happypotato48

[happypotato48]

Theory of Love Romcom Watch Along Episode 3 : Friends With Benefits (Lazy Unhinged Edition)

My first week joining this clowns train and have to say fuck you Third! I hate this movie very much and and it triggered my 2010s PTSD. Mila Kunis was ok but oh boy Justin, oh Justin you sucks so hard and you was so annoying. Dylan and Jamie "Romance" was so dull, cringey, and devoid of kmistry but somehow make perfect sense. this two deserved each other like a sad Mime giving a handjob to an invisible man with a perfect body and zero personality. y'all can go read my wonderful friends very smart and in depth analyses of this movie and its connection to the theme of this ep.

Ok let get clowning!

Third is a เบียว! *byo as the youths would says. it's came from the japanse word Chūnibyō aka main character syndrome aka this bitch is so up his own ass he realized that he the main character in a Thai BL. like i can see a version of this show that a fourth wall breaking comedy that i probably be 100% obsess with. anywho in this EP third purposefully and delusionally put himself in a spot where he whould get hurt again and again by Khai (with has zero fault in this aside from being a generic fuckboy played by Off.) i have no sympathy for this bitch, she gasligh gatekeep girlboss into Khai's apartment and somehow has the audacity to be sad when he caught Khai with a another girl. like at this point they've been friends for ages Third knows Khai through an through, but because he's too delulu and watches too many bad romcoms it made him stuck in his own head.

In Thai he uses the word Satisfied. Third views his life as a movie he views everyone around him as archetypes, every situations as movie plots and it make him has unrealistic expectations of reality, and fuck it if that isn't fucking relatable . cause like yep i've been there (mostly, i was never this bad tho) and as much as it frustrating to watch i appreciated this show sticking to the theme of Com art students being Com art students.

Oh one more thing i want to live and die in Mike's tiny patch of facial hair. mua55555555555

[happypotato48]

Theory of Love Romcom Rewatch Episode 3: Friends With Benefits

It’s week 3 of Third torturing us with his terrible taste in romcoms, and this week’s offering was Friends With Benefits (2011). Not much of this movie stuck with me, so I am grateful that my brilliant friends have already summarized and connected it with this week’s episode. @lurkingshan once again pointed out how Third is further digging his self-pitying ass into a deeper hole by watching these terrible romcoms and learning all the wrong lessons from them. She also addressed how Khai is a good friend and that Third’s perception of how he is treated by Khai is biased since he’s nursing a one-sided crush on him. @solitaryandwandering did a detailed analysis of the movie, its crimes, its saving graces, and how Third tried to spark romance with Khai using forced proximity, following the movie’s philosophy that “the only way to get a man is to manipulate him.” @bengiyo pointed out the lack of friends in Dylan and Jamie’s lives, and how the lack of a get-a grip friend in Third’s life is just letting all his woe-is-me tendencies go unchecked.

Before I talk about the episode, I wanna point out that by having Dylan (played by Justin Timberlake) apologize to Jamie (played by Mila Kunis) for not realizing his love for her sooner, the movie essentially told us that reading brainwaves over the air is more important that communicating clearly and acting based on the agreed upon terms.

And I think that is exactly what Third learned from this movie. He thought that playing house with Khai would somehow magically change the terms of their relationship (which is friendship), and make Khai fall in love with him. I am not saying that living together did not change their relationship at all, but the change happened in a more logical and predictable direction rather than the delusional direction Third wanted it to go. Even though Khai was initially reluctant to let Third into his personal space by offering him the place to live, we see that Khai grows to feel genuinely happy about Third living with him, because it means he gets to spend more time with his best friend. He enjoys having his bestie around, I mean look at this man’s face:

Third set himself up for disappointment when he and Two hatched this stupid cohabitation plan, and he utilized every opportunity that came his way to play the tragic, lovelorn romance hero in the film he was making in his head about himself. Peeking into Khai’s bedroom was an unnecessary and grossly violating act, and it is very telling that Third’s thoughts after doing it was a montage of all the times Khai hurt him by not seeing his massive yet invisible love, instead of being horrified about what he had done. I am side-eyeing and shaking my head at him because he has no one in-universe to do that, and look what it has done to him *gestures to Third’s entire existence*

I love that the others who are engaging with this rewatch project are sharing their experiences with one-sided crushes and how this project is helping them process and reevaluate Third’s actions and their own feelings on them. I did not relate to either Third or Khai when I first watched the show, so the emotions the show and its characters evoked in me were more in the lane of narrative brian-wiggling than emotional catharsis. I watched Theory of Love when I was still pretty new to BLs, and I remember feeling drawn to the show because episodes 1 and 2 did not shy away from leaning into the angst and misery of Third’s situation. Watching Third deal with his secret crush on his best friend who hooks up with a girl a week was painful to watch, and I was impressed that the show was not afraid to let its audience sit in that uncomfortable feeling. Episode 3 is where I realized that the show was very intentionally guiding me into empathizing with Third, even though I found his choices questionable. The show’s insistence that I must feel bad for Third fascinated me enough that I decided I need to see for myself what this show wanted to say about these characters, their actions, and the friends-to-lovers trope. And I am so glad I did because it was so satisfying to watch this show work its themes out with conviction. I am looking forward to experiencing it again, and next up on the romcom list is Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011). As a fan of Emma Stone’s clumsy, yet effortlessly sexy dork vibe, I am cautiously excited for this one.

