The Problems with BOYFRIENDS + Why People are SO ANGRY. || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY

Hey guys, it's Celestia, and today, we're... talking about Webtoon again. More specifically, a comic hosted there. A lot of people commented on last week's video about Webtoon asking me to discuss Boyfriends, probably because as far as the  topic of Webtoon's questionable choice in advertising goes, it's hard NOT to think  of Boyfriends. I hadn't actually seen any of those ads before this was brought up in the comments, and quite frankly, I wish I still hadn't. It was a simpler time back then. B

ut while the ads are so cringey and obnoxious that I'd rather watch Riverdale from start to finish than see one more second of them, they're not the actual source of the controversy surrounding the comic. They're just the gateway that got me down the rabbit hole that is the Boyfriends controversy. So, as many of you requested, I'm gonna talk about it, because after seeing those comments, I went from being blissfully unaware of Boyfriends altogether to having spent a full day doing nothing but re

searching it and reading 60 f*cking chapters of it, and I-- I can see why this whole drama happened, and why it's a lot more nuanced than it appears to be at first glance. And it IS nuanced -- significantly more so than the hordes of Twitter users screaming "if you so much as GLANCE at the Boyfriends comic, you're garbage, do not interact" would have you believe. I'll do my best to explain that nuance before drawing  my conclusions by separating the whole issue into three parts, because honestly

, it's three separate issues: the art, the artist, and the ads. Before I do, though, let me just add a small disclaimer: a lot of the controversy around this has to do with the type of representation that this comic gives gay men, and I think it goes without saying that I am not a gay man. I do not speak on behalf of gay men as if I'm any authority on what is or isn't  harmful to them, and I certainly don't want to come across that way. I did reach out on Twitter to the community for some wider

insights, and I did receive some from self-identified gay users, because I wanted their insight and voices to be taken into consideration during my research. What I CAN say for myself, though, is that I AM a lesbian, and I thoroughly understand what it's like to  have your sexuality commodified, fetishized, and stereotyped, and subsequently, I do understand why this has upset some gay men in the community based on that experience. I mean no disrespect with any commentary in this video, and every

thing I'm gonna say comes from a sympathetic and respectful place with no intention of diminishing the significance of that perspective. That in mind, let's start with part one: the art. For anyone who is as unfamiliar with Boyfriends as I was before this video, it's a slice of life romance comic hosted on Webtoon that focuses on four primary characters who, as one does in a romance comic, meet and fall in love. They originally start out in couples of two, but the prospect of pursuing polyamory

is broached very early on, at which point the four of them begin a polyamorous relationship. And while I've only read 62 out of almost 120 chapters - because quite frankly, I just-- I don't have anywhere near enough free time to dedicate to finishing it - it's largely just about them going on dates and developing their relationships and living the college  student life after that point. And as far as the comic itself goes, it's pretty innocent, in my opinion, I mean-- not, like, ACTUALLY innocen

t, because sex is a topic that is brought up OFTEN, but I mean innocent as in generally well-meaning and positive. It got its fair share of smiles and chuckles out of me while reading it, even if the writing can be a little cringe sometimes, and both sexuality and polyamory seem to be approached healthily, openly, and positively, even if it IS relatively lacking  in the realism department, which I'll address more in a minute here. I didn't see anything openly problematic in the half of it that I

read, aside from one tasteless joke about drugging people, and without any background into the situation, it comes off as fairly innocuous. And that alone is one of the problems that people have with it: that the relationships depicted are shallow, boring, stereotypical, idealized, and infantilized. In terms of infantilization, what people generally mean by this is that the relationships involved are very like, "uwu kissy bundle you in blankets and make you hot chocolate", which some feel makes

it come off as if the comic is depicting gay relationships  as, well... exactly like that. To many, that feels condescending. It's kind of like the Elliot Page situation - when Elliot wore a suit and corsage to the Met Gala and people instantly started saying sh*t like, "oh, he looks so polite with his little flower", or "oh, he's the handsomest little boy", it seemed supportive on the surface - and I have no doubt that it IS well-meaning and was supposed to be supportive - but that's a 34 yea

