I logged into Buttondown and it greeted me with “you haven’t written an email in almost 2 months,” which I think was really unnecessary. I know, brother! I’ve been busy and not watching as much TV as usual. This is partly because there isn’t much airing at the moment that has really captured me, and there hasn’t been anything I’ve felt compelled to binge.

I did, however, play all of DRAMAtical Murder, which absolutely destroyed me with how mid 2010s insane yaoi it was. The “canon” ending is so crazy that I keep remembering what happened and whispering what the fuck to myself.

Not watching BLs has not saved me from seeing discourse, because I haven’t managed to train my Twitter algorithm out of showing me bad takes, although I’ve started muting people who annoy me. Recent things that have happened:

• GL fans impatient for Girl Rules calling Jojo slurs because they think the official accounts haven’t been posting enough even though that isn’t his job and frankly when he was posting behind the scenes photos, all he got were people complaining that they hated the styling or that they hoped the girls would only kiss their assigned partners, so I can’t blame him for maybe being like, no thanks.

• Endless discussion of queerbaiting and once again accusing real humans of doing it. I think it’s fair to be like, I feel like this show might be leaning into it without any intention of following through, but the thing is, if it’s two actors that fans ship, there could be literally nothing there and they’d find stuff to ship. See: F4, where Bright and Win actively had other love interests and yet plenty of the AO3 tag is devoted to their ship. And what’s the solution? That Sky and Nani (in this case) can’t work together ever again without being accused of queerbaiting? I think that’s wildly unfair to them, tbh.

  • My other, possibly more controversial take, is that I simply don’t think queerbaiting is as much a thing as people believe, especially when it’s coming from a production company that does create lots of queer content and even more especially when the show is created by a queer person. Sometimes things are subtext, intentionally or unintentionally, and that’s okay! Not everything has to be explicitly spelled out on screen, which I realize is something a lot of people apparently struggle with these days.

    • And look, if the DewTee and SkyNani shows were being advertised as BLs only to Uno Reverso the viewers, that would be one thing, but neither of those are labeled BLs. You know what you’re going in for.

  • Separately, people were also groaning queerbait about a Chinese “gl-coded” show, which, as many people who actually understand Chinese censorship pointed out, is just wildly ignorant of the situation there. People point to, like, Revenged Love as an example of Chinese ql content, but those used a bunch of loopholes to get around censorship and also didn’t air in China, to my understanding. That’s why Desire disappeared off iQiyi, which is a Chinese-based service, but was still on Gaga.

• Most recently, there were people complaining about how Thai and specifically GMMTV BLs don’t have the amount of skinship they want, which imo is not always unfair, but the way they talked about it made me crazy, because they were like, this is proof that no one at GMMTV cares about queer storytelling and are only doing it for money, and I just wanted to grab them by the shoulders like MOST OF THESE DIRECTORS ARE GAY!!!! A LOT OF THEM HAVE TALKED ABOUT HOW IT’S IMPORTANT TO THEM!!!

  • There’s the additional GMMTV note that I’ve actually watched some of their hetero shows, and I would not say most of those couples are more physically affectionate than the bl ones these days. There’s some cultural and differences going on here as well, with some acts that we don’t register as intimate being considered as such (like touching someone else’s head) and also different norms around PDA.

  • As I was writing this, I saw a post saying it’s because they’re all bad actors and I’m like I need to go into the sea. In some cases this is true. In other cases it’s the director, either because they’re a little homophobic (DYTD) or because they’re going for something specific (Mee and Thee). As in many cases, it varies.

Currently Watching (On Air)

Only Friends: Dream On: I thought it was really funny that this show kept the talking heads thing from the original series and I’m curious if they’ll maintain it longer this time. It’s a funny conceit that I do think works a little better for this season because there’s kind an energy that it’s an interview about the play they’re putting on.

At the moment, I think in some ways this show is both more and less strong that Only Friends; I think Jojo had such a strong aesthetic sensibility in the first series that isn’t as evident as much here, but the set up of this show and the characters in it is, I think, instantly more interesting and complex. Plus a play as the plot engine introduces automatic stakes and is a really good reason for a variety of people who don’t always like each other to have to work together.

So far, I’m obsessed with Mix as Dean; I keep saying he’s like what if Wen in MLC were evil and I stand by that. He’s so underhanded and sneaky and yet I can tell there’s something else going on there. Aou and Boom are, as predicted, instantly nasty; that tongue move in episode 2 gave me a jumpscare while scrolling my tumblr dash. And I’m already buying Joss and Gawin more in this than in MGB, which is both because of the character types they’re playing and because, well, the characters are more interesting.

It’s hard to say if I think this will be “good,” because I still also don’t know where I stand on Only Friends. I do maintain that it is the most realistic BL to my personal experience of queer twenty-somethings, but I think the character arcs are pretty inconsistent for everyone other than Sand and Ray. So we’ll see.

Fourever You: Sun from Another Star: I have episode 2 waiting for me to watch, which is honestly motivating me to finish writing this newsletter. I’m currently a little confused as to Arthit’s full understanding/belief in ghosts; it seems like he can hear them sometimes, but maybe it’s just that his friend's ghost keeps visiting him in his dreams?

I really love seeing Dao from another angle and seeing how [empty stare] he is when he isn’t with his friends. He’s such a bitch most of the time, it really thrills me. And the set up of his and Arthit’s relationship is great, it’s such a funny tropey start.

