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the-conversation-pod · 11 days ago

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Finally, Some Good Fucking Food: The Marahuyo Project and Ossan no Pantsu Episode

AND WE'RE BACK!

After a longer break than we expected, we are finally back to catch up on some shows we really enjoyed this season. Come join us for a Bangers Only episode as we take a break from BL and explore the queer truth found in JP Habac and ANIMA Studios' (Gaya sa Pelikula) Marahuyo Project and Ossan no Pants ga Nandatte Ii Janai ka! aka Don't Care For an Old Man's Underwear!

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome

00:01:15 - Introduction

00:08:40 - Marahuyo Project: A Queer Activist's Story

00:20:24 - Marahuyo Project: On Queerness

00:30:16 - Marahuyo Project: Our Characters

00:42:09 - Marahuyo Project: The Christina Story

00:48:52 - Marahuyo Project: Parents and Children

00:54:54 - Marahuyo Project: Final Thoughts and Ratings

00:59:48 - Ossan no Pants

01:05:18 - Ossan no Pants: Our Characters

01:26:30 - Ossan no Pants: Key Character Arcs

01:36:49 - Ossan no Pants: Furuike and That Fucking Guy

01:45:25 Ossan no Pants: Final Thoughts and Ratings

01:51:18 - Importance of Variety in Media Consumption

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

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

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 - Introduction

Ben

And we're back. This week we're going to be taking a little bit of a break from BL and doing a special class pre-award season discussion of two shows we loved so much that it restored my faith in television as a genre. We're going to be discussing Marahuyo Project from ANIMA Studios and we're going to be discussing Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear! The Japanese name is Ossan no Pantsu ga Nandatte Ii Janai ka!

Before we get into this, we're gonna do a little bit of a breakdown on our special class awards and why we often will pull them aside from our BL discussion. NiNi, would you like to offer some insight for us?

NiNi

Sure, Ben, but first, we've got a guest. Say hi, Shan. [laughs]

Shan

Ben just forgot that I'm a guest at this point.

Ben

It’s true. Shan's still here! She has not left the booth. [laughs]

Shan

I just stay here permanently now. I have squatted in the booth. Hi people, it's Shan.

NiNi

Always good to have you around, Shan.

So, so we are talking a little bit outside of the BL genre this week. We are talking about our special class type programs. We have several categories of special class in our VIIB awards, but the one that we're talking about here is standout queer narrative. Those queer stories that are not technically romances, or at least go beyond the romance genre to reveal and get into some kind of queer truth that maybe romance is not best placed to delve into.

Ben

Since Shan is here and she has watched so many dramas, [laughs] Shan, why don't you walk us through some of the things that distinguish broader sort of family- and community-oriented dramas versus, like, romcoms and romantic dramas.

Shan

I think what makes a show a family drama, versus a romance drama that has family elements, is really what drives the story, what the focus and locust of the story is. In a romance, in a BL or a GL, a QL in general, the primary driver of the plot is a romantic relationship. In a family drama, what drives the plot is more about the relationships of a family unit. Or a drama that's more about community, like something like a Moonlight Chicken, you get community and the relationships between different community members, friendships and neighbors and things like that, being the driving force of the plot.

So when you're talking about categorization, that's really the difference. It's not that a family drama or a community-based drama cannot include romances. They very often or even usually do. It's just about really what drives the story. And in both of the dramas that we're talking about today, what drives the story is relationships that are more familial in nature or more friendship-oriented or more about how a community of people comes together.

Ben

Something else that I think is notable in different styles of drama is what role the supporting cast has. NiNi, you've been probably the biggest fan of side characters and their roles in all the various QL we've watched. I’d like you to maybe talk a little bit about the role you feel for side characters in romance versus side characters in dramas.

NiNi

When it comes to side characters in a romance, these people are usually the friends and family of the main couple. And they're usually deeply integrated into how these two people are coming together. Sometimes they have their own stories happening alongside that are sort of echoing the themes or maybe even opposing the themes in some really interesting ways. That's what I'm looking for when I'm thinking about side characters in a romance story.

When you’re going outward to like family or community and talking about those stories, what you're looking for, for me anyway, is an expansion of the world. I want to know everything about this universe when I'm getting into a family drama, a community drama, a workplace drama. I want it to expand. I am a romance girl, so I like when a romantic drama focuses on the couple, and yes, you get some expansion of the world in that and an understanding of the world around them. But the couple's really the focus. I think in these wider dramas, I like understanding how these people's world operates and how they are all connected to each other inside of that world.

Ben

I like the way you broke that down. In BL in particular, the friends are always built around their support for the core couple. Even in our award season, we award a Best Boy and Best Girl award each year. And that usually goes to one of the standout friends that supported our romantic leads. But in drama like this, I'm interested, like she said, in expanding the world, like what perils and challenges are the side characters facing that help add flavor to the core themes that we're exploring here?

So with the two shows are gonna be talking about today, Marahuyo Project is about a young man who's a very out queer activist in his school in Manila, and after being expelled from the school is sent to a very rural town and there decides to create an LGBT club. Sorry, he uses the full acronym. LGBTQIA+ community while he's there. In our other show, Oppan for short, we're dealing with a middle-aged man kind of a grognard stuck in his way who, after a surprise encounter with a young gay man decides it's time for him to update himself and rebuild his relationship with his family and his co-workers. And it's a show fundamentally about personal growth.

So those themes don't necessarily prioritize romance in them. And we'll get into that more as we focus on those shows. The last thing I wanna highlight before we talk about these shows, ‘cause we've been talking about it a lot, particularly with last season's complex disappointments for us, neither of these shows is in the bubble. These shows exist in a world very reminiscent of our own, and homophobia and the expectations of society at large and how queer people should conform are very much present themes in these stories.

And with that, NiNi, take us in!

NiNi

Why is NiNi always taking us in? NiNi never knows what's happening here. [laughs]

00:08:40 - Marahuyo Project: A Queer Activist's Story

NiNi

So first up we're going to talk about the Marahuyo Project from the Philippines. Ben, what is Marahuyo Project about?

Ben

About how that thankfully ANIMA Studios is not dead and Gaya sa Pelikula is not the last thing we're gonna see from them. JP Habac is still out there, friends, and he's still making stuff.

Marahuyo Project is a kind of, like, a romance drama, sorta, about a young man named King. He is a queer activist at his school in Manila and he does not like the dean of his school. He ends up fussing with her and to piss her off, he ends up making out with his friend in front of her. She tries to separate them and he throws her to the ground accidentally, gets expelled for laying hands on her. And so he is sent away to the town of Marahuyo, a town very far from Manila, and he has to figure out how to exist in this community that doesn't have very much of an out queer network here. He decides to build an LGBTQIA+ organization on campus. And as with everything with these sort of stories, as soon as one person starts coming out, other people start coming out quite loudly in response, or not so loudly in other ways. This show is really fascinating because they insisted on using the entire LGBTQIA+ acronym, and they were intentional about that.

Adrian Lindayag played King in this and he was also in The Boy Foretold by the Stars, which I forced Shan to watch. And she did not like it!

Shan

You sure did. Forced is the right word.

Ben

And she did not like it!

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

I did not like it! But I loved Adrian. I was so excited to see him get another show, and a frankly much better written show. [laughs]

Ben

And his friend who he kisses in the first episode is played by Tommy Alejandrino, who was the lead in The Day I Loved You, a show that I really loved. And I thought it was really special and kind of interesting that this show led in its very first episode with a kiss between two boys whose actors had played kind of femme-y characters before this. That felt really intentional.

I actually want to start with you, NiNi, because you grew up in an island community. I actually want your perspective on King being moved from the metro of Manila to an island that doesn't really have a stable power grid for all day power, and how you feel about him going from an urban center to a rural town.

NiNi

It's so funny. I grew up in Trinidad and the southern Caribbean. Trinidad is considered a quote-unquote rich country and I grew up in the city. But I have friends who grew up in the country. My own family is from the country. My aunt used to tell stories, leaving town and going down to the country to spend time with her father's family, with her grandmother, sometimes with her cousins, and my friends now tell stories about that kind of stuff, as well. There's even a joke sometimes that if you got into trouble in town they would send you down south which is more rural. Or they would send you to live with your grandmother in Manzanilla, which is another rural area. So, there's some elements of that to the stories that I knew about the way that people grow up. And so there's a lot about Marahuyo that reminded me, not just of parts of Trinidad, but of other parts of the Caribbean that I'm familiar with and people that I know and that I'm friends with, have grown up in.

So the whole thing about getting sent to country, it was so familiar in a lot of ways. That whole thing about not having power, or having these village politics kind of mentality about a lotta things. And ways that people can surprise you as well, because you have certain expectations of people who come from those kinds of communities and that kind of background and those kinds of situations where, you know, oh, you don't have lights, what do you know about anything? People make assumptions about people being backward or whatever, and actually no, that's not how it is. So this had a hint of familiarity to it in terms of the story.

Also, I was glad to see it because so many Filipino stories are set in metro Manila or are set in the pretty tourist parts, not places like Marahuyo. I really enjoyed seeing that aspect of life in the Philippines. It felt very homey to me in a lot of ways. But this is one of the things that I enjoy about Filipino drama and about Filipino BL. A lot of these BLs are coming from countries that do feel familiar to me, but Filipino BL in particular has that ring of familiarity to me in a way that some of these other places don't.

Shan

NiNi, I think what you said about the assumptions people have about people who live in these more isolated places in the country or, like, on a small island, is really such an important thing that informed this story. Because King stormed onto that island with his big city attitude and he assumed that every single person he met was a hick who would never understand him. And I think one of the best parts of this story was seeing him have his eyes opened to the reality that there are queer people everywhere and there are people who can understand him everywhere and he has to be open to seeing them and connecting with them. I thought that was such an important piece of the journey that he went on as the main character of this story. I really loved the way the show peeled back those first assumptions that he had about a lot of the people he met in Marahuyo.

Ben

It's very clear that King was sent to Marahuyo in the hopes that isolating him there digitally and physically would sort of, like, contain him. And it didn't. He seemed to adapt to his circumstances fairly quickly, even as he demanded that those circumstances [laughs] also adapt to him. I thought it was really interesting that they sent him to the mom who abandoned him essentially to hang out and live with his grandmother who's always had his back. That was probably one of the most unexpected dynamics in the whole show. I was not expecting that complex set of interactions where the grandma was so on his side that she had put a whole pride flag in his room and had dresses ready to help his friend, but the mom's still sorting her shit out.

Shan

I loved the nuance of that, because… it can be complicated. We are shaped to some degree by our families and by the people who raised us, but we're also shaped by the world we live in. And I thought it was a cool choice to have King have an accepting and loving grandmother. His mother did not learn her fear and her bigotry from her own mother. And I think that's an interesting choice that really reflects reality.

