Friends, family! Some updates and questions on the Old GMMTV Challenge -- if anyone catches this post, I would love your input! (AND THANK YOU for all the input on this watch journey so far, I LOVE YOU, FAM!)

1) Love Sick. Oh my gosh, I am TOTALLY enjoying this show. Yes, lots of problems, LOTS of issues, and I get to enjoy the BL cuts, so I’m missing all the messy het context (thank GAWD). 

But seriously -- oh my god, oh my god. Noh and Phun are like, a canon Thai BL couple? They’re SO PERFECT FOR THE JOB. It’s so amazing, they’re so amazing. Noh is so insane and WISE. Phun is SO CRAZY IN LUV. I love that Phun just CANNOT HOLD BACK! THOSE EYES! (This guy is my TUL?! TUL?!)

So watching Love Sick now makes me regret, by quite a lot, not watching these shows chronologically. I think it would have helped me a lot to watch Love Sick before SOTUS, but alas, I let my curiosity about Singto get the best of me. More on this in a second.

2) @absolutebl, @clairificusrex, @nieves-de-sugui, and anyone else who wants to chime in! Question for y’all: I found this playlist on YouTube for BL cuts of Love Sick season 2. Do these edits look reliable to you? I unfortunately have to multitask at all times when I’m watching dramas, so I can’t fast-forward -- I think I might need to rely on this playlist to finish out LS2. Gah. I hope these work for the task at hand!

3) Okay, chronology. I would love advice, thoughts, feedback on the following questions! (I’m sorry I’m asking all these questions, btw: I have a huge trip coming up, and may run into rights issues where I’m going, so I want to get a good watch plan solidified before I leave. Because... I’m a list person, oh god.)

Like I said, I think I messed myself up by watching SOTUS before Love Sick. I think it would have really helped me to understand SOTUS even more if I had watching LS first, to catch on some tropes that were clearly borne out of LS.

@absolutebl recommended, as the third drama of the OGMMTVC, 2gether. But, in a separate comment thread, @shortpplfedup also mentioned that Love Sick and Make It Right kind go together (@shortpplfedup, let me know if I’m stating this reliably) as two of the early high school pulp BLs. 

I don’t know if Make It Right is as referenced, trope- or script-wise, as an early BL as Love Sick or SOTUS. But it does have Ohm Pawat, who is one of the actors I permanently rabbithole, and I do really appreciate watching Love Sick now to see all the high school tropes being built. 

So I’m wondering: for chronology’s sake, would it make sense to watch Make It Right/MIR2 next, after Love Sick, if this is a side-path I want to take to learn about canon regarding high school settings? 

Or... is Make It Right not worth it? I know @absolutebl has said before that the heat of MIR may be wiggly for the youth of the actors. I’d love input! If MIR gives by way of education, I may want to dig into it while I’m on the road.

4) And then after that, closing out the OGMMTVC would be 2gether. However!

a) My other side commitment is to understand Aof’s oeuvre. And He’s Coming to Me and Dark Blue Kiss both aired BEFORE 2gether. So I’m kinda wondering if I should watch those first, before 2gether.

b) And then there’s his involvement with the 2gether franchise, which -- I had no idea about until I perused MDL. And I’m totally not quite following what all the sequels mean and maybe, why he got involved in the franchise?

Was 2gether so bad, in a way, that Aof and Fon Kannitha had to come in and, like, rescue the franchise for Still 2gether and 2gether: The Movie?

And, what the heck is this MDL description of the movie? Is it, like... a summary of the two previous series?

(Is all of this messy-mess indicative of why 2gether landed on the OGMMTVC list? Ha.)

I’m a little confused by what the whole deal is with 2gether, and if the sequels are worth watching. For me, the priority would be to watch Aof’s work as it progresses over time, which makes me think I should interrupt the OGMMTVC to watch He’s Coming To Me and Dark Blue Kiss first. Because, again, I’m wondering if he or GMMTV felt that he needed to come in and, like, save the 2gether franchise. When I was digging into all of this in MDL, I was totally surprised to see his name there.

Whew. I know this was a lot, but I appreciate ANY crumbs from the experts. (2gether, on paper, looks like a hot mess, but I know BrightWin are beloved, so...what’s up with that, ha.) If anyone’s reading and commenting this -- thanks, y’all, in advance, for your input!

