#I'll be watching nanon in dirty laundry later

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Good lord, give me strength*

*My School President ep 8

[theheightofdishonor]

2023 year in review: part one

It's close enough to the end of the year that i'm writing my year in review. I decided to do a part for shows that actually aired in 2023. (i may or may not do a second part of this for all the shows i've watched this year but even from an initial glance its a LOT, we'll see. )

From what I have noted, I watched 81 shows this year that finished airing in 2023.

Broken down by country, its

Thailand: 35

Korea: 18

China: 10

Japan: 10

Philippines: 4

Taiwan: 4

48 of these were BL and 16 were GL.

Even this is actually so many that I don't quite know how to even break it down so I guess i'll just go by country?

Thailand

Thailand just has such a large output of content that naturally, the quality also tends to vary wildly meaning this produced both some of my absolute favorites and some of my most beloved.

On the beloved side, Bed Friend, IFYLITA, Moonlight chicken,My school president, and surprisingly Midnight Museum. And on a slightly lower tier, Be My Favorite, Dirty Laundry, Enigma, Shadow, Only Friends, and Warp Effect.

Bed Friend reminded me almost of Tharntype? But like good. I think the execution was great and NetJames definitely has some of the best chemistry in a year chock full of good chemistry. They're great in Middleman's Love too.

I Feel You Linger In the Air is Tee Bundit at his absolute best. He's great at blending genres together. He incorporated horror brilliantly into simr and I love how he leaned into the historical and time travel aspects of this historical time travel romance. There was some really cool things with the directing and the acting from Nonkul and Bright was great too. Me finding out Nonkul was doing a bl was probably how everyone else reacted back when news broke that Nanon was doing BBS. He's one of my favorite actors.

Moonlight Chicken ofc is near perfect. I loved seeing older queer people in a romance with Jim and Wen and the contrast to Li Ming and Heart was great. Not to mention the family and social dynamics and the way the show addresses Beam and Jim's relationship. The only complaint I have is that the lack of physical intimacy between Jim and Wen in the middle portions of the show and near the end felt weird considering the content of the show but even then, it's a pretty minor complaint and everything else about the show is great.

My School President is definitely the one I was most engaged in fandom for. And the only one I was waking up early every morning to watch. (and i'd watch each episode like 2-3 times too). The social media/shipping stuff at the end was fumbled a little bit but I loved the parents in this show and the friend group and tinngun. I still can't believe Fourth and Gemini were like 17-18 when they filmed this. They're both excellent actors. Oh MSP also had the best Our Skyy episodes btw. I'll die on this hill.

Midnight Museum I'll discuss later on too but it was fun. I liked how intentional they were with the cameos where it purposefully gave the actors roles that were completely different from anything they've done before, especially with Tu, Bright, and Nanon. The worldbuilding was also fascinating. I know someone here was making a timeline for it and they mentioned it was a damn pain to figure out but like kinda in a fun way? The decision to make KathaDome a bromance is odd and I hate it and I hate the implications for gmmtv but other than that it was good.

Be My favorite was way better than I ever expected from Jittirain. I do have to say that my experience was marred by the fact that I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, just from my experience with her shows but it didn't which was a pleasant surprise. I liked how they handled Aye's character and Kawi's growth.

I didn't think I'd like Enigma because I don't like Win but it was good. The supernatural/horror genre mix won me over. Also Prim is in this and i'm very weak for her. Win was nowhere on her level but he was more tolerable than I expected. I'm annoyed that she's not going to be in season 2 though because she's the main character?? GMMTV needs to understand that the draw of this show is Prim and not Win.

Only Friends. What a divisive show. I went into this wanting mess and drama and with the aim of not having any other expectations and for the most part, I succeeded. This show brought out the best from everyone in the cast, like genuinely these were some of the best performances that any of these actors have done. Absolutely stellar. Storywise, it was pretty good and very unique in terms of thai bl and gmmtv until that last bit with Boston and Nick which felt malicious and just mean compared to the neutral lens that the show had been portraying the other characters with. Watching it was pretty fun though and again, most of the story was really good so I guess i'm allowing it some grace.

