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waitmyturtles · 5 months

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SOME GOOD SHOWS THAT I LIKED IN 2023! (AND SOME THAT I DIDN'T)

I watched A LOT of stuff that did not originally air in 2023 by dint of my Old GMMTV Challenge. This list is inclusive of this recognition!

THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: HE'S COMING TO ME

I have no other words: this is my favorite Thai BL of all time. Perfect length, perfect plot, perfect celebration of Thai culture, perfect acting, the greatest coming out scene of all time, the BEST of the best BL moms. Perfection.

THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: BAD BUDDY

I don't even want to think about how many words I've written on Bad Buddy this year, but they're well deserved for this REMARKABLE show. I've got a thing for shows by Aof Noppharnach that feature Ohm Pawat, what can I say!

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL SHOW(S) I WATCHED THIS YEAR: LOVE SICK AND SOTUS

The influence of Love Sick and SOTUS can be seen in SO MANY Thai BLs, even through today. Without having watched these two shows to start my OGMMTVC project, I wouldn't have the context for what later shows like Bad Buddy and Theory of Love were commenting on by way of their content and structures. Love Sick in particular was a HELL of a lift -- but I am damn glad I watched it, and I certainly feel nostalgia for it today.

Honorable mentions of influential pieces that had impacts on Thai BLs: Love of Siam and Dew the Movie

MY OTHER FAVORITE OLD SHOWS I WATCHED: UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN AND THEORY OF LOVE

BANGERS!!!

If New Siwaj ever tops Until We Meet Again, I'll fly to Bangkok and give him a gold medal. That long-ass show, 17 EPISODES, I WANTED MORE! OhmFluke's chemistry was great, the story delved SO deeply into historical homophobia and how culture and acceptance changes over time -- scrumptious. Theory of Love, man, the way this show ate up implicit compassion bias and gave it right back to us. I loved it. KHAI FOREVER!

THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: MOONLIGHT CHICKEN

Not only was Moonlight Chicken my first real live fandom experience on Tumblr, it was a hell of an amazing show, incorporating so much of what I love particularly about Thai BLs, and how many Thai BLs do not shy away from celebrating Asian cultural touchpoints. From exploring Jim's internalized homophobia by way of his rural upbringing, to juxtaposing Pattaya's spiritual symbols with growing development that upends older strains of local culture, Moonlight Chicken offered a lovely commentary on what it means to be queer in an ever-changing Thailand.

THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY?/KINOU NANI TABETA? SEASON 2

BRILLIANTLY ACTED by literally the best actors in the Asian BL game: we are blessed that Nishijima Hidetoshi and Uchino Seiyou have given so much to this franchise. It's hard to write about this show because it's so perfect -- it needs no extraneous words. Plot, pacing, acting, character development, gratuitous food shots. It has it all.

THE OTHER OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: I CANNOT REACH YOU

Just like Bad Buddy looked at Thai BL tropes in the eye and said, "over my Nong Nao," I Cannot Reach You asked Japanese BLs about the efficacy of almost every trope we've gotten used to, and questioned them with efficiency. The biggest shocker for me? REAL COMMUNICATION, encouraged by the CIPHER, Hosaka, that allowed the two lead protagonists to confirm their love and understand each other. It was straightforward and FUCKING GOOD.

A SHOW THAT AIRED IN 2023 THAT I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ABOUT YET, THAT I NEED TO REWATCH IN CHRONOLOGY, THAT ALSO DID SOME TROPE/GENRE ASS-KICKING THAT I'M STILL THINKING ABOUT: LA PLUIE

La Pluie was FEARLESS. The show had a LOT to say about romance and soulmates not being as much of a realistic thing as content-makers... and, frankly, majority society would like us to think. La Pluie made its characters WORK for love and understanding, and had us viewers face our implicit biases about how romantic content should and could work. I watched this show out of order of the OGMMTVC watchlist to see it it was one of the best of the year, and it certainly is. I'm planning a deep rewatch for early 2024 to pen my words on it.

A SHOW THAT ALMOST TOPPED MY 2023 LIST BUT GOT DOCKED BECAUSE I ENDED UP LIKING THE NOVEL A LOT BETTER: I FEEL YOU LINGER IN THE AIR

@neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan know that I flipped THA FUCK out over this show -- FABULOUSLY acted by Nonkul Chanon and Bright Rapheephong, FABULOUS cinematography, great story up until the end of the series. My fangirling led me to read the original novel by Violet Rain, and -- I found out that Jom was a lot more damn sassy than we got in the show! Tee Bundit's penchant for sadness won. This is not to dock the show, but the novel had more than enough material to carry the series through without repeating themes in the end. So it fell on my 2023 list, womp womp. BUT I STILL LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS SHOW, DON'T GET ME WRONG.

TWO SHOWS THAT I'M SUPER GLAD I CAUGHT UP WITH WHILE THEY WERE AIRING: THE EIGHTH SENSE AND BE MY FAVORITE

Be My Favorite looked at Krist Perawat's checkered past as a BL idol and said: we are going to examine this and make an honest BL out of inspiration from it. It wasn't a perfect show, the time travel shit didn't end up adding up in the end, BUT -- excellent acting from two GMMTV VETS made up for those tangles, and I loved the contextual philosophical references throughout the series. The Eighth Sense looked at the tug-of-war that Korean BLs have with K-dramas and their tropes and said, actually? We will have these dudes full-frontal kiss, and placed that energy against commentaries on mental health, both topics that Korea hasn't quite embraced as quickly as other countries.

HONORABLE MENTIONS OF OTHER AWESOME SHOWS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE AIRED IN 2023

Make It Right, Our Dating Sim, Dark Blue Kiss, Gay OK Bangkok, Dirty Laundry, 10 Years Ticket, I Told Sunset About You, I Promised You the Moon, 3 Will Be Free, Lovely Writer (underrated?!), Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars (UNDERRATED!), and Manner of Death.

And the shows that are airing that I know will stay with me well into 2024: Last Twilight and Cherry Magic Thailand.

I had fun!

WHAT ELSE, WHAT ELSE: THE "NO" SHOWS: THE PROMISE AND STEP BY STEP

I'm not even hyperlinking my thoughts on these shows, nor gifting them with gifs. Insert Bugs Bunny NOOOOOO gif here! We got Man Trisanu, though.

THE SHOW I WAS THE MOST OBVIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED BY: ONLY FRIENDS

Despite my passionate disappointment for this show and how it ended: in the context of the OGMMTVC, Only Friends is still an incredibly important inclusion to the list. Some amazing Tumblr bloggers offered commentary that the bias against sex that OF contained within the show was actually importantly and culturally contextual to the still-conservative state of acceptance that Thailand is currently in (here and here for more reading).

Only Friends reminded us that despite any kind of marketing that we here on Tumblr, as a majority non-Thai audience, may receive about a Thai show -- that we are still not fully plugged into the non-verbal expectations of what a show like OF could promise to do, and to be okay when it doesn't reach those heights. In light of the seemingly pro-sex marketing blasts that previewed the series before its airing, OF ultimately seemed to want to take casual sex, chew it up, and spit it out. There might be reasons why that happened that we just don't know about as outsiders to Thailand. But as an Asian-American viewer that was hoping for neutral -- and maybe even supportive -- commentary on single folks having casual sex without judgement, OF did not deliver for me.

I'm ending the year reading Dr. Thomas Baudinette's book, Boys Love Media in Thailand, the first book-length ethnographic study on the impact of BL on queerness, media, and more in Thailand and across Asia. Baudinette comes from the world of Japanese queer media studies -- as someone who came to Thai BLs this year from Japanese BLs, I appreciate his trajectory. It's clearly a necessity for me to read this book in the context of the OGMMTVC, to understand how Thai BLs have changed over time, and to understand the incredibly larger impact of heterosexual/heteronormative media and themes on Thai media as a whole, as larger and larger swaths of Thai, Asian, and international societies welcome and watch BLs with open arms.

All of this feeds into my ever-growing body of knowledge about the impact of Thai BLs, both in Thailand and across Asia, as Baudinette writes about, and how these shows have and are developed/developing over time. It's been an AMAZING YEAR of watching old and new dramas for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the genre grows even more in 2024.

I also made AMAZING FRIENDS on Tumblr -- y'all know who you are! What a year of growth and discovery for me: this has been a fabulous experience, and I'm looking forward to even more growth in the new year!

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isaksbestpillow · 4 months

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Hello Siiri! First off: I just yelled in delight that you're offering subs on Ossan's Love Returns -- thank you! I have not watched the previous series or OL movie, but I come to you after learning that EarthMix will cameo in this week's episode. I'm watching older Thai BLs to learn more about that nation's genre of BL, and I'm learning about the Thai genre's Japanese BL roots -- which makes the cameo extra sweet for me in my history project. In any case, I am wondering if you could offer a kind of overview of the importance of the Ossan's Love franchise in Japan. My very favorite BL of all time is Kinou Nani Tabeta? -- and I've been so thrilled over the years to get TWO seasons, a movie, and the New Year's special. Ossan's Love has even more content. Would you say it's a bigger BL than KNT? Is the audience for OL growing actively in Japan? I'd love to learn more about the context of its importance in the Japanese media landscape. I feel like I generally have a grip on these things in part due to the fame of the various actors that end up in BLs (like in Cherry Magic), but Ossan's Love has been around for so long, that I'm not sure how to quite contextualize its popularity against other JBLs. Thank you for considering my question!

Hello!

I don't want to make any claims on who's more popular without gathering actual data, but I can talk about the general context of the show.

OL actually precedes Nanitabe's live action, so they weren't in competition during their original airing. OL differs from most other bl live action outputs by being an original script. It's not based on a manga unlike pretty much all other Japanese bls out there, and as such, it pretty much single-handedly brought gay relationships to the mainstream when they had so far been mostly confined to the bookshop bl section: if you wanted to read a bl, you'd go to the bl section, but otherwise you wouldn't be exposed to it.

The first season of OL aired in 2018. There are all kinds of live action bls airing these days, at least one per season, but it wasn't like that back in 2018. Live action bl until recently was either typical age-gap uke/seme anime (Gravitation, Sekai ichi hatsukoi, Junjou romantica) or made-for-dvd movies with mostly unknown actors. My first bl movie was Ai no kotodama. I don't know who those actors were or where they are now. By comparison, the cast of OL is full of popular mainstream actors. Pretty sure at least one person fainted when Tanaka Kei was on the cover of An an's love & sex (was it me, you'll never know!).

Even now, at lot of the bl you'll find on Gaga or Viki actual airs in a specific bl slot or on a paid subscription service. You had to buy each episode of Old fashion cupcake on Rakuten to watch - meaning you need to already know what you're looking for. Nanitabe and Cherry Magic both aired in TV Tokyo's Friday midnight slot , but TV Tokyo is a local network. I had to watch both online because we don't get TV Tokyo in the prefectures. What we do get though is TV Asahi, the network producing OL. It's one of the major national networks and the second most viewed channel after Nippon TV (it's also the channel buying GMMTV shows for Japanese distribution).

What made OL such a phenomenon was the internet and social media. It was the most tweeted show in 2018 and Japanese people tweet a lot. It received the Popular Word of the Year Award. You read it right, Ossan's Love was the Popular Word of the Year 2018 with #MeToo and e-sports (for comparison: in 2022 one of the words was state funeral because of Abe's assassination, and one of last year's winners was boiling of the planet).

As for how OL Returns is doing - it's super successful! Last Friday even omutsu paatonaa/diaper partner was trending on the internet. Last time there was an update about viewership, the first two episodes had been viewed 4.5 million times. The Japanese fandom is super active, and people of all ages are watching. They're doing quite a bit of promo, too. Tanaka Kei & Hayashi Kento were on Geinoujin kakuzuke check, a popular new year's quiz show.

I know OL doesn't get a lot of love in western bl fandom. On one hand, I'm like huh okay fair enough. But on the other, much bigger, you could even say enormous, hand, I'm like you don't have all the facts! You don't even speak Japanese! Take a seat! But if you wanna trash the airline remake (was it really necessary???), I'll bring the snacks.

