#absolutebling

[doorajar]

Another one for ABL:

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Best gal pal of the year so far ? @absolutebl and others will be amused ... as am I !

Caged Again, Episode 7

[pickletrip]

Park Ji Hoon from "At a distance, spring is green".

Chat Wasutha Phromchainun as First in "Playboyy".

Tell me they don't look the same. @absolutebl I had to do this to see the similarities.

[heretherebedork]

My Dear Gangster Oppa is a gift and Playboyy is also a show currently airing.

(This post is a dare but also true.)

[99pacificpassions]

Cat Corners a Mouse

@absolutebl:

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese AKA Kyuso wa Chizu no Yume wo Miru (Japan 2020) - Drama llama queers so queer and so dramatic it's like Japan is trying to PROVE something: obsession, cheating, break-up, reunion, then break up again, all of it explicit. This show is just SO JAPANESE. I can't even, but you should watch it and you'll know exactly what I mean. Something like My Personal Weatherman owes it's lineage to this kind of BL. If you like Japan naked, boney, emo, and smoking (hot & ciggy) you will love this, and should watch it. It's objectively amazing, I can't stand it, but I NEED people to talk about it more.

Absolute-kun gives so much and asks for so little. Here's my personal appreciation of this terrific film, for him and others interested in top shelf BL…

Spoilers ahead, but I felt Cornered Mouse (currently on Viki) was better the second time because I could soak up the details. If you haven’t seen it, you might enjoy it more with some background beforehand. It's a bit difficult to keep up with.

The seme is Imagase Wataru (on left above), a gay man passionately in love with Otomo Kyoichi, a businessman married to a woman. Wataru (given name) is like a character out of American Noir… literally a chain-smoking private investigator.  Like a Noir protagonist, we may not like his means, but he has a code he lives by.

Kyoichi is handsome and sympathetic, but he places himself in situations where women eventually suggest a sexual liaison and his fatal character flaw is that he can’t say no to women. But the philanderer can say no to Wataru, to a point. He’s much rougher with Wataru’s feelings than he is with any of the women in the movie.

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese is based on a manga of the same name and reviewers say that it’s about 65% faithful to the original story. Another reviewer compared it to Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, which is one of the best films ever made. I won’t claim Cornered Mouse is in Mood's league, but I would say it's close and that the main differences are Mood’s opulence and heterosexuality. Cornered Mouse is the best-crafted BL I’ve seen to date.

The film has some great writing, but prefers to show instead of tell, which requires a lot from the talented actors. Narita Ryo as Wataru is remarkable and a couple screenshots aren’t going to do his performance justice, but here he's hunched on a stool like a cat:

Here's Wataru after Kyoichi wakes up to find him looking through the text messages on Kyoichi's phone... in the same room: 

Narita Ryo transcends the AbsoluteBL bar for great acting. Elsewhere, he’s not afraid to look ugly in a scene.

Obviously, this film’s in the BL category of “gay man converts straight man”, generally considered a doomed goal within the queer experience. Somehow, Cornered Mouse’s river of details makes this seem realistic, mostly due to the straight lead’s indecisiveness and Wataru’s persistence... and his fellatio techniques.

Negative reviewers of Cornered Mouse never dispute that it's well-crafted. They tend to complain about the ending and that the characters were difficult to like. Yet, the movie is about accepting people for who they are. If you don’t believe me… well, here’s the director Yukisada Isao:

My hot take is that Cornered Mouse is less about the lead characters accepting each other for who they are and more about the audience accepting them despite Kyoichi’s duplicity and Wataru’s lack of ethics.

The audience is also asked to accept the dilemmas inherent within the “gay man converts straight man” BL subgenre. At a key moment, well along in the men’s sexual relationship, Kyoichi’s college lover has called them both separately for drinks. She makes Kyoichi choose between them, resulting in this exchange:

Kyoichi (to Wataru): “I could never choose you. No straight guy would. You get it, don’t you?”

Wataru, smirking: “Yes.”

Kyoichi then goes to bed with the ex-girlfriend, but can’t perform. He returns to Wataru and is “punished” for his hubris. 

Previously, Wataru has asked to be the top during sex, but was rebuffed. After getting drilled, Kyoichi treats his relationship with Wataru with new respect. Yes, he will break up with him and even get engaged with a woman, but he goes through the formalities of a break up, on par with a heterosexual relationship. He’s far more concerned with Wataru’s feelings, even as he’s crushing him, than he was before that key moment.

The film asks its contemporary audience to come to terms with this more traditional implication: that Kyoichi “turned gay” by taking the sub role.

The other problem for many reviewers was Cornered Mouse’s open ending. They thought it was open, anyway. I didn’t. Kyoichi breaks off his engagement to a lovely woman and vows to “prepare” for the return of his lover Wataru. Kyoichi has always been the reluctant partner. Throughout the film, Wataru pursued Kyoichi no matter his target’s resistance... stalking, blackmailing, pleading... as if he had no limits. Of course, he’ll be back for more. Besides, in the manga, it’s made clear that’s what happens.

Wataru talking earlier in the film:

[respectthepetty]

@absolutebl during the World Cup when their dash got invaded by soccer fans posting about sports stuff instead of their usual BL posts about queer stuff.

Me.

Bed Friend just gave me the best gift, and I will be doing this crappy image in every version I can think of for soccer games this year.

*Mexican Grito*

[doorajar]

Priceless thoughts and observations ! Where else will you find this stuff ?

Heat & Angst in BL + Other TERMS EXPLAINED

Q: You use the terms high heat, low heat, high angst, etc. in your posts, what do they mean?

