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the-conversation-pod · 1 year ago

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The ITSAY Anniversary Show, Part 2

WE'RE BACK FOR PART 2!

Following up on our panel for I Told Sunset About You, we brought @liyazaki back to chat with NiNi, @ginnymoonbeam, @lurkingshan, @neuroticbookworm, and @emotionallychargedtowel about I Promised You the Moon. NiNi is probably the biggest IPYTM stan on Tumblr. Join us as NiNi and Ben unpack the nostalgia of Last Twilight in Phuket before the panelists dive into the importance of this half of the Teh and Oh-aew story.

Sit back and listen to the panel discuss Teh's consistent characterization, the way Jai took advantage of that, and the role of queer community in young adult life.

Timestamps

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

1:16 - Intro 8:00 - Panel Introduction 8:45 - How did you come to BL and IPYTM? 14:35 - Expectations of IPYTM 22:40 - Narrative Structure 31:36 - Teh and Oh's Characters 37:57 - Presence or Absence of Queer Community 42:33 - Relationship Conflicts 47:05 - That Snake Jai 1:01:38 - The Ending and Character Development 1:15:23 - Favorite Scenes 1:23:51 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

01:16 - Intro

Ben

And we're back! Following up on our I Told Sunset About You retrospective we are going to move towards I Promised You the Moon. We brought a different collection of panelists this time, but before we get into NiNi’s session with the panelists, NiNi wanted to first discuss Last Twilight in Phuket with just the two of us. NiNi, describe what Last Twilight in Phuket is for the people who may have missed it because they only watched on Viki.

NiNi

I'm not going to describe it, because I'm just going to tell you: hit pause, go to Youtube, find it and watch it.

Ben

I'll describe it for you!

NiNi

Let me describe it, I never get to describe anything anymore, so I'm going to try.

Ben

I'm proud of you, go for it.

NiNi

So! Last Twilight in Phuket is a… transition piece, if you will, between I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon, that covers Oh-aew’s final day in Phuket. So they spend the whole day together, they wake up together, they go around town together. They discover that everything around them is changing, in a very very melancholy way that honestly made me want to… pull my hair out, scream, and cry all at the same time. And they recommit to each other, and then they literally ride off into the moonlight, on their way, essentially, to Bangkok. I feel like that covers it? I didn't do as well as Ben, but I think I covered everything.

Ben

Last Twilight in Phuket is that summer after graduation before you go to college. It is the best summer of your life. It is a Bryan Adams song.

[both laugh]

Ben

Last Twilight in Phuket is really fascinating as a choice overall. It's available on Youtube still, it's beautiful. You get this 16-minute, almost short-film-esque piece, that is this huge release of some of the tension from ITSAY. Before you're heading into I Promised You the Moon. Like I knew I Promised You the Moon was gonna be a dramatic mess, because Last Twilight in Phuket is tinged with this whole ‘you can't go back’ feeling about it.

One of my favorite scenes is when they attempt to go to the beach together, and it's not the same, because it's a bunch of people there. You get this feeling that they both wanted everything to be perfect between them, and it just cannot be, and it never will be. And I just really love, as you called it, the melancholy hanging over that really beautiful experience. Because it's them saying goodbye to their hometown and everything that it means to them. They know this is the end of an era for themselves, and there's this… trepidation about what's coming next that I eat up every time.

NiNi

As somebody who has left my home for an unknown space, an unknown place, at least twice in my life [laughs] … there is that feeling of trepidation. There is that feeling that when you return, nothing's gonna be the same. It's all gonna be different. Having that actually brought to the fore in the way that everything is already different for them, in terms of the places that they're accustomed to being? Their tutoring school is closed down. The private beach that they went to is closed. Things that they had come to rely on—places and spaces in particular that they had come to rely on as their places—were just gone. And what it sets up is that they have to now find new places and spaces, not just because they're moving to another city, but even in their hometown. Their hometown's never gonna be what it was and they are never gonna be the same boys who ran around Phuket crying at each other… ever again. It's all going to be different. Everything's going to change. And that is sort of the essence of Last Twilight in Phuket. It's setting you up, it's preparing you for what's about to come. And it's also just saying goodbye to the things that have gone. It's saying goodbye even to the present moment. So even as things are happening, they're slipping away.

My favorite scene in Last Twilight in Phuket is the scene where their beach is closed, and they have to go to another beach that's more of a tourist beach, and they're surrounded by people when they're accustomed to being alone in this kind of way. And you wonder like, if Teh is gonna be more reserved because now they're in public. But they're also, like Ben brought up in the last episode, they're also in a tourist space. So they're surrounded by people, yes, but they're surrounded by people who don't know them and who they don't know. So they're free in a way, they're open, and what that allows them to do, they can just be themselves with each other. Teh holds his hand. He puts his arm around him. He hugs him so tightly on that beach when Oh starts crying. It's such a beautiful scene, and it's just so vivid in my mind because of what it represents. They are, like I said, surrounded by people, but the way that the scene is shot, it's like they're the only two people in the world.

That little short is so beautiful, and it's a perrrrfect, perfect, perfect way to close off the I Told Sunset About You story, and open up the I Promised You the Moon story.

Ben

I agree! You should watch it. It's good, and it's also free and it's available. There's no reason for you not to watch it.

08:00 Panel Introduction

NiNi

So our panel of I Promised You The Moon experts: our lovely transcription team, Ginny and Shan, hopped on this one as well as, once again, friend of the pod Mor: @liyazaki. And we were also joined by two new guests. Bookworm, @neurotic-bookworm on Tumblr, and Susan, @emotionally-charged-towel on Tumblr. And I think that we had a fabulous conversation. I can't wait for you to hear it, so let's dive right in.

08:45 - How did you come to BL and ITSAY/IPTYM?

NiNi

Welcome, welcome, panel of experts! Yes, these are the I Promised You The Moon experts. Let's start with ah, an easy, like a softball question: how did you come to BL, and how did you come to this I Told Sunset About You/I Promised You The Moon story? Shan, let's start with you.

Shan

I think I have a very unusual path to BL, I kind of came in via kdrama? Where Your Eyes Linger was my first one that I found when I was just perusing the next kdrama I wanted to watch, and then I realized that there was an entire genre of BL after I saw that, and fell quickly down a rabbit hole. Discovered Thai BL, first Thai BL was 2gether—because that was very popular [laughs] at the time that I was looking around, which was in 2021?—and quickly watched a whole ton of GMMTV shows before I Told Sunset About You came on my radar. And I was kind of blown away by ITSAY, it just felt so different from everything else I had seen of the genre. It felt, in a lot of ways to me as a Westerner, more familiar—it was kind of a classic coming of age story, a classic kind of queer awakening story that I had seen before in Western media in some ways, although very specific I think to a Thai queer experience in a way that was very new for me.

NiNi

Bookworm you're up next on my list. How did you come to I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You The Moon?

Bookworm

My first BL was Kinnporsche, which I watched in May of this year, and I then joined Tumblr just to meet some, I don't know, like-minded people I suppose? And I made some friends and then, all of you immediately told me that I had to watch I Told Sunset About You. You had rules about how I had to watch it [laughs] and so I did I Told Sunset About You with Aiden, and I watched I Promised You The Moon with Shan. This is very different from what I've watched so far: I've only watched around twenty shows approximately, but this feels more like, as Shan mentioned, more of a coming of age. It's also very—much more Asian than the other shows that I watched so far. It immerses itself into the culture, the characters have specific traits that are more Asian. Yeah, it was a very fun watch experience.

NiNi

Bookworm you’re like me, we keep the numbers low but we go for the quality ones. Susan how about you?

