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waitmyturtles · 2 years ago

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Love By Chance, New Siwaj, and MAME

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I’ll cover Love By Chance, the PerthSaint ship, my first experience with a solo New Siwaj project, and my first MAME adaptation.]

TW: anti-queer derogatory language, sexual assault

Well -- wow. Love By Chance, huh? My first-ever solo New Siwaj project, AND my first-ever show with an original book by MAME. Lots going on here.

My thoughts are quite jumbled on this show, so let me list away by means of setting up this review:

1) My thoughts on Perth and Saint, 2) My feeling that for the first half of the show, I was watching my first derivative structured BL, as influenced from what came before it, 3) A missed opportunity to take a deeper dive into how individual characteristics can shape a relationship, 4) What is New Siwaj’s deal with not being able to hold storylines strong through to the end, and 5) Brief thoughts on MAME.

I know that LBC is a fan favorite, and this absolutely makes sense to me. I will DEFINITELY be fast-forwarding to beloved AePete scenes in the future. The show started off STRONG, the AePete storyline was written cleanly, and I mean -- Perth and Saint.

This is my first rodeo with Saint. @manogirl, you asked in a comment what I thought of his acting. I thought he was superb. I don’t know the MAME source material for this show, but it seemed to me like Saint was playing up to Pete’s character as originally written, and that Saint NAILED it.

I’m also on a Perth Tanapon HIGH right now, having finished Double Savage recently, and I’m heartened to see his very natural ability to turn up maj chemistry with partners like Saint and Ohm, who just naturally give and respond back. (I understand that we’re on tenterhooks to see if things can improve with him and Chimon in Dangerous Romance after their turn in Never Let Me Go -- I haven’t seen NLMG, but understand his Chopper to have been milquetoast.)

But anyway -- of course, as the majority of the fam knows -- the strength of the AePete storyline and the stunning acting between these two ABSOLUTELY carried this show. @manogirl, probably the only criticism I would offer about Saint/Pete would be that Pete’s manner WAS flat and restrained, and it wasn’t until the football field scene that I realized that I could understand where that manner came from.

I think we all know that without the incredibly strong acting of Perth and Saint, that there wouldn’t have been a show to speak of here (especially as I now understand what the second season of this show was about, yikes). But Perth and Saint kept this whole project together, literally. They were a DELIGHT to watch, and when their scenes petered out at the end of the run, I wasn’t thrilled about it.

But rewinding back to when I started the series: I think, with the help of the strength of their acting, that I felt something early on in my watching -- that I was watching my first true derivative BL, influenced by what came before it.

Can I list all the tropes that I saw? Engineering, beach trip, sniffing of shirts, guitars and singing, shrimps, the to-be-expected top/bottom dynamic, etc. I am positive I’m missing more tropes.

In Love By Chance, I really saw the tropes become structure. I remember noticing in Love Sick the tropes being born -- the hoses, the beach trip, alllll the music and singing. And of course, in SOTUS, they become canon.

I saw the tropes settled in Love By Chance, like a board game that everyone knows how to play by now. And you know what -- I’ve never considered myself a trope person, but I utterly LOVED how these tropes were handed to Perth and Saint, and I saw what they did with them. PerthSaint handled the meet-cute with such PACE and steadiness, that they made the tropes feel natural and fresh. The tropes, in my opinion, actually helped move the story forward.

Some quick thoughts on AePete’s relationship. I think we were lucky in seeing as far as we could go into AePete’s relationship, as much as we could see, up to the “I love you.” I really liked that we saw much more of their relationship develop after the first kiss and the first sex, when we learn that Ae is a serious horndog, is a jealous bro, but is FULL of loyal love for Pete, and couldn’t give a hoot about what the world around him thinks about it -- to the extent of holding Pete’s hand as close to Ae’s family as I had seen in a BL so far on the chronological watchlist.

But New Siwaj had to New Siwaj (cc @bengiyo) -- in that, with the TinCan and TarTum (wtFUCK) stories, and that KengklaTechno SHIT going down, that a ton of time was taken away from the show being able to focus on elements that I thought were FASCINATING in AePete’s relationship, such as Ae not being able to take Pete’s help, and Ae’s tendency towards stereotypically masculine POVs and behaviors.

Ae’s randiness and jealous tendencies were huge drivers of their storyline, and they didn’t seem to unsettle Pete, which I thought was fascinating and -- only in my humble opinion, PLEASE feel free to debate and disagree, I am all ears on this -- harkening to a kind of macro cishet perspective on their relationship.

Why do I say that? I’m jumping ahead on my list of themes, but quickly: from the REST of what I saw in the show -- TinCan, TarTum, KengklaNo, and Pond’s behavior (I honestly QUITE liked Pond, actually) -- I’m working with a theory that part of MAME’s story structure here is based in Asian cultural homophobia, in stereotypes of how the queer community should act by way of societal expectations in Asia. But more on this in a bit.