Ah, those are literary terms borrowed from the romance and YA genres.  Something like Twilight is low heat but very high angst, for example. My obsession with tropes comes from a literary critic background, so when I don’t know the fan terms I get old school. Literally. 

High Heat AKA Explicit AKA Hot AKA Mature 

High heat tends to mean more that just kissing is depicted on screen: so most Taiwanese BL, some Thai stuff, and Japan and China’s darker offerings. Publishers and authors will avoid using the term explicit because it red flags algorithms and gets books black listed. In the Hollywood film industry this probably includes NC 17 and definitely R rated moves (on the grounds of sexual content). 

I like high heat if it’s done well and the actors can carry it off without making me wince. Some of the best examples of high heat are: 

My Day the series - Pinoy (one of my favorite under appreciated high heat dramas)

Why R U? (probably the best high heat to come out of Thailand)

TharnType series - Thai (trigger: rape) 

Love By Chance series - Thai (trigger: rape for side characters)

Most stuff with MaxTul in it like Manner of Death 

History 3: Make Our Days Count - Taiwan (trigger: death)

HIStory 3 Trapped - Taiwan (HFN ending)

History 4: Close to You - Taiwan (trigger: dub con, stepbrother trope)

Japan’s Pornographer series and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese (warning very darkly cerebral, not really BL)

China did high heat before censorship but only in their darker stuff. 

Vietnam does some high heat but not in any dramas I particularly enjoyed. 

The Philippines does high heat too, but I don’t watch much Pinoy stuff (see My Day above). 

Korea mostly avoids high heat except for stuff from Strongberry (which is a queer production house that clearly has an axe to grind… or something else to grind). Long Time No See and Sweet Curse and A First Love Story 2 are their higher heat offerings. 

I do my heat scale out of 3. 

0/3 means no kissing or physical contact beyond tropes, maybe a hand hold. 

1/3 for a peck or two. 

2/3 for anything in the high school making out at a party range. 

3/3 for “well they definitely had sex and we almost got to see it.”

In most BL the main character usually have a higher heat level than the side dishes but occasionally it’s reversed. Cherry Magic for example, the mains don’t kiss but the sides do. 

High heat is different than erotica. Erotica means the physical sexual connection of the characters drives the plot. BL is mostly romance (or at least romantic), so the emotional connection of the characters drives the plot. Some of Japan’s stuff (and source yaoi) edges into erotica though because… Japan. 

I will say that higher heat BL does often have a weaker plot and story structure than low heat, but that may just be coincidence because there is so little high heat. Out of c.250 BLs I’ve viewed I would qualify only c.30 of them as truly high heat. 

Dub Con & Non Con

Dub con (dubious consent) is when the consent is questionable. For example if one character is drunk or otherwise unable to clearly agree to a sexual liaison (this is statutory rape in the USA). This happens a lot in early BL and is still popular in certain countries and with certain authors/directors/producers (Mame). 

Non-con (non consent) means no consent is given at all. So straight up romanticization of rape. A lot of early Japanese and Chinese BL used this. What I call “dark BL” because these narratives almost always end with suicide, murder, or dramatic death, for example A Round Trip to Love. 

For various psychological reason the rape fantasy is hugely popular, particularly among straight women who are the primary consumers of BL. I don’t kink shame so, you do you, it’s the context of the narrative and (lack of) critical lens that bothers me often with these dramas and their lack of consent. (Here’s an excellent article on the history of consent in the Western romance world.) 

Low Heat AKA Sweet AKA Closing the Bedroom Door 

Formerly known as “clean romance” this is far more common than high heat for various reasons. Audience expectations, airing times, and expense are probably the most common. 

Audiences expect lighter romances to be lower heat levels mostly because the het romcom genre established this precedent. Why make actors kiss if you don’t have to? 

A mature rating usually detrimentally impacts distribution (who will take it, who will air it, and in what time slot). It can also loose a show its sponsorship. However, it usually increases international views. 

Nudity and kissing and further is expensive, the actors are usually paid more the more explicit they go. 

There is in country/culture prudishness to consider. 

So most BLs lean towards the low heat side of the equation. Korea, for example, vastly prefers them. They like a slow burn and maybe just a kiss or two. Thailand does as well, probably because GMMTV dominates the field and they have a very specific lower heat criteria. And because the Thai pulps are predominantly set in high school (and are mass produced) they tend to be low heat (age of protagonists) and sway the data. Thailand will do high heat, though it’s not as common. 

That said Thailand is getting better and better about their kisses and even in the low heat pulps they tend to have more engaging and physically demonstrative intimacy than most other BL producing countries (with the possible exception of the Philippines and Vietnam). 

Chinese post 2016 censored BL (like Guardian, Advance Bravely, Untamed or Word of Honor) does not qualify as sweet romance. Sorry. It’s censored romance or bromance. If the story structure implies that there should be at least kiss, which these shows would have had if they featured heterosexual main couples, that’s censorship. Intent and messaging matters. I’m not attacking the dramas themselves, Word of Honor is a favorite of mine, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of what was done to them. It’s okay to love something and still recognize its flaws, that is not a weakness, that’s life.  

In line with that, just as high heat BLs often encounter dub con issues, low heat can have sex negativity issues. 

Some of you think I don’t like low heat, but honestly that’s not the case. Some of my favorite BLs of all time fall into this category, like Color Rush, Light On Me, or Love Sick. I just strongly prefer it when heat levels are married to the narrative and the actors are physically comfortable with each other, which brings us to… 

Higher Heat AKA Balanced Heat

These are my favorites. They tend to be the ones that use heat levels to serve the story. We, the watchers, never doubt for one moment that the characters want each other badly. Something like We Best Love, To My Star, Addicted, Lovely Writer, or I Told The Sunset About You. There is more than just kissing and it might go right up to the line, even follow the boys into the bedroom, but isn’t gratuitous about it. Taiwan really excels at this and some of the best Thai BLs have it too. 