[happypotato48]

Ahheem as Po mistaken before in ep 1 that Pamika was a MOM. This ep showed us her inner thoughts and it's clear that she think she is doing what best for everyone no matter how much miserable she made them are. so i have come to conclusion THAT SHE IS AN ALLEGORY FOR AN ASIAN MOM.

Thanks you i will take no furter qustion i'm very smart and whatnot.

[happypotato48]

I gotta know: The ThamePo break up - how many Alans?

The scale cannot even read the number because I am soooooo fucking pissed!

Look at Thame minutes before Po BROKE HIM!

He was making plans for THEIR FUTURE!

HE WAS READY TO FIGHT FOR THEIR LOVE!!!!

HE BEGGED HIM NOT TO FUCKING DO IT!!!!

And yet Po still looked his man in his face and BROKE HIS HEART!

So I am passed the Alan scale.

I'm now the USA vs. Canada in the Four Nations Face Off. It's on sight. I'm taking the gloves off just so I can knock off a damn helmet the first second the puck drops on the ice. Because it's beyond this moment. This has a history and a future. This has repercussions.

Because Po and Gam believed that lying and scheming CEO over their men's words and ripped out the hearts of the men they loved for what?! Why did they trust someone who has proven she has no good intentions over the man they were in loving relationships with?! Why did they break the hearts of the man who wanted nothing but to love them? Because they believed they knew better? Because they thought regardless of what their men wanted, that they knew what was better for them even though they promised to stay with them?! They didn't listen to their men beg them not to break up with them because . . . WHY?!

It's Only Boo! all over again, and I FUCKING HATE IT!

[happypotato48]

Let us be a part of each other's everyday life.

THAMEPO | EP11

[happypotato48]

maxnat in your third <coming soon>

[happypotato48]

CHERRY MAGIC! (2020)

Rather than not do anything, I want to do whatever I can. (IrozukuSubs)

@kdramaspace & @userdramas Secret Valentine 2025

Happy Valentines Day @dramaruni 💕

[happypotato48]

Theory of Love RomCom Roundup: Friends with Benefits (2011)

Another week, another mediocre-to-bad movie! Here's @lurkingshan's excellent post. Also, shout-out to @happypotato48, who joined us for this week's watch!! I've been having a lot of fun watching with everyone and reading your tags and posts!!

I'll be honest, I forgot most of what happens in FWB right after it ended. I'd never seen the movie before, so I was at the very least gonna give it a fair shot. It was... whatever. What I will say, though, is that it put me in the perfect headspace to watch Theory of Love. Episode 3 was the last episode I watched before I dropped the show. I was very wrapped up in Third's perspective and could not stomach his pain in that relationship. I'm so glad I re-watched. My perspective on this episode has completely changed and I am very ready to take on the rest of the show.

GIF from 2011 film Friends with Benefits. Jamie, performed by Mila Kunis, walks down a dark street. One hand clutches a beer can as she sadly gestures and laments: "I really have to stop buying into this bullshit Hollywood cliché of true love."

Friends with Benefits is a classic example of a film that wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants you to believe it knows that, but manages to emit a sense of willful ignorance combined with smug winking and nudging. Maybe it would've worked on a willing audience but that was not me! FWB commits two of the worst sins - it's arrogant and boring. Worse than that, it's a comedy try-hard. No amount of faux self-awareness could convince me it's funny. As with the prior film this has the same problems with homophobia, misogyny, sexism, and fatphobia. Alzheimer's forms a fairly large chunk of its later plot, so there's some weird ableism paired with an earlier, unrelated r-slur. As a bonus, we get transphobic jokes with a rape joke thrown in for equal measure. Any other funny lines or set-pieces could never salvage this film from this cesspool of its own making.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that for the time, FWB had a fairly positive depiction of sex. That's not to say that sex had never been portrayed in myriad ways prior to this film in 2011 (the mid '60s-70's were particularly revolutionary), but it is interesting to observe the shift in culture that led to this R-rated romcom (intended for relatively mass-market appeal) in which the premise is centered on a sexual relationship and contains numerous sex scenes. Romantic comedies were floundering in a scene awash with tentpole films; FWB is a clear response to a cynical audience secretly fond of the good ol' days. It was a critical and commercial success, snagging two People's Choice and two Teen Choice Awards nominations.

