#but a lot of the times the criticism of sex in media that i see on here is straight-up 'it shouldn't exist' and hm

[femanthropy]

I think that the criticism of yaoi at face value would be that it’s gay male relationships being marketed for a female audience.

I don’t agree with either content that caters gay male relationships to a female audience OR lesbian relationships to male audiences, both are gross. I would much rather see an accurate portrayal of both relationships over pandering to a different audience.

A lot of time in anime relationships I just see well. A lot of fan service/catering of content in a sexual manner being inherently for an audience. But that’s my general criticism and I haven’t watched many strictly romantic/sexual anime. I’ve watched one anime all the way through, and episodes here and there of others and neither were involving homosexual relationships, only heterosexual.

While I dislike both, i just wish there was less catering to the opposite demographic in terms of sexual relationships. And that goes for all media.

And men always always always in my observation have a much more nefarious and disgusting view of lesbian anime than women do of yaoi. But also I’ve seen fetishisation on both sides mind you.

It’s just the average demographic of men enjoying lesbian relationships in anime wildly differs from the demographic of women enjoying homosexual relationships in anime. And that’s par for the course.

Overall I wish there was more content for women made by women for women pushed into the mainstream, as of course, it isn’t the case.

TL;DR: the demographics of women who enjoy same sex male relationships vs males who enjoy same sex female relationships are different. It’s the catering it’s portrayed which is imo fetishising. That being said I see the difference parallel to society. Two men are often in a fair relationship in media while a lot of heterosexual relationships are toxic and misogynistic in media.

Tbh I don’t get why some radfems are so aggressively against teen girls being fans of yaoi or whatever it’s called. Like idk dude, they’re just young girls trying to explore romance and sexuality in a relatively safe and chill way - I don’t get the issue. I don’t think grown gay men are in danger from teen girls thinking a couple of anime boys are cute together.

[cigarette-room]

if you find sex repulsive why do you go to a sex book shelf, pick out a sex book, read it, go to a sex website, read more of sex book-related sex stuff, then go loudly angrily complain that there's sex in it

[0-therw-0-rldly]

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not really a shipper. I just enjoy canon couples on TV Series/films.

Terms I’d like B*ddies to remove from their vocabulary because they don’t know how to use them correctly:

Media literacy: For a group that uses this term a lot you sure do misinterpret everything in this show.

Queerbaiting: Going to expand on this one. A show that’s already been pre established for having queer characters simply cannot queerbait.

Ship baiting: While sometimes you can argue that they could be doing that, that’s only if you look at the show in a very biased manner. You might think this is the case but the general audience doesn’t think the way you do.

Ship war: This isn’t a one tree hill situation where there was Team Brooke Vs. Team Peyton where the middle guy (Lucas Scott) had canonically been with both women. This is people not understanding fanon vs. canon and not being able to just watch the show. It’s like playing quarterback on Madden and thinking you could be better than Patrick Mahomes.

Plot device: everything’s a plot device. Move tf on.

Predator: You sound like crazy MAGA supporters calling everything regarding the LGBTQIA+ community as predatory. Sit down.

Co-parenting: I know this is a big one and discourse was brought up during the hiatus. Oliver and Ryan have loosely mentioned this years ago but it was never to be taken this seriously. Do y’all even know what co-parenting is or are you that big of a donut? Buck is someone who loves his best friend deeply and by extension, his kid too. Him taking care of him frequently does not make him a co-parent. Maybe he is a parental or uncle figure, but he isn’t a co-parent. Also, I swear y’all need to learn how a will works. He is a GODPARENT, not a GUARDIAN. Stfu.

Hag: This especially applies to women, but to say that someone 25-30+ is a hag for still being in fandoms or enjoying tv shows/films is inherently misogynistic. Men are never held to this much criticism for enjoying fictional media, but women aren’t allowed to?

Queer Coding: people of the same sex “looking at each other”, hugging, or having intimate moments all together doesn’t make them queer coded. It could mean that they just love each other that deeply platonically. While representation is amazing and just because you interpret a character as queer coded (just like my ship baiting comment) doesn’t mean others interpret it that way as well. In addition, network TV has stipulations, and also actors are allowed to decline storylines. Ryan has mentioned his character is heterosexual an abundance of times which means (at least for now) that he isn’t willing to go for this storyline.

Dead naming: Y’all construing the fact that Buck wants people like coworkers and some of his former love interests, to saying Evan is his dead name is inherently transphobic because do you even understand what a dead name is? Evan Buckley is shown as being fine with being called Evan by both Tommy and his sister. I’m pretty sure some of his love interests have called him Evan as well.

Fetishizing: You guys saw two hot guys who “looked at each other” and for 6 seasons have wanted nothing but to see those two make out with each other. Those of us who enjoy Tevan saw Buck giddy at the thought of Tommy and have wanted domestic fluff for them since.

Anything to do with racism, homophobia, and misogyny: I’ve seen the way you guys have conveniently weaponized Henren and by extension Aisha/Tracie when you didn’t get the Ryan/Oliver interview, don’t try to act like you’re morally superior. Not to mention wanting a canonically gay man to die in a show and not even holding those who use your ship name to write CSA fics accountable because you’re petty and want to throw hissy fits. Anyone looking at your comments as an outsider would think you’re homophobes and yes queer people can be homophobic.

I do hope you can expand your vocabulary. 🤍

[rainbowsky]

Hello, loved watching Weibo 2024 last night, both GG and DD were looking so handsome! 😍😍❤️❤️I see so much talk about DD's seat situation, and how it's related to the 227 incident, I was wondering whether you had any hot takes on it? Thank you, luvv your blog!

Hi sasukeforhokage! Thanks so much for your kind words, I'm glad you're enjoying my blog! 😊

Yes, they both looked amazing! It's always nice to see them out at an event, especially both of them on the same night.

I actually got a few asks about this seating issue. I'm sorry for those I didn't answer, but hopefully everyone will get what they wanted from this response.

Background

For those who weren't aware of what happened, here's a bit of background.

On Weibo Night, when the room had been set up for the celebrity guests, photos of the seating arrangement leaked on social media. It showed that GG and DD were assigned to sit 4 seats away from each other. I posted about that on the night of the event, which you can find here.

As I said in that post, GG and DD's assigned seats at these events are largely irrelevant, because they haven't appeared in the room at the same time for years. They seem to coordinate it so that they take turns being out there and being backstage. Generally they're only out there when they need to be - basically when they're about to get an award, or any of their cast and crew are about to get an award, or if/when they're performing.

This has been the case for a very long time, and there have also been events where neither of them has taken their seat in the main area for the entire night (so no, this wasn't the first time seats weren't taken).

Why would they not want to be out there in the main room? Well, there are plenty of good reasons for this.

It's boring, cold and uncomfortable.

There is too much focus on them when they're in the room, and they wouldn't want to be a distraction from other artists, particularly young artists who rely more on the spotlight to build their career. This is also why we always see GG and DD trying to move to the margins when group photos are being taken, so that up-and-coming artists or industry seniors can get prime placement.

The less they are seen in proximity to other stars, the less chance of a scandal, gossip or fan wars due to their perceived facial expressions, body language and other behavior.

This is especially important when it comes to them being in the same room at the same time. There is far too much emphasis on their reactions/behavior toward each other, which can cause fan wars and public scrutiny on their relationship.

When there's a lot of scrutiny on their relationship, it becomes all anyone talks about on the night - even bystanders - and this takes away focus from other artists. As I said before, they wouldn't want to be a distraction. Not only would it make them uncomfortable to be the central focus, it can backlash against them, because Chinese audiences can be harshly critical of those who take up too much public attention. Fans of other artists would also be given more incentive to attack GG and DD and wage fanwars if their idol was forced into GG and DD's shadow.

When they're in a room like that they are going to have dozens of cameras trained on them, so they have to be in 'celebrity mode' completely, which must be extremely tense and stressful.

Ultimately these appearances are a performance, and there's no incentive to perform for any longer than they absolutely have to.

Etc. etc.

What happened?

At some point in the evening people took notice of the seat numbers that were assigned, and realized that DD's seat was row 2, seat 27.

Anyone who has been following GG and DD for any amount of time will likely be aware of what those numbers mean. 227 was the name given the big scandal that happened back in 2020 (because the main scandal broke on 27 Feb of that year), where fans and antis nearly got GG cancelled over a fan fic that portrayed him as a transgender sex worker in a relationship with an underage DD. There have been countless posts and articles written about 227, so I'm not going to dig into that here.

In some ways 227 also became an attack on DD, because a coordinated group of antis tried to frame him for all of it, claiming he and his team were behind the whole thing and were trying to get GG cancelled. His team has been fighting these claims for years, so any association of DD with that number is extremely harmful, even suspicious. It inevitably brings up questions of whether someone is intentionally trying to harm DD by seating him there.

I'll get to my thoughts on that later.

There was a flurry of activity around his seat at one point in the evening, when staff members (later identified as Sina staff) were seen ripping the number off (or trying to, but proper removal would have required scissors, so they ended up rolling up the number to hide it from view). They also took photos of the rolled up number, presumably to show DD and his team what had been done to remedy the situation.

There was also talk that the seating arrangement was changed so that Li Xian would switch seats with DD, putting DD in seat 228 and Li Xian in seat 227, although the numbers/labels were not changed.

Edit: @maurice-dandi shared this image (thanks) of how the seat labels were arranged at the end. They'd cut away the numbers from some of the seats and swapped his name with Li Xian's, moving DD's assigned seat from 227 to 228.

All of this was talked about in various ways by fans on the night of the event, framed by all sorts of theories about what was happening, and why, and about who was making these decisions and changes, and why. Ultimately we don't know for sure who drove these changes, but at the very least it's safe to say that DD and his team were involved in those conversations.

I also feel it's likely they were the ones initiating all of this by lodging a complaint about the number. The seating arrangement was in really poor taste and potentially very harmful to DD and his reputation had he been seen sitting there. Imagine the hotsearches! "Wang Yibo in seat #227." Ugh.

DD never did take his seat that night. I don't find that remotely surprising. Although to be fair, I wouldn't have been surprised if we never saw him in his seat, regardless of which number he had been assigned. He tends to put in the bare minimum for these events - and I don't blame him. The less consequential an event, the less invested he seems to be in it unless he's promoting a project. This is the kind of very common sense, no BS approach that DD is known for.

Why did it happen?

There are a lot of fans who believe this was an intentional attempt by Sina Weibo to spark drama on the night of the event, and to generate audience engagement on the platform.

The theory isn't without merit. All social media platforms benefit greatly from negative engagement. Studies have shown that negative engagement is by far the most popular and long-lasting. The more that people go to war over topics, the more they post about it, the more frequently they check back in for updates, the more they post and comment, and the longer the whole thing lasts.

If someone posts about a cute baby panda it might make the rounds for a few days, everyone might make one comment on it, give it a share and then move on.

Adversarial issues and arguments, on the other hand, tend to rage out of control for days, weeks - even months. People will typically make many comments as they argue back and forth, and they'll even draw others into it.

So yes - Sina Weibo does have something to gain by sparking a war. And they have been known for shamelessly profiting from scandals in the past. For example, by letting antis pay to rank up hateful hotsearches about an artist, and then making the artist pay to have those same hotsearches taken down. They're by no means a noble organization.

However, I also feel they have something to lose by intentionally pulling a stunt like this.

Weibo Night is just a big PR event, both for Weibo and the stars who attend. None of the awards given out are consequential. They're all just a bunch of fluff and flattery, with no real substance. The entire event is just a huge charade meant to make Weibo look important and relevant, and to give artists a platform to boost their status and promote their latest projects.

While it's true that events like this give artists a good opportunity to be seen and to promote their work, Weibo Night needs the artists a lot more than the artists need Weibo Night. The only legitimacy/relevance this event holds is granted entirely based on which artists choose to attend. If big artists didn't show up, the event would rapidly lose any interest or value for audiences.

Weibo Night needs top stars like GG and DD to attend the event. They're by far two of the biggest draws for audiences, and big artists like them legitimize the event through their attendance.

Artists like GG and DD agree to attend events like this based on a trust that the event will be conducted in a professional way that will not bring harm upon the artists and their reputations.

If artists started to get the sense that Weibo Night will intentionally pull stunts that would be harmful to their careers and their reputations, they would stop attending. While I am not naive to how shameless corporations like this can be, I am also well aware of how risk averse they are, and how driven they are by money.

I just don't feel convinced that there's more to gain for Weibo Night by pulling a stunt like this, than there is to lose by doing so. Therefore I'm not convinced it was intentional on the part of the event organizers.

I also subscribe strongly to the old saying, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence." I genuinely believe that people are easily this clueless, and that cluelessness is sufficient to explain what happened that night.

The organizers would have been focused on ensuring GG didn't end up seated in 227. I doubt it would have occurred to them that anyone else would have an issue with that number.

But we will likely never know.

Fans lap up persecution narratives like so much sweet pablum, so this story is never going to die and will likely continue to be spread and framed as an intentional attack on DD, or on both GG and DD, but I'm personally not fully convinced either way.

What about DD's reaction?

Did DD refuse to take his seat because of the number he was assigned? And if so, was that because he was trying to protect GG, or was it because he was trying to protect his own reputation?

Was it a romantic gesture, or was it an act of self-preservation?

These are some of the questions being hotly debated among solos and turtles on various platforms.

My personal opinion is that it was inevitably a bit of both.

There's no planet on which he and his team would want to be associated with that number, given how intensely coordinated anti groups have been trying to frame them as the architects of GG's downfall. They would not want to hand these antis a photo op with DD sitting in that seat. They would not want to appear to be OK with that number. No way.

But there's also no planet on which DD would sit in a seat marked 227. It just would never happen. There's also no planet on which he wouldn't seize an opportunity like this to show his devotion to GG.

Both can be true - and in my view, both are.

And this is totally unwashable. It's blatantly clear that DD is not OK with that number. Anyone can see that, which is why so many new turtles have been hatched over this incident - DD's solos because they've seen his refusal to be connected to an anti-GG number, and GG's solos because of DD's apparent protectiveness toward GG.

And DD's intent was only made clearer when he posted later that evening with the kadian 228.

DD almost never makes personal posts. The fact that he made this particular post on this particular night with this particular kadian is not an accident. He knew what he was doing. He was making reference to that seating issue, showing that he was aware of it and that he did intentionally refuse and reject the number 227.

DD doesn't tolerate BS, nor does he set aside his principles in order to bow down to politeness and expectations.

Of course we can and should also recognize it as a loving thing. Of course. DD is extremely protective of GG. More than of himself. He wants the world to know it. We've seen this time and again - especially after 227.

Anyway, this is just my take on the whole thing. Others will have their own. None of us knows anything for sure. Let's be realistic - none of this is going to be openly disclosed or explained by anyone involved.

Edit: Regarding the speech

I forgot to address his acceptance speech when he received his award. This is another issue that is being discussed among fans. A lot of fans are saying that his speech was short and brusque because he was angry about the seating issue.

This is not a credible theory as far as I'm concerned, for a few reasons.

He is a professional, and when he is on stage he will behave professionally. He will not project his emotional state in a situation like that, in front of an audience of industry professionals. It's just not going to happen. He has his head screwed firmly on his shoulders, he's not going to do something to damage his reputation or disrupt the night by throwing a little microtantrum onstage.

He is not so emotionally volatile that an incident like this would make him visibly angry. He tends to have a flat affect (he doesn't tend to show a lot of emotion, good or bad), so I don't think anything can be read into his demeanor on that night.

He is a man of few words, and his acceptance speeches are always very short. This is nothing new.

I suspect that he was likely aware that this seating issue was an unintentional oversight, not an intentional insult against him. As such, he would be annoyed, but it's unlikely he would have been truly angry.

Related posts/posts of interest:

My initial post about this topic

GG 2/27 Statement

Why did DD never make a statement about 227?

Tencent 2020 rehearsal time slot candy

A recent post where I talked a bit about 227

[kateysummers99]

Do you think the WWBM Interacial movement has now got to a critical point where momentum has starting to challenge even the majority of White Women now as far as there choices for relationship ? May we as White Males even lose this group of females to African Men more then we keep ourselves ?

The short answer is definitely yes.

Because of my own personal experiences and also just looking at major social trends, it's pretty obvious that IR relationships (in general, but specifically white girls and black guys) are much more common now than they were 10, 30, and 30 years ago. 

I think there are lots of reasons for this and I’m obviously not an expert (I work in finance, not cultural psychology), but lets just look at the obvious trends:

Girls today are more empowered in general, and especially regarding sexuality and romance. I mention this a lot on this blog, there are less things hold girls back than there used to be. Movies and TV and culture in general are so much more accepting that people can love who they want to love, and that applies especially to society being more accepting of girls expressing their sexuality. I grew up in a time when dating black guys was an obvious but implied no-no, and it's just not the same today. (Note this is NOT true everywhere. Sadly there are racists and homophobes still, but they will probably be holdouts until they die.)

Black men are idolized for their physicality and masculinity by society more and more every day. Sports, music, advertising media, movies, social media and TV shows - you name it, black guys are constantly the icon of masculinity, status and power. This is really true for their masculinity, where we regularly fetishize the sexual prowess of black men in every day culture with phrases like “once you go black you never go back.” 

Porn is free and everywhere. Also something that wasn’t the case when I was growing up, but now you just pick up any cell phone and in a few seconds be privately and anonymously staring at an amazing black man and his huge black cock (or whatever your fantasy is).

Also in the last few years, social justice and institutional racism has become a hot topic, I think a lot of women recognize that the same old white male patriarchy that has been suppressing women since the beginning of time has also been responsible for suppressing Black people. This puts white women and black men on the same side on a pretty deep level, where they see each other in the same existential struggle for happiness against the common enemy that is old white guys.

Another interesting thing that I've read reports about is more and more young white guys who are essentially "staying single" forever, sometimes due to porn addiction. They make a sexual connection with porn that is easy and judgment free, which is the opposite of the real-world dating situation where they deal with complex social dynamics and competition (including trying to compete against more masculine black men who are constantly in movies and music).

So if that's a growing tend... then young women find themselves more free in choosing partners, society idolizing black guys, exposed to IR sex and porn, and more culturally aligned with black guys… and young white guys basically removing themselves from the dating pool.

As for me personally, I have always thought think black guy / white girl couples are the most beautiful -- there's a special passion and primal attraction that goes deep down that you just don't see with other couples.

So yes, I think black guy and white girl couples are definitely more and more popular. I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where all white men are unwanted forever (sorry white boys who message me, desperate to live in such a world), but I do think increasingly empowered girls and wider acceptance of female sexuality will naturally trend to more black guys and white girls together - which is all beautiful to me :)

[bengiyo]

An Apology to The Miracle of Teddy Bear

I finally caught up with a show that was inaccessible for a long time, and also bogged down in bad-faith fan reporting, at the insistence of @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, and later @wen-kexing-apologist. A few months ago, Shan and Twig wrote about how The Miracle of Teddy Bear Saved the Gays to push back on the false narrative that the show buried the gays and forced the lead to marry a woman, and also about how it contains incisive social commentary about a Thai gay man. I won't reiterate what they said in their excellent essay, but I do want to pick up from my Apology to Ossan's Love and The Novelist to talk about going back for shows you missed.

When this show first began airing in the spring of 2022, it was completely inaccessible in the West. I remember seeing rumors at the time that the show was withheld from international distribution due to its critical themes about Thai society, and I was curious about how a show about how a guy falls in love with his teddy bear that comes to life could be causing such consternation. After the show ended, I also remember seeing discontented commentary about the end of the show's ending that turned out to be patently false.

Now that I've actually seen the show, I want to briefly gush about the things I loved in this show.

Job Thuchapon Imbues Nut With A Complex Humanity Rarely Afforded Gay Characters in the BL Sphere

As I was finishing the show last night, I commented to my friends that Job might be one of the most beautiful people I've encountered in Thai queer media, and I think it's because his performance as Nut feels recognizably human. I'm convinced it's because this was a drama with humanist goals that was able to avoid prioritizing romance as its key outcome. As such, Nut becomes one of the best expressions of the traumatized artist trying to do something with his pain in his art that I've ever been blessed to see.

Nut is dealing with intense family trauma from his father's homophobia, his mother's silence and impotence on the matter, and the social circumstances around his life. He's a man with deep anger at his mom and father, who is also tasked with being the breadwinner for his household because his mom is mentally ill. Moreover, his hateful aunt lives next door to only make their lives worse. Nut is an extremely lonely but talented writer who wants to make something more than a standard BL prioritizing romance, cuteness, and product placement.

Most importantly for me, Nut is so unabashedly gay in a way that I also found extremely believable. He's the kind of gay that's not exactly hiding who he is, but isn't going to go out of his way to blast it to everyone. He's not afraid to hold a man's hand in public, but he's also just going to ignore the female coworker who can't take a hint. On top of that, the gays have sex in this show! The show uses so many useful tools to show us that Nut and Tofu have sex without needing to do a lot of bed scenes. I deeply appreciated this.

Inn Sarin Makes The Teddy Bear Role Into a Meaningful Exploration of the Nature of Humanity and Kindness

I originally worried that Inn was here just to be beautiful (he is), and that his character would just be a joke (it most certainly wasn't). Instead, what I got was a character whose innocence allowed us as viewers to explore some heavy moral dilemmas that a simple view of human nature could not accommodate. By the end of the show I was screaming into the chat that "He's only a bear!" because none of the problems he faced were simple.

Tofu, through his interactions with the other inanimate objects in the house experiences incredibly growth over the show, and learns that loving a human as a human is far more complicated than loving them as a teddy bear. He's faced with difficult challenges around Nut's mom's health issues, Nut's family troubles, and even his own jealousy of Nut's childhood love. Inn's affect as Tofu matures as Tofu becomes more familiar with human nuance, which is contrasted so well by the flashbacks with his dead human doppelganger.

This Show Completed Every Thread it Established

This may not seem like an important thing to highlight, but it's so rare for shows to actually do this, especially when they're this complex. I have massive respect for screenwriter Prapt and the team around him, because it's so rare that I enjoy a final episode of a Thai drama. I was openly weeping at the resolution of a thread I thought was forgotten in the finale.

This show had much to say about speaking truth to power, and how the powerful wield death as a weapon. It had much to say about how internalized homophobia expresses in gay men in different ways. It took its mental health themes seriously. It also humanized its villains in a way that makes them some of cruelest I've seen on screen in a long time. It also shows how important community support systems are, especially the role elder gays play in your life. Most importantly, I loved that this show didn't insist that everyone has to hang out and be friendly with everyone who ever hurt them, even if it values getting closure from much-needed apologies.

Conclusion: This Show Has Everything

This show really is something special, and I recommend going on YouTube and watching it. It's a long watch, but it's one of the most rewarding viewing experiences I've had from Thailand in the last decade. I'm also convinced that I have to take learning Thai more seriously, because if Prapt's writing is this tight, I have serious doubts about what we got from The Eclipse. Any Thai people following me, please let me know if you get around to reading the book The Eclipse is based on so you can talk to me about what you experienced from Prapt's pen directly.

[jess-the-vampire]

You know it's stuff like this why I partly can't join the owl house fandom. The fandom seems to persnickety about liking certain charactersand headcanons, especially as someone who has dealt with similar shit before in my other fandoms. Granted there are other reasons I hate the fandom, but this is the worst one. It kinda soured the show for me, granted I never cared for it, but they just worsening it for me.

At times like these, i think it's important to remember posts like this

Bigger fandoms, will always end up looking worse by comparison, it's inevitable unfortunately.

For me, this is also unfortunately nothing new, anyone whose been with me since the start knows that.

It was a decade ago, in another fandom, that i was harassed and accused of being homophobic, because i shipped some characters together that wasn't the popular same sex ship.

I shipped plenty of other same sex ships, heck, i considered the characters in question to be bisexual. But that did not stop me from being publicly mocked, harassed, and put on block lists.

I was underage at the time, this was my first fandom experience, and it also soured that fandom for me, even the show itself.

People go into these things, thinking they're protecting people, or helping others.

And on the surface, i could see how one would think that.

But you're really not, people are not that simple, and neither are what they enjoy or are drawn to.

I was a teenager having fun in my own little space, with a ship i knew was noncanon, and it wouldn't of taken much research to find out i had no issue with the lgbt community at all, but no, it was "You are erasing us, you only ship this because you hate gay people, you're a horrible human being and yada yada yada-"

now, a decade later, it's "You are ignoring the poc cast because you're racist, you only like this character and are invested in him because you believe in what he believes in, you're a racist and sexist being for enjoying him and yada yada-"

Look, people do this because they want to protect people who have been screwed for centuries, it's perfectly understandable to worry that people who think belos is a cool character could like him for the wrong reasons. But people who genuinely think this way are a minority, and will be way more outspoken about those beliefs, is the solution here really to go up to anyone who likes something you don't and ruin them without evidence? To accuse them all of horrible beliefs?

this entire belief system removes the possibility of many MANY other reasons people enjoy media, and is straight up jumping to conclusions that if someone doesn't fundamentally agree with what you think, they MUST be a bad person. No critical thinking, no trying to understand others, just straight up assuming things.

Which btw, ironically, is actually acting WAY more like belos then anything the artists doing wittober were actually doing. Even the idea people are making art about his childhood and therefore sympathizing with him falls apart because there have been just as much art about his crimes so far.

Belos is a villain in a cartoon, people have latched onto villain characters since the dawn of time, it's nothing new. If you're going to keep this train of thought going....is disney just bad for their villian brand? are people also horrible for similar reasons if they have a favorite disney villian?

This entire thought process can be applied anywhere if you try hard enough.

Which is the kinda thing that allows actual human beings to be genuinely hurt here.

like are people going to be hurt more because people make aus with belos, or are they going to be hurt more because people who make said aus are accused or being racist people worth scrutinizing?

This thought process also doesn't take into the account of the fact that the people who like belos, might also be lgbt or poc, which....a lot of them are from my experience.

You can't both preach the show's message of accepting people who are different from you, and then also try and justify harassing people because they fandom differently then you. Unless the wittebane people are actively spouting out racist and sexist stuff, they're not doing anything wrong by engaging in the parts of the fandom that interest them.

Not everyone will be drawn to the show for the same reasons, you always gotta remember that, everyone has different favorite characters, different ships, and different things that make them happy.

Fandom is meant to be fun, people make aus because they're fun, they want to play with the media they like and do new things with it.

I strongly doubt everyone who has made an au staring hunter, or belos, or who thinks the wittebanes are interesting, sat down and said "Man, i like this show, but there are too much minorities in it, i hate minorities, i should make an au removing them or draw the wittebanes because they are white".

as a fan of these characters myself, i like them, but don't care too deeply about the blights, other white popular characters. I feel that should imply my investment in them has a lot more to do with other aspects then race.

in fact this makes me wonder if the person complaining in the tags would have the same argument about aus staring eda or amity in the same vain, even though hunter eda and amity are all lgbt, and two are disabled.

If you are doing stuff like this, either don't engage with stuff that doesn't interest you, because it's really weird to be this obsessed with a part of the fandom you don't care about.

or maybe, actually try to understand why people like it, rather then assume it's for the wrong reasons.

just my thoughts.

[olderthannetfic]

Writing about my favorite characters as transgender has opened my eyes to how many people in fandom are able to get away with actual transphobia without other people judging them for it, and after one particularly bad experience I feel like I can't participate in fandom without constantly having to check people's profiles and social media to see whether or not they might secretly hate trans people. The fandom I currently write for is relatively small compared to others, but somehow I still manage to catch a lot of casual transphobia, especially on my higher-kudos'd works. This didn't really bother me at first since most of the comments were misinformed but rather harmless otherwise, with most asking me to write a fic where the MC medically transitions to become their "real gender" as a sequel. Those comments were written politely, but the sentiment that a person's body designates their gender bothered me a lot. I specifically present the trans characters in my fics as pre-op or non-op without dysphoria in order to feel more comfortable about my own body, and I'm really tired of reiterating the reasons why I personally won’t create a fic where the MC undergoes a full medical transition. I would be thrilled if someone else wrote that, but it’s not a concept I have any interest in executing myself.

Usually the casual transmedicalism in my comments is my only real gripe about the attitudes towards transness in my fandom, but recently I joined a major fandom discord server and found out that they had a dedicated thread for bashing my work. (Well, to be more accurate they had a bunch of threads for bashing people's works, but mine had the most messages at the time.) I should have just left at that point, but I was curious to see if there was any valid criticism because honestly I don’t get a lot of constructive feedback on my newer stuff and I wanted to see if there was anywhere I could improve. Unfortunately, it was almost entirely just really hurtful comments, with many people making assumptions about my body and offline identity, calling me a fake trans person and a chaser for the things I've written. They kept going on about how I'm fetishizing transness, how I probably just wanted an excuse to write het smut with an M/M tag on it, how I'm probably not actually a trans man but an obsessed and misguided teenage girl instead. I've been on T for over two years now, but even if I wasn’t, their belief that all bodies like mine are basically "female" was really upsetting. Maybe I just happened to stumble upon a bad crowd, but at that moment I just really felt alone. I never expected to receive that kind of vitriol in such a small fandom - I have maybe like five or so people who follow my work closely, so it's not like I'm hitting super big numbers compared to others. I understand that my work might be dysphoria-inducing for other people, but I include warnings for language at the beginning of all my fics and I'm extremely thorough about tagging all the sex acts that take place. It's easy to filter out my work via additional tags if you don’t want to see it. But no matter how many measures I take to make others feel more comfortable, they still feel like I'm taking up too much space and mucking up the tags with my fanfiction.

Part of me feels like quitting after this experience, but I'm also a spiteful bastard and I think it would haunt me forever if I stopped now lol. I'm curious to know if you or any of your followers has ever dealt with a similar situation (as in, finding out there's a bunch of people who hate your work for shitty reasons), and if you have advice on how to continue interacting with others in fandom without constantly wondering if they hate me behind closed doors. I left the server already but I'm sure there's other things I can do that I'm forgetting. Thanks for reading!!

--

There will always be people who dislike you for silly reasons, and if your fic is popular, there will be a lot of them. The only way to deal with it is to just accept that this is normal and not think about them.

[bimbolita]

I’m so glad everyone is having the same visceral reaction to episode 4 like I did. I thought I was being too sensitive but fucking no. It is painful. It is horrid. Knowing that this type of abuse actively happens to sex workers and those who are trafficked. It’s jarring because I didn’t expect to see this dark and explicit depiction in a cartoon that jokes about penises every 2 minutes. It’s like when light hearted coco melon shows start talking about death, it was just unexpected because I never took this show serious. I’m going to share more of my thoughts below! Trigger Warning: Mentions of SA ⚠️

I don’t think it’s my place to deny or confirm if the ‘poison’ scenes were fetishized, I personally believe it’s subjective. I know how I feel but I think no matter where you stand, you are right in your own way. Many things can be true at once. What we can all agree on, is that it was harsh. In a way, I hope the audience is able to understand how exploiting and non glamorous sex work is. There is nothing fun about having your body used multiple times a day by people you do not know and having said scenes recorded then plastered all over the media. Of course all forms of engaging in or creating adult content are different, I am specifically talking about sex workers who have no say or control over their bodies and finances. Like Angel. Let us put emphasis on WORK in sex work.

It is demanding. It is laborious It is scaring. Remember that and remember the unheard voices who must do this to simply survive.

There is a lot of criticism about angel’s personality and yes I agree it is annoying but you have to understand, it is a trauma response. Hypersexuality is a common trait among those who are sexually abused. Angel just outwardly expresses it all the time because it is all he knows. This thought process is the only way to tolerate his behavior. I say thought process because it is only an interpretation. It’s very obvious viv just adores writing sexed up characters with zero nuance or depth but let’s just pretend she can actually write male characters that think beyond their cock and balls. Let’s pretend that Angel Dust is a two dimensional character and not (grits teeth) fetish bait.

Now, let’s talk about Charlie. Alright great, she saw her friend being mistreated and was about to stand up to his abuser, ok good good. The victim (Angel) gets upset and wants her to leave because he was beaten. Yes, average response of someone who is an abusive relationship, he is afraid and wants to avoid more conflict between him and Val. The situation at hand couldn’t be more than obvious. How does Charlie respond? She cries. And not because she is frustratedly concerned for the safety of her friend. It is because he yelled and rejected all her poor attempts at helping. Charlie is weak as shit and I think that interaction was weirdly written. I wish she had the mental fortitude to understand how much danger Angel’s life was in at that moment. I cannot enjoy her ‘aggressive kindness’ cutie do no wrong baby girl type of character in a moment like that.

And I feel the same about Husk’s song. Out of all the responses you could’ve made, this is what made it to the final cut? Do better. I don’t care if I lack the mEdIa LiTeRaCy twitter keeps yapping about. It’s bad. You just showed a sexual assault montage and the rebuttal was basically “my uncle broke his neck tap dancing once :/“ lol we’re both losers and that’s ok, suck it up buttercup, I like you regardless. This was the best response to an SA victim? No degree in media literacy would ever help me think that was an acceptable response. I dunno about ya’ll but I major in common sense at the university of using my eyes and fucking ears. Now imagine, if that entire segment, when Husk and Angel are at the bar plus the musical number; imagine if all of that was placed BEFORE we see Angel and Val interact and then poison plays as the final song. It would be 10x more impactful because then the audience sees how deep and stuck Angel actually is. Trauma olympics is never acceptable but neither is trauma participation trophies. It is not right to make Husk’s issues be seen as the same as Angel’s issues. They are not the same and it is ok to acknowledge that Angel has it worst than Husk. It’d be more genuine if Husk were to just hug him in complete silence after dragging him out of the bar and have Angel tearfully embrace him back. The first non sexual and benevolent interaction between them. The first physical act of care with no ulterior motives of lust.

I grind my teeth at the wasted potential.

[theravenmuse]

Critical thinking is so so low in this fandom, apparently. Apparently it’s a *wild* thing to demand a reputable source before crucifying someone.

To be clear: I *did* listen to the women. Every one of those podcasts. What the women say is very different from what Tortoise was saying, especially in their headlines. If I was one of those women, I would be *pissed* about how my story, told in good faith, was skewed by a media outlet who believes that women cannot ever consent to BDSM. Yes, Tortoise’s “expert” legitimately says this. Women apparently don’t have any power over their own sexuality, especially when it comes to kink. That alone has me sooo pissed. I almost stopped listening right there but I wanted to hear what the women had to say.