I’ve fortunately been spared seeing any discourse about the filmmaking style of this part, because if I see anything about how it’s “darker” or whatever I’ll lose my mind, they’re very obviously playing with horror visual tropes, and it’s great and appropriate for a show about ghosts. Really looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Duang with You: I don’t think this show is particularly good so far, mostly because like many DMD shows the pacing of each individual episode feels fuckin wild. Por, however, is really great as Qin, and their chemistry as the show has gone on has been good. It is absolutely wild how hard into horny it swerved in last week’s ep; I was already losing it in my DMs about how North and Otto’s scenes are so drastically hornier than the rest of the show that I get stressed when I know one of their scenes is about to happen.

My Romance Scammer: This is probably my favorite show airing at the moment, in large part because Mark and Junior are killing it. They’re just so good and have such great chemistry, and the irony is of course that this show is from a director who is Public Enemy #1 on BL twitter (for no good reason).

I don’t recall if this is based on anything—I don’t think it is, because a decent amount of the base concept changed from the original teaser, and I think it's been good because the show has felt a bit more deliberately paced than a lot of Director New’s adaptations. There’s been a nice pace to the show so far, so I’m hoping they don’t drag out the reveal too much longer, or else Tim won’t have enough time to properly grovel.

Finished

Thundercloud Rainstorm: I do not think this show is good, but I thought it was entertaining enough. The reveal that Jeonghan fully did not know that Iljoo was adopted made his behavior make so much more sense; he fucked that man thinking they were blood cousins and that’s why he was furious about it. I mostly think the relationship arc was kind of dull overall, and I wish there had been more going on and at stake. I felt very ehhhh at the end. However, the actors’ chemistry: unreal. Easily the horniest BL I’ve ever seen despite not really being that explicit.

Burnout Syndrome: If I’m honest here, I wish this show was fully a BE, but I do appreciate that it left it open a Happy For Now. The implication that it’s entirely possible that Koh will fuck up again and in fact likely was better than it ending like “ah it’s fine.” I think the anti-AI message felt a little weak at the end; I know the vibe is that, like, even though Koh created this AI and this program, it wasn’t able to solve his need for human connection and he wasn’t able to get the same thing out of the AI art as from Jira’s real work, but idk, the betrayal of it all felt too much for me to be like, yeah you should fuck that man again.

I think ultimately I just did not resonate with the relationship between Koh and Jira and did not think they should be together, so I felt very whatever toward them reuniting in any way. I found the show in many ways interesting and compelling, but not their relationship, which is so funny because this is maybe the most chemistry Off and Gun have ever had. It reminds me of other ships where I find the effect the characters have on each other interesting but fundamentally believe the characters cannot and should not be together because it would require them being different people.

Us: Finally made my way to the ending of this show and tbh I think it could have benefited from the 10-episode format. The last few episodes dragged on so much and I really feel like a lot of the momentum of the show was lost once Pam and Dorak got together and Kawi found out almost immediately. I think a large part of the problem is that Mim’s character just didn’t seem like enough of a threat; I deeply enjoyed her, because she was insane and every time she walked on screen I knew she was about to fuck shit up, but I couldn’t really figure out what she wanted to accomplish. I think we needed to see more of her actual plan and how it would genuinely be an issue so that getting her to work with them felt more like a win. The plots felt so separate by the end that I was just like, sure okay.

However, Emi and Bonnie are so good and so natural together; speaking of skinship, they are one of the most natural-seeming couples, especially among GL couples, and I think a large part of that is that the show was directed by a lesbian. I’m really excited to see what they’re able to do with a darker, less fluffy script (and still with Fon, thank god).

Fourever You: Beside the Sky: This show was not explicit basically at all, and yet I felt so scandalized in episode 7, mostly because Bever was so good at conveying how disastrously, apocalyptically horny Fah was, and so even if you don’t see it to the detail of the book, you know he’s fucking that boy within an inch of his life, and that makes the later scene where Typhoon is still into it and like, yes, more, feel more horny than the actual on-screen content would imply.

Despite how fucking sad the first part of the show is, the latter half ended up feeling really healing; I think it was nice that the show wasn’t just about their relationship and was also about Typhoon finding his family and rebuilding his confidence in himself. It felt like he had a better individual arc than the guys in part 1. Tonfah growing as a result of helping him was more understated, but was just as lovely.

Mu-Te-Luv: Love Me if You Swear: The first episode started a little rough for me, but as this went on, I really enjoyed it. It was impressive how much character development and relationship growth they were able to fit into such a short episode run, though I think road trips are always a really good shortcut for that. Surf and Java were so good and charming, and god, so horny. It’s truly no wonder that GMMTV looked at them here and in H2H and knew they had to keep going with them.

BL News:

• Winny and Satang ending their partnership very suddenly (right before a fanmeeting!) is absolutely wild. Apparently scuttlebutt is that Winny is maybe leaving GMMTV, and that seems like it’s probably the case since Satang was doing stuff alone with their poor child of divorce. I’m mostly curious what will happen with their show from GMMTV26; I hope Satang is able to get a new partner (although who, there are so few tops at GMMTV), but I was also thinking that Surf and Java would be great for that particular show. They’re so popular with the Thai audience, too!

urs,

hk