there is no night that lasts forever

queerness makes queerness possible

inspired by the essay of the same name by laura sackton

im real happy with this one i think, i could have kept poking this for days but i’ve said what i wanna say and im proud of it

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!

Resist. Rejoice. Remember.

I dedicate this year's pride knight to my community. My trans family, friends and loved ones are beautiful, resilient and amazing and we will continue to thrive like the weeds society treats us as.

Now more than ever < 3

Because, I've seen some people define BL with an emphasis on how central romance is to the plot. Since Love's wish to be lucky-in-love is the inciting incident, seems like romance is pretty central. The plot doesn't fully revolve around Love and the guy she ends up with, but ending up with the second comedic option instead of the initial romantic crush is actually a pretty established trope in romcoms (Sleepless in Seattle comes to mind).

Is it a matter of whether we're witnessing gay love? People often refer to this show as QL, and in truth, it's one of the few shows that can fully fit that bill with its gender-variation. I guess, though, I get bothered by people sorting out ql and bl for a few reasons. 1. BL is just a more established tag and search-engine term for this genre, and gatekeeping the labels has real impacts on viewership. 2. Gender-variation seems to have been a part of Thai BL since its foundations with kathoey and tom characters in shows like Love Sick, Make It Right, and SOTUS. 3. Do we need more than one pair of boys to be explictly gay for one another to make it a BL? Ignoring the fact that we've kind of got four boys who have some kind of romantic entanglements with one another in GMA, that's gonna eliminate a few well-established shows from the canon. 4. In the translation I watched, Tangmo states that he has feelings for Love because he's a boy. People are calling him bi in the tags, but that sounds much closer to a description for 'gay,' and Love I believe uses the English word 'gay' when denying him to say "he's not 'gay.'"

As a guy who happily uses the term 'gay' to define himself (I think it's a pleasant non-sociological word that has important effiminate and campy connotations that align with my presentation and sense of self), a gay guy who dated and loved a trans-woman through and after her transition, I think it's interesting to see the kind of 'pearl-clutching' that happens around definitions when BLs decide to get complicated, especially on tumblr of all places. The words we have to define ourselves are limited. Transness throws a wrench into sexuality models, which makes beautiful exploding fireworks of what we think about ourselves. My gay identity didn't make her less of a woman because I was attracted to her. Her womanhood didn't make me less gay. At least it didn't for us, despite some heated discussions and fair fears, but you'll find your own versions of this story.

As a guy who literally has a diagnosis of 'gender dysphoria' and started HRT before deciding transition was not for me for a slew of personal reasons (props to everyone who's thinking about, starting on, or 4lifers on that journey though!), Love's story and desires are so potent and rare to encounter in media anywhere. Trans* allegories get reserved for horror, but this show is a trans* fairytale. The rigid lines between sexuality and gender are a lot less rigid than some would have it. There was a current in American queer discourse where it became important to delineate gay men and trans women, but some gay men might relate to women internally more than men, some might harbor real desires for womanhood that they don't live out and some might just want the diva-upped drag-version of womanhood without the everyday lived experience. Is there a kind of trans-exclusion we BL fans might perform when we try to parse out ~ t r u e ~ gays in gender-swap BLs?

The gender-swap at its core seems to address the full-extent of patriarchal limits: the self-imposed limits on cis-men, the societally constructed limits on cis-women, the pain assumptions of heterosexuality can cause, and the aberration transition brings to the all those proceedings. From Twelfth Night to Some Like It Hot to Great Men Academy, well-done gender-swaps worm their way out of the grips of limiting categories. Is GMA a BL, yes, and its more than that, too. Two boys kiss in the sun to cap it off after saying 'Love is Love' and promising to love each other no matter the gender. If that's not enough to convince you, and the bitchy unicorn narrator didn't make it gay-enough, well, idk if you even deserve to get picked by the robot statue principal for the great men hunger games!

VegasPete + text posts for @kissporsche (pt.22/23)

bonus:

Soft coded subs in English.

LET US NOT FORGET THIS SCENE FROM THE FINALE BLAH BLAH BLAH THE INTIMACY OF THE ART AND THE ARTIST BUT ALSO AS A METAPHOR FOR LONGING & FORGIVENESS

reaching out to touch in remembrance & caretaking, smoothing out the lines before ~moving on~

~~except~~

aaahhhhhhh not me the series you contain multitudes

whoops! i accidentally a whole extremely horny pete/vegas vid

VegasPete + text posts (pt. 97/100)

bonus: