#AI PROPOSES NHAI ACCEPTS

[bl-bam-beyond]

AI NHAI (2023, THAILAND)

Special Episode

Nhai (KRITTANUN AUNCHANANUN aka PING) thinks he is losing Ai (NICHAKOON KHAJORNBORIRAK aka MEEN) but with the help of Tonhon, Nhai is determined to prove he loves Ai.

No honor to the crumbs. No Chonlatee or the others. Just Ai, Nhai, Ai's Dads and Tonhon.

Ai to Nhai: Will You Marry Me? And Let's Grow Old Together.

[twig-tea]

Thank you so much for putting this all together @ranchthoughts I know it was a ton of work!

I love this data analysis and think it's so interesting (and I also really enjoyed chatting with you about where the lines should be drawn).

I wanted to add on that in addition to this being an interesting breakdown across time and production companies, I think it's also really interesting in terms of what the hard data doesn't tell us. I know when Ranch and I were going back and forth on some of these, one of the things that stood out to me was that this criteria ruled out Wedding Plan, which had at its core marriage equality and acceptance as the entire plot driver of the show (for Yiwah and Marine). It also highlighted Grey Rainbow, which as Ranch rightly noted in their OP was not exactly the ideal plot to hold up as a bastion of progress (though I did love the wedding/family conversations in that show).

All of this is to say that looking at wedding and proposal rep is an important facet of marriage equality representation in Thai QL and it is also only one facet. I've been really blown away by how often BL and GL content bring up marriage equality within shows, and it's something I wish I tracked over time because it started as something that happened occasionally and became an almost ubiquitous occurrence. It's also really difficult to put a quantifiable number on how impactful the reference is; there are big differences between say a casual mention of marriage inequality in a line of dialogue and the speech about marriage inequality by the activist who gets erased in 7 Days Before Valentine. Of the Thai QL I've seen, a few scenes have stood out to me that I want to give shout-outs to:

The protest scene in Not Me directed by Nuchy is one of the most iconic images in support of marriage equality in any QL to date

I always have to give credit to Naughty Babe for setting an established date for when marriage equality would pass (and getting the year right!)

The most depressing prediction in contrast goes to Something in My Room which had a timeskip to the main character's death during which they establish that marriage equality still has not occurred

There are also powerful representations of older, established couples that talk about how they cannot get legally married in Thailand that are a different kind of critical representation, the stand-out being Ai's dads in Ai Long Nhai who get a double-shoutout for being a real-life gay couple who have become two of the faces of the marriage equality movement and have announced a reality tv show for their wedding [links to posts by @pharawee and @singto-prachaya)

I already shouted them out once but I think Yiwa and Marine in Wedding Plan are notable for their wedding/desire to get married driving the entire plot of the show

I want to be extremely clear that this isn't to dismiss or diminish the work in the OP in any way; There's no good way to capture all of this in any one quantitative chart, so I think OP has done a fantastic job highlighting this one facet and breaking it down in really interesting and useful ways. My goal here is just to highlight that readers should be careful about what it does and doesn't tell us, and to encourage folks to think about the other ways that marriage equality has been reinforced and driven forward in QL media in addition to depicting proposals and weddings as one important and impactful facet of the fight that is absolutely worth celebrating and continuing to watch.

Happy marriage equality Thailand! 🌈

A few months ago, @colourme-feral came to me with the idea of cataloguing as many same-sex Thai QL proposals and weddings as we could. And today, to celebrate the bill passing the Senate (and the first post-bill-passing proposal and wedding), I'd like to share with you all our findings! Even though same-sex marriage has not been legal in Thailand until this year (hopefully things will be official in the fall), there have been quite a few same-sex proposals and weddings in Thai QLs throughout the years.

Big thank you to everyone who assisted on this project in some capacity (@airenyah, @bengiyo, @blmpff, @chickenstrangers, @dribs-and-drabbles, @nieves-de-sugui, @twig-tea, @waitmyturtles, @williamrikers) plus all the gif and fanvid makers whose work was instrumental in helping us double check everything (particular shout out to these gifsets by @apathetic-tortoise (1, 2) and this one by @gunsatthaphan).

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

We found 28 Thai QL shows which featured at least one same-sex proposal (the blue list below) and 15 Thai QL shows which featured at least one same-sex wedding (the green list below).