MADE IN THAILAND

PEEMAPOL PANICHTAMRONG

[Nickname: PEAK]

KRITTAPAK UDOMPANICH

[Nickname: BOOM]

I bet aziraphale wrote about the day the universe was made, about the angel whose voice recited the words that created the stars, about how bright they shone, and still shine, in those angel eyes✨🪐

Here you have some detailss and a cropped version with just!! them!!!

edit: prints link !

Mommy and Daddy looking good

CAN WE TALK QI RONG?

And the fact that

Donghua team performed an OUTSTANDING JOB of a character study through animation

Like I’m watching him insult Lang QiangQui

And it suddenly hits me that I kinda understand and feel him???

Like Ke Mo

Even though he is wrong

He has a right to hate Yong An

Xie Lian has much more of it, but-

Have you ever thought that

We never get to know

How Qi Rong died?

Even though he didn’t care for XianLe, it was his only home

So when you see him talk about this-

You can see that underneath his arrogant hateful craziness

There is genuine pain

Which he HIDES BEHIND SMILES

HIS EXPRESSIONS KEEP SWITCHING

AND I APPLAUD THE DONGHUA TEAM FOR THIS DECISION

He laughs in one second

AND IN THE NEXT YOU SEE THIS

This GENUINE ANGER

and a RIGHTFULL ONE AT THAT??

No matter how deeply twisted everything about his mindset is

At its core it’s a lack of any established moral guidelines in his upbringing

And the worst coping mechanism of fighting pain, insecurities and fear of abandonment

By going batshit crazy in defense and grabbing onto everything that makes him seem “important”

Yet by doing so he succeeded in becoming so unimportant

That even his remaining family thought about him so little

That we never got an explanation of how he died

He definitely died alone

And at least for this

He has a right to feel angry

Because anger is just helpless pain

trying not to talk too much abt the bear s2 but im Really fuckin frustrated that even with everyone demanding that they’re sooo media literate and sooo smart that no one has talked about claire and the way she sparks audience discomfort. like, she feels out of place within the show because CARMY cannot accept that he is getting this good thing—she feels out of place in HIS life. she’s actually crafted to be the ideal girlfriend, with glowy bokeh lighting in a grocery store and beauty shot close ups and a sweet instrumental leitmotif to show to you, an audience member, that she’s too good to be true in carmys eyes. if you’re an audience member, she raises alarm bells in YOUR head because she raises alarm bells in HIS. he literally tells us that—that’s the crux of his final monologue, that he doesn’t believe he can have the life of food and wines best chef and a life of love and human connection. he doesn’t believe he’s deserving of good things because his family has always been so fucked, because nothing he’s ever tried to hold together has held together—except for his cooking. it’s done this way on purpose, to make you feel that anxiety that he feels around this relationship, and to make you question why you feel it too

Crowley Of The Day: Happy birthday @neil-gaiman 🥳🎉 thank you for all the wonderful gifts you have given us throughout the years that have shaped our lives in one way or another 💖

Lol cut the kid some slack ok he literally just kissed Simon for the first time in months 😂😂 I mean look him. What do y'all expect him to do? Literary analysis?? With that mushy simonsiMONsimon brain?? I'd be impressed if he even remembered his own name at this point.

also don't forget he genuinely thought Simon wouldn't ever like him back until then, let alone write an entire song for him

okay i have a theory(no its not a cry for help)

So, in this last scene:

Ron says she will have 60 seconds to read the script meaning everything Reagan said is in the window of suggestibility.

And she reads the script to create the identity they are going for but, then she starts talking:

So that also goes into Ron's head right? What if he starts wondering about the person that searched for thousands of lifetimes to make him happy?

What if he starts wondering who that little voice in his mind is or that sentence without a voice belongs to?

What if he can't stop thinking about that person who's gonna miss him,

And he'd miss too if it were possible.

And it would be so fucking painful to just remembering but actually not remembering at all. Like trying to remember a word but not being able to form it in your head or like knowing where your step is going to land but then stepping on a stair and so, stepping into a space; falling down briefly but still falling. Feeling that float-y feel of a fall and landing on the familiar ground; feeling the little sound inside and coming back to the reality.

