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virtualtadpole · 3 months ago

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A BL viewer's guide to Thai school uniforms

(This is an older one, originally posted at Reddit in 2022, but it should still be accurate. Hope you'll find it useful, as uniforms in Thai shows often provide context that international viewers might not recognize.)

To begin, here's a summary of the Thai school system. There are twelve years of basic education (after kindergarten): six years of primary school (prathom or P.1-6), and six years of secondary school (mathayom or M.1-6), the latter of which is divided into three lower and three upper years. The age range roughly corresponds to the US system, so the years P.1-6 will often be translated as grades 1-6 and M.1-6 as grades 7-12. Most stories set in school will take place during the upper secondary years, which is often translated as high school (though this is rather approximate as it spans three years rather than four). Students typically enter M.4 aged 15 going on 16, and graduate at the age of 18 (or nearing it).

School uniforms are almost universally compulsory, used by all but a few alternative schools (university will be discussed further below). They mostly follow a very distinctive form, which has barely changed since the end of World War II, as there's a default format that's mandated by law and followed by most schools (though schools may elect to specify their own style of uniform). There are official industrial standards that govern the material, thread count, etc. of student uniforms that can be sold, and an entire industry is built around them.

For boys, the (default style) uniform is mostly the same across all levels, and consists of a white short-sleeved button-up shirt, shorts (in either black, royal blue, navy, or khaki), a belt (brown or black), socks and shoes (brown with khaki shorts, white socks and black shoes otherwise). The shirt will have the letters of the school's abbreviated name embroidered at the right chest, in red for private schools, and navy for government schools. It's common for schools to also require student IDs or names be included likewise. In many schools, the upper-secondary uniform will also include the school insignia/logo as a metal badge pinned above the school's initials, or also embroidered.

The colours of the shorts typically reflect the school's status. Private schools will normally use blue or (less often) black, while government schools will use black or (less often) khaki, with very few exceptions. Navy is quite rare, mostly used by certain schools with historical royal connections. This colour-coding serves as a rather convenient tool for series creators to convey the social background of the characters. Blue shorts signify that they go to a private, presumably expensive school. Black is the default that tells the viewer that it's a regular, average school. Khaki shorts used to be the default long ago but have declined in use, and are now mostly seen as belonging to rural or temple schools (though there are also some famous schools that use them). You'll rarely see them in TV or film, unless the creators are purposely saying that the setting is rural, poor, or retro.

Let's look at some examples.

The school uniform in Bad Buddy is pretty much the bare minimum, with just the school's abbreviated name and no pin or ID. With black shorts and navy lettering, it's clearly meant to be a regular government school (though TBH the filming location doesn't really fit). The dot on the collar is a symbol used by some schools to indicate the year the student is in, based on the number of dots. One dot would mean they're in the first year of either lower or upper secondary, which might be differentiated based on colour, shape, or being on the left or right side. Here, Pran is clearly not 12/13 years old, so the year must be M.4.

In The Yearbook, the school uniform also includes the students' ID in Thai numerals below the school name, also quite a common thing. The navy lettering and the black shorts indicate that it's a government school, and the filming location and the teacher wearing the civil service uniform also hint that it's a rather provincial setting. The haircuts of the characters are also more realistic, as schools usually require a short tapered cut for boys.

The characters in 'Cause You're My Boy also attend a government school, in line with the working-class background. Mork is in upper-secondary, so his uniform as the school symbol embroidered above the lettering, while Gord and Morn's, who are in lower-secondary, don't.

Another example of a government school uniform with black shorts is found in Dew. This school also has the student's name embroidered over the shirt pocket. Dew's oversized shirt and long baggy shorts reflect the fashion trends of 1996, when this part of the story is set.

On the other hand, Hormones follows middle-/upper-middle- class kids at a private school. The uniform was directly copied from that of Assumption College Thonburi (ACT), where the series was filmed (so that its students could blend in as extras). As a private school, the lettering is in red, and the student IDs are in Hindu-Arabic numerals. As in the above example, the stars on the collar indicate the student's year (here, dots are used for lower-secondary and stars for upper). Also note the belt buckle with the school logo, which tends to be seen with fancier schools.

The uniforms in Love Sick are also copied from real life, though this was done not for production convenience, but to pay tribute to the source novel, which was inspired by student life at Assumption College (AC), one of the country's oldest boys' schools (AC and ACT both belong to a network of schools operated by the Catholic Church, hence their names). The novel's full title, Love Sick: The Chaotic Lives of Blue Shorts Guys, reflects its focus on the inside world of the school, of which it paints a semi-imaginary image that makes multiple references to actual teachers, locations and customs, stopping short only of referring to the school by name. This is toned down in the series, though the coat of arms and uniform are nearly direct copies of AC's, minus the belt buckle (which was a relatively recent addition and not part of the uniform when the novel was being written).

Notice how Noh's school badge is pinned on the corner of the shirt pocket just like baby Peak and Ohm's real-life AC uniform, which is unique to the school. (Beam is a junior of Peak and Ohm's by a year, and was probably in M.3 when the photo was taken, so didn't wear a badge.) The school also requires leather shoes, unlike most schools which allow either leather or canvas shoes (in which case almost everyone will wear canvas shoes).

As mentioned in my previous post, the current trend of students having their school uniform shorts modified to be very short probably originated with AC students, and spread more widely from the late 2000s. Naturally, the style is shown in Love Sick, though this is also generally well represented in BL media.

Make It Right, by the creators of Love Sick, used the same style for its student uniform, except the shoes (though pinning the badge at the shirt pocket didn't really make sense now that it wasn't meant to refer AC's real-life uniqueness). It's also a bit strange seeing student IDs running into the 60000s, as even the oldest real-life schools don't have numbers that high.

The use of blue-shorts school uniforms to signify wealthy characters/environments is a pretty common trope in BL (and also Thai series more generally). It's also seen in 7 Project, in a more typical appearance with the pin in the usual location, and the student's name over the shirt pocket.

In My Gear and Your Gown, the uniform (quite unusually for private schools) doesn't have any lettering other than the school's initials. It's most likely a cost-saving measure by the costume department, sacrificing a bit of realism to avoid the need to create individualized outfits for every character (though it does use leather shoes).

The uniform in My Dear Loser: Edge of 17 is rather confusing. It's clearly meant to be a private school, given the blue shorts, but this is contradicted by the navy lettering on the shirt. Looks like a mistake, unless it was a deliberate choice to introduce some sort of ambiguity (though this is unlikely, and even most Thai viewers probably won't notice anyway).

In Only Boo!, Moo originally goes to a private school with a blue-shorts uniform, but is sent away as punishment for neglecting his studies. His new uniform, with khaki shorts, emphasizes the provincial nature of the school.

Often, different-coloured uniforms will be used to contrast the characters' backgrounds. This goes back to The Love of Siam, where the blue shorts and leather shoes of Mew's school uniform reinforce its presentation as a Catholic school (and closely echoes AC, which also served as the school's filming location), while Tong's black-shorts uniform may have been a reference to Bangkok Christian College, a nearby school popularly seen as a rival of AC's. BCC is one of the better known private schools to use a uniform with black shorts, and The Love of Siam is one of the less common examples of this. (Note again the school badge, which isn't worn by some of the members of Mew's band, indicating that they're in lower-secondary.)

The colour contrast is also used in Love's Coming, though it doesn't really convey any significant background.

Somewhat amusingly, creators don't always try to be particularly creative with the school name abbreviations, and they will often be that of the production company's name. So here we have ม.ม. and ม.ม.ป. - MM and MMP for Mungmee Production. Above, there's จ.ท.ว. - GTV (GMMTV) in My Dear Loser, ค.ซ.ม. - CSM (Cosocomo) in Make It Right, and น.ด.บ. - NDB (Nadao Bangkok) for Hormones, the last of which is also the actual in-story name of the school.

I Told Sunset About You uses a very unusual colour pairing: Navy and Khaki. Oh-aew's school (and Teh's formerly) is private, while Teh's is the province's main government school. The colour choices are mainly aesthetic - while some main provincial schools do use khaki shorts (and private schools navy), they are quite uncommon. White shoes worn with the regular student uniform is also practically unheard of (they're usually for PE uniforms - more on these below).

Note also how the year-indicating dots above the school initials are differentiated by colour: navy for lower secondary, red for upper. So when Teh shows up at his old school wearing a uniform with three navy dots, that's him squeezing into his old uniform from M.3 to sneak into the school.

Sometimes actual existing schools serve as the setting of a work, and its uniform is used. For example, My Bromance (2014) is set at Wachirawit School in Chiang Mai and uses its uniform.

The Best Story likewise takes place at the Demonstration School of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. Demonstration or "Satit" schools are pretty much a class of their own. While they're technically government schools, they're operated by universities for their teacher training programmes, and have a higher degree of freedom in their operations. They also often have uniforms that don't follow the usual format, with no school name on the shirt. This is the case with Satit Suansunandha, which has its logo embroidered on the shirt pocket and pinned above the student's name instead.

Some Satit schools also use an unusual colour, charcoal grey, for their uniform shorts. This is seen with Praram's uniform in EN of Love: This Is Love Story, indicating that his school is attached to the university. Having just the student's name and no school initials isn't unusual in this case (though not having any logo at all kind of is).

On the other hand, the lack of any embroidered lettering at all, like in The Shipper, is very unusual. In real life this is unique to Triam Udom Suksa School, which is commonly regarded as the country's top school. GMMTV previously did this in The Gifted, which kind of made sense as it conveyed that the school was unique and special, but this isn't true for The Shipper, so the stylistic choice seems a bit lazy.

This is also the case with 55:15 Never Too Late. Even stranger is the uniform from Nanon's storyline, which has khaki shorts signifying a provincial setting but the top is just a plain shirt with no markings or pin at all. It looks rather like an error in the production process that they had to roll with due to some limitation.

Girls' uniforms are much more varied, as private schools follow a variety of different styles. The standard style is mostly only used by government schools. For the upper-secondary level, it's a white button-up shirt (or blouse? I'm not sure of the terminology) with short sleeves that are pleated at the cuff, a navy (or, uncommonly, black) skirt with three pairs of wide pleats at the front and back, a black belt, white socks and black strapped shoes. The shirt will have the same markings as the boys' uniform. We see Pa wearing this in Bad Buddy (and also Tarn in the ITSAY pic above). Note that they made a mistake with her collar dot, as she was in M.6 in this scene and should have had three dots instead of one. (The same mistake happens with the younger music club students in episode 10. I guess the costume department just created one style based on the main characters and forgot to factor in the others.)

I won't attempt to list examples of all girls' uniforms here, as they're harder to keep track of in BL, but if it's a high-school setting and you see a different style of uniform than the above, it should be quite safe to assume it's a private school (especially if it's long-sleeved, with a necktie, or a blue, red or other brightly coloured skirt, like in the 7 Project example above), or a Satit school.

International schools usually have a different style of uniform altogether. They may be variably coloured, use shorts or trousers, include neckties, and the shirts won't have the usual lettering but commonly feature the school logo. Girls' skirts will commonly have a plaid/tartan pattern. Bilingual schools - private schools featuring a bilingual curriculum, with mainly Thai students - will also often use this style of uniform to some extent. We see it in Brothers, where the setting is supposed to be an international school.

While schools may have a full uniform with blazers and all, they'd only be used on special occasions. If characters wear them on a regular basis, it probably signifies a fantasy setting, or one somewhat removed from real life. This is fully utilized in Great Men Academy, which is as fantasy as you can get with magical wish-granting unicorns.

A similar effect is achieved with sweater vests, as seen in Second Chance. However, this is to emulate the Japanese/Korean uniform style, giving the show something of a J-/K-drama aesthetic while moving it away from the grounded reality of Thailand.

Sometimes, as in Friend Forever, a novel style is created that doesn't really carry any inherent meaning but is presumably done mainly for aesthetic reasons.

In real life, the standard-style boys' uniform (with embroidered lettering) may also use trousers, but this is only done in Islamic schools and the vocational education system, which are pretty much outside the realm of BL stories, so you won't likely come across them. (Update: This is no longer true with the existence of Don't Touch My Gang, but it didn't feature regular uniform, only the workshop shirt, which is covered below.)

Apart from the standard school uniform, most schools will also have a PE uniform, used on days with PE (gym) class, typically once a week for upper-secondary students. These aren't legally regulated, so they come in a large variety of styles, though many government schools will follow the same basic style of a coloured polo shirt made with a woven fabric, usually with the school logo on the pocket. We see Teh wearing this (though with the school initials instead of a logo) in ITSAY, with his usual uniform shorts. Most schools will have students wear the PE top from home and change into the PE bottom (typically sweatpants) just for PE class. Don't expect to see school showers, though, as they're not done in Thailand. Different classes mostly have PE on different days, and in meticulously written shows like ITSAY, where everything fits into the calendar, you can tell the day of the week from the PE uniform (it's Monday if you see Teh in his blue PE top).

