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The VIIB Awards 2024: Special Class

Finishing with Part 5 of 5 of the Very Important Internet BL Awards, we are handing out our awards for our special class dramas!

We will be awarding Honorable Mentions to shows that did something specifically notable, and we will be awarding awards for Best After School Special, Best Family Drama, and Best Slice-of-Life Drama.

Thank you for spending the last week with us! Please tag us with your own awards!

Timestamps

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

00:00 - Welcome 01:23 - Introduction 03:03 - Interlude: The Beach - Moonlight (2016) 04:18 - Honorable Mention: The Day I Loved You 10:26 - Honorable Mention: Chen Yi and Ai Di 15:44 - Honorable Mention: Sasake and Miyano: Graduation 21:41 - Sixth Man: Mark Pakin Kuna-anuvit 31:33 - Standout Queer Narrative: Moonlight Chicken 38:02 - Standout Queer Narrative: The Warp Effect 41:30 - Standout Queer Narrative: What Did You Eat Yesterday? 2 46:54 - 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.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

[fanfare sound]

01:23 - Introduction

Ben

And we're back. We have reviewed all of the shows under the more traditional frameworks. We've gone over which talents we were really fond of, which pairings we're really fond of, who we thought did a great job assembling a show, and what were the bangers of the year.

It's time to award the shows so good that they would have skewed the results, or in our estimation, are not primarily driven by romance in a way that makes them fit under the traditional BL criteria.

NiNi

Here in our Special Class Awards, we have three award categories, and each award category can have multiple awardees, which is why it's special. [laughs]

So our three categories are Honorable Mentions, the Sixth Man Award, and our Standout Queer Narratives Award. In Honorable Mentions, we're going to be acknowledging key contributions to the genre from various filming markets and traditions that are perhaps outside of the main and the ones that we discuss. In the Sixth Man Award, we want to acknowledge the most valuable and versatile supporting actor of the year. And under Standout Queer Narratives, we want to acknowledge queer works that are not primarily romances.

03:03 Interlude: The Beach - Moonlight (2016)

Kevin

“That breeze feel good as hell man.”

Chiron

“Yeah it do.”

Kevin

“Sometimes round the way, where we live, you can catch this same breeze. It come through the hood and it’s like everything stop for a second ‘cause everyone just wanna feel it. Everything just get quiet, you know?”

Chiron

“And it’s like all you can hear is your own heartbeat, right?”

Kevin

“Yeah…feel so good, man. “

Chiron

“So good…. “

Kevin

“Hell, shit make you want to cry, it feel so good.”

Chiron

“You cry?”

Kevin

“Nah. But it makes me want to… What you cry about?”

Chiron

“Shit, I cry so much sometimes I feel like I'ma just turn to drops.”

04:18 Honorable Mention: The Day I Loved You

NiNi

So let's start with our Honorable Mentions. And this year we have three. I'll let Ben take you through them.

Ben

The first one I want to acknowledge this year is a show from the Philippines called The Day I Loved You. [Applause sound] I don't think I ever actually managed to write about this show because you're reacting to a show that is fundamentally tragic. I remember watching it with Kyra, and we called it, like, the Nicholas Sparks BL of the year.

In this show, we have a femme boy who's kind of bullied at school but doesn't seem to care about it. He ends up developing a thing with the new hot guy at the school who's here from Singapore, and there's, like, a love triangle with his best friend. And we realize that the reason why he's been holding back romantically in this story is because he has a debilitating condition that is gonna involve him declining and losing control of his limbs and other mobility along the way. So he's leery of beginning something with someone.

The way this plays out is really beautiful. There's a richness to the way a lot of the Filipino storytelling is done that I really connect to all the time. Even when I'm not watching BL, I really like Filipino cinema when I have the opportunity to really engage with some of their work. And even though BL in the Philippines has been really struggling with the lack of investment right now.

This show is really well produced—it's available on YouTube—and takes the dynamics here very seriously. The best friend is not going to be the one who's chosen because he doesn't want his best friend, who he knows loves him, to also go through the ugliness of his decline. His suitor in this eventually pushes past some of these barriers, but the show never downplays the seriousness of Eli's condition. His condition worsens. It is not a pretty experience. But there is this beautiful amount of heart in it.

