The Forbidden Love

I've been engaged in one soap opera lately. Well, as you can already tell, any soap is full of drama, sometimes you can even find so many flaws in the story-line, and let's be honest: acting is the last you'd expect to be good. That's exactly what i had in mind until several weeks ago. 

It was one lousy afternoon in the office when my boyfriend told me that there's this list of 100 hot guy, issued by afterelton.com. I can tell you that normally I am not a fan of such thing, but since this was issued by afterelton, a prominent gay site focusing on the pop culture and my boyfriend told me that most likely the voters were gays and their friends, one could very well expect that there'd be gay and bi men all over the list - and this was true if you took time to read the introduction. Needless to say, soon after i found myself drooling over the list - Adam Pally of previous post scored a spot in the list - and stucked at number #18... (Go see and click the youtube link. You'll agree with me). The guy's Thore Scholermann.

 

Then my journey began. 

The soap was entitled Verbotene Liebe, a German soap opera literally translated as Forbidden Love. Lame, but steamy, dont you think? Given the worldwide fanbase, and of course my curiosity from the kissing scene, i began to search. What is this series? 

 

It didnt took me long to see the storyline - a soap isnt supposed to be all complicated, is it? A guy named Christian Mann (Thore Scholermann) was in a growing relationship with Oliver Sabel (Jo Wiel); they were owners of a bar named No Limits. It was not a brand-new soap, as it is now currently at 4000+ episodes since its first airing in 1995 - but Chris and Olli's stories were only as early as 2008. Involved in their love-dovey scene was a big aristocratic von Lahnstein family, tackling several issues as we know now, for example drug addiction, incest, rape, murder, HIV, and of course sexual confusion and LGBT culture. 

It was easy to fall in love with Christian - for me - and after constantly talking about it to my boyfriend, i have been successfully infected him with the addiction as well. Which is fun, because we get to talk about it every now and then, and he himself has told me that it helped him seeing clearly what he wants in our relationship. 

 

Although there were a lot of queer series (The Lair, QAF, The L Word, etc) and LGBT characters (Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, and a few other soap in USA), I dare to say that Chris and Olli's stories were of different taste. Despite the drama, you could say it somehow reflected the real situation any gays would face - or at least that's what the worldwide fanbase and I thought. I often find myself wondering the same thing like Chris or Olli, and sometimes it's interesting to see how they reacted to their problem, coming down to commitment, and finally, most importantly, staying together as long as possible. In a way or two, I think Chrolli's story could be some kind of reference to gays out there: how to be supportive like Olli and how to be manly and protective like Christian. You might think i am a bit delusional here, but hey, hope always dies last, doesnt it? So let yourself be hopeful. Sure, you could expect the drama to be a little bit exaggerating, but let's be honest: we crave for drama. We're a drama queen in denial ourselves. 

So enough with the chitchat. You must be getting a bit impatient. Here's the complete playlist you can find in youtube: PLAYLIST1 , and dont worry, although it's German, the uploaders (nick ichglotzutube), has been kind enough to provide the english subs. Several of the videos have been blocked due to the copyright matter, but my boyfriend has tried to use Proxytube to download the blocked vidoes. Proxytube is an add-on for mozilla firefox and it's free to download. So what are you waiting for? Go. Spread the words. Be happy.

Meanwhile, enjoy this short youtube video.