#<- mostly for bl

[zecoritheweirdone]

[slowly pokes my head inside the tftsmp tag] hullo? hullo hullo? anybody there?

i kept seeing tftsmp posts on my dash occasionally, recently,, and like. i was reminded of this really really old wild west fic idea i made a while back? so long back that i don't actually remember when,, because i only really shared it in a few discord servers, and never got that much of a response from it,,, and so i never did anything with it.

but since the tag is actually, like. sort of being used, now? i figured... i'd give y'all an offering, mayhaps?

n-e-ways,,, hehehehhhhoooo au where john john and the bandits are ghosts, ft. my rushed art.

it's been, like– maybe a year or so since i even thought about this idea,, so i'm afraid i don't have much to share outside of a small handful of snippets,, sksjsksjsk. but like. basically, all four of them become ghosts, and then... ghost shenanigans, basically.

[0yorixu]

love for their partners

[khaopybara]

❝I wish I could stop being such a bad luck, so the people I love don't have to suffer or be sad because of me.❞

YIN ANAN as JACK and WAR WANARAT as JOKER official trailer of JACK&JOKER (premiers september 9th, 2024)

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) GREAT & TYME I Yin & Yang ☯︎

[rayandgay]

But I meant you.

[snarkspawn]

some KoD/Spirealm sketches

[fan-fricking-fiction]

We are ft. quotes (1)

[cr: Chloe Liese]

other We are posts <3

[usertoxicyaoi]

mmm getting real sick of these censored purist minded sex repulsive ~fans~ watching asian bls commenting on how sex isn't necessary for a plot/show and that it takes away from the story. that showing feelings of lust and sexual desire and acting upon those feelings isn't right. is it really that incomprehensible that .. you know .. maybe, just maybe, we can also be sexual beings too that get horny and wanna fuck just because, i don't know, we want to? my god, why can't we asians just have nice things without all this nonsense and over the top critical analysis of our sexuality.

my thing with this all, as someone who doesn't watch thai bls as often, if at all, now, compared to jbls is that there are so many mature/high heat jbls out there (the novelist, the end of the world with you and my personal weatherman, just to name a few) that just tend to treat sex as something that's enjoyed. as something that 2 people do as an expression of lust and desire, just because they want to fuck each other, despite how shitty or bad or toxic (or not) one character may be. they allow room for that sexual desire to be explored, bc, you know, we as humans can be reckless like that!!! and recent thai bls are also going about this approach too! and it should be welcomed! and yet .... there are people out there shaming this notion. and if that's still the case, how is progress ever going to be made?

[gunsatthaphan]

something 🏳️‍🌈 is happening..

[pharawee]

"I’ll agree to be your fake boyfriend if you can land a punch on me within the next five minutes."

—WANDEE GOODDAY · วันดีวิทยา · 4 May 2024

[sherrymagic]

Tan/New being iconic in Episode 10 DEAD FRIEND FOREVER (2023-2024)

[lurkingshan]

Thank you for leaving these tags @pharawee! Without getting into any speculation about how Dead Friend Forever will actually end, I do want to address your question and talk about why most of us want to see severe consequences for these boys. The short answer: it's about genre expectations and the psychological catharsis of a good revenge narrative.

To get down to the really basic point: people who love revenge thrillers love them because they are a fantasy construct in which good people survive and bad people get what they deserve. In a world where bad things happen and we rarely have any control, a good revenge story can be exhilarating, giving you the feeling that justice prevailed, villains received appropriate comeuppance for their wrongs, and the protagonist seized control back and experienced much needed catharsis for their suffering. Real life is very much not like this, which is why it's such an appealing genre of fiction.

So how do we calibrate what "appropriate comeuppance" means? This is where genre expectations become really important, because the genre the revenge narrative plays out in sets the terms for where that bar sits. In The Glory, a recent world class revenge drama, we were in the psychological thriller genre, so revenge came in the form of Dong Eun playing mind games with her bullies until they destroyed their own lives. No murder necessary. Dead Friend Forever, however, is in the horror genre, and specifically began its story by planting itself in the slasher subgenre, giving us a masked killer and setting up expectations that these boys are being hunted. When you watch a slasher, you come in with the mindset that most of the characters are going to die and begin rooting for it and looking for reasons why they "deserve" it. And typically, in a slasher, it takes very little for a character to "deserve" a death--you often see people die for the tiniest infractions, like making a rude comment, telling a bad joke, or having sex. But DFF went much farther than that and gave us a multi episode flashback in which we got a detailed accounting of every wrong this group of boys committed against Non, increasing the audience's bloodlust and conviction that these boys needed to pay.

