Yellen:
I used to have another account here that I deleted 18 months ago, and I used to put the BLs I've seen into the Dropped list. Since I wanted only the dramas I completed counted I put the dramas I dropped into Not Interested list. That left me Dropped list free to repurpose and it came in useful. I knew how many dramas I actually completed (not only tried watching!) and how many BLs I had actually seen (too many!).
that's pretty clever! Maybe in another life, if I have more time, I'll do that :-)
10GoodMemories:
Okay, it’s about time I stopped lurking and introduced myself properly. I lurk daily in the forum as well, so reading all of your comments and discussions feels so familiar and natural to me 😁
My MDL completed list says I have watched around 120 Asian BLs. But I am pretty sure there are more that I either haven’t added or have completely forgotten that I’ve watched and now can’t remember much about!
I can’t remember when I started watching BLs or what my first BL was. I used to read a lot of lgbtq novels since 2010 or so.
Welcome and thanks for joining the conversation. Lurkers are fine too though. I have watched over 400 BLs so you might want to look at my completed list to see if you remember any others you want to add. I’ve rewatched a lot of shows because after awhile I can’t remember them. I’ve watched too many. Some people hate rewatching but since I have such a bad memory it’s useful and fun. I actually made a favorite rewatches list and posted it in the share your lists feed.
Even if you don’t remember all your shows you can start keeping track now. Some of the challenges are helpful with this too, like the 52 Week Challenge. This is basically just a list of everything you’ve watched this year. Here’s my completed list if you’re interested. It also includes kdramas and a few cdramas. I don’t have a separate BL list on MDL.
dora:
Love Sick 2014 was the first Thai BL as basically showed that there was an interest in these kind of stories. Sotus was the first series to go viral, then probably 2gether. BLs gained much more popularity during COVID (2020) when people had more time for viewing. Since then production has really taken off.
You will probably enjoy these links, someone made a history of all the Thai shows and their relationships to each other, with a visual timeline. 1and 2. It goes until 2022, after which it became a truly unmanageable amount. Or maybe you've already seen it and that's what you're basing your history off of haha.
And I think I've probably watched about 400 BLs, and maybe 50 GLs.
I don’t know anything about Filipino BLs
Marahuyo project!!! So good!
And The Day I Loved You, also good. But mostly Marahuyo Project!!!
Ryn:
Love Sick 2014 was the first Thai BL as basically showed that there was an interest in these kind of stories. Sotus was the first series to go viral, then probably 2gether. BLs gained much more popularity during COVID (2020) when people had more time for viewing. Since then production has really taken off.
You will probably enjoy these links, someone made a history of all the Thai shows and their relationships to each other, with a visual timeline. 1and 2. It goes until 2022, after which it became a truly unmanageable amount. Or maybe you've already seen it and that's what you're basing your history off of haha.
And I think I've probably watched about 400 BLs, and maybe 50 GLs.
I don’t know anything about Filipino BLs
Marahuyo project!!! So good!
And The Day I Loved You, also good. But mostly Marahuyo Project!!!
I don’t see links to the history of BLs. I don’t think I’ve seen that. I’ve watched a number of videos about the Japanese origins of BL manga but the other info I’ve pieced together from various sources over time as I’ve read and watched about these shows and how they made an impact. I know you and one other person recommended a number of you tube videos in the GL group about why BLs are popular women but also critical assessments of BLs. I really love watching those.
In general I try to learn everything I can about the history and how it serves women and queer people. I’ve tried to stay away from too much info about problems in the industry though—like the dangers of shipping culture—because I don’t want to feel guilty about what I watch and like. I am very interested in censorship in China though and in queer-coding in bromances and things like that. I want to be an informed and responsible viewer. Plus I love learning history, gender studies, and queer studies. You probably know way more than I do from what I can tell from your always intelligent comments but you are also clearly much younger and therefore exposed to more progressive ideas. I studied feminism and gender in the 1990s in college and also came out around then. I continue to read and watch videos and learn but because of health issues I’m pretty isolated. My main connection with others is through MDL. But luckily I have found a great community here and I get lots of joy from watching and talking about shows here.
