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waitmyturtles · 8 months

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Only Friends and More: Watching Asian Queer Shows About Asian Queer Male Sex As a Cishet Woman

Hello! It's Turtles here, your resident cisgender female, heterosexual, South-and-Southeast-Asian-American mama.

I'm joining in partnership with my fellow cishet female elder and very dear friend, @lurkingshan, in taking a minute today to talk to our fellow cishet girlies about the world we are being exposed to via a show that we're holding near and dear to our hearts: Only Friends.

As my friend Shan has written today, Only Friends is presenting a number of paradigms regarding queer sex -- specifically what I will call from here on out, Asian queer male sex -- and how us as cishet women understand, digest, and possibly even judge this sex.

Shan referred to a phenomenon this week that some of us drama clowns saw percolating across our dashes: that Boston's encounter with Top in episode 2 of Only Friends was being described in some circles as an assault.

Shan does a great job to explain a very important point: the interpretation of that scene is dependent on the lens from which that scene is viewed. For instance, a non-Asian cishet female gaze on that scene might very well interpret that scene as a potential assault. A non-Asian cishet female might be using her social understanding of the rules and boundaries of sexual engagement that she embodies and has been raised with throughout her life to come to that interpretation.

What Shan delves into is the importance of identifying what your specific lens is before passing judgment on that scene and other scenes of Asian queer male sex in Only Friends. And, Shan suggests -- hey, try stepping out of that lens for a hot second, and give another interpretation a shot.

In other words: if you are a white, American, cisgender heterosexual female -- and you are watching a show about an Asian queer male community -- by checking your lens in watching this show, you can begin to understand that you may not have the familiarity, the comfort level, and the coded language (verbal and non-verbal) fluency to fully interpret what is being communicated and depicted in totality in this show.

Asian queer male sex looks and behaves vastly differently than sex for cishet females. The language used to engage in Asian queer male sex, the assumptions made about how sex comes about between two or more people, the way sex is approached, the way sex is talked about among friends -- is wildly, vastly different from the way cishet women engage in and about sex.

You know who knows a lot about this? The 100% Asian queer male writing and directing team behind Only Friends. Jojo Tichakorn, Ninew Pinya, Den Panuwat, and Best Kittisak are all Asian queer males. They are the team -- the artists, the darlings, the ASIAN QUEER MEN -- who are giving us this show.

If you a regular reader around here, you'll know that I gave y'all a little homework before Only Friends premiered.

I asked y'all to watch Gay OK Bangkok.

Jojo Tichakorn and Backaof Noppharnach's Gay OK Bangkok, to be exact.

Just like Only Friends: Gay OK Bangkok was about Asian queer men. It was about Asian queer men having sex. Asian queer men having relationships. Having throuples. Dealing with relationship problems. Dealing with HIV. Dealing with dating. Getting tested. Dealing with their jobs and salaries. Dealing with heartache. Experiencing joys of first love. Being there for their heartbroken friends.

Gay OK Bangkok showed us life's joys and life's ugliness -- through the eyes and experiences of out, gay, Asian queer males.

Gay OK Bangkok was VERY GAY AND VERY ASIAN.

We are so lucky to have Gay OK Bangkok as a reference for understanding how sex comes about in Only Friends. Gay OK Bangkok gave us insight into the language that Asian queer males use -- again, verbal and non-verbal -- to engage in sex. It showed friends taking men away from each other for the purposes of romance and sex. It showed hook-ups, drinking, partying, dating. It showed Asian queer males waking up in bed with multiple men. It showed Asian queer males waking up with a man next to them, and maybe not knowing that guy's name. It depicted only Asian queer males doing this.

What Shan asks us to do, when we're watching Only Friends -- or other shows about Asian queer males having love and sex, which are all of our BLs from Asia -- is to understand that if we are cishet women watching these shows, that we are NOT Asian queer males, and we have to check ourselves to not bring our own judgments of how we ourselves engage with sex and love, because we do that differently than Asian queer males.

We can learn about how Asian queer males have sex through our shows. Through Gay OK Bangkok, through Jojo's magnificent The Warp Effect, and through another show that I highly recommend -- that many people thought was problematic, and which I thought was one of the best BLs I have ever seen: Make It Right and Make It Right 2.

