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waitmyturtles · 8 months

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Lovely Writer and BL Gets Meta On BL (and Everything Else) Edition

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

Lovely Writer is in the Old GMMTV Challenge due to the very strong recommendations of @shortpplfedup, and dear NiNi -- I can't thank you enough for recommending it, because 1) it was a PHENOMENAL SHOW, I enjoyed it immensely, and 2) it dealt with a whole bunch of stuff that's extremely pertinent not only to the development and coverage of the Thai television BL genre by way of macro commentary -- but it also didn't hesitate to cover the kinds of discriminations that the queer community faces inside and outside the entertainment industries of Thailand and the world.

Before I delve into this, allow me a quick few words on Tee Bundit, the creator of the Lovely Writer drama (and the man behind two shows airing right now, in Hidden Agenda and I Feel You Linger In the Air). I've now watched three Tee shows: my first Tee show was TharnType, of which I had many feelings. While TharnType is first and foremost thought of as a MAME show, I felt the show was bad enough to need to hold any other folks involved with it accountable. I understand from BL fanon lore that Tee may have created Lovely Writer in part to offer macro commentary about the problems he faced making TharnType and how shipper fans responded to it and how they respond to BLs in general.

If you're a regular reader of this space, you'll know that I watched my second Tee show, Step By Step, *before* watching Lovely Writer, which was a mistake in hindsight -- I definitely should have tried to watch Lovely Writer first, to get a sense of how AMAZING Tee's filmmaking work could be. I had not at all the same feelings about Step By Step -- the 180-degree opposite feelings, in fact. Step By Step was so wildly bad, so unmoored, incomplete, and messy, it made at least the story structure of TharnType look good.

Finally, I acknowledge that I'm not watching Hidden Agenda, and I *am* watching I Feel You Linger In the Air, which I am enjoying very much, if not for my smell test being very active about the editing foibles that I was made aware of during SBS. (But @lurkingshan has hipped me to the fact that historical dramas, of which IFYLITA is one, is meant to have slower pacing -- and Tee, at least, is utterly killing it on the cinematography and scenery alone of IFYLITA, which is making it enjoyable for me.)

So, with all that said, at least from my perspective, Lovely Writer is Tee's top anomaly of the dramas of his that I've watched so far.

Lovely Writer, man. It was a sharp, well-paced, extremely layered, and ultra-critical examination of BL media, shipper fandom, capitalism, internalized and externalized homophobia, intergenerational trauma, family acceptance, and a whole lot more.

Let me break down why I think Lovely Writer succeeded and why I think it's such an important show to have on the OGMMTVC list:

1) The macro commentary on the structure of the BL media world, from novels to dramas, to marketing and fandom, to the exploration of the actors' private lives, is absolutely necessary for any serious BL fan to watch and digest,

2) The inclusion of intergenerational trauma by way of internalized and externalized homophobia was deftly depicted,

3) The acting itself was superb and met the level of talent needed to tell this complicated story, and

4) The commentary on the "work" of the BL world is a subject that had already received attention in other dramas that were indirectly referenced in Lovely Writer in an utterly brilliant way,

and I might come up with even more reasons to celebrate this show as I pen this review.

The ultimate reason why I loved Lovely Writer was that it never lost sight of what I saw as its overarching message: how discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community is mean and entirely useless in all aspects, and how this discrimination is woven in insidious ways in almost every detail of our everyday lives.

By the time of Lovely Writer's airing in 2021, we are five years -- ONLY FIVE YEARS! -- ahead of SOTUS's airing as the first holistic Thai television BL. SOTUS began the process of establishing tropes and conventions, and fell in line with Love Sick and Make It Right in establishing ships -- to the extent of the creation of the first blockbuster ship in KristSingto. Between 2016 and 2021, we have the creation of other blockbuster ships (MaxTul, PerthSaint, TayNew, OffGun), we have shows that buck the BL trope trend (He's Coming To Me, A Tale of Thousand Stars), we have shows that decentralize romance (Manner of Death), we have the creation of the prestige cinematic BL genre (ITSAY and IPYTM), and we have shows that flirt with, for the BL genre, new storytelling structures that hadn't been seen when the genre was born, namely historical flashbacks that gave a cinematic feel to its final products (Until We Meet Again, ATOTS).

