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absolutebl · 7 months

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

You ready to go hunting?

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

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

Trigger warnings throughout.

The true beginnings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few other unknowns, for the queer babies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beloved Enemy,

The Fairy Fox,

Mr. CEO is Falling in Love with Him.

Honestly these 3 are basically the uncanny valley of BLs.

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

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

More Queer Stuff about BL from moi

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

Will BL Get More Honestly Queer?

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

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

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

BL in Taiwan & Gay Marriage

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

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

So is it really fetishization? straight women loving bl

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

BLs That Highlight How Society Treats Queers

10 BLs That Are Honest to a Queer Experience

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

Happy watching!

(source)

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waitmyturtles · 6 months

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SOME GOOD SHOWS THAT I LIKED IN 2023! (AND SOME THAT I DIDN'T)

I watched A LOT of stuff that did not originally air in 2023 by dint of my Old GMMTV Challenge. This list is inclusive of this recognition!

THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: HE'S COMING TO ME

I have no other words: this is my favorite Thai BL of all time. Perfect length, perfect plot, perfect celebration of Thai culture, perfect acting, the greatest coming out scene of all time, the BEST of the best BL moms. Perfection.

THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THIS YEAR: BAD BUDDY

I don't even want to think about how many words I've written on Bad Buddy this year, but they're well deserved for this REMARKABLE show. I've got a thing for shows by Aof Noppharnach that feature Ohm Pawat, what can I say!

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL SHOW(S) I WATCHED THIS YEAR: LOVE SICK AND SOTUS

The influence of Love Sick and SOTUS can be seen in SO MANY Thai BLs, even through today. Without having watched these two shows to start my OGMMTVC project, I wouldn't have the context for what later shows like Bad Buddy and Theory of Love were commenting on by way of their content and structures. Love Sick in particular was a HELL of a lift -- but I am damn glad I watched it, and I certainly feel nostalgia for it today.

Honorable mentions of influential pieces that had impacts on Thai BLs: Love of Siam and Dew the Movie

MY OTHER FAVORITE OLD SHOWS I WATCHED: UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN AND THEORY OF LOVE

BANGERS!!!

If New Siwaj ever tops Until We Meet Again, I'll fly to Bangkok and give him a gold medal. That long-ass show, 17 EPISODES, I WANTED MORE! OhmFluke's chemistry was great, the story delved SO deeply into historical homophobia and how culture and acceptance changes over time -- scrumptious. Theory of Love, man, the way this show ate up implicit compassion bias and gave it right back to us. I loved it. KHAI FOREVER!

THE BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: MOONLIGHT CHICKEN

Not only was Moonlight Chicken my first real live fandom experience on Tumblr, it was a hell of an amazing show, incorporating so much of what I love particularly about Thai BLs, and how many Thai BLs do not shy away from celebrating Asian cultural touchpoints. From exploring Jim's internalized homophobia by way of his rural upbringing, to juxtaposing Pattaya's spiritual symbols with growing development that upends older strains of local culture, Moonlight Chicken offered a lovely commentary on what it means to be queer in an ever-changing Thailand.

THE OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY?/KINOU NANI TABETA? SEASON 2

BRILLIANTLY ACTED by literally the best actors in the Asian BL game: we are blessed that Nishijima Hidetoshi and Uchino Seiyou have given so much to this franchise. It's hard to write about this show because it's so perfect -- it needs no extraneous words. Plot, pacing, acting, character development, gratuitous food shots. It has it all.

THE OTHER OTHER BEST SHOW I WATCHED THAT ACTUALLY AIRED IN 2023: I CANNOT REACH YOU

Just like Bad Buddy looked at Thai BL tropes in the eye and said, "over my Nong Nao," I Cannot Reach You asked Japanese BLs about the efficacy of almost every trope we've gotten used to, and questioned them with efficiency. The biggest shocker for me? REAL COMMUNICATION, encouraged by the CIPHER, Hosaka, that allowed the two lead protagonists to confirm their love and understand each other. It was straightforward and FUCKING GOOD.

A SHOW THAT AIRED IN 2023 THAT I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ABOUT YET, THAT I NEED TO REWATCH IN CHRONOLOGY, THAT ALSO DID SOME TROPE/GENRE ASS-KICKING THAT I'M STILL THINKING ABOUT: LA PLUIE

La Pluie was FEARLESS. The show had a LOT to say about romance and soulmates not being as much of a realistic thing as content-makers... and, frankly, majority society would like us to think. La Pluie made its characters WORK for love and understanding, and had us viewers face our implicit biases about how romantic content should and could work. I watched this show out of order of the OGMMTVC watchlist to see it it was one of the best of the year, and it certainly is. I'm planning a deep rewatch for early 2024 to pen my words on it.