FWB simultaneously has great representation of communication before, during and after sex, and a generally sex-positive attitude. It doesn't slut-shame either character for wanting or having it. We also get to see silly and joyful sex! But then it doesn't go far enough. I don't think it really takes its sex seriously, for all its open conversation about sex and commitment. It's like it was afraid to make this anything more than a standard romcom. It also doesn't take the legitimacy of friends with benefits arrangements seriously, which is where this film's battle between maintaining audience-friendly traditional values and challenging social mores shows its face the most. In the end, men and women can't be friends, nor can they fuck without falling in love. We're all sex-crazed beasts!!!

I wanna circle back to the homophobia. First of all, it's been fascinating to see queerness show up in some way in all these films, I wonder if that'll continue? The gay character in this film, Tommy Bollinger, is played by Woody Harrelson (!). Tommy is a difficult character to wrap my head around. Basically, I think they're trying to do the same thing with him as they are with everything else - write a gay character who subverts almost every gay caricature while still being homophobic about it. Tommy is a sports editor at GQ which, on the one hand, subverts an expectation that he would be the head of, like, beauty or fashion. On the other hand, there's definitely a reason he's on the sports beat. He's not the worst representation I've ever seen, mostly because Harrelson plays it well, but he still exists as the prototypical gross, predatory gay character. Thankfully Harrelson makes it somewhat tolerable - his line deliveries were some of the funniest. Tommy is mostly set-dressing, a support to Dylan and the owner of a fantastic boat which helps when he's in a pinch. What a waste of Woody.

I was afraid there wouldn't be good performances to distract me from the horrid plot, but thankfully the cast is not terrible. Mila Kunis is not bad in this movie. She's a really solid comedic actress and seems to like "low brow" comedy, so she's in her lane here. She's serving all the chemistry where Justin Timberlake only knows to serve a pretty bod. Kunis is also great at pretty crying and cutting line reads. But she is also playing a horrible "not like other girls" character - the only kind of "acceptable woman" in romcoms of this era. The kind of girl that fueled my teenage misogyny. Unfortunate. The worst member of the cast is Timberlake - entirely void of charisma. I never want to see or hear him again. I literally could not bring myself to look at him. My eyes slid off him every time his pasty ass showed up. Genuinely, if they had cast someone who could actually act or pick up what Mila was putting down chemistry-wise, I likely would have liked this film more.

[ID: Scene from episode 3 of Theory of Love. Three shots of Khai and Third are stitched together with sharp jumpcuts. They gleefully run around IKEA's showroom with a shopping cart. Khai pushes and swings it around as Third giggles next to him. Khai then abandons the cart in the middle of the aisle to run off with Third into an unseen section of the store. End ID.]

In this episode, Third has fully moved in to Khai's place in the hopes that it will spark something in Khai's mind. Because, as the film says, "the only way to get a man is to manipulate him." Third has learned all the wrong things from romcoms and we see it in stark relief in episode 3. Third clearly relates to Jamie's predicament in FWB. He wants a Dylan - a Prince Charming to come sweep him off his feet. He believes Khai can be that Prince Charming but ignores the great (if flawed) friendship they already have. He wants to have his cake and eat it, too.

Third also sees himself as deeply "fucked up" just as Jamie sees herself, because of the agony he's been through in the last three years pining after Khai. I'm positive he sees himself as unwanted. He knows something has to fundamentally change but has become so entrenched in the same pattern that he has turned to projecting that responsibility on to Khai. Meanwhile, Khai spends much of this episode showing up for Third, demonstrating how much he cares. At a couple points he tells Third, "With girls I use my body, but with you, I use my heart," a line that fans Third's hope and further creates a moral gulf in his mind between the girls in the story and his "pure" love. I'm sure that to Third, he would rather think of the casual sex Khai has been having as less real than the feelings he has.

Third is wrapped up in his fantasy of himself and Khai as "two battered hearts yet a pair of resilient, eager, pretty bodies" (LOL), sick of the banality and/or turmoil of their present romantic/sexual predicaments, ready for something new in each other. He views himself as someone fed up with the clichés of true love, yet thirsts after them. He's internalized the lesson that feelings in any relationship mean that they either must fall apart or be consummated. We see him decide to try again at the end of the episode despite almost giving up on his dreams. A decision that totally won't end in disaster.

Pairing this episode with Friends with Benefits was an interesting practice. Both projects are paired with very specific moments in my life. I was fourteen years old when this film released, in the middle of questioning my sexuality and extremely sensitive to the kind of heteronormative media I was surrounded by. All my friends loved romcoms, boy bands, talking about (and stalking) boys, reading teen magazines and watching shows like One Tree Hill and Degrassi. One of those friendships was an abusive one; she was especially suspicious of why I didn't express the same interest in boys as everyone else, and I would often openly reject the sexist way in which she would talk about people. I felt in constant conflict with myself and everyone around me. It was in this period that No Strings Attached and FWB came out within mere months of each other (compare those trailers!). I saw posters and advertisements for these films everywhere. I didn't really know what the concept of "friends with benefits" was, so I asked my mom. Turns out, that was the way my parents started out. All of this, combined with my parents' abusive marriage, created a psychological storm. Obviously, I wanted nothing to do with either movie. Fourteen years later, here I am, on the other side of FWB, that friendship, that marriage (almost), and that sexuality crisis.

