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This is the last time I will do this to you. After this you won’t see this version of me again.

OSSAN'S LOVE THAILAND Episode 3

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#drink responsibly.

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And on this day we were blessed with another Live Faifa Reaction

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I’ve seen a lot of posts about The Paradise Of Thorns but none of them told me that this movie is actually about how poverty and inequality forces differently oppressed people to fight each other to the death for scarce resources and any tiny shred of dignity. There are parts of this film that I don’t think quite worked but that overarching message is a banger.

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Cherry Magic Thailand (2023-2024) Episode Twelve (FINALE)

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You are so good at waiting. You are so patient. You have talked to me for two years, but I haven't replied even once. Thank you for always being patient with me. You are really the one that I thought.

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An Apology to The Miracle of Teddy Bear

I finally caught up with a show that was inaccessible for a long time, and also bogged down in bad-faith fan reporting, at the insistence of @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, and later @wen-kexing-apologist. A few months ago, Shan and Twig wrote about how The Miracle of Teddy Bear Saved the Gays to push back on the false narrative that the show buried the gays and forced the lead to marry a woman, and also about how it contains incisive social commentary about a Thai gay man. I won't reiterate what they said in their excellent essay, but I do want to pick up from my Apology to Ossan's Love and The Novelist to talk about going back for shows you missed.

When this show first began airing in the spring of 2022, it was completely inaccessible in the West. I remember seeing rumors at the time that the show was withheld from international distribution due to its critical themes about Thai society, and I was curious about how a show about how a guy falls in love with his teddy bear that comes to life could be causing such consternation. After the show ended, I also remember seeing discontented commentary about the end of the show's ending that turned out to be patently false.

Now that I've actually seen the show, I want to briefly gush about the things I loved in this show.

Job Thuchapon Imbues Nut With A Complex Humanity Rarely Afforded Gay Characters in the BL Sphere

As I was finishing the show last night, I commented to my friends that Job might be one of the most beautiful people I've encountered in Thai queer media, and I think it's because his performance as Nut feels recognizably human. I'm convinced it's because this was a drama with humanist goals that was able to avoid prioritizing romance as its key outcome. As such, Nut becomes one of the best expressions of the traumatized artist trying to do something with his pain in his art that I've ever been blessed to see.

Nut is dealing with intense family trauma from his father's homophobia, his mother's silence and impotence on the matter, and the social circumstances around his life. He's a man with deep anger at his mom and father, who is also tasked with being the breadwinner for his household because his mom is mentally ill. Moreover, his hateful aunt lives next door to only make their lives worse. Nut is an extremely lonely but talented writer who wants to make something more than a standard BL prioritizing romance, cuteness, and product placement.

Most importantly for me, Nut is so unabashedly gay in a way that I also found extremely believable. He's the kind of gay that's not exactly hiding who he is, but isn't going to go out of his way to blast it to everyone. He's not afraid to hold a man's hand in public, but he's also just going to ignore the female coworker who can't take a hint. On top of that, the gays have sex in this show! The show uses so many useful tools to show us that Nut and Tofu have sex without needing to do a lot of bed scenes. I deeply appreciated this.

Inn Sarin Makes The Teddy Bear Role Into a Meaningful Exploration of the Nature of Humanity and Kindness

I originally worried that Inn was here just to be beautiful (he is), and that his character would just be a joke (it most certainly wasn't). Instead, what I got was a character whose innocence allowed us as viewers to explore some heavy moral dilemmas that a simple view of human nature could not accommodate. By the end of the show I was screaming into the chat that "He's only a bear!" because none of the problems he faced were simple.

Tofu, through his interactions with the other inanimate objects in the house experiences incredibly growth over the show, and learns that loving a human as a human is far more complicated than loving them as a teddy bear. He's faced with difficult challenges around Nut's mom's health issues, Nut's family troubles, and even his own jealousy of Nut's childhood love. Inn's affect as Tofu matures as Tofu becomes more familiar with human nuance, which is contrasted so well by the flashbacks with his dead human doppelganger.