Difficult to define, this is a case of I know it when I see it. Usually with these dramas there is A LOT of emotion in the intimacy and the kisses tend to be really good. I call these higher heat by default since there isn’t really a term for it in the literary world. 

SEXY

One note on the term sexy. I tend to think of this as very audience specific so I don’t often use it for analysis. I find something sexy (neck grabs or neck kisses and a hand around the waist, for example). You find something sexy (a person, an action, a gesture, a connection, an image). These may not be the same thing. This can be low or high heat, feature soft boys, domestic intimacy, verbal sparring, eye flirting, or being thrown up against a wall. It’s hugely subjective. 

High Angst AKA Drama Llamas AKA Internal Conflict 

High angst means the plot driver is miscommunication and/or internal drama over identity and self worth, so like Love Sick or Make it Right or Light on Me. These are often, but not always, set in high school for obvious reasons. 

When set in university or older (glares at Ossen’s Love) too high angst can make the characters seem very immature. I happen to be personally over this kind of behavior (too many actor friends) so my preference is for fluffy over angsty. 

That said I loved Light On Me, and still adore Love Sick and Make it Right so there is something to be said for very confused boys, disaster gays and panicked bis, and excessive noodling over coming out. On the flip side while I love Why R U? for its chemistry the angst feels very forced and drama comes out of left field impacting the pace, which make the narrative confusing. 

Sometimes angst and miscommunication are handled really well, especially when sourced in character personality and understandable confusion, perfect examples of this are His the movie on one end of the spectrum (mature older characters, high cinema) and Seven Days on the other (live action yaoi in its purest form) - both from Japan. 

Low Angst AKA Cute AKA External Conflict 

This just means that there is very little emotional immaturity or miscommunication driving the plot. Examples include Oxygen, Cherry Magic, Lovely Writer, Color Rush, You Make Me Dance. This is not to say the characters don’t internally agonize over things like self worth, it’s just that the story is being driven by something else. I will often call these “cute” but usually just low angst. 

Often these are thought of as fluffy and very light weight (which I also like) but that isn’t always the case. 

Sometimes higher concept dramas and more mature characters are dictating the story so it’s not cute or fluffy. Manner of Death, 1000 Stars, Color Rush, and Until We Meet Again are low angst but not at all fluffy or lightweight. 

HEA HFN LTR

HEA = happily ever after (think Disney) 

HFN = happy for now (think the end of HIStory 3: Trapped or Ingredients)

LTR = long term relationship 

Tsundere

Tsundere - (ツンデレ pronounced tsun-der-eh) is a Japanese term for a character who undergoes a development arc moving him (in BL) from a personality that is initially cold, temperamental, hotheaded, competitive, and hostile towards a warmer, friendlier, softer side. (Squishy center.) Sometimes the character will stay grumpy but his disposition is better understood (hello Mr Darcy). Often he will soften only for his other half. Shu Yi in We Best Love is a classic example of a tsundere uke, and Pick in Puppy Honey is the ultimate tsundere seme.  

Taiwan in particular LOVES a tsundere character. These characters are often paired with cheerful sunshine or puppy counterparts. 

There are also kuudere characters to consider. But they are much rarer in BL. I talk about the few that do exist here. 

Seme/uke versus D/s & top/bottom 

I tend to use the terms seme/uke because I come from reading yaoi in the early 00s. I like to consider them the following:

seme: the active pursuer of the relationship in the narrative

uke: the passive resistor to the relationship in the narrative

I use seme/uke because it is the established vocab for BL same sex romantic pairings under the context of narrative analysis. (Using hero/hero would get confusing, for example.) Lots more discussion on this and how it relates to the different countries producing BL here. 

I think of seme & uke as narrative archetypes (useful only when talking about fiction, not useful when talking about real life). It’s about who is in CONTROL of the relationship’s story. 

As opposed to:

top/bottom/verse: terms which come from the gay/queer community and pertain to sexual preference and (should) have nothing to do with narrative power dynamics. To be crass, top/bottom is about who gets penetrated. It’s referencing sexual position and physical acts, not characterization or narrative. The bottom is NOT the weak one or the girl. For heavens sake! 

These are generally though of as sexual position preferences, verse just means both or no preference. FighterTutor are one of the few clearly depicted verse boys in BL. 

I think casual use of seme/uke as conflated with top/bottom is a PROBLEM with both these narratives and the discussion around them. (I recognize that this originates in yaoi.) Mainly because het consumers conflate (egregiously & incorrectly) top with male/masculine and bottom with female/feminine.

Type in TharnType, for example, is clearly a bottom and tsundere but he is neither a submissive nor really a uke. 

D/s or Dom/sub/switch terms come from the kink community and pertain to the power dynamics of a relationship: Dominant vs submissive, (which may include the physical but doesn’t have to). The Dominant is in (nominal) charge and takes responsibility for the emotional/physical action in a given scene or relationship. The submissive acts to endure the Dominant’s actions/choices/decisions as well as satisfy their D’s desires/orders/wishes, and is rewarded for their service by having their needs met (whatever form those needs take: care, stewardship, pain, pleasure, freedom of responsibility, etc). A switch can either move from D to s during the course of a scene or (more common) switches depending on the type of scene, mood, or play partner.  

A D/s dynamic MUST BE:

understood by both parties,

negotiated ahead of time,

involve a safeword and known limits.

A D/s relationship without the 3 above criteria is not D/s, it is abuse. 