This show is the one that has stuck with me quietly all year long. I think about the show at least once a month or so, and have been trying to find a way to properly write about it. In a year where we didn't really have a lot to point to from the Philippines that we really thought a lot of folks should rally behind, this is one of the standouts that I think you all should go back and watch if you can handle a tragic romance, not unlike the experience you might have with a Nicholas Sparks movie or book.

NiNi

So, I have not seen The Day I Loved You because I feel like I am not emotionally capable of watching that right now. It's the same reason I haven't caught up on Eternal Yesterday. There are some things that I'm holding in reserve because I don't think that I have the emotional bandwidth or capacity to handle right now. But I was sort of following along while you and Kyra were doing your watch, and I am looking forward to getting around to it when I have the emotional wherewithal to stand up to the tragedy, because I do sometimes enjoy—I guess ‘enjoy’ is a strange word—but enjoy a good tragic romance.

I tend to enjoy work from the Philippines, especially when the production quality lines up with the ideas they're trying to espouse. And so, given everything that you've said about it to me up until now, it's on my list. I just don't know when I'm going to get to it.

Ben

I think the production quality is about where The Boy Foretold by the Stars is. It's slightly under Gameboys.

NiNi

I think that's a good spot to land.

Ben

The music's good, like the song that they selected for the intro is a banger. It's called Sweet + Wild by YANCO—such an excellent song.

NiNi

I love Filipino music, as you are well aware, so really looking forward to that.

Ben

It's a really excellently put together little production. There's a lot of heart in the story and it takes its characters and its conceits really seriously, in a way that I found really compelling. And I continue to be really impressed with the way the Philippines explores Catholicism and Christianity inside of BL. It's one of the unique things that the Philippines can do, and I like that they do it well consistently.

NiNi

It's one of the things that draws me to them as well, being a lapsed Catholic myself. Lapsed? Former? What's the terminology these days? Having grown up Catholic, it's one of the things that does draw me to the Philippines, and I feel like I understand a lot of what they are getting into in their narratives and in their characters because of that.

Ben

The Day I Loved You from Regal Entertainment, directed by Easy Ferrer, starring Tommy Alejandrino as Nico, Raynald Tan as Eli, and Rabin Josh as Justine.

10:26 Honorable Mention: Chen Yi and Ai Di

NiNi

Our next Honorable Mention award is not for a show. It is for a couple coming out of Taiwan from the show Kiseki: Dear To Me, Chen Yi and Ai Di. [Applause sound] It has been a long time, for me anyway, since a side couple completely took over the show from the main couple to the point that I'm kind of only slightly sure what happened to the [laughs] main couple on Kiseki? But I know for sure what happened to Chen Yi and Ai Di. [laughs]

Kiseki was a mixed bag. It was a strange year from Taiwan. Nothing really landed. They did quite a bit that I ended up, in the end, not watching. I think Ben, you watched most of it?

Ben

Unfortunately.

NiNi

It was a very strange year. The only thing that drew me in was Kiseki and then, it was a strange show. I didn't expect something like that from Lin Pei Yu. But the light in the tunnel was definitely Chen Yi and Ai Di, played by Nat Chen and Louis Chiang.

They play orphans who basically grew up inside the mafia. Chen Yi thinks he's in love with the mafia boss, while Ai Di is in love with Chen Yi. Hijinks ensue. Let's just put it that way. Hijinks ensue. And then Ai Di goes to jail for four years, but before he goes to jail, he and Chen Yi have sex while Chen Yi is, shall we say, altered? And then Ai Di goes to jail and Chen Yi is left with his feelings trying to sort of understand how he feels and where he stands with Ai Di. Then when Ai Di gets out of jail, he's pissed, and trying to keep his distance from Chen Yi. But Chen Yi has now realized how in love he is, and he's not gonna let that stand.

It is one of the crackheads ships I've ever seen. But also kind of delightful in a way? [laughs] But the important thing is that they really took over the show. I don't mean that in a critical way. I mean that of all the things that were happening on Kiseki, they were easily the most interesting.

