#NUNEW IS SUPPORT | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the-conversation-pod · 2 years ago

Text

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

0:00 - Welcome 1:16 - Intro 8:40 - Best Acted Scene 18:40 - Best Cast 25:06 - Best Acting Pair 34:30 - Best Actor 47:05 - Best Ghost Ship 57:19 - Best OT3 1:04:40 - Best Friendship 1:14:10 - Best Side Ship 1:32:20 - Best Main Ship 1:51:28 - Wrap Up

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam and @wen-kexing-apologist as transcribers, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

NiNi: Hello. Hello. Your QL fandom uncle and Auntie are here with giant sunglasses, brown liquor in a flask, a folded $5.00 bill to slip into your hand when nobody's looking, lukewarm takes, occasional rides on the discourse, deep dives into artistry and industry, and most importantly.

Ben: Simping. Lots of simping. I'm Ben.

NiNi: I'm NiNi.

Ben: And this is The Conversation, about once a season we plan to swan in and shoot the shit on faves, flops, and trends that we've been noticing in the BL, GL, or QL industry. Between seasons, you can find us typing way too many words on Tumblr.

00:01:16 Intro

NiNi: Hello and welcome to the VIIB Awards, VIIB standing for Very Important Internet BL Awards for 2022. So Ben and I are here. We've sort of been through the ringer in terms of nominating things, had a couple of very polite arguments, and we are here now-

Ben: We were very nice to each other. Don't worry.

NiNi: We were very nice to each other. We always are. And we are here now to discuss the winners of the VIIB Awards. So, in this episode—which is part one—we will be looking at our awards for actors and ships; and our first acting award is Rising Star or Best Newbie.

Ben, take it away.

00:02:03 Best Newbie

Ben: I wanted to do this in this order because I think it's important for us to get the basic stuff out of the way. Who do we like, who are our faves this year? And so we started with the best newbie because these are people we're hoping to look forward to in the future.

So, we nominated in the pre show: Nunew Chawarin, Bible Wichipas, Peat Wasuthorn, and Barcode Tinnasit.

Let's talk about process. So,

NiNi: Okay. So…

Ben: Before I get too deep into it, tell me why you chose the three you voted for, I guess, go through that.

NiNi: Okay, so I voted for Nunew, Bible, and Barcode; and the reason that I did that is when I'm thinking of a rising star, I'm looking to the future. I'm looking at what they've done. But I'm also seeing their potential. So for me, those three, um, had the best potential that I saw all of 2022. New faces who really made me want to see more of them as actors. So that's why I ended up with these three. Who did you end up picking and why did you pick them?

Ben: I chose Barcode and Nunew, and it for me comes down to, of the newcomers, who gave performances that we’re probably going to refer back to, and who debuted with the most immediate impact on the industry that they entered? And so I voted for Barcode because he holds his own against a veteran actor in a complicated romantic role, and he has to sing and he will be directly compared to Jeff. And we weren't necessarily positively predisposed to him, because there were some consternation from those of us who've been around about Gameplay being recast and Barcode taking the role instead.

NiNi: Mmm.

Ben: And so with a lot going against him, I think Barcode did an incredible job in his very first role and had a lot of great support in that role.

For Nunew, he has to play high heat against an older actor and there are complications for that in Thailand. He also has to sing a lot in his new role with Cutie Pie and even beyond that, he ends up doing the soundtrack song for To Sir With Love-

NiNi: Oh.

Ben: And that song, last I checked, had over 40 million streams on YouTube.

NiNi: Oh wow. Oh Wow.

Ben: And that's more than everything he did from the Cutie Pie stuff combined, and I think almost double. And so, those two really stood out for me in terms of, what were they up against and then how well did they do with that on the table?

NiNi: Fair, fair. And I mean, I definitely take your point about Nunew and the music in particular. I actually wasn't so much a fan of the music he did on Cutie Pie, but actually today of all days, I watched the first episode of what I guess the fandom is calling 2 Cutie 2 Pie.

Ben: That's what I'm calling it.

NiNi: Or, Cutie Pie 2 You, and the song he sang, he sang kind of a trot song in the episode and I was really, um, I remember thinking, being sort of taken aback because I like the tone of his voice, I like the timbre of his voice, I like the way he was emoting the song. I really quite enjoyed it. And I'm not a huge fan of trot music. So, that sort of definitely stood out to me. And then, I mean, I don't do a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, but I have heard how much he is making an impact on the music side of things.

NiNi: And that's all well and good, but I really, really, actually in Cutie Pie, I really enjoyed his acting. I—we went back and forth between us, I think, when it came to Nunew versus Barcode, I was definitely in the tank for Barcode. But, I think in the end you convinced me so…our Best Newbie is…

Ben: Nunew Chawarin, and it's not a disservice to—

NiNi: [long cheer]

Ben: It's not like there's a disservice to Bible or Pete, who I think do an incredible job in two very difficult roles this year.

NiNi: Ohh yeah. For sure. Like it. What Bible did with Vegas? I—Vegas is a very, very difficult character. Somebody incredibly hard to like, and somehow he became everybody's blorbo.

Ben: He does, he does an incredible job and I think it's because Bible himself is an incredibly empathetic and really thoughtful actor, and he really understood what he needed to do with that particular character, with Vegas. And I also—we didn't talk about him much here, but I think Peat does an incredible job as well playing Sky in Love in the Air, a MAME show that people are going to have a lot of complex feelings about. Peat is a standout performer in a very difficult role.

NiNi: I am one of those people who finds MAME difficult and I did not watch all of Love in the Air, but I watched scenes from Love in the Air and I think I watched one full episode, and I do remember thinking that Peat was definitely standing out and I, I was actually pretty surprised at the quality of the acting in Love in the Air, but I shouldn't have been surprised, MAME does cast good actors but.

Ben: We have a lot to say about MAME’s casting down the road, don't you worry.

NiNi: Oh we will. We will. And Peat was really good, but I think on balance, if we look at the four nominees that we came up with, I think that I am with Ben. I think in terms of the Best Newbie of 2022, it has to go to NuNew. So Nunew Chawarin, you will—

Ben: Congratulations, sir!

NiNi: —probably never hear this, but congratulations!

Ben: We are fans of yours.

NiNi: You have won the 2022 VIIB Award for Best Newbie.

00:08:40 Best Acted Scene

NiNi: Okay. So next category… yes, I I don't know what we're gonna give them like some kind of a—

Ben: We should hand out plates, that should be our thing.

NiNi: We should, we should figure it out.

NiNi: So, our next award is for the Best Acted Scene of the year, and this one had a really long, long list. So, I don't think we're gonna get into every nominee that we nominated. I think we'll just go with our top three on this one.

Ben: I think that's probably best.

NiNi: So our top three, yeah, our top three best acted scenes of 2022 were as follows: From Not Me, Episode 11, Todd and Black fighting. Now, oh my God, this was ev- er- y- thing. Ev. Er. Y. Thing. I'm, it's no secret that I had my problems with Not Me. I also very much enjoyed it in a way that I don't think other people enjoyed it, which was a little bit as a parody of the people that you will meet in a leftist movement, which I quite enjoy in my read on it.

Ben: That is, that is the best read on it, I think.

NiNi: [laughs] It was so obvious and I was like, “Oh my God, I've been around these people.”

Ben: That's how I felt too.

NiNi: But, that fight, that fight between Todd and Black, it was, it was gripping. It was emotional. I felt everything that they felt for each other. I felt—

Ben: I feel like there were a lot of stakes in play when they were fighting each other. It wasn't just about who was going to win. It was also about what winning meant for either.

NiNi: And when—

Ben: And also the fact that they couldn't actually really permanently—

NiNi: They couldn't hurt each other, when it came down to it. Yeah, they couldn't hurt each other like…Todd chokes Black out. He drowns him, and then he's like, “what have I done?” And he immediately pulls him out of the pool.

It's like..ohh those two are in some kind of love. I don't know what kind of love it is whether it's brotherly love, whether it's something more erotic cause… I mean, I think we all agree that they fucked right? Like Todd and Black have fucked.

Ben: Right, as the resident Gun Attaphan simp first, I was absolutely enthralled with him getting to play with Sing Harit, who I have been following literally since he started in Love Sick. So, I'm very happy that the rest of the world is figuring out that Sing is incredibly talented.

NiNi: Ohh man, and right now we're watching him in The Warp Effect and ooo, we're gonna save that conversation.

Ben: We’ll talk about that next, talk about that later.

NiNi: Ohh. Next series. Next season we'll talk about that. But I'm…Sing Harit is a great one, and so this fight was, it was everything. It was epic. It was fantastic. So that's our first nominee that we agreed on.

So the next nominee that we agreed on was from Ghost Host, Ghost House, and that was Pluem and Kevin on the couch in Episode 4. Now, talk about chemistry. Talk about sexual tension. Talk about that feeling of…wanting to climb out of your skin and into somebody else's; it's all there in that scene. It's all there. And then, when the tension breaks and they finally start going at it, it's just, it's magic, it's absolute magic. I, I don't know how you felt about it, Ben—I mean, obviously you liked it. But I don't know if you want to tell me a little bit more about it.

Ben: It was really fantastic. I think one of the things that stood out to me—and I talked about this with you in one of our earlier conversations—is there was a lot of really great high heat and sexual chemistry performances this year where actors really leaned into their characters’ desire for each other. What I think Boy and Todd do that really stood out for me, was they captured the same thing that Billkin and PP had in I Told Sunset About You.

NiNi: Mmm.

Ben: During episode 3—

NiNi: In Episode 3, yes.

Ben: —where there was buildup, there was anticipation. It wasn't just that they were willing to do the bed scene, it's that…you could feel specifically how and that they wanted each other before things happen; and in particular Boy does a great job playing up Pluem’s attraction to Kevin's legs. And when that scene starts to unfold, a big part of it is Kevin is pushing up against some of the age social politics of Thai society where he is not really expected or supposed to be an aggressor in an encounter like that. He's not supposed to lead with his desire, and it's one of the common themes about their relationship, they even recontextualize that by choosing to use English pronouns when they're referring to each other to make themselves equal. So they use “I” and “you” as their pronouns, which is also really fascinating, and there was even a lead in with their scene about “Is this your first time?” and a real appreciation for the mechanics of gay sex that we rarely see in genres.

