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twig-tea · 9 months

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Thai QL Favorites Tag Game

Tagged by @telomeke and @waitmyturtles, thank you both for the tag!

Credit: this game was created by @thatgirl4815 as Thai BL Favorites Tag Game.

I want you all to know before I start that asking for favourites is biphobic so you're going to have to ignore the places where I bent/ignored the rules about how many choices I was allowed to have. Also, this is so long, and took forever, I'm so sorry:

Favorite Thai QL:

I could caveat this until the end of time, but I'm going to go with the definition of "favourite" that's "has a special place in my heart" rather than necessarily "best"; and that's undoubtedly Until We Meet Again. I got very not normal about this show. When it was airing, I used to rewatch every episode before the new episode, and then rewatch the newly aired episode at least once before binging the show to date again. And I've binged it several times since. Sometimes if I need to cry, I'll put on the first 10 minutes and ugly-sob. This show felt like an apology and catharsis for years of built-up bury-your-gays induced trauma from queer media, in addition to a balm for all of the external relationship drama tropes in BL. I think I've talked about it around here somewhere before, how this show sets up all of the tropes for things that go wrong for couples in BL, and then everything is fine, over and over? And it was airing during the very start of the pandemic before the world was calling it a pandemic, when I was so worried about everything and governments hadn't caught up to being afraid yet, and I felt so alone, and this show over and over again said "it'll be ok", at a time I really needed to hear that. Plus it's got the whole epic-love-story-across-lives and the family acceptance redemption arc that as a still-only-partially-out-to-my-family-in-my-30s queer absolutely destroys me. Anyway, there are other shows that I would agree are as good or better (shout out to He's Coming to Me, I Told Sunset about You, Bad Buddy, Not Me, The Eclipse), but UWMA remains my fave (and gets two gifs for being top spot).

Favorite Pairing: I have seen this interpreted as branded pairs & as fictional couple, so I'm going to take that excuse to answer both questions. I'm honestly not a fan branded pairs as a thing and agree with @lurkingshan's comments on this, I tend to prefer it when people continuously work with different actors. That being said, JoongDunk seem to be having a lot of fun with the whole fanservice game, which is fun to watch for as long as they're enjoying themselves and continue to be in on the joke, which seems to be the case.

Fictional couple? Right at this moment I am still thinking about Khatha and Dome from Midnight Museum. I think this one hit me in my Chinese epics button, because the story felt a lot like a danmei (not the least because you could argue it reads as censored bromance). But this show asks questions about fate, God, the devil, multiverses, and then has its characters choosing to reject all of the above in order to choose each other? SIGN ME UP. Legitimately it's the most fun I've had watching a tv show in awhile, it was bananas, and I loved the journey of Khatha figuring out who Dome was in relationship to Chan, and deciding to love Dome as Dome, at the same time that Dome was also figuring out who he was, and deciding he preferred who he was when he was with Khatha. But also just Tor + Gun are incredible actors (Tor having been a stand-out since Hormones and Gun of course since The Blue Hour) and I would watch either of them in anything, but together they were magnetic (and evidence for my earlier point re: branded pairs, as much as I enjoy Off & Gun together!).

Most underrated actor: I'm going to say James Teeradon. He had a few small roles in Hormones 2 & 3, Diary of Tootsies, and The Stranded, and he had the main role in Project S: Skate our Souls and in Great Men Academy. First, I should say, you could argue none of these classify as BLs. Second, all of these have trigger warnings, so please take care of yourself and feel free to ask if you want content warnings. But he's one of those actors who never looks like the same person in each role he's playing, and he absolutely gives me shivers. His performance as Boo in Skate our Souls was legitimately chill-inducing--this one in particular has serious trigger warnings, I put off watching it for a long time because I knew about the warnings and waited until I was in the right headspace, and it still messed with me for weeks. But oh man, oh man that show, it rewrote part of my DNA. I don't even know that under-rated is fair to say since there was buzz around him when he was in these shows a few years ago, but he was trying to make it as part of a band for awhile and he hasn't been in much since. If there's one person I want to see in something else who a lot of other people don't talk about these days, it's James.