This Show Completed Every Thread it Established

This may not seem like an important thing to highlight, but it's so rare for shows to actually do this, especially when they're this complex. I have massive respect for screenwriter Prapt and the team around him, because it's so rare that I enjoy a final episode of a Thai drama. I was openly weeping at the resolution of a thread I thought was forgotten in the finale.

This show had much to say about speaking truth to power, and how the powerful wield death as a weapon. It had much to say about how internalized homophobia expresses in gay men in different ways. It took its mental health themes seriously. It also humanized its villains in a way that makes them some of cruelest I've seen on screen in a long time. It also shows how important community support systems are, especially the role elder gays play in your life. Most importantly, I loved that this show didn't insist that everyone has to hang out and be friendly with everyone who ever hurt them, even if it values getting closure from much-needed apologies.

Conclusion: This Show Has Everything

This show really is something special, and I recommend going on YouTube and watching it. It's a long watch, but it's one of the most rewarding viewing experiences I've had from Thailand in the last decade. I'm also convinced that I have to take learning Thai more seriously, because if Prapt's writing is this tight, I have serious doubts about what we got from The Eclipse. Any Thai people following me, please let me know if you get around to reading the book The Eclipse is based on so you can talk to me about what you experienced from Prapt's pen directly.

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The Miracle of Teddy Bear Saved the Gays

Last weekend, both @twig-tea and I had time off and were in the mood to binge something, so Twig suggested we finally watch The Miracle of Teddy Bear. Both of us had missed it while it was airing live (because it didn’t have international distribution) and had been given the impression by others that it had a sad ending that included some anti-queer messages. It was also very long, so we were not exactly rushing to get to it. But we are stubborn and like to judge things for ourselves, so we decided since we had the time and the show was now available, we should jump in. And imagine our surprise when we found out everything we had been told about it was wrong (we have our theories about why). This is one of the best queer dramas we have ever seen, with phenomenal acting, writing, and direction, and we have so much to say about it. The post that follows is co-written by the two of us. Strap in, folks, because it’s a long one.

If you haven’t seen this show yet and don’t want any spoilers, stop reading this right now and head over to YouTube, where international fans can now watch it for free with English subtitles. We’re going to go deep on the show below, and because this drama is designed to slowly reveal information in a very deliberate way, nearly everything counts as a spoiler. We’ll try not to give too much away in the early sections, but be warned!

The Story

The Miracle of Teddy Bear is the tale of a deeply traumatized gay man in desperate need of healing, and the teddy bear who comes to life to help him. In the process of taking care of his person, our bear uncovers deep family trauma and many secrets and lies, accidentally solves crimes, makes lots of friends, heals a family, and saves several lives. He is a very good bear, and through this adventure he contemplates his own existence, learns how to be human, and discovers what it means to truly love someone. 

This is primarily a family drama with important things to say about queer truth, and while it includes several bl storylines, it is not a romance. Intertwined with the family drama is a bl show within the show and a series of interrelated mysteries that slowly get unraveled as the story goes on. One of the things this show does best is parcel out information from various perspectives at the perfect time to keep the viewer one step behind—we found ourselves constantly almost guessing what the show was going to do next, but it always chose a direction a little to the left and surprised us in the best way. 

In the end, every question we asked was answered, and every time we thought a character’s motivation felt a little too shallow, we were given more. The experience of watching this show was deeply satisfying and really made us feel seen. This show gets us. 

The Characters

The Bear: Tofu

Tofu is the titular teddy bear who comes to life via drama magic and does his best to support his person. He starts the series incredibly innocent, and the show and his actor, Inn Sarin, do an incredible job of depicting the change in him as he lives life as a human, becoming more complex and less naive. Tofu is the heart of the show, and it is his love and kindness that enable the growth of the other characters in this story. 