r old man, and saying sh*t like that about him that  you wouldn't say about a man that isn't trans is reinforcing the idea that trans men AREN'T men. In this case, the concerns of infantilizing gay men in Boyfriends arise from something similar - that depicting homosexual relationships this way is reinforcing that they're not like heterosexual relationships. And while I understand why people feel this way, I don't think that's entirely fair.  I think it's missing the context - and the context he

re is that it's a romance comic. Romance manga, or Nora Roberts novels, comparatively, use a lot of the exact same "uwu cutesy" tropes in their stories whether their relationship is heterosexual or not - the point is to appeal to people who WANT that "uwu cutesy" sh*t, and in order to deliver that sh*t, realism is naturally sacrificed. So, yes, it's  shallow, and simple, and idealized, and surface-level, head-over-heels love that is nothing like a real relationship, because generally speaking, t

his kind of media isn't targeting an audience that WANTS to read about a realistic relationship, it's targeting people who want some light reading that makes them smile or "awwww" over it and then move on. I understand that a lot of people are looking at this as  a separate issue - that gay men already don't have enough representation in media and that therefore, creators making that representation have an obligation to do so realistically and accurately because they already have to deal with en

ough people seeing them as the stereotypes that media so frequently represents them as - but I just don't personally believe that criticizing Boyfriends for that is reasonable, because I don't think it would depict a straight relationship any differently. It's a light, slice-of-life romance comic, and those kinds of comics are going to be cutesy and unrealistic by default, because that's the vibe that they're literally meant to capture. I'm not talking about everything in the romance genre, beca

use obviously a lot of it has plot outside of that or is more drama-based than light-hearted, but Boyfriends falls into a very specific genre  of romance literature that is not plot or drama-based, and I feel like it's being judged as if it's supposed to be this realistic, true-to-life representation of what gay and poly relationships are really like, when that's just not fair to the medium. And if we're out here saying all depictions of LGBTQ relationships have to be realistic regardless of wha

t type of genre or medium they're actually being depicted in, we're severely limiting both the creativity of creators and the amount of representation and content we'll actually end up receiving, because if some goofy-ass comic with a bunch of straight characters based on character tropes can only have an LGBTQ character if they're depicted realistically and accurately and free of any tropes, I mean-- that-- that defeats the purpose of that form of media, and they're just gonna choose to NOT hav

e that character then. And I don't mean to say that we should encourage harmful tropes to be used; like, if the straight characters all have endearing or interesting tropes and then the LGBTQ characters have damaging, offensive tropes that read more as a demeaning caricature of an actual LGBTQ person, I mean-- that's obviously shitty, and not okay. But if every character is reduced to a funny, endearing, harmless trope because that's what is expected for that form or genre of media, which I beli

eve to be the case with Boyfriends, I don't personally see how that's a problem. The other problem, similar to but also the exact opposite of the infantialization, is the claim that Boyfriends fetishizes gay men by including as much sexually implicit content as it does. Basically, very early on, it's pretty blatantly and clearly established that these dudes bang ALL the time, and a lot of people feel like that means the creator is  fetishizing MLM relationships. For clarity's sake, the definitio

n of fetishization is that it's the  act of making someone the object of sexual desire based on some aspect of their identity, and this is a huge problem that many minorities have to deal with constantly, including and ESPECIALLY, even, gay men. I understand why people are sensitive to this issue, and I don't understand on a superficial level, either, like -- if I had a nickel for every time I told a guy who asked me out "sorry, I'm a lesbian and in a relationship", and he responded with "ooh, t

hat's hot", and took it as encouragement to keep trying to get with me, I certainly wouldn't have to worry nearly as much as I am right now about making sure this video doesn't get demonetized. It's a horrible, horrible feeling to be reduced to one aspect of your identity and found attractive exclusively because of that, and gay  men have fallen victim to that practice through poor representation in media for  a long, long time. There was a significant period of time where the only representatio

n gay men had in media was sexual. Straight people would get romance movies and novels that occasionally featured sex as a side plot device, and gay men would only get representation  almost exclusively as no romance and only sex. That and the AIDS crisis led to a very harmful and derogatory view of gay men as dehumanized, dirty, hypersexualized, and ultimately, defined them by one aspect of their sexuality rather than by their individuality as people. In time, this issue has become less promine

