All About Lust (and other squicks)
Dec. 10th, 2019 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSome varied media which I am having a little trouble reviewing since (a) they unexpectedly hit my sex squick (b) it's hard to review them without mentioning the sex, and talking about sex squicks me. Also two of them were recced by a BL reviewer I have mixed feelings about because of how he handles his squicks.
Below: m/m reviewer KrisPNatz, m/m romance webcomic All About Lust, m/m romance anime Love Stage, m/f drama anime Beastars
Content note: brief discussion of fictional consent issues
So! First, the reviewer: Boy Loves Boy's Love by KrisPNatz. He's moderately entertaining and light-hearted, and has similar squicks to me. A lot of people with my squicks can be really kink-shamey, but he had a nice rant on his Given review about how it's wrong to expect all BL, or queer media in general, to fit into narrow boxes of ~wholesomeness. Yay! But then on further watching he turned out to be massively inconsistent: from "this isn't my kink but people who are into it seem to like the show" to "Why did this kinky m/m focus on the kinkily problematic main pairing and not the cute background friendships??" and drawing an arbitrary line between "dubcon I enjoyed and thus think handled consent well" vs "dubcon I was squicked by and thus JUDGE".
For example! He made Love Stage and All About Lust both sound like fun, tropey m/m romances that handled sex and consent well for the genre.
And with All About Lust I'd agree! This is a Korean webtoon about the romantic and sexual misadventures of some male Korean art students. I was in the mood for a romance, and it's more fluffy slice of life with some romance and A LOT OF SMUT (with body parts censored to be literally invisible, but you very much get the gist) so that took a little adjusting. It's also a bit disjointed, with a somewhat clunky translation. But overall, it's really cute and good natured, and the sex scenes manage to be consensual, cute, funny, romantic, in character, and kinda hot (probably?), which few manage all at once!
Meanwhile Love Stage is funny, cute, and so bad about consent oh my god. Going into it would squick me, and I eventually skipped to the final episode (which starts with a rape attempt played for laughs) but it's exactly the sort of cheesy, tropey, Problematic BL KrisPNatz said it wasn't. Pia is more into that sort of thing than me and they said it bothered them too, though I think more for the "give up your dreams and do what your parents want even if it makes you miserable, they know best" moral. EDIT: The consent issues didn't blindside me, since I kinda of read it between the lines of his review, but they were still worse than I was expecting.
Finally: Beastars is an m/f anthro anime about a bunch of college students in a world that's like a darker Zootopia: humanoid animals co-exist but there's always tensions between carnivores and herbivores. It's really good, emotionally complex and digging into the worldbuilding in an enjoyably surreal and disconcerting way, using the idea of "animal instincts" to poke at free will and social roles. The protagonist is a quiet, gentle wolf guy who struggles with being a carnivore both internally and socially, while his love interest is a sexually experienced rabbit girl who struggles with being constantly seen as madonna, victim, or whore. Both of them have an enjoyably complex and shippy relationship with the Cool Overachieving Senpai Secretly Full of Pain, a deer dude who finds himself uncomfortably drawn to carnivores.
Unlike the other two works, I don't think it's trying especially hard to be titillating(*), and the sexual scenes are understated and there to progress the characters and story. Unfortunately, I am just really easily squicked by sex scenes involving anthropomorphic animals, as well as unromantic FWB sex, and had to stop watching even though I was really enjoying it otherwise ;_; I might give it a go eventually, depending on what I hear about the rest of the season.
Also a warning for violence! I was 100% fine with it myself but squicks vary :)
(*)or maybe you just have to be the right kind of furry, lol.
Below: m/m reviewer KrisPNatz, m/m romance webcomic All About Lust, m/m romance anime Love Stage, m/f drama anime Beastars
Content note: brief discussion of fictional consent issues
So! First, the reviewer: Boy Loves Boy's Love by KrisPNatz. He's moderately entertaining and light-hearted, and has similar squicks to me. A lot of people with my squicks can be really kink-shamey, but he had a nice rant on his Given review about how it's wrong to expect all BL, or queer media in general, to fit into narrow boxes of ~wholesomeness. Yay! But then on further watching he turned out to be massively inconsistent: from "this isn't my kink but people who are into it seem to like the show" to "Why did this kinky m/m focus on the kinkily problematic main pairing and not the cute background friendships??" and drawing an arbitrary line between "dubcon I enjoyed and thus think handled consent well" vs "dubcon I was squicked by and thus JUDGE".
