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waitmyturtles · 10 months

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: 3 Will Be Free and the Power of Jojo Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I’ll cover 3 Will Be Free, a show that is actually NOT a BL, but BL-adjacent by way of its inclusionary queer content, as written and directed by GMMTV’s Jojo Tichakorn.]

Like I mentioned last week, this review of 3 Will Be Free is slightly out of chronological order with my thoughts on Dew the Movie. But no worries! I needed some time to gather my thoughts on 3 Will Be Free for so many GOOD reasons.

This is the only Jojo Tichakorn show on the OGMMTVC list, as almost all of the rest of the list (except for Dew, Love Sick, and the Kiss Me Again and Puppy Honey cuts) are BLs or BL-adjacent. But I was super happy to get Jojo on the list, because 3 Will Be Free, as so many of you know, was a groundbreaking experiment in decidedly queer content airing on GMMTV.

The dear friends @lurkingshan and @wen-kexing-apologist were my buddies during my 3WBF watch, and the guiding rule that I realized in watching this show was: this show wasn’t CENTERED on queerness, as so many BLs are. This show was INCLUSIONARY of queerness, in an INCREDIBLY real way. Like, in a way that reflects my own life, among my queer friends and chosen family, in my very liberal part of America.

Really quickly, before I dive into the show, I want to take a moment to actually compare this perspective to what I saw in Dew the Movie, which I’m still taken and shaken by. What a different experience of a presentation of queer-focused content. @absolutebl Sensei, in a question I posed to them before watching Dew, remarked that Dew fell into one of a number of categories of a kind of queer content that would be allowed to be produced as a movie -- that queer content in a movie, arguably, NEEDS to have a tragic ending, say, or punch-down humor.

One of the lenses in which I’ve been watching shows on the OGMMTVC watchlist has been to keep an eye out for BL tropes -- their births, their presence, their development. We’re still in 2019 with 3WBF, but we know that come 2021, when Bad Buddy comes out, that P’Aof Noppharnach will produce a show with a BL infrastructure, while turning many common BL tropes around on their heads (I’m always referring to @miscellar’s FABULOUS post on this). But, still, by and large, many BLs produced during that time have core elements of BL infrastructure -- I refer often to Love By Chance as being the first referential BL on my list that really concentrates these tropes holistically into an almost-entirely successful show.

So when I say that 3WBF was REFRESHING to watch, as a crime drama that INCLUDED queerness as a fabric of the life that the show was depicting -- I see how Jojo, in this instance, could not be bothered by BL tropes or a necessary checklist of any kind related to queer media, and instead created a different fabric of a fictional life that hewed far more to reality (except for all the mafia stuff, but whatever). While the plot of 3WBF was wild and slightly wacky, the layers of ACCEPTANCE and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT about how queerness is ACTUALLY PRESENT in almost all aspects of our daily lives was just -- it was INCREDIBLY refreshing to watch. And for a cipher like Jojo to present that to us, unabashed, that we as a global population HAVE queerness around us, in the beautiful people we know and love in our lives -- fuck yeah. This show did not shy away from that.

As always, there were a number of themes that I think the show held that I’ll try to get to:

1) How our societies can’t deal with complicated people, 2) How society doesn’t always accept behavioral change, and 3) How chosen family can change our lives for the better.

Besides the inclusionary-not-centering perspective of queerness in the show, I loved that Jojo actually centered very complicated people as his main characters in Shin, Neo, Miw, and Mae (Ter was a bit more linear, on the edge of getting complicated, but his tragic end still struck hard).

Getting ahead of myself to point #2 -- as I wrote in my review of Theory of Love, society and the general population doesn’t always take kindly to big behavioral change among individuals. We like labels, we like judging people. We like keeping people in boxes to control them. I think about the ways in which, for example, families often can’t accept that children are growing up and becoming adults, changing into different people and personas. If you know someone very well, you want to box them in -- oftentimes for the purpose of trying to control their behavior.

I posit that society also doesn’t accept complicated, multifaceted people for the same reason. Neo is an out, bisexual man, a prostitute, and an alleged criminal. Miw is a hostess, a sometime-prostitute, and also an alleged criminal. Mae is in the midst of her gender transition journey. Society has its claws out for people like that, ready to judge Neo and Miw and Mae for existing on the borderline of acceptability of culture. (And as I very often write about, most recently for Dew -- having these individual characteristics will very often go against the grain of Asian collectivist societies.)

What I really appreciated about the structure of 3WBF is that Jojo initially created a world, vis à vis Thana, in which individualism could NOT exist. Thana needed TOTAL loyalty and complicity for him and his business to function on a minute-to-minute basis. Any aberration to that might cost him his life or the life of his son, Shin. Thana had his wife killed. He killed others at the drop of a pin. In the end, he was on the edge of killing his own son, and the people who provided unconditional love in his son’s life.

We know that Jojo VERY often includes this kind of macro-commentary in his works, most recently in Dirty Laundry -- the macro commentary about the often-problematic forces that control society above the heads of those trying to survive, including politicians, police, and leaders in criminal activity, all categories of power that more often than not are speaking to each other.

Thana was taken down by the people on the outskirts of society, of “normal” life. His son, Shin, was the bridge between those two worlds.

I think Neo was probably centered at the start of the show to be the main character, but to me, Shin (acted INSANELY OUTSTANDINGLY by Tay Tawan, MY GOD, TAY! WHAT A TOUR DE FORCE) was the ultimate center of this show. For me, the show held Shin’s process of growth so beautifully, it gives me the shivers.

Shin was one smart motherfucker, despite seeming melancholy and indecisive on his surface. In fact -- he held all of that as a character. He was INCREDIBLY complicated and multifaceted.

He had the opportunity and the resources to make huge changes in his life, including money. He loved Neo -- and he loved Miw, and was maybe confused by that, but ultimately accepted it. He leveraged his strengths and opportunities to change to save his friends. He hated his father, but didn’t want his father dead. He wanted to pursue art, but landed in mafia work.

He, more than ANYONE, toed, stepped, and played on the line of the complicated gray area of existence in order to survive -- to survive NOT JUST FOR HIMSELF, but his chosen family around him. He stepped into that gray area to find love. He found the courage to ASK and get clarity around love from the people he loved in Neo and Miw.

And -- to me, MOST BRILLIANTLY: he actually took his dad’s advice. He never played the victim. He was so often close to being one -- especially in the forest -- but there was clearly a steely side of him that helped him keep his spine straight, and helped him to survive, vis à vis himself and the friends that ultimately became his family.

And this is where this show ultimately really guts me. Shin chose his chosen family over his blood family -- the blood family in his father that held Shin back from the kind of change that would help Shin ultimately survive in the world. Shin represented a transcendence, a breaking-free from the powers that hold our societies back from progressive change, a very CLEAR message from Jojo that individual change CAN BE good for all of us at a macro level. Acceptance will not derail society. Acceptance will ENHANCE society.

Shin gained that strength through his chosen family. Chosen family allows us to transcend who we once were, to be who we really are. Chosen family allows us as individuals TO change, while our blood family so very often needs us to NOT change, so that they can continue to behaviorally control us.

That’s why Neo and Miw are so important to Shin. That’s why Phon and Ter are so important to Mae. That’s why seeing Ter’s transformation vis à vis Mae was so important. (God, between Wad in SOTUS and Mae in 3WBF, Gunsmile has not caught a break in these GMMTV shows!)

Shin keeping Neo and Miw in his life meant that while he had to stay in his life of the family business, that his chosen family would allow him to BE HIMSELF ... while Shin’s own father demanded the erasure of all of the qualities that made Shin, Shin.

These are huge messages. These very well may be messages that a BL infrastructure couldn’t necessarily hold -- again, because a BL centers queerness and romance. 3WBF, leveraging queerness as inclusionary, allowed for a crime story to hold SO many of these pieces and commentaries, bringing them together as an uplifting and holistic story that those who are down and out are only there because others put them there. Those who are excluded from mainstream society are so very often the ones that push us forward into better progressive change.

Jojo didn’t fuck around with this -- and, DAMN, neither did Tay Tawan. WOW. I mean, all of them -- Joss, Mild, Jennie, Gunsmile. Total A-game performances. But Tay blew me away. You’d think that that hot-ass dude would only play jock roles, and I totally had him as Pete from Dark Blue Kiss in my head the first couple of episodes. But, HELL no. Tay totally rose to the occasion. What a performance. (Let me PLEASE pray that he can rise to the occasion again in Cherry Magic. Don’t let my darling Kurosawa down, Tay!)

I am SO glad that @wen-kexing-apologist and @lurkingshan convinced me to put 3WBF on the OGMMTVC list (THANK YOU FRIENDS, MY GAWD!). As BL-adjacent -- the show spoke to an inclusionary queer perspective that I am HELLA impressed that GMMTV embraced. I know I’m up for a stumble with 2gether as my next actual GMMTV offering on the list. But I think 3WBF certainly allowed for the door to crack open on GMMTV’s ultimate apology tour starting in the 2020s, after 2gether airs.

[HELL YEAH. 3 Will Be Free was so excellent. And I am having a SURPRISINGLY great time getting through Until We Meet Again. I’m really not a fan of long series runs, but I’m giving UWMA a long leash, because, well, Fluke, Ohm (the other Ohm, now I have TWO Ohms, so many Ohms), Kao, and SOOOO much Thai food. And Earth Cooheart is a TOTAL wonder. Oh my god, I love him way more in UWMA than his role in LBC.

I might be a touch delayed in finishing UWMA because of the Independence Day holiday here in the States, but -- hopefully not, and I hope to have my UWMA review up next week. Cross ya fingas for me. Here’s the status of the list. I’m getting mentally prepared for 2gether, oh boy. As ever, if you have any feedback, I’ll take it!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 11) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) 15) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (watching) 17) 2gether (2020) 18) Still 2gether (2020) 19) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 20) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) 21) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 23) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS 24) Lovely Writer (2021) 25) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) 26) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 27) Not Me (2021-2022) 28) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 29) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 30) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 31) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 32) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 33) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 34) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 35) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 36) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 37) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

#3 will be free #3wbf #3 will be free meta #tay tawan #joss wayar #mild lapassalan #neo x miw x shin #jojo tichakorn #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc

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