Cheating and taking the opportunity to choose a second actor from definitely-a-BL series: Fluke Chinnathan from Second Chance the Series. While Second Chance had a lot of flaws, the acting by Fluke and Tong was stellar. Their micro-expressions and body language was unreal. I feel strongly enough about this that I wrote an ode to it as part of the BL-Bracket for best kiss scene. No idea what Fluke is up to or if he even wants to keep acting, but I'd love to see him in something else--he's one of the only other actors (than James, mentioned above) that I'll go in to MyDramaList occasionally just to check to see if they're in anything new. PS if you do give Second Chance a shot, please know going in that Run and Games, real life brothers who are both actors, are both in this series but never in a scene together, and their characters are similar, so a lot of people have trouble telling them apart without knowing there are two different characters in the show.

(Also, I 100% would have said Suar for this question before La Pluie, because he did not get enough credit for You're My Sky and I think he was incredible).

Favorite Character: Honestly, I've deleted my answer to this so many times now. Choosing one is so hard! I'm going to go with White from Not Me. Incredibly loyal, strong moral values (but willing to break the rules/law to fulfil those values because he understands that law ≠ morality), self-sacrificing, extremely competent in some ways, but also has serious blind spots in others that leads to him making very silly choices especially around who they trust, lacking in self esteem especially around whether or not people will want him around. The way he chooses to give up his privilege--not for his brother, because he could have found a way to go back to his old life after everything if he wanted--because he saw what was wrong with all of it and decided to do what he could to help fix it (and not participate in it) is something that really resonated with me. I also love that he is an absolute marshmallow who cannot hide that fact. Plus White being a disaster bi who wanted Sean from the beginning endeared him to me forever. And it doesn't hurt that he's played by Gun Atthaphan

Favorite Side Character: I have also started and stopped this section so many times. Natty and her absolutely terrible taste in women from Diary of Tootsies, Na being at some points the only reason I kept watching Tonhon Chonlatee, Namo being smart enough to know to pretend she doesn't know what's going on in Not Me, Tong the ecovillage owner from Bad Buddy, Daisy and their incredible gender and mix of self esteem + self esteem issues in Secret Crush on You.

Alright I'm giving it to Dream in Something in My Room. I don't have good reasons for this; her character was artistic, had supernatural powers, green asymmetrical hair, and was stoic with a hidden dark past, and I am a simple woman. I wanted to know everything about her.

Favorite scene in a QL: How can I choose just one?! I'm choosing three and you can't stop me.

Third place, Not Me, with Sean and White under the pride flag. It has everything: It's iconic, it's cinematic, it's cathartic, it's political, it's a critical character moment, it has great music, it's full of queer joy, and it brings me so much happiness every time I see it.

Second: Dean and Pharm in front of the Pra Aphai Mani & sea ogress sculptures in the aquarium in Until We Meet Again. Partially because I love aquariums so much, partially because this sequence is one of the first ones we really get to see the hints of Intouch in Pharm. The way he moves around that aquarium is nothing like how he moves at school or his condo, and it's one of the things that struck me so hard on rewatch; while that scene did so much work towards establishing their characters the first time around, the second+ time it has so much more meaning. The throwaway line by Pharm about relating to the ogress now gives me chills.

Plus the way the aquarium scene got called back in I Promise You the Moon makes me really happy.

But first and top, the one that will forever live in my mind for the way it made me feel in my body: Teh and Oh-Aew on the rug in I Told Sunset About You. That moment, my god. Butterflies. Chills. Chewing glass. Devastation. I don't know that I've ever felt any other scene so viscerally; it transported me back to being a teenager and cuddling in clearly non-platonic ways with my bestie and wondering what was happening. Thinking about it now still gives me goosebumps. Maybe a bit of a weird choice because of the pain but I don't shy away from some pain in my faves!

Favorite line in a QL: Honestly I could put one of several meaningful quotes in here, probably the ones I've thought about most being the one from Bad Buddy that a few other folks have noted ("I may not be able to change the world but the world can't change me either"); and "can't we just get a little bit of space?" from The Warp Effect that I mentioned in my Silvy appreciation post. but the first thing that came to mind was this cracktastic banger moment from En of Love: This is Love Story that runs through my head every time a character P-Nong's someone when they don't mean it like that (and especially when newbies get confused about whether characters are actually related):

"'P' but not brothers; the way 'daddy' [said in English] doesn't really mean father. You get it?"

--Param, being a little shit (affectionate)

But also I think special mention needs to go to this new and immediate classic by Tien in La Pluie:

Most Anticipated QL (& why): I am very excited for 23.5 and Only Friends, also WuJu Bakery (does that count if it's Korean but starring Thai actors?) but....This is niche and might never happen, but MindTrio announced awhile ago that they were going to put out Chemistry in Love, which was either a sequel or related to Calculating Love? Listen, this is a low-budget production company making a slightly quirky trope-filled shorts that tend to have pretty cinematography but falter a bit on plot and pacing, and in Calculating Love the main character hits on his love interest with a series of math/graphing equations and coffee. I fully acknowledge that I am a particular kind of nerd, but I just really, really want to see people flirting with their Extremely Geeky special interests. Some sort of of follow-up to Calculating Love has been a maybe-thing since 2020, so it's most anticipated by amount of time I've been waiting. I have a list of 290 "upcoming" shows that may or may not ever happen so I'll stop there.

Healthiest relationship in a QL: I was very persuaded by @waitmyturtles' arguments re: King and Uea, and I thought about My Only 12% and even wrote a whole thing about Tinn and Gun from MSP before deleting it.

But I'm going to use this soapbox to give a hot take and say, by the end of the series, that it's Nuea and Toh from Secret Crush on You. Both of them have secretly loved each other for the whole series, and shown it in their own very unhealthy ways: Toh by keeping a collection of everything that reminds him of Nuea, and Nuea by being extremely cool-guy persona around Toh. But by the end, both of them have aired their insecurities about their relationship, and have committed to working on their relationship together. Toh stops assuming that they will break up (which Nuea explained was hurtful to him) and declares he'll fight for their relationship in front of Nuea's parents, and Nuea allows himself to be seen as very uncool through his vulnerability, and is more open about his uncool thoughts and feelings. I remember them being surprisingly healthy about jealousy too, once they're together, showing trust in one another when that photography club kid shows up. Nuea also makes a really sweet gesture that I think gets misunderstood at the end of the show; Toh explains that his collection makes him happy, that Nuea is more important so he'll give it up if he has to but he really, really does not want to. So Nuea finds a way to make the collection about them rather than about him, so that he can embrace it too and be less discomfited by it. I feel like there's not enough "meeting people where they are", and too many makeover fantasies in romance for my tastes. Instead, Secret Crush on You said listen, people are weird, and we all just need to find the other weirdos whose jagged edges fit with ours. And it's work figuring out together how they will fit, and they won't fit perfectly, but that's ok. As long as everyone is comfortable, it can be a little weird. It may be less realistic than say the way similar themes are handled in Utsukushii Kare, because behavioural change (especially around self-worth) is hard irl, but the question wasn't about which relationship is most realistic lol SCOY also said embrace cringe culture and I am here for it even if it is sometimes hard to watch because it is SO CRINGE; but I respect it for living its truth.

Most toxic relationship in a QL: Oof. I am a strong believer in "if it works for them, that's their business", as is probably evident from above, but the reveal of what was going on with King and Peat in Love Area (parts 1 & 2) was really next level BS and managed to be both toxic and ableist, so it gets a special mention and no gif.

Guilty pleasure series: I don't really subscribe to feeling guilty about liking things, but I have a bunch that don't get a lot of love and I fully understand why lol In addition to the example of Calculating Love above (which is like, a 6 on MDL, and TBH harsh but fair), I really enjoyed I Will Knock You. Maybe it was just the novelty but I loved the character of Noey so much, his vintage aesthetic, the amount of time spent around and in temples, and the most adorable closing credit sequence of all time (shows that have closing credit sequences that reflect the main relationship in the show is one of my favourite tropes!). The criticisms about it, especially the ones about the Thi character, are fully valid and I would not actually recommend it without a lot of caveats (e.g. warnings for blushing virgin trope + age gap, and sooort of glorification of gang membership?), but I had a great time.

Also maybe Y-Destiny episodes 9 & 10? Tohru and First as Kaeng and Puth, whew. I have a special place in my heart for storylines where the characters sleep together as friends with benefits and then have to renegotiate those boundaries because I've lived it more than once lol (Only Friends when?!). But the ending episode for the series was actually so offensively bad, I like to forget it exists.

Most underrated series: You're My Sky and He's Coming to Me have already gotten a lot of love so I'll just say YES to those. Would have said My Ride before this recent release to YT. Does Triage count if it's nominated for awards but nobody ever talks about it (probably because the distribution was so messy)? I think My Only 12% doesn't get enough love because of the pacing of the last episodes, but the rest of the show was SO good.

But I'm going to take this opportunity to get on a sandbox about Diary of Tootsies (spanning S1, S2, and the movie sequel Tootsies and the Fake).

This show is not BL; it is decidedly queer. There is no single love story, and if there is, it's undermined. And yet, because it's a comedy, it also gets overlooked in the lists of Important Queer Viewing (which is fair, honestly, that is not a read). But it means my blorbo of a show often doesn't get hyped up, so I'm taking the opportunity.

This show I would argue sits squarely in the by/for/about queers category as per @wen-kexing-apologist’s by/for/about Venn diagram. Watching it feels like a group hug; it's so very clearly written by actual queer people (even if this wasn't confirmed everywhere online, the screenwriter is out and speaks about this, but it's also just obvious) and I recognize so much of my friends and people I've known in these messy queers. It deals with casual sex, drug use, HIV, adoption, being closeted at work, and more.

It is also so funny. I didn't think I liked toilet humour until Make it Right and Diary of Tootsies proved me wrong. I honestly think about the scene with Natty and the handbag in the car approximately once a month. And the opening sequence of the sequel film!! What a choice for opening credits. And these queer friends are mean to one another, even in the moments they're being supportive of one another, and it is both familiar and delightful (also reminds me of this post by @bengiyo about whether viewers still love us when we're mean). The found family tropes are STRONG in this one, friends.

There is some fatphobia, though I always struggle with how much to warn for that because this show also has one of the only fat characters in QL who gets a character arc, a love interest, and to be a whole person. And to dance! The dance sequencesssss especially in S2, oh my heart. So much queer joy in this show in general!

Last thing I'll say about this show is that it also gets left off people's lists because the "main couple" if you can say there is one is not the one most fans were rooting for--I will admit, myself included. But the narrative convinced me to be satisfied with what we got, which is honestly to its credit!

Anyway TL;DR Diary of Tootsies makes me extremely happy and I'm glad it exists.

OMG ok I am letting this go now. Tagging @redxblueihateloveyou because you've not been active for awhile so this way you'll see this whenever you come back, and @formayhem because we are newly buds and I'd be curious about your answers! At this point everyone else must have been tagged by now, so please just consider yourself tagged if you haven't done this yet and tag me so I see it! I've been loving reading everyone's answers.

#thai ql tag game #until we meet again #midnight museum #joongdunk #james teeradon #fluke chinnathan #not me the series #something in my room #i told sunset about you #en of love #la pluie #calculating love #secret crush on you #diary of tootsies #i will knock you #not tagging the show because of criticism

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absolutebl · 2 years

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Why I Don’t Love Body Swap

I really am not a fan of body swap (or spirit possession), and before you ask, yes I include Big in this. I find it tests the actors’ a little too much, and there are very very few actors who are aware enough of their own bodies to carry the performance requirements off - generally you need to come from dance or physical comedy. (I talk about this kind of acting ability with regards to Saint.)

I should preface this by saying, Vice Versa has only recently started, and I am enjoying it very much. This is not a criticism of it, I’m just using it as a jumping off point to talk about the body swap trope used in film - BL in particular.

Here are some of the ones I know of that use body swap as a narrative device.

2017 HIStory: My Hero (Taiwan) 6/10

Girl dies and her consciousness transfers into in the body of the boy who (maybe) had a crush on her boyfriend. She has a week to make her old boyfriend fall in love with her new body. On Viki.

First we should address the fact that if it’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body, it’s a girl and therefore her having a relationship with a man calls into question if this is BL at all. It IS queer, but is it gay? Grey area, as we often stray into with these narratives. This show, and Great Men Academy are particularly impacted by this quandary.

ANALYSIS: I don’t have much to say about this one, I’ve only watched it a few times. I didn’t respond well to the actor playing the lead at all out the gate and I don’t think he handled being “inhabited by the spirit of a girl” very well. He never made me believe that was the case. Possession is a bit more loosey goosey than plain only body swap, a case could be argued how much of her consciousness would be in her sense memory of body movement, but still... eh, I never believed it. I know, fantastical premise, but as a watcher, the actor still needs to make me believe the innate truth of what i am watching. And Jiang Yun Lin just didn’t, maybe because it was his debut?

2018 PickRome's Our Skyy episode (from Puppy Honey) (Thai) 5/10

Boyfriends accidentally body swap into each other. There’s some nice play on the height difference, This OffGun vehicle is cute and the first time we really got to see them playing affectionate boyfriends. Also the first time Off did soft on screen for us. Important to the cannon of their ship, but not my favorite.

ANALYSIS: Sorry to the OffGun obsessives out there but this was one for the physical comedians out there. I talk about thsi with older actors playing younger characters but you HAVE to move differently. Teens, for example, are way loser in their spine and around their body posture and movement (often because of growth spurts, they clumsy af). Teens are all elbows and angles, and slouching. I don’t mind older actors playing younger, because I’d rather not see minors having to kiss etc... but rarely does the actor get thsi right. Off and Gun didn’t do this right either. They got the personality switch okay, and the aspects of scripted comedy done well too. But both these actors have very specific ways of walking and moving, and we are all very familiar with both. And frankly they shoudl be with each other’s quirks too but the time this show rolled around. But Off is ALWAYS Off and Gun is ALWAYS Gun, I never believed for one second they had switch bodies - even if Off was being unnaturally cuddly, smiley, and sweet.

2022 Cupid's Last Wish (Thai) 6/10

Brother and sister swap bodies. The sister remains in a coma (inside her bother’s body) which the brother, inside his sister’s body, has to go on a quest to rectify the situation. Win is such an incredibly unlikeable character I really struggled with this show, no skin off Mix’s acting, but holy fucking irredeemable tsundere. The final ep tried (and for some it may have been successful) but even EarthMix’s chemistry (which has improved since Thousand Stars) didn’t save it. On YouTube.

ANALYSIS: Mix and Jan actually did better than I was expecting in this swap. But I think it was mostly Jan. Mix is a decent actor, don’t get me wrong, and he was handed a very difficult part to play (I found his character highly unlikable). But Jan was pulling a lot more weight to make them look like they were actually in each others body then he was. Now Mix is relatively new to acting, and he’s the lead, while Jan is experiences and a secondary couple, so the weight should be in this direction. Also there’s a real challenge when the body swap is male/female, not only skeletal structures but the way flesh is distributed on bone (external sex characteristics). We are all profoundly effected by puberty and self-consciousness about different parts of the body, which means that most women and the men move differently. Especially in the context of this narrative where neither character is intended to be trans or body dysmorphic. Jan was a bit better, she made her movements bigger, widened her stance, pulled back and stacked her spine differently (men tend to slouch snd support from the lower back - stomach, women from the upper one - boobs). But she still didn’t exactly move like Mix. And Mix never looked like he was trapped in a girls body. (Smaller feet, stance and stride change, pelvic position, even how you stand in a relaxed position, it should be slightly different for him to convey being trapped in a small, slighter body, with different flesh distribution.)