As I mentioned, my perspective on Theory of Love has completely changed since the last time I saw it. From what I remember, I dropped it after this episode because I was just empathizing with Third too much. I also couldn't stand Khai's ignorance of Third's clear distress - which is something I now see as untrue. Khai does notice, he just doesn't know why Third is feeling the way he is (and why would he?). Khai is not nearly as bad as I initially thought, though I dislike some of his decisions (namely, telling a friend to go somewhere else without ensuring they actually have a place to go). Sure, he doesn't always treat Third well, but he's far from the only one to blame when it comes to the imbalance in their relationship. Third is an unreliable narrator, much like Mhoo in Dear Dakanda. I can now see this situation a lot more realistically, thanks in no small part to the context these films provide. Now that I'm moving into unseen territory, I'm really excited for the rest of the show. Never would have expected those words to come out of my mouth.

Next on the list is Crazy, Stupid, Love. Not a film I remember particularly enjoying, but at least it has some fun moments!

[happypotato48]

Fai got you fooled. When Fai said you were crying, I couldn’t do anything. There, there.

PERFECT 10 LINERS | EP17

[happypotato48]

absolutely losing my WHOLEASS ENTIRE MIND over him being a FLIP CARD that transforms into his big purple bug form and THIS is his flip condition!!!!!!

[happypotato48]

[happypotato48]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV, and When Queer Media Goes Mainstream: The Lakorn Corner, Part 2 -- The Incredible Miracle That Is The Miracle Of Teddy Bear, and How Its Performance Speaks to the BL We Watch Today

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I'm continuing a three-part sub-series on queer primetime lakorns in Thailand, this time highlighting 2022's magnificent The Miracle of Teddy Bear.]

TW: child abuse and a few major spoilers. I absolutely urge you to watch this show, and I really don't want to spoil anything, but please know that this show is one of my new favorite Thai queer dramas, so if that means anything to you, maybe watch it first before getting to this piece!

Hello again! Welcome to part two of the OGMMTVC's sub-series, The Lakorn Corner, where I'm examining important moments in television when Thai queer media and themes, concentrated mostly in the niche Series Y/Thai BL genre, crossed over into mainstream spaces -- namely the lakorn, or primetime drama, space.

Last week, I wrote about 2019's The Fallen Leaf, Thailand's first-ever queer primetime lakorn, which focused on the life story of a transgender woman. I posited in that piece that The Fallen Leaf made a number of significant breakthroughs for broadcast primetime Thai television, especially in centering very specific ideas and themes of LGBTQ+ equality that reached a much bigger audience than the shows of the smaller Series Y genre had ever had previously. Important to note is that The Fallen Leaf aired on the One31 channel (which belongs to GMM, an entertainment conglomerate that also owns GMMTV).

Since the airing of The Fallen Leaf, One31 has subsequently aired two more very important (and VERY huge) queer primetime dramas, 2022's Khun Chai/To Sir With Love, and 2024's Spare Me Your Mercy. The wonderful @clairedaring posited in the tags of my post on The Fallen Leaf that the immense popularity of TFL on One31 allowed One31 to widely broaden its scope of experimentation beyond the traditional heterosexual romances that usually dominate the lakorn genre.

This is important for me to note because, a few years later, Thailand's biggest broadcast channel, Channel 3, decided to broadcast a queer lakorn of its own: The Miracle of Teddy Bear. I want to posit right away that one theory I have about Miracle being able to occupy arguably the biggest primetime airing spot on Thailand's broadcast television was due to both the massive success of The Fallen Leaf in the same time slot on a different channel, as well as the explosive and exponential growth of the smaller Series Y/Thai BL genre between 2019 and 2022, which likely led Channel 3 executives to believe that its own broad and mainstream audience was ready for queer content in primetime. I'll get more into this in a moment.

(The Miracle of Teddy Bear is actually -- HA -- the third queer lakorn to have aired in a primetime slot, as the flopped comedy Rak Diao aired earlier in the year of 2022 on One31. However, Rak Diao did not make a large cultural impression on queer media in Thailand as did The Fallen Leaf, Miracle, or Khun Chai, so I'm leaving it off of this list.)

As opposed to The Fallen Leaf (which centers a single transgender female character), I've seen The Miracle of Teddy Bear categorized as either a BL and/or a lakorn. This discussion on Reddit regarding "lakorn BLs" describes the confluence of "new" queer storylines within the long-existent soap opera/Thai lakorn structure, especially with the subsequent airing of Khun Chai (To Sir With Love) later in the 2022 autumn season.

It's important for me to note here Miracle wasn't a typical lakorn OR a typical BL. It was not a soap opera, it was not a historical drama, and it was not a typical romance. It was very much an exploratory and penetrating drama, but it happens to be labeled as either BL and/or lakorn due to its airing time and its themes.

I emphasize these mundane points because I want to highlight, as I said in my review of The Fallen Leaf, that

as opposed to The Fallen Leaf, which centered one queer main character,

The Miracle of Teddy Bear was the first queer drama to air in a primetime slot on a major Thai broadcast channel *that centered same-sex relationships*.

Considering that Miracle focuses a huge part of its dialogue on love and acceptance, rather than a lifespan-focused psuedo-bildungsroman format like The Fallen Leaf, we MUST therefore juxtapose Miracle against the airing of GMMTV Series Y dramas, which air on GMM25 in Thailand, a channel akin (to us in the States) to, say, the WB or MTV, meaning -- a channel that is not as popular and culturally widespread or significant as the broadcast-level ABC/CBS/NBC channels of the States.

AS WELL, Channel 3 was already showing BLs by the time of Miracle's airing, particularly Secret Crush On You, earlier in 2022 and produced by Idol Factory. But Idol Factory's BLs on Channel 3 air in later timeslots, often at 10 pm or 10:30 pm -- certainly not targeted to a much wider primetime audience.

In other words: in every hotel room I stayed in during my trip to Thailand last year, I had Channel 3, but I never had GMM25. International fans that watch GMMTV dramas on YouTube must understand that while *we* have easy access to most GMMTV dramas, thus making GMMTV dramas plentiful fodder for online fandom -- that GMMTV dramas WITHIN Thailand face tremendous competition from het and queer shows airing on more culturally prominent channels, if they're not web-exclusive shows.

As I noted in my review of The Fallen Leaf, I pondered the reasons why One31 executives approved that show's script. One31 is known for being a bolder channel than the more staid Channel 3. But I also wonder -- it may have helped the One31 executives to approve The Fallen Leaf precisely because its transgender main character was NOT centered in a romance (in fact, she was centered in a notorious love tangle involving her uncle-in-law, her father, and her aunt) (I know, I know).

When I think about this, to jump three years later into 2022 and to see that Channel 3 approved of The Miracle of Teddy Bear's script -- I do think, circuitously, that the airing and popularity of BLs previous to The Miracle of Teddy Bear certainly helped Channel 3 to consider airing holistically queer content, partially centered within a same-sex relationship, in a primetime slot. The amazing @bengiyo and @shortpplfedup of @the-conversation-pod, along with the utterly inimitable and dearest @happypotato48, posited recently that the creators of Miracle may have gotten AWAY with getting this show to air, because the premise of the show -- an inanimate teddy bear is alived to become a human -- itself was so absurd as to perhaps be interpreted as comedy.

According to this EXCELLENT reporting and analysis post by @flowerbeasblog, Miracle's ratings were unimpressive, maybe even dismal, as compared against mainstream het dramas airing in the same timeslot. (Here's another Reddit post about Miracle's low ratings as well.) In conversation with @happypotato48, he shared with me one social media post by a Thai fan that read, "i saw the rating and feel so hopeless about this country."

In the podcast linked above, @happypotato48 further clarifies,

For people who didn’t know this show aired on the time slot called ละครหลังข่าว, or after news lakorn, on the most popular channel in Thailand, channel 3, and the rating was not good. It was bad, like really really bad, a lot of the BL girlies didn’t show up for it and the lakorn aunties just think it was too weird and was not ready for any gay leads lakorn. And it’s pissing me the fuck off because this show depicted the queer truth unapologetically and because of that reason that’s why there haven’t been a BL show [on Channel 3] in that time slot since.  

For us international QL fans, however, we should note, again through @flowerbeasblog's excellent work, that Miracle happened to outperform the much-more-niche, Series Y GMMTV dramas by multiple points.

In other words: as compared to GMMTV QLs, Miracle bested them easily. But Miracle vastly *underperformed* when put up against other primetime dramas on bigger channels.

(I will have more to say on QL vs. lakorn ratings in part three of this sub-series, when I review Khun Chai.)

Moving on to the actual show itself, @happypotato48 also shared with me that Miracle had a vocal base of passionate fans who were excited about real exploratory LGBTQ+ content airing in such an accessible time slot and channel for a wider Thai audience.

My amazing writing friends @bengiyo (here) and @lurkingshan and @twig-tea (here) have written fabulous essays about this INCREDIBLE show, both of which dive well into important plot points and the surrounding history of the show's airing.

I was so blown away by this incredible 2022 queer drama, so impressed by the show's ability, as @bengiyo wrote, to leave not a single thread of a storyline behind for the sake of rushing towards a conclusion. Each episode did not contain a minute of wasted time. Each minute of this show was rich in its themes and plots, describing the incredibly difficult lives of queer children growing into adults, and managing the trauma cards they were dealt with by the imperfect, often biased, and sometimes evil adults that raised these children.

