#My Only 12%

[loveisactivated]

Rest your head against me.

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

“How long has it been since you and me? Hugs and kisses. Blankets and snuggles. Our sparks smoldering without a fireplace. Losing time is not losing you. It strengthens my yearning for you.” ― FIDELIS O MKPARU

The Eighth Sense

Addicted the Series

Love In The Air

Nitiman

Wedding Plan

Be My Favorite

My Only 12%

Hidden Agenda

Sing My Crush

Blueming

Favorite cuddles (Part 3/?) as part of my favorite bl-trope collection (no particular order)

[krystaljungs]

loudly disrespecting the single community cause he ain't it

@asiandramanet september creator bingo  ㅡ animation

[ourjisoo2]

熱 earth katsamonnat ( ator ) lockscreens !

ⁱᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ᵗᵒ ˢᵃᵛᵉ, ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵃⁿᵈ ʳᵉᵇˡᵒᵍ

[ppeonppeonhan]

I can't get over Santa's transformation -- and I don't just mean the lean muscles:

Gif by herebethedork

He went from topping Earth in My Only 12%:

To bottoming for Perth in Perfect 10 Liners:

The range! Hell, I'd be vers for those two, too!

[littleragondin]

Three Tropes Tag Game

The Prompt: Choose three of your favorite QL tropes, and show us three of your favorite examples of each.

Thank you @my-rose-tinted-glasses for the tag! (⌒▽⌒)♡

1. (best) Friend to lover

I will always pick it over any other form of X to lover I think. I love the idea of getting to know someone so well that you end up falling for them. And when it's well done? Nothing can beat it imo.

"I cannot reach you" is one of my favorite examples of this trope, it's sweet and funny and very kind.

"My Only 12%" was also a pretty strong one, with fantastic friendship and pining.

And I will also mention "Where your eyes linger" which does fit the trope. It's a very short one, so we don't spend a lot of time in the 'simple' friendship part of their relationship, but it is a fave of mine.

2. Second chance romance

I'm very fond of the idea that you get to try again, that failing once - by your own fault or not, does not mean you lost things forever. That there is a way to make things right.

"Tokyo in April is ..." is one I really really liked with this trope.

"His" (2020) is an incredible movie about second chances that can I only recommend tbh.

To My Star 2 is also a big favorite that hurts me a lot but I love dearly,

3. Siblings!

To no one's surprise... is it really a trope? Unsure. It's definitely not romance related. But still! Cheeky little sisters, protective older brothers, annoying but well meaning little brothers, kind and defensive older sisters... I love them all, always and forever.

Of course I have to give the biggest shout out to the best brothers in QL land, Yang and Tian from "Khun Chai"

"Our dining table" of course winning in category 'cutest brothers'.

And for the third example I will cheat and give you two of my favorite sisters! Hong Ye from "History 3: Trapped", and recently P'Babe from "your Sky".

I think most people have been tagged already, but if you haven't yet and feel like doing it, I'll tag @iguessitsjustme @benkaben @fandomfairyuniverse and anyone who see this and wants to play =3

[bengiyo]

I’ve just finished my rewatch of Go Ahead, a cdrama you will probably never watch because it’s het and mostly about family trauma. But it’s one of my all time favs and one of the best things about it is the strong found family theme—it’s essentially about three broken families and how they join together as one to support each other. It got me thinking about my fav found family narratives, and especially those that are explicitly queer, because there’s often added life or death stakes in those stories. What are your favorite found family stories in queer media?

This is an interesting question, and I think you qualified appropriately right away by bringing up the life or death stakes of this kind of narrative. I think I want to make a distinction between "finding your people" and "found family" because I think these things often get blurred in romance stories.

Favorite Queer Found Family Stories

For me, a good found family story has to be about the found family component of it. Romance can be a significant portion of the story, but the primary driving relationships need to be about the queers being each other's primary network. I think estrangement from your bio family is a critical component, because knowing you are all each other has is a big part of it.

POSE (2018-2021)

It's really impossible to establish what found family looks like without referring to a show about ballroom culture in NYC in the 90s. We were dying. We were being abandoned. The houses gave people a place to be and a sense of purpose. These kids called their leaders Mother for a reason. Every single queer character in this show was saved by another character in this show before going onto save another character in this show. No show has ever done it like POSE.

Despite their fighting and bickering, Elektra saved Blanca. Blanca would go on to form her own house and provide shelter and support for multiple kids. There is a desperation to queer found family for me that makes it so important. Pray Tell's final choices still resonate with me to this day.

Queer as Folk (2000-2005)

We remember all of the fucking in this show, but this is another show where the queers are their primary support network. Their families aren't really there for them. Justin is kicked out of the house and lives with Debbie for a while, and is nursed by his community after being bashed. Michael and Ben adopt Hunter. Brian donates for Lindsey and Melanie. Debbie housed Brian in the past. Emmett's family disowned him, so his friends are all he's got. The community rallies constantly to protect each other.

Part of what makes this show so special as found family, like with POSE, is how often these folks piss each other off and get into huge fights. They fall out repeatedly in this show over fundamental disagreements that are not easily solved. Some of those fights are ugly in a way only people who know you best can hurt you.

The Fosters (2013-2018)

There's no way I'm not including my favorite TV lesbians of all time raising all them kids on this post. These two public servants found each other, made the difficult choices to be together, and keep expanding their family with more fosters and adoptees over time because there's always more love to go around. This show tackled how important it is to be able to call people family, and what it means for that to be a choice over an obligation. These two always found a way to make it work for their complex family and gave a budding queer the space to grow and be a brat of a teenager after saving him from having the shit beaten out of him for wearing a dress.

Sense8 (2015-2018)

From the directors of The Matrix (1999) and the creator of Babylon 5 (1993-1998), few shows are as queer as Sense8. Eight strangers suddenly become connected to each other and cannot turn it off. Half of them are queer in some way, and it's about their adaptation to each other and looking out for each other as they're literally being hunted. This is one of my favorite sci-fi concepts of all time, and I love the way their relationships outside of their cluster play into their dynamics.

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat (2022- )

This is a recent favorite for this, particularly because of Season 2. In Season 1, we know that Nomoto puts a distance between herself and her family because of the pressure to become a wife. In season 2, we learn that Kasuga has severed ties with her family because of the expectation that she surrender her own life to take care of her family. When she tells Nomoto this, Nomoto gets angry on Kasuga's behalf and they decide to commit to living together. They are also building their community around them, and I better see everyone in their new apartment in season 3.

Gameboys 2 (2022)

So much of what's going wrong for Gav in this season is that he doesn't feel connected to the rest of his bio family after his grandmother passed, and he's desperately holding onto all of the friendships he has because he's so lonely. It's why he's still close with both of his exes (Pearl and Terrence), and why he won't let them go. Also, he's falling apart and Pearl is the one making sure his bills get paid on time.

The Shape of Water (2017)

Shout out to my man Doug Jones for always playing creatures that everyone is attracted to. The way this movie is so much about undesirables choosing to love each other and saving each other. Go watch it if you haven't. This film is not about a sexual awakening. It's about loving inside of a white capitalist structure.

Not Queer But Good

Shout outs for my faves. Some have queer characters in them, but aren't inherently or explicitly queer.

The Golden Girls (1985-1992)

No one did it like them. A bunch of aging women living together and making the most of their lives still resonates almost 40 years later.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)

All of these kids are estranged from their families, and are building out something that works over the course of the show.

The Good Place (2016-2020)

I really love that this is a show about people who didn't get it together in life getting it together in the afterlife because they decided to work together, and then to care about each other. When you're literally being tortured by devils, you're all you've got.

What Doesn't Fit?

This is where things can get a little bit wiggly, but why I want to draw a line on this. I think that shows about queer friendship are important, but I also think that there's a difference between "we are all we've got" and "these people are the most important to me." So we end up with shows like the following.

Noah's Arc (2005-2006)

I often call this the Black answer to Queer as Folk, but I don't think it had time to fully-develop the found family themes in a way that QaF did with its much-longer runtime. Noah and his friends are super codependent and absolutely there for each other, but I don't think the absence of their families is explicitly attributed to their queerness but rather a byproduct of the focus on their gay life dynamics in LA. I love this show dearly, but there isn't a desperation to this that belies the family angst necessary for found family.

For The Boys (2021)

In many ways a spiritual successor to Noah's Arc, this show falls into the same place. The friend trio at the core of this is the most important relationship in their lives, but this show doesn't have the necessary found family angst.

What about QL?

For me, the biggest problem with doing found family in QL is that the primary genre is romance. These shows prioritize the way these relationships will turn romantic in a way that detracts from the found family component even when it's present. Also, because QL focuses so hard on coming of age plotlines, there's an element more of "finding your people" that supercedes any found family dynamics.

I Promised You the Moon (2021) is a good example of this. The primary drama of this show is about the romance between Teh and Oh-aew and the complications they face once they leave Phuket. Oh finds his people there and blossoms from it, but this is a story about how he and Teh can't get over each other.

As much as I love What Did You Eat Yesterday? (2019- ), the only real component of that is in Wataru's character. Kenji gets along with his mom and sisters, and Shiro is working on repairing the relationship with his family the entire time.

With Thai BL especially, I feel like they're big on friend groups, but not as big on found family. New Siwaj loves big friend groups that love each other, evinced by Love Sick (2014-2015), Make It Right (2016-2017), Until We Meet Again (2019), EN of Love (202), My Only 12% (2022), etc. He's done some great work in the space with queer friends, but not really queer found family.

Cheewin, a former collaborator of New's, also loves friend groups that have each other's backs. Probably his best example of that is Secret Crush On You (2022) with that friend quartet. The closest I think he came to found family was Uea in Bed Friend.

Another example that comes close is the unit that forms on their road trip in The End of the World With You (2023). I often think about this group of queers and the kid they adopted screaming to the heavens that they want to live.

Something I love, but which doesn't count for me is Our Dining Table (2023). There are powerful family dynamics here, but like in WDYEY they're adding Yutaka to their family and Yutaka reconciles with his adoptive family. I don't generally think that adding a romantic partner to your family counts as found family. Besides, Yutaka has a stable job and housing.

Final Thoughts

For me, the stakes are pretty high with queer found family, and it really needs to have a queer basis for me to feel strongly about it. Going back to their bio family is not an option, and often times the terms we use for traditional relationships don't always fit properly (yet another reason why Unknown got so much right). I don't think it's queer found family when they're students in college whose families just aren't around because they're paying for their kids to go to school. Finding your queer community as an adult is a huge part of growing up, but a queer found family is there for the really ugly and desperate parts of existence that your friends might not see.

[gabrielokun]

[dramalove247]

Friends to Lovers

These great posts, 1 and 2, got us talking about the pain of friends to lovers series and we totally agree with @lurkingshan on this one.

Friends to lovers is not cute, it hurts.

There's fear when you realize your feelings could cost you your friendship and the person you love. Fear of discovery and rejection. It hurts just to be near them, to hide your feelings, to hope, and to have those hopes crushed. Pain and loss is unavoidable. If you never tell them, you will lose them to their future lives and partners. If you do decide to tell them, you do so knowing that regardless of the outcome, the friendship as it stands will end.

Apparently we are here for the pain because we LOVE a good friends to lovers story. Here are some well done friends to lovers, which means they are going to hurt you, but you might love them for it:

My Only 12%

When your best friend is already your everything and you want him to be more. So many tears. The ugly crying will destroy you in this series.

Tokyo in April Is…

Tragic level of misunderstanding keeps these friends turned friends with benefits from admitting their true feelings for each other.

The Time of Fever

This one is a little too realistic, which means it's real good, but don't expect to feel happy about this series. Their story continues in their future as a side couple in Unintentional Love Story, but we still wanted more because we are greedy and weren't satisfied. The Time of Fever series came later and was highly disappointing because it's a prequal, so if you're going to watch, watch it first. Maybe it is satisfying that way, but we kinda doubt it.

Our Dating Sim

When Lee Wan confesses his feelings for his high school friend, the rejection is too painful to face and he runs away, never to look back, until his friend unexpectedly reappears in his life years later.

Theory of Love

Okay, so maybe Third liked Khai from day one, but he chose to spend 3 years living in self inflicted agony by being Khai's best friend.

Heart Stain

When you confess your feelings to your friend and they agree to date, that should be a happy ending right? But even if your friend doesn't reject you, it doesn't mean you're on the same page or in the same place. The growing pains in this series are really well done, even if we were a little mad at them for it.

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

These two are adoptive siblings and that adds a whole extra complicating factor to this story.

I told Sunset About You

Kat keeps begging Dori to watch this one, but made the mistake of letting Dori know it was going to hurt real bad and now she doesn't wanna.

We know all the above are QL series, but QL just does a better job of telling friends to lovers stories. Plus we watch a lot of them lately. We tried to wrack our brain for non QL friends to lovers and this is all we could come up with 🤣:

Love Next Door

We haven't seen this one, but it's on the to watch list. We've been told this is a good friends to lovers story.

Emma

This shouldn't even be here since this is a blog about Asian dramas, but we were desperate. Plus this scene/line is great.

What stories did we miss? Let us know so we can watch them or add them to the list!!!

[blunaggregator]

BLA Top 20 Thai BL Series of 2022

KINNPORSCHE

MY SCHOOL PRESIDENT

LOVE MECHANICS

MY ONLY 12%

LOVE IN THE AIR

VICE VERSA

TRIAGE

TO SIR, WITH LOVE

THE ECLIPSE

180 DEGREE LONGITUDE PASSES THROUGH US

THE MIRACLE OF TEDDY BEAR

BETWEEN US

NEVER LET ME GO

CUTIE PIE

AI LONG NHAI

REMEMBER ME

21 DAYS THEORY

CUPID'S LAST WISH

STAR & SKY : STAR IN MY MIND

DEAR DOCTOR, I'M COMING FOR SOUL

[colourme-feral]

Annnnnd once again, no one asked for this, but here is GMMTV 2024 Part 2′s shared filming locations game in thai ql,

Ossan's Love Thailand and Moonlight Chicken

The Heart Killers, Pit Babe and its Official Trailer, Playboyy Official Teaser and Midnight Motel

Revamp the Undead Story, Tell the World I Love You, Pit Babe, Dead Friend Forever - DFF Pre-Release, My Dear Gangster Oppa, Y-Destiny, Return Man, 55:15 Never Too Late, Midnight Motel, Never Let Me Go and My Only 12% (1, 2)

The Dark Dice, Baker Boys, I Will Knock You, My School President (and its pilot trailer), PP Krit - ลังเล [Official MV],  Never Let Me Go, You’re My Sky and The Miracle of Teddy Bear (location)

GMMTV 2024 PART 1・OTHER SHARED FILMING LOCATIONS

[loveisactivated]

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

With my head against his chest, as breath entered his body, I remembered that I was breathing too. How long had it been since I’d taken a deep breath? ― S.D.G., Naked

ThamePo Heart That Skips A Beat

Boys Be Brave!

My Only 12%

Unintentional Love Story

I Feel You Linger In The Air

A Tale Of Thousand Stars

Sonnet 18

We Are

Love For Love's Sake

ThamePo Heart That Skips A Beat

Favorite hugs (Part 5/?) as part of my favorite bl-tropes collection, as always in no particular order.

[pinkkop]

Day 49 - 15 Days BL Challenge (part 4)

Day 49 - BL that made you cry the most /made you the most emotional

My Only 12%

I don't think any other show has made me cry like this one did! And not because it's sad, it's actually a very fluffy childhood friends to lovers story. Would highly recommend!

What really got to me is Seeiw's realization that he's gay because his realization comes with such a strong feeling of being abnormal and wrong.

Just the absolute devastation of finally understanding what you are and how you are different but then being faced with the homophobia of the movie he watches with his sister. A movie that tells him he won't get his happy ever after.

It just breaks my heart into a million pieces because these are the same thoughts I had when I realized I was queer.

The original challenge is here, part two here, part three here, and four here.

[absolutebl]

I've just started watching Thai BLs and I don't know which ones would be worth getting thru the bad acting. Could you please recommend me some? xo

20 Thai BL's With GREAT Acting

Laws of Attraction

Moonlight Chicken (review here)

Not Me (review here)

Until We Meet Again (discussion here)

Bad Buddy (review here)

A Tale of Thousand Stars

Love By Chance

He's Coming to Me

The Eclipse

My Ride (review here)

Step By Step (review here)

My School President

Bed Friend (review here)

Dark Blue Kiss (PeteKao watch guide here)

Make a Wish

My Only 12%

Never Let Me Go

Theory of Love

Dear Doctor, I'm Coming For Your Soul (review here)

Triage (review here)

Love Sick is also pretty special but it's very long and complicated and kinda a steep buy in. But if you are of the Degrassi Jr High inclination...

You might also want to try I Told Sunset About You. It wasn't for me but is for LOTS of super fans of high quality BL.

From the tone of the question I am assuming we are going with a a western value judgement which prioritizes grittiness and subtlety.

Here's more stuff for you to explore if you're interested.

(Many of these will not have been updated with 2023)

Here's me talking about western struggles with Thai language and acting style:

Here's the master post on Thai BL

Not specifically Thai but here's my:

10 Best BL All Rounders - acting, script, music, narrative, production

(source)

[lurkingshan]

Hiii Shan,

I cannot remember for the life of me if I asked you about it or not and tumblr search does not help. I've been listening to the @the-conversation-pod round-up ep and apart from making me burst out laughing in public transport, it got me thinking about 'I Cannot Reach You' and the friends-to-lovers trope. Have you ever listed your fav dramas that use it? If not, can I ask for one pretty pretty please?

Thank you for listening to the @the-conversation-pod! And this is such a good question, because friends to lovers is actually a hard trope to get right and often isn't executed that well. It's also a term that is often misapplied to mean something more like friendly to lovers, aka a romance that starts out with the main pair meeting and keeping things platonic for awhile before they escalate to romance.

A true execution of the friends to lovers trope in its purest form is a relationship change narrative, and that requires an established and important friendship, a major transition in the way both members of the pair view each other, and most importantly, lots of angst. If there's no serious anxiety and fear about the changing feelings and losing the friendship present in the narrative, it's not actually friends to lovers, it's just a natural romantic relationship progression. So something like Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, while a great story about a pair of college students who establish a friendship before eventually realizing they like each other, is not really a FTL as defined here. And my beloved Sing My Crush doesn't qualify either, because romantic feelings were present the entire time, just suppressed.

So with those parameters set, there are only a handful of dramas I think have done this really well. Onto the list:

I Cannot Reach You

You already mentioned this one, so let me just reiterate what I said on the podcast: it's the best friends to lovers bl ever made. This story absolutely nails the relationship change arc and puts us in Kakeru's shoes as he realizes his best friend since childhood 1) is gay and 2) has developed feelings for him, and takes us along for the ride as he decides what he wants to do with that. Yamato is the absolute picture of tortured angst and the whole thing is excruciating in the best way, because it makes the payoff so very sweet.

Fight For My Way

I am pretty sure I have recommended this show to you before, and I will keep right on doing it because it's a fantastic romcom and my favorite friends to lovers drama of all time. This one is heavier on the comedy beats, but still gets to the heart of the fear and anxiety, and also goes deep on how hard it is when one of the friends clues into their feelings much sooner than the other and hangs in as a loyal friend while nursing their wounded heart in private. Watching Dong Man finally figure out what the hell is going on and catch up to Ae Ra was one of the greatest pleasures of my years of drama watching.

Theory of Love

I said what I said and I meant it! This drama is controversial because it hits the angst really hard and pushes the characters to some ugly places and some people just can't deal, but it's such an authentic portrayal of how much it hurts to be in love with your oblivious friend, and how much we hurt ourselves by not being honest about our feelings in a misguided attempt to protect the relationship we already have. I love it dearly and will defend it to anyone.

Romance Is A Bonus Book

A bit on the lighter side, watching this drama is like curling up on the couch in a cozy sweater with your favorite book and a cup of tea. It manages to both take the relationship arc seriously while never once making you doubt that these friends will be okay, because they are truly ride or die. There is also an age gap at play here, so we have the added bonus of watching Dan Yi wrestle with her changing feelings for her best friend that she has always thought of as a little brother. I will never forget her staring into the mirror to practice telling Eun Ho "I don't see you as a man" and getting increasingly desperate as she realizes that is no longer true. *chef's kiss*

My Only 12%

See-iw and Cake, my beloveds! I love this pair a lot, and think this drama is a fantastic example of how powerful the friends to lovers trope can be when combined with a queer awakening and the added layer of fear that brings to the story in a non-bubble show. The arc of their close childhood friendship morphing through time, separation, and changing identities is so so good. This one comes with a caveat because the last two episodes of the show are abruptly bad and weird (New Siwaj *shakes fist*) but happily, the FTL arc is already complete by then and none of the nonsense messes with the couple.

Hospital Playlist

I know you know this one, but I cannot possibly finish this list without talking about Ik Jun and Song Hwa. This is such a slooooooooooow burn that plays out over 24 episodes, and it's brilliantly done. What I like most about this take on the trope is how mature and adult it is; these two are 40 year old booked and busy professionals, and they also value their friendship more than anything. I love that you get the whole arc of their relationship over 20 years as they meet, have initial sparks, don't get together for reasons, genuinely settle into a platonic friendship and date and even marry other people, and then realize their feelings are changing again later in life. The payoff after all this time and patience and quiet yearning is so beautifully earned.