So why do so many of us want the bullies to die? Because the genre demands it, and the story set the audience up to expect it from the outset. I have seen some discussion of the way the show is blending different horror subgenres and not sticking strictly to typical slasher conventions, and that's true, and expected. Slashers are usually two hours max, and this show needed to fill 10+ hours of content, so it's doing a really interesting blend of slasher, mystery, psychological thriller, and other horror subgenres. But the bones of the story still hold, and despite the storytelling choice to give the villains some nuance and fleshed out motivations for their behavior, they are still villains who destroyed Non's life. If you're feeling overly sympathetic to any of these boys at present, I encourage you to go back and remind yourself how they behaved in the early episodes of this story, which took place after the events of the flashbacks. These are not genuinely remorseful kids who made minor mistakes and then got their acts together and became upstanding citizens; they just want to move on and avoid blame and accountability for what they did, while Non's entire family was irrevocably destroyed by their actions.

If this story ends without Por, Tee, Top, Fluke, Jin, and Phee suffering genre appropriate consequences for their choices that harmed and betrayed Non, it will be a letdown and many will feel unsatisfied. In real life, we may believe that forgiveness is the right path, and we know that Buddhism teaches unconditional forgiveness. But this is not real life. This is a fantasy genre that is specifically meant to provide an escape from the constraints of real life morality and obligations. No one wants to show up to a fantasy party only to receive a moral scolding. The most disappointing thing a revenge narrative can do is wimp out on delivering the actual revenge.

[heretherebedork]

Do you know what's wild to think about? It was four years ago that I first talked to someone else about watching The Untamed and tried to convince my friends to watch it and completely failed and came here to start yelling about my newest fandom because I'd seen gifs here and figured it was a good place to share.

Four years ago, I had no idea what BL was and had never watched a show in Thai and was only just starting to watch more subtitled shows after a long break from anime.

And now here I am, in my little corner of this fandom, 500+ shows under my belt, new friends, new issues, a whole boatload of meta, just as many gifs and so much joy that I struggle sometimes not to just tell every person I meet about how great these shows are.

And I love it here. Even with the struggles, even with the people who approach this fandom so, so differently than I do, even with the shows and fandom reactions that have broken my brain... I have found so much joy here. From friends found and kept to friends lost to anons of every flavor to new shows and old shows and all the tropes I've come to love... it's been a fascinating journey and I hope to stay on it for as long as I can.

So what I mean is... thank you. This fandom is big and beautiful and ugly and scary and wonderful and a gift and it has given me so much and I hope I've given just as much back and I wish some people found it easier to disagree but I've also learned just as much from that as I've learned from sharing joy and I love so many of you.

Four years.

Four years.

So many shows, so many boys, so much queer joy, so much queer love and so much more is always coming.

[absolutebl]

Hi! apologies if you've answered this before, but can you recommend some bls that deal with homophobia, be it internalised or external? or more generally, bls that are not set in the bl bubble where gayness is 100% accepted?

Thank you very much <3

Ooo, sure thing!

BL's Not Set in The Bubble

BLs that deal with homophobia (internal or external) and rough coming out sequences

Began Beginning from Myanmar is all about this. It's not a BL I would necessarily recommend but it is interesting for many reasons. Both leads are dealing with massive internalize homophobia, among other issues.

Similarly: Like in the Movies and Tie the Not from the Philippines.

And Goodbye Mother and Nation's Brother from Vietnam.

From Thailand

To Sir, With Love - witnessing his family's massive homophobia that results in major tragedy as a child is what drives our main character's whole personality and self hatred. Massive trigger warning.

Until We Meet Again - the pair in the past, of course, it's the driving trauma of the relationship reincarnated. Massive trigger warning.

I Feel You Linger In the Air - fear of being caught is a through line in this drama.