#ossan's love #sorry about the numerous typos!!

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respectthepetty · 9 months

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Following your last post. Are you able to summarise or explain why you love Taiwan BL so much?

I ask because I too love Taiwanese BLs but……I can’t pin point why. Is it because the first ones I watched was top tier?! (Loooking at you fighting Mr2nd and History4) or is there a different frame work that draws us in?

I don’t know and can’t seem to explain it so I has rushed here after your post and express my need for you to someone explain or put into words, WHY WE LOVE TAIWANESE GAYS?!?

Anon, I've listed a few times why I love Taiwanese BLs (like here and here), but I love them soooooo much, I will gladly do it again!

Strangely enough, I have an ask sitting patiently in my inbox requesting I rank the HIStory franchise, but since I love Taiwanese BLs, it's hard for me to pick between my favorites, which I had to do for Taiwanese BLs in general when I was asked to rank my top five. However, HIStory 4: Close to You rules above ALL BLs regardless of country. I love it! It is the best. I will fight people and their pets for it.

But you know I cannot keep things short, so . . .

10 Reasons I Love Taiwanese BLs

*presented in no particular order*

The shows are visually pleasing.

The cinematography especially the color editing and the lighting are good quality. As a color demon, I've noticed the emphasis on colors even in Taiwanese non-BL series I've watched. I'm superficial. They're pretty!

The men are visually pleasing.

Beyond the production aesthetics, the actors themselves are easy on the eyes. Every single main character is unexpectedly hiding a body-ody-ody under his clothes which he reveals in the most natural ways. The camera doesn't linger on the body. The bodies are just bodies. But they are oh-so-very pretty bodies.

The attraction is obvious.

Taiwanese BLs are high heat. The characters will flirt. They will stare longingly at each other. They will playfully touch each other. They will have sex. The characters want each other, physically, and we see that. And it won't be saved until the final episode. The attraction develops in a way that feels natural, and if there is hesitation regarding sex, once they figure out the mechanics, the characters embody the "practice makes perfect" motto.

The beds are used.

Domesticity is at the core of a Taiwanese BL. We see characters cooking in kitchens, often. We see them sleeping in beds without sex being involved. An entire scene can be focused around the characters doing household chores such as laundry, washing dishes, or mopping. The characters are building a home together as partners, and we constantly see that.

The families are caring.

For every shitty family member, there are three others who are determined to win a PFLAG award. We see characters' siblings, parents, and found family members being supportive of their relationship and fighting other family members who step out of line.

The secondary pairs deliver.

When the story isn't focusing on the main couple, I still care about the second (and sometimes third) pair. Their stories might not always be fully fleshed out, but they don't distract from the main couple nor make me want to skip over their parts. The secondary couples are also involved in the stories outside of their romance. They are connected to the overall story and help to push the narrative forward.

The couples are queer.

This seems like a given since we are dealing with BLs, but Taiwan has delivered very few high school and university BLs, and even when it does, they aren't presented as a coming-of-age story. Characters already know they are queer, or if they realize it, they don't panic. For example, in About Youth, both characters confessed they hadn't kissed anyone before, but it wasn't depicted as an "ah-I'm-gay" moment. Even in DNA Says Love You, the reveal wasn't cause for a crisis; it was a moment of relief. In my fave, HIStory 4, the main character realized he liked his friend, sat on that revelation, then licked his friend's mouth and told him he loved him. Very pro kissing-the-homies.

The couples are adults.

Because Taiwan hasn't produced many high school and university BLs, a majority of its shows are focused on adults, with jobs, and families, and baggage. As mentioned above, the main conflict is never a character understanding his queerness. It's usually him trying to balance his relationship with all the other issues life brings him like a work deadline, the mafia, or ghosts. You know, adult issues.

The couples are enemies-to-lovers, lite.

My favorite kind of couple dynamic is "I'll kill (for) him" and Taiwan knows how to deliver this. Even when couples move past the enemies stage, there are moments when they look at each other as if they could kill each other, and that warms my heart. The couples argue. They fight. They plot each other's murders. Then they eat dinner together and hold each other in bed. Love isn't all rainbows and sunshine in these BLs, and Taiwan shows that it's not just about who will fight with you, but who will fight for you that matters.

The country has marriage equality!

I'm going to get political - I don't even believe in the institution of marriage, but I'll throw hands for everyone's right to marriage equality. People deserve the right to get married, and Taiwan granted its people that right in 2019; then, this year, it made it legal for same-sex couples to jointly adopt a child. Taiwan has a tension-filled relationship with China due to disputes about Taiwan's independence, and we all know how China censors the homos. Therefore, I love Taiwanese BLs flexing its gay rights muscle all of the time. Other countries are fighting the good fight for their rights, but if it came down to my last little international dollar, I want to support the countries that support us and not those that are profiting off our community without investing in our community members' rights. So at the end of the day . . .

I love whatever Taiwan gives me.

So these are the reasons I know Kiseki: Dear to Me will be one of my favorites.

The show and the men are visually pleasing. It is giving us queer adult couples stacked on top of other queer adult couples then cameos of even more queer adult couples. We've gotten enemies-to-friendly roommates, where the attraction is obvious, so now we must wait for the lovers part even though they had already cooked, cleaned, and slept in the bed by the second episode. When we meet the families of these crazy little bastards, we are going to love them.

Oh, and there will be a proposal.

TAIWAN SUPREMACY!

#Taiwanese BLs #I love them because they are queer #Kiseki: Dear to Me WILL be a favorite #HIStory franchise needs to give me HIStory 6: Freed #RIGHT NOW!#Let my man be free

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absolutebl · 1 year

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BL Streaming - Which Service is Worth Your Money?

I’m bored and I have a little extra time this morning so it’s time for ABL to play with the spreadsheet of doom.

Occasionally I get the question:

If I were to subscribe to only one platform for BL which should I pick?

This post is dated May 2023.

First things first. I am going to be (somewhat) objective about this and not judge on quality of content. Because if KinnPorsche is all you love in life, obvs you need iQIYI, but if you are a HIStory franchise stan, than it’s all about Viki. Those are your life choices, I’m just here to play numbers games, okay?

Secondly, some shows air on multiple platforms, particularly Viki & Gaga, but sometimes it’s Gaga & YouTube, occasionally it’s even iQIYI + others. This has only started happening in the last few years. Bed Friend was on 3 different platforms (GaGa, iQIYI, YT) - even though it was originally announced for Viki! I honestly don’t know how to track this, so I tend to log the spreadsheet with my preferred watching platform for that language, this will throw the numbers off for those platforms.

Since I join everything my platform preference choice is based on:

the quality of the subs/captions

the quality of the user experience

My subs experience tends to be:

YT = best for Thai

Viki = best for Korean and sometimes Japanese, okay for Thai

Gaga = best for Chinese and sometimes Japanese but very weak Thai subs

My user interface preference is:

YT, Viki, Gaga in that order then everyone else with iQIYI at the bottom. This is because I watch on mobile devices.

ASplay, WeTV, former Line, Amarin TV, Netflix and the other smaller suppliers (and apps) will all be grouped together for this assessment. Since they have so few offerings, by default I would not recommend subbing those platforms unless you are a hard stan of all BL with disposable income.

Super bad BLs that I watched back in the day on grey sites or YT (pre 2020 crack down) because there were no other options and I am a completest are still listed as grey. I would never suggest anyone watch these shows anyway, so I don’t care if they have now shown up on legitimate sites. If they are somewhere, it’s likely Gaga. Which means Gaga’s percentage of the market share is probably UNDER reported by my numbers.

Movies and cinema-only releases that never got international distribution fall into the “grey” category. If I got it off an indie subber, since that too is technically illegal, it falls into the grey category as well.

Final note: This is from a USA based IP, I don’t use a VPN, so platforms assessments are from that perspective.

Spring 2023, current state of the spreadsheet. AKA

Our BL Data Set

Total # of BLs = 564

# of BLs ongoing (so finished runtime is best guess) = 18

Just Answer the Damn Question

Round Number of Actual BLs - % of market share

YouTube = 218 - 38.6%

Gaga = 148 - 26.2%

Viki = 77 - 13.7%

Grey = 53 - 9.4%

BLs I’ve never been able to find on any platform (including grey): 36 - 6.4%

iQIYI = 14 - 2.5%

Other platforms = 12 - 2.2%

Margin of error: +- 1% (look I’m just not driven to be that accurate here)

Subscription Platforms Breakdown - % of market share

Eliminating YouTube, Grey, and missing BLs. Viki is included because I do not know which of theirs are behind the paywall and which are not.

Total subscribe-only BLs: 257

Gaga = 59%

Viki = 30%

iQIYI = 6%

Sml sites/apps = 5%

(rounded)

Okay but how about actual runtime?

Gaga = 360 hrs - 44%

Viki = 311 hrs - 38%

iQIYI = 98 hrs - 12%

Sml sites = 50 hrs - 6%

Anyway you cut it... on pure BL standards...

GAGAOOLALA WINS

Other consideration? In most places Gaga is ALSO the cheapest per month option.

Final Thoughts

YouTube (America’s Alphabet)

YT has the most pieces of content and longest overall runtime because of all the Thai stuff. ALSO bootlegs show up there, especially the early Chinese and Japanese stuff. They will often get taken down and you have to hunt for it again. YT takedowns come in waves, every 6 months or so.

However, GMMTV, some Star Hunter, some Studio Wabi Sabi, all the Vietnamese & Pinoy stuff (until now), and a few choice bits of Strongberry are YT content.

YT’s app is the best UX of a poor set (for me), but the web based YT at Premium level doesn’t work with Firefox. I use YT for work A LOT, so the fee for Premium ($13.99) and lack of ads + downloads (travel) is worth it for me, but I think it probubly isn’t if you’re on a budget.

GaGaOOLaLa (Taiwan’s Portico Media)

Of the pay to play platforms, GaGa dominates with the most BLs by all metrics. If you’re intersted in darker BL, GL and other queer content, very high heat, the history of the genre, or Japanese stuff - most of that is on GaGa. Also all of Strongberry and some of the newer queerer series (like My Ride).

At $6.99 a month it’s ALSO one of the cheapest options.

Gaga is based out of Taiwan, the only Asian country with marriage equality (as of 2022) AND it specializes in exclusively queer content so they need our support. If you can afford them, you should support them. GaGa is the only platform that will always have more BL, guaranteed (so long as Taiwan is autonomous). Ironically, you can follow their YT channel for previews and teasers to their latest series, short content, and acquisitions.

Their app isn’t great, but their web-based interface is fine. That said: there’s no categories (way to organize), and the way they roll out new episodes is unintuitive. Their mobile app ALWAYS pauses not mater what you actually want it to do and the lack of the quick skip ahead is frustrating.

Viki (Japan’s Rakutan)

Viki specializes in longer series, mostly Thai, Taiwanese, and a few of the Chinese bromances. It also now has a lot of KBLs. But in general only more recent stuff (2018 is as far back as they go).

At $4.99-$11.99 depending, it’s low to average cost. I’m not sure which one (if any) you actually need for BL. Most of my favorite new shows tend to air on Viki, and I like Rakutan as a parent company, so I don’t mind supporting them.

They happen to have 5 of my top ten BLs, which is A LOT (since I hand out 10/10 so rarely). So for me they host the objective best BL content.

They have the second best app (after YT, it’s kinda a combo of YT + Netflix) but the lack of a speed-up option is frustrating for many. Also the desktop version is super buggy. But they DO have categories you can name and control, which I love.

Other Platforms

iQIYI - is Mainland China based (hello Baidu, you ugly fucker), so the platform getting/pimping BL for an international audience only is… how do I put this?… oh yeah: shitty. I will often rename it Icky, for this reason. It clearly wants to break the market, but… do we want it in the market at all? How long will they host BLs? When will they be shut down and censored? I would say it’s only worth it if you really also like Chinese dramas. And even so, Viki also has A LOT of those. Unfortunately for us, Wabi Sabi seems to have cut a distribution deal with Icky. And, of course, there is the KinnPorsche situation (so ironic that Icky hosts the highest heat). The interface is a nightmare. They have the WORST app, even when you pay, it serves ads, some of which alpha crash the platform.