NiNi: And that's something that you and I talk about quite a bit, how unrealistic some of the sexual situations we see characters get into are just because of the mechanics of what they're supposedly doing.

Ben: Exactly. So, those two really, real standouts for the year in that regard. So that's why this scene made the list.

NiNi: They made me believe, I mean, just that, that little micro scene of Pluem’s eyes sliding towards Kevin's legs and then him realizing that he's staring and just turning his head away because he's just, he's becoming too enticed. It's just, it's�� it's so real, so visceral, I loved it so much.

So after scenes like that, what is the one that tops them all and, of course, the only only scene that could have topped are those other two scenes. Khan and Thua, The Eclipse, Episode Seven, that “I'm pretending to sleep. You're pretending to sleep”, kiss in the tent. Oh my God, I— [chuckles]

Ben: [laughs] It’s-

NiNi: When I tell you, I lost it. I watched that scene—

Ben: That was a really fun weekend to be online.

NiNi: —over and over. I just completely lost it. It was so…[sighs] I don't even know if I have the words to describe what that scene made me feel.They're so tentative. They obviously care very deeply for each other. They obviously love one another and they're testing the waters over and over and over. But then this is—

Ben: It really stands out for me because of the way that it reflects the internalized homophobia of the show itself, that they're exploring along the way. Because I was a young boy who went camping sometimes. And so, I understood so much of the social politics going on there. Like, you have to pretend you're asleep because you have to give everyone an excuse. And you can't respond too much because it crosses a line of acknowledgement and so it requires Louis and Neo to be really, really comfortable with each other. Because that is a very difficult set of emotional reactions that they have to convey across space there. And—

NiNi: And they can't play them too big either. They have to be so micro.

Ben: No, and it's very hard I think for some of the Thai actors to play small. I think a lot of the film tradition that many of them maybe grew up on is pretty bombastic and…that's not a, that's not me chiding them. It's just not the film history that many of them come from. And so, scenes like that are really hard to do, even for experienced actors. And I can't overstate how impressive Neo and Louis were in that particular scene, and really capturing the totality of the delayed and unexpressed desire between their two characters.

NiNi: And they take you on a journey in the scene too. Because it starts off, it's really tentative, Khan sort of wakes up, he sees Thua there, he closes his eyes, he nudges his way towards him. Thua opens his eyes, he sees Khan there, he closes his eyes again, nudges his way towards him, the two of them gently pushing their way towards each other, and then the kiss is butterfly light. Because of course it has to be utterly deniable. It's butterfly light. They're both awake, both pretending to be asleep to give each other that out, and then after the kiss, when Khan turns away…and you just see his… you see his joy. It's bubbling up inside him. He can barely hold it inside at that point. And all this is happening in a tent surrounded by their friends who are asleep.

I-I can't find the words. I really can't find the words and that's why it is the best acting scene of the year for me. So Neo and Louis take a bow, you have won the 2022 VIIB Award for the Best Acted Scene. We will be sending you a plate.

Ben: It really was really special. I know they're probably never going to listen to this, but please know, you guys really did the damn thing this year.

NiNi: They did the damn thing. I mean, I don't even want to. I can't even. Where do I begin to talk about Neo? I feel like this is not the place, but at some point I'm gonna have to talk about Neo.

Ben: He's got a big year ahead of us so we're gonna be talking about him.

NiNi: Oh oh, we are. I'm so excited.

00:18:40 Best Cast

NiNi: Okay, so next we have the award for Best Cast.

Ben: Ohh, we selected ahead of time: KinnPorsche, The Eclipse, Not Me, Secret Crush on You, and Gameboys 2 for best casts.

NiNi: Okay. Uh huh.

Ben: NiNi, tell us about your, the three you ended up nominating.

NiNi: So, yes, so my picks, my picks were: KinnPorsche, Not Me, and Secret Crush on You. So when I'm looking at a cast, I am looking at the whole. All the main and supporting characters, how they interact, how they work together, how they gel for lack of a better word, and how real they all feel interacting as their characters. So for me it was a no brainer, there wasn't a single miscast in KinnPorsche, Not Me, or Secret Crush on You for me, everybody fit their character perfectly.

Gun playing White and Black. We could talk about that all day and then you've got Todd. You've got First as Yok. I mean, my God, First pulled out from somewhere the sluttiest energy I have ev-er seen on screen. He just sauntered around, slanging his dick everywhere. It was amazing [laughs] Nut yeah, but I mean he wasn't the only one—

Ben: First, is so…First really is so special. He's part of two different casts that made this particular selection.

NiNi: Not Me I mean, there were standout casting, but generally everybody they cast was perfect for the role. Everybody: Fluke Gawin, as I said, Gun Attaphan, Off—oof, we're gonna talk about Off as well at some point because he has grown leaps and bounds in the last year for me. I'm super impressed with him in a way that I've never been before.

Ben: I agree.

NiNi: Then you have Mon. It's an amazing cast.

And then the third cast that I chose was Secret Crush on You. Now, I love unreservedly, unironically love Secret Crush on You. I think it was perfect and amazing. And I mean, I guess we'll get to talk about that a little later as well, but one of the best things about it was the casting. And specifically, again, I always look at the entire cast, but I want to give a real specific shout out to Seng Wichai because, wow! How about you?

What about your three?

Ben: Yeah. So when I'm thinking about the best cast, the question for me is how well, like you, how well does the cast work together and how effectively do they convey the themes in the global narrative that the story wants to tell? And the question for me becomes, could another collection of people accomplish this? So I selected: KinnPorsche, Secret Crush on You, and Gameboys 2.

Ben: Because the overall talent for the three of those shows stood out to me and for the most part, I don't think it's a show where you look at one person you're like, ohh, they're they're the reason to watch this show. I think one of the things that stands out for me is how absolutely, enormously talented someone like Elijah Canlas is in Gameboys 2 and the fact that Kokoy de Santos, Adriana So, and the rest of the cast managed to hold their own with him in a lot of scenes because he's really, really good. And he's a really special actor because he seems to have what Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis have in that people seem to perform better when they're with him.

NiNi: Mhm. He raises the level.

Ben: And so, he's—that's a really, really special cast to me because Elijah doesn't end up overshadowing the rest of them, which could have happened. And Adriana is such a big personality, when she's playing Pearl, and she manages to not outshine other people when she's in scenes with them. And it's, it's really impressive to me how effectively that cast shared space with each other. Particularly in their large group scenes.

And like you, I was really impressed with the KinnPorsche cast because they're working with a lot less on that show because of all of the tumultuous development process, and I really like how effectively they performed this a second time; and it's why I really had to acknowledge what they did because this was their second attempt at this show. And there's any number of ways that that could have gone sideways and been really messed up. And it looks like they ended up being better for it, and…that's incredibly special, and particularly for a cast of mostly newcomers. I was incredibly impressed with them.

Ben: So NiNi, with that said, why don't you go ahead and let the people know who won our Best Cast plate.

NiNi: So…our Best Cast for 2022, the VIIB Award goes to KinnPorsche, because they've got a big cast, they're doing a lot, it's a big story and I still get the feel of every single character, nobody gets lost. Everybody is firing on all cylinders, they're raising each other up, when they're working in pairs, they're fantastic. When they're working in groups, they're fantastic. When they're working solo, they're fantastic. It just, for me, it was a no brainer KinnPorsch wins this one so—

Ben: It was a little bit more difficult for me because I felt very strongly about the Gameboys 2 cast, but…

NiNi: I know you did. I know

Ben: I have to concede to the, the totality of what the KinnPorsche cast did.

NiNi: Because as you said, all the issues with the reproduction, the sheer size of the cast, and the amount of bat-shittery in the story, it stood out to me and that's why they get a plate.

00:25:06 Best Acting Pair

Nini: We're moving now into some more fine grained stuff. So we're looking at Best Acting Pair.

Ben: So,we selected of the, we proposed quite a few people, but when it came time for us to nominate three, we selected: Ohm and Nanon, First and Gawin, Park Seo Ham and Park Jae Chan, Elijah Canlas and Kokoy de Santos, and then finally Boy and Todd.

Ben: When I'm choosing the best acting pair, I'm asking how effectively do they work together across a wide emotional gamut? Some actors are going to do really well in comedic scenes together, or in romantic scenes, or dramatic scenes; and the question for me when I'm thinking about the best pair is who consistently maintains a high level of believability, even as they're moving across the narrative and across a variety of scenes? Particularly because in most cases some of the stuff is shot out of order. How well do they seem to know what they need to do in that exact moment?

Ben: And so I chose Park Seo Ham and Park Jae Chan because, as two idols, there were a lot of other things going on in the background that affect how they will be perceived for being part of this and they fully commit to the dynamic that they have to play between their characters, and there's a really believable segue from enemies to colleagues, to maybe something different that doesn't feel forced in a way that it could have such a short runtime, and it's hard to overstate how surprising their performances, particularly after Light on Me, which I think is really good…but, I don't think the cast romantic chemistry really lands consistently in that.I think everyone's very friendly and they're really stand out interactions and performances and I'm a huge proponent of Light on Me.

But Park Seo Ham and Park Jae Chan, I think, did not need to do what they did to be successful, and there's a reason why a year later, people are still talking about Semantic Error.

For Elijah and Kokoy, I mean [chuckles]

NiNi: I mean, what else can you say?

Ben: I was, I was shouting at my TV “I want to believe!” when I see these two on screen together, and it's really easy for, I think Kokoy, to just play Gav as hyper-cheerful and bubbly. But there's a lot of layers that Gav, Gav is incredibly lonely and really struggling with a lot of grief and externalized homophobia in his own family and Kokoy captures the desperation of the way Gav tries to be good to the people around him, even as he's struggling in a way that plays off very sympathetically with Elijah's tendency towards Cairo's brattiness.

And I think it's really notable how well Elijah plays Cairo's heart, but also kind of his naivete, because Cairo's kind of sheltered and doesn't really know a whole lot; and there's a great deal of emotional narrative and thematic terrain that those two have to navigate together, and they never feel like they're out of step with each other at all.

And they did that first remotely, and then when they finally get together in Gameboys 2, it feels so different because they're together. But, you also feel like they really tapped into something special there. Like this is still really early in their careers. But man, what a way to start for some of them.