Let me tell you about my experience watching Make It Right. Again: cishet Asian female mama here. I knew, going into 2016's Make It Right, that it was known infamously for starting with what a majority of the BL audience called a "problematic" start. The two main protagonist couples, Tee/Fuse, and Frame/Book, start out their sexual experiences in a way that cishet females may call "dubious." Tee first sleeps with Fuse when Fuse is drunk. Frame sleeps with Book after Book messages Frame on a chat app -- Frame goes into Book's room and jumps on Book's body.

Make It Right was written and directed by two Asian queer males: New Siwaj (Until We Meet Again, A Boss and a Babe, etc.) and Cheewin Thanamin (Bed Friend, Why R U, Secret Crush On You, etc.)

When I was watching Make It Right, I messaged my dear friend @bengiyo in a kind of wonderment. I wrote to him, literally, "Sooooo -- I am REALLY LIKING Make It Right so far." Almost as if I wasn't supposed to like it, for all the times I had read about its infamous reputation.

Ben wrote back to me, and he wrote such a compelling, gorgeous message, that I had to center my review of Make It Right around that message. He wrote:

"[New and Cheewin] understand that many early sexual experiences [for boys] are with other boys. And Make It Right asks what life could be if they just didn't turn against each other for it."

Let me tell you something. I would not have ever gotten that on my own as a cishet female. I needed to talk to a queer elder to understand the entire depth of what I was watching in MIR and MIR2.

I wrote in my review of Make It Right that the "problematic" nature of how TeeFuse and FrameBook needed to be contextualized from the perspective of Asian queer males. The word "problematic" here is a judgment. In fact -- for MANY Asian queer males -- drunken hook-ups might be a common way in which one is first exposed to sex. And through Make It Right, New and Cheewin showed us how young Asian queer males -- who are coming to terms with themselves, their minds, their bodies, and their attraction to others -- manage these exposures for the first time.

It was gorgeous to watch. And to learn. And to be exposed to a new-to-me culture of sex and love that I was wholly unfamiliar with as an Asian-American cishet woman.

I want my fellow cishet women who are watching Only Friends to understand that you are in the very BEST hands in Jojo Tichakorn and Ninew Pinya to watch some parts of a culture of Asian queer male sex unfold before your eyes. Like I said before, Jojo has a track record of creating shows about sex that we can trust, in Gay OK Bangkok, in The Warp Effect, and more. Only Friends is going to get into tough, very tough territory -- territory that will include Asian queer men having sex with other Asian queer men, often in scenarios that one might want to jump to judge negatively. I trust Jojo implicitly and explicitly in his storytelling -- in this instance, in stories rooted in toxic behavior -- because he's earned my trust in his past shows.

Before you pass judgment about the sex that you will see in Only Friends, no matter the context: understand that what you're watching comes first and foremost from the perspective of Asian queer males, as written and presented for a majority Asian audience. There are going to be nuances you will miss. (I'll miss them, too.) There will be verbal and body language you will not understand. That is okay. But before you pass any negative judgment: check yourself, check your lenses, check your privileges, and hold yourself accountable before you pass judgment on anything you see.

This got long, but let me suggest -- no, let me exhort you -- to please do your homework while Only Friends is still airing.

1 ) Read @bengiyo's incredible post about Loving Queer Men. Listen and THINK when Ben asks you: do you love queer men when queer men are ugly, or catty, or -- in Boston's case -- horny, or maybe even "cheating"? And ask yourself: from what place/lens/perspective would you call Boston's actions "assault" and/or "cheating"?

2) Read @williamrikers's incredible post about consent among queer men in shows about Asian queer men having sex. This is SUCH an important read, from a queer male perspective, on the sheer joy and delight of watching queer men on screen have sex and depicting queer joy in having queer sex. Root yourself in this lovingness!

3) Watch Gay OK Bangkok.

4) Watch Make It Right and Make It Right 2.

5) Ask yourself what "sex-positive," "accepting," and "accountable" mean to you as a cishet female, especially if you watch shows about Asian queer males, and Asian queer males having sex (and especially Asian queer males having sex outside of relationship settings, and when Asian queer males are having sex with multiple partners, as we are seeing in Only Friends).