So what did the women say? Did Neil Gaiman do shitty things? Yes. But the extent of what he did is unclear because of how Tortoise told the story. What the women say he did was not worth crucifying him over.

I could go through what each of the women actually accuses Neil Gaiman of, but that would be a very long post. In summary, it’s a lot of instances of questionable consent mixed in with (likely unintentional) abuse of fame. Making sure you have consent is important, but when a partner tells you yes, repeatedly, and doesn’t tell you different until things are over, you are not wholly to blame. When a woman texts you that they had a great time and they come back again asking for the same, what clues should you use to find out they don’t wholly mean those things? What about when a woman literally chased you onto a plane, begging you not to leave? What if a woman loves the sex until you tell them that you only have sexual interest in them, not romantic?

Could/should NG have done better? I honestly can’t tell you for certain because Tortoise’s reporting did not clearly lay anything out. Based on what the women said alone, I don’t blame him for not realising he didn’t have their full consent. When he said he was “surprised by the allegations” I can see why. What it comes down to is that as a man with a lot of power and influence, he should have been going above and beyond to ensure consent. Instead, he was accepting at best and pushy at worst. I’m not saying he’s innocent, I don’t think he fully is, I’m just saying we don’t have the story. We have a headline and a mishmash of testimony and reporting behind it that does not support those allegations. But you don’t know that, because you didn’t actually listen to the podcast. That’s what Tortoise was counting on.

[xclowniex]

Will you get red note?

No. Tik tok isn't banned in NZ so I don't really see a point. Like rednote has to follow ccp rules around what content is allowed and the guidelines just aren't something I personally could get behind so I don't want the app.

I will say that a lot of the discourse surronding tik tok being banned is just.... ignorant. Both in like what actual censorship is and the ccp laws surronding data collection. This post is long but it covers tik tok censorship, ccp laws surronding data collection and the sinophobia behind the US governments decision to ban tik tok.

Like I truly don't care what social media another person uses, but I do find it hilarious that the same people who complained about tik tok censorship, are now getting censored by the ccp. Like I've seen a few posts from people complaining they can't post lgbt content as it gets removed. And this is because the ccp is not pro lgbt and your content must adhere to ccp values when you post on rednote.

And I find it funny because tik tok censorship isn't really like that heavy? They don't allow discussions of violence and sex if it's not educational, and dont allow hate and that's about it. People often would complain about how "when I talk about x my videos get less views" yet I've seen plenty of other creators who post similar videos in x topic get the same amount of view. Like it's nor censorship, your current audience just doesn't like when you make x content.

And this is particularly also applicable to people saying tik tok censorship discussions of Palestine as they don't. It's beneficial for them to push that content as rage bait is a huge part of their algorithm. By giving you content which makes you angry or upset, you're more likely to comment which means you spend more time on the app and more of that same content gets pushed to you.

Also literally every instance of leftist antisemitism involving Palestine I've reported on tik tok has been found not to break guidelines.

And the ccp can get your data from tik tok. Whilst US data is stored in US data centres, because the parent company byte dance is a Chinese company, the ccp can request that data and get it. Like their request will not be denied.

I also see a lot of people being like "well what is the ccp going to do with my data" and they're not going to do much with just your data, but it's when they have data from large groups of people is where concern comes in.

In information security, it's not uncommon knowledge that the CCP wants to do propaganda through social media. If they have data from a lot of people, it's essentially as if they've surveyed enough people to get the general views of entire populations. That's the bit which is dangerous.

And the reason for the tik tok ban isn't because of pro Palestine activism. It's because of genuine data concerns but mainly sinophobia.

Like the fact that US social media companies also collect a shit tone of data about you (and also sell it) yet don't get banned but tik tok does, is sinophobia.

The concern from the US government isn't that the data is collected in the first place, it's that China is the ones collecting it.

Because if it was privacy concerns, privacy laws would be much more useful, and would also likely lead to tik tok still being banned because of ccp laws where China can access data collected by Chinese companies at any time.

And I do want to stress that this doesn't mean that tik tok is this evil company as it isn't. It's not their choice that the ccp has access to the data they collect. The ccp didn't create tik tok full stop but also certainly didn't create it to collect data. And I also want to stress that my criticisms lie with the ccp and not Chinese citizens or the Chinese diaspora.

And last thing on the topic I have to say, the ccp will get your data one way or another if they truly wanted it.

Like they don't need tik tok to get your data. Xi jingping isn't sitting there going "well fuck, my plans are all ruined because tik tok was banned". The ccp has hacked the NZ parliment multiple times over the years. Like I think tik tok collecting data is the least of our concerns about data being collected.

Especially since it's not just China wanting your data. The data of people in a country and outside of it is beneficial to any government as it does help them plan stuff both in terms of positive and negative things domestically and for defense and military purposes. Is it good for them to collect it? Fuck no. Should they? Also fuck no. And any country which really wants your data, will get it anyway with or without a social media app. Which is why I still choose to use tik tok.

The only way for you to have no foreign government collect data is if you're born in the middle of rural buttfuck nowhere, never get registered so the government doesn't know you exist and live completely off the grid.

Because of this, I do think we should be focusing on getting more privacy laws and also upping cyber security in every country. We need to invest far moeeninto cyber security

[mumuscae]

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!

Rant on Storytaco's bad writing of dark skinned characters. Specifically Sirius.

I wanna start this out with saying, I do not hate Sirius as a character. He's one of my favorites and I feel like he had wasted potential being in the hands of Storytaco. I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying Sirius as a character either! I believe however that we can enjoy media, and look at it from a critical lense. There are good things about his character and I enjoy a lot of how he was written lore wise!!! Otherwise I wouldn't be so violently obsessed with him since the age of 15 lol. But again. There are a combination of things that I can't really see as a coincidence.

If you have anything to add, or disagree with any of my points, please do not be afraid to say so! I wanna have an actual discussion about this. please I do not bite. I stand pretty firm on my points at this very moment, but I'm entirely willing to listen and change.

Uh. Apologies if my points come across poorly or if my writing is incoherent. There's a reason why I did bad in school lol.

My criticisms are below here. Have fun

Anyways.

Fuck Storytaco?

Uh. This is 100% inspired by recent discussion on the fandoms treatment of Sirius. But I'd like to discuss why this treatment is actively perpetuated by the developers of Arcana Twilight. Which is much more disturbing to think about when you consider their games are often marketed towards minors.(There are other issues with storytaco marketing towards minors too. Uh, idk if those are relevant for this post though. Maybe later cuz it's high key disturbing!!! 😃)

Sirius was written very inconsiderately. Like I know he's a villainous/morally gray character. However I feel like there needs to be a lot more tact when your only dark skinned character is written to be not a good person. Especially in comparison to the light skinned characters. I feel like they just applied every negative trait on earth to him, then turned around and went "jk guys! He's not actually bad. Hes like this cuz he's an orphan." 😭 Like some of these traits would be fine in their own if balanced out with other things, but there's so many combined together that I can't help but feel suspicious of their intentions and bias.

He's the most provocative out of all the love interests. He's consistently initiating suggestive situations, is labeled the "sexyman", and is constantly making innuendos. The game has a lot of fan service in general (even though it's rated E), but Sirius is disproportionately portrayed this way and is just constantly going "hehe sex 😁" Which making him the provocative one is both an issue with him being queer coded and dark skinned..double whammy 😟

He's the dangerous, unpredictable and violent one. He SHOT!!! SHOT the mc within the first few floors. And like. There wasn't even a good reason behind why they decided to write that in other than to make us think he's violent/dangerous/untrustworthy. There are times when it's portrayed that he can't even be trusted alone in a room with the mc, even prior to the villain arc. 😐

He's a pretty much a domestic terrorist.... 😐

He was a wanted criminal for half of the story. Idk if I need to explain what's wrong with that either 😐

He's potentially the only one killed off at the ending depending on your interpretation.

In the clan equivalent of Americans (cough. Guns + eagles + the lazy unlikable rebellious group that just gets into trouble) which is just. Silly. 😭😒

Again he's the "untrustworthy one that nobody wants to be around." This is a point constantly driven in by the characters he's surrounded with. they drill that into the viewers head so so so much.

He's the "party animal" of the group??? Which isn't really portrayed beyond him drinking a lot but was definitely advertised as such.

He's 100% queer coded you cannot convince me otherwise. Which. Now we're falling into queer coded poc villain territory. Double whammy again! Disney is that you?

Going off the queer coded point, he's falling into "predatory gay man" territory. Hes shipped with basically every man in the game by storytaco for promotional and bait reasons. But it's always displayed as Sirius making the other party uncomfortable and getting in their personal space. Making unwanted advances. Like... Y'all don't got a do that

Ok this is possibly nitpicky but deadass why'd they make him a basketball player in the highschool au thingy. He's a theater kid. Nothing about him reads as liking sports. Please do not wear dangly earrings while playing sports??? It bothers me so much 💀

Okay so the sassy, violent, deranged, perverted terrorist... is the only romance-able dark skinned man in the game. ??? NONONO just think about that for a good moment

HE HAS OTHER THINGS IN HIS CHARACTER. THERE ARE GOOD PARTS ABOUT HIS CHARACTER!!! I LOVE SIRIUS SO MUCH. HES VERY COMPLEX AND INTERESTING.. but this is such a horrible combination of very specific negative tropes that it's hard to ignore. Especially when thinking about how this game is advertised to minors who, more often than not, are easily subjected to subconscious bias in media and are easily influenced due to our lack of ability to critically analyze media we're haphazardly consuming. (Sorry fellow minors. As a senior minor aka 17 yo it's the hard truth y'all gotta accept. we've all been there and we've been influenced by media whether we're aware of it or not. I'm not mad at y'all or belittling. Keep having ur funsies with ur silly star men I'm not stopping you lol? This is legitimate concern and criticism towards a company that is promoting weird stereotypes to us)

And I don't think Sirius is just a one off weirdly written dark skinned character from Storytaco. Thuban (WHO IS GREEEEEY. Big issue on its own 😰😭) is depicted as lazy and rude.???? Like he has a single redeeming moment but again. Just reads as "domineering rowdy black man." Especially when you look at the whole great hero trio .. he's supposed to fall within the fantasy "Fighter" archetype with his big ass mace. Compared to Polaris who is like a Cleric and the Wizard/Ranger Schedar.

Also shout out to storytacos other grey men.....???????? I was only able to find four dark skinned men (not just tanned a bit) including Sirius when I went thru Storytacos game catalogue. Two of them are grey. 😐

Anyways Sirius was a huge motivating factor in why I wanted to make Extraterrestrial... Fucked up potential of a character. There are 100% biases showing through how he was written. These were all conscious decisions made on the writers part and I don't think it can be kept behind "he's a morally gray character who's going thru it" because there were so many good ways to show that and his grief without going to every. single. extreme.

--

[astrosirensblog]

Sirenas Astrology observations

9

• moon hard aspects to mercury could be an indicator for having a hard time expressing your emotions verbally. Not having words of affirmation as a love language or having a hard time giving and receiving compliments or loving words. The type of person who says “I don’t have to say I love you everyday , I rather show it”

• the placement you have Aphrodite in can tell you how you can enhance your feminine energy and feel more beautiful inside and out. For example having Aphrodite in taurus could mean that cooking and taking more time to rest will make you feel better and nourished. Aphrodite in gemini needs to socialize and read or write to flourish in their feminine energy better

• people with permanent 10th house placements are known even when they’re not socializing much. They’re the type of person who don’t know many people but many people know them. It’s hard to ignore their presence, even when they don’t do anything

• People with mars in the 10th house tend to attract many people. Even people who hate them get obsessed with them and try to humbled them as much as possible. People with this placement don’t realize how intimidating their presence is and people see them as constant competition. Selena Gomez has this placement and we all know how other celebrities and even fan basis treat her even though she doesn’t do anything actively to provoke them. Honestly taking care of her mental health and not letting anybody humble her was the best decision she could have made for herself

• psyche in synastry can tell you about what you really need in a relationship in order to feel happy and fulfilled and become a better person. With your psyche placement you can learn on which parts you have to work on yourself too. With this placement it’s less about the physical intimacy and more about the intellectual and emotional intimacy of two souls coming together

• people with many 12th house placements tend to take criticism really personal and don’t like hearing it at all since they already have a hard time accepting themselves. They also struggle with feeling seen and appreciated even when people try to make them feel good, it’s never enough because they often lack self validation

• People with virgo placements take working out and looking fit really serious. I never meet a person with virgo placements who didn’t care about their physical appearance

• Having Mars in 4th house conjunct to the north node is a huge indicator of generational trauma that has been passing on in the family a lot. And this could bother the natal person a lot and it can cause friction in the family dynamic when they try to heal from that trauma and break the cycle

• Lillith shows up as the part of yourself that society has tried to repress or make you feel ashamed of. If it’s for example in the 3th house, you could have been told a lot to not share your views or opinions. Or people made fun of your voice growing up. You can take back your power by becoming more confident and expressing these parts of yourself freely

• Women who have Lillith conjunct sun and or asc often use their appearance and sexuality as a way to get what they want. For example Megan Thee Stellion has Lillith in Taurus conjunct her asc and she’s known for her beautiful and hot appearance and her lyrics where she also talks a lot about sex. Marylin Monroe also has Lillith in the first house, I didn’t need to explain how influential her appearance and sensuality is in the media to this day

• people with Lillith conjunct their first house tend to have sanpaku eyes too, here’s a reference:

• Neptune in the chart shows you the part of life where you have to be more firm with your boundaries and don’t overshare because Neptune indistincts your intuition. For example if you have Neptune in the 11th house don’t force connections or friendships, don’t overshare to your friends and be really firm with your boundaries because you tend to let people cross over the line too much. Also don’t expect all of your friends to have the same intentions as you do, some people just want to use you or dim your light so be careful and stay safe

• The planet your sun is conjunct to can be a part of your life where you feel more confident and you don’t like it when people tell you what to do. For example if your sun is conjunct your venus you tend to make the first move when you like someone and you don’t like it when someone tells you that this person is out of your league or you can’t get them to like you. Ego and love go hand in hand with this aspect

[lovra974]

Dream Match 1

Hi! This story is inspired by the book Perfect Match, the Dragon King by I. T Lucas. I loved the concept of shared dreams. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to be tagged for the next part just ask!

Warning for the chapter : Bakugou x reader, fight, violence, questions about sex, manipulation (not from bakugou), female Y/N, tell me if I forgot one!

Summary : Being a hero is a very challenging profession. Bakugou knew it but being confronted by journalists and analysts who want him gone is far worse than fighting any villain. He struggles against them, feeling trapped each time he watches his rank drop.

So when his parents decided to get him out of this cycle, they bought him a Dream Match ticket and told him it was a holiday service agency. But the truth is, this agency is a sophisticated matchmaking service that pairs people to have shared dreams.

A lot of things can happen in these dreams. And sometimes, your subconscious clashes fantasy and reality. It blurs until it leaves answers beyond dreams.

A blast made the villain step back. He jumped on a building, his kangaroo’s legs propelled him. He struck Dynamight in the chest and sent the hero flying. Bakugou crashed against a wall. He felt the shock in every bone in his body.

“Dynamight !” Screamed his sidekick. ”You okay ?”

The blond grimaced. His ears were ringing. Blood covered his face and mixed with his sweat. His suit was ripped on his back. He got out of the wall, his members aching. He ignored the pain. He stretched his fingers and breathed out. 

“Get ready, Cry-Baby.” spoke the hero while swallowing the suffering.

The sidekick jolted and ran away. His quirk made him control his tears. The guy could pour them out like a river. It was perfect to block Dynamight’s blasts. 

Bakugou walked up to the villain. The bad guy jumped a little and smirked. 

“Can’t get enough Dynamight?”

“Come here !”

They both moved forward. The villain was fast. His powerful jumps allowed him to dodge the hero’s attacks. Bakugou kept him away but didn’t touch him either. He couldn’t get close enough to end this fight and began to feel frustrated.

The solution appeared with another hero. The earth shook and rock walls pierced the ground. They rose and surrounded the villain. 

A voice shouted, “Go Dynamight!”

Bakugou eyed the hero Gem Girl on the top of a building. He nodded. Nitroglycerin ran between his fingers. He raised his arms. His sidekick was ready too and protected the buildings. The explosive hero gave his all in his next shot and aimed at the villain. 

“DIE!!!”

…

Bakugou just got back from his battle. The big TV in his office was turned on and played his fight. 

“It was time Dynamight showed up! Twenty-five minutes to get help! I would be ashamed… It was their sector. I feel like there is some slaking. We can see it with this fight. If Gem Girl didn’t step in, Dynamight would still be there!”

The blond ground his teeth and turned off the TV. He wished the talking would stop there but it never did. His manager questioned him about the fight to know what she would say to the media. He would rather be fighting more crazy kangaroos than listen to one more hero analyst. 

He did his reports, followed diligently his schedule, went on patrols and answered calls from his managers. Photoshoots, calls, patrols, reports, meetings and more reports. 

His days began early and ended late. The time between two days of work was just enough to go back home. But most of the time, he slept at his agency. He installed a couch in his office. The thing destroyed his back. But at least, he won a few minutes each day by being already here for any crisis.

But critics never stopped. They questioned his behaviour, his social image, his ranking… He didn’t arrive on time, his quirk was dangerous, his agency communication was shit. Nothing was ever good enough. The journalist always said it was an aberration that he was in the top 10. 

For years, he gave his all. Despite the difficult missions, the failures, the impossible rescues… It was too much. 

His fans were loyal, they trusted him and always defended him. He was thankful, even if he didn’t say it. But it annoyed him at the same time that they felt obliged to defend him. He didn’t need them. He was a hero, he didn’t need anybody.

He saw Kirishima on patrols or sometimes when he was too restless and went to the gym. It was rare. For the other, it felt like forever since he saw them. The last time must have been for Mina’s birthday. Or when Sero presented them to his new girlfriend? Anyway, it was months ago. 

Bakugou was writing a report when his phone buzzed. When he saw who was calling, he hesitated. It was his mother. He could already hear her screams. It had been a long time too since he saw them. He didn’t give much news. And he knew, that if he didn’t respond to her call, she would do much worse than scream through it. Like coming to the agency. 

A horror shiver forced him to click on the green phone. 

“Finally! The brat just remembered he got parents !”

He exhaled. His mother began a monologue he didn’t listen to. Sometimes he heard his father’s voice trying to calm down his spouse. 

“Katsuki !”

“What ?”

“Did you make your appointment?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You ungrateful brat, you’re talking to your mother! Did you use your birthday present ?”

He frowned. His birthday present? Why was she talking about it? He didn’t even remember what it was. 

“I swear Katsuki” she menaced, “if you didn’t use your birthday present…”

“What’s the fucking matter?” He shouted.

“You had one year to use it, you dumb hero! I can’t believe it! Can you believe it, Masaru ?”

Bakugo heard his father talking “Maybe he was busy? He reached the top 6 this year…”

“I don’t care! This ticket cost millions of yen!”

“Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?” He screamed. 

His mother breathed out. “You had one year to use your Dream Match ticket. And you, you little ungrateful hero, you didn’t use it! You got one last week to make an appointment before your birthday.”

Bakugou checked his calendar on his desk. Indeed, his birthday was next week. He completely forgot about it. Not that he cared, he didn’t plan to do anything. 

Now that he thought about it, he vaguely remembered a peach-coloured envelope his mother gave him last year. Her smile was too big when she gave him this damn envelope. He felt like she was up to something.  

“Dream Match?” He repeated.

He shouldn’t have. His mother understood he didn’t open his present. She threw new insults at him, his father had to take the phone out of her hands. 

“Katsuki still has time. He just had to make an appointment this week. I’m sure he will.”

Mitsuki made him swear he would make an appointment this week before completely leaving the phone to her husband. 

“We know you are busy, Katsuki. But it would please us if you went to the appointment.”

“What is this Dream Match shit? What about the appointment ?”

His father took his time to respond. 

“Look at their website. You will have all the answers you're looking for. But let’s say it’s an agency that proposed holiday experiences without leaving the agency.”

“I don’t have time for this…”

“You only need three hours.” Calmed his father. “You don’t really go on a vacation. Promise.”

Bakugou still felt sceptical but he made a promise. His father ended the call a few minutes later. He looked at the clock and sighed. He had another patrol in ten minutes.

~~~~~

“Congratulations Gem Girl !” 

“Good job! “ 

“ You nailed it!”

The hero smiled. She walked through her agency like a conqueror. Her brown boots shined on the floor. Praises kept coming her way. 

Nobody seemed to notice the shadow following the hero. Nobody ever saw her. 

Gem Girl closed her office door after one last smile to her team. Then she sighed and passed a hand in her blond hair. She turned toward her sidekick and said “ Well done Y/N. Do the report. We had to send it quickly to the Commission. I feel this intervention will make us rank up !”

Y/N sat down at the desk in her dark suit. Her boss went to take a shower while she kept working. Her report stack kept getting taller. Not surprising when she had to do her sidekick's job and her boss’. 

Gem Girl formed her agency a few years ago. She reached the top 20 recently. The media said it was because of her dedication and her interesting way of using her earth quirk. 

It was also because Gem Girl did a lot of interviews and publicity. It could be surprising for an active hero, however it was very appreciated by her fans. 

The truth behind her success was that Gem Girl found a sidekick with almost the same quirk as her. Her sidekick did the mission while Gem Girl pretended to fight under the projectors.

Like today, Y/N had a long-range to perform her quirk. So she could use it from afar while Gem Girl harvested the laurels. 

The hero trapped the young and inexperienced student with a contract. Nothing was legal inside. Gem Girl would have everything, her quirk, her talent, her recognition. It left Y/N with pitiful pay, pressure and a lot of culpability. 

“If you open your mouth about it, I will destroy every chance you have to ever be a hero. No agency will ever hire you. They wouldn’t even want your sorry ass in a police academy !”

The agency was not helpful, far from it. The ones aware of it made a point to make her remember her place. 

“Talk and we will all be jobless. Is that what you want? Are you that selfish? Make peace with it and do your job, girl.”

The contract said she had to work at least five years in this agency. It was good for a first sidekick job. Even more so when you didn’t attend a big school like UA and Shiketsu. But for Y/N the last three years were pure torture. 

Her pay was barely enough, she didn’t sleep well and her phantom status made her sick. She did Gem Girl’s work. On patrols with her, she had to walk behind dressed like a civilian. Same for missions. 

Gem Girl was smart. She made sure to never expose her trusty sidekick. She was never mentioned on TV, damn Y/N couldn’t write her name on the reports with her hero name! Most people in the agency didn’t know of her existence and she has been there for three years.

The agency had the duty to promote their heroes and sidekicks, to make them gain visibility. But Gem Girl was the boss.

It was her fault, thought Y/N. She should have been more careful when signing. She should have been wary of Mashika Risa aka Gem Girl when she showed interest in her quirk. She should have been less naive. But she jumped on the opportunity, too happy to quit her last job to pursue her dream.

Now she paid for it. She would be free in two years… if Gem Girl ever let her leave.

~~~~~

“Wait, wait… You've possessed a Dream Match ticket since last year, and you haven’t used it yet ?”

Bakugou rolled his eyes. It was one of the rare patrols he was paired with Kirishima. They walked in a quiet street. Some civilians stopped to ask for a picture or an autograph but most didn’t dare. Despite being in the top 10, Bakugou was still too intimidating. His PR team blamed him every week for it. 

He preferred it that way, he avoided the insults and scandals at the same time. Kirishima walked by his side, eyes blown wide. 

“If you want to get rid of it, I know someone who would be happy to help you.”

“Who?”

“Me!” Screamed his best friend, making heads turn their way. 

“Tsk… What’s this Dream Match anyway? My father told me it was a travel agency or something…”

Kirishima pointed to an enormous billboard. The picture wasn’t really explicit. There was a purple cloud armchair in the middle. The background was blurry. And he could read a weird catchphrase at the bottom. Meet your dream partner…

“It’s so much more,” gushed the red hair. “The agency sells shared dreams. You can dream of anything! And bonus, they pair you with the most compatible person with a ticket. They never missed.”

Bakugou stopped himself. He just understood why his mother gave him this stupid ticket. He felt the need in his guts to scream.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!?”

More civilians turned their heads and quickly walked away. 

“A matchmaking agency? The old hag lost her damn head! Do I look like I have time for this?”

Red Riot gave him a side glance.

“Well… look like you don’t have time to sleep either. When was the last time you had a day off, man?”

“What do you mean, Shitty Hair?”

“I mean… man, you could have the best night of your life! Peaceful holidays, and phenomenal memories in just three little hours. We both know you need it!”

The blond grumbled something. He knew what Kirishima was about to say. 

“You should try it. You don’t have to do more with your match after. You got a good night of sleep, an epic adventure and that’s all !”

Bakugou thought about it. It wasn’t a bad idea. He could use a good night if they were as good as they said. 

“How do you know about it? Did it?”

“Man! Sero met his girl with it!”

Bakugou blinked. He met Sero’s girlfriend once but everybody thought the same thing. They were perfect for each other. They were crazy in love and very complimentary. Not too overbearing in some way. 

The blond hero would never say it out loud, but he had been disturbed by their complicity. It was like they’d always known each other. Maybe, he felt a little jealous of their bond. But he extinguished it quickly, his dream was to be Number One. Not to find a partner to satisfy his mother’s desires. 

Kirishima seemed to feel his hesitation. “You don’t need to speak to your partner after the dream. It can be a one-dream-only thing, you know? Don’t think too much about it, Bakubro.”

“Mmh…” he murmured to acknowledge his friend and nodded.

~~~~~

After her long day, Y/N was completely exhausted. She did patrol after patrol, hers then the ones with Gem Girl. Then she wrote both of their reports. She dragged her feet to her door, all her body was popping from the over-use of her quirk.  

Sometimes, she asked herself if it wasn’t better to forget her dream of being a hero. But each time she asked, the answer was always no. Not when she saved people, even if Gem Girl was thanked for it. Not when she saw every morning the drawings of the children saved in the agency hall. 

Putting them here may be a strategy. And it was a good damn one! 

She opened her door, her eyes half-opened.

“Hello there! Have you seen the time?”

Y/N blinked. The robotic click from Mei Hatsume’s babies followed her everywhere. Her friend with pink hair was spread out on her bed couch. She smiled brightly at her. 

“Hatsume…”

“Tsk tsk tsk.” Hatsume cut her. “Do you believe it! I didn’t have any news for months! What kind of friend does this? Right, my babies ?” 

The robots beeped for approbation. Mei’s smile became even larger. Y/N sighed but her mouth’s corner quirked up.

“I had to ask Booboo to open your door for me.” said the support engineer. “Seriously I wouldn’t leave a cupboard with that kind of protection Y/N. It was crap !”

Booboo, a little robot with propellers rang. Y/N just stood there, not knowing what to do. She was too tired to react correctly to the scolding. Mei took out a cheap bottle of alcohol from nowhere. 

“I have a bottle !”

The two women lay on the bed couch, a glass in hand. Their cheeks became pinker, the drink left a pleasant warmth in their body. Y/N felt her members relax and sink into the mattress. She hummed a song at her long-time friend, happy.

“And then,” continued the engineer, “The director just looked at me with big eyes. Like I was the crazy one and just couldn’t believe what I did! It was so basic by the way. Like come on, of course I could do it. Voop, my baby is so talented !”

Y/N swallowed her drink and said, “ I bet the man left without saying anything.”

“Of course not! What could he do ?”

Y/N straightened, her eyes bright. “Apologise first, then admit he was wrong with you and end it by giving you a raise.”

Mei bursted out laughing. 

“If he was someone good, yes that’s what he would do. But we are so far from it. And you, how’s Gem Girl? Did her Highness break her nails this week?”

Mei knew about her friend’s problem. They fought together to find a solution but they found a dead end. The trap kept tightening around Y/N. The more she worked for Gem Girl, the more she was popular, and then influential. 

The hero didn’t lie. She could destroy Y/N’s career. The sidekick saw how she talked with workers from the Commission. The people who were supposed to control the heroes’ actions. They would never believe Y/N over Gem Girl, not when the agency was with the hero.

“She wouldn’t risk anything. She is ranked 16, her head is too big to take any risk anymore.”

Mei didn’t laugh. She crossed her arms and her babies flew closer to her. Y/N had stopped singing.

“You should be ranked 16.” spoke her friend gently. 

Y/N shrugged. She tried to not think about it. 

“You know if you could come to my big presentation by the way ?” “No.”

The sidekick couldn’t lie, she didn’t have the energy to. She would never have the time. She turned toward her friend, her heart sore. ”I’m sorry Mei.”

“They still won’t give you a day off ?”

Mei wasn’t someone who got angry easily. But the situation was truly unfair. Y/N felt numb. Her days off were as rare as acknowledgement. For the three years she worked there, she never had either. They were lucky she never got hurt. What would they do without her?

“All the greatest heroes have days off !” grumbled Mei. ”Look at Deku, Endeavor, Hawks…”

“Right, but there’s a little difference. I’m a sidekick, not a hero.”

“You’re more like a tool rather than a sidekick…”

Y/N missed the time she went out with Mei, drinking and dancing. It felt like forever ago. 

“I have something for you.” murmured the engineer.

Her friend gave her a peach-coloured envelope. Mei had a big grin, almost a crazy one. Y/N blinked when she recognized the logo. She wouldn’t have known what she had in her hands if the city wasn’t covered with their publicities. Mashika Risa couldn’t stop talking about it. 

A Dream Match ticket.

“Mei…”

“I won it. And I’m offering it to you.”

“Mei I can’t…”

“Oh yes, you can! I’m not taking it back so you better use it !”

“I don’t have time for it, Mei.”

“We always have time to dream.”

The sidekick arched a brow. Using the company’s catchphrase shouldn’t count as an argument. Mei opened her phone to show her Dream Match’s website. She forced her to answer the one hundred and fifty questions to create her account. Then the girls looked at the large choice of dream propositions. 

“How am I supposed to choose one? There is so much choice!”

CEO, fighter pilot, futuristic doctor, cursed royals, her eyes couldn’t stop on a picture.

“This is excellent,” exclaimed Mei. “They know marketing, I hope their tech is just as good. But according to the comments, it’s revolutionary.”

Y/N saw a picture with a castle and a dragon in the background. She clicked on it. 

“Look! It’s like in the shojo we read in junior high!”

“The what?”

“You know, the Roses’ Ashes! It was about two kingdoms at war for a sacred mountain. The hero was from the West but he was banned !”

Mei watched her friend with her crazy yellow eyes. Maybe it was the alcohol, but her pupils looked blurry. Her babies flew high, sometimes bumping against the ceiling while scanning every inch of Y/N’s apartment. The earth’s quirked girl rolled her eyes. 

“The first kiss was during a meteor shower.”

“Yes! I remember! It was a good one I’ll admit.”

“You drooled on the hero’s abs.” Mocked the sidekick.

“And? I can appreciate fine art when I see it!” She retorted, fakely hurt. 

Y/N chose this dream. It had been a very long time since she read it. But it has been memorable. Yeah, if she wanted a dream with her supposedly perfect match, it would be a story like this one. 

Mei stood up and stretched. “Well, I’m going.”

“You don’t want to stay the night?” Proposed the host, not thrilled to have her friend walking at night.

“No, you need the sleep and I have Dynamight’s new gauntlets to finish before his visit… in three hours.”

Y/N smiled. Mei gave her a wink. Her babies flew by her sides, protectively. The door closed and the sidekick fell asleep.

~~~~~

Bakugou was in his office, writing a new report while drinking coffee. He didn’t like it, he avoided it if he could. But today, he felt absolutely exhausted. So maybe a little couldn’t be so bad. 

He made his fingers pop when he finished. His red eyes stared at his computer. His talk with Kirishima never really left his mind. The implication and the promise of rest lived in his thoughts. 

Maybe he could just… Look at the website. For a ticket this expensive, they should be good. The blond was surprised when he discovered the website. He expected something shady that would pressure him to pay. It was the opposite. The homepage presented the company, and then their technology. All of this is to propose shared dreams with your dream match. 

They showed some of their best sellers scenarios that didn’t look so bad. Crime solving, space travels, festive and romantic settings. 

They had something for everyone. The coffee he was drinking seemed to be efficient because he felt very awake now. Without questioning his actions he clicked on the little rectangle to create his account. Once the ticket’s code was registered, he went face to face with a very long quiz. 

It was a one hundred-and-fifty-question long quiz. Some were to type, some were boxes to check or even to rate on a scale. Bakugou spent more time than expected on this. 

How would your friends describe you in five words?

Which characteristics do you wish your partner possessed?

What are your life goals?

And some much more intimate things that made him blush. If there wasn’t the little talking blop on the corner saying none of this information would be shared, he would never have answered. Knowing one of his closest friends did the quiz, did help. Cellophane had a few scandals during his career. But nothing about his kinks. 

When he finally finished the quiz, he could choose his dream. He ended up scrolling the website through the tens of propositions without knowing what he wanted. What did he like? His whole life was about his dream to become the Number One Hero. 

He asked himself if there was someone under Dynamight’s mask. He wore it more than his own face after all. This thought froze him with horror for a few seconds. He pushed it aside. Of course, he was someone!

To prove it, he clicked on the first picture that caught his eye. It was one of a dragon and a castle leading to fantasy dreams. Perfect, he thought. A knight story, it was exactly what he needed. There he would have a change of scene. 

He thought about one of his favourite shoujo. He didn’t read it recently but the story was memorable. He particularly liked the redemption arc of the hero. The romance, while slow, really made the characters shine and showed how compatible they were. 

He took a deep breath, feeling butterflies swirling in his stomach. It has been such a long time since he felt them. Fear followed. It was always behind when he stepped into the romantic field. The rejection, the expectations, the disappointment, the failure and the feeling of never being enough for the other…

He answered a new quiz, way shorter than the first. It was about little details in the dream that needed to be cleared. The blop pops up in the middle of the screen, smiling. It said his request would be processed quickly and they would contact him when they would find his partner. 

Bakugou closed the computer, tensed. He thought he would feel relieved after doing it but no. Waiting was not liberating. He kept thinking about his answers, cringing at what he just did.

How many times do you think it is healthy to have sex in a relationship? Type your answer.

[What the hell is this question? I don’t know? As many times as agreed ?]

Maybe he should slow down on the coffee…

[waitmyturtles]

THE MORNING AFTER: ONLY FRIENDS, EPISODE 12 -- WHEN ONLY FRIENDS GOT 2GETHER-ED

TRIGGER WARNING: EVERYONE'S UP FOR CRITICISM HERE, JOJO AND TEAM, FORCEBOOK, FIRSTKHAO, ALL OF THEM. Read at your peril.

