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wen-kexing-apologist · 7 months

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Can I ask, why do you love BL romance better than het romance? What makes them better? I did not mean anything negative, and I know everyone have their own like and dislike but I want to know your thoughts....

Also what do you think that made Asian MLM (BL manga/manhwa/manhua/tv series/movies) romances better than western MLM romances?

Hello! Yes you are more than welcome to ask :) I truly, truly love getting asks in my inbox and have been having so much fun with the fact I’ve actually been getting some recently! Warning this is long (but i have TL;DRs for everything)

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I think the fastest answer for me is that I am queer, and therefore I find I have a lot more enjoyment and interest in watching queer stories compared to heterosexual ones.

Also, I find a lot of heterosexual romances to be steeped in misogyny, and have low-key or high-key abusive dynamics. And again, do not get me wrong, there are plenty of queer shows where there are abusive dynamics in play, but it is much harder for misogyny to be committed between two men than it is for misogyny to be placed on a male/female pairing. (I love GLs cause, you know…women, but there are a lot more complex dynamics going in to stories written about two women and those can get much trickier for me, and unfortunately many narratives love punishing lesbains with death so.... Anyway, I’m trying to stick mostly to BLs since that is primarily what this ask is about.)

Additionally, I love BLs more than heterosexual romances because of how BLs treat men. Men in heterosexual romances, especially in the West are extremely masculine, often unable to be in touch with their emotions, jaded, misogynistic, they have to be extremely muscular, and we almost never see femme boys or men.

BLs have such a vast range of men, they have twinks, they have femmes, they have gym bros. They have the clowns, and the super masculine boys. There are shows that let boys be boys, be stupid, and stinky, and fucking gross (hey Pat from Bad Buddy), they let boys be angry and aggressive and express their emotions that way (Sean and Yok’s fight in Not Me, Han Baram and Im Hantae’s conversation in the boxing ring in Sing My Crush, Lom and Nuea in The Wedding Plan, Patts in La Pluie), they let boys fight and wrestle and play (Bad Buddy, My School President, Moonlight Chicken, Only Friends). I love queer stories that let men be gay and ensure through the story that that never undermines their masculinity. I love that there are shows that focus on the progress older men can make in their relationships (What Did You Eat Yesterday?) THEY ARE ALSO ALLOWED TO CRY!!!!

And though it is still kind of rare, Asian BLs actually do have femme boys, and while I am sure femme boys exist in Western shows, I think Pose and fucking Glee are like…the only two shows with queer people that I have seen in the last decade that have an femme boy representation at all. On the flip side, I love how often GMMTV puts their boys in drag and that doesn’t even have to be in a queer show. I also generally love the fact that most of the male actors in Asian BLs, and again, especially in Thailand embrace their femme sides in photoshoots and whatnot, that they wear earrings, and jewelry, and makeup and they look hot as fuck, because it helps me with my own gender identity. I feel and see myself much more masculine (and have less dysphoria) when I have an earring or a necklace or makeup on, now that I have seen so many boys do the same.

TL;DR: I am queer, and heterosexual romances are frequently misogynistic, and men are extremely masculine and rarely allowed to be soft. Asian BLs give us a very broad range of masculinity, but often let boys be boys while also kissing boys. And actors embracing their femme sides helps me feel more masculine when I lean in to my femme side.

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As for Asian MLM romances compared to Western MLM romances, obviously this is not a cut and dry thing, not all Asian BLs are going to be better than Western BLs but I find I have a tendency to enjoy Asian BLs/queer media more for a few reasons, generally in order of most to least important for me:

Reason One- Family

This may seem somewhat surprising because the first, and honestly biggest reason I tend to like Asian BLs more than Western BLs has much less to do with the queer aspect. It's actually the family dynamics. I think Western media very frequently has a tendency to be very binary in their portrayal of family dynamics, if family is at all included in Western narratives the relationships that characters have to their family is either almost wholly good, or almost wholly bad. You either have a very abusive household that a character is trying to avoid or flee, or you have a traditional, happy, nuclear family, and when characters have a strained relationship to their family, I have noticed a lot more narrative support for leaving that family behind. But for the most part, family does not play a huge role in most Western shows (and, wild concept to me, it’s part of why I think shows like Succession are so successful, because that is all about complex, fucked up, and loving relationships within a family).

