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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

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Late top 5 ask because I just thought of it: 5 shows that you are always down to rewatch

What a great question that is also such a mean and incredibly evil thing to ask me, wen-kexing-apologist, Chronic Rewatcher lmfao

So fun fact I have seen KinnPorsche 14 times, Our Flag Means Death 11 times, The Old Guard 11 times, Heartstopper 11 times, The Eclipse probably 6 times, Bad Buddy and ITSAY 4 times, etc, etc, etc. And those are counting all the times I have watched a show all the way through. This is not counting the number of times I have actively gone back to watch specific episodes or specific scenes.

See the problem is sometimes I hyperfixate and then I just have to watch it until it is out of my system, sometimes an OST pops in to my head and then I get the urge to watch the show again, and sometimes I agree to edit the transcripts for the backlog of @the-conversation-pod and @bengiyo and @shortpplfedup start talking about a show and I'm like "ahhh good times! I should rewatch that!"

So you can imagine the stress I am under. I'll have to do this by category

Show I Am Constantly Rewatching: Bed Friend

gif by @perths

I know what you may be thinking, and yes you are correct I am in this rewatch for Uea's emotional journey. Uea is my sweet summer child, I love him, I have adopted him in to my family, his happiness is my happiness and I love love love watching him go from a quiet, reserved, unhappy character who keeps getting put in unfair situations through no fault of his own in to this confident, vibrant, happy person who is on his way towards healing. Often times it can be hard for me to pick A Favorite thing; a favorite character, a favorite scene because there are so. many. good. ones. But I am constantly, and I mean constantly rewatching the scene in Episode 8 where Uea tells King about his past. I have lost count of how many times I've seen it, no even kidding I watched that scene before I went to bed just last week. I will always always be down to watch that show because I love seeing how far my boy is able to grow with just a little bit of love, care, and therapy.

Show I Would Rewatch for an Instant Mood Boost: If It's With You

gif by @jimmysea

I have a difficult time understanding/feeling emotion in my body unless I abstract it in to fiction. So when I experience strong emotions it is typically when something super happy or super tragic happens on screen, in a book, during my D&D game, etc. One of my absolute favorite things is when something makes me so happy that my body is no longer able to contain it and I have to do the Neurodivergent Hand Flappies(TM). I think I spent 80% of this show grinning so hard it hurt my face and doing the Neurodivergent Hand Flappies because it just...they made me so happy. Amane is so sweet, and he deserves happiness, and he is getting his happiness and he's just full of sunshine and I already rewatched this show like immediately after it finished. This show joins my This Could Fix Me list.

Show I Would Be Down to Rewatch for Emotional Catharsis: Eternal Yesterday

gif by @duckflyfly

I have not rewatched this show...yet. But I want to, and I know that I will eventually. I can only imagine that it is sadder and more evil the second time around. I cried soooo hard over this show. But it is beautiful, and it is healing, and the pain is a good type of aching pain that comes with coming to terms with grief. With acknowledging grief. With finding where the beauty and peace lie within death and memory, and the way its claws dig in to you and leave you changed forever. Ghosts can be warm, and this show makes me warm despite it all.

Show I Would Be Down to Rewatch for Content: I Told Sunset About You/I Promised You the Moon

gif by @thii-nii

I think I am in @shortpplfedup's camp about how you find new things to think about every time you watch this show. I actually desperately, desperately own I Promised You the Moon several rewatches because I have seen ITSAY four times at this point and IPYTM once. I am currently rewatching IPYTM with a friend who is seeing it for the first time, so that should help. But the first time I watched this show I was unable to function to notice anything, and it wasn't until the third time I'd watched ITSAY when I was rewatching it to prepare for the podcast panel, that I finally was able to form any level of coherent analytical thought to it. So I would rewatch this at any point just to see what more I could pull out of it.

Show I Would Be Down to Rewatch But Haven't Yet: 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us

gif by @dingyuxi

Bold, based on how intense of a reaction I had to this show, I know. But this was one of my favorites, I never wrote anything about it because I was too busy having a literal mental breakdown over it, one that was so bad I almost had to bail on the entire show with like...20 minutes left of it, and I originally nixed my plan to show it to a friend. BUT I have watched the specific scene that did me in (and only that scene) and it went over fine once I knew to expect it so I do want to watch the whole thing again. I have a friend who I have been forcing to watch BL shows I liked and I watch them with her, and this is on the list. However, I am currently running her through I Promised You The Moon and What Did You Eat Yesterday? Season 2 so this show is still quite a ways out from a rewatch because I am not a total monster and want to give her some modicum of emotional break between those two shows and 180 Degree.

Bonus:

Show I Would Never Rewatch: Enchante

I hate this show truly an unreasonable amount. I hate Theo so much oh my fucking god. I refuse to watch this again and I'm mad that I finished it.

ASK ME MY TOP 5 OF ANYTHING BL

#best of bl #ask game #bed friend #bed friend the series #if it's with you #kimi to nara koi wo shite mite mo #eternal yesterday #eien no kinou #i told sunset about you #itsay #i promised you the moon #ipytm #180 degree longitude passes through us #180 degree #180d #the true answer to this is: my list of shows i'm always down to rewatch is long #my list of shows i will never rewatch is very very *very* short

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freensrcha · 1 year

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Can I have a reward ? What ? Well, I want some encouragement. Here you go.

I TOLD SUNSET ABOUT YOU | EPISODE 3

#i told sunset about you #itsay #billkin putthipong #pp krit #mandatory itsay post monday #userbillkin #terrible idea to gif itsay after rewatching ipytm #terrible terrible idea #111gif #I'M BACK #im very suggestible 🙂

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neuroticbookworm · 9 months

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Physicists researching the weird anomaly in time whenever @so-much-yet-to-learn, @wen-kexing-apologist and I have a conversation that begins at an ITSAY episode unwinding and only ends when a technical glitch forcibly kicks us off the call:

#we are very chill about this show #sike!#itsay #i told sunset about you

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foralleternityidiot · 2 years

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Lays can product place anything anytime they want. They have earned that right from the beloved winteam classic lays bus kiss all they way to puentalay’s universe-crossing ramen-flavored lays marriage proposal.

#lays really said thai marriage equality now!#vice versa #puentalay #uwma #winteam #thai bl #i haven’t forgotten their many other sponsorships such as the very subtle itsay ones that were

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stormyoceans · 2 years

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What are your top 5 BL kiss scenes?

OH THIS IS SUCH AN AMAZING QUESTION!!!!!! and also incredibly hard because i've been thinking about it since yesterday and im STILL not completely sure about my choices (mostly because i have a terrible memory and i definitely forgot something ;;;;;;;), but in the end this is what my current list looks like

1. teh and oh-aew's underwater kiss in i told sunset about you. i have a complicated relationship with this show, mostly because i think it really hits way too close to home, but this kiss? UNPARALLELED.

2. kinn and porsche's goodbye kiss in kinnporsche. emotion- and plot-wise this kiss is EVERYTHING TO ME.

3. da on and si won's beach kiss in blueming. LOVE LOVE LOVE how it's a bit of an awkward kiss because si won isn't used to it. love how da on tells him ''relax''.

4. pat and pran's rooftop kiss in bad buddy. i didn't watch bad buddy as it aired so i feel like im slightly less emotionally attached to them than most of tumblr is, but the rooftop kiss is.. A LOT. "do you want us to be friends?" "no." ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT.

5. shi de and shu yi's confession kiss in we best love: no. 1 for you. THIS ENTIRE SCENE IS JUST SO EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING IDK WHAT TO TELL YOU.

+BONUS. vegas and pete's mouth-full-of-blood-surrounded-by-dead-bodies kiss in kinnporsche. NO IM NOT BIASED WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT (but ngl it would have made it into the top 5 if they had given us a better close up view of it).

#THIS WAS SO HARD #sean and white's rooftop kiss in not me was so close to make it in the top 5 too #ask me in a month and my choices are probably going to be different but for now this is good enough #i guess emotions and chemistry are very important in my kisses #anyway thank you so much for asking!!!!#kinnporsche #itsay #blueming #bad buddy #we best love #bl shows #m: ask

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firelise · 3 months

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i never post my coloring/sharpening but i should big up myself sometimes so, for documentation purposes, behind the scenes before & afters:

#what nobody asked for #very green and yellow this show tho #i make everything from scratch also #gif making #giffing #coloring #sharpening #itsay

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nevermiind · 2 years

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For @asianlgbtnetwork Pride Month Event - Week 1 (I'm a bit late tho) - Favourite LGBTQ Drama Series (TOP 3)

I told sunset about you - I don't think any show will ever surpass the masterpiece that ITSAY was. One of the few shows ever that made me shed some tears and one of the most beautiful stories ever told. And not to mention it's beautiful cinematography and top-notch acting.

Until we meet again - My first ever BL! It will always have a special place in my heart and it's one of the dramas that I've rewatched the most. Such an intriging story with an AMAZING cast and the superb acting of OhmFluke. And it features one of my favorite side couples (and pairings) - WinTeam (and BounPrem)

Still 2gether - Forever my comfort series. Whenever I need a simple and delightful thing to distract me from life, I always resource to this beautiful sequel. Tine is one of my favorite characters ever and WatTine's relationship is beautifully depicted.

#asianlgbtqdrama #asiandramanet #asianlgbtqdramas #ALEvent2 #thai bl drama #thai bl #itsay #uwma #still 2gether #this is VERY poorly made but it's my contribution (of sorts) to this AMAZING event

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ayalewis · 1 year

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Due to personal reasons (don't know how I feel, what to think, broke me in pieces) I decided that for me I promised you the moon doesn't exist and the canon stopped after last twilight in Phuket. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

#not to be dramatic but yeah #I love ITSAY so much #and I know that IPYTM is also very good #and portrays the reality of relationships #but I wish IPYTM didn't exist #and leave this bittersweet taste in my mouth #I loved them so much together #and now I don't even know if it's a good thing they're back together 😔#ITSAY #i told sunset about you

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infallible-dreamers · 2 years

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Chapters: 9/11 Fandom: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Michael Guerin, Alex Manes, Liz Ortecho, Max Evans, Forrest Long, Maria DeLuca, Dallas Haines, Kyle Valenti Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, ITSAY au, Friends to Enemies, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers Summary:

Michael had learnt a long time ago if things didn’t concern him, he needed to stay out of it. And even if it did, he probably should still stay out of it because he’d likely make things worse.

So Michael didn't know why Alex coming back made him unable to stay away.

Explores the relationship between Michael and Alex as they relearn their deep connection and come into terms with themselves, their friendship and their complicated and unstable feelings for each other.

An AU based on I told sunset about you.

#malex #rnm fic #ninth chapter of my story is finally out #I'm so slow #but only two left and they're already planned #promise happy things to come #heads up I know very little about cars and that might become evident this chapter to people who know something about cars #michael guerin #Alex manes #ITSAY AU

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absolutebl · 6 months

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Okay, FINE, the shows you should watch for BL's QUEER AF roots

You ready to go hunting?

Many of these are difficult to find. Also many of the images of them and their posters have been block/banned by tumblr, so, no screen grabs for you! (Good times.)

I don't necessarily *like* any of these, but if you are queer and in this fandom and need to dialogue around BL's queerness - these are going to provide a foundation for you. They are important for various industry, reputation, directorial, and cultural reasons. As seeds often are.

Trigger warnings throughout.

The true beginnings:

Boys Love, Japan's 2006 movie is a REALLY rough start featuring a journalist + hot model = murder gay, mild necrophilia, cheating, abuse, rape, and suicide for love. Start as you mean to go on, why don't you, Japan? Is it queer... maybe? Is it BL... honey, I am very sorry to inform you, this started BL.

Note: Yoshikazu Kotani is famous in og BL circles since he acted in 3 early BLs, both Boys Loves and then Same Difference. Also he v tall and hawt.

Eternal Summer, Taiwan 2006 - unlike Japan, Taiwan did NOT start how it would, eventually, go on. But what a messy way to start. A high school story of 3 besties in a love triangle, self discovery, and sexual awakening that fucks it all up.

No Regret, Korea 2006, is a very unhinged queer catastrophe piece about a lost gay man who ends up a host and then almost a murderer because of both his job and his identity.

Note: This is the directorial feature film debut of Lee-Song Hee-il Korea's (so far as I know) first openly gay director who specialized (to this day) in queer content.

The Love of Siam, Thailand 2007, this was Thailand's queer awakening, sure they would backpedal for YEARS after, but in 2022 they began to remember what this movie was (and did) and overtly referenced this quiet little masterpiece. This movie is sad but stunning in that way that the best queer works from Thailand can be (like Present Perfect or ITSAY.) It has Thailand's quintessential softness around theme and character, which you'll understand perfectly when highlighted against the backdrop of the early 2000s works from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Thailand will never lose this soft style and it's one of the most attractive qualities of Thai BL: it's never very harsh with us or its characters. This movie very easily COULD have been quite harsh indeed.

I thought long and hard about including Rice Rhapsody AKA Hainan Chicken Rice (Hainan ji fan) on this list and finally decided it doesn't really qualify. Still let me mention Hong Kong's 2005 movie. It is amazing, fascinating, and very rough going for an ostensible comedy. It wasn't the actual beginning because few saw it and Hong Kong never really picked up or ran with BL let alone QL, but it was hella queer. It's also hella homophobic.

Just Friends? (2009 Korea) - this is Korea's first (kinda) upbeat version of a BL featuring already established boyfriends, one of whom is on military leave, trying to decide on coming out, family life, and the future. All of these are themes Korea will pretty much never tackle again, retreating as they would to their bubble. But what a fun little offering this little show was and is to this day. You should watch it.

Like Love 1 AKA I Love You As A Man: Part 1 - China's 2014 offering is actually pretty classic early form live action yaoi with things like whipping boy, a university setting, rich/poor jock/nerd pairing, hard grumpy/sunshine and a very odd title. It's pre-censorship with an HEA, also explicit, yeah China once did that. This is a lot less queer that it is classic BL and classic Chinese romance, neither of which have any kind of connection to reality. But hey, that's what I'm here for. But it's important to note the drifting away from queerness beginning to occur.

Love Sick - Thailand's 2014 "boys in blues shorts" high school set soapy (in all ways) offering is widely considered the true beginning of Thai BL and by default, eventually, BL as we know it today. (As the biggest producer they somewhat dictate taste and trends in the genre.) This is one of those BLs that owes almost nothing to yaoi, although it started a number of tropes that are now endemic to Thai BL. What it is, instead, is a well scripted story of bisexual self-discovery and the inherent chaos of loving someone of the same gender for the first time, all wrapped up in hormones, existing relationships, and communication issues. It is high school queer angst at its messiest. Nothing is going to be easy for these boys because queer isn’t easy but also because life isn’t easy… welcome to adulthood sweethearts. Is is overtly queer? For 2014 Thailand? Sure is.

Love Next Door 2 a movie from 2014 and one of Thailand’s early very high heat pieces, it’s odd, but sexy I guess? Some unexpectedly decent queer rep including femme characters getting screen time + HEAs. (Part one from 2013 has the same high heat content and features the same lead character (and actor) discovering he is gay with the sex worker next door, but isn't as good nor is it relevant to this installment.)

A few other unknowns, for the queer babies

Wait For Me at Udagawachou AKA Udagawachou de Matteteyo - from Japan in 2015, this is a story about two boys in high school one of whom is a repressed outsider and the other who has a terrible secret (body dysmorphia & cross dressing). When the first boy discovers what's up with the second one, his reaction is very much fetishization. "Oh Japan must you?" kinda started for me with this show. But in this case, Japan, weirdly MUST. This is the ONLY show laboring under (and testing) a pointedly straight lens (or is it?) and identity examination (yes but which boys' identity? that's the question) that I've EVER seen even edge into the BL genre. It is crazy queer, even as it mostly focuses on the fetishization of identity from an outsider's perspective. I WISH more people in fandom would watch it so I could at least talk to someone about it.

The Lover (BL Cut) Korea's 2015 series had multiple couples in an apartment complex, one pair of whom is a BL romance between a Korean man and a visiting Japanese tourist (played by a Kpop idol). It's comedic, slapstick sexy only (no kissing), but basically starts up Korea's bubble and use of idols in BL. It's kinda fascinating to watch them dodge around and still represent gayness in what (is sadly destined to become) a very Chinese way, but which Korea in pursuit of Hallyu and market share would morph into the bubble.

Mr. X and I from China in 2015 is a compilation piece and, I think, the first of this kind of multiple narrative shorter grab bags AKA "Sampler Pack BL." Two of the stories are very queerly sad, but the third is CLASSIC BL of the kind that would become China's best (and last) true BL, Addicted.

Sweet Boy, (Thai 2016) Chimon's first gay role and it is quite sad, oddly sexy, and similar to Dew the movie or My Bromance (just so you know what you are in for) but the acting is on point. When Thailand goes dark, this is how they do it, but this is rough going for baby queers because that's the darkness it is exploring. Our old thematic friends: the pain of self discovery and coming out into a homophobic environment and unfriendly reality, and the cost of being the one able (and willing) to stay in the closet.

Method (Korea 2017) this movie is a May/December actor/idol pairing, that should have been everything I wanted in life but is more about the older character cheating on his wife and their weird “artsy” relationship and frankly, I hated it. And I don’t say that lightly. Is it queer? Who tf knows, but is sure has some interesting things to say about the nature of PERFORMATIVE queerness.

Red Balloon is Taiwan's 2017 precursor BL to their biggest and most famous prestige piece Your Name Engraved Herein. If you're making a choice, choose that instead, but this series certainly paved the way for it to come into existence. Both shows tackle the pressures of culture and social structures on self acceptance and identity and the loneliness inevitably caused by conflict between the two.

(As indeed does Life Love On The Line, Present Perfect, Grey Rainbow, Tropical Night, My Sky, and many other queer meets early BL pieces that revolved around coming out and family acceptance.)

China's 3 2017 "they tried to censor the gay... and it went HORRIBLY wrong":

Beloved Enemy,

The Fairy Fox,

Mr. CEO is Falling in Love with Him.

Honestly these 3 are basically the uncanny valley of BLs.

The Novelist AKA The Pornographer series (2018-2020). Messy psychological machinations, gaslighting, fetishization, sexual corruption, and more good times from "well, what did you expect?" Japan, but also no holds barred queer, just well and truly fucked in the head (and arse) about it.

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese AKA Kyuso wa Chizu no Yume wo Miru (Japan 2020) - Drama llama queers so queer and so dramatic it's like Japan is trying to PROVE something: obsession, cheating, break-up, reunion, then break up again, all of it explicit. This show is just SO JAPANESE. I can't even, but you should watch it and you'll know exactly what I mean. Something like My Personal Weatherman owes it's lineage to this kind of BL. If you like Japan naked, boney, emo, and smoking (hot & ciggy) you will love this, and should watch it. It's objectively amazing, I can't stand it, but I NEED people to talk about it more.

More Queer Stuff about BL from moi

BL Linguistics & Queer Identity - I Am Gay versus I Like Men

Will BL Get More Honestly Queer?

Actually gay, not BL gay - the idea of “by queers, for queers, about queers,” the BL bubble, sanitized gay, and a queer lens

Queer lens (from the director) and chemistry (from the actors) in BL (A Tale of Thousand Stars)

Touch & Daisy in Secret Crush On You - Queer Coded Language and 3rd Gender Identity

BL in Taiwan & Gay Marriage

Debating Queerbaiting in BL ( + Devil Judge… is it queerbaiting?)

BL Actors and the Assumption of Queerness - outing actors, coming out, being out, more: Is that BL actor actually queer?

So is it really fetishization? straight women loving bl

Some BL fans are sasaengs, and it’s a problem in this fandom

BLs That Highlight How Society Treats Queers

10 BLs That Are Honest to a Queer Experience

If you like these kinds of shows try the "Moody Arthouse Smackdoodle" section of this post too.

Happy watching!

(source)

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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

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Best of QL 2023: Favorite Lines

Okay well, I was going to spare everyone (and myself) from having to choose between all the pre-2023 shows I binged this year, but @twig-tea wanted more pain and suffering so here it goes:

Top Five Pre-2023 Lines that Lived Rent-Free In My Brain This Year:

"I don't want to see him sad." -Oh'Aew, I Told Sunset About You, Ep. 5

Okay so you see, my real problem here is that my favorite parts of ITSAY, the things that stay in my head rent free. No. The things I pay to stay in my head because I love them so much are the things that happen in the silence. Beginning of Ep 3, end of Ep 3, the kiss in Ep 4, the wrestling at the end of Ep 2. Those aspects, those moments are what absolutely destroyed me with this show. But I am gonna be real with you all, when Bas let Oh go like that? I wept. And I do love what it says about Oh that despite how much he has been hurt by Teh, he loves Teh enough to know how utterly devasted Teh is right now, and he cannot bear the pain of seeing someone he loves so hurt. Especially when he and Teh haven't spoken since Teh gave up his seat.

"You're tired, aren't you?" -Mork, My Ride, Ep. 5

If you saw my Favorite Lines 2023 post you would notice that this line is very very similar to my favorite line in Moonlight Chicken. And that is because loving and caring for people is super fucking exhausting. Meeting the world with kindness and grace and radical empathy in the face of horrible things, in the face of people who think you are weak for your kindness, or who seek to take advantage of it is fucking exhausting. And it is honestly quite rare that I see kind characters being asked this question, so I always go feral when they do because it is such a testament to love to say 'i see you' but to grant people enough space and autonomy to decide how honest and vulnerable they are going to let themselves be. I was talking with @ginnymoonbeam about this line a little so I am going to steal a line from her: "have you eaten" = I love and care for you

"are you tired" = I see how much you love and care for me/others

Of course the fact that Tawan absolutely just melts in to a puddle of tears because yes, yes he is tired, so so fucking tired does absolutely nothing to help me stop thinking about this scene. I love my boys!

"Because you raised me this way, that's why I'm not like other kids" || "I had to hate Pran, to compete against him, because of you? That's the reason? -Pran || Pat, Bad Buddy, Ep. 10

I cheated here. I do not care. These lines come almost one right after another and are just the same level of one-two gut punch that makes Bad Buddy so fucking incredible. Pat and Pran have been through so much because their parents were trying to save face. All the pain they have suffered, the lies they've had to tell, the caution, the fear, the secrecy in their relationship. How long Pran has had to keep his feelings for Pat at bay, how much Pat is sacrificing to let Pran maintain a good relationship with his mother, is all because their parents have decades old beef. There are so many good lines in this show, if I were to pick another one it would be "do you want to be friends?" "no" from Episode 5, but I feel like no lines sum up the conflict of Bad Buddy better than Pran and Pat confronting their parents.

"You must be disappointed in me." -Wang, 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, Ep 7

Ok so I lied about this one, the line that absolutely stays in my head rent free is the line "Mom." Wang sobs after his fight with In in Episode 8 but I had a legitimate 30 minute melt-down over that singular line and moment so I am picking one of the next most painful lines for me. And if it wasn't this it would be the entirety of the 52 Hertz Whale monologue that In gives in Episode 3 because that is the saddest gayest monologue for the saddest gayest man. And if it wasn't those it would be the boy in boarding school monologue Wang gives in Episode 5. Honestly this entire script, and this entire show is with me always.

BUT what absolutely kills me about this line in particular is that Swasimol tries to shake her head no, and can't bring herself to lie, and Wang watches his mother nod in confirmation that she is disappointed in him when he tells her he is in love with In. And that's the part that is truly crushing.

"I know you're hurting," -Shiro, What Did You Eat Yesterday?

GOD. THEY MAKE ME SO. AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. Honestly a huge fuck you to @bengiyo for introducing this show to me, this brain rot is 1000% his fault.

There is something just so fascinating to me about Kenji and Shiro's dynamic especially around how they handle and navigate their queerness. Kenji is loud and out and proud and while we don't know if there was time his mother had to work up to it, we know that Kenji's mother is pretty accepting of Kenji being gay. But Shiro didn't have that same experience, and he is quiet, and struggling with internalized homophobia, and decently rooted in the closet. And I think when you have a character like Kenji who rarely seems to take the insults and the jabs to heart, who is just the human embodiment of sunshine you can forget that Kenji is human, and Kenji uses his sunshine as armor the way that Shiro uses his silence.

Shiro never says I love you to Kenji, in the first season he rarely engaged in any level of physical affection, and kept a distance from Kenji if they were walking together in public. But Shiro loves Kenji so goddamn much, so so fucking much, and while he can't bring himself to say the words it is in moments like this one, where Shiro knows despite the fact that Kenji hasn't given any indication, that Kenji is hurt by the fact that Shiro's mother rescinded his New Year's invitation.

Shiro and Kenji mean everything to me.

If anyone is curious about any other favorites (shows, cinematography, pain, etc) from this year, feel free to drop an ask!

#i told sunset about you #bad buddy #bad buddy series #180 degree #180 degree longitude passes through us #what did you eat yesterday?#kinou nani tabeta?#my ride the series #best of ql 2023

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stuffnonsenseandotherthings · 6 months

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Watching Manner of Death has confirmed for me that my absolute favourite sub-genre (is it even a sub-genre? category) of BL is Queer Adult Stories.

Don't get me wrong, I loved My School President as much as the next person, Bad Buddy has my whole heart, and I would genuinely fight someone over Eighth Sense, Semantic Error, or ITSAY but...

Maybe it's because I left high school behind a long time ago and my uni years were a bit rubbish, maybe it's because a lot of mainstream queer rep still feels very young and I'm well over first loves at this point, maybe because it feels like it's showing me a future I could have one day, but something about seeing two adults in their late 20s, 30s, 40s fall in love all while dealing with work, family, life in a way I can fully relate to.... It just hits different. It makes me happy.

Moonlight Chicken, Laws of Attraction, Manner of Death, I want more shows like this, I need more shows like this.

#manner of death #laws of attraction #moonlight chicken #half of a tale of a thousand stars fits into this category #the phupha half #bed friends fits too #the fact that 2 out of 3 of these shows involve murder but still make me feel fuzzy inside says a lot #thai BL

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the-conversation-pod · 6 months

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The ITSAY Anniversary Show, Part 1

AND WE'RE BACK!

October marks the third anniversary of the show that rewired the BL industry, and it felt like the right time for a retrospective. In part 1 Ben leads a panel talk on I Told Sunset About You. Just us along with @liyazaki, @waitmyturtles, @wen-kexing-apologist, and @so-much-yet-to-learn

Join us as we talk about our history with the genre, Phuket as a setting, the complexities of the characters, and why this show remains so important.

Listen on Apple Podcasts!

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

0:00 - Intro 4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY? 11:31 - Phuket as a Setting 19:00 - Style and Genre 29:40 - Characters 36:18 - Teh and Oh's Dynamic 50:07 - Why do you care so much about ITSAY? 1:04:08 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

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0:00 - Intro

Ben

BWOOOOOOOOM. Okay. It Worked. You're already in it.

Nini

[laughs] That's staying in.

Ben

Welcome back to The Conversation, everyone, for our fall season. We're very excited about this season. We decided to take advantage of the reduced output of shows, at least for part of summer, and decided to do a retrospective on I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon. We also have made a lot of friends in our time on Tumblr and decided to hang out with some of them, and talk about the show so it wouldn't just be me and Nini blabbing about one of our favorite projects.

Nini

Our panel of I Told Sunset About You experts includes the lovely, the only Turtles a.k.a @waitmyturtles on Tumblr. We have Aiden @so-much-yet-to-learn on Tumblr. We have Captain Hands who is @wen-kexing-apologist on Tumblr. And the fabulous friend of the pod, our good friend mor @liyazaki on Tumblr.

So that is our esteemed panel for I Told Sunset About You in this episode. That's who you're gonna hear. In the next episode we're gonna talk I Promised You the Moon and have a different set of people on.

So, Ben, aside from the fact that it's the anniversary of I Told Sunset About You—the third anniversary—why did you feel like this was the right time?

Ben

I think this has probably been one of the most thematically interesting years that the genre has had, and I've said many times that I don't think we'd be able to get the kinds of quality productions we're getting out of the genre now without the success of I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon, and I feel like for us to move forward with this particular show I think we had to at least get that show out of our system and into the recording. It had been bothering both of us that we hadn't really sat down and talked about it even though we dropped constantly that we are fans. I think it was really useful to talk about it.

I really liked that we actually split up for it because you and I talked to each other a lot on this show, and it was really fun to talk to some other people about the show first and get some other perspectives.

Nini

We always say that one of the whole points of The Conversation is to expand the conversation outward, so we had a really good time doing these panels. We think you're gonna enjoy them. So, let's just dive right in.

4:16 - How did you come to ITSAY?

Ben

We're gonna get right into it, Our first question of the night. We're gonna start with Mor: longtime friend of the podcast. Mor?

Mor

Yes, hi Ben!

Ben

How did you come to ITSAY?

Mor

[laughs] Well I came to ITSAY actually as a relatively new BL watcher — I had very begrudgingly watched 2gether and a handful of other very typical GMMTV type shows. And I had heard that there were some higher budget higher brow BLs out there, but I'm not ashamed to admit that what initially drew me to the genre in the first place is the… kind of fluffy romance trope-driven narratives? And it was just the first time that I had encountered any kind of queer media that was so lighthearted, and typically took place in a world where homophobia basically doesn't exist, and especially as a slightly older queer, that was such a nice change of pace compared to the other queer media that I'd been consuming up until that point. So frankly, the idea of watching a more serious BL back then made me a little nervous, even though that's a lot of what I typically watch when it comes to Western media. So I put off watching ITSAY for a while until I eventually decided to just jump into it and the rest is history.

ITSAY isn't just my favorite show in the genre, it's one of my favorite shows and pieces of media period. I Promised You the Moon is too, but that's a hot take I'll expound on next time.

Ben

Thank you. Aiden, what about you, you've been around BL for a bit. How did you come to ITSAY?

Aiden

I've been in the BL slash QL sphere since the beginning, largely as a lurker. I didn't watch ITSAY when it aired, due to not being in the right headspace at the time to tackle a show with that much emotional impact. It was obviously very much in the zeitgeist, constantly in my feed, impossible to miss. So many other shows since then have been compared to it and I always planned to watch it someday in the nebulous future, but with so many things constantly airing I’d never quite gotten around to it.

So when word went out that Ben and Nini were looking for people who hadn't watched it yet to get a mix of perspectives, I figured there probably weren't many others who'd been around as long as I had and somehow hadn't watched it yet. I re-evaluated whether or not I was ready to watch it and turns out I was! So, better late than never.

Ben

I am so glad we finally convinced you to watch the show. I wasn't gonna push you but I'm like ‘oh my god Aiden’s finally watching.’

Aiden

I'm glad as well. It was definitely an excellent thing to watch.

Ben

Okay, Captain Hands! [laughs] What about you?

Captain Hands

So I got into BL like a year-ish ago, and of course being a queer person who had not seen a lot of queer media the worms got in my brain instantly! There's like a master post of queer Asian shows that is somewhere on Tumblr that I saw, I don't know what user it is, sorry! But I saw a post that had I Told Sunset About You on it as like a good show to watch but I wasn't sure where to access it at the time, so I kind of just filed it away for later. Cut to like six months later, Ben and Turtles were yelling at me to eat vegetables, Kyr-kun-chan changed her icon to I think PP or Billkin or something, Nini mentioned PP and then a thousand messages in the clown server later ginnymoonbeam and I committed to watching ITSAY for the first time, which is probably a good thing because then Ben could warn me about doing one episode at a time.

Ben

Oh right, you were the one who was like, I'm tough I can watch more than one episode at a time. No.

Captain Hands

Wrong. Very wrong.

Ben

I'm glad you also finally joined us. Last but definitely not least, Turtles what about you? How did you come to ITSAY?

Turtles

Hey folks! Ben and Nini, thanks for having me, this is so awesome. All right, so, I guess what I'm the most well known on Tumblr for is the old GMMTV challenge project that I am blogging on. I came to BLs through Kinnporsche, at least Thai BLs through Kinnporsche, I was familiar with Japanese BLs for a couple years before that. I Told Sunset About You, in regards to it making it into the project — it was obviously going to be a natural part of the challenge syllabus, in terms of anybody picking up that syllabus and learning about Thai BLs in the first place. But the entire project, the watch list is community contributed, it’s 100% created by the community of Tumblr posters who love Thai BLs and who have lots of opinions about Thai BLs including this group here. It wasn't just through the solicitation of feedback on the OGMMTVC, uh, that I came to it, I certainly had seen I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You the Moon on many lists across Tumblr as, as an impactful BL. But in regards specifically to where it belonged by way of chronology, and by way of its cinematic impact, all of that feedback came through my soliciting the community on Tumblr for creating my syllabus that is teaching me about Thai BLs, and will hopefully get replicated in other people's journeys as well. So that's how I came to it.

Ben

I'm very excited by everybody's answers about how they came to this. I want to ask a quick follow-up question since — some of us have been here since the before time and the long long ago, and some of you got started like a year or two ago? Going in reverse order real quick: what is everybody's first BL that they remember? Turtles?

Turtles

The classic, the wonderful, the amazing, What Did You Eat Yesterday? Long story short, that was the first time I had ever discovered Tumblr as well — enjoyed that drama and I was absolutely insane for it for about two years solid.

Ben

Thank you for that. Captain Hands! What was your first BL?

Captain Hands

My friends were really obsessed with Word of Honor and showed it to me, so I got really into that, and that's how I found the, like, list of other BLs. If that does not count as a BL, then Kinnporsche was the first thing that I watched.

Ben

[laughs] Aiden, what about you? I'm actually really curious to hear your answer, because you and I have been around since the beginning.

Aiden

It depends on how you define BL, really. The first thing that I think could probably qualify would be the first Takumi-kun from Japan in 2007.

Ben

Unfortunately, that counts.

Aiden

Yeah [laughs]. Unfortunately indeed.

Ben

What about you, Mor? You said ITSAY was one of your first BLs. You have any others you watched before that? Or what was your other pathway into this?

Mor

2gether was one of the first ones, which is ironic because I hated 2gether. [laughs] I don't know why I finished watching it, I was just intrigued, so even though I kind of despised it for a lot of personal reasons — just wasn't for me — I enjoyed it enough that I wanted to keep watching. I wanted to find more.

Ben

I'm absolutely fascinated by how everybody came to this. It's KinnPorsche, 2gether, What Did You Eat Yesterday? and Aiden with some of the oldest stuff.

11:31 - Phuket as a Setting

Moving on to our next question! We're going to get into some setting stuff. What about Phuket as a setting stands out to you? I think I'm gonna have Mor answer this one first because they actually visited Phuket and some of the filming locations.

Mor

I certainly did, and I made a concentrated effort to take pictures, as some of you I think have seen, of the actual scenes in ITSAY, like the famous chip crawl deck, which was a journey to find. It was an incredible experience getting to visit Phuket. The setting of Phuket is unlike any other backdrop to a BL that I've ever seen. The landscape is really a character unto itself. I get a very similar but also sort of very rare sort of feeling when I watch ITSAY as I do when I'm watching, say, the train scene in Spirited Away. It's like looking at a natural environment that's been elevated to something almost magical just because of the way it's being shot or portrayed.

I read once that Miyazaki's films almost make you homesick for a place you've never been, and that's how I felt about Phuket after watching ITSAY, to the point that it absolutely influenced my decision to go to Thailand and actually go there. And having been I can say it's just as lovely as they portray it to be — but I do know my attachment runs a lot deeper and is more personal than that, because Phuket to me will always be tied to Teh and Oh.

The specific locations they chose, having now been there and walked around and seen it — it was so smart and it really enhanced the narrative while never overwhelming it or taking away from it. Like, I was very struck that the beach that the hammock scene takes place on… it's very wide, it's very open, and you would almost miss the hammock, because the way that the trees hang so low to the beach, it really sort of encapsulates the hammock? You have to actually climb under the branches. It really I think created this effect of Teh and Oh — they almost look cocooned in the darkness, in this otherwise very wide open environment. Maybe it felt a little safer because of that, to start saying what they had been feeling and skirting around. The wide shots of the beach chase scene… and obviously the beauty of Promthep Cape, and so many other moments. Phuket just… it did so much to enhance the intimacy of the scenes, and move this story along.

Ben

Apparently we're all going to have to go visit Phuket now. Turtles, when you were reacting to the series you were writing about some of the cultural crossover stuff. What do you have to say about Phuket as a setting?

Turtles

I've never been to Thailand, but I have spent a good portion of my entire childhood and adult life in Thailand's southern neighboring country of Malaysia — with my mother being Malaysian, my being part Malaysian — Phuket is an incredibly important locale for me to consider. Chinese migration from Fujian, from other locales in China, traveled in part down that Thai landscape to the Malaysian peninsula, and then ultimately settling all throughout Thailand, through Malaysia as I said, and ultimately into Singapore which has a majority Chinese population.

A lot of what I learned about Phuket in part comes from my own Malaysian heritage, but also through conversations with other amazing Tumblr users including the very wonderful telomeke, who hails from the southeast Asian region himself. Phuket, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, these are towns that happened to receive more than their fair share of Chinese immigrants, that ended up in part creating a very unique culture that we call Peranakan culture: Chinese immigrants intermingling with ethnic residents of the areas in which they settled. Teh's mom is just a fabulous example of somebody that, that holds a lot of those influences all in one person: she wears Peranakan clothes, particularly when she's hosting events for the public at her Hokkien Mee stall.

Ben

Captain Hands, Aiden, do you want to say anything about Phuket?

Captain Hands

Phuket is a small town when compared to locations like Bangkok, which is where a lot of I Promised You the Moon is going to take place. I've been thinking that the small-town vibe works very well with how often it feels to me like Teh's entire world is ending whenever Oh, like, does something that like makes him jealous. Or like, if Teh's rejected or if he makes a mistake, like you can just feel in his body how much that impacts him, and it feels very small-town to me, to like to have these little moments be so big to him.

There’s such a significant use of the Chinese language in this show, and for all the ways that like Chinese is used to tell us, like, what Teh is thinking and feeling, and for all the ways that like Teh is taking the time to try to teach Oh how to understand the language that Teh himself uses to express himself frequently — is a really poignant thing for me to pick up on considering Teh's own heritage, and like, his mother's heritage, and like the Chinese immigrant population that is a part of that community.

Ben

Turtles was talking about the cultural crossover that occurs in Phuket from all the various people migrating there. I'm from New Orleans which can jokingly be described as the northernmost Caribbean city, that has passed between French and Spanish control multiple times, and has now been occupied by Americans for one hundred and fifty years. So we have a very weird collection of cultures here as well — most evidenced in our architecture. And I think about that a lot when I reflect on Phuket — because I just rewatched it this week — it looks different from what we usually get in Bangkok.

Turtles

This show was so unbelievably layered by its visual cues, from a cultural interpretive perspective. Ben, as you pointed out to me, one of the friends, Phillip, he clearly comes from from a Islamic family, his parents are shown wearing a hijab and a songkok, and it's just very indicative of the the filmmakers giving us the indication that we're talking about… the mixing of cultures, assimilation and melting pot, all of the different words that we want to throw out there.

As per your note about New Orleans, you know, as we say in Malaysia same same lah. It's very comparative to all of these indications that they were bringing up about Phuket. Thinking about Phuket as a tourist town as well, as compared to New Orleans, having just been to New Orleans myself, I think that there's just so much to, to pull out there by way of whether you make Phuket a permanent home or not. Teh and Oh clearly exist on the borderline of that permanence as they get closer to going to college.

Ben

There's something specific about growing up in a tourist town, like you can go visit tourist locations during peak tourist season as a way to avoid people you know. Because unless they're working the location, it's just strangers.

19:00 - Style and Genre

Ben

We're going to move to our next question here and get into some style questions. How does ITSAY play with genre and stylistic expectations? And specifically, are there any works that you recall while you were watching it? Aiden, you and I had talked a little bit about this.

Aiden

For myself when I was watching ITSAY, rather than paying attention to the source materials that ITSAY drew from, I found myself thinking back on shows that I'd seen since ITSAY aired and reevaluating them through the lens that had changed from my watching it. ITSAY clearly broke open a number of aspects that the Thai BL circuit specifically hadn't delved into until then, and expanded the genre as a result.

My personal favorite impact is seeing shows set in rural locations, which were quite thin on the ground before that point, and have increased at least in visits if not fully set in more rural locations since then. Shows like Tale of a Thousand Stars, Cupid’s Last Wish, I Will Knock You, Remember Me, Moonlight Chicken. And it also, it showed grit and grime in a way that you really hadn't seen before that point in at least the BL genre. It was more common in media intended for queer audiences or art house type of content but the BL genre had always been very sanitized, very urban, very clean cut. Almost cartoonish and simplistic. And seeing something where you got to see buildings with marks on the walls that are from, you know, monsoon rain, stains, faded paint, chipped plaster, dirt on the ground, picture glass that had flecks on it, dust settled on things — that was a revelation, at least at the time. It really made things feel a lot more… settled and grounded and realistic. It felt like you could walk down the road and see these places, rather than it being a kind of constructed facade of where these shows are, that's an everyplace everywhere kind of generalization. And that followed with shows like Not Me, I Will Knock You again, Remember Me, that you got to see the grittiness, Not Me especially.

The inclusion of religion, more Chinese cultural aspects, things like that that had largely been omitted from most shows until then, started becoming involved more in the day to day life that you got to see. Things like the talk Bart where you do the alms in the morning providing the food for the monks that go around traveling from home to home.

We also started getting more slower paced shows like Nitiman, You're My Sky — which had heavy callbacks — Coffee Melody, My Only 12%. Shows with high concepts, stronger writing, better production value on a number of levels, like, ah, Bad Buddy, Triage, La Pluie, Kinnporsche. Also things with some of the more awkward side of queer life, which until then had very much not been present almost at all, outside of the more tragic kind of shows. Because again, it was that sanitized, sort of, ‘it has to be picture perfect, it has to be ideal’ kind of… nuance and vibe on the shows. And so we got things like Secret Crush on You, and I'll argue that I Will Knock You should fit there as well.

The way that it's expanded the shows that have come after — and yes we do still have those sanitized, simplistic, clean, bubblegum sort of shows — very much enjoyable when you're in the mood for that sort of show, but we've also added things to give more breadth. Things like La Pluie, Step by Step, Moonlight Chicken, that make it a much more encompassing sort of genre, able to draw broader crowds that have differing interests as well. I am thrilled to see the change and be able to tie back now to how that was driven by ITSAY.

Ben

This is one of the reasons why I was really glad we finally got you to watch the show, because you've been in the genre as long or longer than me? And it was one of the shows that you had skipped for specific reasons when it first aired and I was curious how your long view of the genre would play into your reflections upon it.

When I watched ITSAY, I ended up having a really intense reaction to the end of it — positively, as a result of some of the works that had come before. It's sometimes hard for me to connect ITSAY to other BLs that pre-date it, because those BLs are often heavily influenced by product placement and a slapstick version of humor that ITSAY is not relying on at all — it's an incredibly serious show about what it wants to cover. And that connected me back further to some of the German works I had watched growing up. Like Summer Storm, which is I think from 2004, there's a Dutch film called Boys from 2014, Big Eden from America in 2000 which uses its setting in the American hinterland really well. And I just had not seen this in Thai BL.

The closest we came to something this grounded-feeling from Thailand was The Love of Siam, which they submitted to the Academy Awards in 2007. I actually had Turtles and Captain Hands watch that this week, so before I get into my very specific reactions to that, at the end of episode 5 of ITSAY, I kind of want to hear you two, and what you have to say about Love of Siam in relation to ITSAY before we move forward.

Captain Hands

You've said before that you felt like ITSAY is an apology for Love of Siam, and I fully agree. Two kids that are childhood friends separate for a number of years, come back together, the attraction between them is instantaneous and very obvious and kind of hard to ignore? And then having it end the way that it ends for Love of Siam, is, you know, it's a choice! I can understand and see why they would play it that way, but I agree with you, Ben, that it is, that this feels like an apology for what they did to us with Love of Siam.

Ben

Turtles, any commentary you want to give?

Turtles

Me not being Thai, not knowing Thai, having not visited Thailand — for a movie in 2007 to end with a successful same-sex relationship would have surprised me. So the film ending the way that it did was not surprising, and I found the journey to get to that point really poignant. That is a very deeply Turtles read, a very deep Asian read. Absolutely no surprise whatsoever that many BL filmmakers were influenced by this movie. And as far as ITSAY goes, is ITSAY an apology for Love of Siam? I can absolutely understand that verbiage, that's not a verbiage that I would necessarily jump to using.

I could very well say that if ITSAY had ended without Teh and Oh getting together, I also would not have been surprised, especially with the way episodes 3 and 4 went. And now that I've seen Love of Siam I could feel stronger in that opinion. Now, as far as it making me feel good or satisfied with the story conclusion? That's, I think, you know that's, that's personal extrapolation there. But as far as the art itself goes I think Love of Siam communicated to me that I would not have been surprised if Teh and Oh didn't get together, if they had more personal, emotional, and also macrocultural wrangling that they needed to do. Love of Siam absolutely talks to ITSAY but I'm not sure that I would necessarily call it an apology.

Ben

Mor, do you have any commentary on genre history?

Mor

The really interesting, different thing that ITSAY did for me, as specifically a queer 30-something, a Westerner who's been in all sorts of extremely homophobic environments and, and different things throughout my life, and I've just gotten used to not having happily ever after. What I loved so much about BLs in the beginning was just, ‘oh man, we can have these light, bubbly, effervescent stories that get a happily ever after and it doesn't have to be complicated, it can just be sweet?’ And it was such a new concept for me, to see that.

So, ITSAY ended up, like, with the ending that we got, it ended up being almost healing for me? As dramatic as that sounds. And that's really why, because it subverted it. You could tell going in, this is gonna be serious. This is gonna be hard-hitting. We're gonna be getting into deep stuff in terms of these queer kids figuring out who they are, and learning how they can be together, if they want to be together. So I was sort of expecting — because of my history and what I'm what I'm used to seeing — okay, well we're going serious, it's not a good chance this is gonna end well. So to see that — which frankly was a much more realistic portrayal of queer relationships than your typical sanitized BL — that is what took ITSAY for me to god-tier media, god-tier.

29:40 - Characters

Ben

Let's get into some of the character stuff. For all that they are incredible and great characters, why couldn't it be Bas or Tarn for Teh and Oh? Captain Hands! You're up first for this one.

Captain Hands

So the easy answer for me is that it just couldn't be? Like neither Teh or Oh really knows exactly when they developed feelings for each other, and they both try to have feelings for Tarn and Bas and they just can't make it work. Teh going to Tarn at 4 am and asking her to tell him that she loves him was, for me, like, ‘Oh I need to know what it feels like to hear this from her so I can know how it, how it feels… to hear it? And to know whether or not that feels good? If that feels something, like something I want to hear.’

For a more, you know, in-depth answer, because that's my whole shtick, right? There's a couple of things that I was thinking about, mostly the Chinese language element, the color element, and then just like Tarn and Bas as characters? One of the throughlines of ITSAY is that Teh frequently writes whatever his subconscious is fixating on over and over again in Chinese. Teh can't parse through the complexity of his emotions, but he can summarize them in like words, so like ‘rival’ or ‘intimate,’ and we know that there is much more behind what he's writing, than like what is actually being put down on paper? Because Oh's not good at Chinese, Teh spends so much of this show like painstakingly teaching Oh how to understand Chinese, and like how to understand him as a person and like his subconscious? So like once Oh starts to get it and get better at Chinese is when they really start to connect more intimately. If you think about the end of episode 3 with the sniffing scene, the buildup to that moment is Oh using the male/male protagonist question — like, how you say male protagonist in Chinese, how you say female protagonist in Chinese, is male-male okay? — is him asking if Teh is okay with them like potentially becoming a couple.

And I know this is going to kill Ben to talk about the colors, but this is for the color girlies! Oh is red and Teh is blue and green, and something that I did notice on this watch through is like, Teh's home is filled with red, like the walls of the restaurant are red, his bedspread’s red, the couch, the clothing his mother wears is often red, and Oh's home is… very much blue and green, so like the sign for the Panwa resort is blue, the windows, all of the windows are framed in this kind of like, light green. These boys grew up in each other's colors. Their home is each other's colors. And so of course when they first meet, they're going to be drawn to one another because they remind each other of home. Tarn's color is purple, and so there are parts of Tarn that Teh is drawn to, but I see that as kind of being like the red parts of Tarn.

Oh likes Bas because Bas kind of acts as a similar person in his life to Teh. In episode 2 Oh says that he likes Bas because Bas drives him around, but he won't confess because he doesn't know what Bas's feelings are for him, and he thinks that Bas likes girls and he doesn't want to lose him as a friend, when that is a direct parallel to Teh. And something that I started noticing on this watchthrough is that Bas picks up whatever color Teh is wearing, but he's often like a scene or an episode behind. So in episode 4 Teh’s wearing green at the beginning of like them going to the resort? And then Bas picks up the green when he shares a bed with Oh, and then by the time that Bas has picked up that green color, Teh and Oh are both in yellow, and so like they're now matching, and Bas is is behind the curve.

From the perspective of just like, Tarn and Bas as characters, like they both value themselves enough to know when to let go, which I think is a very crucial part of their relationships with Teh and Oh? When Teh colors the hibiscus that Tarn draws red, she shuts that shit down like immediately and sends him home. And when Oh is quiet and sad on like the drive home, Bas knows immediately like why that is, and goes to Teh’s house. So like I really strongly believe that Oh ends up with Teh at the end because Bas gives him up? Oh would have kept fighting the urge to go to Teh, and like to comfort Teh and to support him, if Bas hadn't driven Oh to Teh's house and been like, ‘it's okay, it's fine, I understand.’ And, and given him that freedom.

Ben

I’m very fascinated to follow up on the thread about Tarn and Bas having more willingness to cut those boys off [laughs]. Anyone else have any commentary they want to talk about on Bas or Tarn? Oh please, Aiden, proceed.

Aiden

It just needs to be said that Bas is the best boy and Tarn is the best girl. Sorry, somebody had to say it.

Ben

Thank you, sir. So [laughs] I think Teh likes Tarn because she's as committed to her future as he is. She intentionally does not pursue a romance with him because she thinks it would get in the way of her pursuit of her art and architecture career. And Teh is super committed to his career as an actor. And I think that's probably why he liked her so much? This is a little bit of I Promised You the Moon slipping through. But like Captain Hands pointed out: because she's committed to what she wants for herself, she's not going to sacrifice a ton of her stuff for him the way Oh might, or that Teh might for Oh.

And Bas… I've been thinking a lot about second lead stuff because of conversations with Shan. Bas doesn't confess until really late in the game? But so much has happened at that point, that Teh is going to be able to break past that because of the earlier promise. I agree that he is the best boy. But I think Oh likes the drama [laughs] that Teh brings to his life.

36:18 - Teh and Oh-aew’s Dynamic

Ben

On to our next question! The dynamic between Teh and Oh-aew is one of the primary draws of this story. What did you connect to in their dynamic or their story? Mor, you're up first.

Mor

I'm vibrating, can you tell? [laughs] So there is so much, I think, that could draw anyone into the story of ITSAY, because the glories and the pitfalls of first love, they have so much in common regardless of who you fall in love with. But I personally connected so deeply to their story, again, as a queer person, I know a lot of other people did as well. You can't help but painfully relate to both of them — at least that was my experience, especially my younger self — Teh having so many feelings that he spends so much time being incapable of processing or acknowledging, let alone communicating? And Oh being so long-suffering and hopeful and just pining with his whole self for this mess of a boy, who doesn't know what he wants or what he's doing. I mean not that Oh really does either; who knows what they want in a relationship when they're that young? And when you have feelings for your long-lost best friend that you just reunited with, it's very complicated.

But there were just so many quintessentially queer experiences in ITSAY and in their dynamic that hit me right in my gay little heart. The tiny secret touches that mean so much, the affectionate friendly banter that all of a sudden is veering into flirting, or ‘are we flirting, like what's going on?’ and then the crippling doubt that sets in afterwards and how it can haunt you for days. This gut wrenching fear that these feelings you found yourself in can possibly affect your whole life: how your friends feel about you, whether or not your family accepts you. There's just so much that we have to consider, well beyond what our hetero peers typically have to deal with, and it's exciting and it's terrifying. It's not just incredibly validating, but like I mentioned earlier, it's healing in a way, to see such a frankly visceral experience portrayed with so much care and accuracy, as they did with giving us Teh and Oh's story, and their dynamic and how it progressed. I just feel like overall the stakes are so much higher for us? And often at so, so young and tender ages, to just explore who we are, to like and to fall in love with who we want to, and… their whole story for me, watching it unfold — this is very dramatic but it's true — for me, it felt like someone peering into my past looking at all these little hurts I forgot, these bigger ones that are still healing, and saying, ‘it was like this back then wasn't it? It was so hard. But there's so much beauty here, and you can have it too! It can be yours too. You can have this struggle, you can go through all of this, you can walk through the fire and emerge through the other side with this beautiful, beautiful thing, that maybe even is even more beautiful because of how much work and how much brokenness it took to get there.’

Ben

I'm so glad we got to let you get that out of your system, Mor. [laughs] Turtles or Aiden, do you have any commentary on Oh and Teh?

Aiden

For me the, the dynamic between Teh and Oh was very unique and… not something that I had necessarily dealt with, but the coming-out scene for Teh and Hoon resonated incredibly strongly for me. The dialogue from that scene matched almost word for word how I came out to my own brother? And the emotions, and the fear and the terror and the relief and the reassurance and the, you know, gentle teasing to lighten the mood… that felt so real. Mine had [laughs] rather less crying, at least in the moment, I definitely did later — but the text and the, the feeling of that scene just took me right back to that moment. And there's so much about this show that is authentic in a very specific way to different people's experiences.

Ben

Thank you Aiden. Turtles?

Turtles

For me, what Oh was able to get out of Teh, by way of what I called a drunken hormonal experience… just the way Billkin acted in his exploratory attraction towards Oh and how PP received it… how their physical interplay represented that budding romance, that budding attraction. The end of episode 2 on the boat particularly moved me, let alone the incredibly impactful endings of 3 and 4. I was surprised to sort of see Teh… melt, and go back and forth in his physicality at the end of that episode. Just the physicality of that exploration, and how the physicality itself then compared to and reflected on all the emotional processes that we saw between the two of them. I thought that that was so unique particularly about this show, and how unabashed it was to display such physical attraction developing between the two of them, particularly on Teh's end. That's something that I'll really take away from this show, that it displayed attraction, really really vibrating attraction, in such an impactful way.

Ben

Captain Hands, you have any commentary?

Captain Hands

Of course you know I do, I have commentary about everything all the time. So I think the thing that really drew me to Oh and Teh’s dynamic was the power of their feelings for one another, and like, especially the way that Oh acts as a magnet to Teh and like, the trance-like state that Oh kind of puts him in, so you get all these moments of Teh just kind of following after Oh, and like Oh being aware of that power that he holds? The sincerity of their characterizations and the commitment to their characters… I love this show so much for having Teh just constantly walk in circles. And how that will kind of translate into just the cyclical nature of his own personality, and like the experiences that he has, and the stuff that he puts himself through. The things he will continue to do as their relationship progresses. You can tell so much, like how comfortable these two are with each other, and how in love they have been with each other since they were kids, and that's another reason I think that they couldn't have really been with anybody else, is because they have all of this history between them? That is like so palpable, and like how much Teh wants to protect those memories, and like the feelings that he has when he's with Oh. The line that they say like, ‘don't give my time to others’ is so poignant.

Seeing the way that Teh is continuously transformed by being around Oh, hating coconut at the beginning of the show and thinking that it smelled bad, and then like having that scene with Oh on the boat at the end of episode 2, and then immediately opening episode 3 with Teh just smashing a bit of coconut meat on his face as like hard as he can, because he just wants to be like as close to it as possible and like, how it doesn't smell bad anymore, and how it tastes good now because he's starting to have these feelings for Oh. And that has radically changed how he interacts with the world around him. It’s just like so good to me to watch being portrayed on screen, especially because Teh is not aware of his queerness in the way that that Oh is? And so like, Teh not knowing why he feels the way he feels, and then lashing out because he can't put a name to like, what it is that is causing the feelings that he has, it feels very, very in keeping with like, the queer experience as you are like, learning your own identity.

Ben

The thing with ITSAY — it's not just the things that it does that are familiar: with all the important touching, the knowing that exists between you, the dealing with the homophobia, the concern about how other people will perceive you, whether or not your parents can be proud of you if you are honest about this portion of yourself. What I think makes ITSAY so special as queer media, and why I lose my mind over it? It's about the fact that these two cannot hide how they feel from each other, at all. And as a result they are the most cry baby boys I have ever seen in all of queer cinema. I just rewatched it this week. These boys are crying constantly at and about each other. Every time any one of them says anything to the other, they make the other one cry over something.

It's interesting because so much of the ‘are you are you not’ thing, when you're growing up, is about the uncertainty that the other boy is actually feeling it? And that never feels like it exists between them. Oh knew what he was feeling, but as soon as Teh starts to show interest in him, he picks up on it instantly, and eventually confronts Teh very directly about it. As Turtles pointed out, the way the intimacy between them is displayed so frankly. They spend all of episode 3 dancing around each other — we know where this is going! And then you get the back-scratching scene which leads into this arc about Teh dealing with the physical reality of Oh being a boy. Episode 4 has the underwater kiss. During the underwater kiss, Teh puts his hand on Oh's chest again, and Oh has a reaction to that, and you can see him immediately being hit with the uncertainty about Teh's attraction to girls — in the middle of the best kiss that has ever happened. And I don't think I noticed that in my earlier watches: even during this huge moment for them, they are still continuing the drama. There's a specificity to the way that these two feel queer, that I have noticed that every person who grew up with some of the Knowing, as I call it, feels so intensely about these two boys.

Mor

I'm nodding so hard over here I'm surprised I haven't lost my head at this point. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes to everything you said. The sheer magnetism of their connection, that's really one of my biggest takeaways from this show. Not only the authenticity, but just how much Billkin and PP's chemistry and their talent as actors, how they were able to really, ah, just make that experience that is so true, it's so true to my experience as a queer person who definitely had the Knowing from a very young age... and had a lot of of moments like that where it just felt like, ‘what, I think there's something here, you know it, I know it, I think we both know it’ — it's hard to put it into words, but they just captured it so beautifully, so brilliantly. It took me back.

It was so accurate that it made me remember little moments, tiny little moments in my past that weren't so little in the moment, they were really big when I was, you know, ten, eleven, twelve, falling for a girl for the first time. That's part of what made it so special for me is how it really took me back to those times, and in a healing way.

Ben

Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

I was just thinking about, in the opposite sense of like, I did not at least acknowledge my queerness until I was in my early 20s? But like, definitely grew up feeling very different from people around me and like, lonely compared to people around me, for like reasons I could not explain at the time? And so like, seeing Teh have to go through and process his own queerness because it is not something that has occurred to him before, was something that I took so strongly to. I relate so hard right now in my life to the identity narratives, because it took me so long to kind of parse through what my identities are, and to like, get comfortable with them. And so seeing Teh’s kind of like, ‘can I even like boys?’ moments, that is something that was really fun for me to watch, again with like the circling, like he has no clue [laughs] what's going on in his life and he is just circling and circling and circling until he kind of comes to a point that he can connect to, and then he'll kind of run off in that direction.

50:07 - Why Do You Care So Much About ITSAY?

Ben

Final question for everyone: Why do you care so much about ITSAY? Aiden.

Aiden

I care about it because, for one it is authentic queer representation on a level that I had very rarely seen on screen — both in Thai media and and just in general. It's very true to life for a wide variety of queer people. But also I am passionate about it because of the way that it drove Thai media as a whole forward to a profound degree — but especially the QL genre. It showed unarguably that there was a market for high quality productions, and the industry reacted by broadening their offerings accordingly. Many of the Thai shows that I love most from the past couple of years clearly echo back to ITSAY in specific aspects, and there will be untold echoes that continue radiating forward from here, in a good way.

Ben

Thank you, Aiden. Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

ITSAY to me is a foundational queer show. Mostly because queer characters are allowed to be complex, three-dimensional and frustrating. If anybody from Tumblr is listening to this podcast, which I know you are, the for, by, and about queer thing is something that I've been looking at a lot as I've been watching more stuff, and this is very much all three, right? Because they're letting these characters make mistakes, and like hurt people that they care about in their quest to better understand themselves? They are allowed to be human, which is like a wild concept in a lot of the like earlier BL shows, it's part of why I don't like it personally when people say that ITSAY's not a BL, because like, why can't BL's be high quality with like, really good structure and story right? Like I don't think that it's fair to just be like, oh this doesn't count as a BL because of like the, the production itself.

And I think that just the emotional, like honesty and vulnerability that the script and the actors like showed throughout this process, really struck deep in my experiences figuring out like my own identity? There's such a commitment to everything and everybody in the show that I really liked. Watching the documentaries. I just love how much of the emotionally safe space it felt like, seeing how often the director himself was crying watching these scenes? Or like, how they would kind of wind up these these crying scenes by like, I remember like, PP being rocked back and forth in a hug by the director in the position that he's going to be in when he hugs Bas crying at the end of, what is it, episode 4 or part of episode 5 when Bas is like, go comfort Teh? All of these moments that like really show that the cast and the crew support each other, and like trust in each other… there is so much time and effort put into this show, and that is part of why I like it so much, is like you can tell how much care every aspect of this show was given.

Ben

Thank you, Captain Hands. Turtles?

Turtles

ITSAY for me reaches an echelon that only a very few Thai BLs have done for me by way of really balancing out an homage, a love letter to the culture that, that it's celebrating, along with what Aiden and Captain Hands have said so far regarding queer representation, and just hit a really incredible artistic balance experimented with with cinematic form and this serialized kind of publication way. Captain Hands, to your point about the argument about if it's a BL or if it's not a BL, one thing that I've been considering quite a bit in conversations, particularly with neuroticbookworm, has been whether or not ITSAY would have been more successful as a movie. And I've thought more about it and I think that, while there may be an answer to that that's separate from what I will say here — which is that I think it was really groundbreaking that they took this incredible idea and artistic vision and put it in serialized form, and experimented with what had been concretely developed as a serialized BL genre, and played in that sandbox.

So taking all of that together, taking all of those maybe slightly even risky decisions rooting this show in a particular voice of a culture that we hadn't seen highlighted quite in as explosive of a way as ITSAY being rooted in Phuket was, along with its gorgeous depiction of queer revelation, of queer realization. Just all of that combined into one pot of a show really blows me away.

My watching experience of it — it took me out, I couldn't multitask, I had to take all of your guys' advice and watch one episode at a time, and no show has done that for me. And so that, that's what I'll take away from it. A unique experience, unlike anything else that I ever experienced watching a Thai BL.

Ben

Before I move to Mor, I just have to say: Absolutely not! This should not have been a movie! I have watched a lot of goddamn movies. We deserved all of the time [laughs] that ITSAY gave us on this story. It would have felt so rushed if they tried to force this shit into two goddamn hours! Yeah! No! No. [Ben bangs the table] There's the table slamming. [laughs]

Turtles

Bartender, get him another drink!

Ben

I have drank like three-quarters of a bottle of wine, so, I'm sorry.

Turtles

Get him some pasta. [laughs]

Ben

[laughs] All right, sorry. This is about you all, not about me. Bestie in Christ, Mor!

Mor

[laughs] That was fantastic, thank you. I was bangin’ my desk over here like yessss, preach, take me to church! I am here to receive.

Ben

Why do you care so much about ITSAY?

Mor

Ohhh boy. A core memory for me from the last couple of years is sitting shell-shocked, absolutely shell-shocked on my couch, silently weeping, watching the credits of ITSAY roll for the first time. Truly just unable to move for probably ten, fifteen minutes, just trying to absorb everything that I just witnessed? And all I could think was, ‘things are different now.’ Truly, that was my reaction to it, I mean, this show? It wasn't made to fulfill a trope. It wasn't made to fill a time slot. It was made to show the tender beautiful humanity that is at the core of all love stories, regardless of the gender of the person you fall in love with, and that's just not something that I can say for a lot of other BLs, or shows period? Not that they don't stand on their own two feet for all sorts of other reasons, but it's something that set ITSAY forever apart for me. Not only that that was clearly their goal, but in how beautifully they achieved it, how perfectly in my opinion they achieved it.

It was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, but it's also a show that I would feel very comfortable showing to someone who had no experience with the BL genre. Because you don't have to have any. You don't have to have an appreciation for it. You just have to be a person. You just have to be a human who has lived through tough human things, and had relationships, to find so much value, so much to relate to. I don't know how you can watch ITSAY and not have it just reverberate with you on some personal level. Whenever I discuss it with people, just like we've been doing tonight, I'm hearing things that even being — practically a priestess of ITSAY I feel like at this point — even with that I'm hearing things that I hadn't thought of before. And I think that's beautiful, that a show can be so elevated, and done so well that people from all walks of life can come to it, and come away with things that are just so true and accurate to their experience, and you learn things by hearing it, you know, hearing from them. But yeah it was so realistic to my experience as a queer person, while also giving a happily ever after, which was beautiful but it was also very hard won, which made it even more beautiful for me. The characters are real, they are flawed, but they figure it out… gives hope for the rest of us. [laughs] It raised production values. It raised the bar on what a BL can be.

We did touch on a little bit about people debating whether or not ITSAY is a BL and I just have to say, whenever I'm debating anything I go to the source. And it was I believe a Teen Vogue article that BKPP were interviewed for: they both referred to the show as a BL, so have the writers, so has the crew, and if they are comfortable with addressing it as that, so am I.

And then on a more personal note, it introduced me to BKPP my beloveds, to some of my best online friends, it got me halfway around the world to Thailand. Overall, it's an artistic and technical triumph as much it is is queer storytelling at its finest, it did everything it needed to in all the ways that it mattered, it moved me, it continues to, in a way that not much media ever has. It's got my whole heart and I could probably find something new to marvel about, you know, forever. It's as complicated and as, as simple as that for me

Ben

Thank you, Mor. I have been watching queer cinema for a very long time. Part of why ITSAY is so important to me, is no other piece of media has so consistently generated such strong visceral reactions. There's so many great pieces that you can pull out for people that many of them haven't seen, but there's something about ITSAY, where if you are aware of it at all, if you even heard its name, you know something about it, and have an opinion about it, whether you've watched it or not. And I also feel so strongly about watching Thai queer people talk so frankly about how they also had the same sort of visceral experiences that the rest of us had.

What also matters for me about this show is, like we've had some interesting moments in the west: like Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, other queer movies that have released, and we keep waiting for their impact to hit the rest of us. We felt the impact of ITSAY within a year of it releasing? ITSAY immediately impacted Korea's willingness to participate in BL, despite how conservative their film industry is. Japan re-upped their efforts on the genre… and GMMTV responding to that! We felt it all throughout late ‘21 early ‘22. It is so rare that you can point to a work that genuinely changed the way an entire genre functioned? And also really rare that you can feel that impact in its time.

And with that: thank you all for joining us on this first clown panel of The Conversation! If there's anything you want to say to the people before we go?

Turtles

I just want to say what an honor it was to be invited on this. I love loving BLs and I love loving BLs along with you all.

Ben

Captain Hands.

Captain Hands

Sorry if we weren't as funny as David.

Ben

[laughs] That's impossible. He's an unhinged 45-year-old gay man. Aiden?

Aiden

One last thought that came up: ITSAY has this level of radical compassion for every single character on the screen, and that helps the viewer to have compassion even if they may be homophobic or unfamiliar, it brings a level of love and care to those characters, in a way that we really don't get, and I have high hopes that it's something that's going to be repeated again as we move forward.

Ben

Mor, any other closing thoughts?

Mor

Oh man, I don't know, I'm just all caught up in the ITSAY wave of feels, as I, as I tend to do. This show has a unique way of shutting down my logical brain and just making me feel all the things, which is what good art should do, dammit, it really should. So, it's doing its job.

Go watch ITSAY! If y'all are listening to this and you haven't, what are you doing? Come on.

Ben

It's been three years, if you haven't watched it since 2020, go watch it again. It holds up. It's still good.

1:04:08 - Outro

Ben

And we're back. Fun fact for all of you: Nini's setup went completely to shit while we were recording, so she had no idea what the hell we were talking about. For the entire recording we're having to text her updates so she doesn't close down the recording booth. So, Nini is now reacting from post, not from the panel.

Nini

[laughs] Yeah, it was a very interesting experience editing the panel not having heard a word that you guys said, so it was all brand new to me. That is a very new experience for me.

Ben

She edited out all of the “Nini can't stop me because she's not here.” [both laugh]

Nini

Oh god, no, but it was really delightful. I had a really good time. I had a really hard time editing the panel, but there's some things that you guys brought up that really sort of tickled my brain, and I wanted to get into them while I was talking to you in the afters.

Captain Hands made some comments on why Teh teaching Oh Chinese, with Chinese being Teh’s comfort language of expression, why that matters, and how the translation scene on the side of Promthep Cape plays into that. I found that was really interesting because that is new thinking for me, after three years and countless rewatches of this show I didn't think that there could be something about it that I hadn't thought about, or that was new to me, but thinking about Chinese as Teh’s comfort language—as his main language of expression. That brought up a whole new set of things to me in their relationship.

Ben

I have a couple of friends locally whose parents have immigrated from Taiwan, and they talk about how they have probably like a kindergartener's understanding of the language sometimes, and I hadn't thought about how Teh wasn't learning Chinese for the first time—that he may have had some familiarity from growing up around his mom. That was a fresh thought that I had coming out of the panel.

Nini

It just adds a little bit more color to what exactly Teh was doing in that class, what he was doing tutoring Oh-aew. How hard he worked to make sure that Oh-aew could understand him, because Teh is not great at expression, but the few times that he manages to express himself very clearly to Oh-aew it is in Chinese. Using the Chinese flashcards on the boat, writing and rewriting words in Chinese in his notebook. That's how he's able to get his points across to Oh-aew, and he can only do that because he's taught Oh-aew how to understand him. I found that was a really good observation.

You made an observation as well that I really enjoyed about tourist places as safe spaces when you are from a tourist place, that going to do tourist things actually gives you a certain amount of anonymity that you wouldn't normally get.

Ben

Some of the normal spaces like cafes, malls, etc. are populated by people that you would run into, but, like, locals are not going on a swamp tour. And so, you can get away with things that you might not elsewhere. Like, I think about the fact that Promthep Cape is a really popular tourist location, and the fact that when they were actually filming that scene very kind tourists stayed out of the camera, but were like two meters sometimes away from the boys while they're recording one of the most pivotal scenes of the series. And that's kind of what it's like when you're in tourist places in your hometown. Like there's a bunch of strangers crowding around you, and it doesn't matter if they hear you say something because they don't know any of your people.

Nini

One thing that Aiden brought forward that I really wanted to delve into myself: Aiden talked about visual style and how ITSAY allowed things to look grungy, and things to look worn, and things to look old, and things to look a little bit dirty; and how that contrasted against the previous BL impulse for everything to be bright and clean and shiny. And one of the things that made me think about from my own experience, how upset—I don't know if ‘upset’ is the term—people tend to get from my home country when my home country is portrayed outside as anything other than bright and shiny and clean and modern. There's that whole pressure to look a certain way to the outside world, and that comes through in our media as well.

So watching that impulse sort of come through in Thai media, and then being sort of broken by this particular production. I always like when I'm watching media from other places when I can see the points of connection between my culture and another culture, between my home and another person's home, that always makes me feel more grounded in the story, even though it's a culture and a place that might be 180 degrees away from me. You can still find those very human points of connection. I really enjoyed that.

Here's one that I want to ask you. You talked towards the end of the panel about Oh and The Knowing, and you've brought up The Knowing over and over again recently, and it's something that I've really been sitting with as you've explained certain things in your life and certain things in queer life, and one of the things that struck me listening to the panel that I think hadn't struck me before is that Oh Knows. Oh has The Knowing, but Teh also knows about Oh because Teh has a complete lack of surprise when Oh tells him that he likes Bas. He doesn't even register it as, like, a surprising thing. So Teh also has a Knowing about Oh but not about himself. I found that a really interesting juxtaposition.

Ben

Teh is an actor who's masking all the time. I think he was probably a little bit surprised, but when Oh tells him that secret, Teh's only goal is to desperately reconnect with Oh. So, I don't think in that moment he cares about Oh being queer. Like, Teh’s so stupid. He's not like paying attention to that sort of stuff. He only cares about Oh not shoving him away at that moment. Like, it didn't really matter what that secret was because he was going to respond positively.

Nini

I get that, but as the time goes on, we don't see any reaction from Teh about it, which is not the reaction that I would expect a teenage boy to have.

Ben

[sighs] When it comes to Teh, he's always performing. It's possible that he already knew these things, but I get the sense that he compartmentalizes. Like, a big part of it for Teh was he doesn't want to talk about it. Because talking about it makes it real, and then he has to face the reality of it. Like, that's what happens after the underwater kiss scene is Oh wants to talk about it and Teh really, really doesn't want to talk about it. It's possible that he knew, but because he's been away from Oh and so repressed, it's not eating at him.

Nini

I'll sit with that.

Ben

Teh doesn't act like he knew, but it's very clear that Oh was important to him, and he had to rapidly come to terms with those feelings.

Nini

I think it's pretty clear that Teh didn't know about himself. It's pretty clear that his journey I Told Sunset About You is a journey of understanding things that he didn't know and understand about himself.

Ben

Part of why I like that so much of Teh's journey is unspoken is it allows it to be more universal because it lets the audience at large take from Teh what they need and project into him what they're bringing to the scene, and this works out really well for Oh a lot, too, because Oh does so much with just looking at Teh.

There's some really great dialogue in the translations of this show, but there's a phenomenal amount of amazing work done from what isn't said, and that is one of my favorite things about it.

Nini

I also agree that one of the great things about ITSAY is how much is done in the silences and it's so interesting that you talked about the silences being something that the audience can project whatever they want onto and that being part of ITSAY’s success, because it's also in a way so legible.

Normally when there's space like that for the audience to project onto we get all kinds of wild shit, like I’m just gonna be real with you. But the silences and the way that these two boys acted were so legible that even though there was all this silence between them, for all this space for the audience to project into, they generally projected what I think the creators intended because the reads were largely consistent in terms of how people were taking it in and how they were reading things.

Ben

I do think so, but a big part of that is how simple ITSAY’s story is. It's a very straightforward coming of age story in a lot of ways. That's why it works! Everything about ITSAY is inherently familiar, and it feels like an experience that people can enjoy again a decade, two, three decades from now. It's one of those classics you can go back and look at and you can probably point at where other projects referred back to it.

I feel like I Told Sunset About You is going to be one of those projects where the future of queer coming-of-age cinema is going to refer back to it as one of its seminal moments.

Nini

So all that said, if we had to write at this point… an ode to ITSAY as our closing remarks on this retrospective, what would be your ode?

Ben

ITSAY is the best show that has ever existed because it is called I Told Sunset About You. It sets up this huge drama about running to the cape together before sunset, and they make it to the cape at sunset. Oh has this incredible breakdown and just says “I don't care what we're going to be to each other, just please don't leave me again,” and Teh, upending decades of genre history and expectation, says, “If I can be anything, can I be your boyfriend?” and old wounds finally closed in my heart.

Nini

Well, that is an ode. I don't think I could be anywhere as poetic as you about it, but what I will say is that this story touched something very deep inside me. I can't imagine not having seen this. I can't imagine where I would be now if I hadn't seen this. It changed things for me in a lot of ways, and that's one of my highest praises for media. If you change things for me, if you make me look at things differently, you've won. So, that's my ode to ITSAY: you won.

And with that we're gonna wrap this one up. Our next episode will be our Last Twilight in Phuket discussion. Ben and I are going to sit down and jaw about that a little bit, and then we will be introducing a fresh new panel and talking about I Promised You the Moon.

So look out for that. We out. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

#podcast #lgbtq #i told sunset about you #i promised you the moon #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 4 #fall 2023 #fall series #thai bl #bl series #s4e1

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twig-tea · 4 months

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2023 BL/GL/QL Round-Up Post

I thought for posterity I'd post a reflection on everything I watched that completed in 2023. For me, that means anything that started in 2022 but the last episode was in 2023 is on this list, but anything that will still be airing after 31 December 2023 11:59 my time (EST) is not on this list, even if the bulk of the show did air in 2023.

A few stats:

110 discrete pieces of content (series/films)

clocking in at est. 600 hours of NEW BL/GL content only

from 9 different countries (Cambodia [1], Philippines [3], Hong Kong [1], Japan [18], Korea [19], Myanmar [1], Taiwan [6], Thailand [56], Vietnam [7])

~50% of the content I watched on this list is from Thailand

~85% of my content was on YouTube [40%], GaGaOoLaLa [23%] and iQIYI [21%].

[Note that this year a lot of older GMMTV shows moved off of YouTube and onto Viki so if you're looking at these stats to decide what to pay for, this won't account for that.]

This doesn't include re-watches or catching up on old shows [e.g. I re-watched Love Sick, My Ride the Series, Semantic Error, ITSAY/IPYTM, Our Dating Sim at least 3 times lol, and anything with a s2 I re-watched s1 to prep, among others, watched Fujoshi Ukkari Gei no Kokuru (2019) for the first time] or non-QL [e.g. Heartstopper s2, Our Flag Means Death s2, Taskmaster s. 15 & 16, Uncanny Counter s2, One Piece s1, etc.] but does include films as well as shows, though I don't count special episodes separately (so Wedding Plan counts once, though I watched both the show and the special).

I hope you all appreciate that with this much content, and with my general brand of being unable to make decisions, I really struggled to narrow down a top 10 list. What follows is the best I could do lol

Top 20 Shows I'd Recommend From This Year:

Moonlight Chicken

Our Dating Sim

Bed Friend

The Eighth Sense

La Pluie

Sing My Crush

Tokyo in April Is...

Wedding Plan

Laws of Attraction

I Cannot Reach You

I Feel You Linger in the Air

What Did You Eat Yesterday S2

I Became the Lead in a BL Drama

If It's With You

Love in Translation

Our Dining Table

My Personal Weatherman

My Beautiful Man: Eternal

My School President

Be My Favorite

+10 I liked but I would only recommend with caveats:

Love Class 2

The New Employee [for the Rainbow Rice Cakes]

Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru

Never Let Me Go

Kiseki: Dear to Me

Unintentional Love Story

The Day I Loved You

End of the World with You

A Breeze of Love

Jack O'Frost

Bonus: Not a BL but worth calling out:

One Room Angel

Midnight Museum

Grand Guignol

The Warp Effect

Sadly, of the GLs that aired this year, I wouldn't recommend any of them. The best one was Show Me Love, which was not actually good but had very gorgeous women and a LOT of flirting.

The other huge thing that happened this year was that I stopped lurking! Thanks specifically to @lurkingshan and @bengiyo demanding everyone start talking about La Pluie, because they got me to post my first meta post. And because I started actually talking to people, I started making actual friends, and participated in organizing things like the Be My Favorite clown checkpoint for ep 11. I also disappeared a month because of life, and am still catching up on everything I intended to write this year. But it's been really rewarding finding this corner of tumblr with likeminded people who like good shows, like to think about these shows, and who are interested in talking about them in a way that's insightful and respectful.

It's been a long time since I felt comfortable enough participating actively in a fandom, and I just want to say to everyone I've interacted with this year: Thank you!

Full list under the cut for anyone curious! [Mostly in order it aired but may be slightly off].

Love Bill

Director Who Buys Me Dinner, The

Star Always Follow You, The

Cutie Pie 2 You

Between Us the Series (Hemp Rope)

Reason Why He Fell in Love with Me Special & S2 [international release]

New Employee, The

I Will Hit You/I Will Knock You

Individual Circumstances

609 Bedtime Story

GAPYuri / GAP the series

My School President

HitBiteLove the Series

Never Let Me Go

Moonlight Chicken

History 5: Love in the Future

Oh My God (ToDo) the Series

Warp Effect, The

End of the World, With You

My Blessing the Series

Our Winter (miniseries)

All the Liquors

Once in Memory: Let Me Be Yours

Shoulder to Cry On, A

Jack O'Frost

Our Dating Sim

Midnight Museum

Me, My Husband, and My Husband's Boyfriend

My Colleague at BL Shop might be My Meant-to-Be

Unintentional Love Story

Chains of Heart

Bed Friend the series

Bad Brother the Series

Stormy Honeymoon

Eighth Sense, the

Bad Brother the Series

Future Series

Tin Tam Jai the series

Crush on You

House of Stars the Series

Happy Merry Ending

Boss and a Babe, A

Pastsenger the Series

Love Mate

Love Syndrome the Series

Promise the Series, The

Day I Loved You, The

Our Dining Table (Bokura no Shokutaku)

Our Skyy 2

My Story the Series

Starstruck

Love Tractor

Naked Dining

Luminous Solution, The

Omai Series / Is My Roommate A Foreigner

Stupid Genius

Step By Step

La Pluie the series

Tie the Not

Sing My Crush / Follow the Wind

Tokyo in April Is .../ Shigatsu no Tokyo wa

Senior Love Me?

Be My Favorite

Show Me Love

Dinosaur Love

Low Frequency

Stay Still

Stay By My Side

Jun & Jun

Wedding Plan the Series

Laws of Attraction, the

Love Class s2

Minato's Laundromat S2

Hidden Agenda

Bon Appetit

Why RU the Series [Korean adaptation]

Be Mine Superstar

Star, The Season 2

Love In Translation

My Beautiful Man: Eternal

My Personal Weatherman

Bump Up Business

Naughty Babe Series

Only Friends

Grand Guignol

Dangerous Romance

If It's With You / Kimi to Nara Koi wo Shite Mite Mo

Y Journey: Stay Like a Local

I Feel You Linger in the Air

Venus in the Sky

Kiseki: Dear to Me

I Cannot Reach You

You Are Mine

Breeze of Love / Weather Forecast of Love

Mr. Cinderella 2

Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru

One Room Angel

Marry My Dead Body

Lucky My Love the Series

Pure Vanilla: Recipe for Romance

Absolute Zero

Memories, The

My Dear Gangster Oppa

Shadow

What Did You Eat Yesterday? S2

Middleman Love

Beyond the Star

Bake Me Please

You and My Stars

I Became the Lead in a BL Drama

#2023 round-ups #bl meta #multi bl #typed so i can stop thinking it #twig talks #top lists are so hard for me this is the best I could do #if anyone wants to know anything about any of these shows feel free to ask!#best of bl 2023 #long post

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shortpplfedup · 1 year

Text

Chapter 1: Only You in the Full Moon Night

Fourteen months. That's how long we've been waiting. And in less than two minutes, Aof made it clear that our patience was absolutely going to be rewarded. The long take sequence that introduces us to the Moonlight Chicken Diner and the denizens thereof is probably one of the best openings I've seen in all of television. And as the episode went on, it became clearer and clearer that we are watching Aof evolve in real time. By the time you get to the closing shot of Jim and Wen framed in the doorway of the diner, under the 'moon' of that lantern, you've been on a journey and you're ready to go on another one. This episode is the most assured work we have ever seen from Aof. There was not a wasted moment, not an extraneous shot; every single frame of this episode was absolutely intentional. The characters are richly drawn and organically introduced, and every single actor is bringing their A-game, from stars to supporters to background.

There are things I need to say about the sequence of Jim and Wen going from total strangers to hopping into bed together because my GOD. From the moment they locked eyes the energy was sizzling between them, and the conclusion was foregone: there was no way that night wasn't ending with those two in a sweaty tangle. And the way that was acted, with Jim becoming more playful and Wen becoming more seductive as the night went on; the way it was filmed, with the red and blue lighting and the handheld camera getting close up, putting the audience right into the moment; the sexual tension was palpable. By the time Wen bites Jim's ear, you almost want the release as much as they do. And I LOVE that they didn't kiss at all during their encounter, because that feels totally realistic. This isn't a love affair...yet.

On the side of young love, Heart and Li Ming's first encounter is almost the opposite of Jim and Wen's, in that it's immediately antagonistic. As much as Jim and Wen almost instantly understand each other, Heart and Li Ming don't understand each other at all. And whereas Jim and Wen start close and get closer by episode's end, Heart and Li Ming start far apart and by the end of the episode they're even further apart. I was worried that with Fourth and Gemini's inexperience, their characters here would be too similar to their My School President characters, but I should have known to trust Aof when it comes to casting. Heart and Li Ming are NOT Tinn and Gun, and the work that Fourth and Gemini are putting in here so far is quite good, Fourth especially.

Setting the story against the backdrop of the pandemic-induced economic crisis grounds the narrative and the characters in a specificity that I have found to be a hallmark of the best stories. I've said this so much at this point, but I Told Sunset About You continues to impact the Thai media landscape, and especially the Thai queer media landscape in lots of positive ways, by encouraging more directors to bring the Thai sociopolitical environment and Thai cultural aesthetics into their work. Making Pattaya integral to the rhythms and aesthetics of this story in the same way that Phuket was integral to the rhythms and aesthetics of ITSAY is so key to making the show stand out.

Not having Alan appear in this episode at all, just having him represented by artefacts: the terse note, the phone charger, Gong relaying his 'unread' message, was incredibly effective. Alan and his relevance to Wen's life at this point is defined from the very first by his absence.

Saleng and Gaipa round out the cast of main characters we were introduced to in this episode, with only Praew (and Alan) left to appear onscreen. They don't get much this episode, but they make it count, with hints of the roles they'll play in the narrative peppered into their scenes. Saleng especially is an interesting one, as it seems like Jim acquired his employment along with the diner, which is an uncommon enough arrangement to be noteworthy. It also looks like everybody is aware of Gaipa's feelings for Jim, including Jim, which tells us a lot.

All in all, this first episode gave us a lot, without feeling like a lot. It was so deftly done in the writing and direction, and so organic in the acting, that the overwhelming feeling is one of having spent an hour living a slice of real Pattaya life, not watching a fictional story. I'm so ready to spend 4 weeks living in this universe with these characters, and I'm already sad that I will have to leave them at the end.

Side Dishes

Mix Sahaphap is probably the sultriest actor in the GMMTV stable, and he's so perfect for this role because Wen is a walking, talking sex bomb and he knows it. The way he uses his eyes...lethal.

The actress playing Gaipa's mother, Narinthorn Na Bangchang, is playing such a perfect market vendor, it's reminding me of how similar we really are across the global south.

I can already feel Heart and Li Ming wrecking me and this only JUST started. Fourth and Gemini are really something special.

Mark Pakin is GMMTV's sixth man, he can come off the bench and play literally ANY kind of supporting character they need. That is MVP level shit.

This show looks SO GOOD, it sounds SO GOOD, production and direction teams put their foot in this one.

Watching Aof work handheld is a fucking DREAM. He's such a workmanlike director, he prefers to focus on pulling emotional truths out of his actors rather than high style photography. But his cast here being so good means he doesn't need to spend the majority of his directing energy on his actors, and he can experiment more with style. The opening sequence in the diner, and Jim and Wen's walk from the diner to the car, these are the kind of things he's never been able to focus on before, and now that he can it's SUCH a visual treat.

#moonlight chicken #midnight series: moonlight chicken #the moon is beautiful tonight #bl meta series

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