So what’s funny is that I had half of this particular newsletter written back at the end of October because I was going to talk about the various Halloween-y shows airing, and then I just never finished it. The shows airing at that time were also the inspiration for what I wanted to talk about today, which is pronoun translation.

Translation in general is hard, and the translations done at iQiyi and GMMTV are often either done with AI/MTL with some editing (IQ) or clearly pretty quickly with an emphasis on simplicity and clarity (GMMTV). Viki definitely has the best subtitles in the biz because they’re done by volunteer (?) teams who aren’t afraid to annotate word usage when it’s something that doesn’t have a direct English translation. Anyone who watches kdramas on Netflix knows the pain of seeing “hyung” translated as “bro.”

The real struggle is when it comes to conveying levels of formality and honorifics—I remember watching a time travel show with my parents where a big point that kept coming up was that the seemingly older character was using respectful/honorific language with the protagonist, and the protagonist would use casual language with someone who appeared to be his superior. We simply no longer have a way to convey that in modern English, and as a result so much gets lost.

And Thai simply has so many pronouns. All very interesting and useful pronouns, but it’s only because I’ve learned just enough Thai and seen just enough explainers that I even recognize when the captions aren’t getting something across. Like in ThamePo, Baifern and Po use rude language with each other to indicate that they’re very close, but there’s nothing in the subtitles that could help convey that. At the time when I started this letter, I was losing it at That Summer, which had Lava constantly calling Davin “Your Highness” in the subtitles, when as far as I can tell he wasn’t really, he was just using very formal language. Which makes more sense if Davin is supposed to be, you know, in hiding.

It’s that time of year—GMMTV upfronts. They announced a whopping 34 projects plus updates on the Love of Siam musical and Scarlet Heart, so there’s lots to talk about. I’m pleased to say that I’m at least interested in the majority of them, and that of the five I’m most excited about, 3 of them are from the GL list. Finally, the girls get some crazy tropes to work with!

First though, I did talk about this on twitter, but I saw people being all negative like, can’t wait to never see these projects or for them to get completely changed, which is just. It isn’t as though GMMTV is the only one who does this! There are so many pilots from other companies that we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of, and many of them change in production because, you know, they’re pilots. Proof of concept. But whatever, you gotta uniquely hate GMMTV to get woke fujoshi points I guess.

Anyway, much like last year I’m going to award superlatives because going one by one would take forever. There’s definitely some trends—fake dating, same name trope, rebirth (which I’m thrilled about), amnesia (again), office romance, and sugar babies/friends with benefits. There’s a definite increase in stories about adults, which probably correlates with the primary demographic of GMMTV getting older.

Bet you thought I forgot about this thing, huh? Well joke’s on you (or me?) because actually I’ve just been very busy and not able to watch shows. Firstly I was traveling abroad, where it turns out most of the shows I was watching weren’t available on my usual streaming apps, and then I immediately got sick when I returned, which I can only assume was from yaoi-withdrawal. But I’m back and am caught up on the stuff I was in-progress on at the very least, though now there’s a bunch of new things I want to check out. Fall seems to be the season of shows more to my taste, which is a little unfortunate, but I guess I’ll have the spring to catch up. I just hate being behind!

Currently Watching (On Air)

Revamp: You know, I didn’t really have terribly high expectations of this show going in, and it’s definitely not perfect, but it’s like being given a cheesy YA vampire book but gay. Which I love. There’s plenty that isn’t fully explained—are we ever going to learn anything about Jonoel??? How tf does that time travel/mindreading power even work??—but it has a surprisingly consistent plot and lore overall. And did I scream when they showed the sketch of Dunk at the end of episode 8? I sure did!

I’ve felt like I’ve been in a weird holding pattern with shows until this past week, which I think is because I hadn’t finished anything since Pit Babe II, but then two shows I was watching ended last week and I finally finished Revenged Love, so I guess I’m back. I’m traveling the next two weeks and I’ve decided I’m going to try to wrap up a bunch of the shows I’m most of the way through.