I was pretty strict with what counted as a proposal or a wedding for the purposes of this project. For example, characters who we know are married but whose wedding we don’t see aren’t counted (like Laws of Attraction’s Maya and Rose, or the unnamed Force and Book characters shown in a “Just Married” car in Vice Versa). There are many shows where there is a ring or someone gets down on one knee but the question is not exactly “popped” (Khun Chai, Star In My Mind Our Skyy 2, etc.), and there are even more shows characters talk at length about commitment and being together forever but there were no mentions of marriage or other details (like rings, etc.) that would specifically suggest it was a proposal (A Boss and a Babe, Ai Long Nhai, Be My Favourite, Cupid's Last Wish, Dark Blue Kiss, Something In My Room, Star in My Mind, Still 2gether, Until We Meet Again, 3 Will Be Free, etc.). Some of these moments might have been intended as a declaration of intent to marry by the characters and the show runners, but they weren’t conclusive enough to be included on this list. Furthermore, I think it’s interesting to see how many shows were, for lack of a better word, explicit in their discussion or portrayal of same-sex marriage (having the characters use the word marriage, showing weddings, etc.), despite being from a time before such a thing was legally possible. 

Note: I've listed the shows with the year they started airing for ease, even though some of them did finish airing in another year.

(see alt text for the full lists)

The Quick Facts

The first proposal and the first wedding in our data set both happened in Grey Rainbow episode 4, which aired on May 7, 2016. (though this is not exactly an auspicious wedding to start with, as those who know know)

12 shows featured at least one proposal and one wedding (Cherry Magic, GAP the Series, Grey Rainbow, Laws of Attraction, Love Syndrome 3, My Secret Love, Naughty Babe, Never Let Me Go, Tharntype Special: The Wedding Day, Two Worlds, Wedding Plan, and the Wedding Plan Special). 

4 shows feature two same-sex proposals (Cherry Magic, Love Syndrome 3, My Secret Love, and Two Worlds). All these shows also feature a same-sex wedding.

None of the shows in our sample had two same-sex weddings.

The Data Over Time

As you can see, generally same-sex proposals and weddings have become more common in Thai QLs over time, though of course there are more Thai Qls being produced now than in the earlier days.

Note: I'm only looking at shows which aired before the marriage equality bill passed the Senate, so the 2024 data does not include Wandee Goodday or OMG! Vampire. It will be interesting to see if and how the number of same-sex proposals and weddings in Thai QLs increases through 2024 and beyond now that it will become a legal reality.

It is also interesting to consider the production companies behind the shows in our sample. This sample includes 7 GMM shows and 5 Mandee/Domundi shows, plus 1-3 series each from other production companies like Idol Factory, MeMindY, Studio Wabi Sabi, Copy A Bangkok, Jinloe Media Work, TV Thunder, and M Flow Entertainment. In other words, GMM shows make up roughly 23% of the sample, Mandee/Domundi shows are another 16%, and other production companies comprise about 61% of the sample.

Main Couples vs Side Couples

There are 28 shows with proposals in the sample but 32 proposals, because four shows have two proposals each. 26 of these 32 proposals (81%) are between the main characters and 6 of them (19%) are between side characters.

Of the 15 weddings in the sample, 12 (80%) are between main couples and 3 (20%) are between side couples.

For interest's sake, I also broke this down for GMM and Mandee/Domundi. GMM has 7 proposals in 6 shows, with 5 main couples and 2 side couples popping the question; and 3 weddings (across 3 shows), in which 2 side couples and 1 main couple got married. Mandee/Domundi has 5 proposals in 4 shows, all between main couples, and 3 weddings (across 3 shows), also all featuring main couples.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

And now here we are, after the bill has passed the Senate. Congratulations to the Thai queer community, and the happy couples Oyei and Cher from Wandee Goodday and Sen and Run from OMG! Vampire who are the first Thai QL couples to propose and to have a wedding (respectively) after Thailand's marriage equality bill passed the Senate! (The bill passed the Senate on June 18, 2024, and episode 8 of Wandee Goodday aired 4 days later on June 22, followed by episode 6 of OMG! Vampire on June 23.)

I can’t wait to see more same-sex engagements and weddings in Thai shows as we move forward.