Ben

So it was a weird year for Taiwan and part of why I wanted to talk about these two is because there's just been less activity from Taiwan and the BL front. Some of that has to do with a lot of complicating factors [laughs] we won't get into on this podcast. But in all the things released—quick aside, there is an interesting project happening right now in Taiwan in that the Friday Taiwanese BLs are being produced by a single company doing a dedicated for BL project. I don't think it's been that great personally, but it's rare that we get dedicated BL commitment in a time slot, and while I don't think the projects have been really strong, the things that Taiwan is good at remain. Like, the overall cast chemistry from Taiwan still remains the best. They are very good at getting the whole cast to believably play off of each other, even in characters who only interact once or twice in the whole show. It is always impressive and especially with the romantic and sexual chemistry. I enjoy the paired chemistry of actors from Taiwan, more [than] the other BL producing countries more often than not.

In this particular show, I think both couples had really strong performances as couples with each other. And we ended up focusing on Ai Di and Chen Yi a lot because they're the mafia boys and Louis Chiang's character wears a choker the whole time, and is always trying to murder someone, and he's shorter than everyone, and everyone loves that! Every time I see this boy getting a little bit mad, I'm like, yes! Kill them!

But they were really good. And it was funny, like, the show shifts towards the back half where we spend a great deal of time focusing on them, and they get the final shot of the show. It's so weird! This side couple legitimately won. I'm just amazed by that choice.

NiNi

A choice it definitely was. With all that said, Honorable Mention award to Chen Yi and Ai Di from Kiseki: Dear to Me from Taiwan, played by Nat Chen and Louis Chiang.

15:44 Honorable Mention: Sasake and Miyano: Graduation

NiNi

The third and final Honorable Mention award this year goes to an anime project. Sasaki and Miyano: Graduation. [applause sound]

Ben, lead the way.

Ben

Okay! Let's talk about anime. So, yaoi is old, a lot older than people realize. We have art made by, we suspect to be women, going as far back as the 1400s, of guys sucking each others dicks. This is not a new phenomenon. At all.

And so, when we're talking about, like, what is BL doing, what is BL, where is BL going? A big question is always what is happening on the written front? What novels are popular in various cultures, and in, for Japan in particular, it's going to be manga. A significant amount of content is adapted directly from manga because manga is already successful, it has a built in fan base, and the manga itself serves as a storyboard and it's very easy to win fans over by taking popular panels and recreating them on screen for maximum impact. What's also notable is, when something is doing really well, it's going to get an anime adaptation. Anime is far more expensive to produce than live action content.

So, Sasaki and Miyano is a story about these guys in high school. One is a little bit older and is going to be graduating soon. His name is Sasaki and he helps Miyano in an instant where these guys are bullying one of Miyano’s friends, and Miyano wants to jump in. Sasaki sees that Miyano wants to help, and he jumps in to help, kind of gets his ass whipped anyway, but the two of them start hanging out.

Sasaki learns pretty early on that Miyano is a fudanshi—this is the boy version of a fujoshi—he reads BL all the time. He is one of us. But he doesn't think of himself as queer at the beginning of this. Sasaki ends up becoming very fond of Miyano, starts reading BL because it's very important to Miyano, and a relationship blossoms between them. Where this particular show is fascinating for me is because Miyano is a fudanshi, and Sasaki is not. And this is evinced most notably in the movie that released this year: Graduation, where Miyano’s understanding of what m/m romance is supposed to look like is influenced by BL, and we get this really incredible moment in the movie where after sorting through some of their stuff, they're having this moment that is sexually charged. And Miyano, who's shorter than Sasaki, and because he's more petite, a lot of people might expect him to be the uke-slash-bottom in this instance, he stops the moment that they're having and says, “I'm not an uke.” And this is also backed by the fact that Miyano does not have uke hair [laughs] but Sasaki does.

NiNi

[laughs] I know what that is now.

Ben

It also gets confused because Sasaki has yaoi hands.

NiNi

Okay, wait, pause. What are yaoi hands?

Ben

So whenever you're watching yaoi—animated yaoi—seme my hands are fucking enormous, because they want you to focus on their fingers and stuff, so their hands are fucking enormous.

NiNi

Listen, the things I learn on this show.