Netflix - here in the states it almost never has new BL content. Sometimes some old stuff. They tested the waters with SOTUS and Love Sick. I have a feeling they aren’t particularly intersted in this market. So if BL is what you watch, don’t bother. At last check they still had Gameboys and Your Name Engraved Herein and Wish You.

WeTV - acts like LineTV used to, has Manner of Death and We Best Love and a few of the more obscure Thai pulps. But probably not worth it for anyone but a completest.

Grey - Unknown or No Distributor

Indie subbers: there’s some BLs that you can watch by supporting indie subbers who supply private links to their personal versions. This is not legal, but it is a slightly nicer way to get stuff you can’t find anywhere else. I’ve done this for some Thai and Japanese stuff.

I find the leads for these sources here on Tumblr. If someone is giffing and talking about a show and I don’t know how they are getting hold of it, I simply ask.

DramaCool (USA) & Dailymotion (France) & Bilibili (China) and others - AKA the grey space. You SHOULD feel guilty using these sites, you’re stealing, but it’s where many of us go for BL we can’t find anywhere else (in defiance of what few morals we have left). These are BLs that originally sold to very odd platforms or never got international distribution. Unfortunately, some of my favorites are in this category like Great Men Academy or Seven Days. It’s a nightmare. The ads are terrible and the virus/bug risk is high. They get taken down all the time. Or the leads are faked. I use an old computer to access and suggest you take all necessary precautions yourself.

P’ABL SOAP BOX TIME

Look I work tangential to the entertainment industry, so if you thought I wasn’t going to learn you a little on this subject, you got another think coming.

HERE’S THE THING:

You watch a show on one of the grey platforms, ESPECIALLY if it actually has distribution on Gaga or Viki - you better review that shit. You spread the word and advocate for that content here, on MDL, on social media, with fan art, I don’t care. You steal it, you find a way to pay back in your time and/or creativity.

I get it if you’re poor, but don’t be a goddamn scab. Find a way to reward content creators with non-monetary support. If you had the time to watch the thing you stole, you have time to pay it forward in some substantial way. Do this even if you didn’t steal it but got it for free. Do this if you read fanfic. Do this with articles, blogs, books. Do this with podcasts.

It isn’t hard to be a decent human and support creators. Don’t you dare just TAKE. If you’re that kind of person stop reading this blog immediately. I don’t want anything to do with you and you don’t deserve my words or my spreadsheet of Doom.

/rant

MORE ON THIS TOPIC WITH FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS

Original post on this subject that I adapted for this post.

(source)

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bengiyo · 9 months

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The Novelist: Playback (2021) Stray Thoughts

We've watched The Novelist, Mood Indigo, and Spring Life. Let's watch these two try to survive long distance.

Yes, please recap for the people who maybe got dragged to a theater for this.

No car BJ? So glad I watched Spring Life already.

Oh, we're getting a bed scene. I forgive them.

Finally, we're talking about insertion and then immediately going to realistic angles. Good job, BL.

I like the way the age gap is playing into how Rio handles his disappointment that Kuzumi frequents sex clubs with his senior.

Oh, I like that we're getting more interactions with Kamuuda.

Rio's sister is always punking him.

"People who are happy have no need for art or literature," is such a cynical read.

Wow, there is a lot of resentment here.

Oh shit, this woman took out his writing hand. That's ironic. I am amused.

Oh my goodness, are we going to make an even younger boy write for him??

Never have I been happier that a boy was illiterate.

No man is immune to Kijima's sexual energy if he turns it on them it seems.

OR WOMAN, IT SEEMS!

Poor Kuzumi. Rio is a hard man to love.

Oh lord he got this boy doing the writing now. Goddammit.

Oh good Kuzumi is here. Please fix this.

I'm so glad Kuzumi caught him with the boy.

HE REALLY SAID THAT HE ACTUALLY HURT HIS HAND THIS TIME!! 🤣

Is this the first time Rio has said his given name?

I love this woman.

Oh, please don't slow zoom onto just Haruhiko to tell me that they're not going to make it.

Oh, I shouldn't have gotten attached to Haruko.

Interesting. I suppose they did foreshadow that Haruko is popular with men.

I'm going wild over the cinematography of Rio's pacing during this fight. Incredible acting from both of them in this long take. Rio can be such a jerk.

Did Rio never recognize the crazy in Haruhiko's eyes? It was the first thing I noticed about him.

Japanese characters are so good at staying still and pretending to sleep when someone looms over them.

I just love Japanese filmmaking. I love trusting actors to act and I love the composition of these shots.

"It's not about being tough. You become tough when someone is important to you." Come through, Haruko!!!

I'm fond of Shizuo.

I'm glad Kuzumi didn't answer his phone and Kijima has to take the leap of going to Tokyo without reassurance.

Kido, you have a daughter. Why ask that question?

Finally a forthright, vulnerable apology and confession from Rio.

I love that these two always kiss like maniacs.

I just love trains.

Families are difficult, but Rio is still loved.

Hands only, baby!!

Y'all awfully vocal for hands only.

The moon is beautiful tonight.

Wow these two have incredible blissed-out faces.

Oh, Rio. I felt that wall breaking. Goddamn Takezai Terunosuke is good.

"Is there really such a life without loneliness?" is a great rebuttal to Rio's cynical view.

Aww, she smiled for her brother.

I'm so glad things ended well for Haruko and Shizuo as well.

Final Verdict: 10, If You Are Male and Queer Please Watch This Franchise Immediately. I'm giving this movie a 10 for the way the entire franchise has been the most satisfying experience I've had in BL in a really long time. I keep begging for realistic approaches to male-male intimacy and relationships, and this franchise hits it constantly. Rio is layers of bullshit hiding an incredible loneliness and sense of worthlessness, and it was so satisfying to see him claw his way out of that because he found someone else who finally connected to him. It's been a really long time since I felt this good about going back to something I skipped over for one reason over another, and I can say confidently that I fully trust @lurkingshan recommendations. If you are gay and feeling a bit displaced in BL, please watch this, and then ping her, me, @harurio @ginnymoonbeam or @waitmyturtles. I promise it will be worth your time.

#the novelist #Pornographer #the novelist: playback #pornographer: playback #Japanese BL #bl series #lgbt film #Ben watches

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msmargaretmurry · 6 months

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ooh becky msmargaretmurry i have to ask about your rnh thoughts here because while i have never been in the oiler trenches and do not (Do Not!!!) intend to start now, i have been watching on the sidelines since the hall and eberle days and i LOVE to hear your opinions

oh thank you for asking anon!! for context i started watching the oilers on purpose in like 2010ish (i had a friend who was super into hall/eberle and i was NOT immune to that) — i do not claim to be an expert on any of this at all, this is just based on my own experiences and thoughts and ponderings. also for the record i think rnh is great. he is an oiler i am extremely fond of, and i'm glad he seems to have found a solid role there that he's content with and has found success in.

so to me the ryan nugent-hopkins of it all goes something like this:

when the oilers drafted taylor hall first overall in 2010, HE was supposed to be the savior of the franchise. the oilers had lost in the scf in 2006 and then immediately not made the playoffs for four straight years and no one was happy. they drafted taylor, hyped him up SO hard — this era was kind of the the advent of current Online Content era and they were making little videos of him arriving in edmonton, showing him around, fans recognizing him on the street. i feel like nowadays thall's stock as a player is like "good but not GREAT" but you must understand that when he was drafted first overall they were expecting him to be GREAT. him, plus hot young swedes linus omark and magnus pääjärvi, plus canadian world juniors hero jordan eberle had the oilers faithful (and the oilers front office) CONVINCED they were going to be turning things around. people were making t-shirts that said

HALL Omark Paajarvi Eberle

— HOPE, you see???

anyway obviously that season did not actually go that great. they finished last in the league. i think they won something like 25 games all season. and they wound up with another first overall pick, which was our boy, the nuge.

and the thing is, ryan was expected to be very good, but he was NOT expected to be the savior of the franchise. that was already taylor hall's job. there was a lot of concern his rookie season about him being too skinny and not strong enough to really make an impact at the nhl level yet (and to be fair, he DID look like a baby deer out there). the people and the powers that be were very much like, we're glad to have him, we think he'll be a great piece of this rebuild, but there was much more willingness to be like, okay well he might need a few years to finish baking.

rnh's rookie season was better than the season before, but it was still not good. they did not come close to making the playoffs. they were still very bad. the blue jackets were also very bad, and a friend and i drove to columbus and got seats on the glass for oilers/jackets for like $50. extremely funny experience, 10/10, do recommend.

(not relevant to this narrative but a very fun fact imo is that despite the oilers but godawful that season, 2011–12 had two of my favorite oilers games i ever watched: sam gagner's 8-point night against chicago, and a 9-2 win ALSO against chicago, who was one of the best teams in the league at the time. as a bl*ckhawks hater then and now, watching this clown car oilers team run roughshod over chicago brought me immeasurable joy.)

however, the only one of the young stars who was REALLY living up to expectations at this point was jordan eberle? iirc he lead the team in goals AND assists that year. the masses were starting to get impatient with the performances of the other young stars, especially first overall franchise savior taylor hall.

and the oilers won another draft lottery. (you can imagine at this point the rest of the league was already pretty sick of the oilers winning draft lotteries.) they drafted nail yakupov first overall. i am not going to dive deeply into the yakupov saga, because we would be here all night, but suffice to say that, no, he did not live up to first overall expectations, but also, yes, he was very much punished for Being Russian In Edmonton, and those two things cannot be untangled from each other. however, in the context of the nuge of it all, this leaves rnh in an interesting and particular spot: he is still not expected to be taylor hall, and wow he looks like such a nice pick compared to yakupov. rnh is playing pretty well! not all-star numbers or anything, but again, he's not the cornerstone of the franchise rebuild. he is an important brick, but not the foundation.

not like the rebuild is working anyway. with their arsenal of three straight first overall draft picks (and canadian world juniors hero jordan eberle), edmonton misses the playoffs for the seventh straight season. and then they miss them again. and then they miss them again. and it's not even like assigned franchise savior taylor hall is playing poorly — other than one slump of a season he is consistently putting up 50+ point seasons, including one 80 point season! but the oilers as a team are still a laughingstock in the league. it's not just that they're missing the playoffs. they are consistently near the bottom of the league.

to be clear, i don't think this was the fault of the players. i think the oilers were (are) pretty shit at management and were (are) pretty shit at prospect development. i think that when you have a team with that many decent-to-good players and you can't get out of the basement that the problem is systemic. but god forbid the front office take a good long look inward to diagnose the problem within themselves. no, the problem was that assigned franchise savior taylor hall was not doing his job (saving the franchise).

not that there wasn't any frustration toward other players, including rnh. there was frustration toward the team as a whole, but hall often bore the brunt of it. omark and pääjärvi were gone by around 2014. eberle was still well-liked but it was kind of accepted that he wasn't going to change the fate of the organization. the idea that the oilers needed to ship hall out becaue HE was the problem was in the air before the 2015 draft lottery.

and then the oilers won the 2015 draft lottery, and with it, connor mcdavid. people were not happy. (please click on this link it's so funny.) the oilers were so bad at this point that it was just generally accepted that connor going to the oilers meant the prime of his generational-talent career would be wasted by an incompetent team. honestly not really feeling like we've been proven wrong at this exact point in time!

however: connor mcdavid? brand new savior! way better savior than taylor hall ever would have been! the last five years of rebuild weren't REALLY a rebuild, the real rebuild was going to start with mcdavid!

and where is the nuge in all this? he has been pretty quietly plugging away, turning into a very good and reliable nhl player. a consistent 40–50 ish point player, not bad! fast forward a few seasons into the mcdavid era and he's putting up 80 points, 100 points! he's the longest-tenured oiler. the edmonton people and powers that be seem to really value him! which is really awesome.

this is not to say that there was never any "nuge should be better" discourse or any frustration with him when the team was doing so badly, because there was absolutely frustration with the whole team, including him. i do distinctly remember hearing the phrase "the oilers need more from ryan nugent-hopkins" more than once on the broadcasts. nuge finding his role on the team and the notable success he's had in more recent seasons has been a process, even though he hasn't ever been ~bad at the nhl level. however, imo, his positioning between noted disappointments hall and yakupov and also assigned saviors hall and mcdavid did put him in a unique position where people had a little more patience with him and blamed him less for the team's struggles than his fellow first overalls.

i do still miss the kid line sometimes though.

