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the-conversation-pod · 1 year ago

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Comfort Food

Japan is leaning into its cozy heartwarming bona fides and we’re liking what it’s giving. We'll discuss an amnesia show and two different food shows. Please eat before you watch any of these shows or you'll be so hungry.

Ben and NiNi discuss the Japanese BLs Jack o' Frost, Our Dining Table (Bokura no Shokutaku), and Naked Dining (Zenra Meshi).

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Timestamps

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

0:00 - Welcome 1:15 - Intro 2:01 - Jack o' Frost 23:40 - Our Dining Table (Bokura no Shokutaku) 48:00 - Naked Dining (Zenra Meshi) 1:02:50 - The J-BL Victory Lap and the Food BL Flop

The Conversation: Now With Transcripts!

We received an accessibility request to include transcripts for the podcast. We are working with @ginnymoonbeam on providing the transcripts and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader.

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0:00 - Welcome

Nini

Hello, hello! Your QL fandom aunty and uncle are here with giant sunglasses, brown liquor in a flask, a folded five-dollar bill to slip into your hand when no one is looking, lukewarm takes, occasional rides on the discourse, deep dives into artistry and the industry.

Ben

Lots of simping! I’m Ben.

Nini

I’m Nini.

Ben

And this is The Conversation. About once a season, we plan to swan in and shoot the shit on faves, flops, and trends that we’ve been noticing in the BL, GL, or QL Industry. Between seasons, you can find us typing way too many words on Tumblr.

1:15 - Intro

Ben

This spring Japan continued to lean into its cozy, heartwarming bona fides, and we're liking what it’s giving! This particular week, we'll be talking about Jack o’ Frost, Our Dining Table, and Naked Dining. As with everything in this season, Nini and I recorded our initial reactions to these shows either a week ago or months ago, and we're going to append our final thoughts to the end of this. So, sit back, listen to us talk about how Japan continues to demolish all of our hearts, and we'll see you on the other side.

Nini

Demolish indeed. Catch y'all on the flip.

2:01 - Jack o’ Frost

Nini

So, Jack o' Frost. Ben, what is Jack o’ Frost about?

Ben

Jack o' Frost is about a couple in about their mid-twenties that is falling apart but gets a second chance because one of them has an amnesia incident, and cannot remember anything related to their partner. The show unpacks the amnesia trope itself as a sort of perverted version of second chance romance, as a way to force the characters to examine some of the rigidity with which they've viewed their lines when it comes to other people.

We begin at a birthday party. Ikegami Fumiya—he's a salary man and he's been living with his boyfriend, Okusawa Ritsu, who is an artist or illustrator. For whatever reason he suggests they break up during this birthday party. Ritsu gets upset and leaves. Fumiya doesn't hear from him, and then the little brother calls him the next morning because he was hit in the head and seemed dazed. Over the course of the first episode we come to understand that Ritsu doesn’t remember Fumiya and anything related to him, but seems to remember everything else.

And so we spend the next couple of episodes with Fumiya sort of hiding their original romance from Ritsu because he was maybe embarrassed about the fact that they had just broken up and thought he had a chance to get things right this time. Eventually this blows up in his face as things come out, but the two of them have to unpack what being apart means. And we end up seeing them come back together as Ritsu realizes that maybe he was also slightly at fault for some of these things.

This show ended up being incredibly satisfying to watch. I am deeply opposed to the amnesia romance trope. It is one of the few things in BL that is almost a hard line for me because I don't like one person knowing that much more about the other one. It always makes me uncomfortable. Nini, what did you think about Jack o' Frost?

Nini

I loved it unreservedly.

On the technical side, it hit everything that I'm looking for in a show—all four of the filmmaking markers. Like, the direction was good. The writing was good. The acting was good. The production was good. So, like, from a filmmaking standpoint it hit the mark 10 out of 10. Love the story.

I, too, I'm generally not a fan of the amnesia romance. Let me actually take that back. It's not that I am not a fan of the amnesia romance. It's usually handled badly, and here it's handled really well. First of all, it's not soapy at all. It feels at first like Ritsu’s just foggy, like he got conked on the head. He's a little disoriented. But then as the story plays out, they're teasing out, “Oh no, he really doesn't remember Fumiya,” and, like, he thought that he would remember, and then he doesn't remember, and then it comes out that he doesn't remember.

And then the way that they deal with that is surprisingly realistic. They go from realizing that he doesn't remember Fumiya, and then that's at the end of one episode, and then the beginning of the next episode they're at the doctor! I'm like, “Okay, yes! I think I can rock with this show!” That's just such a simple thing that so many shows that are doing the amnesia storyline do not do.

As much as I don't agree, of course, with Fumiya's decision to withhold information from Ritsu. And the reason that he withholds that information…I understand why he felt desperate enough to make that move—the fact that it's a deliberate move, and it's clearly elucidated to the audience that it was deliberate. And why he was doing it—I think that that was important. I think normally that wouldn't have been laid out in the way that it was laid out to the audience.

I like that you see the impetus for the breakup throughout. The first thing that you see in the show is the breakup, and you're just like, “Why is this happening like this?” And then as you go through the show, and you see Fumiya trying to re-engage with Ritsu in this idea of having a new relationship—a fresh start—but you're seeing the same things crop up in their relationship that Fumiya said were a problem when they were breaking up in the beginning. And then at the end, you come right back to seeing the entire fight and break up, then and you understand everything that happened. You understand fully why Fumiya made the decision to do what he did. You understand fully what was going on with him and Ritsu.

The way the show is constructed…I generally don't like when shows are constructed like that—when it's kind of this mystery and you have to put together the pieces, but here it really works. I really enjoyed the acting. Honda Kyoya, who plays Ritsu is incredibly good in this. The couple play that the two actors are using is good. The intimacy between them is good. The way that the intimacy develops is good.

You get the sense of things being new and old at the same time between the two of them, which I really like. It feels correct for the story. I really like the show. I gave it a 9.5. I dinged it half a point for reasons that we're going to get into as we discuss the show. But this is an excellent show—almost gave it a 10.

Ben

I ended up giving this show a 10, because most of the time, for me, the question is what's the premise, what are the conceits, and then do you deliver? And the show does. It’s an amnesia romance about a couple that broke up, and all of the reasons why they broke up, why they're still being drawn back to each other—how does the amnesia fit into this? Where do other people—all this is executed really well.

Ritsu doesn't know what's going on, but Ritsu's little brother does know and he is not okay with this at all. He makes that abundantly clear to Fumiya right away, and Fumiya says, “I'm going to tell him. Just let me sort things first.” And he reluctantly agrees because the last that Shuji knew his brother was in a long-term committed relationship with a guy who seemed pretty good. And Fumiya is a pretty good dude!

What we eventually learn is that this is likely Fumiya's first real romance in a way? Like, I get the sense that he maybe knew who he was as a queer person, but hadn't had any real meaningful connections with another person until he was with Ritsu. What happens in their relationship is they settle into a domestic life—it's going pretty well. But they're in their mid-twenties, and they're trying to pursue their professional objectives. Ritsu relies on his clientele to provide opportunities for him and this means that in a lot of ways he's always on.

Like, some of us have had that partner who is entrepreneurial in nature, and so they have to talk to clients during personal hours all the time. And that can be really frustrating because it feels like your couple time is being given up for everyone else, and it makes you feel like maybe your partner doesn't want to be with you—they'd rather be doing this other stuff. Maybe they're bored with you? And that's often the wrong way to think about it! They're working hard because they're trying to create opportunities for both of you. They want to work so that you two can do other cool things together. And, like, the show underscores that beautifully because we learned that part of what Ritsu was doing with all this money he was getting was he had…booked a vacation for them to go back to the place where they first were intimate with each other—that they had hoped they could see during a winter season instead, so that they could do other things like use the hot tub and make a bonfire, and do some other cute stuff. That's what Ritsu had done.

And, again, Fumiya has to come to terms with this because he was like, “We should be over!” And then he realized that Ritsu was doing all this romantic stuff for him. He and the audience is left to wonder, “What if he hadn't gotten hurt? Would Ritsu have come back and they would have maybe talked about what was going on and worked it out? Or did they need this…unusual opportunity to see each other properly?”

Fumiya has this fight with Ritsu. After he had done a little surprise party for him, got him a really cute cake, and the two of them have a really satisfying couch bed scene. Honda Kyoya and Suzuki Kouske did a really good job there. We get this really satisfying oner from bringing the cake over, to eating the cake, to flirting with each other, to making out on the couch. That is so impressive to watch the actors, have pre-built those emotions before we started the shot, to execute that in the single take. It is so satisfying on so many different levels.

I don't really like when intimate scenes have a lot of cuts and edits in them because there's a visceral quality to just being in the moment with the characters. I don't mind the editing when we're remembering something that happened because we edit our own memories. But when we the audience are experiencing a first time with someone I like for those to be handheld shots and long takes so that we can stay with the characters in the moment.

What eventually happens when all of this lying comes out is they break up for very valid reasons. Like, “You lied to me,” but Ritsu's memories come back. Another reason why I forgive this show for doing amnesia: the other guy gets his memories back. And now that he's been able to reconcile what was going on, he realizes that, prior to this, he was also maybe withholding something from Fumiya. Like, he doesn't tell Fumiya that he had already known who he was for far longer, and had been holding a weird little crush on him. I don't think the two things are equal, but it forces Ritsu to have an understanding about what people are doing and why.

Like, Fumiya did lie to him, but it was a lie because he was insecure, and no one could have predicted this would go down. He still cared about Ritsu the whole time. He just panicked because he was feeling like he was losing his boyfriend.

Nini

This is why I dinged the show that half point, because…I didn't like that the show felt like it equated Ritsu's withholding of the fact that he had met Fumiya once before. He just ran into him on the beach and he developed this little crush. He held onto that, and then he randomly saw this dude in a cafe and he recognized him. That's the quote-unquote “secret” that Ritsu is holding from Fumiya. It's not that I feel like the show equated the two, because I don't feel like the show equated the two. But they considered them too similarly for my comfort, which is why I dinged the show a half a point. But only a half a point because, in the end, does it really matter why Ritsu decides to forgive Fumiya? It doesn't to me. I am one of those people who believes in people having all the information and then deciding what they're going to do with it.

People make decisions about love all the time that don't make any sense. I am a person who really believes in love itself being a decision, and a decision that one should take with their eyes open. So, the fact that Ritsu now knows everything and he decides to forgive Fumiya and go back to him is all that I need personally. Like, you know all the information? You're good with this? You love this person, and this person loves you, and that's the way you feel? Good. Go with it. That's where I ended up, so I felt in a way—for me anyway—in the way that I conceive of love. The show didn't need that, which is why I only dinged it a half point.

Ben

So the reason why it works for me is the implication of the withheld knowledge about Ritsu having a crush on him before is that it implies that Ritsu had been holding back emotionally in their relationship. So Fumiya's uncertainty about where they stood was a little bit valid in that Ritsu hadn't put all of his cards on the table, and it left Fumiya feeling unsteady in their relationship.

Nini

If I squint I can see that, but I would have to squint.

Ben

That's okay, but like you said, like, it doesn't necessarily matter, but that's the way I ended up reconciling that.

I liked the way everyone knew what was going on and was encouraging them even down to Ritsu's ex encouraging Ritsu to show a little more patience with Fumiya than he showed him when they were together. Now that's growth.

Nini

I loved the relationship between Ritsu and his ex. It felt very real.

Ben

[laughs]

Nini

I have exes like that! When we broke up I hated them and I never wanted to see them again and then like years later we're friends and they're just like, “Oh, please don't do this shit with this person that you did with me. Figure it out.”

I like that his ex is like, “Yeah, I noticed that this is your boyfriend because he was glaring at me. Why did you invite me over to your house?” And then he realizes that Ritsu doesn't know that Fumiya is his boyfriend [Ben laughs] and he then he's like, “Okay I'm—I'm removing myself from this situation, but how would you go talk to this dude? I think you need to talk to this dude.”

He sees everything that's happening, and he doesn't insert himself, but he does try to gently shove Ritsu towards figuring it out for himself.

Ben

I really really appreciate how effectively the chemistry works between Suzuki and Honda here, that I genuinely believed their characters were into each other. Every single time these two characters have to do on-screen intimacy—in any way—it hits really well between, like, the flashback to the first time they, they had sex at the cabin they stayed in, to the pre-breakup makeout they had on the couch, to the gentle ways they touch each other—consider each other when they're existing in the same space together. They feel…very familiar with each other…in a way that was so satisfying for me as well.

Nini

You know I have to say it. The kissing is bad!

Ben

I think it's fine!

Nini

The intimacy is fantastic. Like I said, the couple play, the actual skinship work that they're doing—that's all incredibly good—like, you feel the heat. But the kissing is bad.

Ben

I'm [gonna] let you have it.

Nini

Okay. I need them to at least do more than, like, gently graze their lips against each other’s. [laughs]

It feels silly to kvetch about that when the intimacy is so good. I felt all the things that you're supposed to feel when you're looking at the intimacy onscreen. It feels hot. It feels close. You get all the feelings you're supposed to get…It's just that the kissing is bad, from a technical standpoint.

I'm letting it slide, and it's not my intention to…bitch about this…That's just me nitpicking. The important part of the heat and the kissing and all of that is the understanding of where these two people are in their physical relationship, and I get all of that. It doesn't make me question whether they're into each other or not. It is very clear that the two characters are extremely into each other, and that they want to touch each other, and that they want to be intimate with each other, and that they want to be around each other. It's just really me nitpicking.

Ben

I really just admired this show so much because I'm always complaining that we only ever see shows about boys getting together, and I want more shows about boys staying together. And this is a show about boys staying together! Like, in a roundabout way, ‘cause they're technically cheating by doing an amnesia plot, so they're getting together again…but fundamentally, it's a show about a couple in crisis saying, “We're probably going to still be in crisis, but I'd rather be in crisis with you than lonely without you.” I just think that's really beautiful because that's the work of a long-term relationship.

It's making the choice to choose each other constantly. Infatuation falls off. It's about trust in the long term, and that's what these two were able to finally get to with each other. Like, you have to work towards each other and decide who you want to be to each other long term, and what kind of life you want to build with each other, and that's the biggest thing that I think Ritsu hadn't really properly communicated to Fumiya, because Fumiya is like a salaryman-type.

Like, he's reliable. He does a lot of their cooking. Like, it's clearly his apartment. He's the one making the long-term choices for them in terms of keeping them physically whole. And Ritsu as the artist, you expect him to bring a lot of more of the the life and the other aspects of this to their thing—and he does!—like that's the whole thing with uh the secret gift of the, the second trip thing is he was trying to do that, but he doesn't say these things to Fumiya. He does these things quietly.

He does it through maybe his art sometimes, which he doesn't always show Fumiya, and he has to say these things directly because Fumiya can't just understand his way through that—which is actually kind of radical from a like, from an Eastern storytelling perspective. Like, they're very big on the whole “You should just know” thing and like it's kind of nice that this show is like, “Yeah, but he didn't. So, you should tell him.”

Nini

I take your point. I feel like a lot of the time, there's this idea that you're doing all these things—people should just know. And no, people don't know. You have to say the thing, and I like that more romance is leaning towards saying the things.

Ben

The show is good! Like let let's let's let's be clear! This show is very good! [laughs] And it surprised us! Like I was not expecting this show to be good.

Nini

I’m very, very glad that I watched this. LIke I said, Jack o’ Frost was a 9.5 out of 10 for me, and my ding was really a me thing. But this is a 10 show. I can acknowledge that this is a 10 show.

We're in the business of recommending, which I sometimes am—I would recommend Jack o’ Frost. I think it handles a subject that I usually do not enjoy in a way that I did enjoy. The filmmaking is excellent. I had a note in my notes about how much fun the set designer and set dressers must have had on the show.

Ben

They definitely did, because they must have had fun dressing up that apartment.

Nini

That apartment looks like they had so much fun designing and dressing that.

Ben

We're not necessarily the best set design analysis people. So, if some of you are very good at picking out these things in the set design, I would love to read your posts about that! Please send them to us because there's a lot to pick apart in the background of this whole show.

Nini

Ritsu’s desk alone. There's a shot in particular over Ritsu's desk that I just want to pause and look at it. The show is gorgeous. It's really well done. Go have a look-see if you haven't looked at it already.

Ben

It's a good show! I can't recommend this show enough! Y'all should really go out and watch it.

23:40 - Our Dining Table (Bokura no Shokutaku)

Nini

Our Dining Table. Ben, what is Our Dining Table about?

Ben

Our Dining Table is about two 23 year-old men meeting each other at a very turbulent time in their lives, bonding over their shared affection for one of the guy's little brother, and then learning to better take care of themselves and each other by learning to cook more together.

We meet our protagonist, Hozumi Yutaka, played by Inukai Atsuhiro, as he's working for an architecture firm, and he eats sort of the same lunch every day on a park bench outside, and about a seven-ish year old boy walks up to him who's very precocious. Asks him about his rice ball, and asks if he can have it. Yutaka doesn't really know what to do with this but the young boy, whose name is Tane, his brother Minoru runs up, apologizes for the brazenness of his brother. And the next day when they come to apologize, the little boy asks if he can come over to teach them how to make the rice balls because his brother does a terrible job with it.

What starts as a simple hangout with these two brothers, one who's 23 and out of school, the other who's 7 and very precocious, becomes this incredibly lovely friendship that starts to boil very slowly into a romance, and very much becomes a story about what it means to choose your family, whether you were born into them or not.

It's a truly lovely little production and is probably one of the most wholesome things we've watched this year.

Nini

I…loved it. It’s so layered. It is about all the things that Ben is saying it's about. Finding family, choosing family. It's about learning to let go in some ways of things that happened to you in your past, but it's also a retrospective on grief. Because the reason that Minoru is taking care of Tane is that his mom died. And when his mom died, his life just kind of stopped for a bit, and he is now taking care of his little brother so that his dad can work and support them.

Yutaka is…stunted from things that have happened in his childhood that we later discover are things that he held onto—some things that he misinterpreted, some things that he interpreted correctly, but also didn't let go of. And over the course of the story, he learns to let go of some of these things. There are things about meeting Minoru and Tane and their dad—the Ueda family—that give Yutaka the strength to face certain things about his past. And that leads to him reconciling in a way with his adoptive family. It leads to him finding this new family in the Uedas.

It's something else, and it's so well made. Production, direction, acting, writing. Top tier. Top tier stuff. I had an ache in my chest watching this show, and that ache was simultaneously happy and sad.

Ben

I know what you're talking about. Both Yutaka…and Minoru…are carrying around a great deal of grief and there's a lot on them. We learn that Yutaka is adopted in the family he's part of because his original parents passed away, and he had a very difficult time when he first moved into the Hozumi household. They recontextualized some of this later to show that maybe Yutaka took certain things a little too hard, but Yutaka's very emotionally stunted by these sort of things. He doesn't really develop a whole lot of friends and he's kind of a loner.

One of the things that's interesting is he can make rice balls, but he doesn't actually cook a lot of complex and diverse foods that often. It's his desire to…befriend this family that actually brings out a lot of his cooking skills, because he has a natural knack for some of it because he's read some stuff. But it's fun watching him learn how to do things along the way, and it's fun seeing a budding friendship/relationship make someone more sociable with other people in their lives.

Like, this is classic romance. I eat this shit up every time.

Yutaka’s really not that engaged with other colleagues at work. When he impulsively agrees to make bentos for the boys before they go out to the zoo one day, he ends up asking his co-worker—who's been wanting to befriend him for a while—to teach him how to make a bento. One of the lovely parts of that is he messes up quite a few times—he ends up practicing making the bento every day almost for weeks and getting feedback from his coworker until he can do it right. And that, for me, is just such a lovely moment. Yutaka is new to trying to cook consistently for other people, and I like that Minoru also picks up more food skills along the way. There's a lot of “food is love” stuff that's done very well in this.

Minoru tries to make sure that he can make the dishes that he remembers his mom making for him because he doesn't want his little brother to not also have a fond memory of those dishes as well, and that's really, really beautiful.

There's just a really…almost understated way that this show allows its characters to express affection. Very early in the show, Minoru is clearly-taken with Yutaka. Iijima is giving just absolutely enamored smiles at Inukai the entire time, and it is so convincing.

We get to this really interesting misunderstanding that felt super queer in about the late middle of the show, where in a very sort of…intimate moment, Minoru…kisses Yutaka on the cheek, but then feels like he overstepped, and Yutaka's not very good at expressing his feelings so he's just kind of silent about it. Then they meet up to talk about it, and Minoru misreads Yutaka's…silence for…anxiety or embarrassment, and essentially breaks up with Yutaka?

That felt super queer to me. You don't know if people are going to be receptive to what might be a huge change in their lives, and so you prepare yourself for the disappointment. I talked about this once before—or multiple times on this podcast—about the way internalized homophobia really demolishes your brain and blinds you to maybe what's happening in front of you, and I was not expecting this very heartfelt little cooking show to delve very directly into that.

