#BL Talk

[gatoraid]

Ogeretsu Tanaka’s BL manga Happy of the End is getting a live action adaptation starting September 2!

Having lead shitty lives, these two love-starved people find a crooked consonance together.

Happy of the End is out in English by Kuma Publishing.

Sources: @Qpa_BLinfo, @tanaca_, @chillchillbl

[khaopybara]

❝This is your only chance, Ai'Mook.❞

CHANYA AMARIT as VIVI and AYA ORAPAN as KAIMOOK episode 8 of LOVE SEA

[gunsatthaphan]

just bro banter 🤙🏻✌🏻

[itsallaboutbl]

You think I'm going to let you lead?

[forcebook]

Hands.

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.01 "I'm sorry. My dad wants me to go home now. For dinner."

[lunabug2004]

LIES AND SLANDER

[jimmysea]

Dry off before you come out. Don't get water everywhere.

LET FREE THE CURSE OF TAEKWONDO (2024)

[byemambo]

POND PONLAWIT AS HILL

Fourever You (2024) | 1.03

[thistle--bug]

Still so impressed and grateful to Last Twilight for portraying exes-to-friends so successfully. Like, once Mhok and Phojai break up and stay friends they don't break that boundary once. They're each other's besties, love each other fiercely, and are super close but it never gets romantic again. And I don't think I've EVER seen that done in media, let alone with a man and a woman.

[gatoraid]

Key visual by Syundei for the recently announced anime adaptation of Go for it, Nakamura!!

Source: Comic Natalie, Official website for the anime

[khaoray]

How about we become friends with benefits? You want that? Well, what are the rules between us? Simple.

@asiandramanet event 07: comfort @asiandramanet may bingo: visibility & animation @userdramas creator bingo: purple, team colour, key frames, transition & animation

[khaopybara]

❝Who else would I be worried about if not my boyfriend?❞

FIRST KANAPHAN as KANT PATTANAWAT and KHAOTUNG THANAWAT as BISON episode 6 of THE HEART KILLERS

[gunsatthaphan]

"will you marry me?"

[nieves-de-sugui]

Reading this gave me some thoughts. In seeing how these rich v poor boy stories (where they're making a point of showing the disparity in means between the mains) have been incrising, it makes me wonder if there's an ongoing pursuit of an idea of the epitome of romance being the getting of a rich boy in shining armor with emotional problems for you to fix and live your undying love forever. Is it because of the idea that it is the popular kdrama formula and hence it must be the best form of romance? (Since kdramas are so popular in asia) Are the people behind these stories not interested in telling a different story? Or telling it in a way that is coherent to the story they're tryin to make? Am I speculating too much?

One of my favorite romances in the past few years was Rain or Shine/Just Between Lovers, where both the main characters were not in the best financial conditions and there was a clear rejection of the rich sad second lead (that barely counted as one). I feel that this trope is very much tied to straight couples because of the still existing idea of (putting it very quick and simple) having a man provide for their family while getting emotional support from their partner is (sort of?) the perfect happy ending.

However, when we get this trope in BL, to me it does not make sense to keep it as is. A gay couple is not a straight couple. They have similarities but also differences. There is a lot of mysoginy in the rich man poor woman type of story, so when it is translated to a BL story, why are some of those elements still there? Like giving more importance to the emotional journey of the man (the rich one) than to the one of the woman (the poor one).

When having that element in BL it can no longer be mixed into how women and men's worlds collide as they try to understand each other. Like "oh btw they're from different social classes". We cannot be distracted as easily from the wealth disparity. So it cannot be as easily brushed over as in straight romances, it takes a lot more place. So I understand @bengiyo very well here. We cannot be fooled into caring about the sad rich boy's feelings because that is not what is interesting about the story anymore. In a BL or a GL you have equals (there is not that "women and men are different" excuse anymore) so their differences are a lot easier to pay attention to. And things that romantic, or can still be romantic for one do not work for the other.

So why is there a push to make these kdrama like romances in BL when they just don't work because there's no mysoginy and sexism to normalize questionable behavior? As an enjoyer of romance I do not like this pursuit of the mainstream style of romance. Romance is interesting becaues it takes characters and their circumstances and make them see and understand each other in order to fall in love. And while straight romance has a hard time getting out and trying new things, BL is expanding and exploring. It is a shame it's not subverting the rich man poor woman tropas much as it could.

Do you have thoughts about the proliferation of sad rich boy characters in bl this year and what our response to these characters says about our wealth fantasies? Please share with the class.

BOY DO I!!!!

I get that we're all struggling out here in these streets and holding on to our little dramas for a modicum of joy in this hellscape, but it is so awkward for me to see folks sweating sad rich boys and their feelings.

I think it bugs me because we had two rich boys that folks didn't like in Patts (La Pluie) and Sailom (Wedding Plan), and then we had a proliferation of rich boys that we're bending over for in Kanghan (Dangerous Romance), Gun (A Boss and a Babe), Jeng (Step By Step), Pisaeng (Be My Favorite), Yoon Tae Joon (Unintentional Love Story).

I've been saying all year that I just don't have a lot of bandwidth for worrying about the feelings of sad rich boys when their poor partners have real shit to juggle. With Dangerous Romance, any real regard for Sailom's existence was tossed at the end of episode 2, and he's made little sense to me for weeks. Jeng absolutely stepped all over Pat for weeks on Step by Step. There's a whole running gag about how Gun doesn't understand the perspectives of his poor employees.

It always stands out to me that we rarely get stories about people of an equal class, and we rarely get stories about two poor folks trying to eke out an existence together.

There's definitely a wealth fantasy component to a lot of this. The audience is meant to empathize with the protagonist, and there is the fantasy that your partner will make a bunch of your problems go away with money, but I just do not have it in me anymore to watch people in fancy apartments cry because the poor boy doesn't like them. It also bugs me how we tend to sympathize with the sad rich boy even when his partner is dealing with some shit.

Right now we've spent like five episodes of Dangerous Romance watching Kanghan's goofy ass figure out he likes Sailom and I'm just not into it. I'm also frustrated with the audience concern about WP Sailom messing with Namnuea's money, which was revealed to be a non-issue, and I'm so salty about Kanghan actually fucking with DR Sailom's money and yet we're cooing over Kanghan because we like Perth? How now, brown cow?

The biggest problem I'm having with the wealth fantasy rich boy romantic leads is how the shows often seem more interested in the emotional concerns of the rich boy and not the practical realities hemming in the poorer character. I don't like poverty as set dressing so we can lust after a rich boy in PPL.