Well. Big deep breaths. I spent a lot of time on a show that had been marketed as not-a-BL, that ended as a BL. As a mom with not that much time to spend on watching and writing on dramas that were marketed incorrectly, I am feeling some kinda way (fucking pissed off).

So many people had amazing takes yesterday, on both sides of the aisle, regarding how the show ended (pro-ending here, anti-ending here, here, here, here, here, and here, and my dear friends @neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan did heavy lifting on reblogs yesterday, so stroll on over to their blogs for more).

I want to set up a constellation of points to touch upon before I get into the meat of this post.

1) I referred quite a bit to my review of Theory of Love throughout my watch of Only Friends. In that review, I meditate on how the majority of the general global public judges sex, and casual sex, and people who have sex and/or casual sex. Generally speaking -- even in countries that makes as progressive art on sex and sexuality as Thailand and the United States -- that's a rule of thumb that I can rely on. Sex is judged by the majority of the global public.

2) I hate to say it. I cannot believe this happened. But I was right about monogamy being an ultimate theme in Only Friends. Not just a theme, fam. A theme by which people judged others for having open, casual, and consensual sex. Queer sex. Queer sex that is so very often had outside of the constraints of a monogamous relationship.

There was a reason why that holiday party was populated by couples, except for Boston, and Boston had to grovel to them in apology for their friendship. In Only Friends: monogamy wins, and casual queer sex loses.

3) Unfortunately, in part though an analysis of Cheum inside of last week that I accidentally started (ha), I see that points 1 and 2 come together to have created a fabric and framework of judgement that Only Friends ended on.

The last paragraph in this excellent post by @benkaaoi notes that the assumption by a large portion of the OF fandom that the creative choices that were made to end this series were designed to save the sanctity -- economic and otherwise -- of the shipped pairs of ForceBook and FirstKhao. This rings true to me.

Most of the BL shows that I've watched this year are older shows, through my Old GMMTV Challenge, in which I've been studying the changes over time that GMMTV and other Thai networks, have made towards their editorial choices, attitudes, and risks in producing BLs. I included Only Friends on this syllabus to note the show's impact as a kind of zeitgeist measure of how much heat and literary controversy GMMTV could take in airing increasingly progressive queer media -- even though Only Friends wasn't originally intended to be a BL.

To the theory that Only Friends needed to save the ships... and to another theory that the ships needed to be saved in the most moralistically judgmental way that I could have ever imagined (I was actually blown away by how heavy-handed this messaging was) -- I look to the ending of 2gether.

The majority general reaction to the ending of 2gether from within the existing BL fandom in 2020, was one of guffawed incredulousness. BrightWin/SarawatTine did not kiss in the first season of 2gether. It took Aof Noppharnach to come in to make Still 2gether to indicate that these two young men may have been at least vaguely sexual with each other throughout the course of their fictional relationship.

Yet, 2gether was a massive success. Many theorize it was because 2gether was the first big BL to air during the start of the COVID pandemic, and new BL fans had time to be at home and watch shows. But I posit in my 2gether/Still 2gether review that 2gether was also successful PRECISELY BECAUSE IT LACKED SEX (and by sex here, I mean plain old kissin').

As I stated earlier: sex is judged by the majority of the global public. With BrightWin NOT kissing, new fans who may have been implicitly and/or explicitly turned off by physical depictions of queer love could glom comfortably onto 2gether, and watch a BL without the "threat" of physical depictions of two men expressing their love to each other.

Subsequently, BrightWin gained massive social media followings, 2gether made GMMTV buckets of money, and GMMTV went -- well, hot diggity.

Many of us had impressions of Only Friends as...something else than it ended up being. Early on, Jojo Tichakorn, for instance, cited an early non-GMMTV, non-BL show, Gay OK Bangkok, that he and Aof Noppharnach worked on in 2016 and 2017, as being referential to Only Friends. Gay OK Bangkok centered on a group of queer friends, mostly cisgender men with Jennie Panhan in the mix, as they lived their lives and dated away in Bangkok.

I'll tell ya, GOKB didn't end the way Only Friends did, and I'll get into that more in a bit. I believe @benkaaoi, @lurkingshan, and others are absolutely right that the ultimate moralization on casual sex that this show depicted -- and how Only Friends punished Boston for his casual sex -- was an economic decision designed to reflect on the sanctity of monogamy that shipped couples like ForceBook and FirstKhao can sell back to their fans, fans that may have actually flocked to GMMTV shows from 2gether, and that demand a fantasy of devoted monogamy from both fictional characters and professional actors who are actually only just doing fan service to earn their livings. GMMTV has known for a long time how to make money, and money the network doth has made from Only Friends, and from shipping their ships around the world to service the growing fandom.

Casual sex in fiction, casual sex that breaks up the ships.... fucks that economic shit all up.

GMMTV has taught us our lesson, a lesson that we had already learned from the no-kissing rule of 2gether. Loose lips shall not sink ships at this network. And I think we lost a chance for a big and progressively artistic zeitgeist that GMMTV could have taken risks on, if it had the courage to risk depicting something truly novel.

I want to note quickly another framework that I dug into while I was watching this show. I sent a flare to @lurkingshan before I started watching the episode that I was going to, in part, watch this last episode from my personal Asian lens. I wanted to ask myself, as I was watching this disaster -- is there anything happening here that strikes my heart with fear and doom as an Asian?

Indeed, yes. I didn't expect it, but there was a dialogue on individualism vs. collectivism.

Boston. My dear, sweet Boston. Boston, named after a city so very distant from Bangkok.

Boston was punished by his group of friends because he didn't adhere to the rules of the group. His individualistic actions and preferences -- his preferences to "roll alone," as Nick stated, would not work in the frameworks of either monogamy with Nick and/or the group dynamics of the hostel crew.

The link I linked above is an amazing answer to an inquiry I posed to dear @absolutebl last year about how Asian social collectivist paradigms are depicted in BLs. In that question-and-answer dialogue, I asked ABL Sensei about the motif of queer revelations in BLs, and how seemingly straight characters respond in kind to being approached with a proposition to a queer dalliance and/or relationship. Generally speaking, the Asian collectivist mindset is to at least attempt to respond in kind to those kinds of propositions, as one's behavioral habits are designed to be responsive to others instinctually, as opposed to only servicing oneself. To only service oneself is not only seen as selfish, but also as disturbing to the general flow of public existence among one's societies. To respond in kind means that you will not cause potentially disturbing angst to another individual or group. (Collectivism explains why Asian countries performed much better with mask mandates during the pandemic than we in the States did.)

So -- Boston filming Ray, Boston sleeping with Top, created waves in the friend group. He was so severely punished for it.

And the show iterates, and repeats, Nick's preference that Boston move forward alone in Boston's life, because of Boston's tendencies to make decisions that suit himself. As an Asian-American, I mutter to myself: god forbid.

Nick will not commit to Boston -- and yet, will also condemn Boston for making his own decisions outside of the specter of a monogamy that does not exist between Nick and Boston, and that Boston will still get judged for, as referenced in the Sand/Nick conversation depicted above.

In other words: if Boston makes a decision for himself? That's punishable. Because it might hurt someone else's feelings -- a someone else that actually hasn't committed to Boston, and/or allowed Boston to commit himself to.

This group caught Boston in a moralistic and collectivist catch-22, the likes of which I just would have never expected from Jojo and team, even if the creative team faced the economic pressures of the GMMTV bigwigs. I'm sorry to state that I am beyond disappointed in this condemnation of individualism, sending Boston alone, judged, and friendless, off to New York City to live in, what, the immoral boundaries of Chelsea? Homey, get a fucking SWEET-ASS PAD, and FUCK THESE LOSERS, leave 'em BEHIND in your cloud of airplane gas emissions. See you at the La Quinta rooftop bar on 32nd Street, friendo.

Only Friends could have ended so much better. And I understand that in the Only Friends novel, published AFTER the script was finished, that it did end somewhat better for Boston (cc @jinitak, reporting from Thailand, thank you for this heads-up about the novel!).

So. Any-fucking-way. Do y'all know how Gay OK Bangkok ended?

Of many lovely endings for the various GOKB characters, an older main character, Aof, was dating a much younger character, Big. (CC to @neuroticbookworm for our quick convo on this last night.)

Aof was sex-averse. Big wanted lots of sex. Big slept with a lot of people. He loved Aof. Aof couldn't handle Big having sex with other people, and they broke up. It was a lovingly handled break-up, written just gorgeously by Aof Noppharnach.

After their break-up, I thought Big would disappear from the show. Instead. Instead! Nong Big, the little brother to the core group of queer friends that centered GOKB, was welcomed back with open arms. Arm, Pom, Sathang (played by an effervescent Jennie Panhan), and others toasted to Big, telling him he would always be family, no matter if him and his ex, Aof, had broken up. In the queer circles of friends that I'm a part of, exes are not as commonly excommunicated as they are in straight circles.

Only Friends could have been this. Something, a little something, like this.

Instead, Only Friends punished a friend for acting outside of the rules of their group.

Boston was punished because.... because Only Friends had to end up being a BL. For the sake of the moolah, for the sake of collectivism, for the sake of the shippers who'll buy tickets around the world to see ForceBook and FirstKhao perform fan service on stage.

I just didn't think that the show would be so brutal, on so many levels, in the end, to people who want to have casual sex. I don't think any of us expected this. But, it's over, it's done, and the piece has been said -- GMMTV said, no casual sex today, and here's how we actually feel about it.

I'll see you over on Gagaoolala for Playboyy. Deuces, OF.

(It was an absolute pleasure writing meta with the Ephemerality Squad -- onto the next one! @lurkingshan @neuroticbookworm @ranchthoughts @twig-tea @slayerkitty @thatgirl4815 @distant-screaming @clara-maybe-ontheroad)

[the-conversation-pod]

Fall and Winter 2024 Mailbag Grab Bag

AND WE'RE BACK!

Because we got bogged down in life stuff for the back half of the year, we built up more than a few questions in our inbox. Come listen to us talk about genre fatigue, our thoughts on the BL Bubble, and an hour-long discussion about sex scenes.

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Introduction 00:02:10 - Inbox: Surprises of the Season 00:07:07 - Inbox: Does Categorization Matter? 00:11:42 - Inbox: BL Fatigue? 00:15:51 - Inbox: The BL Bubble 00:30:26 - Inbox: Sex On Screen 00:41:07 - Inbox: Fave Sex Scenes 00:51:24 - Inbox: Worst Sex Scenes 01:04:24 - Bonus Round: Best Sex in a Bad Show 01:06:54 - Inbox: Critical Philosophy 01:18:31 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @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 (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). 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!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 Introduction

Ben 

And we're back. It has been so long since we've been in the booth together. We are getting to our asks like a regular Tumblr blog—six months late. 

NiNi 

Sounds about right? Yep. 

Ben 

We appreciate all of you for being patient with us. It has been a very difficult half year for me and NiNi, but we did get your questions and we did answer them. So sit back and relax and I think we've got, like, an hour of answers for you guys. 

NiNi 

Almost two hours bestie. 

Ben 

Oh my God! It is what it is. Shan will be joining us for these, so you will get to enjoy her lovely voice and insights. We will see you in the questions. 

00:02:33 - Inbox: Surprises of the Season

NiNi

Let's start with the inbox. Shan, you wanna take us in?

Shan

All right. First question today comes from @wen-kexing-apologist, and they write: “Which show was the biggest surprise, positive or negative, for you this season and what made it surprising?”

Ben

Biggest surprise positive is definitely Tadaima, Okaeri. I was not expecting to love an omegaverse project this much. I was not really expecting to love a show that relied heavily on a toddler to be one of my favorite shows, either. I had such a blast with that. 

My biggest surprise negative… I think it's 23.5. I was not expecting that show to feel as disjointed as it was. I was not expecting Fon’s show to have the problems it was gonna have in it at all. I was not expecting perfect, but I was not expecting the confusion I felt from that show. 

Ben

All right, Shan, biggest surprises of the season for you?

Shan

I'll start positive. I will shout out Unknown. I did not expect a high quality Taiwanese BL to fall out of the sky and it was quite a delight for me. That show gave me some proper brain rot for a while. I immediately went out and read the novel and I was super into the weekly discussions. That was a super positive experience, even though the end of the show was a little bit disappointing. 

On the negative end, it was kind of a rough season [laugh], so there are so many I could talk about, but I wanna give a special spotlight to one of the most baffling shows I've ever seen in my life. It's called Love Is Like A Cat, and—

NiNi

[laughs] You watched that?!

Ben

Man.

Shan

[laughs] I did watch it, bestie! I did, I watched every single episode. 

NiNi

Oh noooo.

Ben

Oh my…

Shan

So, Love Is Like A Cat was this Korean and Thai BL collaboration. It wasn't the first time that happened, but it was promoted as if it was gonna be kind of a big deal. I always watch Korean BL and I'm very interested in these cross-country collaborations so I went in, not necessarily expecting a show of all time, but thinking that it would be an interesting project that would maybe make some [laughs] interesting connections across those cultural traditions. No, that is not what happened. 

I was baffled every single week of that show about what it thought it was doing and why. The basic premise is that this Thai actor is afraid of dogs and he has to, for career reasons, go on this reality show where he works at an animal shelter. 

The thing about this show that is amazing is that they completely neglected the actual romance between the humans. There was never any point where you believed that these two people liked each other. But the love story between this actor and the dog that he was afraid of was [laughs] actually kind of touching?

NiNi

Oh no.

Shan

But also extremely poorly executed. One of the weirdest experiences of my life, I don't understand how that project got made. I can tell that the people who made it were similarly very disappointed with how it turned out because nobody promoted it. They really tried to release it as quietly as possible, and none of the actors in it talked about it. 

One of the weirdest flops I have seen, just kind of a big what the fuck to me, like, how did that happen? How did this get made this way? Why was the story about the dog the best part of the show? It was a strange one.

Ben

I'm just gonna go watch the end of Homeward Bound instead.

[all laugh]

Shan

I do recommend, I think you'll be better off if you're looking for good dog content.

NiNi

Wasn't there a Vietnamese cat BL that like—

Ben

We're not gonna talk about it.

[NiNi laughs]

Shan

That one was also real fuckin’ weird. Choco Milk Shake did something cool, and then a lot of other people thought they could get in on that, and no, they cannot. They need to stop.

Ben

Speaking of Korean BL and surprise disappointments, Boys Be Brave is also my near second disappointment, because that was from the director who did Our Dating Sim. So I went into that one super positively disposed towards it and did not have a great time.

NiNi

Well for me, hmm, in terms of things that surprised me positively, even though Love is Better the Second Time Around did not end well, I still was quite surprised by how well the first two-thirds of it held up. 

Negative surprise. Yeah. I gotta agree with Ben. It's definitely 23.5. I was anticipating this so much and I expected it to be good. And it just wasn't. And I don't want to say much more about it, ‘cause I think I said a lot about it on its own episode.

00:07:07 - Inbox: Does Categorization Matter?

NiNi

Okay, Shan, what's our next question? 

Shan

Next question from @avorbl. How much has the categorization of My Strawberry Film as romance by Gaga, MDL, etc. influenced your reception and rating?

Ben

[laughs] This is such a shady fucking question.

NiNI

I have not watched this one so y'all have to tell me, why is it shady?

Ben

My Strawberry Film is the final outing from Drama Shower. In both seasons of Drama Shower I believe they attempted to do something original. The MBS team decided to do kind of like an indie coming of age type of film, but over the course of eight weeks, 23 minutes at a time… and it was boring as hell. What avor, I believe, is hinting at here is that they released it as a romance. The BL viewing audience is going to be invested in this boy’s closeted crush on his closest male friend and maybe navigating the drama of his friend having a crush on a mysterious girl who shows up. And then there's a second girl who has a crush on our gay boy and they have to sort all of this out. 

There could have been some interesting stuff here, particularly because mystery girl might be queer? But, it's boring and it's moody in ways that film types like me can enjoy at a film festival, but not over the course of eight weeks. I don't mind a moody film that just hangs out in teenage malaise for a good 90 minutes. That can be an interesting emotional experience, but My Strawberry Film, being billed as a romance was extremely frustrating because none of the romances are really compelling and none of them succeed in a way that was interesting. It just was not what we thought we were signing up for, and because we were constantly out of alignment with it, it was a deeply unsatisfying experience. 

I know Shan suffered through this with me. Shan, any commentary you wanna offer here?

Shan

I watch a lot of drama across all different genres. I can get down with a lot of different types of stories. So for me, the main problem with this show is not that it was miscategorized. The main problem with it is that it fucking sucked. 

The entire thing is designed to leave you unsatisfied in a way that I don't actually think supported its themes or ultimately delivered a message that was aligned with it being hosted on a queer platform. There was a backstory with one of the characters’ mothers who had had these feelings for her female best friend that she thought were unrequited. She met a tragic end. She died. Later in the show we find out that her best friend regrets and did return her feelings. 

So, in this show about everybody liking somebody who doesn't like them back and a bunch of one-sided loves that all end in failure, the only requited love story was with the dead person who was not alive to know that her love was requited. I don't know what the show was trying to say with that. But what they communicated with the way that the story played out was that being queer is lonely and miserable and destined to end in despair. And I found that just such an [laughs] offensive message in a show—

Ben

It sucked!