As mentioned above, white canvas shoes may be required for PE uniforms, as seen again in The Love of Siam. This is mostly a feature of girls' uniforms, though, as boys' uniforms will more often use the shoes that are already part of their regular uniform, but schools which normally use leather shoes are a natural exception. However, they will more typically have students wear white shoes from home together with the PE top rather than change shoes at school like Mew apparently does. The shirt style here, a custom-patterned polo shirt with a knitted fabric, is also common.

We see another example of the style in Dew. Except for shoe colour, PE uniforms are usually identical for boys and girls.

Since there aren't actual limitations to PE uniform designs even in real life, creators sometimes have a field day with them. In Make It Right, the PE uniform is quite obviously a piece of fan service. (There are real-life schools that do use shorts, though they're not quite that short.)

Another uniform you might encounter is the Territorial Defence Student uniform. In Thailand, men face military conscription at age 21, upon which they will have to draw a lottery to determine whether they must enlist for two years. But there's an alternative to that. By completing three years of military training as Territorial Defence Students (often referred to as ร.ด. - Ror Dor (R.D.)), which is offered to upper-secondary school students, one avoids the need to face the lottery completely. Naturally, most middle-class boys will take the training. It takes half a day a week for 20 weeks each year (which is half the school year), plus up to a week of field training around January-February. For the weekly training days, if the session is in the afternoon, school will typically have only morning classes.

The need to attend Ror Dor is probably the most universally hated aspect of high school life for Thai boys, not because of the training itself, which is hardly intensive at all, but because of the military haircut requirements. Naturally this is never portrayed realistically, and many works ignore the existence of Ror Dor altogether. What's kind of funny is that the above storyline concerns Tee needing a haircut to pass Ror Dor inspection, but none of the characters except Mork come anywhere close.

The Ror Dor uniform is a khaki green combat uniform, with the student's name on the right chest and the school patch on the right arm. The Thai numeral on the left collar indicates the student's year. Here, it's ๒ (2), indicating that they're in the second year of training, which means M.5. The green T-shirt worn underneath is often worn casually by some.

In stories that go down to the lower-secondary or primary years, you may also see the Boy Scout uniform. In most schools, participation is mandatory for students up to M.3, and takes place once a week. Here in The Love of Siam, we see young Tong in the Scout uniform, indicating that he's in primary school, while Eiw and Cake in My Only 12% are wearing the Senior Scout uniform (with the maroon shoulder boards) of lower-secondary students.

That's pretty much everything regarding school uniforms, I think. Onto university...

In Thailand, universities have uniforms for undergraduate students. Unlike school uniforms, which are very specific, university uniforms are more loosely defined. In most cases they will be a white dress shirt and black (or navy) slacks for males, with black dress shoes, and a necktie and a belt buckle bearing the university symbol. For females, it's usually a white shirt/blouse with the university symbol pin, a black (or navy) skirt, shoes, and also a belt buckle bearing the university symbol. Some universities will also have metal buttons with the university symbol that have to be attached to the shirt.

While most universities will have defined uniforms, in practice, the requirements vary across universities (and across faculties within the same university). Many require that uniforms be worn for attendance of all classes, but some don't, and expect them only on exam days or special occasions. Strictness and adherence also varies. Often, people won't bother with the belt buckle, sneakers may be allowed (or turned a blind eye to), and jeans may even be permissible. This gives creators more leeway in designing the costumes to a varied visual effect.

In the above scene from Bad Buddy, Pran's upright collar (GMMTV does seem to like these, though I don't quite recall seeing them in real life), Wai's short sleeves (some universities officially have them as a uniform option, some don't), Safe's jacket (which is totally normal, by the way - they do blast the aircon in some lecture halls) and Louis's workshop shirt (more on this below) combine to provide visual contrast. The costume design is also often used for characterization. In Love by Chance, the timid and deferential Pete always wears his necktie, while the brasher Ae is never seen with it, nor does his shirt ever seem to be tucked in. (Untucked shirts are also used for characterization with school uniforms, though it's pretty much the only option.)

Even where uniforms are more strictly enforced, the necktie is usually not worn outside of formal occasions. Some universities have a tradition of requiring them only for freshmen, and similarly female freshmen may be required to wear below-knee accordion-pleated skirts (and for some universities, white shoes) for the entire first year. All of this is shown in SOTUS, as the entire series revolves around these hazing traditions. As freshmen, M and May wear the full university uniform (May with pleated skirt), while the sophomores are seen wearing pencil/mini-skirts and jeans with no necktie. The necktie doesn't have a printed logo, though it's attached as a tie pin - some schools do this. (Quite a lot of series, however, don't bother with having any sort of logo on the tie or belt buckle at all, which is a bit unrealistic, but in some cases could be explained away by the above-mentioned variability in strictness.)

Also famously depicted in SOTUS is the workshop shirt/smock/overshirt, which isn't really an official uniform, but a protective garment meant for practical classes. In some schools, there's been considerable drama over their use, as students often use it as a cover for casual clothing instead of wearing the regular uniform, which the staff disapproves. As so many series show, it's indeed quite commonly seen as an engineering-school symbol.

And that's pretty much all I can think of. If you've made it this far, thanks and congratulations! :p Let me know if I've forgotten anything.

#thai bl #thai culture #bl meta

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shijiujun · 1 year ago

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A Summary: The Spirealm | 致命游戏 (Kaleidoscope of Death 死亡万花筒 Live Action) & Why You Should (Eventually) Watch It

Talk about the most short-lived drama release ever, not even totalling two hours if I recall. Creating this summary as I've seen a handful of confused friends, so here it goes!

It's going to be a long review because I sped through all 78 episodes and only properly watched the first two doors, but I got you. You'll get both the brief book rundown and the drama parts!

If you just wanna see the bromance (LOVE) parts please skip to section 4!!!!

1. Overview

Title: The Spirealm (kinda awful I'm sorry it's a mouthful) or 致命游戏 which means fatal game

Adapted From: Danmei (BL) Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

Novel Prints: There are GORGEOUS Thai, Vietnamese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions printed, AND Singapore publisher Rosmei has signed the license for the ENGLISH version, probably going on sale this year (preview is here). You can still access fan translations by Taida on I think wordpress and someone else on Tumblr sorry bad memory (they did half and half each) if you'd like to read it for context. It is one of my FAVE danmeis EVER and I am a die-hard OG book fan, check out my full danmei review here.

Total Episodes: 78 (20 minutes each with the exception of last episode which 10 minutes, with several BTS not that I think we will get to see all of them yet)

Where to Watch (LOL): Erm considering that iQIYI China AND International took the episodes down, there is no legal way to watch this, BUT thanks to some cnetz with super fast and great wifi, we managed to get ripped HD versions without subs. iQIYI is very hard on copyright though, they've taken down several subbed and unsubbed versions already on YouTube, but you should type the titles of show into Twitter and the top tags will tell you where to access the raws and very little subbed episodes, that may also be taken down at any point. I have the Chinese raws but as it's hosted on a cloud, I had to pay to access it.

Main Characters: Lin Qiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the novel) and Ling Jiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the drama)

Produced By: iQIYI so for SURE they won't film it fully BL even if the original is, but I've seen enough bromance cuts

Main Actors: Xia Zhiguang (Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie) + Huang Junjie (Ling Jiushi)

2. Summary

Book (drama follows closely if not removing the supernatural premises): Lin Qiushi, a designer, opens the door to his home one day from inside and sees 12 iron doors outside. Confused, he opens one of them and arrives at a snow covered village in the mid of winter, and meets Ruan Baijie, who's a pretty, unusually tall and whiny/timid woman. They realise that they're in a horrifying door game, and they'll have to find a door and a key to get out, while battling a long-haired, human-eating deity. They, along with a few others, have to survive day after day until they get out, and on the first night, two people have died in gory ways. Ruan Baijie and Lin Qiushi partner each other, and despite seemingly timid and crying all the time, she saves Lin Qiushi a few times mysteriously, and Lin Qiushi finds himself trusting in Ruan Baijie.

They get through the door together and when they leave successfully, Lin Qiushi realizes that the people who died in the door will die in real life by some freak accident too - car accidents, forced suicides, a robbery gone wrong, a lift trapped in the air and going ablaze, and more. That night, Lin Qiushi wakes up to see a super handsome and tall Ruan Nanzhu at his bedside and this man feels familiar to him, but he can't put a finger on it. All he can think of when Ruan Nanzhu says his name is Ruan Baijie (ahem he would later find out who it is of course). Ruan Nanzhu takes him to his mansion in the suburbs where he meets a group of other people just like them, who're forced to go through the doors for survival. Ruan Nanzhu then invites him to join Obsidian, his organization.

Through various doors, Lin Qiushi grows and supports a super intelligent and powerful Ruan Nanzhu, falls in love with him, gets through many many scary doors with him and some of their other team members, makes friends, loses them to the cruelty of the doors as they ponder over what the door means, and what being alive/dying means.

And at the end of it, at the end of of it all, when they're all good and living their life, Lin Qiushi also finds out what Ruan Nanzhu's secret is, and the lengths to which Ruan Nanzhu went to, just to be with him.

Drama: Ling Jiushi is a VR game designer who gets pulled into a game, and he meets Ruan Baijie (in his male form) right off the bat (SO NOT CROSSDRESSING I AM SAD). All the parts are actually the same as the novel, albeit with the game setting and Ling Jiushi and Ruan Nanzhu's identity adjustments to suit the game premise. Most of the other doors and their lines are the same, just that the ending is a bit more confusing than it could be. There's a big bad as well and they actually show the opposing organizations when in the novel, these other organizations aside from Obsidian didn't even actually have a face or goal to them.

3. Characters

^ Them in the book (based on manhua that never got to go live LOL) (RNZ/RBJ left, LQS right)

^ Them in the show (LJS left, RNZ right)

Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie: MY HANDSOME CROSSDRESSING INTELLIGENT ALOOF BUT WHINY (WHEN IT COMES TO LIN QIUSHI) SASSY BOSS!!!! He's super mysterious and super thick-skinned too, and all he wants is Lin Qiushi's attention the moment he meets him. He's intrigued by Lin Qiushi's calm and his brains and the way he handles things, and has a lot of trust for him right from the get-go. This is also shown in the drama itself. As the leader of Obsidian, he cares a lot for his team members and his friends even if he doesn't show it most of the time, and the last thing he wants to do is lose Lin Qiushi, and he would do ANYTHING for Lin Qiushi, ANYTHING!!! Just look at him whining:

Ling Jiushi (Lin Qiushi): In the novel he's super calm, has quite a lot of brains, a little bit of a blur in the beginning but he's super smart as well. Worries a lot for Ruan Nanzhu and is also a loyal friend to some of his only friends, and feels a lot when he loses them. Falls gradually in love with Ruan Nanzhu in the novel, like they just belong together. In this drama, Ling Jiushi holds that same trust for Ruan Nanzhu, but in demeanour he seems a bit more like a klutz and and not as cool as he was in the novel, but I guess it's acceptable. Literally like the only thing he loves more than RNZ (maybe) is his cat Chestnut LOL and RNZ is NOT really happy about that but Chestnut LOVES RNZ

Yixie and Qianli: CUTEST TWINS ;-; WHO TREAT RNZ and LQS as their big brothers LOOK AT THEM BOWING AND RNZ/LJS like parents LMAO

A handful of other characters who will keep turning up and get your hearts ;-;

4. ALL FAVE BROMANCE MOMENTS + TROPES

THEY TOUCH EACH OTHER A LOT LIKE HOLDING HANDS AND TOUCHING FACES, PIGGY BACKING?!?! DID I MENTION FACE TOUCHING

WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP THEY HELP EACH OTHER WHEN HURT OR GET HURT FOR EACH OTHER

AND WHEN THEY WAKE UP IN BED THE OTHER IS AT THEIR BEDSIDE

AND DID I MENTION HE FEEDS HIM IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

AND THAT THEY DATED UNDER THE FIREWORKS LIKE THE NOVEL DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THIS SHIT

AND THE KABEDONS

AND FINALLY RUAN NANZHU RIZZ OMG

5. Settings

They REALLY OUTDID THEMSELVES. THIS JUST FROM DOORS 1-6:

THEY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE NOVEL DESCRIBED!!!!

6. Overall Thoughts

PROS: This was NOT a cheap production, I'm telling you, they followed the cases very well and there're a lot of super recognisable lines, if not ALL of them, even if they changed the cases a little. I think they did it because in the novel originally, the author DOES leave a lot of details hanging like someone dies and you know he had a background and there are some shady things happening but the author NEVER actually goes into detail. So the drama did their best to cover these loopholes, even if it felt a little awkward at times. Money went into settings and attires and every damn thing, this looks EXPENSIVE. And if you've ever imagined each door and the bosses inside in your head, you might have felt chills go down your spine because damn did they really colour the book's settings for me (despite its differences). DID I MENTION that Xia Zhiguang really got the damn memo and he was a passable Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie who knew how to turn on his BL eyes. PLUS they really did some of the character deaths really well - they're technically some of the biggest parts of this story so ;-; (not two main of course)

CONS (maybe): They did away with the supernatural/horror premise and replaced it with a GAME premise, which means that there's a scientific element to it and the try to explain away stuff with the game, including the ending. I don't 100% get the ending, but the feel/vibe is about the same. Might not be for hardcore reader fans tho! They skipped out on a couple of doors, some of which were my faves, but it's fine, it's long enough LOL. They give away/explain some of the clues and surprises super early which means you don't get that added boom at the back as well. Despite that, I have to say they tried to round up the loopholes from the book as much as they could and give it an explanation while tying elements/conspiracies across doors (probably also to save cast fees LOL). And as always it's not a solid ending, it's an open confusing one, and even more confusing than the book itself because THERE IS NO CERTAIN HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH HUBBY for it (there is in the book tho, they live together happily every after). Secondl,y, I'd say HJJ's acting is a bit stiff and OOC compared to the novel, but Xia Zhiguang really made up for it.

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HOPE THIS HELPS YOU GUYS!!! But I guess if you need subs it's going to be a long LONGGGG ride, considering that iQIYI doesn't seem to be going to be able to put it up anytime soon CRIES.

#the spirealm #致命游戏 #zhi ming you xi #kaleidoscope of death #kod #kod la #danmei #dangai #bl drama #asianlgbtqdramas #死亡万花筒 #lin qiushi #ling jiushi #ruan nanzhu #xia zhiguang #huang junjie

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absolutebl · 3 months ago

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This Week in BL - It's Wild Out There but the Kisses are Good

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

NOV 2024 Week 3

Ongoing Series - Thai

Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 11 of 12 - I’m really enjoying this show. But I will be glad when it ends next week. I’m ready. The motorcycle rescue in the middle of the kidnapping sequence was so absurdly bad I actually laughed. Meanwhile, in the hospital room did you notice Q’s dad used chan/nai with Min? I actually gasped out “oh, mad respect “ when he did. Papang it’s so damn hot, could he PLEASE get the lead in a BL? Please GMMTV.

Love Sick 2024 (Sun iQIYI) ep 9 of 15 - I like Earn’s sincerity and open admission in the new version, and I like how genuine and delicate Noh is coping with someone crushing on him. Probably because he knows how painful it is from the other side. The conversation between Phun and Aim was much better and more kind in the new version, too. I'm chronicling my experience with 2024 as compared to 2014 here.

Every You Every Me (Mon Gaga) ep 6 of 10 - I like this couple a lot, and not just because of all the sex positivity. I just enjoy their dynamic of artist and musician, introvert extrovert. Anybody wondering about that “up against the window blurring thing” with the shirt off the shoulder? That’s a very very old yaoi trope (mostly office yaoi from the early 2000s) that I haven’t seen in a long time. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it in Thai BL…… wild.

Meanwhile, let the weird interweaving of the filming crew begin. The show within a show that we all suspected was due is now happening. I’m not sure about that. (I worry it will be some clumsy commentary on pair branding.) But how hot does Fiat look these days?

Fourever You (Thurs YT) ep 7 of 16 - I really don’t like the second storyline. It find it unpleasant. I also don’t think the chemistry between Maxky and Bas is good. In fact I begin to suspect Star Hunter should cut Bas lose. Yes I said it.

Caged Again (Fri Gaga) ep 1-2 of 10 - Penguin escapes zoo by turning into a human. Gets trapped in a boys school and a panther falls in love with him. How does a penguin know how to read? OK I’m not gonna try to figure out the logic of this show. There is none. Do I like it? Not sure. I’m not mad about the dynamic or the setting but the main foundational conceit is…… odd. It’s not uncommon in BL, the “my cat boyfriend” thing has been done for many years now. So I know what to expect. It’s not that. Or is it? I do like how the actor playing Junior looks a bit like a bird. I also like how the actor playing Sun really does behave like a cat in his social interactions, it’s funny. I think…… I’m not wild about this so far, but I like it better than I thought I would. Love seeing Jaonine & Nokia in any form.

Perfect 10 Liners (Sun YT?) ep 3 of 24 - I just don’t like Arc and Arm. Sorry not sorry. However, I do like the sides and future couples. So I’m sticking with this one.

Jack & Joker (Mon IQIYI) ep 10 of 12 - Because I heard this episode was really rough and the world is a mess I gave this one a miss this week. We’ll see if I’m up for it next week.

Your Sky (Sun iQIYI) 12 eps - (starts tomorrow) A naive freshman and the campus’s popular senior agree to pretend to be a couple - but their fake deal begins to generate real feelings.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

My Damn Business (Korea Sat YT) ep 7 end - Ooooo counter lift!!! And caught in the act. Very nice. It was a really good final episode and an absolutely fantastic kiss.

In summation:

Two men work their last few days together at a failing company. I like this but I’m not sure I should like it. This is a classic office romance, short even for Korea, with more than usual workplace harassment (even for BL) in the guise of aggressive pursuit from older boss to younger employee. (The optics are NOT good.) It reminded me of Jun and Jun only shorter, colder, and with more dub con. Now, I happen to be one of the few who truly loved Jun and Jun, it’s very much my style of KBL. I think that’s part of why I liked this one so much. But I suspect that might have given this show too much shine by association. Still, eminently rewatchable and it’s nice to have Korean IP drop on YouTube. 8/10

Our Youth AKA Miseinen: Mijukuna Oretachi wa Bukiyo ni Shinkochu (Japan Tues Gaga) ep 2 of 11 - Another one that is about abuse, but for some reason I don’t mind it as much as I did Let Free the Curse. Maybe it’s Japan? Maybe it’s the disinterested nature of the director’s lens? This show is examining the inclination of teenagers towards spectatorhood out of fear, while simultaneously giving us a contrived spectator’s perspective with its style of the filming. For example: there is a lot of shots in alleyways and looking in and out of apertures (like doorways and windows) at Hirukawa. He’s often seen from a distance, because Minase thinks of him as distant and somewhat like a specimen. It’s very clever and what I expect from Japan. But it also makes me feel distanced from the characters and their story (intentionally, I believe) which means it’s less raw than Curse, and a lot easier for me to watch. In other words, I am observing this BL, not living it. But that’s the point. And because of that, I’m also liking it. But I’m extremely wary. Japan never drops a kiss early on in a series without some serious trauma to follow.

See Your Love (Taiwan Weds Gaga) ep 5 of 13 - I love them all very much. Carry on.

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (China Sun iQIYI) eps 5-6 of 12 - So far as I can gather it was episode five that got this one censored and kicked off the air in China. So now we are in unchartered (and presumably only lightly censored) territory. Honestly? I have no idea how they get away with what they get away with these days. Onto the actual meet of the show. I don’t think the teacher should be flirting with the kid if he’s gonna blow hot and cold like that. He is ostensibly the mature one in the relationship. Although if he’s flirting with a child, that is clearly not the case. I get the conflict of the main characters a bit more. Because it’s all about class and the risks that you can take with your identity depending on how much autonomy you have in society.

Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YT) ep 8 of ? - Basically this is just a narrative about bullying. And I’d like to get onto the revenge portion of the program, and that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. I do love that Dat asked for permission to kiss. Consent is very sexy. Also it was a good tentative careful cautious timid first kiss. The actors are older but it felt high school. (Although apparently Bach entirely kissed away Dat’s injury.)

Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 9 of 12 eps - Gosh I really do like this couple. And I like the legal proceedings. But I’m worried about whether this show is going to end well.

Love in the Air: Koi no Yokan (Japan Sat Gaga) ep 3 of 10 - Frankly I didn’t want LITA the original, so I’m pretty sure I don’t want the Japanese cliffs notes version of LITA. It’s somehow softer, which I wasn’t expecting from Japan. But I don’t mind. The brevity and softness are improving matters, IMHO. I continue to unequivocally loathe the wardrobe department. I’m offended on the actors’ behalf.

Eccentric Romance (Korea Weds Viki) eps 11-12 end - An odd and somewhat lackluster piece about two college friends, one Thai and one Korean, who get together and become boyfriends while investigating murderer - each speaking in their own language. Neither the BL component nor the murder component was well executed or engaging. It’s not terrible, but that’s no ringing endorsement. "Odd yet still somehow forgettable" is probably how I would put it. 6/10

It's airing but......

Love for Loves Sake got some kind of special supposed to air 11/9. Not sure what, why, or where. Only the rumor that it...... is. I'll believe it when I see it...... literally.

Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) 10 eps - I DNF'd at ep 7, I couldn't make it. I am weak. Life is hard enough right now, this show is making it harder. It’s not what I want from my entertainment.

Secret Love (Sat YT) 10 eps - Another take on my beloved stepbrothers trope. Adopted into a rich family, boy falls in love. But when he is made the heir instead, everything goes wrong and he leaves. Now enemies the two boys reunite in uni.

DAMN IT! This is airing but in two minute increments on a proprietary app that’s mostly for Android, and it’s already up to episode 11. I’m not wild about this style of distribution, so I’m not gonna bother unless somebody cuts it together as a full piece. Although I do adore the premise.

Bad to Bed (Taiwan Sat YouTube) 10 eps - This is a little too low production value even for me. And just very very odd. DNF

Next Week Looks Like This:

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

November BL still to come:

11/20 Winter Is Not The Death of Summer (Thai Weds YT) ?? eps - Criminals who meet in prison fall in love

11/20 The Heart Killers (Thai Weds Gaga) 12 eps - Jojo directs FirstKhao & JoongDunk in an action romcom about assassin brothers (Khao & Joong) who meet a tattoo artist ex-booster (First) and a mechanic (Dunk). I'm highly amused that Joong plays the older brother to Khao and that we have a take on the Taming of the ShrewBL. I like that everyone is morally gray. This has all GMMTV's best chemistry in one BL and some fresh concepts that I've only seen tackled in m/m romance novels (check out Amy Lane's Racing for the Sun, thank me later). I'm excited. My only quibble is Jojo, I like his style but his characters can get unreliably messy so…... this gonna be interesting.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENT

Apparently I have feels about wardrobe departments this week, because, to use an old fashioned term, this look on him absolutely slaps. (Love Sick)

It's rare for Thai BL to beat out JBL in the fashion department.

(last week)

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

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theheightofdishonor · 4 months ago

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GL Recs Masterlist

I've watched a couple hundred gls now and so I thought i'd put it to good use and help other people find some. There's not enough gl rec lists anyway

First things first, I'll like to direct you to https://mydramalist.com/list/1xrpwdW3 which is a gl rec list on mdl with more than 200+ titles + links. It's an EXCELLENT resource, kept up to date and even tracks upcoming titles.

Now for stuff that I've watched and thought are decent. I'll link all of these to their mdl page and the links to watch the show can usually be found in the comments. If you're new to gl, be warned that a lot of these are pretty short, ranging from 1-30 minutes.

1 in 10,000 (2018) Korea. This is a soulmates piece told in 3 parts following two girls through different parts of their lives. I think this got more confusing as it went on but I really liked Act I and I think it's worth watching. It's beautiful and angsty and a bit artsy. I'm pretty sure it has a happy ending but don't quote me on that.

Afraid of (2019) Korea. A short film about a girl struggling with her sexuality. Yeah, I know, there's a THOUSAND of these but I do like this one. It's beautifully shot and there's a lot of heart.

Am I the only one with butterflies? (2018) Korea. A girl blogs about falling in love with the manager at her new job. I like part ii better than part one but it's just cute and the pining is very similar to het kdramas.

Anonymous high school girl (2022) Korea. A low stakes love triangle. Good chemistry, low budget, awful kisses.