Fall seems to be my season when it comes to BL releases, though—most of what’s been announced for the next few months is stuff I’ve been looking forward to. Which is worrying, because I remember at the end of last year, I had like eleven ongoing shows.

Currently Watching (On Air)

I’m back from a week away with a bunch of friends, which was both very affirming and very depressing to leave. On the other hand, I can catch up on things that I’ve fallen behind on. The networks have finally timed it out correctly so that the supernatural themed shows are airing leading in to fall, which suits me perfectly.

I was feeling like I wasn’t watching much of anything, but now that I look at my list I realize how untrue it is. I think it’s more that only a few of the currently airing shows have me gripped and I haven’t finished anything recently since I fell off a few.

Currently Watching (On Air)

I was having a discussion the other day with a friend about “good” versus “enjoyable” and how I categorize things I’ve seen. For me, there are a lot of things I think are good that I don’t necessarily enjoy and a lot of things I enjoy that I don’t think are “good.” Really, though, so much of media enjoyment is about personal taste, because a piece of art only exists in conjunction with the viewer.

I tend to divide things up in my head based on whether or not I would recommend something to someone. With BLs and with Thai BLs specifically, there’s the complicating factor of Thai/Asian TV conventions that might not play well with a first-timer. And of course, recommendations should be highly personalized to the person being given the recommendations, because as I said above, art exists in conjunction with its audience.

All that being said: when it comes to declaring something “good,” what I have come around to on this is, “Do I think this work is successful in what it’s trying to do?” There’s an instinct to compare all works against each other—this past week, when someone was complaining about GMMTV’s obsession with social media stats, they posted a graphic of all of the awards won by I Told Sunset About You with the caption, “Your engagement will never get you this, P’Tha,” which was funny to me both because several GMMTV shows have done quite well at end of year awards and because in general GMMTV shows are trying to accomplish something very different from Nadao shows. It’s like comparing your local diner to a molecular gastronomy restaurant. They’re both food, but they aren’t trying to give you the same experience. So instead, I try to look at something and see what story it was trying to tell and if I think it did it effectively.

For example:

I have fallen woefully behind on my fujoshiing these past two weeks, partially because of scheduling but also because I’ve been busy watching Leverage: Redemption. It’s interesting watching an American show, especially one as episodic as Leverage, because as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of Asian dramas in general really aren’t that, largely because they’re adaptations. (I had this discussion recently with a friend of mine who is a writer of episodic fiction about how Chinese shows in particular do not seem to take episode breaks into account when pacing out their shows, or at least do not take them into account the same way we would.)

I’ve also seen several takes the past couple of weeks about what each country does well, and everyone seems to think that Thailand is the worst at writing and directing and Japan is the best, which I have to say I don’t really agree with, though it does also depend on what you consider good. My real take on what each country does well and not well is something like this:

Thailand: It’s undeniable that they often have very rough production, which is in part due to how fast they (especially GMMTV) turns out their projects, but it is also just because the film/tv industry isn’t as developed, infrastructurally. I don’t know the ins and outs of funding or anything, but even just looking at the production quality over the last 10-20 years makes it very apparent that the Thai industry has been growing exponentially to catch up to the rest of Asia.

I was looking up a show from the early/mid 2000s recently for research reasons and when I dug up a clip on YouTube, it really looked like something from the 80s in America, both stylistically and in quality. Even comparing, say, School 2013 from Korea and LoveSick, which came out within a year of each other, there’s a noticeable difference in deliberate style to School 2013 even though it is very obviously dated.

As I write this, I realize that it might seem like I’m ending this newsletter, but actually I’m thinking about show endings since two I was watching finished this week. Both managed to avoid the common Thai BL trope of having time skip (though to be fair, GMMTV is the worst about this), which was great, but I don’t know if they were equally successful finales.