Ben

I think what worked really well about having his grandma be so queer friendly is that when she tells him to give Marahuyo a chance, the growth arc that you mentioned is possible because he's able to receive that message from someone he trusts and respects, who he knows also trusts and respects him. I think that that sets him up to be open to learning things. ‘cause he spends the beginning of almost every episode giving us a small lesson in Filipino queer history, particularly as it pertains to colonization.

I was gonna go to NiNi for that one and see if you had thoughts about that because you've spoken at length about the diasporic experience and living under extensive colonialism.

NiNi

I mean, how much time do we have to have this conversation?

Ben

Probably five to eight minutes.

[all laugh]

Shan

Yeah, do your whole talk on colonialism in five minutes, NiNi.

NiNi

Oh my god, okay, no pressure. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons that Filipino BL in particular does speak to me because of that colonized experience. The colonized experience is so specific and so similar all over the world, no matter where you were colonized or who you were colonized by. You recognize it in people, you recognize it in the society, you recognize it in the environment. The way that the Philippines is so Catholic and Catholicism is all over this story. How Catholicism has harmed people, how people find shelter in it, how people find safety in it, it's all over this.

And one of the things about coming from a place that was colonized is that you have this sort of weird love/hate relationship with the people and the places and the experiences of the colonizer. On the one hand, like, revolution, resistance, that's part of it. And that's part of what King is dealing with as well. Talking about the parts of history that get hidden by the colonizer because it's inconvenient to them or they wanna bury some particular truth. That's the resistance part, but also the part where people are talking about things like tradition and gentility and all that stuff that the various deans, because it's two deans—three deans, I think—in this story. And they're all talking about things like propriety and respectability. And those are things that you're fighting against every single day, where those ideas even come from is a place in yourself that you sort of recognize, but you fight against every day. The experience of being colonized does a number on your head, it does a number on your society. It is wild to experience.

One of the things that I enjoyed about this is that it did give me that kind of feeling of wanting something out of the experience that you're not even sure what it is. Like you want revolution, but you also want all the things that the colonizer told you to have. It's this bizarre feeling.

Shan

It’s a mindfuck.

NiNi

Yeah, it is a mindfuck. And it's a hard thing to explain to anybody who hasn't had the experience.

00:20:24 - Marahuyo Project: On Queerness

Ben

I wanna start moving into our character specific discussion. When King first gets to the island, he has a very weird meet cute [Shan laughs] with like the island's favorite boy who's the scion of their most beloved or most successful, whatever, family—the Soliman family—where a, like, shit ton of fish gets thrown in the air. [laughs]

Shan

There's so many fishes!

NiNi

He literally gets showered in fish and I'm like, this is so clever. Like, as a joke, it was a very good joke.

Shan

Very effective.

NiNi

It was a very effective joke. And as a metaphor, also extremely effective. It was so good. This is the kinda shit that JP Habac excels at.

Ben

I knew you were gonna love that. So, right away, because King won't shut the fuck up about the fact that he's queer, he ends up finding a trans girl in his class almost immediately, who's also beefing with the local priest, who ends up going by the name of Venice. And the two of them team up and decide they're gonna start their own LGBTQIA+ organization. And Venice, was like, we added more letters? Wait, what?! [laughs] How do I say all of those?

Shan

I love my naive girl. She doesn't know anything.

Ben

She's so pretty. [laughs] Also, shout out to Venice for eating in, like, every scene—

Shan

Every scene!

Ben

—for eight episodes.

NiNi

So much rambutan, I swear.

Shan

Always eating rambutan specifically, not just eating, eating this specific island fruit. [laughs] She loves ‘em.

Ben

So, Ino's family is very beloved on this island and Ino is the first obstacle they think they have to get past to getting their organization approved. But very quickly we suss out that Ino is likely closeted. And then we confirm that he's closeted in a really interesting bit we'll get into in a bit.

I wanted, while we're here talking about the island politics, NiNi, to talk about the reveal we get later on that Ino’s ancestor, who his family has all of this pride for, exists because he outed a queer man and then robbed him. And then the island community built a tradition around the poetry that they stole from a queer man, who they then basically drove to death.

NiNi

Yeah. This is a comedy, by the way.

[all laugh]

NiNi

I just had to fire that one out.

Shan

We started with all this super serious stuff. It sounds like such a heavy show. And it is, kind of, but it doesn't feel heavy. It just deals with heavy things.

Ben

The themes are actually heavy when you think about them, but because you've got really optimistic and energetic young people, it doesn't feel as heavy as it actually is.

NiNi

It really doesn't. But I mean, again, this is a story of colonization. Things get stolen all the time. Your own history gets stolen from you. And you have to go back into history and find your truths. So that work of uncovering and unearthing and archiving and storytelling and passing things down from generation to generation, that is real active work that takes place every single day in a colonized place. Unlearning a lot of what the colonizer tells you about yourself. All of that is part of the colonized experience and that's what I was really gratified to see them tackling in this show. This idea that they hid the truth from you and now you have to not only go and learn the truth but tell it to as many people as possible.

Shan

Yeah, and I think it's really meaningful that they found out this truth via a story told to them by an elder on the island who they just kind of happened upon.

Ben

But it happened because they were doing research. They were trying to justify their organization and it was recommended to them that they show that this organization would be good for Marahuyo as it currently is, not just because some kid from Manila says they need to have this. And so the trio that had formed at that point was doing real research into the history of the town itself, and that's what eventually led them to asking this woman about this history.

Shan

Yeah, and to tie that into the romance, which you kind of alluded to, Ben, but we haven't really talked about is, King and Ino, they start with a very antagonistic relationship. Over time we figure out this antagonism on Ino's side is because King is pulling things out of him that he's trying to suppress. He feels uncomfortable because he is a closeted queer kid and King is loudly and forcefully demanding that folks recognize his queerness and also the queerness within themselves. And so, they have an uncomfortable dynamic that starts to smooth out over time as they get to know each other and understand each other better and as Ino decides to kind of push back his fear and start helping King try to make this club happen.

So it's in that context that they're on this research trip and they go to this elder and she sits them down and she tells them this story. And that is how Ino finds out that his whole family legacy is built on a lie and that his ancestor harmed somebody who's just like him, a gay man who did nothing wrong. All he did was profess his feelings for somebody who didn't return them. And he was destroyed over that. That is what Ino's family legacy was built on. Finding that out was just a huge moment of despair for him. And in some ways brought him and King closer together as they worked through that, and in other ways made it even harder, I think, to imagine being able to be with someone like King, who's so open and so free. It was a really beautiful moment and it was a really important moment, both in the romance and in the broader story.

NiNi

There's two things that you said there, Shan, that I actually want to pull out. The part that you said about Ino’s ancestor having harmed somebody whose only sin was expressing feelings to somebody who didn't return them. I actually, I can't remember exactly, but wasn't the story that he did return the feelings and then panicked about them, or something like that? I can't remember.

Shan

I think we don't know.

Ben

That part is unclear.

Shan

It's a speculation.

Ben

What we learned, based upon what is provable, that he had written poems about his unrequited love for the Soliman ancestor. And then the Soliman ancestor unintentionally—or maybe intentionally—discovered these poems. He had not been given them. I think that's a big part of this too, is that—what's his name, Nalundasan—was outed. And then the Soliman ancestor turned on him in a vile way. And that ended horribly. And—

Shan

So we don't know if he turned on him because he was afraid, because he was suppressing his own queerness, or if he was just a garden variety, homophobic heterosexual man. We don't know.

Ben

I think what also makes me particularly sad about that story is Nalundasan, the person that they harmed in this, had performed a role as a community and cultural leader. And had chosen to closet himself, he left descendants behind. He formed a marriage and had kids. This was just the part of his life that he was not able to express, so he expressed it in his poetry that he had kept private until it was made public. And that part is really sad too, because Ino is closeted and knows it.

A lot of times in BL, a lot of these guys are, like, untapped sexual beings who are activated by the power of BL and product placement. In this story, most of the characters are well aware of how they feel about who they are and what's going on with them. King definitely knew who he was the whole time. His loud gay ass showed up with his mullet and was like, you can't tell me what to do.

Shan

His rainbow mullet.

Ben

Speaking of his mullet, I have to get this out on the podcast. I will never forgive his mother for cutting his hair while he was asleep. That was horrible and vile. And the only thing saving her from these knives is she's played by Sue Prado.

[Shan laughs]

NiNi

No, but legit, the fact that the show lets this go really upset me. Because it was such a violation. When it happened, I gasped. And the show gave it a lot of grace and let it go and that did not sit right with my spirit, I have to say.

Ben

I agree.

00:30:16 - Marahuyo Project: Our Characters

Ben

Ino is an interesting queer character in that when he sees King right away, he sees him almost as a threat, because Ino is trying not to draw attention to his own queerness. Like, it's clear he maybe wants to leave at some point and then deal with his shit. And he can feel that he's not going to be able to get away with that around King. He's also drawn to King because, I mean, why wouldn't he be? He's tall, he's really pretty. He wears ridiculously gay shirts. Some of them show off his midriff.

Shan

And he's brave! He's brave in a way that—

Ben

So brave!

Shan

—-Ino wishes he was. That's the thing, right?

NiNi

There's so much about King and King and Venice in particular that had me thinking a lot about the importance of the people who can't hide.

Ben

Mmhmm.

NiNi

And what they mean to the community and what it means for them to be out there at the vanguard, taking all the shit and how that's almost never recognized or rewarded or anything like that. But it's so important for the ones who are like Ino, the ones who are like Archie, to see the Kings and the Venices just loud and out in front and visible and unhideable and unapologetic and what that means. And the show really made you feel that. It made you feel not just that King and Venice are brave, but also how important what they were trying to do was, what the mission for them was.

Ben

It's also interesting too because their mission is not academic for them. King was dealing with homophobia even in Manila. Then he lands in Marahuyo and he's like, same shit different day. That man got called a slur and was like “hmph, uncreative.” And I was like, wow, they're throwing slurs around in these shows again. Finally, mask off. And I was weirdly relieved that the show was mask off about its homophobia because it's very frustrating sometimes to talk about shows where the homophobia is kind of subtle. And you have to argue with people about your interpretation, where they think you're being cruel to the show for recognizing what the show is doing. I like that that wasn't an issue here, thank you, JP Habac!

But in terms of what Venice is dealing with and what Archie and Ino are dealing with, queerness is also not academic for them either. King is not the first other homo they've ever encountered, because we learn that Ino's father almost or temporarily left his family for a love with another man and then chose to come back to his family and stay with their mom. And his dad explains that he loves Ino's mom and wants to be her husband even if it means he cannot enjoy his attraction to men. So, Ino is dealing with, like, a double closet in his life where the whole fucking town knows about his dad steppin’ out on his mom with a man.

We learn that Venice and Archie lost their friend.

Shan

Should we do, Ben, a rundown of the characters? ‘Cause we haven't really done that yet.

Ben

We probably should. Let's go down the whole cast!

Shan

Let's go down the list.

Ben

We've got King, our favorite gay boy with a mullet that should not have been lost. [Ben and Shan laugh] We have Ino, who's our big man on campus who gets his shit rocked. We've got Venice, everyone's favorite local trans girl. Who eats rambutan all the time.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

She loves those fucking rambutans.

Ben

Hanging around the local priest all the time is Archie, Venice's former friend who has pulled back on his friendship with Venice because of the death of their friend, who he repeatedly deadnames over the course of the show until he finally cracks through the core of his grief.

Archie is a complex character to talk about because he is also queer in some way and suffering in his own closet. And he's choosing a path that leads him to the priesthood as a way to survive under the pressures of the homophobia he lives under.

NiNi

So many thoughts about that.

Shan

Yeah, let's not, let’s not lose sight of the girls. Let's not go down the Archie Road yet. We also have—

Ben

Lorena! Aka Lorie. Lorie is probably some kind of queer. Might be bi, might be a lesbian, might be asexual. It's very clear—

Shan

She's figuring it out.

Ben

—she's still figuring it out by the end of the show. We are not going to label her here because she has not chosen one for herself. She is sorting through her own angst with men because of her own father's infidelity. And she's very close to her friend, Lili, who is eventually revealed to be probably intersex. And it's very clear that their friendship is extremely important to them in a way feels romantic on Lili's end, but Lorie is still sorting through. But the reveal from Lili to Lorie about this truth about her is one of my favorite moments in the whole show.

And then there's that asshole Marco who ruins it like five minutes later. I hate that boy.

Shan

Marco, our villain.

Ben

I hate that boy.

Shan

He's really the most villainous character in the show.

Ben

I hate that boy so much!

Shan

He's the worst. He's the fucking worst.

Ben

[laughs]I hate him. I hate him so much! Mmmmmm.

Shan

This is a story that takes place on a small island, but it’s also in a school. So there are school dynamics at play here with this group and how they come together. King and Venice connect pretty much right away when he gets there because they are both visibly queer and they latch onto each other. And King is very much, as Ben said earlier, an activist. He is loud and proud and he demands respect for his existence. And he also wants to create space for other people like him, or somewhere on the queer spectrum to have pride and to be able to come out and have space, too. Venice is very classic sunshine character. That girl is so pretty and so dumb and she's just the nicest girl, just ever! [laughs] But she just doesn't really know much. She doesn't know much about queerness because she's been very isolated. So King is teaching her about what it means to be a queer activist, what some of these terms mean, what it means to try to fight for your space, ‘cause she has been in a space of insisting on living as herself, but also accepting that in some ways she would have to just be quiet and conform to get by in the school, and King doesn't find that acceptable. So they latch onto each other through that.

And then Lorie is the mayor's daughter, so she has a lot of status in the town, similar to Ino, who’s part of this family that is the big legacy family. So they both have a lot of positional power within the school and within the community, which they use over the course of the story to help with the club and helping some of these other kids who are more like outcasts. Lili is friends with Lorie and that's her social entree in the school. Archie is part of the local church and close with the priest, which gives him a kind of authority too. He's seen on the island as almost like the deputy priest.

Ben

I have to say it, he has the authority given to an overseer.

Shan

Exactly. That is definitely his role. He's kind of a cop.

And Marco is just a little asshole who’s just a fucking asshole to everybody all the time. And they're all in school together, they're in this forced proximity and King and his arrival to the island really awakens in a lot of these kids who are queer but have been suppressing it, who are closeted either knowing or not, he really awakens in them this kind of connection to their own queerness. And they have varying responses to that. Some of them really joyfully wanting to come and be part of what he's building. Some of them being really afraid of it. We see the whole spectrum of responses there.

Ben

I think what also really works for me in terms of how this felt particularly queer, there's two big things. First, spoiler alert, they do not get to have their club. They are not given official approval for their club, but then they go, fuck you, we don't need it anyway. And then they have their march regardless. I love that.

The other part I like is that we have three characters who agree to out themselves in some way by trying to pursue the organization that they want to have. You get King, who's like, “I'm gay. You can use whatever slurs you want. They apply.” You got Venice, who's chosen to stay optimistic despite the death of Christina. And then you've got Lorie, who's like, you guys suck. I have way more fun with these guys. I'm going over there with them. And then each of them ends up holding the confidence of someone else who is closeted that they're close to.

King is developing a romance with Ino, Venice is holding the confidence of Archie, who does not come out over the course of this show. He's still closeted in the end and cheering for them from the closet. Something that I really appreciate the show doing. There are still people in our communities who do not feel safe enough to come out. And Lorie is holding Lili's confidence about her truth about being intersex. And I like that those three did not betray that confidence to each other. I thought that was a really important thing that the show did because when you are protecting someone who's closeted, the best way to do that is to shut the fuck up. You don't even tell people who could be trusted with that info because it's not your info to share.

That's the big point about protecting closeted people, is, if they're gonna come out, they need to feel like it's something that they have control over. What's so evil about Marco is he went out of his way to take that moment from Lili because she embarrassed him because he wouldn't stop sexually harassing Lorie.

NiNi

Yeah, I do like that you get three different takes on that whole, I guess you could call it end game, of the closet because you've got Archie who stays in, you've got Ino who comes out, and then you've got Lili who gets outed. And then you get to see how each of those things impact the characters. I found that to be really, really interesting to watch.

00:42:09 - Marahuyo Project: The Christina Story

Shan

We should talk more, we've been alluding to it, but we should fully elaborate on the backstory with Archie and Venice because it is, I think, one of the most touching stories that this show told.

So Archie and Venice and their friend Christina grew up together. They have been best friends since childhood. We don't get every detail, but what we do learn over time is that Christina, like Venice, was trans and somewhere in her transition and in her coming out, something went very badly for her and she ended up, presumably, ending her own life. This created very different responses in Archie and in Venice. Venice kind of carried on, she's a very optimistic person at heart and she carried on that way, kept Christina's memory close, and continued to live in her truth as a trans woman and carry that forward. Archie became so deeply afraid of queerness and the way that it could damage somebody's life that he locked up tight, and as a result of that, rejected Venice and her transition.

When the story begins, he seems like—on the surface—just this hateful bigot. He's constantly deadnaming Venice and Christina. He is disapproving of Venice. He doesn't support her. And then you find out more about this history that they share together. And you find out more about what motivates him and how ultimately at the root of it he really is just so terrified for Venice that she will end up like Christina. And he thinks, wrongly of course, that preventing her from transitioning is going to save her life. And that is what is driving his behavior. What a nuanced story to tell about what is normally reduced to something so simple and hateful.

The emotions between Archie and Venice are so complex. And Venice, because she's a very kind and generous person, she has a lot of space for Archie. She understands why he's behaving the way he is, and she gives him a lot of grace around it. And she really tries to support him. Like, he is so afraid and doing so much to suppress his own queerness that it's manifesting physically for him. We see throughout the show he's got this anxiety habit of scratching at his neck. It gets gross, like, to the point where he's basically scratching—

Ben

It was gross.

Shan

—his skin off.

Ben

If you have any phobias or squicks around people self harming because they've been scratching at themselves too much. You're gonna want to maybe be ready to look away when they show the back of Archie's neck—

Shan

Yeah, be prepared.

Ben

—because he's legit tearing his own body apart. They manifest how deeply he's tearing himself apart in the way he's scratching up his neck. It's really uncomfortable to watch.

Shan

It is. And so Venice sees that, and she has a lot of sympathy for him. She understands why he's behaving in this way. And she doesn't tell anybody else. That's their private personal history. And she doesn't think it's hers to tell. It's just a really nuanced look at how these fears and anxieties and how suppression of your own queerness can manifest in these different forms of self-harm and harm to others. I just, I found it to be such a beautiful and touching story that didn't get all the way resolved by the end of the show, because you don't just fix something this deep overnight.

NiNi

I think that the colonized thing adds another layer to this as well because the place that Archie is running towards, running away from himself, is the church. That's the colonial ramification. That's the idea that respectability will save you. That comes from the colonizer. All of that stuff is on top of all this other stuff that's happening with Archie. It's something that I recognize from people that I know, people that I grew up with, people who grew up in the Catholic Church, definitely, but also in other traditions that are imported traditions, that are colonizer traditions. This idea that if you are part of the establishment, if you are part of what they value, if you are somehow involved in that stuff, then you're safe. These ideas are not uncommon to even uncolonized societies, but there's a whole different layer and level of it that you get in colonized societies or societies that were colonized.

I don't even know if I can accurately describe how it works, but just know that there's layers to this shit. And one of those layers is Archie trying to disappear into the Catholic Church.

Ben

My favorite thing about Archie, too, was despite how awful he seemed at first, they gave us signs early on that there was more going on here. There was the way that Venice didn't sneer at Archie. She mostly looked annoyed and disappointed. Like, it was clear that they had a relationship. And there was a moment when an adult stormed in on their party and Venice was in a dress. Archie, from the shadows, reaches out to her back and tries to pull her back from being seen because he's worried that something might happen to her. And I'm like, never mind. I know where the story is going! And I was way less worried about Archie.

By the time we get the reveal about what happened to Christina, Archie is the one who is seemingly the most visibly devastated by this loss. So, all of his cruelty towards them was given context for me that doesn't make it okay, but humanizes it. This is not the best way to cope with this, because shoving your other friend into a closet is not going to help her either. But I understand that this is how you're trying to cope. It's not helping you, either. But I understand you.

00:48:52 - Marahuyo Project: Parents and Children

Ben

So, on a lighter note! [laughs] Since we've talked about a lot of sad things here.

Shan

Here we go! This is a comedy. Let's remember. [laughs]

NiNi

I was just about to say.

Ben

On a lighter note, one of the most absolutely fantastic things about this show was the way that they had Adrian constantly breaking the fourth wall to look at us and kiki with us as the audience.

Shan

Yes! Whenever King would look at us, I would get so thrilled. [laughs] And he was always pulling the best faces. [laughs]

Ben

Adrian is really funny. Adrian, I don't think you'll ever hear us because we're a tiny little podcast, but we loved your work, sir. I loved your work and all three things I've seen you do. It was great. We love you. Thank you for the gift of King and the gift of Dominic.

Shan

Do you have a favorite fourth wall break? Mine was when [laughs] he looked at the camera when Ino was talking to him by the water and was like, “oh my god, he loves me.”

Ben

Yeah, that was the one for me!

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

I love that kid so much.

Ben

I liked the little march they did at the end. I don’t think the mom deserved to be there. And I don't know about Ino's dad deserving to be there, but grandma deserved to be there and I'm glad she was there. I liked seeing them all walk together because it's a cool visual, even if I think it's not wholly earned by some of the time that they had available.