The Beauty of the Law (2023) China- If you're not familar with chinese gls, I think it's certainly something to get used to. This is like in the top 1% of the category. It's an ad for Adolph Shampoo and i'm going to let you know that they're going to appear often on this list because they make excellent gls. It's a historical about a female unlicensed lawyer trying to help a woman escape her abusive marriage. Makes great points about gender imbalances and women's historical lack of legal rights in China. (f you like this one, Sheng Wei, one of the actresses stars in 50%+ of all chinese gls, check her out)

Beguine (2018) Thailand - It's if the school dancing scene in My School President was a 30 minute sequence with two girls. No plot but adorable.

Cat in the eastern palace (2020) China - Watch this just to have the surreal experience of seeing like 3 whole cdrama arcs which normally take 20ish eps executed in a 7 minute timeframe. Also because it stars laoji who's in the other 50% of chinese gls. As for plot, it's about a cat spirit and a girl pretending to be the crown prince.

Clasper (2021) Thailand - And they were roommates! I liked the production, the dialogue and the acting was pretty decent.

Couple of Mirrors*** (2021) China- Wait to watch this because it will ruin you for everything else. This is like typical thai bl length, like 12 45~min episodes. It's a historical mystery about a wealthy woman who finds out about her husband's affair with her bff and the photographer she enlists to help her. If you watch one thing out of China, watch this.

Dear My Girlfriend (2021) Korea - A group project ft love triangle. It´s pretty classic. A girl starts dating someone who likes her only to realize she might instead be in love with her best friend. The editing is cute. It's a touch angsty as love triangles are and pretty well done.

Dear Uranus (2021) Taiwan. Another school love triangle. Does feature an adorkable female character, you know a bit awkward, a bit cutesy, if you hate this archetype, ignore this one. Personally I think the chemistry for the lead couple was lacking (genuinely shocking considering taiwan tends to be great at this) but both the love interests are hot and I am not immune to hot women

The Demonic lord and the virtuous cultivator (2021) China - Avoid this if you don't like toxic yuri. I personally love it so this is 10/10 for me. Orphan gets taken in by a benevolent benefactor who turns out to be her parents' killer and eventually....you know what go watch it.

Encore Martha (2021) Taiwan. One of the few gls about older women. A tomboy reunites with her first love. This one's only available on gagaoolala so you'll either need a subscription or sometimes they promote it for free. If you can find it though, it's worth a watch.

Family Plan (2016) Korea. This is a bit of an odd one to describe. The first half is two high school girls who are dating. And then the second half is their relationship as adults where they marry guys and use it to have a kid that they raise as theirs. I liked how this examined how two gay people would go about their relationship in in a world where they can't freely be with each other.

Favorite Girl (2022) Thailand. Very standard plot about a girl suffering from a breakup and her roommate but something about it stuck out to me.

Five steps to accept farewell (2016) Korea. Warning for unhappy ending. This is all pure angst, a 9 minute snapshot into a breakup. I like how it's done and the messiness of the situation.

Fragrance of the first flower (2021) Taiwan. A beautifully shot, beautifully acted, slightly too short show about two ex-lovers reuniting ft. all the angst about living in a homophobic society. It stayed in my head for weeks after I first watched it.

Girls Blood** (2014) Japan. A movie about 4 "girls" in an underground fight club. warnings for rape, trauma, domestic assault. One of the main characters is a trans man. There are sex scenes. It's very queer and I highly recommend.

Girls Love** (2016) China. Pre-censorship China had some very wonderful queer work and one of them was this movie It's about a girl who falls in love with her hot butch roommate ft all the tropes AND we get to see them function in a relationship instead of the movie ending when they get together. Warning for both characters being forcibly outed at the end. (nothing bad really happens to them after though). Also do NOT watch the sequel. If you go to mdl, everyone else will also tell you not to watch the sequel and I foolishly did not listen to those people because I liked these girls so much and I suffered for my mistake.

The Girls on Rela (2016) China. It's an anthology of short, I wouldn't say stories, more like moments, sponsored by a lesbian dating app. Each one's really short but the acting and scripts are all pretty good.

The Girls on Rela Season 2** (2016) China. This is sponsored by the same company but it's a totally different format. It's one long show about two girls cohabiting. Pretty well executed if a bit slow.

Graduation, Present + Propose (2021) Korea. A short about a high school girl giving a graduation present to her crush. What it does it does well. It's pretty.

The Handmaiden (2016) Korea. Historical set movie about a conman and thief girl who plot to steal a heiress’s fortune. I make it sound boring but that's only because it's a pretty popular movie and everything to be said about it has already been said.

Happy to have you here (2021) Thailand. Two friends have a sleepover and figure out their feelings. This is definitely in the top 20% for this trope, even though they rushed just a tad into the kiss.

Hello, spring is coming (2019) Korea. I'll let you read the synopsis for this one. What you need to know is that it's pretty, well acted, has good chemistry and is as brightly colored as a lollipop. It's a bit disorienting, parts of it doesn't make a lot of sense but it's a fun time.

I broke up because of you (2023) Korea- A bartender and their client catches feelings for each other. The dynamic is nice, the kiss less so but it can be forgiven.

I’m her weapon (2022) China- It's kinky, it's angsty, it's 3 minutes long and still fits in a separation arc. I would pay money for an extended version.

Kanojo no Kuchidzuke Kansensuru Libido (2022) Japan - two girls fall in love in a hospital. I like the tone of this one.

The L Bang** (2015) China- Another Rela production. It's a 4 episode comedy about a bunch of lesbians + (1) gay man who live in the same apartment complex. It's got queer friendship, queer acceptance and queer love. It's just wonderful. It feels like 2000s American sitcoms but queer and Chinese.

Led Astray by Love (2022) China- Fairly long for a cgl. A girl gets transported to a manhwa and falls in love with the ruler. Sunshine/grumpy. This baby is 52 minutes long and covers like the same amount of plot as word of honor does in 30 something episodes.

Legend of Yunze (2021) China - A human and a half demon vanquish demons from a village. It has a second season and a special that I haven't watched yet.

The Lost World** [Xia Ye Zhi Dao Feng De Tian] (2023) China - After watching as much cgl as I have, I was shocked to see Laoji in a modern piece. This is a college setting running-into-a-childhood-friend trope. The pacing and chemistry are both pretty good. It's one of my favorites from her.

Love in the Tinder Age** (2019) Korea- A black comedy about a bullied lesbian's failed suicide attempt ft psychics, ghosts and a teacher/student relationship. It's not really a gl because the main character doesn't get a romance BUT it's really fun so you should watch it anyway.

Love of Secret** (2022) Thailand- More of a slice of life than a love story but it's cute and fluffy and the main character very much is in a relationship. The actual plot is about a med student who's hiding both her relationship with her best friend and her dreams to be an idol. I found it positively charming.

Lover’s Concerto** (2002) Korea- Calling this a gl is a stretch. It's more just queer? The girls were most likely in love but they don't end up together and the movie itself doesn't really have a happy ending. I did find it beautiful though.

Mayfly angel (2024) Korea- Classic discovers-feelings-for-bestie-after-a-breakup plot. Warning that this is angsty and they don't end up together. But I found it realistic and I liked that they felt like two real people. Take that how you will.

Miss shen and the woman warlord (2023) China- a woman cross-dresses as another young woman's fiance and they fall in love. Despite how i describe it, there's a decent amount of plot and some political commentary.

More or less than 75 celsius (2019) Korea- A tea master and her supervisor fall in love. It's sparse and short but cute.

My Dear (2021) Thailand. A drunk girl confesses to her friend and luckily for her, it's mutual. It's 5 minutes long but it uses its time well and the acting is nice. It feels a bit like gmmtv's confessions. If you like it, the production company ShakeShoulder makes TONS of gl shorts and i'd recommend checking them out.

No distance left to run (2022) Hong Kong. a 15 minute short film about how fame causes issues in a pop star's relationship. Unhappy ending. The song's a bop though and it's well done.

Nü er hong** (2023) China. I forgot to mention but this one, the legend of yunze and the lost world are all produced by the same studio. They do a lot of fairly long chinese gls. The story is about these two beings from an alien world who crash land on earth and are hunted. One is a healer and the other is a killer, they're in love, the killer goes insane so her lover kills her. Unbeknownst to them, they're immortal so the killer wakes up with no memories 200 years later. The pacing is better than some of their earlier stuff but it's not quite perfect here yet. It is one of my favorites from the studio though and it ends happily.

Our relationship ended before it began (2022) Korea. A barista falls in love with her manager at a coffee shop ft gender roles, miscommunication and the classic "cool one picks on the nice one to show affection" trope.

Pyramid Game** (2024) Korea. This is more gl adjacent like Devil Judge and Beyond Evil. There is a secondary gl couple that's more explicitly canon though. If you've watched other kdramas about school bullying, this is pretty similar except it's an all-girls school and everyone is so gay. It's got so much heart and is one of my favorite shows of the year.

Really, Lily? (2019) Korea. A 6 minute short about two girls who visit a cafe and beats up two men who were making homophobic remarks about them. It's surprisingly comedic and the coloring is bright to match. Features a pretty decent kiss. Watching it, I wished it was longer but what's there is still good.

Secret of us (2024) Thailand. The only longform thai gl that i've liked enough to finish. It's about an idol who comes back to win over her doctor ex. It falters from ep 6 onwards but until then, the show is really good at showing the emotional thought processes of the characters and the way they construct the story is compelling, even though I don't even like second chance romances.

Shackles (2023) China. Another one from the Chinese shampoo ad. The pairing itself is not my favorite but it's so cool that this is basically a warning against nuclear pollution AND features chinese mythology that's used in the brand's marketing. Like a 3 in 1. It's so interesting.

She Makes My heart flutter (2022) Korea. Baby lesbian finds out her aunt runs a lesbian bar and starts working there. It's so goddamn cute but it has this weird relationship with homophobia where everyone in the show is apparently 100% ok with queerness but a lot of the aunt's actions is so driven by her being a queer person in an unaccepting society. A bit like how Moonlight Chicken deals with Jin and Li Ming's different attitudes towards being queer except they don't dwell on why the aunt is the way she is or what she's been through. Anyways, it's worth a watch.

Sleep with me (2022) Philippines. A 6 episode series about two girls who are disabled in different ways fall in love. One of them can only sleep during the day and the other is in a wheelchair and the show does a pretty decent job at showing how these disabilities affect their lives and their relationship

Soshite, Yuriko wa Hitori ni Natta** (2020) Japan. If you follow me, you may have seen me talk about this show earlier this year because I found it and promptly fell in love. It's not quite gl but Mizuki's actions are all driven by the fact that she's in love with Yuriko. It's queerer than you would expect, less queer than you might want. It's a supernatural-adjacent school horror about a girl who's new school has a weird thing where every year, a girl named Yuriko becomes "Yuriko sama" and rules the school while everyone else in that year with the same name mysteriously dies. Yuriko's best friend Mizuki plots to make the sweet innocent Yuriko the newest Yuriko-sama to save her life. It's weird, there's plot holes everywhere by the end, it definitely vilifies it's gays and the ending is weak but it's such a compelling watch.

Stand-in love (2023) Philippines. 2 best friends have a ‘stand in’ relationship where the straight one helps the lesbian one learn how to court someone but they end up falling in love with each other. Like 20 min long and I love it.

Ti Shen** [The substitute] (2017) Taiwan. The mdl synopsis can describe the plot better than I can but it's a romance between an idol and a normal girl that's split into two parts. The first half is about them meeting in high school, the second is when they reunite later on a movie set where one of them is the other's stunt double. I think the first part could've been a bit longer but it's a great movie.

Transit Girls (2015) Japan. Stepsisters. Happy ending though and it's fairly long. I liked this mostly because I like Japan's moody stuff. I also liked how they handled the male love interest.

Truth or Dare (2022) Korea. A 10 minute short about two girls who like each other playing truth or dare. It does a great job at building tension and revealing things without saying it.

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna** (2022) Japan. A woman who loves to cook comes to an arrangement with her neighbor who loves to eat. Japan does food-centered dramas better than everyone else and this is no exception. The romance itself is slow and you watch how their dynamic changes through this and the season two that came out this year.

The Twelve flower gods: Camelia (2020) China. A xianxia romance about a girl falling in love with a flower but it's a minute twenty so I promise you're not watching for the plot. You're watching to witness the ridiculous amount of innuendos that they manage to fit in under two minutes.

Twin souls of destiny (2023) China. Xianxia romance between two elves, one who is made from the memories of the other's past life. I want someone else to watch this so we can discuss whether or not this is selfcest. The color combination is interesting because I very rarely see lovers in red and purple. The time travel is confusing but it's a good time and laoji is in it.

