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the-conversation-pod · 24 days ago

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Year in Review 2024

AND WE'RE BACK!

Come join Ben, NiNi, and Shan as we talk about the trends we noticed, air some grievances, hand out some of our favorite fan awards, and make some new resolutions!

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:00:55 - 2024 Headlines: Industry Consolidation 00:06:49 - 2024 Headline: Self-Censorship 00:13:52 - 2024 Headlines: Vertical Format Micro-BLs and Other Shit We're Anti 00:20:14 - Festivus Airing Of The Grievances 00:36:51 - 2024 Fan Awards 00:55:49 - QL Resolutions 01:04:45 - Affirmations and Hopes for the Future

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 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation, the Queer Media And Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

I'm Ben, the media critic

NiNi

I’m NiNi, the vibes queen

Ben

And we are your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs

NiNi

We’re here to talk queer film and dramas, with a special focus on Asian QL

Ben

So if you like to dive deep into queer stories…

NiNi

If you like cracked out takes on art and commerce in queer media…

Ben

If you just enjoy simping for attractive people…

NiNi

We believe in simping!

Ben

Tune in!

00:00:55 - 2024 Headlines: Industry Consolidation

Ben

And we're back. Oh my God, it's time to review 2024 before we get to the VIIB Awards, where it's just nonstop us talking about our faves. Once again, we have brought Shan into the booth because we have too much to discuss. Shan, say hello.

Shan

Hello!

Ben

First, it's time for us to talk about the big ideas of the year. NiNi, as the person who loves Thai BL the most on The Conversation, let's talk about how clearly the money is drying up and everybody is having to shuffle to whoever's got something to offer them.

NiNi

Is the money drying up or is it just being funneled all to the same place? Because it feels like more money is getting spent on fewer things. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but I'm not sure that I can put my finger up and say that's a bad thing, either. We have seen some definite dips in quality. We don't have as many faves this year as we did last year, or even the year before. But what we did love, we loved-loved.

So it's a complicated picture, I guess, but definitely there's been a consolidation and we wanted to talk about it a little bit because we predicted this in our very first set of episodes, all those many, many, many moons ago. We predicted that there was a consolidation coming in Thai BL because everything just got so big, so fast, and that usually precedes everything's starting to shrink back down a little bit.

Ben

Big things we noted this year was GMMTV absorbing a bunch of free agents and, in one case, basically the entire staff of a whole studio that they now hire to do production work for them.

Shan

Mmhmm. It's been wild. Like every week, I feel like we've been seeing announcements of new talent acquired by GMMTV.

Ben

Barcode is now at GMMTV.

NiNi

That was a big get.

Shan

All the Wabi Sabi boys this year, too.

NiNi

Yeah, those were the two big headlines, Wabi Sabi getting folded into GMMTV was one and definitely Barcode coming right at the end of the year. That was a big one.

Shan

They also got Dimple Fluke.

NiNi

I mean, we love Dimple Fluke, but I don't know how big Dimple Fluke is in the general fandom—

Shan

—He's big in my heart, NiNi, big in my heart.

Ben

[laughs] We thought this was coming when they got Singto to come back. Clearly trying to do it on his own didn't work and they were able to get him back in their house. I don't know how I feel about it. Wabi Sabi is no longer doing talent management. BOC seems to be shrinking

NiNi

BOC (Be On Cloud) has said that they're backing off of talent management, as well. They dropped most of their roster. I think they only represent Mile, Appo, and Bible now.

Ben

Wow.

Shan

GMMTV is the big studio that seems to want to be in the idol management game. And so that's where a lot of the talent is going. What feels concerning about it to me—we've talked quite a lot on this podcast about the increase in output, but not a commensurate increase in quality from GMMTV.

Out of all of the BLs that they're putting out annually, which is around eight to 10, there may be only a couple that actually have really good scripts behind them. So they're acquiring all this talent, but we know they don't have enough good writing to support shows to support this much talent. They put out, this year, a script writing contest to the plebes to say, “Help us, we need help writing shows.”

NiNi

I was just gonna bring that up.

Ben

With hostile as fuck language, by the way.

Shan

They literally went to the fans and said, “Can you write us some shows? Because we got nothing and we're acquiring all this talent.” That's just on the BL side. They've got this whole side of the house of these great, talented actresses and very few projects to cast them in. So it's concerning to me to see all the talent going to this one place that clearly cannot handle everybody that they're taking on.

Ben

It worries me too, because we've noticed a lot less sponsorship deals in most of their shows. One or two shows per year will get the usual eight- to 10-plus sponsor cards at the beginning, but that number has dropped off overall. It's very clear that there's maybe not as much ad money helping fund the production in the first place.

NiNi

Bestie, I haven't seen an Oishii ad in quite some time.

Shan

Right, where did Oishii go?

Ben

If the juice makers have given up, it's over.

NiNi

It is concerning to see this consolidation happening. There's a few people who are out on their own, who I think might be able to survive on their own. Like Jeff is out on his own, Billkin and PP are out on their own, and they're probably the ones who can sustain. Everybody else is either going to GMMTV or they're getting into the other side of GMM Grammy, like the One31 kind of lakorn side. But even that is shrinking, we're given to understand, people are moving into BL because that's the growing side of the market.

Actors are moving into BL who might not have done BL before. Big names got into BL this year, like Jes Jespipat did 4 Minutes with Bible, a Be On Cloud production. He's a big lakorn actor. And then JJ and Tor did Spare Me Your Mercy at the end of the year. The headline on that really is like these big lakorn actors who nobody would have ever expected to do gay shit are doing the—well, in the case of Spare Me Your Mercy, semi gay shit. But Jes did gay gay shit in 4 Minutes, you know what I mean? So that's one of the big, I think, headlines that we need to be looking at looking at Thai BL in particular going forward.

00:06:49 - 2024 Headlines: Self-Censorship

Ben

We need to talk about Thai BL starting to self-censor, likely to reach specific markets.

Shan

Yeah, it's concerning. I wouldn't call it a trend yet, but we've seen a few examples of it in the last few months and it's making me nervous. What I'm talking about is, productions that are publicly saying, admitting that they are censoring some of the more explicit romantic or sexual content from their BL shows so that they can focus on reaching a wider audience with their message. We've seen statements like that from the Addicted Heroin creator. We've seen recently the screenwriter of Spare Me Your Mercy talk about the decision to remove explicit sexual content from the show for the same reason. We saw some of this related to Love Sick as well. If you're gonna do a Love Sick remake in 2024, the one thing you would expect them to improve on is not having censored kisses, but nope, they didn't do that.

So there's this drive and this stated intention by some of the creators behind these shows to create BL dramas that minimize the actual BL as much as possible. They want to take advantage of the market for BL. They want to take advantage of the fan interest and the fan engagement for BL while also getting away with keeping the actual queer romance in these stories as minimal as possible. That is pretty shitty. They're coming out and they're saying this openly, this is not us just guessing.

NiNi

Just saying that taking the romance out is why I left a lot of Western media. I'm so tired of seeing people say things like, “Well this doesn't have any plot.” The romance is the plot, the relationship is the plot and not recognizing that in a genre that is about romance is the part that kind of makes me go like mmm, okay, like yes—

Ben

The genre is literally called Boy Love. (all) Where is the love?

How old is that song? Hold on, let me Google that real quick.

Shan

Don't look it up. But this is what I mean. Like, NiNi and I are refugees from Western romance. We came over to Asia for kdrama, because we wanted to see a genre of television that respected romance, that took it seriously as its own storytelling, that actually respected romance fans and people who like love stories. That is one of the best and most consistent features of Asian drama. And so to have now this subset of Asian drama creators who are specifically working in a queer love space that is even more hard for people to find, even less accepted by the mainstream, to have them intentionally self-censoring because they are trying to prove some kind of weird point. It just completely misses the point for me of why people are here engaging with these dramas. Certainly it doesn't seem to be helping in terms of pushing forward the social agenda in these countries where they're making these shows.

Ben

This is the part that always stresses me out when we're trying to measure how gay can it be and still get funded because this happens to us repeatedly in queer viewer space. Netflix pulled this shit on us where, when they first wanted to go to digital streaming, they set up deals with all of the gay distribution houses. And we got to watch all of these movies that we had never had access to before. And it was great. And we all were like, hell yeah, I'm going to go on Netflix so can watch my little gay shows.

As soon as they get tastemakers—read: queer and brown people—to pimp their shit, they try and immediately convert and get a bunch of normies in there.

NiNi

Yep, that's basically what happens.

Ben

This, again, this is not shit I'm making up! This is what really happened.

Shan

These are the patterns and we've seen them play out so many times in so many places and it's the pattern we're starting to see play out in BL and it's alarming.

NiNi

I mean! It played out on Tumblr. The platform that we spend so much of our time on, this is exactly what happened. The people who built the ship got kicked out of the ship.

Ben

It's been an actually horrible year on Tumblr for queer people, especially trans people. It's a bad look that the gays who make the shit who seem like they're in an accepted enough space are either choosing to or being pressured to straighten up their act so that they can continue to get fed and make stuff. That doesn't feel great. It feels really worrisome as a sign about what may or may not be going on. Like it's only a few things right now, but we're seeing this everywhere else.

NiNi

What we're basically saying is support GagaOOLala

Shan

Please! If you're gonna spend money on any of these platforms, spend your money on the queer platform hosted in Taiwan that actually cares about queer people.

Ben

If you have spent significant sums of money on iQIYI in the last year for two shows and you haven't spent money on Gaga, reflect and then message us. [all laugh]

NiNi

And I mean if you need yet another reason to subscribe to Gaga, their social media manager is like the greatest person in the world.

Ben

They're my favorite person. They made fun of Kidnap. They were like, Kidnap, the show that's probably poorly named, is back on this week.

Shan

Let's just get on our soapbox about Gaga for a minute, okay? They are the only platform that streams the vast majority of Japanese QL, period. They bring us Taiwanese BL. They bring us Thai BL in increasing volume.

Ben

The WeTV shows have been consistently airing on Gaga lately. GMMTV is also clearly trying to consolidate and are starting to put their shows behind the Gaga and iQIYI paywall.

Shan

It's a good platform that is worth supporting and it's far cheaper than any other streaming you're paying for. You should have it. You should subscribe.

NiNi

This is not an ad.

Ben

They do. We are not being paid. But if you guys want to hang out—I'm just kidding. Don't put that in there, NiNi. [laughs]

NiNi

Yeah, but yeah, support Gaga. That's the only platform that when Park Seo Ham came out of the military, sent out a tweet saying, “Tell the world the bitch is back.”

Ben

I love her!

Shan

They deserve it.

NiNi

She is us, we are her, and this is a non-binary she. We don't know the gender of the GagaOOLala social media manager, but she's one of the girls.

Ben

I'm using ‘she’ in a gay way. It's very affectionate.

NiNi

She, non-gender specific.

00:13:52 - 2024 Headlines: Vertical Format Micro-BLs and Other Shit We're Anti

Ben

While we're bitching about things, let's talk about all these stupid vertical TV shows that keep coming out and how we must continue to refuse to watch them. We have already seen one of the shows that [Iijima] was in is going to apparently be put on TV properly.

Good job, everybody, in not watching that. [NiNi and Shan laugh]

Do not let this become a thing. We cannot tell them that we are willing to watch shows two minutes at a time on our phones only. Unacceptable.

Shan

Not only two minutes at a time on our phones only, but only after burning through a huge number of ads. That's how you get to the shows.

Ben

Gross.

NiNi

This is like Ben's whole conversation in one of our more recent episodes about the BL TikTok filter. They're trying to get you used to the BL TikTok filter in like a million ways.

Ben

I won't. I will NOT accept this!

Shan

Because the aim of this is to stop making actual dramas and just get us to watch a version of TikTok on our phones and call that BL. That's the end game here, guys. Don't fall for it.

NiNi

Do not fall for it.

Ben

We are here to support storytellers only. We are not here to make ad guys happy.

NiNi

I think that's a good segue.

Ben

Speaking of ad guys who clearly don't like us, Korea is not interested in BL right now. [laughs]

NiNi

Oh my God.

Ben

We got three good Korean BLs this year.

Shan

At least they were all excellent. I know we talked about it on our recent Hallyu episode but now that the year is complete and the data has been crunched, I just want to underline this. We got, not necessarily fewer shows total from Korea, but we got fewer shows of a decent length. We got fewer shows of quality. A lot of what Korea put out this year was junk, frankly. These little vertical series, these small little web series that are really short episodes and very lacking in narrative. And then they also put out three of the very best things of the year.

So it was a real dichotomy. In years previous Korea was putting out a more steady run of quality shows. We saw a real drop off of that this year.

Ben

Oh shit, did Strongberry even make anything this year?

NiNi

I was just about to say this is the year that Strongberry pissed me off because they made that Happy Ending thing that was neither happy nor an ending.

Shan

And they made Blossom Campus, which was terrible.

Ben

Ew…

Shan

Strongberry let us down this year for the first time ever.

NiNi

I kind of feel it for them because the CEO of Strongberry has spent so much time telling us how hard it is to get shit made and to get money to get shit made. So I was just like, ooh, things must be getting, like, real rough if they couldn't put out anything good.

Shan

Can we though just take a moment to shout out the CEO of Strongberry for putting out his own little story about what happened with that show and basically being like, I told the writer not to fucking do that and he didn't listen to me.

Ben

I did love that. I love that he just said, I told her she ain't let one listen.

Shan

He was like, this is not on me. Do not associate this with me. You love Strongberry. You will continue to love Strongberry. [NiNi laughs]

Ben

He basically did say it like that. We were like, all right, girl. [laughs]

Shan

We'll let you have this one.

NiNi

Yeah, but I mean it's a year in which we had nothing good from Strongberry, and that to me is like, wow. We got other really good stuff, some of it came out of absolutely nowhere. And I think that it had to come out of absolutely nowhere to get aired, because, as we saw when things are in the pipeline and they know about it, they're going to try to kill it.

Ben

Our last big highlight of the year we want to point out is that there was a Japanese BL airing almost every week this year. That is unprecedented. Usually, even if stuff gets made, we barely know about it, it gets no distribution, and the fansubbers are having people show up at their houses over. [NiNi laughs]

So we almost never get a lot of the Japanese BL, but there was a significant amount that was just handed to us on legal platforms for us to support, most notably GagaOOLala.

Shan

GagaOOLala! I started Japanese QL Corner in January of 2024 on Tumblr. It's just a weekly post that I do that tracks the Japanese QL that's out. And I had things to write about every single week for the entire year. And we weren't always having to chase things down in the dark corners of the internet. We had things that we could watch on a regular streaming platform every week from Japan, And there were weeks when I was writing about six or seven shows at a time. That's how much was airing.

NiNi

Now were those six or seven shows great?

Ben

Not always.

NiNi

I would say no, not always, but in terms of batting average, I think Japan did pretty well this year.

Shan

I'd say still about half of the shows that aired from Japan this year were good to fantastic. And the other half were problematic here and there. There were only a handful that I thought were, like, bad bad.

Ben

My favorite thing about watching Japanese BL is that I am never mid about it. I either really liked it or I was like, who is this for? [Shan and NiNi laugh]

I love that there's not all this wishy washy shit about like, oh, maybe it's kind of okay if I squint this direction. I'd be like, no, fuck that show. A 4 for you, a 3 for you, a 4 for you. Stay away from the shows I love. All of you over here, my 9s and 10s. Don't look at them. They're not worth it. Averages are not the most useful metric but I really like that when I'm recommending or not recommending Japanese BL, I feel very firm about how I feel about these shows.

Shan

I do think that there has been a lot more variation in quality with the high uptick in volume of shows. But the batting average is still pretty damn high.

We've got two new Japanese QL productions starting this week. So I'm excited that it's gonna keep going.

Ben

That's it for the big highlights.

00:20:14 - Festivus Airing Of The Grievances

Ben

Before we close out this year, we need to vent a little bit of grief. We need to talk about the things that we were super hype about that made us look like clowns. We're gonna start with our biggest disappointments in no particular order. Starting with the worst.

NiNi, Wandee Gooday!

NiNi

[laughs] The absolute worst. I am so pissed off at this show. I talked a little bit about how pissed off I was with this show in our mailbag episode, but friends, I still have more ire in me about the show. I was so stoked, and the show dragged me along for a solid five to six episodes and then literally dropped me on my face. And that's something that I do not forgive in any way. I will remain pissed off forever.

This is not The Shipper level, but damn close and I can't do it.

Ben

If you want to feel a little solidarity, David was actually bitching about this at brunch earlier this weekend. He said, I can't believe I wrote a whole post for the first time on Tumblr about this show only to be made to look like a clown like this. He said he's never writing anything ever again.

NiNi

[laughs] David's like, how dare you embarrass me?

Shan

How dare you? It sucked, man. It was a huge letdown.

NiNi

And the thing is that it could have been so good.

Shan

Could’ve had it all.

NiNi

I'm convinced that the first half and the second half were written by two different people. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me.

Ben

Yes, let's start talking about BL like Star Wars fans. STAR WARS COULD BE SO GOOD IF IT WAS GOOD. Before you bitches come after me, my very first email address I made is a Star Wars email. Don't come for me.

NiNi

Don't come for him, period. Okay?

Shan

Leave us alone, it's been a long year.

Ben

Speaking of a long year of disappointments, Shan, I'm letting you have the entire disappointment that was all of Sammon’s collected works this year.

NiNi

Oh God, here we go.

