person claiming to love him would never do. Because of that, I can never love the drama wholeheartedly or trust in that relationship, which really pissed me off because until that final act of noble idiocy, it was a lovely and thoughtful romance.

By far the worst version of this trope is what I call the needlessly cruel variation, where the noble idiot outright lies to their partner about their feelings and intentions as a way to make a clean break. This usually takes the form of claiming not to love them anymore, and it is fucking infuriating. Plus and Minus is a great exemplar of this version of the trope, and it’s the reason I start hissing every time it comes up. After pursuing a relationship with his lifelong best friend, Li Kung bows to homophobic familial pressure and ends their relationship by claiming he misread his feelings and does not love Tse Shou after all, leaving Tse Shou confused and destroyed, having just lost both his lover and his best friend with no warning and in the cruelest way imaginable. It was out of character for Li Kung and absolutely untrue to their relationship dynamic. That the show then tried to tack on a fluffy happy ending after that unbelievable breach of trust just made me even more angry and I will honestly never forgive it.

There are others that fall somewhere along the spectrum—A Boss and a Babe, for instance, lives somewhere in the gray space between the second and third variation, as Cher told Gun he was leaving him because they were not compatible and told him not to look for him, and failed to communicate that his intention was to finish his degree so that they would become more compatible. It was cruel in that there was zero reason for him to not just tell Gun what he was doing, but it was based in Cher just being low (high) key stupid about other peoples’ emotional needs rather than him intentionally setting out to break Gun’s heart.

And then there’s something like We Best Love, which starts out giving the impression that we are dealing with noble idiocy before peeling back the layers to reveal that both Shi De and Shu Yi had been tricked into thinking the other abandoned him, and it was actually Shu Yi’s dad who interfered to keep them apart and confused. Shi De was definitely an idiot for never talking to Shu Yi to confirm the breakup and trying to defeat his dad on his own, but he never actually nobly dumped Shu Yi in the first place. It’s an interesting twist on the trope that starts as infuriating and becomes more sympathetic as it’s unraveled.

In conclusion: I really do despise noble idiocy narratives on the whole. But that doesn’t mean it’s a completely useless trope, and there are dramas I love that have deployed milder versions of it. It can and has been used effectively in a way that supports character and leads to relationship development. It’s just so rarely the case that I instinctively recoil from it, and I wish drama writers would stop and think 12 times before deciding if its use is really necessary or compelling in their stories.

[heretherebedork]

And Kiseki continues to play pokemon with BL cameos. Update your pokedexes!

[gabrielokun]

[ql-of-all-time-bracket]

QL of All Time - Round 1: Plus and Minus (2022) vs You Make Me Dance (2021)

[brazilian-whalien52]

This gays traumatized Taiwan so much that now they just show up in every bl so we can see their alternative reality

[iguessitsjustme]

Only one character per show. I can do another one of these with different characters from these same shows if people want.

Also I know not all of these shows are QL. Don't worry about it. Just vote.