That kind of an annoying feeling that comes and goes. And when he can't handle it anymore, can't handle not knowing; he tries to reach for it, search for it, tries to recognise it, name it and find it...

... does this make sense is this how memory erasing works JWEBKEBRKF I DONT KNOW AND I DONT CARE!!!

Mark looks even more tired than before

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: YYY, and When BL Talks About BL 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 examine the success -- or not? -- of Cheewin Thanamin’s YYY and what the show does by way of macro-level commentary on the BL genre.]

Alright, so YYY! It would be VERY EASY to write this show off. Maybe the old Turtles of the early OGMMTVC would have done just that (exhibit A: SOTUS, which I’m thinking about revisiting in a wrap-up piece after the OGMMTVC is done, thanks to Krist and his fantastic acting in Be My Favorite). 

But I’ve learned my lesson. There’s a LOT going on with YYY that makes it absolutely worthy of inclusion on the OGMMTVC list. It was @absolutebl Sensei themself that made the case for YYY, especially in ABL Sensei noting my interest in Cheewin’s emotional filmmaking trajectory from Make It Right/MIR2, to Secret Crush On You, to Bed Friend. I thank you, ABL Sensei, for pointing me in this direction to see this *other* side of Cheewin!

So why do I think YYY is important on the OGMMTVC list? It’s a short, VERY CHAOTIC, VERY UNEXPECTED six-episode series that focuses on two roommates, Not (Yoon Phusanu) and Pun (Lay Talay), who fall for each other in short order in the midst of a wild and inexplicable living environment. They’re supported by their fellow apartment-mates, Ohm (Pee Peerawich, most recently of La Pluie) and Arm (Scott Satapong), and most importantly, are living under the VERY watchful eye of their probably-transgender building manager, Porpla, played by THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE actor in Poppy Ratchapong. OMFG. More on Poppy in a bit. (OMFG, Poppy. I’m in LUV.)

I’ll break down the importance of YYY in the following order:

1a) Who exactly is the writing team of Fluke Teerapat and Tanachot Prapasri, and why are they important (I’m actually going to try to figure this out along with the rest of y’all, and hopefully if folks have more info, they can chime in!), 1b) What did director Cheewin Thanamin bring by way of past vision to YYY to explain the show’s composition, 2) Why the show’s subject matter actually serves as critical commentary to what was happening with the BL genre vis à vis the association of BL and romance, 3) A quick deep-dive on the EXCELLENT acting we saw in YYY, and why that’s also important to the show as a whole,

and, as always, possibly more. Let’s do this. 

So, Fluke Teerapat and Tanachot Prapasri. I’ve tried to find more information on these two dudes to some avail, but my quick analysis of their work really stems from MDL, Fluke’s past acting career, and analytical conjecture about why they wrote YYY and what they wrote after YYY. 

As we know, the guys of these broad circles -- New Siwaj and his Studio Wabi Sabi, Cheewin and his Copy A Bangkok studio, Fluke and Tanachot as writers, and many, many others -- are, generally speaking, of a community of BL creators that are outside the usual GMMTV circles. (I’ve written about this before -- while my project is called the Old GMMTV Challenge, with the goal of digging into how we’ve ended up with GMMTV’s current standard of BLs, the list features quite a few non-GMMTV BLs, as I believe art is always speaking to art, no matter where it’s published.) (And, I am sure most of you are familiar with this, but if not, there are master lists of the history of Thai BL studios out there.)

I note the non-GMMTV affiliation of these guys, because -- some of these guys, like New and Tee Bundit, actually contract with GMMTV for specific shows, like A Boss and a Babe and Hidden Agenda, respectively. Fluke Teerapat himself was a pre-BL actor in the 2014 movie My Bromance with Fluke Natouch (so many cute Flukes, amirite), and also acted in GMMTV’s FIRST BL in SOTUS -- Fluke Teerapat played Wad, who was maybe? hopefully? kinda? indicated to be shipped with the older Prem (Gunsmile Chanagun).

I’ll add two more points to consider here as I continue to sit with the influence that Fluke, Tanachot, and Cheewin brought to YYY: Firstly, GMMTV BLs, up to YYY’s moment in 2020 generally asked for romance in their shows. Again, that’s a generalization. (I don’t think Theory of Love fits in this category.) But considering what had come out on GMMTV CLOSELY PREVIOUSLY to YYY’s airing -- 2gether and Still 2gether -- GMMTV was riding a romance high, and counting their massive BrightWin dollars.