A SHOW THAT ALMOST TOPPED MY 2023 LIST BUT GOT DOCKED BECAUSE I ENDED UP LIKING THE NOVEL A LOT BETTER: I FEEL YOU LINGER IN THE AIR

@neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan know that I flipped THA FUCK out over this show -- FABULOUSLY acted by Nonkul Chanon and Bright Rapheephong, FABULOUS cinematography, great story up until the end of the series. My fangirling led me to read the original novel by Violet Rain, and -- I found out that Jom was a lot more damn sassy than we got in the show! Tee Bundit's penchant for sadness won. This is not to dock the show, but the novel had more than enough material to carry the series through without repeating themes in the end. So it fell on my 2023 list, womp womp. BUT I STILL LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS SHOW, DON'T GET ME WRONG.

TWO SHOWS THAT I'M SUPER GLAD I CAUGHT UP WITH WHILE THEY WERE AIRING: THE EIGHTH SENSE AND BE MY FAVORITE

Be My Favorite looked at Krist Perawat's checkered past as a BL idol and said: we are going to examine this and make an honest BL out of inspiration from it. It wasn't a perfect show, the time travel shit didn't end up adding up in the end, BUT -- excellent acting from two GMMTV VETS made up for those tangles, and I loved the contextual philosophical references throughout the series. The Eighth Sense looked at the tug-of-war that Korean BLs have with K-dramas and their tropes and said, actually? We will have these dudes full-frontal kiss, and placed that energy against commentaries on mental health, both topics that Korea hasn't quite embraced as quickly as other countries.

HONORABLE MENTIONS OF OTHER AWESOME SHOWS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE AIRED IN 2023

Make It Right, Our Dating Sim, Dark Blue Kiss, Gay OK Bangkok, Dirty Laundry, 10 Years Ticket, I Told Sunset About You, I Promised You the Moon, 3 Will Be Free, Lovely Writer (underrated?!), Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars (UNDERRATED!), and Manner of Death.

And the shows that are airing that I know will stay with me well into 2024: Last Twilight and Cherry Magic Thailand.

I had fun!

WHAT ELSE, WHAT ELSE: THE "NO" SHOWS: THE PROMISE AND STEP BY STEP

I'm not even hyperlinking my thoughts on these shows, nor gifting them with gifs. Insert Bugs Bunny NOOOOOO gif here! We got Man Trisanu, though.

THE SHOW I WAS THE MOST OBVIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED BY: ONLY FRIENDS

Despite my passionate disappointment for this show and how it ended: in the context of the OGMMTVC, Only Friends is still an incredibly important inclusion to the list. Some amazing Tumblr bloggers offered commentary that the bias against sex that OF contained within the show was actually importantly and culturally contextual to the still-conservative state of acceptance that Thailand is currently in (here and here for more reading).

Only Friends reminded us that despite any kind of marketing that we here on Tumblr, as a majority non-Thai audience, may receive about a Thai show -- that we are still not fully plugged into the non-verbal expectations of what a show like OF could promise to do, and to be okay when it doesn't reach those heights. In light of the seemingly pro-sex marketing blasts that previewed the series before its airing, OF ultimately seemed to want to take casual sex, chew it up, and spit it out. There might be reasons why that happened that we just don't know about as outsiders to Thailand. But as an Asian-American viewer that was hoping for neutral -- and maybe even supportive -- commentary on single folks having casual sex without judgement, OF did not deliver for me.

I'm ending the year reading Dr. Thomas Baudinette's book, Boys Love Media in Thailand, the first book-length ethnographic study on the impact of BL on queerness, media, and more in Thailand and across Asia. Baudinette comes from the world of Japanese queer media studies -- as someone who came to Thai BLs this year from Japanese BLs, I appreciate his trajectory. It's clearly a necessity for me to read this book in the context of the OGMMTVC, to understand how Thai BLs have changed over time, and to understand the incredibly larger impact of heterosexual/heteronormative media and themes on Thai media as a whole, as larger and larger swaths of Thai, Asian, and international societies welcome and watch BLs with open arms.

All of this feeds into my ever-growing body of knowledge about the impact of Thai BLs, both in Thailand and across Asia, as Baudinette writes about, and how these shows have and are developed/developing over time. It's been an AMAZING YEAR of watching old and new dramas for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the genre grows even more in 2024.

I also made AMAZING FRIENDS on Tumblr -- y'all know who you are! What a year of growth and discovery for me: this has been a fabulous experience, and I'm looking forward to even more growth in the new year!

