If I’m honest, what I really want to write about today is Conclave, but this is a newsletter for fujo news, and while I personally would read the problematic blasphemous yaoi for Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci in that movie, that only exists in my head.
Apart from Conclave, what I’ve been thinking a lot about is the irritating Thai vs. Korean (vs. Japanese vs. Taiwanese) BL fight that was happening on Twitter this week because of Love in the Big City (now on Viki). I have more than a few complaints about this, starting with how I think calling LITBC a BL is like calling Queer as Folk or, like, Angels in America a BL.
This is of course a semantics thing—I am more inclined to accept general queer narratives in manga being called BL, whereas when it gets applied to TV or film I get more irritated because in those mediums I think BL has a different connotation and by extension different audience expectations. I think I’m right, though—like, while a manga about queer male life would get the BL tag, I doubt people would call the recent Tim Drake Robin run BL despite his relationship with his boyfriend being a main story element.
When it comes to using BL as a descriptor for TV, it’s a term that became used specifically for shows focusing on romance and often youthful romance. Not that I think LITBC isn’t romantic, but calling it a BL under those expectations is misleading at best. It’s a disservice to the source material, which is an award-winning novel based on the author’s experiences as a gay man in South Korea, and it’s a disservice to the genre of BL television, which is not trying to accomplish the same thing as LITBC.
And of course, because LITBC is more tonally elevated and literary, people are thrilled and eager to jump onto it to show how Korean BL (again, it is not a BL) is better than Thai BL, which they’ve all decided is either softcore porn only for women (ignoring all the queer male creators involved in the Thai BL industry, even if many of the original stories were written by women) or worthless campy fluff. I don’t think any country does BL better than another—each industry has its own strengths and weaknesses—but boy, has this ongoing rhetoric made me a Thai BL defender.
Things I’ve seen just this week:
Thai BL could never—in reference to a sex scene from LITBC, to which many people pointed out that there are a lot of Thai shows with sex, followed up by the OP saying that all Thai BL sex scenes are noncon and problematic, before admitting to really only having seen Kinnporsche and I think Tharntype, both of which are somewhat notorious for those exact things.
Thai director Jojo Tichakorn had a really great qrt of the original pointing out that there’s actually a really wide diversity of narratives in Thai BL these days, and you can’t judge it solely on what was being released 4-7 years ago. Honestly, if Jojo qrt-ed me to call me stupid, I’d delete my account, but that’s just me.
Someone on Tumblr saying that LITBC was what Jojo’s Only Friends wished it could be, to which my moot was like, I think Only Friends was exactly what Jojo wanted it to be. Which is correct! You don’t have to like that show, but it wanted to be about messy queer men making bad decisions about sex and romance and how that affects their friendships. LITBC is about a gay man in a repressive country trying to find love. Two very different things.
General insults about the quality of Thai BL from the content—again, either claiming all of it is porn (which I think is the OPs telling on themselves more than anything, because you do have to actually seek out stuff that isn’t fade to black)—or claiming that it’s all sexless high school romance. Pick a fight, besties. It can’t be both.
I do see this rhetoric from Japanese BL fans sometimes, but more often I see this kind of derogatory language toward the Thai BL industry from KBL fans, which seems to stem from general over idolization of Korean cultural output, xenophobia and/or racism towards Thai culture/people, and, honestly, homophobia. It’s wild how much I see the take that it’s better for BL to be chaste, actually. It’s often cloaked in the claim that all BL is produced by straight cis women, for straight cis women (and therefore any sex scenes are exploitative or something), but as I pointed out earlier, a lot of the creatives in Thai BL are openly queer.
Are there problems in the Thai BL industry? Oh, absolutely. Do some shows rely on the promise of nc (no children) scenes for viewership? Sure! But I don’t know, I think it’s great that Thai BLs have reached a point where they actually do show scenes of physical intimacy between gay men. I’ve seen some KBLs (many of which I liked!) where I’m genuinely not sure if the main characters know what sex is.
I had a whole other section planned here for my personal ranking of how explicit intimacy scenes are based on five different factors but this ran long, so instead let’s cut to the what I’m watching updates.
Currently Watching (on air)
Jack & Joker: We’ve hit the halfway point and it did the uno reverso of now it’s time for Joke to be pissed off at Jack, which I did think had to be coming given the general vibe of the show. It’s also a smart narrative move to keep the tension up.
It’s become pretty apparent at this point that, in addition to general commentary on class and wealth, this show is deeply about people being backed into a corner and the choices they make as a result. The show believes strongly that it is better to work together and help than it is to sacrifice other people for your own gain, which is why I fear that Save is doomed by the narrative. RIP.
Kidnap: Once again, the structure of this show is so wild. Like, nominally it is an action thriller about a kidnapping related to organized drug crime, and yet the organized drug crime plot barely made an appearance this episode. Instead, we watched Ohm and Leng flirt for a solid 45 minutes, which was an excellent use of the episode time. While in the grand scheme of BL nc scenes, this one isn’t actually that explicit, it did hit pretty high on at least one of my rankings (level 5 - I know or can surmise what position they fucked in). Get Leng some real acting training (he’s fine, just very obviously inexperienced, though as I said I’ve seen much worse and he at least does not look visibly uncomfortable being on camera unlike some I could name) and these two will be absolutely lethal because the chemistry is there for real.