Shadow isn't a bl but it is queer and I appreciated most of what it was doing with the historical horror suspense elements. I think towards the end it definitely was way shakier and I don't understand why they made some of the decisions they made but I really liked the first 3/4 of the show. Fluke and Singto are obviously good too, even though they're both way too old at this point to still be playing high schoolers.

The Warp Effect had the distinct vibe of a PSA and Gigie and Fah should've dated but otherwise, it was a fun watch, I think. I liked Alex's character arc, I liked everyone's character arcs honestly. On my notes, I wrote that the ending was a bit flat so points off for that but it was good.

A lot of these are from GMMTV which when it was good, was incredible and when it was bad, I usually was decent at avoiding them completely

The worst offender from Thailand that I didn't avoid is Tee Bundit with the double hit of Step by Step and Show Me Love. I think people far more eloquent than me have written a lot about sbs so I won't say much but like I almost refrained from watching IFYLITA because of how hurt I was by sbs. And Show Me Love was just like offensively mediocre which hit worse at the time because I had just watched Something In My Room and IFYLITA beforehand and made the mistake of having expectations from Tee. In my defense, Tee's usually good at writing engaging characters and casting for good chemistry so I had no reason to believe he'd fail here.

Hmm what else. Oh actually, brief mention of Nanon's filmography this year since I checked out all of it and he tends to be so good even in mediocre shows that I can't help but be intrigued.

Hmm what else. Oh actually, brief mention of Nanon's filmography this year since I checked out all of it and he tends to be so good even in mediocre shows that I can't help but be intrigued. Dirty Laundry by JoJo was excellent. It was a little hard to get into because i'm not a fan of the genre but i loved it. Also Film and Nanon are a fun pair and I think they get better with every showing. UMG actually was mediocre despite the great cast and I want better from Nanon so I dropped it. Namtam and Milk's characters should lowkey have gotten together though. In Midnight Museum, Nanon's a side character (which i honestly forgot was something gmmtv let him do) but he fucking KILLED it. He played three roles here and all of them were new for him and you could tell the guy was having a blast. I can't say it's some of the best acting I've seen from him but that's only because when Nanon is good, he's always this good. Oh and also, Nanon and View in MM is the best chemistry he's ever had with a girl. Our Skyy, there's not a lot I'm willing to say publicly about all that but Nanon even at half-effort is still better than half of GMMTV's stable. The Jungle was a terrible mess but Nanon was so excellent in it that i'm still writing essays about Nannam and Nanfah months later. Nanon and Mild as a pair were also excellent and the only ones that made it out of this show unscathed. The rest as I said, is a mess but one that could've been somewhat redeemed by making Mix a vampire. (this might not make sense but like watch Mix's performance alright he's trying sooo hard to be shady and mysterious and they never let it go anywhere) My precious was a fairly run of the mill movie with excellent acting. As a plot I think it's a little thin for a show but i'm interested to see how they'll stretch it out. Hopefully the longer runtime means the friend group can be fleshed out a little bit more.

Korea

Well that ended up not being all that brief but moving on, I thought Korea would have more on a showing because I remembered watching a lot of kdramas but turns out most of the kdramas I watched were from previous years so, only 18. A very dramatic drop from Thailand's 35.

The best of these included The Eighth Sense, Our Dating Sim, and Welcome to the Lesbian Bar with Sing My Crush being ever so slightly underneath. I would rec Lesbian Bar to literally everyone, but especially those who enjoyed MLC. It's got that same queer family focus with the central relationship being this baby lesbian and her lesbian aunt. Out of the not queer stuff, My Perfect Stranger was an excellent time travel romance, The Glory Season 2 was better than all the other season twos that came out this year, and

If Korea produced anything too egregious this year (outside of Taxi Driver and Uncanny Counter's season 2s) I missed it. But out of the ones I watched, the most disappointing was A Shoulder To Cry On, followed rather distantly by Bump Up Business, both for very different reasons. I will say though that whatever is wrong with Tae Hyun in A Shoulder To Cry On is very appealing to me in the same way that Tae Joo from Where Your Eyes Linger was except like a weaker version.