nt, but by no means has it gone away, and I completely understand why that's led people to being particularly critical of how gay men are represented in media. But Boyfriends isn't some fujoshi BL manga or smut film made by a straight person, it's a comic that's clearly just trying to depict all aspects of a gay poly relationship, and it's created by a gay man. Again, I've only read about half of it, but from everything that I HAVE read, it's not some smutty, over-sexualized thing, it's a romanc

e comic that has sex in it, because a lot of real relationships have sex in them. Yes, they do it a lot, but it's by no means the only unrealistic, exaggerated aspect of the plot. They get together almost immediately, move at a ridiculous pace in their relationship, and transition into their very first polyamorous relationship with almost no bumps in the road that aren't immediately resolved. The whole thing is fast-paced and exaggerated, because it HAS to be to be entertaining to keep people's

attention, and the sexuality aspect seems to me like just another example of that. I've read a million comics of straight relationships depicted the same way for the same reason, and I don't personally see any evidence of the characters being fantasized and coded as attractive BECAUSE they're gay. Like, I feel like a lot of people throw the word "fetishization" around without really understanding what it means. Drawing a gay character as sexy or being intimate with another character does not imm

ediately mean that person is fetishizing gay men: as I said fetishization means sexualizing a character based on one aspect of their identity, which in this case, would be homosexuality, so it's only fetishization if that gay character is ONLY depicted as sexy or in intimate situations because they're gay - if we're only supposed to find  him or what he's doing attractive because he's gay, basically. But the failure to differentiate  between the two is actually quite harmful, because it ends up

leading to the opposite problem: any depiction of a gay character being attractive or "doing the do" - thanks YouTube -- is called out as being fetishization, it will end up not being depicted at all. So once again, we're kind of back to the same issue as before, like -- if creators will be demonized for the gay relationships they depict being too cutesy, innocent, and unrealistic, even if that depiction is completely unrelated to the character's sexuality, they'll just choose not to depict them

at all. Similarly, if creators will be demonized for the gay relationships they depict being too sexy even if that depiction is completely unrelated to the character's sexuality, they'll choose not to depict it at all. If there's no way to incorporate LGBTQ representation that won't be over-policed, we won't get any. And in my opinion, Boyfriends being accused of fetishizing gay men just by including gay men that have sex is a perfect example of that problem: it's made by a gay man and does not

, in my opinion target an audience that will view it as being appealing that way specifically BECAUSE the character is a gay. But I think a lot of that also goes hand in hand with the other big issue that people have with it: that it reinforces harmful stereotypes of gay men. And I can see where this one came from, but again, it's so much more nuanced than people are willing to give it credit for being. First of all, the main four characters are literally and openly intended to be based on stere

otypes. While they do all have actual names, being Adrian, Vincent, Felix, and Kevin, they are never referred to as such and are almost exclusively referred to by the fandom as Nerd, Prep, Goth, and Jock. The comic makes no attempt to disguise the fact that all of its protagonists are specifically intended to represent certain stereotypes in a silly, harmless way, and while I understand that in some cases, these stereotypes can absolutely be seen as poor representation of gay men, like Vincent -

or Prep. He can often be depicted as quite flamboyant and similar to the token gay friend character trope that's so f*cking infuriatingly common and harmful, and I can absolutely see how people would come to the conclusion that that's the stereotype that he's intended to represent. But I also feel like that's intentionally or unintentionally missing the point of Boyfriends, which is that none of them are based on stereotypes of gay men, they're just based on general stereotypes of people. Nerd

is the shy and easily flustered bookworm, Prep is the pretty boy trust-fund kid with a butler that's literally named Jeeves, Goth is the edgy, sarcastic bad boy, and Jock is the, naturally, dumb jock with a heart of gold and guns for days. Yes, Prep might come across as that stereotypical gay guy sometimes, but that's because if any of the main three antagonists of Mean Girls were gay men, they would too. That's the preppy stereotype. And while none of the characters have much depth beyond their