I can take a couple guesses myself, as an Asian child of Asian parents, as to why Miracle didn't perform well during its airing. For a much wider Thai audience than the typical girlies that watch BLs -- an audience that certainly included parents and grandparents -- Miracle was a HELL of an exercise of accountability towards underperforming adults who are involved in the raising of queer children.

The Miracle of Teddy Bear took a goddamn SCALPEL to the biases, the trauma, and even the violence that adults commit unto children and other adults, in the name of demanding that children conform to their demands and to societal expectations. If parents were watching this live -- parents who could have either been raising, or had raised, queer children -- and raised them in the context of bias and conformity, than I can only imagine that this show made them squirm in shame. But besides this point about shame, Miracle, as I mentioned before, was also not a typical primetime romance drama. It was heavy, emotional, penetrating material, and a primetime audience may not have been primed to deal with such heavy content at that airing time.

I urge you to read @bengiyo's and @lurkingshan and @twig-tea's in-depth essays on Miracle's plot, but I'll run quickly through it now to get to some important points that I want to highlight.

Our main protagonist, Nut, lives with his mentally impacted mother, Na. She hallucinates regularly, speaking to a man that she calls her husband. One day, Tofu, a teddy bear that Nut owns, comes to life. While Na accepts Tofu immediately, Nut is extremely concerned by the sudden appearance of a strange man in his house (who wouldn't be). The connection between human Tofu and Nut's suddenly-missing teddy bear is not made, and Tofu is eventually accepted by Nut to live in his house and take care of Na.

Over the course of the series, it is revealed that the man that Na hallucinates (Saen) is not actually her husband -- but is the twin brother of her deceased actual husband (Sibmeun), a husband that was devastatingly homophobic and abusive to both Na and Nut while he was alive. Na and Saen had previously been in love, but due to a confluence of events, Na ended up marrying Saen's twin brother, Sib.

This single decision, in all of its intergenerational traumatic glory, is the kingpin to a cascade of horrifying trauma for Nut as he grows up.

Nut knows he is gay throughout his life and is punished brutally by his father, time and time again, for it. Na is blamed and punished separately by Sib for her fault of not "correcting" Nut of his sexuality. Nut is brutally separated by his high school boyfriend, Tatarn, by Sib, who originally learns of Nut's relationship through a homophobic teacher who narcs on Nut and Tatarn after seeing them together.

Tatarn himself is an injured protagonist in a separate storyline, as this generation of children become adults, of how his effort to fight the government against taking over his family's land leads him to a series-length coma. With Tatarn in a suspended state, Tofu is able to come to life through Tatarn's life force, and Nut and Tofu eventually fall in love. I want to emphasize that there's SO MUCH MORE to this series that you must catch up with in Ben's and Shan's/Twig's essays, or, ideally, in stopping everything and watching this show.

The utter BRILLIANCE of this series emanates first with Tofu -- a grown man borne out of a teddy bear, who knows nothing about how the human world functions, thus establishing Tofu as a brilliant and objective narrator commenting on the fallacies of human behavior that he observes around him, Nut, and Na.

Tofu is able to ask the most simple questions about why people act the way they do. He poses these questions like a child.

Where does homophobia come from? Why does it exist?

Nut himself asks, in the BRILLIANT episode nine of this series -- why do people have to disturb our love?

And with Tofu's existence, Nut is able to begin exploring his repressed and traumatic memories, to finally be able to tell the story of his brutal childhood to an objective listener.

He says to Tofu, in episode 10 (I paraphrase here),

"[my parents] ruined it for me. They ruined my self-esteem. They never explained [their homophobia] to me."

Nut goes on to tell Tofu that his high school boyfriend, Tatarn, was the first person in his life that didn't make him feel like an intruder.

This theme (there were so, so many themes in this show, from traumatic patriarchy, to embedded and generational misogyny, omg so much) of internalized homophobia and intergenerational trauma reminded me of an Instagram post I once saw from an older gay man, who wrote about missing his young adulthood due to the trauma of his upbringing. He wrote that it wasn't until his 40s that he could actually LIVE as a gay man, because he spent his 20s and 30s in fear of prejudice, and processing the trauma that he had grown up with. He wrote that his is the case for most queer people -- that one's 40s are the equivalent of a heterosexual's 20s.

We catch Nut fully processing this, after a lifetime of internal and external struggles, with Tofu, to the point of Nut seeking therapy at the end of the series.

There are many more storylines dealing with homophobia (including that evil fucker Jan, FUCK YOU JAN), as well as unfettered support for queer children, as we see through Gen and his lovely family. We see parents changing their views on same-sex relationships, through Song and his father, Anik.

I want to note something for the sake of the OGMMTC syllabus and the history of Thai BL, as this show aired starting in March of 2022. What remarkable show had ended just two months prior?