The Core Family: Nut, Na, and Kuenchai

Nut is our protagonist, and his struggles with life as a gay man are the soul of this story. He lives with his mom, Na, and their dog, Kuenchai, and Tofu is his beloved teddy bear. Yes, Nut is a cranky ass grown man with a beloved teddy bear. It will make sense eventually, we promise. Nut is a bl novelist working through old trauma via adapting his work for the screen. Na is a woman who has been Going Through It, and while we start the story with only the vague sense that something is not quite right with her, we spend a lot of time on her history as well as her growth in the present until we get the full picture. The way Nut and Na’s stories are tied together gets to several of the core themes of this show (discussed more below). 

The Sides: Gen, Song, Prib, and the nosy neighbors

Our cast of friends and allies who support Nut and Tofu and have romantic trials and tribulations of their own. Without giving too much away, we’ll just say this: all of these characters have satisfying arcs, and some of them may have caused us to squeal in delight. 

Specters of the Past: Neung and Tarn

Telling you literally anything about them is a major spoiler so just know they are here and they are important and you will fully understand why and how by the end. Oh yeah, and Neung looks exactly like Tofu (or should we say Tofu looks like Neung?) for Reasons (which are explained! We love this show).

Villains: Saen, Sib, Jan, and Parit

Expect these four to show up often and cause a lot of trouble. Their motives and exact crimes are revealed over the course of the show.

Other Elders: Anik, Juea, Kanya and Sittha

They are mostly here to serve a few key plot functions and represent a spectrum of parental figures (related by blood and not) and acceptance of queerness.

And we cannot forget: The inanimate objects

In this show, inanimate objects can come to life under a certain set of magical conditions, and they are Tofu’s friends and helpers along the way. Some of their stories are shockingly touching! They also add some needed levity to the show, especially the grumpy ones. Special shoutout to the cactus and the spare blanket, our crime solving MVPs. We have to admit, the animation for these took a bit of getting used to, but within a couple of episodes we were cheering these creepy blinking eyes on. 

The Themes

And here is where we start to get into spoiler territory about specific character arcs. This show had so many clear and well-articulated themes, and they stayed consistent throughout the story.

Queer people can be happy

This is stated explicitly as well as demonstrated through multiple storylines: gay men can love each other, have good relationships and fulfilling sex lives, and get their happy endings. Those who argue that people should fight against their queerness because it will make their lives harder and keep them from happiness are not just wrong, they have it backwards. 

Queer people can only be happy by living their truth

This is perhaps the main thesis of this show, and it comes across in so many ways over the arc of the story. We see this theme exemplified in particular through Nut, Tarn, Song, and Gen, with each of them representing different versions of the queer experience that shape who they are and how they show up in the world. Even before the story tells you, it’s clear what kind of experiences each has had from his relationship to his own queerness and his general demeanor and outlook on life. Nut has survived an abusive homophobic father, and that shows up in his anger, his self-protective rejection of others, and his struggle with emotional regulation. Gen has been raised by loving and accepting parents who support his choices in all ways, and this shows in his good humor, balanced perspective, and confidence to be himself. When we say good media should show, don’t tell us its point, this is a fantastic example of what that means. 

Accept and love your queer children or pay the price

Relatedly, this story is very interested in the consequences for parents who fail their queer children, and explores a whole spectrum of acceptance from enthusiastic support to negligent ambivalence to misguided suppression to violent bigotry. We see so many different parents and parental figures react to learning about their gay sons and gain insight into them by how they respond—and only the ones who manage to get it together to love and support their kids get to keep their families. Critically, the adults who fail their queer children are convinced they’re acting in their best interests at the time, and we are along for the ride as the redeemable ones go through the stages of first admitting they were wrong but still thinking their intentions justify the pain they caused to fully acknowledging the damage they have done and making amends. 

Be patient with others, you never know what they’ve been through

That said, the show also invites us to stop and consider what might be behind aberrant behavior before judging it. Tofu is unfailingly patient with others, and even with the worst people in this story, he always seeks to understand why they are behaving a certain way before giving up on them. The show slowly and methodically reveals information that recontextualizes things we thought we understood and encourages us to keep digging for empathy and missing context. People in this story behave very badly and make a lot of mistakes, but a lot of it becomes more understandable once you have the full picture.

