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waitmyturtles · 1 day ago

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Hey,

I'm not 100% sure how this works. Also this is more of an opinion than a question. I just feel the need to brain dump. You are under no obligation to reply. 😁

I fear that First and Khaotung are being wasted at/by GMMTV. They're both stellar actors and seem to have the sensibilities to tackle more serious material.

I feel like coming off Not Me, the themes in The Eclipse kinda went over my head. My fear was and still is that I didn't understand all the nuances. And that's why I felt like the show was lacking. Also I think the very first preview set it up as an entirely different show (more supernaturalmystery/thriller) in my head, so there was a disconnect there as well.

Their next project was Moonlight Chicken where both of them shined as actors but negligibly as a BL pairing. Having said that, they seem to be on very solid ground in the BL fandom - I am referring to their fan meets.

Only Friends was a masterclass of acting as far as FirstKhaotung were concerned (i was all about Ray and Sand), but I think the overall reputation as show that fell flat on its face overshadowed or at least took away (for me) from the gravity of FK.

And now we're here. With The Heart Killers and I am very wary of how Ota all going down. I see that the final trailer got over million views and I'm happy for them, but based on I think the absolute travesty that was OF, my expectations for this show are on the ground.

I really want more of an insight into how projects are picked up and distributed inside GMMTV (if you ha e any, I'm dying to know). I feel like they would benefit greatly from being on a show like PS I Hate You or something like Peaceful Property.

It feels like they're backsliding in terms of material given. Which I am sure is a) not their fault and b) me possibly being weird and dramatic in the wee hours of the morning. But I wanted to get it off my chest and I was reading your previous reviews when I felt, and then gave into the impulse to write to you.

Also I'm a MaxTul girly too and somehow, you made me want to give Make it Right another chance.

Have a great week ahead and keep up the absolutely exceptional work! ❤️

NIHILISTIC! It's great to hear from you! And thank you for the compliments!

TW for girlies out there who are not Nihilistic: this post will contain criticisms of The Heart Killers trailer. Read at your peril, delicate hearts!

I'll go backwards to save the biggest stuff for last. If you write anything about Make It Right, please tag me! @bengiyo and I always give a little DJ air horn to each other when we've nabbed another one into the broader cultural reconsideration of this AMAZING show. MaxTul, man. Nobody beats them! (Okay, almost, Tul admits he wasn't the strongest actor, but. We'll let it slide, dahling!) Chemistry, humor, pride representation, everything, they're great. I yelped when I saw them in Triage!

Okay, so you are a FirstKhao girlie, and you're worried about what The Heart Killers bodes. (Out of transparency, I have The Heart Killers tag filtered because of Only Friends PTSD. I'm gonna filter my own post!) For you, Nihilistic, I just watched the trailer for it.

I will get to all your questions about the GMMTV model in a moment.

Now, out of even MORE transparency, I am watching the MESS that is Kidnap right now, and listen, it's NOT GOOD. I'm fucking not even writing about it anymore, I'm just reblogging the sessy gifs. I am watching it to support Ohm Pawat, and am hoping that this partnership with Leng Thanaphon will hopefully lead to better scripts.... somewhere. (Or at least, better scripts for Ohm at a place like One31 or Channel 3. I also hope Ohm keeps up his anti-branded pair stance, but if GMMTV forces him to pair permanently with Leng, it won't be a fucking surprise, and more on that below.)

To focus specifically on THK for a sec: the THK trailer evoked a lot of what's gone utterly wrong in Kidnap for me. I think writing Thai BL/Series Y scripts to be different, fresh, and innovative, is just going to be really fucking hard, especially for stories featuring branded pairs that MUST end up together in the end. Because we, the viewers, KNOW that they MUST end up together in the end, what kind of mystery and conflict can a script convincingly evoke to keep us, the viewers, engaged and interested in the drama?

A few of us Ohm girlies were excited that Kidnap could have had non-romantic plot points (CRIME!!!) to drive concurrently with a romance plot. There are Series Y that have done this BEAUTIFULLY, particularly Sammon's stories of Manner of Death and Triage.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't get that from the THK trailer, and that THK smells a lot like Kidnap to me. The trailer itself is giving an indication that the "jobs" these guys have as double agents are going to be compromised due to them falling in love. And after the debacle that was Jojo Tichakorn's Only Friends -- a show premised on the exploration of mean, icky, really horny humans, a great place to start an interesting show! -- knowing that THK will HAVE to end up in a romantic place, with FK and JoongDunk being in memorable and memeable entwinements... that's a lot to ask of a show that already isn't making sense by drive, emotion, and tone in its trailer alone. What matters more to these characters? Their work, or their need to be in monogamous relationships? Seems like the latter to me by way of the trailer, which makes me wonder what the point of the plot is. (Joong's chest, probably.) (Gahddayum.)