Ok, I started to ramble, sorry. Anyway, I know more stuff about BLs if anyone’s interested, but Ryn probably knows even more than me.
Love Sick 2014 was the first Thai BL as basically showed that there was an interest in these kind of stories. Sotus was the first series to go viral, then probably 2gether. BLs gained much more popularity during COVID (2020) when people had more time for viewing. Since then production has really taken off.
You will probably enjoy these links, someone made a history of all the Thai shows and their relationships to each other, with a visual timeline. 1and 2. It goes until 2022, after which it became a truly unmanageable amount. Or maybe you've already seen it and that's what you're basing your history off of haha.
And I think I've probably watched about 400 BLs, and maybe 50 GLs.
I don’t know anything about Filipino BLs
Marahuyo project!!! So good!
And The Day I Loved You, also good. But mostly Marahuyo Project!!!
I see now that the numbers are links. Sorry I missed that. I have seen these before but didn’t take the time to look carefully because it’s so much information. I will set them aside to review little by little. I’m especially interested in which studios made what so it’s great that someone collected that information. It does make me feel like I haven’t watched that many older BLs though. Lol.
Okay, it’s about time I stopped lurking and introduced myself properly. I lurk daily in the forum as well, so reading all of your comments and discussions feels so familiar and natural to me 😁
Hi! I've seen you in the main feed a few times. 🙋🏻♀️ Now that sm is split up I don't see the main feed thread as often. With all the group pages it's been enough work as it is, lol.
Anyways, nice to see you here!
because I don’t want to feel guilty about what I watch and like
Hmm yeah, of course there is a minority of fans who really cross some serious boundaries, but it also seems like there's a concerted effort to make women and afab trans people feel guilt and shame about shipping gay men. I think a substantial part of this is purity culture, women not being allowed to have sexual desire, but there was also a terf campaign that propagated this. Info here. Accusations of fetishization abound, definitions of what is even meant by 'fetishization' sorely absent. It mostly seems to be a way of saying 'it's bad' without having to formulate reasons why.
I studied feminism and gender in the 1990s in college
Oh that's super interesting! I wanted to take a minor in gender studies, but then I thought I should do something useful and did marketing instead. A horrid decision, absolute waste of time, some of the worst people I've ever met. But well I didn't need a minor to read that stuff by myself, and I just decided to make my thesis and essays about gender anyways haha. Which texts were you supposed to read? Was there much focus on queer people at all at the time? I heard from my classmates that in our gender program it was really just about heterosexual women 95% of the time. They should've called it 'women's studies' imo, because 'gender and sexuality studies' is false advertising if you're only going to do one gender and one sexuality. My major for my bachelor was Chinastudies, and then my master East Asian studies, and one of our professors wanted to make a new gender and sexuality studies course specific to East Asia for the master (sadly not in time for me to attend it). She asked some students to show up to a consultation to ask about what we'd want out of such a course, and of course I showed up. One of the things she said was kind of scoffing like 'young people nowadays sometimes think that when we say 'gender and sexuality', we mean queer people! Isn't that odd?' And me and all the other obviously queer students sitting there were like 'uhhh...?'
Idk I kind of think I got a better/more diverse education on gender and sexuality from queer people themselves than I ever could have from a uni course. The gender theory texts I've read are usually myopically focused on gender roles, and pretend that's all there is to gender, no innate part to it, which, as a trans person who's been through conversion therapy perpetrated by people who believed that too... yikes. And so many of the older texts make their arguments based on Freud's oedipus complex, which I just cannot take seriously for the life of me.
I continue to read and watch videos and learn
Idk how good your piracy skills are, but in case they're not great, and you (like me) don't have endless money to spend on gendery books, check this website out: https://transreads.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive has almost any book you can think of, but it requires a bit more computery skill. Usually you need a VPN before they allow the website to load, probably to protect people in countries where piracy is illegal (in my country downloading is not illegal, hosting and uploading is.) Anna's Archives' working URLs keep changing as they get taken down and go back up, so that's why I'm linking you to the wiki page, which generally has the most up to date working URLs.
You can buy the book after reading it if you think it's worth the money, to support the author :)
Ok, I started to ramble, sorry.
I continued the ramble, lol. I'm not very sorry actually.
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