In most of my writing workshops, we talked a lot about endings and how difficult they are. Beginnings are hard, of course, but endings are the final impression of the work, and it’s hard to escape a bad ending while a weak beginning can be forgotten. Think Game of Thrones or the special episode of Jack & Joker, both of which managed to alienate their fans in different ways.

It’s hard, right, because you need to wrap up all the story elements in a satisfactory way, but in a way that doesn’t feel too contrived. And wrapping things up too much can be more frustrating to some people, while others like a friend of mine is like, actually I would like to see this couple all the way until they die.

That latter instinct is something I’ve noticed a lot of romances fall into, with a lot of fics, romance novels, and shows having some kind of flash-forward sequence at the end. It seems to be more common with slow-burn stories, which I suspect is partially because the “resolution” of the story is the couple getting together, but the writer wants to show that the relationship actually lasts. It’s hard to write denouement for romance, I think, because it’s more than just the end of a situation (the aftermath of a murder being solved, the cleanup post disaster), it’s the start of a new story, just one the audience won’t be seeing.

I started this morning by watching first episode of Hide & Sis, which is not a QL, but is one of those ensemble-cast GMMTV extravaganzas. It’s delightfully trashy in the way I associate with early 2010s k-dramas and American soaps. Actually, it reminds me of the show Revenge, which I absolutely adored the first season of. I wish Snap25 had put this energy into Pluto and truly made it a thriller or, alternatively, leaned off their insane color grading to make it look less like one. At every moment in that show it did feel like someone was about to be murdered and yet nothing! Please.

Anyway, this had me thinking about trashy TV and why some shows work for me (this, Reset) and others profoundly do not (My Golden Blood). I think I largely stand by the opinion that the issue with MGB is the overall structure and plot of the show, because it’s positioned as a vampire thriller when it starts, but fails to deliver any of the actual genre staples. I get the suspicion that a lot of people think you can’t balance a thriller and a romance, and I’ll admit it’s difficult, but Dr. Sam has done it multiple times, with Spare Me Your Mercy being possibly the hardest lift since the characters are on opposite sides for most of the show, and yet she delivers. The trick is that, as always, the characters’ romance storyline needs to tie into the main plot.

Currently Watching

I was out of town this past week visiting a friend and among other things, we watched the first 8 episodes of ThamePo, which had me thinking again about why I think that show is so successful at what it does. A large part of it is how clearly written all the characters are—sure, the Oner staff, Baifern, and Gam aren’t that deep, but we don’t need to know that much about them for the story or their involvement to feel meaningful and we do get little complications to their characters that indicate a fuller depth of personality behind them.

But what is really striking to me is that the entire main cast, aka all of MARS and Po, have an obvious stake in the plot and personal goals outside of the main storyline. And we know their interests to some extent as well, both from prop and set choices and from how they set up scenes between them and Thame and/or Po.

This is kind of a continuation of the thought from last time, but a lot of shows with larger casts struggle with this, either with establishing their supporting characters as fully realized ideas instead of plot devices or with balancing out the need to do that with giving the main couple enough time to develop. Recently, I think My Golden Blood did a particularly bad job of giving the supporting characters any depth or personality, and it really contributed to the “bad NCT vampire AU” vibe of the entire show. I think a compelling enough main couple can distract from this—it’s why I’m still watching My Stubborn—but that of course comes down to what an individual person finds compelling.

Of all shows, Playboyy actually did a pretty good job with this, which I think is largely because it’s a thriller and you need to give all the characters more than one personality trait and motivation to increase suspense. I wouldn’t call any of the characters on that show particularly complex, but they all at least have goals and secrets, both of which are things that different professors of mine have pointed to as a way to create plot and complexity.

June, appropriately, is overflowing with BL shows, and if I’m honest, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed because there’s a lot I’d like to check out!