Shan

We're calling this the Sammon Omnibus entry in the disappointment list. This year there were four different projects associated with Dr. Sammon. She screen wrote three out of four, and was the original writer for one: these shows were Dead Friend Forever, 4 Minutes, Spare Me Your Mercy, and Petrichor. All QLs, all with her attached, all very heavily promoted and very buzzy.

I'm not gonna say that none of these shows were good at all or had any artistic merit. I actually really liked Dead Friend Forever until it fucked up the ending. 4 Minutes I found to be a very beautiful but ultimately incoherent mess. Spare Me Your Mercy was just a flop for all of us, none of us finished the show after all of us putting it on our list of the most anticipated of the year.

Ben

After JJ put his whole ass into Great Men Academy, I can't believe they embarrassed him like this.

[NiNi laughs]

Shan

We have all seen Tor and JJ in other projects. You are lying if you claim that they were on their game in this show. I'm sorry. They have both done better with other people with better material. This show did not live up to the hype. I did not even finish it because I was so disappointed.

Ben

I can't believe we're saying that Tor was better in fucking Midnight Museum.

NiNi

He was! He was absolutely better in Midnight Museum.

Shan

He was better in Midnight Museum! And he had better chemistry with Gun than he did with JJ in this BL. JJ was light yards better in Great Men Academy than he was here. I'm not trying to shade the actors. It's not their fault. It's the material. The writing was bad. The show was flat. They seemed not at all dialed into their characters. They seemed confused about what they were supposed to be conveying, probably because their relationship development arc didn't make any fucking sense. It's not the actor's fault. They are very good actors and this show did not give them what they needed to succeed. I cannot believe what a letdown this show was after all that hype. There's also Petrichor, which is the first GL that has her attached to it. And I had to drop that one, too. It was hard to watch.

Sammon is kind of considered one of the best screenwriters in the QL industry in Thailand. She wrote Triage. She was attached to Manner of Death. She has a track record. She has all these novels that are very popular and well liked. So there's a certain level of expectation that comes with her shows. But this year, her big year of four QLs, this was not it. Not a single one of these projects left me satisfied. I started the year as such a strong fan of her work, and I'm ending the year kind of throwing my hands up like, well, girl, guess Triage was a fluke. I don't know what's been going on, but you have not even come close to meeting that standard again.

NiNi

I liked DFF and 4 Minutes more than you guys did. We've talked about this already. But I will say that these are shows that they spent money on. I have no complaints about production quality on any of these shows. They pulled up some quality actors. They got Engfah in Petrichor. They got JJ and Tor for, as you mentioned, Spare Me Your Mercy. Bible and Jes put on a clinic in 4 Minutes. And the DFF boys, they put their whole pussy in. They acted these shows, and they produced these shows. They look great, they sound great, but the writing just didn't hold up to everything else that they were putting in.

And they got progressively worse because the one that I enjoyed the most was Dead Friend Forever, that was the first one. And the one that I enjoyed the least was Spare Me and Mercy. Like, we all dropped it. For different reasons, I think, but we all dropped it.

Shan

I mean, it was not working on any level. So no matter what you were there for, there was just nothing to hold on to. If you were there for the romance, if you were there for the mystery, if you were there for the euthanasia discussion, it didn't really succeed at any of those.

NiNi

Let's move on. Because we could talk about this forever.

Ben

Oh, that's fine. It's time for me to go the fuck off. I've been holding this in for months. [NiNi] It's time to talk about My Love Mix Up.

NiNi

God, here we go.

Ben

Before I hurt people's feelings about this, I like Fourth and Gemini a lot. I think they're both very charming. I think they are both real talents and I am very much looking forward to seeing how they mature over the next decade, the way we got to experience with the original GMMTV BL boys. That being said, part about supporting your faves, for me, is wanting them to get work that uses them well. And I do not believe that My Love Mix Up used anyone well. It's extremely disappointing to me that after doing such a good job on Cherry Magic Thailand, that GMMTV released a show that did everything I was afraid would go wrong with Cherry Magic Thailand.

Cherry Magic Thailand managed to make the Cherry Magic story applicable to the Thai context in a way that we all loved. My Love Mix Up was not a Thai adaptation of Kieta Hatsukoi. It was My School President in a terrible Halloween costume, clearly trying to sell more tickets for concerts for these boys. It was embarrassing and it was a waste of everyone's time. I am so mad about this because I had doubts about this the whole way into it, but really hoped that after the strong showing in Cherry Magic, that there was gonna be something really cool here. I had a lot of hopes about this. This sucked.

And so much of it comes down to casting. As much as I like Forth and Gemini, I like them as individual actors, not as a branded pair. I think they work just fine together, but they were not the correct boys to play these characters together.

NiNi

It's especially noteworthy because there were other boys in My Love Mix Up who I think would have done a better job.

Ben

[performately coughing] Aungpao!

NiNi

They put Aungpao in this show and they didn't make him one of the leads. Aungpao would have killed Atom.

Ben

Yeah, Aungpao would have done a way better job.

Shan

Yeah, he would have been perfect.

Ben

And I think Fourth should have played Ida's character.

Shan

I watched one or two episodes of this before I dropped it. And to me, it was just such an obvious case of miscasting. They cast it based on wanting to shove a pre-existing branded pair into a set of characters that did not fit them. And so from the start, the whole production betrayed the story. That's just frustrating.

Ben

And they clearly did not understand the major themes either. They really fucked it up.

NiNi

I came at it from a different perspective than you guys, because you guys had watched Kieta Hatsukoi, and I deliberately did not watch Kieta Hatsukoi until after I had watched My Love Mix Up, because I wanted to be sort of a control, and I ended up in the same place on the whole thing that you guys did, watching Kieta Hatsukoi afterward.

They did not get this right at all. They didn't have the spirit of it.

Ben

I'm really glad you were able to arrive at this conclusion with us. Kieta Hatsukoi is really solid and I do not understand how they fucked that up that badly. It pissed me off. It was disappointing. Chop!

Speaking of chops, how dare they reboot Love Sick in 2024 and then fuck it up this badly. I loved Love Sick as what felt like the Thai Degrassi. How do you make a worse version of that? In 2014 Love Sick was absolutely insane. They had girls two-timing dudes in the same bed with them in their own apartment complex. They have motherfuckers trying to drown each other in the pools and shit. [NiNi laughs]

Shan

And they had sex. They didn't show it on screen, but those characters had sex.

Ben

I get much of the stuff that we saw in 2014. Love Sick may have been adding stuff and they may have been trying to be more true to the book by just making it into this boring ass GL and BL experience, but it just wasn't good. And I was pissed because they went in a cool direction by making Aim queer that was really good, but it doesn't save the show.

Shan

That was the only interesting thing I heard about this remake, is that they made Aim a lesbian which added a little bit of a layer to her desire to cling on to her boyfriend. But everything else they did worse on than the original show.

Ben

I don't want to be super mean to these boys because everybody was new in Love Sick and everybody's clearly new here. But goddamn, the new kid does not match Captain. And the way that they went so hard in making him look like Captain undercuts him constantly because he's just not as good as Captain.

Shan

You know, Ben, the moment I saw that buzzcut is when I knew that this production was doomed. [NiNi laughs] Because that is so not the fucking point. That's not the part of him you have to get right!

NiNi

My whole thing about this is that to be disappointed you have to have expectations. I was not disappointed in Love Sick 2024 because I had no expectations. I did not watch it. From the time I saw that they were remaking Love Sick, I remember, I think we said on this podcast, “Who needs it? Nobody.”

Nobody needs a Love Sick remake in 2024.

Ben

We were correct. We asked why it was made and they had no answer.

Speaking of why was this made, Yin and War had a great deal of fun with their friends in the show that they produced, Jack and Joker. I ended up dropping it because they killed Jennie and I refused to accept that and I left.

NiNi

Jennie Panhan is a goddess and you cannot kill her on your show. I'm sorry, you just can't.

Shan

They really shouldn't have. It was pointless and gratuitous and disgusting.

But let me just say, I did finish this show and I don't wanna be super mean to Jack and Joker because here's the thing: it's not a real show. It is a self-funded vanity project from Yin and War so that they could hang out on a set with their friends.

Ben

And Tee Bundit was there.

Shan

And Tee Bundit was also there. I went into the show and I was like, I know this is not a real story. They cobbled this script together themselves. We're just having a good time here. That was my only expectation: this will be fun. It'll be entertaining. I have no expectations for a coherent story, for themes, anything like that. And even with that bar, the lowest bar I can possibly grant to a show, somehow this show disappointed me.

It was a mess, but not a fun mess. It was boring. It was mostly sexless, which was the most shocking part to me. They had three pairings in this show, only one of whom actually kissed on screen.

Ben

They had our boy Pee in this show.

Shan

They put Pee fucking Peerawich in this show and they didn't let him kiss anybody! I was pissed.

I'm livid, still. They had this great side couple that the fandom was super into. They never actually let them get together on screen. They did not become an actual romance.

Ben

The most useful thing about that side pair is that Shan recognizes Mark Siwat about 30% of the time now.

Shan

I know what his face looks like now!

Hi, Mark Siwat, this is my letter of apology to you.

NiNi

Shan has a very specific Mark Siwat face blindness.

Shan

It's Mark Siwat-only face blindness. And I'm sorry, Mark Siwat, you don't deserve that from me. You were a delight in this show. And I'm so mad that your character did not get a proper story.

The thing that frustrated me about this show is it's a fucking fan service project. So why aren't you serving the fucking fans? We spent 16 hours in this show and it was mostly boring nonsense. They stopped doing the capers halfway through for some reason and just made us sit in these endless plots about this stupid fucking mafia whatever, rich families playing squid games. It was stupid. It was boring.

Meanwhile, they didn't deliver on most of the things that the fans wanted. What a pointless use of so much money. Why, Yin and War? Why?!

Ben

We hadn't seen Mark properly in BL since Bite Me, so I was especially disappointed. I'm still mad about that, too! Don't you worry! I'm still mad!

NiNi

God, I'm still mad about Bite Me.

Shan

This should have been the funnest thing that happened this year. And instead, it was boring and sad.

Ben

I'm so sorry that you were on two of our disappointments, Jennie. You didn't deserve that, either.

NiNi

That's an important thing to bring up. Like, where's the fun? I feel like there were things that should have been fun that were just a slog. Where did the fun go? If this is gonna be a caper BL, then be a caper BL. You know that it's bad if you can't get me to watch a Tee Bundit show. I have not watched a minute of it. You know I feel about Tee Bundit. I love him even when everybody else hates him. Except for Hidden Agenda, which we will never talk about again. But this show didn't even compel me to watch it, which is saddening.

Shan

Yeah, it was lackluster and it was truly only the fan sentiment for Yin and War that made it popular. It was just fans supporting actors that they like, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's no there there with this show.

NiNi

Shout out to War’s pottery videos. Sir, you are hyper competent and I find that very attractive.

Shan

And I really recommend just watching his pottery videos instead of this show.

Ben

That's right, just head to IG instead. War did good work in Love Mechanics. That's why he's a fave. That doesn't mean I have to applaud everything he does after that, especially when it's not that good.

I did like all of his outfits, though. Clearly he had a great time.

NiNi

Okay, so now that we have completed our Festivus airing of the grievances…

Ben

I feel better. I really do.

Shan

I'm happy we got that off our chests.

NiNi

Let's move into our fan awards.

00:36:51 - 2024 Fan Awards

NiNi

In advance of our Very Important Internet BL awards, VIIB Awards that are coming up later this month for you guys, we just wanted to have a few awards that are just us having fun. And so we put the call out and we got some feedback.

Ben, take us into it.

Ben

We are finally awarding the Girl, You Tried winner of the year. Girl, You Tried, for those of you who have been with us, is something we like to award every season to shows that we think had really good ideas that maybe weren't executed as well as they could have been. We handed out quite a few awards this year. I don't remember all of them right now, but we have selected a winner.

Shan, would you like to announce the winner?

Shan

Ooh, do I get to announce? How exciting. Okay.

The 2024 Girl, You Tried Award goes to Love Is Better The Second Time Around from Japan. [air horn]

Ben

We've already covered this. I'm very happy about the yukata sex, but not about episodes 5 and 6.

Shan

So close to being one of our favorite shows of the year. And that is why it gets this award.

NiNi

Agreed. I am in 100% agreement.

Ben

Other shows that were up for consideration included The Sign, Living With Him, Ayaka Is in Love with Hiroko, I Hear the Sunspot—oof I got beef with that show—and The On1y One, Shan got beef with that one.

Shan

I got beef with that show!

NiNi

I think we made the right choice in terms of the final winner, though. I think of all of those the one that was closest to actually making it.

Ben

A bunch of those guys are in another MBS not-BL right now where they're all playing boxers, hugging each other without their shirts on, and sweatin’ and shit.

NiNi

Yes, more information? You're burying the lede here. Like, I need to know where I can find it.

Ben

[laughs] Nowhere, man. It's not in the Western circles right now.

NiNi

The fan subbers are letting me down.

Ben

I got a couple of Japanese fans keeping me in the loop. They send me little clips and it's all my favorite boys wrestling on the ground and shit in dark gyms.

NiNi

Why don't they make more shows like that?

Shan

This is what I'm saying!

Ben

Let me tell you, Petty's been demanding this BL for like four years.

Shan

It's true.

NiNi

I think we are actually getting a boxing BL next year.

Ben

We are. [everyone laughs]

Onto our next award. It's time to award our Trash Fave of the year.

NiNi, please describe the award.

NiNi

Trash Fave is basically my favorite award. I cannot defend any of these shows, but I had such a good fucking time with them.

Shan

Our Trash Fave winner of the year is Gym Affairs from, wait for it, China! Did you all know that China put out a real modern BL with kissing on screen in it this year? Well, they did, and it's called Gym Affairs, and it's winning the Trash Fave award because, listen. This show is not a quality production. It was clearly filmed on some iPhones with just whatever guys they could find around. But you know what? I respect it because it had a narrative, it had a clear story, and they are doing what they can in China to get these queer stories out, one way or another.

Ben

It really spoke to guerrilla filmmaking, like they just really popped up somewhere, filmed what they needed to and got the fuck out of there.

Shan

And it's a cute little show. It goes quick. Watch it on YouTube, it's free. It's a fast binge. It's charming. The actors are cute. It's a good time. We can't really call it a good show because the production quality is so low, but it's a fave. All of our friends who have seen it had a great time watching it. You should join in.

(Transcript note: The show has since been pulled from YouTube.)

Ben

Our other two shows for consideration were Kidnap and OMG!Vampire. [NiNi laughs]

NiNi

Yup.

Shan

O-M-G Exclamation Point Vampire.

NiNi

I was gonna say that y'all have very different definitions of trash than I do because even though I haven't seen Gym Affairs yet, from what I've heard about it, it is not trash it is just produced on a shoestring. Whereas Kidnap was actual trash.

Shan

Yeah, Kidnap is super trashy. Like, trashy in the sense of, like, pulp novels.

NiNi

It's called Kidnap, but there's only half a kidnapping, maybe.

Shan

Did anyone actually get kidnapped in Kidnap? That was a Gaga joke.

Ben

This show was so stupid.

NiNi

At one point the guy kidnapped himself. Like, there was a lot going on.

Ben

This show was so stupid that I got bored with Ohm Pawat, and was like I can’t do this anymore.

Shan

I could only sustain myself by looking at Ohm's arms for so long.

NiNi

This is what makes it my Trash Fave. I watched it till the very end because my favorite two things were in it, Ohm Pawat and being babygirl.

Shan

You know what I think this is, NiNi? I think it's like when you open the trash can and you look inside, you sometimes find, like, this gem of a thing that someone threw in the trash. And that's what Gym Affairs is. And Kidnap is all the actual nasty, dirty trash around it.

NiN

Ohm, we love you on this podcast, sir. We love you so much and that's all we're gonna say.

Shan

Free Ohm from this trash. That's what I want to say.

Ben

We love you, even though all of Tumblr celebrated your character getting shot again, just like a few weeks ago.

Shan

And I don't think any of us actually watched OMG!Vampire.

Ben

Our friends loved it. They had a great time with Lee and Frank's final show together.

Shan

Several of our friends submitted it and they had a great time watching it. They highly recommend it if you're into vampires that are, apparently, very bad at being vampires. [NiNi laughs] You know, you should check that out if that's your thing.

Ben

Onto my favorite award, it's time to award the BEST BOY!

NiNi

The Namgoong Best Boy Award, which I promise I'm gonna watch Light On Me this year. I promise, I promise.

Ben

NiNi, I swear to God.

All right. Shan, I'm putting this in my resolutions at the end of this. If NiNi does not watch Light On Me, we are not doing this show next year. [NiNi laughs] I've had enough. I have a list of shows that are non-negotiable for the next awards show. Light On Me and Rainbow Prince.

NiNi

Okay, I will. I absolutely will.

Ben

You will watch them. There will be no more arguing about this!

NiNi

Okay, we're not arguing. It was never an argument. It's just more kind of, it always gets pushed down to the bottom of the list, but I promise you this year, bestie, this year.

Ben

Namgoong is the best boy and is the reason why we have this award. And this year, the award for Best Boy who did everything he could for the gays goes to Yai from The Sign. [air horn]

Congratulations, sir. We loved everything about you. We loved your arms. We loved your heart. We loved your wife.

Shan

Mostly loved the wife the most.

NiNi

I definitely had a lot to say about those arms. I'm sorry, I'm spacing out thinking about them now.

Shan

This award is for the best supporting male friend who is all about helping the couple get together.

Ben

He was so great. Good job, Yai.

NiNi

Yai absolutely did that.

Ben

What a mess of a show, but you had a clear throughline.

NiNi

I just loved him saying, “Where were you discussing the problem? The bed or the sofa?” I think that was one of my favorite lines.