6) And finally: if you are a cishet female fan of the shipped pairings of Only Friends, ask yourself if you are truly comfortable watching your favorite Asian actors have fictional sex with other men who are not in their pairings. Ask yourself: "what makes me uncomfortable about this?"

The growth that I have gained from watching Asian BLs -- shows about Asian queer men in love and sex -- has had such a positive impact on my life, that I cannot wait to share this joy and acceptance with my children as they grow up. I will show my children Bad Buddy and The Eclipse. I will show my kids Gay OK Bangkok, so that they may know that there are thriving communities of queer people around the world that we can be allies with. I'm going to teach my kids about acceptance, perspective, and relativity. And to my fellow cishet girlies, I say: it's never too late. I came to BLs when I was already a mom. It's never too late to grow up and into loving and standing up for our queer brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings -- and to afford all communities that are not our own the joy of living their lives freely, without the auspices of judgment and discrimination.

(Special thank yous and shout-outs are in order for @bengiyo, @neuroticbookworm, and @wen-kexing-apologist for reading this through and offering insight. Thank you, dear friends.)

#only friends #only friends the series #gay ok bangkok #make it right #make it right 2 #jojo tichakorn #ninew pinya #den panuwat #best kittisak #asian queer sex #asian queer love #queer love #lgbtq+#the warp effect

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gemistar-888 · 2 months

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Make It Right 2 Ohm Pawat Toey Sittiwat

#asia #actor #singer #thailand #thai bl #thai series #gmmtv #Make It Right 2 #ohm pawat #toey sittiwat

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rocketturtle4 · 10 months

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Make it Right 1&2: It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it – my reflection on the show as a newbie.

In brief: I am attempting to understand how Thai BL has changed, and just generally catch up, by watching ABL’s understand the history of Thai bl list on the Thai master post. I’m more interested in the growth and change of shows and characters (and tropes) than the tracking of different actors/directors, although I enjoy reading about those things. I am concurrently understanding the history of all BL by watching the Foundation Syllabus lists as well. Not everything has been or will be reviewed. These are my own thoughts, I am not expecting everyone or even anyone to agree.

Also, the only Thai BL I have watched older than 2019 were the earlier parts of those lists (Love of Siam, Love Sick 1 & 2 (BL cut) and SOTUS, SOTUS S + Our Skyy). I have only seen about a dozen younger ones, hency why I am watching these lists. Everything is fairly new.

The Good

This main story, about boys falling in love and leaning into those relationships in a way that isn’t necessarily reflective of reality but instead shows what life might look like if young men leaned in rather than out, was GREAT. @bengiyo I really appreciated this lense.

I absolutely want to start here because the relationships of Frame&Book, Tee&Fuse, Yok&Mo and even Rottung&Nine were exciting and engaging stories told across one or both seasons. They were old with a meaningful rawness that @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles both discuss in their posts about Make It Right 1 & 2. The characters journeys and choices felt real to a world where men aren't as forced away from each other and themselves by societal and peer pressure.

I went in mentally prepared for some of the biggest issues I’d seen mentioned (general cringeyness, alcohol-induced sex, arguably non-consensual sex, and for the second season, depression and suicide). I had skimmed @waitmyturtles post about season 1 and @lurkingshan's post about season 1, and I was looking forward to the show

Some highlights:

The friendships (I absolutely LOVE boys who are besties with some boys and in love with others. The idea that you can’t be friends with members of the genders you’re attracted to is dumb. The idea that boys shouldn’t support each other and talk about their lives with each other is dumb. I love that this show and others are repping it for genuine and meaningful friendhsips.)

The main relationships especially Frame&Book. (see @lurkinshan’s post about season 2 in particular for excellent recaps, I’m not going to go into details).

Actual quotes I sent to @waitmyturtles while watching:

Frame just told Book that he's a beautiful star whether far away or up close and I'm ACTUALLY DYING FROM THE SWEETNESS

Tee set a ringtone just for Fuse RIP Myself

Tee just CHECKED WITH HIS BOYFRIEND BEFORE CALLING JEAN HIS GIRLFRIEND. My man, how obvious can one be!