Whereas, in Asian media, far more frequently family and family dynamics play a huge role in the character’s lives, behaviors, and can influence the story. And because filial piety is such an important aspect to many Asian cultures, you get a lot more interesting parent/child relationships out of Asian media than you do with Western content. And I am a white Westerner, but I am fundamentally, culturally a Southerner and despite no longer being a woman, I will never shed the mantle of Eldest Daughter. And that has resulted in a sense of family responsibility and piety that ends up making it very very easy for me to understand the motivations of the characters that remain loyal to their family even when their family is asking for things from them that run counter to their own desires or happiness (I’ve actually had this conversation a lot with @waitmyturtles about the intersections of Southern culture and Asian culture).

And similarly, I find that a lot of Western media with queer characters at least in the time frame that I have been able to find content with queer characters is either wholly homophobic, or wholly accepting. And do not get me wrong, we get family dynamics like that in Asian BLs too, but we also get parents who are upset about their child’s queerness, and will voice that, and yet who still take care of their children. I’m thinking of the film I watched just the other day called Margarita with a Straw where the main character’s mother can barely look or talk to her daughter when she comes out, but because she is disabled, her mother is still there preparing food for her, bathing her, etc. because even if she is upset about her child’s queerness she can’t stop taking care of her. And those aren’t dynamics I often see in Western media.

I don’t see relationships like Sawismol and Wang in Western media, where a mother can look at her child and say, out loud that she is disappointed, and to be upset, and to still, despite everything, be the person that her son goes to for comfort when he is absolutely devastated, and I don’t see Western parents sitting there and performing that comfort even when they are disappointed in their children’s queerness.

TL;DR: Family dynamics feel a lot more built out, realistic, and complex in many Asian BLs/media that I’ve seen, than they do in many Western shows. Until I started watching Asian media, I had not seen the dynamics I have with my mother or my father played out on screen.

Reason Two- Casual Trans Inclusion

And, as a trans person myself, part of what makes Asian BL shows, Thai shows much more specifically, so important, interesting, and influential to me when compared to Western BLs is the casual inclusion of trans people. Like, that is just something Western media is barely ready for. It’s not non-existent. We have and have had shows like The Fosters, Sense8, Pose, The Owl House, and Heartstopper that have some trans rep. But a lot of those shows have a hefty component to them that shows the struggles of being trans.

In The Fosters we have to watch Cole nearly die trying to get his hands on testosterone, in Sense8 we have to watch Nomi be kept as a medical prisoner and stripped of her autonomy and almost lobotomized, in Pose we are constantly exposed to the very real dangers that trans women of color experience including murder, in Heartstopper we are spared from having to witness the transphobia Elle went through, but it is mentioned. I think the only one of these shows that doesn’t have some element of struggle because a character is trans is The Owl House and let us not forget that Raine Whispers goes through fucking hell in that show. And these conversations, and the demonstrations of struggle to just survive and thrive despite that is vitally important in a society that is pushing closer and closer towards genocide against trans people. Stories that show the struggles of trans people exist for the sake of realism but also serve as an attempt to try to garner empathy towards trans people by cisgender viewers.

Thailand does have stories where a trans character experiences transphobia (3 Will Be Free, The Warp Effect, Secret Crush on You), but they also have so many stories where trans people are literally just vibing. Do you know how revolutionary it was for me when I watched KinnPorsche and saw Yok, and she was happy, and beautiful, and fun, and her entire plot centered around her running that bar, flirting with boys, and playing surrogate mother to Porsche? Or just to see trans women existing, who aren’t even central to the plot, but are just there? (Payu’s secretary at the auto shop is a trans woman, Golf Tanwarin was at the inclusive cafe in The Eclipse, Golf Kittipat had an illustrious career as a music producer in My School President). Like that shit is SO important to me, and I never, never see it in Western media.

TL;DR: There are many Thai shows especially where trans people just exist, and they have plots that aren’t always centered around them being trans. Which is revolutionary, coming in as a trans Western viewer where the majority of trans rep in Western shows makes me eventually have to watch trans people suffer.

Reason Three- Passion Projects

The film industry is huge and pervasive in Western culture, and in the US especially, and with that comes big budget projects that stretch out as long as they can squeeze a cent out of a fan base. As a result you get shows that are too long, you get shows that ruin their premise in the last season after five to fifteen years of dragging the shambling corpse of a story along. And again, do not get me wrong, there are plenty plenty of Asian BLs that are cash grabs, that are terrible, where the actors aren’t really in it. But, most BLs in Asia are one season, they get in, they get out, and you forget it if it’s bad, or you hate it forever if it’s objectively bigoted. But the time commitment to terrible pieces is a lot shorter.

