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!

That Summer: This show is kind of the flip side of Revamp in that it’s also not perfect, but watching it feels like reading a beach read romance novel, and that’s absolutely what Jojo intended. As per usual with his shows, it looks gorgeous. It’s so colorful and warm! And Satang looks beautiful, and they let Winny have his freckles out, so I’m thrilled. We do keep going GIRL THE COUP??? but they did at least partially address it at the end of last episode. Is Gawin evil??? Is he an assassin??? Is he secretly good and dating Namtan???

I do also want to give a moment to appreciate Mond and Ryu. Ryu isn’t an amazing actor, but that’s okay, he’s mostly here to be stared at lovingly by Mond, who is a compelling actor and not just because he’s so handsome. And boy do they have chemistry, although to be fair Mond is one of those people who could probably have chemistry with anyone. But I see why they got pulled for A Dog and a Plane after Jojo worked with them in this.

Khemjira: In the time I went away, this show blew up to the point that people on my feed who don’t usually watch BLs are watching it, and that’s so great to me because, yo, it’s good. The slow building of tension and information over the course of the episodes has been good for both the save Khemjira plot and the romance plot, and even the breather episodes have something to add to the world. (The whole section about the Holy Man’s War was so intriguing I had to go look up the actual historical event.)

And the whole heist vibe of the last episode leading into the finale has been so good. The introduction of Net’s character (who was cracking me up so much, I feel like he must have his own book from the author??), the inclusion of Jet’s sister (I wish we had seen more of her honestly), and then the ending reveal from Ramphueng as she gets more and more monstrous looking is just great viewing. I’m a little worried about how long the final episode might be (I’m still shocked episode 8 was two entire hours), but Khemjira might be the first show to actually earn that.

I do need to talk a bit about the two nc scenes we’ve had so far, because while they both went on a little too long as per Domundi’s usual, they didn’t feel quite as excessive as others, partially because there wasn’t as much slo mo, and partially because I felt like we did learn about the characters, particularly when juxtaposing the two. Like, the b couple being impulsive and passionate and a little goofy (the glasses gag killed me) fit them really well and also tbh seeing it gives more context to how Charn is very hopeful puppy the next day. Meanwhile, Khem and Peem still being a little restrained in their scene but Peem visibly losing himself to it was, like, excellent characterization. That whole scene was crazy, by the way. The tension of it from when Khem turns over in his “paint me like one of your French girls” pose to when Peem finally breaks and gets on the bed. ARGH.

Finished

My Magic Prophecy: I do not think this show was good, despite its surprisingly high MDL rating. Most of that is due to the pacing and, genuinely, the aesthetic. Like, the weird washed-out palette just doesn’t work for either the tense mystery aspects or escaping to the beautiful northern province aspect. In the hands of a different director (Jojo, maybe?), I think it could have been better and felt richer. But it is by far the most I’ve enjoyed JimmySea and Jimmy specifically, plus it has evil!First, so it’s not all bad.

My Bias is Showing?!: While this show reduced the horniness of the webtoon by 99.9%, Kevin did at least kiss his love interest on the mouth more than once, which is more than I can say about any of the other Omega X boys in their BLs. Overall, I thought this was a pretty good adaptation—it felt complete, the B couple got an actual story (although we should have gotten the scene where they got back together for real IMO), and it captured the essence of the characters as best it could given they couldn’t make the show 50-60% sex scenes like the webtoon was. I enjoyed it! Would love to see fic for it.

Mu-Te-Luv: “Hi” By My Luck: Overall, I thought this was a solid 4 episode story! It’s not a lot of time to establish the characters and give them growth, but both of them did have arcs and I thought the end conflict was really believable. I was so fond of both of them at the end!

Side note, I haven’t started the newest arc (or watched the Nani one), but apparently people were complaining that it doesn’t use transwomen, which had me like kathoey are noootttttt the ssaaaameeeeeee some of them identify as trans and some of them don’ttttt. Like, Pompam is in it and I believe he has in the past used that term for himself. Plus there’s Fluke and Lego among the main four, who are not “out” but are not exactly “in” either. Idk man.

Desire: Oh boy, what a show. It’s not good! It looks great, and Hua Yong in particular is so funny and well-acted, but it’s just, like, not a well-paced story. It can’t decide how corporate/inheritance thriller or just like, weird psychosexual romance, which is a problem originating in the source material. It cracked me up that they just avoided showing any pregnancy and did a time skip. The time skip was inevitable, since they’d cast child actors, but apparently it pissed a lot of people off, especially with Gao Tu and Wenlang, to which I say be grateful they gave us even this much, because the original novel sure didn’t until the extras.

BL News:

• I did somewhat watch the My Stubborn special episodes, which managed to cram like 4.5 pretty explicit nc scenes into 2 hours. Impressive! I’m absolutely terrified to see what this production house and these actors bring us with Knot!

• Inn and Great have announced they are not going to be BL partners anymore, which is tragic because I really did enjoy watching them together. They’re still friends, which is sweet. My group chat’s theory is that Inn is going to finally marry his partner and take a step back from acting now that his baking empire is expanding and seemingly doing really well. I’m interested to see what they do with Great from here—I saw he’s in the cat show, which will be fun, and I assume they’ll have him with someone else soon enough.

• Becky and Freen have both left IdolFactory and set up their own individual agencies, which I’m sure everyone has been normal about (luckily this happened while I was not checking Twitter). The statement said they still plan on working with IdolFactory, so maybe Cranium will still happen? I hope it does, because I need more variety in the longform GL world.

urs,

hk