Until Rainbow Dawn** (2018) Japan. Movie about two deaf girls falling in love ft homophobic parents. The director is a deaf lesbian herself so the movie does a wonderful job in how it depicts deafness and their relationship. It's really well done

When the light pours (2022) Korea. A girl's boyfriend wants her to sing him a song so she enrolls in guitar lessons and ends up falling in love with her teacher. The girls don't get together and I really wish they had! So if you watch this, don't watch the ending and pretend that they did end up together.

#gl series #wlw #gl drama #thai gl #korean gl #gl recs #sapphic media #until rainbow dawn #fragrance of the first flower #couple of mirrors #she makes my heart flutter #sleep with me #she loves to cook and she loves to eat #secret of us #love of secret

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lgbtally4ever · 8 months ago

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Spaceless

Short Film

Bible Wichapas

You Tube

youtube

#spaceless #short film #bible wichapas #you tube #thai bl #thai bl actors #short gay film

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mysterygrl20 · 2 years ago

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do you have 20 minutes to spare for a crying sesh

youtube

#bl drama #thai bl #thai short film #childhood short film #Youtube

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absolutebl · 11 months ago

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@danmeiljie have you seen this one?

The full PerthLay short film.

It's so fucking adorable we deserve this so much.

#omg it's so cute!!!#thai bl #japanese bl #nice to see Perth using his language skills!#PerthLay #LayPerth #BL short film #BL short

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twig-tea · 1 month ago

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2024 BL/GL/QL Round-Up Post

Since I did this last year, I thought for posterity I'd post another reflection on everything I watched that completed in 2024. For me, that means anything that started in 2023 but the last episode was in 2024 is on this list, but anything that was still be airing after 31 December 2024 11:59 my time (EST) is not on this list, even if the bulk of the show did air in 2024.

A few stats:

[The image is TL;DR for what follows lol]

I watched ~150 discrete pieces of new QL content in 2024 (series/films) that I tracked [It gets complicated with specials and split seasons but I did my best to be consistent]; plus 10 things that I would consider "adjacent". For contrast, I listed 110 pieces of discrete content in 2023; that's a 45% increase year over year!

This clocked in at an est. 900 hours of new BL/GL and adjacent content (up from ~600 in 2023--which also tells us that the content I tracked was a little longer overall because that's a full 50% increase in terms of hours spent).

The new content I watched came from 9 different countries [same as 2023]: (Cambodia [1], Philippines [2, down from 3], Hong Kong [1], Japan [32, up from 18 in 2023], Korea [20; was 19], Myanmar [2, up from 1], Taiwan [12, up from 6], Thailand [75; up from 56], Vietnam [4, down from 7]), China [5], and then 3 joint effort productions from Thailand/Korea [2] and Thailand/Taiwan [1]

This means just under ~47% of the content I watched on this list is from Thailand [close to the 50% in 2023]

So many more shows had multiple or varied distributions this year, but like last year ~85% of my content was on 3 platforms: YouTube [38%; down from 40%], GaGaOoLaLa [30%; up from 23%] and iQIYI [17%; down from 21%] Note: I'm in Canada and my access routes are sometimes affected by that.

As unbelievable as it sounds with all that, I did actually drop shows this year! I dropped 9 shows, which is I think more than I've dropped in my entire previous 20+ years watching queer asian media combined (that might be an exaggeration but I do really hate dropping shows); 4 Thai, 3 Filipino, 1 Taiwanese and 1 Japanese (listed at the very bottom of this post if you want to be messy). I didn't track any dropped shows in 2023.

And if you're wondering how many shows there are in the world in total, I am aware of an additional 11 shows I just did not have time to even start (2 from Cambodia, 4 from the Philippines, 3 from Thailand, and 1 each from Korea and Myanmar). That does not include the vertical short reels that I didn't track this year--see @ellsieee 's tracking post for these--as well as several GL shorts from JPC media YouTube channel and Sastra film app YouTube channel that I just have not had time to try or even keep track of, though I do peek in on them to see if there's anything that looks particularly good, and I do always link these folks in my GL round-ups.

All of this doesn't include re-watches or catching up on old shows, or non-QL queer media, or non-queer media (the hets sometimes do deserve rights); but does include films as well as shows.

I hope you all appreciate that with this much content, and with my general brand of being unable to make decisions, I really struggled to narrow down a top 10 list. What follows is the best I could do lol

Top 25 QLs I'd Recommend From This Year:

[Links are self-indulgently to what I thought was the most relevant post I'd made this year relevant to that series/media, mostly spoiler-free pitches]

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat S2 (Tsukutabe) [GL]

Love in the Big City

Love For Love's Sake

Tadaima Okaeri [anime]

Ossan no pantsu ga nandatte ii janai ka (Oppan)

Marahuyo Project

Knock Knock Boys

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo

Love is Like a Poison (Doku koi)

Ossan's Love Returns

Twilight out of Focus [anime]

At 25:00 in Akasaka

Cooking Crush

Cherry Magic [anime]

Cherry Magic Thailand

Takara no Vidro

Soul Sisters / Twin Rabbits [GL]

Perfect Propose

Unknown the series

Paradise of Thorns [film]

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days

The Secret of Us [GL]

Mr Mitsuya's Planned Feeding (Mitsuya-Sensei)

The Time of Fever

A Man Who Defies the World of BL S3

I tried to put these in some kind of order but honestly if you asked me to rank them the numbering would change all the time and I would combust. The ones I liked best are closer to the top of this list. I also debated back and forth on whether Paradise of Thorns counts as QL so many times. But in the end I decided the main character was queer and queer romance of a sort was at the heart of the drama, so I've left it in this list even though technically it should probably sit with the 'adjacent's.

Worth noting that though only ~20% of the content I watched was from Japan, ~45% of my favourites were from Japan.

+5 notable pulp offerings worth mentioning:

Bagan Beginning (Myanmar)

City of Stars (Thailand)

Gym Affairs (China)

To the Ex Who Hated Me (Korea, GL)

Under the Oak Tree (Vietnam)

I think I'll do a top 10 GL post separately since we had enough content to warrant a top 10 (yay!) but this is already long enough. I just want to take a second to acknowledge that this year was so much better than in 2023 when I didn't feel like I could recommend any of the new GL shows. Thank you content creators for better and more GL in 2024, please keep that energy for 2025!

Bonus: Not a QL but worth calling out:

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (Thai film)

I saw both this and Paradise of Thorns in theatres during the Toronto International Film Festival and they were both so powerful! Extremely different tones but they surprisingly hit on similar themes, and very beautifully filmed. HTMMBGD was a complicated film filled with very rounded and complex characters, and I still think about it all the time. Very excited for more folks to have access to both of these soon.

Sidenote: The fact that I watched 45% more shows in 2024 than I did in 2023 and still managed to keep my rec list to 30 (*cough1cough*) does seem to back up the general feeling that though we had more content, we didn't have a proportional rise in good content. I do want to crunch those numbers in another post.

Double Plus Bonus: Best Older QL Content I watched for the first time in 2024:

Life as a Girl / Joshi-teki Seikatsu (Japan, 2018; I'm so sad I missed out on this one for so long due to misinfo, it is fantastic! Thanks to @so-much-yet-to-learn for helping propel me to this one)

Iron Ladies (Thailand, 2000; thank you for the rec, @happypotato48)

Nacchan's Secret / Himitsu no Nacchan (Japan, 2023; thank you @furritsubs for making this watch possible)

Can I Buy Your Love From a Vending Machine / Sono Koi, Jihanki de Kaemasuka? (Japan, 2023; thanks to @nicks-den for making this watch possible)

I Fell In Love with the Villainness (Japan, 2023; watched because of a convo with @pilanthitasanilaphat)

Doi Boy (Thailand, 2023; this one I had on my list and just had to work up the energy to watch, but it was a beautiful film and I'm glad I did)

BL Metamorphosis (Japan, 2022; another thank you to @furritsubs)

Dear Dad (India, 2016; thanks to @neuroticbookworm for the rec!)

Salty Blue / Kakenuketara, Umi (Japan, 2023, thank you again @nicks-den!)

[I can't believe I forgot this at first] The Miracle of Teddy Bear (Thailand, 2022, thanks for going on that journey and writing great meta with me and for calling me out for forgetting @lurkingshan!)

There is so much good content in the world and despite my best efforts I haven't seen everything! So grateful to the fansubbers and people who write about past shows so that those of us who missed them the first time still get a chance to see them.

In terms of my output based on all this input, I continued not lurking this year, and have enjoyed it very much; see my Top 10 posts from 2024 here as well as the content I linked in my recommended shows above--going through the process of adding those links really highlighted to me how much more I've written this year, and how much more motivated I am to write about shows I love. It's no surprise I had dedicated posts for most of my top shows! To highlight a few specific projects this year that I'm proud of, I participated in the Love in the Big City Book Club read and watch-alongs organized by @lurkingshan, which was such a fun project that I am grateful for, and I started my GL Odds and Ends posts (tagged with #gl recs) that I am still feeling out but am really enjoying seeing the impact whenever someone watches a show because they found out about it through one of my posts. I also made an appearance on several episodes of @the-conversation-pod and had an incredible time trying out different things in a quarterly 'Dispatch' and having some really rich conversations with @bengiyo and @shortpplfedup. I love this corner of tumblr that we've carved out for ourselves as a QL watching community, and I just want to say to everyone I've interacted with in 2024: Thank you, and wish good things for you all in 2025!

Full list of 2024 shows under the cut for anyone curious! [Mostly in order it completed but may be slightly off--if a special aired immediately after the final episode I only list them as one thing and count the airing of the special as the end date, for example].

Bagan Beginning

Love Senior the Series

After SunDown

VIP Only

Twins the Series

Last Twilight

Night Dream the Series

My Universe

Bake Me Please special episode

Sahara Sensei to Tori Kun / Mr Sahara and Toki-kun

Love for Love's Sake

7 Days Before Valentine

Happy Ending

PitBabe the series

For Him the series

Cooking Crush

The Sign

Chaser Game W

Playboyy the series

Perfect Propose

Ossan's Love Returns

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna S2 / She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat

Cherry Magic Th

Dead Friend Forever

Sukidoya / Although I Love You and You / Sukiyaken kedo dou yaroka?

Healing Thingyan

Love You in Every Multiverse

Cherry Magic (anime)

Please Teach Me

Anti Reset

Jazz for Two

Blank the Series

A Secretly Love

To Be Continued the series

Love is Better the Second time around / Koi wo Surunara Nidome ga Joto

City of Stars

Sea You Soon

Human Too

Man Who Defies the World of BL s3

Gray Shelter / Gray Currents / Grey Current

Gym Affairs

1000 Years Old the Series

Love is Like a Cat

To the Ex Who Hated Me

Lady Boy Friends the series

Deep Night the series + Special Episode

Unknown the series

Memory in the Letter

You are My Star

Lonely Girls

Boys Be Brave / Roommates / I Can't Confess

Blossom Campus

Two Worlds

VIP Only special episode

Pray In Love

I Fell In Love with My Male Best Friend

Friend With Benefit

Stay By My Side special episode

23.5

You Made My Day

Living With Him

City Boy Log pt3

Anti-Reset special episode

The Time of Huan Nan

Xiao Xiang Yi Jiu

Inverse Identity

At 25:00 in Akasaka

Only Boo!

Tadaima Okaeri

Love Bully (Club Friday)

Blank the Series S2

Marahuyo Project

The Two of Us

Blue Boys

OMG Vampire!

My Stand-In

We Are the series

Ossan no pantsu ga nandatte ii janai ka / Oppan

Wandee Goodday

Under the Oak Tree

The Rebound

Love Enemy

Love in the Apocalypse

Bad Guy

My Marvellous Dream is You/ Dream the Series

Century of Love

Knock Knock Boys

Be Your Star

Meet You at the Blossom

BOYTOY

The Secret of Us

Ayaka is in love with Hiroko / Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-sempai ni koi shiteru

My Love Mix-Up!

