#since i got into thai bl

[laurenkmyers]

TUL PAKORN IS IN LONDON RIGHT NOW

WHAT IS HAPPENING

YOU CAN'T JUST SPRING THAT ON ME

SIR

[pharawee]

Do you know? Since I met you I've been very happy.

[potatoes-in-bloom]

Sunshine disguised as a Rebel

[gunsatthaphan]

~ 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)

[littleragondin]

" I won't be your secret love, 'cause it's a waste of my love." - Your Secret Love, Luther Vandross

- I think we can make it public. Is that okay? - Sure. But let me think about it first.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

The Thai Communal Wardrobe item #17

Bad Buddy ep 9:

Secret Crush on You ep 5:

Between Us ep 5:

for @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas & @sammie-lightwood-bane 💙

[absolutebl]

hello! happy new year, could not get the idea of making this for you out of my head. don't feel obligated to use the gif if you don't want to tho, but if you do it's fully yours no credits needed. and if that's the case, for all of our sakes i hope bl industry does not give you many moments where you need to use it! 💕

OMG I HAVE MY VERY OWN GIF!

I am BEYOND honored! GAH.

[mutsky]

i saw a tweet yesterday that was like "thai bls need to cast men who want to kiss other men" and i think we are watching different bls bc from where i stand and what im watching that is not a problem but i am also the nosiest person on the planet which bls have guys that dont wanna kiss each other

[quodekash]

ive rewatched the our skyy2 promo video too many times now and each time it has more impact 

there was the first time 

and then the second time after the last episode of msp came out 

and then the third time after watching the first episode of a boss and a babe 

and now the fourth time after binging star in my mind 

and each time it has more impact cos of the new understanding of one of the couples 

but also every single time the most impact came from the existence of patpran. i need help. 

[slayerkitty]

Oooof I have so many thoughts percolating about Tai, his emotional state, how he reacts to situations, etc, all tied up in the soul mate thing and his parent divorce and how much of me I see in him because I am also a middle child of divorced parents (and it was not amicable lol) but I do not know if I am emotionally capable of putting them together coherently but oh my god I relate so hard to Tai on like a fundamental level.

This show. THIS SHOW.

[forcebookish]

not only have i been stanning for only four months, i didn't even know forcebook existed before then and i've already written two fics about their characters and two fics about them

[sonnburn]

Literally found out this morning that the GMMTV line-up was being announced today and I truly, foolishly thought I couldn’t care less. But we’re getting a Cherry Magic remake and a new JimmySea series so NEVER FUCKING MIND, LET’S GOOOOOOOO!!!

[pharawee]

Are you thinking about me now?

[piosplayhouse]

The horse is six feet under at this point I know but I still can't get over the gall of James Somerton correctly! arguing that Disney's lack of queer representation should be blamed solely on the company and not on the Chinese market, only to immediately fuck up any sort of logic he had in saying that by concluding that this is because China should be completely written off as a viable market because the government only lets people watch shows about communism and censors everything else 🤪 source: I shit you not, a right wing conspiracy theorist !! Since he doesn't actually know anything about the subject he's talking about, he's not actually making any arguments. He only mentions Chinese BL because the article he plagiarized did, and even then he has to punctuate it with a "audience of mostly STRAIGHT WOMEN! " of course, even though the article also acknowledges and has multiple interviews with queer Asian people who found comfort in the genre right below all the stuff he copied. There's no mention of queer Chinese artists or lesbian works or any sort of empowerment, probably because he didn't care to learn about any of them, and so rather than ending with what could have been a strong message about the persistence of queer identity even under political oppression, the video fizzles out into nothing with an aftertaste of "so Disney should just say fuck the Chinese and make whatever they want" (because yeah James sure that's the reason why Disney doesn't make gay stuff there's definitely no biases within the company itself or American culture) and "well at least we still have the Japanese and the Thai are making bl now!" Just the epitome of self-centered white saviorism. No real sympathy or respect for queer Asian struggles, just a reframing of a unique struggle with representation into "well I got mine so go get yours somewhere else" while he waits for them to spit out a work that he can regurgitate into a profit on his channel

[lurkingshan]

First Note of Love hooked me instantly. I’m so excited to get another high quality Taiwanese bl this year. Core premise:

Neil and his brother Matt were a famous music duo until Matt died in an accident. Neil has been deep in grief, a general wreck, and unable to perform or make music since. He has to produce an album this year or his contract terms will be violated, losing him both his source of income as well as the copyright to the music he made with his brother. His manager recruits a hot young composer, Sea, to work with him on the album, who has his own connection to Neil from the past.

I love this premise and the show feels really solid. The character introductions were great and we already got a chance encounter, a childhood connection, and an accidental kiss by the first episode (this is Taiwan, after all, the tropes will be plentiful but they’re using them well). This is a GagaOOLala original so that’s where you can find it along with Viki. The first two eps are already up!

ETA: @pharawee reminded me this show is co-produced by Thailand’s Star Hunter and one of the cast members is Thai. I’m so intrigued by these cross-country collabs we’ve been getting.

[bengiyo]

Hi, i'm a newish bl drama watcher from thailand that just started watching thai bls. i'm a bit ashamed to say that for a long time as a gay man living here i've been avoiding bl shows like the plague cuz of both the fandom reputation and of misconception from my yaoi era which i leave far behind. i'm just want to ask how did you got into watching thai bls and what were you preconception before you got into it.

Welcome to the Tumblr side of BL fandom. I'd actually like to also hear more of your experience with yaoi and BL as a gay person growing up in Thailand if you're willing to share.

For me, I'm a Black American from the Gulf Coast (the South). I grew up in a Catholic city and spent my entire adolescence in the closet. Despite having a sense of who I was as early as 8 years old, I kept most of that to myself. Because I didn't talk about it much with people, I found out most information about queer media and queerness from the internet.

I entered BL via queer cinema. I think the first explicitly gay character that I remember from TV was Marco from Degrassi: The Next Generation. There were probably others, and definitely more subtle expressions, but when I think about the oldest gay character I remember and connect to, it's Marco. I don't like counting things like shipping Shawn and Corey on Boy Meets World or Tai and Matt on Digimon for oldest gay characters. Sailor Moon can't even count because we got a censored version of it in America.

I got access to satellite television away from observing eyes around age 16 and started watching content on Logo back when they aired gay content regularly. I watched basically whatever I could late at night. It's how I saw movies like Get Real (1998), Beautiful Thing (1996), and Bent (1997). It's also how I saw Queer as Folk (2000-2005) Noah's Arc (2005-06).

After hitting adulthood I mostly got lost in video games and standard American TV for a while, but I did basically show up to any Gay Event in TV. I appreciate that Stef and Lena from The Fosters (2013-2018) were some of the only TV lesbians to survive the horror of 2016.

I watched a bunch of movies in this time, many of which appear on the Queer Cinema Syllabus I made for a hypothetical Westerner new to BL and queer cinema, which @wen-kexing-apologist has decided to try to complete.

I got into Thai BL in 2018 accidentally. I started seeing gifsets of Kongpob telling Arthit he'll make him his wife passing around Tumblr and was basically like, "Right, what's all this then?"

I had watched a few Thai gay films, mostly notably Love of Siam (2007), Bangkok Love Story (2007), How to Win at Checkers Every Time (2015), and The Blue Hour (2015), but this was the first time I was seeing a long series made available so easily from any Asian country.

From there I got into Make It Right (2016-17) and Love Sick the series (2014). Once I realized that yaoi had moved beyond manga and a few anime adaptations, I went looking for a lot more. I basically haven't left since I started in about 2016 with SOTUS.

There's my basic entry into the genre. I don't think I was as worried about fandom and worries at the time because so much of being a fan of queer cinema was a mostly-private experience for me for so long. I didn't realize that BL fans active in the space would predominantly be women or queers figuring themselves out. It took a while to adjust to that, and also to adjust my expectations of the kinds of queer stories BL distributors were willing to fund.

That being said, I tend to agree with @absolutebl that BL has a useful role in normalization for non-queer audiences who encounter it. I like cheering BL when it does things I think work really well, and also deriding it when I think it does things that are offensive to help nudge the genre and offer my perspective as a gay man.

I like the place we're at right now where there's way too much to watch for any person with other hobbies and responsibilities because it means that people can pick and choose what's to their tastes.

More often than not, I'm probably most-invested in something airing from Japan because of my melancholy nature, but there's so much variety these days that it's okay if you don't like everything. I certainly don't!

I'm glad you joined us on Tumblr and look forward to your thoughts!