NiNi: I mean…[snickers]

Ben: And finally, I guess I'll talk about Boy and Todd, we talked about their, their scene earlier, and mostly comes down to that. But I really like the way that they played up their initial attraction to each other. That felt super believable in the first or second episode when they start interacting. And…there's an easiness to the way that they interacted, which made them feel like one of the most gay pair of boys we've had over the last year. It didn't feel very forced and it felt really unique. We already talked about the other things. I don't want to go on about that too long, but I can't overstate how believable of a pair they were.

NiNi: My first choice was Ohm and Nanon, because…when I tell you that Bad Buddy burned a hole in my brain and so much of that was about how much Ohm and Nanon brought to the story. Because the story is already very good, the way that they build up this family feud, the way that they build up this lifelong competition, the way that they build up, how it has damaged both Pat and Pran, and the way that it made them turn to each other, the way that Ohm and Nanon built that up, that you feel that sense of history between Pat and Pran and that sense of the stress that they've been under their entire lives. They're doing it individually, but then when they come together in a scene and they're interacting in a scene, you feel their tentativeness with each other, but also the fact that: “I'm not supposed to like you, but still, you're the closest thing I have to a best friend in this entire world because nobody knows me like you do.” There's so much of that in there, and it's really like the right thing is some of it. But it wouldn't have been believable if Ohm and Nanon did not bring what they brought to the table. So I, I definitely had Ohm and Nanon on my list.

The second acting pair that I had on my list were First and Gawin and that is Yok and Dan in Not Me. 95% of the strength of that scene where Yok draws Dan it's, it's visceral, it's powerful, it made me sit up and take notice. Just. The way at first, that Yok is very teasing with Dan telling him “If you don't take the pillow away, I'm gonna assume that you're here for something else, not just to be drawn.” And then Dan spilling out as Yok is drawing him, just unburdening himself. And where that led them to inside of the scene and feeling everything that they're feeling and that really pulled me toward them as a couple, pulled me toward them as a pair because that came from somewhere deep inside their interaction, not just within themselves, but within the way that they were interacting with each other as a pair. So that is why I picked them.

But, in the end I had to agree with Ben's best acting pair, hands down of 2022 had to be Elijah Canlas and Kokoy de Santos and Ben explains it far better than I can with regard to this, because my reaction to Gavin and Cai is so visceral. It's…they feel lived in. Elijah is Cai, Kokoy is Gav.

Usually there's a little bit of an uncanny valley. There's a little bit of a shield between you being aware that this is an actor you're watching playing a character, and you being really drawn into the character and losing that film over the whole thing. And Elijah and Kokoy did that to me, especially in Gameboys 2. The way that I haven't seen from anybody else. Not even some of the performances that I really enjoyed and I nominated for this, Elijah and Kokoy have something really special in terms of how they act together and that, that—

Ben: I've seen both of them in other roles and I've seen Elijah in I think about five distinct roles and I never feel like he's repeating in these roles, and I've seen Kokoy and Elijah in another project they did together and the vibe is very different there.

NiNi: There's something about—

Ben: No disrespect to Ohm and Nanon or First and Gawin, you both—you four— did an incredible job this year too. There are other people in this list we didn't mention.

NiNi: Some good names too.

Ben: If you had to pick one pair. It has to be these two.

NiNi: It's magic. When you put the two of them together in these characters and put them on the screen, they are magic.

Ben: Congratulations to Elijah Canlas and Koykoy de Santos. Here is your plate and I can't wait to see what you two do next year.

00:34:30 Best Actor

NiNi: Our final acting award—

Ben: Best actor!

NiNi: Yes, our final acting award for 2022 is the Best Actor of the Year, and again, we both nominated different groups of people, but we only agreed on one and—

Ben: This is a difficult one, and I think before we read off even the names, let's talk about what we're looking for in Best Actor. How about you go first? What are you looking for?

NiNi: Ohh my gosh. I am looking for somebody to take me into the character’s psyche. I'm looking for them to show me a truth about the character that maybe isn't exactly on the page, but they find within themselves as they act the character. I'm looking for nuances that come from deep, deep, deep understanding and delving into the character. I'm looking for excellence. I am looking for submerging of the ego. I'm looking for disappearing into the character.

My choices, my nominees were: Nanon Korapat as Pran in Bad Buddy, when I talk about disappearing into a character. My God. Nanon became Pran. Nanon was gone. Nanon disappeared. He was not there anymore. Nanon was not home. What was there was Pran and that scene where Pran breaks down after he has the fight with his mother? Just that whole episode, there's just one thing after the other. When Pat’s dad finds them and he pushes him and then he pushes Pat away to go and talk to his dad, and then he goes back home and has fight with his mom. And then he's on the rooftop when Pat comes to find—that whole sequence. It just…

Ben: You know they filmed both of the rooftop scenes the same night.

NiNi: I know, and the emotional difference, the emotional color between the two is just, how do you go from one of those things to the other of those things in the same night? It's just magic, absolute magic. So Nanon one was the first nominee that I had.

My second nominee was First Kanaphan as Akk in The Eclipse. What drew me into Akk was the fear that he had. It was palpable. I'm looking at the first episode or first two episodes of The Eclipse and I'm watching what I called Gestapo Akk, which is him really being the rule stickler, the heavy and I'm looking at this kid, and I'm looking at him reacting to Ayan coming into his orbit and just totally shattering his psyche without even trying. And I'm just like, “Oh my God, this poor baby, he does not know how the hell he's gonna survive this.” Because, we find out later that Akk has had crushes before, but that Akk is so deeply internalized, so deeply closeted, he can't even admit the way he feels to himself. And sort of—

Ben: I think First’s performance really stands out because Akk was so different—

NiNi: It really does. Akk is, Akk is a very different character from the characters I've seen First play before.

Ben: I think that's really what is special about First for me. He's played in about 11 different roles now? And…and we talk about actors growing between roles and that really just has to do with how much more believable they are. First keeps getting better, but what stands out for me is how specific all of First’s performances have been.

NiNi: And we talked about this with the Moonlight—when we talked about the Moonlight Chicken trailer—not to to delve off topic—but I mean all you or not the trailer, they're special. All you see is First walk across the lobby—

Ben: Right. We were both screaming.

NiNi: —and immediately get who his character is.

Ben: He's really, really good and we had a lot of things to talk about. We'll talk about First a lot in the coming year.

NiNi: We, we we'll, we'll—we will talk about him a lot cause he's in quite a bit.

Ben: My other two picks were: Elijah Canlas and Son Woo Hyun. I already talked about Elijah with Kokoy. But individually, Elijah's good enough that he could have carried the entirety of Gameboys on the strength of his performance alone. It's really…good that the rest of the cast was able to keep up with him. But, even if they couldn't, we would still be talking about Gameboys because of Elijah alone, and that's kind of what I look for when I'm talking about best actor. The question for me is how strong is their performance that you just can't envision anyone else doing this? So Elijah stands out for that for our Cairo.

Ben: And then Son Woo Hyun stands out for—

NiNi: Kang Seo Jun!

Ben: Here's the thing. Like there's a lot of people who did not enjoy To My Star 2: To Our Untold Stories. I loved it.

NiNi: I also loved it.

Ben: I'm, I'm a melancholy person. But here's the thing. Like to really delve into that deep level of melancholy takes an incredibly talented actor to keep the audience from losing hope along the way. And Son Woo Hyun plays his optimism in a way that feels really attainable, because you can tell that he's holding on for dear life because he knows he'll break if he lets go. And so it's really important that when his character does actually give up around Episode 7? It hurts so much because you can feel how hard he worked to not give up before that. And I just don't think that a sequel romance story that puts the characters through a lot of pain that I said was not done at the end of the first one. That's, that's my big disagreement with other takes. I just don't think anyone else carries that. I think the two of them are a really special pair as well, but I don't think that worked without Son Woo Hyun’s performance at all.

NiNi: I always talk about in To My Star—the original To My Star, how he is covering up his melancholy, his paranoia, all of these things with the sunshine attitude and how clear that is in the acting, even before you know anything about him and To My Star 2. He took that and ran with it. It was amazing.

Ben It's really interesting, like he and Kokoy de Santos are basically doing the same basic role in their stories. The real changeover is that we spend more time with Son Woo Hyun, and so we have to, we have to believe that a lot harder.

NiNi: We have to believe what it is about him that would carry him through a year without seeing the person who walked out on him on his birthday and left a note and know why he would still be looking for him a year later, you had to believe.

NiNi: And you absolutely believe that.

Ben: And when they get back together—

NiNi: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: —all of those scenes are really difficult. When he finally breaks and his frustration comes out it isn't…He could have played it as sad and mopey, there was…there was a specific form of outrage he tapped into there that really landed—

NiNi: There was an energy there

Ben: –-and you never forget that he's an actor playing an actor and he does an incredible job of it. It's not easy.

NiNi: But I mean—

Ben: The one nominee [chuckle] that we both agreed on.

NiNi: Yes.

Ben: Let's talk about him.

NiNi: So…

Ben: Seng Wichai

NiNi: And actually, I was supposed to say for both roles, so, Seng Wichai playing Toh in—or as I call him, Toh Gay to Function—

Ben: [wheeze]

NiNi: –-on Secret Crush on You and then playing Pan in War of Y, which is a show that we both gave up on. But, that first arc, New Ship with Seng Wichai playing Pan? Gripping. Riveting. He elevated that entire first arc of War of Y, and then what he did with Toh in Secret Crush on You, because Toh is a very hard character to like. When you meet Toh, he is: stalking Nuea, he is… deluded, he is in this fantasy realm that he refuses to jump out of, no matter how much his friends are gently trying to tell him “This is not okay. This is creepy. This is not good for you.” His friends are gently trying to get him out of it, and you don't know where this comes from. And then as the series goes on, you start to see where this obsessiveness, where this obsession with Nuea comes from. And it doesn't have anything to do with Nuea. It has to do with Toh and how Toh feels about himself.

And, as they go on and go on it, it starts to get even deeper where you realize that part of the problem as well is how for all that Toh is—-and for this, I will use the term that even though it's not quite correct, visibly queer because he's femme, Secret Crush on You is a story about femmes. Um…he's not out and it affects everything he does, everything he feels about himself and you see that in the way that Seng plays the character, I was gobsmacked. Best Actor of 2022. Hands down, and Ben and I agreed on this.

Ben: It stood out for me because the question—I said this with Elijah, that Gameboys 2 would have been good if everyone else wasn't. And… that's how I feel about Secret Crush on You. Seng is so compelling in Secret Crush on You and War Of Y: New Ship that you can't look away. And I feel like the special quality that Seng taps into is he can play ugly really well.

NiNi: His character in War Of Y is this sweaty, desperate mess. And somehow you just can't keep your eyes off of him.

Ben: Toh is also kind of a mess, and what's interesting is like Seng is actually an incredibly attractive person, but he—

NiNi: He is.

Ben: In both shows he, he plays his characters in a way that is kind of unattractive and it's really hard to do that really well. A lot of actors ride on the strength of their smiley charm alone, but Seng can't for both of the roles he's in, because he actually has to play his own charm as kind of twisted and weird with the way he has to smile as both characters. And that's one of the major things that stood out for me and why I put him above an incredibly difficult. there we didn't even mention who were on this list who in–-

NiNi: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Ben: —any other year would have probably won, but 2022 was a really special year in genre.

NiNi: Seng took it for me and I think you and I talked about the last sex scene of Seng and Billy's arc in War of Y and how I had to look away, it was so…I, I was worried that there was something actually happening on that set…that was intense.

Ben: Oh man.

NiNi: Up against the mirror? That was really intense. Seng Wichai in that New Ship arc…add that to Toh—either one of those roles alone would have gotten them the best actor of the year together. Blows everybody else out of their water.

Ben: That was basically it. We were having a conversation. I was like “Seng carried two shows, everybody else carried one.”

NiNi: Yep, basically, so he wins. So congratulations to Seng Wichai for winning the 2022 VIIB Award for Best Actor, your plate is in the mail.

00:47:05 Best Ghost Ship

NiNi: We're moving into a new category. Now we're going to talk about ships.

Ben: This is going to be a little bit different because before we were mostly talking about the strength of performance and so we were talking about the skill of the people involved. At this point, we're going to be talking more about the collective character dynamics that are a result of the work.

NiNi: So this is a mix really of us looking at the writing for a couple, the acting for a couple, what the production design for the couple is telling us about how they work together, their chemistry. These are the kinds of things that I was looking at. I don't know if you had anything in addition to that.

Ben: This particular section is a little bit different from the last one because when it comes to really strong performances, there is strong enough that people pick up on it from small bits that manage to make gifs on Tumblr and such, and so NiNi and I have basically seen everything that we agreed upon in this. The ship awards are a little bit different because I've seen a whole lot more than NiNi, so there's going to be a lot of commentary about the side of BL that NiNi doesn't have time or attention for. So, this section is going to be a little bit different.

Ben: So we're starting with Best Ghost shipm for us a ghost ship is one that is not, say, officially sanctioned per se by the show, but is one that you're like, maybe though…maybe…

NiNi: “Hold on.”

Ben: “I got something to say about that.” So, we selected quite a few, but I ended up nominating Todd and Black for Not Me, for all the reasons we discussed earlier; Vegas and Porsche from KinnPorsche; and then Minato and Hanabusa from Minato’s Laundromat. We've already talked about how Todd and Black want to fuck each other so much that it makes them look stupid–-

NiNi: So much.

Ben: –-and you're gonna have a lot to say about Vegas and Porsche, and I'll let you cover that because you're way more into that one than I am but the thing that stands out for me about a ghost ship, I think. And what draws me to it is, how does the presence of that ghost ship impact the narrative overall, or influence how things unfold? So, the tension between Todd and Black is the source of all of the drama in Not Me. All of this stuff wouldn't happen if Black didn't turn radical and Todd didn't get pissed that he lost his friend along the way.

With Vegas and Porsche, the potential for Porsche to choose Vegas creates all sorts of problems with Kinn, and conflates the ongoing rivalry between the two halves of the family already. And there was a real belief I had at one point that Porsche could choose Vegas.

And then finally, Minato’s Laundromat is a show about a graduating high school senior who has been harboring a ten-year crush on the now owner of the local family run laundromat. The owner is Minato, and Hanabusa is one of the other local kids is also graduating at the same time, but he consistently flirts with Minato just to piss Shin off, and it's so convincing that I was allowing myself to become delusional about it, just because I thought it was fun to see how it complicated things. So, those were the three that I ended up selecting, primarily like I said, about how much their ghost ship impacts the, sort of, primary ships or the other themes of the ship.

NiNi: I, I agree what you said about the fact that the ToddBlack ghost ship is actually the impetus for the entire Not Me story, and that's the one of the reasons that I picked it as well. [High pitched] It should have happened

Ben: It happened, don't worry.

NiNi: I'm pretty sure it happened. I feel like a lot of the way I feel about ghost ships, is that “ohh, this is something that I really wish that they had put in there” because it would have put a nice little complicated wrinkle in the story, chemistry was there.

Todd and Black stood out for me, so that is definitely. Ohh God, they should have showed that to us. The second one I picked. I also picked VegasPorsche. I picked VegasPorsche because Porsche is Helen of Troy, right? I'm not the only person who got that out of—

Ben:That's a really great way to describe his role.

NiNi: Porsche is Helen of Troy. Porsche is somehow the face that launched 1000 ships, although he's not really. There's a little bit of pulling and tugging over Porsche himself, but also what Porsche represents, which is his mom, which is the pulling and tugging from the previous generation was it's over his mother. Over Namphueng.

I enjoy the dynamic of VegasPorsche as well because I also didn't know if Vegas was trying to play Porsche or if he was seriously interested because it's not quite clear. I liked that. I liked not being 100% certain of whether Vegas was really into Porsche, or whether he was just playing him and that came up for me and two scenes. It came up for me in the scene where after everything happens with Kinn and Porsche in Episode 4, that Vegas comes and meets Porsche at Yok’s Bar and takes him out for a ride on his motorcycle. And that whole—the ride on the motorcycle, the romantic music—I'm not above being swayed by music, just the general behavior, the interaction between Vegas and Porsche in that scene, and how flirty Porsche was. He was feeling alive and I feel like Vegas was also feeling that vibe too. I don't think it was fake in that moment.

And then in Episode 7, where it's a little clearer cut that maybe Vegas is trying to use Porsche, although again, I don't think it's 100% clear cut and he tries to kiss him in the bathroom. At that point you feel like Porsche is not interested in this anymore. He's not flirting. He's not. Whatever. But I get the sense that Vegas hasn't quite picked up. He still thinks that maybe he has a chance and again, it's a little bit more iffy as to whether he's seriously into Porsche, or whether he's just playing him. And again, that might just be my interpretation, but I always felt that Vegas had a little bit of a soft spot for Porsche. That's why they were also on my ghost ship nominees list. And then my third one was just—

Ben: I think it works really well for Vegas because of how deeply unwell he is.

NiNi: Oh yeah.

Ben: He probably does like Porsche, but he likes Porsche the only way he can. As a way to bother Kinn, because that's the only thing he's been allowed to care about.

NiNi: That goes back to Vegas as a character, man. We don't have a Best Character award, but if we did…

Ben: We chose not to do best character because–-

NiNi: The reason we don't have a best character award. Because it would just have been too hard. It would have been way too hard to just pick one. We had such an—

Ben: We didn’t want to get into a blorbo fight.

NiNi: We would have just had an embarrassment of riches. We would have had to basically give out 20 best character awards. So we just decided not to. My third pick for ghost ship—and this was just because it was so cute—there's not even a hint of it on screen, but I was just so attached to the idea.

Ben: That's why I, that's why I was waiting for you to talk about this. Because when you put this on the list and then put your mark by it, I was like—

NiNi: You were like whaaaat?

Ben: –-are they even on screen together ever?

NiNi: They're never on screen together, but I feel like it could have been a contender and that is Jay and Foei from Cutie Pie. Now I know in the end it turns out that Foei gets into kind of a het thing with Hia Yi’s secretary…but. But…Foei is such a ridiculous character and Jay is so not. I would have loved to see them interact in any way, but especially Jay meeting Foei and being like: “You are ridiculous. You have to come home with me.”

Ben: The first one you put on here that I was like, “I'm not with you sis. And I need you to explain this one to me.” I have been waiting like a week and a half to hear her explanation for this. Because I, I saw this on the list and I was like…”Whatever, I just need to hear her talk this one through.”

NiNi: But yeah, that's it for me. Like I said, there is no basis for it whatsoever in canon. It is a total go ship, a total crack ship. If I were a fan fiction girl, this would be the fan fiction I would write. I love a serious character and a ridiculous character together. I adore it so much. I would have loved to see these two, so that's why they were my third pick. In the end, the best ghost Ship is…

Ben: Todd and Black from Not Me. Congratulations to Sing Harit and Gun Attaphan for bringing together such a compelling dynamic.

NiNi: If you'll ever want to make a Not Me 2 and make that canon…

Ben: [chuckle]

NiNi: [in sing-songy voice] I will be watching. And not just for the sparks either, because the sparks were there, but just the dynamics are so juicy. These are people who have been friends their entire lives and had a serious fracture and they hate each other, but they love each other. I love it. I want to see so much more of that?

Ben: We don't often get dynamics that complicated in BLs. Hats off to the entire cast and crew for making that work.

NiNi: Nuchy. If you ever listen to this, please make Not Me 2.

00:57:19 Best OT3

NiNi: Moving into our—

Ben: Our next category—

NiNi: Yes.

Ben: —is best OT3. This is when I'm letting NiNi lead, cause I don't normally do OT3s, so I only brought forth options that I think were really supported by canon this year. We only ended up with three recommendations. So, before we get into who won, we'll just give you the three we had. It was the obviously the Jung Woo, Choco, and Milk trio from Choco Milk Shake—

NiNi: So delightful.

Ben: It was Pat, Pran, and Korn from Bad Buddy; and then it was Jung Hyung, Tae Young, and Jung Woo from Happy Ending Romance.

NiNi: Disclosure, I've only seen two of these. I have not seen Happy Ending Romance, so I can't speak to that, but at, Pran, and Korn in Bad Buddy comes solely and entirely off that scene in Episode 9 before Pat gets shot. I had to bring it up. Sorry, I just did where [laughs]

Ben: I always forget the Pat got shot [chuckles] until you bring it up. I'll just be existing in my world and be like, “Wow, Bad Buddy really is good.” And then you'll be like—

NiNi: [laughs]

Ben: *slides a paper across the desk*: Pat got shot.

NiNi: [laughs] So ridiculous.

The scene after the rugby match [chuckle] when Pat and Pran are having their little cute time and Pat is kind of like: “Well, maybe I'll just stay home and make out with you instead, or” and Korn comes banging on the door and he comes in to get Pat to go out for this victory celebration. And the way he was looking at them and the way that he was kind of like “did we all?” you know. And then the little hand motion he did? Just, he's so nosy. I'm convinced that he wants in on that action and I do not blame him. I mean between—

Ben: The reason why I also let it ride was you get the sense that Pran is very protective of his space. In the show, only two people actually enter his bedroom. It's Ohm and Korn, even Wai never enters his room. His friends hang out in his living room, but you get the sense that in the time from all their flirting in episode 7 and 8 that Korn stood out amongst all of the people they know as someone that Pran also started to really trust. He lets him into their space. He lets Korn see them inside of a space that might just be reserved for them. So.

NiNi: That whole idea of playing with what we're allowed to see and what we're not allowed to see in Bad Buddy, what's for our consumption and what's just for Pat and Pan, and the fact that you're right, Korn is the only person other than Pat that he allows into that very private space of his. It feels like something. And then after they were outed—I will never forgive Wai—Korn was the first person to kind of be like: “I'm on your side. Don't worry about it. Everybody's gonna come around.” And then he started immediately giving Pat shit. And I love, I love a best friend who gives you shit about everything. He give Pat immediate shit. Like, “Where's your… Where's your boyfriend? How is your boyfriend? You all did it yet?” He mentions it more than once. He is so interested in their sex life and what they are doing. I am convinced that he wants to be part of it and I…would like to see it.

So that's why I picked that for OT3. Do you want to talk Happy Ending Romance? Cause I haven't watched it. Or do you—

Ben: Yeah so—

NiNi: Want to just award?

Ben: Happy Ending Romance is a really Kdrama-esque BL from obviously Korea. So in this one you have a bunch of adults who are all connected around book publishing. Basically this up and coming hotshot, really talented writer ends up causing a kerfuffle in the industry by revealing some shady practices by one of the best selling authors of the era and he gets blacklisted but ends up being sheltered by another writer who becomes…he ends up living with him as a boyfriend and this other guy who was a publisher who worked for the publisher at the time left his position in protest and opened up his own publishing company and then randomly runs into this act—this other… writer, who he's—who's writing he's loved for so long, and he ends up working so hard to reunite with him. And the reason it put, it ends up on this particular list is the…through all the drama that gets resolved, the final shot is of the three of them on the roof together in a way that indicates that these two are a couple, but sometimes he still shows up and it's one of the few that really feels like canon was saying “it could happen.” Which is kind of similar to Choco Milk Shake, but they kinda end up creating separate pairs in that one so…I ended up being like, well, yes, but they pair Milk with Uncle so…

NiNi: To me, when you have anything that looks like a triangle, the answer is pretty much always poly, but [chuckles] I really enjoyed the Jung Woo, Choco, and Milk dynamic, especially at the beginning before Uncle enters the picture for Milk. This idea of them both loving Jung Woo so much and not just loving Jung Woo, but loving each other enough to make the journey together to Jung Woo, which is something I don't see talked about a lot in the Choco Milk Shake dynamic. They make their journey together.

Ben: It does give off an incredibly specific sibling dynamic

NiNi: Yes, and it's so they love Jung Woo, they love each other. It's the perfect OT3 for me, and that's why it was in the ends up the best OT3.

Ben: It feels like-It feels like they were watching, like, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, and they were like, you know…

NiNi: Oh my God. [laughs] You make me feel old sometimes, Ben. [laughs]

Ben: [laughs] I mean, it's not like I referenced like—we can't talk about that movie, too many animals.

NiNi: Oh my god [laughs] I hate you so much. [laughs] Yeah. No. So like for me, it was just the sense of the fact that they all love each other and that maybe, were it not for Uncle, it could have been an OT3. To me, that makes it the best OT3 of the year, so the 2022 VIIB Award for best OT3 goes to Jung Woo, Choco, and Milk Choco Milk Shake. So our next-

Ben: Sending plate to Strongberry because.

NiNi: Yes. Oh, my God. I think they would appreciate it actually. Like, I think if we actually reached out to Strongberry, but like here you want a Very Important Internet BL Award. Here's a plate. They would actually maybe make a video about it.

Ben: They probably would. They're so…they're so—

NiNi: So accessible.

Ben: –-really, they're so kind to people, I really.

NiNi: Yeah, yeah, this.

Ben: We're not talking about production houses specifically, but I really love the Strongberry has done for a very long time.

NiNi: I agree. They, they love the fans and it shows.

01:04:40 Best Friendship

NiNi: Our next ship is friendship. And this was so hard because there were so many great friendships and friend groups on screen this last year. I'll talk a little bit about my nominees, so I nominated: from KinnPorsche, Porsche and Yok; I nominated Khua and Diao from Cutie Pie; and I nominated Toh, Jao, Daisy, and Som from Secret Crush on You.

Now Porsche and Yok, you could call that a friendship, you can call that a mother-son relationship, you can call it whatever they want, but it's clear that those two are ride or die for each other like—

Ben: Like a true queer relationship, it is complicated.

NiNi: Yes, the bisexual and the house mother. It's beautiful to watch anytime Porsche needs advice, particularly about romance and about falling in love, he turns to Yok when he finally, is open with being with Kinn, the place that they go to is they go to Yok’s bar and when he wants to go to a place when he wants to take Tankhun to a place that he feels safe, he takes him to Yok’s bar and, just the dynamic between the two of them is so lovely, I…feel like they truly love each other. He trusted Yok with his baby brother to protect him. I love them. I love them so much.

NiNi: The second one I nominated was Khua and Diao from Cutie Pie, and that—that's because they felt so lived in and real and modern as a friendship for me. They just, they felt like two friends.

Ben: Modern is a very good term for them, I think.

NiNi: The scene where Khua and Diao are on the phone and Diao asks “Oh my God. Was it a Nail and Bail?” talking about. [Laughs] Talking about—

Ben: [laughs]

NiNi: Khua and Lian having sexy times. And I nearly died. It was so perfect. They felt like real friends. They talk about their lives. They talk about their loves. They make inappropriate jokes that they couldn't make with anybody else. It felt so real and lived in as a friendship. I loved it so much. It was it for me. Who are you two runners up?

Ben: I think before we, I talk about them, I'll talk about why I think friendship is really important in romance and why we made sure to include itas a category. The big thing about romance is it's about people's ability to form strong and meaningful connections with other people, and it's difficult to appreciate a character falling in love when they don't have people who care about them or that they care about. It's why I think so many villains are really compelling. Like Yzma and Kronk are a great example of this, they wouldn't work if they didn't have this weird twisted relationship with each other.

And with the two I nominated as runners up, it was Gav and Pearl from Gameboys first because…because they were best friends, then lovers, now back to best friends and Pearl is always there to help Gav, and she asks for really so little in return other than to just be acknowledged and hugged by the boys whenever she does something for them. It's not easy to dial your relationship back with someone and genuinely root for them to fall for someone else and Adriana does that in such a believable way.

Also nominated Nukhua and Khondiao for the same reasons you did. Their particular friendship feels like a gay friendship because you get the real sense that if they both weren't absolutely sprung for Lian or Yi something maybe could have developed between them, but instead they became basically sisters to each other. And I just really love seeing that in genre because we don't often get friendships that feel queer. Which I think is especially important for Cutie Pie, cause you and I were talking about this earlier. How hard Cutie Pie leans into sort of traditional aesthetics with the way they do stuff that the fact that the Khondiao and Nukhua friendship feels so queer, I think, helps keep that show from feeling, from skewing too hard one way or the other.

So our winner, who we will talk about at length probably, is the quartet from Secret Crush on You of Toh, Khaojao, Daisy, and Som.

NiNi: [sigh]

Ben: I'll let you go first.

NiNi: We nev-er get stories about femmes. Femmes are always the side characters or pushing everybody else into their romances and rooting for them. And not only do we get here a group of femmes and a woman or and two women, one cis woman, one trans woman, and I want to speak specifically about Daisy because I think that Daisy is a breakthrough character for Thai BL. I think that the way that Daisy is created as a character, the way that she interacts with her friends, the way that she interacts with Intouch when Intouch starts flirting with her, everything about her. And then that heartbreaking arc where she tries to butch up. To be seen as a man, when that's not who she is and her friends are there and try to be supportive, but they see how miserable it's making her. That whole arc solidified the entire friendship group for me. Not that it wasn't solid before, but how well they know Daisy and how they know where this desire to be seen as more manly in that moment is coming from. And the fact that they give it room to develop for her until it's clear that it's hurting her.

Ben: They do.

NiNi: And the minute it's clear.

Ben: They really live that live for—

NiNi: Yeah, exactly.

Ben: –-like two or three episodes. But I was really impressed how long they let that go and how visibly uncomfortable the friends were along the way. I was sold on the four of them I think from like episode one or two with their whole saying “3 = 4, so you're coming with us.”

NiNi: [laughs] That's nice. That was really good.

Ben: Like that feels like a gay friend group if I've ever seen one. You can't bail, Khaojao, you're coming with us. I just really love the way they care for each other. They're just so special. Like, yeah, there's a lot of great friend groups in BL, like, we're going to, there's always going to be like, Pharm, Manow, and Team. These four are very special. It's—

NiNi: They really are.

Ben: Part of why I ended up giving, I argued for Seng as best actor honestly is in the I think it's Episode 11 where they have that confrontation with Daisy, about what's going on. Seng who could otherwise dominate a scene dials back his performance so as not to distract. Like, that whole scene works so well, because it doesn't feel like it's just Daisy and Som talking to each other while Khaojao and Seng—Khaojao and Toh look sad off to the side. It felt like the four of them were together and the other two boys stepped back to let Som speak to Daisy as a woman.

NiNi: Yeah, woman to woman.

Ben: And made space for that.

NiNi: Just incredible. Just.

Ben: To those folks at Idle Factory, very, good job on that one.

NiNi: IdolFactory is killing the game when it comes to queering BL. And that sounds like—

Ben: Absolutely, absolutely.

NiNi: —that seems like a weird phrase to say, but, but they, they are.

Ben: Absolutely incredible from all, all four of them. Just—

NiNi: Yeah, it's just.

Ben: –-outstanding set of performances—

NiNi: There's no question

Ben: —for a long series, honestly. Really, really great job.

NiNi: And just like little things too, like them on the night out, them and the French maid outfits. These are people who genuinely—

Ben: Jao running to bring his own box of shit he's horaded from his interactions with Sky.

NiNi: Yes, [laughs] with Sky. They just…they love each other. They have fun together. They are there for each other through thick and thin. They give each other shit. They yell at each other when they need yelling at. They feel like real friends. That's amazing.

Ben: Let Saint know. We're sending a plate to IdolFactory

NiNi: We are sending a plate to IdolFactory without a doubt. So our Best Friendship of VIIB Award for 2022 goes out to Toh, Khaojao, Daisy, and Som from Secret Crush on You. Congratulations to them and to IdolFactory. Yaaaaaayyyy.

Saint, you're getting a plate, it's in the mail.

1:14:10 Battle Royal Best Side Ship

NiNi: Now, we come to the Battle Royale. The head to head. Where Ben and I are going to duke it out because we could not agree on anything in this category and that is best side ship, now…

Ben: We have zero agreement, our basic model for this was we threw up some nominations for people who we think did a good job in each category, and then we each marked the three that we thought did a great job and then where we both agreed we were like, “Okay, that's just going to be the winner to keep it simple,” where we had multiple agreement we had a small discussion that we would and then we went, all right we'll save the rest of this for the, the recording. We have zero agreement at all about best side ship.

NiNi: No. And as Ben said when we started, we thought about whether we should discuss it before or save it for on air. And we agreed to save it for on air. And one of the reasons was that Ben and I, I think, have two very different metrics for looking at side ships, two very different ways of viewing them. And that's why we each picked who we picked.

Ben, I'm going to allow you to go first. Who are your three nominees for best side ship?

Ben: I selected for best side ship: Sky and Khaojao from Secret Crush on You; Yok and Dan from Not Me; and Khan and Thua from The Eclipse.

NiNi: I selected Ink and Pa from Bad Buddy; Kim and Chay from KinnPorsche; and Syn and Nuer from Cutie Pie. I'm going to cede the floor, you have won the coin toss. Go ahead. Convince me.

Ben: I think I'll just talk first. I'll talk first about what I want out of a side ship. For me a, a side ship should not distract from the main ship, the main couple. They need to feel as if they are adding a level of nuance to the themes being described in the show itself, the sideshow from Golden Blood ended up outclassing what was going on with the main ship, which distracts, because that's not even like a bodyguard adjacent pairing of any sort.

I selected Khaojao, Khan and Thua, and Yok and Dan because of how they contribute to the primary themes being explored and the work they're in. As opposed to any other metrics that I think stand out. What were the…the primary criteria for you for your side ships?

NiNi: So, I think it's well established that I am not a fan of side couples in general. For me, a side couple has to be such that if they wrote the main story about the side couple, it would still work for me. So if they flipped main ship and side ship, I would still want to watch the story.

Ben: That’s really interesting.

NiNi: And that's my main criterion. That is my main criterion for side ships. If they are interesting enough to hold me even without the main ship, if they are driving story themselves, if they are deeply integrated into the story in such a way that you could really flip it and it wouldn't lose anything, that's what does it for me. So that's—

Ben: Yeah, I think that makes total sense and that's why we probably didn't. That's why we selected different things.

NiNi: Of the ones that I picked, for all that, they had barely any screen time, Kim and Chay goes to number one with a bullet for me because Kimlock Holmes and Porchay, will go to the top of the list for me, because whatever Kim has going on is obviously deeply integrated into the story. And one of the reasons that I am really convinced that we're getting a second series of KinnPorsche. Is that the story ended in the middle? As far as I'm concerned, because we don't know what's actually happening with Kim and with Kim and Porchay. So, the fact that the other stories seemed to be tied up with a little bow that didn't matter to me, it still felt unfinished because there is obviously something going on with Kim.

My favorite dynamic in a couple I've said is a junkyard dog and the only person allowed to pet them, so Kim and Chay is absolutely top of my list here. From the minute Chay walks into his life, he is fighting a losing battle. Eventually he just gives up and accepts that Chay utterly owns him. He will do literally anything. He will kill, he will maim, he will cover himself in blood to protect Chay, and Chay is the only thing that he cares about. He doesn't, I don't even think he even cares about his family as much as he cares about Chay. For me, that is the best side ship of 2022, of all the ones that I picked.

I also picked, as I said, InkPa from Bad Buddy. I think why is obvious. I think they're delightful. I think they're delectable. I think that the way that they fell in love is so real. My lesbian friends have demonstrated this to me time and time again, where it's kind of like “I like her, but do I like her like her?” and they spend all this time and I'm just sitting on the sidelines like, “girl you're in love. Why? Why are we still talking about this?” They're like, worried about this. Like, I don't know. Like, I think maybe she was into me, but it was so real for me. And I loved it. I loved that they could have flipped. Again, as much as I love Pat and Pran as much as I love the main story of Bad Buddy, if they had flipped it and given me Pat and Pran as a side couple and Ink and Pa as the main couple, I think I would have still watched. So that said a lot to me.

And then Syn and Nuer, I mean, come on, they're just adorable. Syn, this very religious, very innocent boy, suddenly just getting hot under the collar for this hottie who just walks into his class and he just doesn't know what to do with it. This kid is flirting with him. He's just like, ohh, I'd like—

Ben: At first, he's mostly protective of his friend because he knows Nukhua and Lian are it for each other.

NiNi: When the attention shifts and Nuer notices Syn, and then from that moment on, that's it from for him. Syn is so coy and sweet. And that's not usually the type of character that I'm into, but it works for this and Nuer is so naughty. The way that he talks to send, it's very respectful, but it's also very, very, very cheeky.

Ben: He, he toes the line in his piety.

NiNi: He wants to wreck that boy and Syn knows it as well. And he's just kind of like oh. “Well, I kind of want to be wrecked, but, then again, I'm also a bride of Buddha.” It's so delightful, I—

Ben: It's really fascinating listening.

NiNi: –-love their dynamic.

Ben: It's fascinating listening to your explanation for what you like out of side ships because I feel like it's not the way I appreciate them at all because I don't, I wouldn't want the series to be flipped like the, the star-crossed thing with Pat and Pran doesn't play out with Ink and Pa that way. I like Ink and Pa in that particular story because their gentle falling for each other underscores that homophobia is not the problem in this story. Because Pat’s parents don't have a problem with Ink at all. It's just that particular boy is the problem.

For Syn and Nuer, Cutie Pie is so much about this arranged marriage, you have a responsibility to this person dynamic that Syn and Nuer, as fun as they are, they just don't feel like they play into that particular set of circumstances or the age gap thing either because they're actually the same age. Which, I guess allows them as a point of comparison relative to the mains. And for Kim and Porchay, as much as I love Jeff and Barcode, they're in a completely different type of show from everyone else. They barely interact with the rest of the cast over the course of the show.

NiNi: Uh-huh, exactly. Yes.

Ben: Like Barcode—like Barcode’s character, Porchay is in like a, I got discovered by my idol romance.

NiNi: But think about it, if that was the story and then there's all this mafia shit happening in the background, wouldn’t that just be [giggles] delightful?

Ben: I mean, it would be Love in the Air.

NiNi: [laughs] Fair enough. It would be Love in the Air. Kind of love that. So anyway, that's me. What about you?

Ben: All right, so I first chose Sky and Khaojao because in a show about femmes, and fats, and other undesirables being chosen as loved ones. I like that Sky and Neua are so determined when it comes to Toh and Khaojao, and in particular I like their dynamic because it takes a lot for Jao to come around to it, because he keeps thinking that he might be being toyed with, or he's just going to get dumped and hurt. But once he does start to accept that he likes Sky, he becomes really possessive of him and starts mean-mugging other characters, particularly women in the series.

NiNi: [giggles] Surprise makes such excellent faces.

Ben: When they go on that run and that woman is clearly trying to strut for [chuckles] Sky and he goes “Shoo!” And so like what works really well for me with Sky and Khaojao, is that it helps reinforce how normal Nuea wants to be seen because he and Sky are best friends and they're both begging Toh and Khaojao to stop elevating them and putting them on this level. The, the desperation of: “We love you. We're not Gods or other special people because we play basketball where people think we're especially attractive. We just want to be seen as guys who really like you. We don't want you feeling like we're going to bail on you constantly.” Their relationship helps reinforce how normal Nuea wants his relationship with Toh to be. Because the same thing is kind of playing out twice, it helps reinforce that this shouldn't be spectacular.

Ben: With Yok and Dan in Not Me, you have a series about radicals fighting against the system, and one of your more radical members ends up falling for a cop in this, a cop who is maybe struggling with the, his own role in the system he creates protest art on the side, but he makes money selling NFT's…what, what a character.

NiNi: What a character. I mean, wow. But then again…Not Me is about the characters you meet in the leftist movement.

Ben: Exactly. And so like that really stands out for me when you're talking about the role of Yok and Dan in say this story. They instantly complicate the narrative that it isn't easy to do us and them when you're focusing on systemic change, because it isn't easy. There are people who are gonna end up serving as agents of the system because there just aren't a lot of great options otherwise. That's part of how the systems maintain themselves and what happens when radicals fall for these agents. What is the fallout of that? It would have been easy to just make them hate each other. But the fact that Yok becomes so insane for Dan really makes that work really well for me.