More modern set stuff:

City of Stars deals with having to leave the closet as a super star. So does Close Friend Season 2 a little. The OhmFluke pair also deals with coming out to parents. Love Stage!! (Thailands version) contains one couple that chooses to remain closeted for the good of a career and another that risks it.

Moonlight Chicken - mostly about self hatred and difficulty in being out, to the point where his young nephew challenges him on it and provides a foil.

Also, ya know, TharnType and Why R U. Both have self hated and challenging coming outs because of trauma and daddy issues.

Dark Blue Kiss - Kao is terrified of being outed and it's used to blackmail him.

Similarly although he is out of Ae, Pete is being abused and blackmailed because he is gay in Love By Chance. Also Ae doesn't manage to come out... yet.

I Told Sunset About You - of course.

My Gear and Your Gown final episodes contain homophobic (or are they?) parents.

Second Chance heavily implies that there is something going on with Paper's inability to accept Fah.

Similarly Gene accepting Sib in Lovely Writer.

I'm pretty sure there's a ton of homophobia at the back end of My Tee, but honestly it's been years sicne I watched that mess.

Charming little pulp 21 Day Theory deals with quite a bti of this, but our main character has a lovely gay uncle to guide the way.

"Punch the homophobe" my favorite trope of all time, happens in Oxygen. But otherwise they neatly circumvent the patriarchs objection by defacto adopting a child to inherit.

TonhonChonlatee is all about one characters inability to acept his own queerness as encouraged by his homophobic family and various other evil characters.

My Only 12% actively tackles and calls out cultural homophobia and damaging misrepresentations.

"Why does everyone think that both of them are strange? If it's not wrong, why does everyone hurt?"

The show he's talking about is Thailand's first proto-BL, love of Siam and it is about an inability to come out.

From Japan

Life: Love on the Line - it's parental disgust and personal self hatred and paranoia that breaks them up (they get back together but he as to get over it)

Similarly His - is a kind of reunion romance after self-homophobia drove one half of the pair to marry someone else.

Actually the original series with the same characters, His the series, also deals with self acceptance around gayness, and it's subtle (Japan) but it's pretty clear one of them was kicked out of/ or left his previous school because he got outed. (Light on Me references a similar situation, but it's ultra subtle.)

If It's With You also kinda falls into this category. Not sure these can be called "dealing with" it tho, more side stepping and alluding to it.

Tokyo in April is - yeah it's kinda the whole thing from one half of this pair

What Did You Eat Yesterday also has a coming out to the parents thread throughout, and a coming out at work thing, but it's not really the point of the show.

From Korea

Most Korean BL are gonna be out. The specialize in the bubble. Although a case could be made for Love For Love's Sake and Love Class. And, see comment, Jazz for Two.

One noted exception is Just Friends which is a short piece about coming out to mom while on leave from the military. This is one of Korea's earliest BL pieces and not strictly BL, but it's fascinating in that neither theme (military nor coming out) would reall be reused again.

From Taiwan

My Tooth Your Love - has a kinda different take and we aren't sure, as viewers whether it's because he's gay or because he's not doing what the Patriarch wishes. But trigger warning for [physical abuse.

DNA Says Love You deals with this and other forms of queerphobia during the later half. Slow start but I do love this show.

Faded is a propaganda piece (pro marriage equality) which is all about coming out to a parent.

In H4CTY Xing Si (of the side couple) is having a hard time coming out but that's complied by the fact that he's fucking his stepbrother, it's a mess, bit I enjoy them - v problematic couple tho.

Papa & Daddy actually has a coming out sequence (GASP!) where the parents don't take it well as does Love is Science? (sides) - but the later is mostly because disaster bi is also baby daddy.

Red Balloon, of course, and it's sibling movie Your Name Engraved Herein are kinda all about self loathing and suffering because of gayness and lack of acceptance.

Unknown is certainly tackling some of this.

In which I talk about some of my favorite coming out sequences:

He's Coming to Me has my favorite series of coming out sequences to both friends and mother.

A few more that I really don't like (Promise) and probably Together With Me should be here, but I willfully can't remember them.

(source)

[live-from-flaturn]

If You Thought the Special Ep Wasn’t Getting Textposts, You Were Wrong

[sunshinechay]

Narrator voice: they did not in fact stop pestering CharlieBabe and now toddler Way