Unprocessed trauma will prevent you from healing and cause you to perpetuate harm on others

Speaking of bad behavior, so much of what’s wrong in this story is driven by unprocessed trauma of one sort or another. Nut’s anger is at its core a deep hurt from being betrayed by the person he trusted most to be on his side. Na’s refusal to live in reality causes her to continue to hurt herself and her son. Saen’s denial about his own actions leads to far-reaching consequences he could not imagine. And the healing process depicted in the show is not linear; people who have made mistakes in the series make them more than once and advance and regress as the situation around them changes. 

People are responsible for their own actions and inactions

And while the show is clear that trauma is the source of the bad behavior of these characters, it is also clear that this is not an excuse. Everyone in this story is held to account for the things they do, as well as the things they don’t, no matter how understandable their reasons are. The people who refuse to heal face serious consequences in addition to seeing the damage their unprocessed trauma causes others. 

Noble idiocy leads to everyone being unhappy

One of the biggest sources of said unprocessed trauma in this story is characters making self-sacrificial choices for the ostensible benefit of others and bringing misery to everyone in the process. We love a drama that recognizes noble idiocy for the selfish and destructive act it truly is and clearly says you have to communicate with your loved ones if you don’t want to make a mess of everyone’s lives.

You can’t appease an abuser

No amount of hiding who you are or making yourself small will convince an abuser to treat you better or guarantee your safety. This theme is most obvious in the main storyline between Nut, Sib, and Na, but Jan is another example of a manipulative and emotionally abusive character who other characters continually try to play nice with, to no avail. She takes every opportunity to be cruel, whether the person she’s talking to is kind or combative in return. The show reinforces that abusers will always find an excuse to justify their behavior; changing yourself for them is pointless. 

Love is wanting the best for someone, even if that means letting go 

This is really the show’s core point where romance is concerned: being with you may not actually be what is best for the person you love, and if your love is true you have to accept that. The people who could not see this—Saen and Jan—were the ones who continued to cause harm to their loved ones and themselves, while the characters who honestly worked towards the happiness of their beloveds even if that happiness was not with themselves—Tofu, Tarn, and eventually Prib—were rewarded by seeing that happiness play out and ended our story truly content. The MVP of this theme is Tofu, whose pure teddy bear love for his person became more complicated and selfish as he became more human. But in the end, he held to the truth at his core that Nut’s happiness was his happiness.

You can have more than one great love, and one doesn't tarnish the others

Which brings us to one of the most beautiful takeaways from this show, and something that dramas so rarely do well. Nut loves two different men, neither more than the other, and he never chooses between them. They both hold important meaning in his life and he honors that whether they are with him or not. When Nut is with Tofu, he remembers his past love with fondness but he is clear that these memories do not make his love for Tofu any less real. A lesser show would have had those moments where Nut was thinking about his past cause him to distance himself from Tofu. But in this show, Nut sharing his past and working through his lack of closure was when he and Tofu had some of their closest and happiest moments together. This show is extremely clear that we can have happiness with more than one person over the course of our lives, and it is not only okay but encouraged! 

The Resolution

From here, we will be talking about the ending, and so by necessity will no longer be avoiding major spoilers. If you’re intrigued by the above and want to avoid being spoiled fully, stop now! One of the things that is so brilliant about this show is the way information is slowly revealed, so if you think you would like this show we recommend experiencing it for yourself. If you’re still not convinced and need to know the ending before you decide, read on. 

In our view, this story ends exactly as the show signals it will from the very beginning—and the way it should—and the ending is unambiguously a happy one. Tofu realizes that he and Tarn’s life forces are tied together, that it was Tarn going into his coma that caused him to awaken, and that as long as he continues to live as a human, Tarn will not recover. We and the characters have come to love Tofu in his guise as a human, but the truth is he does not belong there—he is a teddy bear, and for him to stay by robbing an actual human being of their life would be wrong. The story took pains throughout to show us how tenuous and restricted Tofu’s existence is, because he is not a real person and thus can’t live a full life (for example, he can’t get a job or safely leave the house because he doesn’t have documentation or any life experience). We also see Tofu struggle so much with the added complexities of the human experience that he becomes ill with overwhelm multiple times. He repeats to us through the whole story that all he really wants is to be a comfort to Nut. While he finds value and joy in being human, it does not change who he is at his core. And so he allows himself to be poisoned by Jan, sacrificing his human existence to bring Tarn back and exposing Jan and Saen’s crimes in the process. 

With this decision, the other characters get the chance to mourn him and move on. Nut grieves, finally makes the connection between human and teddy bear Tofu, goes to therapy (!), makes peace with his mother, and writes his love story with Tofu as his next show. Tarn wakes up and begins his recovery, and he and Nut slowly reconnect and rekindle their relationship over time. Na finds joy in her lucid moments and enjoys time with her family, finally free of the hell Saen and Sib unleashed on her life. Gen and Song get their happy ending with acceptance from Song’s dad, and Prib’s fixation on gay men becomes clear when her new female love interest enters the scene (let’s go, lesbians!). We get confirmation that the nosy neighbors are, in fact, an elder gay couple. Even Kuenchai and some of the inanimate objects have character arcs! Kuenchai is instrumental in making sure Nut is reunited with bear Tofu, and we get to see a slipper gain some independence from her other half and a grumpy bolster cuddle in to comfort her people when they need it.

We end our story with several happy families who love their gay children and a call for marriage equality via Nut and Tarn deciding to marry whether it’s legal or not. Tofu is a bear again but his human life is very much not forgotten—Nut speaks to him every day, honors the love they shared, and talks about him openly with Tarn. And we even hear from Tofu again, see a final moment between him and Nut in a beautiful dream, and are reassured that Tofu is happy to still be with Nut in his original form and to see him living so well. It’s everything he wanted, and he made it happen. He truly is the very best bear.  

The Purpose

We wanted to take some space to get a little extra meta and talk about why this show matters so much in the broader queer media landscape. First, it was a landmark queer television event in Thailand—please read this post by @flowerbeasblog to get the background on its significance in the cultural landscape. This show was broadcast very intentionally to educate and send a message to a broader audience in Thailand than is typically reached via bl dramas. And that’s why understanding and taking its themes seriously is so very important.

This is a story that is deeply rooted in queer truth, written by a queer man who wants people like him to be seen and understood. The show puts forward an unapologetically pro-gay message on broadcast television (on a major national network! during primetime! that does not shy away from the sexual component of queer love!) and embeds important political commentary in a fantastic and engaging story in a format familiar and comfortable for the Thai audience. It’s not meant to be received as a romance, and its nuanced and mature take on love and relationships is certainly not designed for ship wars. The writer even turns directly to the camera and underlines this in the final episode: while he respects the importance of bl in the media landscape, he has a bigger agenda in mind for this show and important things to say.

And that’s why some of the discourse around this show is so frustrating. A small portion of international fans who watched this show live seemed to misunderstand it deeply and created such a false impression of it that it caused others to stay away. Contrary to some of the takes out there, this show does not have a sad ending, Tofu’s resolution is not remotely anti-queer, and there is no woman who ends up with Nut (we are so confused that this was anyone’s interpretation; Nut at every age and several times within the show explicitly shouts about how very extremely gay he is). To see this story as a tragedy because Tofu “dies”—which he doesn’t; his human body disappears but he returns to being a conscious and content teddy bear—is to misunderstand Tofu’s character journey, his narrative purpose, and his agency. We can only assume that shipping got in the way of comprehension here, and people who wanted to see human Tofu and Nut end up together focused on that to the exclusion of pretty much everything this show was saying and doing.