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans

Love Sea the series

Cosmetic Playlover

City Boy Log s4

Sunset Vibes

Mr Mitsuya's Planned Feeding

Takara no Vidro / Takara's Treasure

Paradise of Thorns

I Hear the Sunspot

The Time of Fever / when your temperature reaches my fingertips

4 Minutes The Trainee

Twilight out of Focus

Happy of the End

The On1y One

Live in Love

Heaven'sxCandy

The Two of Us s2

Addicted Heroin

I Saw You In My Dream

Monster Next Door

Our Golden Times

Affair

First Note of Love

Battle of the Writers

Reverse 4 U

Unlock Your Love

Chaser Game W s2

Let free the Curse of Taekwondo

Uncle Unknown

The Hidden Moon the series

Love in the Big City [the series]

Smells Like Green Spirit

Red Whisper

Eccentric Romance/PT is Love

My Damn Business

Apple My Love

Dominant Yakuza and Wimpy Corporate Slave

The Nipple Talk

Kidnap the series

Every You Every Me

Jack & Joker

People Come Later

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days

The Loyal Pin

Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru 2

Love is Like a Poison / doku koi: doku mo sugireba koi to naru

Bad Guy My Boss

Haunted Hearts

Seoul Blues

The Renovation

Love Sick 2024

Love in the Big City [the film]

Spare Me Your Mercy / Euthanasia

Soul Sisters / Twin Rabbits

My Hot Butch Roommate

Whisper Me a Love Song / Sasayaku you ni koi wo utau

Boys' Christmas

Bonus: FuFuKnows bi-weekly shorts [every other week they post a short film, almost always a QL storyline; there were 23 in 2024]

And those QL-adjacent shows I mentioned [these are all adapted from QL media or starred QL actors or were part of a QL franchise but did not have a canon queer romance at the core of its storytelling]:

The Spirealm

Close Friend 3 - Soju Bomb

How to Make a Million Before Grandma Dies

Man Suang

High School Return Of A Gangster / I, a Gangster, Became a High Schooler

Kimi to Yukite Saku: Shinsengumi Seishunroku

Hoshikuzu Telepath

A Balloon's Landing

Peaceful Property

My Strawberry Film

The shows I dropped:

Time the series

Beside You

Sugar Dog Life

The Whisperer

Kiseki in Tokyo

Q18

Sky Valley

The Fate Trap

Dear Miss Becky

And as a shout-out in penance, the shows I had on my list to get to but haven't yet watched:

A Blue Sky (Cambodia)

Ending Friend (Cambodia)

Pretty Boys (Philippines - requires an access fee on VivaMax+)

Oh My Boo (Philippines)

The Perfect Heartbreak (Philippines)

Where I found You (Philippines)

My_ the series (Myanmar)

What's In My Bag (Korean GL - requires an access fee on Vimeo)

Complicated (Thai)

Club Friday: Hot Love Issue (Thai)

2nd Chance (Thai; not to be confused with Second Chance, this was a smaller 3-episode short series from this year)

Thank you for reading!

#ql superlatives 2024 #bl meta #gl meta #multi bl #multi ql #typed so that i can stop thinking it #twig talks #superlatives are so hard for me this is the best I could do #if anyone wants to know anything about any of this content feel free to ask!#long post

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chaos0pikachu · 1 year ago

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Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

Short answer: No. anyways, in the following essay I will explain that James Cameron is a weeb...

(okay fine~~ lets actually do this)

TLDR: discussing what media globalization is, how fandom can distill it down to only American/European cinema, showcasing how a lot of current BL is influenced by countries within it's own proximity and NOT "the west" but each other, also James Cameron is still a weeb

I had seen a post that basically proposited that BL was being influenced by modern western romance tropes and had used things like omegaverse and mafia settings as an example. I found this, in a word, fucking annoying (oh, two words I guess) because it's micro-xenophobic to me.

It positions western - and really what we mean by this is American/European countries, we're not talking about South American countries are we? - cinema as the central breadbasket of all cinema in and of itself. Inherently, all following cinema must be in some way, shape, or form, influenced by American/European standards, and as such America/European countries are directly responsible for cinema everywhere else, and these places - namely non-white countries - do not influence each other, nor have their own histories in regards to storytelling or cinema and do not, in turn, also influence American/European film making either.

Now like, do I think all of that~~ is intentionally malicious thinking on behalf of folks in fandom? No, so chill out.

I do, however, think a lot of it is birthed from simple ignorance and growing up in an environment where ~The West~ is propagated to be central, individual, and exceptional as opposed to the monolith of "Asia" - by which we mean China, Korea, Japan don't we? How often in discussions of Asian countries is Iran, India, or Saudi Arabia brought up even tho they are all Asian countries? - or the monolith that is South America - in which some folks might believe regions like the Caribbean and/or Central America belong to, but nope there both North America.

Anyway, what we're talking about here is the concept of "media globalization":

"The production, distribution, and consumption of media products on a global scale, facilitating the exchange and diffusion of ideas cross-culturally." (source)

"The media industry is, in many ways, perfect for globalization, or the spread of global trade without regard for traditional political borders. [...] the low marginal costs of media mean that reaching a wider market creates much larger profit margins for media companies. [...] Media is largely a cultural product, and the transfer of such a product is likely to have an influence on the recipient’s culture." (source)

Typically when I see fandom discussing what falls under MG the topic is usually focused on how "the west" is influencing Thai/Korean/Chinese/Japanese media.

Enter, Pit Babe.

Surely Pit Babe was influenced by Supernatural right? Omegaverse is huge in the west - love it, hate it, meh it - it originated in the west - specifically via Supernatural after all.

Nah.

Omegaverse has been popular in Japan and China for almost a decade, if not longer. The earliest omegaverse manga I can think of is Pendulum: Juujin Omegaverse by Hana Hasumi which was released in 2015, almost a decade ago.

(what if you added furries into omegaverse? WHAT IF?? - Japan)

There's countless popular omegaverse manga too, and the dynamics only moderately resemble the ones we're familiar with in the west. Juujin is part omegaverse and part furry/beastmen - the alphas are all beastmen the omegas are humans - while something like Ookami-kun Is Not Scary only slightly resembles omegaverse dynamics as a hybrid series - beastmen are really popular in Japan in part b/c of historical mythology (you see the combination of romantic Beastmen and Japanese culture & folklore in Mamoru Hosoda's work The Boy and the Beast and Wolf Children).

Megumi & Tsugumi (2018) is so popular they're an official English edition published by VIZ's imprint SuBlime and that's a straight up omegaverse story.

(look at the omega symbol on the cover loud and proud baby)

So if Pit Babe was influenced by anything, it certainly wasn't "the west" it was Japan, Korea and China. Because those countries have a thriving omegaverse sub-genre going and have had such for 10 plus years now. Supernatural is popular in Japan, yes, and that may be where Japan and Japanese fans originally found omegaverse as a fictional sub-genre.

HOWEVER

Japanese fans took the sub-genre, bent it, played with it, and evolved it into their own thing. As such, other countries in their proximity, like Thailand, China, and Korea who read BL and GL manga, found it and were like "hey, we wanna play too!"

(is that an omegaverse yuri novel I spy?? yes, yes it is)

When I watched the Red Peafowl trailer, it had more in common with Kinnporsche, History: Trapped, along with films and shows like: Jet Li's The Enforcer, and Fist of Legend, Donnie Yen's Flash Point, Raging Fire, and Kung Fu Jungle, Han Dong-wook's The Worst of Evil, Kim Jin-Min's My Name, Lee Chung-hyeon's The Ballerina, Baik's Believer & Believer 2, Yoshie Kaoruhara's KeixYaku, popular Don Lee films The Gangster, the Cop and the Devil and Unstoppable alongside BL manga like Honto Yajuu and Bi No Isu (probably one of the most well known yazuka manga to date).

youtube

Like, we're seeing a rise in mafia based BLs and people think that's because of "western influence" and not the absolute insane success of kinnporsche??? Especially in countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines and other Asian countries???

Mafia films and gang shows aren't even that popular here in America/Europe; don't get me wrong, they still get made and exist, but the last full length film was The Irishman which did not make it's budget back, and while Power is still on-going it's not a smash hit either. The heyday of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Goodfellas, and Scarface are long gone. And if you've watched any those shows or films they have very little in common with Kei x Yaku, Kinnporsche, or Red Peafowl in tone, or style.

(who knew martin just wanted to make his al pacino/robert de niro fanfic come to life all these years?)

Another example, The Sign, which is clearly taking inspiration from Chinese costume dramas: Ashes of Love, Fairy and Devil, White Snake (and it's many adaptions), Guardian, & Ying Yang Master Dream of Eternity. Alongside Hong Kong and Korean cop and romance shows like Tale of the Nine-Tailed, Hotel Del Luna, Director Who Buys Me Dinner, First Love, Again, and previously mentioned cop dramas.

youtube

Like, I know y'all don't think Twins is influenced by, what, American sports classic Angels in the Outfield?? Gridiron Gang?? Rocky?? Nah that shit is inspired by the popularity of sports manga like Haikyuu!!, Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis (which even has a Chinese drama adaption), and the like. And also probably History 2, & Not Me but I'm like 87% sure Twins is just Haikyuu fanfic.

So like, does this mean that there's NO history in which American and European cinema influenced these countries? What, no, obviously that's not true, American/European totally have had media influence on countries like Korea, Japan, etc.

Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka considered "the father of manga" was inspired by Walt Disney's work on Bambi. Another more recent and prominent example is director Yeon Sang-ho and his film Train to Busan.

"And it was Snyder’s movie [Dawn of the Dead, 2004], not the 1978 original, that filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho recalled as his first encounter with the undead. “That was when I started my interest in zombies,” Yeon said, in an email interview through a translator from South Korea. Even today, he added, “it’s the most memorable and intense zombie movie I’ve ever seen.”" (source)

HOWEVER, the global influence doesn't stop there. It's not a one-way street. Yeon Sang-Ho was inspired by Zack Synder's Dawn of the Dead, a remake of George Romero's own work, but Yeon Sang-Ho's work has inspired countless Korean film makers to make their own zombie media; following Train to Busan there's been: Kingdom (2019 - current), All of Us Are Dead (2022), Zombie Detective (2020), Zombieverse (2023), Alive (2020), Rampant (2018).

And hey, wouldn't you know it now we're starting to see more zombie media coming out of places like Japan (Zom 100 the manga, movie, and anime) and High School of the Dead.

Do you know what Domundi's series Zombivor (2023, pilot trailer only) reminds me of? It's NOT The Walking Dead (which is the only relevant zombie media America has created in the last decade) it's Korea's All of Us Are Dead (2022). Comparing the trailers, the settings, the tone, it's clear where Zombivor is pulling inspiration from: Korean zombie cinema. NOT American zombie cinema.

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In fact a lot of Domundi's shows - Cutie Pie, Middleman's Love, Naughty Babe, Bed Friend - are all very clearly inspired by Korean filmmaking, specifically that of romantic kdramas from the 2016 - 2020 era. Not always in story, but rather in technique.

This is media globalization. It's not simply ~The West~ influencing non-American/European countries but countries who are often more close in terms of: proximity, culture, and trade are going to have more influence on each other.

It is far more likely that Aoftion (Naughty Babe, Cutie Pie, Zombivor) was influenced by watching Train to Busan, All of Us Are Dead, and other Korean zombie shows and films than a single episode of Walking Dead.

My point isn't that this goes one way only, but rather it is very literally a global thing. This includes American and European film makers being influenced by non-American and European cinema.

Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, the Wachowski sisters, George Lucas and James Cameron have all been influenced by Japanese film making, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Oshii.

John Wick's entire gun-fu sub-genre is heavily influenced by classic Hong Kong action films, specifically John Woo films. Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Voltron, Young Justice, My Adventures with Superman are all obviously inspired by Japanese anime but animated by a Korean animation studio (Studio Mir). Beyond that, the rise in adult animated dramas like Castlevania, Critical Role Vox Machina, and Invincible to name a few are very clearly taking inspiration from anime in terms of style. The weebs that were watching Adult Swim's Inuyasha, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z have grown up and are now working in Hollywood.

Okay so like, what's the point of all this? What's the issue? Since American/European cinema does influence et all cinema does any of this really matter?

YES.

I take contention with this line of thinking because it centers "the west" and our supposed individual importance way to much. Declaring definitively that "BL is being influenced by western tropes" and then including tropes, narratives, and film making styles that aren't inherently western and actually have major roots in the cinema of various Asian countries, removes the existence of individual history these countries have which are rich, varied, and nuanced. It removes the "global" part of globalization by declaring "the globe" is really just America and Europe.

It distills these countries down to static places that only exist when American/European audiences discover them.

BL doesn't exist in a vacuum you can trace the development of Korean BL to the development of Korean het dramas almost to a T. You can also trace their development to the queer history of each country and how Thailand interacts culturally with China, Japan, Korea, etc and vice versa. It also ignores the history of these countries influencing American cinema as well. Don't mistake "the globe" for only your sphere of experience.

Anyway James Cameron is a damn weeb y'all have a good night.