Frame: if I'm going to open my heart, I want it to be with you, Me: 💀

Tee and Fuse just EXCHANGED METAPHORICAL HEARTS.

You get the idea

Ohm (that’s it that’s the highlight)

Fuse’s chaotic bi-ness. You kind of want to shake him by the middle of season 2, but it’s also just so fun to watch.

The Struggle

What I wasn’t prepared for, was how much I had to work to love this show.

Frequently throughout season 1, and the first half of season 2, I had to keep asking myself:

Why am I uncomfortable? Why am I uncomfortable? Why am I uncomfortable?

And sometimes, it took multiple episodes of discomfort to pinpoint (one of the multiple) reasons I was cringing. It actually got more challenging as I watched, because I’d find a reason, reflect, reframe my thinking (or modify how I watched the show) and get back into it, only to knock into a wall of discomfort again. It was similar to the struggle you might have beginning a good show where something about the start doesn’t quite gel, but over and over and over again.

Investment

investment

off.

Investment

investment

off.

Rinse and repeat.

FRUSTRATING.

(I literally wandered off between episodes 6 & 7 of MIR 2 to go watch all of What Did You Eat Yesterday (before watching tokyo in april is...)(twas great) just to get a break. Then I read some season 2 recaps from @lurkingshan here and @waitmyturtles here and decided that yes, it was worth the effort) - the last 5 or s episodes were totally worth it FYI

So here are some things I struggled with:

(In writing this reflection, I’ve found some had intertwined or central causes I didn’t notice at the time, so hopefully this makes sense.)

Frame’s overt casualness towards sex (Thinking reframed after S1 Episode 6 I think)

Frame initially felt very predatory to my teenage conditioning. I already made a post about it. It got better after episode 6, but I don’t know if that was because I fixed my brain or if Fuse became less overtly sexual since he started pursuing Book.

(Side note, even before I figured out the problem, I was so pleased with his ability to talk about sex with a medical professional in S1 Ep5, and that was a weird discordance in my brain because the reason Frame was comfortable talking about the issue caused by sex, is because he was comfortable having and talking about sex. Whereas, in my experience, there is this expectation that teenagers (and adults) should be comfortable having these conversations regardless of their experience or comfort with sex in other contexts. Which you should be able to talk to a doctor but you can't just switch tracks in your brain so easily.)

I thought I hated all the girls on the show (I was wrong, but that was my original conclusion)

it was this point that caused me the longest discomfort because WHY? What was I reacting to? Jean was meh, Jiang (Fuse’s sister) was fine (this was pre-introduction of Jean’s not a bestie and Tee’s Mum). Christina was great. What was I reacting to??

It turns out that it’s because both Lily and Yok’s mum are adult women acting in ways that felt predatory to me. I actively hated the show anytime one of them appeared on screen, and that was not a fun emotional response to have.

Lily: I am not sure how old this character was supposed to be, but she’s not in school, and she was tricking Wit into giving her his number and then seemed to be stalking him.

Yok’s mum: She comes across a random teenage girl (who she knows NOTHING ABOUT) and approaches her to PAY HER TO SEDUCE HER SON.

Honestly, Yok’s mum was the worst since Lilly was barely in it. The weird storyline with Wit in the second season also felt very odd. Plus, I found it super confusing that she was this dictating overbearing parent and yet when she was injured, Yok just casually started ordering her to stay home and have Wit take care of her, and she just…agreed (am I missing something?)

Jean: To be honest, she didn’t bother me nearly as much. She was a manipulative teenager who wanted the cool older boyfriend while keeping her nice safe boy on the hook, classic 1-dimensional teenage girl, easy to ignore.

I have no idea what happened with Lily or Yok’s mum in the latter part of season 2. I started actively skipping whenever they appeared on the screen. It did wonders for my engagement because hating anytime they appeared on the screen seriously impacted my viewing experience.