#ask #hockey for ts #thank u anon for letting me take this little trip down memory lane #also i was going to leave the coffeeshop and hour ago but i got so distracted by this 😂#all that being said does anyone else remember EXACTLY where they were when the oilers won the mcdavid lottery?#i have a terrible memory but i remember it in such exacting detail

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grapejuicegay · 10 months

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Thai BL Favorites List Tag Game

I was tagged by @feralmuskyscentedhoepran @casualavocados @waitmyturtles (look guys! I'm actually getting to a tag game relatively fast this time!)

Favourite bl:

Could it be anything but Bad Buddy? It's my first ever bl, it changed my life, I met some of my favourite people on here because of it and it just destroys me every single day just be existing. It got me with a flying kick in the chest and I have never let go since

Favourite pairing:

I joined at such a great time in bl and I've had an absolutely wonderful amazing 2 years with so many great pairings. But I love Ink with my whole entire heart and I love both of them and just their very existence as a pairing is Such a Big Deal in the industry as a whole that it can't be anything but

My girls!!!! I have nothing more to say

More underrated actor:

I think it's a toss up between Sing Harit and Aou Thanaboon. I'm excited every time Sing has any sort of role in any show I watch. He's brilliant and SO good. Just like with Neo, he's great at comic relief and effortlessly funny but also SO GOOD in a serious role. And Aou just showed up like a year ago and maybe I'm biased because I'm obsessed with Mes and I love him as Max but I just want to see more of him.

Favourite character:

Feral. Musky Scented. Hoe. Baby Boy. King of Repression. Menace. Dimples. Pran Parakul Siridechawat. I love him so much.

Favourite side character:

Wat "you are what you eat. what you take builds who you are" Wasuwat. Just making movies and looking out for his friends and being their voice of reason in the face of the impossible pressure on all of their shoulders.

Favourite scene:

The Eclipse ep 6 beach scene!

Not just because it's such a good scene but also because it's the reason @casualavocados and I finally started talking after months of lurking around each others' blogs. Julian ily never forget the big meta 💖💖

Favourite line:

I've already yelled with @dribs-and-drabbles and @dimplesandfierceeyes how absolutely insane "I'm tired of pretending to hate you while your face has taken over my heart" is.

But also, "I can't change the world but the world can't change me either"

It's such a powerful line delivered in the sunniest of settings. It's validating and empowering and comforting. It's as big a hug as Uncle Tong gives the boys when they say goodbye.

Most anticipated bl and why:

Only Friends and 23.5 Degrees. I don't think I need to explain

Healthiest relationship in a bl:

They snipe and snark at each other constantly but the only reason it works is because they know each other inside and out. They look out for each other, they fight but they figure it out, they talk about everything. They love each other not despite of their flaws but because of them (it's literally canon!). They make me want to tear my hair out with how much they love each other.

Most toxic relationship in a bl:

I've been very very lucky so far to have watched only great to average shows. I know they exist, but not for me they don't 🥰

Guilty pleasure series:

I don't think I really have any?? Largely because guilty pleasure is usually assigned to shows that are cheesy and/or pulpy shows that you don't like to admit to enjoying because you don't want to admit to watching them at all. I just enjoy enough objectively bad media (fast and furious franchise my beloved) to not really feel guilty over anything I like anymore.

Bonus! Most underrated series:

Agreeing with both @casualavocados and @waitmyturtles on Triage and He's Coming to Me. Both of them absolutely fantastic and DEFINITELY need more attention.

This was fun! I don't know who to tag that hasn't done this already! I guess I haven't seen one yet from @dimplesandfierceeyes @respectthepetty @lost-my-sanity1 @jemmo. If anyone else wants to do this, consider yourself tagged too!

#this wasn't supposed to be 90% about bad buddy #but like what did i expect would happen #bad buddy #the eclipse #only friends #23.5 degrees #inkpa #patpran #wat wasuwat #sing harit #aou thanaboon #triage #he's coming to me #feral musky scented hoe pran #tag game

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emotionallychargedtowel · 3 months

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For the tokusatsu ask game!

1 and 19 :)

Oh, those are good ones. Thanks, @nieves-de-sugui!

How did you get into toku?

When my kids were three or four (they're twins so they always share the same age), my son saw a toy Godzilla and got obsessed with it. So we started showing my kids Godzilla movies, then branched out into other Toho kaiju like Mothra, King Ghidorah, etc. Just to give you an idea of how deep this got, at one point my kids were both obsessed with Biollante, a monster that was created when scientists fused some of Godzilla's DNA with a rose and the soul of a young girl that looks kind of like the thing from Little Shop of Horrors on steroids. This continued for a while. Then we watched Godzilla vs. Megalon, which features Jet Jaguar, a kaiju-fighting robot who they immediately adored. We were already tracking down toys of the various monsters they liked and they wanted a Jet Jaguar one really bad, but when my partner went looking, there weren't any options out there. (I think since then a JJ figure has been issued, but it wasn't around at the time.)

Then a fateful moment occurred: my spouse saw an Ultraman toy someplace, though it kind of resembled Jet Jaguar, and got it for the kids to see if they'd like it. They were immediately obsessed and wanted to know all about Ultraman, but we barely knew anything about it. I'd seen a little bit of the weirdly dubbed version of Tiga that aired on the WB on Saturday mornings at one point, but that was it. So we started looking things up and checking out shows, which led to more shows and more toys and so on. Our first series was Tiga and we just kept going from there. This was also around the start of the pandemic, so we were in desperate need of an exciting new collective obsession. Actually, I don't know how we would have gotten through that period without Ultraman.

So we mainlined Ultraman for months (maybe even a year or more?) before we checked out any other toku stuff. Then we were talking to a friend who's knowledgeable about this stuff and he suggested we try branching out into other tokusatsu franchises. Our first Super Sentai series was Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, which we all loved right away. I think our first Kamen Rider series was actually Ex-Aid, so it’s kind of a miracle that we kept going with it, because I really dislike that series--I never even finished watching it. Our second Kamen Rider was Saber, which was a way better fit for us (if not exactly representative of the franchise) and remains one of my favorite Kamen Rider series.

Kamen Rider Ryuki was a kind of milestone because it was the first tokusatsu show that my spouse and I watched without having to have kids present and paying attention all the time. It's a bit on the mature side so they only wanted to watch it intermittently. That's when we figured out that some toku shows filled that niche really well--things that we could watch without worrying about kids feeling left out but that we didn't have to refrain from watching in their presence or censor somehow (at least, most of the time). Which led to even more tokusatsu-watching since things you can watch in that way can be hard to come by.

Incidentally, a big part of the reason I first got into BLs was because of my tokusatsu fandom. Before I saw my first BL, my twin sister had already seen KinnPorsche and told me about it, so maybe she would have continued with BLs and eventually gotten me into them anyway. It's hard to say. But as it happened, I was looking for something short and not too gut-wrenching to watch on Viki one day when I saw the listing for Senpai, This Can't Be Love and got curious about it because the leads were played by Naito Shuichiro from Saber and Seto Toshiki from Ex-Aid. I talk about the tokusatsu to BL pipeline for actors, but I myself traveled down the viewer equivalent of that pipeline.

19. If you could go back and change one show, what would you change?

My first thought was something relatively small. If I could, I’d change the fact that Takano Hassei’s character in Kamen Rider Ryuki was (spoiler!) killed off so quickly. I get that the battle royale premise of the series necessitated some painful character deaths but he was so likable and made the story so much more compelling as soon as he showed up and then suddenly he was gone. They should have let him stick around at least a while longer.

But the main series I’d change is Kamen Rider Kiva. I have such mixed feelings about that series in a number of areas, but the main thing I’d change is its treatment of women characters. It's kind of confusing, though. I keep thinking over how things turn out for the women in Kiva and trying to figure out exactly what my problem is with it and what I think should have been done differently. Basically, the women in Kiva face a lot of sexism in different forms, and the show makes this pretty explicit. Women in Kiva can be incredibly competent and smart, much more than their male counterparts, and they still don't get the same opportunities. Whenever men in the show are interested in a woman romantically and/or sexually, tons of sexism also comes into play, usually in the forms of benevolent sexism and/or objectification. In one arc, for example, two men fight over a woman as if she's a prize to be won and she doesn't have a say in the matter. Otoya often insists on rescuing Yuri from situations that she's arguably better equipped to deal with than he is, with occasionally disastrous effects. These things aren't portrayed as neutral. At times, sexism is called out explicitly. At others, it's shown in a way that seems clearly designed to make it visible.

I'm used to media texts that highlight sexism giving me some kind of catharsis about it. It would be ridiculous for a story to solve the problem of sexism completely, but there's usually some kind of progress that's made, or at least a character removes herself from a sexist situation if it doesn't improve. But Kiva doesn't do that. Not really, anyway. Both of the women who want to be Riders do get to do that, briefly, which was pretty remarkable when the series aired in 2008/2009. Unlike in some Kamen Rider series in which characters always have their own distinct Rider identity, a bunch of the people (basically, all of the human beings) who become Riders in Kiva use the same tool, the Ixa System, and become variations on the same Rider. Both Yuri and Megumi, a mother and daughter shown in different time periods, become Kamen Rider Ixa at some point. But their time as Riders is short-lived, and only happens after they've proven themselves again and again while watching the dopiest men imaginable get to become Ixa first. So that doesn't constitute much progress. (Did I mention that Yuri's deceased mother/Megumi's grandmotherdesigned the Ixa System? And they each still have to fight tooth and nail for a brief chance to use it!)

Watching Kiva actually made me notice the extent to which I expect some kind of catharsis once a piece of media foregrounds sexism somehow. And as soon as I noticed it, I questioned it. Does that kind of catharsis really need to happen? Might it not be better for us to have to sit with that discomfort? Catharsis discharges tension, but maybe it's better not to do that. But I don't think the uniformly shitty outcomes faced by the women on Kiva serve any sort of useful purpose in that way. (I'm including Megumi marrying Nago as a shitty outcome. The show may treat it as cause for celebration but that guy sucks and she's totally settling.)

So what would I change? First, I'd make the sexism the women face more explicit, with more characters labeling it as such more often. Since the show features two timelines, one taking place in 1986 and one in 2008, it would make sense and provide at least a little bit of hope if the 2008 storyline involved a bit less sexism or a bit more progress toward counteracting it. Maybe some individual characters could even learn something from their experiences and become a bit less sexist. At the very least, the leaders of the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization should have learned from their mistakes since they were present for the events of both 1986 and 2008 (the other 2008 characters are too young to have been present then except as small chidren).

When the two Kurenais, Otoya and Wataru, go through a body-swap situation across time and Otoya finds himself in 2008, his attitudes seem even more egregious in the context of 2008. I'd look for other ways to use the differences and similarities between attitudes in the two time periods to make a similar type of point.

I'd definitely give Yuri and Megumi more of a chance to be Ixa. Especially Megumi, since she's in 2008 when people should be at least a little bit less sexist. And for fuck's sake, I wouldn't have Megumi marry a douchey clod like Nago in a million years.

Well, that ended up being longer than I expected! Thanks again for the questions, nieves!

