#gogang

Winners’ List:

Rising Star: Aungpao Ochiris Suwanacheep (Dynamite, Cooking Crush; Khaopan, My Love Mix Up, TH)

Best Cast: Modi (Wei Qian), Kurt Huang (Wei Zhi Yuan), Tammy Lin (Wei Li Li), Kim Jae Hoon (San Pang) (Unknown, TW)

Best Pair: Tay Tawan Vihokratana (Karan) and New Thitipoom Techa-apaikhun (Achi) (Cherry Magic Thailand, TH)

Best Actor: Lee Tae Vin (Tae Myung Ha, Love for Love’s Sake, KR)

Best Ghost Ship: Mawin/Ton (23.5, TH)

Best Friendship: Three Must-eat-eers: Prem, Dynamite, Samsee (Cooking Crush, TH)

Best Side Ship: Fire/Dynamite (Cooking Crush, TH)

Best Main Ship: Shiba/Haruto (Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Love Is A Poison), JP)

Best OST Song: “Camino” - Let Free The Curse Of Taekwondo, KR (performed by Gogang, music and lyrics by Gogang and Jung Mijin)

Best Music: 4Minutes, TH (Banana Sound Studio, composer: Toy Terdsak Janpan, MS: Pimmata Patpibul, Jeerapat Jongkolsongkroh)

Best Production: Love For Love's Sake, KR (AD: Ha Ye Rim)

Best Original Story: Hwang Da Seul (Let Free The Curse Of Taekwondo, KR)

Best Adapted Story: Toyama Erika (I Became the Star of a BL Drama, adapted from BL Drama no Shuen ni Narimashita by Suzuri Machi, JP)

Best Direction: 25 Ji, Akasaka de (At 25:00 In Akasaka), JP (Dir: Horie Takahiro and Kawasaki Ryo, DP: Hanamura Yasushi, Ed: Kitani Mizuki)

Best GL: Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (She Loves to Cook and She Loves To Eat) (NHK, JP)

Best Pulp: Knock Knock, Boys! (Kongthup Production/WeTV, TH)

Best Romantic Comedy: Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Love Is A Poison) (TBS, JP)

Best Romantic Drama: 25 Ji, Akasaka de (At 25:00 In Akasaka) (TV Tokyo, JP)

Best Genre Romance: Love For Love’s Sake (Wavve Studios, KR)

Show of the Year: Let Free The Curse Of Taekwondo (Studio Him Energetic Company, KR)

Honourable Mentions: 

7 Days Before Valentine (TH) - Experimental

Tadaima Okaeri and Twilight Out of Focus (JP) - Animated

6th Man Awards: 

Dome Jaruwat Cheawaram (Cooking Crush, Jack & Joker)

Title Kirati Puangmalee (We Are, Wandee Goodday, Kidnap)

Standout Queer Narratives: 

Ossan no Pantsu ga Nandatte Ii Janai ka (Don’t Care For An Old Man’s Underwear) (JP) - family drama

Marahuyo Project (PH) - community drama

Love In The Big City (KR) - slice of life drama

Kimi no Tsugu Kaori wa (Fragrance You Inherit) (JP) - family drama

Interview With the Vampire (US) - southern gothic drama

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation, the Queer Media And Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

I'm Ben, the media critic.

NiNi

I’m NiNi, the VIIBs queen.

Ben

And we are your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

We’re here to talk queer film and dramas, with a special focus on Asian QL.

Ben

So if you like to dive deep into queer stories…

NiNi

If you like cracked out takes on art and commerce in queer media…

Ben

If you just enjoy simping for attractive people…

NiNi

We believe in simping!

Ben

Tune in!

00:00:55 - Introduction: It's Awards Season Once More

*trumpet fanfare*

Ben 

And we're back. It's time for our favorite annual tradition. It's time for the VIIB Awards.

NiNi 

Yes, we are here to discuss all the best things that we saw in 2024 and that you should watch, as well. We've got five main categories in the VIIB Awards. Acting, ships, immortal technique, top tings, and our special class awards.

Ben 

For those of you who are new to us, this is the Very Important Internet BL Awards. NiNi and I started our show on this and we will be handing out plates once again to our favorite boys, girls, and otherwise stellar performers.

Ben 

NiNi got deep into her cups before we started and she was late, so unfortunately I am also deep into my cups already.

NiNi

So we're just gonna have some fun and try to get through these as quickly as possible before we get blotto.

00:02:09 - Acting!

NiNi

Let's start with our acting awards.

The great thing about being an actor is that you're invited into people's worlds that you normally would never be invited into. People want to tell their stories, they want to be seen, they want to be understood. As an actor you just get to go on these incredible journeys that most people are never invited to or never have an opportunity to travel.

Mark Ruffalo

NiNi

And the first award is Rising Star. Our awardee for Rising Star this year is Aungpao Ochiris Suwanacheep, who played Dynamite in Cooking Crush and Khaopan in My Love Mix-Up. 

We love Aungpao on this podcast. We loved Dynamite. It was the first thing we ever saw him do, and we fell immediately in love with the character. And every time I've seen Aungpao since then this year, he has delivered. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does next. Very excited about him.

Ben 

I'm so excited for him. I thought he did a great job in both of his roles despite feelings I have about both shows. Congratulations, sir. We will be sending you a plate.

NiNi 

Did we ever decide what we're putting on these plates? We're going into the third year of the VIIB awards and we don't know what's going on these plates.

Ben 

It is clearly gonna be like two Caribbean mason jars full of like a fruity drink.

NiNi 

It’s gonna be brown liquor! [laughs] 

Ben 

Hell yeah.

NiNi 

Amazing. 

*xylophone sound*

Our next award is going to the Best Cast of the year, and this award is for the best ensemble performance, including individual performances, chemistry, and interplay.

Ben 

This is going to go to the cast of Unknown, including Modi–also known as Chris Chiu, Kurt Huang, Tammy Lin, and Kim Jae Hoon. 

