My sourced list of Out Thai QL Actors part 1: here and part 2: here.
A list of my general BL essays is here and essays based on series or specific creators are here.
A list of my BL playlists is here.
A list of my QL web weaving here.
Asks are always open. Lmk if my facts are wrong. Feel free to disagree respectfully. Message me to gossip, go CAPSLOCK about fav series, or hmu if there are some hurt feelings.
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not an apologizer but a contextualizer. yes the character did that but please understand the Circumstance. yes they had other options but they had to make this choice in a sea of available bad choices. and also it made the narrative more interesting. won't anybody think about the narrative!!!!!
In this post, I said I could probably make a separate list of 90s/00s queer rom coms, so here it is! These aren't just overlooked ones, but a celebration/recommendation of all the ones I've seen and enjoyed, so there will be a lot of familiar ones
Just the list without my rambles*:
*I'm too tired for rambles, today, and this has been sat in my drafts for ages! If anyone wants my thoughts on any particular film, I'm happy to give them. I'll add a couple of notes on some of them, though
The Wedding Banquet, 1993
Go Fish, 1994
Jeffrey, 1995
Trick, 1999
But I'm a Cheerleader, 1999
Latter Days**, 2003
D.E.B.S., 2004
Straight-Jacket, 2004***
Touch of Pink, 2004
Saving Face, 2004
MƤnner wie Wir, 2004
Imagine Me & You, 2005
Were the World Mine, 2008
(These aren't all the 90s/00s queer rom coms I've seen, I just either didn't like or don't remember the others because I've been seeking out these films for the better part of 25 years. I remember liking Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, but nothing about it. Also, just a note that I may be stretching the definition of rom-com a little with some of these. And that I don't remember a lot of them all that well, just that I liked them)
**this one has all the hallmarks of a rom-com but it does have a pretty distressing conversion therapy scene and a lot of homophobia. It's not the only one (But I'm a Cheerleader is right there) - in fact, most at least touch on homophobia and other heavy topics - but it's not handled in a humorous way. Tbh I'm not sure if this one should be on the list at all or not š¤ this is why I don't make genre lists! I fret too much about definitions
***this movie is so soooooo good! It has TERRIBLE CGI but it's a rom-com about a closeted actor in the 1950s who is forced into a lavender marriage with a secretary who has no idea he's gay and his name is GUY STONE! Lmao (it's very heavily influenced by Rock Hudson) Maybe it goes without saying, but it's camp af
And shout out to Shelter and Big Eden that are maybe even more on the romantic drama side of things, but they have my whole heart and were/are so important to me
And now I'm going to work on the list of Australian queer films and a post about Marco Berger's films
āIs it gay to pitch a tent in your living room while having a Pit Babe movie night with your gay roommate?ā ā the search history for LeeIth in Class Crush Crisis probably
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Important Match Point question: why does Sunās dad know Coach Kong? Why does he treat him so familiarly? Obviously Bayās family knows him because Boat attended school with him. But why Sunās? There seems to be an important missing piece in the midst of all this. And Imma speculate that itās already being hinted at in a few ways.
Now that Bay had a full-ass smiley face light in his room, Iāll admit that I was wrong and yāall were right to compare this to Bad Buddy. The references are abundant. But there are also threads going back to Love of Siam I keep seeing. Christianity was not a thematic issue brought up in Bad Buddy (except for the initial separation happening during the Christmas pageant), but itās more significant in Love of Siam, and in Match Point weāre high-fiving Jesus every episode. Thai BLās biggest sticking point with Christianity across its BLs has been (surprisingly not homophobia but) about eternal life and accepting death (which, it seems to argue, has consequences that encourage homophobia). So who died?
Another element thatās pointing me to Love of Siam is the missing woman trope. In fact, Bad Buddy touches this possibility and then refuses it early on with Pran rescuing Pa from drowning in the first episode. Love of Siam, however, revolves around the grief of lost women, both a grandmother who passes but more significantly a daughter who goes missing while on a trip to Chiang Mai with friends. We already heard in passing that Sunās mom has moved out of the country, which put my thoughts to the series own noted absence of women here. But Iām wondering if thereās maybe another missing woman. Did Sun have a sister the same age as Boat and Kong? That kind of loss could easily upend the relationship of neighbors and still be echoing down the years.
What Iām speculating based on very meager evidence is that, yes, BaySun are a reference to PatPran in Bad Buddy, but BoatKong are maybe also a reference to their predecessors, TongMew in Love of Siam. The latter pair could be reeling from loss and sudden ruptures and restrictions it bent their lives toward, while the former who were not so directly impacted by the initiating event are confusedly navigating a dynamic nevertheless shaped by it.
Iām almost always wrong when I make these kinds of predictions, but I wanted to put it out there and continue to place this show as part of very specific lineage in Thai BL
Edit: totally forgot about armās older brother character last week lol. yāall need to take my blogging license away sometimes š¤£. But still, the clinging to expectations stands, and Iām not throwing my dead sister theory out yet, and even if that doesnāt come to fruition, Iām guessing the departure of Sunās mom was some kind of initiating event that checks the lost woman trope box.
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What makes a BL?: A look at Thailand's "Esplanade gay movies"
Originally posted on Reddit April 2022.
"Esplanade gay movie" is a term some in Thailand have used to describe mostly low-budget, small-studio gay-themed films that received a limited release, often at the Esplanade Cineplex in Bangkok (no relation to Singapore's durian-shaped theatre). I briefly mentioned the influence of indie filmmakers on the formation of Thailand's live-action BL genre during the early 2010s in myĀ Early history of Thai BLĀ post, but felt that a closer look was warranted.
The above posters are of films that had limited theatrical releases, though some are nearer to the mainstream than others. There's considerable variety in their subject matter, which ranges from fluffy young romances (essentially BL as we now know it) to erotic adult dramas, with plenty of experimental stuff in between.
There'sĀ Boring LoveĀ from 2009, a romantic comedy adapted from a very popular story on the Pantip.com forums. The story also inspiredĀ Is This Love?, one of two gay-themed student films from 2011, the other beingĀ Just in Case. These two only had special charity screenings, but are early examples in the development of school-romance BLs. Another student short film,Ā Present PerfectĀ (2012) by Anusorn Soisa-ngim, had a remake which was released in 2017 and became quite a festival darling, with a sequel in 2020.
As mentioned in my earlier post, as the category diverged, some of these indie productions were the first to enter BL territory, includingĀ TimelineĀ (2013, with a sequel in 2016),Ā Love's ComingĀ (2014, with a 2015 sequel) andĀ My BromanceĀ (2014). On the other end of the spectrum, a trend of erotic dramas being produced for the big screen was also emerging withĀ Me, My Familiar PeopleĀ (2013) by Rachyd Kusolkulsiri (who would go on to makeĀ Love Sick), andĀ Teacher and StudentĀ (2014) andĀ Father & SonĀ (2015) by Sarawut Intaraprom, who'd previously directedĀ Boring Love. The 2015 sex comedyĀ Love Next Door 2Ā is a follow-up to a 2013 online-only original.
A supernatural/horror trend seemed to follow, withĀ Summer to WinterĀ (2015) by the creators ofĀ Timeline, andĀ The Blue HourĀ (by Anucha Boonyawatana, who would later directĀ Not Me) andĀ Red Wine in the Dark NightĀ (Tanwarin Sukkhapisit,Ā The Eclipse) in 2016. The latter two would also be picked up by several international festivals.
More works on the BL side includeĀ Water BoyyĀ (2015) also by Rachyd,Ā Sweet BoyĀ (2016) by Sathanapong Limwongthong (Gen Y),Ā I Love YouĀ (2017) by Phadej Onlahung (Dear Doctor) andĀ BoyfriendĀ (2016), an adaptation of a popular web comic also originating from Pantip.com in 2005. The last was rather curiously also directed by Sarawut, whose company usually focuses on erotic gay stuff. (Edit: It's because he was the original author of the web comic.)
Works heavier on drama includeĀ My BromanceĀ director Nitchapoom Chaianun'sĀ The Rain StoriesĀ (2016), andĀ FathersĀ (2016), which was praised for tackling the subject of gay-parent families and also made the festival rounds. And then there'sĀ DriverĀ (2017) byĀ Love Next DoorĀ director Thitipan Raksasat, which is an erotic drama thriller. I haven't included some better known works like Anucha'sĀ Malila: The Farewell FlowerĀ or Tanwarin's earlier films that touched on transgender issues.
While I'd have liked to make this an analysis of how these films influenced and/or interacted with the development of the BL genre, that's pretty much beyond me (and I haven't actually seen most of them). But maybe those of you who know the works could share your thoughts. (Or actually, please share even if you haven't seen them.) What do you think defines a work as belonging to the BL genre, and how it could apply to these works (as well as others, like all the stuff by Nitchapoom's Wayufilm, which I've always had trouble categorizing)? Do BL films somehow differ from the recognized characteristics of BL series, given that they are almost entirely the work of queer creators and none are adaptations of BL novels? Do gay viewers form a larger part of their target audience compared to TV?
And did you notice how aggressively shirtless these posters are?
i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.
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just a heads up that mr kill is on viki (and maybe iqiyi in some places??) now, so the eps will probably start disappearing from youtube in whatever regions viki has it (and by disappearing, i mean geoblocked). it's likely they'll disappear one by one because viki is releasing one ep a week, five weeks behind (so, viki has one ep, which means ep one is gone from youtube for me, the next week ep two will go, etc. and so on)
i'm pretty sure it'll still release on youtube each week, though, because this is apparently what happened with girl rules and maybe something else. but they'll just get geoblocked after four or five weeks when viki has 'caught up' with the eps, if that makes sense (which it probably doesn't because i am exhausted)
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