Nini

I don't have anything in my show notes for this show, because I literally watched it just sighing at the screen. Everything was so well observed, everything felt so real. Everything was very gentle. The show is extremely gentle. Nothing feels harsh–not the grief, not when there's any kind of anger, when there's confusion or sadness—none of it feels harsh. It's all very gently done. The show treats the characters incredibly gently. The show brings the characters together incredibly gently. The show has a lot of heart. It feels kind of like eating warm soup on a cold day.

[Nini laughs]

I'm not always able to be verbose or coherent about the shows like those, because they just bypass the brain and they go straight into my heart. It's not always easy to talk about them when they do that.

Ben

I have a question for you, then.

Nini

Okay.

Ben

We learned from some of our friends…that the conversation that happens in the Hozumi household, revealing that Yutaka’s adoptive brother was trying to take care of him, was added for the show. How do you feel about that inclusion, and do you think it's better to have given us those insights into the Hozumi family?

Nini

It doesn't seem like this is a reversal of anything, just a deepening. I like…that Yutaka is—not wrong—because he's not wrong about the things that he experienced when he first joined the Hozumi household. His brother Yuki was quite mean to him, but that is reframed a little bit as him being maybe a little jealous.

It's that thing when a new kid comes into the family. Usually this happens when kids are younger but he was a little bit of a shit about Yutaka joining their family, and the parents weren't very proactive in ensuring that that was shut down. So, it's the first impression that Yutaka has of Yuki, and it has stuck through everything. It stuck to the point where it made him mentally erase the ways in which Yuki was good to him subsequent to that, which I found super realistic in terms of how memory works.

Yutaka sort of went into his shell after that initial hostility. That changed him. It altered him, and he didn't really come back out of that shell until he met the Uedas. They kind of gave him the courage to go back to his family—because he's been avoiding his family. The impression is that he's been avoiding his family since he left the nest. Probably since he went to college. Probably still while he was living in the house.

He held onto his hurts. He misunderstood attempts to pull him back out and nobody really knew what to do, so they just kind of let it sit and it festered a little bit. Because he's now gained the courage to go back into the house and see his family again, he is rewarded for that courage by having these things reframed for him to understand that: yes, his family does actually love him. Yes, they want him to be an integral and active part of them. I like it.

A lot of people I know didn't like it because they think that it's a redemption for the family, or it undercuts Yutaka's pain. I don't think that it undercuts Yutaka’s pain. I actually think that it makes it more tragic in certain ways. That over the years they couldn't resolve this, but also makes it more satisfying that he finally was able to resolve this. There is a sense of relief that you get watching Yutaka make peace with, and in some ways, return to his adoptive family. That was really lovely. I quite enjoyed that.

Ben

I really liked it because I don't think Yutaka can be a good member of the Ueda family without…gaining some sort of closure with how he felt about how he joined the Hozumi family.

I don't think it's about redemption for anyone or forgiving anyone. It's about Yutaka appreciating that love itself is not straightforward. It was about him recognizing that, yeah, his adoptive older brother is a little stiff, and maybe they'll never really be close, but they're also not enemies. And it allowed him to see that the Hozumis may not necessarily give him the affection that maybe he wanted directly, but they do genuinely care about him and his well-being and sincerely consider him a member of their family.

And that's something that Yutaka has to process and accept, and it's that realization that people have been trying to pour love on him his whole life that finally kicks him out of his freeze response to Minoru expressing affection for him directly. That allows the two of them to finally cross a threshold and start to be something more to each other.

Speaking of which! I really love the way Iijima played Minoru as somebody who was clearly aware of his own queerness. That was kind of understated in his performance, but he was clearly familiar with the fact that he was bisexual.

Nini

That sort of comes to light when his ex-girlfriend comes to see him. The way that he is with her—and it's on multiple levels. It's the level of: He left school when his mother died to help take care of Tane, and here's this person who he clearly has some kind of history with coming to find him and being like, “Look, how long are you going to do this?” But it's like she doesn't understand him at all, and it feels like she doesn't understand him on multiple levels.

She doesn't understand him on the familial level of why he would put his life on hold to take care of Tane, and she doesn't understand him probably on the queer level as well. Because she's here aggressively trying to make her play, and he’s having a whole other relationship basically. The way that he shrinks with her I found very effective.

Ben

IijIma is very, very good, and he does so much with his physicality in this show.

Nini

You can see the affection towards Tane and the kind of joking relationship he has with his dad. You can see when Minoru starts to fall for Yutaka, and you can see how he gradually is falling deeper and deeper and it's really all through the body language. There is work in the facial expressions and all of that, yes—both the micro expressions and the bigger ones—but the body language really. He starts turning his entire body more towards Yutaka when he talks to him. He sits closer to him when they're eating. There's a lot of, like, little things, some of which are probably in the direction, but also some which are just in Iijima’s physicality in playing the role. I really enjoyed watching him do that.

Speaking of the physicality of the role, the actor I, think his name is Kuuga who plays Tane?

Ben

His name is Maeyama Kuuga.

Nini

Such a delight! Such a delight. So lovely. That kid is going places. He's perfect!

[Ben laughs]

He works perfectly. No notes.

Ben

I saw an interview with Inukai and Iijima, where they talked about how, because they had to do a lot of long takes because Japanese cinema has a very strong stage tradition. There was a lot of necessary improvisation.

Maeyama Kuuga does a great job, but he's still a kid and he's going to stumble over his bits a little and they're going to have to work around him to make sure that the goal of the scene is accomplished, and there's a lot of giving Maeyama an understanding of what they're trying to do and why they're trying to do it so that he's invested in trying to do it, and playing around what he's going to give them. And it was very clear that he had a good time while working on this.

You mentioned the direction. As Tane gets closer to Yutaka, he starts to sit closer to him when they're having their meals together. Like, you mentioned the lunch with the ex-girlfriend. She was super rude to Tane when he spilled some juice on her or whatever, but later in the same episode he spills some juice on Yutaka, and Minoru starts to worry that Yutaka will also get mad, but Yutaka was only concerned that Tane might have hurt himself and immediately gets up and it's like, “It's okay, we can just change clothes.”

Yutaka is treating Tane in a gentle way that he wishes that he had been treated when he was younger and that extends to the way he also treats Minoru, because Minoru's relationship with his little brother is important. You can't just…start a romance with someone who's filling a parental responsibility if you're not also prepared to participate in some parental responsibilities. Whether Yutaka understood that consciously or not he adapted very quickly to it.

It's funny because Tane is the reason that they know each other, so this isn't something that he, like, met Minoru. They thought each other were cute, and then he's like, “I guess I'll deal with the kid.” Like, he's here because the kid asked him to be here originally, not the brother.

Nini

Tane brought him into things. Tane was so insistent that Yutaka be part of this that Minoru actually started looking at him. We got, of course, backstory later in the show that…Minoru had run into Yutaka once before even though he didn't remember it. Tane has, I guess, kept bringing Yutaka back to Minoru at different points in time, I guess?

Ben

Beautiful. I love it.

Nini

It's really super sweet. The the first time it happened, which was around the time that their mom died. The whole interaction between Yutaka and Tane then, which Minoru didn't remember until later, actually helped start pull Minoru out of the immediate grief of his mother's death to the point where now he's at a place where it's more manageable. And then he meets Yutaka again. He’s still got Tane, he’s really stressed out. And he calms down almost when Yutaka comes into their lives, because he is incredibly frazzled and flustered when Tane first interacts with Yutaka.

And then over the course of all these dinners and weekends and whatever that they're spending together, you see him calm right down even when Tane is throwing tantrums, even when there's a lot of stressy stuff going on—Tane’s not well, Tane’s this, Tane’s that. He's more calm even when more stressful things are happening because Yutaka’s there.

And then in comes Ueda-san just to seal the deal! He is one of the best dads that we've seen in all of BL.

Ben

I love Ueda Koji so much, oh my God. He literally picked his son up by the scruff and threw him out of the house and was like, “Go find Yutaka and fix it! [Nini laughs] Right now!” I loved it.

Nini

It was so funny, and you're the one who pointed out—because I hadn't even realized—that every time they cook, they never leave any food for Ueda-san.

Ben

They never do! [laughs]

Nini

[laughs] It's so terrible! And he's always so nice about it! He's always like, “Aw, shucks!”

Ben

I really like that one of the core themes of this show is: “Love is hard, and love does not come without the risk of loss. You will experience loss by loving some people, but you still have to love them regardless because it's what makes life worth living.”

Nini

I do like that they didn't end the show on Minoru and Yutaka getting together. They went a step beyond that because Minoru and Yutaka… This is not going to be some kind of happily ever after from them. They're both unlearning so much, and there are going to be stumbles, which is why I like the show going past the “we're together now” moment into Yutaka directly tackling his fear of loss, and beyond that into the special about some of the misunderstandings because these boys are not the best communicators—even though they're learning and trying. I really like that we sort of got a step into how their relationship is going to function and the things that they're going to learn being in a relationship with each other because you know you and I are the “tell us how these boys stay together” people and [laughs] I feel like we got a little bit of an insight into that by the end of the show.

Ben

I really liked that Minoru is going back to school, and I like that a big part of it is…he wants to stand beside Yutaka because Yutaka is a working adult. I like that in so many ways, like, leaving school when his mom died was a part of his grief. And, like, going back to school in so many ways communicates that he's finally come to terms with it and can focus on his own goals again. Which is interesting because, like, the ex-girlfriend—it's what she wanted for him, but she was kind of selfish about it.

I also like that we're still seeing them developing at the end. Like, this show isn't “and then they lived happily ever after.” I like that we're leaving them at the beginning of what feels like something that can really work that they're still figuring out.

Nini

Overall, this is a 10 show. Ben, is this a 10 show for you?

Ben

Oh, absolutely! Like, no questions about it. Go watch it. I'll be watching it again.

48:00 - Naked Dining (Zenra Meshi)

Nini

And now Naked Dining—Zenra Meshi. Ben, what is Naked Dining about?

Ben

A Japanese salary man who secretly overperforms at work who, about six months after his grandmother dies, receives some time-delayed mail from her encouraging him to head back to his hometown and take care of some things at her house. While there he runs into a young man who was a friend of his grandmother's who has been taking care of the house. After going through some of her things, he decides he wants to complete the culinary journey she had taken herself on. As she had gotten older and sick, she decided to do a last form of maybe, like, international travel by preparing foods from other cultures using the appropriate ingredients, and this young man—who works at a grocery store—was helping acquire these ingredients for her.

The two of them start hanging out on Saturdays to follow through on her path, and it becomes a really interesting examination of some ideas about different parts of the wider LGBT acronym…? Gets a little muddled towards the end unfortunately, but I guess we'll get into that here in a second.

But basically it's a Japanese food BL we had a mostly decent time with until the end.

Nini

I feel like it had a lot of ideas…and it cycled through them just one after the other—just idea after idea after idea—but none of the ideas are really taken through to a conclusion. None is really a through line through the whole show. It's not that none of them emotionally land because they absolutely emotionally land, but they also feel like you don't get to sit with any of the feelings that you have about anything that happens because the show was then sort of onto the next idea and onto the next idea

I was just kind of left with a, “Oh, well that was interesting and you know, helpful…But what happened to this? It just went away?”

Ben

I feel like two or three different show pitches were being merged in this.

They have this whole conceit with the naked dining. So Souta has this thing where every day when he goes home after secretly overworking he makes himself a bowl of ramen, and then he strips off his clothes to enjoy his food without anything in the way. At first this was kind of a cool idea for me that your clothes are a costume, and you're wearing the salary man persona when you leave the house. Food is one of the few tangible joys he has in his life, and so he's stripping off this costume so he can be closer to the food, but I feel like the show never interrogates the emotional core of why he does this?

And then it ends with he and Mahiro doing it together…and it just feels unearned as a shortcut to say “well they fucked.”

Nini

I understand the, the concept of Mahiro accepting that part of Souta, but the thing I didn't get that maybe I wanted to understand is why Mahiro might find that idea appealing. When it comes to the two characters, I feel like I have a really good handle on Souta. I feel like I understand his thought processes and his motivations, and I feel like I am emotionally connected to Souta. Mahiro is a little more, like, slippery for me.

Mahiro just feels…sad…and, like, he's been nursing this crush forever…but I don't have a sense of who Mahiro is outside of the way that he feels about Souta.

Ben

Souta was really kind to him when he was a teenager, and he fell for Souta, but Souta didn't even see him that way at all. And it seemed like it twisted around whatever sort of other personal struggles he was having at that time and, like, get fucked with his own sense of worthiness and he just really never recovers from it.

I got frustrated because around episode like 7 or 8. Mahiro kisses Souta when he's sleeping. Souta is confused because he's feeling things from Mahiro and asks him—kind of innocently—if they can kiss again because he's trying to understand how he's feeling. Like, “You kissed me, can I kiss you back to see what's going on?" and Mahiro gets upset because he doesn't want Souta to kiss him if Souta can't kiss him like he likes him. Which, fine. I get that. I tell boys all the time, “Don't flirt with me unless you mean it.” But I didn't think that was fair because he had initiated things with Souta, and that was one of the big struggles on the back end—like, even down to the final episode.

So they've gone on this huge arc.They’ve been cooking these foods together. Souta’s finally figuring himself out. Souta’s female coworker…showed up to Mahiro and was like, “Of course, you know this means war,” and she puts on her eye black—

[both laugh]

—and they're going at it trying to fight for Souta's affections or whatever. Great. Amazing stuff.

And, like, she accepts her defeat as gracefully as she can. I did not hate this character—she got on my nerves a little bit—but she treated Mahiro like a true romantic rival, and I got mad respect for that.

Souta is called away for work. And this show does some New Siwaj bullshit to us by, like, giving us a flashback to high school to be like, “Once! In high school! He said to his homies that he wants to connect Japan to the rest of the world! Which means that now that he's gotten a job in Singapore! He's never coming back!”

And it's, like, you guys are in, like, a real relationship here. You guys have gone through all of the things! And then Souta comes back and is like, “I've made a decision without you! I'm going to stay in Japan!” Like okay, whatever.

And Mahiro's, like, mad about this! And Souta has to grab him to keep him from running away again, and I was like, “God damn, bro, we have eight minutes left in this show!”

Nini

I don't know whether they felt like they needed to fill time or—I don't know what it was—but the plot really got tortured, like… You're right that it feels a little New Siwaj-y, because the show is going along pretty well—slow start! Yeah, it gets to the middle, and there are these really good ideas that are building up here. And then…somewhere around the time that Souta asks Mahiro if he can kiss him things just kind of, like, fizzle?

It felt like they wrote eight episodes worth of stuff and had to stretch it to fit 12.

Ben

It feels like there were 12 recipes, and they really, really wanted to make sure that each recipe had its own episode. This was also a little bit frustrating for me because I don't always feel like the food of the episode matched with the tone that was going on.

Nini

I feel like the food didn't fit at all! I also wasn't sure what the theme of each episode was because it wasn't always clear.

Ben

There's a little bit of an idea with the food, like, the dishes get more complex over time, and Souta, who doesn't have a whole lot of kitchen skills, is picking some up along the way. This was actually really good and I really enjoyed this. I liked that by the end Souta was able to cook along with Mahiro even if there were still new techniques for him to pick up. That was incredibly satisfying. The way that the cooking itself feels is used well in the show but, like, the specific dishes don't always feel like they resonate for the episode—and that's the problem! I can't remember any of the specific dishes they made, which is kind of frustrating for me in a show that was so much about the food.

Nini

I think I'm not accustomed to Japanese drama being this slack. That's the best word I can use to describe it. It feels slack. It feels like there's way too much room in it somehow…and they're just kind of ambling around within the drama.

I haven't seen a Japanese drama that feels this purposeless.

Ben

And that's, I think, the heart of it. With most Japanese dramas I know if I care about it almost instantly like they usually set up a really solid premise, and part of what ended up really frustrating me with this show is I feel like the “naked dining” as part of the core premise is deeply undercooked and doesn't develop into something really interesting. Like they were so close!

As a result it ends up kind of feeling weirdly flat by the time we get to the end.

Nini

You know what I feel? This is gonna sound real weird but follow me on this. I think that this kind of story, that the story—these stories that they wanted to tell—would have worked better as an anthology or something where they were following multiple couples.

Ben

I agree…and I feel like they could have focused on the role of the dish a lot more.

Nini

This feels like it was originally like a Midnight Diner or a Three Star Bar in Nishi Ogikubo, and I feel like the if it was gonna be 12 episodes, and it was gonna be focused around what it's focused around, because they really seemed to want to focus it around these recipes, they needed to use up the room. And one of the ways that they could have used up the room, with even some of the same writing and some of the same stories they wanted to tell, would be to separate those stories up over multiple individuals or multiple couples.

And I feel like the show kind of had the right elements for it as well because one of the best episodes of the show is the episode where they have to have the anniversary party for the boss at work. It just feels like the strongest episodes are when they actually pulled somebody else in, like when they did the Taiwanese hot pot with Ryu.

Ben

Great episode.

Nini

I think what happened at the back end of the show is that it spent way too much time with just Souta and Mahiro.

Ben

You're correct. Like, the two episodes you highlighted: the episode where they cook for the boss, and the episode where they hang out with Ryu, are interesting because when they're around other people, they naturally start to turn into a little bit of a team. It's why the Ryu hotpot episode works so well because they're being super awkward with each other. We can feel that their dynamic is struggling and Ryu is like, “I'm going to fix these gays, and then I'm going to go to sleep.” The perfect elder gay.

[Nini laughs]

Nini

And I love that and he really did try! And then Mahiro’s bullshit got in the way.

Ben

Like that—that's the whole show! Like things were going well and then Mahiro's bullshit got in the way and we don't even know why.

Nini

Mahiro, I understand why you're afraid of this, right? But you kissed the man, and he's literally standing there like, “Can we try this again?”

Ben

Take responsibility for what you did!

Nini

And you're just like… “Naw.”

There were times honestly, when I just wanted to yell at Mahiro “Shit or get off the motherfucking pot already. I'm so tired of you.” [laughs] I got tired of Mahiro! And then I started feeling bad for my man Souta, because he was trying!

He was trying so hard. He was trying hard to be honest, he was trying hard to be open. He was trying really hard to understand himself because he didn't want to dick Mahiro around because he cared about him. So he is literally trying to work so much of the shit out by himself and only coming to Mahiro when he couldn't work shit out on his own anymore and he needed to work it out with the person that he's feeling all these things about—which is normal! And understandable!

And Mahiro treated him like he had kicked his dog. I got so frustrated with Mahiro. I just really did. And the thing is I understand! Okay, yes, you're scared. Okay, fine. Get it. But I'm still frustrated with you, man.

[sighs] Anyway, all that to say: Ben gave it an 8. I gave it a 7.

I had a very visceral and personal reaction to certain parts of this show and then the rest of the show let me down, so I feel more disappointed by it than Ben does I think. Which is why, for me, it's a 7.

Ben

I think, like, having sat here for the last 40 minutes unpacking it, I'm probably going to lower to 7, and it becomes a 7 because it has “failure to execute the core premise stuff,” and I feel like that's a big thing for me. Like, if you at least complete the core premise, but just stumble around it, you can get an 8. And I don't think this show really completes the core premise. So I think this is gonna be a 7 for us. So that's a chop unfortunately.

1:02:50 - The J-BL Victory Lap and the Food BL Flop

Ben

All right! We're back for the outro! We watched Jack o’ Frost, Our Dining Table, and Naked Dining. All right, panel! Tens or chops? Jack o’ Frost, Nini!

Nini

[laughs] 10.

Ben

10 for me!

Our Dining Table!

Nini

10.

Ben

10 for me!

Naked Dining?

Nini

Chop.

Ben

Two chops! [Slaps desk and laughs]

Nini

So, where does that leave you feeling about Japan and Japanese BL drama, and where does that leave you feeling about food drama?

Ben

Oh, interesting. For Japanese dramas…I feel…good. I have a lot to feel good about, though.

So, Jack o’ Frost completed the MBS Drama Shower Year One set of outings, which I mostly really enjoyed. Drama Shower 2 has started. We get a whole ‘nother the year of MBS content. I feel great!

Our Dining Table—I do not know what that particular network is going to do next.

And even though Naked Dining wasn't great per se there were good elements in it. So, like, it's not saying “This is horrible. Goodbye. Boo.” Like, even though: two chops.

I'm feeling good about Japanese BL in general.

For food drama, I gotta be honest. I'm a little concerned because as much as I loved Our Dining Table I feel like they lost touch with the food thing in the last, like, third of the show as we got really caught up in the romantic stuff—and it's fine. That took precedence at that portion. But I don't really feel like we finished strong on a food portion of the show the way we open strong with food. Only real minor knock I gave that show—not enough for me to take a point from it.

Nini

I mean Ben's the big J-BL person. Like, Ben's had to sort of shivvy me into a lot of J-BL, and I have not regretted it to be fair to him. I'm feeling pretty good about J-BL. I feel like J-BL gives me what K-BL would like to give me, which is contained stories like with high production value and low runtime. But somehow they managed to grab my emotions in a way that K-BL has very seldom managed to do at this point.

Ben

There's a specificity to what the Japanese story wants to unpack that I don't think that any of the Korean projects has properly honed in on. Thing for me with Japan is…up until Naked Dining, I had never once felt like my time was being wasted, and that's not something I can say about any of the other countries.