This was really a special cast playing off a really complicated dynamic which takes place in-world over the course of years. So we had to watch them play maturing characters in ever-changing dynamics the whole time. Really stellar group performance from them and it resulted in some really standout individual scenes that are easy highlight reel footage.

NiNi 

They were the best cast that we saw this year in terms of the way that they gelled together and the individual performances. So congratulations, plate for you guys from Unknown.

What's our next award, Ben?

Ben 

Best Pair! Best Pair goes to the best couple performance, including individual performances, chemistry, and interplay between them. This is basically going to, because this is a romance show awards, the best couple that we saw from the acting pair this year.

NiNi 

Best Pair for 2024 is Tay Tawan Vihokratana and New Thitipoom Techaapaikhun playing Karan and Achi in Cherry Magic Thailand.

Cherry Magic Thailand was one of the best things that we saw last year, and Tay Tawan and New Thitipoom have been around for a really long time. They’ve been working together for about eight years, and every time they come back they're better and better and better, and I think that Cherry Magic Thailand was probably the best that I've ever seen them. I have not always been a New fan but he has shut my mouth lately, and I love Tay Tawan.

Best pair of the year.

Ben 

I was really impressed by them because taking over a work that is so beloved and having to perform characters that already have very strong, memorable performances is a really difficult task to do. And I think these two did a good job balancing our expectations of their dynamic based upon previous outings with meeting the demands of the work that they were adapting. That was an incredibly well done execution by both of them.

*xylophone sound*

NiNi 

Our final award in the acting category is our Best Actor, and that's for the Best Performance of the Year. Ben, who is our Best Actor for 2024?

Ben 

It's Lee Taevin for his role as Tae Myungha from Love for Love's Sake. 

Lee Taevin really wanted to take on a role like this, and he did such a great job playing the complex layers of darkness and difficulty that his character is carrying in this. It is hard to get too deep into the nuances of his performance without spoiling it for those who have not listened to our previous episode or watched the show. But in a year with some really, really strong performances within BL, the top performance goes to Lee Taevin.

NiNi 

He really stood out this year. I mean, we had a little bit of a hard time picking this one, but we landed up on him because Tae Myungha is such a visceral character. I felt everything that they wanted the character to have us feel. All the confusion, all the despair, I really, really felt the depth of his work.

Ben

Lee Taevin the veteran actor amongst the cast here, and he's the type of actor who clearly elevates other actors around them. That's a pretty important skill for him to have developed at his relatively young age. 

So congratulations, sir. Hope to see more of you next year.

00:08:00 - Ships Ahoy!

NiNi 

Moving on to our ships category.

Ben 

It's time for our SIMPY Awards! Let's go girls!

Hot Priest: Love is awful. It's awful, it's painful, it's frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish, makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do.

Sister: There's something wrong with your priest.

Hot Priest: It's all any of us want and it's hell when we get there so no wonder it's something we don't want to do on our own. I was taught if we're born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, it feeling right. When it feels right it's easy. But I'm not sure that's true. It takes strength to know what's right. Love isn't something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.

Fleabag, Season 2 Episode 6

NiNi

I'm going to let Ben take it away with our first award in the ship category, which is the Best Ghost Ship. It should have happened and we should have seen it. So who is our best ghost ship of 2024?

Ben 

It's Mawin and Ton from 23.5.

This is how Euro can still win. We're gonna give him an award [NiNi laughs] because they should have let him kiss one of the twins in the last goddamn year or so.

NiNi 

He should have let him kiss both of the twins. He had the chance.

Ben 

We went with this one because there was an interesting narrative reason for them to have leaned into the tension that his character, Mawin, was developing with Ton, particularly because of his crush on a different character. In this case, more than any of them, they should have let them kiss…just a little bit.

NiNi 

Euro, we love you on this podcast. One of these days they will let you kiss a boy. I swear.

*xylophone sound*

Okay, moving on to the greatest of the ships, Best Friendship.

Ben 

This goes to our best besties of the year. This is not an award for the people who are the best at supporting the romantic outcomes for a couple. It is about the characters whose friendship itself is so critical to the function of these characters' lives that it in some ways challenges or even supersedes any of the romances that occur in the work. 

NiNi 

Our winners for Best Friendship go to the Three Must-eat-ers Prem, Dynamite, and Samsee from Cooking Crush, because without their friendship Cooking Crush does not work at all. It is probably more central to the story than the relationships between Prem and Ten and between Dynamite and Fire. They focus on each other and they care about each other and they're allowed to get angry at each other and when they're angry at each other they apologize for the stupid shit that they did.

Ben

We had two veteran actors who I love a lot playing Samsee and Prem with a newcomer in Dynamite. And I think it was really impressive to see the two veterans support the newcomer and create a beloved character as a result. 

This group has a real fight and breakdown in the show that challenges the core friendship itself. I found myself more moved by the resolution of the fight this friend group was having than I was any of the romantic challenges.

NiNi 

Congratulations to the Three Must-eat-ers. We will be sending you a plate.

*xylophone sound*

Ben 

On to Best Side Ship, NiNi's favorite award every goddamn year! [both laugh]

NiNi 

We decided this year that we were not gonna fight over this award. The best side ship goes to the secondary couple who best reinforce the themes of the primary couple's story.

Ben, you tell the people who has won.

Ben 

It's going to Fire and Dynamite. You thought I was done awarding Aungpao. [snickers]

NiNi 

We're never done awarding Aungpao.

Ben

You had this really interesting dynamic with Ten fighting his dad and Prem dealing with his own anxieties where on the opposite side you had Dynamite presenting himself as really forthright and open about what he is and Fire avoiding his mom. These two balanced out very well with their main couple of their show and it's not a surprise that the best side ship went to also the show with the best friendship because the character and relationship writing on this show was really stand out.

This was one of Neo's, not best known performances, but truly one of my favorites that he's done. I really liked what he did with Fire, especially coming off of playing Boston. That man is an incredibly talented actor and we are very lucky that he shows up so often for us.