Shan

He was mischievous.

Ben

Other boys in consideration were Ryoga from I Became the Main Role of a BL Drama for his feathers and his support of his friends by tricking them into having a date and also telling Akafuji he was aggravating and then giving him useful advice.

Shan

He was a real one. He was helpful.

NiNi

He was the realest.

Ben

Our last boy is Ryosuke from The Fragrance You Inherit, a last minute addition to this list.

Shan

The drama did technically end right before the end of 2024. Ryosuke is the lead’s, Sakura, of the show, he's her bestie. He's been supporting her since college. He's the person who knows her and who props her up through all the hard things in her life, including her gay disappointment, her crushed, unrequited love, and parenting her son who is a perfect angel boy. He's there for it all. He is there to help her out. We love him.

Ben

He is also played by Takeda Kouhei.

Shan

He sure is! Looking excellent. Sir, I salute you.

Ben

If you don't know who that is, you better ask somebody.

Shan

You better not come ask me, because I'll get mad at you.

Ben

On to my second favorite award. The Yiwha Best Girl Award!

NiNi

Yiwha! We love her over here!

Ben

I absolutely love Yiwha. I love that that show, all these years later, spawned the best girl and worst girls award. The Best Girl, like the Best Boy, goes to the girl who supports the boys the right way and is there for them and willing to scrap for them.

NiNi, please hand out the award to our Best Girl.

NiNi

Best Girl for 2024 is Lukpeach from Knock Knock Boys!. [air horn] All she wanted in life was to spread good information about sexual health and behavioral practices, to support her boys and to write non-creepy fan fiction about them. I salute you, Miss Mama. You are the best.

Shan

Yes, support her in all her endeavors.

Ben

She was a great character. I really like her as part of the evolution of the shipper character. I'm okay with them finding a way to write girls that really love gay boys and want them to have a good time without it being creepy.

Beyond Lukpeach, we also had Jane from Knock Knock Boys!, Ju from Century of Love, and Pai from Cherry Magic Thailand on this list.

I liked Pai a lot and she was a strong contender for this award, particularly because she stole a motorcycle to make sure those boys had the scene they needed to have. And then she left. She explicitly said, “That scene is for them. I got what I needed. I know my boys are going to make this happen.”

Shan

Pai was great at knowing the line between supporting and inserting herself where she didn't belong, and she never crossed the line.

Ben

What a great character. This was a pretty decent year for fujo characters in the genre. That is one of the positive things I can say about this year in terms of trope-related stuff.

We have introduced a new award this year.

Shan

What exciting stuff.

Ben

I'm gonna let you award this one, Shan. This is our Bridesmaid Award. This goes to…

Shan

Hyunho from Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. [air horn] Oh, I love it. This award is for the second leads. The character that can never win, but that still manages to make you kind of want them to and who makes you sympathetic for them when they inevitably lose. I think Hyunho was the platonic ideal of the kdrama second lead in Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. He is definitely a deserving winner of this Bridesmaid Award.

Ben

Our other two people in consideration were Sangwon for Love for Love's Sake, because he got into a whole fight for the gays and then got mad that they kept asking him for help for the rest of the show. And Kurosawa from Ossan's Love Returns, because this man has not won five times now. Incredible.

Shan

He will always be the Bridesmaid eternally. But yeah, this is really Korea's category to lose, because this is what they do. Second leads are specifically a Korean trope.

NiNi

Good job, Korea.

Ben

We are once again awarding our favorite version of BGP!

Shan

Ben, remind the people what BGP means.

Ben

BGP is a term that we got from Bump Up Business, a terrible BL from the boys of OnlyOneOf, a Korean kpop group whose entire business model is pretending to be gay, and they made a whole show about idols who had to work together in a what they called a business gay performance to sell records, and wanted us to pretend that it was a real romance. Absolutely insane behavior. The audacity!

Shan

I can't believe this show happened.

NiNi

I'm sorry! “Is our business gay performance over before it began?” [everyone laughs]

Ben

Oh my god!

NiNi

I watched that entire show specifically because they told me that line was in it.

Ben

She, NiNi was like, Shan and Ben are just cackling. This has to be ridiculous if the two of them have completely lost composure over it. And she was not let down.

We love the term BGP because it's about the performance of the relationship for consumption. Shan, please announce our winners.

Shan

This year's BGP award goes to Daou and Offroad, the only potential winners of our hearts.

NiNi

I have to agree, there wasn't even a question. This was definitely Daou and Offroad’s to lose this year because, sir, the performance is performance-ing.

Ben

They got a really solid outing with Century of Love despite everything that we now know was happening on that set and around that production. And they have continued to make their music and handle their performances, and they're coming to America this year. That's a huge deal.

Shan

They have a fan meet in the United States that is already sold out. These boys are making moves.

Ben

I'm very excited for them. Also up for consideration were Chris Chiu, aka Modi, and Kurt Huang for Unknown the series, because they went way hard on their Taiwanese BGP. Tumblr may not have been paying that much attention to it, but those boys were working very hard. And of course, we're going to acknowledge Yin and War, who got a whole show financed on BGP alone.

NiNi

That is impressive.

Shan

Pretty impressive.

Ben

All right, our final award, our most fun award. We are handing out the Blorbo of the Year Award. This is for the character that took over your brain and you just could not let them go. Every time someone tried to take it from you, you just bit down harder and shook.

Shan

Ben, would you like to announce the winner?

Ben

The winner of the Blorbo of the Year award goes to Go Young from Love in the Big City. [air horn] What a great year for us and that character.

NiNi and Shan in unison

He is the moment. [all laugh]

NiNi

Oh my gosh, I can't get it out of my head. You owe me a coke.

Ben

Yeah, it's gotta be a coke because you guys can't have any more drinks after Friday night. [laughs]

NiNi

Oh my god, no more, no more, no more drinks, no more.

Shan

Keep it, keep it to soda, non-alcoholic. Nope.

Ben

Go Young was so important to us. He is one of the most dynamic and complicated queer characters we got to experience this year. I am so thankful that despite all of the drama, we were able to get Nam Yoon Su and friends’ version of these characters. My goodness.

Shan

I feel unbelievably blessed that they got an actor of Nam Yoon Su’s caliber to play him in the drama. I never in my wildest dreams could have expected that.

NiNi

And he put his neck, his back, his pussy, and his crack into that.

Shan

Holy shit. Me and NiNi are kdrama watchers. We have seen him in other work. He transformed himself for this role. It was impressive shit.

Ben

Our runner up, who we had a great deal of discussion about and who almost won this award until like five minutes before this recording, was Dynamite from Cooking Crush, another complicated queer character with a ton of heart that we deeply loved. I've been thinking about this boy all year.

Shan

As often is the case when a character you love is misunderstood by others, it makes you love them even more fiercely. That definitely came up with Dynamite.

Ben

A lot of you don't watch anime, but Twig and I were not gonna let this go unremarked. We wanted to acknowledge Hisashi from Twilight Out of Focus, along with Shion, who was my favorite boy from that show. I love that pink Twig so much! He said, I'm going to high school and I'm gonna get me a motherfucking boyfriend. And he did.

Shan

The pink twink!

Ben

I love that pink twink so much! He said, I'm going to high school and I'm gonna get me a motherfucking boyfriend. And he did.

Shan

He did. He did it all.

NiNi

Good job, anime twink. I think there is a missing person here. I can't believe that Ben left this one out considering how he started the year. Aoyanagi Hajime?

Ben

He's not on my Blorbo list. I think about that boy a lot. But does he take over my whole soul like these boys? He does not.

NiNi

Mmm, interesting.

Ben

I admire him deeply, and I think Nachika did a great job with him, but they're getting the sequel, so. It ain't over yet! [laughs]

Shan

We'll get to talk about him again.

NiNi

We're gonna talk about them in 2024 and 2025. Fantastic.

Ben

I'm winning. I might not see Go Young ever again, but I'ma see my boy again this year. A win for me.

NiNi

Excellent, good job.

Congratulations to the winners of all of our fan awards and our runners-up. These are not VIIBs so you do not get a plate but we will figure out something, I don't know.

Ben

I'm gonna send you a cup.

Shan

Souvenir mug!

NiNi

At least it's not a koozie. A koozie is just disrespectful. We discussed this before.

Ben

I know that if we sent Gap Jakarin a mug that said Best Boy, he would absolutely show it on the IG.

Shan

He totally would and he’d pose with it!

NiNi

I believe that. 100% he would totally do it. Maybe, maybe he would even put it next to his bicep.

Shan

Maybe we should consider sending it.

[Ben laughs]

NiNi

And I would have a plotz moment. He's large, people, you know how I feel about the large ones.

00:55:49 QL Resolutions

Ben

It's time for our QL resolutions. Shan has pulled up the record on the things we said we would do for this year. It's time for the call-outs. We'll start with me.

Shan, proceed.

Shan

All right, so Ben stated a couple resolutions last year. His kind of not that serious one was he said he will watch 100 shows in 2024. And his second, which he was more serious about, is that he would be backing off of shows when he's getting aggravated with them sooner than he used to and just being more willing to stop watching shows.

So Ben, you've definitely failed the first goal, but I think you did good on the second one.

Ben

I did great. I engaged with 75 Asian QLs this year, but I dropped 26.

Shan

That's big for you. That was a big mental wall that you had to move through this year and you did a great job, bestie.

NiNi

Four for you again, Glen Coco. Four for you.

[Ben laughs]

Shan

Are you feeling better now that you started backing off shows you're not liking?

Ben

Honestly, yeah, I feel way better that I'm recognizing when a show is irritating me and I'm not forcing myself to watch it for this weird sense of ego. Like, “It's really important that I say something about this.” I don't care anymore. Who cares? It sucks. I'm not writing about this.

The core of what I want to do is, I want to convince uninitiated BL viewers to watch BL. There is no value for me in watching a show that I despise or just isn't working for me, because I'm not using it as a reference to try and get people who might like BL to watch BL. I'm not gonna ask them to watch a mid-tier BL. So it gets dropped.

Shan

All right, NiNi, in January, 2024, you said your resolution for the year was that you were gonna stop picking on New Siwaj. Let's check in on that, how you feeling?

NiNi

I definitely had a great time with a New Siwaj show this year and talked about it on the show. These resolutions do have power so you gotta be real careful when you make them. I won't say entirely that I have stopped picking on New Siwaj. I'm still gonna pick on him if he deserves it. But I liked something that he did this year.

Ben

Don't worry. He definitely deserves it.

Shan

But you found something nice to say about him this year. You did.

NiNi

I did find nice things to say about him this year. So I think that I have kept that resolution.

Shan

We did great this year guys, because my resolution from last year was to be more aware of when I'm getting no joy out of a show and cut it off and not feel bad about not finishing it. And I did that this year. I also got better at not starting shows I didn't think I was going to like. And I think that that was a good and healthy choice and I'm glad that I did it because as we've been talking about, the genre just keeps getting bigger. There are so many shows. We can't watch everything and we can't make ourselves miserable trying to force ourselves to watch the things we're not enjoying.

I'm real proud of us. I think we did good on our resolutions this year.

NiNi

Excellent, good job. So let's look ahead. What are the resolutions that we're all making this year 2025?

Ben?

Ben

I have no fucking idea. What should I do?

Shan

Do you have something about how you wanna write or how you wanna engage on Tumblr?

Ben

I'm probably going to focus on writing more reviews this year. I stopped doing Stray Thoughts but I don't want to stop writing about things I loved. I think I'm gonna push myself to write more reviews and stuff. I think I'm going to start writing on Tumblr more about Western stuff. I think I'm going to start writing more reviews about more generalized queer work that I'm engaged with. That'll probably be my thing this year, writing more thoughtful pieces about work after it's done instead of yapping about it in real time.

NiNi

Okay, Shan, how about you? What are you resolving to do this year?

Shan

I was thinking about this a bit. I think there's a couple things on my mind. I want to continue quitting shows if I'm really just getting no joy out of them. I want to continue being more selective about what I start in the first place. Another thing I've been doing more of lately that I think is working for me and that I want to continue is waiting to binge shows that I suspect I will not enjoy very much week to week. For me, it makes a real difference how I watch a show, because if I'm watching weekly and participating in a weekly discussion, I'm going to naturally think more about the show, I'm gonna dig into it more. And when these shows are kind of weak or mediocre, I'm spending an awful lot of time thinking about what isn't working. So, I'm trying to identify those shows where I just can tell I'm gonna have a better time if I get it over with quick instead of stretching it out.

I also wanna stay committed to continuing to have variety in my media diet. I want to continue to watch things outside of QL, want to be better about continuing to mix in Western shows here and there. If you just watch too much of the same thing all the time, you really lose perspective. So I wanna be attentive to that this year and make sure I'm changing it up.

Ben

You heard it here, friends. Shan is joining me in watching over 200 movies a year!

NiNi

I'm not sure that's exactly what she said, bestie. [laughs]

Ben

She said she wants to mix it up! I got a great Indonesian film for you to watch.

Shan

I will say this. This is my big gap. I just don't watch many movies. I like long-form stories.

Ben

Mm-mm. I’m challenging you, Shan. It's not like I hate movies. You’re gonna watch some movies with me, Shan. I watched a great Chinese film from 2015 last night!

Shan

Ben’s resolution is to force Shan to watch movies. I don’t hate movies. They just don't fill my soul the same way, you know? They're just here and gone so quick.

NiNi

Yeah, if I really love something, I definitely need to sit in it for a while. So I am definitely more on the long-form storytelling side of things, as well.

Ben

A great film just stays with you forever. All right, we're starting with Ghost Dog.

Shan

All right, you can make your list. NiNi, what’s yours?

NiNi

My resolution this year is to finally watch some of the shit I have been meaning to watch. My watch lists keep growing and growing and growing and I need to put some time and effort into actually watching some of this shit. Some of it because Ben is going to stop talking to me if I don't watch it. And we can't have that.

Ben

It's true! I'm glad you recognized that that is a real outcome!

NiNi

There's definitely some things that are on the list I gotta get past. I think I've finally gotten past the uncanny valley effect so that I can watch Light On Me. And I'm gonna watch Eternal Yesterday. Finally, I am gonna watch Rainbow Prince.

Shan

I forgot you haven't watched Eternal Yesterday?!

Ben

I haven’t!

Shan

Oh my god.

NiNi

To be fair to me, I do not think that is the thing for me to have watched when I was in the mental state that I was in for most of last year.

Shan

It's very true. You need to wait for the right moment, but I'm excited for you to watch it.

NiNi

I am looking forward now that I'm feeling mentally better to getting into some of the things that I have meant to watch, but just not been able to hit play on. Like I said, these resolutions have power, so It's definitely happening this year.

Ben

I'm excited. My resolution is to torment Shan into watching movies. That's great. I feel good about this one.

Shan

He's getting revenge because I have forced him to like kdramas and he's mad.

NiNi

You have gotten Ben to watch kdramas, cdramas.

Ben

I have watched Goblin, I watched The Rebel Princess. What else did you fucking force me to watch? School 2013. That is like 6,000 hours of TV. You owe me a few movies.

Shan

I sure did! School 2013. He's starting Healer again. Listen, the truth is that Ben likes the kdramas. He hates that he likes them, but he likes them.

Ben

They're just so fucking long. I just spent two hours on a fucking episode of a kdrama. I could have watched one of my fucking movies during this time.

NiNi

Speaking of movies, y’all have got to watch Paradise of Thorns as soon as you're able.

Shan

As soon as it's out.

Ben

I believe it becomes available very soon after we finish recording this.

Shan

Yeah, I'm excited to watch that one. And I still need to watch How to Make Millions When Grandma Dies.

NiNi

Have you not watched that yet?

Shan

No, it was only on New York screens for like a few days and I didn't make it during.

Ben

We have literally not had access in the US, girl! Like this, it's one of those things where like I've been intentionally waiting because we know it's coming to American distro.

NiNi

It's on that Oscar shortlist, so it's definitely coming.

Shan

Yeah, we need it. It's gonna come for sure. It'll be in theaters and I'll go watch it.

01:04:45 - Affirmations and Hopes for the Future

Ben

Okay, affirmations for the year. Things that we really liked that we would like to see more of. Number one, Kongthup Productions. Good job this year, guys.

Shan

We love them.

NiNi

We do. This is the studio that produced Knock Knock Boys!, Monster Next Door. There was a GL.

Ben

Apple My Love.

NiNi

Apple My Love, yeah.

Ben

They have been a really fun breath of fresh air in the genre this year, and I really hope that whoever is having fun funding them is getting returns so that they can keep doing that.

Shan

They are out here producing original scripts that are interesting and that have things to say.

Ben

Next, despite how much I deeply despised My Love Mix Up Thailand, I would like to continue to see more of these cross-country collaborations. There were a lot of interesting results we got from that this year. We got Unknown the series out of it. We got Love in the Air: Koi No Yokan.

Shan

I loved it.

Ben

We got Cherry Magic Thailand. And we got a couple of interesting projects where it was kind of funded in both places. Like Eccentric Romance, Meet You at the Blossom, Battle of the Writers. There may have been Chinese money involved in that one.

NiNi

There definitely was.

Ben

It's very interesting seeing these sort of cross-cultural collaborations. And even within the countries, Oxin Films and, what is the other group's name? They teamed up and made Haunted Hearts. It wasn't good, but they worked with someone else.

Shan

I'm interested in these productions adapting works from other countries in these kind of joint funding models. Love in the Air Koi was great because the MeMindY team was deeply involved in that production and there was a lot of cross marketing. They had actors from the original Love in the Air Thailand cameo on the Japanese show. It was cool to see that kind of cooperation going on.