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how shows balance having multiple couples, because four of the shows I’m watching have at least three couples, and it’s striking how some shows do it well and some don’t. I was laying awake in bed last night trying to pin down what makes it work for me, and I think a large part of it has to do with how the characters interact with whatever the main storyline is and with each other.

There’s a definite trend in BL to have a show where there are multiple ships who only superficially interact—I think this used to be more common in older shows (I’m thinking, for example, of Why R U?, where the many, many couples rarely interact with each other and the storylines are essentially completely separate from each other), but it still shows up from time to time, and I suspect often part of it is because they’re adapting web novels, where the side couples are often given a set of side stories that are happening concurrent to the main storyline. The difficulty in adaptation is making it not feel like a diversion from the story of the show.

This happens more frequently with couples with 3 or more couples, too—Syn and Nuer in Cutie Pie, for example, are really very tangential while Yi and Kondiao are both paralleling the main relationship as well as being confidantes of the main characters—but it appears elsewhere too, like in Dark Blue Kiss where Mork and Sun are just living an entirely different genre from Pete and Kao.

I have finally resurrected out of my Covid bed, where I have been languishing for the past week. As part of my convalescence, I finished reading the Murderbot books and also read the webtoon Who Can Define Popularity? which was the source text for both Blueming and Something’s Not Right, the latter of which I watched while sick. So naturally I’ve been thinking about how adaptations work and what makes a story translate well into a different medium. So I’m going to do a slightly different format this week and go through some of the things I’m watching with that in mind.

Sweet Tooth Good Dentist: Okay, I’m not up to date on this show, but I did see that Mark and Ohm were talking about disappointed they were with how the show has not done very well, which is so tremendously not their fault—I think there’s a lot to say about the decision to only put it on iQiyi, but there’s also a lot to the fact that it’s just a strange slice of life type show that was marketed as a slapstick romcom. And it is that in places, but largely that isn’t the genre.

I said this on Twitter, but the most appealing part of the show to me was how it kept circling back to their first date and showing us more of what happened on that day and why it was important to them. I do think that might have been the thing to focus on, because it got a little too in the weeds of its episodic conflicts—which, I comment a lot on how BLs that are adaptations need to think more in terms of how episodes pace out a story, but this was episodic in the way Jittirain tends to write her college stories, where she focuses a lot on the little things about university life and relies on the couple(s) to create the sense of overarching narrative.

And that works sometimes, especially when a couple is very push-pull, but it felt to me like the writers on this show couldn’t quite crack what was the kernel of heart to this story and so it feels pretty unfocused a lot of the time. It’s a story that needs a firmer narrative frame to set up stakes; even We Are, which is similarly kind of meandering and slice of life, has the ever-present payment agreement and the timeline of Peem submitting his new painting.

Due to it being my birthday last week, I was immensely busy with real life plans and thus unable to do the important work of writing my fujo newsletter, although I was able to catch up on a few shows.

Currently Watching (on air)

Sweet Tooth Good Dentist: I still don’t really know what the overall arc of this show is meant to be, even if I am enjoying it. It’s very slice of life, but even slice of life shows usually give you some idea of the scope, and this one…hasn’t. It seems like maybe there’s still more to resolve with Sant’s mom (and btw, that stuff made me get all misty-eyed) and still some mysteries to Jay, so it isn’t like I can’t see places it’ll go, I’m just not sure what the end destination is.

One thing I really liked from the last couple episodes was the conversation between Gugg and Yada about her bisexuality and how she feels pressured to pick one or another while simultaneously feeling anxious about not being able to offer her ex what a man might. It was an interesting conversation, and a more nuanced discussion of bisexuality than most BLs are capable of having.

I’ve been watching Weak Hero, which is very much in the vein of shounen anime “these guys are obsessed with each other while they beat each other up/beat up people together” but more realistic about how that violence plays out. All of which is a big departure from the BLs currently on...I would love a BL that is more fully enemies to lovers. More serious Bad Buddy?