#tokusatsu #tokusatsu ask game #toho kaiju #biollante #jet jaguar #ultraman #ultraman tiga #kaizoku sentai gokaiger #kamen rider saber #kamen rider kiva #senpai this can't be love

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astral-from-afar · 1 year

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Tokusatsu influences in Blue Period

Okay many people may not know but Magender in Blue Period is a reference to Tokusatsu, specifically Kamen Rider. I just want to spend my time going through some panels and just add a few fun facts as a fan of both shows.

Here is a brief rundown of Kamen Rider

It’s a long running TV show starting from the 1970s where a superhero who rides a motorcycle fight supervillains in order to protect Earth and their loved ones. When the franchise began they usually had an insect motif but has expanded in the last few decades to experiment with new ideas. There are 33 series currently and are split up into 3 eras (Showa, Heisei and Reiwa) based on the different monarchs who ruled over Japan at the time. There are other details but all you need to know is that it is pretty big series in Japan and has been making waves internationally.

First is the episode count. Usually kamen rider seasons shows last around 47-52 episodes on average however some can be as little as 31 episodes (kamen rider decade) and some can be as long as 98 episodes ( the original kamen rider series). The reasoning behind the episode count is that it runs all year round only a weekly basis. It starts from September and ends in August with a few breaks throughout the year.

Another staple in the kamen rider and tokusatsu medium as a whole is the transformation belt or “Henshin belt”. This is used by the main character to transform into their superhero form and they often cry out “Henshin” (transform in Japanese) as well as their catchphrase. As seen below Magender’s catchphrase is: Eliminate evil and illuminate truth.

Furthermore Henshin belts are one of the most successful pieces of merchandise in Kamen Rider due to it iconicness with each new rider having their own unique belt. Another piece of merchandise would be the helmet which Meguro wore in chapter 45. Both can be pretty expensive so I feel for Yatora ( i want one so bad as well)

Last bits I want to go over is what Takada said in chapter 51. The demographic in Tokusatsu has always gone towards young kids, mainly boys. However there have been interesting incidences where a kamen rider series is watched by a different demographic, adult women. This phenomenon was not only due to mothers having to understand the plot of kamen rider for their children but because they found the main lead handsome.

This caused the widely known ‘Odagiri effect’ (named after the lead actor in Kamen Rider Kuuga) which wikipedia states that “A program attracts a larger than expected number of female viewers because the program stars attractive male actors or characters”

This doesn’t mean all women watch kamen rider for the handsome characters of course but this caused a large shift in how actors were recruited which still happens in the present day

The last comment about the relationship between the two male characters is quite an often take when it comes to the two male leads of the series. The tension caused by the two and their subsequent interactions as they learn to bond over the 50 episodes causes many fans to speculate if their bonds go beyond ‘friendship’. I could name many incidents in almost all series that are homoerotic but it is rare to have anything confirmed. To add fuel to the fire it isn’t uncommon to see actors of a particular kamen rider series to go onto starring in BLs which has lead to several memes by kamen rider fans.

Okay so that’s all. I’m very happy if anyone read this far and I hope this gave a bit of an insight on the Tokusatsu medium through the lens of Magender as I love Kamen rider and Blue Period to bits. I’ve barely seen anyone talk about it online so I just wanted to dedicate a long post about it. Have a great day :D

#Blue period #yatora yaguchi #Blp meguro #Takada #kamen rider #tokusatsu

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luna-rainbow · 1 year

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Vincenzo thoughts

I'm halfway through the series now and first thing is either the director or the scriptwriter must be a fan of Song Joongki LMAO This whole thing is an ode to this completely fantastical character. There are so many scenes that's unnecessary for the plot. Like the entire BL drama in episode 8, even if it was hilarious to watch Vincenzo switch between alluringly handsome and a "kill me now" expression (and both Song Joongki and Kim Sungcheol really going for it in their exaggerated performances, while the director/cameraman pulls every romance trope in the book).

I think the best way to take this series is to see it as a superhero genre without the superpowers. It is an extremely exaggerated version of reality, down to Vincenzo's skills, the villains' reckless disregard for consequence, and the at times comical resolutions - and the profound lack of law enforcement in a show featuring main characters who work with the law. Surprisingly, it works (as long as you're not trying to convince yourself it's trying to be realistic), with the alternation between grim violence and quirky comedy keeping the palate fresh.

It's not just Vincenzo who's unrealistic, all of the characters are cartoonish in some way -- Hong Chayoung's undampable sass, Jang Hanseok's grandiose vanity, Choi Myunghee's cruelty, all the residents in the building -- but they're also quirky and individual and manage to be more than a cardboard caricature, an admirable feat.

What I do like is that it's made clear from the start that the two main characters are not your classic "good people" (boy am I glad that the female lead is not relegated the "voice of kindness" role for once). The only certifiably good person was Chayoung's father, who then mused, "Perhaps it takes a monster to defeat a monster" before asking Vincenzo to become that monster. He also said of his own daughter, "The world has changed, and it now needs someone who's ruthless, fearless and shameless enough to win the fight." They're not moral people, per se, but they are principled people who will fight every inch to protect their own code.

And I think this is where Vincenzo as a show actually works (as opposed to...ahem, certain Disney franchises). Vincenzo is fighting on behalf of the disenfranchised - the impoverished residents who are being evicted, the families of subjects who died from medical experimentation, the one human rights lawyer who tried to stand up to Goliath and lost because he was too pure, his own mother who was framed for murder - against a corrupt corporation in cahoots with every public service: the police, the hospital, the justice system, the banks and even the media. Despite the comedy sprinkled throughout, the stakes are high and the villains are terrifyingly merciless, so that Vincenzo's ruthless retaliation is not just gratuitous, but actually necessary to bring them down.

Like Song Joongki mused in one interview, he was surprised the show connected with people in other countries - but perhaps, he adds, that social injustice and sense of helplessness is something people all over the world understood. It is a classic David vs Goliath story, and we love to see David get his hands dirty and tear Goliath to shreds.

I finish with this poignant metaphor of the law enforcement corruption issue, which Vincenzo says to a prosecutor who protests that there are still a lot of good, upright people in the justice system:

Here is an apple. This side is rotten, this side isn't. Half of it is rotten, and half of it is still edible. We would call this a rotten apple, not an apple that is still half-edible. Even if there is a fresh, uncorrupted prosecutor like you left, the system you work in is still a rotten apple. You say that there are people in the justice system who are morally upright, but that sort of assertion won't turn a rotten apple back into its fresh state. The worst case scenario is that even the fresh part turns rotten in time.

#vincenzo #kdrama #song joong ki

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undeath1245 · 1 year

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The “lore” of Overwatch

Do you guys think that the franchise’s lore is lackluster, boring if not worse? Because I feel like there isn’t enough substance in the backstory behind Bl*zz*rd’s hit FPS game. Or most likely, the lore is being swept aside to focus on other things other than maintaining the game’s “sequel” and its shitty monetization system.

Now, I figure that the franchise has to have a backstory to explain its playable characters’ backgrounds; TV Tropes refer to it as an “excuse plot”. But, the lore has so much substance and content that it shouldn’t be swept aside and left out for so long. I mean, I became a huge fan of Overwatch’s story from its animated shorts, and the last one I saw was “Infiltration”. I honestly feel like this story could have benefited better if it was told through either a single-player story mode (excluding the upcoming indefinitely cancelled PvE mode), a standalone single-player FPS game, or, even better, an animated series made by the same studio that made these shorts. I’m a bit skeptical about following the story again and watching the other shorts I missed, largely because I’m unsure if the writing and overall lore is good or not. Many people say that the shorts’ writing was plain and shallow, as if they needed to be made as soon as possible to appeal to the fans who adore the animation and story, and the animation is wonderful, I tell you what.

Some people say that some of these shorts don’t entirely match with a player character's overall personality and backstory. Take Hana Song, for example. In the game, she is characterized as a snarky, giddy Gamer Girl™ and mech pilot who spouts annoying quips at her enemies, and I love that about her. But from what I’ve heard, in her own short, “Shooting Star”, D.Va is characterized as a war-torn soldier who apparently uses her Gamer Girl™ personality as some sort of public façade, as she retains a vigilant, worried demeanor in case the “enemy” ever comes back, whomever that is. It’s almost as if her joy and spunky personality had already diminished, and we didn’t get to see any of that happen. It could have been better if we could see some flashbacks about her career as a skilled, popular gamer and her good times with her teammates before things went south. I mean, “Honor and Glory” did this better with Reinhardt. Plus, wasn’t D.Va supposed to be a StarCraft gamer? Because I heard that got retconned by Michael Chu.

And that brings us to another issue with the franchise’s lore: the retcons. From what I heard, Overwatch’s lore suffered from so many retcons, and I don’t know why. I think the first instance I heard of such a retcon was when Moira was introduced. Before Moira, it was heavily hinted that Mercy was responsible for Gabriel’s transformation, when she botched a resurrection that turned him into a shadowy freak. But in Moira’s origin story, she was the one responsible for giving Gabriel the spooky sublimation powers he currently possesses. At first, I thought that it was Mercy’s resurrection ability that further fucked up his body, but after reading some Wiki pages, Gabriel was resurrected into Reaper by Moira after his supposed death. Adding to this retcon, Brigitte (or Birgitta as I prefer to call her as such) was supposed to be 28 years old before her age was retconned to 23 years. Another instance of these retcons is that, from what I read from this post, Gabriel rebelled against Overwatch because of his bitter jealousy of Jack when he got promoted as strike commander, not because of his dispute with his team from their differing ideas and methods. One other retcon is that, from what I was reading from this page on All the Tropes, Pharah was supposed to be fully Egyptian until her ethnicity was retconned to be mixed race, Egyptian and First Nations to be precise, granted that it was probably because of her Thunderbird skin.

But then again, after reading this excerpt, some of these retcons were probably misinterpreted as such because they somehow interfered with the fandom’s overall headcanon, like Mercy being responsible for Gabriel’s transformation. But then again, when it comes to the writers adding in new stuff into your game’s story, especially when it comes to adding in new characters, and especially when it comes to adding in new stuff through mere snippets (the animated shorts and comics), you think that they should have planned the full story ahead much earlier instead of later on. I’m not saying that they should have added in some sort of story mode early on in the first version. I’m saying that they should have made a complete outline of the game’s story instead of making it up as they went along, not that this method was bad. I’m sure that there are other stories that were made up as the writers went along and were handled well, too.

(incoming rant)

I began writing this post around a couple of months ago. I was largely neutral with what Liar Entertainment has in store for the PvE mode. I never planned on getting it and playing it right away, largely because I’m not a PC gamer and I don’t want to sell my personal information. I was waiting for the playthroughs that were to be uploaded onto YouTube. But then, on May 16th, Bl*zz*rd had announced that the PvE mode has been cancelled. Not only that, but from what I’ve heard, it had been cancelled ever since around 2021, largely because of management issues and executives prioritizing the oh-so most popular PvP mode more than anticipated PvE mode. So essentially, Overwatch Lite (that’s what I’m calling the current version) was not only a glorified update that dared to call itself a sequel, but it was also a complete scam from the beginning. Fans had been waiting for a story mode ever since, especially those who are diehard fans of the game’s lore, and the PvE mode was basically what they were itching for. Sure that it wasn’t like a single-player campaign like in other games like in Call of Duty or Halo, but it was a campaign mode nonetheless, at best a multiplayer campaign similar to Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: Zombies mind you. And yet, Bl*zz*rd decided to pull the plug on it and focus on the traditional PvP mode, and more likely what to put in their shitty online store. I heard that the company had been declining ever since *ct*v*s**n merged with them, and I’m no avid gamer, but I feel inclined to believe as such. Maybe if that merger had never happened, Bl*zz*rd would have remained as the most popular, most beloved video game company ever known. Maybe if that merger hadn’t happened, Overwatch, or even Project Titan, would have flourished as one of the most popular FPS games of all time.