Fourever You: Oh boy, every episode of this show thrills me more. I love a show where the main characters are like, okay we actually need to sit down and talk about this instead of letting this obvious misunderstanding continue, and apparently so does Director New. The further backstory we got is so good, even if I couldn’t look directly at Hill who was so deeply embarrassing as a teen that I wanted to smack him through the screen. Get it together!!! You need to have a single thought that isn’t about Ter!! I am so scared to find out how long he’s actually been in love, it’s going to be a horrifying number of years.
Perfect 10 Liners: The pace of this show is what I would describe as “frenetic,” which puts it on one end of the Director New in 2024 spectrum, with We Are at the other end. This is not a bad thing; there’s a lot of characters and ideas to introduce, and it wastes no time in getting the action going. I hope every episode starts with someone telling the story to Wine, HIMYM style, it would be a fun framing device.
Currently Watching (completed)
Why R U?: I have not watched this show except for snippets basically since it came out and so I have wiped a lot of it from my mind. It’s so incredibly dated despite only being from 2020, and we are appropriately watching a 240p rip of it on YouTube with horrible subs. It’s the viewing experience it deserves.
It’s interesting watching it now in 2024, both because as I said it feels really dated but also because it’s much more apparent on rewatch how much of the show had to be reworked due to COVID. It started airing in January 2020 when they were still filming, and it’s really clear that about halfway through they had to choose what to prioritize, which ended up being the Fighter/Tutor storyline. It’s why the show feels like their show even though they’re nominally the b couple, and it’s why all the tertiary couples vanish around halfway through, which I honestly think is to the show’s benefit. The focus helps, and the chemistry between Zee and Saint was absolutely fire.
It’s also very jarring to see baby Nat, who was seventeen when they filmed this and is so clearly so much younger than the rest of them. Me like, put that baby back to bed!! It’s cute that he and Max have remained paired this whole time; their friendship is very cute, even if Domundi really did say here Max, we got you an illegal child bride. Guys. Please.
Completed
609 Bedtime Story: This show ended up being very bad on a level that is hard to explain in brief. What I’ll say is that initially we are following Mum from Universe A and Dew from Universe B and them falling in love, and a huge part of the plot is solving Dew B’s murder. This is seemingly resolved in like episode 9 ? by him instead getting hit by a car (lol). We never see him again, and instead Mum A meets Dew from Universe A and then that ends up being the main couple despite them like never talking before deciding they’re in love. I felt insane watching the last few episodes of this.
Love Mechanics: Having finished this, I can safely say that it isn’t a “good” show, but that is entirely down to the writing, both because the original storyline is unhinged and because they made a few changes that added additional unneeded melodrama. It was right to make Vee’s character less of an actual criminal and sweeter in general, but they didn’t need, like, the boxing storyline in ep 11. Literally what was that for. Instead they could have included the backstory from the novel where it turns out Vee has a picture-perfect memory of the first time he met Mark, which is a completely normal thing to have about a guy you dislike.
Anyway, Yin and War are really good in it, and it’s made beautifully, so aside from how the storyline is kind of nuts I did enjoy it. War is simply so cute in this. There’s a moment in the last episode where he bursts into tears out of happiness and every time I see it I just want to hold him to my chest and rock him to sleep. Baby.
Knock Knock Boys: The first episode of this show is somewhat misleading as to how raunchy it’s going to be—it’s definitely a show that’s pretty frank about sex, which was its intention, but it’s actually not explicit at all apart from the the very brief flashbacks during the episode 1 drinking game. It’s funny, because the show said outright that it wanted to discuss different issues related to queer youth, which includes stuff like filming without consent and what it means to be pansexual, but it didn’t actually feel terribly preachy because they worked it into the characters’ actual storylines.
Overall I liked it, mostly because of the friendships between all the characters. Latte had the weakest character arc for me, and I would have loved him to have more, and Peak’s storyline went on a little too long without anyone communicating clearly, but I truly felt the affection and love between all the characters. I particularly liked how understated the romance between Peak and Thanwa was—they fell in love in such a lowkey and naturalistic way, and it was nice to have a couple where I was always like, wow, they just like each other so much. Surprise yuri at the end only made it better.
Other BL News
Congratulations to Mew Suppasit and Tul Pakorn getting engaged at a literal press conference! Truly nothing is more Mew Suppasit than writing a song about wanting to marry your boyfriend, having your boyfriend in the music video, and then proposing to him at the press conference for the song release. Tul also having a ring ready killed me, as did all the clips of him just crying nonstop afterward. I love love.
Domundi actually getting ready to release a show in 2024? Wow! I was starting to believe that they were actually a money-laundering front and Zomvivor (allegedly still going to be released) was a tax dodge. And Your Sky looks cute! I like fake-dating, and this a reason for it that I buy.
Peaceful Property Corner
What can I say about this show? It’s just always such a great mix of hijinks and real human pathos. Something that was pointed out this week was that a real theme is that sometimes bad things just happen and bad people will take advantage of that, which is especially interesting given the preview for next week. Are we actually about to steer into occult curse shenanigans? Or will it be more complicated than just “someone put a literal curse on Home”? (It almost certainly will be more complicated.)
I am dying at how at the faintest sign of tenderness between Home and Kan, people are like oh, I see, I ship it, they’ve been teasing this the whole time, and meanwhile in this episode we have the reveal that Home can hear ghosts but not see them while Peach can see them but not hear. Which I’m sure means nothing. #notapolca
And yes, we’ve all been burned by the queerbait before, so I’m keeping my expectations tempered, but at this point it would just be bad writing to suddenly pivot to Home/Kan endgame and so far this show has been very good writing. So I remain ever in hope. Again, #notapolca.
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