#Falling For My Boss

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - We In A Slump, but help might be coming from a very strange source

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

Sept 2024 Week 4

Ongoing Series - Thai

Jack & Joker (Thai Mon IQIYI) ep 3 of 12 - I don’t have a lot to say except that the plot is somewhat predictable but the show is still very engaging. War is fantastic. I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot.

Monster Next Door (Thai Thurs Gaga ) ep 10 of 12 - The second leads are getting better in this one. I understand where they are coming from, which makes their conflict so much more understandably painful, and honest to a friends2lovers trope. The main couple is kinda standard college relationship drama, but they are cuties.  

Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 4 of 12 - How is Ohm so damn gorgeous? Meanwhile, babies’ first argument. And it’s sponge bath time. Q has got to be wondering if Min is as meticulous with all kinds of care and attention to detail all......the......time. Somebody here in the hellhole said something about this being "the most BL to ever BL." And I think they’re right. At least right now. Although, watch out, we got us a new contender from the east.

I Saw You in My Dream (Weds Gaga) ep 11 of 12 - I do love the continuation of the perversion, in a good way, of the punishment trope from last week's episode. Oh, has the show finally remembered its title? NO SINGING. 

Addicted Heroin (Thai Tues WeTV) ep 7 of 10 - More kidnapping and an attack and now there’s a girl involved and somebody’s going to China and I don’t understand anything! And I don’t really care. Is this how the actual book originally went? Because it’s wild. Also TOO MANY of flashbacks. I guess they got a bit of a boyfriend era, and the claiming during the water fight was cute, but otherwise...... meh

Love Sick 2024 (Thai Sun iQIYI) ep 2 of 15 - One shouldn’t make comparisons, of course, but all I can think about is how amazing Captain was as Noh in the original series. Thus this show is mostly just making me want to rewatch the original. It’d be an interesting twist to have Aim be queer instead of a damaged cool girl slut. Was the helmet hand letting go a foreshadow of the iconic bookstore hands letting go? Also, I gotta say for the second episode of a series there are already too many flashbacks. Why are they using filler when they have so much content crammed into so few (comparable) episodes for a series? It’s annoying. Stop it.

Live in Love (Sun Gaga) ep 4 of 5 - This show has some interesting, if heavy handed, things to say about shipping and trolling, but also predatory/proprietary female behavior. It’s fascinating to see it tackled head on, if handled in a profoundly clumsy manner. I’m not sure how I feel about it. That said, most of this episode was actually an advertisement for a resort in Phuket. 

Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) ep 2 of 10 - I'm getting What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? vibes from this show. Only this is WAY more bullying. It’s very old-fashioned 90’s billionaire romance novel only gay. It’s never a good sign when I’m watching two boys kiss and I really want one of them to just bite the other ones lip off instead.

Battle of the Writers (Sun YT) ep 9 of 12 - No ep this week. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Sugar Dog Life (Japan Sun grey) ep 8 of 10 - Gosh it’s so frikin adorable. Baby got sick. He has SUCH A CRUSH. And such a courageous little confession! Yay! Can’t wait for next week. 

Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YouTube) ep 1 - sure, yes this is, in fact, just Ba Vinh doing his thing with pretty boys again. And yet...... There is a REASON this leapt into the standings guns blazing. So it’s high school set but it's stepbrothers trope. (My, aren’t we popular this year?) I know, but I NEVER get tired of this trope. We got us Bach (BV's sullen tsundere) and Dat (babygirl meets bully). It’s GREAT how the brothers' dynamic is entirely different at school than when they're at home. My ear isn’t trained for Vietnamese, but I think Dat is using different pronouns depending on his location (his personality entirely shifts when he’s at school). I’m not sold on the Bach character, although I always trust BV to serve in the end (at least we know the kisses will be good), but Dat is utterly in love, a touch spicy, and reasonably complex. The surrounding cast is good too, my favorite pretty boy is there playing top dog (woof), and one of the besties is out gay (YAY!). The plot of the show is...... well...... absent. Nothing happened. But if we are aiming for Love Sick slice of life style BL, I'm game. Subs are appropriately terrible and confusing. But I like it A FUCK TON so far, so I’m gonna keep it in rotation. Nice to have Vietnam back in play. What a shocker.

2024 has been a year of upsets.

Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 3 of 10 eps - I weirdly enjoyed the farcical music and the utter absurdity of the court case. I also liked how it highlighted what a good team these two are. Frankly I don’t mind a bit of an antihero sleazy lawyer + conman, it's engaging. I’m getting wholesome out of Thailand. I don’t really need it from Japan at the moment. Also I don’t believe for one second our conman actually is serious about the relationship. Conmen gonna con. I'm reminded of the scorpion and the frog fable.

First Note Of Love (Taiwan Mon Gaga) ep 8 of 12 - I love Orca so much. I do not love the autotuned version of Orca, but I knew what I was in for with this particular show, it's in the title after all. I did laugh a whole lot when Laing used kha. Hon, I don't think that word means what you think it means......

The On1y One (Taiwan Thurs Gaga) eps 11-12fin - I never thought I’d say this, but the pacing was off in the penultimate episode. Taiwan, and its chronic misuse of flashbacks strikes again. That said we eventually got a "lock in" trope and Wang being the biggest little flirt shit in the cafe OMG!!! Of course, you shouldn’t use a girl to torment your bf, but it was so well done, I can’t really complain. Meanwhile, teacher kisses. And now I understand exactly why they’re present in this narrative. Clever. Bummer of a burden on that ending though. I cannot see how they’ll manage to stick this landing. [That was ep 11]

AND NOW EP 12 - doomey doomey doom

Not the water bottle trope! Argh the teenage lust of it all. Just stop it. Wang is so smart he knows exactly how bad he has to be to leave the class. And his bf certainly knows that too. And......

......

So that was not an ending and I’m not happy about it and no one is surprised. Even I’m not surprised. I’m just disappointed. Even tho I suspected this was where we were headed I'm disappointed. That’s it. That’s all I got. How do I review something that was such a crushing let down?

Conclusion:

Based on a Mou Mou novel + the Your Name Engraved Herein team, this is old-school coming of age BL and it was bloody fantastic. Tsundere seme to beat all tsundere (smartest + tallest + bestest at everything but people) meets socially-ept cutie smart-ass uke. They're living together by end of ep 1 and start kissing by end of ep 2. A stellar tense slow burn stepbrothers trope that ate my life and than just belly-flopped the finale. What I'm left with is epic levels of disappointment and well...... at least nobody died? My standard "fatally flawed" rating for any BL is 4/10 so I guess that’s what I’m giving it. 

Before you ask me for the stats: Taiwan does not have a history of second seasons. I went ahead and ran the numbers and the odds are certainly not in our favor. I put the chances at 2%.

Yes, I contemplated a revenge rating of 2/10 but even I'm not that mean.

It's airing but...

The Hidden Moon (Sat WeTV) ep 1 of 10 - This is a supernatural romance (my ghost boyfriend trope) by Violet Rain (I Feel You Linger). A man is hired to write an article about an old mansion in Chiang Mai being converted into a café. He sees the ghosts of people who died at the mansion, falls in love with one of them. Was substantially recast. I loved IFYLITA except the ending so I think I'll let this one run it's course you can tell me if it's work tracking down... if they managed to land it. I have my doubts.

In Case You Missed It

Falling For My Boss is vertical format (nash) short from Korean BL about a happy-go-unlucky man who keeps losing his flower shop business because of romantically misbehaving employees (apparently it's a thing). When his best employee brings in a new boy he's worried she's falling for him, but it turns out it's his own heart on the line. He a clueless softy and The Boy is a lost broken sweetheart, making this a gentle little snippet of a show. There's a baby linguistic negotiation, some hung slinging, awkward handholds, and everyone is very pretty. For me the absence of kisses and the vertical format were more annoying than the length, which felt fine but many viewers will find too short. I enjoyed the 30 minutes of cute. All of which makes this a solid 7/10 from me. It was originally only available on this one ap in very short form with ads so I wasn't gonna bother. Then some kind soul cut it together without ads and stuck it up for download. Say thank you.

Oddball recommendation next: This podcast episode touches on some stuff we see in Thai BL so I think it's worth listening to. Journalist Dominic Faulder on the Complex History Between Thailand & Myanmar

Happy of the End (Japan Gaga) - Completed its run. A boy is disowned for being gay, dumped by his boyfriend, and ends up in a dysfunctional co-dependant relationship with his would-be kidnapper. We were due for another messy JBL and it's exactly as expected. I do not like it at all and DNFed. Gossip round the hellhole is that was a solid decision.

Marriage Equality Law has officially been enacted in Thailand...

Yes the actual law. Goes into effect Jan 22, 2025

Next Week Looks Like This:

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

Coming Oct 2024:

10/3 Fourever You (Thai iQIYI?) 16 eps - New directs Earth (UWMA, 12%) + Pond (Century of Love, 180 Degrees), Bas (Gen Y, 2 Moons) + Maxky (Why You… Y Me?) and other familiar faces like Bever. Sampler pack university BL from Wabi Sabi that looks like it's trying to be a gay Boys Over Flowers (4 older med students hot boys) and I'm not mad about it. Trailer Not sure who's distributing this but my guess is iQIYI since they had the last few from this house.

10/7 Every You Every Me (Thai Gaga) 10 eps - Jade and Chin have lived over a thousand lifetimes. In each one they somehow manage to fall in love with each other. (This pair, TopMick was piloted in a My Universe ep, that was one of the only ones I liked.)

10/10 Eccentric Romance (Korea ????) 12 eps - Silkwood’s 2nd Thai/Korean colab, that has been in production since 2022 which is a LONG time in the BL world. I'm worried but I like the concept: friends of 10 years who’ve been hiding feelings for each other enter the same university. Plus MURDER.

10/10 Gangster and His Boyfriend (Korea ????) 8 eps? - Kim Dong Bin (famous trainee & idol reality competitor, yeah that happens) stars as a fallen idol who unexpectedly becomes entangled in a gangster family. Discovers that his friend’s father is responsible for the murder of his entire family years ago. I don't know much about this one, neither does anyone else and I'm not sure where I got that release date so……

10/21 Love in the Big City (Korea ????) 8 eps - Adaptation of Booker-nominated famous coming of age novel of the same title by Park Sang-Young. Cynical yet fun loving student writer Young pinballs from home, to class, to Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female besie and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their worries about life, love, and money with soju. As time passes Jaehee settles down and leaves Young to face his problems on his own. Young finding comfort in the arms of the series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness and another who might be the great love of his life. Not really BL. Stars Kim Go-eun (The King: Eternal Monarch), Noh Sang-hyun, and Nam Yoon Su (The King’s Affection). This already released as a movie and isn't very well regarded, this date is supposedly an international release as a series. I'm wary of it being BL.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

I got nothing, The On1y One drove me into a funk.

(Last week)

Streaming services are listed by how I (usually) watch, which is with a USA based IP, and often offset by a day because time zones are a pain.

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

Sigh, Tumblr in its infinite wisdom doesn't like too many at-ings.

[ellsieee]

Falling For My Boss is a vertical format kbl that's available on the Shortime app. Each episode is 1-2 mins, and there are 31 in total.

Shortime allows you to watch ads in lieu of buying anything, so it's entirely possible to watch the whole series for free. You get a log in bonus of 5 to 20 points, can watch ads for a total of 80 points, and watch 5 ads after you run out of points to unlock 5 additional episodes per day. It costs 20 points per episode. As of now, they have two bls available: Falling For My Boss and The Secret of Male Students.

If you're looking for something short and sweet, FFMB is a decent offering. It is very low budget, but it's not that noticeable given the short runtime. The plot is pretty simple and revolves around a misunderstanding, but it resolves logically and there isn't much angst. The leads have decent chemistry. There is no kissing, just hugs and handholding, but it feels right for this series.

Recommended if you're like me, and enjoy your "low quality" media.

Update: Watching ads to unlock the eps only allows you to rent the episodes for 3 days, after which, they will become locked again, so you can't even rewatch the series after all that ad watching. That pisses me off. They should give people at least a month. :(((

Well now no one has to watch any ads. Watch FFMB here.

[respectthepetty]

I love that Falling for My Boss decided to KISS for the colors - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Because it was clear when the characters fell in love.

Thanks @ellsieee for always bringing me color-coded boys in love from these vertical shows.

[drizzle5]

[starridge]

well???

[dottysdokis]

made a little chart

bonus bc it makes me giggle:

[technically-human]

It's already requited, they're just stupid

[miyakuli]

Painful parallel...

[ittybittyluci]

Lucifer heard Satan talking shit:

Idk this popped into my head a couple days ago and so naturally instead of working on assignments I started drawing this instead. Didn’t expect it to turn out as well as it did.

[xh-agi]

They can have some silly. As a treat.

[mindlessmedic]

They're everything to me 🥺

[the-barefoot-hatter]

Check out the new guy!

[plutonious]

Subway Boss Elesa Design!!!!! I originally made this design several months ago and this is the third time I've actually drawn it and ONLY time I've actually finished it. I'm genuinely a really big fan of it I think I did SOOOO well. Grins.

[utdrmv-confession-box]

While I am not sure if they’re the same team as last time, we have another “anti-cringe” blog on the loose targeting fandom goers.

For your own sanity, please block “anticringeassociation”.

And just as last time, if you’ve already been targeted by them, report them for harassment. They deserve no platform here.

I’ve already added tags for some popular fandoms as well as ones I’ve noticed being targeted a lot, more will be added if I notice other significant fandoms being targeted in the “anti-cringe” team’s reblogs.

Edit: Probably also report for spam as well. I forgot that that was even an option.

Edit 2: As they are cowards, they have limited the ability to search for their blog. This has caused a few people to struggle with blocking them. To combat this, here is a link to the blog so you can easily block and report them: https://www.tumblr.com/anticringeassociation

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.03 "I didn't think you were like this. Like what? Like this..."