Ben

It's interesting because Sasaki, who just recognizes his attraction to Miyano, and maybe knew about himself already—it's a little unclear on that front. He doesn't care what position Miyano wants him to take, he just wants to be with Miyano. It's not that explicit, like the show's not going to point the camera at us and go, “Let's break down and talk about the [laughs] social politics of BL and how it impacts the youths’ maturation.” But it's apparent that it's one of the things it's thinking about because we get this really excellent presentation through Miyano, who is struggling to contextualize their relationship because his primary framework for understanding relationships between two men is formed by BL, which is not a great source, obviously [laughs] for this ‘cause BL is fictional, and is trying to just have fun with a lot of readers preconceptions of stuff. So, we get to watch them figure out what their relationship is going to be while deconstructing some BL presumptions. And it's a really enjoyable experience watching this really adorable little show.

NiNi

My brain is still stuck on yaoi hands.

Ben

All right, legit. Legit. You can pause right now and you can go Google yaoi hands. It's a whole thing.

NiNi

I believe you. [laughs] I'm gonna wait until after the show. So…

Ben

Ginny is in the fucking transcript right now Googling ‘yaoi hands.’

[both laugh]

NiNi

Ginny, I don't know if I should say I'm sorry or you're welcome.

Ben

The third and final award goes to Sasaki and Miyano, developed by Studio Dean.

21:41 Sixth Man: Mark Pakin Kuna-anuvit

NiNi

Our next category of awards is the Sixth Man Award. We are going to name the Sixth Man award for its inaugural awardee, and the inaugural Sixth Man awardee is one Khun Mark Pakin Kuna-anuvit. [fanfare sound] Mark Pakin, the most valuable and versatile supporting actor of the year. So this award shall forever be known after this as the Mark Pakin Sixth Man Award.

Bestie, I want you to go first here. Why is Mark Pakin not just our inaugural winner, but why is this award being named after him?

Ben

It's easy to get caught up in the ships, and the leads, and all the actors, and the big romance parts. But a big part of any successful story is going to be how well the lead characters play off of their supporting characters. It's notable when you look at Mark's credits since 2021, when he first appeared in a small role in I Promised You the Moon, since then every single show he's been in has been one of the highlight shows of the year.

Mark was in Bad Buddy, My School President, The Warp Effect, Moonlight Chicken, Only Friends, and now Last Twilight. Mark picks good projects and he makes them better because he can play whatever is needed of him in each of these shows. And because, as NiNi says, I bring the lore, when you watch the behind the scenes stuff and what people say about Mark, he is a huge presence behind the scenes helping manage morale and the overall mood of the set when he's present. Mark is working even when the camera is not in front of him, and making sure people are taken care of, and making sure people are grounded, and making sure that people stay in the right headspace so that they can do the work. And it clearly pays off.

Mark is really talented and you can feel how effective he was as one of the oldest actors on My School President in particular, and helping Gemini in a lot of his scenes. Mark plays so well with Fourth in Moonlight Chicken. Mark has a couple of moments with Earth in Moonlight Chicken that I still think about, like particularly the scene where Saleng receives the dowry gift from Jim, or the scene where he's leaving in, like, episode one and he's kind of shuffling out of the place. Or even just his goofy ass showing up at the end now that he's moved into, like, a value position at the water park he's working at.

Like, it's so incredible to watch Mark work whenever he's on screen. You are just so excited that he's back on screen and he does that completely from a supporting role. He is doing a great job without stealing the show or the scene from the other people that are in it. No disrespect to some of the other actors out there who are really talented, but they can't help but chew the scenery and take over every moment that they're in. Mark is really good at dialing in his performance to exactly where it needs to be in any scene, any moment. He can go really high or really low. He can go big or small as needed, and then turn it on a dime. And it's so impressive to watch. It's notable that every show he's been in has rated highly with audiences. And I just at this point find it hard to not see a pattern with his presence, and people's general love of his characters, and the shows and the storylines around where his character is involved.

NiNi

This year I watched Mark's play—technically six, if you consider the Our Skyy: My School President AU?

Ben

Kind of counts. We'll call it six. We had six different versions of Mark Pakin on our screen this year.

NiNi

And all of them were different. Every single one of them was different. And if you expand out to his other roles, every role that he has ever played, he is a different person. I do not know how he does that. I talked in the Moonlight Chicken episode about how loose he plays as Saleng. His body language is loose. The way that he speaks is loosened. It's such a different version of him that comes up as Nick in Only Friends. You can feel some of the anxiety that comes off of Nick. You can feel his vulnerability. Compare that to Tiwson in My School President, who is nothing if not confident. Ultimately, utterly confident. Every single role that he plays is just different. Physically, he acts differently. He sounds different. The way that he interacts with the other characters becomes different. He is building these characters right in front of our eyes, almost in a weird way, in real time. And then when you see him off the clock—well, not off the clock—but when you see him behind the scenes and you see him just sort of being Mark, that's a completely different person, too.

I am not the lore person, Ben is the lore person. But I did happen to see within the last couple of days a conversation on some one of these variety shows between Mark and Namtan. And Namtan is talking about being on the Last Twilight set and working with Film on the upcoming GL Pluto. And the way that Mark interacts with Namtan, and the way that they discuss acting, and the way that he supports her in those moments in the variety show. Like, he's kind of interviewing her but also praising her. I just think about what it's like to have somebody like Mark in your corner on set. And he did this too, we saw, in some of the behind the scenes on Only Friends. There's a particular one that I'm thinking of where Force played a fairly difficult emotional scene. And after the scene was over, Mark was there to say, “Yeah, guy, that was really good.” And to discuss in detail and specificity what about the way the that Force acted in that take really worked.

Ben

He was gassing Force up, and Force was eating it up. He was a little shy about it, but Mark came in and was yelling at this man. He's like, “You did amazing! You fucking crushed that, dude!”

NiNi

Mark is what I like to call an actor's actor. I don't know what else to say about this dude. He's only 25. There is so much ahead of him.

Ben

He's playing a very serious character on Last Twilight right now, and I remember seeing in one of the early behind the scenes things Aof was talking about Mark and he's like, “We weren't sure what was going on. Like, Mark was playing the scene and we were like, wait, what's going on? Mark Pakin’s on screen but we're not laughing or smiling.” And they asked Mark about it and he's like, “Well, I'm not playing a comedic character. Like, this is pretty—it's a pretty sad character, guys.”

NiNi

One of the stories of this year, I think that we're going to get into a little bit in the year in review, is people finally putting some goddamn respect on some comedic actors' names. Because, guys comedy is hard. It is so hard. It is harder in certain ways than playing drama. And so when you get a really good, really good comedic actor, you should know off the bat that they're gonna be good at drama, because it's just easier. Mark Pakin is a really fucking good comedic actor. I don't know where this kid came from.

Ben

Nadao Bangkok.

NiNi

Well, yes, there was that. [both laugh] He's only 25. He's got so much ahead of him. But in terms of what's already behind him, gotta give him props for that. And that is why he is both the inaugural Sixth Man award awardee and is going to be the person after whom this award is named going forward. So congratulations to Mark Pakin Kuna-anuvit.

Ben

We're big fans of yours, Mark, if you ever hear this. Please keep working. We love everything you're doing, and I'm really glad you committed to acting.

NiNi

I genuinely cannot wait to see what this kid does next.

31:33 Standout Queer Narrative: Moonlight Chicken

NiNi

We are now in the Standout Queer Narratives category of our Special Class awards. These three shows are chosen because while they might be in genre, they're not really of genre.

Ben

So, BL is a romance genre. The thrust of BL is about the romantic relationship at its core, and seeing it to completion. You go to a BL and you expect the very pretty boys in the intro to flirt with each other a bunch and eventually sort out their dramas and pair up by the end. Sometimes we're dramatic and they don't pair up, but we come to the genre because we want to see the cute boys get together. There's a big difference between a queer drama and a queer romance. And BL is romance. And so if you're wondering where Moonlight Chicken was [fanfare sound] [laughs] for the last week with us, it's why it's here. We talked about this in our episode, which you can go listen to. We praised it for, like, an hour and a half.

Moonlight Chicken is a family drama. The only ‘I love you’ said in the whole show is between Jim and Li Ming. The relationship between Wen and Jim is important, but it's primarily about how Jim's queer experience has further weakened the version of his life he thought he was building, and how Wen is an opportunity for him to not perpetually punish himself for the way certain things went wrong. It is important to the story but their romance is part of the drama around the diner, and the people who are connected to Jim. Like, Saleng and Praew are not a side couple, and I wouldn't even classify Heart and Li Ming as a side couple in this. They are just one of the dynamics that's being explored in this show, and it has resonance with Jim because Li MIng is Jim’s son in all but name. And so that's the crux of the whole story here.

Moonlight Chicken is truly fantastic, and I don't know that if we put Moonlight Chicken under the traditional scope we were doing in the award show that it would have won in every category it was in, but it would have probably superseded a lot of these just because of the scope of the project. That is not fair to the other shows, because the other shows are operating under the presumptions of romance as a genre.

It may feel like we're splitting hairs to some of you, and I'm sorry I can't make it more clear or explain this better. But we don't like to put bad bitches up against each other [NiNi laughs] on this podcast.

NiNi

Not even in our awards shows.

Ben

Like our award shows are really about, like, these are the top two projects that we really like the most. We give them awards because it's more dramatic for us to fight over who's better than the other one. But it isn't good to put a project like Moonlight Chicken up against the other shows that we talked about earlier this week with you all.

NiNi, any other things you want to add for Moonlight Chicken, since we've already gushed over the show once this year.

NiNi

I mean, we spent—unedited—close to three hours talking about Moonlight Chicken. I don't know what I can say that I haven't already said about this show. It is not primarily a romance. There are some parts of the audience that kind of bounced off of it or bounced off parts of it. And that's because it's not a romance. And that's okay if you come to this genre expecting romance, and you see Moonlight Chicken and you're just kind of like, “Oh, I don't know.” I'm going to judge you a little bit, but ultimately, yeah, you're right. It's not a romance. What it is is a haunting, absolutely haunting examination of love and loss and family and intergenerational trauma. It's about community. It's about coming to terms with yourself at literally every stage of being. Coming to terms with yourself in your youth, coming to terms with yourself as you start to become a real adult, coming to terms with yourself in your middle age. I have no more words, so I'm not going to try.

Ben

It has Mark Pakin in it!

NiNi

[laughs] If you haven't watched this and you like things like Parenthood or Friday Night Lights.

Ben

Aging ourselves immediately.

NiNi

Go watch it.

Ben

It is our Standout Queer Narrative as the family drama of the year that we were most enamored by.

NiNi

Moonlight Chicken produced and aired by GMMTV, starring Earth Pirapat Watthanasetsiri and Mix Sahaphap Wongratch among others, including the Sixth Man Mark Pakin, and directed by Aof Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon.

38:02 Standout Queer Narrative: The Warp Effect

Ben

Our next show that we wanted to talk about was The Warp Effect [fanfare sound] as our after-school special [laughs] show of the year. It also has Mark Pakin in it!

NiNi

[laughs] This is not a coincidence. I think Ben is right. I think that putting Mark Pakin in your show automatically raises the level.

Ben

So, despite our [laughs] mixed bag of Jojo shows this year, he and NiNew did a really good job on The Warp Effect, exploring the social politics of sex, and how they impact people even 10 years later for the things you do in high school. I think they did a good job with the sex ed 101 component of it. You could see some of Jojo's Gay OK, Bangkok roots coming back there. And it was a lot of fun seeing Jojo work with a large cast of men and women talking about the way sex worked for them, how it didn't necessarily always work for some of them. And it was so legible! Like, it was amazing to me from week-to-week how much recall I had of that show from week-to-week, ‘cause that show was packed. It had like three to five threads it was juggling in every single episode, and yet I was still able to hold them from week to week—and as you all know, I watch too much. So, the likelihood that I forget stuff is high.

It was so much fun to watch this for the 12 weeks it was on.

NiNi

One of the things that I think it did really well is balance its themes with its narrative. I think that a lot of shows this year sort of failed at that balance. I think The Warp Effect was probably the strongest at doing that all year. It doesn't fall into the BL categories because it's not a BL.

Ben

The main character is literally straight.

NiNi

But we wanted to acknowledge all the things that it did really well, and also acknowledge that it was a very queer narrative, because the main character, yes, is straight and he has straight problems. But within the show we have a gay couple, a lesbian couple, Mark Pakin in a relationship with a trans woman.

Ben

Who Mark made blush all the time. [both laugh]

NiNi

Again, that behind the scenes stuff he's so good at. We had couples involved in kink, which kink is not technically queer, but they're definitely in the vicinity.

Ben

They're getting their asses beat with us on the streets. They count.

NiNi

We've got an aromantic character. We've got bisexuals, we've got everybody in this show. It is super queer in only the way a Jojo show can really be. And it was just fun to watch. It is an after school special that did not feel preachy. It was lighthearted where it needed to be. It was serious where it needed to be. It's a great show and definitely one of the standout great narratives of the year.

The Warp Effect produced and aired by GMMTV. Starring everybody you can think of [laughs], directed by Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong.

41:30 Standout Queer Narrative: What Did You Eat Yesterday? 2

NiNi

Our final Standout Queer Narrative award, and our final Special Class award goes to the granddaddy of this podcast. It’s What Did You Eat Yesterday? Season 2, guys. [fanfare sound] Do we even need to explain this?

Ben

The only thing that could have possibly made What Did You Eat Yesterday? 2 better was if Mark Pakin was somehow involved with it.

[both laugh]

NiNi

I can’t stand you. So What Did You Eat Yesterday? falls into the slice-of-life genre. We would have talked about What Did You Eat Yesterday? ad nauseam in our Om Nom Nom episode, which you would have heard if the editing is right… last week… sometime?

Ben

Oh my God.

NiNi

[laughs] Don't quote me on that. Listen guys, the editing is…it's gonna be what it is. So we would have waxed poetic about this show for, at the very least, an hour.

Ben

And you've already heard Ginny’s supercut of me mentioning the show unprompted all year long.

NiNi

You would have definitely heard Ben, bringing up What Did You Eat Yesterday? every chance he gets in our holiday clip show.

This show is amazing. Nishijima and Uchino are amazing. I did not expect to get more What Did You Eat Yesterday? this year. The fact that we got it is a gift.

Ben

This season 2 picks up a little bit after the movie. Shiro and Kenji been together for about eight years now, and we continue with more stories about their lives. The big theme for this season: they are dealing with the fact that they are in their 50s now. They're getting older and they're going through physical and emotional changes, and there are changes going on in their personal, professional, and family lives that they also have to manage as well.

This show remains kind of unique. BL is romance. It’s focused on people getting together. What What Did You Eat Yesterday? is focused on as a slice-of-life food drama, is about a couple staying together and dealing with the things that come up in their lives. Less than a handful of shows allow us to return to characters and see how they're doing and if they're going to make it and stick together. And What Did You Eat Yesterday? is so important in that regard, not just because it's about a long-term relationship. It's also about older gay men. And it's super important that we conceive of the idea that there are older gay couples. We do get to grow old with each other. That's also–and marriage equality is important. You want your boys to grow old together? There are gays who are old right now. You deserve to see gays getting older together and doing their best for each other.

What a lovely season we had because everybody got to grow this season. We got to see Shiro take on more professional responsibility than he was maybe willing to. Kenji got to grow professionally as well. Wataru was still a bitch the whole time, but he feels like a friend now?

[both laugh]

NiNi

I'm still creasin’ over the 50 balloon. [laughs] Oh God, that was such bitchy energy. I love it.

Ben

I just love how at this point, Kohinata and Wataru feel like their friends. And that was so important for me that we got to see them having a relationship with another gay couple. Kenji finally got to meet Kayoko this season. What a delight that was.

NiNi

And Kayoko treating him like a celebrity when she runs into him in the grocery store. So fun. Great, phenomenal, fantastic show anchored by some of the best performances by two of the greats.

Ben

Man, that's another thing we should talk about. The-the other reason why we need older gay characters: we deserve to see more veteran actors in the genre. This is not a knock on the young and up-and-coming talent or the OGs who are still doin’ the work. We deserve to see veteran actors bringing veteran-level talent to this genre more often than we do.

NiNi

What Did You Eat Yesterday? produced and aired by TV Tokyo, starring Nishijima Hidetoshi and Uchino Seiyou. You have won the coveted standout Queer Narrative Special Class award from The Conversation.

46:54 Outro

That is going to wrap us up on the 2023 Very Important Internet BL Awards, the VIIB Awards. It's kind of sad to see this go, but we will be back with the VIIB Awards next year when we get to discuss a whole new bunch of stuff.

Looking forward to it. With that, we out.

Say “bye” to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#podcast #lgbtq #thai bl #bl series #filipino bl #taiwanese bl #japanese bl #on art #season 5 #winter series #Spotify

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