Nini

They're just the granddaddy, man, aren't they? Like, they built this shit. And what they're doing now feels a little bit like…coming into the room and putting your dick on the table.

[laughs]

Because what we do know is coming out of Japan the rest of this year right now is sequels. Like, they have done so much good shit. They can just come back to us and say, “Yeah, more of that!”

[Ben laughs]

—and everybody's like yes, please! You know what I mean? It feels a little bit like Japan is taking a victory lap right now and I gotta say it's well deserved.

Ben

That's a really interesting observation I hadn't considered: that the presence of sequels is a statement about how strong their work is.

Nini

I mean look at what's coming up. Minato’s Laundromat 2. I didn't watch Minato’s Laundromat, but everybody seems to be excited about it. We got Utsukushii Kare 2 already this year and the movie Utsukushii Kare: Eternal. We got the Cherry Magic Movie. This is gonna be the fourth like return to What Did You Eat Yesterday? because you had the original, you had the special, you had the movie. This is the fourth return to What Did You Eat Yesterday? They're coming back to She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat like.

Ben

MBS liked BL enough that they decided to renew the slot for another year and the first offering’s pretty strong. Like, real shit, y'all, if you—you're gonna be hearing this a little late, I think, so Tokyo in April is… may have finished by the time you hear this.

Nini

We're gonna be talking about that in the fall. Japan really does feel like it's taking a victory lap right now. Like even with its original content. It's all like light work.

In terms of what J-BL is doing, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the J-BL, Ben.

Ben

Is it hittin’ for you?

Nini

It’s hittin’. It’s hittin’. It’s hittin’.

And then in terms of what food BL is doing. Look, I don't know, I feel like food BL is kind of all over the map—that very few people are really clear about what they want to say using food. I feel in general, the food BLs are kinda “hmmm,” and this is not just Japan, because they've been trying them in Korea, they've been trying them in Thailand, and none of those have really hit. I don't know how I feel about these food stories because I don't know that the people who are making them know what they want to say.

So, J-BL: 10. Food BL right now: mostly chop.

Ben

HA! Two chops!

[both laugh]

Nini

Anyway, that is going to wrap us up on Comfort Food. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#podcast #lgbtq #jack o' frost #our dining table #naked dining #bokura no shokutaku #zenra meshi #japanese bl #bl series #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 3 #summer 2023 #summer series

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eatclean-bewhole · 3 months ago

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We figure we’re already having these conversations. Why not hit record and make it a podcast!

The Real Nutrition Talk podcast is where a functional nutritionist (myself) and holistic chef (Andrea) come together to share our expertise and advice on health, nutrition, and wellness. We dive deep into the latest trends, new science, culinary medicine, timeless practices, and practical tips that can help you nourish your body, mind, and soul.

Whether you’re looking to improve your diet, explore holistic health practices, or simply live a more balanced life, our conversations offer insights and actionable steps to help you thrive!

Let us know what topics you want to hear!

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trapangeles · 8 days ago

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O'Shae Speaks His Truth: From "8am in Family Court" to "Ladies Love O'Shae / Ni99as Hate S.O.A.P."

In the world of rap, authenticity is currency, and O'Shae (UCanCallMeSoap) has plenty of it. With raw, unfiltered honesty, the L.A.-based rapper is captivating audiences with his latest project, Ladies Love O'Shae / Ni99as Hate S.O.A.P. and the poignant single "8am in Family Court." This interview dives deep into O'Shae’s journey, creative process, and his unwavering commitment to staying true to himself amidst the chaos of the music industry.

A Father’s Fight: The Story Behind "8am in Family Court"

For O'Shae, "8am in Family Court" is more than music—it’s his lived experience. “My inspiration for the record came from personal experiences. I’ve been battling in court for custody of my daughter for years now,” he explains. The track is a powerful outlet for his frustrations, a way to release emotions without succumbing to destructive behaviors. “A lot of fathers never get the opportunity to feel heard or understood when it comes to their children, and I want to let it be known that that’s not true.”

The song’s title carries weight, symbolizing the countless mornings he and his family have spent in courtrooms. “Some days were better than others, but we show up and continue to fight,” he shares. His hope is to inspire other fathers to persevere. “I pray that my message touches the hearts of men who feel discouraged when their bitter baby mommas try to use their child as a pawn. You’re not alone. There’s a way to have your children—you just have to trust the process.”

Bringing the Vision to Life

O'Shae’s dedication to authenticity shines in the music video for "8am in Family Court." Collaborating with videographer Skinny Kenny, he integrated personal elements like a viral video of his daughter, family photos, and even court documents served to him. “I wanted to make it as authentic as possible and show that I am a real father who has been present in my child’s life since birth,” he says. The visuals encapsulate his raw emotions and determination to keep fighting.

Duality and Growth: "Ladies Love O'Shae / Ni99as Hate S.O.A.P."

With Ladies Love O'Shae / Ni99as Hate S.O.A.P., O'Shae explores a dual narrative. The first half celebrates women, offering tracks designed to uplift and empower. “I wanted to create a project my female audience could listen to and feel respected—something to boost their confidence,” he explains.

The second half confronts envy and resentment. “No matter how much love and respect I show, some people will always hate,” O'Shae says. “It used to bother me, but now I embrace it. People don’t like others being better than them, and I’ve never had to be anyone but me.” This unapologetic self-awareness fuels the project’s raw honesty.

Lessons from The Liq Podcast Open Mic

Despite winning his round on The Liq Podcast Open Mic, O'Shae’s experience wasn’t without challenges. Reflecting on his tension with the host, he says, “I feel like he was looking for viral moments to boost his audience. As soon as I felt the energy turn negative, I knew it was best to remove myself.” While critical of the platform’s professionalism, he acknowledges a takeaway: “There are weirdos in the industry, and I could have handled it differently by not giving him the satisfaction.”

Evolving as an Artist

O'Shae’s growth is evident in his willingness to take creative risks. “I’m singing on a few records now, something I wasn’t comfortable with before,” he reveals. His track “15 More Mins” pays homage to the late Drakeo The Ruler, showcasing his evolving wordplay and versatility. “Although I’m not against criticism, I know who I am and what I’m capable of. I’m claiming the whole road as my own.”

Advice for Aspiring Artists

For those navigating the industry, O'Shae offers wisdom forged through experience: “Keep God first. Surround yourself with solid, loving people. Stay true to yourself and know that everyone isn’t your friend. Plenty of people are waiting for you to crash out, but you’ve got to believe you’re better than that.”

What’s Next for O'Shae?

Fans can expect visuals from Ladies Love O'Shae / Ni99as Hate S.O.A.P., along with a new EP titled Son of a Pimp on the horizon. He’ll also be performing at Pookie F’n Rude’s Fire & Water Sign Birthday Bash with DJ Carisma on November 22 and at Ivery Da Goddess & Friends next month. “I’m always in motion,” he says confidently.

Connecting with O'Shae

O'Shae’s journey is deeply personal, and he invites fans to join him every step of the way. “Follow me on all social media platforms @UCanCallMeSoap and find my music on any streaming platform under ‘O’Shae,’” he says.

With each track, video, and performance, O'Shae is proving that his story—and his voice—are here to stay.

Have you been spending all your money and time on making music and shooting videos, but still not getting any exposure? Tired of just spinning your wheels? You know to get exposure you need to get featured on blogs, radio stations, playlist, and get your music e-mail blasted out to the masses. Need help getting all that done? Then check out the Package we’ve made available for you below!

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xplrvibes · 10 months ago

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Any good recommendation for podcast with Sam and Colby? Need fuel to survive third semester of med school hehe

Sadly, snc haven't appeared on that many podcasts over the years, so the well isn't very deep. But I'll give you a short list of a few of the appearances that stuck out to me - if you've already listened to them, feel free to stop by and ask for more!

1. Morbid Podcast Episode 398- True Crime & True Hauntings with Sam and Colby: This one is good if you are into learning about the history of something. If you aren't familiar with Morbid, they do a true crime podcast that also occasionally dives into hauntings and urban legends. They covered a Sam and Colby video in one of their episodes, which led to snc reaching out to them and appearing on an episode dedicated to a military ship with a haunted background.

2. The Checkup with Doctor Mike- Colby Brock has Cancer and Doctors Let Him Down (video available on youtube): obviously, this one deals with very sensitive and serious topics and themes and was recorded shortly before Colby began chemo. I'd only listen to this one if you are comfortable with listening to some of the things he went through during the first half of his cancer battle (it can get intense), but this one is also a good listen if you really want to get a peak inside the relationship between snc and just how much of a united front they are in all aspects of their lives. It's also probably a lot easier to listen to now that we know he's cancer free, as well.

3. Kong Pham- Sam and Colby (available on youtube): Kong is a long time friend and business associate of snc's, so this podcast has a really comfortable and casual feel compared to some other times where they may be in full "snc llc" mode. They really go behind the scenes and in depth on a lot of the highs and lows in their lives - fascinating listen!

4. You've Got Company with Kris Collins, Episode 1 (available on youtube): another familiar and comfortable one with a trusted friend, they really let their guard down in this one. They're also hungover, which helps set the tone. 🤣

A few honorable mentions: the Joe Rogan Podcast (very long, not a lot of new info), the podcast with Heath and Zane (too many people talking over one another, but some good laughs), Share Ur Scare with Brennen Taylor (Brennen is Brennen but it had some fun moments).

#asks #sam and colby #colby brock #sam golbach

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talenlee · 7 months ago

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CoX: Polysynthesis

This is an explanatory writeup of one of my Original Characters (OCs). Nothing here is necessarily related to a meaningful fiction you should recognise and is shared because I think my OCs are cool and it’s cool to talk about OCs you make.

“I know what it takes to be a top hero.”

When your powers involve the ability to synthesise together chemicals into other objects, there are a lot of routes you can take them. You could invest heavily in engineering and mechanisation and make guns or bombs. Or you could dive deep into studying pharmaceuticals and synthetic chemistry and make a whole bunch of chemical compounds, like riot foam, tailored vision-warping drugs, and degrading crystal blades.

Polly to her fans, Syn to her friends, she’s a firm believer in study, theory, and then practical applications. You might know her because of fan pages, interviews or podcasts she’s done, her discussion of Identity Management or Chemical Innovation.

Polysynthesis has a very clear, crisp, public hero persona when she’s interacting with other heroes in most work settings. This is a woman who knows that she could be on the record and on camera and she is clear about communicating that whenever she can. Science talk, hero talk, the persona that many heroes consider On, that’s what most people encounter when they deal with her; Polly in action is very On. This means very rarely is she critical of others, and likes to highlight the ways she’s using complex chemistry or the like to defeat her opponents.

Which is a little at odds with the ways she does that, which can be flooding small spaces with toxic gases or riot foam and stabbing into things with knives that she routinely discards as she moves through a scene. There’s a lot of very tangible, physical violence, brutish almost, as she espouses specific chemical agents that she’s using to break through armour or immobilise enemies harmlessly.

Stepping back from public events, she’s much more relaxed, but still has a public persona; That persona is a science communicator, someone who lives in the overlap of nerd and jock, who goes to talk about ways that scientific devices and problem solving applications work together, but she’s very tangible, very material; not dimensional science or big power manufacturers but rather a fascination with chemistry in people’s everyday lives. Things you can do and make with stuff around your home.

Because that’s what she can do. Polly can synthesise anything she wants, from chemicals in her body, and then create them and hold them in her hand. She’ll tell you how hard it is to make something like an iphone because there’s a lot of literally microscopic action in the process and then she’ll do it anyway because she wants you to know she’s really good. But the problem is that’s a party trick – the phone is one design she knows how to make, and they’re not just easily transferred; making an iphone with a slightly different case? Easy enough. Changing the architecture inside it? The software? Absolutely not. That’s why she relies on making things that are fungible and simple most of the time – drugs, poisons, chemical agents and knives. It’s also part of her training regimen: she generates synthetic compounds for her own body, that let her create and maintain optimal states. It’s why she’s tall, strong and jacked.

This has also a related oddness regarding her and food, which is you’ll never see her eating food in public. She drinks – usually water – but in public spaces she’s very deliberate to never be seen eating anything in public. This is because when she revealed on a podcast to an interviewer that she synthesises food products in her body to make her created objects, and that means she consumes a lot of food, she found out there was a large body people on the internet who were suddenly Very Interested in her in ways she found a little uncomfortable, and wanted to discourage.

Polly believes firmly in not devaluing others’ work with her own powers. When she gets a new outfit, she pays the designer a user’s fee and then replicates her own copy of the outfit with her powers. This vision of not devaluing work disappears when she’s making things like a smartphone or a tracking device, and when pressed as to why she mostly shrugs about it. There’s a conversation about depriving value from artists versus depriving value from corporations, but she’s not likely to get into it.

Build

Polly’s a tank! A bio armour/claws tank. That means she’s got a build that focuses on being tough and being able to spam her area affect attacks in order to grab and hold aggro, and then it doesn’t matter if she does lots of single target damage as long as she can do it indefinitely. Her build has:

45+% defense to Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold and Melee damage

41% defence to Energy and Negative

90% resistance to smashing and lethal damage

80% global recharge

the ability to double-stack Follow Up for a 60% global damage buff

The ludicrous survivability and auras of Bio Armour.

I like this build a lot, no link at the moment because exports still don’t work. I like how her build can use Musculature to improve its damage output, and run Assault as well, because Bio Armour has so much recovery.

History

Okay, so there’s this twist in Polysynthesis’ story. That is, part of what helps her maintain her secret identities, is that Polysynthesis isn’t a hero from Primal Earth. She started her life on Praetoria, as a completely different person, who looked different and had a different gender. That old identity doesn’t have a lot to build a story out of, because and this is very important, I don’t ever want to do anything with that old identity. It’s a deadname, and a dead identity. The important thing about it is to explain how Polly looks at the world around her now.

She was used to partying and enjoying herself and indulging and making the coolest drugs for rich and elite people, far away from the real problems real people dealt with in their real lives. The realisation after the fall of Praetoria of how much that old life of casual joy and pleasure was built on neglecting good she could do in a community of people who could suffer was part of what shocked her into making herself into a heroine – and she’s very much trying to jump to the top step here, which is why there’s this drive to succeed to excess.

And also why she uses an alternate identity to go out and party and get high and vent the anxiety of someone who struggles with the trauma of having her whole world ended. And that’s just part of the history of this character. Because, that’s all stuff that flowed from conversations with friends, while the start for her story, well, the start was something I think of as very important to almost all forms of OC creation, and that is, blatant and unapologetic theft.

I watched too much of My Hero Academia which I would say now is ‘more than just the first Gentle story arc.’ It’s not a good show. It’s a show about superheroes that doesn’t understand what superheroes are or what superheroes are for and largely thinks that Japan’s school system is good for educational outcomes and also good for students. The show nonetheless has a bunch of popular and well-known characters that mean there’s a ton of fanart of these characters that look cool. In the context of roleplay, being able to grab art and use it to highlight or emphasise moments in storytelling, that’s great fun and valuable, so having a character who looks like someone where there’s a ton of existing fanart in different contexts is really useful!

In My Hero Academia there’s a character named Momo Yaoyorozu. She’s the superhero Creati, and if you’ve been having your nose twitch while I described Momo and her powers, yeah, this is why. I made Polly as a whole-character reference to Momo. Momo’s powers are interesting and cool but also not central to the story so it doesn’t matter how many times a problem could be solved by having Momo come up with a solution for it but instead the story needs Momo to be very limited and kinda stupid. Momo at one point uses her powers to create a chain gun that she then uses to not shoot at things and just as a dead weight, and that’s… so silly.

Also, she’s a woman in My Hero Academia so her life is going to suck anyway, because that anime sucks at writing women, period.

There’s also stuff about Momo that doesn’t make sense? Like her body and her attitude and the way she models is all very strange when it’s meant to be a what fifteen years old? That seems wildly ridiculous given just how she looks. And she’s meant to be smart, a highly skilled student, but her ability to conceive of solutions to problems in the series is preposterously basic, because the story doesn’t ever want her solutions to be good ones.

Polly was originally going to go by ‘Syn’ socially, because I like when a character’s appellation is a little more challenging than just the most obvious one. It shows when a player has done a little extra and remembers a detail like that dealing with a character, right? But then a friend’s character, a very sweet Starfire like, pointed out that ‘Polly’ is cute. And well, damnit, it is, and fine. She’s Polly now.

There’s also the way that I didn’t want Polly to be too omnidisciplinary. If she’s doing a ton of research into engineering and chemistry regularly, and then praciticing using those powers and working out, there’s going to be stuff she’s not an expert in, especially when she’s trying to project an entire upbringing in a world where she’s an interloper. To that she recruited a ‘social media manager’ whose job it is to present her pictures and manage her appointments on podcasts and stuff like that, and that’s Mac.

Mac has to deal with all sorts of things, because Polly as a hero is great, Polly as a public science communicator is amazing, and Polly as a social media management client is a nightmare. She doesn’t get the memes, she doesn’t know what she should set up, and she doesn’t look at the product either. Which means that Mac wakes up to a phone upload of thousands of photos and a calendar and then has to try and wrangle Polly to make her appointments (with the always very understandable interruption of hero work), while also dealing with Polly’s own difficulty being, well, normal. Mac is constantly frustrated by Polly missing opportunities and being unavailable when she needs to be (because there’s a nonzero chance she was sleeping in because she’s still going out and partying).

And all this is because a friend, hearing about Polly, who doesn’t even play City of Heroes, went ‘I bet her social media manager’s job sucks’ and we talked about it!

Polly’s background, of a terrible self-centered drug dealer to the privileged elite who shifts into a heroic chemistry teacher was literally a reference to a Breaking Bad meme another friend shared when she heard about the concept of Polysynthesis. This same friend also had the same opinion of Creati, and helped kick off the idea of how to use the same powerset without being focused on technically challenging creations that aren’t meaningfully useful.

I like hanging on to these details about how a character was shaped by my friends, because my friends are cool, and OCs are like dolls that we can play with together. It’s nice to have creative play narratives with people you care about! It’s cool and I recommend it!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#City of Heroes #My OCs #Making #Media

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leelee120000 · 11 months ago

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Generation Loss Part Two: The Interview

June 14, 2023

Introduction:

In this exclusive interview with Nathan Hanover, I took a deep dive into the world of music design and life as a composer. Hanover is a composer who specializes in creating music for video games, podcasts, and interactive media. His music is everywhere, highlights include The Joy of Creation, a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan game; Dialtown, a phone dating simulation game; Just Roll with It, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast; and most recently the soundtrack of Generation Loss. Hanover has an Undergraduate Degree from the University Centre of Colchester in Film Music and Soundtrack Production.

Photo of Generation Loss logo

Generation Loss:

Generation Loss is an episodic horror semi-scripted live-stream show. The show has had a remarkable impact on the lives of many in such a short time, it’s been a week since the finale.

McPherson: How would you describe the start of your involvement in Generation Loss? What was the choice to work on it like? Did you know much about it beforehand?

Hanover: I knew about the project very late compared to the rest of the Generation Loss community who have followed the project for around two plus years. After working with one of the members of the Just Roll With It team to compose the soundtrack for their horror Dungeons and Dragons podcast, Blood in the Bayou, I became aware of Generation Loss and planned to reach out to the creator for possible employment in the show.

Surprisingly however weeks later I got a private message in my Twitter inbox from said creator of Generation Loss who had streamed a video game earlier that year which I also was involved in called Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim. He had enjoyed the music in this game a lot, and once my work finished on Blood in the Bayou, its creator suggested me to the Generation Loss creator, complimenting my music, my turnaround time, etc. So, while I planned to contact them, they contacted me. {Ranboo, the Generation Loss creator, uses he/they pronouns.}

McPherson: G.L. has such an already iconic story and aesthetic. What was composing music for it like? Did you find it limiting?

Hanover: As you noted above, I have a Bachelors’s with an honors degree in Film Music & Soundtrack Production however mostly specialize in Video Game music, this project was exciting for me as this was technically the first time I had put my degree to the test, this wasn’t a game. This project was a mix of live theatrical performances and pre-recorded scenes, there weren’t any concept art, cutscenes, or shots I could look upon to brainstorm my ideas as 90% of the show was live, other than looking at the set of the Cabin, the already released marketing, and the script, I had to conjure ideas I thought would fit into the scenes I had built in my imagination.

With the marketing already released and trailers of the show on the internet, stock music had been used of an 80s FM (Frequency Modulation Synthesis) Synthesizer repeating a dissonant stabbing chord pattern, the creator of Generation Loss enjoyed this sound, and I used this as the basis of my soundtrack, taking this idea and creating my own. Generation Loss’s theme includes two main motifs, the stabbing chord pattern, and an arpeggiated sequence of this same chord. The chord I decided to use was an A Minor with a sharp 7th (the G# note in this context) creating an AmMaj7 (A Minor Major 7 chord), in the correct context this dissonant chord can become bittersweet, tugging at the heart, however putting the 7th at the bottom of the chord creates a Minor 2nd clash between the G# and the A, always giving that sense of unease and raw dissonance. This chord progression and the arpeggio outlining the chord show up all over the soundtrack, even hidden in other character themes.

I played around with modulation effects, granular synthesis, and stuttering glitch effects to make the soundtrack sound as unique as it does, this was quite fun for me as most of my other work has been long-drawn-out ambient pieces, Jazz or Swing, or even Orchestral. So to work in this retro 80s aesthetic, but to corrupt it in such a way where it was listenable, but unusual as if the act of Generation Loss had taken effect on the soundtrack was enjoyable to me and opened the door to truly unique ideas.

McPherson: G.L. has some of the hardest-hitting emotions in horror. Your music is a significant part of that impact. How do you do it – how do you create such emotional music?

Hanover: For me, to make emotional music work I have to determine what notes I’m going to use, what scale to write in, and what directions I want to take the piece, but the key factor people may not think of is not what’s written in the music, but what’s written around the music or what the music is actually being paired to. For example, in episode 1 of Generation Loss, there is a mixture of unease, ambiance, and comedic music, when the main character goes into the basement the music is a long drawn-out ambiance, unsettling effects, and detuned piano, but the scene had been juxtaposed by a comedic cooking segment only moments ago. The tonal whiplash in the music makes the scene hit hard, one moment they are cooking slime for a slime demon, and the next they are exploring a dusty basement with literal skeletons. Episodes 2 and 3 were similar but the style had changed, the ambiance had been removed in favor of SAW-esque pieces, driving drums, electronic stings, etc. but still included elements of comedy, “The Lasor Room” for example inspired by old 70s spy films, juxtaposed by the driving rhythm that scored the scene moments before where the characters begged for their lives on a carousel.

McPherson: What, if any, were some of your stresses or worries while making the soundtrack? In contrast, what was the most enjoyable part of the process?

Hanover: My biggest worry was the deadline, while I started the project in January 2023, I had only created the main theme and a random draft of an idea that eventually became the opening to “Live or Die”, my work truly began at the end of March and had around 2 months to create the soundtrack, due to how tight the deadline was I was writing music days before the first episodes premier and is why the soundtrack has a delayed release as online stores request music to be submitted 3-4 weeks before release. I found feedback quite hard as usually I work 1-to-1 with the employer to show off drafts and brainstorm ideas, track titles, etc. but this project was different due to how busy everyone was, I’d essentially write several pieces a week, get feedback, and then create edits to be greenlit the following week and repeat. No one had time to sit down and brainstorm so a lot of the feedback was in bursts but due to a timezone difference, this meant I’d get feedback very late into the day for me to act upon the following morning.

In contrast, I feel my favorite part of the process was to see how excited the creators and actors got about my music which encouraged me to create better and better pieces. One of the actors even now talks about my music and how passionate he is about my soundtrack which is nice to see. Another thing I enjoyed was hiding stuff IN the soundtrack itself, secret codes, visual art IN the music, and hiding motifs in other pieces to show the connection between tracks/themes, the Snowfall Jingle motif crops up in a few pieces, but the Generation Loss motif shows up even more.

McPherson: Did the soundtrack go through any major changes before it was finalized? What song was made first? Which was last? How long does a song normally take you to make?

Hanover: I don’t believe the soundtrack went through any major changes as once I had the style of the project down, I could work within those boundaries however tracks had little changes along the way, even a few cut tracks of failed ideas. The first track I wrote was in January 2023 which was the Generation Loss theme which went through 2 iterations before landing on the one used in the show. The last track was the Button cutscene which was also the longest to create due to severe technical difficulties with the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) I use which doesn’t score to video well. Most tracks can take anywhere from a day to create to a week, the “Achievement Unlocked!” Jingle naturally only took me a few hours to create and finish as it was only 3 seconds long and is an altered version of the Generation Loss motif, however, “The Button” took me around a week to create and finish to the point I was working on it the day before episode 1’s premier.

McPherson: Do you have any behind-the-scenes stories about Generation Loss?

Hanover: I sadly don’t other than the coincidence of myself wanting to reach out to the Generation Loss creator only for him to actually reach out to me weeks later following his previous encounter with Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim and the suggestions from his friend who hired me for Blood in the Bayou.

Photo of Just Roll With It logo.

Previous Work:

Prior to Generation Loss Hanover has made music for many video games and series. One, my favorite Dungeon and Dragons podcast, Just Roll With It. Just Roll With It features many online personalities as they play custom D&D campaigns together. Another is Dialtown, a phone dating videogame.

McPherson: What has working on JRWI’s sound been like? How have the different campaigns influenced your process? Do you have a favorite?

Hanover: Working with Just Roll With It was by pure luck if I’m honest, the creator of Blood in the Bayou made a Tweet searching for a composer to work on his project, and one of my friends suggested the link to me, I’m quite pessimistic so I replied to the tweet not expecting any response, but my track “Blood Sugar” had sealed the deal for him and I was hired! Blood in the Bayou was exciting to work on and my first foray into Podcast music. Its deadline was harsher than Generation Loss which made me pivot the soundtrack halfway through, instead of writing music to the episodes themselves to creating looping music like I would a Video Game for the editor to add in and swap on their choosing. Once Blood in the Bayou was complete, the main JRWI member approached me to work on their main campaign, Riptide, a sea shanty pirate podcast with over 100 episodes! Riptide took me a while to get into the swing of the style I and the JRWI team wanted, having just came from BitB my brain had to readjust the musical style to fit this pirate aesthetic, initially there was a lot of trial and error when creating its theme and the mood but luckily since the team uses Video Game music as their background music, I had a plethora of examples to build upon. I feel I enjoy Riptide the most out of the 2 as while it’s pirate music, it has its own universe where genres exist together so for one track I can include fully orchestral, and then write a Punk Rock piece next which despite being so different, the variety of the world and it’s sound allows it to gel well.

McPherson: Dialtown is such a unique game, and your music plays a great part in that. How did you make such a massive soundtrack?

Hanover: I work quite quickly when I create music, I know FL Studio like the back of my hand which allows me to be extremely efficient, Dialtown was also in development for almost 3 years which gave me more than enough time to research, plan and write its music. Dialtown’s soundtrack was fun to work on as like Riptide, was quite diverse in its sonic style, mixing Jazz and Swing, Orchestral, and some ambiance together throughout, Dialtown is also a visually unique game which allowed the music I created to be unorthodox in its creation. Unusual chord progressions to uncommon tonal modulations and creative ways to use the most unusual instruments in its setting, from Camera clicks, snaps, and hits as the percussive basis of “Oliver, aspiring filmmaker, qualified goblin” imitating drums, to the vibrato of the Stylophone’s in “Karen, so, so dunn”.

McPherson: How has the experience of working on so many different projects been for you? Do you have a favorite? Which was the most challenging?

Hanover: A lot of my work has been building experience for my future work, despite starting in 2015, I feel the last 5 years or so have been building up to the start of my career, and the initial 5 years were portfolio-building, I keep my early music up as an example to show off my blunders, from weird mixing, terrible melodies to ideas that worked in theory but failed in practice, but I also keep these early blunders public to show off how my style as grown. I get complimented on my leitmotif skills and how to tie a motif together to be recognizable and fun to listen to, but if you look back at my early 2015-2017 work, you can see that those skills were in their infancy.

I don’t feel I have a favorite project as I see my work from the creators’ point of view, not the listeners so I can hear all the imperfections or things I feel I could have done better on, but every so often I’ll go back to a track of mine to listen to, to re-experience it, but there’s always a threshold that is hit once I stop listening or thinking of my previous pieces in favor of my newer upcoming music.

McPherson: Is there anything you’d change about your work?

Hanover: I like this question as the simple answer would be “No”, but for the long answer, I feel anyone who creates art is a bit of a perfectionist who won’t let go of a particular piece until it’s perfect and I feel like that’s the same for me, I don’t release a piece until I feel it’s perfect At that time. The catch musically is my knowledge is ever expanding, I don’t think you ever stop learning as it’s such a massive topic to the point even individual genres have their own information and knowledge on what makes that individual genre work. There’s also equipment, I have far better equipment, knowledge, and technology than I had 5 years ago, a track I believed was perfect 5 years ago won’t be perfect now and as such, every so often when the mood strikes me, I’ll revisit a track to rearrange and update. I was going to do this with Dialtown’s soundtrack but knew it would be far too costly and time-consuming, but I have done it with my standalone tracks such as “The Castle (2016)” and “Return to the Castle (2018)”, “Autumn (2016) and “From Summer to Winter (2021)”.

Photos of Nathan’s cats Milly and Myrtle.

Personal Life and Thoughts:

Wanting to know more about Nathan outside of his work? In this section we talked advice and his personal life!

McPherson: Do you have advice for other musicians? Do you have any advice for college students?

Hanover: It’ll sound pessimistic, but I feel the best advice I could give is the saying “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” I’m unsure if this is a cultural saying but essentially don’t funnel all your time, effort and money into one thing. When I first started, I was embarrassed at the thought of music NOT being my primary job and put all my time, effort, and money into it and then realized how BIG the music industry is and how saturated it is more so from the recent Pandemic. Due to this it hindered my developments greatly, couldn’t pay rent, couldn’t fund myself further, etc. because no one was hiring and there were literally thousands of composers out there all wanting a piece of the pie. Naturally feeling deflated by this I’d look on the internet for interviews of bigger composers and what their advice was which always boiled down to “If you continue and do your best you’ll make it” but I feel this is survivors bias, having seen just how BIG the industry is, I feel I’m not even scratching the surface yet.

But I soon learned a lot of their advice came down to one (or more) of three things, Luck, connections, and being in the right place at the right time, one great composer I’ve always been inspired by recounts how he would submit his portfolio to X company for months with radio silence, until he knew a friend who worked at the company who was willing to show his portfolio to executives, eventually getting hired (Connections). Another worked in a music store testing music software, and one day a pair of company executives entered and were surprised to see the music coming from the music software was from the store clerk and offered him the job at the company eventually getting hired (Luck + Right place at the right time). I’m nowhere as big as the previous examples but to use my own example of how I came to work on Generation Loss really starts in 2016 when I worked on two Video Games, Porkchop’s Adventure and Porkchop’s Horror Show, that creator knew the creator of Dialtown: Phone Dating Sim, which got streamed by the creator of Generation Loss which allowed me to be hired thanks to the luck of my hiring for Blood in the Bayou, and thanks to the right connections, allowing me to work on Generation Loss.

I started my portfolio in college, and I feel from my experience building your portfolio as early as possible and getting as many connections as you can from networking as possible is the way to go, My career started by sending a Direct Message to someone on DeviantArt, the creator for a Five Nights at Freddy’s fangame called The Joy of Creation when I was 15, having no idea it would get as popular as it has become to be picked up by the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s himself soon allowing me to move away from fangames to original IPs. Don’t be embarrassed or afraid to work a second job, and do not make your music career the primary career unless you happen to be born with a lot of money and open opportunities already, it’s oversaturated and pays poorly, work a primary job to help fund your music career, and eventually with luck it may tip the scales where your music career becomes your primary career. This also applies to session musicians, I used to start by playing gigs in bars before jumping to music composition, and even now work Part Time as a composer, naturally, I won’t disclose my primary job but it helps pay the bills, keeping the lights on, while my music income pays for its own bills, and I hope over time I can buy a separate place to have as my own studio but I hindered myself from the start by putting all my eggs into one basket believing if I just funneled as much of my time, effort and money into it, it would simply work. I would class myself as an indie composer and I hope my work can inspire people, but I’m not at the stage where it’s 100% sustainable and it may not be for another 5 years, there still may be a point where I simply stop creating, I’d like to hope not, but it’s never a 0% chance.

McPherson: Are you enjoying your career?

Hanover: I’d say so, but I can be pessimistic so I don’t have the brightest of outlooks, but that is mainly to do with my Anxiety and Depression which I suffer from, music can sometimes be an escape for me, and something I deeply enjoy thanks to my Autism.

McPherson: Generation Loss has recently caused a lot of new people to become fans of your work. How has that affected you?

Hanover: It’s been exciting if I’m honest, I’ve always had a small following over the last 5-7 years or so, but this has been the biggest reaction I’ve had and I hope it continues after the release of the Generation Loss soundtrack. People joke about me simply appearing in comments and scaring them with my presence (which I find extremely funny it’s now become a little internet meme) I am just incredibly grateful for the support and attention, as you can probably tell from the previous 2 questions, under the online presence I’m not the brightest nor happiest of the bunch so it’s nice to see people genuinely enjoying the music enough to pay and help fund me as a creator. I hope it doesn’t sound greedy but it all helps go towards my progress and sustainability, I know money can be a taboo topic in the industry, everyone has to have some heartfelt reason as to why they do what they do, and I guess I do to…but money is also nice. It’s not talked about but it’s fundamental, if all my music income suddenly stopped, other than the passion, nothing else would fuel my creations and I don’t think the taxman or landlord would allow “passion” as a payment option, a lot of passion was used in those first 5 years building my portfolio and earning little to nothing in order to try and get myself off the ground.

McPherson: What would you like the readers to know about you?

Hanover: One of my favorite colors is pink, and I have two cats, Milly (10), Myrtle (4) which you can see me post on my Twitter every so often, I firmly believe Trans rights are human rights! Happy Pride Month!

You can support Nathan Hanover’s music at:

Bandcamp: https://nhsynthonicorchestra.bandcamp.com/

Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/nhsynthonicorchestra

Website: https://nathanhanover.com/

LeAnne McPherson

#my writing #nathan hanover #gl #gen loss #generation loss #music #interview #cats

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tutuandscoot · 2 years ago

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I know that this blog is mainly focused on vm’s 22 year partnership and not so much their current separate endeavors but just out of curiosity, have you read/watched/listened to all their solo interviews (like the ones from 2018-present) just to keep up with them?

Yes I do- I can’t say I’ve watched/listened to all of them but yes most certainly I do and I love hearing about everything else they have going on as they see fit to share. I mainly get frustrated with the actual interviewers and the “questions” they ask: ie the two most recent solo T podcast interviews I was appalled by some of the questioning- especially with the quite obvious baiting the first woman did both with teasing the interview and then the way she probed T for the potential (yet long setting of the record straight by VM themselves) of a romantic relationship in the past and T herself even mid-interview- quite subtly to her credit (as to not piss of her friend interviewing her) by saying they (VM) were quite bothered by it and felt it was very rude of people to ask why they weren’t ‘together’ and people being sickly curious over their private lives.

Some interviews I really love were their separate ones with Scott Livingston (their trainer) and T’s ‘Women of influence’ interview (the one in 2020) was excellent- an example of really well prepared and intelligent questioning and respect of T and S.

I’ve said in the past this is a space to admire their partnership and it’s not because I don’t care about them outside of their partnership, I just don’t feel… not inappropriate.. that it’s wrong to.. but thats their own private lives and I and others shouldn’t be finding joy over deep diving into their personal affairs. Their skating career however was public and was a sport and art for people to watch and yes.. judge. There is also just so much there to discuss and reminisce on and I feel there is a line not to cross when it comes to discussing people I don’t know lives’.

#ask #I hope I’ve made it clear I love and appreciate everything about them #and my not discussing/posting personal life stuff is out of complete respect for them

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autisticempathydaemon · 2 years ago

Note

matchup incoming <3 ->

What song are you fixated on at the moment:

NYE by joseph! second verse in particular ^^

Enneagram:

im a 2!!

Do you love gargantuan Youtube video essays, and if so, which is your favorite and why?

yes!!!! i love deep dive videos on internet culture from early 2000s. i also really like film analysis videos

Tell me about your childhood imaginary friend.

i liked chronicles of narnia a lot when i was little and i definitely played with imaginary aslan and lots of other talking animals

What is your go-to way to fall asleep:

smushed into just so many pillows and blankets that are good for holding with music/podcast/asmr playing and my cat snuggled up with me

If you had to change your name, what would it be, and why:

if i were to change my name i’d probably pick a family name since my name now doesn’t have any connections to anyone else. birdie was a family name that i think is rlly cute :3

favorite of Redacted’s audios, and why:

currently i think the david camping audio is my favorite. very soft and quiet and calm.

What Redacted boy holds no appeal to you, and why:

probably marcus. while i do think he is an interesting and well written character, i don’t see the appeal the way i do for some of the other more morally grey boys.

that one book/movie/tv show you know all the words to.

peter pan!!!

Which Redacted boy are you platonically attracted to:

asher is so bestie vibes to me i need to carry him around in my pocket at all times. i care him so much <3

go-to thing you ramble about:

i’m kind of a known rambler if given the opportunity so i’ll start going on about anatomy, work gossip, film theories, the games i play, anything really if someone offers to listen ^^

favorite playlist:

my favorite playlist has all my fav 50s and 60s music bc i am a hopeless romantic. big band songs to slow dance in the kitchen to type of theme going on.

And whatever else you think tells me about who you are:

i think im pretty hardworking and i spend a lot of time taking care of other people (probably a good time to mention the extreme eldest daughter syndrome).

in my free time i love baking and cooking. i can play a tiny bit of guitar and piano but most of my musical talent lies in singing.

that’s all i can think of :0

It’s the little things with this entry. All the little, small, sweet things that make a life together, that you have in common, that make me think you’d be a really lovely fit for Camelopardalis.

Like, I can see Cam being a huge fan of the Chronicles of Narnia? (I think he loves all the classics, like the Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien and Lewis were contemporaries, so that works together.) He’d love smooth, crooning classic 50’s music; Cam plays it in a record player but not in a hipster way, in a “this is technically an antique” way. He’d love the leisurely, methodical routine of cooking.

Most of all, he’d love you. Twos are often categorized by a caring, giving nature and a desire to love and be loved. (Geordi, for example, would be a Two.) I think Cam is a good match for that, as he strikes me as the type of partner who’d be very open, communicative, and giving with his affection and in receiving it.

Song:

A heart that's true and longs for you/ Is all I have to give/ All my love belongs to you/ As long as I may live

Camelopardalis seems, to me, as the kind of man-shaped being who doesn’t fall first but falls extremely hard when he finally does. You would be a once in a very long lifetime kind of event for him, and his love would outlast you, the sun, every star in the sky.

Runner-Ups:

I also like Gavin for a Type Two. There’s something about the way he talks about his feelings that’s so effusive and raw that appeals to me for someone with the basic wants and fears of that Enneagram. Ollie, I’d pair with you because of the way his hardworking nature would complement yours. Ollie is dedicated but balanced, and I think he’d make sure you don’t overwork yourself.

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

Note: thank you for your patience! I really appreciate you waiting 💙

#redactedasmr #redactedverse #redacted asmr #redactedaudio #redacted audio #redacted #busybee matches

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standupcomedyhistorian · 1 year ago

Text

Hey, everyone!

I'm doing better (although living on my own is WEIRD after being with my ex for 21 years), and I wanted to thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. I'm getting through this one day at a time, and I'll make it to the other side of the road. 🐔

Anyway, there was a recent list of best comedians in the 21st century in the Telegraph on the eve of the Fringe Festival, and some of my favorite comics were included! 👀

Here's the descriptions for those curious—I highly recommend all of these incredible comics, ESPECIALLY number 1:

44. Kate Berlant (my article about her and Bo; audience interviews for Kate coming soon!)

A warped mirror for millennial smugness, 36-year-old Berlant’s narcissistic persona and fast-paced, deadpan delivery have inspired a host of great younger acts (including Leo Reich). Her half-improvised, stream-of-consciousness patter is a kind of thrilling comedy glossolalia, while her mind-reading routine is some of the funniest failed stage-magic since Tommy Cooper. The American’s luvvie-mocking Broadway show Kate (directed by Bo Burnham) arrives in London next month. Fight for a ticket.

16. James Acaster (my article about him and Bo)

It’s easy to take Acaster for granted – he’s constantly on panel shows and podcasts. But his 2018 stand-up shows (collected on Netflix as Repertoire) are works of borderline genius; baroque puzzle-boxes, all buried callbacks and high-concept whimsy. If he once seemed a bit aloof and impersonal, that mask fell with his most recent West End show: a confessional tour-de-force about being dumped by his girlfriend for Rowan Atkinson.

5. Tim Minchin (my article about him and Bo)

The kohl-eyed, frantic-haired Aussie already felt like the finished article when he parachuted into the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe with his sensational debut, which parodied teen popstar dreams with precision-tooled, beat-perfect musical numbers. Almost two decades later – after stage-musical success with Matilda and Groundhog Day – his live shows come with more contemplation and political edge, but that twinkly-eyed mischief is still there. Minchin evolves with age, and is all the better for it.

4. Maria Bamford (my article about her and Bo)

A critic once called Bamford schizophrenic. She corrected him: “That’s not my mental illness! Schizophrenia is, of course, hearing voices, not doing voices.” An impressionist whose vocal acrobatics are usually used to imitate her own family, Bamford can be surreal, confessional or staggeringly dark (especially stories about her time “in the psych ward”), but is always thrilling. Her rare performances – in her own front room, car parks, or to just one audience member at a time – are unique. Wildly original, and a crucial influence on countless young British acts, she is, to my mind, America’s greatest living stand-up.

1. Bo Burnham (my primer and SOOOO much more on my website haha)

Burnham is the 21st-century comedian. Recorded in his bedroom, the razor-sharp New Englander’s piano-driven songs made him a YouTube sensation by the age of 19, at which point, in 2010, he astonished British audiences with an almost bewilderingly precocious stage debut, Words, Words, Words.