Back to AePete for a second. In Ae -- there’s a lot to be explored. Where does his jealousy stem from, besides testosterone and an unending urge for bodily intimacy? I want to KNOW how Ae’s expression of masculinity affects their future relationship. I want to KNOW why Ae can’t take Pete’s help -- does he truly think of Pete in the wife role, and that Ae, as the husband, doesn’t need any help? I want to know WHY Ae is so patriarchal to Pete. I want to KNOW why Pete doesn’t question it, at least at first.

Maybe they were going to get into it in the second season, if the PerthSaint ship hadn’t split. But there’s A LOT THERE.

While I’m working through this, I’m thinking of Bad Buddy/Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy (of course), and seeing the embodiment of Pran wanting to NOT take Pat’s help on Pran’s play project in Pha Pun Dao -- and how this desire for being able to do things ALONE, without ANYONE’s help, likely led to Pran working in Singapore after the boys graduated.

I’m spoiled, now, by seeing this internal need of Pran to explore his independence play out through Aof Noppharnach’s lens in OS2. We don’t get that depth here in LBC with AePete, and I really wish we could have gotten more. Ae IS SO FASCINATING. @bengiyo, you mentioned to me in a side conversation that Ae might be tagged as demi, and I just wish, I WISH, we could have had more depth there. IT’S THERE AND IT’S FASCINATING TO HAVE KNOWN WHAT WE COULD HAVE HAD with these guys.

Because: between New and MAME, good lord -- these side storylines! We had literally almost TWO FUCKING EPISODES devoted to TinCan!

Flatly put: I don’t think we had a worthwhile payoff with any of the side stories. And I think the side stories ultimately took the show down for me. I might even say that AePete weren’t strong enough as a foundational column to hold the show up as a whole -- but I can’t write that totally off, because they were SUCH a gem couple, and Saint and Perth’s acting was SO GOOD. We just missed so many opportunities to really get to know them better.

New Siwaj’s screenwriting and filmmaking — smdh. I’m not as pissed as others about what went down in Double Savage, but we saw New using flashbacks as a way to cover his ass for jumbled storytelling throughout the series. Flashbacks, side stories, whatever -- New likes to clearly make things complicated in his work.

And maybe he was intrigued to turn MAME’s novel into Love By Chance BECAUSE he saw what he likes to play with in filmmaking in MAME’s story. But as an auteur, I wonder if he has contemplated a linear beginning-middle-end perspective on a main couple, one that can actually be satisfying! (Hello, ATOTS.) I will say, though -- that New and MAME might be a natural pair to complement each of their tendencies towards fringe-ier filmmaking techniques and perspectives.

I want to offer a few quick thoughts on my perception of the story as crafted by MAME specifically, with the absolute understanding that she’s controversial, and I welcome all feedback on my thoughts here. (And I also understand that the other directors I mention below used source material written by other novel authors, so naturally, the comparison between MAME and the directors is not quite fair. But let me go there anyway.)

@bengiyo has shared with me (thank you, my ever patient friend) that she’s popular in many circles by way of the chemistry of the leads in her stories and her penchant for heat, which are two qualities that I also appreciate in BLs. In any case, here goes my critique.

Between the TarTum and TinCan traumas, plus the questionable KenglaNo scene, I have an unsettled feeling that MAME has tapped into Asian cultural stereotypes of homophobia in LBC. I’ll explain through a personal anecdote.

When I was a kid, like pre-teen, the ONLY band I listened to was Queen. Queen WAS IT. Freddie Mercury was MY HERO. MY HERO. A mixed Indo-Persian gay Brit with a voice like god. Kicking down doors and prejudices. He’s up there today with my slate of utter heroes.

My father -- traditional Indian-from-India guy -- was taken aback. He made reference often to his discomfort that I was enthralled and inspired by a gay man who had died of AIDS. To me, what I think of as the “usual” homophobic stereotypes from my family were thrown out often -- Freddie Mercury had multiple partners, he dressed like a woman, he was dangerous and filthy, etc.

I know that MAME is known for processing her own personal trauma through her art vis à vis queer storylines. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about this.

It gives me the minor jibbles. I’m not sure this sits well with me. I don’t want to deny ANYONE, ANYONE their right to make art. But I can’t help but think that MAME ISN’T aware of Thai/Asian cultural homophobic stereotypes towards the queer community (not to conflate specifically Thai and Indian perspectives, which is why I’m glomming on “Asian” here). From the kind of commentary I grew up with with my dad -- I was hit on the head, SPECIFICALLY vis à vis the side stories, that Asian cultural homophobia was being leveraged in LBC as a potential means of connecting with fans that may have otherwise ignored this show. That elements like gang rape must be a given. That incestuous implications have to be a part of a queer story. That intentionally non-consensual sex must be a part of the telling of a queer story. That the TinCan story had to have ended with Can pulling back, with Tin left to suffer.

It makes me jibbly with a concern about trauma porn. That trauma porn MUST be a part of a storyline, in MAME’s eyes, regarding stories about queer people.

Again, I don’t want to deny anyone their chosen modality of creating art. But I reflect on this against, say, Aof Noppharnach’s storytelling in Bad Buddy, in a world where there’s no homophobia; or Cheewin’s storytelling in Bed Friend, where nuclear AND office families are accepting. Trauma is STILL a given in these fictional queer worlds, created by queer auteurs, because there IS homophobia in real society (Bed Friend) and intergenerational trauma IS a reality (Bad Buddy).

But the trauma isn’t leveraged AS AN AUTOMATIC, ABSOLUTE GIVEN for the SAKE of the storyline HAVING queer characters -- which seems to be an equation that I think is making me jibbly about MAME’s perspective here. @bengiyo, my question is: is the trade-off between having high heat and great chemistry worth it, for MAME to HAVE to include what I’m seeing as Asian absolutist stereotypes (as I grew up with these stereotypes) in the telling of queer stories?

I’ll certainly have more to say and think on this when I get into TharnType, and I’ll likely be able to answer some of these questions on my own. As an Asian raised in America, and as an ally, I have enough concern about what I saw by way of MAME’s story, as compared to what I heard in my childhood home by way of prejudices, to at least hold a red flag in my hand.

AePete were an absolute delight in this show. But I’m not sure, yet, if it’s worth setting queer characters up for traumatic fictional journeys BECAUSE an author has chosen to tell stories of queer people to process THEIR OWN personal trauma. I don’t know. As an Asian, I’m really conflicted. Because it seems to me to tap into easily understood and dangerous stereotypes that Asians might otherwise hold about the queer community and queer rights -- and that it’s easier to ride the bandwagon instead of hopping off of it and running on your own. Processing one’s pain is one thing. Trafficking in stereotypes because one might think queer sex and queer love is of a specific type and kind by way of continental and cultural stereotypes is something vastly different, and quite concerning for me.

This thought train isn’t over until I watch TharnType. I’m sad that PerthSaint didn’t continue, and I’m sad that Earth Pirapat doesn’t inhabit the role of Type in TharnType, but like I said before -- PerthSaint were worth it alone for me watching this show. And MAME and New Siwaj, separately, have had TREMENDOUS influence on Thai BLs, and I needed to watch their first show to understand where this particular trajectory started, and where it’s going to go, with TharnType, Until We Meet Again, and other projects on the list coming up. Let’s see where this takes me next.

[LBC is done: PERTH! I don’t think I have anymore Perth on my watchlist, wah. Come back to me, Perthy-werthy!

Okay: I finished the BL cuts of Kiss Me Again this weekend, and I’ve gotten familiar with TayNew/PeteKao. I have THOUGHTS! (I really like them! I know there’s ish with New, but I’m waiting until I get to DBK to dive into that research.) I will NOT review the BL cuts, and will just wait to do a big old review after Dark Blue Kiss -- but I’ve watched the BL cuts FIRST to get their airing dates chronologically correct (I’m saving their Our Skyy for after DBK).

THAT MEANS THAT I’M STARTING He’s Coming To Me this week (FINALLY!). I have a few homies out there who mentioned rewatching this and possibly doing a watch with me (!!!). Please note that I can’t binge at all (mom lyfe), and that it usually takes me around a week to finish, so: go at your own pace and don’t wait for this old mom to catch up! And anyone who wants to join at your own pace as well, PLEASE DO! I would LOVE to commiserate on what I know will be a ridiculously amazing show -- and I’m shaking with happiness that I’m finally diving into Aof’s earlier work in the OGMMTVC series, which was a huge original point to my starting this project.

Here’s the watchlist as it stands. Lovely Writer is a new addition to the list as meta-BL commentary. As EVER, I’ll take recommendations!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (watching) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) 11) TharnType (2019) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) 14) Dew the Movie (2019) (not an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but I want to watch this in chronological order with everything else) 15) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) 16) 2gether (2020) 17) Still 2gether (2020) 18) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 19) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 20) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 21) Lovely Writer (2021) 22) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 23) Not Me (2021-2022) 24) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 25) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 26) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 27) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 28) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 29) My School President (2022-2023) 30) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 31) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

#love by chance #perthsaint #perth tanapon #saint suppapong #aepete #ae x pete #pete x ae #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #MAME #new siwaj

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