Lovely Writer was a pandemic-era show, airing after the incredible success of 2gether and Still 2gether (2020), and that success -- the insane burgeoning of awareness around BL in that moment -- along with Tee's experience in making TharnType, and seeing the hype around TharnType -- likely fed his desire to make incredibly smart commentary about what he was seeing by way of capitalistic interaction with the genre, and, maybe more importantly, how these capitalistic demands were actually affecting real people, including himself, in the process of the creation of this material.

What I loved the absolute MOST about Lovely Writer was the parallel story of insidious homophobia within and emanating out of the media world -- and how that insidious homophobia was ultimately presented next to stories of internalized and externalized homophobia on personal, interpersonal, and familial levels. Bua, Gene's book editor, wants hotter and more explicit sex scenes. The director of Bad Engineer wants, needs, Nubsib and Aoey to emanate attraction and heat. The fans of Bad Engineer (Lovely Writer's show-within-a-show) demand ship after ship -- SibAoey and SibGene -- and become poisonous online if their fantasies aren't catered to. But Gene and Nubsib, as an actual queer pair, cannot be out and together publicly. In fact, not only are studios wary of fan rejection of Nubsib and Bad Engineer itself -- but it's also presented that Aoey's career depends on Nubsib faking a relationship with Aoey, to Aoey's crushing recognition.

What the media world assumes is that fans want an arm's length away from the reality of queer relationships and queer sex. I posited in my 2gether review that that's exactly why 2gether was so immensely popular in real life: 2gether gave fans an illusion that two men could successfully be shipped together, without any depictions of actual intimacy to make the fans feel uncomfortable -- especially if those fans held implicit and/or explicit bias against queer people. (As @bengiyo has written in the past: when queer love gets "too real" for fans -- fans turn. In Ben's words: audiences don't like gay people.) (It's always important to note that out actors, like Fluke Natouch, Earth Katsamonnat, and Bruce Sirikorn, are far less popular actors than the majority cishet GMMTV stable of actors. Fluke Natouch only recently -- in 2023! -- had his first solo fan meeting.)

What Lovely Writer highlighted, in its macro criticism of the BL industry and what this industry has spawned, is the utter hypocrisy of the media world leveraging queer themes and ideas for the sake of selling content, while keeping an arm's length with queer reality. As CNN wrote about gay idols in the K-pop industry, so in the Thai BL industry can a career be wildly and negatively affected if an actor comes out. For the sake of Nubsib's career as his show, Bad Engineer, aired within the Lovely Writer universe -- Gene broke up with him.

And this was presented alongside three family stories -- Gene's, Nubsib's, and Aoey's -- of discrimination and rejection of sons being gay. Gene having a queer revelation vis à vis Nubsib, and being courageous enough to bring his admission home, only to face hypocritical rejection, and then hesitant acceptance, from a father that had been discriminated against in his own past for his own queerness. Nubsib faced incredulous resistance from his parents, specifically in regard to how his parents' careers would be affected by having a gay celebrity son. And Aoey was rejected by his family for his career choice in acting in BL shows while being gay himself -- to the extent of getting kicked out of his parents' home.

From my dear friend @lurkingshan -- another Lovely Writer stan, hey gurl -- I understood that Aoey's storyline affected a lot of Bruce Sirikorn's fans (and I am super-duper glad that the one glowing part of Step By Step, the character of Chot, was embodied by a glorious Bruce). Man, did Bruce ever EAT his role of Aoey, depicting the heartbreaking insidiousness of internalized homophobia. We think he's after Nubsib -- but he needs to chase Nubsib for the sake of keeping up his BL career. We find out that Aoey is attracted to Gene -- but Gene is already managing the complicated realities of his relationship with Nubsib, and must deflect Aoey's repeated flirtations attempts. I saw the show setting up Aoey as a despicable character, but my heart broke for him: as he was rejected by his family, he had only the ephemeral acceptance of his fans who were only interested in his potential to be shipped in fantasy with his co-worker.

Alongside Aoey's story of internalized homophobia was that of Gene's father -- which gutted me. (Nu Surasak, who played Gene's father and was also the teachers' foundation head in ATOTS -- damn, he is a HELL of an actor.) Gene's father simply did not want Gene to be gay, because Gene's father himself had experienced queer discrimination as a young man. And we saw how Gene's father's internalized homophobia nearly ripped his family apart.

And then, Gene's father HIMSELF demonstrates a process of behavioral change, when he begins to RELATE to where Gene is coming from in his love for Nubsib. I gotta admit: I did not see this coming. Not just Gene being so brave to come out so openly to his family, but to demonstrate that PARENTS can change, in such a visceral way. This was so meaningful to me in part because many of our BLs today show parents that automatically accept their sons -- without a process of change and acceptance happening before our eyes.