That said, when you have a low budget, and a story you want to tell, it makes my love so much more. Because it means the crew, the writers, the director, and often time the actors are there because they want to be there, because they like the story they are telling, because they have a story they want to tell. It’s part of why I love shows like The Eclipse so much, because that show was made with a budget mainly comprised of pocket lint and hope, because Golf Tanwarin had something they wanted to say. Most if not all of Aof Nopparnach’s shows give genuinely, inherently queer stories that speak to queer people. Jojo Tichakorn makes pieces that are so full of queer lenses you could never deny the inherent queerness in his shows, even if the story is primarily focused on a straight person/relationship (Mama Gogo). There are so many shows in the Asian BL world where you can just tell that everyone is having fun. LIsten, Fish Upon the Sky is an extremely problematic show, but for me it felt like everyone had a great time goofing off on that set. You can tell EV-ER-Y-BOD-Y in the cast of Mama Gogo was having the time of their motherfucking lives.

I also think the West is very self-congratulatory and tends to hold themselves as the standard of televisions and acting, when I am over here watching Asian BLs with some of the strongest acting from young people I have ever seen, and having it be written off because its a) low budget b) gay and c) in another language. Like, when I try to get people in to BL I start with shows like KinnPorsche (which I know drives @bnegiyo mad) cause it has a much higher production value than many other Asian BLs without being prestige and therefore can’t radically alter the perception of what BL is (hello ITSAY/IPYTM and 180 Degrees), Thai BLs especially. And I figure that is the only way to show someone the level of absurdity and camp that comes from a lot of BLs, while also maintaining their interest because it has a higher production value, so that if they end up enjoying that they are more willing to watch the low budget shows.

TL;DR: Many Asian BLs are pretty low budget, compared to like any Western show, which I find to mean we have more stories in Asian BL that people actually want to tell. (there are still very many shows that people seem to just kinda show up for, or get bored with partway through [looking at you Tee] but.)

Reason Four- Abundance

There are

Many

Asian

BLs

Here's a fraction of my watch list

I have watched 81 in roughly the last year, and there are so many more on my Plan to Watch list, and there are more coming out all the time. The West has given me like…two, maybe three. And when we do get good queer shows in the West, they are frequently canceled before completion. Especially if they are on Netflix.

We lost Sense8, fans had to fight for Out Flag Means Death to get renewed, The Owl House got cancelled by Disney after giving their main character a girlfriend, ND Stevenson had to write two ending to She-Ra and fought tooth and fucking nail to get the gay one, Legend of Korra had to save the gay kiss until the end just like She-Ra had to. If you want to get depressed here is a link to an article ‘50 TV shows with Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer characters cancelled after one season’. Because most Asian BLs are meant to be only one season, we actually get complete stories, rather than ending with unresolved tension, or cliffhangers.

TL;DR: there is a metric fuck ton of Asian BLs

Reason Five- Sex

The West, especially the US, tends to have a very puritanical view of sex (which makes sense because the Puritans were some of the first colonizers…I mean colonials…to murder everyone and occupy…uh, I mean settle the United States (I would also like to place blame on the Italians and Spanish [hey Columbus] and their Catholicism AND PROTESTANT CALVINISM that also influenced the pervasive societal views of sex and especially gay sex in the United States).

With ever increasing homophobia and transphobia, so many shows are trying, in my own personal opinion, to garner empathy, sympathy, and acceptance for queer characters by cisgender and/or heterosexual viewers by making their queer characters flat, two-dimensional, virginal, perfect people. But homophobes and transphobes consider holding hands to be just as grotesque and inappropriate as full on porn. With Western, and especially US based, views of sex, many queer characters are sanitized, sex scenes are rare, and if they do exist at all they are usually in shows that have mature ratings.