(I haven't watched the latest episode of Jack & Joker, btw, but I understand that THIS WEEK's episode is ALSO going through something similar, with dead-end and uncommitted plot points all to get to a kiss. Oy.)

To summarize these points and to touch at your question about how GMMTV chooses scripts: GMMTV has an economic model to sell in giving happy endings to their branded pairs, which I wrote about at length in my Old GMMTV Challenge rewatch of The Eclipse. No matter where a script goes, the ending must be memorable and monogamous to satisfy the retweeting hunger of the branded pairs' fandoms, in order for GMMTV's artists to increase online engagement and to maintain earned media values to sell products.

The wonderful @flowerbeasblog noted to me recently that Tha Sataporn, the CEO of GMMTV, said in an interview that as the productions of Series Y in Thailand continues to increase, there is a greater need for more scriptwriting talent across this niche genre, creating competition for more excellent writing. (By comparison, in the States, when streaming services like Netflix and Hulu starting commissioning more original series just about a decade ago, the demand for scriptwriters and excellent writing also went up by incredible scale -- only to come crashing down recently with pandemic and strike-related losses in revenue.) GMMTV's recently announced script competition, Y Find, updated itself last week with a notice that the company would need more time to sift through scripts to judge. In other words: the demand for creative plots is so high at this company that they are literally fielding entries from the general public.

At the same time, Tha Sataporn has been blunt in indicating that "good shows" are not the priority of his GMMTV, and that talent, management, and engagement are his indicators of success. So, economically -- as long as a show hits that happy ending, and gets the girlies excited online with commentary and purchasing power, then the studio has won, in GMMTV's eyes.

ULTIMATELY, Nihilistic: what we are dealing with regarding your concern, as fans and/or critics of Series Y shows, is a conflict of values, among critical fans like ourselves, other fans who only watch shows for romance and shipping, and the economic bottom lines of the studios/agencies themselves. Some of us just want narratively good scripts, like Bad Buddy or He's Coming To Me. Others are content with having a show end with their fave pairs confirmed together in the end, no matter the process of how they got there. Those are different values we hold in watching shows. I appreciate that while you're a fan of the FK branded pair, that you want stronger scripts for them. I do, too, but that's not a value that every fan -- and GMMTV itself -- holds. And I believe that's why we've been seeing more and more mediocre scripts from that studio in particular.

I actually want to note maybe something positive about FirstKhao. Other than The Eclipse, it seems like they haven't been locked into high school or university settings. Only Friends, Moonlight Chicken -- these are shows that show First's and Khao's characters as young adults, and THK is going there, too. I hope they can avoid the university settings as they continue to work.

Is stellar acting wasted at GMMTV? Oh, yes. Besides First and Khao, who I truly think are good actors, we have Gun Atthaphan, Nanon Korapat, and Ohm Pawat -- these three guys are on my list of the best Thai actors out there who have done BL, and they haven't had great scripts in years. (Gun, arguably, has had the best pickings of decent shows recently in Cooking Crush and The Trainee, but they weren't high art; and Nanon's Dirty Laundry was the last Jojo script I was truly impressed by.) All three of these guys were in MOVIES at one point. Those ambitions, on behalf of these actors by GMMTV, seem to have gone by the wayside in preference for a huge economic push to boost branded pair-based series insteads, with their plot holes and guaranteed romances.

I hope the genre's tide turns for the sake of quality scripts, especially at GMMTV, but my hopes are low for this agency at the moment. My joy in Thai shows recently has been in watching past shows for my OGMMTVC. I've been on a lakorn kick lately, having watched The Miracle of Teddy Bear and I'm looking forward to watching Khun Chai soon. Other agencies and studios, like One31 and Channel 3, are breathing down GMMTV's neck and producing more interesting shows, sometimes with branded pairs and sometimes not. Triage only came out two years ago, and that show's trilogy (along with Manner of Death) will end with this year's airing of Spare Me Your Mercy, starring the very likely one-time pair of Tor Thanabob and JJ (Jaylerr) Krissanapoom, two gigantic artists in Thailand who are circling BACK towards the much smaller genre of Series Y for SMYM's sake. I have VERY high hopes and expectations for that show -- and that show is well out of the purview of GMMTV.

I think what you're smelling about the THK trailer is right, Nihilistic -- to me, the trailer isn't cohesive, and jumps already to its forgone conclusion of a romantic end. Unfortunately, for those of us familiar with Jojo Tichakorn's work, we know that if he was given more leeway, he'd likely come up with something more interesting. But now that he has to work with branded pairs -- who are shipped in the eyes of their fan beholders -- he's got a lot less room to be creative and interesting, which ultimately stifles the otherwise excellent acting we'd see from these young men.