For me the language around D/s actually better correlates to seme/uke under the context of modern BL. But I feel compelled to acknowledge that BL never involves adequate communication or negotiation in this regard. 

(For the record I belong to both the queer and kink communities.)

If you’re interested in Daddy/boy I talk about that dynamic in this ask. But because it shows up so little in BL I’m not gonna bother to cover it in depth here. 

BLs That Overtly Reverence D/s (or BDSM & Kink) 

(source kept up to date)

[lurkingshan]

Japanese BL Starter Pack

It’s been awhile since I dropped a rec list, so I am here today to share one that is very near and dear to my heart—a Japanese bl primer for those who are new to the jbl game. I created this for @neuroticbookworm to help her on her journey when she decided she wanted to start getting into Japanese works. The fandom (on Tumblr and generally) tends to focus primarily on Thai shows because they are the easiest to access for international fans, since Thailand is working its way toward world domination via ql media and wants us all to be able to watch. But there is a lot of great stuff to watch beyond the easy access Thai channels, and Japan is the country where this genre originated, so its shows are important for anyone who considers themselves a bl fan. Japan doesn’t cater nearly as much to the international audience so tracking down the shows sometimes takes some ingenuity and can-do spirit, but that’s part of the fun!

And so, the list! Bookworm is about halfway through it and having a ball, so I figured it was time to stop hoarding it and share it with anyone else who would like to dip their toes into jbl and isn’t quite sure where to start. A few notes: 

I am not here to teach you about the deep roots of the jbl genre or give you a primer on yaoi manga. I am by no means an expert and there are other places to find that information. Start here with this great post by @nieves-de-sugui and then maybe wander over to @absolutebl to read up more on the evolution of the genre.

This list is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every important Japanese bl ever made; it is simply a nice sampler platter of the cream of the crop among various styles you will find in jbl. Watching through this whole list will not only expose you to some fantastic shows, but also give you a sense of what makes jbl unique and how the country’s style differs from others, and point you toward the types of jbl you’ll like most (they tend to put shows in pretty specific style and tone lanes and once you find the ones you like there are lots more where that came from). 

If you’re coming to this post as a jbl lover and you don’t see your favorite here, I promise it’s not because I don’t love it very much; I simply had to make some choices to get this down to a reasonable shortlist. Feel free to leave extra recs for others to find! 

I’m putting these in a loose suggested watch order that will take you through the various jbl lanes in a kind of popcorn style, because I always think it’s good to change it up so you don’t get too stuck in one mode, and it works its way up to most of the extremely Japanese stuff (you will know what that means by the time you finish). But do what’s in your heart and change up the order if you want, friends, I am not the boss of you! 

Cherry Magic (Crunchyroll or grey)

gif by @liyazaki

I believe everyone on Tumblr is pretty familiar with this one, which is not a coincidence—this is one of the most accessible jbls. Not in terms of actual access to watch it, mind you (we’ve all jumped through shady internet hoops to watch it) but in terms of its content and style. Cherry Magic is a classic workplace romcom with a magical twist, and it is charming af. It’s a great exemplar of Japan’s light and zippy comedy lane for bl—a lane in which, importantly, the romances stay chaste even when the actual plot is about sex, or lack thereof. My friend @waitmyturtles would kill me if I didn’t make sure you know that Cherry Magic also has a lovely follow up film. And bonus: there is now a Thai remake airing so if you watch the original you can get in on the discussion about the different adaptations between countries. This is pretty easy to find these days in all the usual places, but I strongly recommend watching it here.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki)

gif by @liyazaki

Moving on to a slightly more mature workplace romcom. Old Fashion Cupcake, another Tumblr favorite, is an age gap boss-subordinate romance, and it’s both very adult and somehow wholesome af at the same time. Sure, there is a lot of carnal desire going on here, but there is also a lot of wooing via fluffy pancakes. It’s a tight five episodes and a fantastic example of what Japan, with its extreme technical precision in writing, directing, editing, pacing, and acting firing on all cylinders, can do in two hours. There’s not an ounce of flab on this thing and you’ll want to watch it over and over again.

Utsukushii Kare (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Time to get a little weird! Weird is a key feature of Japanese media, and lots of jbls explore unusual relationship dynamics rooted in complex psychology. This is the first show on the list that will likely feel very Japanese if you’re new around here—my advice is to lean into it and finish the show, even if you get uncomfortable along the way. In Japanese media, discomfort always serves a purpose. This is a high school story with a twisted relationship at its center, and I’m not saying any more than that. Don’t spoil yourself and go watch it! This one also comes with two sequels—one short second season and one movie—that continue from the original story. They are less essential but still excellent.

I Cannot Reach You (Netflix)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Next up, another high school tale, but with a totally different vibe. This show is kind of a revelation in its willingness to tell a story about overwhelming desire—including sexual desire—with young protagonists. It’s rooted in a classic but often misunderstood trope, friends to lovers, and takes the angst of it seriously, giving us a low stakes story that feels extremely high stakes to our leads. It’s also gorgeous and uses a classic Japanese visual style (bokeh) that you’ll be dying to learn more about. 

His (Viki)

gif by @gabrielokun

Time for a break from high school, and we’ll sprinkle in a movie for some added flavor. His is a jbl film featuring a second chance romance between a stoic, introverted man who moves to a remote town to start over, and his ex-boyfriend who follows him there unexpectedly, adorable child in tow. Importantly, this movie does not take place in what we often refer to as the “bl bubble” where homophobia doesn’t exist; the leads’ experiences of being gay men in a homophobic society are hugely important to the plot and themes of the story. It’s a beautiful film and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. @bengiyo would surely also like me to tell you that this film follows a brief prequel show called His: I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love about the characters originally meeting in high school; I do not think it’s really necessary to watch it but completists can start there.