His follow-up, What, was better yet, a royal-flush hour of ingeniously sly musical, character and meta-comedy that was the undisputed hit of 2013. As he told me at the time, “I do hope my sort of frantic, the-floor-is-lava type of comedy is a mimic of what it feels like to be alive now.” Indeed it was, and, although panic attacks took Burnham away from the stage for some years, he blithely whipped up the acclaimed feature film Eighth Grade in 2018, and three years later returned to the public eye with the Netflix special Inside.

This was locked-down comedy – as “live” as it could be at the time – about the misery, isolation and gnawing insecurity of being a young comic unable to perform, so finely observed, intricately constructed and beautifully written it made your head spin. In terms of capturing that bizarre moment, mining it for laughs, and speaking both to his own generation and to all of us imprisoned in our own homes, no one else even came close.

Congratulations, Bo! ✌🏼

#the telegraph #might be a joke list but it made my day #and I'll take any reason to be happy right now #bo burnham #bo burnham inside #inside bo burnham #standupcomedyhistorian #kate berlant #kate #london #james acaster #tim minchin #maria bamford

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thelaurenshippen · 1 year ago

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also, please please please take this time to support independent art and artists!! obviously, diving deep into streamer archives to watch all of twin peaks or the x-files or pushing daisies or whatever is awesome, not to mention the centuries of books, decades of films and recorded music, etc.

but this strike also means that a lot of artists are out of work -- not just writers! if you've enjoyed someone's podcast or webcomic or self-published novels or poetry or anything else that someone chooses to put on the internet for free, support their patreon, tip their ko-fi, etc. if your favorite published author has a substack, pay for a subscription!! (being published does not necessarily equate to making a living)

let the powers that be know you're mad, support all strikers, and if you have money to spend, put it directly in the pockets of the artists you love!

I don't care if no new shows come out for 2 years, the sheer amount of media that exists couldn't be watched in a million years. Go back and watch old movies and shows, YouTube videos, documentaries, read a book. Anyone acting like this writers strike is less important than their entertainment, you aren't a leftist or an ally to the working class, you're a spoiled bougie brat

#writers strike #lauren writes things #I should have some sort of 'surviving as a writer' tag #I'm saying this as someone who is a) not a TV writer #b) not a member of the WGA #and c) is STILL immensely affected by the strike #a lot of the companies who typically hire me to work for them #and pay me real money I can then pour back into shows like life with leoh or my own originals #are companies I cannot work for currently #and I'm not saying this to be like 'support me!'#but to say that a LOT of artists right now are feeling the effects in unexpected ways!#we should ALWAYS support independent art #but I think it's especially crucial right now #not just to keep these artists afloat #but to show studios that we don't need them to produce great stuff that is actually profitable #making money that the powers that be are not getting a piece of is one of the BEST ways to freak them the fuck out IMO

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kicksaddictny · 25 days ago

Text

Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre Set to Appear on Drink Champs Live at ComplexCon Las Vegas

ComplexCon, the groundbreaking festival and exhibition celebrating convergence culture, is set to take over Las Vegas on November 16 & 17. For the first time ever, the iconic Drink Champs podcast will host a live episode at the event, featuring hip-hop legends Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. This exciting installment will be part of the ComplexCon(versations) panel series, which is known for bringing together the biggest names in music, fashion, and innovation to discuss today’s hottest trends.

The live episode of Drink Champs, hosted by N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, will take place on Saturday, November 16. It promises a lively and candid discussion with Snoop and Dre, coinciding with the anticipation of Snoop Dogg’s upcoming album, Missionary, produced by Dr. Dre and set to be released by Death Row Records, Aftermath Entertainment, and Interscope Records. Fans can also look forward to catching the conversation on Complex’s channels after the event. The special presentation will be sponsored by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop.

Known for its engaging and unconventional storytelling, Drink Champs has become a go-to platform for deep dives into hip-hop culture, exploring ideas, friendships, and the most memorable stories from the music community. ComplexCon’s panel series, ComplexCon(versations), has featured must-see discussions, including the famed “Sneaker of the Year” panel and appearances by cultural icons.

Since its debut in Long Beach in 2016, ComplexCon has become a global sensation, bringing together top talent from fashion, music, and art. The event is known for exclusive product drops, limited-edition releases, and live performances. As ComplexCon makes its mark in Las Vegas, attendees can expect more thrilling announcements, exclusive insights from industry innovators, and a chance to experience today’s convergence culture firsthand. Stay tuned for more details on the lineup and programming as ComplexCon continues to redefine the intersection of style, music, and innovation.

#complexcon #kicksaddict

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the-conversation-pod · 1 year ago

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Welcome Back My Boyfriend!

AND WE'RE BACK!

It's finally time to discuss Our Skyy 2! We were playing hurt this night: Ben was still recovering from dental surgery (please forgive his voice during this episode) and Nini was nursing a headache. Still, it didn't stop us from discussing all eight shows and talking about the crossover for an hour!

Nini and Ben assess the entirety of Our Skyy 2 and rank the offerings from worst to first.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Google Podcasts

Timestamps

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

0:00 - Welcome 1:15 - Intro 6:07 - Vice Versa 14:23 - Star in My Mind 19:20 - Never Let Me Go 28:00 - A Boss and a Babe 36:45 - The Eclipse 49:50 - My School President 1:00:24 - Badd Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars 1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2

The Conversation: Now With Transcripts!

We received an accessibility request to include transcripts for the podcast. We are working with @ginnymoonbeam on providing the transcripts and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

0:00 - Welcome

Nini

Ben

Lots of simping! I’m Ben.

Nini

I’m Nini.

Ben

1:15 - Intro

Nini

Hi, Ben. How are you tonight?

Ben

I'm battling my own body's slow recovery from dental surgery but it doesn't matter because we have so much to record so we're sticking to the schedule!

Nini

But, we're gonna be okay. You've got meds, I've got meds—a.k.a. beer—for this headache. We're gonna be fine. We're doing it live. So, what are we talking about tonight? We are talking about Our Skyy 2… What a journey. Ben, explain to the people the concept of Our Skyy.

Ben

Welcome back, my boyfriend! That's it.

Nini

[laughs]

Ben

Jojo started this off and summed it up perfectly. Our Skyy originally served as a sort of epilogue project for the initial run of GMMTV BLs.

In the first run we had the Puppy Honey crew with OffGun, the SOTUS pair with Krist and Singto, the InSun pair from My Dear Loser: Edge of 17, Tay and New from Kiss the series—before Dark Blue Kiss, and Drake and Frank from My Tee a.k.a. ‘Cause You're My Boy.

Nini

So, that's the concept of Our Skyy. So, when GMMTV put out its 2023 offerings last year: Surprise! Our Skyy 2. They are giving us epilogues for 2020, 2021, and some 2022 shows. We're gonna dive into these.

Ben

With the original Our Skyy it was kind of chaotic. So, every crew kind of just did what felt right for their characters.

Like, Pete and Kao basically went on a date that was mostly uncomplicated—something their characters needed.

OffGun did a body swap which was just so they could let Gun pick on Off for a bit.

In and Sun got closure—unsurprising, Aof was on that one.

‘Cause You're My Boy: they just kind of did just a hot mess that was weirdly endearing, which is exactly what their show was.

And SOTUS did like the the next most logical thing for Arthit and Kongpob, which was them kinda saying goodbye as they were heading into a long distance form of their relationship because Kongpob was pursuing higher schooling outside of Thailand, if I remember correctly?

In a similar vein, this particular Our Skyy run that we're going to be talking about very much captured what I think the core spirit of the original work was, and each team came back to it—for the most part—with something to say that was consistent with their original offerings.

Nini

Yep.

Ben

We went Never Let Me Go, Star in My Mind, The Eclipse, Vice Versa, My School President, A Boss and a Babe, Bad Buddy? and then A Tale of Thousand Stars.

Nini

I also think that the airing order was very interesting and maybe we'll get a little time to talk about how they chose to air what they did when they did. This Our Skyy, I think, wanted to lean a little bit into the crack. Every single outing had a little bit of a crack element to it—and I quite like that. I enjoyed that. I had fun with that—for the most part—and we'll get to the ones where I did not enjoy that.

Ben

I do think that the Our Skyy project leans into fan service, and not in an inherently negative way? They want the people who enjoyed this show to have fun coming back to the show, and it’s been notable for me that, for the most part, I found that if someone really liked the original show they also really liked their Our Skyy outing. So like, for those of you who've listened to me or followed me, you know what shows I didn't like or despised when they aired and—unsurprisingly—my takes are fairly consistent.

Nini

Maybe it's the corners of the internet that I've been perusing, which you always tell me to stop looking at…I feel like the more that people liked the OG show the more upset they were with the Our Skyy. Maybe that's just the people are being wrong on the internet corners of the internet that I like to occasionally look through. [laughs]

Ben

[laughs] I don't go there.

6:07 - Vice Versa

Nini

Let's delve into it. Let's start talking some specifics. So, if we're going from worst to first my worst without a doubt was the Vice Versa Our Skyy. I am on record as not having watched Vice Versa because I was not interested in Vice Versa. I have tried and failed so many times with Jittirain stories that I knew that I was not going to enjoy this one, and so I never watched the original. But, for the sake of the podcast, I watched every single Our Skyy including this one, except I did not finish this one. [laughs] I started watching it. I was mostly annoyed, and then something happened that just… I just said, “Oh, absolutely not,” and I stopped watching it.

So, the trope—the, the crack trope—for the Vice Versa Our Skyy; the fan fic-y, fan service-y trope is: Add a Kid. I think it's Puen? Puen and Talay have been together for a while now. They're working hard, working a lot. They don't have as much time for each other. And so Talay comes up with the idea of doing a month of special days where they pay very close attention to each other and they do special things together. And it's a really sweet idea and honestly if that had been it I would have been fine. There would have been no problem.

But then they add a kid, and the way that they add a kid is what pisses me off. One of their friends… essentially delivers his nephew into the care of these strangers… so that they can play house? But it's also like a trick that Puen is playing on Talay. Because this kid just shows up at the house and Talay thinks that it might be his kid. Like, the, the setup of Vice Versa has always—as I have said before—every time I think I know what Vice Versa is about, Ben lets me know that I don't actually know what Vice Versa is about. But there's some way that Talay thinks that this kid is his somehow.

Ben

Would you like the context for why he believes that kid is his?

Nini

Sure, hit me with it!

Ben

So, they basically spend two years in the other world with Nanon and Ohm’s characters in their bodies. Ohm's character, Tess, is an asshole who absolutely ruined Talay’s life for the two years he was in his body. He sabotaged and ruined every personal and professional relationship that Talay had.

When he got back to his own body he had to spend years fixing his own life. Which sucks, because while he was in Tess's body he basically fixed Tess's life. It's really upsetting for me that Puen, who claims to love Talay, who watched him suffer for all of the things that Tess did to his life would genuinely let Talay believe that Tess saddled him with the responsibility of an unplanned kid… because he thinks his boyfriend doesn't pay enough attention to him… like he makes his boyfriend work outside in a tent in Thailand to do graphic design on an iMac.

Nini

You were really really mad about the tent. [laughs] I remember when we were watching this. You were really pissed about the tent.

Ben

I'm—I'm not over it.

It's humid in Thailand! Why would he be outside with a Mac? Oh my God—

It's frustrating because… On the one hand, I understand the impulse of, like, how do we get these guys to consider a new form of domesticity together? But, like, why do we have to use an actual child? Why can't we use, like, a dog, or a cat? Not coercing a child into letting strangers bathe him, and treat him like he's their son, and sleep with him in their bed. It’s so, so weird… and really unhinged… and it made me like a bunch of characters even less than I already did!

It was aggravating. It's frustrating because Puen did this through the whole show. Like, he doesn't trust Talay. He lies to him. He manipulates him. Talay and he are both in entertainment and Talay was against a huge deadline the night of Puen’s birthday, and he couldn't take a break from his work to meet his deadline to go do flirty, boyfriend things with Puen.

Puen expressed this frustration directly the next day in a way that I thought was totally valid and then Talay goes, ‘You are correct. Here is the plan I've come up with for us to make sure that we don't take our own relationship for granted, and keep working at it.’ And they have a really great month doing cute boyfriend date things while trying to maintain their careers. And so the whole secret baby felt completely unnecessary.

Like, we need something to happen for the plot to justify Jimmy, Neo, Aou, and Sea hanging out together. So, we have to introduce a secret baby, I guess?

I hated it…[laughs] Like, people joke that I don't often give low scores because I don't usually watch crap. Like, if something is, like, really really bad out of the gate I am like, “Oof! I don't have time for this!” and I'll usually drop it these days, because I got too much to do. But, like, I gave the show a 3 because I was deeply put off by the coercion of a child and the audacity of it all. Because, like, you know what your boyfriend went through because of Tess.

Why would you pull on that really traumatic thread from five years ago and make him believe that Tess had done this to him as well—knowing that Talay has a strong sense of responsibility, and would of course try to do right by a potential child.

Like, it's hard to even talk about, like, any of the cute relationship things that may have come out of this because, like, they should divorce.

Nini

I did not enjoy this when it was revealed that the kid was…tricked. I turned it off, and I did not watch the end.

For every special of Our Skyy, I gave it a drama score and a crack score. My drama score for this was a -5, because I was entirely unamused—like wholly unamused. This is not what I came to see in any way. I don't care if the kid is cute. I don't care if they're all cute together. They're literally using a child to fix their relationship—

Ben

And, explicitly, the child's parents did not know that this was happening.

Nini

—which makes it worse! So, I gave it a drama score of a -5, which is of course an overreaction but it's still getting a 0. Crack score, I gave it a 10, because it is actual crack? Like, this is probably the crackiest thing that happened in all of Our Skyy. But…it's not enjoyable as crack! So, let's give it a… 5 for crack… So, 0 for drama, 5 for crack gives it a score of 2.5, which sounds about correct.

Ben

Yeah, not good.

Nini

Yeah.

Ben

Pass.

Nini

Not good. Tens or chops? One chop!

Ben

Two chops!

[both laugh]

14:23 - Star in My Mind

Nini

Let's leave Vice Versa behind in the dustbin where it belongs and let's move on to the next on the list: Star in My Mind. Hoo!

Ben

[laughs]

Nini

Ben, I can't even remember what happened, I was so bored watching these episodes, like, dead bored. Star in My Mind is also a show that I did not watch the OG show. So, I had no idea what it was about and was going in blind. And, I think that I was correct to not watch the OG show, because… if it was anything as boring as this, I didn't need to see it.

Ben

[sighs] So, the Star in My Mind special is basically just the gang going on a little vacation together, and then New tries to subvert the “You're together now. Let's throw in a jealousy element bit.” Like, you put a note on here that the trope for this one is “trick your friends into going on vacation.”

So, their friends try to tease Daonuea into believing that maybe Kluen has eyes for some girl, and Daonuea gets jealous about this, and then a fight ensues and the friends get all upset. But we in the audience know that the guys are faking this fight. They knew what their friends were up to, but they were kind of flaking on this vacation. So, he uses this fake fight to force them to go on vacation with them.

Whatever.

Like, I think the part of this that was cute was New just throwing away the whole jealousy trope for BL, and then having the gay characters just be like, ‘Yeah, this is stupid. Anyway, we're going to absolutely use this against them because these bitches will not buy their tickets and I'm [gonna] force them to.” And, like, that part was kind of fun.

I'm in my breakup era with New right now. I can see, again, him trying to do something here. New is currently over BL. He’s tired of it. You can feel that in Star in My Mind. Like, he's completely bored with all of this. And so what could have been, like, at least a cute trip, just looks like five straight dudes hanging out in the woods for like an hour.

Nini

I think my notes say “it's two hours of a bunch of dudes vibing without vibes.”

Ben

Yeah, like, it wasn't great, and I don't really like coming for actors like that. But, Dunk is still uncomfortable with on-screen intimacy—or at least it feels like he is—particularly compared to Joong, who does not suffer from being camera shy when it comes to this kind of work. And so while I've seen them in behind-the-scenes stuff, and their variety stuff, and Joong and Dunk are great bros, I'm still struggling with Dunk as a romantic lead because he doesn't kiss well.

Nini

New didn't even phone this in. Like, I think he sent an email? Maybe it was a snail mail.

This was just—it was boring, which I think might be worse than bad? What do we even say about it?

Ben

Nothing! There is nothing to say! Like, Pawin was there. He didn't kiss anybody. [laughs]

Nini

I mean… that's really all that you can say about it. It was a waste of Pawin, like.

Probably the only thing that I enjoyed about this was Joong's several pissy faces when Khabkluen is salty because all his straight friends keep interrupting his gay couple time to hang out when all he wants to do is make out. And, like, the pissy faces that he makes are delightful, and they're the only reason this has a score.

I give it a drama score of 3, because what was it even about? And I gave it a crack score of 4, and all four of those points are for Joong's pissy faces which I thoroughly enjoyed. So, It was a 3.5 for me not because it was bad but because it was boring.

Ben

I think a show has to be offensive to me in some way for me to go lower than 6 and Star in My Mind is not. It's just boring and because I've been in these gay streets a long time, I've been offended. A lot. And, I will accept boring. It's a 6. It's forgettable. We don't have to talk about it anymore.

Nini

And we will not.

Ben

[laughs]

19:20 - Never Let Me Go

Nini

We're going to move on to the actual fun and interesting ones now. [laughs] There's a definite quality bar in Our Skyy 2. There are Vice Versa and Star in My Mind, which are below the quality bar. And then there's everything else, which is above the quality bar. Now, we're talking about games of inches here.

Never Let Me Go. So, the Never Let Me Go fanfic trope for Our Skyy was they did a time travel story that was also a—.

Ben

Fated mates.

Nini

—that was also a fated mates, and also a role reversal, and also like a body hopping. Like, there were—there was a lot going on here. It was not boring. Everybody was clearly having a fabulous time making this. And, I actually really enjoyed it. It was two episodes. I could have watched maybe four to six episodes of this no problem.

This was actually incredibly interesting. It was a lot of fun. Pawin, and Pond especially, clearly had a great time.

Ben

That's true.

[both laugh]

Nini

Pond had a fabulous time. So, the plot of the Never Let Me Go special… You go ahead.

Ben

All right. So, it's been a couple of years since we left the boys in Never Let Me Go, and Nuengdiao has been studying elsewhere. He's coming back to Thailand, and Palm has quietly been setting up shop in Bangkok so that when Nuengdiao comes back to Thailand he can be closer to him. He doesn't want to just stay out by the beach because he wants to see his boyfriend more.

[Cat begins wailing in the hallway near Ben’s mic]

Nuengdiao was a little bit caught off guard by this, and didn't like him making decisions for them. They run into a fortune teller who tells them that if they don't fix what was originally broken, they won't make it in this life, either. And then the fantasy hijinks kick in, where they are sent back in time to their original pairing… into the bodies of their past selves. And in their past—in their first past together where they become a couple—Palm is the rich lord, and Nuengdiao is essentially sold to him as a slave. Also, Pawin is there in an earlier version of his character.

And so they have to play their roles. Palm is having way too much fun bossing Nuengdiao around. And also just trying to have sex with him in the past. Over the course of this they end up realizing that they have to help Pawin’'s character hook up with Mark Pahun's character, and so all of the girlies who've been waiting for that ship to reunite were fed.

Nini is correct. Like, this ended up being really fun, because we got to see Palm and Nuengdiao kind of become like the gays who have it together for other gays.

Nini

It had that crack story but there was also another story going on alongside the crack which I really enjoyed—building on Nungdiao and Palm's actual OG series story—which is that Nuengdiao believes that Palm should make his life about himself, that he should make his decisions about the things that he wants to do without considering Neung. And that they can still be together but Palm shouldn't plan his life around him. When he comes back to Bangkok, it's to tell Palm essentially that he's decided that he's gonna stay away for a longer period of time. He's gonna do graduate school as well.

And, this is actually a conflict between them that sort of leads into the whole time travel thing, but it's actually a really interesting conflict between them because it builds on their series story in a really interesting way. I enjoyed watching them navigate it and figure it out while they were also navigating and figuring out how the hell to get out of the past. I mean the internal logic of the story just about holds together. It's fun. It's enjoyable. It's emotional.

Ben

If he looks at you for seven seconds he's into you and we're all like rooting for this under an umbrella.

Nini

It's fun. It's cute. It's got a little bit of a message to it. It's enjoyable. The characters feel like themselves. At one point we get a little montage of smash cuts of Nueng and Palm: they alternate crying over each other's dead bodies through the ages.

Ben

One of them definitely felt like a nod to Aof’s work where Jojo was poking fun at him.

Nini

They were actually dressed like Jim and Wen in Moonlight Chicken complete with Phuwin wearing sunglasses, his corpse wearing sunglasses at night when he's dead and Pond crying over him. It was really funny. It was delightful. That little smash cut montage was really fun and actually upped the crack score a little. Time travel is crack, no way about it. I was fully going to give it a good crack score anyway. But that little sequence upped the crack score by at least a point. It was just very funny.