#thanks for the ask!#firstkhao #first kanaphan #khaotung thanawat #tw: criticism #the heart killers #jojo tichakorn #kidnap the series

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copperbadge · 3 days ago

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[ID: My shower, tiled in ugly but functional brown, with the shower curtain off to one side; fixed to the ceiling is an oblong LED lamp, shining brightly down into the shower.]

Forgot to post this yesterday! That's the new little lamp I've installed in the shower for better lighting, and actually it looks kinda cool.

It doesn't work, but it looks cool. :D

I shouldn't say it doesn't work because obviously it's lit up in the photo, but it's not serving its purpose. An overhead light in that space is too high up for me to easily switch on manually, so I bought one with motion detection. In theory, when you get in, the shower the light will flick on.

In practice, the motion detection only detects a change of light, not actual movement (it's meant, I think, for something more like a garage, where when you open the door to go in, the ambient light you've let in makes it go on). The result is that in order to get it to turn on, one has to perform a kind of magical summoning ritual consisting of flicking the bathroom lights off and on, and it won't stay on unless the rest of the bathroom is dark, which defeats the point.

It was a $7 lamp, so I'm not overly annoyed. The pricier option (all of I think about $20) has a remote control, so I might go that route, but I also know of a brand with better motion sensing, so I may order from there.

Today's cleaning was mostly a form of rearranging furniture. I don't want my laundry hamper at the foot of my bed anymore -- it crowds the room and looks ugly on my video calls. I've moved it to the hall closet opposite the bathroom, but that meant shifting the storage bins already there and the majority of the lightweight jackets hanging above them. The bins mostly went into the bedroom closet, replacing a shelf I moved out of the closet and may donate, except for one open bin with the camping supplies, which I need to repack and find a home for. Right now there's just a nook of my living room that's "storage staging"; sometimes you just gotta get messier before you get cleaner.

In any case, that took about 30 minutes of a Behind The Bastards episode (The History Of American Masculinity, Pt. 1) and I'm taking it easy because I'm still battling a sinus infection, which is the reason I didn't scrub the toilet instead because I felt okay to move things around but not to get up close and personal with cleaning products. I took a few measurements of the hall closet (which has no doors) and I'm going to spend the rest of my allotted cleaning time on the sofa under an electric blanket, shopping for an appropriate set of shelving to replace what's currently there and make better use of the space. (I was tempted to try and convert it into a micro-office like you saw in trendy magazines early in the pandemic, but I prefer my office setup with a little more natural light.)

#naclyoho #national clean your home month

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rosenrot234 · 2 days ago

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I'm aware a lot of silent hill acts kinda like a big ol ink blot test for the player. That includes the characters to a point. Folks having diff opinions usually is fine when it comes to silent hill. I get it.

But at the same time I feel kind of confused when people call James stuff like pervert or that he's toxic masculinity. I never got that vibe. I'm talking about OG James too.

To me the sex stuff with silent hill is "Dude James hasn't had any kind of intimacy in 3 years. And he had a intrusive thought like ONCE probably looking at a nurse taking care of Mary." And Silent Hill is skipping in a smug manner all "You still thought about it" even if it was a lightning fast intrusive thought.

His indifference to the monsters being hurt to me is "He's angry at the cancer / disease. Not Mary. The Mary he loved isn't here anymore". So when he sees the Mannequins being harmed by Pyramidhead, that is why he's indifferent to it and just focusing on hiding. To me the cancer is making a total mockery out of Mary by appearing so feminine based. So that's why all the monsters just look so icky but so sexy. And again why Pyramidhead punishes the monsters too. James had that intrusive thought and felt guilty about it. But he's not taking it out on just women period. He's taking it out on himself. So Pyramidhead messing with the monsters too makes sense. I understand WHY people think its purely punishing women. I just politely disagree. ( Altho one can also see the apartment scene with PH as "He's just playing with dollies. Making a silly widdle mockery of playing house" since he's using 2 Manniquins for this. It gave me more a chuckle since PH is a giant troll, that is what he is meant to do )

This is also probably why if you do the kill / stomp a bunch combo a bunch against the monsters, you actually nudge your playthrough towards In Water. The more James really really beats up the monsters ( himself ) , the more he's at risk of drowning. It's a very small nudge though. Nothing to really worry about if you're achievement / ending hunting.

People take him saying he hated Mary way too black / white imo. But again. I'm aware. Ink blot test. This is more a mild disagreement at the end of the day and I wanted to ramble.

I'm also not trying to ignore the whole strip club thing either. I was talking more about the core of the character. Dude was trying to cope. But I don't think that makes him this big slobbering horny beast I see with some fan portrayals of him.

Christ reading thru this post to check if it sounds alright just makes me think "Well if people didn't know I was Asexual , they sure do now". lol

#silent hill 2 #silent hill 2 remake #james sunderland

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