NiNi 

Congratulations Fire and Dynamite, we will be sending you a plate.

Ben 

I just want everybody out there who thinks I hate GMMTV to know that, while I do have beef with them, I am not incapable of applauding good work when I see it.

*xylophone sound*

All right, Best Main Ship. We are in a romance genre. We're here for couples that we believe can make it. This always goes to the couple whose love story we actually buy into and believe. These are the people you return to. These are the ones you show people and they're like, what should I watch? These boys! Sit down!

NiNi, who is our best main ship of the year?

NiNi

Our Best Main Ship of the year is Shiba and Haruto from Love is a Poison, Japanese title Doku koi: Doku mo sugeriba koi to naru. 

The show was hilarious and had so much heart and Shiba and Haruto's relationship at the center of it all is really what pulled me in. The acting is amazing, the writing is amazing, this is a true battle couple (@lurkingshan). They got together and decided that they were going to stand shoulder to shoulder, back to back and fight off everybody who tried to come for them.

I believe in them. I believe that they'll last.

Ben 

This show has a fist bump involving rings that legit made me understand what it means to swoon. This show whipped ass! It may seem like an oddity show, ignore that part. Just go fucking watch it (@solitaryandwandering). 

This show understood all of the reservations the audience might have from their initial reaction to them and went out of their way to demolish them. This show was fucking fun and I really loved these two so much. I will be thinking about that man's fake posing during their photo opportunities. I'll be thinking about that towel sequence where he threw it on him in the onsen. Don't think I forgot! [NiNi laughs] These guys were great.

NiNi

They even got to have a yukata moment.

Ben 

They sure did! [snickers]

NiNi 

They fell in love so hard and it was delightful to watch.

Ben 

I just love when a couple fights for each other, especially when one of them can't.

NiNi 

My god. He squared up and then got his ass beat. And it was incredible. [both laugh]

No notes.

00:16:31 - Immortal Technique

Ben 

It's time to do some more traditional awards. We're moving on to Immortal Technique, where we talk about technical and production related awards.

This is one of my favorite sections every year because this is the one that rewards you for paying attention to details.

NiNi 

This is also the one where we basically talk about the people behind the scenes, the people whose names are in the credits but who don't get a lot of credit, and we always love to give that credit out on our show.

As a director I, I kind of, I, I have quite a good ability at—at the very beginning when we're first starting to write the screenplay—I have quite a good ability to imagine the film in my head. Like you know even the very first page of, of, of the script as we do it I can start to imagine the camera angles, the music, I can start to feel how the film's coming together and I sort of have this imaginary film starting to be put together and that's right back at the beginning. And uh, in this case we started this process about five or six years ago and then what happens during the course of the movie is that this this film that's playing in my head always gets modified because as you design the sets, you know then the sets that we've designed replace the ones that I originally sort of imagined and then as the actors come on board their faces put fit into the characters I imagined. And so my little internal movie is always changing and being updated so that, um, it's, it's you know it always ends up better. Everything, every time my film in my head gets changed it's, it's improving all the time because all these all these other people are coming on board and giving their input into it.

Peter Jackson, interviewed by Charlie Rose, 2002

NiNi

We're starting with Best OST Song, and this is for the song as recorded. The style or genre, does the song fit the mood of the show, composition and arrangement, production and performance, usage and listenability. Basically, is it a bop and do you think about it a lot? 

So Ben, what is our Best OST Song of the year?

Ben 

This was actually a pretty extensive discussion we had in the background about this one, but in the end, we are excited to award Camino from Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo, performed by Gogang, music and lyrics by Gogang and Jung Mi Jin.

NiNi 

Man, I love this song. Every time it came on at the beginning of an episode, you just felt yourself sinking into the place that the show wanted you to be. It starts off with this acapella harmonizing that just really got you into your feelings. And then a little bit of piano, a little bit of strings, It was very not flashy, but really effective. 

If you have not watched Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo, I don't know what you're waiting for. Listen to the song in context, then go listen to it out of context. It's a great song.

Ben 

I'm rewatching it right now with Emily. We just started the first episode and legit, the intro starts and she's like, it's one of those shows.

NiNi 

Exactly, puts you straight into the right place that you need to be in.

*xylophone sound*

Ben 

Our next award is for the Best Music. This is the use of music overall. Scoring, music supervision, music editing. It's all about where and how music is used throughout the entire production. As usual, we had a lot of feelings about this one. But in the end, NiNi, we decided to award...

NiNi 

4 Minutes. The composer is Toy Terdsak Janpan, music supervisors Pimmata Patpibul and Jeerapat Jongkolsongkroh and done by Banana Sound Studio.

4 Minutes, one thing that it did do well was everything around the production. And the music in particular was very evocative and very effective at setting mood. The show worked very effectively through the soundscape. It was well done. Kudos to them.

*xylophone sound*

Ben

On to Best Production! This is kind of a catch-all award goes into production design and art direction, set design and dressing, location choice, costuming and hair, makeup, and a little bit of sound design color grading and editing. This is about shows that do a good job with their world building, their aesthetic, and basically do they really capture the vibe.

NiNi 

Best Production this year goes to Love for Love's Sake, art director Ha Ye Rim.

Ben 

You've got a person who is essentially isekai'd into another world. Like he passes out in our world, wakes up inside of what feels like a video game. And they have to convey a lot of details about what's going on with the mechanics of the video game and all the ways that the world is behaving around him. None of this is very easy to do, particularly on a very short runtime. And they manage to give us all of the information and details we need without huge exposition dumps. And they do such a great job.

There are some key details, particularly the work they do with Tae Myungha's eyes and his hair in particular. This is one of those shows that really rewarded us as viewers for paying attention to more details than just what was happening in the subtitles or when the boys were at their prettiest smiling at each other. Paying attention was such an important part of really being able to embrace and understand this experience.

NiNi

It was incredibly impressive, the way that they built up the video game world and all the ways that the video game starts to glitch. It starts so subtly, you almost can't tell and then by the time it builds up you start thinking back to all the little things that showed up in the background that told you that the game was glitching. It is really serious attention to detail that they put into this show and for that we award them a plate.

*xylophone sound*

We're going to move on now to the writing awards, the first one is Best Original Story. So that is for premise, story, screenplay, stage directions, dialogue, character voice, all the things that go into writing an original story.

Ben 

This year's award goes to Hwang da Seul for Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. Welcome back, ma'am, and well deserved. 

My goodness gracious me. Good job, ma’am. This was one of the most stunning experiences we got to have this year. Once again, you were determined to make us love some boys and then break them up for a ridiculous amount of time and make us really root for them to get back together. And holy shit, you did a great job this time. This was honestly such an unexpected and really special experience. 

The reason why we award Original Story is a significant amount of BL is adapted. A lot of productions, for a lot of valid reasons, rely on adapting existing work that already has a fan base that's ready to support it again and advocate for it. It's always really impressive when someone does something original that manages to cut through the noise and become one of the most memorable things we may have ever watched in genre.

NiNi 

The writing of that confessional scene where Shin Juyoung takes his cross off and puts his forehead on the wall and confesses through the wall. I mean, I don't know how somebody comes up with that, but I got goosebumps.

Ben 

There's the bit where Hyunho is going to Dohoe's house to get something. And Shin Juyoung shows up and we just see the three of them staring at each other in a hallway. There is not much dialogue in this sequence, but that is such a charged moment. Incredible stuff.

*xylophone sound*

NiNi 

So from original story, we're moving to the Best Adapted Story. This is for adaptation of a source work from another medium or another culture. 

Ben, who wrote our best adapted story?

Ben 

Toyama Erika for I Became the Star of a BL Drama, adapted from BL drama no shuen ni narimashita by Suzuri Machi. 

This was the first thing we watched on New Year's Eve into New Year's. This was the show that set the standard of the year for me. This show was legitimately funny. In a really short runtime, they captured the total essence of the story. 

What a solid experience to start the year. And good news, gays, theys, and thems—it’s getting a sequel. [snickers]

NiNi 

[laughs] We are. We are. I'm so excited about that.

Congratulations to Toyama Erika, who wrote, I'm sorry, the best line of the year when the writer of the drama within the drama says, “We will drown the audience in the BL goodness.”

Ben 

That line stands alongside “Every fujoshi has a dick in her heart.”

NiNi

Congratulations to our original story and adapted story writers, Hwang da Seul and Toyama Erika. We will be sending you plates.

*xylophone sound*

Our final technical award goes to Best Direction. This award is for overall vision, filmmaking style and visual impact, photography, cinematography, shot selection, and direction of actor movement and expression. This is usually awarded to the directing team, which usually consists of the director, the director of photography or the cinematographer, and the editor. 

Ben, which show had the best direction of 2024?

Ben 

It's going to 25 Ji, Akasaka de, AKA At 25:00 in Akasaka. Directed by Hori Takahiro and Kawasaki Rio, DP Hanamura Yasushi, and edited by Kitani Mizuki. 

We just awarded I Became the Main Role in a BL Drama. And then this show released and I was like, are we doing this again, but moody? And they said, we sure are! 

And we loved it. I cannot believe we got similar premises in the same year and both were standout productions of the year. I'm a sucker for actors playing actors. And I really loved the work that went into this particular show.

NiNi 

The way that the show plays with the camera, inside the show inside the show, the way the camera kind of zooms in to immerse you in the moment, and then pulls back out to show you how fake the moment is.  They really make an effort to blur that line between real and fake, which is a big theme in the show. So very well done.

Ben

My favorite section every year. BL is really silly sometimes and there's a wide range of quality. And I don't think it's always for a lack of effort on people's part. But damn is it really good to have some things that are good enough that you are willing to show it to some of your bougie friends to make them sit down and watch some fucking BL. Thank you to everyone.

NiNi 

Thank you to all of our Immortal Technique winners. You will be getting your plates in the mail if we ever get around to sending out these magical plates. [Ben laughs] But y'all did good and we love you.

00:29:05 - Top Tings

NiNi 

Let's move on to our top tings. All the best things that we saw this year.

Ben 

Historically we've awarded these on some genre lines, but primarily country lines. With the greater diversification of the genre and also the absence of certain countries for economic and political reasons, we have opted to not award based on countries anymore.

We are going to be awarding on genre-oriented categories only. With that being said, NiNi, take us in.

MC: Gentlemen, pray silence for the President of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.

President: I thank you, gentlemen. The year has been a good one for the society. Our Members have put more things on top of other things than ever before. But I should warn you, this is no time for complacency now. There are still many things that are I cannot emphasize too strongly,  not on top of other things. I myself on my way here this evening saw a thing that was not on top of another thing in any way. Shame indeed. But we must not allow ourselves to become too despondent for we must never forget that if there was not one thing that was not on top of another thing, our society would be nothing more than a meaningless body of men gathered together for no good purpose. 

Monty Python, The Royal Society for Putting Things On Top Of Other Things

NiNi 

We're going to start with the Best GL. Well, there's no competition really in 2024.

Ben 

It is Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, AKA She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat from NHK in Japan. 

NHK really delivered for us and I was so relieved when they actually came back to continue the She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat story. Because after the first 10 episodes, we were not finished.

The ongoing exploration of queerness and relationships between women in the modern era was just so excellent in this show. It had adult women of various ages interacting with each other across those age lines and trying to support each other in meaningful ways. And we got really great development on the core relationship.

There was a lot of new GL this year and I'm looking forward to some more projects and I hope we have a wider field to choose from next year. But this is unequivocally our winner of the year. Nobody can compete with the chosen family scene. It's over for everyone else. I'm sorry.

NiNi 

I love the way that they expanded the show, expanded the cast to bring in somebody new moving into the apartment building, to bring in Nomoto's internet friend that she turned into a real friend. Really expanding the world and getting more into the relationships between all of these characters, all of these amazing women. I love it so much. It's the best GL that we watched this year.

*xylophone sound*

Ben

Our next award goes to the Best Pulp for shows with a small budget that have a big impact. It's very hard sometimes when you're working on tiny budgets to say big things. And it's really impressive when that show clearly has a strong creative handle on what it wants to do and what it wants to accomplish. It's easy to award the studios that have a lot of money and a big actor pool and can produce a lot of stuff. Something's probably gonna be good if you try often enough. It's always really cool when a small team comes out of nowhere and delivers one of the best things you saw this year. 

With that in mind, NiNi, who is our best pulp of the year?

NiNi 

Surprising absolutely no one, our best pulp of the year is Knock Knock Boys! by Kongthup Production and WeTV from Thailand. 

Knock Knock Boys! was an amazing pulp that used its small budget incredibly well. Some great acting, some sharp writing, just incredible all around. Took what they had and ran with it. I still think about Almond and Latte not having sex at the beach. I think that's one of the best scenes that I've seen this year. A great little show.

Ben

This show absolutely fucks. Go watch it!

NiNi 

Nothing more needs to be said.

Ben 

[laughs] Girl, I am halfway through this bottle. I need to slow down.

NiNi 

I'm so leaving that in. 

*xylophone sound*

Our next award goes to the Best Romantic Comedy. Live, love, laugh. I'm leaving that in as well. 

Ben, What's the funniest and most warmed we felt all year?

Ben 

This year's winner is Doku koi: Doku mo sugireba koi to naru AKA Love is a Poison. 

The show was just that funny consistently for 12 weeks. It's hard to be funny for 12 weeks. This show earned every single laugh it got. And they use their laughs to tell some really dirty jokes.

NiNi 

I just keep thinking about the succulents. [both laughs] The succulents making all those sighing noises. The succulents were one of the best things about this show and if you want to know what that means you should go watch it. It's an incredible show, incredibly funny. I laughed out loud multiple times. It's a delightful romantic comedy.

*xylophone sound*

Ben

Our next award goes to the Best Romantic Drama.

NiNi, who is our awardee for this year?

NiNi

Once again from Japan, the best romantic drama is 25 Ji, Akasaka de, At 25:00 in Akasaka by TV Tokyo. I am stuck on this show in a way that I did not expect to be when I watched it. Just the emotions involved between Hayama and Shirasaki and how long they've been going on and how tangled up they are because they are working together playing lovers and can't really disentangle real from fake.

Ben 

I really think about the way Niihara delivers “Asami-san” across the entire show. And I really feel like this show kicked into overdrive. I think it's around the end of episode four when Shirasaki is struggling with delivering the big confession scene in the drama they're recording within the show. The way we arrive at the end point of that, it's really one of the most effective episodes of television we got in BL this year.

NiNi 

I'm not gonna stop thinking about it ever, I think. Congratulations to 25 Ji, Akasaka de. You get a plate.

NiNi 

Moving on to the Best Genre Romance. This is for romance blended with sci-fi, fantasy, horror, action, and or mystery elements.

Ben 

This year's winner is Love for Love’s Sake from Wavve Studios.

It's really hard to do sci-fi well and give the audience an interesting relationship to sit with. Without spoilers, I really like that the audience has had a wide field of complex reactions to the end of this particular story. I think that that is a really strong indicator of how well the show explored the various things it wanted to do. It's really, really hard in sci-fi to do relationships that are meaningful because in sci-fi, it's more about the human condition and exploring complex ideas. The characters are more stand-ins for societal ideas that the story wants to pick at. 

This was an incredible job with a newcomer, no less, delivering on a really compelling and complex relationship. Man, I'm still thinking about that shoes moment.

NiNi 

My god.

Ben 

Hold on, I'm in my feelings.

NiNi 

The VIIB awards when Ben gets in his feelings. No, it was really so good.

Ben 

He shouted that man's name and he said run and then his shoes let off sparks and I screamed in my house. The scream I scrumpt!

NiNi

This is really a great one. One of the things about genre romances, it's really important for the genre elements to matter, for them to be integrally integrated into the story and the themes. That's one of the things that we look for in a good genre romance. 

Ben 

When Tae Myungha got the ability to see who Cha Yeowoon dislikes the most and he's going around and surveying the field, that hurt my feelings.

NiNi

My lord that was a moment to end moments.

Ben 

This really was an excellent show. This was not an easy decision for us, but this is why this show pushed ahead.

NiNi 

Congratulations to Love for Love's Sake. You get a plate.

*xylophone sound*

All right, Ben.

Ben 

It's time, baby! Show Of The Year!

NiNi

We are ready to award the best fucking thing we watched this year in QL.

Ben 

If you ain't watched fuck-all this year because you're too busy, you got too much else going on. If you only have time for one BL, please go watch our awardee, Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo from Studio Him Energetic Company.

It wasn't even close. I'm sorry to everybody else this year. [both laugh]

NiNi

It was not. It was not even close.

Ben

Look, last year I almost fucking murdered NiNi over La Pluie. [NiNi laughs] 

NiNi

I do remember. 

Ben

We met in person and I almost fucking killed her over the show.

NiNi

But this year it wasn't even a discussion, really. Obviously we enjoyed some other things, but one show really stood out and this was it. Hwang Da Seul is back. And she's killing the fucking game.

Ben 

We already spoke extensively about this show in an earlier episode, but we barely scratched the surface of everything we could have talked about in that show. That was a complete viewing experience. Not a moment of our time was wasted on extra bullshit. This was a stellar show and it is hands down head and shoulders above the other things we watched this year.

NiNi 

I just keep thinking about Dohoe asking Juyoung if he dressed up for him while he starts undressing him. Amazing show, incredible show. We can talk about it forever. 

Congratulations, Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo. You will get a plate. That's gonna wrap up our standard class awards.

00:41:43 - Special Class Awards

NiNi

Now we move into where Ben really gets to enjoy himself. Ben would not do the VIIB Awards if we did not do special class.

Ben 

Here's the background for the new people. When NiNi first approached me about doing a podcast together, she's like, let's start with an award show. Like it's the end of the year. Let's award the shows we really liked this year. And it was all like super queer cinema type stuff. And NiNi's like, okay, but I want to give BL shows awards. 

So we compromised and we put all of the queer shit whose primary goal was not to tell romantic stories overall into their own special class so we could highlight them. We thought this was a good compromise because BL is a romance genre, and the shows that I typically like to award here are not romances. But these are the shows that I support BL for. The market that enjoys BL has enough crossover with some of these types of queer dramas that it enables them to get made. So, it's time to hand out our special class awards so I can once again talk about all of my favorite things.

00:43:11 - Special Class: Honourable Mentions

Ben

Let's begin with our honorable mentions. These go to shows that we think contributed to the genre for any number of various ways.

And I want to say to all of you out there nervously waiting. Remember one thing. No matter what happens tonight, you're all winners. Because as you know, it is an honor just to be *wails* NOMINATED! 

I’m fine, fine, fine. 

Nathan Lane, 1995 Tony Awards

NiNi 

I wanted to highlight in the honorable mentions 7 Days Before Valentine. We talked about this one a little bit in one of our grab bags. This was a highly experimental piece that I really enjoyed and has surprisingly stuck with me. I still keep thinking about it. It's not BL exactly. It's kind of BL-ish. It's not, it's queer, it's not queer. It's very genre, it's also not genre. It's a little bit of everything when I described it in the grab bag, I described it as something that made me feel like I was sitting in a theater watching actors do an experimental play.

Ben 

It is from the same screenwriter/playwright/director who also gave us 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us. We wanted to highlight that Punnasak Sukee is still working.

NiNi 

It's very different kind of work but, I think, really worth watching. Our other honorable mentions come from Japan.

Ben 

It's time for the Anime Awards. Brother in the booth, play the sound!

*bright sparkle sound*

Ben 

There were about 10-odd anime projects that were BL or BL-adjacent that came out last year, only some of which were reasonably accessible to Westerners.

I want to highlight Tadaima, Okaeri and Twilight Out of Focus. Tadaima, Okaeri  is the best Omegaverse project that came out in this year. Wild time to be in BL. But Tadaima, Okaeri uses the convention of that genre to tell a story about a married gay couple with kids who are still growing their family, and it's really heartfelt. So many stories we watch are about guys getting together and the uphill challenges they fight to do that and whether or not we believe in them. This story was one hundred percent about that belief we had in them. These guys are together. They've already gone through their BL drama. We're watching them build a home. We're watching them raise their son and then their daughter.

This was a really unexpected and really incredible viewing experience. Omegaverse is not for everyone, but truly this was one of the standout narratives that I got to experience this year. I still think about this family at least once a week.

On the other end of the spectrum, Twilight Out of Focus was about a film club at a high school that allows us to explore three different relationships where in two of them, someone is already a known gay. This was a really special show that was unpacking a lot of BL presumptions. Studio Deen came back this year with Twilight Out of Focus. And it's continuing to ask the question in a context where a lot of people's first experiences with queer storytelling and queer identity is coming through BL, what responsibility does BL have to the boys and girls and other kids who are discovering themselves and BL is informing how they're going to interact with their potential partners? This show does this in a really elegant way without dunking on BL in the process. Also, the animation is gorgeous, truly.

Both of these are available on Crunchyroll. Please give them a chance.

00:47:36 - Special Class: Mark Pakin 6th Man Awards

NiNi 

We are moving on in our special class to the Sixth Man Award, or what we like to call the Mark Pakin Awards, because that's who we originally awarded this award to.

Interviewer: What was your preparation as sixth men? 

Jamal Crawford: You have to warm up different. Got my body…I knew I'd be cooling down, so I'm over…I didn't go to the bike, but I'll go to the hallway 'cause. I was stretching when I was on the bench. I was stretch off and I was mentally, more than anything, I would mentally put myself in the game before I got in the game. Oh, they're playing like this. They playing that pick and roll. He's sitting back right there. Okay, he's going for hands up. Oh, he's going for the left hands, okay. So I'm putting myself in, so I'm playing the game before I actually play the game. I'm like, you got more more. How much you see on my other plan? You like this, okay. You got to stick to it right here because I'm trying to send you left back to your right mother. This guy. That one guy is blitzing because he can get up the other guy. So I'm just watching different things, dude, and so I'm putting myself in the game, but I'm making my own adjustments. Before the play even happened.

Jamal Crawford, 3-time NBA 6th Man of the Year

NiNi

This award acknowledges the most valuable and versatile supporting actors of the year for on-screen and off-screen contributions. Our sixth man is somebody who can come on to a project, and just fire away, go right in. Basically, it's a gunslinger. It's coming off the bench and doing everything that needs to get done.

We've got two sixth man awards to hand out this year and I'm going to let Ben take the first one.

Ben

My award is going to Dome Jaruwat Cheawaram for his acting work in Cooking Crush as Samsee and for his composer work on Jack and Joker. 

Dome has been around BL for a very long time. I still listen to the song he sang for Until We Meet Again. This man has been in the streets with us for a long time. And I think he did a really fantastic job with the Samsee character. This man is always working. He is in the background somewhere doing something to entertain people. And we really wanted to acknowledge that this year.

So congratulations, sir. Thank you for all the work you do. And I really hope that people continue to appreciate your presence.

NiNi 

He is a great actor. He's a great musician, and he is one of our Sixth Men of the Year.

Our second Sixth Man Award this year is going to go to Title Kirati Puangmalee from We Are, Wandee Goodday, and Kidnap. He's been around and he continues to be around. And this year he gave us three very different performances.

Ben 

He's been with us as early as Love By Chance and he started with GMMTV for us on Be My Favorite, playing a heel there. Once Gunsmile left GMMTV, he stepped into that role to be the dude we hate. Good job, sir. You're doing a great job.

NiNi

This year he also played people that we liked, so great. He was one of the best parts of Kidnap because his character was entirely unhinged and nobody ever called him on it. Delightful. Every time he shows up, I know I'm going to have a good time. He is a good, solid actor, he can show up and do whatever you need him to do. 

So congratulations to Title Kirati Puangmalee for being one of 2024's sixth men.

00:51:13 - Special Class: Standout Queer Narratives

NiNi

We are on to our final awards, our Standout Queer Narratives of the Year.

Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular. Never the same. Totally unique. Completely not ever been done before. Unafraid to reference or not reference. Put It in a blender. Shit on it. Vomit on it. Eat it. Give birth to it. 

Lady Gaga

NiNi

These awards acknowledge queer drama works that are not primarily romances.

Ben 

We're going to be talking about five different shows this year. Ossan no pantsu ga nandatte iijanaika!, aka Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear from Japan, a family drama. We're going to be talking about Marahuyo Project from the Philippines, a community drama. We're going to be discussing Love in the Big City, a very complicated adult coming of age drama,Kimi no tsugu kaori wa, aka Fragrance You Inherit from Japan, a very interesting family drama. And finally, Interview with the Vampire Season 2, a Southern Gothic drama from the United States of all places.

NiNi 

We almost never talk about Western shows in standout queer narratives.

Ben 

That's how good that show is. That's how good it is.

NiNi 

Let's start there then.

Ben

Interview with the Vampire Season 2 continues this narrative. Louie and Claudia are in Europe and we're dealing with the fallout of their attempt to kill Lestat at the end of Season 1. What's so special about Season 2 is honestly, Jacob Anderson. I also want to give some special shout out to Delainey Hayles, who has to take over the role of Claudia in this season. And she does an incredible job. Assad Zaman and Eric Bogosian really step up in this season and play some really stellar stuff, and Emily would kill me if I didn't mention Ben Daniels’ work as Santiago. 

This is fundamentally a gay drama about unwell divorced people. And it remains one of the most compelling watches that I get to look forward to.

NiNi 

I have not watched this one yet. I'm working on cutting down my list this year by actually watching things. So this is on the list, definitely of things that I'm going to watch. It's been making too much noise for me to not watch it.

Ben 

I will say sincerely, as someone who really swoons for really strong actor chemistry and performances, if you had watched Interview, you would not have awarded Best Pair to Doku Koi.

NiNi 

It's standout queer narrative, they don't go into the BL parts.

Ben 

You all see why this award show works the way it does! [both laugh]

But sincerely, that's how good the two of them are. they're not really in a proper romance because they're so fucked up. [NiNi laughs] But goddamn, Jacob and Sam are the two men I look the most forward to playing queer characters. And this show has a complex lens on queerness over the course of centuries, which adds an incredible layer to the performance.

It's hard to do sequels to romantic stories. I loved the second season of Interview in many ways more than I loved the first season, but I would not have been able to enjoy the second season without the first season. That is truly what makes a second season really good, when it builds on what the first season did and elevates that to a whole new level; a really special experience this year. It is rare that I go out of my way to recommend Western Queer TV on this podcast. But in this particular case, I highly recommend Interview with the Vampire.

NiNi 

It's on my list and steadily climbing.

The next show on our standout queer narratives list is a show that we actually haven't talked about yet but will be talking about coming up soon. Fragrance You Inherit, Kimi no tsugu kaori wa from Japan, a family drama. 

Without getting too deep into it, which we are going to do on its own episode, Ben, just give the people a little taste of what Fragrance You Inherit is about.

Ben 

Fragrance You Inherit is about a single mom and her son. And it's about her meeting the son's new girlfriend, who happens to be the daughter of her college crush. The son's girlfriend is the spitting image of her mom, and this is fundamentally a show about really kind people trying to do right by each other as they navigate some unresolved feelings across two different generations. 

This is a show that could have gone a really ugly route, but I really liked that this was fundamentally a show about people trying to take care of each other. And it was a lot of fun watching a show where the primary stress comes from everyone being really polite about some very difficult things. We get to see an older lesbian who knows she's a lesbian but hasn't told her son, navigate the unresolved feelings she had for her closest female friend in college while their children pursue a really meaningful romance between them in a way that I think honors the desires and perspective of all of the characters involved. It's a really special experience and was a real surprise for us at the end of the year.

NiNi 

This is from Ishibashi Yuhuo who also did Our Dining Table, Tokyo in April Is…, I think, and a few other standout Japanese dramas that we've watched in the last few years. 

Ben 

There were not enough shots of shoes. I would not have known it was her.

NiNi 

[laughs] She does love shoes. 

This comes from a manga by Ogawa Maruni and it really surprised me. It's a GL but not a GL. It's about having built, after disappointment, having built really good, meaningful, happy lives, and then having that rocked a little bit by unresolved things from your past and where that takes you. It's also about parents and children. It's also about being honest with people in your life and how not being honest with them can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety. It is a great show. We will be talking about in a lot more detail coming up in a subsequent episode, but we wanted to award it a Standout Queer Narrative Award.

Ben 

We already discussed Love in the Big City in an earlier episode, so we will not go on at length about it here. But we are once again stating for the official record of the VIIB Awards, that this is honestly the show not to miss this year. There is so much that went into getting this show even made.

The entire experience we get with Go Young across his 20s and four difficult periods of his life is honestly one of the most meaningful queer experiences I got to have in communion with other people in the last couple of years. Everything about reading Love in the Big City and watching Love in the Big City is one of the most memorable experiences I've had with queer media in a long time. And I cannot overstate how good this show is and how significant the existence of the show is. 