Sorry that I almost turned this post into a rant there. I’m still a bit agitated that content like the game’s lore and story is currently being handled by a diminishing video game company, with the PvE mode being split into fragments locked behind a battle pass paywall. I have no idea what’s going to happen with this franchise at this point. Maybe these missions would be fun and engaging. Maybe the story is still happening. Who knows? All I know that, now that Liar Entertainment had come clean to the PvE mode being cancelled, I think that the game’s playerbase will diminish as time rolls by. I know that there will be a couple of players still latching onto the Overwatch scene and sticking around for future seasons. I honestly can’t blame them. I mean, you got to at least stick around to see if those battle pass-locked missions and cinematics are worth the money. But at this point, now that the company had wiped out all faith in the playerbase, Overwatch will fall, no one wins, and that planned lore that people had been waiting for is lost in time. But, it doesn’t mean that it could be the end for the fandom, or the remains of the fandom at this point. We could still make some fan works here and there, do some fan art and even make some fan-made shorts if we could. If Bl*zz*rd couldn’t deliver the story as promised, we might as well make it ourselves. I know that there are a lot of fan stories out there that explores the many concepts of Overwatch. I still remember some comic dubs of such. Heck, we could even explore cut content from the game, like the heroes from Prometheus.

There’s plenty of material out there. All it takes is our imagination. I know that fanon shouldn’t hold superiority over canon, nor should it be held over people’s heads. But sometimes, when it comes to an incomplete, interrupted storyline like Overwatch’s, maybe we ought to fill in the blanks and create what we can come up with. I don’t want to end this post on a low note, rather a fairly high note. If the company won’t deliver the story, we might as well make like the Mad Titan Thanos and make it ourselves.

#Blizzard Entertainment #Overwatch #Overwatch 2 #Michael Chu #D.Va #Reinhardt #Mercy #Reaper #Moira #Soldier: 76 #Pharah #Brigitte #lore #storytelling #retcons #criticisms

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waitmyturtles · 10 months

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: 2gether and Still 2gether Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I tackle the impact of GMMTV’s biggest BL, 2gether, and its companion follow-up, Still 2gether.]

Alright! We have reached a major milestone in the Old GMMTV Challenge. This entire project started off on the backs of two now-seminal posts (for me! and I hope for you, too!). The first one was a dialogue I had with the ever-lovely @miscellar regarding how Bad Buddy had addressed BL tropes and turned those tropes around for a singular drama experience. At the time of my asking @miscellar about this, I hadn’t organized myself to do a chronological exploration of Thai BLs as a genre -- I was picking and choosing what to watch, and I knew that what I had watched in Bad Buddy was formative. I wanted to learn more.

@absolutebl had caught the scent of this discussion, as others were sending them asks of this historical nature as well, and they penned this post that listed out the three dramas that they thought best explained how GMMTV came to its current state of programming -- GMMTV’s apology tour, as we called it back then, with Love Sick, SOTUS, and 2gether listed as the three dramas one needed to watch to understand the state of GMMTV’s BL programming now.

So with that, I dove in, and publicly began building out the OGMMTVC, with major help from @absolutebl, @bengiyo, @shortpplfedup, @lurkingshan, @miscellar, @nieves-de-sugui, @solitaryandwandering, and many, MANY others along the way (@manogirl singlehandedly introduced me to MaxTul, for which I say, FUCK YEAH, FRIEND, THANK YOU!).

And the milestone that we’re celebrating today is that I’ve crossed the 2gether and Still 2gether threshold -- 2gether being the last drama on @absolutebl‘s original list. And, of course! I have thoughts on 2G and S2G.

(Before I dive in, I just want to say that I’m saving some juicy, juicy analysis of the pain/suffering/separation type for a separate meta that I’m hoping to publish later this week, offering a comparative analysis of Still 2gether to Bad Buddy and Until We Meet Again. I don’t want to unwind this here, because I want this post to focus in large part on 2gether’s media influence, but -- stay tuned, I’m headed for more pain meta shortly, tee hee!)

So, yeah, 2gether -- wow, right? Haha.

No, not quite, I’m just sort of joking. I’ve had EXCELLENT dialogue with the fabulous @bengiyo and @so-much-yet-to-learn about there being some shining spots in 2gether, which I agree with them about. (For both 2G and S2G, @bengiyo and @so-much-yet-to-learn shared with me some incredibly moving reflections on what it meant that Bright Vachirawit, in particular, was so emphatic about Sarawat being identified as gay in the show -- and how that spoke to the queer community during 2G’s prime. Thanks to you both for those timely comments.)

I think those of us who watched this 2G installment of the franchise know inherently what its major issues are, including a lack of chemistry emanating from Win Metawin, and an overabundance of pure talent and eagerness from Bright Vachirawit that wasn’t met at his level, à la Krist and Singto in SOTUS.

Besides the 2gether series itself -- which I’ll get back to in a minute -- I just want to note the external landscape of the show’s airing. We now all know that this show premiered in the very early stages of the COVID pandemic emanating out of Asia. 2gether’s popularity has long been attributed to people being at home to watch shows, many of whom likely were watching Thai BLs for the very first time. According to 2gether’s wiki, the show reached 100 million views by April 2020 on LINE TV ALONE (thank you to @lurkingshan for dropping the data!). Both Bright and Win have MASSIVE social media followings now, FAR outnumbering the other stableholders at GMMTV (Tay, Off, Gun, Nanon, etc.). And, 2gether’s continued success in and out of Asia is mostly attributed to the nostalgia that first-time viewers may have about 2gether being their first BL.

I thought this was all interesting to note in a recent Instagram post that Toptap Jirakit, who plays Type in 2gether/Still 2gether, posted. He hit the streets, interviewing Thai fans on their favorite BL series. I think it’s likely convenient for his own career that most of the interviewees listed 2G in their top three lists -- but it made me think.

I know, especially from discussions with @bengiyo and @lurkingshan, that there was a LOT of BL fan dismay about the ending of 2G. To be UTTERLY honest, I TOTALLY MISSED the ending high-five, because I was looking for, like, something BIG at the end, and, lol, the high-five totally went over my head. I guess that’s a good description for my feeling of the entire series, which I’ll dive more into in a bit.

First, I want to offer another, but supporting, theory on 2G’s popularity. Taking into account that Toptap IG video (again, acknowledging the self-promotion within it), as well as Bright and Win’s massive popularity, I want to meditate on the wider fandom of BLs vs. non-BL dramas in Asia. BLs in Japan, for instance, are often relegated to midnight-or-later airing times on television. And much of GMMTV’s content is online-based first. I don’t know, as BL fans, if we’re routinely and globally aware that the fandom for BLs -- which is big, maybe even huge -- is dwarfed by, say, the fandom of a mid-sized K-drama. The BL industries in Thailand and Korea are still relatively young and nascent, while other non-BL drama machines are well-oiled across the continent.

In other words -- yes, because of COVID did 2G find a much bigger audience. But I also want to offer that 2G’s...chastity? chasteness?...may have also HELPED this particular series gain such wider appeal. In other words: Asian audiences of a larger mass, outside of established BL fandoms within and outside of Thailand, may have responded more favorably to 2G BECAUSE of 2G’s lack of sex, a lack of innuendo, a lack of insinuation.

(Remember: in majority cishet society, sex is judged. And queer sex? Forget about it. I’ve established in this OGMMTVC that queer sex is even fodder for creating discriminatory material WITHIN the BL genre itself. Sex AND queer attraction give many people the jibbles. Audiences going to non-BL dramas may be doing so because they want to consume specifically het content. Same-sex romance just might not be their thing. And those non-BL drama genres are GIGANTIC -- from funding to viewership, etc.)

In that Toptap video, many fans list Bad Buddy, A Tale of Thousand Stars, and others as their other favorite BLs. Putting BBS aside for a second -- because there WAS intimacy in BBS, just not an overabundance of it -- we can consider ATOTS as another example of a BL that happens to be quite popular in Thailand, demonstratively, while also being subject to similar criticism by BL fandom as 2G in having a lack of intimacy.

While us in the BL fandom will readily make fun of 2G for not having intimacy at all, I do think, for Asian audiences not accustomed to an abundance of sex and/or same-sex sex in media -- the way that us Western viewers have in our majority media -- that 2G was accessible. It wouldn’t have to make your non-BL fan, new to the genre, uncomfortable -- especially to see same-sex intimacy.

(The wonderful @telomeke made a similar point last week in a conversation about queer acceptance vis à vis Thai politics. I wonder if our devoted BL fandoms lull us to think that an ENTIRE COUNTRY might be accepting of the queer community and queer politics and policies. It’s definitely not a reality in any single nation worldwide. There are always going to be complicated dichotomies of acceptance in every single society that humans exist in.)

When I got to the end of 2G, and saw that there wasn’t going to be any kissin’ or huggin’ -- it made TOTAL sense to me WHY this show was popular OUTSIDE of the already-established BL fandom, particularly in Asia. It ain’t my cup of tea, but it was a show that I could see, like, my Asian cousins watching, as an introduction to queer revelations and engagement. And then, if they stuck with the genre, I could see them going to, say, an ATOTS, before going to a BBS, a show that really addressed the development of queer intimacy between men. Numbers-wise -- yes, COVID explains 2G’s popularity. Content-wise? Content-wise, 2G stays in people’s hearts, partly because I believe it didn’t PUSH those hearts, as a same-sex starting gun to their first exposure to BL.

I could get well into an analysis of how sex, generally, is perceived in Asia, and ALL of the cultural nuances and biases AGAINST sex in Asia (cc @neuroticbookworm, as we have talked about potentially writing meta together on this topic from our shared South Asian lens). But I happen to think that some of our beloved BL filmmakers -- P’Aof Noppharnach, Jojo Tichakorn, New Siwaj, Cheewin Thanamin -- have actually addressed it, and beautifully so, and continue to do so. For instance, the ending quote placards in Dark Blue Kiss touch multiple times on Thailand needing more sex education. Just to offer a personal example -- I’ve had to talk to Asian relatives well into their thirties, as an American, about their first exposure to sex, to explain that sex is not... a bad thing. It’s the cultural and social judgments that accompany sex that colors a person’s worldview on sex.

2G didn’t challenge ANY OF THAT. In fact, in casting Win, they chose a dude who was VERY CLEARLY not INTO that -- to me, à la the casting of Krist Perawat in SOTUS.

No sex? No moral challenges, no ethical quandaries, no uncomfortable moments with a same-sex acting partner. Just two dudes dating, cute cute, holding hands at the Scrubb concert (or whatever).

Of course, for my tastes, as y’all know, I desire something more complicated. And I understand that GMMTV HEARD the feedback that many established BL fans had about that 2G ending. And P’Aof Noppharnach, at the time of 2G’s ending, clearly said something to the effect of, not on my watch, I’m actually going to take this franchise AND FIX IT, MY WAY, which, fuck, COULD I LOVE THIS MAN MORE? No -- but YES, I found a way to love him more.

And we got Still 2gether -- a show rooted in its QUEERNESS. QUEERNESS AND INTIMACY AND INDICATIONS OF SEX. I mean, look!

Not just rainbow shirts! Rainbow shirts on multiple people. And rainbow TABLES. P’Aof was like, WE ARE NOT MISSING A MOMENT HERE, PEOPLE. We’re going to fix this. We’re going to claim BL for the queer community who actually serve at the mercy of the audience that consumes BLs.

Before I dig further into S2G, for which I have reams of notes, as opposed to 2G (obviously) -- some quick positive notes on 2G. Wat’s romantic confession in the shelter bus in the forest was seriously heart-warming. It was romantic as fuck. And we see a NUMBER of tropes that make their way into BBS -- bringing over a beverage to someone who is joined by another potential romantic partner; how everything needs to be a competition or a “deal”; all the singing and writing of songs; make-up remover/micellar water (hi @miscellar, ha!); the keeping of a guitar for someone else. I loved seeing those tropes in 2G. I love when shows talk to each other.

Most of all, 2G established Sarawat as committed to his pursuit. Bright was UNABASHED in his role as Sarawat. It was Win/Tine who could not meet Bright’s level -- seemingly out of, what, disinterest? Repulsion? Maybe even a lack of acting talent? It wasn’t obnoxious, per se. It just seemed like Win didn’t know HOW to respond, or even what to respond TO -- all while Bright/Wat CLEARLY SIMMERED in his role. (Like I said earlier, @bengiyo has shared that Bright was emphatic in interviews that Sarawat was gay, while Win was less forward about Tine and who Tine was.)