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lurkingshan · 4 months

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Intergenerational Trauma Challenge - 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us

It’s winter and I’m huddled up in my house hiding from the cold weather, so obviously this is the perfect time to tackle another entry on the intergenerational family trauma challenge list. This week I finally watched 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, a Thai drama about Wang, a young man just coming of age who is desperately seeking answers about his father’s death; Sasiwimol, Wang’s very complicated mother who does not want to dig up the past; Inthawut, his father’s best friend who has been hiding from it for years; and Siam, the black hole at the center of this story.

Before I dig into the trauma themes, let me just say that this show is excellent, if not for everyone. It has a very intentional style that makes it feel like a stage play—the writer is a playwright—and it’s basically eight episodes of very intense conversations. It’s not a romance and there’s an intellectualism in the writing that I found kept me at an emotional remove from the characters even as I marveled at how well crafted the dialogue is. And the dialogue is very important, which is why the translation of this drama is much stronger than we typically get from Thai productions—the words matter. It’s also loaded with visual metaphors and is all around beautiful to look at, and the three main performers are fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes theater, stories about complicated families, or beautiful and talented actors showing their work. And more than anything else, this show does incredibly strong thematic work and its messaging is on point: this is a story about how noble idiocy ruins lives.

So, with that said, onto the trauma! Spoilers ahead, and I am assuming anyone reading past this point has watched the show. Some themes you’ll see in this one: taboo, denial of queer identity, homophobia, filial piety, and lots of emotional manipulation. Shoutout to @bengiyo and @twig-tea for reading this to make sure I didn’t miss anything in this complex story.

There are two main sources of intergenerational trauma radiating down toward Wang: the absence of his father, Siam, and his intense relationship with his mercurial mother, Sasiwimol. The story is structured around Wang’s determination to seek answers about Siam—both who he was and how he died. He has grown up knowing a certain story: that his parents met and fell in love in college but divorced when he was young, that his father loved him very much despite not staying with his mother, and that his father was an alcoholic who died in a drunk driving accident. Shortly after his father’s death, his mom put him in boarding school so she could focus on her career and became a weekend parent to him—as she was not around to structure his day to day life, their relationship became more about her taking him on fun adventures and spoiling him when she had time off, treating each other as best friends instead of like a mother and son, and never talking about Siam. He has always suspected there was more to the story of his parents that he was not being told, and as he has grown up, come into his own queerness, and picked up on his mother’s casual homophobia and obsessive devotion to compulsory heteronormativity, his suspicions about the secret his mom was holding became sharper.

Enter Inthawut. Inthawut was Siam’s best friend, and with nothing to go on but a set of old pictures, Wang has an instinctual certainty that he is the key to the secret he’s seeking. And thus he engineers a way for he and his mom to “coincidentally” stumble onto Inthawut’s property and get invited to stay a few days in his isolated home, at which point Wang begins his campaign to figure out what the hell happened between Siam, Sasiwimol, and Inthawut at any cost.

One of the things I find most interesting about this story is how much the plot hinges on Wang going against Asian cultural norms in his pursuit of the truth. He is not respectful to his elders. He does not maintain filial piety and deference to his mother. He refuses to restrain his emotions. Instead, he is pushy and relentless and emotionally manipulative (all tricks we can plainly see he learned from Sasiwimol) and Inthawut doesn’t stand a chance against him. And so, because Wang explicitly acts against these cultural values, the truth comes out and the trauma is no longer suppressed.

And in the end, it’s a simple, if desperately sad story: Siam and Inthawut were in love, but Inthawut was battling internalized homophobia and deep-seeded fear and so he relentlessly pushed Siam away and toward dating and then marrying their friend Sasiwimol. And when Siam, miserable in this heterosexual relationship he never actually wanted, finally snapped and confessed his true feelings, Inthawut rejected him and ran away to study abroad. Inthawut was running due to his own fear, but he also had noble notions of somehow protecting Siam from his own queerness and told himself that if he was gone, Siam would accept his heterosexual life. Of course, that did not happen, and in the fallout of this rejection Siam sank further into alcoholism and died soon after. Inthawut’s reaction was the exact worst fear of all gay people who work up the courage to confess to a friend they have developed feelings for: outright rejection, abandonment, and destruction of the relationship. And in his mind, he did this to Siam “for his own good,” a fairly textbook execution of the noble idiocy trope. In the aftermath, we see how Inthawut has isolated himself, part in penance, part in self-protection, and intellectualized his way to a romantic construction of his own cowardice that he tries to convince Wang is righteous.

But Wang is deeply affected by how the denial of his father’s queerness ruined his life and is absolutely not having any of Inthawut’s self-denying bullshit, and this is where things get messy, as both Wang and Inthuwat seem to start seeing Wang and Siam as interchangeable and they develop an emotional entanglement that is deeply unhealthy, to say the least. Wang wants to understand Siam so badly that he starts to be him, and Inthuwat is so desperate to address his regret and shame that he starts to see Wang as Siam, as well. Wang also uses this attachment as a way to shock his mother and forcefully bring her real feelings about Siam and Inthawut to the surface. Despite Wang’s many loud protestations to the contrary, I don’t believe that he and Inthawut actually love each other. They are using each other to work out their trauma about Siam.

And they’re not the only ones! Sasiwimol seems to have her own psychological confusion about Wang as he relates to Siam, and their dynamic is very strange as a result. She refers to Wang as dua-eeng (and has taught him to do the same with her rather than calling her “mom”), a Thai endearment that literally means “self” but is often used between lovers. They have a very physically affectionate relationship that often had me grimacing in discomfort, and she clearly sees Wang as both a source of pain—because he is so like Siam—and her one source of comfort and happiness. She is a successful woman by any standard, but she’s also desperately lonely, hanging on tight to Wang as her only companion in a way that often veers into overbearing, and deeply wounded by her past with Siam and Inthawut. It was through her own friendship with Inthawut that she pursued Siam in the first place, and she clearly feels betrayed not only by Siam, but by Inthawut, both for getting in the way of her relationship with Siam and for leaving them. Her feelings about both men are complex and the story never fully spells them out, in part because Sasiwimol never does. Determinedly not thinking about what happened between them is a big part of how she copes, along with sublimating her suspicions into homophobia, which she perpetuates quite intentionally in her work via production of heterosexual romance propaganda.

Wang clearly loves his mother even as he is frustrated by her prejudices, her desire to control him, and her tendency toward emotional manipulation. He is a perceptive kid and he has studied her closely; he understands her very well and can often predict exactly how she’ll react to a situation. Which is why his decision to announce baldly to her face that he is in love with Inthawut—not only coming out as gay but declaring his intention to move out of her home and in with a man 20+ years his senior who is deeply entangled with her own trauma—felt very intentional to me. He knew what kind of reaction that would get from her, and he wanted it. And sure enough, Sasiwimol crumbles at this repetition of her trauma and the perceived disloyalty of Wang choosing Inthawut over her just as his father did. The rest of the emotion she’d been holding back comes pouring out, resulting in the three of them finally airing out everything that lies between them and everything they are feeling about the Siam-shaped hole in their lives. And once she breaks down, Wang is able to forgive her for the grievance she’s caused him and ultimately decides to remain filial and continue living with her, because he does not actually want to punish his mother for what happened to his father.

So, in the end, where did the story leave us with all this trauma? I can’t really say that any of these characters have healed, but I do think Wang kick-started that process, at least for himself. He got what he needed most out of this little scheme: deeper understanding of who his father was and why his life took such a drastic turn. He remains caught in the dysfunctional dynamic with his mother, and I’m not sure he’ll ever fully break out of it, but at least there is more honesty between them now about what they’re dancing around. She now knows he is gay and she has to accept it to keep him with her, and given that he has backed off from asking her to accept something much scarier than that, I do think she will find a way to make her peace with it. Inthawut is the character who seems to have progressed the least, standing firmly in his stasis and remaining determinedly alone with his pain, though the show leaves us with a note of ambiguity that suggests he may someday find the courage to move on.

The messages of this work are clear. Internalized homophobia and denial of your own queerness are poison for your soul. Rejecting a loved one “for their own good” is an act of cowardice and selfishness, not an act of love. Hiding from and sublimating your trauma will never allow you to heal. Refusing to process your pain will only lead to you pushing it down on the next generation. Ultimately, this story told us that bravely looking ourselves and our trauma in the face and confronting our truths head on is the only way to begin to heal, and that running from them only leads to ruin.

#180 degree longitude passes through us #thai drama #intergenerational trauma challenge #shan shouts into the void

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oobbbear · 12 days

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Ah yes, now my animated music vid playlist will be handy!

Fan animated section but great

Charlie's inferno by Urser

Vampire series by Daria Cohen

OR3O Clover series

DKC m: Return to Krocodile Isle by alex Henderson

Run, Rabbit, Run by LiteralHat

Now for some official ones i love!

Caracan Palace with Mirrors, Miracle,Rock it for Me, Lone Digger, Moonshine and MAD

Stromae with Carmen

Delta Heavy with Get By, Ghost, White Flag, Hold Me, Take Me Home, Punish my love

C2C with Delta

McBaise with She's a Big Boy, Water Slide, Wood

Fever the Ghost with SOURCE (Felix colgrave animation)

Stuck in the sound with Let's Go

The Shins with The Rifle's Spiral, Pink Bullets

SIAMES (ofc) with My Way, The Wolf, No Lullaby, Mr. Fear, Summer Nights, All the Best

Skip the Use with Nameless World

June with A Little Messed Up

Flobots with Handlebars

Freak Kitchen with Freak of the Week

Goldfish with We Come Together, One Million views, Get Busy Living, Washing over me, Fort Knox, Talk To me, Forever Free

Jinkx Monsoon with Cartoons and Vodka

Blockhead with The Music Scene

Twiztid with Dead & Gone

Pearl Jam with Do the Evolution

John Hickman with Cascade

Jay-Z with The story of O.J.

Mystery Skulls witj Endlessly

Britney Spears with Break The Ice

Daft Punk with their classic Interstella series

GRADES with King

Coldplay with Something Just Like This, Adventure Of a Lifetime, Hurts Like Heaven, Daddy

One T + Cool T with The Magic Key

Ryan Woodward with Thoughts of You

Expect a part 2 in a bit

HOHOHOHO I’m shaking this like a kid found a jar of cookie thank you thank you thank you

#ask #save

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wuxiaphoenix · 3 months

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Worldbuilding: Collapsing Empires

One of our classic stories is the band of Plucky Rebels against the Evil Empire. I will boldly go on record as saying I love these stories. Who doesn’t want to cheer on the rag-tag determined heroes fighting against overwhelming odds? (See Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, The Magnificent Seven, and so many others.)

On the other hand I also read history, and so there’s something I’ve noticed. While the urge to create an empire seems to be a human constant, individual empires always fall. Eventually.

I’m sure there are many reasons for this. I’ll give you a few I’ve noticed; you can probably suggest more. The three I’ve got are environmental shifts, out of context problems, and the elite desire to stay in power at all costs.

Each of these can, of course, feed into the others. Here’s a few examples.

Environmental shifts are nasty. Some are from human land use - deforestation and gold or lead mining do numbers on large areas - but others are just the solar system giving you a Bad Era. To be very general, our climate tends to alternate between periods of warmer and more predictable weather, and cooler, less predictable weather patterns. (You can in fact have a scorching drought or a dozen in an Ice Age. It’s just on average cooler.)

Empires tend to get started and grow during the good times, to the point they’re right on the edges of their ecological limits as to how many people can make a living without starving. And then a bad spot hits. And things go sideways. As they say of bankruptcies, first slowly, then all at once. Famines usually start in some spots, and the empire handles it, getting ever more stressed - and then worse weather sparks floods and mudslides, and out of that ecological havoc you tend to get plagues, and between plague and famine you can’t feed or levy enough troops.... And then law and empires collapse as everyone scrambles madly to survive and people who were on the empire’s borders try to make out like a bandit. Pun fully intentional.

A “sudden” (usually over decades) climate change might be considered an out of context problem... but I had more direct and weirder things in mind. At one point, for example, we had archaeological evidence that the Luwian Kingdom might have been wiped out by a comet strike. Current archaeology thinks not, but the scenario still remains possible for fiction. Not to mention the scholarly wrangling over what really happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. It looks like the real-life cities were on a very oil-rich plain. So theoretically, if a meteor shower came down and punched a few holes....

But you don’t have to look to outer space. Cortez and other conquistadores showed up from across the Atlantic with a deep history of warfare that was an extremely out of context problem for the Aztecs, Incas, and many more. (Yes, diseases played a big role. But historically the conquistadores legit beat local armed forces high, wide, and handsome.) Joseon Korea and Tokugawa Japan had similar problems with the rest of the world. Anna and the King is a fictionalized version of the King of Siam trying to ease his kingdom into a soft landing in the modern world. I can only imagine the battles he must have had with his court over that.

Which leads to the third reason I see empires fall. If a ruler wants to keep ruling, and doesn’t trust his people, he has to make sure no one else is strong enough to oppose him. But keeping everyone too weak to fight you means that sooner or later, they’re too weak and corrupt to fight someone else.

And on the edges of an empire, there is always Someone Else.

Side note: This is one of many reasons I think a republic is the best government to create and maintain a nation. Ideally we have people in power getting overthrown all the time. We just do it on an agreed-upon regular basis. Unfortunately that was also supposed to apply to all bureaucracy....

Anyway. If you’re writing Plucky Rebels against the Evil Empire, go for it! But you might want to also poke some history and see if any of these real-world factors apply. Smart rebels take advantage of an existing crisis! Just ask Li Zicheng.

Though note what happened to him....

#creative writing #worldbuilding

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jeffyfitoftheyear · 5 months

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Round 2: Category finals

These are your most voted on outfits for the Concert category. Images of each fit are under the cut. The winner of this poll will make it to the semi-finals!

Siam Halloween

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Live on Saturn Jakarta

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Live on Saturn Bangkok

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Fly me to the Moon

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Move On

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Konnec Con

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Voting will be open for 24 hours!

All other polls can be found here.

#jeffyfitoftheyear #jeff satur #round two: category finals #best concert outfit

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flying-pierog-art · 12 days

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📓 all I love songs n lyrics associated w ocs !!

The questions

OK SO- >:D

I tried to find songs that are only related to one of the characters but that would be boring and what you did, describing what you see when listening to the songs was way more fun to look through so here we go!

Saint Bernard by Lincoln - The Dragon Revived going on about his death and the owner~

Спова by Ferry - Skyler and Henryk's dynamic

KT's official Guide to Coolness by Ferry - Skyler who just like KT (the brown haired girl in the MV) is trying really hard to fit in this whole new world (The Advena City) that unravels before him ✨️

Angel with a shotgun by The Cab - Violet Sky (as in, Tom X Skyler) either of them could be the one singing but it matches the plot more when it's Sky!

Rät by Penelope Scott - Henryk, about Advena's higher ups, mostly about Matylda

Freaks by Surf Curse - Tom being sick of his exile out of The Advena City

Like A Dog by Ferry - The reason for the mains' (especially Skyler's) fear of Snails (spoilers :) )

Ain't it fun by Paramore - Camille finding the outside of Advena's walls, where they're out of their siblings guard, more fun than the Advena City itself

Faulty Feline Philosophy by Ferry (again) - The Cat Revived (aka Karo's Revived). Just in general, throughout their life after death. (Ik I don't usually talk much about her-)

Blood // Water by grandson - The Dragon Revived to Weronika Strzelec (Matylda's mother) (and in case ur asking, yes, I'm litterally Polishing the entire Strzelec family-)

Skrzydlate Ręce by Enej - Tom wishing he had a revived or basically any kind of power and then him actually getting it by the end

Summer nights by SIAMES - Karo and Charlotte making the best they can out of their time in Advena

Boy in the Bubble by Alec Benjamin - Raphael in S3 accidentally going against his morals :) (spoilers)

Open up your eyes by Emily Blunt and Daniel Ingram (I think?) - Matylda as she visits Karo at the beginning of S4 when Advenians finally get a reason to imprison her. She comes to offer a deal to break her out... and some life lessons.

Aaand those are the most accurate ones where I don't have to pretend like half of the lyrics are something else to fit the story 🙃👍

#The Gloom Land #oc ask #ocs #oc songs

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where-does-the-heart-lie · 1 year

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“Seven” by Sleeping at Last and “All the Best” by SIAMES are 100% certified Luffy songs

Was legit listening to Seven and thinking about Luffy like:

I love both those songs for him a whole lot, especially Seven.

Ive been trying to assemble a sabo playlist for a while now but the thing about that is that i am just awful at thinking about songs abstractly, and also i listen to the same pool of like 100 songs and dont branch out a lot.

All i got so far is “No Surprises” by Radiohead and “Mama” by MCR

I even drew this for the former:

If Ace would have a song it would be

Uhhh

“I’m Still here” from Treasure Planet

Thanks for the ask!

#ask reply #@tatertotcosmonaut

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droughtofapathy · 6 months

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The Gilded Age's Broadway Divas: Aurora Fane (Kelli O'Hara)

Beloved by all, Aurora Fane enjoys a powerful position in Mrs. Astor's New York. Having suitably recovered from impending financial ruin last season, this season, Aurora has done some ill-fated matchmaking, worn some fantastic hats, and provided beautiful window dressing to scenes where she just sits there and looks pretty.

One of Broadway's (few) leading sopranos, Kelli O'Hara is a dying breed. As trends shift towards a more pop/rock sound, and classical musical theatre becomes a thing of the past, Kelli nevertheless finds her niche. A seven-time Tony nominee, Kelli has won Best Leading Actress in a Musical for the 2015 revival of The King and I. You'll recall another Gilded Age Diva who won for that same role some years prior. A proshot of the NT Live production can be found online. It is a gorgeous shoot, even if I take issue with that show as a whole.

She has also been nominated for Kiss Me, Kate (2019), The Bridges of Madison County (2014), and The Light in the Piazza (2005). Ironically, though Aurora Fane supports The Academy, Kelli is a classically trained opera singer who has appeared on the Met Opera stage three times, and will play Laura Brown in an encore run of The Hours this spring. (See my breakdown post over costumes here.)

However, prior to her opera appearance, Kelli will be starring in the new Broadway musical Days of Wine and Roses for a limited 16-week run, opening on January 28th. Kelli has been nominated for every role she has played since 2005, and this will almost certainly be no different. Booked and busy.

#1: "Shall We Dance?" The King and I (2015)

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Kelli's voice is otherworldly angelic. That much we already know very well. The King and I opened in 2015 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, the third musical Kelli has starred in at that venue. The Beaumont is, of course, right next to The Met Opera, and the only Broadway theater outside the theatre district in Midtown.

As Anna Leonowens, Kelli travels to Siam to teach the children and wives of the king how to speak English. Orientalism aside, the show is a classic Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the score is divine in Kelli's mouth. Fun fact: Kelli's replacement was Marin Mazzie in one of her last onstage roles. Marin was the Passion co-star and dear friend to Donna Murphy, our Mrs. Astor.

This video is from the 2015 Tony performance and showcases the incredible quick change Kelli makes between singing "Getting to Know You" and "Shall We Dance?" aided by a team of unbelievable dressers. It is a marvel to witness. As is Ruthie Ann Miles, Kelli's co-star who recently performed in the Encores! production of Light in the Piazza.

#2: "What More Do I Need?" Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration (2020)

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In 2020, despite a global pandemic, the theatre community still found a way to honor Stephen Sondheim's milestone 90th birthday with an online concert. Kelli performed a song from Saturday Night, Sondheim's first professional musical that was slated for Broadway in 1955, but was scrapped. It only got its New York premiere in 2000. This particular number is a cabaret favorite, and Kelli is an absolute delight with just a camera and digital accompaniment.

Fun fact: it wasn't until this particular performance that I truly started to appreciate the wonder that is Kelli O'Hara. I had previously seen her in concert just that March, and loved her, of course, but I have a complex relationships with sopranos. I now recognize that I love mature sopranos, but it's the ingenues I can't listen to without wincing.

#3: "They Don't Let You In the Opera" (2016)

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Lest we think Kelli is limited in her range and style, this song was written especially for her to showcase her vast talent and comedic timing. Kelli, an Oklahoma farmgirl, isn't the sort of person you'd expect to be both classically trained and country literate.

Kelli, who has been typecast as refined and often repressed characters who go through harrowing emotional experiences, much like Aurora Fane, is more than capable of bringing a rollicking comedy to the mix.

This number is a favorite in Kelli's concert repertoire. There isn't much more to say, except that you need to witness its hilarity for yourself.

#4: “Heaven? Somebody else’s heaven?” The Hours (2023)

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Speaking of opera, here is an excerpt from a scene in Act II where Laura Brown has fled to a hotel room to contemplate some very serious courses of action. Kelli, alongside soprano Renee Fleming and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, makes up a trio of phenomenal women in Kevin Putts' adaptation of the book and movie.

The Met Opera theatre seats nearly 4,000 people across six levels. The performers do not use body mics or amplification of any kind, but rather rely on intense vocal training to be heard across the theater. For this reason, alongside the vastly different vocal techniques and styles, musical theatre actors rarely cross over into opera, and vice versa. Notable exceptions include Renee Fleming, Kelli's Light in the Piazza co-star Victoria Clark, and Mary Beth Peil, who made her musical theatre debut in The King and I as yet another Miss Anna, hers in 1985.

#5: "So in Love," Kiss Me, Kate (2019)

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Starring in yet another Golden Age musical revival, Kelli brings a different take on Lilli Vanessi, a glamorous movie star in a turbulent relationship. Kelli's vocal talent, of course, speaks for itself. For Kelli, this role was a tribute to her dear friend, the late Marin Mazzie, who had passed away some months before the show opened. Marin, who replaced Kelli in The King and I, had played this same role in the 1999 Broadway revival to great acclaim. In her first entrance of the show, Kelli wore a costume that featured the very same hat Marin wore in her show.

Though this video is beloved, my personal favorite rendition can be heard below. It was taken at a concert Kelli put on at the 92Y in New York last February. In it, Kelli sings for and to Marin, and the entire theatre wept.

Bonus: "Back to Before," Ragtime Reunion Concert (2023)

The role of Mother was originally workshopped by Donna Murphy in Toronto in the early 90s, but she left to do King and I, which worked out well for her. In came dear friend Marin Mazzie, who originated the role on Broadway, and established a precedent no other has been able to top. Also in that cast? Audra McDonald as Sarah, for which she won a Tony, of course.

In 2023, after years of pandemic-related delays, they staged a one-night reunion concert of this special show. And who better to take on Marin's iconic role than Kelli O'Hara? Listen to her "Back to Before" here, and then do yourself a favor and run, don't walk, to listen to Marin's.

#the gilded age #aurora fane #kelli o'hara #met opera #sondheim #ragtime #marin mazzie #kiss me kate #the hours #the king and i

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ac-fandom · 1 month

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AND THE WINNING SHIP IS SMURFETTE X HEFTY!!!!

And here is the design of Smurfette and Hefty's daughters, Beauty (the brunette one) and Confident (the blonde one) and now some fun facts:

-Beauty is Model's best friend since they were little.

-Beauty and Confident are twins, but the older one is Confident.

-Confident is a sportswoman.

-Confident is asexual and bisexual, while Beauty is lesbian.

-they have a great relationship with their uncles, both on Smurfette and Hefty's side (who are in my AU Handy Wild and Hefty are twins, Clumsy and Snappy are brothers)

-Both sisters get along very well with all the Smurfs in the village.

-Confident as a Smurfette and very clever.

-Beauty has problems managing emotions

-Confident and Beauty, they love the song that Smurfette sang to them when they had a nightmare, which was about her adventure in the forbidden forest with the Smurf team.(the song you're talking about is "Noi smurfs siam così" by Cristina d'Avena who is Willow's Italian voice actress and the singer of the 80s Smurfs series.)

It's nothing, having said that then next with the son of Smurfette x Poet.

(p.s. the Smurfette x Hefty and Smurfette x Poet couple are two different universes, and what's more they have some other different ones)

#smurfs #fankid #the smurfs #smurfette #hefty x smurfette #heftette #smurf hefty #smurf #ships #smurfs 2021 #smurf Beauty #smurf Confident #hefty smurf

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absolutebl · 7 months

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hi there 🖐🏼 what are your recs for bl movies with great acting?

BL Movies with GREAT Acting

Specifically Movies? Do KBLs that were cut into movies count? Hum, I'm gonna make a judgement call given how few actual movies I have to work with and say if it holds as a "movie going experience" I can count it. I should say in order to really push this into the superlative acting space the BL aspect on many of these is... light.

His

Japan 2020 Viki

His is about being a grown adult and still struggling with coming out as gay. It addresses the consequences of life choices disingenuous to identity. Nagisa turns up on Shun’s doorstep with his precocious daughter in tow. This is a touch confusing to Shun since they were each others first love and ended badly. Shun has retreated from society, rejecting the world before it can reject him, already brokenhearted because without Nagisa he never had a reason to fight. Nagisa went the opposite way, tried to pretend to be something he was not and ended up with a daughter he adores and a wife who hates him. The acting is killer, Miyazawa Hio is sulky in the best possible way, the filming is beautiful and the setting unique and interesting...

I'm not wild about the ending. Moody arthouse smackdoodle is going to pretend that "ambiguous" is somehow unique and special rather than bog standard commonplace for narratives of this type. But endings are my hangup, not yours?

This is not really BL (the prequel was), so few of the tropes are used. You do not need to have watched the prequel.

Your Name Engraved Herein

Taiwan 2020 Netflix

This movie is fantastic but it is also seriously depressing. It’s a self acceptance journey that goes emotionally array on the alter of history, but if you wanna wallow in high quality acting and serious gay drama, this’ll do it. I would say it's not really BL, no real trope drops at all.

Okay those two I chose more on the strength of the acting than BL. These others are not going to be at the same standard/style.

If you want moee of the above level of drama, things get very sad in the BL world, so Love of Siam, Dew, Eternal Yesterday, Goodbye Mother, etc...

Restart After Come Back Home (Risutato wa tadaima no ato de)

Japan 2020 Gaga?

Atmospheric study in rural Japan meets complex family dynamics built on a romance framework of city boy meets country boy, grumpy/sunshine. It’s beautiful and icy sweet. Slow moving in places but ultimately worth the patience, low heat, low angst, and stunning. The acting is a touch stiff, in that Japanese reserved way.

This is the only BL movie, as a movie, that I could pull. There are others, I jsut don't think the acting is good enough.

So here are some highly rated short bingable series that are movie length (1.5-2.5 hours) but not really movies - BUT with killer acting. So they still might satisfy the itch. I places them in order of acting and filming quality, not my own personal preference.