That's right, GMMTV's inimitable Bad Buddy. (BBS GIRLIES CAN'T LEAVE 'EM ALONE.) As I made comparisons between GMMTV and Channel 3 earlier, I also want to compare what Bad Buddy represents vis à vis homophobia versus how Miracle dealt with it.

We all know that Bad Buddy exists in GMMTV's common No Homophobia Bubble. We all know that Bad Buddy leverages other themes, including intergenerational trauma, school infighting and bullying, and personal and family rivalries, to represent conflicts that commonly arise in situations of homophobia. We all know that the resolutions that Pat and Pran come to at the end of the show are oftentimes compromises that queer couples must make to survive in love and the world.

I believe that one of the reasons why The Miracle of Teddy Bear underperformed in ratings at the time of its airing is because, unlike Bad Buddy, Miracle surgically dissected just about every emanation of homophobia that one could possibly imagine. (TW: child abuse, spoiler) At one point during a flashback to Nut's childhood, we see Na saving Nut's life by slapping him in front of his homophobic father, as a means of distracting the father from potentially killing his gay son.

As I keep repeating, The Miracle of Teddy Bear is not a BL. In the context of the show's conversation about homophobia, the series ACTUALLY COMMENTS ON SERIES Y, brilliantly so, as Nut himself is a Series Y screenwriter, and Miracle demonstrates that Thai BLs are actually GOOD for reaching audiences that may otherwise question same-sex relations.

And Miracle is also not a romance. Except for the re-animated teddy bear, Miracle strikes about as realistic a vision of the difficulties of love and acceptance as I've seen in a fictional drama.

And I drank every minute of it up. It was incredibly refreshing to me to watch a truly queer piece of art just absolutely dissect almost every experience of the trauma of a queer child growing up in a difficult environment, and processing those difficulties in his adult life.

There are a few other pieces on the OGMMTVC syllabus that touch upon this brutal angst. From The Love of Siam, to Gay OK Bangkok, to Dew, to The Eclipse, there is a world of Thai queer cinema and shows, some of which include BLs, that don't shy away from wrangling with the oft-present brutality of growing up and living queer.

As I think about how Miracle performed in primetime broadcast ratings in 2022, I'm thinking about what some of us in critical circles have been discussing regarding the last year and a half of GMMTV shows -- GMMTV being the biggest producer of Thai BLs at the moment. GMMTV shows, since Bad Buddy, have not been as critically incisive into worlds of bias, and shows like We Are or My Love Mix-Up Thailand have actually generated criticism for being too out of touch from the oft-difficult realities of being queer.

I think it's extremely important for us, as a small fandom in the huge world of Asian dramas, to think about what we want to see out of the shows we prefer. I had no prior expectation before I tuned into The Miracle of Teddy Bear, not at all expecting such a thorough and rich commentary into the realities of being a queer Thai man.

I feel that The Miracle of Teddy Bear has given me such a broader insight into the kind of parenting that many young queer Thais likely experienced in their childhood. It's given me a larger holistic view of the issues I need to be aware of when I interact with any of my queer friends. And I think this holistic education into a queer experience should, frankly, be on the list of anyone who considers themselves a fan of queer media, so as to be better educated about the realities of bias that our friends and family may face.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is, The Miracle of Teddy Bear is so brilliant, that we as a fandom need to work on giving it the broader reputation it deserves. It deserves an important spot on the OGMMTVC syllabus as a must-watch, critical exploration of society vis à vis sexuality. For me, it's in my top three with He's Coming To Me and Bad Buddy as my favorite Thai queer dramas, if I'm broadening my criteria out of BLs, and also lands up in non-BL-land for me with the movies The Love of Siam and Dew.

If any of us out there think that we understand the culture of Thai queerness, or even of the trauma that being queer could cause to a child -- check yourself (as I did), watch The Miracle of Teddy Bear, and prepare for a rich and artful education into issues and themes that you may not have even thought of.

[Aaaahhh, I have been waiting for MONTHS to pen this tribute to Miracle, and I'm glad it's out of my system! It's long, but it's absolutely a must-watch.

Speaking of must-watches! My next post in this series is not a part of The Lakorn Corner sub-series, we'll take a quick break from that. I have been waiting, also, for MONTHS to revere over Triage (TRIIIIAAAAGGGEEEE!), the best medical BL ever, ever, ever. I'm just gonna gush in my piece, I hope that's okay with y'all.

I'm watching 2022's Khun Chai at the moment, and I'll review that after Triage, and then I'll take a look at the start of the GL era in Series Y territory with GAP and some preceding shows. My School President is on the horizon!

Here's the latest OGMMTVC playlist for yer pleasure!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Love Songs Love Stories: Pae Jai (2015) (Thailand’s first serialized GL) (to be reviewed with GAP the Series) 5) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 6) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 7) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 8) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 9) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 10) Together With Me (2017) (review here)

11) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 12) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 13) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 14) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 15) The Fallen Leaf (2019) (not a BL; adjacent to the project as Thailand’s first lakorn featuring a queer/transgender main character) (review here) 16) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 17) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 18) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 19) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 20) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content at GMMTV) (review here)

21) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 22) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 23) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 24) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 25) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 26) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (review here) 27) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 28) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 29) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 30) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here)

31) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 32) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 34) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 35) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: preamble here, part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4) 36) Secret Crush On You (2022) (review here) 37) The Miracle of Teddy Bear (2022) 38) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here)  39) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist (part 1 and part 2) 40) Triage (2022) (review coming)

41) Honorable Mention: War of Y (2022) (for the sake of an attempt to provide meta BL commentary within a BL in the modern BL era), with a complementary watch of Aam Anusorn’s documentary, BL: Broken Fantasy (2020) (thoughts here) 42) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 43) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch to Reexamine "Genre BLs," Along With a Critical Take on Branded Ships (review here) 44) Khun Chai/To Sir, With Love (2022) (watching) 45) Love of Secret (2022) (a GL that preceded GAP) (I will not be watching this, but it's on the list to precede GAP) 46) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL with a branded pair and ship) (review coming) 47) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023), Coupled with a Speed-Watch of My Love Mix-Up Thailand (2024) to Comment on GMMTV Trying to Make Magic Happen Twice  48) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 49) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 50) La Pluie (2023) (review coming)

51) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 52) Wedding Plan (2023) (Recommended as an important trajectory in the course of MAME’s work and influence from TharnType) 53) Only Friends (2023) (tag here) (not technically a BL, but it certainly became one in the end) 54) Last Twilight (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as Thailand’s first major BL to center disability, successfully or otherwise) 55) Cherry Magic Thailand (2023-24) (tag here) (on the list as the first major Japanese-to-Thai drama adaptation, featuring the comeback of TayNew) 56) Ossan’s Love Returns (Japan, 2024) (adding for the EarthMix cameo and the eventual Thai remake) 57) 23.5 (2024) (GMMTV’s first GL) (thoughts here) (I am not finished with this show; I will finish it when I get to it on this list) 58) Spare Me Your Mercy (2024) (thoughts here) (added as the finale of Sammon's medical trilogy in Manner of Death and Triage, and as a major lakorn starring two of Thailand's biggest actors in Tor Thanapob and Jaylerr)]

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Gelboys: Thoughts on Episode 2

1) Before I say anything else, THOSE GELS AT THE END WERE AMAZING, with the layers?? AND those little horseshoe things?! Omg the technology these days.

2) I have to gush a little! This was a brilliant episode.

What an amazing juxtaposition between the no-communication-just-playlist-and-nails date, and the stolen moment at school — no background noise — when Fou4mod, almost in one breath, confuses and compromises his values and his standards to try to keep Chian close to him.

And I loved the separate juxtaposition when we as the viewers, watching the two boys on their silent disco date, stopped hearing music and started hearing the sounds of the trains and the city. That the world was still moving around these two guys who were in their own shared, very temporal, moment.

It was definitely painful to watch Fou4mod waffle in his negotiations with Chian. We as viewers know that the values he was compromising on were ones he held onto strongly in the first episode — he likes clarity of a relationship status and monogamy.

As a mom (and as a former single woman on deez streets) — I couldn’t help but think nostalgically that what Fou4mod was doing, in compromising his values, would be THE way he’d learn about the complexities of human engagement. @betterholdfast said this perfectly — to use their word, it’s almost devastating to have watched the change and compromise unravel in real time.

And yet, these teenage and young adult stumbles are just the precursor to the journey of learning about how unreliable most humans are, unless and until their become your friends, family, and maybe even partners. And that second part — the becoming part — takes so much work beyond the first pheromonal whiffs of a crush.

Fou4mod knows what he wants, we know what he wants, and yet….he now kinda doesn’t know what he wants. And that indecision, leading to the rapid-fire decisions he was making to keep Chian close, that state of waffling, oooh god, that place of unknowing discomfort and queasiness and hope and joy and total devastation — is teenager-hood, right? And this show is successful at this moment because it has NAILED that cringey indecision. I just LOVE IT.

3) One last point, speaking of cringe, and going back to what I said earlier about noise. Wasn’t it so brutal to see Fou4mod learn the truth of Chian’s position once all the distractions were gone? The AirPods, the phones, the playlists? Once all that noise went away, Fou4mod discovered Chian’s truth. Just such an amazing metaphor for the distractions that today’s technologies make for us, that keep us from finding out more easily the truths about ourselves and others. I know this show will keep hammering away at that point.

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But I guess you gotta fight in order to get what you want.

—GELBOYS · สถานะกั๊กใจ · Episode 02

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I want my gay rights now! - Marsha P. Johnson (NYC Pride Parade, 1973)

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