Currently Watching (on air)

Sweet Tooth Good Dentist: I nearly screamed when Mim showed up in this episode—I saw her in the background before Yada introduced her to Gugg and went oh no rip this poor boy. ViewPoon will never be reality...

As for the actual main couple, I’m a little surprised how quickly the love triangle was resolved, but also it’s clear there’s a lot to work out with regards to both Sant’s financial situation as well as whatever happened to Jay. I feel like there might still be more to learn about Jay and Captain’s friendship as well, so I hope Captain sticks around and not just because I find Jimmy absolutely hysterical in this role.

I was having a conversation with a friend about what I’m watching recently and I was like I’m not watching anything, which is just empirically untrue, but compared to like the end of last year when I had a show every day, this is nothing.

Currently Watching (on air)

My Golden Blood: I’ve been referring to our watching party for this show as our weekly self-flagellation because I don’t think any of us are really enjoying this but all of us are just invested enough to want to see how it shakes out. My only bitch is Nakan, and I’ve reached the point of being irritated with the main characters where I’m like maybe we just let him do his evil plan. Let him eat all the humans or whatever. It’ll hopefully mean I see less of Joss’s dick.

Sweet Tooth Good Dentist: I always had a feeling that Jimmy would do great in a role where he gets to be unhinged, and I was right. Captain is both very stupid and very weird, and Jimmy is absolutely killing it. He’s so much more entertaining here than in any other project I’ve seen him in except maybe Bad Buddy. This moving into a genuine love triangle is going to be fun because I haven’t seen one of those in a hot minute (I don’t count ThamePo because Po was not aware that a love triangle was happening). I don’t really know where this show is going longterm, but I do like the characters a lot and am willing to see where they take me.

Once again I have been very busy and unable to keep up with shows regularly, although I did have enough time to watch all of The Pitt, my quarterly non yaoi show. I’m finally somewhat back on track, and have just watched the most recent Break-up Service, which is also not yaoi but did feature a storyline this week about a bl actor in a fixed couple who wanted to quit bls so he could openly be with his boyfriend.

It’s an interesting storyline for a GMMTV show to do, given how they are maybe the preeminent fixed-couple company and get a lot of criticism for their fanservice and such. The central conflict of this episode was that Aungpao’s character was in a fixed couple with Prom, but was secretly dating Drake. It’s not said outright that he is contractually forbidden from publicly dating, and it’s also referenced that if he was in a straight movie there would be a focus on shipping with the female lead, both of which I found interesting because the straight fanservice aspect tends to be ignored by people who want to criticize BL fixed pairs.

It did have me thinking about the difficulty of dating as a fixed couple actor; there are certainly those who do have partners we know about (Love and her boyfriend, Inn is not exactly public-public with Tie but it’s well-known, Pond Ponlawit is dating Jamie GMMTV). I don’t know how much they’re asked to not date publicly a la idols versus just wanting to keep their private lives private and protect partners from blowback from delulu fans, and I don’t know if there’s really a good answer for it, because fans will be insane either way. I do think Inn gets away with it partially because he entered the fixed couple with Great while already in a semi-public relationship, but the amount of insane hate Bright got for having a girlfriend well after having left GMMTV in addition to not having been in a show with Win for several years—well, I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to date in the view of fans.

Currently Watching (on air)

A friend of mine was texting me updates from Awesomecon this weekend, which included a BL panel that was self-admittedly slightly out of date—notable couples included MewGulf and BrightWin—which was very charming to see. It’s actually really interesting to me how rapidly the QL landscape has changed, even just over the last couple of years. There’s been a clear increase in financial investment across the board, as well as being able to attract more experienced actors who in the past might have shied away, largely because being a BL actor was seen as a step down or something.