And then finally with Khan and Thua. Khan and Thua, I think are necessary to make the Ayan and Akk relationship function in the show. Because Ayan is a gay boy from outside of the system of Suppalo. And so we have him falling for Akk and the complications that happen when somebody who has seen the outside world wants to show you what it actually looks like. We have as a necessary point of comparison what gay boys inside of the system who care about each other look like with Khan and Thua. And, I don't think it's possible to appreciate Akk and Ayan without the tension and desperation over small acts that Khan and Thua are riding the whole time like Ayan is demanding so much more from Akk constantly. And here we see Khan and Thua, basically surviving literally on scraps the whole time and that, for me, makes them my best side couple of the year. Because they’re necessary to their particular story in a way that the others almost aren't.

Like, we could have done like we have…other options with Sky—with Secret Crush on You because there's Daisy and Intouch. They could have been blown up more. But, I think specifically for what The Eclipse wants to talk about with systemic homophobia, you need Khan and Thua in the conversation of Akk and Ayan. And then, the teacher's name, I can't remember right now, and Ayan’s uncle. Without them playing their roles in the story, I think it makes Ayan exceedingly exceptional. I think they provide context that's necessary for Ayan’s exceptionalism.

NiNi: I like how your thought process worked to Khan and Thua showing what it takes to be gay inside the system and still be able to try to at least be yourself and what it takes for that to happen. Because we see how hard it is for Khan and Thua to work their way towards each other. They are clearly people who care about each other. But Khan is going to slap away Thua’s hand if he tries to touch him. Coming to the end where he kisses him out in the open—

Ben: And that doesn't—

NiNi: –-on the beach.

Ben: –-happen without Ayan’s role in their story either.

NiNi: And it doesn't. It doesn't. That's true. I feel like you're, you're bringing me around on Khan and Thua. You're bringing me around. So, if I drop one of mine in order to also agree on Khan and Thua, I probably would drop…maybe Syn and Nuer, as much as I enjoy them. I feel like a story about Syn and Nuer doesn't say as much as the story about Khan and Thua, so I will. I will lean into one of yours. Any one of mine that you're, you're going to lean into.

Ben: I think in terms of accepting your argument about flipping the story and then being really interested in the side couple story as a result. I would agree to drop, because we basically see their story already and Not Me, there really isn't that much else to say. I'll say we can drop Yok and Dan in favor of Kim and Porchay.

NiNi: Okay, climbing closer together. So then our two points of agreement and where we're going to choose between our Kim and Porchay, versus Khan and Thua. And I think we've got pretty strong arguments for both of them. I will admit though that my KimPorchay love is partly because I need to see what happens to them next, where I feel like Khan and Thua’s story is pretty well wrapped up within the series. But also again that dynamic, I just love that dynamic that basically Kim will bite off anybody's hand that comes near him except for Chay. But that's just my personal thing. So I'm conceding.

Ben: I'm arguing that The Eclipse would be an absolutely insane show if we flipped it and focused entirely on the perspective of Thua [chuckle] watching all of this shit going down.

NiNi: I concede.

Ben: Yes. Yesss!

NiNi: So the winner of the best side ship 2022 VIIB award is Khan and Thua from The Eclipse. And Ben has convinced me and let me—

Ben: Congratulations to Neo and Louis!!

NiNi: –-tell you all. Congratulations to Neo and Louis. Congratulations to you, Ben, because it is very hard to convince me of anything and you convinced me about this. So congratulations to you. You will also get a plate. Congratulations to them. And now…

Ben: Whoof, oof, that was a hard, that was difficult. [laughs]

NiNi: That was a hard one. That was a real hard one. I'm glad we agreed to duke it out on the podcast, though, because that was a lot of fun.

Ben: I think it was a good choice. This would, like we would have done fine in text. But, I really enjoyed hearing you talk about what you enjoy inside ships because that was a lot of fun.

NiNi: With all the stuff that we have coming up and all the side ships that are happening and stuff that's airing now that we're going to be talking about in the spring. I think I'm gonna look at your way of looking at it a little bit more. So, you've changed my mind that that's not enough.

Ben: Thank you. I just watched too many shows, so the idea of flipping the show to watch it again, we're seeing that right now with Between Us and we both have thoughts about that.

NiNi: We'll save those for the spring show when Between Us is over and we can talk about it in full detail. Now, for the main event of the night.

01:32:20 Best Main Ship

NiNi: Best main ship. My three nominees for best main ship were PatPran from Bad Buddy. I don't think I need to explain this anymore, they were everything. They were the moment, they were life giving. They were devastating. They were hilarious. They were fantastic.

My second nominee is Toh and Nuea from Secret Crush on You because you don't expect their story when you start watching to go anywhere, like where it went and it was some really clever writing. It was some really beautiful acting. I really enjoyed it.

So those are my runners up, who are your runners up?

Ben: But this is a very difficult section for me because we said this in the pre show, but I engaged with 92 productions this year and NiNi engaged with maybe like 20?

NiNi: I don't even know if it was 20. I have to actually count, but I think it was more like 15.

Ben: Yeah, so 15, maybe 20. So I've seen a lot of dynamics and I put a lot on this list who, unfortunately I will not have enough time to talk about here. My two runners up are: Phayu and Rain from Love In The Air and then Pluem and Kevin from Ghost House, Ghost House.

So, Phayu and Rain there is some worrisome consent stuff with them, but I just don't choose to focus on it because I've accepted some of the rules of MAME’s world having been engaged with enough of her work at this point. And so the reason why I end up like Phayu and Rain so much is particularly for MAME. There is no drama in their relationship. All of the factors that complicate their dynamic are entirely external. They are an incredibly straightforward example of two people who saw each other from afar, decided they liked each other, and then started pursuing each other.

There are kink elements to them being like a lifestyle D/s couple, but there's nothing dark about Phayu. He can be a little stern, but he has a job that seems to be paying him well, he's loved and respected by his colleagues at his day job, he's admired and respected at the upscale auto shop he runs. There's nothing wrong with his parents. He gets along with his brother. He has a good relationship with his best friend. There's nothing dark about him that needs fixing. The, his relationship with Rain is just…he is a lifestyle dom looking for a sub. And he found his ideal one in Rain and worked his ass off to make that work. And it's the same for Rain. He's loved by his mom. He's beloved by his friends as the idiot of their group, and the only thing that really goes wrong with their particular dynamic is the mafia shit with the racing nonsense. Better than that, I really like them for that.

With Pluem and Kevin and Ghost House, Ghost House…I talked about this earlier, there's just something very specifically queer about the entire way their relationship unfolds. It feels grounded in a world that the rest of us could live in as well, and they do the rare thing in BL of showing a couple together after they've chosen each other, which is another reason why I like Phayu and Rain. I really liked the execution of them falling into the background to support once they transitioned to the Prapai and Sky segment of this show. That is incredibly well done. Pluem and Kevin get together properly around Episode 5 or 6, and then we get to see them doing boyfriend things for about two solid episodes before they do the required breakup nonsense and get back together because it's romance. You have to split the couple up so that we see that their lives suck now that they're separate. I get it. The genre demands it. It gets on my nerves.

Nini: [chuckles]

Ben: So those are my two runners up. I like, I like the specific queerness of how both of those couples felt, and I really liked how all of the issues that they struggled from are external to them and not necessarily in their control. And there's just something really special about the way those two pairs genuinely liked each other that really stood out for me this year. Not to mention for Phayu and Rain, both of those guys are newcomers. Boy and Todd aren't newcomers, but I was not expecting that from either of them.

NiNi: But in the end, despite all our runners up and all the other members of the long list, and this one was a long list, we instantly agreed on the winner which I don't think happened for anything else, did it?

Ben: Not in this week's worth of selections.

NiNi: No, no, no. So our winner for best main Ship VIIB Awards 2022 is Togawa and Nozue from Old Fashion Cupcake. This one was a surprise for me. The fact that I didn't even question it.

Ben: You don't normally like Japanese shows.

NiNi: It's not that I don't like Japanese shows, it's that I've been having a hard time with Japanese BL this year. What I have seen I have enjoyed, but I haven't been compelled to watch much of it. It hasn't been grabbing me. There are two shows in particular that you told me that I had to watch, one that we're gonna talk about in our special class program. This one was the other one, Old Fashion Cupcake and you're like “you, you've got to watch this. You've got to watch this.” So I did give a spin and.

Ben: No, it was short too. So that's why I got you to agree.

NiNi: Yeah. And I was completely hooked. Absolutely, completely. Ben likes stories, and so do I. Ben likes stories about older people finding love because we are both old. I'm older than Ben, but guess.

Ben: I am, I am the resident What Did You Eat Yesterday? stan anywhere we go.

NiNi: Yes, which is another one that you introduced me to actually. And again thank you for that. You're always introducing me to great Japanese BL and queer stories. So we are older than your average BL fan and as much as we enjoy all the coming of age and first love and all of those narratives and all of the young, hot things in college and the office narrative. There is something about watching an older man who is sort of having a little bit of a mid-life crisis be gently pulled into this relationship with a colleague who is still of a decent age. I think he's 30.

Ben: Thirty-one or two, I believe.

NiNi: So he's 10 years younger, but he's still not a kid. Watching that happen, it was fascinating to me. I felt like I understood them in a certain kind of way.

Ben: I think one of the special aspects about the way Japan handles romance. One of the factors underpinning what they seem to enjoy the most is devotion, particularly if it's been going on for a long time. So with Togawa, he became devoted to Nozue when he first joined the company and was kind of in a rut because he was overworking and Nozue we gently chided him and was just like: “Well, don't forget to enjoy your life along the way, it's just a job.” And Togawa took that completely to heart, and he has an incredible zest for life. It's reinforcing his characterization constantly, like when he's eating something, he shoves huge bites into his mouth. He doesn't eat in a polite way per say—

NiNi: Yes

Ben: —because he loves the taste of food. He works out a little bit to stay healthy, but he seems to enjoy activities that allow him to be physical and about. He continues to enjoy his life and when he sees Nozue forgetting that and kind of spiraling that's when he moves forward and makes his own regard for him present. And I just really like the choice of someone to share how much they love someone beyond just supporting them quietly because they feel the need to help them more. Maybe it's some of my current love of an airing show is, is bleeding over right now, but I really, really enjoy that. And then for Togawa in particular, he's got a genuine desire for Nozue. Like the final oner from Episode 4 of Old Fashioned Cupcake—

NiNi: Mmm, that one take scene?

