~ Monthly BL Breakdown: April 2024 ~
🌷 Happy May!!! ☀️
Disclaimer: ALL shows can be streamed here or here, as well as on Youtube and other platforms. For more info on where to watch what, check out this post!
New breakdowns are coming at the end of every month - feel free to add stuff! -> previous breakdowns
What came out this month? (green = seen/currently watching)
🌟 Love is Like a Cat - April 1st (South Korea / Thailand)
🌟 We Are - April 3rd (Thailand) ✅
🌟 Memory in the Letter - April 6th (Thailand)
🌟 Living With Him - April 11th (Japan)
🌟 Gray Shelter - April 11th (South Korea)
🌟 Beating Again - April 13th (Thailand)
🌟 Blue Boys - April 15th (South Korea)
🌟 At 25:00 in Alasaka - April 18th (Japan)
🌟 GMMTV2024 Part 2 (lineup event) - April 23rd (Thailand) ✅
🌟 Boys Be Brave - April 25th (South Korea)
🌟 CHANGE2561 2024 lineup event - April 25th (Thailand) ✅
🌟 My Stand-In - April 26th (Thailand) ✅
🌟 City Boy Log Vol. 3 - April 30th (South Korea)
New series & movie announcements
🎥 The Fridge - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 Flavor of Us (starring Benjamin B., Dome W. & others) - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 Children's Day - Date TBA (Taiwan)
🎥 Blue Time - Date TBA (China, possibly censored)
🎥 Bad Guy My Boss - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 Oriental Magician In The Ent. Circle - Date TBA (Taiwan)
🎥 Under the Oak Tree - Date TBA (Vietnam)
🎥 Invitation - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 The Love Matter - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 I Saw You in My Dream - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 I Wish You the Best - Date TBA (Thailand)
🎥 Impression of Youth - Date TBA (Taiwan)
🎥 Meet You at the Blossom - Date TBA (Taiwan)
Other news from the BL world
❗️ The production company Studio WabiSabi announced that their actors Boun N., Prem W., Santa P., Sammy C., Yacht P. and Stamp P. have terminated their contracts and will no longer be artists under the company on April 15th. Shortly after, GMMTV announced the 6 of them as newly signed artists, along with the disclosure that BounPrem's upcoming BL Vampire Project is now being produced under GMMTV, who now also own all broadcasting rights; WabiSabi will function as a co-producer. New S. stated on Twitter that the decisions had been long in the making, as well as the fact that WabiSabi no longer functions as a management agency for actors and is now a mere production company. He also denied the rumors that the company is shutting down. Shortly after the transfer of the Wabi Sabi actors, actor Fluke Jeeratch (formerly Pongsakorn) joined GMMTV as well.
❗️ The Filipino BL Gameboys is getting a third season. An air date has not been confirmed.
❗️ P Ekkapop and Pan Jirachot, the lead actors from Kiseki Chapter 2, have announced a new project together. Details are unknown.
❗️ Actor Barcode Tinnasit has announced his departure from his agency Be On Cloud.
❗️ After some confusion, the Korean production company Studio X+U announced that their upcoming series Fragile - which was initially advertized as a Korean SKAM remake - is in fact not connected to the Norwegian web series and is instead a standalone series, which focuses on the life of a group of teenagers. According to ZUM News, there was supposed to be a Korean SKAM remake based on the Norwegian original, which was however cancelled due to unknown reasons. Fragile was created as a substitution.
❗️ GMMTV held their 2024 part 2 event on April 23rd. The following BL projects were announced:
The Heart Killers (starring FirstKhao & JoongDunk)
Perfect10 Liners (starring ForceBook, PerthChimon, JuniorMark)
Heart That Skips a Beat (starring EstWilliam)
Revamp (starring BounPrem, formerly known as Vampire Project)
Sweet Tooth, Good Dentist (starring MarkOhm)
The Ex-Morning (starring KristSingto)
❗️ The production company CHANGE2561 held their 2024 lineup event on April 25th. The following BL projects were announced:
This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans (starring SailubPon)
Goddess Bless You From Death (starring PavelPooh)
I’m The Most Beautiful Count (starring PingSupanut)
Pit Babe Season 2
Upcoming series & movies for May
👉🏻 You Made My Day (starring Tar A. and Bom T. from I Will Knock You) - May 3rd (Thailand)
👉🏻 Inverse Identity / Upside Down - Mary 3rd (China)
👉🏻 Wandee Goodday - May 4th (Thailand)
👉🏻 A Balloon's Landing - May 10th (Taiwan)
👉🏻 City of Stars: Special Episode - May 10th (Thailand, cinema release)
👉🏻 The Time of Fever (Unintentional Love Story spinoff) - May 15th (South Korea)
👉🏻 Blossom Campus - May 16th (South Korea)
👉🏻 OMG! Vampire - May 19th (Thailand)
👉🏻 Manji Reverse - May 24th (Japan)
👉🏻 My Biker 2 - May 28th (Thailand)
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I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then
SIGHS...
Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.
I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:
There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.
Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.
I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.
No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."
Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).
So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?
This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.
---
P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.
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Ingo held Khan's scaled wrist gently as he examined the claws his friend now sported. Five fingers had been turned into four deadly talons, new to Ingo but already put to gruesome work by the hybrid.
"I'm sorry about your hands..." he said softly. Khan shrugged as he examined his other claws.
"Eh, don't sweat it. It's hardly the worst thing they've done to me." He responded mildly. As though his body being changed against his will to a weapon was the norm. Ingo glanced at his eyes, his fangs, the remnants of his horns- and remembered this wasn't the first time his friend had been altered against his will. His grip on Khan's hand tightened.
"Still," he insisted, "if we'd found you guys sooner..."
If they'd found Khan and Nana sooner, Khan would still have his hands and Nana would still have both eyes. If they'd been just a little faster to realize the hybrids were missing, to remember where they had come from, if they had pushed their pokemon a little harder to fly and fight-
"I'm glad you found us at all, honestly." Khan said it off the cuff, without thinking, but must have felt how Ingo's grip tightened again. He turned his head to look at his friend and Ingo felt mild dread at the look in his eyes. As Khan leaned forward he cringed back just slightly.
"Hey, look on the bright side!" Khan accentuated his words with a point from his claws. He must have seen Ingo's confused upset because he smiled wider.
"The bright side?" Ingo repeated. There was a bright side to this?
Khan shut his eyes as if he was a teacher explaining something incredibly simple.
"Oh, my sweet summer train man, of course there is!"
He stuck out his claws like Elesa and Skylar did when they were showing off freshly done nails. The scales gleamed in the light, dimly iridescent.
"I match your color scheme now!"
Ingo's gaze remained on the claws for a moment. Was this really a good thing? Khan had lost another important part of himself because he and Emmet had been too slow. Was the simple black nature of his scales that important? Could it make up for everything else?
He looked up with tired eyes, meeting Khan's gaze again, and realized that Khan was not as unaffected as he thought. He was giving Ingo the softest smile he'd ever witnessed on the other man's scarred face, his eyes half shut and gentle. Khan had been there when it happened, had suffered the consequences, just as he had the last time he'd been abducted. He would figure out how to deal with his new appendages just as he always had before. It was not quite old hat, but it was also nothing new, and something would have been changed no matter how quickly he and Emmet had arrived.
For the first time in the years he'd known Khan, the hybrid was being sympathetic and offering Ingo a comfort over something he had no control of. Yes, he now had claws and scales, but they were the color that Ingo most frequently found himself in. The color of one of his closest family members. Ingo wondered if Khan had used that as a way to comfort himself after it happened, but didn't dare ask. Instead he tried smiling. Surely it was weak, but the worried look in Khan's eyes lessened.
"Yes, you're quite right." Ingo grasped Khan's claws as if they were still his hands, holding them tightly. He would get used to them, just as Khan had. It would be alright. "Another color would have been quite unfortunate."
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