Ben

Lastly, and we say this every year, more GLs. There needs to be way more lesbians in this genre than there are.

Shan

And we need to give them good stories.

NiNi

And even though there was a ramp up this year, because there was actually quite a bit of GL this year, I can't point to one GL that I saw or was truly that interested in this year that really hooked me.

Ben

She Loves to Cook happened this year.

NiNi

I mean, yes, yes, okay. She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat, but that goes in the category, the same category as What Did You Eat Yesterday? It's eternal, it's everlasting.

Ben

I'm sorry, you didn't think Chaser Game W changed the face of the game?

NiNi

No.

Shan

There were a lot of GLs this year, but most of them had, like, really terrible writing. What's wild to me, and this has been a really interesting thing that we've started seeing in the recent months. These shows, even when they're not very good in terms of the quality of the story, they're really popular because the fans are so thirsty for this content. The QL viewership wants GL and these studios need to put some real resources behind making these shows and making them good because there is a lot of potential there.

NiNi

I think GL's kind of following the trajectory that BL followed, which is a shame because BL sort of set the trajectory already, so they could have shortcutted all of that.

Shan

Can we not just skip to the good content part?

Ben

Well, they did try to make GL SOTUS, so hang in there, girls. [everyone laughs]

That's going to end it for us. We will see you all in the coming weeks as we make our way through the VIIB Awards. I'm very excited.

NiNi

And a little super special little treat for you before we get to the VIIBs, which I will not spoil but it's gonna be fun.

That is going to wrap us up on our Year In Review. Oh my god guys, another year. This is our third Year In Review.

Ben

My goodness.

NiNi

Absolutely wild. This is our 50-something episode. We're getting up to 60. We're about to be retirees up in here. We love it.

See you guys next time, 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 #podcast #the conversation #on art #lgbtq #bl series #thai bl #winter series #japanese bl #taiwanese bl #korean bl #filipino bl #Spotify

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thepoetjean-makes-stuff · 1 year ago

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HOW TO ACTUALLY WRITE -- THE BASICS (AKA STEP 0-1)

(AKA ThePoetJean justifies their Master's degree and makes it everyone else's problem)

1) "WRITING IS REWRITING" AND WHAT THE HELL THAT MEANS -- No writing is law or set in stone upon the first draft, and whoever taught you that is a bum. Even permanent glue can be removed by nail polish remover, so why is editing your first draft no different? When writing for fun, oftentimes you can edit the post and clean up the story when things are no longer working (it's called a cutting room floor for a reason). When writing for publishing, you'll often be paired with an editor who'll send tweaks back-and-forth to you, chipping away at any structural mistakes or grammar flaws to bring out the point of your writing piece in the process. The first draft is just about getting the general vibes of the story down: like the batter for the cake recipe before you start baking it. This part is meant to be fun and messy and no one expects you to serve them go when you're just cracking your eggs open. Let yourself be messy cuz (burnt or fluffy), this is the first step to making your story, so no need to have something be all pretty and presentable the first time around! Again, a lot of writing is just rewriting cuz drafts are a thing so getting stuff down is most important. And another amazing thing -- if the story sucks, you can always change it later! You gotta trust yourself to get it done in order to get it out to the world one way or another, so go do that!

2) LEARN YOUR OWN WRITING PROCESS! -- (OH MY GOD PPL, LEARN HOW YOU TO THE THING IT'S HALF THE BATTLE!) Most of the struggles I see with newer writers is never learning how they write, and that sucks since have the joy of making things is making the thing -- so why make writing stories so arduos for yourself. Learn your own methods and use them whenever you get to writing! Learn the writerly basics like plot, structure, framing, character voice, setting, time period, etc and learn how best you can utilize them in your own stories! On a purely craft level: Learn ALL THE WRITING CRAFT and keep in mind that all writing craft is meant to be guidelines rather than hard rules. Learn many ways about how to write in general cuz no writing advice is one size fits all and being embarrassed of your process is dumb and hinders your creative growth. Trust yourself as a writer, you'll improve faster that way. Believing you can and believing it's possible is the first step to doing anything! (Plus all writing is rewriting anyhow to there's no need to feel embarrassed about something you can fix later, anyways, right?)

3) Read projects like your project in order to get a better feel of your project. Whether it be writing style references, basic literary craft examples, or just you want to break down the vibes of the stories so you can better emulate in your own -- GO AND WATCH/READ/LISTEN ETC TO WHATEVER STORIES YOU THINK WOULD MATCH THE VIBES OF YOUR OWN!! Now, this isn't a 1-to-1 copy, you're not mean to make a clone of the thing you like or take properties for the IP that you're into -- that's more along the lines of fanfiction (which can be fun and is ofc, super valid) -- BUT! To create your own stories, you need to learn where you get your ideas from, and learn how to implement, borrow, twist, etc from the story structures and properties you gather your inspo from. Other writers are your peers, not your enemies -- so treat their work and your own with the respect it deserves. No two chicken sandwiches are ever exactly the same; true artists steal from many places, so learn how to be a good thief (creatively speaking). Example from my own secret WIP novel: I'm writing a New Adult Urban fantasy novel with a dark, powerful lady protagonist that uses lots of philosophical themes, alternate history perspectives as well as using mythology as a basis for a lot of the magical roots and setting roots. Likewise, this a story about friendship and romance after major loss and trauma, and how to come back to yourself after grief, so I've been looking for stories that cover those themes in their plots, which has made the story a lot more fun to read and write outside of just being a cool concept to play with.

If you're writing a second-chance romance story, read romance stories. If you're writing a sci-fi story with lots of robots, read stories about robots. Presumably, you enjoy the same stories you're writing in concept if not in execution, so don't hesitate to seek those stories out, and break down how those stories work in order to scrap them for literary parts. You're smarter than you think you are, and breaking down stories is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it, so please consider doing this as you go into your next project, your writing will thank you for it!

OPTIONAL:

4) If the story works better as something else, swap the format and see what happens.

Have you ever read something and been like "Huh, I like this book, but with how iconography is used in the actual text, it might be better as a movie or a comic book"? So have I!

So, if you ever feel like the story you're writing isn't working so well as a novel or a play, consider turning it into a movie or a webcomic! Of course, this is all easier said than done, and every writing format comes with its own rules and limitations, but I'd give it a try if you ever want to see your project from a fresh perspective! If nothing else, you'll learn something new -- and become a better writer for it!

Til next time, beloveds~

PS. Take all advice with a grain of salt. I am not your parent or your principal, I'm just a lady with a writing degree and a lil free time. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't, etc. PLEASE SHARE THIS POST AROUND TO ANYONE WHO IT MIGHT HELP! THANKIES :3

KOFI: https://ko-fi.com/thepoetjean

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batsplat · 7 months ago

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do you have a favorite bit of motogp gossip that you either want to know is it’s true, or you just enjoy as a stand alone piece, no need for further investigation?

one of those where I initially stared at and like. lost all motogp knowledge in my brain. and then stuff did come back to me. this is all very much low hanging fruit and I'll add to it when I remember more interesting/quirky ones. BUT here are some things I want to know:

y'know how casey randomly suggests in his autobiography that valentino was sabotaged in the 2006 title decider? so, personally, I don't really buy this, because 'why' and also 'casey girl you are SO paranoid' - though, sure, if given the option I'd like to double check if valentino had a dud tyre (completely plausible) and also if somebody really deliberately gave him one (?? casey idk about this one). but what I'm REALLY curious about is... there's a change in his autobiography?? like I've seen this book excerpt float around online and the text is different from what's in my book!! mine's from the paperback version so I assume there may have been some edits for that, so that would make it the newer version... but like. this is a real editorial change. check this out:

version posted on the internet, from the hard cover edition???

version in my book, first paragraph is the same

But as soon as the lights went out Valentino was in trouble. I was one of six riders to pass him on the first lap and if you watch the footage you can see how much he is struggling to even keep up with us. His rear and front tyres were just not working together and on lap five the front inexplicably folded and he went down, right behind me. I couldn't help but wonder how he could be having such problems with his tyres. Could he really have been stitched up? It seemed so improbable, but I remember watching that race back in the motorhome that evening and thinking, Welcome to my world, mate.

this isn't 'gossip' because I haven't found anyone else who has spotted this, but like? that's a substantive change? if my one really is the newer one? ...?

let's set aside the fascinating insight you get into casey's knotty and at times bizarre valentino rossi complex with him adding the line "welcome to my world, mate" (oh my god. please just take him to dinner. I will crowd fund this I literally just need to be able to listen in. casey come on CALL him I NEED you to do the dinner thing, YOU suggested it not me). like we're not going to even touch that. but if my version really is the updated one, then he's kinda softened his stance, no?? "convinced he was stitched up" to "could he really have been stitched up"

what happened?? who wanted this change? casey? an editor? did dorna give casey a call? did some poor bloke from pr have to politely ask whether casey could please not state in his autobiography that the most popular rider ever had had a title stolen from him by the establishment?

(casey was talking about valentino's stolen tenth BEFORE it was popular. he did it even before valentino did, bless)

"there are a lot of commercial interests in the sport" also didn't make the jump to the 'new version', mind you. did Big America get to casey

come on you guys have to admit this is an odd change?? does nobody else thing this is weird??

okay fine moving on

Did Valentino Literally Curse Sete

(like. not literally as in did he curse curse sete, literally as in did he say it)

(though if he did literally literally curse curse sete, I suppose I'd also like to know that bit)

the commentators in 2003 brno say so and I'm inclined to believe them, but I need to double check whether sete and valentino really were partying on ibiza together right after that very painful valentino loss at the sachsenring. such a fascinating little detail, that's not something post-2004 valentino does I reckon

I mean, look, obviously a bunch of things from that time period I want to have fact checked. including valentino's friend hearing sete say in late 2003 that valentino wasn't going to be smiling so much after joining yamaha. classic bit of gossip, did it actually happen though

I've referenced this a few times before, but y'know how valentino said that marc's manager alzamora told him after sepang 2015 that marc had been angry at valentino for killing his title charge? I just want. to know. if this conversation actually happened. I don't think valentino would pluck a lie like that out of thin air, especially something so specific about somebody on marc's team, and he has known alzamora for decades but like. maybe almazora just said something valentino misinterpreted? I just find this such a bonkers thing from alzamora if it's true that I would like it confirmed for my own sanity, you know?

yeah look I would like to know if marc really did get casey kicked out of honda, obviously I've discussed this before and it's very he said she said but yeah it'd be fun to know the truth

this is literally peak gossip because I can't find a source for it but I swear a journalist did say it: the rumour is that marc blocked joan mir from joining honda in 2019. like, I'm only including this because I was explicitly asked for gossip as I just cannot find where it was said... but it is something that is. out there. and... again, just curious. like I buy it, but also it could be bullshit!

on a similar note, did he ever make clear to honda he didn't want either vinales or rinsy on his team circa 2016? was it just a vibe in the paddock or was this an actual demand from marc?

speaking of!! the whole thing about alzamora basically rigging the moto3 teammate situation between rinsy and alex marquez to ensure the latter won the title that year. what was that all about, how far did they go there

switching to valentino now. this doesn't quite fit the remit of the question because it IS something I've investigated. and my conclusion is basically a big *shrug*

did valentino block casey from joining yamaha in either 2005 or 2006, and did he attempt to block jorge?

there are completely contradictory sources on the timeline here that do make me feel like there's a chance yamaha was just fucking with casey at the very least in 2006 and valentino had fuck all to do with it, which a recent interview from casey did actually hint at too... he made it sound like maybe yamaha was just using him to try to drive down the price of another rider (which would then presumably be jorge)

I just want to know! and the thing is, it was a matter of open paddock discussion that valentino blocked casey (jorge explicitly references it in in 2007), but something doesn't quite add up between what jorge, casey, colin edwards, articles from the time and lin jarvis have said on the subject! my current pet theory is that valentino blocked casey in 2005 from joining the satellite yamaha team in 2006 (weirdly casey doesn't really imply valentino was responsible for this one in his autobiography, but whatever) but NOT in 2006 (casey does imply valentino was responsible here, you see my problem). and yamaha was fucking around with all four of valentino, casey, jorge and edwards in late 2006/2007. but. yeah. I have unanswered questions

the entire 'alex marquez blocked from yamaha' situation.... again. something is off there. you know the story from late last year about how he was blocked in 2019 from joining the petronas team in 2021? this completely threw me, because there was an entirely different story about this YEARS back in 2018!! I initially assumed the two stories were about the same event, but it can't have been! one's him being blocked in 2019 for 2021, one's him being blocked in 2018 for 2019

from the descriptions of both there's also no confusing them. the 2018 story has to be about the 2018 contract cycle because that's quite literally when it was published, and the 2023 story has to be about the 2019 contract cycle because it explicitly references the space fabio would create by moving to the factory team for 2021, which obviously wouldn't make sense before fabio's actual rookie season. like they have to be about different stories

and in that same 2018 story, marc said that back in 2016 lin jarvis told him no marquez would be joining yamaha:

again, this was in 2018!!

plus, he did say back in 2016 that he'd spoken to jarvis, which kinda backs up this is a conversation that did happen and marc isn't just misremembering the timeline/lying (the notion of marc joining yamaha in 2017 is fantastic, what an absolutely horrendous idea):

now what marc says in 2018 about his conversation with lin jarvis is very similar to petronas yamaha boss razali saying in 2023 that he'd been told by yamaha no marquez was allowed at yamaha. suggests that this is a thing that did happen!!

but again... razali was told that in 2019... after marc had already been told the same thing three years before that, and the exact same deal had already been blocked one year earlier... does nobody else think this is weird?? like, I'm not saying yamaha hq covered themselves in glory here, but is it not a little strange the satellite yamaha squad had basically almost signed a contract with the younger marquez again without checking in with yamaha, just ONE YEAR after this same contract had already been blocked???

again this isn't actually gossip because I'm apparently the only person going ?? about this but I'll say it: ??

kinda been annoying me since december last year, like I know it doesn't matter but I'm just curious about it! why's nobody else talking about the 2018 story!

idk my best guess here is that petronas yamaha was faffing about and playing weird games with the factory team, that the deal was never as likely to happen as they made it sound to the marquez camp. zero proof, that's me spreading rumours yeah... time to create some of my own unfounded gossip

(also of course I'm curious if valentino did have any actual involvement in this. like if lin jarvis was telling marc this in the year of our lord 2016, I'm assuming valentino didn't have to explicitly say to jarvis that 'inviting marc to the team for 2017' wasn't exactly high on his christmas wish list. it is interesting that marc frames it as jarvis making this about. like. all the marquez's way back in 2016, and again, would this really have been on valentino's radar at the time? that feels a bit...? alex marquez was thirteenth in that moto2 season? would certainly be very... thorough for valentino to already have had that particular talk with jarvis)

(mind u there's a fun moment in a 2019 presser where valentino is sitting between the two marquez brothers and the younger marquez is being asked about his contract situation, the implication being he'd had a motogp deal and no longer had a motogp deal. and he's answering and marc's doing his freak stare and valentino is Right There sitting between them... I <3 mess)

man did valentino actually ever fucking block anyone from joining his manufacturer #notmygoat. I still think he didn't know about jorge until the deal was basically done, had nothing to do with the younger marquez, at most blocked casey the one time but then yamaha wasn't actually seriously intending on signing casey in 2006 and was just using it as a play in their jorge negotiations, which.... idk. bit disappointing if true icl. I hope he blocked someone, I'll say it

(also. okay. I don't want to sound awful here because I do have a lot of sympathy for baby!casey but. ignoring the morality for a second, I do LOVE the idea that valentino blocked casey from getting a satellite yamaha seat fresh off his 250cc runner up season because it would conclusively prove valentino did ABSOLUTELY rate casey!! like he didn't even want casey to come close to being his teammate!! not even a sniff at his data!!) (genuinely this is the rumour I'm choosing to believe, I know there's a chance valentino didn't successfully block anyone and was just a complete flop but I want the 2005 one to be true. it really adds something to the rivalry idk... like ugh valentino saw how dangerous casey was proper early when much of the paddock wasn't yet convinced... cute)

moving on

there was a rumour in 2015 that valentino approached dani after aragon to complain about how sturdy his defence was, like moaning about denying him points and shit. now, there's exactly one article about this in marca that is the sole origin point for the rumour, and it says that valentino also interrupted a honda party after phillip island to complain to marc. this does not match up at all with anything either marc or valentino have said since then - and would mean you have to believe that marc wasn't actually blindsided by that presser... also feels a bit unlikely we would have heard NOTHING from any other source if vale was really gatecrashing a honda party

of course, neither dani nor valentino have spoken about this supposed post-aragon 2015 meeting either, not even when dani was kinda accusing valentino of hypocrisy during sepang 2015, but I suppose you could say maybe dani's just not the type of guy to bring it up again. however.... I do reckon occam's razor kinda applies here and if one of these stories is bullshit then they probably both are, plus it's not like marca is exactly a neutral source. still would love to be certain!! instinctively I don't really think that's valentino's style at all, but of course it'd be intriguing if the story were true because it'd be a sign of how 2015 kinda messed with him. but I still feel 2015 is more about him falling back on past tools he'd mostly discarded - rather than, like, acting wildly out of character, which again... well, this brings us back to how that kind of behaviour isn't really valentino's style. basically, I don't buy it, but that's kinda why I am so curious about it? because I feel like it would be really interesting and quirky if he had actually done that. does this make any sense

speaking of, again this doesn't really count because I did kinda investigate it last year.... but you know when valentino in that podcast referenced a conversation with marc around the time of sepang 2015, where marc stared blankly at him? I have a hunch about when that conversation happened, want to know if it's right. this also isn't really 'gossip' because this is a conversation I'm having with myself but

y'know when bez was injured on the ranch late-ish last year? a bunch of journalists pointed out how hush hush they were about what actually happened to bez - like they repeatedly drew attention to that because god knows THEY love some gossip lol. which probably means nothing, but I'm curious what the journalists' theory here is, like do they think it was an embarrassing injury?? OR. look. I suppose the conspiracy theory would be that pecco caused it (obviously accidentally!!) and everyone at the ranch knew it'd be a terrible look if they admitted that because of the whole title fight situation. call me casey stoner because those dots are not real and definitely have not been connected

okay, you know how there were rumours in the spanish tabloids bez said some real ugly stuff to marc at valencia last year, and bez didn't directly address it but freaked a little and did a sort of blanket denial that he'd said anything that bad? I don't actually think he did tbh, but again. would just like to check!