Ben: —is so believable it works so well because Togawa seems to have gotten himself caught off-guard. Like, he's been restraining himself all this time and he finally confesses how he feels about Nozue and it comes rushing out of him in a way that he wasn't prepared for. Because you get the sense that he's been preparing for this moment and it just sort of happens and it's a mess and isn't just that Togawa is pulling himself out, Nozue responds in the moment, even though he's a bit overwhelmed by it. And there’s just something really special to me about the ten years of gentle support they gave each other, then turning into committed dedication that as much as I really loved a lot of BL this year. I was asked who was the best, the best ship of the year. It's these two.

NiNi: I would have mentioned in the pre show that I process my feelings through media because I'm not always sure of what I'm feeling, but if I see a character going through something, it triggers something in me. Something maybe that I have been noodling in the back of my head or some aspect of my life that I couldn't figure out and it clicks for me, when I see the character going through it. So one of the things for me, I was watching Old Fashioned Cupcake at a point in my life where I am going through a bit of a midlife crisis myself. [laughs] I've been sort of through the wringer the last few years in terms of what is the meaning of life? What am I doing here? What is my purpose? Why don't I enjoy things anymore? And watching Togawa take Nozue to these little cafes, and feed him these desserts, and tell him: “Let's have some mindless fun. Let's gossip. Let's talk about the things that teenage girls talk about. Let's be silly. Let's be immature a little bit. Let me remind you that life is fun.”

Ben: That didn't translate as well in the initial subs, but there were a lot of Japanese levels of interaction with the way that they were playing with gendered language—

NiNi: Mhm

Ben: —and familiarity of language and all their interactions, that is unfortunately difficult to translate into English because we don't have those many hierarchies right away. But I felt it.

NiNi: The way they would speak to each other at the office was completely different to the way that they would speak to each other on the dates that they were having. Which, Nozue didn't realize were dates-

Ben: Have to con your man into a date.

NiNi: —and then again it was a completely different way from the way that Togawa in particular spoke to Nozue when he had that moment and became overwhelmed and kissed him. There are levels of intimacy, there's levels of formality, there's all of these different things happening because they have such a complicated relationship in the sense that they are senior and junior at work. They have such a big age gap. They are,I hate these terms. I never like using them, but, the seme and uke thing, as well. There were so many levels to what was happening between the two of them in addition to all this stuff about Nozue’s midlife crisis, and his existential feeling of, well, “It's just a straight shot to the grave at this point. So why am I even? There's nothing to enjoy.” The dynamics of it are so fun.

And one of the things that I enjoy about BL, the way that it uses language. Because Asian languages, they have so many levels of pronoun and tone and everything for speaking to people who are at different levels of familiarity and different levels of age and different levels of all these things that those nuances that you don't get in Western languages. You can do it in a Western production, but it's much harder to get the same idea across with the economy of language that you can in an Asian production. So, I really, really enjoyed that about Old Fashioned Cupcake. I enjoyed Togawa and Nozue just vibing…having a great time. I enjoy when the feelings boiled over. I enjoyed how Nozue was into it, but then he was so scared because he had never even considered before in his life that he could be queer. And, it was just like whew, overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed.

And then at the end, when he goes to Togawa in the end and they're in the alley and they're, oh my God, that ending it's just [sigh] when he accepts the way that he feels and the way that Togawa feels about him, and they're in the alley and they're smiling and they're it's so lovely. It's so lovely. I feel about it very similarly to the way I feel about the ending of What Did You Eat Yesterday? when—

Ben: Kenji’s cutting Shiro’s hair?

NiNi: Kenji’s cutting Shiro’s hair, yes, and the way that they've been fighting, I think, over this cafe thing for like an episode or two at this point. And they went to the cafe in the end and I can't remember exactly what happened. I haven’t watched it in a few months, so I have to watch it again because—

Ben: Well, the, the cafe bit is interesting because it comes up very early in like episode one or two. Kenji suggests they go to it and Shiro doesn't want to be seen or perceived a certain way. And the final sort of movements of the original run of What Did You Eat Yesterday? feature Shiro allowing himself to enjoy these cutesy things because he knows they make Kenji happy.

NiNi: The end of Old Fashioned Cupcake puts me in mind of that, even though it's quite different because they're not doing these things to make each other happy. Togawa genuinely enjoys these things and he wants to share them with Nozue. So, it's not a question of one of them doing it for the other person, just to make them feel better, but it still has the same feeling. I don't really know why, but I think it's just that feeling of love and understanding and acceptance that they have for each other.

Ben: It is the rare show this—it is the rare show from this past year that I genuinely hope gets a continuation.

NiNi: I do. I want to see more of them.

Ben: I want to see what domesticity is like for them, and I gotta be honest. One of the things I really want to see from Japan at some point is intimacy from committed people. I think of all of the countries producing BL, they're the country that I most want to see tackle that. Like, Thailand came a little bit close to that this year with My Ride with Mork's uncles. It's something that I really want to see positively explored. These two were really great. We had a lot of people on this list for potential consideration again, I've seen a lot more stuff than any, but we were obviously going to agree on these two, but I didn't feel a strong sense of, oh, man need to argue for a bunch of the other people who ended up not even making the nomination cut.

Because as good as they are, Togawa and Nozue stand out in this year as a dynamic that: 1) I think really only Japan can do. And 2) as something that stands above the genre. Like, I joke sometimes that Japan languishes a bit. They realize they surrendered J-Pop to Korea and now K-Pop is dominant, and they've kind of laxed and they let Thailand have BL, but Thailand doesn't ever consistently hit Japanese quality levels. They didn't feel threatened by it. But with the current rise of Korea and the Philippines putting out some noteworthy products that people want in Japan, like that's part of the Gameboys distribution hell is the Japanese people apparently really like Gameboys. That's affecting its distribution. Korea is in the space and Thailand's putting out some great products, because I Told Sunset About You clearly was a moment that affected the whole world.

NiNi: Oh my gosh.

Ben: It's not that particular podcast. We'll talk about that at some point for sure. It feels like Japan is trying to do this thing where it's as a reminder we let you have this. L-E-T. And Togawa and Nozue feel like one of those examples. I think of also from Japan this year, there were a lot of…all of the stand out couples for me that I think really lingered with me this year, most of them came from Japan.

NiNi: For me this year I have been so Thai-heavy because I think in a certain way Thai BLs, even the challenging ones, are easier to watch than some of the other countries. They're easier to slide into, the emotions are so juked you feel them in a particular kind of way. Whereas particularly with Japanese BL, you almost have to work for it a little bit. So I don't think I felt like doing a lot of that work, which is why I watched very few Japanese productions in the past year. Mostly ended up watching what you recommended Ben, which would have been Old Fashioned Cupcake, Koisenu Futari, which we're going to talk about in another episode, and…what else did I watch from Japan this year? I think I watched more old stuff from Japan this year, so I watched Utsukushii Kare finally and I haven't been feeling to invest in that particular kind of way. I've been really Thailand focused. I haven't watched anything from Taiwan. I've watched only a few things from Korea, only a few things from Japan. But I—

Ben: It's a real disappointment that you skipped out on some of the, the offerings from Taiwan because, we'll probably talk about the Taiwan stuff more next week, cause we're going to be talking about some music stuff where that'll come up in the discussion

NiNi: Yeah, I think we're definitely going to talk about Taiwan in our next episode because I think we'll be doing sort of a country by country breakdown as part of our industry discussion. So, look out for that.

1:51:28 Wrap Up

NiNi: But in the meantime, let's wrap this up. We've got to close this one off, otherwise we will talk forever. You know we will.

Ben: Congratulations to all of our winners. And for those of you who weren't nominated or did not win, please know that it was not for lack of love for the work you did this year.

NiNi: Oh my, you should see some of—

Ben: 2022 was—

NiNi: —these long lists.

Ben: 2022 was an incredible year for the genre in a way that—

NiNi: It really was.

Ben: Like there were some misses this year, but the swings were so noteworthy that I don't really feel like there was a lot of phoning it in this year. Everybody really tried to bring their best efforts to whatever project they were involved in, and there was, there was something worthwhile to talk about in every show that I watched. Even the shows I dropped there was something really special happening in that show that was worth discussing.

NiNi: For me, of the 15 shows [laughs]

Ben: [laughs]

NiNi: —that I watched in 2022 from beginning to end, I think it might have been more than 15, but I didn't watch anything close to as many as you did. But, I got into the things that I knew were going to give me brainworms because, those, for me it's much easier go to something that I know is gonna haunt me in a particular kind of way, not in the way the Japanese cinema haunts me.

NiNi: This has been the first part of the very important Internet BL awards. The VIIB Awards for 2022. All the winners. Congratulations, your plates will be in the mail. Our next—

Ben: Those of you who joined us, thank you.

NiNi: Thank you very much for listening to our inaugural ramblings. Our next part, Part 2, which will be going up very soon after this one, is our technical awards and industry discussion. So we're going to talk all things behind the scenes: music, production, direction, all those kinds of things and we're going to talk a lot about—

Ben: Going to get nerdy.

NiNi: We're gonna get real nerdy, and then we're going to talk. Shoot the shit about what 2022 was like for us in terms of what we watch, what we didn't watch, what we're interested in, what are the themes that we saw happening. Both in the art and in the industry, so look out for that. That'll be following on really soon.

And just to give a little teaser, our part three of the VIIB Awards are going to be our best in class and our special class. Which, I think you will not want to miss. We have two special class awards to give out. I think you'll like what we chose. I think you will like what we have to say about them. We've held it, we haven't discussed these at all because we did not want to blow our wad, so to speak. So you'll be getting our takes fresh on our special class program. So look out for that. Anything else you want to say before we leave the people, Ben?

Ben: No, it's been a lot of fun and I'm just glad that we're finally doing this and I can't wait to get into the Part 2 stuff.

NiNi: Ben and I are nerds, so of course the nerdiest part of this is going to be our most fun part. We are out. See you next time. Bye!

Ben: Bye!

NiNi: Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben: I did!

NiNi: Thank you.

#the conversation #ben and nini's conversations #podcast #on art #the viib awards #viib awards 2022 #winter series #winter 2022 #s1e1 #Spotify

19 notes · View notes