Secondly, YYY is the first piece on the OGMMTVC list that features Cheewin Thanamin as a solo director. Going backwards, as we know, Cheewin’s previous work on BLs including co-writing, co-directing, and acting in Make It Right and Make It Right 2, and he was a writer on Love Sick, season 2, and was a guest actor on Love Sick, season 1. 

Putting this all together: at least Fluke and Cheewin have utterly tremendous histories with the literal birth of the BL genre, Cheewin outside of the GMMTV circles with Love Sick and Make It Right/MIR2, and Fluke beginning his career as an actor in GMMTV’s first BL, AND first HUGE BL. 

Cheewin and Fluke have had front-row seats to the development of the BL genre, seeing and understanding what fans, studios, producers, and major networks in GMMTV, Channel 9, Channel 3, and others, demand and expect out of the genre and the dramas by way of fan service, shipper culture, romantic storylines, tropes -- all of it. Cheewin and Fluke have been around for a MINUTE. They clearly HAVE critical viewpoints about BL, and are not afraid to scrutinize the genre in their works, which is what happened in YYY.

I’m going to get confusing for a second to jump to the closer present for my next analytical point: what else have Fluke Teerapat and Tanachot Prapasri written?

They’ve written My Ride (2022) and La Pluie (2023). I haven’t watched either of them yet, but I am damn glad that I’ll be watching them after the OGMMTVC is done, in their chronological order, and I already can’t wait to write about them. Because what I bet is that I’ll see what intelligence and scrutiny Fluke and Tanachot had leveraged in YYY, the cutting criticisms about BL they lined YYY with, and then took the sharpness of their writing and the critical viewpoints they have ABOUT the BL genre to My Ride and La Pluie, two beloved BLs that are lauded for their directness in structure and storytelling. 

In Cheewin, Fluke, and Tanachot, we have a team of creators that’s not afraid to be critical about the genre in which they’re operating. Now -- this take, this perspective, can sometimes work well (I’m eagerly awaiting Tee Bundit’s Lovely Writer on the OGMMTVC list, as I understand he takes this macro approach in LW), and in other times, it does not work well at all (exhibit B: Tee Bundit’s Step By Step, rant linked). 

YYY took a lot of risks. It was a weird show. It didn’t... quite make sense. But it was clearly designed to criticize what we, as fans, usually expect out of BLs, including clean and romantic storylines and happy endings.

Episodes 5 and 6 of YYY fully explained to me the show’s purpose. First off: BLs are jobs for the actors. The ships are not real. And YYY states as much. Pun is considering quitting his job as a shipped half of a boy-couple, and his acting partner isn’t having it.

In episode 6 -- before Not and Pun go to space? -- we get two screen quotes of the life of YYY itself.

The world that Porpla operated in the apartment building where Not, Pun, and their neighbors lived was chaotic precisely BECAUSE of Porpla, and what Porpla demanded out of the human behavior around them. Porpla could only be appeased, as an obsessed yaoi fan (LOL), with the confirmation that Not and Pun were together and dating. If that’s not a metaphor for fan and network demands out of BLs and ships, then I don’t know what is. AND: those demands CERTAINLY create chaos, especially for the individual creators and performers associated with BLs. (I didn’t take screenshots of Porpla’s INSANE outfits, but really, the chaos of YYY stemmed and centered around Porpla -- and Poppy Ratchapong’s ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE performance of Porpla). 

While watching YYY -- Porpla, the Chinese brothers, the coffee and janitor couple, all the flashbacks, Not’s hilarious and nonsensical sign-offs (omg, I was gagging with laughter) -- I was reminded of Lukmo and Yok in Make It Right, especially in Make It Right 2. New and Cheewin did some crazy shit with Mo and Yok, especially their confusingly edited and strangely metaphorical sex scenes. Mo and Yok were chaotic right up until their open and tender moments about their emotionality to each other. 

At the time of my watching Make It Right 2, I noted that it seemed to me like Mo and Yok suffered from editing fumbles, which I think is still accurate. But now that I’ve watched YYY, I also might want to theorize (I wonder what you think of this, @lurkingshan), that Mo and Yok might have been specifically written BY CHEEWIN himself, AND that the chaos and strangeness of their metaphorical intimacy (like, sexual food metaphors using mortars and pestles, it still scars me, ha) may have been specifically designed to serve as a mirror against the more straightfoward (but still chaotic) romantic ships in TeeFuse and FrameBook. I’m not ENTIRELY sure. But I think I can feel confident in theorizing that what New and Cheewin were doing in MIR was to add a gentle question about whether EVERY ship working in a BL is worth it. (I think New touches on this in Love By Chance vis à vis TinCan.) And I think Cheewin furthers that question in YYY vis à vis Not and Pun -- who, spoiler alert, do not end up together at the end of YYY. They end up in space. Yeah, totally. 

(I just want to note here that a major reason why Cheewin in particular is such an important person to focus on for the OGMMTVC is that chaos is not his ONLY bag. As I noted in my MIR2 review and earlier above, Cheewin has a SEPARATE perspective that he’s explored in multiple shows — the journey of queer joy. We have seen marriage proposals from FrameBook in MIR2 and KingUea in Bed Friend. While chaos is…chaotic, I love that Cheewin has MULTIPLE THEMES that he explores in his works, and he’s not necessarily *beholden* to them in any one of his shows. Unlike Tee Bundit, Cheewin may not be held back by funding issues, and *can* dabble in non-romance structures. But from what I’ve seen of his art by way of romance — he does those structures beautifully as well, ending at least MIR2 and Bed Friend in glorious happiness. Again, I really appreciate @absolutebl​ Sensei recognizing these two different tracks in recommending YYY to me.)

Anyway, listen. YYY is home to micro- on macro-commentary about the BL genre and BL’s resulting questions and chaos, using chaos itself as a storytelling tool. Porpla is THE entity, the über-fan, the symbol of CULTURAL PRESSURE for BLs to WORK and PLAY in happy endings, when happy endings might not exactly be what filmmakers like Cheewin really want to achieve all the time (see above). I appreciated that time was actually taken to explain to Porpla that Not and Pun were not going to be together. I gotta say that I commend Cheewin, Fluke, and Tanachot for playing hardily in this sandbox, clearly having fun doing it, in such wild fashion.

AND: I MUST give Yoon, Lay, Pee, and especially Poppy their flowers. They acted the hell out of this show. Yoon had me DYING with laughter at his nonsense monologues at the end. Pee is clearly one well-rounded actor, handling comedy crazy well, and I can’t WAITTTTTTT to see him in La Pluie (cc @wen-kexing-apologist).  

But this post and the performance of this show ultimately belongs to Poppy Ratchapong. When I first late-night liveblogged about YYY and I was like, POPPPPYYY, the HOMESLICE @dribs-and-drabbles came THRU with a post celebrating Poppy that had me SILENTLY DYING on a work Zoom call with them abs, DAMN! LOL. FAMILY: I MEAN, if you’re gonna watch YYY, you’re gonna watch it for Poppy as Porpla. His Porpla was SO wild, SO chaotic, SO emotionally (UN)balanced, SO insane, SO crisp, SO controlled in their manipulation, I mean. Porpla will definitely be in my top 10 list of favorite OGMMTV characters. Poppy did Porpla’s wild identity utterly solid. 

(YET ANOTHER REASON to criticize Step By Step: an underutilized Poppy! I can’t wait to see Poppy in Lovely Writer, and I have GOT to watch Cutie Pie after this project is done.)

YYY was an experiment in macro-level commentary on BL. It was definitely fun, confounding, confusing AF, but I had a lot of fun with it. I’ve proven that I don’t have to like the shows for them to belong to the OGMMTVC syllabus, but I didn’t NOT like YYY. I enjoyed it a lot, and for the sake of seeing this wild side of Cheewin in definitive form -- and to also see the roots of Fluke and Tanachot’s writing before My Ride and La Pluie -- it is absolutely worthy of belonging on the OGMMTVC list. 

[Okay! I’m ahead on my watchlist below, as I’ve already watched Manner of Death -- that review is dropping next week. And I am ALL kinds of nostalgic and warmly weepy for A Tale of Thousand Stars -- I am soooo glad I am spoiling myself for some awesome rewatches during this project. 