Let's talk about Ino's mom. Ino's mom clocks very quickly when she starts seeing him hang around King that clearly he's gay, too. And she's like, what the fuck? What are you gonna do to our family? And he pushes back on that because he was ready for that particular fight. I was really proud that for a kid who they've been grooming to speak in front of crowds and talk about stuff, he was able to hold his ground against his mom. And I was really frustrated with his dad. I did not think his dad gave him any useful perspective or advice at all. And that was a real failure.

Shan

That man was useless.

NiNi

I actually found the dad to be really sad. I think the dad was included almost as a cautionary tale? Because the dad just seemed so beaten down by his whole life, by everything that had happened to him, by all the choices that he had made. Yes, he's trying to make it so that his son doesn't have to make the same choices that he made once he realizes what's going on. Because the other thing is that he definitely buries his head in sand a little bit about Ino because of his own background and his own history.

Ben

I think that's the only way to read him.

Shan

He definitely was.

Ben

I don't think we got really great answers about Judy, King's mom either, about why she left.

Shan

That was one of the disappointments for me. I really loved the show. I didn't think it was perfect. It had a couple areas where I think it could have been stronger and one of the primary ones was on Judy. I really wanted to understand her better because we know her mother, we know that she wasn't raised to be this way. So bigoted, so afraid. And I don't really feel like we ended the show understanding better why she left King. Why she treated him the way that she did. I just, I wanted to get a little bit deeper down into what was going on with her. And I just don't think we ever got there.

NiNi

Well, maybe the show didn't get there, but I got it. I know so many Judys. She left the country, went to the big city, fell in love with this man. I don't know what happened with her and the husband, but whatever it is, plus the whole thing with King, she didn't know how to deal with it. She ran straight home to the arms of something simpler and more familiar. It has nothing to do with the way that she was raised. It has everything to do with that, like, colonized mentality. Her life went to shit and it was because she didn't do the things that in her mind she was supposed to. Because I guarantee that she rebelled against her own mother, not just in running away to Manila, but also I am sure her mother's such a free spirit, she's definitely straight-laced, I'm telling you. It's a story that I've seen so many times.

I agree that it wasn't on screen, but for me it was a shortcut. Like, I saw Judy, I saw the grandmother, I was like immediately I got it.

Shan

Yeah, I appreciate that. I definitely needed the show to actually go there, [laughs] especially because like, this is a woman who abandoned her child and I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to understand the way that she chose to interact with him even after he came to live with her. And they just never dug into it. That was a bit of a disappointment for me.

Ben

Big fan of this show never showing us King's dad, fuck that dude.

Shan

Yeah, we didn't need to see him. I don't care about that.

Ben

I also want to talk about… one of my favorite things was despite having limited connectivity on the island, King did not lose touch with his bestie in Manila, who called that man out on his shit every single time he got her on the phone. [laughs] It's very important when you're gay and extra that you have somebody who tells you when you're doin’ too much.

NiNi

You do need a get a grip friend. And she was definitely the get a grip friend. It's one of the things that JP Habac likes to do, because he did the same thing with Vlad and his friend Sue in GSP [Gaya sa Pelikula]. She was not there, but she was his get a grip friend. She's the one who called him out on, like, sad dancing to The 1975.

I love a get grip friend, my favorite type of character.

00:54:54 - Marahuyo Project: Final Thoughts and Ratings

Ben

My last positive comment about this show—I'm lying, I probably have hundreds more—[Shan laughs] is this show wore its politics on its sleeves, but in a way that didn't feel preachy. There's a really great moment where King is pushing back on a lesson they're having about fucking Machiavelli's The Prince. Oh my! [exhale sound] I went to an all male Catholic school, I have strong thoughts about [laughs] Machiavelli.

I love King reminding people in that whole stupid argument that no social progress has ever been made by people being very polite to the powers that be. Every form of welfare and the social safety net that we all expect and rely upon, people fought and bled for. And I liked that there was not really a response to that. Are there any social services that you rely upon and expect? People died for that. So shut the fuck up.

Great work. A+.

NiNi

And there's some little things that I want to really pick up the show on. The whole Balagtasan tradition, the debate in verse, it was so beautiful. I really enjoyed listening to the debate on a musical level, almost. And while we're talking about music again, this is from the people who did Gaya sa Pelikula. So of course the music was gonna be bangin’.

Ben

This soundtrack, this soundtrack fucks!

Shan

Let me actually get the name of the song because holy shit, one of my favorite songs that I have ever heard in a drama. Let me pull it up.

NiNi

Which one are we talking about? Di Inakala or Magpatuloy?

Shan

My favorite song in this drama, so beautiful, it's called Di Inakala by Paul Pablo. Gorgeous.

Ben

It really is.

Shan

It was used in the romance arc.

NiNi

It's fabulous.

Shan

What was the one you really liked, NiNi?

NiNi

I like, there's a song called Magpatuloy by Mijon and that song, I listen to literally every day now, every single day. One of the things I always love—

Shan

Beautiful.

NiNi

—about this team, about JP Habac, and he works with music supervisor Patricia Lasaten, they always pull out Filipino artists and songs in Filipino language front and center when they're doing music for their shows and I love it. I've learned about so many great artists and gotten into so much great music because of this team.

Ben

We're gonna have to move on ‘cause now I'm gonna start talking about the consent part of their first kiss and how great that was. The show's great! Please go watch it.

Let's finally rate this show. Let's go around the board. Shan, rating?

Shan

I gave this show a 9. I loved it. I think it's beautiful. I think it is required viewing for anybody who cares about queer drama, good community drama, good Filipino drama. There's just so many reasons to watch it. It has a bit of rough edges around some of the storytelling decisions. I don't think it's a perfect show, but it is beautiful and I intend to rewatch it and I hope everybody listening to this will watch it if you haven't already.

Ben

NiNi, rating?

NiNi

I also give this a 9 because I do agree that the things around King's mom sort of hung there. I don't think they necessarily had to be resolved, but they weren't really even addressed very much. So that would be why I dinged it, but it is a fantastic show.

Ben

My public rating for this show is a 10. I do think it's one of those shows that anybody should watch. And if you are one of the listeners who likes what I have to say about things and is curious about how I think about stuff, it's one of those shows that I beg people to watch. It's one of those shows that you show people: here’s a short list of shows to watch to understand me as a person.

I think everybody should watch it. I agree with you both. Not a perfect show. Has some rough edges, but in terms of me recommending it to people, I'm givin’ it a 10. Top of the list. Go watch this. Right now.

NiNi

So two nines and a ten, okay, I'm not mathing today. We're gonna give it a 9.5 from The Conversation.

Shan

Feels right.

Ben

I think a 9.5 from us is correct. It is an incredibly good show with a couple of quibbles we have about mostly the way they handled some of the adult storylines. But I think the youth storylines are crystal clear and really well-executed. And we get to see a side of queerness that we very rarely see. It’s a beautiful show. Please watch it.

00:59:48 - Ossan no Pants

NiNi

Let's move on now to the next show that we're going to talk about, and it is called—let me see if I can get this correct…Ossan no Pantsu ga Nandatte Ii Janai ka!…I totally butchered that. English title is Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear!

I just started watching this today so I'm very excited to discuss what of it I have seen and I am just prepared for the spoilers that are going to come. So Ben, what is Oppan about?

Ben

About how if we give Japan 50 minutes to tell a story, they're gonna use that time well! [laughs]

Shan

So well!

Ben

Oppan is about this man named Okita Makoto, who is a kind of upper-middle manager of a printer sales company. He is very much a salaryman type who is upholding a lot of casual misogyny because this is what he is taught to do, and he believes he's filling in the role that's expected of him. He goes to work every day. He works really hard. He sacrifices everything of importance that matters to him to be present for the work. and he leaves the household matters to his wife. And it's not going that great!

He finds himself feeling distant from his wife, distant from his daughter who doesn't seem to like him; and their family is dealing with the crisis because for whatever reason, his son—who he's never been able to feel close to—refuses to go to school and doesn't leave his room.

One day while walking to work, he almost falls down the stairs, because he lives in a walkable community, and is saved by a young gay man who catches him. The two of them have a little bit of bonding that comes from this. A friendship begins to grow between them. And over the course of this friendship, Makoto decides that he needs to change with the times and update himself, because he recognizes that he wants to better connect to people and what he's currently doing is not working.

And the rest of the show is about Makoto learning how to be a good friend to this young gay man who's near to graduating from veterinary school, his wife, his two children who are an adult and approaching adulthood, and his coworkers.

This is one of the kindest shows I've ever watched. When I tell you that a show about a misogynist was one of the most empathetic things I've watched this year, I am not being funny or being ironic. This show understands how everybody responds to societal misogyny, how it shapes them, hurts them, but doesn't have to be the end of their story. This was an absolutely delightful experience. I loved every single moment I spent with this show. Holy shit.

NiNi, before we get into Shan's impressions, because I have much I want to ask Shan about, you are three episodes in. Just give us some of your initial impressions and thoughts on how you're feeling about the characters, and some of the stories you've encountered so far.

NiNi

The only reason that this show works is because Okita loves his family. He really truly loves his family, and he doesn't want to lose them, and he knows that they're slipping away from him. And there are so many ways that that kind of story turns negative. In this instance, the show uses that love and that fear of losing his family, and turns it in a positive direction. He turns it in on himself and says to himself, “What can I do to not let this happen? How can I bring them back to me? What have I been doing wrong and what can I now start to try to do right?” And that's really what stuck with me.

We don't talk about this a lot in the world. I know this is a weird segue. Life is extremely hard on middle-aged men in the modern age, because they were told a certain way to be that has just, to their minds, vanished. They were told they were the main character and that everybody was around them to make sure that they succeeded. And that's gone, and they don't know how to deal with that. Watching a middle-aged man deal with that in a healthy way, in a way that looks at himself and says ‘I have to do better,’ I find incredibly satisfying. That spirit of, ‘I need to look at my life, look at my choices’ basically and ‘I need to fix the relationships in my life because I have broken them.’

01:05:18 - Ossan no Pants: Our Characters

Shan

I think we need to start with a little character cheat sheet.

Ben

Let's first name the Okita family members.

Shan

Makoto is our patriarch, as NiNi just so eloquently said, is the heart of this show, his journey. We have in his family, his wife Mika, his daughter Moe, and his son Kakeru. That’s our core family that we will keep coming back to.

Our other main character is Igarashi Daichi, and he is the young gay man who lives in the neighborhood who meets Makoto and kind of starts the journey that he's on. Daichi also has parents who are relevant to the story. Mihoko is his mother and his dad, we will just be referring to as ‘That Asshole.’

Ben

—Fuck that dude! Ho ho!

Shan

Fuck that dude. We don't need to give him a name.