At the end of this story, Tofu is happy. To think that Nut was better off with Tofu than with Tarn is to not allow for the complexities of human experience; Nut did love Tofu, but he loved Tarn, too, and their relationship was a positive force in his life both before and after Tofu entered it. And Tarn was an actual gay human man in a coma who could not wake up while Tofu existed. Tofu was the creation of Tarn’s love for Nut; his existence was limited, and he found being a human extremely difficult. All Tofu wanted was to be Nut’s teddy bear and stay with Nut forever. He wanted Nut to be happy, because Tarn wanted Nut to be happy, and during his time as a human he worked to enable that happiness. He was instrumental in moving forward several stuck characters and uncovering many secrets, all of which were necessary for Nut to get to where he ends up at the end of the show. Being in a relationship with Nut was a bonus. He enjoyed the experience of being in love with Nut, but in the end he chose to sacrifice his human life so that Nut could have a permanent, lasting happiness with someone who was real. Tofu’s human death is not an example of the bury your gays trope; in fact, it is a total rebuke of it. Tofu, and this show, saved the gay men in this story and gave them full and happy lives. We cannot recommend watching and supporting this show enough.

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can’t believe tiktok is actually getting banned, twitter is infested with bots and brainworm-infested musk bots, facebook is king of QAnon, instagram caught the plague from facebook and is dying a slow death in real time… and as the dust settles… only Miss Tumblr is left standing… failing upwards once again

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The people in the top three spots on Forbes' billionaire list—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—will have prime seats at President-elect Trump's inauguration next week. NBC News, citing "an official involved with the planning of the event," reports that the three tech billionaires will be sitting together on the platform with other high-profile guests, including Trump's Cabinet nominees. Bezos and Zuckerberg's companies, Amazon and Meta, have each donated $1 million to the inauguration, while Musk spent more than $250 million to help Trump win the election, reports Reuters.

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GelBoys, an upcoming iQIYI original - a Masterpost

Series Title: GELBOYS สถานะกั๊กใจ

Director: Boss Naruebet Kuno (I Told Sunset About You, The Paradise of Thorns)

Director of Photography: Tang Tawanwad Wanavit (I Told Sunset About You, The Paradise of Thorns)

Screenwriters: Boss Naruebet Kuno, Kate Karakade Norasethaporn, Junior Naron Cherdsoongnern (I Told Sunset About You, The Paradise of Thorns) (TBC)

Airing: February 2025 (TBC)

Original Network: iQIYI

Although there are no official synopsis yet, GelBoys is said to be a romantic coming of age series which tells the relationships of the four boys with gel nails. GelBoys stars brand new faces whom you may or may not be familiar with. (source)

1. PJ Mahidol Pibulsonggram Previously more known to the public as JJ Krissanapoom's little brother, PJ has recently gotten more public attention after starring in Good Doctor TH. He's also starred in PBS Thailand's Eightraordinary.

2. New Chayapak Tunprayoon Thai QL audience may be more familiar with New Chayapak through projects like Netflix's Ready, Set, Love or I Promised You The Moon (the sequel series to I Told Sunset About You). Fun fact: New Chayapak is actually a trainee under Nadao Academy before Nadao Bangkok got dissolved in 2022.

3. Pide Monthapoom Sumonvarangkul If you've watched sports themed BL series Our Days before, you may remember Pide Monthapoom who plays Q.

4. Leon Brocco GelBoys is Leon Brocco's series debut.

OFFICIAL MOOD TONE TEASER

As first announced in November 2024, GelBoys is iQIYI Thailand's third original series after Petrichor. GelBoys have been teasing the series through various social medias such as X, Tiktok and Youtube. You can watch the actors' short vlogs below.

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Thame Po 1.04 · Love The Way You Lie

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And do we need to keep that distance?

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THAMEPO | EP. 6

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Thongkam and Jingna 🥰

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Thongham & Jingna

Jeff Satur and Keng Harit in THE PARADISE OF THORNS (2024)