And I think S2G absolutely grabbed Bright’s talent and spotlighted it. I am deeply glad that the ending of S2G had a such a STRONG sexual insinuation, à la AePete’s SIMMERING attraction in Love By Chance, and even in moments throughout the show as well, and I loved how S2G leveraged Bright’s fabulous acting as Sarawat IN those insinuations. Because -- contrary to how my Asian parents raised me, and how many Asians are TAUGHT to THINK about sex, which is to say, to try to ignore it or laugh at it -- PEOPLE HAVE SEX. And sex, and QUEER SEX, are things to be celebrated. Sex is beautiful, and BELONGS in stories of romance and love. To have had it essentially...deleted?...from 2G removed a huge sense of reality from that piece of drama art.

S2G also focused on a thing that many in the BL fandom actually pooh-pooh: it focused on a committed, ongoing relationship. My favorite BL in the world, Kinou Nani Tabeta?/What Did You Eat Yesterday? is focused on two middle-aged guys in the middle of their years-long relationship. I’m a married mom. I want to see the struggle. I love first love in BLs, don’t get me wrong -- my Cherry Magics, my BBSs, my Old Fashion Cupcakes. But I also don’t mind the struggles. Give me a Minato’s Laundromat, season 2, any day.

I think P’Aof was offering a subversion to Thai BL expectations by showing Tine and Wat in their settled relationship, a year in, where even Sarawat admits -- the sweetness of the relationship has worn off. The guys are working together, living together, working on their relationship together, eating instant noodles together, instead of the green curry and simmered pork and eggs that Tine lovingly made for Sarawat in their early days.

I feel like I’ve said this before, but let me say it again: I CANNOT EMPHASIZE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS FOR MEDIA TO SHOW QUEER COUPLES IN LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS. Queer partners are FAMILY, TOO. I had ongoing FABULOUS conversation with @chickenstrangers (THANK YOU, FRIEND!) during my 2G and S2G conversations, and dear @chickenstrangers pointed out to me the nature of a conversation that Sarawat and Earn (FILM FILM FILM!) had, in which Earn complemented Sarawat on his courage in being in a same-sex relationship. And Wat corrects her. (Sorry for the massively bad screenshots, it’s bumbling mom hour around here):

Like I said earlier: 2G gave potentially sex-and-queer-love-averse audiences a BL they could chew on. Win Metawin gave them enough by way of the portrayal to allow audiences to feel like they could be at arm’s-length while observing a same-sex relationship.

S2G, and Sarawat himself, strike to the HEART of queer existence and queer love. Sarawat corrects Earn: I do not love Tine because I’m courageous. I love Tine because I love Tine, because I am a human who loves another human. It’s nothing special. It’s just love that myself and my partner have, that other couples have.

I think what P’Aof did, by way of observing what was going down in 2G -- what was being NORMALIZED in 2G -- was to pull a switch and turn the tracks around, and say, I have got to normalize ANOTHER PATH for these fans that are paying extremely close attention to Bright and Win right now. And he did it, with rainbow tablecloths and shirts; with Tine’s homies, Fong and Ohm, holding Tine down; with Sarawat’s homies, Man and Boss, exploring their OWN loves simultaneously with Sarawat and holding Sarawat down with love and support.

Oh, and, of course. What P’Aof did with Green. Green was arguably a worst-case scenario of a gay character being misused for comedy in any of the dramas I’ve seen on the OGMMTVC in 2G. I honestly do NOT know what GMMTV was thinking when they allowed that characterization to air.

And Green just becomes... SASSY, and EQUAL, and really fun and slightly conniving towards Dim in S2G, and it was FABULOUS to watch (OMG. Guy and Guy’s chemistry and comedy? HILARIOUS. P’Aof ABSOLUTELY knew what he was doing there!).

Watching S2G was another fabulous P’Aof moment. It was like putting on warm pajamas and snuggling in for the smart ride of a drama. Every bad drama should consider having P’Aof come in to save the day (except for The Promise and Step By Step -- let’s never utter those titles ever again, ever).

But, I do need to give 2G credit. 2G opened the door for something: it served as a misstep for GMMTV to learn from. I don’t want to be SO summarizing like that -- again, because very important experts in @bengiyo and @so-much-yet-to-learn, who analyze shows from a very important queer lens, have spoken on the bright spots of 2G. 2G allowed for S2G to exist, for Sarawat to exist as an openly-in-love man with a boyfriend who he doted on. 2G allowed for fans of 2G to then walk the road in S2G, to be exposed to P’Aof’s CRITICAL and EMPATHIC eye in developing queer content, and to be exposed to a Sarawat that was much more able to LOVE and to receive love.

I’ll giggle and laugh at the foibles of 2G. But I saw how Bright, and even Win, improved in S2G. I saw how a director in P’Aof, and his screenwriting team in Pratchaya, Bee, and Au, took a thing that wasn’t representing the queer community healthily enough, and turned it into yet another gorgeous representation, not just of queer love -- but of GLOBAL LOVE, a kind of love, between Tine and Sarawat, that all of us humans who WANT to love another person, can strive for. I will always appreciate 2G and S2G for that journey.

[Alright, we keep truckin’! If you’ve been following my blog in the late-night space, well -- you know where I’m at, psychologically, at the moment. I was ALL KINDS OF MESSSEDDDDD UPPPPPPPPPP over I Told Sunset About You. GEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZ. I am really going to enjoy my ITSAY write-up, and will definitely serve up some comparative analysis between ITSAY and other shows, as per a request from the legendary @lurkingshan, I gotchu, gurl. I see some really important moments from the OGMMTVC journey in ITSAY and cannot wait to get my pen on them.

And speaking of wild and crazy mindsets, I have started YYY -- more on THAT in the liveblogs -- and then after YYY, a return to dear MaxTul. We’ll definitely honor the end of Tul Pakorn’s career as I watch Manner of Death for the first time. Tul’s been a real homey in the space for a while, and I can’t wait to celebrate him.

Here’s the status of the watchlist -- as always, I’ll take any feedback ya got!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 11) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 15) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) 17) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) 18) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review coming) 19) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (watching) 20) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 21) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS 23) Lovely Writer (2021) 24) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) 25) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 26) Not Me (2021-2022) 27) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 28) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 29) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 30) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 31) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 32) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 33) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 34) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 35) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 36) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

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italianpersonwithashippersheart · 11 months

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BL Wishes

My List of things and Plots that I Would Like to See In BL

FIRST: Rapid Fire Specific Drama Edition:

Big Dragon S2: I need it, I need it now and I need at least one kinky scene with MossBank because I have not forgotten about the lack of kinky sex in s1. I know it's going to focus on a new couple but I need at least one sexy kinky time with them please and thank you.

I need Minato Coin Laundry s2 not to break them up, or have stupid cheating plots. (The bar is in hell)

I need both Domundi (The Next Prince, Naughty Babe, Love Upon a Time, Middleman) and Taiwan (I forgot the names of announced shows but it's in my blog somewhere) Line Ups to come to me and I need it now. Especially Taiwan.

I need Make A Wish to be more available, I could only find it with Italian Subs, I didn't watch it yet, but the ending seems to be hinting at a season 2 and at the possiblity of a poly ending (or at least a love triangle) so I need other people to be able to watch it as well.

The HIstory franchise needs to get its shit together and start producing more and better shows. Like for all of it's fault I did like History 4 and History 5 was fine. But I need more, I need them to do 2 shows again, I don't want them to "fine" I want them to go all out. Go Crazy. Just don't kill gays again.

Now More Generic BL Wishes:

VAMPIRES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just give me vampires, maybe even some werewolves. I need it, I know that we have Mafia BLs but I want Vampire BL god damn it!!!! The main four actors of Cutie Pie would be great a Vampire-Werewolf BL. And I know Fluke Natouch would be great as a Vampire as well (he was in 2015 movie playing a human to vampire co-lead). I also think Earth Cooheart would be great as a Vampire. And MossBank, they would be great in a werewolves pair.

Speaking of Fluke Natouch and Earth Cooheart I need both of them to get more adult and darker roles. I need Cooheart to be allowed to be a little sexy, and I know Fluke would do a darker powerful role justice, I want him to be in a role where he bringes "bigger" man to their knees. I want to see him covered in blood (I say this with love)

POLYCULE with the main four actors of Cutie Pie. This is entairly @respectthepetty's fault. I saw the MaxZee posts on her blog and and It send me down a rabbit hole. By the way did you know there are no true polycule fanfic of the four of them, there is something, but not true polycule and never with Lian and Yi as a pair. Truly no one knows these characters they way @respectthepetty knows them.

Also @respectthepetty's fault for putting this in my head: Domundi Line Up Mash Up. Bad Friend and Middleman Ship meet Cutie Pie and Naughty Babe's ships. In one big BL. The idea is now in my head and it's glorious. Let's Do It!!

Choco Milk Shake Thair Remake but Poly this time. Not sure what trio could do this, but I need it.

LET GUN KISS SOMEONE WHO IS NOT OFF. Listen I realize that OffGun are probably GMMTV best pair branding, and I know that both Off and Gun are going to bank on this pair and be settled for life. I don't even need Gun to be in an endgame ship with another actor, I just need him to kiss another male actor. Not Me would have been the best scenario because of the twins situation. But they didn't go there, and I will never forgive them for that.

Related to Number 5, I had this idea for a plot with an OffGun endgame ship, that started with Gun's character being in a relationship with Sing (because I am still mad about ToddBlack - Listen they have baited us twice with GunSing kiss I need this now) who cheats on him and Gun has to move out and finds an appartmant with Off's character and maybe another roomate played by Tay because I love the Tay/Off dynamic. We would get scenes with Gun and Sing together, showings us flashbacks and stuff but also an OffGun endgame. WIN WIN!!

I need more shows with parents that are in the murky gray area between full acceptance and abusive, I need them not to change their mind at the end and I need a realistic exploration of what it means for a queer person to have parents in that gray area, I want them to question if it's worth it to have to be one that is keeping that realtionship alive. I am also loving the trend of dramas dealing with homophobia and I need to see more of it. I don't want it in all my BLs far from it, but I do like when BL goes there.

More disable characters in BL, preferably by disable actor's but this is a streach so, I just need more disability in BL.

And more actually fat characters, not like Jao in SCOY (which I Love, but calling him fat, felt like a bit of a strech)

And Obviously more GLs and more masc women in GL

I think that's it. Those are the major ones. Feel free to share your thoughts on your own wishes or if you agree or disagree with any of my ideas.

#bl wishes #bl series #bl actors

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tofueggnoodles · 6 months

Text

my phones for the last two decades

just a celebration of mundane materialism

It got smaller. (For those of you in the know, yes, I waited nearly 10 years before getting a new phone because I want, no, need an Android phone that fits in my pocket. I don't need a big screen, just a nice pair of earbuds or a good BT speaker. I listen to my porn instead of watching them.)

Or maybe not.

I have no good reason for putting the Saiyuki boys on the wallpaper, except that I like Sensei's art. I hardly listen to the Drama CDs anymore, because I listened to them so many times between 2021 and 2022 I am now just sick of them.

BUT, I owe everything (especially my mental health and overall state of happiness today) to Saiyuki. If I had not chosen to rekindle my love for this franchise by downloading some random Saiyuki Drama CD from youtube, I would not have been introduced to the Wild Adapter series. And if I had not gotten into a KuboToki obsession, I would not have been tempted to seek out BL Drama CDs featuring the same set of VAs on aarinfantasy. As they say, one thing leads to another....

In short, Saiyuki was the indirect cause of me owning 20 GB (1 weeks' worth) of BL Drama CDs on multiple drives. These are mostly from the late 1990s up to the late 2000s, because most of the VAs in the Minekura franchise were, well, active during that period.