That is not the case with Asian BLs. Like, do not get me wrong, there are plenty of pure, virginal, don’t kiss, barely touch BLs out there, but because there are so many BLs, there are also plenty of shows with lots of physical intimacy and multiple make out scenes that aren’t maturely rated, as well as plenty of maturely rated shows that have multiple sex scenes AND CAN INCLUDE KINK WHICH LIKE!!!!! I rarely see in the Western media I’ve watched. Hell, Sense8 is a sexual liberation show that includes multiple orgies, but there is not even a hint of any other kink (besides whatever Dani, Lito, and Hernando have going on).

gif by @radishayuan

Meanwhile, The Warp Effect has fucking puppy play, Bed Friend has pet play, Laws of Attraction which has a couple pretty chaste kisses shows handcuffs to at least imply kink, there’s a ball gag and a fucking leash in Big Dragon, I haven’t seen it but Unforgotten Night has a lot of BDSM themes in it, Rain and Payu have a dom/sub dynamic going on, we have daddy kinks abound, I also haven’t seen this one but I know there is some belt bondage in War of Y. And even if it isn’t shown, kink and bondage specifically are often referenced in passing in shows with sex.

Also, there are very very very few Western shows I have seen that treat sex workers kindly, and Jojo Tichakorn is right there giving us sex workers as main characters multiple times in a row. Taiwan has great physical chemistry, the very few things I have seen from the Phillipines are so fucking queer, Japan even when they aren’t including sex at all have some extremely queer narratives, and when they are including sex? Holy fuck. South Korea is developing, but I have liked what I’ve seen so far, and it’s been fun seeing very rapid progressions in the level of physical intimacy characters are allowed to have, Thailand has been making a name for itself.

TL;DR: There is a very broad range of physical intimacy in Asian BLs from no sex to lots of sex, but the abundance of content means I am seeing more shows with gay sex in them in like…a month or two, than shows I have seen in the West with gay characters at all in like…the past year. (This is of course, subjective, don’t ask me for real numbers).

And, you know, in case this response wasn’t long enough, the amount of queer content, the types of stories being told, the rapid and continued development of BL is super interesting to observe in its own right. Sure, it may be driven by marketability and sales, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some truly important, realistic, vital, and beautiful pieces of queer media being created and shared with the world, a lot of which is much more accessible to audiences than Western media. I go heavy on the Thai shows in part because they are available for free on YouTube.

I also think the West seems to think that having gay marriage is the be all, end all of queer inclusivity, and that they do not realize that countries without gay marriage are creating some of the most realistic queer content out there right now. The West has a lot it can learn from Asian BLs, but in my opinion, we’ve got our heads too far up our asses to be following their lead.

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blmpff · 2 months

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✨ Various Tropes: Touching Foreheads (1/?) ✨

TITLES IN ORDER: 1. No Regret (2006) 2. History 2: Crossing the Line (2018) 3. Gaya sa Pelikula (2020) 4. His (2020) 5. Light (2021) 6. Dear Doctor I'm Coming For Soul (2022) 7. The Eighth Sense (2023) 8. I Feel You Linger In The Air (2023) 9. Kiseki: Dear To Me (2023) 10. Playboyy (2023) 11. The Sign (2023) 12. Love is Better the Second Time Around (2024)

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my-rose-tinted-glasses · 1 month

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You're all I need, the very air I breathe. You are home.

#gaya sa pelikula #like in the movies #karlxvlad #pinoy bl #bl drama #rosygifspinoybl #rosygifs

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eohachu · 1 year

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[ID: nine gifs from Gaya Sa Pelikula, showing Vlad and Karl dancing unrestrainedly through Karl's apartment. /end ID]

REWATCHED IN 2023:

Gaya Sa Pelikula (2020), dir. JP Habac

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gabrielokun · 6 months

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#Like In The Movies #Gaya Sa Pelikula #Gabriel makes stuff #VladKarl #Vlad x Karl #Ian Pangilinan #Jose Vladimir Austria #Paolo Pangilinan #Karl Frederick Almasen #Philippino BL #Philippino Series #BL Drama #BL series

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red-hibiscus · 2 months

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BL characters I relate to most as a mentally ill gay trans man

Daisy from SCOY

Surprising no one, I, a trans person, relate to Daisy. They're outgoing and seemingly don't care about how people view them. They know they're visibly queer and they normally don't mind it (from what I see). But at the end of the day, society does affect them. They're hesitant to believe Touch genuinely cares and is attracted to them despite Touch being an absolute green flag who is very direct with his flirting. Even after, Daisy was worried about people would view their relationship with Touch and tried to become Day, a more masculine version of themself. Impossible of course and they broke down emotionally exhausted. I feel that so much because I also don't believe it when people, especially cis gay men, are attracted to me. I've caught myself trying to change my behavior to be more masculine (as I'm a bit on the nonbinary side of things). It's bad, but I know how Daisy feels.

Wang from 180 Degree Longtitude Passes Through Us

As a 26 year old trans gay immigrant in a country that doesn't want me, I have a shit ton of pent up anger that has been building up since I was a child. I've calmed down over the years, but I can still be stubborn and argumentative when it comes to politics and human rights. I'm also a linguistics major, thus an academic.

Wang is so much like myself and like a lot of people around me. Like me and Wang would be close friends irl I know it. We're young and stubborn. We're angry at the older conservative people around us, too much sometimes. So he lashes out. Many of his points are correct, but they're not hitting. Partially because the people he's talking to don't want to change, partially because he himself is stubborn. People like us yearn to be free, to be ourselves and to learn. Wang has a passion for the humanities like myself. Yet he knows society really only cares about STEM fields. I've compromised and am getting a master's in computational linguistics. Even though really I just wanna learn as much as I can about sociolinguistics.

Karl from Gaya Sa Pelikula

I haven't watched GSP in a hot minute, but I do remember feeling very seen.

So in the show Karl has his gay awakening, tries to internally and externally deny it, and eventually let himself be free to feel everything and be himself (at least in private).

Now I didn't have a gay awakening, but I guess you could say a trans awakening. In middle school I felt different, I suspected maybe some flavor of LGBT, but wasn't sure and I was too afraid to think about it too hard. Come high school I secretly wanted to join the LGBT club, but was afraid. Then I was essentially adopted into the LGBT club and dragged into the friend group during lunch because I was a loner like everyone else. At the time still "identified" as a cishet woman. As time went on people started to suspect. "Why are you in the club?", "why did you cut your hair", "why do you dress like that?", "your voice is low for a girl haha", etc. Much like Karl, I was not ready for any of that. I was still struggling to make sense of it all and come to terms with it myself. So I kept rejecting it and every time it hurt.

I kept rejecting it until I couldn't. Until someone I resonated with so much came out as trans and it clicked. My trans awakening was complete. I became able to be more myself, but only in private safe spaces. I wouldn't come out and live as a man until after high school and it was terrifying.

Adachi from Cherry Magic

I've only watched the jpn ver, but I'm sure that character remains the same.

I'm anxious and used to be quite shy. Now I'm just awkward. I'm really bad at seeing the good in myself cause I feel like I'm wandering around aimlessly in life. Not that impressive. So when people compliment me I think "haha they're just being nice" (refer back to me never believing people are actually attracted to me).

Adachi is the exact same. He has the same routine every day. Just going through the motions and not really thinking anything of himself. But then Kurosawa comes along and the ability to read minds. Adachi then realizes "wait, someone I respect so much actually loves me? And thinks I have a lot of good qualities? Makes me wanna cry." And me too Adachi. I'd be the same.

Jared from 7 Days Before Valentine

Jared, my precious baby, is described throughout the show as kind, but weird and different. We later learn that he has dyslexia, and honestly he seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Even if he isn't, he has a behavioral difference people pick up on and then shun him for it.

I too was seen as kinda weird growing up. Maybe it was the autism, maybe it was the social anxiety. Probably both. And then of course there was the gnawing feeling that I was different than everyone else and it turns out it's because I'm trans.

So when Jared said that people didn't talk to him because he wasn't like other people it hit me so hard.

Myungha from Love For Love's Sake

The whole show is sad yet cathartic for me. Myungha is depressed yet spends his time comforting others. He has a hard time loving and receiving love. If you give him a fictional character who is very similar to him he will love them and see all the good, but he doesn't see it in himself. Relatable as hell.

I have an incredibly hard time being honest with my emotions and letting people love me and express attraction. Mostly in a romantic/sexual context. Dpdr is cockblocking me. So dating is hell, but I'm lonely and yearn to not be.

Probably if you put me in a situation like Myungha I'd also go "yep, that right there is my blorbo" and then not realize that all the things I like about the person and make me care about them are things I have.

Honorable mentions:

Both Akk and Ayan from The Eclipse

Nozue from Old Fashion Cupcake

Oh-Aew from I Told Sunset About You

Cher from A Boss and a Babe (I headcannon him as autistic)

Amber from DNA Says Love You

Uea from Bed Friend

Mitsuomi from Restart After Come Back Home

Jao from SCOY

Maybe I'll make another post for those later

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seatawinan · 1 year

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My School President // Gaya Sa Pelikula

#my school president #gaya sa pelikula #mjtag #userbillkin #usernuria #userconcrete #usertaeminie #tonanons #tuseralexa #lextag #userpuentalay #Gemini Norawit #fourth nattawat #*sam.gifs #tinngun #geminifourth #parallels

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jojotichakorn · 1 year

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time for a new quiz, fellas!! i did something like this a while back, but i've got a bunch of new faves, so here you go.

#archer's quiz #star in my mind #semantic error #dark blue kiss #my school president #bad buddy #manner of death #light on me #enchante the series #kinnporsche #lovely writer #gaya sa pelikula #2moons2

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see-u-on-the-other-side · 2 years

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Honestly tumblr makes the experience of consuming any fcking type of media soo much better

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wanderlust-in-my-soul · 4 days

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“It was an intense embrace, no awkwardness, no holding back, the kind of hug two people can only achieve after long intimacy, but anyone can give in an instant to a stuffed bear.” ― Ada Palmer, Seven Surrenders

To My Star 2

A Boss And A Babe

Minato Shouji Coin Laundry

You're My Sky

My School President

Don't Say No

Semantic Error

The New Employee

History 2: Crossing The Line

Gaya Sa Pelikula / Like In The Movies

Favorite hugs (Part 3/?) as part of my favorite bl-tropes collection, as always in no particular order.

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wen-kexing-apologist · 7 months

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Captain Hands! Besides hands: what other physical parts and/or expressions are you watching for the most in dramas? What physicalities (besides intimacy, heh) give you the most clues into the psyche of a character?

BESTIE

BESTIE COME ON, I STILL HAVE TO WATCH ABSOLUTE ZERO AND INSTEAD HERE YOU ARE PUTTING DIFFICULT QUESTIONS IN MY ASK BOX!!

And you’ve fucked me further by excluding the intimate scenes, when you KNOW THAT THOSE ARE SO FUCKING RIFE WITH PHYSICALITY, CHOREOGRAPHY, AND EMOTIONAL WEIGHT

GAHHHHHHH

Ugh. Ok. Fine. Just know you did this to yourself because I look at fucking everything, which is part of why it can take me three hours to watch a 45 minute episode of something.

So there are a couple different things that I love looking at when I am analyzing characters, their body language, and what they are thinking. That said, I think everything after this is extremely subjective and often times hard to give an explanation for why (for example [and just to sneak in a hands example] James gives an incredible performance as Uea, and also, when I see him on screen as Uea I feel like he is paying too much attention to how his hands are laying in a scene since he has to femme himself up a bit. Why do I think that? No clue).

An additional problem to this is that what I look for is variable depending on the actor themselves and how many things I know them from. For example, I didn’t think Earth was a good actor at first when I watched A Tale of a Thousand Stars because Phupa was *so* repressed that he just read flat to me, and I literally went and sought out other EarthMix pieces, at that time I think only Cupid’s Last Wish was available, to see how Earth performed in that and it grew my appreciation for the fact that he can act.

So, what other things, besides hands, do I look for in the physicality of an actor that makes me understand their character?

Eyes

Hands and eyes are some of the most expressive parts of a body, and you can learn a lot about people from looking in their eyes.

There are three main things I am looking for when I am parsing a character’s thoughts or feelings: Eyelid/Eyebrow Movement, Eye Movement, and Eye Shine.

Eyelid/Eyebrow Movement

Not sure if this makes sense, but I am looking for small movements such as eyes narrowing, or getting bigger, or an eyebrow being quirked (shout out to Mark Pakin in Only Friends quirking his eyebrow at Boston when they meet for the first time at the phone repair shop). Obviously for this, as for all things, there are levels to it, if a character is someone fundamentally incapable of keeping their emotions close to the chest, you are going to see that in larger reactions, extremely visible, eyebrow raises, eyes that obviously narrow quickly, etc. Or for characters that are repressed, surprised, distrusting, or otherwise mysterious, I may be looking for smaller reactions, just a little eye twitch if something is getting to them, minimal dipping of an eyebrow if someone is, say, confused. And variations in that are going to be so interesting, for example if a character who is typically good at hiding his emotions suddenly gets a deeply furrowed brow, or has his eyes widen dramatically you know shit is suppppppeeeerrrr fucked.

gif by @klausbens

Nick is both demonstrating the eyebrow movement, and the next thing I look for...