I’d have preferred they didn’t show up at all

The characters are young. (reframed mid season 2)

Shocking the teenagers in high school are, in fact, teenagers who’d have thunk it? But when it turned out Book had had sex two years earlier, my brain was like, WAIT, WHAT? How old are these characters right now? I’d been assuming about 16, which turned out to be accurate (they are in the 11th grade in s2, making them probably 16 at the start of season 2), which means Book’s sex tape is when he was 14. Now do I personally know people who became sexually active at 14? Yes. Does it kind of weird me out on a personal level because at 14 I hadn’t even hit puberty? ABSOLUTELY (seriously, people thought I was like…9).

A father in a story I once read (yes, it was a fanfic) said something like this to his underage son:

“Yes 18 is an arbitrary line, past the point many teenagers are ready, but isn’t it better for the one’s who aren’t ready to be protected by the law even at the cost of you having to wait?”

And my uh ?19? year old self latched onto that idea with a retrospectively concerning lack of nuance.

However, that idea is very black and white on one hand, and patently unrealistic on another. Understanding that teenagers, even teenagers as young as 14/15, like Book was with his first boyfriend, do in fact, have sex is something I still find kind of confusing because of how completely uninterested I was about such things in highschool. (Especially at 14). But that doesn’t make it less true or less okay. Teenagers can have healthy sex lives and that’s okay (is a mantra I repeated to myself…more than once)

Yes it is becoming clear to me that most of my hangups are apparently around sex, hence this reflection.

Sex workers being friends with teenagers and suggesting sex with them (early season 1) - can teenagers have casual sex? (reframed here, now)

I was surprised by this one because I had made a conscious effort to dismantle inherent biases I harboured towards sex workers as a concept some years ago, and it was something that didn’t bother me at all when I watched 3 Will Be Free in May of this year. (Yay for growth)

Yet, when an adult women suggested Frame come back to her apartment, my brain went: WHAT NO! (seriously, my brain when WHAT NO so often it was exhausting)

I think this underlies a lot of the discomfort I felt with points 1, 2, & 3 on this list. While I have little to no issue with ADULTS having casual sex, Teenagers having casual sex, especially with Adults, is something that I’m not okay with being depicted (and I don’t mean consciously but unconsciously). Throw in some romantic feelings and I’m apparently fine (I love my age gap BL), but casual and that’s suddenly not okay?

I haven’t really settled on how I feel about this intellectually one way or another and the ambiguity of it all makes it hard to reframe this one properly. At what point does someone become an adult is not a question I’m suddenly going to be able to answer, especially because my personal experience of being a late bloomer biases me towards the older, the better. Also how I feel about it being depicted on TV is not the same as how I would feel about it in real life. However, the fact that (to my unconsciousness) it’s okay if romantic feelings are involved feels a little hypocritical. (If you click on the link @absolutebl talks about age gap issues in the context of Minato's laundromat (scroll down past epiosde 8, I had previously read this and it helped me when I was thinking this through)

I think this one comes from a place of some realism rather than exclusively sex-negative conditioning, which makes it harder to traverse. Adult’s brains are more developed, and an inherent power balance is involved when one party is relatively independent, and the other is not. I think I unconsciously believe romantic feelings reduce this power imbalance...not totally sure though.

The Crassness of it all (A constant and ongoing reframing of my brain)

Other things that made me cringe: (Shockingly these are largely about sex again)

Sex with strange women in the bathroom (Frame and Book early season 1) (also, they appeared to be adult women, sooo back to point 4)

Hooking up with strangers for sex (Frame and Book early season 1)

The forced sexual encounter (this one’s not on me) (Frame and Book early Season 1)

Lukmo and Yok exchanging numbers while taking dumps in the bathroom (early season 2)

Lukmo and Yok dream sex scene and actual sex scene (I don’t think this one is on me) (late season 2)

Boys watch porn in groups (do they actually this keeps coming up in shows?) (is there anything wrong with this if they do, other than how uncomfy it makes me to imagine…no)

These aren’t necessarily bad things, just things that made it harder for me to watch and that’s what I’m reflecting on so…

The inherent Misogyny

I had the exact same problem with Love Sick, so I wasn’t really fussed about this one. I just thought it was SO STUPID that Fuse was only able to justify breaking up with Jean after she’d been a bad person. Like if she was a good person, he would have to stay with her BECAUSE SHE’S A HELPLESS GIRL.