I also have tons of CD Dramas starring Miki Shin'ichirou and as many as I can find that feature the late Shiozawa Kaneto, but for this I blame Yami no Matsuei and Ai no Kusabi ;)

#saiyuki #drama cd #miki shinichirou #shiozawa kaneto #minekura kazuya

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absolutebl · 2 years

Text

10 BLs to Watch if You Loved KinnPorsche

It’s really hard for me to understand exactly why you liked a thing, anything, let alone a phenomena of pop culture. Also there is nothing exactly like KP. With those two codicils in mind, I will do my very best.

So here are 10 things I’m going to assume you are looking for.

higher heat levels - things get steamy

lower angst levels - external conflict (rather then internal agony and navel gazing)

good chemistry (not the same thing as heat) - this means the actors are good at portraying physical, mental, and emotional attraction to each other

action

grey morality

multiple couples

mature characters

non-school setting

longer length treatment

a happy ending

I do hope I’ve gotten it right. This BL list will be rated on a scale of #/10 KP rating system - one point for each of the above, half points allowed. (Which is NOT my normal BL rating system.)

Some things that I can’t really help you with:

Explicitly kinky characters. There is very little of this in light BL (stories with happy endings) and what there is I’ve a listed here.

Mafia or yakuza set dramas are more common in dark BL. There are a few exceptions, but none of them have the bodyguard trope of KP.

Trigger warnings: assume if it happened in KP it may happen in these. including the stuff people argued over and disliked. Also dubcon and few others nasties. (Why so much dubcon in BL?)

Narrative structure. As you probably noticed in KP, strong story structure is not a hallmark of BL, but rather the exception. So far there have been only a few great strongly written high concept and killer narrative BLs.

Let’s start, shall we?

Loved KinnPorsche? Try These BLs Next

1. Manner of Death

(Thailand 2021) WeTV

This is a gay romantic suspense featuring a doctor and a mafia character. It’s more a murder mystery investigation with multiple plot twists than a mafia romance, but it is tons of fun. It’s stars the Original Kings of BL IRL ships: MaxTul. Also two of the hottest bodies in BL.

KP rating 9.5/10

It has higher heat levels, low angst (there is no angst at all, really, these boys got other things to do), great chemistry, action, grey morality, multiple couples (kinda - this is where it flails at bit so I dinged it 1/2 a point), mature characters, a country + medical setting, longer length treatment AND a happy ending.

What to watch next if this was your favorite off this list? Triage or Dear Doctor, I’m Coming for your Soul.

2. Trapped

AKA HIStory 3: Trapped

(Taiwan 2019) Viki

Basically the definition of enemies to lovers. Is about a cop investigating a cold case where a mafia boss is the only witness, so he starts chasing him. Along the way to solving it, they fall in love. Side characters = mercenary hitman meets nerdy cop of his dreams, cooks for him. All the leads are stellar. It’s high heat, fun action, and a bit of a mystery drama but is pretty about all of it. My only warning is that the main couple doesn’t entirely end up together, it’s implied, but... amorphous ending. The sides end happily tho.

KP rating 9.5/10

Contains mature characters, non-school setting, higher heat, lower angst, great chemistry, action (some of it the SAME action, these two run through the woods hand-cuffed together for days too), grey morality, multiple couples, and a longer length - only the ending falters.

You want HIStory 3: Trapped NOT the other HIStory 3!

If you’ve been frustrated by the heat levels and setting of Thai BLs since KP, then that’s because you need to turn your attention to Taiwan instead. Taiwan specializes in high heat levels and non-school settings. (They have some, but it’s not their focus.)

What to watch next if this was your favorite on this list: HIStory 2: Crossing the Line, DNA Says Love You, and you can explore the top 10 I talk about in my Taiwan’s history with the genre post. A warning, do not take Trapped as a typical example of HIStory franchise, it’s all over the place.

3. Long Time No See

(Korea 2017) GaGa

Long Time No See is about two assassins who fall in love via online gay fanfic without knowing they are hitmen on opposite sides of a turf war. Or do they? It’s absolutely great and very under appreciated. One of Strongberry’s few longer pieces (but still short by Thai BL standards) with good fight sequences and very suspenseful.

KP rating 8/10

Contains all KP elements except multiple couples and a longer length: mature characters, non-school setting, high heat, low angst, good chemistry, action, grey morality, and a happy ending.

What to watch next if this was your favorite on this list: Actually you might try some of Japan’s darker stuff, I’m thinking Double Mints, for example.

4. Not Me

(Thailand 2022) YouTube

This is crime thriller BL-lite about a group of motorcycling malcontents bent on bring down a corrupt system. Overtly queer, the romantic threads are not entirely the narrative drivers and it’s very slender on tropes, making this one, like MoD more gay romantic suspense than BL. But if gritty tension is what you’re after, this one has that in spades.

KP rating 7/10

It’s pretty low heat, this is OffGun+GMMTV and heat is not what they do. It has some angst because of the twin thing and the political thing (but not as much as I expected). The characters are not mature by my personal standards, they do act with the idealism of youth and they are in university some of the time. Otherwise ticks all the boxes: good chemistry, action, grey morality, multiple couples, longer length treatment, and a happy ending.

What to watch next if this was your favorite on this list: you can try OffGun’s back catalogue but it’s probably not what you’re looking for, try Bad Buddy instead and consider my favorite Thai BL, Until We Meet Again.

5. 3 Will Be Free

(Thailand 2019) YouTube

Is about a mafia kid, a stripper, and a grifter who accidentally kill a hitman and then have to go on the run with two assassins chasing them. Along the way the three of them basically fall in love with each other. You also get the mafia hitmen perspective. It’s GREAT and very queer.

KP rating 6/10

Low heat levels for this one because it’s from GMMTV. However it is also low angst (there consistent outside stressors and this plot moves FAST), good chemistry, lots of action, very grey morality, multiple couples (but with each other, this is a poly romance), is not set at school, and has a longer length treatment. However, the characters aren’t entirely mature and it has a slightly ambiguous ending - they survive and are kind-of together but also stuff has happened. I dinged it an extra point because technically this is a queer romance and not, actually, a BL at all. Still it’s a very under-appreciated gem of a show, and I highly recommend it.

What to watch next if this was your favorite on this list: there’s nothing else out there like this show, sorry, it’s unique. However if you like Tay (Shin) you should watch his BL series the Kiss series and Dark Blue Kiss (watching guide here) where he plays a completely different personality.

6. Irresistible Love

AKA Irresistible Love: Secret of the Valet (YouTube) + Irresistible Love 2 AKA Uncontrolled Love (YouTube)

(China 2016) grey

This two movie series is mafia esk but it’s very rough and lacks narrative cohesion. Rich kid (maybe mafia) boss has obsession with his family’s butler in a classic execution of the whipping boy trope. It’s in two parts and the second part has two endings, you want the one that ends not entirely unhappily. I not-so-secretly love this BL: obsession, mutilation, very hard fought and absolutely classic Chinese BL pre-censorship. It's a wild melodramatic ride.

KP rating 6/10

This has higher heat levels (all are dub con), good chemistry, very grey morality, mature characters, non-school setting and a medium length treatment. It also has some serious angst because of the unequal power dynamic and the seme’s bisexuality, there’s little action, only one couple, and the ending is all over the place, happyish if you can find the right one. (As of typing this post: the YouTube links should still work, but this is a grey show it has no official distribution.)

What to watch next if this was your favorite on this list: really? This one was your favorite? Okay then, how about trying My Beautiful Man AKA Utsukushii Kare? Or go for Addicted, if you want the best that China can do.

7. Golden Blood

(Thailand 2021) YouTube

A Thai BL pulp with the whipping boy trope (attack dog variant) about a boy who is pulled off the streets because he has the correct blood type and trained to be the servant/caretaker/bodyguard of a rich mafia kid. They fall in love.

KP rating 5/10

This one has higher heat levels, multiple couples, a longer length treatment and a happy ending. But it is a Thai pulp so the production values are poor. There is some unnecessary angst as the characters are not mature and it is partly set in university, the chemistry is uneven (great with the sides but not the mains), there is action but it’s not very good, and grey morality (sort of). All in all, a mixed bag.

If you liked this best you have some pretty relaxed standards. why not lean in and try some MAME stuff like TharnType, Don’t Say No, or Love in the Air. Consider yourself warned.

8. Unforgotten Night

(Thailand 2022) iQIYI

Ostensibly a kinky story of a mafia Dom who after a one night stand gets obsessed with a simple office worker and kidnaps him into his dark crime riddled world. But that made it sound appealing. It’s terrible.

KP rating 5/10

It does have higher heat levels but they aren’t actually, ya know, good because the chemistry is poor, there’s a lot of unnecessary angst, there’s some action, grey morality, multiple couples, longer length treatment, and a happy ending but ho boy. It’s not a wild ride, it’s a confused and quite dull one. Also you will spend a lot of time worrying about plumbing, and not in a euphemistic way.

If you liked this best, you're confused. You need to learn what good chemistry looks like, watch Zee’s catalogue - Why R U? and Cutie Pie.

There is also Chains of Heart to consider.

9. Where Your Eyes Linger

(Korea 2020) Viki

Ostensibly high school set about a poor kid whose been raised in a mafia kid’s family specifically to protect him (whipping boy trope, attack dog variant). Themes of codependency and survival with pretty classic Korean style romance ending.

KP rating 4.5/10

Excepting Strongberry, Korean stuff is rarely high heat, this one gives you a kiss at the end but that’s it. Decent chemistry, only a little action, only one couple (also a hallmark of KBL), and short treatment. It does have grey morality and a happy ending (at the very last minute). The characters are not mature and it is set in high school.

What to watch next if this was you favorite: you might try Hwang Da Seul’s other BLs To My Star or Blueming. I like the both a whole lot.

10. Word of Honor

(China 2021) Viki also Youku’s YouTube

Yes a censored Chinese bromance actually made one of my lists. But remember I’m rating this by KP standards, not my own. Normally I leave the censored stuff off my lists because I believe in censoring the censors. However, if anything gets on, it’s usually this one.

This show is my favorite of the post 2016 bromance wave. It’s two murder-gay assassins (pining sunshine/tsundere), and they are so insanely gay for two boys who are never allowed to kiss. Tropes include: wuxia, soulmates, paranormal, historical, and fantasy elements.

KP rating 4/10

No heat, this is Chinese BL post censorship, some angst (China likes angst) but in this case it’s warranted, good chemistry, fantastic action, beautifully grey morals, there are other couples but only het and they die, a VERY long treatment, and an ambiguous ending.

If this was your favorite go ahead and watch Untamed (knowing they don’t end up together) or even The Guardian. You might also try Advance Bravely if only to see our boy Jun swap seme for uke. That’s kind of a bodyguard romance.

And that’s it, those are my recs. Feel free to leave your own recs (and reasons) in the comments.

This post is dated Sept 2022, not responsible for other BLs that come along after that date and fit the KP model better.

That said, recent additions!

Never Let Me Go

KP rating 7/10

This is a bodyguard romance with has lower angst, good chemistry, action, multiple couples (sort of), mature-ish characters, longer length treatment, a happy ending. However it is medium heat, no grey morality, and 1/2 in a school setting.

The Sign

KP rating 9/10

Def has the higher heat levels, lower angst (it’s mostly external conflict), fantastic chemistry, and some grey morality, mature characters, non-school setting, longer length treatment, a happy ending. It’s only flaw is weak secondary couples. They there, but not awesome.

This show is literally everything (except straight) all at once. It's BL, queer, band of brothers, romcom, erotica, PNR, fated mates, police procedural, fantasy, mystery, suspense, and slasher. It’s the king of genre mash-up chaos. Sure, it's madness but there is genius in it. Was it a crazy unhinged mess +1 roll for damage? Yes. Yes it was. Did it manage to hold all those tangled threads together? No it did not. Was it also a charmg, sexy, engaging, non-stop piece of entertainment? Sure thing. I think this show is basically my KinnPorsche, and frankly I’ve been chasing that dragon naga since KP aired. Is it perfect? No. But it was balls to the wall FUN.

(source)

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