Quick note: in my review of 2gether and Still 2gether, I noted that I wanted to pen another pain-related Big Meta on pain, trust, and separation in BLs. I was going to originally write it on Still 2gether, Bad Buddy, and Until We Meet Again, but of course -- ATOTS also has a classic example of separation. So I’m going to hold off on writing this at least until I’m done with ATOTS, and/or when my life calms down a bit in the fall.

Speaking of life calming down, my August is going to be IN.SANE., so I will do my best to keep up on the watching and the writing. Pour one out for me, y’all!

Status of the watchlist below. I made an addition, btw! I added Be My Favorite, which a lot of us are currently watching. GMMTV going so far as to make a show in part as über-commentary on half of its first HUGE BL ship in Krist? That is MAD worthy of inclusion. And, it’s a great fucking show. Any feedback on this, let a gal know!

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 (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no 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) (review here) 18) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 19) YYY (2020, out of chronological order)  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) (review coming) 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 (watching) 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) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) 29) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 30) 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)] 31) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 32) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 33) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 34) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 35) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 36) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 37) Bed Friend (2023) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults) (tag here)  38) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) (watching)]

I've been stuck on viewing Maggie as Crowley's mirror, and for most of the show I like that interpretation. But once I started thinking of Nina as Crowley's Mirror in the ball scene specifically, I made a connection....

Aziraphale is playing God here. He has a vision- a happy romantic evening where people speak Victorian English, dress nicely, dance, and fall in love -and he wills everyone present to conform to his plan. But Nina doesn't conform. Nina feels like something isn't right. She asks questions.

She asks Aziraphale what's going on, why she doesn't feel sad when she knows she's sad, and Aziraphale doesn't give her a satisfactory answer. He tells her that the important thing is that she's here. She's here to play a role in his great plan. To dance in his ball.

So she expresses her concerns to Maggie. Maggie hadn't seen the issues at first, but she listens to Nina, and Nina gets her to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation just a little bit. Listen to their conversation at the dance again. It sounds SO MUCH like the conversations we've heard Crowley and Aziraphale have a thousand times during their 6000 year dance. Crowley calling out heaven, asking questions, trying to get Aziraphale to consider the absurdity of it all. Aziraphale mostly defending heaven, but listening, and sometimes acquiescing.

And this all falls in line with a point I've made before - In season 2, Crowley's relationship with Aziraphale begins to mirror his relationship with heaven. Aziraphale shows a pattern of not listening to Crowley the whole season, but especially in this scene. Crowley tries to ask him what is going on, and alert him to very real danger, but Aziraphale is dismissive. He is blinded by his desire to see his plan to fruition.

And just so we're clear, this is not an Aziraphale hate post. Rather, I think it might give us some insight into where God is coming from. Because Aziraphale's actions may be dismissive and controlling, but they are motivated by love. Misguided, certainly, but with all the best intentions. I have a feeling, when we finally meet God, it will be a similar story. And maybe both She and Aziraphale will learn that sometimes to love means to let go.

Meta: SNW's Chapel doesn't fix her character in TOS, it makes it worse.

I see people blaming any and all criticism of the writing and development for Christine Chapel on misogyny. But if anything, I feel like a full defense of her characterization is worse.

If SNW's interpretation is truly who Christine is, TOS tells us her wings are clipped. She becomes desperate, pines for years for a man who no longer returns her affections, loses her self-confidence and power. Retconning Nurse Chapel into this fiery, war-time, fighting badass with flirtatious energy and commitment issues makes her look utterly regressed in TOS, a mere shell of her former self that never returns.

She is nervous, quiet, keeps to herself, no longer fights, doesn't go after what she wants. Confined to sickbay, forever lonely. Is her development on SNW supposed to be some kind of win? Because to me it looks like they changed who she is into someone she's not, and damaged her more in the process, underscoring all the mistakes TOS made with her rather than railing against them. They could have given us Christine Chapel who was quietly competent, intelligent, kind, gentle, all the traits she still had in TOS but with real development, but they just had to make her into someone whose personality seems utterly destroyed by TOS. I find no enjoyment in that. I'm not going to celebrate that when they could have given us a new, original character to be that badass fighter.

if i just told you i love you would this world change

Happy Birthday, Rasputin!!

Ah well, here's the thing, the crew... they're in a bit of a deadlock over the whole 'banishment of Ed' thing.