Hello (this is pretty long). I am not exactly new to dramas, but I never watched that many throughout my life (especially not to completion), until this year where I found myself gravitating towards some. I'm after recs of something very specific that's a little hard to describe but I will try.
I would like to see a drama with a "GL pairing" (at least one of the girls being the main character !) that is not (necessarily) explicit or does not function as a capital-R Romance. I also don't need the relationship between them to be the main focus of the story and I am completely fine with, or rather I can even massively like slow AF burns (as long as it gets going at some point lol).
What I'm after is some sort of romance-coded intense relationship that can be difficult to define and is maybe not (necessarily) acknowledged as romance, but for the viewer the female characters are very intense/particular about each other / quite taken with the relationship / have a certain amount of tension. It can be antagonistic (very fertile ground for this stuff) as long as it's not only that. They could be very "straight" women who never thought they would end up feeling this way for another woman. It could be a mismatch due to their circumstances of being on opposite sides of something even if they don't hate each other (or simply very different positions in life, like younger/older, rich/poor, etc), or maybe in high stakes situations and not "meant" to fall in love. And hopefully they don't die or end up with some guy at the end (and preferably end up in a position where I can imagine them together after lol). If they do, it's something very ignorable LMAO or death as one of the final scenes idk. One of them going to prison is fine 😂 though not ideal.
A het exemple of what I mean is the drama Hyper Knife (which I love and got me back to dramas, currently my undisputed fav). It's a thriller about a pair (a mentor and a former student, naturally with a big age gap) that is not explicitly romantic on paper, but it's very romantic as a subtext. The characters don't kiss and don't name what they have, but they're clearly in love with each other. It's also a drama where the relationship between them can be extremely barbed, toxic and complicated, but love wins out in the end (!!! important. I'd like for the chr to want that person in their lives rather than overwhelmingly be away from them, no matter how crazy things got between them.)
I'm fine if it's an explicit romance as long as it's a long complicated build towards it (basically they only get together for real at the end), focused on the psychological aspects of falling love that can be mixed with many other emotions, positive or negative. I am finding/suspecting that I am quite partial to thrillers because they focus on a storyline and can have intense relationships between leads that can be very subtextually romantic only but still important and strong, and it doesn't follow conventional romance done in asian dramas (which I do like sometimes, but less so, and I can get tired of it pretty quickly, unless it's a difficult love built in some important external circumstances too, be it character development, life or career goals or some fantastical thing like xianxias / adventures / action etc).
My first try of this was The Message (2020), which is a cdrama, and I went after a cdrama specifically because I knew about the censorship and I wanted to see how a GL could be done under this constraint. I like to see the many ways the writers can infer romance without actually spelling it out or using common tropes. Anyway, it was going pretty well (though lighter than I would like on the relationship side, but the plot carried it for me. I really like thrillers haha), but when things were starting to get good, (spoiler) the main character fucking died so I decided to just pause this one for a while 💀
I specified all this because I am aware there are many thai GLs, but looking at some posters it seems mostly like what you see in romcoms, which I am very wary before starting, because as I said, it tires me out if it doesn't have a strong story/characters or is not very particular to my tastes. Even though I haven't watched that much asian LA shows, I am a pretty avid manga reader and I am very familiar with how east asian romcoms function. And even though I like GL as much as I like het, GL manga/wha/huas don't usually hit the spot as true psychologically-inclined slow burn romances between complicated people as het does, even when it's marketed that way. I've tried a lot of yuri manga throughout my life and there are some I love, but the trend is mostly towards faster / purer / romantic from the get-go / more straight-forward love stories (not to say dramas function exactly the same way without even knowing them much, I'm happy to be proven wrong with some straight up GL romance). I know BL on the contrary has a lot of complicated characters in effd up situations buuut I don't like BL so I'll take what I can get with GL and het.
Some notes:
• Please remember I would like for it to include at least one MAIN main character, no side romances while we're actually following the story of another person entirely. But it can be an ensemble cast too with multiple stories of somewhat equal focus, that's perfectly fine.
• In explicit romances, no jump from the start towards one character being romantically interested in the other, unless it's very lowkey or they don't pay too much attention to it. I like to see the reasons one character gets interested in the other as the story goes.
• No taboo themes are off-limits for me, I just don't like toxic slop (toxic just for the sake of toxic / shock factor) but I think unless you're very familiar with the kind of yuri I'm talking about, that's irrelevant for this. Everything else, I'm game.
• But the show does NOT have to be dark !!! I said 'complicated' to put an emphasis on character building & struggling with one's emotions, and that can happen in any setting at all. It's not because I am ambivalent about romcoms in tv that I'm opposed to completely lighter non-toxic shows with comedy, as long as the emotional side is well done. I am also ok with melodramas (latino here lol).
• I would just ask for a warning if one of the characters die / end up in another relationship so I know what I'm getting into.
• Things like miscommunication and "confusing/convoluted motives", unlikable characters and imperfect / toxic relationships are NOT a problem for me like they are for many watchers as I see these complaints all the time, so even if you think so and so character is unlikable there is a huge chance I won't think the same (it's very rare for me to hate a character). I only have more of a problem with toxicity when it's tied to that traditional cool dominant macho male characters with zero vulnerabilities because I like female characters more and I'm a Role Reversal fan. Since we're talking about women in dynamics with each other, this isn't exactly relevant, except:
• I am also open to Het recs of this kind of subtextual / "unromantic" romance (mostly done in thrillers and non-romance genres), but I wanted to say this last because I am truly mostly after GL right now after being let down by The Message on that front. Just remember I don't like dominant cool guy-types, so if it's het it doesn't have to be RR necessarily, but at least egalitarian. (This isn't to say he can't be strong and confident, for example: in Love Beyond the Grave (2026) the ML is strong and confident, but it's still a RR romance because he acts subservient/submissive to the FL and he has many qualities that balance things like being gentle, devoted and thoughtful while still being a bit of a madman (lol), he is not some dom cool stereotype.)
• Please let me know if the rec is GL or het (no BL pls)
P.S. I was thinking of watching Friendly Rivalry (2025) next but I saw the reviews and apparently the GL aspect is completely dropped, so idk about this one... bummer.
Thank you so much if you took the time to read all this and can help me!
emeraldarrows:
