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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

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Feelings Made Visible: Design Choices in The Sign

I am sure I am not the first person who has picked up on this, but I wanted to talk briefly about something I noticed in the Tharn and Phaya fantasies that were really intriguing to me.

So, generally I dislike intimacy fake outs, it often feels like fanservice in a way in that the story is building tension between it's characters and doesn't want that tension to break while also knowing that an audience seeing a ton of swerved or interrupted kisses may piss them off a little bit. And while I don't love that The Sign has given us the intimacy fake outs in the previews for episodes, I have really enjoyed them in the show itself because they serve a function beyond just catering to an audience that knows Billy is one of the best in the business when it comes to acting horny and just wants to see him making out with Babe.

The fake out intimate scenes in The Sign do a really great job at demonstrating the difference in expectations and desires between Phaya and Tharn.

In Tharn's fantasy he wants to be handled a touch more aggressively, he wants to be pressed against walls and choked, etc etc while Phaya's fantasy shows a deep desire for soft intimacy. He wants to be taken care of, he wants to be handled tenderly. And, like a number of us have pointed out at this point, you can see what aspects of their reality inform their fantasy. Phaya is pressed against Tharn's back at the end of their sparring match, and then Phaya is pressed against Tharn's back when they are about to start fucking in Tharn's fantasy.

Tharn strokes his thumb gently against Phaya's hand and wrist at the doctor's and then Tharn strokes his thumb gently against Phaya's hand and wrist in Phaya's fantasy.

That's all well and good. But there is another thing that they have been doing with these fantasies that are really interesting to me, and that is the difference in the way they are visually structured. In Tharn's fantasy in the bathroom, the lighting is vibrant and unnatural, a total wash of pinks and blues that almost drowns everything else out. In Phaya's fantasy on the couch, the scene is lit naturally but a bokeh effect is superimposed over top of their make out session.

And thinking back throughout the course of the show, these two visual cues are frequently following Tharn and Phaya throughout any and all of their potentially intimate moments.

When Tharn is drunk in Episode 2 and Phaya has dragged him in to the bathroom, the bathroom itself is lit up with a soft pink glow that brushes over Tharn and Phaya's skin. And while they are both leaning in to their desire here, their lips almost touching, Phaya actually giving in a little and kissing Tharn's forehead when he looks down at Phaya's amulet, it is Tharn who is iniating all of the romantic/flirtatious physical contact. It is Tharn that says he won't let Phaya go, it is Tharn that pins Phaya against the bathroom stall and kisses his cheek, it is Tharn that goes in for the actual kiss before getting distracted. And as a result of that we get Tharn's visual cues with the bathroom lighting, not Phaya's visual cues with the bokeh effect. And for what it's worth, the lighting here is real, when Yai enters the restroom and it is really just Yai and Phaya in a shot, they are still awash in pink. Which is why I think the lighting is fun but realistic (aka lighter/more muted) rather than absolutely consuming the scene.

At the beginning of Episode 3, Phaya returns to his grandmother's home and for a moment he invisions Tharn is cuddling him in bed, and for the brief time that Phaya is leaning in to that fantasy, he is under white/uncolored lighting the entire time, but those bokeh flares cover the screen until he snaps out of the dream and realizes he is alone in bed.

gif by @thisautistic

The same goes for later on in the episode for both of the soft, quick kisses between Naga and Garuda and Phaya and Tharn. When Phaya has the dream of him and Tharn in the past, there is a moment where they share a kiss, and again they are in natural lighting with a bokeh effect appearing when they actually kiss. And while this is a moment of shared intimacy between Naga and Garuda, it is occuring in Phaya's dream and as such we get the visualization of Garuda's feelings rather than having any visual confirmation of Tharn's. Same goes for when Phaya gives Tharn a goodnight kiss at Tharn's grandmother's house. In the moments leading up to the kiss all the lighting is natural, and they actually play a little bit here (and quite frequently if you look back at it) with string lights that give scenes almost a natural bokeh effect with the way the lights form little circles on screen.

gif by @25shadesoffebruary

So the entire time that Phaya and Tharn are talking on the dock there are little string lights in the background that sit near Phaya's head, and when he wraps his hand around the back of Tharn's head (something that appears in Phaya's fantasy make out on the couch later) and pulls Tharn in for a kiss, the bokeh effect flash large and bright across the screen. In parallel to the bathroom flirting, this time it is Phaya that is initiating all the action. It is Phaya who is flirting, it is Phaya that leans in for the kiss, and therefore it is Phaya's bokeh effect that appears when they actually share a moment of intimacy.

In Episode 4, Phaya offers to drive Tharn home, but forces them to stop for hot pot first. Tharn protests at first, but Phaya grabs him sexily by the shirt and starts dragging him of screen, pulling him for all intents and purposes in to a date. And at this point in the show, if you don't think Tharn reciprocates feelings for Phaya you are burying your head in the sand. SO. Tharn likes being here. He likes being on this kinda-sorta date with Phaya. Eating food and sharing space, and the moment that Tharn gets up from the table, the scenes turns to very intensely focus on him. As a result, the lighting in the background of the scene is a deep, bright, pink. A visualization of Tharn's feelings for Phaya.

gif by @25shadesoffebruary

And that pink lighting continues as we head in to Tharn's apartment and wind up in Tharn's fantasy. Phaya has just manhandled him (something Tharn likes), he's taken him on a date (with quite enough plausible deniability for Tharn's emotional walls to maintain that's not what he was doing because he can't fall in love with Phaya because everyone Tharn loves dies), and now Phaya is sleeping right outside his door. Something I very much appreciate about The Sign is that there is no mistaking these men's sexuality. There are no struggles with it, they don't have to fight against internalized homophobia before they are willing to be intimate with each other, and Phaya and Tharn are both experience a decent amount of early-to-mid twenties horniess that allows them to be very obvious about and open with their physical reactions to carnal desire. These are men that have clearly fucked before. And it is not that Tharn wouldn't jump Phaya's bone at the first opportunity, it is fully about Tharn's trauma history. If Tharn didn't have the baggage that he did, if he hadn't lost so many people that he loved, you know he'd have no hang ups about this and he and Phaya would have been fucking from like…week one of base camp.

And we know this from the moments where Tharn is not in his head. He initiates the physical intimacy when he's drunk, and when he is asleep he has his fantasy. And because this moment happens in a dream we get a far less realistic coloration to the lighting and instead get the very intense, saturated pink that covers every inch of the bathroom. And while we do get a little bit of a string light situation that is evocative of a bokeh effect, we don't acutally get a bokeh effect. Because this is 100% Tharn's fantasy.

gif by @firstmix

The color play continues at their next intimate moment when Tharn is patching up Phaya's wound, yelling at him about not being stupid and going off alone, and telling him never to say it's okay if he dies. When Phaya stands up to walk away, Tharn reciprocates the shirt pull from the beginning of Episode 4 (because The Sign perpetually says #verserights) and we get a moment where Phaya and Tharn are backlit by red and blue flashing lights from the police vehicles in the area. AND not only that but the way the lights reflect off of the medical van window alludes alludes to a bokeh effect. Because they are sharing this moment. Phaya is touched by Tharn caring so much about him, and horny about Tharn manhandling him. Tharn is pissed at Phaya for putting himself in harms way and is showing how deeply he cares for Phaya with his "never say it's okay if you die in front of me again" statement.

gif by @smileytharn

During the fight in Episode 5 there are a ton of colors being tossed around in that warehouse. The lighting itself is yellow and green, that snake dude is radiating green magic, and when Tharn steps in front of Phaya to protect him and gets stabbed he throws out some yellow magic in return. Cool. Noted. BUT because I am talking primarily about the intimate moments and their visual cues, I want to get at one of my favorite touches in the entire show/one of my favorite touches in BL, which is when Tharn wipes the sweat from the top of Phaya's lip. Because again, we are here in reality, so while we do have some non-traditional/realistic lighting happening in the warehouse, it's not as obvious or all consuming as Tharn's dreams are. HOWEVER! There is a deep, rich, saturated red-orange light behind Phaya's head every time the camera cuts to his face when Tharn is in his arms. It's there right before Tharn brushes his thumb across Phaya's lip and it's there when the camera cuts back to Phaya after Tharn has completed his action. There is no bokeh effect, and no allusion to it because Phaya is not experiencing a romantic moment here. This is a shared intimate moment, sure. But Phaya is fucking terrified for Tharn's health and safety. It is only Tharn that is engaging in some level of intimate/romantic touch and thusly it is only colored lighting that we get on screen.

gif by @forcebook

When they go back to Tharn's apartment, and we enter Phaya's fantasy, it is rife with bokeh effects. We have bokeh effects coming out of the wazoo. Phaya loves Tharn, Phaya cares for Tharn deeply, Phaya's connection to Tharn goes back centuries, through multiple reincarnations, and Phaya thought for a moment he was about to watch Tharn die. Phaya thought for a moment Tharn was going to die thinking that Phaya was pissed at him, with their last moment being Phaya punching Tharn in the face so hard he bled. And so Phaya really wants to be close to Tharn. He was to be comforted by Tharn. He was to be treated gently by Tharn, and he wants to reciprocate that gentle care for Tharn as well. In Phaya's fantasy he asks Tharn to blow on his wounds, and then asks to do the same for Tharn. Now, if you will allow me a brief tangent- from a script standpoint this make out fake out is incredible because Phaya knows Tharn so well that even in his fantasy he correctly identifies almost verbatim what some of Tharn's responses will be. Sure, he doesn't anticipate the "what if saliva gets in the wound and you get an infection?" but he does absolutely nail the "you don't need to look at my wound, the doctor took care of it" response. Tangent over. ANYWAY, Phaya indulges in this fantasy and the screen is absolutely drowning in bokeh effect because this moment belongs entirely to Phaya who has had an incredibly emotional day, and is therefore experiencing extremely large/deep/big emotions here too.

Where am I going with this? Well. Earlier today I was scrolling on tumblr (because I am physically incapable of leaving tumblr for more than 10 minutes at a time) and I saw that @negrowhat had reblogged some screenshots of an intimate scene from the official trailer for The Sign and I saw this:

Now. We don't know when this moment comes, we can't confidently say that it is real (though Episode 7 apparently promises no tricks this time). But I think it is real for one reason in particular:

Both Tharn and Phaya's visual cues are present at the same moment.

Up through now we have not actually seen that occur. We maybe had some level of allusion to a bokeh effect at the same time as some interesting color choices, but we haven't actually had a bokeh effect and a bright color at the same time. And even if we do want to count those allusions, this idea still holds because those moments where we've had some modicum of both are shared moments of intimacy from both parties. SO anyway, I think that when Tharn and Phaya actually have sex together we are going to see both of their visual metaphors joining together (since they are…ya know…joining together).

Alright. Time for the big whammy. I don't know how eagles see, I know they see well and I highly doubt they see in bokeh effect, so I don't have much to say about Phaya's visual cues around intimacy from a garuda perspective, except to say that hsi fantasies are always in correct and proper color. Where I do think the choice gets interesting is with Tharn. Now Tharn is naga, which I guess aren't technically snakes, but I don't know what the eyesight rules of sea serpents are so I'm going to go based off actual serpents.

Snakes see in infrared.

What does this mean? It means their color perception is bright, saturated, and heat focused. If you ever look at an infrared camera, you can see that areas of higher heat are typically demarcated in the red, orange, yellow spectrum. I don't think pink is a traditional infrared color but there have been moments throughout the show where red lighting connects Phaya and Tharn (police lights, the lighting behind him in the kidnapping/murder warehouse). And infrared lighting is intense. So I for one think it is absolutely fucking brilliant on the part of the director/cinematographer/lighting designer/production team to make the choice that Tharn's emotions about Phaya are going to be tied to color. That the naga that is lying dormant in him comes out subconsciously, unconsciously whenever naga and garuda are close. And I especially love that the moments of deepest color are when Tharn is dreaming because a) dreams are already fucking wild and b) it is one of the few times Tharn is not dragging his feet, gritting his teeth, kicking and screaming, and desperately trying to hold on to the emotional and physical distance he feels like he needs to have from Phaya in order to make sure Phaya survives.

I look forward to seeing what they do with these effects as the show continues. This has been Killing Time While on an Airplane with Captain Hands, thank you for your time.

#the sign #the sign the series #phaya x tharn #tharn x phaya #phayatharn #tharnphaya #billybabe #idol factory #thai bl #wka long post

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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

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Fantasy v. Reality: The Sign, Episode 7

Phaya.

Tharn.

Anyway, I wrote this post a couple days before Episode 7 aired talking about how Phaya romantic feelings are portrayed with bokeh effect and Tharn’s romantic feelings are portrayed with colored lighting, and how we’ve only gotten one or the other effect up until this point. In that post I posited that once they fucked for real, Phaya and Tharn would have both their effects in play at the same time and well…

So yay, I was right or whatever.

Before the action really even begins, I noticed a really interesting design choice. In my previous post I mentioned that they’ve been using string lights a lot in a way that to me appears like an attempt at some real-life version of a bokeh effect when the light reflections get large and translucent. And they utilize that effect very heavily during the conversation Phaya and Tharn have out by the pool. Also in my previous post, I noted that outside of Tharn’s fantasies when there are romantic feelings, we get some type of more realistic unnatural lighting: in the bar bathroom, at the hot pot place, etc. and that trend continues here.

If you look at the lights behind Tharn and compare them to the lights behind Phaya, you will notice the top half of the lights behind Tharn have a light green color to them, and the bottom half of the lights behind Tharn has a pink tint to them. So that’s cool! Their effects are starting to come together before they kiss, and then we transition in to the sex scene and we are absolutely rich in color and bokeh effect the whole way through.

But! While watching the scene I noticed something else, which I know others have as well (hey @chicademartinica) but I’ll talk about it anyway, and that’s how similar to reality Phaya and Tharn’s fantasies are. So, I guess it’s time for a scene breakdown (of sorts!)

Tharn’s Fantasy v. Tharn’s Reality

In Tharn’s dream, Phaya enters the bathroom and puts a hand around Tharn’s neck. In reality, they initiate at the pool and then bring it in to the bathroom, but worry not! Tharn still gets a hand at or near his throat multiple times in their first round.

In Tharn’s dream he and Phaya have their first sexual encounter in Tharn’s shower. Same thing happens in reality.

In Tharn’s dream, Phaya pins Tharn’s arm (and Tharn himself) against the glass, kissing his neck and shoulder. In reality, Phaya is facing a different direction but their arms are in almost exactly the same position.

And similarly, it may not be up against the glass like he did in his dream but, I’d say his first sexual encounter with Phaya is playing out surprisingly close to what he was hoping for.

Phaya’s Fantasy v. Reality

Where Tharn seeks more aggression, Phaya seeks more tenderness, and we see Phaya get that during his actual sexual encounter with Tharn.

In Phaya��s dream, we see Tharn’s fingers curl slightly (like a claw) and drag down Phaya’s shoulder. In reality, we see Tharn’s fingers curl slightly (like a claw) and drag down Phaya’s back.

In Phaya’s dream, we get him sitting on Tharn’s lap so he is towering over Tharn, and Tharn’s face is closer to his dick. Tharn’s hand trails down Phaya’s side. What do we get in the real sex scene? Something extremely similar, but with Tharn a second away from having Phaya’s dick in his mouth.

In Phaya’s fantasy we get a great close up of Tharn’s hand on Phaya’s shoulder, with his fingers just meeting the edge of Phaya’s wing tattoo while Phaya kisses Tharn’s neck. What do we get in reality? Almost exactly the same action.

And I know we were all taking notes about how often Phaya’s hand went to the back of Tharn’s neck during the fantasy scene, but don’t worry, he does that in his actual sex scene with Tharn as well!

Now I don’t have time to look through all the gifs, or screenshot all the moments, but there is also a lot to be said for the way they kiss each other, the way they hold each other, and the areas of the body that Phaya and Tharn focus on that does seem to translate directly from both of their fantasies and ends up in their actual evening together.

Which I absolutely love because of what it says about Tharn and Phaya’s connection to one another. To be fair, I haven’t paid all that much attention to the similarities and differences in fake out make outs before this show, and that’s probably because there haven’t always been stark/obvious similarities. I would typically assume though that if we saw a fantasy and then a reality that were incredibly balanced, obviously paralleled moments, that some sort of conversation would have to have been had about what people like, what they want, etc. (It isn’t a fantasy, but the FWB Negotiations in Bed Friend, Episode 3 come to mind when I think about Uea verbalizing that he doesn’t want hickies after King sucks on his thigh hard.) So we could sit here and claim that these two were vocal about what they wanted/what felt good in the moments in between cuts, the parts of this encounter that we as an audience aren’t seeing. But, I like my theory better.

My theory, and this is almost certainly an extremely obvious theory and something they aren’t going to explicitly confirm, is that Phaya was able to fulfill Tharn’s fantasy, and Tharn was able to fulfill Phaya’s fantasy when they finally, actually fucked, because they are reincarnated lovers. This cannot possibly be the first time these two souls have um…come together as it were. I don’t remember if I said it in a post or not, but something I absolutely love about the way that Phaya and Tharn interact in their softer moments, is that so much of their physical interactions feel familiar yet unconscious. Tharn is trying not to fall for Phaya, yet his hand will immediately come up to stroke Phaya’s wrist when Phaya touches his cheek because they were lovers in another life. Tharn is trying not to fall for Phaya, yet he fits himself so easily in to Phaya’s arms when he’s asleep and his hand trails towards where it shouldn’t be, because they were lovers in another life. Tharn and Phaya are able to picture exactly what they’d get out of sleeping together and nail (haha) it immediately, because they were lovers in another life, they already knew what their partner wanted.

#the sign #the sign the series #the sign ep 7 #phaya x tharn #tharn x phaya #phayatharn #tharnphaya #billybabe #idol factory #thai bl

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