This was just adding insult to injury.

But real talk, Het relationships ARE often framed this way and it didn’t feel unrealistic to how boys may actually think/feel/have been taught so I wasn’t really mad about it specifically.

Why have I shared all this?

Because I think some people may struggle with Make It Right for more ingrained and complicated reasons than they realise. The obvious answers of non-consent, ‘bad’ humour and general messiness are right there as perfectly acceptable reasons not to watch.

Yet I prepared for that going in and I still had a really hard time watching this show.

I've watched higher heat BLs before, I'm not really sure why this one was so different. @lurkingshan comments on the rawness of the show in her post about season 2, maybe that's part of it? It felt less removed from my life I suppose, previous TV genres I have watched are basically fantasy and anime so I don't tend to watch shows with a strong sense of realism. Perhaps thiis one hit me more because it felt more real?

My hangups aren’t anybody else’s, but there is more societal pressure on girls to be chaste, to be demur, to be careful or wary of sex, at least in Christian cultures (Sex Negativity, it’s not fun). I already knew I internalised those messages more than most teenagers (Something I very much struggled with growing up is that young people are often taught with extreme messaging because ‘it’s the only way to get though to them’ and I’m a very literal person and I was very naïve on top of that so it tended to “affect me more than it was supposed to” (to quote an actual conversation I had with my mum)). (Example of this in a different context was learning about the dangers of alcohol when I was 12 and I went home and cried to my 19 year old brother because I thought he’d die from the occasional parties he went to…it sounds crazy but I was distraught).

But I think an argument could be made for less strong reactions to some of these same problems, negatively affecting the viewing experience for other people, especially a majority audience of young women. I think part of the reason I could identify the causes of my discomfort were because they were so strong. A Low-level buzz of ‘uhh, I don’t really like this’ is much less likely to make someone go: okay, but why?

(Side note, this has caused me to realise how much I haven’t reacted to sex negativity in shows like UWMA, I read about it as a concept later and thought: Oh, yeah, that is bad, but I did not even notice it while I was watching and I did not even notice that my lack of noticing might be a problem until now so…yeah…not good)

Final Thoughts: What did I think of Make It Right?

I adored the relationships.

I loved the friendships.

I enjoyed how much it forced me to reflect on my ingrained biases. It was growth and learning, sometimes more than I wanted, but growing is something I want to keep doing for the rest of my life.

But it was hard work.

Overall, I do recommend it, but only if you’re prepared to think about yourself, your feelings, the WHY of it all while you watch.

(also, you might just not like it for more obvious reasons and that’s okay too).

Rating: Season 1 76%, Season 2 79% Middling Recommendations

Next up: Love by Chance (Thai List)

Or: Wish You (Korea) (FS)

Savvy?

#make it right #make it right 2 #long post #rturts is wondering #rocketturtle4 catches up #Rocket4Reviews

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absolutebl · 2 years

Photo

pretty shots in BL

picturesque urbanity

Love By Chance (Thailand)

He’s Coming to Me (Thailand)

Seven Days (Japan)

My Esports Genius Brother (China)

Not Me (Thailand)

Gen Y 2 (Thailand)

Why R U? (Thailand)

Dear Doctor I’m Coming for your Soul (Thailand)

Make it Right 2 (Thailand)

Just Friends? (Korea)

#thai BL #Love By Chance #Seven Days #japanese bl #adapted from a yaoi #live action yaoi #adapted from a manga #My Esports Genius Brother #chinese bl #Not Me #Not Me the series #Gen Y 2 #Why R U?#Dear Doctor I’m Coming for your Soul #Make it Right 2 #Just Friends?#Thai BLKorean BL #Korean BL #make it right

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lurkingshan · 1 year

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Make it Right 2

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this show that I'm struggling to decide where to start. I guess the best place is my overall impressions, which haven't changed since I finished the first series: I LOVE THIS SHOW AND I WILL DEFEND THESE CHARACTERS TO ANYONE. Fight me!