stereotypes, in my opinion, Prep DOES have much more personality than just that, and it's clear - at least to me, after  reading as much of it as I have - that he's not based on any gay stereotype, but just a preppy one, as his name would suggest. There's just overlap between the two, because of the unfortunate and quite frankly shitty fact that for a long ass time, gay men in media were depicted as a trope that was very similar to preppy. But I don't think the creator had any deliberate intent

ion to make him read as such. Ultimately, I think a lot of the criticism that Boyfriends as a comic alone is facing comes from a very well-meaning place, for the most part, but a place that appears to be disregarding the context in which it exists. As a lesbian, I'm f*cking sick as hell of being represented in media exclusively as either butch and strong with short hair and masculine clothing, or soft and sweet with long hair and dresses, and I too want better representation than that. I get it.

 I'm also sick of being commodified and fetishized for my sexuality. I understand wanting better - we all have a right to want better. But if the tables were turned and this was a comic about four lesbians, I would not personally look at it as an offense to that desire for better representation, but as something separate entirely, because as I said, Boyfriends is clearly not out here trying to be a realistic depiction of anything: homosexuality, polyamory, individuality, or even society. It's  s

upposed to be exaggerated and idealized, because that's the genre. So saying it's bad or harmful representation of gay men when it's not even supposed to be realistic representation of  ANYTHING just seems unfair. Understandable, obviously, but unfair. If homosexuality was not part of this comic, no one would have these issues with it, at least not to this degree, so to hold it to  a higher standard just because it is about gay characters feels to me like it's just setting  it up for failure. It

's not good representation of realistic gay characters, I agree, but that's because it's not good representation of LIFE, and as a funny, silly little romance comic, it shouldn't HAVE to be, so long as the lack of realism isn't deliberately reinforcing any actual harmful  stereotypes. And in my opinion, I personally don't think that Boyfriends is doing that. But  five pages of scripting in and we're still only now finishing up discussing the art itself - part two, the artist, is a topic that I

found to be much much more contentious and controversial. So now that we're done talking about why people are mad at the Boyfriends comic, let's talk about why they're mad at the person who made it. Refrainbow, or Ray for short, is the creator of Boyfriends, and they've been facing a lot of backlash for quite a few significant personal issues in addition to all of the comic-related issues that I've already mentioned. Also, irrelevant to that, but for clarity's sake, their pronouns are he/they, s

o I'll be alternating between the two for the duration of this video. Anyway, from what I've seen, Ray is being criticized for three primary reasons: saying the n-word in an old tweet, alleged anti-semitism, and having drawn a NSFW comic of real people - those real people being BTS members, who were minors at that time. There were some other claims as well, including that they used transphobic slurs in the past, which I couldn't substantiate,  orientalism, which I'm not in any place to weigh in

on as a white person, and pro-shipping, which I've already discussed as a moral gray area, in my opinion, in a previous video, linked in the card above, so I'll be leaving those out of this video and focusing on the aforementioned three, in order. First, their use of the n-word. this is not an allegation - Ray themselves has admitted to having used it in this tweet shown on screen, and has apologized in the same screenshot, and it is thoroughly substantiated and proven to have happened. This was

almost 10 years ago, and arguments have been made in their defense based on English not being their first language, but in my opinion, the tweet in which they said the n-word already demonstrates a clear understanding of the English language in and of itself, which tells me that even 9 years ago, they clearly knew exactly what they were saying when they used it. Yes, they were young: they were 14, presumably, based on math, but I knew what that word meant when I was 14, and I knew that it was f

*cking reprehensible to say it, so I don't think age is a valid excuse. Yes, they apologized, but I don't see how much weight that apology can really have if this word was ever acceptable enough in their vocabulary for them to have felt comfortable using it with their friends on Twitter. Ultimately, as I am a white person, I am in no place to comment on the validity of their apology, much less accept or reject it, so I'm simply going to leave this section here without giving any opinion and just

move on to the next issue. Next, the alleged anti-semitism. Now, despite the substantiated documentation of  the jokes that people are referring to, which I'll show on screen here, I am still going to refer to this as alleged anti-semitism, because there's more context to it than what a lot of people would have you believe. Even when I first saw these tweets, my immediate response was "okay, those sound sarcastic, not serious". And as it turns out, that is exactly what they were. Ray acknowledg