China

I once thought i'd never touch a cdrama again but here I am, having watched 3 whole traditional length cdramas this year. The other 7 are almost all from the Legend of Yunze's catalog because I love their content. The best by leaps and bounds was Nu Er Hong by Legend of Yunze. I think it's my favorite out of everything they've made. The studio's really started to figure out their pacing and also this one was fairly dark and dark gl- dark anything really- is right up my alley. A flower for 3 lives and Seven Gods of Joy by the same studio had great concepts but shakier execution. Stepping outside of them, A league of noblemen was probably my favorite traditional cdrama but Mysterious Lotus Casebook was fun fandom-wise since people on tumblr were watching it.

I think the only show i'd classify as bad is probably My everlasting bride which I watched on a whim. Under a miscroscope started good and then ended boring so overall averages into mediocre. This wouldn't be a crime anywhere else but I expect good pacing from my cdramas.

Japan

I liked pretty much everything I watched from Japan this year so imma go with my worst off which was Jack O' Frost. This is more on me than on the show itself because the concept just squicked me out a lot more than I expected it to. Badly enough that i've blocked the tag.

On the best of, I don't even know if I can choose. Hmm, Bokura no micro na shuumatsu, Kimi ni wa todokanai, Kinou nani tabeta s2, both the My Beauitful Man installments, and Taikan Yoho. Ahhh, and Tokyo in April is... Welp well turns out I couldn't actually choose. This was pretty much everything I watched.

I didn't think I'd like Bokura no as much as I ended up liking it. And I don't know if I would've liked it as much if any other country had produced this show. But it was achy and wistful and I fell in love;.

Kimi ni wa todokanai though was hands down my favorite from Japan and I don't even like friends to lovers. It also helped that they, mostly Yamato reminded me a bit of Kageyama and Hinata. Like I know it's just common character archetypes but also, it's kagehina core, yeah? The bed scene where Yamato yeets Kakeru onto the bed was both hilarious and just well done. I liked the way Yamato wrestled with his desire.

I watched Kinou Nani Tabeta s2 just a couple days ago since I was waiting to binge it and i'm glad I wasn't watching this weekly because it would make everything else I watch weekly dull in comparison. Honestly would watch 100 seasons of this. It's perfect.

My Beautiful Man S2 and My Beautiful Man: Eternal were both solid. I think mbm s1 had tighter pacing but week to week, I enjoyed s2 more. For some reason I didn't write notes for either but I do remember liking both so.

Taikan Yoho. If not for the kghn vibes from kimi ni wa, this would be my favorite. Like their dynamic and just the layers of it and how it presents itself in the language of the show is just so tailored to my taste. I think I wanted just a little bit more from them, but what I got was excellent.

Philippines

I only watched four and somehow, it's perfectly split into 2 gls and 2 bls. I really do like pinoy stuff and the way they write relationships but I don't watch a lot of it because I don't know a lot of people who track it and also because most of it is on yt and i don't like the yt interface. But out of what I watched, the best was The Day I Loved You and Stand-In Love.

The Day I Loved You did a good job in handling the love triangle and Eli's illness. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending but it was still good.

Stand-In Love is about 2 best friends who are in a 'stand-in' relationship with each other where the straight one is helping the lesbian one learn how to court a girl but then they end up falling in love. It's like 20 minutes long, it's fucking adorable, very well done for the amount of time it had.

The other two things I watched was Tie the Not and Lei and Mar. Tie the Not is basically just pinoy Wedding Plan and I find that I don't care for the concept. Lei and Mar is a cute friends to lovers that for some reason ends in a car crash. Like it started out really cute and then bam, car crash out of absolutely nowhere. Just, why?

Taiwan

Kiseki: Dear to Me was fun and I liked the cameos. It was a funny experience for me though because I consumed a lot of this show via gifsets but I never actually read the synopsis and whatever the hell I thought this was about was decidedly not it.

Fall For You - it's tragic, it is but I laughed

Stay By My Side reminded me a bit of Hikaru No Go but I can't tell you why. It's more cute domestic fluff than plot but I watched it twice so clearly I didn't mind too much at the time. Plus, it has ghosts and i'm a sucker for supernatural stuff.

You are mine was a mess and I think I watched up til the penultimate episode. What is it with office bls this year?