Susan

It's funny because Shan was saying that it seems like an unusual path to go into BLs through kdrama, but that's what happened with me too. The first BL I ever watched was To My Star—I just kind of saw it as another kdrama. I didn't really pay very close attention to it, and it's not a show that really rewards, like, half-attention. So it didn't really take hold until a bit later, and actually the first BL that got me really like watching a lot of BLs is Senpai, This Can’t Be Love. I watched that one because it had two actors in it that were on Kamen Rider and my family are really into tokusatsu. That was kind of my path into the genre in general, and then of course you can't read about this stuff, especially in communities like the Tumblr fan community without hearing about I Told Sunset About You. There are some titles that sound more odd in English, without a cultural context for the countries they come from? And those would kind of stick in my mind a little bit more. And then of course you know I just heard glowing things. My big focus for a long time was, and kind of still is, Japanese BL. That's one of the reasons I hadn't watched it until just recently.

NiNi

Ben's gonna love that, you know Ben is a big big fan of the Japanese BLs. Ginny, let's go to you: how did you end up here on our esteemed panel?

Ginny

I guess this is the Asian drama background group, because I came in through cdramas; I was deep in the Untamed fandom from 2020 on, and got into reading translations of Chinese danmei, BL novels, and the few other adaptations that were available. Because I was studying Mandarin, I resisted getting into other Asian countries’ dramas for a long time, because I was like ‘this is language practice.’ But I saw gifs from Manner of Death, and I was like, ‘wait! wait! They let the boys kiss?’ So… then I had to get into BL. I actually held off on ITSAY for a long time, because I'd been hearing that it was good, and I was like, I know a lot of these are are okay and enjoyable but not like, “quality,” and I want to not blow through all the good ones right away. So I started saving it. And then more came out, and more good shows came out, and I realized, oh there's actually a rich field of quality dramas here. And then I just was like, emotionally afraid, because people kept talking about what an intense experience it was? So I didn't finally watch it until earlier this year, and it was everything that had been told to me. Frequently when I go in expecting something to be intense, it's disappointing, or you know, it falls short of that? This series did not.

14:35 - Expectations of IPYTM

NiNi

That it certainly did not. Mor, I know you would have talked a little bit about the way that you came to BL on the ITSAY panel. So I want to kick off the next part of this with you. So we’re coming off of ITSAY in the halcyon days of whenever we actually watched it, and we get to the end and boom: the story will continue. When you saw that, Mor, what was your expectation of what we were gonna get in this continuation of the story that ended up being I Promised You The Moon? What did you expect going into this?

Mor

So, when I am deeply attached to a story the way I was and will always be with ITSAY, I try to go into follow-ups to those stories with as close to zero expectations as possible. It's a defense mechanism, I'm just very afraid of being burned and disappointed, so I try to not let myself go down those mental rabbit holes of what could happen, because getting stressed out and theorizing—it's not going to change the outcome, we're going to get what we're going to get. You hope that the writers will listen to the fans, you hope that they stay true to what we at least perceive to be the spirit and intention of the original story, but ultimately it is their story to tell, So I try to just get on board, strap myself in, enjoy the ride whatever it's going to be.

But my general expectation was that we would see some very relatable situations play out, so, living on your own for the first time, being totally responsible for yourself, finding new friends, having very new experiences—especially for Teh and Oh, given where they grew up. Bangkok is such a different environment than Phuket. And all the while they're trying to maintain friendships, they're trying to maintain their relationship. That age is just so exciting and terrifying and constantly in flux, and I expected I Promised You The Moon to showcase that. And it absolutely delivered: just, in a much more gut-wrenching way than I ever maybe originally anticipated, but one that nonetheless still rang incredibly true to life at least for me, and to these characters, which at the end of the day is all I can really ask for as a viewer.

NiNi

Guts were wrenched and no mistake. Bookworm, you're a recent convert to the legend of IPYTM as I like to call it. What did you expect having finished ITSAY, and getting ready to dive into IPYTM? What were your expectations of the story?

Bookworm

When we got to the end of ITSAY, one thing that was very clear for me was that Teh and Oh were seemingly on the same page? They finally were talking to each other and listening to each other, but only on the burning desire that they share for each other, right? Everything else that encapsulated a relationship, they had to figure all of that out, and that was my expectation. Immediately after I ended ITSAY, that was what popped into my head. And I wanted IPYTM to explore those, um, aspects of their relationship, how they were going to figure out living together, how to… spend time with each other, balance the schedules, and all of the other boring things that come with a relationship. And I think yeah, they were pretty successful, I would say.

NiNi

Shan, I'm gonna come to you next. What were you thinking of, having ended ITSAY, seeing that title card come up and then going into IPYTM? What were you thinking that we might get?

Shan

I came in with a lot of stuff already in my head about IPYTM, because as I tend to do, I had been lurking about on Tumblr—that's how I learned about this show in the first place, I probably never would have found this show without seeing people talk about it on Tumblr—so for both ITSAY and IPYTM, like, I kind of went in with like a notion of what the discourse was around them? So, similar to Bookworm, I felt that the next phase of the story would have to be them figuring out how to actually be in a relationship together which, frankly is one of my very favorite reasons for a season two to exist [laughs] of romances? We so rarely get that part of a romance story.

But I also knew that there was a lot of fandom discontent around this second part of the story. I knew going in that there was a cheating plotline and that people were big mad about it. And I had seen the commentary from some people that Teh had been quote-unquote “ruined” in the second part of the story, and that he was quote-unquote “out of character.” And having seen ITSAY and the quality of that production, and the quality of the writing—like some of the best writing I've seen anywhere in the genre? I just didn't believe that was true, at all! [laughs] So I kind of went in, honestly, ready to fight, and just kind of like prove to myself that those takes were wrong? I went in with a fighting spirit, like, ‘I don't believe that that's true, and I bet this story is so much better than they think, and that fandom just wasn't ready for it.’ So that's kind of honestly the posture that I took into the show. And you know, spoiler alert: they were wrong and I—and we here on this panel—were right.

NiNi

[laughs] Shan came in ready to box. What about you Ginny, how did you feel going into I Promised You The Moon? What were your thoughts and expectations?

Ginny

Very similar to Shan, I had kind of picked up a lot about it by osmosis. I was sure that there was going to be a breakup, I had picked up that there might be cheating, and I knew that a lot of people hated Teh. I left ITSAY loving Teh so much, and also seeing very clearly why people might hate him, the things about him that a lot of people would pick up and be really upset about. So, I think I went in with my expectations… pretty well set for all of that, and… I was just excited to see how the story was going to play out. I also had a lot of trust in the writing and creative talent behind the show, so I was ready to be satisfied by the story, and I was!

NiNi

Coming to you Susan, let's hear it?

Susan

Well, I haven't seen I Promised You The Moon. I don't mind spoilers, I actually kind of like to be spoiled on almost everything as much as possible. As much as I seek out media that has really a lot of emotional themes, I also can't handle them very well. So knowing what I'm in for really helps me. And it doesn't seem to detract from the experience for me.

ITSAY seems so self-contained, and so much about a certain moment in time? And it's so tied to the place. It makes it really hard to even picture what it would look like to tell this story, at a different phase of life, in another place. Everybody's a little bit fearful of second seasons and continuations of beloved shows, but if I'm really sold on the initial show, when I hear there's going to be more? Yeah, I'm nervous, but I'm just like yeah, yeah, more okay, sure, great! Yeah, whatever you say just give me more! This is one of the only times that I did kind of feel like hanging back for a moment and being like, ‘how would that work? I don't even know.’ At the same time, I do usually prefer stories about established couples. It just gets at a kind of complexity that is really appealing. As exciting as getting together stories are, the established relationship story is usually kind of where the rubber meets the road. And I like when things get challenging and complicated and people definitely aren't being their best selves anymore, things like that.

NiNi

Definitely there was a lot of that in IPYTM.

22:40 - Narrative structure

NiNi

So, I'm gonna just switch things around a little bit, I want to talk about how IPYTM is structured, the narrative structure, the story coming out of the very clear five-act structure coming of age story that we got in ITSAY. And I want to really lean on Shan and Bookworm for this. Starting with Bookworm: what are your thoughts on how I Promised You The Moon is structured and organized as a story?

Bookworm

Well when I went into the watch, I was already told that there were going to be a lot of time skips in the show compared to ITSAY. ITSAY was much more fluid and flowing, and it was contained within, I think, just months. But when it came to IPYTM, we had a lot of blocks of time that were left for us to fill. I expected the characters to have breaks—like how the characters would have developed during the times that we have lost, and there would be fractures in the character that we would see? I expected that to happen because that usually does happen when we have a lot of time skips. But it was impressively well-maintained through the time skips, and it did not bother me as much as I expected that it would? Maybe because I was informed beforehand that, this is how, narratively, the structure of the two shows were different.

Also we see the boys grow up a lot more in the show, right? So there was a sense of, sped-up nature in the show that we did not get in ITSAY as well? I have noticed a sense of discomfort around this narrative structure, but I felt pretty okay with it, maybe it's just a personal preference or maybe it was because I had prior knowledge, but it felt fine to me.

NiNi

Shan, you want to pick up on that?

Shan

I think that the way that we jump through time so much in IPYTM is like the biggest obvious difference, right? So ITSAY was structured kind of like a five-act story, where each episode was a complete act; big shift happens in the relationship in each episode. But IPYTM is different. It's kind of, I think, a three-act story split across five episodes. So you've got episodes 1 and 2 is Act 1, where it's the move to Bangkok, it's the new setting, it's the adjustment, to kind of moving into an adult phase of their relationship? And then into the first fracture in their relationship, related to some of the adult choices that they're having to make. That's kind of Act 1. And then there's a big time skip between episode 2 and episode 3. And episodes 3 and 4 are like Act 2. There's a pretty short time period that both of those episodes span across? Like, maybe only a few weeks of time. And that's of course the BIG big fracture in the relationship, when Teh begins to really drift away from Oh-aew, and ends up kissing Jai, and all of the fallout of that that we saw play out. And then there's another big time skip after the end of episode 4, and we're—head into episode 5, which is their kind of time apart and then their reconciliation. So it really kind of feels like three acts, kind of spread unevenly across five episodes. And each of those installments is paced differently. So I can see how—and you know I think I felt some of this myself as a viewer—it feels a little bit, I think hard to kind of keep your bearings in the story? Whereas in ITSAY you were on one continuous fluid ride, like Bookworm said.

IPYTM also has to fall back on some filmmaking tricks that ITSAY really didn't use, I think because of this structure. Things like using a lot more flashbacks, using repeating scenes… ITSAY really didn't do that at all, but it happens quite a bit in IPYTM: kind of trying to remind the audience and ground them in things that have happened, because they're skipping through time so much.

One of the things, that I think is maybe an intentional result of that different structure, is about the emotional tone of the two stories. ITSAY—it’s very emotionally immersive. Like I think on the panel discussion you all had about ITSAY, you talked about how these boys are constantly crying. The emotions are big, right? And that feels very in line with one continuous emotional story, a coming of age story about young boys who are kind of coming into themselves and understanding themselves for the first time. IPYTM, by contrast, feels a little bit more even-keeled. Like, there are emotions, but they're not quite as big. There's a little bit of a remove, and I think that's because they're adults now. Think about the way Teh cries in ITSAY, versus how he cries in IPYTM. In ITSAY he's like honking crying right? He's got like snot dripping down his face, losing his shit, curling into a ball. He has no control at all. In IPYTM when he cries, it's not like that. He does have to kind of keep a lid on it a little bit. He doesn't go quite as deep into his emotions. And so, I think the way that the narrative structure is set up kind of lends itself to that more adult feeling? Of having to restrain your emotions a little bit, and keep getting on with things, and not being able to just kind of wallow in the way that they could when they were young.

I don't think that one of these styles is better than the other? I think they are just different. And I think that as a viewer, we're probably all going to have a preference there. My preference personally—I like big emotion, you know? And one of the things that Bookworm and I talked about around this, was how there's a little bit of a Western/Eastern dichotomy here as well. I'm a Westerner, I like the bigness of the emotion in ITSAY, that really resonates for me. Whereas for Bookworm, the kind of, more emotional restraint that we see in IPYTM? Resonated a little more for her, and I don't know if you wanted to comment on that at all Bookworm.

Bookworm

Yeah, the bigness of emotions in ITSAY was definitely a factor that disengaged me from the emotion? For me, whenever a character on the screen does not want to feel something, and wants to keep it inside themselves and struggling to do so, and you can see it on the face, the struggle to keep their composure? While having all of this emotional turmoil within themselves? That is what will make me feel all of the emotions that they are trying to feel. I didn't really get that sort of immersion when I watched ITSAY, because Teh and Oh did all of the crying themselves. They cried constantly: they cried in classrooms, they cried [laughs] around their friends, there's just a lot of crying.

When it came to IPYTM, the emotions were much more subdued. In both of the big moments in Oh and Teh's relationship, when it came to a head—in episode 4 when they fought, and afterwards Teh goes to Q's house to talk to Oh—in both of those moments, both of them were angry, they were confused, and Teh's having the moment of realization of how he has fucked this up, and all of those emotions were dialed way back down. And I definitely felt much more immersed into the story, when it came to IPYTM than I felt in ITSAY.

NiNi

It's really interesting that that's the stuff that you guys picked up on because, in watching the documentaries—and I don't know how many of you have watched the IPYTM documentaries as yet—but one of the things that the director, Meen Tossaphon Riantong, talks about, particularly in that scene in episode 4 that you mentioned Bookworm, is about how when they were doing it they had to do multiple takes because Billkin was crying too much. He was being too emotional, and he needed him to dial it back because he's a grownup now. It was definitely deliberate on the part of the director.

31:36 - Teh and Oh’s characters

NiNi

While we're on the topic of how Oh and Teh are handling emotion, let's delve a little bit into their characteristics, and how that even led them to be where they are, in the rift that they have in IPYTM. I want to start with Mor here: I want to talk a little bit about the different ways that Teh and Oh handle conflict, and the different ways that they… deal with their relationship and how that led them to be in such a pickle [laughs] during I Promised You The Moon.

Mor

That's a very generous way of putting what happened. [laughs] It was definitely a pickle.

They approach conflict I think in polar opposite ways. Oh wants to talk things through, typically. He's more measured in his approach; you can tell even in ITSAY when they're still in high school that he will kind of wait and absorb and observe. But he wants to be open, he wants to talk things through, and he's very self-aware, whereas Teh doesn't know what he's doing or what's going on. Some of y'all have heard me use this analogy 1200 times already and I'm sorry, but for me, it always comes down to Teh being the equivalent of a human bulldozer. That man, he feels and he acts first, second, and third—and then he maybe thinks fourth or fifth on a good day? [laughs] And I think part of that is just his personality. He's extremely passionate, he has been since he was a kid, and that passion is one of the things that drew Oh to him in the first place. I also think that Oh was basically Teh’s touchstone in many ways from the time that they were kids? So when that relationship was severed, we never got evidence of any other connection that ever came close to that level for Teh. So I think in a way, Teh's emotional intelligence got stunted a little bit when that friendship stopped? And you can really see the difference, the contrast with Oh when they meet up again later in ITSAY.

Oh seems to make friends easily, he's well-liked, he's already incredibly self-aware and comfortable with who he is. When he gets into university one of the first things Oh does is seek out community. He values relationships. Like I said before he's more measured in his approach to life and to friendships, and because of that he has this emotional maturity and awareness going in to IPYTM that's light years beyond Teh? Teh just doesn't know how to put what he's feeling into words, and beyond that, Teh doesn't even seem to be aware of how he's really feeling in make or break moments that really count. It takes him much longer to process it and be able to communicate that. To top it off, Teh's tunnel vision is so focused on becoming an actor, and the friendships he makes are either accidental or they're initiated by other people, and he seems to minimally invest in them? Except for once Jai had him under his spell of course.

Teh also wants things to stay exactly the same, we see that a ton in I Promised You The Moon. Teh just does not cope well with change. It's like he wants to willfully ignore that it's an unavoidable part of life. When their friendship ended initially Teh lost the main person in his life who in my opinion challenged him, which Oh did just by nature of being himself. Oh doesn't have Teh’s one-track mind determination, which of course brings its own set of issues and insecurities for Oh, but it also opens him up to seeing more possibilities, something that Teh has a hard time even conceptualizing. And I think because of this Teh got even more one-track minded once he started drifting away from Oh in IPYTM? Teh’s basically rigid in a time where it is crucial to be flexible. He's blind to the fact that not everyone operates in the same way he does, especially his partner.

So basically you have these two people coming into this relationship with incredibly different ways of approaching life. One partner with subpar communication skills—and I'm being generous with that. [laughs] And they're in a new environment with new routines, new people, new challenges. These are differences that may have never become an issue in a friendship, but a romantic relationship? You can have the best intentions in the world, but when you have that much fundamental imbalance in an intimate relationship, that's a powder keg ready to explode. It leaves the perfect window of opportunity for snakes like Jai to take advantage of that at the first chance that they get.

NiNi

Yes, join me in the “Jai is a snake” corner over here. [laughs] I want to come to you Susan actually, because having not watched I Promised You The Moon, and just listening to everybody else talk about how Teh and Oh have progressed within I Promised You The Moon and the way that their relationship comes apart—but having watched ITSAY, does it surprise you how things went with Teh and Oh coming out of ITSAY?

Susan

Ah, no, not at all, it actually seems really in keeping with the characters, and their kind of styles in how they relate to each other and, how they negotiated their relationship in ITSAY. I think it's really consistent.

NiNi

You heard it here first from our resident behavioral expert, people: Teh is not out of character.

Susan

People get into kind of complementary roles in relationships. It can be kind of one person's job to do certain things and voice certain types of needs, and another person's job to do the things that that role isn't taking care of, and voicing the needs that that person is afraid to voice, while maybe not voicing some needs that the other person is voicing. Big example of that is pursuing and distancing. A lot of relationships have some kind of imbalance between who's pursuing and who's distancing. The thing that I think kind of sums up pursuers and distancers is that it's about what you do when you're in distress. When a pursuer is in distress they're looking for connection, and distancers, when they're stressed, they want to get away. Again and again we see Teh just disappearing, when he's distressed, and kind of making it everybody else's job to track him down.

NiNi

You're taking us to church here. [laughs]

37:57 Presence or Absence of Queer Community

NiNi

I want to come to Ginny. One aspect of the character stuff that came up during Mor's contribution, and it's come up with Susan as well: this idea of Teh being more of a… lone wolf kind of character, whereas Oh always finds community, and when he moves to Bangkok he finds queer community where Teh does not. I have always felt like part of the way that things went between them was because Teh had no community to talk to about the things that he was experiencing and feeling?

Ginny

I'm having so many thoughts in response to what Susan said, and in response to your question. They both do seek connection, but Oh-aew is much much more interested in community, in friendships, in sharing himself in a fluid kind of balanced way. Teh has this intense drive for a one-to-one, deeply intimate, deeply entwined connection. He's not interested in friendships especially: he wants people to, like, bind their lives with his, he wants people to, like, twist their identity into his.

I want to go back to a couple of the things Susan was saying about the pursuer distancer dynamic first, which is that we do see Teh work very hard for the relationship in practical ways. Like he's the one keeping late hours and driving all over town to make sure he can spend the night with Oh, and he never once complains about that or resists that, because he is devoted to Oh in this way. But he has a very rigid conception of what that looks like, and as soon as the idea that they're not on this same career path, on the same path of artistic passion together? As soon as that's shattered, his idea of this unified partner that will walk aside him and share everything important in his life starts to crack, and he starts to look away from Oh-aew, and eventually to look to someone else for that kind of connection and bond that he feels like he needs. And for Teh at this point, his understanding of his sexuality has become kind of a non-issue, whereas his binding of his romantic interest and his artistic passion is where all of his turmoil lives.

Meanwhile Oh-aew has made this wonderful friend group. I recently rewatched the series, and their first interaction where he first meets Q and the other friends… the first time I watched it I was so tense because Oh's loneliness and his homesickness is palpable and painful at that point in the story, and you just desperately want him to have somebody. And he sits down with this crowd of kids and you're not sure what's going to happen. It's not obvious right away that they're queer unless you're paying close attention, like, Q’s fingernails are painted, there's little cues there, other things like that. And then within two seconds of meeting them, Oh-aew starts crying because he's so homesick, and I was like ‘oh god, what's going to happen, I'm so stressed for him.’ But these boys just like surround him, they're so sweet to him, and then it becomes clear. Right there you've established, this is a queer friend group and every time you see them together there's just all these indicators that like, these are people that Oh can be at home with, can come into more of himself with, can be supported by. The way they hold him through the breakup makes me cry. Because it doesn't take away any of his pain, but they're so there for him. He's never alone and he's never unsupported. It makes a tremendous difference to how I think things go at the end. I don't think Oh gets to a place where he's able to come back to Teh at the end, if he doesn't have that community support holding him really through his whole college career and especially through the breakup.

42:33 Relationship Conflicts

NiNi

I want us to delve into some of these different things that Oh’s friends are supporting him through, that Teh doesn't seem to have the same level of community on. Their initial conflicts, the early stuff that was happening, the things that are happening with them in year one and particularly the giant fight that they had in episode 2. I'm going to come to Shan for this.

I love talking about how horrible Teh is in episode 2 of I Promised You The Moon, because that boy was being rancid. But I also want to talk a little bit about how the seeds of that were sown in the little cracks that you saw in episode 1.

Shan

Thank you for allowing me to talk about Teh being rancid in episode 2. That fight is brutal! It starts with Teh being so passive aggressively awful to Oh-aew in front of other people. Oh-aew has come into this restaurant to sit with Teh and his seniors—these are people that Oh-aew is not particularly comfortable around? This is not a friendly crowd for Oh-aew. He is with people that he doesn't know well, that are older than him, that he wants to make a good impression on, because they are important to Teh and and he's Teh's partner. So for Teh to start taking digs on him under those circumstances, and to just not let up and keep relentlessly going no matter how many times everyone at the table tries to deflect him away from it? Just so brutal to watch.

And the seeds were planted pretty early on, right? This was seeded not even just in episode 1 of IPYTM, but way back at the beginning of I Told Sunset About You. The original fracture in Teh and Oh-aew's friendship is because of Teh's inability to roll with Oh-aew acting in a way that he doesn't like. He's jealous of him. He's jealous of how easy things come to him. He is… judgmental about Oh-aew's inability to stick with things, or to know exactly what he wants? He looks down on Oh-aew a little bit for being a follower, for adapting the interests of the people around him. Now in college Oh-aew gets to school and he's miserable, and he realizes he doesn't actually want to do the thing he thought he was there to do. And you know, let's not forget that Oh-aew is sitting in in the program that Teh gave up for him. Now Oh-aew never asked him to do that, of course, that was Teh’s big dumbass mistake. But Oh-aew has the thing that Teh wanted and that Teh gave up, in his mind, for Oh-aew. And Oh-aew doesn't value it the way that he would, and he doesn't like it the way that he would, and he decides to give it up. And he gives it up to follow his new friends into their passion. Now, is that a totally fair way of looking at it? I don't think so: Oh-aew is clearly good at marketing. He has, like, a natural aptitude for it; it makes sense that he would go that way. But from Teh's perspective, he's just looking at Oh following his latest friends into the thing they're doing, and he kind of sees it as part of that same pattern.

So that was seeded so consistently throughout their relationship, that kind of tension point, and the way that Teh judges Oh-aew for this kind of behavioral pattern that he has? And so to see that come out in that fight, and for Teh's resentment of that to just continue to simmer and simmer and simmer, to the point where he cannot keep it together even in front of other people—and he embarrasses himself even more than he embarrasses Oh-aew in that scene with his seniors. It was such a brutal scene but it also felt so real, it was such a real kind of fight that you see long-term couples get into, where one of them just starts digging at the other, knowing all their weak points and knowing all the worst parts to hit, and that's what we watched Teh do in that scene. And all of it was so, like, deeply seeded in the story that we knew exactly why it was happening.

NiNi

Doesn't make it any easier to watch.

47:05 - That snake Jai

NiNi

Now it's time to talk about that snake Jai, and I'm going straight to Mor on this because Mor and I watched this together live while it was happening. [laughs] Come through, Mor. Let's talk. Let’s talk about Jai, let's talk about Teh and Jai, let's talk about how Oh-aew clocked Jai, just bring it out.

Mor

Oooh, that man. That man! The first thing that always comes to my mind that NiNi and I would just rant on, and we could not let it go—because how could you—is that fricking journal. The fricking journal! That was the most disgusting, manipulative… I can't think of something more insidious as a plot device to use. Not only is there a power imbalance already between these two, because yeah, they're not that far apart in age, but Jai is in a place that Teh wants to be in. He is succeeding in the area that Teh is dreaming of being in. Teh is already looking up to him so much. From the first time that he walks into the acting club, he's hearing from other people about how important Jai is, basically. So there's already an an imbalance there.

Jai is experienced. He obviously knows how to read people and use them very well, we see that from the beginning. So I feel like he saw Teh, and just laser focused on him. And using the journal the way he did: it was like he asked Teh to make him a manual—’Go ahead, go ahead Teh, write out to me how I can best wrap you around my little finger and use you! Use you for my devices; use you to further my career, my dreams, my motivations. And once I have wrung you dry and left you with nothing… well, you know, whatever, I helped you! I, I helped—it's not my fault, we're not in a relationship. We’re—I mean, this is just professional! This is acting, Teh! That's how it is!’ I mean so much of Jai, and where they wound up, and just that whole relationship: it comes back to that journal. Again, it was just like a manual of how to manipulate him. It was so disgusting. I was so angry! [laughs]

I'm getting angry now, I've never been so upset watching what felt like a slow motion car crash where Teh is just completely unaware of what is happening, and how he is being played like a fiddle. And you just have to watch it go on, and because he's drifting away from Oh, there is truly nothing to help him. There are no guardrails. There are no safeguards at this point. And that's why to me, it was not shocking in the least what happened. As we saw it in ITSAY, he just feels and feels and feels first. He does not think first. [laughs] And the way that that whole relationship played out from the beginning, Teh was set up to fail.

Whoo! I'm gonna get off my soapbox now.

NiNi

[laughs] No, god, I love that so much. My thing on Jai is, when I saw Jai gaslighting Teh that was one thing, but then when he tried to gaslight Oh-aew—that was when I knew that he was a snake and that was all I was ever going to think about him. But I think that Bookworm has some slightly different thoughts on Jai? So Bookworm, if you want to pull those out and tell us what they are.

Bookworm

Well, make no mistake NiNi, I also hate Jai so passionately. But the thing that struck me as soon as I finished episode 3 with Jai and Teh kissing in that rehearsal room, was that Teh tends to… have trouble trying to separate what his ambitions are and what his desire is. When it comes to Jai he is just somebody Teh looks up to, somebody who is ahead of Teh, who can guide him to the goals that Teh has set up for himself for so long. And, immediately he transfers all of that longing and the visceral need onto Jai. He keeps lusting on the personification of his ambitions, and I would argue that he does the same thing in ITSAY as well. There are certainly other factors but when we see how easily Teh got roped into Jai’s schemes and how he… let his heart sort of go with Jai wherever he pulled, because he was blinded by the ambition and the achievements that he wants in his career. There is a shadow of that in Teh and Oh’s dynamic in ITSAY as well.

Another thing that I tried to keep an eye on after episode 3 was that, if there was no Oh-aew in Teh’s life, would Jai be Teh’s future self? Is that what Teh would become? There is certainly, few things that Teh does that feel so close to what Jai did to him. For example, when he showed up on Tarn's doorstep asking her to tell him that she loves him, but he doesn't want to say it back. It's not a far reach, you can see how Teh can easily become Jai, but there is also a part of him that I think is just not as ruthless. Like Mor mentioned, he is a human bulldozer, everything he does is just chaos and he only stops and reflects when he has just demolished everything in his sight. But he does reflect, right? He stops and he thinks about it. He talks to Oh-aew whenever they stop and have a conversation after whatever mayhem has happened, Teh can go into his mind and he can point out where he's going wrong, and he can see the things for himself without somebody else telling him: this is where you're making mistakes. He would just spell it out by himself, he has that ability to identify the ways that he's hurting the people around him, and the reasons that he's doing that. That is what sets him apart from Jai.

NiNi

So so so so so, so accurate. Given everything that Bookworm just said about the similarities between Jai and Teh, and the difference being Teh’s ability to reflect versus Jai’s: we're given indications in the show that Jai feels guilty—I don't buy them necessarily, but Ginny, do you think that Jai feels bad about what he did? Not that he wouldn't do it again, [laughs] but do you think that he feels bad about what he did?

Ginny

So on my first watch I read Jai more sympathetically than on my second watch… which is less because I knew what was going to happen on the second watch, and more because I saw some of the nuances. Small indicators he was giving that he was calculating the whole time. I do still think—like, Jai is not a monster; Jai is a human person. He clearly has the ability to see what he did to Teh. He knows how badly he hurt him and how he ruined that relationship. And I do think he feels a way about that. Like you said NiNi, he wouldn't do it differently. He's made his choices, and he's never given any indication that he would ever put another human's feelings above his goals.

And in his own way, he might think he is helping Teh, because for Jai, the artistic achievement and the career achievement is more important; the ambition is more important than anything else. And if he got Teh to a place where he performed very well in that play—he got a request from an agent and it ended up launching his career—so Jai might look at that and say, ‘See I helped you, because I gave you something that you really really wanted. So what if I had to break your heart and this other person's heart and ruin your relationship to do it?’ So I think he has feelings about that, but I think Jai's priorities are such that he would never regret what he did.

NiNi

Anybody else have thoughts on that?

Shan

I think that there was an intentional choice in the ending montage to show Jai reacting to the news that Teh and Oh-aew got back together? To give us a little bit of a sense that Jai does remember—I don't think he regrets what he did to Teh in that relationship—but he cares a little bit about it, enough to feel some sense of, maybe relief that they were able to work through it, and that whatever he did didn't totally destroy them forever? Frankly, I don't like the choice to show us that. [laughs] I don't care about Jai, I don't care what he feels about it. But I do think that was included intentionally to kind of communicate to the audience, like Ginny said: he's not a monster, he's a human, and he… very similarly to how we see Teh behave sometimes, he puts his ambitions first over the way he treats others. And I think they wanted us to see the humanity in that, and not totally just write him off as a villain.

NiNi

He can kiss my ass. Go Mor.

Mor

Them showing us that scene, to me, was the final nail in the coffin of, okay, all right, my read on you? Mhm, it’s been right this whole time. [laughs] Okay, yeah, Jai probably isn't a monster but the thing is, from a personal perspective: I've known Jais. Something that NiNi and I talked about having backgrounds in the arts, dance, theater. We have seen Jais, we know Jais, I can see a Jai, I can spot one from twelve hundred feet away. Okay, they're not monsters, but they are—the term gets thrown around way too much, but for me, they're the textbook definition of a narcissist, who thinks that they are god's gift, and that everyone is blessed by being in their presence, and that they are the top dog basically, and everyone else? They're collateral. Maybe they'll be useful. They're not out to necessarily get people but they're definitely out to use people.

And so showing us that scene… What will always stick with me is Jai's smirk? It wasn't a smile in my opinion. Not a smile of ‘oh, you know, I'm glad that this worked out.’ It was a casual over the shoulder… just a smirk. And then the casualness with which he walked off the screen. The fact that there were no words, there were no dialogue—to me, it just spoke to how casually he viewed what he did. How it wasn't that big of a deal, and he's just going to move on. He's going to move on with his life, he'll probably never think of these people again—and to me it really all comes down to intention. Teh may have done things that would have made him very similar to Jai, but Teh never had the intention to blatantly use people the way that Jai did. And while that doesn't make you a monster, it does make you a shitty human being. That really makes all the difference. And that scene to me was showing us without words Jai's intentions.

NiNi

Whooo, yes, let me tell you all about some of the nonsense that goes on backstage, understage, in the flies… like some of the shit that I have seen? [laughs]

Susan, now I know you haven't seen I Promised You the Moon, but like I said you're our resident behavioral expert. So everything that you're hearing, what's something that you want to bring forward here?

Susan

Just as an aside, what y’all are saying about these tendencies in the performing arts community? As someone who spent a lot of my life in a community of musicians, sounds familiar. I was already thinking about a former partner of mine who once told me that his gift to the world was going to be his music, and that my gift to the world was going to be how I facilitated him making his music. So, you know, I can relate to some of that stuff.

So, I was going to say, there's something about Teh that seems contradictory on the surface. And that is, he's clearly an incredibly sensitive person, I mean just look at the crying. He clearly feels a lot, and yet he can act so unfeeling. And what I'm hearing about this other person? This person sounds like someone who doesn't start from the base of perceiving those emotions in the first place. It just doesn't hit them as hard and they feel like they want more, because it takes a lot to, kind of register on your personal scale. So that's going to be my guess about this person. They're not already coming from a place of feeling for other people in a natural way. That's an educated guess.

NiNi

That's a very, very educated I guess.

1:01:38 - The Ending and Character Development

NiNi

I want to take that and sort of slide into the next idea. One of the things that struck me in the end of the show, particularly in episode 5 in that conversation that Teh and Oh-aew you have when they see each other again at the agency. Teh is talking to Oh about how he's having such a hard time coming up with his thesis play, and Oh is telling Teh, there's so much all around you. And I always tie that back to some of the things that Susan was talking about there that's also manifested in the way that Teh deals with his roommate.

Teh is, in his mind, rejected by his roommate at the beginning, and he rejects him right back, so he doesn't even realize or notice when his roommate breaks up with his partner. So when he breaks up with Oh-aew in the end, he's hostile at this point to his roommate. He hasn't even tried ever to build a relationship with him. He's not interested in anything he does. And his roommate says to him, ‘well why do you think I wouldn't understand you?’ He realizes that he has not looked outside of himself at all. And that’s something that comes up again in the conversation with Oh-aew.

I think I rambled myself around a little bit, but I want to start getting into the end of the story and how that plays out, and Teh’s reflection on his own behavior, on how he's been treating people, on the fact that he's not good at paying attention to people [laughs] and that has caused him problems in his life. Shan, I haven't come to you for a little while.

Shan

I actually really love Teh's arc in the final episode. After the big emotional episode, where he makes a big big mistake [laughs] because he's not thinking things through, he gets time: he gets time away from Oh-aew and time to move into a new phase of his life, and time to start having some new experiences, and even time to date somebody else after Oh-aew, and feel the difference in the quality of those relationships and what they do for him.

We kind of see him start to process, and understand that even though his ambitions are being realized? He is not fulfilled. He doesn't feel happy. He is an actor, he has a tv show, he's doing things he said he wanted to do, and he's dating somebody—his co-star, who is the perfect partner for that, right? She helps his career. They look great together. They have the same ambitions. She's very driven just like him… and he's not into it. He's like, ‘oh this isn't really doing things for me emotionally that I thought it would. Having a partner who is exactly aligned with the things I want to do is maybe not actually going to give me the satisfaction and the fulfillment of my desires that I thought.’ And so, I actually think that's a really important arc for him. And then for him to then see Oh-aew, have all of that activated, have all of those old feelings come back, and realize that he actually wants to fight to get that relationship back. And he's bringing some of what he learned.

And I mean, you know, he's still the same person. He still has to do everything in the most dramatic way possible. He has to make it a big grand gesture, instead of a more organic attempt to reconnect with Oh-aew. I loved that in the resolution between them, what Oh-aew says is not ‘I trust that this will never happen again,’ or ‘I feel really confident now that we're gonna, like, be great together.’ [laughs] What Oh-aew says is, ‘I understand who you are, and I wanna be with you. And what I'm asking from you is a commitment to, like, not go off and spin out the way that you normally do when shit happens. Because shit is gonna happen again.’ And Teh seems pretty confident about his ability to, like, commit to that.

I don't believe that Teh is never gonna stray again. I don't. I think he's probably going to end up having feelings for someone else again. It's the way he is. He just gets obsessive about things that draw his attention, and I think that that's probably always going to be the case. And so one of the things that they're going to have to work through is figuring out how that works within the context of the relationship they have, what their boundaries are around that. And that necessitates communication. So that's kind of the commitment that they're trying to make. And the trajectory of that can look different. Oh-aew at this stage in his life wants a monogamous relationship; maybe that will always be the case. And then they'll have to figure out how Teh can control these impulses that he has to make that work. Maybe they're going to learn that if they want to stay together long term, absolute monogamy maybe is not their solution. There are paths before them. But they have to talk to each other. They have to work it out together, and that's the commitment that they're making: that when shit gets hard, they will talk to each other. I really love that; it felt like a very adult resolution. It felt very grounded in… who they are as people and what they can reasonably expect of each other. It just felt so mature. You just don't see that very often in BL. So I really loved it.

I will say, the Oh-aew side of that arc wasn't quite as strong for me. And I think it's a little bit evident in the way that this conversation has gone, Oh-aew—his characterization is not quite as strong as Teh’s. I don't feel that the writing team had as much of a handle on exactly what they wanted to say with him and about him. So I do think there's a little bit of a missing piece to his part of this story. We saw that post-breakup Oh-aew was kind of thriving on his own, actually. He's doing great. He did very well in school, he's started his career. He's still got great friends. He's still got community around him. He is okay, he's content being single. And we saw that after Teh's first grand gesture, that he rejected him pretty firmly. He was like ‘no, you don't get to do this, this is not the way.’ And then we didn't really see a middle step before he then changed his mind and decided to jump back in both feet with Teh. And it's not that that doesn't feel right? It does, because Oh-aew is always going to forgive Teh, always. He said it himself: ‘Have I ever left you, Teh?’ No, he hasn't and he never will, probably. So it's not that it feels unrealistic, it's just that I wanted him to have a little bit more of an emotional arc there, similar to what we got for Teh. So that's my, like, small quibble with that. But overall I loved the resolution for their relationship; I loved the way they came back together and what the show said about the future in front of them.

NiNi

‘Have I ever left you Teh?’ is probably my favorite line in all of I Promised You The Moon. I want to step to Bookworm here, because I want to talk a little bit about Teh and reflection in the end of the story, and the role of the play. How Teh uses it to reflect and try to reconnect with Oh-aew, and how Oh-aew perceives that.

Bookworm

We’re very clear that Teh is somebody who does not like change. Who keeps things going till it reaches that breaking point. I want to maybe reframe it a little bit, and bring it back to the play. I think Teh tends to let things go, because I think he does not like being in the present. He is constantly either thinking about the future, or he's obsessed with something that has happened in the past. That's why Oh-aew was so pissed at that play, because that is not the conversation that he wanted to have. That is not something that Oh-aew wants to even address at that point, because they have moved past all of that, and there are things that they have to talk about that has happened in the present and at the moment. And Teh does not engage that way, it's just not his character, right? He doesn't do that.

Then we got to the ending, and Oh-aew has this conversation with Teh about how he just wants to be in his life, and he doesn't know where this is going to go but he just wants to be together. And then Teh does, again, just a chaotic maneuver and posts this Instagram picture, and it's identifiable chaos, right? That's a Teh that we know. But this time he is trying to solve a problem at the present, and that I think is how Teh has reflected. It may not be conscious; I'm pretty sure he has not sat down and thought through all of this. He's just that—as the time moved, he has done this shift within himself. He has turned that chaos somehow into… a tool that he can use to try to engage with the problems that they have to deal with in the present, and not put it into the future so that it becomes such a huge ticking time bomb that just blows up on everybody's face—or just throw everything into the past and link it to some pivotal focal point that just shadows over everything else.

NiNi

Y'all are blowing my mind, and I'm loving this whole experience. Ginny: Shan mentioned not having as clear an understanding of Oh in this final act as she does of Teh, and I feel like you're a kind of an Oh-aew whisperer. So I don't know if you want to lean into your understanding and share with us what you're taking away from Oh in the final act of the story.

Ginny

I definitely see… his arc and his journey is much more subtle, and you have to be watching really closely I think to read some of what's happening. But what I saw especially on my second watch is that—Oh-aew, up until he hears that Teh has broken up with his co-star, he has a very clear story in his mind about the breakup, and about Teh and why it didn't work out with him. And that story started when Oh-aew left acting. He knew that Teh wasn't okay with it, and even after they made up, Teh wasn't fully okay with it. And that degraded their relationship until the point of the Jai incident. Oh-aew was very clear that it was specifically an artistic partner that Teh was falling in love with—and it was that bond, of having feelings for somebody that shared these ambitions was what pulled Teh into Jai's orbit—and knew that he could never compete with that. And so the story I believe he's telling himself is that Oh-aew is never what Teh wanted or needed. Teh thought he did when he thought that Oh was going to be an actor, and along his side. But as soon as Oh moved away from that path, he stopped being the life partner that Teh was looking for.

One thing that always strikes me at the beginning of episode 5 is how happy Oh is to see Teh in his career success. He smiles when he sees him next to his actress partner on screen, he buys a magazine, and he doesn't seem to carry any bitterness about that. He's genuinely so joyful for Teh and his success. So part of his story is that Teh has gotten what he always wanted. He's got his career and he's got this partner that shares his ambitions which is what he's always wanted and needed—what Oh couldn't be, and the reason they didn't work out. Oh has devalued himself in how he thinks Teh sees him. He does not fully see how important he is to Teh and how much he means to him. When he says, ‘have I ever left you?’ It's very clear that Oh will always be by Teh's side, until that point when he accepts what he believes to be true, which is that he's not what Teh needs. And then he goes to the play… he rejects Teh immediately after the play, but I don't see that as a rejection of the idea of them getting back together, so much as a, ‘this is too much. Why are you throwing this at me right now?’ And then he looks at the messages. That, I think, is when he realized that he himself is what Teh wanted, not the artistic partner. And I think that's part of why he comes back to him.

1:15:23 - Favorite scenes

NiNi

I want to just ask a fun round robin question before we get to the end. What's everybody's favorite scene in I Promised You The Moon? Let's start with Shan.

Shan

I'm gonna go for maximum pain: my favorite scene is Oh-aew confronting Teh after Teh, right in front of his fucking face, [laughs] attempts to get into a relationship with Jai. I have PTSD from that scene to this day! I cannot believe what Teh did in that sequence. The way that he—right in front of Oh!—was making moon eyes at Jai. The way that he went to talk to Jai to try to confirm that their feelings were mutual. The way that after Jai rejected him, he got up on stage to sing a song with Oh and started singing it at Jai! Making weepy eyes at him literally right in front of Oh's fucking face! And then I love that Oh called him on it immediately, hit him so hard with those flowers! [laughs] And I love that he just said, ‘how stupid do you think I am? You're doing this right in front of me.’

I just loved how the show did not shy away from Teh’s audacity in that moment, from how disconnected he had become from his reality. It was just the peak of his ability to delude himself and go into his obsessive episodes, and I just thought it was so well done.

NiNi

I think you and I are both fans of the angst and also the drama. Bookworm, what about you?

Bookworm

I'm gonna continue Shan's rage and go into the next most painful scene, which was Teh going to Q's house to talk to Oh-aew, and the conversation they have on the couch. Like I said before, when somebody tries so hard not to cry, or when somebody's trying so hard to not say something that is just dying to get out of them, and they're trying to hold back the words just to save themselves from the pain? Those are my favorite things. When Oh-aew finally breaks help with Teh, and Teh gets up from the couch and walks away… there's a split-second frame where Oh turns back, and you can see the longing in his face. He is devastated and he wants to say so many things. But he just holds it back and he watches Teh walk away. That was such a well choreographed scene, and how the actors performed it, it was just such a delight to watch, and I came close to breaking. I had tears in my eyes and just… choked up in that scene.

NiNi

Mor, what about you?

Mor

I am a ho for well-done angst as well, so in a way I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have to go off about the quiet genius of the aquarium scene. That was possibly the most beautiful parallel I've ever seen in a show, and I see parallels everywhere, I adore them, and it's one that I will never get out of my head. It was like Teh was saying without words, ‘Oh, after all the pain I put you through, after everything it took for us to get here, I am taking us out of this underwater world we were in where we were hiding these feelings and I was terrified to show it to the world. And now? I'm choosing you in front of the world. I don't give a damn who sees us.’ And yet it's in the same sort of environment where he first really let himself feel what he was feeling, that he let himself feel that desire and to show it to Oh.

That underwater scene in ITSAY was so pivotal for them. To go from that—and that that's the only way that Teh is willing to show him affection, is hidden, underneath the surface of the water, away from the world—to then be in this open aquarium in Bangkok, the biggest city in Thailand and he is kissing him. I get chills! I get chills. It was so well done, and it was done without words. You can't beat it for me, you just can't.

NiNi

Ginny I'm gonna come to you. What's your favorite scene in all of I Promised You The Moon?

Ginny

First I have to stop crying about the aquarium scene, because everything Mor said was true. My favorite scene is in episode 5 when Teh and Oh-aew first see each other at the agency. Coming into that scene the first time, I was really feeling like, ‘I care deeply about both these boys, I want them to be happy, but I don't really care if they get back together, and I think maybe they shouldn't.’ As soon as they saw each other? The gravity of what pulls them together sets in for both of them, and you see the longing that still pulls them together, and I went ‘oh! never mind, I need them together again.’

It's the same thing that is still my most vivid impression from ITSAY: the intensity of the love and desire that they have for each other, and how vital that is to both of them. One of the things that really impresses me in I Promised You The Moon is how naturally they play each stage of the relationship. When they're playing partners who have been together for three years, they feel like partners who have been together for three years. It feels lived-in, it feels comfortable, it feels a little bit… stale in the way that things can get if you're not paying attention? But still full of affection; it feels so right for that stage. But as soon as you've had them separated and then seeing each other again? All of that desire comes rushing back. And I love it. It is about the desire but it’s also just about the deep roots of that connection that they share, because they’ve known each other so long and they go so deep in each other’s lives. And the way that that instantly revitalized my personal emotional investment in their relationship was just so powerful.

NiNi

I'm going to hold my scene for when I'm talking to Ben after in the outro, but great, great scenes from everybody.

We're going to close out with Susan, because I have to ask Susan the very important question. Okay Susan, you 've been sitting here, you've been listening to this entire conversation, and I just want to know: are you going to go and watch I Promised You The Moon now?

Susan

Oh how could I not? I feel like having this conversation, it seems almost like a boost where I would be more at a point watching I Promised You The Moon for the first time… It would be more like having a second viewing for my first viewing. That's one of the reasons I actually, like I said, I like to be spoiled? It tells you where to put your attention. I'm going to definitely be looking in different places, thinking about different things beforehand in a way that I think would be better than if I watched it just cold.

NiNi

Mission accomplished! [laughs] All right guys, we're going to wrap this up here, we could keep talking forever but we gotta go!

1:23:51 Outro

NiNi

Ben, so you were lurking in the background of that recording [laughs]. And unlike me, you actually heard what we said, and now having listened to the edit as well: what are some of your thoughts?

Ben

I gotta be honest. I was not chatting with you like I normally am when we're recording, so I was very drunk while you all were recording [laughs] for two hours! I did not remember the middle of the recording at all! I'm sorry, I was not present.

[both laugh]

NiNi

But you have heard the edit. So.

Ben

Oh, everyone sounded so good! I really liked the conversation you guys had getting into the fact that Teh was always like this. There was this huge pushback when the show was originally airing, that Teh was acting out of character, and that they had somehow misunderstood their own characters and ruined them. But I really liked that the panel was very much about how Teh was always this way. And Jai knew that about him and used that against him.

I also love that you all hated Jai, that was so fun to listen to again on the recording. I was very conscious for Bookworm going off about Jai, because she hates him so much! [both laugh] I'm also glad that we were able to get Mor on the podcast twice! We do not talk about Mor often in our recordings, but know that they are one of our favorite people, and that they were able to make time to be with us twice is a real gift.

NiNi

I did quite enjoy what we're referring to as the “fuck Jai” portion of the panel [laughs]. I was gratified to find out that Bookworm hates Jai probably just as much as Mor and me.

[laughs]

I think one of the things that, listening back to the panel, that I really obviously wanted to get across was the fact that Teh has always been this way. This is how Teh always was. This is how Teh probably, in some ways, ever shall be, and to say otherwise is to basically ignore the Teh of I Told Sunset About You. I think that when it comes to Teh and I Told Sunset About You, people got bogged down in the romance and forgot all the bullshit. And, my god, was Teh full of bullshit. [laughs] So watching Teh’s bullshit continue, and him eventually learn to try to curtail it slightly? That was a delightful journey, the way that I saw it. I quite enjoyed that.

Ben

I really liked Ginny bringing forward the discussion about Oh's friend group, and the queerness of that friend group, because I don't think I grokked it the first time, that any of them other than Q were queer. But having watched some of the scenes after Ginny pointed them out, it's very obvious. And I think that that's really well done, because they're queer for the people who know queer people; they're just Oh’s friends for the people who don't. And I liked that.

NiNi

In the ending, I did a round robin with the gang about everybody's favorite scene—because you know me, I'm a scene bitch. I will always find a favorite scene, whether it's in an episode or in an overall show. I will always want to know what everybody's favorite scene is. I feel like that's better than a personality test. [laughs]

So what was your favorite scene in I Promised You the Moon?

Ben

Right now, it is… the scene—I believe it's in episode 4?—with Mek, when he talks about how Teh never showed any interest in him. Because he's only just mildly hurt and disappointed in Teh about it, and it caps off, like another episode of Teh just spiraling in his own bullshit again?

It stands out because Mek was like, ‘bro, we've been here for years and you ain't said shit to me,’ and that's basically Teh. He's so rigid, either people fit into his vision of his life or they don't. And they don't exist if they don't fit into his vision. And it was kind of rude of him to just presume that about his roommate right away, who was clearly trying to make overtures of friendship to him for like two to four years? That scene is currently the one that comes to mind when you ask.

That or Bas coming back to be like, ‘Are we still talking about this man?’

[both laugh]

NiNi

Shade!

Ben

My favorite Billkin and PP scene is probably when they put PP in Oh’s shirt with his heart cut out, and he's watching Teh look at Jai when they're supposed to be singing a song together. And then he beats him with the flowers.

NiNi

I feel like Oh-aew beating Teh with those flowers… it was a pivotal and necessary moment. At the time, it cleared my skin. It watered my crops. [laughs] It fed, nourished, and sustained me. I rewound it several times. I asked Mor to make gifs.

Ben

There's so many good scenes in that show.

NiNi

Can you not pick a favorite? Or does your favorite rotate?

Ben

It rotates. I think what's interesting is, my favorite scenes in I Promised You the Moon are not with Oh and Teh. My favorite scene that PP does from a work standpoint, that I think is one of PP's best, is the audition scene where he's faced with homophobia. And you can see his decision to quit acting happening in real time. Like I thought that was really, really good.

I also really like the scene where Teh is mean to Khim because she can't make acting work. Because Teh is so wrong in that scene.

NiNi

I also go back and forth a lot. But I think if I had to count an absolute favorite scene—

Ben

It's the Jai kiss!

[NiNi laughs]

Ben

It's the Jai kiss! Because Oh catches—and he's like ‘that rat bastard!’

[both laugh]

NiNi

It's the Jai kiss for a lot of reasons. The filmmaking in that scene is so impressive. The way that they build the tension of the scene, of you watching Teh make this terrible, horrible mistake, and then intercutting between Oh-aew coming to find him, and him getting closer and closer to Jai, and then him laying one on Jai, and then that long dolly shot of Oh-aew spotting them through the door of the rehearsal room? So you just see Oh-aew’s face. You see it change, and then there's this looong dolly shot that pulls back into the rehearsal room and then you see Jai and Teh making out. The filmmaking is just next-level, like everything about it—the shot selection, the music, the sound, the camera work—perfection.

So with that said, we've come to the end of our I Told Sunset/I Promised You the Moon third anniversary retrospective. That's it from us, we're about to wrap this up, we'll see you next time. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#podcast #lgbtq #i told sunset about you #i promised you the moon #last twilight in phuket #pp krit #billkin putthipong #the conversation #ben and nini's conversations #on art #fall series #fall 2023 #thai bl #bl series #season 4 #s4e2

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