The Pornographer series (Gaga)

By now you should be ready to get into some classic Japanese fucked up psychosexual material, right? Right! The Pornographer series is told in five installments in this order:

The Novelist, a six episode miniseries

Mood Indigo, a six episode prequel series

Spring Life, a 15 minute short

Pornographer: Playback, a two hour film

Spring Life Continued, a 15 minute short

Confused by that distribution model? So say we all; sometimes Japan likes to make us work for it to make sure we really appreciate its many gifts to us. The story across these installments is about a very difficult to love protagonist, what makes him the way he is, and the also-unhinged-but-in-a-different-way man who finally gets through to him. It’s an extremely satisfying love story and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen, full stop. For this one, you’ll want to just pull the word problematic out of your pocket and store it in a drawer; nearly everything that happens in this story is problematic and that’s the point. Lean in! All of these installments except for the film are on Gaga, if you get that far hmu and I will supply you with the final puzzle piece.

Our Dining Table (Gaga)

You could probably use a break after those last two, so it’s time to shift over to a heart-tugging twofer: family trauma mixed with the cutest shit you’ve ever seen. ODT is an example of another classic type of Japanese show: the food drama (you will see the GOAT in this category at the end of this list). In Japanese culture, food is love, and the act of preparing food for your loved ones is a common path to romance. You’ll love this story about an isolated office worker who meets a pair of brothers, learns to cook as a way of connecting with them, and begins to heal from his own trauma as a result. The image above is a scan from the manga, which @troubled-mind curates to make extremely cool comparison sets like this one. Many jbls are faithful adaptations of yaoi manga source material, so it’s good to have a bit of familiarity with them.

Minato’s Laundromat (Gaga)

gif by @liyazaki

Japanese media loves to explore taboo, and often manages to do it in a way that is surprisingly light and chaste. This is an age gap romance between a teenager and his adult neighbor that explores internalized homophobia, emotional repression, and falling in love across seemingly impossible social chasms. It’s also a great example of old school yaoi seme-uke dynamics that still show up across the bl genre. Also, take my advice: end your journey with this one with the first season and just pretend season 2 doesn’t exist.

Eternal Yesterday (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Remember what I said about weird? Time to do that again, but with a heaping dose of grief and pain on top. It’s not a spoiler to tell you this show involves a major character death; a major character death is, in fact, the root of the entire story. This is a magic realist tale of first love turned tragic, and it will hurt and heal you. It is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

Restart After Come Back Home (Gaga)

And now for a break for your poor exhausted brain. This film is basically the jbl version of a Hallmark original movie, about a city boy who goes back home to the country and falls in love with a total sweetheart while working together on a farm. Enjoy it, bestie, you’ve earned it! 

Tokyo in April Is… (Gaga)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

You’ve probably noticed by now that emotional repression and failed communication are big themes in Japanese works. This second chance romance has plenty of both, and it’s a great example of a kind of muted emotional style that Japan does so well, where the surface of the story seems almost placid and calm even as deep emotion roils underneath. This one (and Eternal Yesterday above) are part of a special line up of jbls on Japanese channel MBS called Tonku (Drama) Shower. The shows air one after another in the same time slot on Fridays (in Japan, perhaps Thursdays for you depending on where you live) and you truly never know what you’re gonna get, but they’re all interesting. Warnings on this one for sexual assault and trauma. 

The End of the World With You (Viki)

Time for sexy and weird again, but even more so! This has to be one of the most unique bls ever made; it goes to some truly divine and strange places, and it feels incredibly queer while doing it. Made by the same screenwriter/director of the Pornographer series with a lot of the same sensibilities, but in a more heightened apocalyptic setting. This one has existential angst, a road trip, a redemption tale, and a variety of interesting side characters in the mix.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Gaga)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of the list and your reward is watching one of the best bls of all time, and a perfect slice of life food drama to boot. WDYEY now has two seasons (along with a couple specials and a movie that fall in between) because the universe clearly loves us. You can now get it on Gaga for easy access but I’m partial to the versions over at @kinounaniresource for better subs. Wherever you watch, settle in to get cozy with Shiro and Kenji and make sure to always eat before you hit play.

[aliceisathome]

A Japanese version of LITA?

I shall be watching from behind my fingers...

@absolutebl @heretherebedork

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Peaceful Property went ahead and picked one of my special interests to explore this week. For queer history nerds like me, some of the most prominent questions in the field are whether and how to connect to those in the past who did not have the same conditions and language for queerness as we do in the present.* Forcebook gave us two characters, Phoom and Vicha, who failed to name or live their queer feelings in the past. Instead, they had queer gestures to offer across time. What do these queer gestures and failures offer to the main conflict between Peach and Home, and what do they offer to us as an audience debating whether Peaceful Property is a BL or queer-baiting?

That ghost story spanned and blurred time into a time immemorial. Using the venue of Thai traditional dancing gave the story a sense of deep Thai history and traditions that are kept up to the present, while Phoom's home indicated early twentieth century Western influences, and a television (alongside Phoom's age in the modern-day setting) suggested the beginning of the global information age of the 80s or 90s. Then Force and Book, finally getting the opportunity to show their true acting capacities (let Force be as queer, emotive, and silly as he is in his interviews, GMMTV!!!), took us on a heart-shattering journey that blended those eras together.