ed them and came out with a Twitter thread on the 28th of June explaining the context that they were taken out of, which I will show on screen and read for you now: "Hi. I want to address and apologize for the  tweet from 2016 that resurfaced recently. Sorry for taking some time to do it, I was making sure that I tackled this with as much transparency and sensitivity as possible. During the day it was tweeted out, July 26th of 2016, news broke out that a major religious group in Indonesia was pl

anning to ban Pokemon GO. There was an absurd and racist rumor spreading among some Indonesians that Pokemon was somehow converting people to Judaism. If you didn't know our political climate here, any mention of Judaism is seen as heresy by people with extreme views in Indonesia. I found this situation ridiculous and made fun of their logic in this conversation with my friend. It was a very poor attempt at satire aimed at officials who were seriously considering a video game ban over these raci

st and anti-semitic rumors. However, regardless of the intent, these words are still written, and it has hurt many people. Anti-semitism is not okay in any form. I recognize that it's a major problem around the world, and it's especially insidious in Indonesia. I do not wish to further these  sentiments, and I've taken the tweet down to prevent further harm. I apologize for making such a comment in the first place, and I will take care not to repeat that in the future. I recognize  that the impa

ct of my words greatly outweighs their intent." There's a bit more to it than that that specifically addresses their following, which I'll still show on screen but not read out because it's not really relevant to the point here, which is that as I suspected, these tweets were never intended to be deliberately racist, but rather were made to make fun of a racist government. And I don't mean to say that them joking around about this is fine, obviously, like-- when my  government does sh*t that dem

eans women's rights, I relentlessly joke about it in terms of how  stupid and awful they are in a similarly satirical fashion as Ray joked about this. But I'm a woman - it hits different coming from a man or anyone who doesn't identify as female. And Ray is not Jewish. So if Jewish people are seeing the way that they joked about this issue as offensive and not okay, I can completely understand that, and I respect and acknowledge it. I am certainly in no place to weigh in either way as I'm also n

ot Jewish, I just wanted to bring attention to the wider context here, because a lot of people are taking Ray's tweets here as completely genuine and deliberately racist, and that is objectively not the case. They were making a bad joke about their government being anti-semitic, not intentionally making an anti-semitic comment. But as they said, the impact of their words greatly outweighs their intent, and I don't mean to give an opinion on that weight one way or the other, because it just isn't

my place. Moving on to the final issue that people have with Ray: let's talk about the NSFW comic and general art that they drew of BTS members when he was 17. I believe he drew both a whole NSFW comic and at least one piece of  NSFW fanart of multiple BTS members, at least one of whom was a minor at the time of that art being created, and-- okay. There are two issues here: minors being depicted sexually, and any real-life person being depicted sexually. First of all, when Ray made this art, he

was a minor. He was drawing a minor sexually as a minor. And let's suspend the reality of this is a real  person for a second here, and see it as a character. I don't think it's predatory in any capacity for a minor to draw sexualized art of another minor. When I was 14, I read Dengeki Daisy, a manga of a 16-year-old girl and a 24-year-old man being paired together romantically, and I thought that was hot as hell. As a 24-year-old now, that concept makes me nauseous. But at that time, with the

perspective of a 14-year-old, if I had made explicit art of that pairing or of the 16-year-old, I cannot  imagine a world in which that would have been reasonably seen as malicious or predatory. It would have been a kid thinking "I'm an adult in my mind, and so are they, because that's my world view". It's incorrect, sure, but it's not malicious. That in mind, I don't think Ray meant anything bad by drawing this kind of art of a minor when they were a minor; they were viewing someone the same wa

y they viewed themselves, and when you're a teenager, that usually means viewing them as if they were an adult, because what teenager doesn't think they're an adult? The problem is obviously when an adult views kids like they're adults in that capacity, which is inexcusable, but that's not what Ray was doing, because he wasn't one. But the bigger issue here for myself and many others is that Ray was drawing NSFW artwork of real people, and I don't think I have to explain to you guys why that's g