And THEN: how Gene's father came to Gene's side when Gene decided to leave Nubsib for the sake of Nubsib's career. And how Gene's father related, tear by tear, emotion by emotion, to everything Gene was going through.

WHAT A DECISION TO INCLUDE THIS STORYLINE. To have a PARENT embody a story of THEIR OWN queer revelation? @bengiyo has written before about the importance of queer elders in our beloved shows -- and while Gene's father presents a more complicated reality than out-elders, the fact that Gene's dad could holistically RELATE to EVERYTHING Gene was going through was truly remarkable to watch.

(I want to note that if you didn't know, there is a movie-length Lovely Writer special episode. It's structured around Nubsib wanting to surprise Gene for his birthday. The middle part is somewhat incomprehensible -- hi, Tee -- but the ending wraps up Gene's father's total acceptance of Gene's and Nubsib's relationship in a gorgeous way. I highly recommend finding it if you haven't watched it.)

Lovely Writer's very complicated storyline -- from Gene writing a novel, to Nubsib filming a show, to Gene and Nubsib's childhood, to Aoey's interventions, to Gene and Nubsib's families, to the fans, to the studios and managers (ZORZO!!!!), to EVERYTHING this show held -- could not have worked if Up Poompat and Kao Noppakao didn't hold it together. They were the fucking GLUE to this story. THESE DUDES ATE. Step By Step did NOT allow me to appreciate Up's SCOPE. (I mean, Put was TOTALLY intolerable, and Up did him fantastically, but Gene was just, WHOA.) I just need to give them their flowers, because I loved Kao in Until We Meet Again, but I did NOT appreciate how capable he was at very intricate storytelling as a main lead.

I want to wrap this up by noting that Lovely Writer was not the first show to offer macro commentary about the BL industry. Cheewin Thanamin (who made a HILAAAARIOUS cameo in Lovely Writer as a press conference host, I was HOOTING) offered commentary on BL actors in YYY, where one actor tells another actor, this is a job, and we have to do this to get paid. War of Y, another Cheewin show, also gets into this. As we recall, Step By Step also attempted to offer macro commentary about ships and the BL industry -- to the morbid extent that that criticism was edited out after ZeeNew fans raised protests.

I love it when media comments on media -- the hypocrisies, the vagaries, the capitalist realities. For the Flukes, Earths, and Bruces that are out: we don't know how many more actors are in the closet, out of fear for the sake of their careers. Lovely Writer forces fans -- the BL fandom -- to reckon with the hypocrisies of watching queer media, and of accepting queer realities vs. only being accepting of queer fantasies that do not otherwise challenge heterosexual power. Queer joy is joy. What Lovely Writer did for Gene and Nubsib was to center and highlight that joy, and to show that they, together, could surmount the ridiculous obstacles of the demands of media and capitalism, to allow their love to thrive and grow. What a story. I want and hope that Tee Bundit can demonstrate this SHARP critical eye on his work again in his future.

[Alright! Next one up: my review of Last Twilight in Phuket and I Promised You The Moon. What a turn from I Told Sunset About You. I love relationship-growth stories, and IPYTM was one of the very highest order.

I mentioned previously that I may need to take a week or two off from the OGMMTVC due to some insane life shit happening at the moment (FML, MOVING). I've been coping by letting myself fall a little behind on shows. I’ve paused on Not Me, to give it the attention it deserves. But I will be picking it up again soon, very slowly, and I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. After Not Me, I hope to be settled enough in to start in on my usual faster pace to get through 55:15 Never Too Late, for more macro commentary -- this time, from GMMTV itself, on the BL industry.

And then onto my long-awaited Bad Buddy and Our Skyy 2 rewatch. I'm having some seriously fantastic and in-depth conversation with a few Tumblr friends about how BBS has impacted us, and I can't wait to bring them into my big-brained posting moment about re-watching Bad Buddy and offering some insights into our conversation.

List below! As usual, feedback welcome, etc. (Tumblr's new web editor is jacking with this list and not letting strikethrough what I've watched. For the very latest list, please click here!)

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review coming) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review coming) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 39) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 40) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 41) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults) 42) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 43) Only Friends (2023)]

#lovely writer #lovely writer meta #meta on meta #bl meta #tee bundit #step by step #up poompat #kao noppakao #bruce sirikorn #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #cheewin thanamin #yyy

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