Daichi also has a boyfriend who, in what I considered a bit of a revelation for this show, actually matters and has a story. Madoka is his name. He's very important. We'll talk about him.

We also have a broad constellation of side characters in this show. I will not name them all because there are far too many, but a few that I think are really important to know because they have important plot lines or are part of important plot lines for our family are Hasegawa, who is a schoolmate of Kakeru's who is on the baseball team; and Shizuka, who is a schoolmate of Kakeru's who bonds with him over a shared interest. And then we have Furuike, who is Makoto's senior at work. Those folks all have pretty important actual arcs in the show.

There are also other side characters who are Makoto's coworkers, Kakeru's schoolmates, and Moe's friends, but they're not as present in the narrative.

Good luck to our translator for having to do all those names. [Ben laughs] That's me, why am I, I'm giving myself luck!

It's a big cast. This is an ensemble show. It's a family drama. It is rooted within a family as the central unit of the story, and then we follow each of these family members on their own individual storylines that intersect with some of the other characters that we talked about.

Like, in terms of my overall feeling about this show, I just fucking love it. It is one of the best family dramas I've ever seen. It is one of the most thoughtful and smart shows that I have seen in the way that it takes the themes that it wants to explore and it really digs deep into them in a way that still feels really natural. Like, this show is absolutely intended to be educational television for a broad audience. And it also is just a really good drama that does not feel, usually, like an afterschool special. It feels like a very organic and natural story of a family and the people around them, rather than a show that's just sitting you down and preaching at you all the time, despite the fact that it is literally preaching at you a lot through the story and through its themes.

You know, I think NiNi's summary of, kind of, the core plot of the story and the purpose of the story was spot on. This is really rooted in Makoto's journey to do better, to recognize that he has damaged his own relationships with his inability to change and evolve with the times, that he is the one who needs to do some thinking and some learning. And I think what's so beautiful about this show is that he is able to do that through the kindness and the compassion of a stranger who sees potential in him, who sees an opportunity to engage him and to help him learn, rather than just dismissing him.

You really need both sides of that equation to make this work. You need somebody who is willing to admit that they're wrong and be open to learning. And you need someone who is willing to have patience for them and to see the good intentions behind some of their mistakes. And that's what you really get in Makoto and Daichi. They are the unconventional friendship that really powers this show, that gives Makoto the energy he needs and the knowledge he needs to do better by his family. And then in turn gives Daichi the support he needs when his life starts getting a little bit messier.

One of my favorite things about this show is that when it starts, you kinda get a little niggling in the back of your head, you're a little worried. You're like, is Daichi a manic pixie dream gay? Is he just here to be this fairy who blesses Makoto and helps him be better and is used as this font of wisdom? Or is he going to be a full human and a real person? And it's definitely the latter.

As the story goes on, we get his life filled in too. We learn about his struggles. We learn about his relationship. We learn about his family. We see him make mistakes, and we see him need to draw on strength from Makoto. This friendship becomes very mutual, and they change each other's lives. This is an all-time great drama. I love it. Everyone needs to watch it.

Ben

NiNi, I want to check in with you about Daichi at episode three, because you just got through the sequence where they went to the public bath together, and Makoto was trying to show Daichi some appreciation. And it was well intentioned, but kind of annoying. And Daichi got legitimately irritated in that moment and very politely told Makoto to step back.

I want to know how you feel about Daichi coming out of the sequences that happened in the public bath,

NiNi

I think the timing and pacing of that is actually perfect because I was just getting to the point in the story, having watched two and a half episodes of Daichi having what seemed like unending patience for Makoto and his foibles and his crass, sometimes crude expressions and the way that he is often unthinking before he says something. I was just getting to the point of being, does this kid not have any feelings or does he just exist to be Makoto's conscience and sounding board?

And then that moment in the tub happened and I was like, okay, so he does get pissed off. And he does get annoyed and he does get exhausted and he does get tired of having to deal with this shit.

Ben

Daichi joins a very short list of characters who are now my all-time favorites. He and Shiro are gonna live in my psyche for the rest of my life.

Daichi is so fascinating because he's a well-read, self-actualized queer character who has the full support of his mother, who has clearly dealt with a lot of homophobia. And we learned that he suffered in high school when he was outed. But he has chosen to proceed through the world with kindness and not assume the worst from people, because it burns you out. We get to experience Daichi's complicated romance with his closeted boyfriend.

And then the relationship he forms with Kakeru. Daichi is helping Kakeru because Kakeru might be going through some sort of queer awakening. He wants to have control over his gender presentation and he likes to be cute. He wants to be pretty. He wants to use feminine styling and cutesy girly things, because they make him happy. But he is not certain yet where he sits on the spectrum of sexuality. The big thing he hates the most is people projecting and presuming about him.

Shan

They really made a contrast here because Moe, Kakeru’s sister. She is so schlubby. She's like hair tossed up in a headband, unshowered, wearing, like, shapeless sweats. Just like looking like, you know, she didn't even bother with anything in the morning besides rolling out of bed. But then when she has to go out in the world and she does her hair and puts on makeup, she looks like a different person. The first time they showed Moe outside of the house all done up, I was literally like, who is that? Who the fuck is this girl? Why are we following her? It really took me a second to click in and realize that was Moe.

What I liked about the contrast there is that Kakeru, for him being pretty, coming on with these feminine styles, doing his makeup every day, that is what actually makes him happy. So he looks that way even when he's sitting in his own home. For Moe, that's not part of her self identity so much as part of the armor that she puts on in the world. They didn't comment on it at all in the show, but the visual contrast was there the whole time between these two siblings.

Ben

I love so much that Daichi was able to help Kakeru get himself out of that room by never telling him what to do, by always focusing on asking Kakeru questions to help Kakeru find the answer in himself. He often did the same with Makoto as well. He very gently corrected presumptions.

Like, he—Makoto asked a reasonable question. “My son likes to dress up like a girl. Is he trans, and what do I do about that?” And Daichi is like, “Well, he hasn't said he's trans, so let's not presume there, but let's think about trans people for a moment.” And I really love the way that that was handled because Kakeru tells us plainly that he does like being a boy, but he wants to be pretty.

There's the bit where Kakeru is leaving and he thanks his dad for what he did, and his dad, desperate to try and say something that helps his son is like, “You survived being my son for 17 years, you can handle anything.” And I was like, Oh, buddy. [laughs]

Man, I'm getting lost in all the characters I want to talk about. Let's go back one step and let's focus on Daichi. Daichi helps Kakeru by being gentle with him and letting him figure things out for himself, and then giving him encouragement and friendship when he needs it. And when we finally get to see Daichi's relationship with Madoka, it's complicated. He has an incredible meet-cute with the biggest man we've ever seen in a Japanese drama.

NiNi

I have seen that man! He is large!

Shan

That man is large. He's large.

NiNi, immediately: “Why did no one tell me there was a large man in this drama?”

NiNi

Ben and Shan can attest, literally I paused and I typed in the chat, “So who is this big one?” I was like, why is there a large man and nobody told me there was a large man here?

Ben

Shan is like, I feel like we failed on our strategy with needing to get her to watch this. We should have told her it was a big man. I'm just like, see, but then she would have felt like we were baiting her and she would have taken even longer to start. It's better that you discovered the large man—

Shan

—We decided to let you discover on your own.

Ben

—You needed to discover the large man on your own as a, as a pleasant surprise.

NiNi

Listen, it was very pleasant and very surprising, because all of a sudden he was just there and he was large and I was like—

Shan

There he is. Can't miss him. He's so big.

NiNi

—these bitches, these, these bitches didn't tell me that there was a large man here—

Ben

Nope!

NiNi

—I'm disappointed in you all. I will say that much. [laughs]

Ben

Nope. We got exactly what we wanted. Because you kept watching. You like, “There's a large man. Is he going to show up again?” And then you kept watching.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi

You…

Shan

Let's tell the people more about Madoka, Ben.

Ben

So Madoka is from a smaller community, and his family is anticipating his return home after completing his veterinary studies. He's going to take a position at a large clinic that's basically been prepared for him. He's expected to marry. And this is a huge amount of pressure on him. He doesn't want to disappoint his family and let them down because he's not shared this truth with them because he's afraid of that disappointment.

I think for a lot of us, that was my big thing that kept me in the closet. Because my family wasn't more homophobic than like a standard Southern cosmopolitan family. But they have these ideas about who you're going to grow up to be in the life that you might be sharing with them as you get older. And when you tell them this about yourself, you are shattering whatever image of your life that they had growing up, particularly when you were able to hide what you were.

Certain people cannot hide who they were. Daichi is one of those characters who could not hide who he was, and his peers made him suffer for it. And his father. Fuck that man. Fuck that man!

Shan

Seriously, fuck that man. We have nothing nice to say about him. Nothing!

Ben

But Daichi is being patient with Madoka, too, because he's not gonna demand like, “You have to come out so that we can be together.” He's patient with him and lets him sort through that. And the show lets that be as difficult as it needs to be. When these two eventually decide to marry, they have a stellar sequence that I will never get out of my brain. I don't wanna describe it further because you’re gonna watch this scene, NiNi, but know that the proposal sent all of the clowns into the stratosphere.

Shan

All of the clowns and all of the characters within the show as well.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

The people inside the show reacting to it happening were perfect mirrors of all of us at home reacting to it happening. It was so good. And that's a surprising thing in and of itself, that in this family drama that was meant to be more mainstream, we actually saw two gay men decide to marry each other. Same-sex marriage is still not legal in Japan. That doesn't mean that people don't want to commit to each other in a meaningful way, and I think it was really powerful to see these characters make that choice. As the show goes on, we learn more about Daichi's family and his horrible fucking father—

Ben

—Horrible man!

Shan

—and a fucking horrible homophobe who has made Daichi feel so isolated and small in so many ways. And we see this dynamic flip between him and Madoka, where he's been the one who's been patient and been strong while Madoka had to work out talking to his family. And then his horrible father comes back into the picture, and suddenly Daichi is the one who's having a crisis of confidence. And he doesn't know if he can commit to this life that he knows he wants because of the way that it disappoints his father, who he still has this attachment to.

To see them get the chance to support each other through those journeys and to come out the other side of it was just such a really meaningful part of this story. And the way that it tied back to the Okita family because they have come to love Daichi. They have their own relationships with him. He's so important to them in a number of different ways. And so they get very invested in his life. We talked earlier about how in these dramas, the side characters don't exist just to power a romance, right? These are not fujoshis. That's not what's going on here—

Ben

—Well, there is a fujoshi in the story. Like—

Shan

Although Moe does write—

Ben

—gay boys— [laughs]

Shan

Yeah, she's a mangaka. She does actually write yaoi manga, but she's not like that about Daichi and Madoka. They are real people to her. She's not looking at them as a fan girl. She's here for fictional romance only.