Check out other posts in the series:

Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]

#kinnporsche #pit babe the series #the sign the series #twins the series #red peafowl the series #domundi #gmmtv #chaos pikachu speaks #fucking a this was an entire essay #i should drop a ko-fi link cause good god damn #chaos pikachu metas #Youtube #pikachu's bl film series

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ineffable-opinions · 7 months ago

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MAME & BL Literacies (Part 4)

Other parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Contents:

MAME’s queer characters and their lives

Fetishization of queer men and profiting off LGBT community

Why other queer genres like gei comi struggle to get live action adaptation?

(bonus) What Did You Eat Yesterday sexy times

BL and rape culture

Everyday ethnocentrism & BL

This is the last part of this essay series. In this part, I want to discuss the response this review of TharnType by @waitmyturtles generated. As always, corrections and criticisms are welcome.

Here are the points @solitaryandwandering raised:

1. fans will get SO rabid for MAME’s stuff yet resist tuning in for more queer-friendly Taiwanese BL or lower heat fare

I think that the BL MAME creates is "queer-friendly". Moreover, her BL focuses on the intersection of queerness with local forms of gender, patriarchy & heterosexism, class, race, skin color, age, employment, location & regionalism, abilities and disabilities, education, health conditions and access to medical care, urban-rural divide, migrant status, culture, etc.

MAME's BL have aspects of Thai queer culture and praxis that are otherwise overlooked. Here's an example.

Through Techno’s interaction with Tharn in episode 1 of TharnType, MAME highlights an important issue: invisibility of androphilic “man”. Techno comments that Tharn is the first masculine presenting androphilic male he has met, even though he has several queer friends.

This is in part due to skewed presence of androphilic male characters in mainstream media. In Thai soap operas and movies, androphilic men are 'presented as effeminate, overreactive, with a passionate but unrequited interest in men'.

Countering this perception is the hegemony of masculine aesthetics in urban Thailand’s queer culture. 'The English word “man” has been borrowed into Thai gay-speak to denote acting in a masculine way. Man describes a masculine presentation of either gay-identified or heterosexual males and contrasts with the Thai term phu-chai, which also translates as “man” but is used in the specific sense of denoting the gender role of a heterosexually identified male.

'Many Thai gays believe that effeminate gay men, or gay sao, will experience discrimination and prejudice because of their feminine characteristics and behaviours. Thai gays also think that performing gender-normative forms of manhood are useful in establishing sexual and romantic relations with other gays. These expectations are associated with the culture of images, known in Thai as phap-phot, by which many homosexual men feel compelled to act in accord with normative male gender roles.'

This is in contrast to Techno’s queer friends who blur the lines between the masculine and feminine domains. His use of the word kathoey is case in point.

Moreover, the need for social conformity for Thai gays in terms of their gender performance is an urban phenomenon. Ethnographic study by Wijngaarden traced the rapid adoption of more masculine gender performance by gay men who moved from rural setting to urban for the purpose of education and employment. Ambiguity in gender performance is more accepted in rural setting where there is gender-based understandings of homosexuality. Also, gay dating scene in urban areas seem to assign value to masculine presentation.

source

I don't really know what @solitaryandwandering mean by "queer-friendly" in the context of Taiwanese BL.

Support of fu-people (BL fans) for queer works in Taiwan is well-known. When the play 《愛情生活》 Life of Love by Xu ZhengPing was staged, they had BL version shows too.

The play has a short film adaptation which is available for free on GagaOOLala.

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Fu-people have also shown their support for series like Breakfast by 想再見你.

@solitaryandwandering gave valuable response to this post which I am adding below.

I had to go back and re-read what I said in the post for more context. I think though we may disagree on a couple points (what people consider "queer-friendly" is somewhat subjective) your criticisms are totally valid. I think in my first point I was making a really broad generalization and my description of overall Taiwanese BL as being "more" queer-friendly largely rings false to me now. I think what I was frustrated with was more with what I've seen of BL fandom's response to the series and other works. The popularity of high heat and "problematic" themes (I'm using that pretty liberally) like abusive relationships or rape is pretty massive in comparison to Taiwanese stuff in general. But that's not to say Taiwanese stuff don't utilize the same tropes or themes. Hence why I think my comparison wasn't accurate.

In comparing Taiwanese BL I had seen at the time and MAME's stuff (specifically TharnType) I probably felt that Taiwanese BL didn't so heavily utilize themes which made me uncomfortable or angry at the way MAME was writing it. And I still do largely think that at least for her earlier stuff MAME needed to work on her characters and plots. I did not see Tharn or Type or the other characters or the story as appealing or positive representations of… anything. In my view at the time Taiwanese BL liked to play with similar themes but still (mostly) didn't leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't really agree with what I think was a bit of a limited view at the time. Reading your post has given me a bit of a different perspective, too.

I don't think everyone making Taiwanese BL particularly cares about the response queer fans have haha. And MAME has shown she does, at least from my perspective.

And again lumping an entire country's slant on the genre against MAME's creations is a bit disingenuous. So I appreciate you criticizing that.

And I don't inherently think lower heat stuff is inherently more queer-friendly of course - queer people fuck! Queer people can do terrible things! But the gulf of popularity between high heat stuff versus lower heat at least in international online spaces is pretty large. That concerns me for the reasons I stated in my comments - why is fandom more eager to engage with one over the other? Do these fans see queer men as people or as things to fetishize? And how does MAME's writing encourage or discourage those damaging readings? Largely I think what I was referencing in my response was fandom response rather than what creators at large do.

I think we may disagree on how effectively MAME writes her shows but I do think my perspective on her as a creator has changed quite a lot. Her writing certainly has with each show. It's important to interrogate my own ethnocentrism as you point out in your post. Acting like I'm the arbiter of "good queerness" in stories just because I'm queer is not a practice I want to encourage.

and yes, I do think there is quite a bit of critical consumption of BL, and it has only been growing! I was concerned about those who do not critically consume, a more direct criticism.

But I did communicate it as a large generalization… One of the reasons why my response to stuff like TharnType is this way is because I have a background in domestic violence prevention, so the lens I look at that kind of material through is highly critical. But it is also a white American lens.

And here is my contribution to that discussion. I am very grateful for to @solitaryandwandering for engaging with this post.

What each think as “queer-friendly” is subjective. I wanted to be clear about what I thought as queer (since LGBT+ form is a little too narrow from my perspective). I wanted to place BL in the context of Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) culture and wanted to showcase the similarities and their connection. Life of Love by Xu ZhengPing, the tongzhi work I mentioned, has both "high heat" and "problematic" themes (it deals with infidelity) while addressing what it means to be tongzhi in post-marriage equality era. The BL versions’ ad is very funny. Please check out that link if you haven’t.

About abusive themes in BL, I really wish BL audience will pay attention to media consumed by queer people that are made by queer people in BL producing countries and realize how meek MAME is in comparison, both in terms of influence as well as themes. That is why brought up erotic treatment of rape aka rape for titillation – rare in BL but very common & celebrated in queer content from the region such as gei comi and gay pinku cinema. I think that answers the issues you raised – popularity of high heat stuff, queer men as fetish and damage it causes. I have been consuming gei comi and BL for years and when the live action boom happened, I was hopeful that gei comi will also start getting live action adaptation. Instead, there was a deluge of sweet BL and concerns about damage anything problematic can cause, not to mention the kind of critique authors as mild as MAME was getting. When female BL creators were getting bashed (not only about live action but also about comics and novels), I thought the criticisms would extend to gei comi. I was confused when it didn’t. I was even more confused when it seemed like no one was ever mentioning gei comi. It was as though those who were criticizing BL creators don’t know about gei comi.

To be honest, I don’t really know what damage everyone is talking about even now. I mean, what’s the basis of those claims? Gei comi always had those themes, a great deal more than BL. What harm did it ever perpetuate? Whom did it harm? I couldn’t find any evidence (empirical or anecdotal) no matter how I searched. (I will be grateful if you can direct me towards some research or something on the matter.)

Only damage that I know of is linked to the tangible impact of gei comi on the popularity of hairy, gachimuchi aesthetics of queer men [and associated physical manifestations of protest hypermasculinity] in East Asia that I discussed in part 2 of this essay series [as well as in my post on masculinities with special focus on Chinese androphilic men]. This is one area I think a lot of skinny queer men in East Asia would have found themselves at a loss. So I think BL exclusively having skinny dudes is a good thing.

I know that I can wish all I want but audience won’t accept live adaption of something like Fisherman’s Lodge much less Pride (my introduction to the genre and the reason why I fell in love with it). My Brother’s Husband sort of solidified my belief. Then Sei no Gekiyaku [Dangerous Drug of Sex] live action happened, and my worlds collided. All of a sudden androphilic men were discussing a BL like never before. It was such a hit on Netflix Japan. That’s when I discovered The Shortest Distance Is Round and then its sequels. By then it was clear that there is escaping the difference in wavelength.

I would like to make a small addition in light of Heavens x Candy (a 2024 Japanese BL movie, pinku adjacent that is available for streaming on Gagaoolala).

I now have greater hope for "hard" BL and even gei comi getting live action adaptation from OP Pictures (albeit without hairy, gachimuchi aesthetics. I mean the only actor doing such roles in BL is Kaji Masaki who acted in both KabeKoji and Smells like Green Spirit.) I plan to do a longer post on Heavens x Candy when I get time to rewatch it.

2. Fetishization of queer men in yaoi

By that standard, is Minamoto Kazuki fetishizing straight women through his works?

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Minamoto Kazuki is a gay mangaka who creates straight romance and smut.

Arguably, his most famous manga, at least in BL fandom, is Wall Circle’s Doujin Artist Nekoyashiki-Kun’s Desire for Recognition Grows which got live action adaptation: KabeKoji in 2022.

Apart from creating commercial BL and yaoi (self-published BL like the ones in the image given above), he has also authored an autobiographical work titled Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out and a manga exploring queer life and homophobia titled The Gay Who Turned Kaiju.

Moreover, many scholars, mangaka, fans, etc. from Asia and elsewhere have already spoken/written plenty about the issue of fetishization. Here's a compilation of resources.

3. zero critical consumption and leveraging of abusive concepts

I wonder why it is assumed that BL is consumed without critical thinking. It is true that BL, especially MAME's BL, are not didactic. TharnType is a BL with odo (royal road) narrative progression. It is not one of the sweet BL that GMMTV produces. Due to a general lack of BL literacies, there are off-the-mark expectations associated with BL, particularly Thai BL. Hence, odo BL seems to violate a lot of these misguided expectations.

TharnType is a well-done odo BL, in my opinion. "Leveraging of abusive concepts" is not a failure but a feature.

When it comes to depiction of abuse, there are those who think that it always gives the wrong message. There are variety in opinions on what is the right way to go about it. BL being an accommodating genre has space for all sorts of treatment. Even in live action, there is good variety in terms of how the theme is treated. But nothing is everyone’s cup of tea. This being the case it is understandable if someone like how MAME handles abuse, just as it is understandable if someone doesn't.

Assuming that fans don't engage critically with the theme and are mindlessly consuming it, have the implication of infantilizing the audience - as though they are without faculties of discretion and are incapable of making judgements. It also has the added implication of demonizing all media concerning queer people that deals with abuse. If MAME’s approach is deemed “unsafe” for queer population, based on that judgement, where does BL and gei comi that offer erotic treatment of abuse fall? What about queer people producing and consuming them?

That brings me to the points @nieves-de-sugui has raised.

4. how much all of these tropes where used (and still are). I believe that when things are made for tv they should take all the things you mentioned into account more than they do.

I believe that makers of live action queer content are very cautious. Thanks to that we are yet to get live action adaptation of any gei comi.

I have seen mainstream media ignore Gengoroh Tagame (probably the most popular gay mangaka creating content aimed at androphilic men) and his works for years in spite of his tangible influence on East Asian queer men. And then suddenly creating a live action adaptation of his all-ages manga My Brother’s Husband.

Who will dare to adapt his works Gunji or Fisherman’s Lodge or Pride? How can we show rape, trauma and taboo involving queer people on screen? What message will it give to the queer population? To the non-queer population?

A scene from Fisherman’s Lodge. Image courtesy of @finalatomicbuster.

If MAME was not involved in producing her BL, it is doubtful if it would have ever happened the way it did. Almost all BL adaptation is a censored adaptation, with notable exceptions like Sei no Gekiyaku. Recently, 25 Ji, Akasaka de (2024) removed complicated sexual content (including a dub-con episode) from the volume 1 of the manga, which was critical to the story and the couple’s development, in adaptation. Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka (2024) went as far as removing the more sexual second couple from the live action adaptation probably because makers thought it was better not to go anywhere near cruelty.