while we're already on bez, there was one report that the switch to aprilia was partly motivated by marc to factory ducati. again, not entirely sure I buy that this would factor into his thinking beyond the obvious 'this means the route to that factory ducati seat looks even more closed than it already did' angle'.... it's very much down my list of priorities but I'd quickly confirm/deny it if given the chance yeah

that's all for now lol

#these all feel INCREDIBLY boring but i'm stuck 2/3 of the way through a bunch of different asks and this was fast and fun so #anon i will return to this when i think of more interesting ones. my brain gave up on me. these are all so basic bleh #man i'm gonna miss lin i swear he was always up to some shit #i see u buddy. i know u were flat out lying to colin edwards for like. half a year. i see u #//#brr brr #batsplat responds #“welcome to my world mate” caseyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy #every day i wake up and think about Her (all the things casey wants to tell valentino but has never gotten the chance to)#like he canonically factually actually wants valentino to know what casey's pov on that rivalry was... doesn't that make you CRAZY #he doesn't want to interrogate valentino he wants to confess to him... he wants valentino to Understand... makes me ill #u know it's also like... because valentino literally has said Nothing substantive about that rivalry since mid 2013 #has casey like... noticed? I'm sure he doesn't WANT valentino to keep insulting him but idk it's kind of a bit. hm #like if you ARE looking for closure and YOU are still talking about it a lot but the other guy is just. Not. would that bother you?#idk!! maybe it really is completely a confessional impulse for him. casey constantly wanting to get his story out there #and not really caring what valentino contributes. that he's stopped contributing at all. orrrrr WOULD he like valentino to *respond*#does he want confirmation valentino is even seeing this stuff!! sending it out into the ether and waiting for the echo gahhhhh #what was this post about again #THE FUNDAMENTAL ALIENATION OF FEELING UNSEEN BY YOUR FOIL WHO SHOULD UNDERSTAND YOU BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE #//at

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marilynthornhilllover · 1 year ago

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🥂🎉End of year statements 2023🎉🥂

Alright so, where do I start. I know you guys are probably reading this and your probably like " omg why is this random girl tagging me in her post"💀😭 sorry if I'm misjudging, but last year I did an end of year statement on my Instagram it was one for editors ( the editing community) , so me and my friends kinda made it a tradition👍🏼😅.

- { Inspiration }

Honestly when I first started this tumblr account I had no intentions of making fanfics or even being " a writer" I had a wattpad account that I ditched because i simply got tired💀 so my friend @slut4milfsss who is no longer active told me she started an account for marilyn Thornhill, where she's gonna be writing fics, and if you can't tell by my name already I love marilyn, so I created an account and decided to support her and then she told me I should start writing, obviously I told her NO, but after I gave it a thought and then I started writing.

Now if you go wayyyyy back to my very first fic to be honest it wasn't that bad💀but it was bad, over time I got better but still😐....When I first started the first three blogs I followed was @regalbootie @daydream-cement and @littledollll and oh. My. GODD everytime I read their fics I felt as if I was in HEAVEN, their so talented and so very well creative and to me they were just perfect writing Gods. Then I followed @cissyenthusiast010155 and @v3nusxsky and I swore I died because again their fanfics were completely amazing and phenomenal and so well put together and it was crazy how realistic the fanfic seemed, it was like they made it come to life and then your imagination does the rest. From theses extraordinary and inpowering writers I found my inspiration to write and for them I'm honestly so thankful because I would have not been writing fics.

Guys I'm so sorry for the random tag, i dont wanna seem creepy 😭. but anyway I love you guys so much and please continue to shine your light and do keep writing because you guys are epic!<3.

Of course then I followed other amazingly talented writers such as @abbyromanoff @brienneoftarth1989 @willalovexx @prentiss-theorem @ilovehugslikealotalot @inlovewithgreta @daddy-heather-dunbar @m1lfsh4ke @m1lflov3rrr @yellowjacketsgayfanfic @agnessharknes @storiesofsvu and honestly the list goes on😮‍💨 but as we go into this new year I just wanted to show my gratitude for theses writers because they are truly amazing!<3.

Also to @geistergreen and @vivendraws because I love your arts!!! So creative!!

And of course to @resident-lover for blessing us with that scrumptious amazing game of theirs. ( I'm obsessed with Miranda's , Cassandra's and alcinas route)

Alright, moving on.

- { Mutuals }

I have some of the best mutuals on here and I'm so eternally grateful for them, they're so supportive and kind and loving. And I honestly couldn't ask for better friends than them, so I just wanna say thank you to @willalovexx @willowshadenox @prentiss-theorem @luisa323 @ilovehugslikealotalot @tryingmybest233333 @heidsworld @m1lfsh4ke I honestly couldn't be more thankful for you guys, when I get notifications that you liked my post, comment or messaged me I get so happy, you guys are just so cute and adorable and so wholesome, thank you for being by my side and I'm always here if you need me<3

- { account and followers }

I celebrated my first 1 year tumblr account anniversary on the 10th and I honestly couldn't be more grateful to be able to write fanfics for you guys and make content. I get so happy and excited when I see a fanfic requests might I add that you guys are extremely wild with your imagination, because some of the requests I get are beyond amazing and so well put together and well taught of and I'm so happy and grateful that I get to write them for you guys. Just remember all requests are seen and I will do them also about thoses kinkmas requests, i know it's not Christmas anymore but I will still be working on them and I will post them, just give me some time.<3.

When I tell you guys being a badged psychologist is not easy believe me💀the amount of notes is unbelievable sometimes I feel like my hand is gonna drop off because my fingers become sore and I can't even type😐sooo yeah, also I have my office now, honestly so happy!!! Although I'm still majoring in forensic for a couple more years🙄ugh anyways.

I hope you all enjoy your 2024 ( new year ) I hope it's kind to you all, I hope there is a lots of opportunities in store for you guys, love especially, peace and just everything that your hoping and wishing for, goodnight!<3

#announcement #I APOLOGIZE FOR ALL RANDOM TAGS ❗️❤️❤️#fypシ゚viral #HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE #love #fanfic #fanfic writers #writers love #writers post

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meraki24601 · 3 months ago

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Hello! I saw your advice on your previous reblog and it's very helpful to know that there's other ways of writing and you could break a couple of rules. I am a very bad storyteller so it truly helps, thank you for sharing! I just want to ask for advice about dialogue, I take days thinking what the character should say in this part of the story that I am not moving forward. I don't think that's normal for one line to take that much time?? How long should thinking for a dialogue normally take for it to sound natural? I think it should be quick because everyday conversation isn't planned but then I read somewhere that dialogue in stories are different from everyday conversation and that they should move the plot. But I don't want to sound like a Hallmark movie. I am also not very fond of the monologues that happened inside of the characters head, so I completely remove that in my story. I like when writers leave clues in conversations, even if the story is vague, it's like a puzzle piece! I think it's fun when they do that so I try to copy it but I end up just spending so much time with dialogues just thinking about revealing not too much information. I kind of 'overbake' everything. It doesn't sound natural anymore. I have taken a break and everything, tried to reset the story. Only to get stuck on a dialogues again.

Oh my god this is so long I am so sorry I just want general advice on dialogues! I am new at this so I'm making a lot of assumptions.

Hello Friend! Thanks for asking!

You have some really good questions in there. If you're asking questions and trying to learn, you're never a bad storyteller; you're just inexperienced and learning. It takes time to figure it out, and even professional writers struggle to make their stories "good." That's why alpha and beta readers, as well as editors, are so important. Anyway, in most cases, rules are there so you can learn how to break them. That definitely applies to writing dialogue.

One rule that I always hear is that you need to write quickly. Completing a draft should only take this long, and you should be able to put down so many words in an hour. While that might be true in part for most professional authors, that is mainly for people who need to chug out 5 or 6 books per year. Unless you have a contract that says you have to have a completed book in a month, take as long as you need. Take a day or more to chew on a line if it's important enough to warrant the attention. That writer friend I mentioned in my last post? They tend to average 20-30+ words per hour. I, on the other hand, average more like 8-15. Even so, I've written complete drafts of 5 novels and released a children's book, and he's only written one. Each person is different. Speed does tend to come with experience, but it's not required to be a good writer.

Yes, story dialogue generally differs from what you might hear when listening to someone chatting at the next table in a restaurant. That mainly comes from removing filler words and unnecessary verbal delays. Can filler words be used? Yes. However, they need to be used sparingly. Some verbal delays can be hinted at outside of the spoken words through actions and the listener's reactions.

Personally, when I'm really struggling with figuring out what a character would say, it's usually an issue with understanding the characters themselves. Would your character react to what's happening? What part of the recent events would they be reacting to? How would this particular person respond to what has been said to them? Are they the kind of person who would overthink and work out what this or that means in their head, or would they talk out their thoughts? How would their background influence the specific words they use?

For example, if a character were to ask another, "Hey, could you get her some more coke?" There are a few things this would tell you about them. First, I might assume they were from the southern US since they used the word coke instead of soda or pop. The request also suggests they're familiar with the person they're asking or the other person is in a waiter position. The person who needs the drink might be a child, an anxious adult, a significant other, or some other relation to the person asking, and this character has taken charge of the situation and asked so the other doesn't have to. If your character isn't a Southerner who wouldn't actively take charge of another person's minor needs, then they probably wouldn't say the line as it is, and you would likely need to adjust it to fit. Even though it seems like a simple, sweet thing to do, if they're making the request to avoid answering a question they had been asked, it changes how the reader and other characters would feel about it.

It sounds like you're trying to find the perfect dialogue right away. Remember that your first draft is supposed to be awful. Let yourself intentionally write bad dialogue. Get those Hallmark, cheesy, "I love you. No, I love you more."s down on the page and then make it less vomit-inducing later. Once you know who your characters are, how they act, and what your readers actually need to know, then you can make them say those meaningful lines that will have people screaming about how they didn't see things before they happened. If you need to, write the action first. Avoid writing a single spoken word until you know where everyone is and what's happening in the chapter. You can even use asterisks and plug in things like *so-and-so says something cool here that reminds the reader of their dead brother* to make a note of where you need to come back to and help yourself get past a troublesome spot.

Keep going! Writing is never easy, but it does get easier as you learn. Practice, and when you're ready, let other people read what you've written and give constructive feedback.

#writer problems #writers on tumblr #writing #writing help #writing dialogue

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arwainian · 3 months ago

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Reading This Week 2024 #47

my laptop is getting its fan repaired/is sitting in the computer repair shop waiting for a new fan to arrive so my workflow for this week has been decimated. ah well. at least there's books

a few housekeeping notes: I'm starting to try using Storygraph again, same username, just trying to populate it with the books I read this year. I try to stay committed to not giving books star rating if I can help it, because it detracts from my reading experience. working slowly at giving the books i've read written reviews (sometimes just taking the thoughts i put in these posts for it).

Finished:

Until I Love Myself, Vol. 2 by Poppy Pesuyama, translated by Emily Balistrieri (speaking of storygraph, my thoughts/review of this book were on there first) I think this manga. moreso this second volume but also in the first, is about the circumstances of its own creation. so many of its chapters include discussions between Pesuyama and their editor regarding what they want to include and how they want to handle its publication

LEASH. DEPATURE. COMPULSION. by rozecrest on ao3

Tiger, Tiger by Petra Erika Nordlund *caught up. not finished. tiger tiger is an ongoing web comic. i'm bad at keeping track of ongoing serialized work i'm reading on these posts, so i've been slowly reading through it for a while. you should check it out for amazing art, cool worldbuilding, and messy queer characters

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 7-9 written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie (vol. 8 has a lot of guest artists and writers) okay now that i've finished this series i have some Thoughts. i think wicdiv is very very twisty in a way that was probably really fun when it was being released. however how i am reading the series, as a collection of trades that compile multiple issues together, it mostly reads as very cheap. the one exception to my negative opinions toward its twists and reveals is the revelation about the actual nature of the gods cycles and their powers, which felt earned in that it had genuine clues to its set up in the earlier issues, so there was no 'we hid key information from you ah ha arent you so surprised about how it actually went down' that rubbed me the wrong way about the rest of the twists.

Blue Box, Vol. 6 by Kouji Miura, translated by Christine Dashiell *wails* oh no the drama of an unrequited crush that's out in the open. the way that Taiki lashes out at Chono for continually talking about him as 'the guy she likes' when he doesn't feel the same for her and be reminded that she like-likes him makes him sad and uncomfortable about not requiting her feelings... these teenagers....

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 7-8 written by Kanehito Yamada, art by Tsukasa Abe, translated by Misa 'Japanese Ammo' aw yeah baby we're back on track. no more boring extending mage exam arc, we're back to the bread and butter of the series. short adventure vignettes

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, audiobook narrated by the cast of the Words Take Wing Repertory Company i picked this up for my mini mutuals book club! we rolled a random number on our list and this is what came up. juvenile fantasy about a princess who runs away and is voluntarily 'held captive' by a dragon. i did picture her relationship with her dragon as a lesbian romance, and i am correct. i will not be taking questions at this time

The Girl That Can't Get a Girlfriend by Mieri Hiranshi autobio manga about the author's struggling love life

"Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice" by Rutskarn essay/blog post about the author's experience using a highly lethal cowboy combat ttrpg to run a high intrigue high politics, limited combat tragedy game. sounds like he has an awesome table of players and really made me think about all of the work i'd want to do if i ever wanted to run my own political intrigue game

last night in a darkened room by bigdamnher0 on ao3 read to feel sad about dick grayson and tim drake

Started/Ongoing:

Provenance by Ann Leckie, audiobook narrated by Adjoa Andoh yay stand alone book in the imperial radch universe! i love crime.

Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey, audiobook narrated by Gregory St. John SPOILERS but: extremely frustrated about the self-conscious narrative defense about the problematic age gap relationship (no its fine that his love interest is less than half his age! he's his soulmate reincarnated!). listen. i was ready to meet you at your freak. i will read some Weird Shit and enjoy my time with it. i was in fact delighted by the romantic comedy farce that the bard had to go through to get the hot older wizard to notice him. the younger party being the active pursuer of the relationship took us as far out of uncomfortable power dynamics as it reasonably could, and i was ready to root for the happy couple. but the minute you start going 'no no no its NOT weird. its completely fine actually for this magical reason' you've lost me. are you trying to tell me that it's not freak shit? that its just okay and not weird and No One needs to feel weird about it? embrace your freak shit or die

#cal reading log #arwainian princessoid decrees

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katie-the-bug · 7 months ago

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Last post about Left Behind, I promise.

I'm as surprised as you are that the book isn't over yet.

Anyways, for those just tuning in, our cast: Rayford Steele, pilot and newly minted evangelist; Chloe Steele, getting evangelized to; Bruce Barnes, source of spiritual guidance and exposition in unequal measure; Buck Williams, newly promoted magazine editor and reporter; Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist and the only character I like; Hattie Durham, Rayford's emotional sidepiece who's moving on to better things, and by "better things" I mean Nicolae.

In Chapter 20 Buck sees Chloe for the first time and is immediately "stunned." Oh god no.

In Chapter 22 Chloe becomes a born-again Christian. Or, technically, she recounts how she became a born-again Christian to Buck, who's deliberately gotten himself a seat next to her on a plane. She decides that Buck's sitting next to her is, rather than Buck being creepy, God answering her prayers. I don't know quite what kind of example this is setting but I don't like it.

In Chapter 23, Nicolae becomes secretary-general of a revamped United Nations, which the authors think means King of the World. Earlier in the story he had set a number of conditions to his accepting the role - such as disarmament of member states, his election being unanimous, and the UN being moved to Babylon (which has for some reason been rebuilt in this universe) - all of which are enthusiastically met. In a better book this would be evidence of a far-reaching ability to manipulate minds, but as it is I can't tell where Nicolae's Antichrist powers end and this world's endemic insanity begins.

Nicolae also discusses plans to create a one world religion as though religion is in any way the UN's business. What do the authors think the UN does?

Throughout the second half of the book Bruce has been emphasizing how horrible the coming years will be and how most new Christians will die horrible deaths. The characters have discussed this multiple times, but if they're anxious about it for longer than a few minutes, the narration doesn't show it. Usually I'd criticize such a thing, but this is, in my experience, pretty on-brand for Christians. I've heard several of my Catholic school teachers treat the persecution of Christians in America as an inevitability, before getting on with the curriculum as though they haven't just given a bunch of twelve-year-olds a new reason to be anxious. (I am bitter.)

After wrestling for a few chapters, in Chapter 24 Buck finally says the magic words (in a bathroom, immediately before a press conference with Nicolae) and becomes a True Christian. The immediate consequence of this is that he can now sense that Nicolae is evil despite having no hard evidence for his misdeeds.

Almost immediately afterwards Nicolae shoots two guys in front of an entire press conference, so I really don't think Buck sensing his evil was necessary.

And immediately after that Nicolae uses his powers to erase everyone's memories of the event - except Buck, who is protected by the plot God. Nicolae had previously something about how the people present will "understand cognitively" that he is in charge, even without remembering it, which sounds like the authors just wanted Nicolae to do something bad without it affecting the plot. Cowards.

At the end of it all Buck tells the Steeles and Bruce that Nicolae is without a doubt the Antichrist. All I can think is that it would be so funny if he were wrong, the Antichrist were someone else, and Nicolae just had powers for no reason. It wouldn't have made for a good book, but the book wasn't good anyway and it would at least be funny.

That's Left Behind for you. My posts about the next books in the series will be spread out a bit more because I'm going on vacation and won't have access to my computer all the time. Still, expect a considerable volume of posts about this over the next month or so, because these books are just so easy to make fun of.

See you in the next book!

#katie reads left behind #left behind #long post #religious trauma mention

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viridianvenus · 1 year ago

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Oh my gosh! Just realized you were a beta for Family by the middle Warner sibling! I’m just so curious—what was that like? Highlights?? Lowlights?? It’s probably my favourite piece of fiction <333

Obviously the biggest highlight was getting to read the new chapters early. She had a pretty detailed outline going well into the Warner's adulthoods. I don't know the details, but she already knew who wound up with who, what careers they had, who had kids and how many and if they were boys or girls.

Another highlight was when she'd slip shout outs to me in the story. That friendly cat reporter Anica? I had a cat named Anica. One of the other students in Dot's riding class, Diego? My other cat was named Diego. Yakko's early girlfriend Athena working in a cookie store? I worked in a cookie store at the time.

Another highlight was just knowing that I was helping what I knew from the very start was going to be the biggest deal fanfic in the fandom. Obviously all of the genius came from her and my impact was minimal, but it was there. When I read the very first chapter she posted I knew I was reading the start of something amazing, but the spelling and grammar were all over the place, so I contacted her and offered to be her beta. We did not know each other at the time. Her immediate reaction was "God, yes!" I edited that first chapter, she reposted it and I was her beta for the next two, maybe three years.

A lowlight would be that, try as I might, I was never able to get her to stop info-dumping non-story related content. All we need to know is that the grandfather clock is significant to Goose, and why. We don't need a full page explanation on how grandfather clocks work. All we need to know is what's going on emotionally between Wakko and Foghorn, we don't need paragraphs explaining on how to fix a car engine. But her justification was that she spent the time doing the research and by God she was going to use it.

Another lowlight, and I'm not sure I'd really call it a lowlight, but it is ultimately the reason why I stepped down as beta (the final two, maybe three, chapters were not beta'd by me) was that it was a major time commitment. You know how massive those chapters were. My turnaround time was 4-5 days. That was not an expectation set by her, she was always saying she didn't know how I was doing it so fast, that just wound up being the speed that I worked. My process was that I would get the chapter and then I would read it through just as a fan enjoying the story. If something stuck out to me I would notate it, but I was reading with my fan brain, not my editor brain. Then I would reread the whole chapter again. much slower, with my editor brain. I was working two jobs at the time, so it eventually got to be too much, but by that time she had a second beta so I wasn't leaving her high and dry.

To this day, Family is still my favorite fanfic ever. Not just for Animaniacs, but in general and I still do occasional re-reads. She and I aren't in touch anymore, we're still Facebook friends but neither of us really use Facebook anymore. She's married and works full time, and we basically just slowly lost touch. We did briefly reconnect when the reboot first dropped. She wasn't impressed. She couldn't even make it through the season. I don't like the reboot either, but I watched all of it and gave her a rundown of what she had missed. She's glad she stopped watching when she did. We both agree that the reboot writers have no idea who the Warners are.

#animaniacs #animaniatag #animaniacs reboot

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too-much-sunshine · 2 years ago

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Could u maybe give me like a description of how u think some of the photos from the photography / model (I forgot what it’s called) scenes were like? (Clothing too and that stuff)

I wanna do fanart and I thought that’d be a cool place or start but u can honestly give me any scene to do art on (like if u have a preferred scene ud wanna see art of specific photo thing of them js tell me)

Oh my gods oh my gods bestie you cant just SAY that its like a dream come true!! Literally you could draw anything and I would love it sm!! Ahhh You are so cool bestie.

Of course I can explain those for you if thats what you wanna draw!

I will say that next chapter does have descriptions of a few of those photos! So below the cut will be kinda spoiler and also super, super, super long post cause I'll include some quotes for you! <3

So! My editor and I were literally talking last night about scenes that we just see so well. I imagine this fic as a movie while I'm writing it, so to me everything is visualized very well but there are two specific scenes that I can just see so well and think would be very cool to see! (please do not think you have to do this! Its fanart so do what you want to do! Have fun with it!)

First I will go over the outfits I think. Just a reminder of their old and new outfits as their typical Hero outfits do change halfway through the fic so far. Grian first describes HotGuys outfit as:

"his normal patrolling outfit. A black tight-fitted shirt with his signature blue and orange logo plastered in the center of his still gasping chest and baggy black pants cinched around his calves. He had his bow clipped to his back in a way that could not be comfortable to lay on and his quiver attached to his thigh. And of course, dark framed sunglasses"

And Grians original Hero outfit (the first version Cub gave him) is:

"...motifs of HotGuy while being different. Like that fact while HotGuys is mostly black, this is mostly white. It was sleeveless, tied around the neck with a bow in the back. There were white fingerless gloves stretching up past the elbow and halfway to the shoulder, these also had bows. A pair of high-waisted white baggy pants cinched around the calves much like HotGuys yet these were sent over a pair of orange fishnet tights. A belt held them above the hips with a heart-shaped belt buckle with the blue and orange of HotGuy. White combat boots tied to look together laced up with orange and pink laces. Resting on the head was a pair of pink sunglasses, heart shaped. And to finish off the look, there in the center of the shirt was a rounded off version of HotGuys logo, it almost looked like a heart."

I will refer to these both as Version One! Because we also have Version Two! Scar:

"The taller one has HotGuys current Superhero outfit, with a few tweaks to it, such as a few pink details that used to be black around the waist... changed to look more like Grians."

Grian:

"...Changes made to the outfit that he noticed were there when he first saw it. It did have less bows, such as the gloves now being smooth all the way up. The one in the back of his neck stayed, but with an added latch so if it came undone then the top would still stay on. The fishnets also changed from orange to light gray, probably to break up all the bright colors."

Grian never ends up ever wearing Version One. But there is a few times we see Scar still in his Version One.

Those are the outfits I'll reference during these scenes that I see!

The first one that comes to mind is actually described in the next chapter! It would be cool to have your idea on it before you know my description, but the picture that was taken while Grian was grimacing before remembering himself as they left the Hero Tower!

" ...he pulled his heart glasses down over his eyes, dowsing the world in a pink tint... he was bombarded with what felt like hundreds of flashing lights. Disorientated, he held tighter onto HotGuys arm tilting his head up to try and catch his face... HotGuy was looking away from him and into the crowd. He had his other hand lifted, waving and smiling so bright he commanded attention...

A few braver reporters shoved at Cub, pushing their cameras and microphones in Grians face, making him pause his steps pulling HotGuy with him.

His first reaction was to grimace at the audacity. He's just some guy, no need to push and be rude. But then he saw the flashes go off and he remembered himself.

This is what I said about it in the last chapter, and I do describe that picture in the next one. But if you like this one Id love to see how you see it!

Both CuteGuy and HotGuy are in their Version Two outfits here! And have similar looking makeup on!

"Dramatic wing with some more intricate, yet simple lines around it, along with an orange and pink gradient eye shadow. Finishing off the look with some mascara on his bottom lashes only. He also applies some pinkish lip tint to his lips."

If you dont like that one (I wont be offended if you dont! <3) I just love the scene where Grian is sitting, doing his makeup on the couch while Scar is preening his wings from behind!

"...Without another word, or look at Scar, he turned around with his back facing Scar. He heard Scar shuffle as well, probably sitting crisscrossed like Grian.

Hesitantly, Grian moved his wings off the ground and onto the couch behind him for Scars reach. He felt Scar slowly place his hand on the outside of his wing...

...He changed the subject, grabbing some eye primer and a few brushes. He felt Scar placing his hand back onto his wing, starting to actually straighten his feathers. Grian... moved onto foundation and eyeshadow, trying to keep his mind off it."

I just like the idea of them being very domestic and just best friends. Its probably one of the biggest extension of trust so far in the fic and it just feels nice.

Here, they are also in their Version Two. But dressed down. I mention that Grian doesnt have his boots or quiver on. I imagine neither does Scar as they are just having a quiet morning moment.

So, those are the two I see the most. But you also asked for a description of a few of the photos from the photo shoot! There are a few that come to mind!

The main outfit that Grian is in for a few of the photos is described as:

"It was a cropped pink and red hoodie sporting the HotGuy logo over his heart. The sleeves were a bit long so they poofed out around his wrists with white cuffs. His stomach was covered by a pair of high waisted joggers. The string belt was tied off with a heart shaped bow above his naval. Scar pointed to the slightly heeled pink and white combat boots resting to the side of the shoe box. He had also handed him a pair and heart shaped sunglasses that tinted the world in a rose hue."

Both he and HotGuy are also wearing makeup!

"...applying a pinkish blush over Scars cheeks including his nose; a call to Grians look where he used red to make him look almost cartoon-like. Then he took a blue pencil and drew a star right below his right eye, matching Grians pink one. On the other side he drew a pink heart, again matching his blue one.

Taking a step back, he nodded satisfied. Leaning back in, he added a few much smaller stars and hearts around his cheeks making them look almost like freckles,."

HotGuy is actually in his Version One for these pictures. I like to think that Cub had to go over a few things after he realized he messed up with Grian and also made Scar a bit upset as well. So by this point neither of their new outfits were ready yet.

As for the pictures themselves, half of the whole shoot is taking individual pictures such as headshots and full body shots that catch what Grian looks like and what the public can expect from him. In these hes tense but trying hard to look professional and kind. Smiling nicely at the camera, and when hes posed full body he has his bow pointed at the camera or to the side with a serious face.

When hes with Scar though, he finally is told hes too tense and to have fun. Which basically means Scar is being goofy to the camera to try and get Grian to laugh. But the photographer mostly catches when Grian is rolling his eyes with a smile, making him look a bit like a troublemaker. And when him and Scar are posing together, thats shown even more as Grian is purposefully making himself a nuisance to Scar. Getting in the way of the camera or taking his bow from him or pointing his own bow at him making Scar raise his hands in faux fear.

(A few specific ones I imagine are HotGuy pointing at the camera with a bright smile, while CuteGuy leans on his shoulder looking at the camera with his arms crossed and a sly smirk. Or Grian on the ground as Scar extends his hand to help him up, both are laughing. I also see Scar smiling and 'checking himself out' in the camera while CuteGuy is behind him pointing his bow at him while he doesnt even know.)

I mention him having a few outfits changes and those are stuff like, white and blue skirts with white tights underneath and whits knee length boots. A mix of shirts with either HotGuy or CuteGuy logos on it. He is dressed in what I feel like is a mix of Arianna Griande type look but functional superhero outfits.

Something I struggle with is keeping the balance of Grian being masculine and feminine. He is secure in how he dresses and the things he likes. But societal wise, theres still a little bit of pressure there and he knows that. What is a little bit of a spoiler, but will say, is that these photos, when released to the public, are meant to pain Grian is a mischievous and troublemaker look. And its a good thing. Him and HotGuy are pinned against each other as opposites two times over. Their colors are opposite, and to the public, so are their personas!

I hope this helps! I went a little bit on a tangent there so sorry! Please dont feel like you need to do any of this! I just hope I was able to help you with the compilation of quotes for you too look at! And sorry this took so long to answer!

If you need anything else please to be afraid to ask! And I cant wait to see anything you create! <3<3<3<3

#woftl #woftl spoilers #SunShineTalks #Maybe I'll draw them myself too!#draw my on fanart lol #thank you so muchh

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aceofwhump · 2 years ago

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Question is the legacy editor any good? I've never used it because I'm paranoid about it messing my posts up lmao but I'm curious

The short answer is yes. Legacy editor, the older way tumblr did posting, is in my opinion, the superior editor. I love the legacy editor. A lot. It is definitely superior and I'm sad staff has decided to slowly get rid of it.

However! With that said I've been pretty much exclusively using the beta post editor for the last like year when staff announced that they'd be eliminating the legacy editor eventually so I thought it'd be a good idea to get used to the beta editor. Which I suppose I did. I've gotten used to it and don't use legacy much at all anymore. I also wanted to use it because I got really tired of not being able to edit in mobile the posts I made on web using the legacy editor. With the beta editor you can edit across platforms which is soooo nice. (although it appears that in one of the apps many updates I can now edit a gifset I made today via legacy editor but not the posts I've made in the past using the legacy editor so who knows what's going with that).

But there's a lot of annoying things about the new beta editor that make it inferior to the legacy editor and I'm praying that staff will improve it. For starters, and probably my biggest complaint, is how awful it is to upload and rearrange images. It's so much easier in legacy editor to move images around. In beta the page moves when you start to move the image and it drives me CRAZY!!! I always end up putting the image in the wrong place because the page won't stop moving! Legacy is wonderful to arrange images. I do think the upload is slightly better in beta purely because it uploads multiple images in the order I select them where the legacy just puts them in whatever order it wants to and I have to remember what order I wanted my gifs in.

Legacy is also better because it actually differentiates between an image post and a text post. With the beta editor everything is technically a test post. So my gifsets are not considered an "image post". Some people have noted that the beta, since it's not an image post, it resizes the images a little and sometimes decreases the quality of the gif by doing that. I haven't really noticed that myself with my own gifs but doesn't mean it isnt happening.

The legacy editor also allows me to upload my gifs without stupid errors for no reason. Lately any time I upload more than 6 gifs at once I get an error message and have to upload them one by one. Its not because of size because they're always under 7mbs so I don't know why I can't upload them all at once. I hate it actually. And sometimes my gif will be under 10mbs (like 9.7mbs) and it'll tell me that the gif is too big. Excuse me tumblr but 9.7 is smaller than 10! I never had this problem in legacy.

The legacy editor is also better when it comes to using html, inserting links as text and not the stupid thing beta does where you paste the link and it becomes that stupid post preview thing that I hate, and oh my god is it awful for text blocks! When it first came out you couldnt select multiple texts blocks at all. You can now but it isn't the easiest. And it like expands when you do and makes it weird. Idk it's hard to describe. In legacy you can just...select all the text with no problems. Text blocks are treated like individual sections in the beta and make editing a major pain in the ass.

I also don't like thst apparently new xkit won't work in beta and you have to use xkit rewritten because fuck I don't want to learn how to use that one when I've been using new xkit for years but I guess I'm gonna have to now. I haven't been having any problems with xkit yet but who knows....

So yeah I think overall legacy is better. Beta Post Editor has some good things (I like the increased image upload limit, the editing tags is good) about it but there's so many problems. Unfortunately we're stuck with it so I've been sticking to using it exclusively to make the transition easier on myself. I do suggest becoming used to how it works and to just continue to provide feedback to staff about features we dislike or bugs we come across. Hopefully they'll listen and improve it.

#this got long #i'm so sorry #apparently i have thoughts about this whole legacy vs beta post editor thing going on right now #I've got to do a feedback write up to sent to tumblr #hopefully they can continue to edit and improve the beta post editor to make it more like the legacy editor #especially for us making gifsets #mod post #mod replies #ask #anon

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the-conversation-pod · 9 months ago

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Spring 2024 Lagniappe

And we're back! It's been a long production season for us, and we've still got projects to talk about! Join us and @twig-tea once more to answer our inbox questions and do quick takes on a bunch of projects we didn't cover in long form, and then hear Ben and NiNi catch up on a few shows or movies, wrap up the season, award Girl You Tried, and ponder the future.

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Inbox: Comparing Cherry Magic Adaptations 00:10:17 - Inbox: Remaking Het Romances into QL 00:16:04 - Catch Up Corner: Young Royals Season 3 00:21:23 - Catch Up Corner: Man Suang 00:25:12 - Catch Up Corner: DNA Says Love You 00:29:23 - Twig’s Dispatch 00:38:35 - Winter Round Up 00:44:45 - Girl, You Tried 00:47:35 - Look Ahead

The Conversation Transcripts!

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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 your 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 - Inbox: Comparing Cherry Magic Adaptations

Ben

And we're back. We have finally made it to the end of what feels like our longest production season we have ever been in.

NiNi

I feel like we have been recording this season since last season and we're recording right up to the end of the season. Our first recording for this season was on the 28th of January.

Ben

Oh my God!

NiNi

We've been here forever. We're going to change some things up going forward, and we'll tell you guys more about that when we figure it out.

But for now, welcome to our spring lagniappe. Let's go into our inbox. We have two great questions from two new names and we also have a very special guest. Say hi, Twig.

Twig

Hi everyone.

NiNi

Twig is back with us, and she's gonna help us answer some of these questions.

Our first question comes from @hellooobees and hellooobees writes: “I'm sure you plan to discuss something similar to this, but now that we have the Japanese and the Thai adaptations of Cherry Magic with the anime also airing, I would really like to know your opinions about them and the unique flavors they add to the mix.”

Thank you for the question, hellooobees. Ben, you've been tracking all of these adaptations. What are your opinions about the different versions of Cherry Magic now and what parts you enjoyed differently about different versions of the Cherry Magic story?

Ben

I'd say for Cherry Magic, I'm really glad that Akaso Eiji and Keita Machida were the ones who introduced us to Cherry Magic. I think both of those actors are really good, and considering what we now know about how much was changed in Cherry Magic, I think it was good that they had two solid actors who could handle that and bring some pathos to that when they were asked to do that.

But I gotta be honest, having now seen complete versions of the Cherry Magic story as it was originally written out, I will not be returning to the original Japanese live action. The Thai live action is probably the best version in the sense that it's the most watchable, and I think the most consistently satisfying to watch. I think the cast of the Thai version is extremely good, and I think they're very funny. I think they all play off really well together, and I think the overall set of arcs that all the characters go through are really satisfying in that story.

The anime is probably my favorite. The Thai cast is just so likable. The anime cast is… not? And I think I like them more for that. We talked a lot about the Thai adaptation earlier when we had Shan on the podcast. Let's talk a little bit about anime one specifically.

Twig, what were some of your standouts and notes you took while we were watching this?

Twig

The anime is my favorite version too, not because it's better, but because I had a little more fun with the way the characters are less perfect. Adachi in the anime… he's a little bit mean! And it's delightful. I love a mean twink, and Adachi in the anime version of Cherry Magic—he's a little sullen and a little mean, and he hates people a little bit. He's got a little bit of a misanthropy thing going on that is missing—from my taste—from the other versions of Adachi.

My favorite moment is when he's standing on a street corner and he sees a couple canoodling, and he's. Just like, “Ugh, straight people.” [laughs] And it's like, yes! Go off.

Ben

He's always calling people normies in his head. It’s so fucking funny. [laughs]

Twig

It's like, “Fuck normies.” Like, yes, I love you! [NiNi and Twig laugh] He's also, like, a little bit less afraid to use his power for his own benefit. There's multiple times where he's like, “Oh, I'm just gonna find out what this person's thinking just because I wanna know.” And he has does moral qualms about it. I really enjoy that more morally gray character that we get in the anime.

NiNi

I have a question, actually, about the use of the different mediums and cultures. Is there anything that, for example, in the anime version, the medium of anime allows them to do that wouldn't play as well in a live action version, or vice versa even?

Ben

There's a really great example of that around the date episode. The [Thai] episode ends with Achi first having a long conversation with Jinta at their cafe, and then he goes to Karan and they have a really big heart to heart moment. That is probably the best way to do that in live action. The actors only have to build the emotions once. Today we are filming this really big emotional scene about the date, and the actors can be ready for that.

But what I think anime allows you to do is the story can spread those scenes across multiple locations. In the anime version Adachi and Kurosawa unpack their bad date across a series of interactions, across like one or two days. A little bit at work, a little bit while they’re walking in the street, a little bit hanging out at a bar later, and then walking home.

You can do that in anime because you just can place the recordings at the settings that you want to put them in. And I prefer the way the anime handled the fallout of that bad date, but it's harder to do that in live action because it's hard to get the actors to deliver the right chemistry and mood in eight filming locations for a single overarching conversation.

Twig

I think also there is something about the medium that allows the characters to be a little bit more gray and still be lovable because everybody is in more of an extreme. If actors were trying to portray the level of intensity of emotion the anime characters do, that—it would feel very off putting. But characters are allowed to make giant faces beyond what a human can actually make in reality, [Ben laughs] and so I think it's easier to allow people to be more dislikeable and still be loved.

Ben

Twig and I really like how unlikable the anime cast is. That may seem incredibly weird, but like Rokkaku is so insufferable in the early episodes. And like, Fujisaki as a fujo is way more off-putting. Adachi is such a bitch, and then Kurosawa is intense and also aloof. I understand why Kurosawa is single in this version.

Twig

Yes, yes, exactly. [laughs]

Ben

With Karan it’s like, “Why is this man single?” And with Achi, it's like, “My body’s tofu.” Sir, you are New Thittipoom. [Ben and NiNi laugh] We are looking at them trying to pretend like you don't have these enormous fucking shoulders with the way they cut that shirt. Please.

That gets a little bit fanciful in Cherry Magic Thailand that these guys are single, because they're both really emotionally available for the most part. Achi is just kind of shy.

Twig

Yeah. I also just really like how much more Adachi as a character makes his own decisions proactively in the anime. In the other two versions, Achi and Adachi, feel very led along by the hand by Kurosawa and Karan.

NiNi

Okay, so I think we have a hierarchy. We have a best, a favorite and an original, I think. If that's a hierarchy.

Ben

If you're asking us in a vacuum, like, what's the best one like to show someone so that they'll be impressed with the Cherry Magic story, they should watch the Thai version.

Twig

Yeah.

Ben

If you're asking us what I think my favorite expression of the story is, I really think it's the anime. I really like this version of the cast, like, I like Tsuge and Minato the most in the anime, too. I don't really wanna recommend the original Japanese live action anymore. And it's not because I think they did a bad job with that one. It's just, they made some changes to the story and ended up kind of spinning around towards the end.

Twig

One of the things I focus on about all of the adaptations is that whatever changes were made to the story, the way the characters are changed to work with that was done really well. The characters feel true in each version of the story, and they feel different in each adaptation as a result.

Ben

For those of you who don't watch a lot of anime, or for those of you who do watch anime, there are some real knocks on Cherry Magic anime. The walk animations are not great, particularly when someone's coming from the background to the foreground. Oh my God. There's a Kurosawa walking towards him moment that will haunt me for the rest of the time. [Twig laughs]

I feel like I have to make that note because anime fans are very particular about animation and art. This is from a B-tier studio. So, be nice.

00:10:17 - Inbox: Remaking Het Romances into QL

NiNi

Let's move on to our next question that comes from happypotato48. And they write, “With all the recent news about Thai bl remakes and adaptations, it's getting me thinking if the industry is going to do remakes, why only BL, why not remake old hetero dramas or movies into QL/ GL/BL? So my question is, if you could pick one older or more recent non-queer Asian media that you wish to get remade into a QL/GL/BL, which one would you pick?”

I mean, I have my clear answers.

Ben

I really want you to go first because you are far more familiar with het romance than I am.

NiNi

My number one answer to this kind of question is always going to be Twenty-Five Twenty-One, because as far as I'm concerned, Twenty-Five Twenty-One is already a GL, they just got confused about what it was supposed to be. Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a Korean sports drama about fencers, and it has one of the greatest female/female relationships, supposedly a friendship, but I'm sorry, this was a romance to me. As far as I'm concerned, these two girls fell in love and it made me completely hungry for sports GL. That hunger that has not yet been appropriately fulfilled.

My other answer, which is an interesting one ‘cause I've been trying to get Ben to watch this. It's My Country: The New Age, fantastic historical kdrama about the birth of the Joseon era. Very warriors’ bond. And yeah, I would make that BL. I think it would work really, really well.

What about you Twig? Where’s your head at with this question?

Twig

All right, so I had one immediately come to mind because I'm still mad that it wasn't queer to begin with. It felt like it was supposed to be. Nana. Nana is a Japanese manga, I think they even did a live action. It's about these two women who are both named Nana moving into an apartment together, and they are so queer and the underlying theme of the show is so queer. Everybody in that show is so queer. And then they made them straight, and I'm still mad about it. I'm like, “You were wrong. You're just wrong about who these characters are and who they're in love with.” That one absolutely needs to be made into a GL, please and thank you. Also the aesthetic would make me very happy. [laughs] So I just want to see it.

The other one that came to mind is partially because I'm watching it now, but Hospital Playlist. It’s right there. It would be so easy to remake as a BL.

NiNi

Who would you put together?

Twig

Oh don't, don't put me on the spot. [laughs]

NiNi

Come on. I'm putting you on the spot. Who would you put together?

Twig

Who would you choose?

NiNi

Ik Jun and Jun Wan, I would absolutely make them a couple. I think they're fantastic. Not that I don't love Hospital Playlist exactly as it is, but if there had been an Ik Jun/Jun Wan romance, I would have also loved that.

What about you, Ben? Where do you sit with this?

Ben

This one is always a difficult question for me because the reason I'm watching Asian drama is for queer reasons. So like, I don't go out of my way to watch a bunch of that stuff. So unfortunately I do not have a het drama that I would like to see redone as a BL. The ones I've seen were basically BL already, like Coffee Prince is clear. It does not need to be remade to be more BL. And I don't actually think that Goblin would be better if it was a BL. I think it works as it is, and I don't really want to change that.

So I'm going to cheat. I'm not using an Asian drama for this. I want to see a gay version of Really Love. Which is like this generation’s Love Jones.

NiNi

This generation has a Love Jones?

Ben

It's really fucking good.

NiNi

Am I gonna have to watch this?

Ben

You really should. You need to go write this down and go watch it. These two people who are vibing at, like, maybe not the right time in their lives and the success that they're starting to get professionally and creatively is getting in the way of their ability to have the romance that is really important to them.

I think about that film at least once a month. I'd like to see a gay version of that.

NiNi

I have made a note, dear friend.

Ben

And it's about black people. So you should watch it.

NiNi

Always a win.

Ben

One of the reasons why I have really taken to Asian dramas is the west—particularly Americans—really fucking hate romance and I really like how earnestly—particularly Korean dramas—engage with romance. I think it's what makes BL possible. There's a real appreciation for romance itself in this part of the world.

I wish I had a better answer for this one, because I think it's a fun question.

NiNi

That's gonna wrap us up on the questions this season. Thank you guys so much. We always love hearing from our listeners. Please, don't be a lurker, don't be shy. Please send us questions. We love them so much.

00:16:04 - Catch Up Corner: Young Royals Season 3

NiNi

So before we get into the things that I actually watched, like way, way behind the curve, like two years behind the curve, let's get into some of the stuff that we actually caught up on this season that was, I suppose, current. There's two things that we had been waiting for. The first one was the third season of Young Royals and the second was finally being able to watch Man Suang.

Let's talk a little bit about Young Royals 3. I watched the whole thing. Ben still has not finished it. Ben, what did you think of the parts of Young Royals 3 that you have watched so far? How far have you gotten into it? Are you planning to finish it? And what do you think of it?

Ben

I got to Simon is grounded, Wille can't really leave the school now because of the curfew. I think that's as far as I got. I'll say this much: I like that this show seems to take the reality of dating a public figure seriously. I like that Simon is struggling with being online because you can't not be online in the modern age, and he is not given any real training for how to deal with it. Wille is given no fucking training either, he's like, “I'll handle it.” Really? Y’all let this impulsive boy who punches people whenever he gets mad and then just says whatever on national TV, he's in charge of teaching him on how to engage with social media? Okay, sure. Whatever.

But I'm enjoying the struggle they're having with being public. It's different when your whole relationship has been kind of closeted and now you're suddenly out. You have to get used to what that means, and maybe this isn't exactly what you wanted. I like where it feels like the show is going on the front end, but because I know there's a lot of angst ahead for them and I haven’t been in a very high energy mood for a bit to deal with that, I have not been in a hurry to continue it.

NiNi

Though we, the show has presented this thing about being in a relationship with a public figure, for me, tying that back to some of the Asian BL that I've seen, I always go back to the Lovely Writer well. Having these stories in the western context is always really interesting. Interesting in the sense of, I haven't seen something like this be done in the queer western space, but also in the fact that I've seen these stories now. I've seen them in the Asian space and so they feel familiar enough that I don't feel like they’re anything new or exciting, necessarily.

Did I enjoy Young Royals 3? I really did. But in terms of the Simon and Wille stuff, I like them. I enjoy their romance, I always have. But I felt a little bit like it had been done. And that's because I've been seeing these stories play out in Asian media for a while at this point. I thought that they did a great job writing it. I thought that it was fantastically acted. There's a sequence when Wille and Simon go swimming in the lake at sunrise that I think is definitely worth watching the entire season for, but, I feel like it's been done.

Ben

I will say on the way out from Young Royals that I want to applaud Omar Rudberg and Edvin Ryding for the execution of BGP over the last three or four years that they've been working together. I think those two have done a great job of managing the public version of their friendship and the professional requirements therein. They seem to have a really good handle on it, and it seems like their team did a really great job preparing them for all of this. They seem surprisingly chill for people who have gone through the BGP gauntlet.

NiNi

It has been some gauntlet and Edvin is a young actor in his first major role. I am very impressed with how he's handled himself.

Ben

It's just not one of the shows that I am most excited to watch, and some of that is me being kind of grumpy politically. When we're trying to advocate for non-English language media people seemingly struggle with having to read subtitles and don't wanna watch foreign content as a result. But had no problem showing up for this show. There's a wider conversation to have about how fandom will do anything for a white man, even read subtitles.

NiNi

Say it.

Ben

It's frustrating. I feel like I'm pettily not finishing Young Royals because I don't enjoy how people who say they want more queer stories have ignored BL and then bitched that there's no great queer stories and they watch Young Royals and they're like, “Oh my goodness, I've never seen anything like this.”

I will finish Young Royals. But I am frustrated with the Western audience rushing to watch this show, and then snubbing anything Asian immediately afterwards.

00:21:23 - Catch Up Corner: Man Suang

NiNi

The next thing we're gonna talk about a little bit is Man Suang. This is finally, finally been made available to those of us in the West and in an English language subtitle version.

I really enjoyed this—this is not gay. Or to be more clear, it is not obviously gay. But I thought this was a really interesting piece from Be On Cloud.

Ben

I did not watch this. I need you to tell me like, what is going on in Man Suang? Like, what's the drama here? [NiNi laughs] What is even the story they're telling?

NiNi

Oh, I get to summarize something. Okay, bear with me.

Man Suang is a story about Khem, played by Apo Nattawin. When Khem is a dancer and after he dances, he basically gets called back by these various men, women, it doesn't matter, to come to their rooms and perform sexually for them. At the beginning of the film, some assassin sneaks into where they are and kills the guy that he's with, who is a very important guy. He tries to save him and can't, and he's then caught and arrested because of course it's assumed that he is the one who tried to assassinate this guy. And so to save his own life, he agrees to go undercover at this very fancy club called Man Suang. He gets a job there as a dancer and he meets this Chinese-Thai guy called Chatra, who is played by Mile Phakphum. It eventually becomes known to him that he and Chatra are basically on the same side, spying at this club, so they form an alliance and a friendship and possibly something more. But whatever more is happening is sort of subsumed by his trauma.

Basically, it is a spy story. This feels about mid- to late-1800s in Old Siam. There's a lot of Chinese migration, that integral part of the story. Bas plays Khem’s friend, Wan, who is sent to Man Suang with him to join in the spy mission. Tong plays Hong, who is part of the family who owns Man Suang. They don't know whose side he's on. There's a lot of intrigue. There's a lot of drama, there's a lot of very familiar faces.

I don't know how to describe the movie other than to say it is intriguing. It is gorgeous. I am not entirely sure the story holds together all the way. My understanding as well, which, I don't know if this is correct, its that the version that we have gotten on Netflix is an edited version. It certainly feels that way. I feel like there are bits of the story that are missing that we are expected to fill in. But the acting is fantastic and particularly as we get down to the climax of the story, there is some phenomenal acting from Bas and Tong.

I have explained this terribly. When I edit this down it is going to be explained even more terribly. I wish that you had watched this so that you could explain it properly for our listeners. What I will say is that it's a gorgeous piece of cinema. It's beautiful to watch. Everybody is operating at a very high level in terms of the acting. It's a good film, it's not a great film.

Ben

I'll probably watch it at some point.

00:25:12 - Catch Up Corner: DNA Says Love You

NiNi

Our final catch up is, I finally watched DNA Says Love You! Ben, I'm gonna let you remind the listeners of what DNA Says Love You is about.

Ben

DNA Says Love You is about this group of friends who are, it feels like late college kids, who are trying to make their little ghost hunting YouTube channel function. The guy and his friend had this other friend when they were growing up, who ended up leaving and they've missed her for a long time. This new guy shows up mysteriously and seems to be connected to her. And you spend most of the show wondering what sort of mystery may be going on here. Is there something spooky going on? Is this a trans story? We're not entirely certain what's happening there.

When we finally get confirmation about what's going on, the reveals are really great and there's a really interesting execution of a… unexpected queer romance here. I'm gonna continue to talk around the reveals around Amber, because while I don't subscribe to spoiler culture, I do think the presumptions you bring to the table are part of the experience of this particular show, and I don't like revealing the full truth about Amber when I describe it to people who may not have seen it.

NiNi

Yeah, I think that's the right instinct. The first time we talked about the show, I remember you describing the show and thinking to myself. Okay, well, from that description I know what this is about. And then I go into the show and actually, no, I didn't know what it was about. I think that that experience is the right experience to have with this show. I think allowing the show to take you on the journey is the only way really to watch it? So I also will not be spoiling the show.

We're gonna continue to talk around what it is, but I do want to say, having watched it now, I am going to echo Ben's praise of Erek Lin, who plays Amber. I think that Erek Lin did an incredible job with this character. I enjoyed the story. I love that this is a story about friendship more than anything else, and about what it is to be a friend and what it means to carry somebody in your heart for a really long time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Is it perfect? No. There are a few things that I wish that the show had done—not differently, but probably given some more time and attention to. And then there's some side characters who I found fun and interesting, but I was a little confused about how they fit overall into the story.

Ben

I don't think the connective tissue with all of the romance bits going on was necessarily great in this. But I did appreciate the established gay couple sides who are dealing with a potential separation in their future. There's a whole thing of, like, growing pains and growing up in their story that I really connected to.

NiNi

Fair enough, but I wasn't entirely sure how they fit into the story thematically, or really, to be honest, narratively. They seemed to be sort of off to the side in their own little story. But yeah, overall, really good show. If I were in the business of recommending things, I absolutely would recommend it.