In front of the TV, Vicha teaches Phoom the gesture for love before they kiss. It's not a pronouncement, and no one's recording. It's just a movement between two men tucked away in a private place. Vicha records later, but he doesn't put it into words. He carves tallies into a tree waiting for Phoom to return. Then Phoom does, but he's so cold toward Vicha that the latter can't even bear to look as Phoom tries to explain his sadness through dance. Phoom's mother is looking on as Phoom repeats the the move to signify "saddened," in the face of the instructor's demands for "happy."

The dance is interspersed with scenes of Phoom's mother berating him for being "gay"--she uses the English word! and as @absolutebl explains that's important!--across a locked palatial door as Phoom collapses in tears. Edit: @lurkingteapot giving me the Thai language lesson in the notes to explain, “Phoom's mother does not use the English word for gay. she says มีลูกผิดเพศอย่างแก mii lûuk pìt pêet yâang gɛɛ, where the gɛɛ is a familiar term for "you" -- "to have a child who gets gender wrong, like you!" ("gets gender wrong" as in, directs affections/attraction at the wrong gender).”

With just one chance to return to the dance studio that she believes to be the cause of his queerness, all Phoom can do is subtly cue Vicha about his queer experiences through dance. Jose Esteban Munoz says in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity,

"Queer dance is hard to catch, and it is meant to be hard to catch--it is supposed to slip through the fingers and comprehension of those who would use knowledge against us. But it matters and takes on a vast material weight for those of us who perform or draw important sustenance from performance. Rather than dematerialize, dance rematerializes. Dance, like energy, never disappears; it is simply transformed. Queer dance, after the live act, does not just expire. The ephemeral does not equal unmateriality. It is more nearly about another understanding of what matters. It matters to get lost in dance or to use dance to get lost: lost from the evidentiary logic of heterosexuality.

Phoom's mom, the representative of compulsory heterosexuality, watches on, but she either can't see the coded evidence, or she recognizes its ephemerality and bears it knowing its lack of impact. Even then, she ends Phoom's dance before Vicha can look up and see the queerness that might affirm his own queer feelings. Phoom fails to live as a representative of queerness, unable to resist the pressures of heterosexuality.

With Phoom locked away, Vicha can't bear the loneliness. Queer suicidality has been haunting Peaceful Properties since the first episode, and the reason Peach keeps his blinds closed in his apartment returned this episode if we didn't recall. But we've had other subtle references, too. Vicha's death, though, was visceral and vivid as he slit his wrists with the same tool he used to count down the days until the return of the person who could affirm his queer feelings. Then, he documented his feeling in poetry with blood. While, Phoom failed to materialize his queerness for others, Vicha could only materialize his queerness through tragedy.

Much of queer history and fiction has focused on these tragic queer figures. In fact, they've been quite productive political tools for advancing queer goals. In the past ten years or so, the culture has turned on tragic queer figures and their narratives, though. Emotionally, I feel like that's for the better, but there's a fine line I'm always attentive to between welcoming empowering histories and turning our backs on those who don't or can't achieve them. It's also a fine line between welcoming ensured happy endings for queer characters and refusing to engage with those creators past and present who use other narrative tools to explore queer themes.

Relatedly, using a branded pairing for Peaceful Property while not advertising it as a BL, nor committing to that status even by episode 7, seems intentionally designed to invite the conversations about whether its queer-baiting or a BL. It feels so old-school to engage in the kind of queer subtext reading that much of the fandom is doing currently. Sure, people do fantastically detailed metas about body language, color theory, and everything else you can think of for BL series. When queerness is not a given, however, the analysis of queer subtext serves the purpose of liberating the characters and the text from the binds and blinds of an otherwise heterosexual context.

There's a generosity in that work. It certainly can't erase the failures to fully live-out one's queerness, nor the problems and behavior that suffering and suppression can lead one to commit. However, sometimes you absolve people out of empathy rather than anything they do to make-up for their harm and futility. Sometimes people are transformed by that initial love, mercy, or understanding, whatever you want to call it, like the ghosts in the series finally being seen. The basic tenets of humanism, a philosophy so disruptive to the rigid class structures the show's simultaneously exploring, and Buddhism, the Thai beliefs which the show's been explicitly exorcising the ghosts with, depend on understanding people at that level, beneath the trappings of social status, symbols of wealth, and even language.

Peaceful Property has taken us on the journey for Home and Peach to understand each other at this level. They, like the audience, have been looking beneath the cloaks of class and patriarchal defensiveness that separate them for the meaningful ephemeral queer gestures that can offer them release from the endless cycles of grief and guilt they're stuck in. That the series keeps finding ways to find peace for these ghosts suggests that the we'll also find peace and love from the alienation haunting Peach and Home. They just need each other to perform that exorcism on their hearts.

*Thailand, specifically, is unique site for queer historians and anthropologists--like director P'Jojo!--because of this question. Its one of the few places that maintained a non-binary gender system into the present, whereas many others were suppressed by Christian colonial law or influence.

[thefreeblog]

Does @absolutebl know about this. I vaguely remember that they are a big fan of shirtless Meen. (Me too 🫣)

VIU knows exactly what it's doing with this new promo poster for The Rebound. 🤣

[ayoungroyal]

Joke to Jack: Yes i do the cooking, yes i do the cleaning

(I am also the one to make you smile sometimes)

Reposting because of the broken tag. Thanks for the tip!! @absolutebl

[doorajar]

Just watched My Partner (2023, USA, 100 min) on GagaOOLala. Charming, well written and played. Enemies to lovers, set in Maui. A native and a Filipino high-school student are assigned to work together; they eventually shed girlfriends and find each other. Families, school, best buds, etc--all the ingredients needed for a successful rom-com ?

Recommended. Check it out ...