ross and weird. Thumin recently made a video going over Rule 34 and why it's messed up to draw that kind of art of real people who don't want it existing, so please go watch that, linked in the card above, for some additional context. And while Ray has apologized for having created this and acknowledged that it's a violation of their consent, they have not acknowledged the fact that while they haven't made visual art of BTS members since they were a minor themselves, they have not, to my knowled

ge, acknowledged the fact that they've continued to write explicit BTS fanfiction  on Archive of our Own until March of 2020, at which point they were a legal adult in almost all countries, dependent on their birthday, of course. Written art is no different than visual art  in terms of this issue, so their apology, to me falls short and remains hollow and performative. But that's just me. Alright, so, having discussed both the comic and its creator, let's talk about the thing most people already

knew about: the ads. In fairness, this section will probably have very little in it to discuss, because it's very straightforward: Webtoon saw that Boyfriends was really popular, and decided to make a bunch of ads promoting it, and all of them were so cringe-worthy that I wanted to crawl inside my own body and hide there just to stop seeing them for one whole minute. I don't know if I've seen all of them, but I've certainly seen more than I want to, and while they're not all entirely awful, the

y're certainly not good. And having read half the comic, I can say that if I had seen these ads first and not had this video requested, they would have made me avoid the comic like the plague. They're awful. They drive people away from the comic in the same way that most Webtoon ads do: by taking content out of context and making it seem worse and less appealing in the process. And this isn't even a criticism of Boyfriends in and of itself anymore, because I've read a lot of it, and I don't thin

k the ads are indicative of the kind of content  that the comic itself provides. It's a criticism of Webtoon. As a professional marketing consultant for many different organizations as my day job, I would be f*cking ashamed to be even tangentially associated with Webtoon's marketing team. They're tone-deaf, out of touch, senseless and completely incapable of connecting with their target audience, and this is a prime example of that. Boyfriends as a comic is nowhere near as societally cringe as t

he ads would suggest, and the fact that Webtoon advertised it this way tells me for the millionth time that they just-- they don't know how to  advertise or market ANYTHING! They're saving grace is that their platform is, to my knowledge, the most popular online comics hosting platform that there is. Their marketing team is... let me make an analogy. there's a track star who can run faster than anyone. They're represented  by an agency. That agency makes 25 ads that make them look like they can

run about as fast as the slowest person on your high school track team. They now have to compete not only with their actual competitors, but with the image that this agency has made the public associate with them. They can't go solo, because they need the agency to compete at all. Webtoon's marketing team is actively holding back not only their platform, but every individual creator unfortunate enough to have their work used as promotional material, and it's honestly just so disappointing. Pleas

e hire someone with some grasp on current media, Jesus Christ, this is just so f*cking sad! And that's really all I have to say about the ads - they're garbage, and Webtoon needs to fire their team or agency. Done. But in conclusion, it's a lot. This whole controversy is so much more nuanced than I expected when I started my research, and in so many instances, I am just not in any place to comment on who's right or wrong. The point of this video, ultimately, was to explain to you guys why people

are so upset about it, and I hope that I've accomplished that. But if you're here hoping for me to tell you whether the comic or its creator are bad or not, I just can't do that. So much of this has to do with separating art and artist, which is a topic that I'm aiming to cover soon and make a dedicated video about, but in this case, the comic and related controversy is about gay men. I'm not a gay man. Two out of three of the issues surrounding the artist pertain to black people or Jewish peop

le, and I'm neither. I'm not in any position to draw a conclusion one way or the other. I guess my point in making this video was more to bring attention to the drama and spark a conversation based on as many facts as I could find, and I hope I've done so. Please let me know what you guys think in the comments - I feel like this one is going to be a topic  that prompts a lot of very different opinions, and my own perspective is so limited that I would be incredibly grateful to hear them. I hope

you enjoyed today's video or at least found it vaguely informative, and please leave a like and subscribe if you did. Thanks for watching, and special  thanks as always to channel members Cafe Soleil, Joseph Solomon, and Unknown Code, as well as patrons Batman, Kyle Low, blueswanson, thisistotallymyname, Uni Tea, Cora Feere, and Jamesha Walker for their support, and I'll see you in my next one!