Am I nitpicking? Sure, it’s what I do.

2019 Great Men Academy (Thai) 6/10

Love has a crush on popular Vier who goes to an all boys challenge school. She meets a unicorn and wishes to get close to him. Love wakes up to find herself changed into a guy so she can attend the same school. Difficult to get hold of.

ANALYSIS: This one is a body swap where it’s a girl whose body is turned into a man’s, so there is no “other character” to compare too. That makes it I think a lot easier on the actor because he gets to interpret what she becomes physically because of the transformation (and we don’t have something to compare it to constantly and visually). I actually think James did a pretty darn good job (he’s an experienced actor). This is one of my favorite body swap executions. That said, I always think there would be a period of adjustment, a physical adaptation to the awkwardness of inhabiting someone else’s skin even if it’s yours transformed - in terms of clumsiness, spacial awareness, which James managed to touch on with this show but should have been pushed into a bit more for humor if nothing else. But this is really difficult to do.

2022 Vice Versa (Thai) - still airing at time for writing, unrated

This one showcases boys body swapping into other boys bodies, but played by all four actors back & forth on screen with each other. On YouTube.

ANALYSIS: Please don’t get me wrong, I really love Ohm & Nanon. But, none of these actors physically move, vocally speak (cadence, tone) like their counterparts. And as the secondaries in this show, it is on Ohm and Nanon to do the hard work in this matter, to attempt to match to their respective lead actor. In the end, I just do not believe that any of them have swapped bodies. When you see Nanon, he doesn’t hold himself the way to Jimmy does. He doesn’t have Jimmy’s arrogance and pride, or that sort of svelte beauty of physicality. Jimmy is elegant about his movements, precise and smooth. He inhabits space with care. Nanon does not. With Ohm and Sea, it’s more that their voice cadence and tone are so completely different.

So in scenes where we swap back-and-forth between the two playing the same part, I feel a profound disconnect. There’s just no way that is the same person, and the actors are not being directed to make it feel that way (or they’re not sophisticated or workshopped? enough to execute smoothly). It’s a little disappointing and, frankly, it makes me just a tiny bit annoyed whenever Nanon or Ohm is on screen, because it’s so much “oh THERE’S Nanon!” not the role he’s playing.

It might have been a different story if they had been, heh he, swapped: Jimmy|Ohm versus Sea|Nanon. Because physically those match-ups move a little more like each other naturally. Jimmy is such an elegant and almost aggressive way of holding himself with that perfect posture, and Nanon just doesn't, he’s slouchy. Ohm is a bodybuilder and moves like an athlete, while Jimmy is more floaty like a dancer, but at least that’s a little bit closer to each other in the arena of body awareness.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to it being more just JimmySea, and less OhmNanon on the same screen, and not just because... Jimmy, but because I’m finding this aspect so very jarring. And I do think a smart director will move towards just the dominant couple in this matter.

A good example: What is the best examples of this kind of thing for me, weirdly, is actually Men in Black.

If you’ve ever seen this movie, Vincent D'Onofrio who plays the bug character is a truly remarkable physical comedian. It’s him inside his own body, but the entire time you NEVER forget that an alien creature is inside that body. That creature is not used to bipedal motion, to the smaller size, to talking with that voice box, and we know this ALL THE TIME. Yes he has makeup and CGI helping him, but that man can move his body.

Of course this isn’t the same as a body swap or a body move from one biological sex body to another, but D'Onofrio highlights how important it is to show with the way you inhabit space, hold your head, walk (stride, foot position), stiffen your spine, even breathing is different and when you switch bodies it manifests primarily in the physical.

Before you ask, Saint is the best BL actor I know at physicality performance, but I don’t know who he should swap with...

(source)

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