The first ever anime adaptation of a gei comi, Shin Yaranai ka based on Junichi Yamakawa's Kuso Miso Technique, is *sigh* disappointing to say the least.

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I wanted to quickly mention What Did You Eat Yesterday yaoi version since @waitmyturtles mentioned the series.

5. What Did You Eat Yesterday

I want to highlight that What Did You Eat Yesterday was not a BL in publication. It was published in Morning, a conservative magazine for middle-aged men. This is what got a live action adaptation.

Fumi Yoshinaga has created a proper BL doujin series that includes content that couldn't be part of publication in Morning.

Here are some panels from the two latest volumes of the yaoi. I wonder if audience would have had the same impression of the show if they had incorporated the doujin bits too.

6. One piece of the puzzle that's missing here is Thai rape culture that blankets all of their society.

This is an important point @yousaygoodbyeandisay raised and it applies not just to Thailand.

Sexual assault as a theme in BL, handled in a myriad of ways, has been the case since the inception of the genre. I have discussed the history in the context of Japan here.

It was during the publication of JUNE magazine that the importance of depiction of sexual assault in BL became clear to the editor through response letters from readers.

June is a place of therapistic rehabilitation for those women who had experiences of mental and physical abuses as a female. Mr. Sagawa said that he cannot ignore that there are not a few readers who had such experiences during their childhood.

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MAME studied BL and its production academically (you can find her research output by searching her name: อรวรรณ วิชญวรรณกุล) before she entered live action production. She not only know what she is writing/creating but also is willing to deal with difficult themes without taking sweet, fable-like route.

Now onto the points @mikuni14 raised.

7. my shock seeing so much SA related stuff (the show covered just about every problematic sex thing there is, and finally forgave the heinous criminal instead of putting him in jail. I don't know how MAME can create for example AePete and also somany vile things

For those who don’t know, MAME is a unique Thai BL creator. Thai BL creators on average lack BL literacies for various reasons. MAME is one of the exceptions. This is because:

she is a BL author & hence, one of the creators of BL literacies

she studied BL and its production academically [you can find her research output by searching her name: อรวรรณ วิชญวรรณกุล]

then she started producing live action BL

In an industry which is lacking in BL literacies, what she brings to the table is fu-culture (BL fan culture) in all its glory. Unfortunately, the live action audience who are fans of sweet BL, have a hard time adjusting.

Here are some typical narrative progressions for a (Japanese) BL:

あまあま – sweet

ユニーク – unique

シリアス – serious

邪道 – evil road (jadō)

王道 - royal road (odo)

Any theme/one-line plot can choose to take any of these narrative progressions. Moreover, Thai BL usually originates online which allows for innovation.

MAME employs different narrative progressions for different ships. AePete follows the typical sweet BL progression. KengklaTechno follows jado and TharnType odo.

TarTum is a sweet BL, complicated by them being step-brothers. While their pairing is barely on odo, Tum as a character has a complicated odo progression within their ship.

Since TharnType is an odo BL all wrong-doings are not punished. Take for example KinnPorsche, another odo BL, where the ending can’t be 'organized crime gets the main characters in jail'. In odo BL involving crime, most of the victims are usually cannon fodders. So, characters are not bothered much by the crime. But in MAME's universe, Tum is an important character, someone designed to make audience root for him. Hence the audience can’t dismiss the crimes against him. It is not wrong to want the narrative to have Lhong jailed. If TharnType was a sweet BL, it would have gone there.

8. selective memory

Selective memory is indicative of preferences and it helps to fine tune BL consumption. MAME's storytelling incorporates diverse elements. Those who enjoy her works also might find that there something or the other that isn't to their taste. This is an important part of BL literacies.

I enjoy dangerous characterizations over subdued ones and prefer a meriba more than a happy ending. While there are plenty of BL media with those, they are super rare in live action. So, I appreciate MAME for taking into account fans who want something different from sweet BL.

Here are the points @bengiyo raised:

9. What Did You Eat Yesterday v/s Old Fashion Cupcake

This has nothing to do with MAME but has to do with BL literacies more generally. Old Fashion Cupcake is more appealing to BL fans because it is a BL and hence not sanitized to continue run on a conservative magazine. So, it permeates moe (affect). Moreover, creators of Old Fashion Cupcake are better informed than creators of What Did You Eat Yesterday in terms of BL literacies. So, the direction and acting works better in the former than the latter.

9. The Effect feeling like the first huge volley leveled at BL from within the genre.

I am always amazed at the takes on the Effect. Somehow it is assumed to be a critique of BL genre. That's not the case. The Effect is a proper jado BL.

What audience are picking up on is the 'I can do it better' spirit that motivates a lot of BL creation. It is natural for audience to feel like the depiction of complex themes, such as sexual abuse, bullying, delinquency, identity theft, murder, infidelity, pregnancy, etc. are not dealt with well. Creating BL that fits one's taste better is one way authors and artists go about addressing the issue. That is how we end up with same theme dealt with in numerous ways. When that expands, we end up with sub-genres and BL categories.

Jado BL are rare, particularly in Thai BL.

It is difficult to sell BL with jado and other narrative progressions. It becomes even more difficult to sell branded pairings when the characters they play are not impeccable. It is unlikely that actors playing bad guys can sell products for advertisers. (Imagine the characters from The Effect being in ads together!) It is even more unlikely that fans would go broke behind wicked characters and would want to attend fan-meetings and concerts featuring them in some way.

This is also so as not to trouble the average audience’s worldview (世界観) and is clearly a low effort and low skill (in terms of BL literacies) approach. But since a lot of audience don’t appreciate villain-like characterization, it is clearly low risk, no chance of a backlash from angry audience and the best method for assured money making.

@respectthepetty has also flagged the next issue:

10. History3: Make Our Days Count.

Gays were being buried and put in prison in Taiwanese BLs in the same year it legalized marriage equality.

There is a lot of ethnocentrism in the hate that MODC gets, apart from lack of BL literacies. While I understand where that take is coming from given American media history in the context of Hayes code, AIDS crisis, etc., I wish media from elsewhere would be looked at independently.

Queer narratives everywhere have their own over-used tropes and historical issues. Malayalam media, for example, has the issue of having one of two queer characters having varathan vibe (Rosy in Ponnaranjanam, Kiran in Sancharram, Antony's boyfriend in Mumbai Police, Kiran in My Life Partner, etc.) that makes them look odd in Kerala's rurban landscape. Even Kaathaloram played into this trope. The problem is that it perpetuates the belief that queerness is an import of sorts.

Mindless application of media critique learned from the west leads to the brushing aside of pertinent issues with media of the region in favor of finding legitimacy via commonality with the west. That way we end up with crits accusing Moothon of employing bury the gay trope while ignoring that:

Moothon is a gangster action flick like Kammattippaadam

It is rare for romances irrespective of the gender of the main characters and genre of the movie to have happy ending in Malayalam. In fact, almost all great love stories in Malayalam movies are tragedies. This is unlike in Hollywood where heterosexual romances usually get happy endings.

more importantly, every queer character, including Latheef, is infused with varathan vibe.

Taiwanese BL has issues worth exploring. Issues of their own media - not varathan queer trope from Malayalam media or bury your gay trope from American media.

MODC was an dealing with well-established BL tropes (like any other show in the History franchise). It explored bereavement (a tribute to Lan Yu, first ever danmei live action adaptation) and substitute lover trope.

The series introduced a doppelgänger of Yu XiGu (Xiang HaoTing’s white moonlight), a perfect candidate for substitute lover trope. But instead of pursuing it, they subverted the trope.

History franchise, which was build to grow BL and BL literacy in Taiwan, ended up victim to prejudice since it failed to measure up to foreign standards. MODC offered something rare. The audience didn't appreciate it. They dismissed it for not measuring up to expectations colored by experiences which danmei is not connected with for historical reasons.

By that standard, would tongzhi literature from Taiwan too have to make amends for sins of the west towards its queers? Imagine stripping of death as a theme from tongzhi author Chiang-Sheng Kuo's works! Then there is also difference in how death is perceived in different societies.

Why must BL be arm-twisted to fit into norms from elsewhere and correct the wrongs of someone else?

11. BL profit off LGBT community

This is really interesting. There are many questions that I can think of that is linked to this take:

Is BL really profitable? Short answer is no. Long answer here.

Is it really LGBT community that BL profits off?

Probably not. It is moe that BL sells. That imo, is the main difference between BL and other queer genres.

Anyway, BL predates LGBT acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL surely is commercialized. But that is capitalism reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people's labor of love.

@he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle raised the following point.

12. 2019 saw significant increase in quantity and quality of BL. Since then, live actions smoothed out the rougher edges of the source material (like what happened with Kinnporsche and Love in the Air).

While I understand the rational behind toning down dangerous characterization to appeal to the largest audience, I think that kind of censorship for commercialization limits potential of the genre. The impact is most visible in case of GMMTV BL such as Only Friend (where it could neither be sweet BL nor could it embark properly on jado).

Compare it with adaptation of the ero-BL Sei no Gekiyaku. It stayed true to the content and pushed the boundaries enough to bring about convergence between gay pinku cinema and BL. When BL is allowed to explore its potential freely, it not only imparts BL literacies but also makes it possible for other queer genres to gain new audience, which in turn encourages production houses to venture into different queer genres.

jjsanguine raised the following point.

13. I don't even hate toxic characters or plotlines, actually I love them. But like even if the characters don't know they're doing it, the show should. And it really really doesn't. And neither do the fans. Kind of alarming.

This is in relation to Lhong and San.

Lhong is a yandere in a odo BL. (for detailed discussion see Part 3) It is a matter of the world view and less about show's self-awareness (which I believe it has). If TharnType was an jado BL, Tharn could have ended up with Lhong and Type would be the stalking horse.

@jjsanguine later commented about how Lhong felt "goofy" by way of his over-the-top actions which made the show's convictions questionable.

San and Tharn's relationship was, to an extend, the most realistically depicted. I remember starting to learn about Thai queerness and realizing that a lot of elements in their relationship reads like ethnography. Consider for example Tharn being only fourteen at the time of sexual debut and San being older. This is not too different from the average age of sexual debut in Thailand. Despite it being a compoundable offense, average age of sexual debut is declining. Tharn's discovery of what he likes and dislikes and shedding cuteness (which San comments about) and adopting manliness (which Techno comments about) too is in line with what is observed among urban queer youth. Contrast this with Sky in Love in the Air whose sexual debut and exploitation are tied to his migration to urban landscape. Sky's backstory too read like ethnography and his vulnerability a reflection of the many others' in his society.

@absolutebl raised the following points:

14. Rape - as plot device - doesn't make good stories - lazy & bad writing: Feminist critique and modern narrative analysis.

Feminist and queer BL scholars from Akiko Mizoguchi to James Welker have discussed rape as a plot device in BL. Since experts have written plenty, I'll spare my effort discussing this misconception.

15. rape is an act of sexuality (or worse, sexy), it is NOT - it is an act of violence. But that is only the start to the way it’s chronically mishandled, especially in commercial fiction (of which romance makes the largest percentage).

Akiko Mizoguchi's two decade of work have addressed this in relation to Japanese BL which I feel holds true for BL more generally. Moreover, BL is not a romance sub-genre. BL is a genre in itself. A lot of BL is romance. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is a romance sub-genre. But there are plenty of other works too. Like One Room Angel and Social Reform Season. Similarly, BL is not a porn sub-genre. A lot of BL is porn. But come on!

16. [MAME] produces consistent highly-profitable narratives by-and-about queer folks but utterly disingenuous to the queer experience and that defines exploitation in the ET industry... Right, just adding that yes BL does not represent (in any way) the reality of being queer in any of these countries.

I have already discussed how MAME's works are intersectional reflections of queer experience. BL has been reflecting different queer experiences in Japan even before the term boys' love emerged. But narrow, ethnocentric ideas of queerness doesn't lend itself to honest understanding of other forms and representation. Consider characters being addressed as เมีย ‘wife’. It is a Thai queer practice. One can always dismiss that since it sounds heterosexist in the culture one comes from as absolutebl does in this post. That, imo, is 'disingenuous to the queer experience' of Thai people.

The question is what are westerners missing in their own countries' queer media that they feel they must just judge everything with no care for the cultures and people producing content for themselves? Seriously, what have the westernization done to some in the audience that they emerge so desperate for queer content that they watch BL yet remain blind to the cultures (fu-culture in particular) that produce them and splooge vitriolic ethnocentrism?

That concludes this discourse series. I want to sincerely thank everyone who contributed to and inspired this 🙏.

Other parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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