So, the Okita family really cares about this couple and wants to see them happy and is so deeply emotionally invested in them that it becomes part of their family story, too. It's just a really beautiful way that Daichi's family became very connected to the Okita family, and that all of them became a bit of a surrogate family for Madoka—whose own family by the end of the story does know more about him and have accepted him—but are kind of far away. So he gets this familial support system through these other two families coming together and surrounding him and Daichi with love.

NiNi

Shan you said something there about being surprised about how they got to a wedding. I'm actually not surprised because one of the things that Ben and I have been discussing about Japanese drama when we've been discussing it lately is how there seems to be a category of Japanese drama in like the last five to ten years I’d say which is what I've been personally calling normalization drama.

Me, My Husband, and My Husband's Boyfriend. She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. Koisenu Futari. Like, there's a list of these shows, and this list is building up, of shows that are looking at, they would probably use the term 'alternative lifestyles'. But what it's about is normalizing these things because so much of what I understand about Japanese culture is about not standing out. It's about conforming. And the reason, and Ben and I have talked about this, that a lot of homophobia and stuff that comes out in Japanese dramas is more about how people are rocking the boat than necessarily about the queerness in particular sometimes.

One of the things that I have been looking at in these normalization dramas and in terms of what Japan tends to put in front of its audiences is about saying, “Look at these people, they're just like you. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it normal? These people are like us.” So I'm not surprised that this is something that came out of Japan.

Shan

I think that's a really accurate description of what this show is trying to do and why it does fit into that pattern. As we were watching live, it wasn't clear to us as we were going how much any of these side characters or storylines was going to get real attention. And so I think, honestly, I think we were all surprised that he was a real character, that Madoka got his own storyline, that he wasn't just there to be part of Daichi's backstory. That he wasn't just there to be a complication for Daichi, but that he became a character in his own right and got a whole story.

Like, this show really became a true ensemble piece. Makoto's at the center of it always, but this show really cared about every single character. Even the side characters. Like, the characters that you would normally expect to only kind of be in the backgrounds of scenes. Some of them really got to come to the fore for, like, limited periods of time and really shine.

One of my favorite side characters was Hasegawa, who is a classmate of Kakeru's, who was on the baseball team with Kakeru. One of my favorite little side stories in this show is that Hasegawa, he actually is really curious about Kakeru and he cares about why he has disappeared from school, and he wants to understand him. And he really makes an effort to reach out to him. He goes to Kakeru to ask for help with skin care because he has acne, and Kakeru gives him an amazing routine, buys him a whole slew of products and gives him—

Ben

—And it starts working like right away. That man's skin cleared up in like a week!

Shan

That boy looks amazing! His skin was cleared up within a week! He went to him for skincare help because he knew that that was a way to approach Kakeru that would be acceptable to him, and then use that as an in to try to rekindle their friendship. And eventually when Kakeru was ready, and felt like he could trust him again, they did start having more mutual exchanges and rebuilt their friendship.

I mean, listen, I can't lie. We all know I was shipping it. I know this is not real—

Ben

I did not feel bad for Makoto when he was like, “Kakeru seems to be having some very nice interactions with a boy. I mean—

Shan

He fully, he was like, does he like that boy?

Ben

—if that's where it's gonna go, we gotta make sure he knows. It's okay, son.”

Shan

Yeah, and we kind of knew it wasn't going to go there because that's not the point of the show. This is not a romance drama, and they already had a romance storyline that they were dealing with with Daichi and Madoka. But I was kind of shipping it, because this boy was such a nice boy. I really liked the way that this show made room for that. That one of the things that I think stands out the most about this show is how much empathy it has for all of its characters. Even the shitty dad.

This show has some empathy for him. We don't like him, but the show has space to understand his perspective. All of these side characters, the show really cares about giving space to who they are and revealing through context that they also have the chance if they're willing to take it to learn more and open their mind and be kind to others.

01:26:30 - Ossan no Pants: Key Character Arcs

Ben

I'm gonna blow through a lot of these characters to power through some of the arcs they went on.

NiNi, you watched episode two where Moe was determined to go to Comica to sell her manga to her readers. But the family was like, you're too sick. You cannot go to a public venue. And Makoto decides to step up and go sell the books for her and brings Daichi along to help. That was a really interesting episode for us to see Makoto step into Moe's passion and Moe's world and see what she values. And it's the beginning of the rebuilding of their relationship.

NiNi

The show isn't just about Makoto's relationship with Kakeru, it's about his relationship with his entire family. Because you see how disconnected he is from his family. Like, even the dog— ignores him.

Ben

—Carlos!

NiNi

Like, there's a whole side plot about the dog ignoring him. Okay? I have a lot of thoughts about men of a certain age. We are feminists on this show, and as feminists we actually do love men and want better for them. One of the things about this show is watching a man also want better for himself. Beautiful.

Anyway, he's become so disconnected from his family because he doesn't have any kind of interiority, he has no inner life, he has no conception of self beyond what society has given him. He has no hobbies, he has no things that are interesting for him. On a day when he's at home and all the rest of his family is out or doing something that means something to them, he's sitting at home because he doesn't have anything to do. And then he eventually ends up going out and getting drunk in the park because what else does he have to do, because he has no other interest because he's never been allowed to have this internal life.

And part of the show is about him actually doing that, and part of that story is him understanding his daughter's internal life because he's been so dismissive of what she does. She's a mangaka, she works on what we in fandom call the transformative works space.

Ben

[laughs] She's a doujin artist writing fic about her favorite characters.

Shan

I love her so much.

NiNi

She's fantastic. This is not something—yes, she makes money on it occasionally—but she does this for the love. This is a hobby for her. And he doesn't understand being so involved in something that you are not a professional at, you are an amateur in that sense of the word, but it's important to you. And what you do is important to people. It made me feel a lot of feelings about this podcast. I gotta be real with you. But anyway—

Ben

Aw, bestie!

[Shan laughs]

NiNi

It did, it really did. So him sort of stepping into her world and understanding that about her—to my mind the way that I saw it, it made him also feel a little bit sad that he doesn't have anything like that. I saw a little bit of sadness that even as he feels the joy of stepping into her world, and starting to understand his daughter a little more, and having them getting that little bit closer off of this interaction, and opening a little bit of a door for their relationship to start being repaired, I could see it raised a little bit of sadness in him as well. And I'm curious to follow that thread and see where it goes.

One thing that I've been really interested in, I realized that Mika, the mom, actually does have a job outside of the home. When she first called from work, in my head I'm like, did we know she had a job? And the fact that when he gets home, she's always got food prepared on the table for him. He never asks about it. He never says thank you about it. It's expected that it's gonna be there.

Ben

Good—

NiNi

He comes in at the end of the day. He never asks her about her day. He doesn't seem to have any interest. And I am waiting for him to realize. I am ready and excited to see how he starts repairing his relationships with each of these people in his family. Like he even has to repair his relationship with the dog at this point. That's how bad it's gotten.

Shan

[laughs] I'm so excited for you watching this show, NiNi. I do want to give Mika her due because she is the overlooked member of this family, she is doing so much of the invisible and emotional labor for the family. And the show does give her her due and you'll get to see all of that. It kind of builds on what you were saying about Moe and how she feels about the fandom stuff that she does.

Like, this show really understands fandom and what it means to people. Mika, she is a mother. She does have a job that you'll learn more about. And she's also a fan. She is a fan of a K-pop group called RANDOM. That actually ends up being a really important part of who she is and a part of her story with Makoto and his journey to understand her. They really take that seriously and they really help you understand and they motivate her obsession with this K-pop group and really root you in following them as a fan has done for her in her life, and allow Makoto to understand that too.

And when he gets there, when he finally fully clicks into what he owes to this group of K-pop idols who have given his wife something to feel joyful about is one of my favorite moments in the show.

Ben

So, Mika tells us about how she's given up a lot in her life to be the mom figure of this family. She was spiraling in a depressive state when Moe was having problems, Kakeru wouldn't leave his room, and Makoto didn't even want to talk to her about any of these big family problems. And she felt like if it had been someone else, they would have solved it already, that she had failed as a mom.

In this moment of despair, she saw an interview with the leader of RANDOM, and was really touched by the way he talked about dealing with the challenges in his life. That gave her a light out, and caring about RANDOM and the goings on with that band gave her a little light that she was able to hold on to, to hold fast, as her family dealt with these big problems that she was trying to just tackle for them.

Once she reveals all of this—as they're on the way to a concert together, by the way!

Shan

Hell yeah!

Ben

Makoto says, “Ah, then RANDOM is the Okita family's benefactor.” I just love that man so much because that is the right response.

Shan

What a good attitude, sir! You’re doing amazing!

NiNi

What you just said just leads me to think about the scene that gives the show its name about the old man's underwear thing. Makoto has ways, of expressing yes, but also of conceiving the world through a lens that he can comprehend. The things that are incomprehensible to him. Finding a way to reframe it to himself that's comprehensible. Sometimes that's serendipitous, like the thing with the underwear. And sometimes that's considered, but him saying something like “RANDOM is the Okita family's benefactor,” that's him reframing this thing into a thing that makes sense to him that he can then use that as a way of understanding the idea that he's grappling with or that he's struggling with and I really like that.

Shan

Absolutely.

Ben

You're gonna love that moment you get there, NiNi, because you just came through the Comica stuff where Makoto, like you mentioned, has his own way of contextualizing how he appreciates what people are doing. He went through the whole Comica experience, and he appreciated how passionate everybody was, and how diligent and organized they were—

NiNi

—And how efficient they were.

Shan

—Yes.

Ben

Yeah, that was his big thing he took away.

Shan

He saw them through a workplace lens ‘cause that's what he knows, you know?

Ben

And there's this great moment when they come out of the RANDOM concert. He lets Mika go and hang out with her other friends, because Mika ends up hanging out with Daichi's mom and another older female fan who are having fun talking about their favorite boy group. He ends up reading about RANDOM.

When he's still hanging around, Mika wasn't expecting him to wait around for her. They're walking home together. They're talking about the band. He's like, he's read some articles. He's read about them. He's talking about the band—

Shan

—He selected a bias!

Ben

He picked a bias! He's like, “I completely understand why you like Seojun. I found that article you mentioned where he told that story. It's a beautiful, touching story. But we were watching them on the stage. Did you notice that the other member noticed when the other guy tripped and he helped cover for him?

[Shan laughs]

“I really appreciate the teamwork and determination he showed in that moment. He really touched me in that moment.” And he had his own bias coming out of the concert! [laughs]

Shan

And then they’re out there practicing the dance moves! I can't wait for you to get to that episode.

Ben

It's so great because… Like, Daichi says it early and it kind of throws Makoto off. He's like, “I don't have any hobbies.” He's like, “Your family is your hobby. Everything you do is for the benefit of your family. That's what you're most passionate about.”

And so we get through this whole thing where we learned that Moe is passionate about manga, it’s what she loves it’s what gets her up every day. Mika is passionate about RANDOM. It's what helps motivate her day in and day out. She gets this really great moment where she gets mad at her family for not appreciating the food she's doing, because she wanted to share a recipe that had won a contest with them. Nobody checked the fucking group chat. And everybody was up in their asses about their own shit that night. Nobody congratulated her, said anything nice about her food. And she went the fuck off on them and they all deserve that ass whooping.

We go on this long journey with these characters of understanding who they are and rebuilding their relationships with each other in a way that is so beautiful. This is great.

01:36:49 - Ossan no Pants: Furuike and That Fucking Guy

Ben

There's even in the show where an older version of Makoto shows up, like one of Makoto's seniors who has been displaced from one team because of being rude and sexually harassing women there. I don't think he was touching them inappropriately per se, but just his general demeanor was deeply offensive.

And so he gets reassigned to their team. Makoto is able to reach through to him in a really great moment where they go and solve a major work problem together the way guys like them used to solve problems. And it's a way in for him to talk about how “That's not how the young people operate now. And your information and the way you operate is good and we should teach them. But also we got to open up to them too." What's so great is, like, Makoto is kind of an idiot. He's not mean-spirited, but he's doing irritating and annoying and harmful things to the people he cares about.

Daichi's dad is the worst kind of bigot because he is well-read. He has heard all of the arguments. He does understand that his son is suffering, and is willfully choosing to exacerbate that dynamic because he thinks he knows what's best for his son. But it's not really for the benefit of his son. It's about power and control.

One of the things that often frustrates us when we talk about these shows, particularly Shan. Hello, Shan—is these shows often like to rush reconciliations and apologies so that we end with a moment where the whole family’s come back together through the power of love and teamwork or whatever. And Daichi's dad does not get to have that moment. He is excluded from the final triumphant moment of the series because he is too bigoted to let go of his own ego.

Shan

It was a thing of beauty to see a parent who did not deserve to be forgiven unforgiven and excused from the table.

[Ben laughs]

It is everything that I have ever wanted from a drama. I was so fucking happy, because most of the time in these shows, they just insist on pushing toward this unearned redemption that is so unsatisfying. And this show just said no, because you know what? This show has a really clear thesis. And it came through, I think, in a final speech from of all people, Furuike: You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know everything, but you do have to care about hurting people. And you do have to try to do better. And you do have to be willing to learn and update yourself.

And what he says in this final speech in the workplace is, “I'm older than all of you. And I have learned that going through life and all of its good and bad can really desensitize you to the things happening around you, to the experiences of others. And if you let yourself become desensitized, you will hurt other people. And if you can just try really hard to not get used to yourself, and to keep learning and to keep trying, you will do better and you will enjoy life more.” And that is really this show's thesis.

And Daichi's father doesn't do that. He's not open to learning. He doesn't care ultimately that he's harming other people, because he thinks he's right and that's all that matters to him. And so he doesn't get forgiven. And he doesn't get to sit at the fucking family table at the end of the show and play happy families with everybody. He's not invited to the wedding. If he wants back in, he's going to have to try, and he's going to have to care. And he is going to have to put in the effort to update his thinking and make amends with his son and with the people his son loves. Until he does that, he is not welcome and he is not part of the family.

And I just loved that the show was so firm on this. There is room for redemption for everyone, everyone deserves the chance to do better. But if you don't put in that work, you don't get to sit with us. Period.

Ben

PERIOD!

Shan

PERIOD!

Ben

[laughs] Let me tell you, NiNi, you will lose your mind when you get to this scene. I am still thinking about it. I was screaming to Twig for three hours about this scene because the Okita family is in this very fancy restaurant wearing their jackets and stuff and they start removing their jackets like fucking Care Bears revealing their stomachs and blasting this man with the hearts of everything that they love.

Shan

It was like the family Care Bear stare. Like they all pulled back their shirts and the beams came out of their chest. [laughs]

NiNi

I'm so mad at y 'all for a Care Bear stare. I haven't thought about the Care Bears in at least, at least two decades—

Ben

—30 years? [laughs]

NiNi

I can't stand y 'all ass. I can't stand y 'all ass!

Ben

Kakeru is like, “Yes, I'm wearing women's clothes.” And then Moe was like, “And I love to draw fujo art, fuck you.” And Mika's like—

Shan

—She like pulls back, she's got a t-shirt with like two people kissing on—

Ben

—she's like, “I'm old and I get to like idols too.” And then he looks over at Makoto's like, “At least you're the only normal one.” He's like, “No, I'm not. I’m the most fucking crazy person here. I love my family. I love all of these people. And I was asked to be here as the matchmaker for Daichi. And I'm going to tell you to your face that you are a bigot and an asshole.”

He asked that man the most important question: “You are correct that the world is harsh, and that it's not going to be nice to our kids. But it doesn't matter if they're queer. They're going to be made to feel awful and bad and weird and wrong for any number of reasons, whether it be Moe loving to draw fujo art, Kakeru wanting to wear the clothes that make him feel better, or Harunishi wanting to wear his b-suke-kun to work every day.” [laughs]

For any number of reasons these kids are going to be made to feel wrong and unhappy. And that's one of the things the show makes clear. None of the older men in this show are happy at all. Not Makoto, not Daichi's divorced dad, not Furuike when he gets assigned to their team originally, and not multiple colleagues of theirs who get downsized over the course of the show. No one is happy.

Everyone is being asked to present and conform for the sake of others in the society and everyone is miserable as a result. And the Okita family says, “No, we're going to prioritize our happiness in this family. I'm doing these things as a parent because I love my family and I want them to be happy. I don't want them to suffer for other people and be miserable like you.” And he asked that man directly, “If the whole world is lining up to be cruel to your son, why are you trying to cut to the front of the line to get the first lick in?”

And that man had no answer for that.

Shan

Man, that was so infuriating. This was what was so challenging about fighting him, why Makoto struggled a little bit, and why Daichi really struggled, was that he wasn't an in your face, loud, screaming bigot. He would espouse his bigoted ideas in the most calm, rational matter of fact way. And it would make the other characters second guess themselves. He wasn't talking as if he was being hateful. He was talking as if he was just being the rational one in the room and the rest of them needed to come back to reality.

That can be very disarming, trying to deal with somebody when they're presenting what they're saying to you as if they're just talking common sense and you're the one who's offbase. I liked that representation of a kind of bigotry that can feel a lot more insidious than the more in your face stuff that we often see depicted in media.

Ben

I was really happy with it because they showed through Makoto and Furuike that they aren't trying to be mean-spirited when they interact with people these ways. They're just deeply out of touch and deeply misinformed and they were taught poorly. The worst thing about Daichi's asshole of a father is he's the people who teaches people to be like that.

01:45:25 Ossan no Pants: Final Thoughts and Ratings

Ben

What really works with this too is, like, Kakeru can be a real bitch over the course of the show when he gets pissed off with people expecting things from him. But I really like that for all that he doesn't share interests with his father that much, in so many ways he is a lot like his dad and how he handles interactions with people. That was a really well done arc—

Shan

And him continually recognizing that.

Ben

—that he and he starts to recognize too. Yeah.

Ben

The final scenes of the show are so earned. Makoto is like, “If the world is going to fight my kids, they're going to have to go through me!”

Shan

Hell yeah!

Ben

—And he's flexing in the mirror. And then the kids are coming through the door of the bathroom, because it's the day of Daichi's wedding. And Moe dunks on him right away. She's like, “You're not going to get buff in three days, Dad. Move. We have things to do today.”

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Kakeru’s like, “Move.” He's like, “Don't look at me like this.” They're like, “Get out of here, Dad.” And he's like, “Oka-san, your children are bullying me!” [laughs]

Shan

It was so nice to see this family that in the beginning was so strained with each other, they would have never joked with him that way when the show started because they had no trust in him and they were tense around him all the time. And to see them come all the way to the other side of getting back to a normal dynamic where they can just make fun of their dad for being a dork. That's such a beautiful way to show that he has rebuilt that trust with his kids. They feel comfortable now to make fun of him when he's standing in front of the mirror in his dorky underwear making macho poses.

Ben

[laughs] We finally get to their wedding and Makoto is given this parental position as Daichi's stand-in father. And of course Makoto is a crying, slobbery mess at this wedding.

Shan

The way that he weeps over this relationship makes me laugh every single time. [laughs] He's just so happy for them. He's so invested.

Ben

The long and short of it is, this is a show that is super empathetic about the way internalized misogyny has done so much damage to all of us. And it wants to gently lead us down the path to learning to reconnect with the things we love and the people we love without feeling the need to enforce arbitrary norms that have only made everyone miserable.

And it earns that repeatedly in every single moment for 11 fantastic episodes.

Shan

Man, what a show.

NiNi

I look forward to watching the next eight.

Shan

I'm so excited for you to finish it, NiNi. You're gonna love it.

Ben

Alright, hot ratings. NiNi, can't rate it yet. Shan, rating.

Shan

I gave the show a 9.5. I love it deeply. I think it is excellent. I think everyone should watch it. My ratings are about execution and I think there were a couple—not really wobbles in the show—but a couple little bits that could have been smoother. There were a couple scenes that didn't quite carry off the PSAs in a way that sounded like natural dialogue.

Ben

You're going to have to let go of that moment at the end of episode five.

Shan

I can't do it. It's sticking. [Ben and Shan laugh] There's one scene in particular that felt deeply inauthentic in the way a character—

Ben

—You're so mean!

Shan

—I'm sorry, but it's true. In the way the character reacted to something, instead of reacting in a way that felt authentic for his character, he gave a very after-school special speech, which felt so wrong from a character perspective. It just sticks in my brain.

And so it's not technically perfect, but it is spiritually perfect. It is emotionally perfect. I love this show so much and I want everyone to watch it. I am in the process of bullying my own family into getting a Plex media server so I can force them to watch it. I just, I think everybody should see this show.

Ben

I'm giving this show an 11.

Shan

Nice. He's just gonna make sure the average pulls it back up to 10. [laughs] Which I am fine with!

NiNi

You see, whenever, whenever Ben does this and he calls producer privilege, I just sit here and I go mm okay. Because he's always on me about it.

Shan

Okay, I see how it is.

NiNi

Okay, have your 11, sir. Have your 11.

Ben

This is one of my favorite shows of all time. We've made a lot of memes on this podcast about my repeated mentioning of What Did You Eat Yesterday? or random diatribes about how New Siwaj could make good work if he wanted to make good work.

Shan

Oh boy.

Ben

But this is, this was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with TV itself in a really long time. This was the kind of really homey and welcoming drama that I have really needed to believe in TV as a medium again.

I loved watching the show and I loved talking about this show with our friends the whole way through. This is the kind of drama that I feel determined to show to people

So, it gets a 10 from me, from The Conversation.

I am desperately begging you to go watch it. And then tell us how you feel about it.

01:51:18 - Importance of Variety in Media Consumption

NiNi

So what are the connection points between these two shows, other than the frame, obviously, which is that these are queer narratives that go outside of and beyond romance?

Ben

I don't want to be harsh to our listeners who enjoy BL when I say this. Watching both of these shows is a real relief for me, because sometimes BL feels so detached from reality that it can feel kind of alien. I need to get a couple of queer dramas in me a year that are about the queer experience in a grounded way, or else I go insane.

I am really relieved that both of these shows came to us when they came to us. Because I need experiences like this to make BL worth it for me. These are the kinds of projects I only encounter because I'm in the BL space.

Shan

I think what connects these shows for me is that they both really care about all of the characters involved in the story. They try to tell really full stories about a community or a family that does not just narrow down to one point that's about one person or one relationship. They really try to take a holistic look at the full world around our characters, and how all of them form relationships with each other and how the world around them informs those relationships and puts stressors on them. It's just, like, a really complete immersion in both of these shows into a place and a way of living and a way of being that can sometimes feel missing in some of the other things that we watch and discuss on here.

It's really refreshing to watch stuff like this sometimes. I think any healthy media diet requires some variety, requires stepping out of the same formula that you are used to in the media that you consume. What really matters to me about these shows in the context of this podcast where we discuss queer works, is that it really takes queer reality very seriously. And it roots its story, both of these shows, in a very close-to-realistic version of what it would mean to hold these identities in the world that we actually live in. When we are often watching shows that are in a bubble that don't deal with those realities, it's important to dip into that every once in a while.

And, this is not a homework assignment, either of these shows. They're beautiful dramas. They are joyful. They are fun to watch. They are touching. Just because they have heavy themes and because you learn a lot doesn't mean that they're not also incredibly entertaining shows.

NiNi

For me, what I get out of being in this particular space and shows like these. I was calculating today. I am actually in a relationship maybe about once a decade, but I am living in the world all the rest of the time. While romance for me is…not exactly an escape—there are escapist elements to romance for me. I find a lot of fascination in different aspects of romance. I live in the world all of the time. And so getting into shows that are in the world, that are focused on things that I have much more of a day-to-day connection to than romance. Occasionally it's just fun to sit there. It's good and enjoyable and it feels good inside to sit in. You feel a little bit of coming home about it. And that's where I'm sitting with these two shows so far. Every so often I do need to watch something that isn't a romance, and I like when it's good.

These two are really good.

Ben

I gotta say that, too. Like, no disrespect to a lot of the work that we talk about on this podcast. We watch a lot of shows that are flawed in one way or another. And it's not for a lack of effort from the people making them. But every now and then, it's really helpful to watch a really, really good show or a really fucking good movie, and be like, damn, that was something else. It can be really inspiring and it can help keep you grounded.

You need to balance your media diet. You have got to not just watch romance. It will overly flavor your taste, and you're not gonna notice when the creators are playing with things outside of romance. You got to...expand your horizons, because the more types of stories you encounter, the more you'll be able to enjoy the stories that you love the most. It's good for you to watch something other than BL.

NiNi

And with that, that is going to wrap us up on episode one of our fall season. Dun-da-da-dun!

Shan

Wow.

Ben

I'm really glad we're starting on a high note because BOY was summer rough! Ha ha! Shit!

NiNi

I just want to point out we just at the end of the summer had our 50th episode. So this is our 51st and this is our 8th season. We are rounding out into almost two years of doing this show. We're going to have some thoughts about that as we wind down.

With that, we out. Say bye to the people, Shan.

Shan

Bye, people.

NiNi

Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #podcast #lgbtq #marahuyo project #ossan no pantsu ga nandatte ii janai ka #don't care for an old man's underwear!#filipino bl #japanese drama #jdrama #bl series #winter 2024 #Spotify

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the-conversation-pod · 3 days ago

Text

Fall and Winter 2024 Mailbag Grab Bag

AND WE'RE BACK!

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

Timestamps

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

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

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

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

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 Introduction

Ben

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

NiNi

Sounds about right? Yep.

Ben

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

NiNi

Almost two hours bestie.

Ben

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

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

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

NiNi

[laughs] You watched that?!

Ben

Man.

Shan

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

NiNi

Oh noooo.

Ben

Oh my…

Shan

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

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

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

NiNi

Oh no.

Shan

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

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

Ben

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

[all laugh]

Shan

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

NiNi

Wasn't there a Vietnamese cat BL that like—

Ben

We're not gonna talk about it.

[NiNi laughs]

Shan

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

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

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

NiNi

Okay, Shan, what's our next question?

Shan

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

Ben

[laughs] This is such a shady fucking question.

NiNI

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

Ben

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

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

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

Shan

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

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

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

Ben

It sucked!

Shan

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

Ben

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

00:11:42 - Inbox: BL Fatigue?

Shan

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

Ben

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

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

Shan, you watch too many dramas!

Shan

Mmm.

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

Ben

NiNi, where are you sitting on this?

NiNi

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

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

00:15:51 - Inbox: The BL Bubble

Shan

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

NiNi

Ben, you wanna go first or last?

Ben

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

NiNi

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

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

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

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

Shan

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

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

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

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

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

Ben, please start your rant.

Ben

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

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

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

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

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

Shan

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

Ben

Look.

Shan

They were so little! Leave them alone!

Ben

They were, they were.

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

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

Shan

That was a great question.

Ben

Thank you for humoring my rant, NiNi and Shan.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

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

NiNi

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

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

Shan

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

[all laugh]

Ben

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

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi

Sometimes I will forgive bad acting.

Shan

Under certain conditions.

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

[all laugh]

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

Don't even try it!

Ben

Oh lord. Here we go again.

[all laugh]

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

It’s true.

NiNi

I mean, he's not wrong.

00:30:26 - Inbox: Sex On Screen

Shan

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

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

NiNi

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

Ben

Good. Go for it, girl!

[all laugh]

NiNi

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

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

Ben

Hydrate, baby.

[NiNi and Shan laugh]

NiNi

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

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

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

Shan

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

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

NiNi

Bestie, I'm so mad.

Shan

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

NiNi

So invested.

Shan

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

Ben, how about you?

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

Ben

Heeeey!

[all laugh]

Shan

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

Perf.

NiNi

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

Ben

They ain’t making that joke.

Shan

No. [laughs]

00:41:07 - Inbox: Fave Sex Scenes

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

Mmm. That’s a good one.

Ben

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

Shan

Yeah, Be On Cloud is good at sex.

NiNi

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

Shan

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

[Ben and Shan laugh]

NiNi

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

Shan

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

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

Ben

Let me just mute now. [Shan laughs]

NiNi

Oh God.

Shan

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

NiNi

Man, Sunbo and Zhigang in the gym bathroom.

Shan

Hoo!

NiNi

Quality.

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

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

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Ben

Exactly.

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

Ben

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

Shan

And you should.

Ben

It's good.

Shan

You gotta watch We Best Love, both parts.

Ben

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

[all laugh]

NiNi

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

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

Shan

You know everything about how it was made.

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

[NiNi laughs]

Shan

That’s enough of this dark sex!

Ben

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

Shan

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

NiNi

Oh my God.

Ben

I was like, Miki Koichiro understands me.

Shan

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

Ben

Mmhmm.

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

Right?

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

Shan

A dark tale that uses sex very well.

Ben

It does.

NiNi

I agree, I agree.

Ben

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

Shan

Except Pornographer!

Ben

Except Pornographer.

Shan

Watch. I'm not kidding!

NiNi

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

Shan

We owe him so much.

[NiNi laughs]

Ben

Let's put Grand Guignol in the conversation.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

Oh my God! We reality should, though.

Ben

Issei fucks Mr. Unlucky in that movie!

Shan

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

00:51:24 - Inbox: Worst Sex Scenes

Shan

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

NiNi

Hoo.

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

List them, bestie!

Shan

Name names!

Ben

List them, bestie!

Shan

Name names!

NiNi

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

Shan

All right, name those names.

NiNi

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

Ben

No, no, ma'am.

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

What about Playboyy, NiNi?

NiNi

[disgusted sound]

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

NiNi

Why did you watch them, friend?

Shan

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

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

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

NiNi

Nope.

Shan

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

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

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

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

Ben

We sure did.

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

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

NiNi

Ooh.

Shan

I still haven't watched that.

Ben

[singing cadence] You don't need to!

Shan

And I never, ever will.

[all laugh]

NiNi

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

Ben

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

Shan

I just trashed MosBank out loud!

Ben

Say what needs to be said.

NiNi

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

Shan

[excited gasp]

NiNi

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

Shan

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

[Shan and Ben laugh]

Ben

Yes! Kill ‘em, bestie.

Shan

Tell ‘em, say more!

NiNi

I have never enjoyed a JoongDunk sex scene.

Ben

I sure haven't!

NiNi

Nope.

[Ben and Shan laugh]

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Ben

Mmm.

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

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

NiNi

Oh my God, I'm gonna get cancelled.

[Shan laughs]

Ben

Good, good. We deserve it.

Shan

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

Ben

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

NiNi

That was a decent one.

Shan

Santa and Earth have good chemistry.

NiNi

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

Ben

A Boss and a Babe?

NiNi

I always call it Boss Baby. Yeah.

[all laugh]

Ben

Where's my Boss Baby tweet?!

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

Oh hell yeah.

Shan

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

Ben

Followed by the Neo and Mark scenes.

Shan

Yeah. Neo and Mark were good in that show.

NiNi

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

Shan

The legs!

Ben

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

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

Shan

Speak for yourself, bestie, I got my grudges.

Ben

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

Shan

[laughs] I always got time.

Ben

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

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

Shan

NiNi, what question did you wanna ask?

NiNi

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

Ben

Oh, interesting.

Shan

Oh. Good sex in a bad show.

Ben

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

NiNi

[laughs] Oh my god, no you can't.

Ben

I’m still mad! I'll never not be mad.

Shan

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

Ben

Why r u?

Shan

Yeah, I think that's the answer!

Ben

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

Shan

No.

Ben

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

Shan

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

Ben

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

Shan

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

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

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

[all laugh]

Ben

We needed it, get it out of our system.

Shan

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

Ben

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

01:06:54 - Inbox: Critical Philosophy

NiNi

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

Shan

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

Ben

Oh, yes. Classic Tumblr name. A+!

Shan

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

Very nice comment. Thank you, cuntextual.

NiNi

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

Ben

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

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

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

Shan

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

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

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

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

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

NiNi

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

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

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

Ben

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

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

01:18:31 - Outro

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

Ben

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

NiNi

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

NiNi

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

Ben

Peace!

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