This show for many ways fills the same sort of place as Moonlight in my queer cinema taste in viewing. I can't really chat with a queer cinephile who hasn't watched Moonlight, and Love in the Big City  is very quickly becoming one of those things. If you haven't watched Love in the Big City do not talk to me. 

Watch this one, for fuck's sake! It's that good. You owe it to yourself to get this into your psyche.

NiNi 

We talked about this show for maybe close to an hour and a half of pre-edit time and we barely scratched the surface. Since our episode went out, we have been continuing to talk about this show and finding new things to delve into. We are not going to talk about it forever, but we could. Watch it, it's worth everything, and it is one of our standout queer narratives of the year.

Our next standout queer narrative is Marahuyo Project from the Philippines. Thank god JP Habac came back this year. I was starting to lose hope.

Ben 

I'm so glad that ANIMA Studios is still in it. And I'm so glad that they came back with a project like this. It felt really special to me in a year where I found myself really struggling to connect with youth queer storytelling, this show said it was LGBTQIA +, and it meant that with its whole fucking heart. And it put its whole ass on the line to tell the stories that it wanted to tell. This was a great viewing experience. And if you care about queer art, this show is available for free on YouTube. Please go give them some support.

NiNi 

I just can't stop thinking about the back of Archie's neck.

Ben 

Mmhmm. And about Adrian Lindayag and everything that he does for queer activism in the Philippines, and I'm so glad that he got to play King.

NiNi 

Amazing show, amazing music, amazing writing, amazing direction. Oh my god, King's fourth wall breaks. Amazing. It was just such a good show with a lot of heart, a lot of real deep complex feelings to delve into.

Ben 

The funniest thing about dealing with the VIIB Awards is, like, each one of these shows would have decimated other categories it was in. Like, Marahuyo Project would have decimated Best Music. It would have been no contest. 

NiNi 

It really would have, it really would have won best music.

Ben 

I almost fought for it. I was like, I don't care. I'm giving it to them anyway. They're like dragging me off stage so I–

NiNi 

[laughs] Shhh, come on, come on, come on. No, shhh, it's time to go to bed, come on.

Ben 

We would have given Love in the Big City show of the year. Interview, if everybody else had watched it, would have definitely won genre romance, flat out. Like, that's how good all of these shows are.

NiNi 

But ultimately they are not romances.

Ben

But that's the point. [snickers]

Our last show is Don't Care For an Old Man's Underwear. We talked about this show at length earlier. This was so spectacular. This was a show where our primary character is an ignorant, misogynist, middle-aged man, and we were rooting for this man very early on in this show. And we loved him by the end of it. This show is so aspirational in a way that even some of our BLs can't really stand up to. Like this show believes that misogynistic old men can do better and have meaningful, loving, supportive, and positive relationships with their families if they just listen to them a little bit more. Good job, everybody. Way to really shoot for the best outcome you could possibly get. 

This show really modeled what relationship rebuilding and healing could look like in a way that I think is really helpful. And I really liked that a very well-known and popular Japanese comedian was in the lead role of this. Dramas like this are often really important because you have people with clout they've earned well outside of the queer narrative space doing really meaningful work in it. And these are the kinds of projects that often reach a lot more people than the BL that we talk about. Like, I feel like more people are gonna have had a gay storytelling experience because of Interview with the Vampire, more than some of these BLs we've talked about on here by a long shot. And I think for the Japanese viewing audience, I think many of them would have probably engaged with Ossan no pantsu far more likely than they would have engaged with any of the BL we highlighted on this list earlier. 

Really important to highlight these kinds of projects because these are the projects that are useful for you to show your friends and family. If you're interested in sharing BL with them, these are very good starting points to get into the rest of the genre because they are not BL, but they do open people's minds up to viewing queer media from places they might not have normally expected to get that.

NiNi 

Well said and I just love Makoto's turns of phrase. I think about them a lot, saying that the idol that his wife likes is the Okita family benefactor.

Ben 

That is exactly where my head went, too. “So Random is the Okita family's benefactor. I understand.” [laughs]

NiNi 

It's such clever writing, the way that he recasts ideas into a way that he can engage with them in an attempt to understand the things that he doesn't understand. I really enjoy that the writing puts him into the role of doing that work.

All of the shows on these lists, of course, because it's our VIIB Awards, these are really the things that we loved watching. But I think I have a special place in my heart for Oppan.

01:06:00 - Outro

Ben

We talk about a lot of shows in this podcast. We highlight a lot of things. These are the things that will be talked about well beyond this year, or at least we hope they will. Please go watch them and be part of that conversation.

NiNi 

I think the other thing that the VIIB Awards forces us to do is even in a year that we're struggling a little bit, it reminds us that, no, actually there was a lot of good stuff, too.

So anyway, there we are. Those are our VIIB Awards. We're gonna put up our final awards listing as part of the transcript for this show. So look out for that when it comes out on Tumblr. But that's gonna be it from us. The 2024 VIIB Awards are over.

Ben

I'm currently showing Emily Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo and Love in the Big City at the same time.

NiNi 

My gosh, so you're giving her the exact same experience we had. Good job.

Ben 

I sure am! [laughs] Can you believe that we got both of these shows at the same time? Like, how did they think we were supposed to process both of these shows simultaneously?

NiNi 

They weren't thinking about us, bestie. They were just like, no, we're just going to put the things out. It's time.

Ben 

Incredible. I just love the idea that a bunch of new Korean viewers who might've become interested in QL following up on Love in the Big City had Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo right there being advertised at them. Like, that is so stellar.

NiNi

That was a very good four weeks.

That is going to wrap us up on the 2024 VIIB Awards. Oh my god guys, we're done for another year.

This year, let's see what's gonna happen. Is Ben gonna not watch in the summer so he doesn't get cranky? Stay tuned to find out.

Ben 

[laughs] No promises, no demands. Love is a battlefield.

NiNi 

Woo. We have drunk too much brown liquor, it is time to go. We out. 

Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben