#maxtul

And thinking about how Pond and Phuwin admitted they hang out a lot but they don’t post any of it because they don’t want their actual relationship outside of work to be called fanservice.

And thinking about the interview BillyBabe gave recently where they reiterated that they don’t engage in fanservice and they can’t make anyone believe anything about their relationship anyway.

And about old videos of Earth during early ATOTS era asking MCs not to use the term koojin about him and Mix.

And about YinWar, BossNouel and MaxTul always having been very honest that they are friends who work together. Never obscuring that fact.

And about Tay Tawan loudly saying that OffGunTayNew all kiss each other all the time since Gun showed up and the realties of their friendship are none of your business.

And about Krist loudly saying he’s allowed to have friends.

Because none of these pairs intend to stop acting with their current partner (aside from MaxTul because Tul has left the industry entirely.) They’re not protesting being paired with another person for multiple projects. They are protesting the commodification, the telling a person who they are with know actual knowledge, and frankly homophobic/toxic masculinity drenched idea that for a man to show care to another man they either have to have a deep romantic relationship or they’re faking it all for the money, even the stuff with no branding attached.

And half the stuff that gets filed away as evidence that two men in a pair or are dating or that everything is definitely fanservice and is entirely manufactured are things that are completely normal in female friendships:

Looking at a person when they speak

Knowing someone’s likes and dislikes

Thoughtful gifts

Saying you love them/care

Acts of service

Physical affection

Sometimes being jealous of a friend’s relationship with other friends

Hanging out outside of work

And yeah, some of them may be just coworkers that they grit their teeth and work with and fake it til they make it. But some pairs out there have a genuine relationship, however they label it. And however it’s labeled is none of your business.

As a fan, you have no right to tell them how to act, whether it’s to call out fanservice and demand they stop or to tell them they can’t have other friends. Both are toxic extremes and treating a person like an object you can control.

There’s a longer essay on this, that I plan to finish soon, but this is where my brain keeps cycling through.

LOVE MONTH WITH: ➤ MANNER OF DEATH (2020)

Day 9: Most Visually Pleasing Love Scene

(I took into account the love scenes and the heavy making out sessions)

The Sign the pink one

TharnType the ice cube one (please don't hate me 🥺)

every MaxTul scene, I mean.. come on, it's them

every scene of Kinn and Porsche

Siew Sum Noi - IG and Ruk scene

Be Loved in House: I Do

Love Class 2 this scene

gif by @nanihirunkits

Twins both scenes, I especially like this one

Ghost Host, Ghost House this scene

every DaouOffroad scene in Century of Love and Love in Translation

cold blue:

red hot:

Destiny Seeker

The Eighth Sense so beautiful

Bake Me Please both their scenes

4 Minutes all scenes, it's the same as with KP

I think we (or at least I) forget the Thai BL trajectory over the years is not exactly one from conservatism to progressiveness. Many of its creators and actors were coming out of a much more sexually-explicit but less popular queer media landscape, and you can see it in many early works. Hormones, Love Sick, Diary of Tootsies, Make It Right, Grean Fictions, and Together With Me all bear rough edges they share with that side of Thailand’s lgbt+ culture. Even Room Alone and SOTUS, teen-focused gmmtv’s first forays into queer programming, draw on the edgier queer storytelling techniques established in the 2000s. It wasn’t until 2017-18 (2 Moons, He’s Coming to Me, SOTUS S, Love By Chance) that you see the corners getting sanded down and refined into the more innocent BL many of us picture when we hear the label.

And before we make any claims about some specific nefarious force within the industry, I’d point out that this trend happened across all kinds of media around that time, a response to the toxic masculinity and discriminatory rhetoric associated with that kind of obscene humor in that historical moment of increasing fundamentalism. Progressivism framed itself as something cleaner, more pure, in a world of increasing xenophobic vulgarity. Of course, an aesthetic can contain any number of political views within it, and the pre-2018 BL options are wonderfully indecent displays of filth as a welcome home for queer people to discover themselves beyond the reaches of untrustworthy institutions that wielded purity as a weapon.

Tagged by: @miss0atae @hughungrybear @abstractelysium @thisonelikesaliens @befuddledcinnamonroll @my-rose-tinted-glasses and @troubled-mind

Seriously, thank you all SO much. I am emerging from the cave and work-induced coma that was January, and this is SUCH a delightful way to do it! I greatly enjoyed reading everyone's stories and journeys. It's wild how varied they are while still feeling familiar.

Gonna be honest...I was enjoying reading everyone's journeys so much, that I went ahead and read the posts by @embersinthefirelight @watchthisqqq @maybe-boys-do-love @gotmehookedonthekpop and @alecdoesntknowhowtoadult too.

It looks like I need to add Yes or No to my watchlist.

Where to begin.....

Apparently by making gifs 😅.

Stage Beauty (2004)

Is the messaging in this film problematic? 100%, yes, very. Would I probably greatly dislike this film if I saw it for the first time today? Also yes. Does it even qualify as queer? Probably not.

But all my brain processed at the time was....it exists. This type of media exists. These types of characters exist.

And at the time, that left a bigger impact on me than I can possibly describe in words. It meant I wanted more.

Princess Jellyfish (2008+)

Like the previous one, is this queer? Coded - maybe? Like many of my favorite crossdressers in media, Kuranosuke is definitely identified as straight. But....it was this show that forced me to admit a lot of things about myself. Thanks to some amazing teenagers in my life, I also learned a lot of fun new words around this time like "pansexual". I consider it a major stepping stone for me personally and for looking for more queer media in all forms.

And....apparently we're making more gifs.

Silhouette of Your Voice (2017)

As someone who is hearing impaired and does not sign, this IP is incredibly precious to me. I thought about skipping it, because it's not like it drew me further into the QL genre. But...it's a huge part of my story. It was a first. The first time I felt my disability was represented in a way that felt accurate to me on a lot of levels.

Together With Me (2017)

We're actually to the prompt at this point 😂. Yeah, I watched the opening sequence of Together With Me and life has never been the same. I was reeled in for whatever else this genre could throw at me. What pulled me into QL? MaxTul. Hook, line and sinker. If I had stuck to the prompt, this post would be 1 show/1 gif long. This is it. The whole answer.

TharnType (2019)

This is my first fully live watch. I have STRONG memories of essentially sneaking around and even lying to coworkers so I could skip a dinner and go watch the newest episode. #icecube scene for the win. I still think it was the right choice to skip dinner. For the record, I was already lurking in the tags of Tumblr by this point even if it was only the tags for shows I was watching.

The Heart Killers (2024/2025)

The show that got me to finally stop lurking. Why? Well... @airenyah wrote these epically amazing but long posts about Style that I absolutely HAD to read, but I wanted to read them comfortably on the couch.

So...FINE. I'll make an actual account and download the Tumblr app after count that...6-7 years of lurking in various BL tags and bookmarking blogs in my browser.

Having the app (and an account) meant I did something I had never done before....I answered a poll. And that was fun. Then one night I was tired/not reading carefully and mis-clicked on a poll (in THK tag) about where you were from. I panicked. At my core, I'm a data person....and I had messed up someone's data. So I decided to comment and apologize. And the person was incredibly nice about it.

And it made me wonder...could I? Should I? What would it be like to actually talk about all of these shows I love? My brother encouraged (read: practically forced) me to start the blog, and here we are...a year and 865+ original posts later.