Eye Movement

Oh BL boys constantly looking down at their crushes lips, how I love theeeeeee. When I am looking at eye movement, I am usually looking to see how many times someone breaks eye contact with another character, how quickly they return to that eye contact, and where they are looking. Ray in Only Friends is looking very disrespectfully at Sand, and you can tell that Ray is admiring the goods by how slowly his eyes move ever lower. This is an extremely obvious example, because there isn’t really even dialogue happening at the point in time at which Ray is checking Sand out in his bathroom. I live for the moments where characters are talking to eachother, but their eyes keep flitting down to the other person’s lips cause they just wanna kiss them so bad.

This doesn’t even have to be a ‘let me stare at your lips three times in thirty seconds” or a “let me stare at your lips for thirty seconds” deal either. In moments like Laws of Attraction, Episode 7 where Tin is a wash of frantic eye movements to assess Charn for injuries. You can tell he’s just anxiously taking Charn in, looking to make sure that he’s okay.

gif by @spicyvampire

Eye Shine

Eye shine is such a vital fucking part of acting, if I watch something and someone consistently has dead eyes it takes me out of the story a bit, makes me think that either they are a bad actor or that they were not interested in being on that film set. But if a character with bright and shiny eyes, suddenly has dead eyes, oohhhhh the juiciness, ohhhhh the trauma that has been unleashed upon that character. For as much as I have been shit talking Dangerous Romance, I will give it to Chimon that Sailom’s dead eyes after he is almost burned with the iron are incredible. Peat similarly does a great job of this in the last episode of Love in the Air when Prapai rescues Sky from Gun.

gif by @moonkhao

Bright in I Feel You Linger in the Air is absolutely crushing it in the eye shine department. You do not have to look at Yai for more than ten seconds any time Jom is in the room to see the human equivalent of the heart eye emojis appear. Though we only really started a romance at the end of Episode 6 and we didn’t spend a lot of time in Episode 7 actually focused on Jom and Yai’s relationship, I do not doubt their attraction to one another for one second because of how Yai looks at Jom.

Film in Laws of Attraction absolutely destroys the ‘I am actively thinking about fucking you, or getting fucked by you,’ aka horny eye shine as Charn in Episode 8 after Charn and Tin kiss at their wedding. I think we are all aware of (as @shortpplfedup calls them) Mix’s ‘fuck me’ eyes in Moonlight Chicken, so on and so forth.

The change in Neo’s eyes in Ep. 5 of Only Friends before he digs his claws in to Ray? Superb, I saw that look and knew Boston was about to be a shit stirrer.

Low key, I think part of what makes First such a great actor is the fact that he has really big eyes, because First is a very skilled micro-expressive actor, having facial features that are slightly larger than average I presume (in full speculation) is easier to read the microexpressions. At least for me. For example, it is easier for me to tell when say First in The Eclipse or Mix in Moonlight Chicken are doing micro expressions, especially when it comes to eye shine, than it is for me with Earth in A Tale of a Thousand Stars or Kao in Until We Meet Again.

Posture

I look at how a character holds themselves in space, do they feel stiff constantly, do they feel loose? Where are they relaxed, how are they relaxed, are they leaning in, are they leaning out? Do they stutter and stumble (Ray in Only Friends), are they ramrod straight (Akk in The Eclipse), when and where do they melt (Ren and Kazuma in Tokyo in April Is…), when are they experiencing joy (Karl dancing in Gaya Sa Pelikula), when does a character experience desire and especially when do they yank on the leash they have tied around their desire and snap it back behind a door (Pran in Ep 5 of Bad Buddy, Teh in Ep 3 of ITSAY), where does a character place themselves (Hira and Kiyoi in Utsukushi Kare).

gif by @eohachu

If I had to pick one master of posture out of every performer I have seen in a BL, it is hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, no contest, and zero time needed to think, Billkin in his performance as Teh in I Told Sunset About You/I Promised You the Moon. That boy is awkward as hell and I drank in every second of it. But Teh’s posture changes so much in this show, he’s constantly tense, but you can see how some of that falls away when it’s just Oh and Teh together, or when Teh’s attention is on Oh because he leans more forward in his chair, or when he is thinking about things and kinda stressed about them and he is shaking his leg anxiously under the table. Teh is constantly fidgeting and Billkin shows that so well

gif by @thii-nii

One of my favorite acting moments in Only Friends so far is the fight scene in Episode 5, but especially how fucking pissed you can tell Ray is from the way he is breathing and how drunk and ready to continue a fight he is by him being unsteady on his feet

gif by @bird-inacage

And as an aside, some of my takeaways from watching characters aren’t so much about the characters, but about the actors. For example, Saint in Step by Step is too stiff all the time, like he’s aware of the camera and he’s not comfortable being there, and I had hoped as time went on in the show he would give a stronger performance because I could see the bones there, but he just didn’t have the fluidity. And there were a couple scenes towards the end of Step by Step where I do genuinely think he showed major improvement from where he started.