Shan

—that was part of Drama Shower. I was like, what the fuck is this? On top of all of that, it also was just so fucking boring. It was such a slog, but because it was part of Drama Shower, some of us hung in there trying to see what it was trying to do, trying to understand how it belonged in this line up of projects. I do not know what the person who created this was trying to say, or if they thought they were saying something different than what ultimately was communicated by their story, but I hated it. Blech.

Ben

And that's all we're gonna say about that. It was an ignoble end for a very cool project.

00:11:42 - Inbox: BL Fatigue?

Shan

Let me change moods. This is from @mynameisnotthepoint and they write “Hi. First of all, I really enjoyed the spring season of the podcast. My question is: because BL is so big now and many of us are experiencing fatigue with some of the stories being told, is there a type of premise or trope or genre in BL that you find yourself gravitating towards, and if so, why?”

Ben

I'm gonna unpack the question a little bit. I am not experiencing fatigue necessarily, with familiarity with BL, I'm experiencing fatigue with BL consistently ending on a shit note. [laughs] I just desperately need them to just take any premise that they're trying to tackle seriously and complete it within the expectations of the character motivations that they're committed to or, but hopefully and, the narrative that they're trying to set up. I just desperately need the shows to be good more often than they are. It is so frustrating that so many of these shows just veer off of whatever course that they try to set us on. Some of them for commercial reasons, some of them for “look how clever I am reasons.” I don't really know, I just really need these shows to stop shitting the bed and I would be less tired. 

As for what I find myself gravitating towards, I am far more interested in queer life drama that also features romance than I am in queer romance in and of itself. 

Shan, you watch too many dramas!

Shan

Mmm.

Ben

[laughs] What type of premise, trope, or genre are you drawn to in BL currently?

Shan

Similar to you, Ben, it's not really about the genre or the premise for me. I can watch a good story about just about anything. So for me, it's really not about what the concept is, it's about how it's executed. My great frustration right now with a lot of the BL I'm watching is I feel like the story is the lowest priority. So many of these shows are more about promoting something, whether that be an actor or a couple or a brand, more than they're about telling good stories. And that's where my frustration lies. 

I will take anything you wanna throw at me. Give me all of your ideas. Give me all of your concepts. I will watch the same basic formulaic romcom eight billion times if you execute it well. I will also watch your super out there weird idea if you execute it well. For me it's just about the execution, so, I just really wanna see BL that cares about story. I wanna see BLs that understand that you need good writing to have a good story. That's where my hopes are right now for the genre.

Ben

NiNi, where are you sitting on this?

NiNi

I think I'm sittin’ in the corner with Shan. I am not somebody who gets fatigued by watching the same thing over and over if it's done really well. So, it's not a question of premises or tropes or genres fatiguing me. It's a question of things needing to be executed. On some level, I do enjoy rewriting [laughs] some of these shots in my head after the fact, especially if the premise was strong to begin with, but I am also kind of annoyed that I have to do it in my head and I don't get to see it on the screen. 

So, what I find myself gravitating towards? Something that's well done and written all the way to the end. That would be nice. I just wanna tell everybody: stop trying to be surprising or water cooler worthy and just write a solid show. 

00:15:51 - Inbox: The BL Bubble

Shan 

Okay, next question! @troubled-mind writes: “I very much enjoy shows that exist in a so-called bubble, let's say Our Dating Sim, and those that firmly don't, like the brilliant Marahuyo Project. Still, I feel like there are cases of shows that want to have a cake and eat a cake in that regard. Keep things on the lighter side as if in a bubble, but also try tackling queer issues like homophobia and prejudice at the same time. This just doesn't sit right with me sometimes. So my question is: what do you think is the most challenging aspect for creators when they attempt to get outside the bubble? And what potential misdeeds would you still forgive and which are too much to overlook?” 

NiNi 

Ben, you wanna go first or last? 

Ben 

Probably last ‘cause I feel like I'm gonna go on a rant. [all laugh] We talked about this a lot on the show and I'm probably gonna rehash a lot. Before I dominate the conversation on this, I think I wanna get some of your reactions first, NiNi. 

NiNi 

Hmm, let's see, what is the most challenging aspect for creators when they attempt to get outside of the bubble? I think tone is a big part of it. I think that's probably the thing that suffers most with, especially creators who are accustomed to working inside of the bubble, trying to either straddle it or work outside of it. They don't get the tone of what they're doing quite right. And it's not to say that it can't be, you know, light hearted or comedic or all of that. But it does, if you're going outside of the bubble, need to feel queer. And it doesn't always do that. 

What potential misdeeds would I forgive? Ooh [laughs]. 

Ben 

Be honest. Go ahead. You just thought of an answer right there. [Ben and Shan laugh] Just say it. Say it with your chest. 

NiNi 

No, I wouldn't actually forgive that. [laughs] I was thinking of something but then I was like, “No, really would you forgive that?” I'm like, no, no I wouldn’t and no, I haven't in the past. 

What I won't forgive is getting the sex wrong. Like getting how queer people interact in a sexual way. Getting that wrong, I'm just like “Oh, what are you doing, you don't know what you're talking about, or you're trying to appeal to an audience this is not really for. Stop this, I don't like this.” When we're talking about BL in particular. There's a lot of penetrative sex talk and penetrative sex action that goes on and I'm just like, this is not where boys start. And whenever they start that way in a BL, especially one that's trying to be outside of the bubble. I'm like, no, this does not feel right. I don't like this. This is not correct. This is not how it would go. And it can just kind of lose any sense of authenticity that story may have had. I can't suspend my disbelief any longer, I just. I lose it. 

What about you, Shan? What do you think about the challenging aspects and potential misdeeds? 

Shan 

I really agree with the point that you just made. In a narrative that is trying to be authentically queer, to be a little bit more rooted in a real world sensibility, not understanding how queer people actually engage with sex is a big immersion breaker, I guess? It kinda just pulls you out. 

I think it's helpful to give a couple illustrative examples of, like, where we've seen this before. Bad Buddy is the quintessential bubble/not bubble show that actually did it very well. Bad Buddy exists in a world without homophobia, but they layered a very clear allegory for homophobia onto the story. And so you still had Pat and Pran having to deal with a lot of the very same issues that they would have had in a homophobic world because of this rift between their families and the unacceptability of their relationship. That's a very elegant way to tell a story where you don't have to get directly into homophobia, but you are still having the characters kind of experience the beats of homophobia in how it would affect their relationship. 

And then you have a show like Only Boo that tried to also straddle this line and did it very poorly. They struggled with, I think to your earlier point, NiNi, tone a lot in wanting to have this kind of like, shiny, happy, fluffy show, but also have real stakes. And then wanting to just ignore those stakes and not deal with them whenever they got in the way. So there was a lot of conflicting information in the show about what mattered and what didn't. And it got in the way of the story ultimately, and derailed the main narrative. 

When I think about what is challenging when you're trying to get outside the bubble, in Thai BL in particular, there is, I think, a dedication to keeping these stories relatively light and romance focused and wanting to always deliver happy endings. And that can often be very much in tension with trying to engage with the reality of homophobia. There is still a lot of cultural homophobia, and the shows that they make in the BL space have very intentionally skirted that for the most part, and so, trying to venture into that space, into getting a little bit more real, but then also maintaining that tone of the shiny happy place and making sure that everyone gets a happy ending can often be in tension. That's where shows like Only Boo kind of go off the rails and really struggle. If you're going to deal with homophobia, you have to actually deal with it, and it might mean that the authentic ending of your story is not a typical romance ending. And I think that's a really hard thing for most creators to do in a way that feels satisfying. 

I think in terms of what I can forgive or not, I do want to give credit to the shows that try to get outside this bubble more, because they're trying to do something a little bit more difficult. I wanna give credit to these shows for attempting things that have a higher degree of difficulty, attempting to build an authentic romance narrative in a less than ideal world. But, there are certain things that you do have to make sure you get right. And for me it comes back to that narrative integrity piece. It's not that there are specific acts or specific endings that I can never accept under any circumstances. It's more that whatever happens in the story and whatever the resolutions are, they do need to feel like an authentic possibility that springs from the conflicts that the story introduced. And what breaks a show for me is when they introduce conflicts rooted in homophobia, that they then don't take seriously and just brush aside when they get too difficult to deal with. That is what breaks the fictional world immersion for me and makes the show feel like a failure. 

Ben, please start your rant. 

Ben 

The issue when you go outside the bubble is people with money are trying to make money off of BL, which means they're just trying to make money off of romance tropes that they can produce as cheaply as possible to maximize the fan engagement and then monetize the actors into advertising deals and fan events afterwards. That's how the market for this functions. 

The harsh way to say this is the audience is here for gay romance, they’re not here for gay drama. They don't actually care about the lives of queer people. They're just here to enjoy some romance and then go about their lives. This is not meant as a sort of chiding for the people who are in the genre for romance exclusively, but it is one of the major contributing factors for me for why we have this tension between those of us who are here for queer drama and often will bounce from romances that are just kind of schlocky, as a result. 

@troubled-mind brought up Our Dating Sim. Our Dating Sim is what we might call a technically in the bubble show because they don't say the words gay in that show, but it doesn't feel like a bubble show to me because there's no rationale for any of the movements of that story that makes sense if either boy was straight and existed in a world without homophobia. That story only works if you read them as queer. 

Dealing with this tension of, how do we get funding to tell stories? And then how do we balance the goals of the people with money, the audience that they think they're trying to reach, and maybe trying to tell the stories about queerness that matter to us? It's expensive to pay people and hire people to be on these sets, and it's hard to get the distribution deals you need because of some of the rules and such. It's a niche genre. What's, like, a very specific appeal. It does not get a lot of engagement and if the margins are that thin, we're not gonna see bravery that often in this, because how does that translate into dollars for them? Do people who want to sell juice and toothpaste and cars and motorcycles and stickers and chips want to put their products alongside biting social commentary? I don't know. Like, we're in a global backslide into fascism right now, and we can feel money drying up and organizations shutting down and former allies being quiet when we need them. It’s a rough time out here. It's hard when you're trying to juggle the goals of commercializing romance, the goals of commercializing pretty actors, and the goals of telling meaningful queer stories. It's very hard to really serve all of those goals really well. You can usually serve two of them, but not all three. It sucks! 

What misdeeds would I forgive? Bad acting. The first thing I'm willing to forgive in a show that is really compelling is bad acting. Make It Right is the quintessential [laughs] example of that. 

Shan 

[laughs] No, don’t pick on my boys! [NiNi laughs]

Ben 

Look.

Shan

They were so little! Leave them alone!

Ben

They were, they were. 

What is too much for me to overlook? Like a specific blend of sexual violence, I think. It doesn't come up as often these days. But I was here in some of the early days where there was a lot of “I can't hold back anymore” stuff that's not very pleasant to engage with. That's one that I just do not enjoy. 

Shan 

I feel like you also tend to get particularly angry with shows when it feels like they steered away from the more queer direction that they could have headed in. 

Ben 

That's a good point. Let me define that properly 'cause I did get a little bit lost in my rant. There's a couple of key things, I think, that are at the heart of queer storytelling for me. One is being othered and recognizing that in yourself often times before other people, or immediately after someone else clocks it. Like, a big part of being queer is being queer, literally weird! You are not in step with the developmental progression that a lot of other people around you are on. There is something different about you. And it makes you feel separate from others as a result. If I don't feel that from at least one of the characters, I don't always feel like I connect to them. Another thing is if they're not out, why are they not out? Because part of why you stay in the closet is because you are terrified of the massive social and economic changes you're about to face as a result of being out. 

Those are probably the two key things. It has to be the sense of being othered and the real concern about not fitting in and possibly being discarded. 

Shan 

That was a great question. 

Ben 

Thank you for humoring my rant, NiNi and Shan. 

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan 

I don't know how much of that you all will get to hear, but it was all amazing. 

NiNi 

One thing that Ben said that actually made me think what I could forgive. He said bad acting. Sometimes?

[Ben and NiNi laugh] 

Shan 

You can’t forgive bad acting, NiNi, I don’t think you ever—

[all laugh]

Ben 

Hold on. Where's the tape? Hold on. Is this you?

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi 

Sometimes I will forgive bad acting. 

Shan 

Under certain conditions. 

NiNi 

Yeah, under certain conditions. Well, one thing I will definitely forgive is a certain level of production quality, I will find a way to enjoy low production quality if the story is good enough. 

Shan 

I agree. We try to meet a show where it's at. We really appreciate that some of these folks are out here tryin’ to make good queer stories on a shoestring budget, and we don't hold that against them. 

Ben 

We hold everything else against them. Looking real hard at you, Oxin Films. 

[all laugh]

Shan 

Oh my god, I don't wanna talk about Oxin Films. 

NiNi 

Yes, but also, My Dear Gangster Oppa. That’s all I'm gonna say. 

Shan 

Don't even try it!

Ben 

Oh lord. Here we go again. 

[all laugh]

NiNi 

I'm sorry, I will be haunted by that orange scar makeup. Haunted. 

Shan 

Ben has quoted “quit the gangster life” at me twice in the last 24 hours. 

Ben 

It’s true.

NiNi 

I mean, he's not wrong. 

00:30:26 - Inbox: Sex On Screen

Shan 

Let's go to the next question, which is quite a humdinger. So, this is long, strap in, folks. I'm going to read it all and then we'll come back and answer it piece by piece. @parralex0889 writes: “I'm reeling from being whelmed by the end of 4 Minutes, so I was thinking about the positives and I really enjoyed how sex was depicted and talked about in the series. Great gets picked up unexpectedly by Tyme, and when they get home, Great very pointedly pauses and says he needs to shower first and they potentially do a redo of that in the finale, as well. Tonkla, a character who openly asks for raw sex twice and eventually gets it. Great having his own condoms and no shame about it. I really enjoyed that these characters are allowed to have ownership and pride and desire and life and characterization through their sex and attraction. Even earlier in the year in Wandee—Wandee Goodday—there's a little moment when Cher exits the bathroom before going to bed with Yei, and to me, I could easily project a certain, ‘the water's running clean and I'm ready for action’ in Cher's movements. So to make this into a question or three, do y’all have any stand out ‘this is how real people engage in sex in reality,’ instead of the perfect TV sex that BL and BL-adjacent shows often lean into? Second, favorite BL sex scenes in general? Third, which sex scenes have been y’alls worst, either in execution or bad chemistry?”

So, that's the full question. Let me take this piece by piece that we can tackle all of. First of all, we haven't talked about 4 Minutes and Wandee Goodday specifically on the pod. So maybe we should just start there. Alex is suggesting that both of those shows were pretty good with their depictions of sex, and so maybe we should just talk a little bit about that first in our impressions. 

NiNi 

I mean, can I start with a liked it, hated it? [laughs]

Ben 

Good. Go for it, girl!

[all laugh]

NiNi 

I liked 4 Minutes more, I think, than you two did. The ending wasn't everything that I wanted, but I was still pretty satisfied with it. Wandee Goodday fell off the rails about, what? Halfway through and never got back on the rails, and I'm still pissed off when I think about it because it could have been so good. What was the reason?! 

I had to get that off my spirit before I actually engaged with the question. 

Ben 

Hydrate, baby. 

[NiNi and Shan laugh]

NiNi 

But in terms of how the sex is depicted in these two, I liked how Wandee Goodday tackled sex in the beginning. How they tackled a friends with benefits relationship and how they tackled them having a sexual relationship and speaking openly about sex and the way that they enjoyed sex and the things that they wanted to do. I liked that they showed them having different kinds of sex. I liked that they joked about sex and they had a good time with it. When things started getting confusing for them emotionally, it still didn't stop them from having sex, which I liked because so often these shows treat sex and romance or sex and love as these separate entities that somehow sex is sex and love is love and somehow love and sex can't be intertwined in that way. And so that was the thing that I did enjoy about Wandee, the fact that they intertwined sex and fun, energetic, engaging sex and love, not just soft focus, tender touching, missionary. [laughs] And then it went off the rails, but not gonna dwell on that too much at this point. 

4 Minutes is a different show. It's not so much about the relationship between these characters, and that's one of the reasons I think that I enjoyed it because I didn't see 4 Minutes as a romance or anything involving a romance. These two characters bumped into each other. They had sex, they got way too entangled because of a host of other reasons. Tonkla and Korn had a very interesting dynamic that involved, like, a lot of power dynamics that I feel like the show didn't entirely engage with and I would have liked to see more of. And then Tonka and Win and the way that they had sex also showed a lot of interesting power dynamics that were flipped from Tonkla and Korn’s, and I liked watching that, I liked seeing the show tackle sex sort of outside of the lens of love. So I did enjoy that about it. But to me, 4 Minutes was not about romance so the conversations about sex were in a completely different direction. 

I am the sex and story girl. I'm the person who wants to see, like, what is the sex telling us about these characters and their relationship and their power dynamics and their, all these different things. And I got, like, a smorgasbord of that, I think in 4 Minutes. So I quite enjoyed how these two shows actually tackle sex. 

Shan 

I agree with that. I have many issues with 4 Minutes but none of them were about the use of sex [laughs] in the show. I thought that the show was very smart in how it used sex to inform character. I really appreciate when a show that is about hot young adult men who have sexual desire lets them actually have sex and doesn't put weird purity principles around the context in which they can do that. And so I just appreciated how real that felt. To Alex's point in the question, that they actually did address in some of those sex scenes actual important stuff like sexual health and the way things actually work and having to clean up and all of that stuff that is normally skipped over in romance. I thought they were pretty good about that and that was one of the aspects of the show that I liked a lot, despite thinking that the whole thing didn't hold together all that well. 

Wandee Goodday I think a little bit less credit there, though I do appreciate that they acknowledged casual sex as a thing. I thought they also got a little weird about it in places where suddenly the two main characters stopped having sex for reasons that never made any sense to me whatsoever, but they eventually skipped over that, there was just a lot of weirdness in that show in general. But I do agree with NiNi's point about the way that they depicted sex as fun, and I think that's something we don't see enough. We don't see enough either of sex between committed couples and I thought that was a really great part of what Wandee Goodday did with Oyei and Cher, showed them as a long term happy couple that had a really active sex life and really enjoyed that aspect of their relationship together. We don't get to see much of that. I really appreciated that aspect of that show, despite really [laughs] sharing NiNi’s ire about the way that the story went. 

NiNi 

Bestie, I'm so mad. 

Shan 

Hee hee we’re gonna be mad forever about that. You have to understand, folks, that NiNi and I were so invested [laughs] in this show being good. 

NiNi 

So invested. 

Shan 

We were so excited for it and then when it went bad, it was just so disappointing. Ugh.

Ben, how about you? 

Ben 

It's difficult. I think I care oftentimes less about the physical mechanics of the sex when there's something interesting happening with the characters in the moment. I feel like I only really get caught up in the mechanics of some of the sexual stuff when they're fuckin’ up the story around it. I do like when the shows represent the kind of sex that guys are probably having with each other. Like I don't mind how much penetrative sex that they want to do if it's like Alex says, where, you see guys dealing with some of the physical preparatory realities of that. 

Shan 

Why don't we get into some of the other questions, ‘cause we're starting to get more into specifics. The next specific question that Alex asked is, “do we have any stand out ‘this is how real people engage in sex in reality,’ instead of the perfect TV sex that BL and BL-adjacent shows often lean into?”

Shout out to Alex for giving us this chance to talk about Knock Knock Boys!

Ben 

Heeeey! 

[all laugh]

Shan 

‘Cause it is definitely the standout Asian BL of this year for what does sex look like in reality. There was an—what I consider iconic and was iconic to the tiny community of us who watched—this sex scene between the characters Almond and Latte, who were having sex for the first time, and it was just a great and funny and compassionate comedy of errors, of them trying to work through the awkwardness and find the right positions and get comfortable with each other. It was a very charming and funny scene. I haven't seen anything like that previously in BL. Usually they're very preoccupied with trying to make things look sexy. This was not sexy, but it was very loving and I thought that was such a great sex scene. 

Ben 

That sequence really does a great job of showing people, like, communing in the act and trying to take care of each other and deal with their nerves and all the other stuff that they bring to the table. I also liked the lead up to that where Almond talked to his friends about how he was feeling. It was nice that Thanwa and Peak also finally let go of a lot of stuff that was hanging over them and they were far more relaxed around each other for the rest of the show, clearly having a good time.

Shan 

And I like the contrast, their characters are older. They're both sexually experienced, so, like, sex for them was a more relaxed affair all around. They weren't confused about what to do. Almond and Latte are younger. It was Almond’s very first time and it was Latte's first time with someone he was in love with, so they were more nervous. 

NiNi 

You know me, I'm always gonna go to the Philippines. The ones that really stand out to me, the Gameboys movie. I think that one felt very real. 

Shan

Perf.

NiNi

The season 2 cut is a better version of the movie. And then there's a lot of these Filipino quarantine dramas that I think did really well. Quaranthings, Meet Me Outside got me into the headspace of yes, this is how something like this would go. 

Ben 

To finish off on Alex's question, none of these shows are ever going to have somebody talking about prep in a meaningful way that isn't like a quick line, like, nobody's going to make a booty water joke in these shows. 

Shan 

[laughs] So yeah, we can only get so close to reality in Asian BL, let’s not get unrealistic with our expectations. 

Ben 

They ain’t making that joke. 

Shan 

No. [laughs]

00:41:07 - Inbox: Fave Sex Scenes

Shan 

All right. So let's transition to the next part of Alex's question, which is what are our favorite BL sex scenes in general? 

NiNi 

It's always gonna be, for me, Kinnporsche Episode 7 in the bathroom. The mutual masturbation scene. That's one of my favorites of all time. 

Shan

Mmm. That’s a good one.

Ben 

That's a good highlight. I have a lot of issues with Be On Cloud, that is not one of them. 

Shan

Yeah, Be On Cloud is good at sex.

NiNi 

I really liked the way that the scene is constructed and what it says about the characters and where they're at in the moment and how it evolves as it goes along emotionally, and then the fact that it is a mutual masturbation scene and not penetrative sex or an oral sex scene. Which is the most give and take that you can do simultaneously as two gay men. I think it was really good and it's one of my favorites. 

Shan 

There's some pretty decent examples of really good sex in the genre. I think in terms of other Thai BL, I would shout out the shows from MeMindY, which are made by a person whose name I will pronounce… May [MAME]. And— 

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi 

Y'all, we got told we've been pronouncing it wrong, but we cannot make the mommy pun. I'm sorry. We just can't do it. 

Shan 

I'm not calling her mommy, I’m not doing it. So you're just gonna have to live with it. 

So, what I love about her shows is, I think that they use sex very well both as part of the narrative and as part of characterization and as legitimately part of the romance arc. Her shows believe that couples who are in love also have hot sex, which might not sound that revolutionary, but is in this genre, believe me, because most shows only allow hot sex scenes between characters who are in a toxic relationship or characters who are about to break up. That is not true in her shows. You see hot, loving sex before and after relationships start. You see casual hot sex, you see committed, loving hot sex in her shows and she really stands apart on that, her shows do, in the genre, so it's something I definitely want to shout out. TharnType, Love in the Air, I thought Wedding Plan’s sex scenes were fantastic. They really allow you to see sex as just a normal part of the romance arc and not something that is separated out and othered in any kind of way. 

Ben 

We cannot overstate when it comes to the work she does, that in most cases her characters have the best sex after they get together. We don't see a sudden drop off after they get together. 

Shan 

Love Sea, which we just finished recently, was a great example of that. The sex got better as they got closer and as they fell more in love. And that's pretty common for the trajectories of her romances. 

Another example that I'll bring up, and I did clear this already with Ben. You know it's coming, Ben, so brace yourself. 

Ben 

Let me just mute now. [Shan laughs]

NiNi 

Oh God. 

Shan 

I think we can't talk about good sex in BL without talking about History 3: Make Our Days Count. Taiwan is known for very good intimacy scenes, and it is the pinnacle of what they can do when all cylinders are firing in terms of having sex scenes that are part of character, that are part of the narrative arc, that are part of the relationship development, and that are very well performed between actors with extremely good chemistry. Just all around fantastic and Make Our Days Count has the best sex scenes in Taiwanese BL. It's just true. There's controversy around that show, understandably. It's one of my favorites. I know a lot of people don't like it for very fair reasons, but the sex scenes in that show and its depiction of intimacy between people who are falling in love is just top notch. 

NiNi 

Man, Sunbo and Zhigang in the gym bathroom. 

Shan 

Hoo! 

NiNi

Quality.

Shan

Bestie, I think about it all the time, still. It just comes into my mind and I'm like, ooh, yes, that happened! 

NiNi 

I mean, it's so much to it as well. The fact that it happens in the gym bathroom after hours, this, like, this feels like something that could really happen. 

Shan 

And we talk about Taiwanese BL and its style with sex scenes. It feels very raw, I think in a way that a lot of the more stylized shows don't. It hits harder because it feels like something that could really be happening, and it feels like it's the way that it would be happening. 

Ben 

There's great examples of that kind of intimacy in History 3: Trapped. There's the bandage kissing scene, which is one of the most intimate scenes we've had in a while. They don't actually have sex in that moment, but man is that one of the most charged scenes in that whole series. And then there's the birthday cake scene after Meng Shaofei’s been gone all day. 

There's the We Best Love 2 scene that everybody has feelings about that I think is great! 

Shan 

I have so many feelings about it and they're all positive. I love that scene. 

NiNi 

I like that it transgresses the line because it's a discussable transgression of the line—

Ben 

Exactly. 

—and people who just dismiss it because of that, I think that you're missing out, honestly. 

Ben 

We’ll try not to spoil it because we know a lot you all haven't seen it. 

Shan 

And you should. 

Ben 

It's good. 

Shan 

You gotta watch We Best Love, both parts. 

Ben 

What are Sam and Yu doing right now, hold on. 

[all laugh]

NiNi 

And then, I'm always gonna have to bring this up. A non sex scene that feels like a sex scene is Teh and Oh-aew on the bedroom floor in I Told Sunset About You Episode 3. 

Shan 

Hoo! Scratching the back! Oooh, I've been transported. I'm gonna need a minute. 

NiNi 

I can't even bring it up without it entering my brain. It is so ingrained in there. 

Ben 

You want to know how good that scene is? I have basically memorized all of the trivia around that scene. 

Shan 

You know everything about how it was made. 

Ben 

Like they had to film it twice. They filmed the show and then during the edit process didn't like the version that they got and brought the boys back. And that was really stressful for them. They had to redo their homework again. There was a ton of pressure on them. 

Shan 

It came out amazing, so thank you for your service, everybody on those creative teams. 

We obviously gotta talk about Japan here, too, because they are often pushing the envelope in BL on what kind of sex can be depicted on screen. Obviously, the Pornographer series is a prime example of using sex to inform character, to move narrative to tell us something about the relationship and where it is at every stage where we're seeing them engage in physical intimacy. The best sex scenes I have ever seen in a romance, still, in that series. 

Ben 

All the sex is complicated in that one too. Except for one that wasn't where I was so relieved. [laughs]

Shan 

Yeah. The one you were waiting for. [laughs]

Ben 

Literally, I watched The Novelist and we did the prequel in Mood Indigo. And I'm like, that's enough. [laughs] I’ve had enough!

[NiNi laughs]

Shan

That’s enough of this dark sex! 

Ben 

I had enough of this! I need Haruhiko to suck Rio’s dick right now. And within 15 minutes of the movie, that's exactly what happened. In a car! [laughs]

Shan 

It was in the special, the 15 minute special. He finished Mood Indigo and he said “he needs to suck his dick right now.” I was like, bestie, hit play. [all laugh] It’s the first thing that happened! 

NiNi 

Oh my God. 

Ben 

I was like, Miki Koichiro understands me. 

Shan 

That series really understands how sex relates to the relationship arc and where the characters are emotionally, and it always got every single beat exactly right. There's a lot of crazy good sex scenes in that series. There’s a lot of wild sex. The one where the chemistry is the most off the charts is maybe one of the ones in Mood Indigo, but my favorite scene in that whole series, my favorite sex scene, is the one at the end of Playback, the movie. 

Ben

Mmhmm.

Shan

It is the culmination of those character arcs, and it is so perfectly executed and they chose to not have it be a penetrative sex act. They chose to have it be a moment of very deep emotional intimacy, where hand jobs were exchanged. Ugh, it was just fucking perfect and I can't believe [voice gets intense] how many of you haven't watched it or haven't finished it because you couldn't find Playback! Please, come tell me if you need help. I will give it to you. You've gotta watch it. 

NiNi 

When Japan is on game, they're on game. 

Shan

Right?

NiNi

I think about things like the Utsukushii Kare movie. I think about things like The End of the World With You. 

Ben 

That has some great scenes. From the same team that did The Novelist and Mood Indigo and Pornographer. 

NiNi 

For, like, a couple that we saw even this year, like, Love is Better the Second Time Around and Perfect Propose, I think also tackled sex really well. I think about The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese all the time, and that is a dark tale. 

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

Shan 

A dark tale that uses sex very well. 

Ben

It does. 

NiNi 

I agree, I agree. 

Ben 

There’s a great one in Jack O’ Frost. The problem with a lot of the Japanese ones is, like, if you're seeing a great Japanese sex scene, the guys are probably about to break up. [Shan laughs] Unfortunately. 

Shan 

Except Pornographer! 

Ben 

Except Pornographer. 

Shan 

Watch. I'm not kidding! 

NiNi 

And not in The End of the World With You either, because the best one is the one in the car, and that's right before they get back together. 

Shan 

We owe him so much. 

[NiNi laughs]

Ben 

Let's put Grand Guignol in the conversation. 

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan 

Oh my God! We reality should, though.

Ben 

Issei fucks Mr. Unlucky in that movie! 

Shan 

Oh, we lost it. Grand Guignol, if you don't know, it’s a horror BL movie, it's on GagaOOLala. If you have watched a lot of Japanese BL, you should absolutely watch it because you will be fucking delighted. [laughs] But, you know, all the usual warnings that come with a straight up horror film. 

00:51:24 - Inbox: Worst Sex Scenes

Shan 

Let's get to the last part of Alex's question. Which is, “which sex scenes have been y’all’s worst on execution or bad chemistry?”

NiNi 

Hoo. 

Ben 

We have to acknowledge that despite the sheer volume of BL this current panel has watched, they actually don't have sex on screen in a lot of these shows. And so, there are things that I have, take more umbrage with in shows that didn't even have the sex. Like, as much as I love Make It Right, Peak was not a great actor at the time and was clearly nervous to be around Boom for the intimate scenes they had to do. That stands out. 

NiNi 

I feel like what it comes down to is, do the actors go for it or not, and for what quantity of go for it? There are always actors who’re gonna go for it and go too over the top and it doesn't feel genuine because they're not willing to sit in the moment. So they're goin’ hard, but it just feels like people smashing together. It doesn't feel like it's being acted. 

Ben 

List them, bestie!

Shan 

Name names! 

Ben 

List them, bestie!

Shan 

Name names! 

NiNi 

Let me finish my thought here. And then there are ones where it's too soft. You're telling me that these people have this welling up of emotion or sexual desire, whatever it is, and the way that they touch each other in those moments just does not feel like that. It does not feel desirous, it does not feel overwhelmed, it doesn't feel any of those things. It just feels robotic. Hate that. Basically, anything where I feel like the character of the scene does not match emotionally and physically, where the characters are, I don't enjoy. As actors, you've taken me out of the scene because I can't buy it anymore. I see the actor at that point, I see the actor hesitating. I don't see the character in the moment. 

Shan 

All right, name those names. 

NiNi 

[laughs] I was hoping I could get away from it. 

Ben 

No, no, ma'am. 

Shan 

The question was which scenes, you gotta at least name some shows. 

NiNi 

Y'all go first and I will come back around. 

Shan 

What about Playboyy, NiNi? 

NiNi

[disgusted sound]

Shan

There you go. The gag sound says it all [laughs]. 

NiNi 

There is literally nothing about Playboyy that I ever wanna think about again. Let's forget that that ever happened. And it could have been so good. 

Shan 

You think about your list. I have an answer to this. 

Ben 

Go ahead, bestie. Say what you need to say. 

Shan 

I did not live through Big Dragon and Sunset x Vibes to keep my mouth shut about this issue. I watched both of those shows! 

NiNi 

Why did you watch them, friend? 

Shan 

I'll tell you why. And listen, I have no beef with Mos and Bank. They seem like nice dudes. Great for them. I’m happy for them that they seem like they have good lives. They’re out there doing their thing, cool. 

But I do have beef with their shows and I'll tell you why. Because both of these shows were marketed to me as if they were going to be mature, dark stories that involved a lot of actually sexy sex, and neither of them delivered on that promise! Big Dragon at least had some halfway decent sex scenes when it started, before it suddenly devolved into being random BL fluff right in the middle. It started as enemies hate fucking and then by episode 2 they were like actually, we're in love. And I was like, what the fuck? This is not what I was promised. So anyway, those sex scenes at least had a little bit of verve to them, even though the story was a mess. 

Sunset x Vibes—and I have learned that that's how you're supposed to pronounce it, by the way—

NiNi

Nope. 

Shan

Terrible. Just no, if you haven't watched this show, please don't. It’s not good. It is not worth your time. It is a mess and a half. The sex scenes in particular were so disappointing because first of all, they decided to do some weird blushing maiden stuff that felt like it had no business being in the story. Had no idea why they were doing that. And then on top of that, the sex scenes were not particularly tied to character or story. They didn't tell us anything really about who these people were or anything about their relationship. Were just inserted, almost like they were PPL—product placement—breaks. It's like, ope, time for a sex break! They didn't do anything in the story. They were not narratively important, and they also were just not well performed. 

Again, I have no beef with these actors. There are many reasons why they might not have performed these sex scenes well, even though they have, in the past, done a better, or at least adequate, job at that. But these sex scenes were uncomfortable. They looked like they were filmed in a rush. There were strange edits in a lot of them. The kissing looked awkward, there were awkward angles being used. It was such a strange show, because it didn't deliver on story, it didn't deliver on the romance plot, it didn't deliver on the sex scenes. I had no idea what it was actually trying to do. 

What I'm trying to get at here is that you can't just go out in the world and say, “Sexy BL coming your way, it’s gonna be amazing!” and then deliver this tepid garbage. The audience is not gonna stick around because you say that there are some explicit sex scenes that are poorly executed. 

While we’re on the subject, we should mention that another Thai BL just tried this trick. Battle of the Writers suddenly taking a pause to re-edit their episode and put out the longest, most explicit sex scene by far in the show, in an attempt, it seems, to attract an audience back to the show and get people talking about it again. I think people did watch that sex scene. I don't think they watched the show, though. 

Ben 

We sure did. 

NiNi 

[laughs] With popcorn, rewound it and watched it again. 

Shan 

You can't just expect having NC-17 scenes in your show to carry it anymore. There is too much good content in the genre now. That was a rant, perhaps that you didn't ask for Alex, but that's my answer. Big Dragon and Sunset x Vibes failed on this test. 

Ben 

I am always the worst person to ask about these things, ‘cause if something's not good, I don't catalog it. I don't usually hold grudges against BL for being bad at sex and so, there's a lot of awkward sex scenes that I've forgotten. I don't remember really enjoying the sex scenes in shows like Nitiman because I don't even remember what happened. I remember just going, “hmm, that’s bad.” And I just moved on for my life at that point. 

Of the things we talked about on this show this year, probably the like worst one™ was the one we dialed in on when we talked about Unknown. And that isn't because the actors weren't willing to execute the scene with each other, it's that whatever that they were coached into doing didn't translate well into what was edited together in the scene that we got. They didn't really build towards their sex in a way that completed the narrative arc they were on with the older brother. Those are the ones that I tend to remember more than like, “ooh, those actors were, like, biting each other's lips. What the hell?” None of that ever sticks with me ‘cause I watch too much. I’m just like whatever, shuffle on. Maybe like back in the day, you would probably be like What the Duck? because I do not remember the leads, doing a good job on that show at all. 

NiNi 

Ooh.

Shan 

I still haven't watched that. 

Ben 

[singing cadence] You don't need to! 

Shan

And I never, ever will. 

[all laugh]

NiNi 

I'm gonna go for a quote unquote safe choice ‘cause I just don't feel like having the girls come for me for coming for their boys. 

Ben 

Uh-uh. I wanna hear the answer. Speak the truth on this show. 

Shan 

I just trashed MosBank out loud! 

Ben 

Say what needs to be said. 

NiNi 

I'ma just lay it out here and the girls are gonna have to come for me. I'm sorry. I love First and Khaotung. 

Shan

[excited gasp]

NiNi

They did one good sex scene in Only Friends. I don't think the rest of them were good. 

Shan 

Yes, bestie speak the truth! Let's speak truth to this powerful fan base!

[Shan and Ben laugh] 

Ben 

Yes! Kill ‘em, bestie. 

Shan 

Tell ‘em, say more!

NiNi 

I have never enjoyed a JoongDunk sex scene. 

Ben 

I sure haven't!

NiNi 

Nope.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan 

I still haven't watched any of their shows. I do not care. 

NiNi 

Mmm mm mm. And the third one, the safe one, is none of the sex scenes in Between Us were any good. 

Ben

Mmm.

Shan 

Ooh, okay. Expand on that. I feel like most people think the first couple episodes of that show are its saving grace because of the sex scenes. 

NiNi 

No, because I don't buy [Ben laughs] either of them really. It's the acting, it's the acting for me. 

Shan 

Okay. This is great, NiNi unleashed. I love it. 

NiNi 

Oh my God, I'm gonna get cancelled. 

[Shan laughs]

Ben 

Good, good. We deserve it. 

Shan 

Let’s let them try to cancel you. Let's let them try! 

Ben 

New Siwaj does get lucky sometimes and has actors who do okay together. The couple of times they've had decent bed scenes in his shows, like, I think the My Only 12% one was actually pretty decent. 

NiNi 

That was a decent one. 

Shan 

Santa and Earth have good chemistry. 

NiNi 

I think that the married sex scene in oh, God, what's that ForceBook one? Boss Baby! 

Ben 

A Boss and a Babe?

NiNi 

I always call it Boss Baby. Yeah. 

[all laugh]

Ben 

Where's my Boss Baby tweet?! 

Shan 

[valley girl voice] Force and Book were so good in Boss Baby. 

NiNi 

Let me stop calling this Boss Baby. A Boss and a Babe. New Siwaj hits on one from time to time. Most of the time I don't like the way that he directs sex scenes, but My Only 12% one was good. 

Ben 

I had a lot of beef with Only Friends, but I do think the car scene between Force and Neo’s characters was still a little compelling sequence. 

NiNi 

Oh hell yeah. 

Shan 

In the whole show, that was the best sex scene. People were not ready for that conversation, but it's the truth. 

Ben 

Followed by the Neo and Mark scenes. 

Shan 

Yeah. Neo and Mark were good in that show. 

NiNi 

Because they went for it, but they didn't go for it in like a, “oh, we're going for it” way. They went for it in an actual acting way. 

Ben 

Yes, you can see them fucking with each other the whole time. Each one was trying to outdo the other one in each scene, and I was like all right guys, I get it. You’re both athletes. 

Shan 

It’s rare for GMMTV shows, I think, to deliver truly good sex scenes because there's just too much other nonsense getting in the way. But it does happen. I still think one of the best, it's not really a sex scene, I guess, but a prelude to sex scene is Pat and Pran in Episode 11 of Bad Buddy. They just nail the anticipation and the heat of it to the point you don't even have to see the actual sex to feel like you just saw a really good sex scene. 

NiNi 

That one, and the one night stand in Moonlight Chicken. 

Shan 

Yeah. That's another one where they just nailed the anticipatory tension that can also create a really memorable scene that doesn't actually have to explicitly depict anything. And I think that's maybe the thing to think about here. It's not just the fact of a scene being super explicit that actually makes it sexy, and a lot of times shows are putting out these scenes that, all they have going for them is that they're super explicit, but they're not nailing the emotions, not nailing the characters, they're not getting the chemistry and the movement and the heat right. And so it's all empty. 

Ben 

An example of one that had us in a lot of the early part of the sex scene, but maybe not all of it, is the Episode 4 Ghost Host Ghost House scene. That has really good build up tension. 

Shan 

The legs! 

Ben 

Another example, they don't actually have sex in the show—a lot of that was because of quarantine protocols again, in the Philippines—is the kiss that they have in Boys Lockdown. I think that has really good building tension to it because of the mask mandate at the time. And I think that carries a really specific gay layer to it that I thought was really compelling. 

The problem is, 1, a lot of these shows don't have sex; 2, when they do have sex, a lot of it's kind of bad? The sex being bad isn't so stand out that we keep an ongoing list of grievances. 

Shan 

Speak for yourself, bestie, I got my grudges. 

Ben 

You're better at grudges than me. I'm too busy to be having grudges. 

Shan 

[laughs] I always got time. 

Ben 

Do not ask for my attention! It’s not good for you. 

01:04:24 - Bonus Round: Best Sex in a Bad Show

Shan 

NiNi, what question did you wanna ask? 

NiNi 

What is the best sex scene you've ever seen in a terrible show?

Ben 

Oh, interesting. 

Shan 

Oh. Good sex in a bad show. 

Ben 

Can I be mean and just say Make Our Days Count? [laughs]

NiNi 

[laughs] Oh my god, no you can't. 

Ben 

I’m still mad! I'll never not be mad. 

Shan 

You gotta think about an actual bad, like, a poorly made show that does sex well. 

Ben 

Why r u? 

Shan 

Yeah, I think that's the answer! 

Ben 

Not to be mean to the Why r u? team. Why r u? got crushed by the pandemic. Now, that show was probably not gonna be good anyway. 

Shan

No.

Ben

But, it's not their fault that their set basically got shut down. 

Shan 

Yeah, that's a really good answer to that 'cause Saint and Zee, that was a moment. I still think about Saint sucking on Zee’s Adam’s apple all the time. [NiNi and Shan laugh] It's so memorable, and they had such good chemistry. That show is a trash fire, but boy. 

Ben 

There's also some really goofy montage of sex in Destiny Seeker. Shan got that far in. 

Shan 

I watched the whole thing! I watched all of Destiny Seeker. It was oddly charming. It wasn't a particularly good show, but like, there were aspects of charm to it, and they did well on the sex. 

On that front, I would shout out City of Stars, which a lot of people I don't think have watched. It’s a show from this year, a Thai pulp, and I couldn't really say that it's a good show. The production values are low, it's got some green actors, but the sex was surprisingly great. Really well used in the narrative arc. Really well used in the relationship development and very enthusiastically performed. 

Thank you, Alex, for getting us to rant about sex scenes in BL for over an hour. 

[all laugh]

Ben 

We needed it, get it out of our system. 

Shan 

We needed to get some things off our chest, clearly. 

Ben 

I'm gonna end on this particular note. We need to see more people behaving like the MeMindY team. This trend towards really chaste BL or BL that's only willing to use sex if it feels like it's leading into something negative is not satisfying. Especially when sex is part of your storytelling. Do better! 

01:06:54 - Inbox: Critical Philosophy

NiNi 

We've got a comment, really, that came into our inbox from user @cuntextual. 

Shan 

And I want to be clear that that’s C-U-N-T cuntextual. 

Ben 

Oh, yes. Classic Tumblr name. A+! 

Shan 

Props for a fantastic username. They write: “Just dropping by to say you guys make my life better. [Shan says “Aw”] I listen to all your episodes, even for those shows I haven't watched, and I can't understate how much The Conversation has taught me about media criticism and QL history. So thank you so much for all your hard work.”

Very nice comment. Thank you, cuntextual. 

NiNi 

Thank you so much for the comment, cuntextual, and we wanted to use it as a frame to talk a little bit about media criticism. 

Ben 

This is the first time I feel like the BL bubble has really popped. BL hasn't sucked this hard since 2018. A lot of people weren't in the streets with us in 2018. They have no memory of this. A lot of folks joined during COVID. 2019 was a really good year for BL. A lot of people's favs are from that year. 2020 was a good year despite the lockdown. ‘21 was a solid year. ‘22 was a solid year. I had a great time last year in ‘23 and I do not know [singsong voice] what's going on this year. 

This is a good place for us to talk about, like, what is the role of a critic. For me, a critic is not a shill. It is not my goal or job to cheerlead shitty shows. My goal as a critic is to have a consistent lens and perspective from which I write that the listeners and readers can understand, so that when they're reading my takes they understand why I'm reacting the way I am. There are quite a few critics who I follow, who I often disagree with. But I like to read their perspectives because they're consistent. I know exactly where they're writing from, and that helps inform whether or not I might want to go see a movie in theaters or wait for it to come home. 

So when I'm reacting to shows on this podcast and on my blog, I am not here as a fangirl for BL. I am here as a queer cinephile. And so I'm here reacting because I want more English speaking people to engage with what's happening in these various Asian communities. As a result, when shit is good, you will hear me screaming “this shit is good!” But you will also hear me saying “that shit is bad.” The critic's job is to communicate to the audience who's listening to them hy shit might be good or bad as a means of helping them decide what might be worth their time to engage with. Anything else is just motherfuckers sittin’ around chattin’ about nothing. And that is not what I'm about. 

Shan 

I agree with a lot of what Ben just said. I don't really think about media criticism as clearly as Ben does in terms of bringing people to the genre and trying to recommend shows. I do that sometimes, I definitely like to yell about it when I really like something. But for me, I get a lot of personal enjoyment and pleasure out of breaking down stories. How they work, what makes them good, what makes them not so good. I like to approach media through thinking about what the components of the story are and how they're working together. And I get, honestly, a lot out of thinking about and talking about shows that don't work that well because that helps me learn too. 

So I don't really have stan loyalty to any show. I could start out loving a show, and if it goes off the rails for me, I'm going to say something about that and I'm going to try to unpack why and talk about it. Even if I really like an actor or a pair that's in a show, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to think that their show is great. It’s great when that happens, but it often doesn't. And I really don't agree with the idea that the only way to support something is to cheerlead it uncritically. I've never agreed with that, that's just not how I interact with media. Bringing a lens of critique and taking the shows seriously and talking about them seriously is how I show respect and love to the media that I enjoy. I'm always gonna kind of show up that way when I'm interested in any kind of media that I'm watching. 

We've talked a little bit about the shift that we've been feeling in the genre. This is not new, it's just maybe the level of intensity feels like it's shifting towards commercialization and just selling product as the primary motive for most of these shows. And has very much crowded out the motive around good storytelling in a lot of cases. That has been the shift that I have most keenly felt. And that has particularly been very pronounced for me in Thai BL. I don't know if that's actually a uniquely Thai media thing. It might just be that that's where most BL still sits. Thai production companies produce vastly more BL than any other BL producing countries at present. 

One of the things that I noticed that I was talking with Twig about is that there has been a real dearth of high quality content coming out of other countries besides Thailand. In Korean BL, we have had a significant reduction in output, not necessarily in the number of shows, but in the quality and length of shows that we've been getting, significantly less this year than in the previous couple years. We've gotten fewer good shows from Taiwan. Japan actually, conversely has been producing more BL, but with a steep increase in output there has not been as consistent of a quality, and so we're now getting Japanese BLs that let us down in ways that we're not used to happening with Japan. 

It's felt a little bit like a transitional year to me, and this last few months in particular I think there have been a confluence of shows that have started really strong and then gone off the rails. That always feels really frustrating to me because I hate to get invested in something that then lets me down. That's way worse to me than something being just kind of bad from the start, from the whole way through. I'm still happy to be engaging with the genre so much. I'll keep doing it in the way that I always have, and I'm just hopeful that we'll still get a decent ratio of shows that are interested in storytelling compared to some that are not. 

NiNi 

It's very interesting to hear you all talk about your critical philosophy. I'm kind of all over the map on this stuff. I enjoy watching the shows and talking about the shows and analyzing the shows, and I also enjoy letting some of the shows wash over me. I'm not a consistent critic. Sometimes I do feel like a show is more like me putting on my critical hat and wanting to look at it in terms of, okay, what is this technically doing? What is happening here? And then sometimes I don't want to do that with a show. Either it gets me in the heart place, a place where I don't feel like I either can or want to turn that lens on it. It comes down to me, for me, on what the show is doing for me. There are some shows which I can see are probably objectively not great but I'm enjoying the critical aspect of it because I get to puzzle out in my head. Okay, what exactly is not working here and really get into the integrity of it. There’s stuff that's not great that I don't wanna do that with because I'm just having such a good time. There's stuff that's good that I wanna put my critical hat on and there's stuff that's good that I don't wanna do that either. I'm really all over the map when it comes to the idea of a critical philosophy and it really just depends on the show. 

One of the things about getting all this additional volume, all of these stories upon stories upon stories that are happening, is that the more we get, the more diverse and diffuse the audience gets, and I think that's maybe some of what's being struggled with, as well. There are still shows that we are all watching and all enjoying, but increasingly I feel like there are shows that are sort of, okay, this is speaking to this particular person or these one or two or this group of particular people and not this other group of people. Ben was talking about this when he was talking about Tadaima, Okaeri, that once all the people who weren't going to be interested in it faded away he had such a good time discussing it with the people who were there because they wanted to be there. I feel like this is something we talked about at the end of last year as well. The number of shows that is really a full fandom experience is shrinking every time, every season, every year, and things are getting more stratified, more diffuse, more separate. I don't necessarily know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing that's happening. 

There's always gonna be, at least I hope that there's always gonna be those shows that we are all really agreeing on. All enjoying all, like, yeah, this is knocking it out of the park on all the quadrants. The various quadrants that we hold there. And we can talk about them from that space of we are enjoying this for very different reasons, but we are all enjoying it. Rather than sort of talking across each other at cross purposes because we are either enjoying it for a reason that is exactly why another person is not enjoying it, if that makes sense? So that's kind of where I'm sitting right now. Yes, the fandom experience is kind of separating into its little nooks, which is in some ways not as fun, 'cause there's not as many people to talk to about the show when you really like something. But, I hope that we're still gonna get stuff that's gonna let us all come together. 

Ben 

The hard part about being a critic this way is you have to be there for a lot of stuff. It's hard to do good critical work behind the zeitgeist. You need to be on the front lines with the viewers reacting in real time, like, that's the experience. And so you really want to be there for the shit that's going on. And it is disheartening as a viewer to start a show having a good time and then have your reactions become grumpier from week to week. It's not fun. It burns out the audience, too, like they're not having fun with that either. I don't want that to be the default expectation of the genre. That is not my goal when I start watching a show to rag on it, it's not how I want to spend my time. 

I want this to be fun. [laughs] Truly. And I'd like for it to start being fun consistently again. 

01:18:31 - Outro

Ben 

Clearly we need to rein in questions from Alex. I feel like we spent 50 minutes talking about Alex.

NiNi 

Alex got us talking about sex work over an hour. This is ridiculous. 

Ben 

I just want you all to know that I was silenced on this podcast and not everything I said was allowed to be aired. 

NiNi 

I mean some of the things that you said, bestie, were a little on the borderline. 

Ben 

Thank you all again for sending us in your questions. We do look forward to them and they often lead to really interesting discussions for us. If you're curious about more, our inbox will be open after we finish this current season. 

NiNi 

I mean, how much after are we talking about? I know I've gotten really bad at this. I gotta get better. Okay, we're gonna try to be better about this. Gonna try. 

Ben 

Like any other blog, we will get to your asks when we get to them. 

NiNi 

And yet we get to them. But we know that you love us and you will stay tuned and wait. 

NiNi 

And with that, we out. Say bye to the people Ben. 

Ben 

Peace!