And then watching Pawin overexaggerate his “khrub’s” and fall in love with Mark Pahun's character, who's like a jewelry seller at the market. And then when they come back to the present and he's Phum again, they meet Phum at the house—which has been maintained—the lord's house has been maintained throughout the ages.

Ben

Because it had been passed down to his ancestors’ family now because they were all, like, gay besties together.

Nini

Yeah, and like, Phum and Mark Pahun's character are together in this life, too—and they're really cute—and Phum's like, “Yeah, I was a shit to you in high school. I'm sorry about that.” [laughs] It was nice. It was fun. It was enjoyable. I gave it a drama score of 7.5—I think that's reasonable for it. I gave it a crack score of 8.5 so it works out to an 8 for me, which I liked. I liked it.

Ben

I really liked a lot of this. I liked how much fun Phuwin and Pond had in the traditional garb that they were wearing. I like how much fun they had with how often they had to be shirtless. I really enjoyed them writing vows to each other in the past because they didn't know if they would be able to escape. Basically fully committed to each other. That was really beautiful, and not something I expected from Jojo. I was really surprised that Jojo did something that genuinely tender. That really worked for me.

I gave it an 8. It's one of those 8’s where it's, like, if you liked Never Let Me Go, this is going to make it feel a little bit better because the idea that the drama of Never Let Me Go is yet another instance of these two characters trying to be with each other across space and time is super romantic—and that's the kind of shit I love in my big dramas. And I was not expecting this particular show to make me go, “Wow,” [sighs] and look back at the, the original show and go, “Okay. I can see that.”

It was deeply enjoyable. If you liked Never Let Me Go enough, and you feel mildly dissatisfied by it, and you just kind of want some closure to walk away from, watch the special. I felt very good about Palm and Nuengdaio by the end of that, because they felt a little bit more grown. And I kind of like where they left the characters with Palm just being like, “Whatever, I have a rich boyfriend and I've worked very hard. I'm just gonna go hang out with you in Germany for a little while, and then we'll figure it out from there.” And I'm like, more power to you, bro.

Nini

It seemed like yes that they were just going to vibe and enjoy each other, And, after everything that those two went through? Sure! That seems like a great place to leave them.

28:00 - A Boss and a Babe

Nini

Also in the, for me, 8 category—so there is a tie here—A Boss and a Babe. This kind of…surprised me, because I ended up, with the OG show, being really disappointed by where we landed with it. But I really liked the Our Skyy.

Ben

This is a little bit weird because I think in terms of whenever the rest of you hear this. We're actually, I think releasing this before the episode where we talk about A Boss and a Babe. So, spoilers, a bit, for that particular episode, but, uh, we were…less than impressed with A Boss and a Babe.

Nini

For sure.

Ben

However, we actually had a decent time with their Our Skyy outing. Nini why don't you walk us through the setup for this particular outing.

Nini

So, the fanfic trope for the A Boss and a Babe outing of Our Skyy is, I guess, “walk a mile in my shoes” kind of thing? Gun and Cher are happy together. They're sweet loving boyfriends… but the office is in shambles. Because Gun is stressed out and he's stressing everybody at work out. And because Cher knows everybody at work because he used to work there, he has been hipped to the fact that his man is stressing everybody else. And so he goes on a mission to try to get his man to stop stressing everybody at work out.

So, trying to make him understand that he needs to dial it the fuck back. And the way that he eventually comes up with after trying a few other ways, is that they are going to spend a day walking a mile in each other's shoes. So, he is going to spend a day being the boss, and Gun is going to spend a day being the intern so that Gun gets an idea of the stresses that his employees go through. And Cher is just like whatever I'll just be the boss, and Gun is like, “Oh, it's not as easy as you think.”

And it actually turns out really fun and interesting to watch them do this. Of course it's a weird, horny sex thing because everything is a weird, horny sex thing with these two. But [laughs] it's, it's fun. It's light. It's interesting. It's…enjoyable. It's a strong conflict. It's a stronger conflict than we get in the actual OG series. It works. I think it's that because it's so short New doesn't really have time to fuck it up.

Ben

[laughs] So, like, I was frustrated because Gun’s being kind of a difficult boss, but being fairly reasonable about why he's a difficult boss. He's like, “We work in a difficult industry where we spend a great deal of time working on something, and then we release it to the public, and then it can flop. And so I have been funding people's jobs for anywhere from two to 12 months working on a project, and we really need strong turnaround for this because these people's jobs are riding on the success of this. So they do need to take their jobs seriously, and when they are given feedback or are given specific directives, they need to accomplish those directives.”

There's like really interesting tension there between, like, the boss's perspective of, “Y'all can be mad at me, but you want me to cut your checks, right?” versus, “Bro, we are not going to work well under these fucking conditions.” Like, that tension was delivered really well! Gun's perspective comes through in a way that doesn't feel pandering to anyone, and I was like he is a little bit off base in the way he talks to people, but the things he's concerned about are valid for where he sits.

It just pissed me off low-key because, like, we never figured out what Thyme’s whole deal was in the original show. Like, his friend who used to be part of the company. And it feels like that was his job here—was to be like the bridge between Gun and the team. To translate Gun’s directives and frustrations into directives for the team so they could accomplish them and to keep the team motivated. And, like, Cher was helping with that for a while but now that Cher is, like, doing other stuff, like, that has gone away. That's the biggest thing with this one. Like, this was such a solid concept that it made me even more annoyed at how the OG show just sort of fumbled every thread that they were holding.

Nini

Yeah, I have to agree. Like, the workplace conflict on this was really strong and solid, and the workplace stuff in the OG show was kind of weak. And part of the workplace stuff that was great in this was showing that, yeah, Gun does need a balancing force at work. But also, aside from that, surprisingly, Cher is not an idiot. [laughs] Like, Cher is actually pretty competent. He's not, like, ready, clearly, to be the boss of a place like this. But he's not an idiot.

Like, one of the things that happens is that Gun tries to set him up a little bit by having, like, a client come in and try to, like, have a discussion and talk to him about, like, partnering on a game or something and like talking about ideas and all that kind of stuff. And at first you think that Cher is going to blow it. But then he delivers. He comes into the meeting. You know, he takes a minute to get his bearings and understand what's going on, but then he has actual good ideas? And he can speak to the people in a way that works for the business.

So, it shows they could probably at some point in the future after Cher has learned more, they could probably run the business together. Because I think that they bring the different perspectives that's required, but, just like Ben said, that also makes me, like, really mad that we didn't get more of the Thyme stuff in the OG series because, to me, that feels like this was what Thyme’s role was. And that just completely got cast aside. So, on the one hand, I thought this was actually pretty good but, on the other hand, it made me think even less of the OG series and I was already struggling with the OG series.

Ben

[sighs] And that's where we are. It sucks because, like, again, like, Force and Book are good. And the cast of this particular show? Very good. They hold together an otherwise weak show but, man, you just really want to see what that cast looks like when they have a really good show under their belt.

Nini

Yeah, and this gives you, like, a kind of an ‘in’ to that. So my score: this was drama score of 8 because I thought it was a solid conflict. Well executed. I give it a crack score of 8 because, quite honestly, once the whole role reversal thing started. Like, if I worked for Gun’s company, I would have taken, like, vacation until that was over because it was just…It was a little too “bring your kinks to work” for me personally.

[both laugh]

I would have been like, yeah I don't need to see this. I'm gonna take a day off, and tomorrow when I come back, hopefully everything will be normal. Combined like drama score 8 crack score 8 average 8. What did you give it?

Ben

I gave it an 8, and we were joking with some of our other friends about how most of us gave it an 8, and I think it was ginnymoonbeam who was like, “We all gave it an 8, but these are all very different 8s.”

[both laugh]

Nini

Yes, that is definitely true. These are different 8s that we are giving it. My 8 is like, “Damn it. Now I got to go back and revise my score of the OG series and put it even lower.”

36:45 - The Eclipse

Nini

Moving along from the 8s and now we're starting to get into the top of tops. The top top top tops of the Our Skyy pantheon for me. And next up is The Eclipse. Ben, I'm [gonna] need you to give the people what we're talking about here.

Ben

The Eclipse picks up, it feels like, the summer after the boys have graduated from high school. So, they're away from Suppalo—we're not going to deal with any of the Suppalo nonsense anymore. It's just the two couples, Wat, and…Pawin's character for some reason, because he's always palling around them. They're getting together to help Wat shoot for a film project that he wants to submit to a competition. But we pick up, originally, with Akk and Ayan who were doing boyfriend things, and we are seeing the ongoing deprogramming of Akk continuing. And over the course of the filming for this, we see that Akk and Ayan are basically stand-ins for Golf's very complex ideas about the way our private and public lives inform each other, and how both are inherently political.

Akk and Ayan over the course of this are having a struggle about whether or not they should care what other people think. Akk thinks that to be part of a civil society you do have to care about how your actions and behaviors impact other people. Ayan, who has seen what a civil society does to people, thinks that that is bullshit and that he should be more concerned about himself and the people he cares about, and not the nebulous feelings of others. And then calls Akk directly out at one point about how his concern for others turned him into the worst version of a cop possible.

And it gets really ugly when they're working on Wat’s film project. These two are having a truly fundamental struggle about whether or not the two of them are even compatible because they do not see eye-to-eye politically. You get the sense that Ayan hoped that, once freed from the Suppalo prefect thing, Akk would start to see things more his way. And Akk hoped that Ayan would stop fighting with him so much, because Akk really just wants to do soft, cuddly things with his boyfriend. But Ayan gets off on fighting with Akk. [laughs] So he is always antagonizing him for sex reasons.

Nini

It's one of those early relationship conflicts when you're still figuring out how to be with each other. When you're dating at the beginning, you put your best foot forward. In this case, with the two of them, they put their absolute worst foot forward when they were getting together. But there's still that thing about the version of you when you're courting is…different, somewhat, than the version of you when you're not courting. For them, the issue is the version of them when they were courting was exactly who they are, but they didn't think that that was who they were.

So, like you said, Ayan really thought that out of the pressure cooker of Suppalo, Akk would be a different person, and then he's, like, coming to realize: No, this is really just who he is. And Akk is having that same realization about Ayan. They have to decide essentially—and they do decide via Wat's film—whether what they are to each other is worth bridging that gap between them. The answer that they come to is: yes it is—in a really phenomenal scene that I enjoyed so much.

Ben

Let me tell you. First and Khaotung are just really, really good together. Like, it's amazing how they can play these two characters coming to a precipice of fundamental political disagreement to the point that they looked at each other and they're like, “Is this really who I'm going to be with?” And you can see this almost weird resignation as they turn to face each other and embrace, where there are no easy answers to this.

They don't see eye to eye politically on a lot of really fundamental things, and yet they still want to choose each other each time. And that is delivered so well. Like, it's hard to watch The Eclipse with your brain off. I watched a lot of people try to do it during the original show and they struggled, because it is not a brains-off show. Golf has a lot to say about the state of their country and is using whatever platform they have to voice some of these ideas, most notably about how sitting on your phone writing mean tweets is not action. That you need to get into the work. That you have to get into the streets with other people. You have to participate in the work. Even if it's just in the support of getting the people who do do the work the tools and food they need to do the work.

And it's really fascinating that even in this little two-part special, which as far as some people thought, was just First and Khaotung making out for two hours because these boys kissed a lot in this special, they managed to say a lot. Golf managed to express their deep love of Thai cinema with the references that Wat was playing out.

It also managed to get across how much these two boys really like each other, and it was kind of fun to see Akk and Kan working their way out of their internalized homophobia. Like it was not surprising to me that Akk and Kan wanted to do a lot of touching with their boyfriends.

Nini

I really liked how it all came together: how Golf used their love of not just Thai cinema but queer cinema to sort of pull the threads together of the fight that Akk and Ayan were having. The petty fight and the serious fight, because they were having a fight on two levels. They were having a petty fight about—well, maybe not petty—but they were having a surface level fight about Ayan paying attention to Akk and being lovey-dovey and soft with him, versus Ayan wanting Akk to be tougher with him because that's what he likes. And then that going to the deep level of the political, and then, on top of that, that being pulled together by the concept of film. And then even throwing in for us a little side story about Wat and what film means to him, and how he's not necessarily supported by his family—but he kind of is a little bit but mostly not—and how he has things to say and he feels strongly about those things

Like, they managed to do a lot with very little in this special and I really, really enjoyed it. It was very deep for what it was. Very thinkable piece. I really liked it. And then on top of that, they also get to have a little bit of coming-of-age nostalgia moments about leaving high school and moving into the real world. There's so much packed into those two hours. I was really impressed with how much they managed to get in there and have it feel organic.

Ben

I was incredibly impressed by this entire outing.

Nini

I liked the special on its own. I liked it in connection to the OG show. I liked it as a continuation of the OG show. I liked the things that it had to say and the way that it carried through its themes. I was impressed by how much it managed to fit in. I gave it a drama score of 9.5. I really thought it was very, very good.

Ben

But there was singing so she took half a point.

[both laugh]

Nini

I gave it a crack score of 8. The trope really was I guess “secret surprise” because the frame that this is all put in is Ayan preparing a surprise for Akk’s birthday, but it's a secret surprise where he's pretending that he doesn't remember and he's not going to celebrate Akk’s birthday, which is a little weird which is why I took the half point off really, because I hate that secret surprise trope.

Ben

It's one of those things where I don't really like it for Akk, but if fits with Ayan’s sort of, like…Ayan is the queer kid who reads too much theory. Like, he knows more than you. And so he doesn't always see you, specifically. Like, he outs Thua in the first show thinking he's helping him. Like, he kind of is but, like, he outs Thua and oversteps, and it's the same thing here with Akk. Like, he wants to surprise Akk. Like I don't think you should be surprising Akk, because so much of his Suppalo experience is about being guided by the things that are not being said that he's supposed to just interpret.

If you're trying to deprogram him, you need to not do that to him. And the reason why, like I—I mostly let it go is because, as dense as Ayan can kind of be because he's too fucking smart for his own good, when Akk admitted in, like, the first fifteen minutes of the show that he hoped that they were gonna do cute boyfriend frolicking in the fields and taking pictures together, and Ayan was like, “Oh, I thought you were just kidding about that.”

And Akk was like, “No! I was serious.”

It's like, “All right? Well shit! Grab your camera!” And they frolicked!

Nini

[laughs]

Ben

He gave his boyfriend the cute boyfriend shit he wanted to do, even if he teased him a little bit about it first.

Nini

I did like that too. I like that they don't have it together yet but they're willing to listen, and they're willing to do what it takes, I think. But, like I said, I'm knocking out a half a point for the secret surprise because I hate that trope. The crack score is an 8 because there's these set of dream sequences which are homages to Thai film and queer film, and I thought they were delightful. There's the Brokeback Mountain one and then there's the Golden Eagle one which is a Thai film then there's the Ong Bak one which is another Thai film and then there's another—

Ben

If you have not seen Ong Bak and you like action film, please go see Ong Bak.

Nini

I have not watched Ong Bak. Of course, Ben has because he's a boy.

Ben

I am a boy! Tony Jaa is amazing!

Nini

[laughs] I really liked that Golf gets to throw that in there as well. And it's fun. The Golden Eagle one especially is delightful. [laughs] It really is. So that's 9.5 and 8. Let's call that an 8.75. Ooh the maths is coming back! It's coming back! An 8.75 for The Eclipse.

Ben, what’d you give it?

Ben

I gave it a 9 because it's really coherent and that mattered a lot for me, because we had watched a lot of—I don't remember the exact order—but I remember just not being, like, necessarily, like, great at this point because a bunch of them were kind of…stuffed…or boring…and this wasn't. I was fully engaged the whole time, because Golf has such clear ideas in their work and they're all working together at various levels that they really wanted us to not miss.

49:50 - My School President

Nini

Moving on from The Eclipse onto the next rung on the ladder up: My School President. So the My School President fan fiction trope was AU, alternate universe, for all of the characters. I had a fucking blast with this. Ben, explain to the people what happened.

Ben

I'm gonna pre-react to the criticism, unfortunately.

My School President is a high school story about pursuing your long-term crush and the final year of your high school experience. There was no way My School President was going to get an epilogue story. So instead they flipped the seats of a bunch of the characters.

So, in this version of the My School President story, Gun is the school president and Tinn is the member of the school band. This time named Lion instead of Chinzhilla. Instead of Tiwson being the school president's best friend, they keep Por, who is his bestie in this. Tiwson is a member of the band. Sound and Win switch positions in this, where Sound is the long-term member of the band. Win is the new hot boy who shows up who they recruit. They also decide to flip Yo and Pat in the story with each other, even though they're still both in the band. Gim becomes the principal, and Photjanee becomes the operator of the milk ice cream bar.

And in the process of this, like, the same beats from the show. We still hit them, but they play out very differently because the core characterization of these couples don't shift. Which forces us to reckon with certain aspects of the characters that kind of get glossed over in the idealism of the original My School President run. For example, Tinn is so much braver than Gun. Gun is kind of a coward who is gripped by an intense sense of self-doubt, and it starts off almost immediately. Like there's some political commentary with the way Gun is selected as the school president. 250 votes were cast by parents to make Gun the president instead of going through the school voting process instead, which works as a quick shorthand for the show, but also works as a commentary on Thai parliamentary politics.

And so like he's not the school president because he wants to help Tinn. He's just sort of pushed into the position by his mom, and so the moments that they hit along the way, like the dancing together scene. That plays out differently because Gun backs off and ends up dancing with someone else. The whole Questions thing they did to get close to film the thing goes differently because Gun won't ask Tinn directly, but Tinn does ask him, but Gun backs down.

It was interesting because, like, everyone still chose each other. But, like, in a weird way Tiwson and Por were the strong couple of this outing, anchoring for the rest of them.

Like, in the original show Tinn and Gun are so obviously together that the force of their mutual attraction sort of just creates opportunity for the rest of these relationships to bubble up. This time around, Tiwson and Por are working together in the background to help Tinn and Gun get together because they want to come out as a couple. Which I thought was an interesting switch-up as well.

Nini

I really enjoyed that, despite shifting the characters around in terms of their positions and roles, that the cores of the characters remained exactly the same. And you see how the same people living a different life would become a different person. Like you talk about Gun being kind of a coward and he is kind of a coward even in the OG show. Tinn’s the brave one, and Tinn has to be the brave one because Gun's the one who's gonna back down. But also the Gun of the alternate universe—the multiverse of cuteness as it is called—the Gun of the alternate universe hasn't spent his whole life on stage being judged and knocked back. And developing that thick skin that he talks to Tinn about in the OG series, so he is much less resilient than the Gun of the OG series. And that makes a difference in how he navigates his crush on Tinn.

Similarly to that, Tinn in the AU has not had the strictness of the OG Photjanee forced on him the whole time. The strictness and the straight lace-ness because things are a little looser for him. And so he feels more able to take the ball and run with it when he realizes how he feels. They redo the scene of them spending the night at the school and walking around, and this is where Tinn turns the Gun and is like, “Look, do you like me?” which is something Tinn wouldn't necessarily have asked in the OG series.

But then Gun, faced with the opportunity to actually lock it down with his crush. He says no and he runs away which is not a thing that Tinn would have done. If Gun had ginned up the, the actual courage to ask Tinn if he liked him Tinn would have been like [inhales] taken a deep breath and been like, “Hell yell, let’s date.” It's really interesting watching how they take the same characters and, just by moving their positions in the story, they create a story that's different.

Ben

And yet all the people still choose each other. They basically state the big idea at one point. The Gun character says maybe in another lifetime things would have gone better, and the Por and Tiwson of this universe slap that idea down and go, “Yeah, but you're not in those universes. You're in this one. Make the most of the life you have.”

Nini

I really enjoyed this outing. I enjoyed what they took the opportunity of the Our Skyy special to say and to do. I agree with you. I don't think that an epilogue would have worked. My School President is so of its setting. I do not think that moving the boys into college and following them there—I don't feel like I would have been interested in seeing that because that's not the point of My School President.

My tagline for My School President was “perfect high school romance” and I think that's where it should stay.

Okay, so my drama score for My School President was 9.5, and I took off a half point because nobody made out. And, I'm sorry, I am shallow. I wanted somebody to kiss in this special. I didn't care who. Just somebody. So I took off half a point. But the crack score is a 10 because I mean it's an AU. There is nothing crackier than that, so that works out to what, like a 9.75? Yeah, I'm good with that.

Ben

So, I gave this one a 9 because it was a little heady and My School President is not a really heady show for me. But the whole AU concept was. Now, I liked it, but in terms of, like, recommending it to the people who liked My School President, it's kind of hard because they wanted more of what they loved in My School President and this is not exactly that? So, I gave it a 9.

But I'm also with Nini, like nobody kissed in this one. And, again, young actors. I'm totally fine with them not kissing, but…their characters in the original show have really specific kisses, and, if they were more experienced and veteran actors, we would have gotten a different type of kiss from these characters because they are coming at each other very differently. And we don't get to offer that particular comparison here. So, minor knock for me as well.

Nini

We didn't even get to talk about the best part which was them doing a fake music video for a fake Aof song that incorporated Aof’s top three hits in the music videos, which are He’s Coming to Me, Bad Buddy, and A Tale of Thousand Stars.

Ben

We didn't even talk about that.

Nini

Tiw and Por got to do A Tale of Thousand Stars. Sound and Win get to do Bad Buddy. And Gun and Tinn get to do He’s Coming to Me. So they, they paid homage to their granddaddy in "Aof" Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon. Three of the greatest GMMTV BLs, and also the ones that sort of set the stage for My School President.

1:00:24 - Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars

Nini

Onto the main event, and the main event of Our Skyy 2 was "Aof" Noppharnach giving the finger to GMMTV and saying, “Fuck you, I get four episodes to talk about what I want. And what I want to talk about is queer elders coming to terms with themselves, and I'm going to use anybody I want to talk about that.” AKA the Bad Buddy - A Tale of Thousand Stars crossover event.

Ben, break it down for the people.

Ben

Whereas every other one of these projects except for My School President was in many ways an epilogue this is a mixture of…it's an epilogue or a post-show story for Tian and Phupha, but for Pran and Pat it's set between Bad Buddy episode 11 and Bad Buddy episode 12. It's the senior year for Pat and Pran. They are still closeted and having to keep up the architecture-engineering rivalry, though it looks like they've tried to smooth things over over the years because most of the beef is about who's bringing…brooms to…the charity project now. [laughs] But they're having some consternation because both groups need to put on a play as part of their class president activities, and after the normal Bad Buddy hijinks kick in, Pran reveals that he wants to adapt Tian's diary A Tale of Thousand Stars into a play for the architecture school.

And once they decide to follow this route, their teacher says that, because they don't have permission from the people whose story this actually is, they need to go find them and get said permission. Pran decides that they're going to go to Pha Pun Dao to talk to them directly, tell them how important it is that they want to tell this particular story.

Before they can leave, Pat is forced to hang out with his engineering buddies and, because he has to pretend like he doesn't like Pran, he says something akin to, “That Pran guy. He'd be useless without me. I'm always having to help him.” Pran felt some kind of way about that and decided to leave Pat behind and go to Pha Pun Dao himself—much to his own chagrin—because he loves that boy, and got so nervous when he was walking around by himself without Pat.

And over the course of these four episodes, Pat and Pran learn a little bit more about themselves and their dynamic—but mostly they really help Tian and Phupha work past some really fundamental struggles that they were having as a couple that Pat and Pran realized that they had moved past a long time ago.

This crossover really elevates both works because Aof is obsessed with the idea that queer people make each other better and, by the end of this, we as a fandom seem rather split about it because those of us who liked both A Tale of Thousand Stars and Bad Buddy were able to appreciate how both stories impact each other. But, it seems like if you were really only into one of those stories, you resented the crossover in one way or another.

Nini

I think that's one reaction to it, but, I mean, we've seen among the clowns even people who were really into Bad Buddy but not so into A Tale of Thousand Stars really coming around on Tian and Phupha by the end of the special. I don't think we have like a Vice Versa situation in that, and we can discuss all the reasons that might be, but I think that definitely the crossover has made people who maybe didn't appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars as much really appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars and Tian and Phupha more now.

Ben

So where do you want to pick up with the beginning of this discussion?

Nini

I think I want to start with the idea one of our fellow clowns first espoused, and really sort of set me off on this thought process, that this special—this whole crossover—is all about Phupha. Because, of all four characters in the OG shows, the only character who didn't really get an arc was Phupha—this is Phupha’s arc. How do you feel about that as an idea—as a concept?

Ben

Since we're gonna start here, I'm gonna come out swinging.

Nini

Do it.

Ben

If you hate that Phupha is the focus character of this particular special, I need you to examine whether or not you actually care about gay men.

Phupha is a poor, hyper-masculine, closeted gay man, who's older than the other characters. He's about 35 at this point. There are so many queer people out there that you're never going to know about because they cannot live their lives loudly.

We're recording in June right now. Pride month. Phupha’s not gonna show up at Bangkok Pride because 1) he's not coming to Bangkok, and 2) that's just not the place where he feels safe. It's not the place where he feels seen. It's not where all of the quiet gays are gonna go, or where the gays who have to be closeted for one reason or another are going to be. And it's easy to forget them because they're boring or they're less fun.

I like that the story ends up being about: “How do we help Phupha break out of his own shell a little bit and let Tian love him just a little bit more?”

Nini

Phupha is this sort of stoic, very stern, character. I mean they lampooned that a little bit in the OG series for A Tale of Thousand Stars, and they lampoon him a little bit in the beginning of the crossover here, deflating him a little bit—kind of puncturing the whole stoic seme thing. But this is kind of who he is.

This is, as you say, he's older. He's got real responsibilities. He's got a community to protect. He's…got people that he cares about that he needs to take care of. He is not the kind of guy who is going to, like you say, go to Bangkok Pride. He is the kind of guy who maybe has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with—definitely has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with. He is that guy who is trying to do the right thing all the time. And so often the right thing means him subsuming his actual desires in some kind of idea of him denying himself being what's best for the community.

And one of the things that the crossover brings forward, particularly in the person of Pat, who is diametrically opposed to the idea of subsuming himself for anybody. He only does it for Pran, and only, like, grudgingly. But, to put somebody like Pat, who is just loud and proud and just completely does not care about any ideas of masculinity or propriety or anything like that, and put that character in conversation of any kind with Phupha. It's so delightful to watch that happen because, of course, Pat immediately gloms onto him. He follows him around like a duckling—he imprints on him.

He's like, “Oh, yes, Stern Daddy. I really, really like this vibe that you're givin’ off here. I'm just going to follow you around and bother the fuck out of you.”

I think it was wen-kexing-apologist who said that Pat's entire job in the special is to terrorize the local elder gay. I Love it.

Ben

Pat and Pran. They both looked at Phupha, looked at each other, and then both said at the same time ‘WOULD.’

[both laugh]

Nini

I did see that. That was funny because it's true. They hang a lampshade on it at two points 1) when Pran runs into Phupha for the first time—him really having, like, a gay boy moment. [laughs] Like, the whole, like, slow-motion, turn-around, like, gasping gay boy moment.

Ben

He's read the, the diary and he's like “I get it.” Immediately!

[both laugh]

Nini

And then, to have Pat's moment come, where—because Pat's flirtation language is competition. So, of course he basically challenges Phupha to a duel in the form of a drinking contest. And then they wake up shirtless next to each other and think that they might have maybe…done something—

Ben

They definitely did some stuff.

Nini

They made out. Just a little bit. They kissed a little bit.

But I—I loved that! I loved that they were both really into him. Like it was clear that they were both attracted to him. It was very gay and very fun. But also they're just like, “No, I get it.” They—they both looked and they were just like, “Tian, I get you. I understand why you live in this village with [both laugh] no running water, and you have to sleep under a mosquito net every night. I get you! I understand you because, for this man, I would do these things.” Like, they get it.

It's kind of delightful.

Ben

I like how, when Pran first gets to the village, and Phupha passes out, Tian runs up and Pran’s like ‘who are you’ and Tian's like, “No. Who the fuck are you?”

[Nini laughs]

Ben

And, like, if Tian had been allowed to have a knife…

Nini

Pran would have been stopped at that point—fully stabbed. “Like, who the fuck are you and why are you talking to my man?” [laughs] Like, Tian lives in the village because he doesn't want anybody else to see Phupha.

[both laugh]

Nini

Because he knows the minute any of these whores take a look at his man, if it's going to be a problem.

Ben

In terms of the serious stuff. So, they've shown up to convince them to sign these papers. Going into this Pat and Pran are fighting a little bit because Pran feels guilty, and part of this journey for him was maybe seeing, like, if he actually needed Pat as much as he does. And he learns very quickly that he is not at his best without Pat.

It's funny because Pat always knew this. Pat seemed to know already. Like, he says it in like episode 5 of Bad Buddy that he was not at his best when Pran was gone.

But Pran wants to prove he doesn't need Pat's help, and when Pran shows up to try and convince him to sign Tian's like, “Fuck yeah! I wrote the diary so people would…maybe want to become teachers and appreciate what I have out here. Absolutely!” Phupha's like, “No, y'all not going to present me as some lovesick fool on your little stage.”

And then Pran tries to talk to Phupha a couple of times and fails massively at it. Tries to lie to Phupha. And then Pat blocks the shit out of that by calling out the bullshit right away, because he's pissed at Pran for running off without him. So he's sabotaging some of Pran's efforts. And it isn't until the two of them start working together that they actually start making any fucking progress because…that's who they are.

Nini

But I think there's also, like, a really valid point to the fact that Pran—he tries to talk to Phupha about it at first and Phupha is not having it. You're right. But one of the reasons that Phupha is not having it is because he's looking at these kids and he's thinking, “These kids do not understand me. These kids have no idea of what my life is like. These kids have no idea of what our lives are like. These kids have never faced any kind of serious challenge. These are two dumb kids. I'm not gonna give them time of day. They don't get to tell my story.”

And then, by the end, the thing that actually gets Phupha to agree to let them tell his story…is Pran actually dropping the bullshit—as you said—and saying to him, “You think I don't know what it's like to feel insecure? You think I don't know what it's like to feel like my partner deserves better than me? You think I don't know what that feels like? Oh, believe you me, I know what that feels like.”

And, because at this point Phupha has spent an enormous amount of time with Pat, he's like,

“Okay, yeah, maybe you do understand what I'm going through.”

And the way that that works out in the end—and I mean we're kind of skipping back and forth through the story at this point—but the way that that works out at the end is Phupha saying, “Okay, you get to tell my story, but you have to tell my story because you understand me.” His condition for signing off on them doing the play is that they play the roles of him and Tian, because they understand him. I thought that was really—a really great way to follow that thread through the story. I really enjoyed that part.

Ben

I like the subtle way Aof played with our expectations about who would identify with who. Like, they made Tian and Pran resemble each other. Tian was like, “Fuck this twink,” right away as soon as Pran showed up.

[Nini laughs]

But then, like, Pran helps him. Pran helps him in the class and Tian softens very quickly to Pran.

Because of how physically macho Pat is—like, there's this expectation that he and Phupha are gonna be super similar to each other—and there's an interesting subtle commentary that Aof does there in that it's the more creative one, who's way too close to his mom, who's more like the hyper-masculine dude, because both of them are masking in their lives.

Like, Phupha is hyper-masculine because that's what's expected of him. And like people pick at Phupha about this a little bit, but he is trying to live up to the role that he is told he's supposed to fulfill. And Pran also suffers under the expectations of who his mom expects him to be, and it's interesting for me that Aof, over the course of these three episodes when they're all together, Aof says Pran and Phupha have more in common because they are carrying so much homophobia on their shoulders, and that's why the two of them probably understand each other best.

Nini

Using the yaoi tropes again, a talk about who is the seme and who's the uke in the story in terms of who's the pursuer and who's the pursued, and…if you look at it, like, then you can clearly see that it's Tian and Pat who are aligned because Pat pursued Pran and Tian pursued Phupha. They are the semes even though it seems that Tian would be an uke. He's not. He actually pursued Phupha.

So in the narrative sense. He's the seme. It's just very fun, this playing with the idea of what is a seme and what is an uke. And, again to use the yaoi terms—which you know I don't like to use ‘cause I don't really know the yaoi or rock with the yaoi. But, that idea of who is…pursuing the relationship, leading the relationship—like that's Tian and that's Pat.

And in terms of who is being pulled along by their partner in a kind of a way that's Phupha and that’s Pran. So, I do like how Aof leans into this…because again, it subverts expectations in a particular kind of way. But also it makes so much sense.

Ben

There's two subtle things that I really want to point out, and I want to talk about them a little.

First, Pat and Pran use titles for Tian and Phupha the whole time. And the other thing is about how nobody really knows anything about anybody in this. So, like, we're gonna call them Tian and Phupha, Pat and Pran, because we're inside of these people's stories with them. But it's interesting to me that Pran and Pat never cross a familiarity line with Tian and Phupha in the brief time they're with them. They refer to them as Teacher and Chief only the entire time.

Nini

I like that because it's a nod to their roles as adults because Pat and Pran are still kids. They're still college students, and Tian and Phupha are adults to them. But, in some ways, Pat and Pran have progressed much further in their relationship than Tian and Phupha have because they've been through more—just from the nature of their whole history. And they've crossed barriers and boundaries and, and parts of their relationship that Tian and Phupha are just confronting or haven't even confronted yet. And I liked that.

I liked, also, that interplay of the younger ones being the ones to teach the older ones something. I really like that because I feel like that's what's happening now not just in—not just in queer circles—because that's definitely happening in queer circles. But also just in terms of generalization. Like, if you're not a complete douche and you're our age—well I say our age. I'm about 10 years older than Ben. Not ten, but…when you've crossed a certain Rubicon in the adulting game. Let's put it that way.

Right now. The kids are teaching us like a whole bunch of stuff as long as you're not a dick, like, and you remain open, the kids can teach you all kinds of shit that you never thought was possible to learn about yourself at this stage in your life. And I really like that Aof played with that because Aof’s about my age, and I like that he is the kind of person who understands that the young uns have things to teach us as well. Like, we have things to teach them—clearly and obviously—and we want to make a better world for them—clearly and obviously. But also, there's so much shit that we can learn from them when it comes to just fucking unclenching, because that's what happens here! Like, all of this is in service of Phupha just fucking unclenching.

Ben

And this is what I mean about having other queer people, like it isn't just about your boyfriend. You need queer friends. Like, Tian blossoms almost immediately when he realizes that Pat and Pran are a couple—that they're not just friends. As soon as Pat flirts with him a little bit at breakfast and Pran shoves a spoon into his mouth, you can see Tian instantly relaxes and it's like, “Okay” and is more receptive to what these two are here for. And for Phupha. Like, yeah, it's one thing to just be into Tian and that be a thing, but to have someone like Pat roaming around actively flirting with him all the time, that also forced Phupha to reckon with who he is.

And it's funny, because, like, Pat and Pran are actually closeted. They basically, like, admit it to Tian and Phupha as a sort of a de facto thing. But, like, the two of them are away from the world where they have to hide. So they're on top of each other. They're constantly touching each other. They're flirting constantly…

Nini

They're fucking in the tent twenty feet away from them. [laughs]

Ben

We'll get there in a second. We’ll be there in a second. [Nini laughs] But they're so obviously obsessed with each other. And like Nini said, like during the rescue bit, Kampung is not in the tent with them where he's supposed to be. And so the boys are like, “Oh, I guess the kid decided to go stay with Phupha and Tian. Great! My foot is hurting me because I twisted my ankle, but let's get it in!” And then in the morning Pat limps to breakfast asking, “What's my score for last night?”

Nini

I love that they just fuck their way through all their problems. It's delightful. I enjoy it.

Ben

One of the sad things with Tian and Phupha is…they have to keep waiting for the other person to be asleep to be affectionate with them, and that's one of the big things that I'm really glad that they start to work through towards the end of this. Like, I'm really proud of Phupha for listening to the man who he loves, and the person who is inspired by the man who he loves.

Like, it’s so fascinating. Like—like Pran ran on this whole trip thinking he was Tian, met Phupha, realized he was Phupha, and was able to reach across that gap and say, “Please trust me. We got you.” And Phupha said, “Okay.”

There's a lot of consternation in the fandom right now about taking score between Pat and Pran about who sacrifices more, or what should or shouldn't be said. I'm not particularly interested in that particular conversation. Pat and Pran love each other. They're adults. They've committed to each other. Sometimes you're gonna be with other gays and you're not going to understand how they work, and you just have to accept that their dynamic is their dynamic. It's not about who wins. It's about who cares for you—and they clearly care for each other.

Nini

I think part of what it is, as well, is—it sounds bad, but go with me on this right? I am a great proponent of therapy. I believe in it. I am in therapy. I have been in therapy for years. I recommend therapy to everybody. But there is a certain level of therapized that I think is not necessarily good for us…And that is as somebody who believes in the power of therapy to change and save lives. I think that this idea that everything is pathologized, that you always have to be on the lookout because somebody's trying to get you in some kind of way—I think that it can be harmful to relationships and to our understanding of relationships in certain ways, because not everything that is unbalanced or imbalanced is harmful.

And I think that one of the problems that I'm having with…not so much the show, but the fandom reaction to it is…that yes, Pat and Pran’s relationship looks unbalanced from the outside. It probably is unbalanced in certain ways. But that doesn't mean that it's harmful. But there's this idea that because of—again this is a, a therapized lens that unbalanced equals harmful, and I don't think that's necessarily the case.

One of the things that I really don't grok onto and, to be fair…I am very…I am a Bad Buddy fun. I am a Pat and Pran fan. I am a fan of the characters separately and together. And one of the things that…I am really personally sticky and icky about is this idea in certain parts…that Pat and Pran do not love each other equally, or Pran does not love Pat enough, or Pat loves Pran more—all these ideas of particular kind of imbalances between them. And my whole thing is—Who are they and what do they need and what do they want from each other? What does Pat actually need from Pran? Is he getting it? He absolutely is.

So this idea of keeping score between the characters—or keeping score in relationships in general if you, if you broaden out to the idea of relationships—I feel like it doesn't serve. I feel like it's…reductive. And I feel like looking at these characters through that lens is not the way that Aof is portraying these characters, or wants the audience to look at these characters. Because I think that Aof is a person who is…very tuned into certain ideas that he wants to portray—certain things that he wants to portray about queerness and queer community and queer relationships—and…I think that to reduce probably the greatest queer relationship that he has put on screen in Pat and Pran to score keeping, when score keeping is a part of their history that they have deliberately stepped away from because they were forced into it. I feel like it misunderstands what he's trying to do and say with these characters…

And that's just my opinion, and I will admit a hundred percent that I am very precious about these two particular characters. I'm very precious about a lot of Aof characters because I feel that Aof writes characters in a way that I understand them intrinsically. But these two characters in particular I feel very precious about. And, I feel like to see them like that in the context of somehow keeping score between them is to not see them at all.

Ben

Pat only cares about one score and he asks Pran for it directly every morning.

Nini

And that's a fact. [laughs]

Ben

And that's the big thing for me! Like, they were kind of having a fight and most of it was Pran’s insecurity because Pran is a little bit embarrassed about what he's asked Pat to do for him. And they get over that almost immediately. They get to Pha Pun Dao. They see Tian and Phupha and they're like, “Oh, man. These guys are older than us, but they're like…four episodes behind us. [laughs] So, we got to catch these gays up quick!” And they—they instantly get over whatever their beef is and they start playing out their kinks the way they always do. They start cosplaying as Tian and Phupha…and flirting with each other.

Nini

And they do in the end have a little bit of a resolution to their…really not much of a fight, fight. And, there's two resolutions, really.

The first resolution is the resolution they get in Pha Pun Dao which is, “Look, I can't fucking live without you, and you can't fucking live without me, and we agree on that. So, let's dead the shit.” And they did! And it was fine, because the shit was never really live in terms of a fight being live in the first place. They were fucking their way through that whole fight…and that's how they deal with things, and it works for them, and it's fine.

And then they get a second resolution that Phupha gives them—a gift—which is, “I get to be in the open with you, even if it's just on stage. I get to be a lover in public.” And it works for me.

Ben

They even tried to redeem Wai a little bit.

Nini

It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts.

Ben

[laughs] He doesn't drop the curtain this time. Instead, he's like, “Give the people the kiss they need!”

Nini

It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts. [laughs]

Ben

And it's interesting, too, in terms of that particular gift. It works out in a couple of ways because Phupha gets to see a bunch of people react to their story. People are loving it. Lesbians are crying over them. One of the lesbians is moaning, “Why don't they just fuck already!”

[both laugh]

Ben

He gets to see people love them through this play, and then this gives Pran something that he's wanted: Pran his on socials after the play seeing people making fanvids about him and Pat. Which is something that he wants. He wants to be in the open with Pat because he knows that's what Pat wants, and this is the closest they're gonna get for now. And he is relieved to just see that.

But again, Pat is not worried about that. He's like, “Oh good, good. Did you get what you want?” and he's like, “All right. Let's stop fucking around with all this other stuff. Can we kiss as ourselves now?”

And they do!

Nini

We've talked a lot about Pat and Pran here and we've kind of scratched the surface on Tian and Phupha. But I really want to get into Phupha because the main thing that the special is doing is unlocking Phupha for the audience, because—like I said—all the other characters have had their arcs in the OG series that we're looking at. Only Phupha has really been holding the line, so to speak.

And this is Phupha's unveiling. It's his opening. This is Phupha getting harassed by a baby gay. Terrorized, actually, by a baby gay. Realizing that, “Oh my god. The baby gays came to town, and they fucked in a tent twenty feet away from us, and the world didn't fucking end. So maybe…I, too, can fuck my man and the world won’t end.”

[both laugh]

And then he proceeds to do just that.

Ben

I really like the way Aof went about doing it. Phupha primps himself up, rents an expensive vehicle, picks up Tian, and then goes with Tian to a cute cafe and lets Tian show him off a little bit, even if it made him a little bit nervous to be fawned over.

Nini

He let Tian, like, dress him up! Like, he let Tian take him shopping! He let Tian babygirl him a little bit. He let Tian spend a little money! It was nice!

Ben

That felt like a big deal because he mentioned it. He's like the money on one of these dishes could feed the village for a week in Pha Pun Dao, but he lets it go. Tian is actually a rich kid. This is part of what Phupha knows Tian gave up to be with him and so, when they're in Bangkok, he relents. He lets Tian dress him up like a Ken until Tian is satisfied with the look. And unsurprisingly, Tian chooses something very sleek, masculine, and comfortable for Phupha.

And then Phupha shows up and meets the parents. This is a huge deal too because Phupha was nervous about this because he feels like he took their son from them, and that he overstepped because Tian's dad was once a superior in the military. And all they say is, “We're gonna give you the thing that's most important to us. Take care of it.” And they acknowledge his filial piety to his father when Tian—when Phupha—admits that the reason he's a forest ranger is because his dad loved that mountain and felt a need to take care of it and the people who maintain it. And they were like, “Respect that.”

And then he proposes!

Nini

Okay y’all know how I feel about the BL weddings and the BL proposals. Y’all know that I am usually kind of, like, sitting in the corner, like, with my hands over my eyes. But this one, y'all, I was deep in my feelings. The tears came out. It was beautiful. I fucking loved this proposal. It was perfect.

Ben

I think I liked it because it wasn't a grand gesture in front of a bunch of people.

Nini

That's exactly why I liked it. [laughs]

Ben

It was for them. It was Phupha finally saying that he wasn't going to hold back anymore, and then they had loud obnoxious sex in the hotel room.

Nini

I just like that the loud obnoxious sex started like way before this. Like, the loud obnoxious sex started—like the idea of loud obnoxious sex of course was started by Pat, because that's Pat's entire brand. When he was walking around in the forest with Phupha, like, pretending to worry about Pran when he knows Pran is gonna be fine, and telling Phupha, like, “I mean I'm just going to sniff him out and, like, what do you mean you're not going to sniff out your man. Like, don't you know what he smells like? He smells so good.”

[both laugh]

Ben

You know, I don't think that's underlined really loudly in the show but like Pat says it quite plainly to Tian. He's like, “We don't need to go roaming around. Phupha’s experienced and good at his job, and Pran's really smart. We should really just stay here.”

[both laugh]

Like, nobody believes in Pran more than Pat.

Nini

Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Pat is like, “Listen. He's gonna be fine. I'm not particularly worried about him.” Like, both times. Both when he was wandering around in the woods with Phupha and when he was trying to get Tian to sit his ass down and be a heart patient like he's supposed to be. Both times he's just like, “I am not worried about Pran. Like, can we just focus on what the real problem is here. The real problem here is that your man is going unsniffed. Y’all are having a fight that y'all don't need to be having.”

I loved Pat’s whole energy in Pha Pun Dao. He was just like, “I'm just gonna vibe. I'm just glad to be here. I like being able to be out in the open with Pran. We are literally a million miles away from Bangkok. I can just be out here and just love on Pran the way that I feel like lovin’ on Pran—”

Ben

“I'm here to test the structural integrity of the teacher's house.”

Nini

All of that! “I'm here to fuck in a tent and ask the next morning if I did good.” He was just vibing the entire time, and then he got the bonus vibe of running into Phupha who he has—I'm sorry—a major fucking crush on. He does. It’s canon. We're gonna leave it at that. He brought the sex pest fairy godmother energy to Pha Pun Dao, and he's just like, “Listen, y'all are having a fight. Have you tried fucking about it? I have found that to be a very—”

[Ben laughs]

“—I found that to be very helpful method of solving problems. Y’all should just fuck! Give him a good old sniff. He smells real good. Have you noticed that?”

And it works! Like, Phupha at first is like, “Oh my God, get this kid away from me.”

Ben

Pat said, “Dick is not magical. It doesn't fix you. But! You look like you could use a little bit of a stress release.”

[both laugh]

Nini

And he's not wrong. And I love that despite the fact that Phupha spends the entire time being like, “Oh my God, child, get away from me. You are so annoying.” The minute Patt leaves, he's just like, “Okay. I'm [gonna] try what the kid said.”

And he does it!

Ben

He goes back to all of their most romantic moments that he downplayed previously and gives them to Tian. Tian doesn't even know what to do with it at first because they've been so cold for a while.

Nini

He takes Tian back to the waterfall, and he's just like, “You said that I sneaked to look at you and I did but I ain't sneaking now! I'ma look.” And then he goes further than that. He said, “Not only am I going to look. I am going to make sure that you get a good look.”

Ben

[singsong] Take a good hard look!

Nini

And like, like you said at first Tian is like, “What is happening here?” because Phupha is being so open, which I don't think he's ever been before.

Ben

And, like, Phupha was kind of manipulative about it because he made Tian relent and so Tian thought he was being, like, punished at first. Like, Phupha was teasing him because Tian's never made his attraction really quiet.

And then they finally get the stern dicking they've been needing. And Phupha…steals a line from the kids: “What's my score for last night?”

Nini

It was so fun. And Tian is just like, “Your what?” Like, Tian is fully enjoying this and I love that for him because one of the things I think people forget throughout the course of A Tale of Thousand Stars is that the Tian who starts the tale—he's sexy! Tian at the beginning of the story, he's got this edge to him. The sexy edge, and that kinda gets whittled away a little bit in Pha Pun Dao. But, that's still who he is.

And I like that at the end of the tale when we get here to the epilogue that he gets to be that again. He gets to pull out that sexy edge that is part of him and use it on his man. Like, he babygirls him, he takes him shopping, and then, when he lookin’ all nice, he leans into him and he be like, “You're real handsome. Do you have a boyfriend?” And I'm just like this is Tian! This is Tian that I remember!

Ben

And then he pushes Phupha in that bed, and he's like, “I've been waiting for five years. I'm ‘bout to get what's mine.”

[both laugh]

Nini

Phupha’s like, “What are you doing?” He's like, “Don't worry about it.” [laughs]

Ben

He’s like, “Don't worry about it, babygirl. I’ma take care of you tonight.”

[both laugh]

Nini

And I love that. I love that so much. Phupha is, like, panicked about it for a minute, and he's like [sighs]. He's decides. He's like, “Let go, let flow.” He's like, “All right. This how you want it?” and Tian's like, “Uh-huh,” and he's like, “All right, let's do this!” [laughs] I loved It. I loved it so much.

I love that at this stage of his life Phupha just learns to like—you know what? He's like, “Sometimes you just gotta un-fucking-clench.” And he just, he lets it all go.

Ben

I don't usually like talking about sexual positions around here because…of the way people project onto them, but I really like the implication in the final scene that this might be the first time Phupha really switches with Tian in a way that's also him emotionally… because you do have to unclench if you want to enjoy that particular act.

Nini

[laughs] In more ways than one!

Ben

It works really well because of the proposal. Like, Phupha's putting it all in the line. He's actually putting himself on the line. And he's going to be a complete partner to Tian, and is also going to relent and let Tian have some of the things that he wants.

Like Tian is happy in Pha Pun Dao. He doesn't hate their lives there. He just says, “I want you to come home and see my parents once a year. It's important to me. I just want you to come down for that. And when we're here, let me treat you nicely.”

Like, even if their lives aren't gonna always be there—like Tian may someday have to take care of the responsibilities of his parents getting older. But, I feel better about them facing that now as two people who are fully committed to each other than Phupha’s whole waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop thing all the time.

Nini

I just…really liked…getting to see…Phupha just…be… We never get to see him just be. Once he internalizes what Pat and Pran say to him, at every point from then what we see is him getting to just be. Yeah, in a slutty way—which I personally enjoy. But also just not worrying so much about what the things he's doing say about him. And yeah, there are, like, moments of that, like, when they get to the play and the curtain goes up, you see him starting to, like, freak out a little bit. But as the play goes on he relaxes.

I like that he leans into both the relaxed energy and the slutty energy, because I feel like the slutty energy is incredibly important. Like, one of the things that I really enjoyed about the final episode of the crossover was that mosquito net moment because—

Ben

Oh my God…finally.

Nini

That's so many things! That's Aof acknowledging that he was maybe slightly too precious with their sexuality in A Tale of Thousand Stars. That's Aof acknowledging that, maybe yeah, they should have kissed there. That's also Phupha acknowledging a bunch of stuff. That's also Tian getting to recast those moments in his mind.

Ben

I also love that Aof basically gave them the Bad Buddy post-credits scene.

Nini

Now, everybody’s saying that, but to me I just remember that the A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene wasn't sideways either. Like, they wrastled in that A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene. Like, Tian had to ask for the dick but he got it.

Ben

I'm just very satisfied by the outing this time.

Nini

I really, really enjoyed it, and I think that a lot of the Sturm und Drang around it is because of these ideas—again once again—these ideas about balance, and feeling like it was maybe unbalanced between Pat and Pran, and Tian and Phupha. But I don't think those ideas of balance are relevant to what Aof was trying to do here. I think that using Pat and Pran—who are a solid, established couple who we know are pulling through anything because we've seen their future already—using them as a conduit, or a catalyst, or a support to pull Tian and Phupha through a hurdle that could break them. I was fine with it in the end.

Like, I went through a lot of like—you know. I mean, you know because you were in these discussions with me and you and the clowns, like, sort of pulling through, like, how we feel about this.

Ben

Everybody else is having a difficult time. I was vibing so hard for like—[laughs] for like two weeks! Everybody else is like, “Oh I don't like this episode!!” Like, everybody was mad after episode 3! Me…I thought that episode was great. They're like, “I hate how long they were lost in the woods.” I'm like, “Well, that was the whole point.”

They were lost in the woods. They were all circling around an issue, and the issue is really simple. Like, just sit still and let other people find you. Because that's what you need to do, baby gays, sometimes, it's sit still so we can fucking find you! And help you!

[both laugh]

Ben

All right! Let's talk about the actors.

Nini

Watching these four get to vibe together. I want to see it. And not just the four of them vibing together, but…the…pairings because they gave us like a mix and match. So, they gave us every single pairing that you could get out of these four actors, and everyone was delightful and delectable. And I enjoyed every single one of them, but I particularly enjoyed pairing Ohm with Earth.

Ben

I really liked… the pairing of Nanon and Mix, and I don't know what we need to do to see those two work together again, but I would like to see the two of them take on meaty characters together.

Nini

I mean they're gonna be in The Jungle together.

Ben

Are they? Well well well…

Nini

Yeah, maybe you might have to watch The Jungle. [laughs]

Ben might have to watch a straight show!

Ben

No…we just did that! It sucked!

[both laugh]

Ben

I loved Mix in this. Like, we've seen MIx and Earth together a couple of times, and you talked about this during episode two. Their drunken walk home together felt like Phupha and Tian, not Jim and Wen.

Nini

They made it feel so different, even with similar framing, even with similar camera work, even with the same actors, and the same director. They made that moment feel completely different from Jim and Wen's moment doing the same activity, and I—hats off, I bow down. I appreciate actors—y’all know that.

Ben

I like how all four of them managed to make their dynamics feel lived in.

Like, Pat and Pran felt settled. Like, they have some long-term difficulties to deal with—some of which are never gonna go away—but it was kind of interesting for me knowing that they're rock solid by the end of BB 12 that you can see them starting to get there now. Where Pran is nervous that this can't work forever because Pat is too loud. He…needs to be loud about stuff.

But, like, you can see the signs here of them giving themselves openings. Here, like with the play, with Pat going home to his dad later and giving him the liquor that Pran got in Singapore, loudly climbing through Pran's window when he comes back to Bangkok…to go play with his guitar in his room.

Nini

Pat needs to be loud. Pran knows Pat needs to be loud. And the journey that they're setting off on through the special—I can't even say that it culminates in Bad Buddy 12 ‘cause it doesn't. It continues in Bad Buddy 12, but it culminates at some point in a future that we don't get to see. And there's something to be said about Aof putting that way-way off…and the things that he wants to say to the baby gays and the elder gays.

Hoo! Man, I've been feeling Aof lately. Like, Moonlight Chicken, like, unraveled something in me. And going back to some of his earlier works in the light of Moonlight Chicken because part of the whole point of the crossover—and of crossovers in general—but in this particular crossover is intertextuality. When we were talking about Bad Buddy. When we were, like, thick in the things of Bad Buddy. We're talking about text and subtext and metatext working together to tell this story, and the thing that didn't become a part of that story—there were hints of it, mostly in the Pa and Ink storyline—but the thing that was hinted at, but not really fully grasped onto, was intertextuality.

Like, the conversation that different pieces of art are having between themselves. And one thing that this special—that the crossover delves into now—is the intertextuality.

Ben

I particularly like it because you have two leads interacting with each other and I find that sometimes we can get a little too archetypical about the leads of shows. By forcing the audience to consider who Pat and Pran are relative to Tian and Phupha, it forces you to revisit how you've been viewing them the whole time. Like, Pran thinking that he was Tian, and us maybe getting a little too caught up in that. Because, like we called it at the end of the first episode! We're like, “Why does he look so much like Tian? That feels off.” And it was off!

Oh. I wasn't trying to make a pun there.

He's not like Tian. Like, as soon as I saw them I was like, “Why would they compare him to Tian? He doesn't feel like Tian to me?” I was right! And so, we get to the end of this whole shebang, and I am having a blast. Like I'm watching people having to sort themselves out like “Did I like this? Did I not like this?”

I was drinking a mojito, having a good time, after this ended. I was drunk at the reception hanging out with some lesbians.

Nini

I mean in the end is it not the place that you want to be? I feel like it all worked out super well, and one of the reasons that it worked out super well is that these two stories had to be in some ways told together. And yeah, one got a little subsumed to the other. But that's the way that it had to be at this point in time.

Ben

I think it was pragmatic.

Nini

Yeah, I think if we had caught up with them and done this crossover at a different stage in each of their relationships a different problem would have come to the surface, and maybe a different arrangement of the two couples might have happened. And that's also something that we need to think about in terms of the specifics of when in the story narrative and the timeline of the stories that Aof chose to set this particular crossover.

When it comes to Aof I'm always thinking about what he's trying to do, because one of the things that has been very clear to me throughout his oeuvre, but particularly in Bad Buddy, is that…he is always going to tell the story that he wants to tell. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into certain narrative structures. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into audience expectations. He wants to tell certain stories, and that's what he's gonna do. And that was made very clear to me with Bad Buddy 12, because that defied every narrative expectation—every audience expectation—to speak a truth that Aof had on his spirit.

Ben

The other thing for me—this is the part where I’m gonna get a little bit grumpy again. It is expensive to make television. Like, the biggest thing that stands out to me with all of Our Skyy is how stripped-down all of it looked.

Like they filmed in like one or two locations at most it felt like half the time, and they had really short filming schedules, and everybody had to be good very quickly. There's not a lot of runup time. It feels like people just brought whatever they still had left from the last performance and they just ran with it. Everybody had to be really good, and it's expensive to film on that mountain. And so Aof needed to justify that particular crossover, by using the most potent talent he had.

Like, there's a huge Bad Buddy fandom. There's a pretty solid contingent of people who like A Tale of Thousand Stars. And for A Tale of Thousand Stars to get something good, he needed to merge the Bad Buddy budget with the Thousand Stars budget.

But also, they didn't want to touch their ending, which is why he sets Bad Buddy before its ending, but Tian and Phupha only at the beginning of their romance when we leave them. They have more work to do, so they can have an epilogue story that really hammers into some really interesting stuff, which we just spent the last hour or so talking about.

But it's done really efficiently! Like for the most part we all seem to enjoy Our Skyy, and they manage to do that with their limited budget. Like Pat and Pran are in a different room because it's probably cheaper to use this room. There's less people in Pha Pun Dao this time. Au is running around in the background as an extra! Wasn't he the damn director of the Kwan and Riam play? [shushes] Don't pay attention to that. A bunch of guys are running around with masks on—that's probably just crew members!

Nini

I did sort of love that chewing gum and string energy these productions can bring that is really sort of the heart of the Our Skyy franchise. I feel like I like that because to me that means it's for the art. If you're going to do this on chewing gum and string it's because you really fucking care. Like if you're going to do a story like this on string and chewing gum, it's because you really want to tell this fucking story. And in the end that's where I land on the vast majority of Our Skyy 2.

Ben

So what's our final verdict on Our Skyy then? Worth it? Not worth it?

Nini

Before we get to our final verdict on our Our Skyy, we didn't give our final verdict on the crossover.

Ben

Oh, it's a 10. [slams desk and laughs]

Nini

It's a 10! It's a 10! It's a 10! Let's just—let's just—let's let it go. Right? It's a 10 for drama and a 10 for crack because what is more cracky than a crossover? And so it averages out to 10. Have I got quibbles with it? Yes. Do they, in the grand scheme of things, matter to my enjoyment of it? Absolutely not. It's a 10—point blank period.

Ben

It didn't waste my time. They set out a really interesting premise: what if Tian published his diary? What if “lonely queer looking for meaning and community” Pran found it? What if he met them? What do they do if they meet each other? Like, they follow through on that in a way that gave us so much to talk about for two weeks.

And it was fun seeing the whole fandom come alive and see people revisit characters! It was fun seeing people change their opinions on Phupha, and even Earth and Mix as the result of watching this. That was so much fun.

Nini

It was delightful. It was enjoyable. It was meaningful. It was narratively enjoyable at least for me, it was a 10. I loved it and one of the things that I love most about it is that Pat gets to lick Pran's finger this time.

Ben

Oh my god.

Nini

I mean, it's just the slutiness of it all! Pat gets to lick Pran's finger. Phupha gets to touch his titties in a sexy kind of way. They get to make out with that damn mosquito net, and I enjoyed every single second of it. I laughed, I cried, I…felt warmth deep inside.

1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2

Nini

All that said, in terms of the overall—let’s give an overall score for Our Skyy 2. Ben, what do you think?

Ben

With the caveat that you should only really engage with the Our Skyy content if you liked the original show, it's a 9.

Like, I didn't like Vice Versa and I didn't like Star in My Mind when I watched them the first time, and so everything I didn't like about those shows was present in their Our Skyy offerings. I don't think it's very fair of me to be especially mean about their Our Skyy offerings when they are in line with what the audience has been taught to expect. If the audience likes that more power to them. But for the six shows that I genuinely liked, I had a good time with these.

Like, the weakest shows in this that I had a hard time with on the front end were A Boss and a Babe and Never Let Me Go. And I really liked what Jojo did with Never Let Me Go, and I thought that A Boss and a Babe actually had a really interesting story this time. But I loved The Eclipse and I thought Golf was great with this outing. I thought the cast was great in The Eclipse outing, and I felt like that about Bad Buddy and A Tale of Thousand Stars, and I felt like that about My School President.

I had a great time! It gets a 9 overall. Like, there are quibbles—it's not always the best thing, and it forces you to maybe look back at a show and alter the way you felt about it. And if you'd rather lock the show in a mental prism of where you last left it, maybe don't watch these offerings? But if you grow and change, and you kind of want to imagine what your characters are like if they also grow and change, then maybe it's worth checking out for you.

It's a 9. Highly recommended.

Nini

For you, the score is always about a recommendation. For me, it's always about do I like this? How much do I like this? And for me, for the vast majority of Our Skyy, I fuckin’ loved it. So I also give it a 9. I don't have any caveats about recommending it to anybody or anything like that. I just had, for the most part, a whale of a fucking time. And so, it's a 9! I enjoyed myself!

So kind of in our own form of intertextuality harkening back to our Season 2: Electric Boogaloo episode of the Spring Series, and talking about sequels. So, Ben, after Our Skyy 2, how are you feeling about sequels?

Ben

Enthusiastic? [laughs] I mean, come on, man, like, this was fucking good. We need to think about how these characters stay together. That can be so rewarding to think about and it's good for the audience to think about it.

I hope we see Pat and Pran in 10 years after their little sprout has blossomed, and maybe they're considering something else. I'm totally down to return to characters every couple of years for check-ins. That totally works for me, and I think that there is value in transitioning the types of stories we tell with characters over time, because they're going to face a variety of situations over time, so it can be so, so rewarding for us as viewers to go on those new journeys with them.

Nini

How do I…feel about sequels? Again, it's the same way I always feel. I feel like when there's story still to tell, I'm ready to see it. I'm ready to hear it. And if I feel like there isn't anything left to say, then I'm not interested. That's largely where I landed with the Our Skyy episodes for the most part where I felt like there was story left to tell. I thoroughly enjoyed getting that story and then those, like Star in My Mind, where I felt like there was no story, I wasn’t really interested.

So, do I feel pumped about sequels and the whole idea of following these boys into the “staying together” part of things? Yes, that's something that I'm always going to enjoy, and if that means conflict, I am fine with that. I enjoy watching them navigate that, whether the conflict is minor or major, I am having a blast with that in my mind.

And…I can't wait for Our Skyy 3.

That is going to wrap us up on the Our Skyy 2 episode. Y'all are going to hear the edited version of this, but I just want you all to know that we've been talking for three hours, and we've been having a great time. See y’all in the next one. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Welcome back, my boyfriend!

Nini

[laughs] Bye.

#podcast #our skyy 2 #bad buddy #a tale of thousand stars #my school president #the eclipse #vice versa #star in my mind #never let me go #a boss and a babe #thai bl #bl series #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 3 #summer 2023 #summer series #Spotify

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