Similarly, Copter as Lomfon in La Pluie is very stiff, and seeing the behind the scenes, that seems to just be how Copter himself is. But pairing him with Suar is going to make it difficult for Copter to shine in my opinion because of how relaxed and expressive Suar is as an actor.

Speaking of expressions…

Facial Expression

“Yeah, yeah, Captain Hands, facial expressions, obviously”

Okay but like, I really really struggle when it comes to microexpressions, and I will watch scenes like four or more times in a row staring only at one character’s face to try to see everything they are doing with their face so I can get a better understanding of how they are reacting, what they are thinking, or feeling. I did this for Phupa a ton in Our Skyy 2 because at someone point in it, and possibly because I have become more familiar with Earth at this point and can read his face much better, something clicked and I started being able to see Phupa’s reactions much more clearly.

Great example of this (especially in conjunction with posture) is Shiro in What Did You Eat Yesterday? when he fights with Kenji, and tells Kenji to leave and Kenji turns to go. You can see the panic set in to Shiro’s face, the way his mouth drops open, and he kinda moves his jaw like he’s trying to think of something to say. It is such a beautiful demonstration of how deeply Shiro loves Kenji, seeing how scared Shiro is of actually losing him, even when he is incapable of saying “I love you” to Kenji. And that set up early on really helps guide the show, and builds wonderfully up to Shiro’s panicked breakdown near the end of the WDYEY movie when he thinks Kenji is dying cause he dyed his hair.

gif by @dengswei

Or the way Kenji's face falls when Shiro says "I know you're hurting"

Other examples of very busy faces with lots of things going on that tell me a great deal of information about the characters: Sengtian in La Pluie when he’s watching Lomfon’s video, his jaw drops ever so slightly and quirks to the side a bit and you can tell he’s mad even before he storms out; Akk in The Eclipse, I mean I feel like this one doesn’t really need an explanation, but god is there some good frustrated intakes of breath when Ayan needles at him; Yutaka and Minoru in Our Dining Table (are great examples of eye movement as well) but when Minoru is rambling about his feeling for Yutaka and Yutaka opens his mouth slightly and takes in a breath like he’s going to speak, and then he doesn’t? Superb;

Sorry to keep bringing up the same handful of shows but they are the ones I’ve watched more recently so they’re what immediately springs to mind. But, in Episode 8 of Only Friends you can tell Ray is feeling kinda bad from very early on in the conversation because he swallows hard after Sand asks about Mew and then has varying levels of face fall when Sand hits him with yet another passive comment.

Aura

God, I do not know how to explain this one at all, because it’s not something I am really actively investigating, but does very much shape how I engage with certain characters, and that is just the invisible vibe they give off. And yes, I understand that an aura is an intangible thing, but to give off an aura in television requires a number of physical elements all working in tandem. Teh, for example just radiates anxiety, frenetic energy, and there are a number of little things Billkin is doing like posture, like eye movement, like facial expression to aide that but those are things that would usually tell me that Teh is anxious, rather than me getting hit with a wave of anxiety through my screen. Similarly the believability of the magnetism between Teh and Oh in PP’s performance, as well as PP and Billkin’s work as scene partners that you can feel the pull between them.

gif by @tehohaews

I could ramble ever longer as I am sure you are aware, but I will stop here for the sake of making sure whoever is reading this is maintaining even a single scrap of sanity after my very long winded reply. Hope this answered your question?

TL;DR: Beyond hands I look at eyelids, eyebrows, eye movement, eye shine, posture, and facial expressions including hard swallows and sharp intakes of breath to get a sense of what a character is thinking or feeling.

#only friends the series #itsay #ifyl #i feel you linger in the air #dangerous romance #what did you eat yesterday?#the eclipse #billkinpp #first kanaphan #mix sahaphap #bright rapheephong #like in the movies #gaya sa pelikula #laws of attraction #jamfilm

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