[2nd complete read]
“BJ Alex” holds powers of structure, presentation and attraction. Scenes and scenarios feels lively. It never gets overly bogged down in the drab and dreary. It feeds you just enough character transformation, smut and pander to keep you reading. It works, it’s enjoyable, but I’m tired.
The confluence of story beats that keep this body functioning could not be more rote. Development in far too many manhwa is conditional on the presence of the viewer i.e. Dong-Gyun still being stiff as a board upon meeting one of his old friends, previously disgusted at his homosexuality. Surely there are more directions this sort of meeting and resolution can be tackled from? His reactions plays into the character we have seen in the story so far, but it doesn’t speak true to the reality that even just a handful of years can be impactful in the way in which one considers and reacts to their “trauma”.
My mind immediately goes to the best in this and tangentially related genres I’ve read. “Cheese in the Trap” does the psychological off kilter perfect boy much better than “BJ Alex”. Yoo Jung is manipulative and vindictive, and those elements don’t necessarily change through out the run of the story, but he does develop and recognise that people don’t view that aspect of himself positively. Alex on the other hand shifts so wildly from hard to soft boy that it just seems arbitrary if you don’t buy into the preconditions for his “growth”/”change”.
In fact, concrete identities is something “BJ Alex” struggles with generally. Apart from the instances of uni-dimensionality (the overweight bully lol)… Dong-Gyun is obviously a pillowy soft boy, but I’ve read a commenter praising his ability to be confrontational when required. However, he generally leaves me wanting. Not necessarily because he doesn’t seem like a character with some dimension, but because he isn’t viewed as needing “fixed” in the same way Alex is. This is understandable to an extent. Alex is a right royal cock and gets abusive for no good reason at points in the story. But personally I have always detested a lack of recognition in the negatives associated with being overly nice and easy going. Personalities have positives and negatives. This simply adds to me finding Alex’s personality shift jarring. A soft boy made hard through the trauma of a previous relationship. A bit boring. A bit unbelievable.
“All About Lust” is an example of a smutty yaoi manhwa that builds concrete, interesting identities for it’s characters, while also veto’ing the requirement for them to be damaged by their homosexual identity. The characters hobbies and interests even factor into the start and development of the relationship! This is completely foreign to “BJ Alex”. After all, what do the main pairing seem to care about apart from each other? What are their hobbies? How do they spent their time outside of each other? You can extract some information, but not enough from the total run of “BJ Alex”.
Ultimately I understand that these stories are created for straight girls, by straight girls. They are also created by Koreans (manhwa duh), which is a cultural atmosphere that I have no knowledge of as a born and bred Briton! But as a G A Y M A N I am highly fatigued by the picture stories like this draw of the le gay experience. I am not normal by any means, not even when compared against the average homosexual, but coming out is something that one moves past relatively quickly once it originally happens. I have lots of good heterosexual male and female friends, and the quirks of our relationship are a myriad more interesting than anything I’ve ever seen presented in a manhwa. I just find my own experience poorly reflected on and done little justice when it is spelled out by these authors.
In conclusion, I enjoyed “BJ Alex”. All prior compliments hold, and the sex scenes are really good. But as my time is increasingly sucked into the blackhole of full time work, I am becoming even more of a stickler for “MORE”. I really enjoy romance and yaoi manhwa, but I want MORE. “BJ Alex” is physically invigorating, but not spiritually or intellectually.