[fluffy13-4]

I keep circling around the mixed reactions after MileApo‘s recent press events where they revealed that they had a dispute last year but are on better terms now and want to continue their cooperation. It starts eating me up inside so I created a little poll.

As this is only my second own post, I have very little reach and am therefore mentioning ql drama bloggers because I am hoping to get a more conclusive result to this poll. I hope you are all ok with getting mentioned 🙏❤️🙏

@absolutebl @becauseimanicequeen @boozles @guzhufuren @heretherebedork @impending-doom-lol @itsallaboutbl @negrowhat @nick-nellson @onlyrainbowshipstbh @pharawee @poetry-protest-pornography @respectthepetty @scarefox @scarlettundrhett @smittenskitten @spicyvampire

[heretherebedork]

Okay, hear me out...

Lomfon is the true representation of the damage that the belief in soulmates do to the people that could love them.

So if a soulmate is destiny and leave no choice in the matter and people actively believe in that, they will reject the people who don't fit their idea and ideal of a person in a way that leaves them with no choice.

Lomfon might have claimed not to believe in soulmates but we know he believed in fate from his keychain and now that he has Tai and Patt's voice in the rain it's confirmation, in a way, that there is something there.

But it does not bring any happiness.

Because Lomfon was clinging to fate while Tien was right in front of him and only after he saw him did he receive the supposed sign that Tai is meant to be his soulmate.

Because a soulmate takes all the choice and chance out of love and leaves you ignoring all the signs that don't fit into your specific view of what soulmates means.

Lomfon is falling apart now because he was so sure about what he believed and what was meant to be and now he's confronted with the reality that Tai has no interest in him and that he's starting to fall in love with Tien and it's all wrong.

(But it's not, it's not wrong, because soulmates are only what you make of them.)

Lomfon is not a nonbeliever, Lomfon is a believer who was in bitter denial because the reality he faced wasn't the one he had hoped for and now that fate has twisted and wrapped him up and pulled him in he's suddenly realizing that what he thought he wanted wasn't what he actually wanted at all.

In the preview he is pleading to know what he thinks, to know who he likes, because he doesn't know.

Because he placed all of his love into the fate of the keychain and now that's all been swept out from under him between the rain connection and his growing feelings for Tien that he doesn't know how to react.

If you decide to set your path on fate and destiny rather than your own choices, you will hurt the people you love because you will not see what you are doing because you do not see any of it as a choice.

Lomfon is going to hurt everyone around him in a desperate bid to figure out what fate and destiny have been trying to tell him because the idea of making a choice is terrifying.

(This also reflects back on Tai and Tien's parents, their divorce and how Tai's father talks about how love is something you have to work for to keep and how the entire show is showing us that love is a choice you make and that fate and destiny cannot take that step for you.)

And so this final act isn't about Lomfon as a second love interest for Tai (he never was). This is about the act of choice and the way that trusting in fate and destiny without making choices hurts the people you love and yourself in the end.

Tien is the one who is going to be the most hurt, the one who is caught between all these people and all their fates and has only himself, only his own life, no voices and no keychains and no notes and nothing but the fleeting calm that Lomfon's touch leaves and the love he's just starting to discover.

Love is a choice. But that also means you have to make a choice.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

We Are and the evolution of Thai BL tropes

The QL discord started a rewatch of My Engineer a few weeks ago, and damn, has it been an interesting experience. At the time I originally watched My Engineer, there was little that stuck out to me, because so much of what happened felt so incredibly common in a lot of the (admittedly rather limited) number of BLs being produced. It felt like pretty standard fare.

But going back and watching it in juxtaposition with We Are airing has been so fascinating. This genre has been evolving, y'all.

As much as we all joke about always getting more university BLs, there is something to be said for a format that can be used as something of a metric for the genre. And though there's only four years between My Engineer and We Are, seeing them both at once gives me such an incredible appreciation for the direction the genre is going in, the impact of having more queer voices involved in the creation of QLs, and how there's a lot of good we can find in seemingly simple spaces.

Obligatory disclaimer: This is just my perspective and subjective interpretation of what I have seen as a BL viewer of some time; also I don't have time to go in and do a university deep dive, so this isn't a real analysis, but more of a brief writeup of observations.

Trends are not black and white, of course, there is a spectrum. I'm sure we'll suffer through more Dinosaur Loves. At the same time, having such predominant production companies as GMMTV putting effort into hiring queer creatives and subverting old cliche tropes is an encouraging thing. (Especially as they were the creators of the original university trendsetting BL with Sotus).

Note: For newer QL viewers, I highly recommend @absolutebl for brushing up on trope history. For university BLs in particular, this post and this post are great starting primers.

Let's talk tropes!

Ok, one more note - some tropes are being what I would consider subverted, some more adapted to a newer framework, and some just played with - I'm going to talk about how they appear to me, but I'm not going to be super pedantic over it, because this is just for fun.

Trope: Bullying/hazing behavior

This did not age well in My Engineer, and I would guess hasn't aged well in a number of BLs (and other media, because the whole "he's mean to you because he likes you" bullshit has been around forever). Not just because the behavior was shitty, but because it was played off in the script as cute, and implied that it was completely justified for the seme to do whatever he wanted in his pursuit of his uke.

(There was also quite a strong tone of internalized homophobia, with the lead feeling more comfortable in expressing his interest through harassment than honest emotion, but the show never actually engaged with that in any meaningful way.)

We Are sets up a very traditional enemies to lovers/bullying start to the story, with Phum taking advantage of Peem's economic situation to make him his "slave".

And yet... there's some important elements here that make this more than the standard use of the trope.

Phum keeps it pretty light in his bullying behavior, and clearly is using it more to keep Peem around as company, versus the kind of bullying in My Engineer, where Duen is literally hit by a car, and yet still expected to keep jumping to Bohn's whims.