For example! He made Love Stage and All About Lust both sound like fun, tropey m/m romances that handled sex and consent well for the genre.
And with All About Lust I'd agree! This is a Korean webtoon about the romantic and sexual misadventures of some male Korean art students. I was in the mood for a romance, and it's more fluffy slice of life with some romance and A LOT OF SMUT (with body parts censored to be literally invisible, but you very much get the gist) so that took a little adjusting. It's also a bit disjointed, with a somewhat clunky translation. But overall, it's really cute and good natured, and the sex scenes manage to be consensual, cute, funny, romantic, in character, and kinda hot (probably?), which few manage all at once!
Meanwhile Love Stage is funny, cute, and so bad about consent oh my god. Going into it would squick me, and I eventually skipped to the final episode (which starts with a rape attempt played for laughs) but it's exactly the sort of cheesy, tropey, Problematic BL KrisPNatz said it wasn't. Pia is more into that sort of thing than me and they said it bothered them too, though I think more for the "give up your dreams and do what your parents want even if it makes you miserable, they know best" moral. EDIT: The consent issues didn't blindside me, since I kinda of read it between the lines of his review, but they were still worse than I was expecting.
Finally: Beastars is an m/f anthro anime about a bunch of college students in a world that's like a darker Zootopia: humanoid animals co-exist but there's always tensions between carnivores and herbivores. It's really good, emotionally complex and digging into the worldbuilding in an enjoyably surreal and disconcerting way, using the idea of "animal instincts" to poke at free will and social roles. The protagonist is a quiet, gentle wolf guy who struggles with being a carnivore both internally and socially, while his love interest is a sexually experienced rabbit girl who struggles with being constantly seen as madonna, victim, or whore. Both of them have an enjoyably complex and shippy relationship with the Cool Overachieving Senpai Secretly Full of Pain, a deer dude who finds himself uncomfortably drawn to carnivores.
Unlike the other two works, I don't think it's trying especially hard to be titillating(*), and the sexual scenes are understated and there to progress the characters and story. Unfortunately, I am just really easily squicked by sex scenes involving anthropomorphic animals, as well as unromantic FWB sex, and had to stop watching even though I was really enjoying it otherwise ;_; I might give it a go eventually, depending on what I hear about the rest of the season.
Also a warning for violence! I was 100% fine with it myself but squicks vary :)
(*)or maybe you just have to be the right kind of furry, lol.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-10 01:22 pm (UTC)Beastars sounds like not my thing but it does sound really cool! I hope it continues to do interesting things just because I like that kind of thing to exist, even when I can't myself enjoy it!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 11:43 am (UTC)Ah, I didn't make it clear! Luckily Love Stage didn't surprise me entirely: despite Krispnatz saying it handled consent well, he described the plot in enough detail for me to realise he was wrong. It was still worse than I was expecting, but I didn't get totally blindsided or upset.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-16 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-10 03:15 pm (UTC)Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa yes. Honestly, I know I found it difficult because I literally can't remember whole huge chunks of it and I only watched it about 4 months ago. I remember the art style. I remember like two themes (which I remembered largely via talking to you about it and thinking hard about it). And the rest is like 'hmmmmm :).' I remember Hunter x Hunter better than that, so whatever problems I had with the show, my brain went a whole lot of 'NOPE' on it. (Can't predict squicks, I mean I rewatch Junjou Romantica, and that literally crossed consent out of the dictionary and danced badly on it).
Re: Beastars I'll keep an eye on the rest of the season for you! But also understandable pulling out.
All About Lust sounds really sweet, I'll have to look into that.
(I see that tag there, I see it).
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 11:31 am (UTC)What tag I see no tag >.>