Ben

You have been recommending things with me for over two years now. Highly recommended, go watch it!

This show is about a queer experience that very rarely gets depicted in any kind of media. This is worth watching.

NiNi

Well said, sir. Well said.

00:29:23 - Twig’s Dispatch

Ben

We are going to introduce a new segment to the lagniappe of The Conversation, Twig’s Dispatch. We wanted to make sure we gave airtime to all of the shows that we choose either not to discuss on the show or we didn't think warranted a very long conversation.

NiNi

The point of the segment is for Twig to just do a round up of what's out there that we may not have seen, may not have wanted to watch, may not have been able to put effort into at the time to get a sense of the landscape and also for Twig to point out, hey, maybe you should watch this one.

Ben

So Twig, why don't you run us down your list of shows?

Twig

Dispatch! Hey-o!

So I've got 12 pieces of media that weren't on the list of stuff you've discussed in the season. My Universe it's on iQIYI, 12 two-part episodes that are only very lightly linked together. It felt like a series of school projects. There was a body swap, mistaken identity, in love with your sibling’s friend, destined lovers, enemies to lovers, love Triangle, a coach and an athlete, fake dating turns real, a twincest episode—it did walk a fine line, it made me very uncomfortable—age gap, paid companionship, and terminal illness. If you love one of those tropes, you can just watch that one miniseries associated with that trope, I guess.

There was a lot of not very well handled difficult subjects in these, so if you have any need for warnings, I would check for the warnings about the episodes you might wanna watch. If you're curious and wanna try one of them, my favorite one was Right Time, Right You, the destined lovers one, episodes five six. It's a little bit lighter than some of the other ones and has some of the better acting. There's also three or four different directors who, you can try out a bunch of different creators and see how you feel about them, which is kind of fun from a viewer perspective.

Night Dream is actually one of the ones that I like more. It's a second chance romance. I think it's on YouTube, childhood friends, Night and Dream. meet again after Dream had disappeared from Night's life for years and fall back into this sort of will they, won't they that comes from being closeted. This is one of the ones that I liked because it felt a little more queer and they did some interesting things with flashbacks, so we got a mid-series reveal that I thought was actually pretty well done. If you have time and you're open to a slightly more queer feeling story, it's worth giving a shot.

Going in with low expectations is a good idea, but it's not a terrible waste of your time.

NiNi

Bake Me?

Twig

The actual show was last season, but the special episode landed this season. My biggest complaint about this show was there wasn't enough baking. It was a really frustrating plot. Special episodes, you just have to have something to give people a chance to be with those characters again and see them be cute, really. Right? But they didn't take that route.

For Shin’s birthday Peach ignores him for days, so that Shin thinks that Peach is gonna leave him, so that he could surprise Shin on his birthday as like the worst birthday gift ever. I [laughs] was not into it. I don't love a big lie as a plot device for a relationship.

Ben

VIP Only?

Twig

My biggest note about this show was Liu Li coming into his own, being self assured and exercising his own agency and figuring himself out was actually great, but it came way too late. He was so much more interesting as a character when he actually took control of his life, but he was just so passive for so many episodes. What I love about it was he lets go of what he thought love was, that juvenile understanding of what love looks like, to realize what love really is. I thought that was a really cool arc and I was really sad that it wasn't treated better.

Love Senior the Series. Oh, I had such high hopes for this one, guys. It is essentially the lesbian version of SOTUS. It's a hazing ritual that happens with engineering. The first seven episodes were so great, we got lesbians who were thirsty for each other and they were actually more successful than their gay male counterparts in overturning the systems. We got a character who had casual sex, and it's fine. Yes, anti-purity culture! And then episode 8 happened and someone got drugged, there was slut shaming, there was a car accident, there was amnesia, and then noble idiocy—literally every one of my least favorite tropes. I guess they felt like they needed to have more for their characters to do, but I was, like, really enjoying them just being lesbians and horny for each other. Like, what was wrong with that?

Ben

Anyway, what is You and My Stars?

Twig

That was just a little micro series of two episodes by Mind Trio. They're like a little indie BL-producing YouTube channel that I like to follow. They did my favorite show that no one heard of, Calculating Love. It's not actually that good, but it makes me happy. [laughs]

This one is a little love triangle—I think it's like 25 minutes total—and it's one of the better ones on this list for sure. There's two friends, Hunter and Win. And Win likes this guy Time, but he finds out that Time likes Hunter and so Win tries to help Time to woo Hunter, but Hunter steps away and then we find out who Hunter likes. But I will not spoil it. It's cute. There's some star folding, hence the name.

After Sundown: essentially, they took the plot of Cutie Pie, but added ghosts, which sounds like it should be really fun. And so it was really disappointing how boring this movie was. [laughs] A poor kid comes to a large estate and is betrothed to a rich guy who's been cursed because his grandfather was gay. That's the summary. That should be really interesting! It was not. I was so bored.

NiNi

Twins the Series.

Twig

Of all the sports to get wrong in a gay series. How dare you? So these twins, Zee and Sprite, Zee plays volleyball, Sprite does judo. Zee gets beaten up by guys who were looking for his twin Sprite, so Sprite feels guilty and takes Zee’s place on the volleyball team to make sure that Zee can still qualify to compete for the national team later that year. He has to integrate with the team in order to hide the fact that he's not Zee, but he's first of all really bad at pretending to be his twin, and also it takes until I think it was, like, episode 8 before he actually got volleyball lessons from anyone? I was like, what are you doing? He's pretending to be one of the top athletes in a sport that he doesn't know how to play, and nobody notices for the entire series. I was aghast.

Sprite, the one pretending to be the volleyball player, falls for a teammate named First who hates Zee, the twin who he's pretending to be. The Big Lie went on for way too long. It doesn't get revealed till the very end. And First does not get to be angry about it for nearly long enough for my taste. The leads did have mad chemistry, and Ryan's waist is fantastic, so you know who, kudos to them for working with what they got.

Do we talk about For Him? What I kind of wanna say about For Him is: pay your actors, and we'll talk about your show. Give Tor Atagorn another show. That was my takeaway from that show.

NiNi

Happy Ending.

Twig

My favorite thing about this is all of the lore, because everybody went into it going, “Oh, it's Strongberry, it's going to be good” and then it wasn't. And then Strongberry came out and was like, “It wasn't really us, we distributed it.” I mean, the director said outright, “I wanted to make a sad short with an ambiguous ending.” and that's what we got, and I think now he's realizing that maybe wasn't the best goal.

NiNi

Bringing things forward that people may not have heard about, there is a BL that came out from Myanmar called Healing Thingyan.

Twig

This is a little YouTube miniseries. It takes place as friends celebrate the Thingyan Festival over a period of a few different years. It's short, it's cute, it's free, and it's the only show from Myanmar that I've seen where nobody died. So [laughs] already it's crossing over the bar into things that I'm happier to send support to.

One of the things that I feel like has to be said about anything coming out of Myanmar is the political situation. As long as it wasn't really bad, I was going to tell people to watch it because I wanna encourage views on shows where people are struggling against the political climate they're in in order to be able to show this kind of content. This show had to pass a censorship board to be made, so don't expect a kiss, but they're surprisingly cute for what they're allowed to make and in a country where the penalties are severe for making things that could be seen as encouraging quote unquote of queerness, I feel really strongly about sending views towards this thing.

Support local Burmese shows. Give it a shot. Give Myanmar some love.

NiNi

That's our first ever Twig’s dispatch. Thanks for being here with us, Twig.

Twig

Thanks for having me again.

00:38:35 - Winter Round Up

NiNi

Always a fun time having Twig on the show, new friend of the pod. I like that we're building up this stable of friends of the pod. I like hearing the voices of BL fandom on our show. It's great fun.

Ben

It's also like inviting friends over to your house, like it's different when you're just hanging out and doing stuff. But every time your friends come over, you have to clean up and shit. [Ben and NiNi laugh] There's a lot more extra effort on the front and back end now.

NiNi

Let's talk about the season as was. Ben, I know you have some complex, complicated, mixed moody kinds of thoughts about how this season went.

Ben

It's tough. The most obvious thing from our release schedule that stands out this season is this is, I think, the first time Japan has outnumbered Thailand in our number of shows we talked about—oh, wait, nevermind. They caught up because of Twig.

[Ben and NiNi laugh]

NiNi

In terms of long form discussion, we talk more about the Japanese this season. That is true.

Ben

This is the most we've talked about Japanese content on this podcast since we started, which is a real win for me because that's what I enjoy the most. But it's also a reflection of what's going on. Thailand is still out-producing everyone, but it's less about countries now and more about production teams and studios. We managed to have a really great conversation around Cherry Magic and Cooking Crush about what longevity looks like in BL. Now that there are more players actively engaged in the genre, it's not just us talking about 8 to 10 Thai BLs, the one or two Japanese shows that got released, the maybe Korean project that got released, the maybe Taiwanese project that got released. There's a whole lot more people playing in the space now.

My own life responsibilities have forced me to cut back on being present for every BL. The gap between a show I really am enjoying and engaged with and a show I'm not but I’m trying to stick with is a lot further than it's ever been, and I find it a lot harder to cross that gap. I'm relieved that we have more friends now because I can ask people what's going on. That's been the big shift for me. Being more cognizant of my own time and how I'm investing myself emotionally in the shows. I don't like showing up grumpy to productions. I don't really like being in a foul mood when I'm watching shows. I don't think that's fair to the shows and I don't think that's good for me emotionally either.

NiNi

This is generally where I've been overall, but that's just a function of my life right now. I've been so busy, even this season, I tried to watch as much as possible, but they are definitely things that just did not happen. And going forward they're going to be shows that I don't watch. Ben'll tell you my standard comment now when a new show comes up is, y'all tell me whether I need to watch this. There's some stuff that I'm definitely gonna be watching. That's not a quality bar, trust me, because there is some trash that I fully intend to watch [cough sound] cough We Are.

But [laughs] yeah, my thing is, as Shan said in the year in review, reclaiming my time a little bit. I don't have the time that I did have and the time that I am spending to do this stuff, I want it to be time that I enjoy. Watching stuff with my friends, talking about that stuff that I enjoyed or at least was bad in an interesting way with my friends, that's what I'm gonna be focused on, not on getting volume. So it's really now question of y'all tell me what I need to watch because you really wanna discuss it, and that's actually in a lot of ways working out really well for us, I think.

So, I'm good to keep that going. I also like us having more friends to have these discussions with now. Ben and I agreed from the beginning that if this stopped being fun, we're gonna stop doing it. We're definitely still having fun with this, but we're having fun in different ways now than we did when we started, and this show is always gonna evolve along those lines. Whatever is fun for us now is what we're gonna be doing. So you would have heard a couple of really fun segments this season.

One segment that we're not sure is going to keep going is the Catch Up Corner. Going forward, we don't know how much catch up there's gonna be in this show cause we just, we don't really have time to catch up on everything.

Ben

All I caught up on this season was two long ass Chinese dramas. [laughs]

NiNi

Ginny and Shan have gotten Ben into the cdrama space, which is a space, I'm sorry, they're too long. I can't do it. [laughs]

Ben

Nah nah, NiNi. All of these shows should be longer, 40 episodes, 58 episodes—

NiNi

Oh my God.

Ben

68 episodes!

NiNi

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

Ben

Every single show should go on for half a year, multiple times a week. We should end in the middle of a sentence.

NiNi

[laughs] You're terrible. You're really, truly terrible.

Ben

In terms of catching up on BL, it isn't our style to show up super duper late to the fandom experience and talk over it. We don't wanna be those people. And so if we didn't engage with a show during the season, we probably won't have an extensive conversation about it. We're probably going to rely on the fact that we have friends now to highlight those shows if we didn't show up for them for whatever reason. So that we get a conversation around the time it released. But if something pops up, like, what happened recently for NiNi when we finally got her to watch something, we’ll try to bring it to you and give you some reactions.

00:44:45 - Girl, You Tried

NiNi

Girl, You Tried. Who are our contenders this season?

Ben

[funny voice] Oh my God. This is probably the most difficult Girl, You Tried we've ever had because things were either bad and it's like, “Oh, absolutely not.” And then there are things that are like, “What was she even doing?” So I think legit contenders for Girl, You Tried: Chaser Game W, The Sign?

NiNi

I think it's those two.

Ben

Yeah, I was gonna say, I wanna kind of put Sukidoya there, but that feels mean.

NiNi

No, I think Sukidoya was better than that.

Ben

Exactly. That's the constant problem this season. There are things that didn't necessarily land exactly but they didn't really fail, or there were things that were just like, “Oh, absolutely not. We're not giving you an award for that.” [Ben and NiNi laugh]

I think it's really Chaser Game W and The Sign.

NiNi

So between those two, if I had to pick.

Ben

You do. That's the bit!

NiNi

[laughs] I think The Sign tried harder than Chaser Game W. So for me it's The Sign.

What do you think?

Ben

It is The Sign because Saint really did try. There's a lot of effort that went into The Sign. While we have some real consternation with it as a piece of copaganda, and as a maybe too-watered-down adaptation of its source material and kind of confusing plot threads, I think there's a lot of real effort that went into that. I think the performances are really earnest. It's not a half-assed production in any way. While it doesn't land exactly for me, I think it is probably the best Girl, You Tried [laughs] show we have.

NiNi

Going back to the original intent of Girl, You Tried, it was really for something with a good concept, but problematic execution. I think The Sign fits into that. I think that they had the right ideas. I think that maybe they got in the weeds and did not know how to get back out.

So, dubious congratulations to IdolFactory!

Ben

I don't want you all to feel bad about Girl, You Tried. I think there's a lot of great stuff in your show. I think the efforts that went into CGI work are really noteworthy. There's technical gains there that are gonna be really beneficial for the Thai media landscape, even well beyond BL. I really thank them for introducing Babe Tanatat to us, because I really like him! [laughs]

NiNi

And will cosign on Gap Jakarin. I am a fan.

Ben

We got to see Yoshi again! I haven't seen Yoshi properly since, like, Love Sick.

NiNi

It is the Girl Who Tried.

00:47:35 - Look Ahead

NiNi

Let's look ahead to the future. Give me one thing you're looking forward to this season or something that you're watching now that you're looking forward to talkin’ about.

Ben

I'm really, really looking forward to talking about Love is Better the Second Time Around. We just finished episode four of six as of this recording and it's still going very strong. I'm excited to talk about Unknown. I'm only two episodes in and it is really intriguing. I'm having a good time with that one, I'm looking forward to discussing that. I am hoping that 23.5 is a really good discussion for us. I would really like to have a positive conversation about Thai GL. I really want Milk and Love’s show to be really good. I love them both a lot, and it's really important to me that the show go over really well.

NiNi

My disaster loser lesbian love Ongsa. I want to say so much about what Milk is bringing to this role, so I am also [Ben laughs] looking forward to talking about 23.5. One of the things that I like about it so far is that it does not feel like flipped BL. It feels like a GL. It feels very specific to a lesbian experience and I am excited by that.

I can't say I'm looking forward to, but I'm gonna watch We Are. I just am. Ben’s on my case already, I'm on Ben’s case already. We both have feelings about New Siwaj, opposite direction feelings. We're both gonna be watching this grumpily, but for different reasons.

Ben

I just don't really know what's gonna happen in this. It's gonna be 16 episodes of people vibing. We already went through this with the fuckin’ Star in My Mind Our Skyy episode.

NiNi

But you see the difference is that unlike things like Star in My Mind and Hidden Agenda, we are being told upfront that this show is about nothing.

Ben

Well, I'm glad you're looking forward to four months of nothing.

NiNi

We've already established that right now I'm in a very busy time of my life, so something I can watch mindlessly and enjoy the pretty, I will jump on. I mean, Phuwin’s here? Everybody loves Phuwin.

Ben

That's not how I'm built! [Ben and NiNi laugh]

NiNi

For me this is really simple. Phuwin is here. We love Phuwin. I am looking forward to seeing what Winny and Satang give. I am very interested in seeing AouBoom. I grew to love Boom through the mess that was Hidden Agenda and I am looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table here. There isn't much of a table but they are going to lay it as best as they can.

I am also looking forward to watching Unknown and Love is Better the Second Time Around. Looking forward to catching up with those once they're complete.

Ben

I'm excited for Living With Him. We've got an interesting one from Korea called Gray Shelter. We've got a meta one coming from Japan called At 25:00 in Akasaka, which is about two guys preparing to film a BL and complicated feelings coming in.

Up Poompat is going to be back with us again in My Stand In. He's gonna be playing across Poom. That one looks like it's gonna be messy as hell, and I think Up is well suited for that kind of messy.

There is another Korean one on the horizon called Boys Be Brave, and A Man Who Defies the World of BL 3 is supposed to release [laughs] sometime in April. I'm excited to see Inukai again. I'm excited to see Yutaro again. I'm excited to see Idegami Baku again. Very, very happy about this.

NiNi

I'm excited to catch up actually with Zettai BL. I have been meaning to watch that for years, so I might take advantage of this opportunity.

So that's what we're looking forward to coming up. Going forward, we're going to be switching things up a little bit in terms of our schedule of when things come out. We're still going to be seasonal, but probably on a more extended schedule, bring us a little bit closer to real time. So look out for announcements from us, but for now that's going to wrap us up on the lagniappe and going to wrap us up on the spring season.

We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

#podcast #lgbtq #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #thai bl #bl series #spring series #japanese bl #korean bl #myanmar bl #taiwanese bl #spring 2024 #Spotify #cherry magic #dna says love you #man suang #young royals

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