On the GL front, I saw a tweet that was like, we finally have girls no thanks to THAT company (in this case GMMTV), which did make me roll my eyes. The GL landscape has been pretty barren across the board—it’s hardly limited to just one company—which I think is due to a combination of factors. To me, it’s just funny to specifically mention one company that is actively building its GL pairing roster and has been working on it for a couple of years now; I think people underestimate how long it actually takes to get a project going, from pitch to casting to writing.

This is not to say that they have a good balance, because they demonstrably don’t, but I also appreciate that the GL couples at GMMTV are not just femme4femme, which has honestly been my biggest complain about most GLs that exist. This too has been changing, as have the stories that GLs have been able tell (for some reason, there was such a preponderance of woman in a comphet relationship but secretly yearning for x girl stories that tend to play out in similar ways), and that’s really great to see.

Currently Watching (on air)

I’ve been so wildly busy the last few weeks that I’ve barely had time to keep up with what’s airing, let alone finish the several shows I’ve had on the go. A true trial for the dedicated fujoshi.

Currently Watching (on air)

Perfect 10 Liners: The last couple of episodes have just been so sweet—I like how quickly the potential misunderstanding was resolved between Faifa and Wine, because it tracked with their personalities. Not enough Tay for me, but we can’t have everything, I suppose.

The issue with Faifa’s mom was, as per, resolved pretty quickly, but that’s because a show can’t really devote 10 episodes to the therapy that would actually be required to unpack everything that’s gone on in that relationship. I think the mom is actually an interesting character—to me, it seems clear that she loves her kids and is fully aware that she has failed them on many levels, but doesn’t even know where to begin fixing it.

I’ve been wildly busy and also sick over the last couple of weeks, which means I’ve had neither time nor energy to keep up with most things and have instead been rewatching whatever makes me feel the most comfort at any given time. This includes one specific episode of Marry My Husband, which has me craving rebirth revenge content so badly that I wish I could reach into the future and pull out the completed Reset series with Pond Ponlawit and watch it now. At least they’re chugging along on filming.

Currently Watching (on air)

Perfect 10 Liners: I’ve seen so much hate for Yotha over the last couple of days because of what we learn about Faifa this recent episode and I don’t think it’s unfair, necessarily, but I also think it underestimates that Faifa is really good at putting on a front and also that their entire family is bad at communication. I do think Yotha is right to worry about Faifa not knowing how to properly be in a relationship (I think his real concern is Faifa won’t be able to prioritize well) but he’s also wrong about it generally, which is a really interesting place for his character to land.

I think this back 2/3rds of the show have been much stronger because Yotha and Faifa’s storylines inherently go together and complicate each other. Faifa is such a Director New character—he loves characters who put on a cheerful and happy front to keep everyone around them happy, it shows up in so many of his shows that I’ve seen.

A lot of my shows in the last week have had queer angst to some degree or another, which following last week and the general consensus that it has become less important to modern bls made me go, yeah, we are still here. It hasn’t left.

Earlier today, a tumblr post crossed my dash that was about the phenomenon of seeing overt homophobia portraying in media being a thing that happened in “the past” and how 2000s/2010s being too recent to be considered “the past” by most people, but if you go back and look at shows from that time, there is so, so much homophobia. Entire characters were created where the joke was essentially, “he is slightly effeminate in x way.” Because that’s what it was like! Things have changed (in the US) so rapidly over the last decade alone since marriage equality passed that it feels anachronistic in both directions.

One of the interesting things about watching especially Korean and Japanese BLs is feeling a little like I’m looking at something from the past. Very few couples in those shows are openly gay to anyone aside from their close friends or family, and sometimes not even that. There’s a very real sense of danger to the prospect of them coming out. Thai shows I feel like have never had quite as much of this, though there used to be a lot more uncertainty about being out that still appears sometimes (Ossan’s Love does this, which is actually what triggered this whole thought).

Anyway, the point is that it’s interesting to look at as a trend, and in another life I would be writing a paper about it, but instead I’m putting it down here, in my fujo corner.