Now real talk, does this show have high production quality, smart writing and plotting, sharp editing, scene construction, and overall narrative consistency and coherence? No, it does not. It has none of those things, and a lot of them have gotten markedly worse from the first season. But all that barely phased me because the characters just hooked themselves right into my heart and wouldn't let go. This show is very very messy, but in the most lovable way ("LIKE GAY PEOPLE" - @bengiyo).

There were three main storylines that I was invested in for this second season. I will talk about them in order of least to most emotional investment. @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist @manogirl tagging you to come back to this later after you finish your watches because I want to talk about ALL OF THIS. For anyone reading - major spoilers from here on out!!

Yok & Lukmo

Boy, I did not expect this romance, and I really liked it. Which came as a surprise, because I did not care much about Mo in the first series. I was more invested in Yok, but in season 1 he felt kind of removed from everyone else, which was of course by design. He felt apart from the other boys because he is different. And it was just really really lovely to see a femme gay character get to embrace who he is and be loved for it. I like that he was wary of Mo and tested him for awhile before he let him in, and that Mo did waver a bit when he was first challenged on whether he really was okay being in a gay relationship. That felt authentic to me, and only made it feel more solid when they came back together with Mo more confident in what he wanted. I also liked that in the end Yok's mom stepped up to take her kid's side and express her acceptance of who he is and his relationship - it was very sweet.

I do have to deduct some points here for that very tonally bizarre sex scene that got tacked on to the end of their story. The way that scene was directed, shot, and edited just didn't feel in line with their dynamic at all, and I spent most of it thinking we were in some kind of weird dream sequence. I did find it amusing though that these two were better with physical intimacy in their one scene than the leads ever managed across two full seasons.

Frame & Book

My beloveds!! They were my favorite part of season 1, and I still loved them here, though I think the show faltered a lot on their storyline in season 2. The ideas behind their arc - Book working through some past relationship trauma, dealing with the fallout of Book's public violation, Frame struggling to hang in as Book pushed him away - were all good. But the execution was pretty spotty. The entire arc needed some clearer storyboarding and a pacing and sequencing revamp. The choppy editing this season felt most evident to me in this storyline, where I often felt like scenes came abruptly out of nowhere or felt out of sequence, and emotional swings happened too fast to be believable. And I didn't love where the show ultimately took some of the resolutions with the ex-boyfriend (and the teacher who was apparently inviting his students for group sex parties??) but I can't say they aren't in line with this show's overall forgiving attitude toward whatever these boys get up to.

All that said, at the core of this storyline was Frame and Book struggling to endure a traumatic event together, figuring out how they need to show up for each other in those moments, and learning from their mistakes to become better communicators. All of that worked and fit the characters really well. I believed that Book would totally shut down and push Frame out in the face of public humiliation and deep shame. I believed Frame would try and try and try to get through to him but also experience moments of weakness where he would be tempted to just say fuck it and go back to the easier path of casual hookups. And though a lot of the journey to get there was sloppily executed, I believed that they would ultimately come out of that mess more committed and in love than before (I could have done without all the wedding talk though, they are 16 people!).

Fuse & Tee

And here we come to the arc that frustrated and thrilled me in equal measure. FUSE YOU ABSOLUTE WANKER I WANT TO YEET YOU OFF A CLIFF AND ALSO GIVE YOU A GIANT HUG. I was deep in my feelings about this story all season. Fuse made me so mad, Tee made me so sad, and they both made me so happy in the end when they finally figured out their shit.

As we discussed in the clown server, Fuse's storyline feels very familiar to a lot of early Thai bl. His inability to let go of his shitty girlfriend and his constant wavering between Jean and Tee was reminiscent of Phun in Love Sick (and would also be a dynamic repeated in other shows like Together with Me). The key difference for me, and what made it comparably more upsetting than in Love Sick, is that unlike Noh, Tee did not have his own other relationship to deal with or any ambivalence about whether he wanted to actually be together. Tee only wanted Fuse, and wanted commitment and fidelity from him, and watching Tee get increasingly depressed as he tried to be happy just getting what he could from Fuse, caught in a cycle of getting hope and then being rejected again, was so painful. And while he might not have been fully aware of how selfish and cruel he was being at first, eventually Fuse definitely saw how this was affecting Tee and came to understand he was the cause, and he still didn't stop fucking with him! I was so angry with him around the midpoint of the season, I just wanted Tee to dump him and start dating his little friend.

What made it all so much harder to swallow is that Jean and Fuse's relationship was so mild. THEY DON'T EVEN LIKE EACH OTHER. Fuse does not want to touch or kiss her - that was established way back at the beginning of season 1. They go long stretches where they don't even talk to each other until one of them remembers the other exists. Jean has a whole other boyfriend that she seems to have a much deeper relationship with. And this is where the show kind of pissed me off, because the way they turned Jean into an evil manipulative woman stereotype with her pulling this elaborate scheme to pretend her boyfriend was her brother so she could parade around town with him (and even brazenly bring him in front of Fuse!) just felt so false and over the top to me. Why would she bother to do any of that just for the sake of stringing along this boy who isn't even interested in being her boyfriend in any real way? @bengiyo mentioned that his reading of it was she is insecure in her relationship with the older boy and so wants Fuse as a back up, which I could buy to a certain extent, but they really lost me with the lengths she went to. Jean is a very pretty girl who will no doubt have another boyfriend in a week; all this just to hang on to Fuse? I didn't buy it.

And that's a problem because it made it harder to understand why the hell Fuse was having such a hard time letting go of her, and why he was willing to hurt Tee so much in the process. I think if he genuinely liked Jean and had a deeper relationship with her, that would have worked better for me. As it was, he just seemed like a coward, and the way he kept rejecting Tee and then still trying to have his way with him after was infuriating. When he told Tee he was breaking up with him and staying with Jean, and then still tried to get him to sleep with him after, that's when I was ready to strangle this kid. And some of this I can rationalize as him not being ready to firmly commit to being out in a gay relationship and needing Jean as a kind of shield and safety blanket, but if that was the intent I think the show muddied the message a bit by having literally everyone already know about Tee and Fuse. That horse was long out of the barn before Fuse finally did something about Jean.

To the show's credit, it knows exactly how awful Fuse was throughout this entire debacle, and the last segment of their arc is all about Fuse recognizing it himself and atoning for his behavior with Tee. I love that we saw him apologize to Tee with increasing sincerity. I love that we saw him finally be the one to pursue Tee and make his feelings clear, and that Tee actually made him work for it. I loved that we had multiple episodes of Fuse trying to work up the courage to ask Tee to be his faen, and that Tee knew what was happening and enjoyed watching Fuse flounder. My absolute favorite scene was Fuse finally breaking down and confessing to Tee at the beach (with a little help from best bro Lukmo) - that he knows he was wrong, that he knows he was selfish, that he understands what Tee means to him now, that he loves him and wants to be with him and he's ready to commit to that. And Tee, because he is a kind and generous person who has been patiently waiting for this all along, immediately forgave him and responded in kind. It was so emotionally cathartic and satisfying, and felt very much earned after that loooooong journey through the mess. More than anything else I felt so proud of Fuse, and so happy for Tee, and I believed they would be solid from that point on. I didn't even need the sweet little epilogue to feel that way, but I was delighted to get it (and a direct homage to Love Sick with Fuse putting his hand over the camera lens as he leaned over to kiss his boyfriend).

Final thoughts

As I wrapped up my watch I have been reflecting on why this show is not as beloved in fandom as something like Love Sick. Why does it not seem to have the same nostalgic pull? Why don't people (other than @absolutebl and @bengiyo) talk about it as much as other classic Thai bls? And the only thing I can think of is that it's too raw for most of the bl audience. And I mean raw in every sense - the production, the acting, the emotions, the inexperience and naivete and even the physicality of the characters. Nothing particularly sophisticated is happening here, and nothing is smoothed over. If you want to love these characters, you have to love them through all the bad decisions and fucked up choices and flaws run wild. You have to love them when they're ugly as much as when they're beautiful. And I think that's hard for a lot of the audience that just wants to see sweet love stories. But I am here for it and so glad I finally got to watch this.

#make it right #make it right 2 #thai bl #i wish more people would watch this #hit me up if you need help finding the right links i am here for you #shan shouts into the void

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