As soon as Phum realizes he really upset Peem by leaving him waiting at the mall, he genuinely feels awful about it. It's clear that his intent is not to cause harm, and that he has a conscience. He wrestles with his feelings on it quite a bit, and it ends up being the thing that gets Phum to finally express an honest emotion with Peem.

And most importantly, the script does not let him off the hook. His behavior is bad, and is identified as such by the writing. Peem pushes back and is shown to be right to do so, Beer openly says he disapproves.

So instead of a cliche story beat that's used just to start the action, or a seme who's allowed to do whatever he wants because "passion" (blech), we're seeing it used for characterization, giving us important beats about who both Phum and Peem are in how they engage with each other through the use of the trope.

Trope: Obsessive/jealous behavior

Oh, this one was painful in My Engineer. Duen couldn't even talk to another human being without Bohn getting jealous and angry and dragging him away.

Phum gets jealous, particularly around Kluen, but what makes it feel so subversive here are two key things.

Phum's jealousy has a purpose here, it's not just for drama's sake. It's not the cliche seme doing whatever he wants and being treated as justified. It's deliberately being used to explore his insecurities, and give him a challenge to overcome. Phum doesn't stomp over and drag Peem away, he retreats, he hides. When his jealousy causes him to lash out at Peem, he is immediately aware he fucked up.

And again, the script is making it clear that this behavior is not ok. Peem chides Phum when he acts unkind to Kluen, and Beer makes it clear that the solution is not petty behavior, but actually figuring out a way to communicate his feelings with Peem before he misses his chance. This is portrayed as a barrier for Phum to overcome in order to be with Peem, not an expected part of a romantic relationship.

Trope: Friendship group

There are not enough words to express how much I love the friendship group in We Are. To be fair, this is one of the better historical tropes. We've gotten a lot of amazing friend groups, even in mediocre BLs.

But it's still different in We Are, for one simple reason. In most university BLs, the friend group is a supporting structure. But here?

The story lines may be about the romance, but the point of We Are is the friendship.

I will die on this hill, y'all.

I don't have enough time to go into it fully here, but this show is a love letter to friends. It's a tribute to finding the people who see the real you and have your back unconditionally. Who cheer your successes and commiserate over your defeats, who pick you up when the world knocks you down, who call you out when you make mistakes, and push you to be better.

And romance is lovely, but all of these budding relationships are about being friends first, and then lovers, because that friendship is just as important as everything else, if not more.

Trope: Pink milk

Lol, ok, kinda kidding, kinda not. I know we all got mad over the drink wastage, but also check out these visuals - it's about diversity baby!!

TanFang speed round

My two little trope-busting bebes. These two are already so beautifully non-traditional in their composition, but I love how frequently they are used to make fun of and play with tropes just on their own.

Introduced as pining crush/friend's older brother pair, but actually secret enemies to lovers.

Grumpy/sunshine pairing, where the sunshine used to be a fighter, and grumpy smiles when he thinks no one is watching.

Wound-tending where they keep poking each other instead of acting soft.

Openly mocking the jealous boyfriend trope.

Setting up the possessive trope when Tan doesn't pick up Fang's calls, only to immediately have Fang question if he's being unreasonable.

Setting up their own cute eating scene for kicks.

"First time" sex scene making it clear this is anything but their first time.

Tan holding Fang down in the cliche possessive pose, only for Fang to take the agency of kissing Tan. (And overall saying eff off at the cliche top/bottom roles old BLs were such a fan of).

In Summary

I'm sure there are more tropes that will come to me, and we do still have 5 episodes left of We Are, so there are some potential trope uses that I am keeping an eye on. This is by no means an all-inclusive list.

But I wanted to write this, because I was genuinely shocked to realize how different my My Engineer watching experience was this time compared to my first time. How over the last few years I'd come to expect more thoughtfulness in my QL media, even in the ones that seem shallow on the surface.

Considering how fast and furious the QLs are coming these days, it's easy to forget how recent it was that we were much more starved of content. And I think sometimes we forget to take in the big picture, of how far we've come in just a few years.

Critique is always going to be important, of course, it's part of what helps us make progress. At the same time, it doesn't hurt to take a moment to look around and see some good in where we are.

@sailorbryant thanks for the push to get this written! Feel free to add thoughts!

[respectthepetty]

Between seeing Up in drag and the BL Bracket being about gender envy, I just want to give y'all a little (blurry) gender expression treat:

EDITED - Updated with all the added reblogs (6/19)

Up Poompat [Lovely Writer, Step by Step]

First Kanaphan [The Shipper, Not Me, The Eclipse, Moonlight Chicken]

Poppy Ratchapong [Why R U?, YYY, Cutie Pie, Lovely Writer, Star & Sky, Step by Step, EVERYTHING!]

Nanon Korapat [My Dear Loser, Bad Buddy, Vice Versa, Dirty Laundry]

Added through reblogs:

Bright Vachirawit [2gether, Still 2gether] @sparklyeyedhimbo @absolutebl

Turbo Chanokchon [Love Stage, Nitiman]

Yin Anan Wong [Love Mechanics, En of Love series] @house-of-mani

Tul Pakorn [Manner of Death, Together with Me, Triage] @so-much-yet-to-learn

Max Nattapol [Manner of Death, Together with Me, Triage] @khabkhluen

Off Jumpol [I'm Tee, Me Too; Not me; Theory of Love] @watchingblsnowandforever

Singto Prachaya [SOTUS, He's Coming to Me, Friend Zone]

I think I caught them all. Thanks for the crowdsourcing effort everyone!