Pleochroism

I don’t hate this drama by any means, but I won’t lie, it confuses me how it’s so highly rated when the leads had basically zero chemistry. Did that not bother other people?

Not even exaggerating when I say that this drama fundamentally changed how I watch BL. It lowkey ruined me for many other series because it was so unique and amazing 😭

Gelboys is definitely my top BL of 2025 and it isn’t even close 💅

The world of Thai BL is chock full of plot-driven stories where they cram so much action and drama into ~8-10 episodes of a series. I personally adore Gelboys because it’s the opposite of that.

The actual plot is extremely minimal. Just a bunch of queer boys in situationships going through life, going to school, being artsy and chronically online and getting their nails done. But the characterization is so rich and authentic! None of the characters are basic stereotypes or melodramatic caricatures. They feel like very real people who do real things that teenagers do.

It has some of the same general themes of other BLs - first love, miscommunication and misunderstandings, desire, heartbreak - but it’s written in a way where none of these themes feel like tropes.

The style is so refreshing. Like a true cinéma vérité - which is something that I never expected to see in the landscape of Thai BL! It’s genuinely groundbreaking and I think/hope that it will be a landmark piece that progresses the genre as a whole going forward.

I get what some people are saying about being bored with the lack of plot/action in the early episodes, but as someone who loves character-driven media more than anything, I loved it! Immediately my all-time favorite BL drama. I just hope season 2 manages to live up to the standard season 1 set!

It’s a character-driven drama rather than a plot-driven drama, so if that’s not your cup of tea, then maybe it’s not for you. Personally that’s my favorite kind of media so I adored it all the way through. But the story does pick up a bit around episode 4 once you get out of the episodes that are fully centered around Fou4mod and Chian. So from there you’d probably enjoy it more!

Those are 4 of my top 5 KBLs along with Blueming! Excellent taste if I do say so myself! lol

I highly recommend Gelboys for an amazing Thai BL! It’s a first of its kind in the genre - cinéma vérité style and so modern and realistic in themes and content.

I Told Sunset About You and I Promised You The Moon are from the same filmmaker/production team and have incredible production value as well.

This! Thank you!

Not to mention all the people saying things like “they didn’t need to kiss (or have any physical intimacy) for it to be gay! You all just wanted porn! This is realistic!”

As if gay teenagers in conservative societies aren’t just as sex-motivated as straight teenagers and as if they don’t crave physical intimacy just as much.

Because yeah, like you said, many teens are going to be way more invested in school and activities than in relationships in high school, but to the extent that they are interested, they absolutely do want to kiss and have sex. It’s insulting that people are trying to pretend that this isn’t an important factor in young gay people’s relationships just because “Korea is a homophobic society!!”

Because the writing was bad and the changes made to the characters and action in the manhwa were clearly intended to appease straight people so the result was an insult to queer viewers. Nobody thought it would be explicit. We just expected it to be well-written! But I know that’s too much to ask - sorry!

Not exactly sure what about it you love and are looking to replicate, but Blueming is a good one if you haven’t seen it. It’s got a kind of similar enemies to lovers vibe and is also in a university setting. It’s definitely one of my top 5 KBLs (along with Semantic Error of course)

I agree with you, and it’s all down to the terrible writing on this series. His character and his relationship with Heesu could have been handled so much better to actually consistently build towards something instead of stagnating. But he was written to be blank-faced and emotionally unavailable throughout several episodes of the drama seemingly specifically because they were trying to drag it out to 10 episodes and had no idea what else to do with his character over that time 🙃

I’ve been seeing so many people praising this drama that I have to assume are both straight and very ignorant of gay/queer people and our lives.

It’s quite clear to me that many creative decisions in this drama were made with the goal of making straight people comfortable, so I guess on that front it was a success! So many ignorant straight people love this trash lmao

I honestly don’t even think it needed to be longer. I just think they didn’t utilize the time they had well enough. They could have cut out so much (the blackmail texter, the two older sisters’ relationship drama, the carrot juice girl, etc.) and then used that time on other subplots to make them more interesting. Instead we got about 7 superficial subplots when we could have just had 2 or 3 more deep and well-integrated subplots.

Bro don’t compare this mess to Heartstopper. the subplots in Heartstopper were actually interesting and well integrated into the story 😭

I think that it fails even as a traditional KDrama. I don’t watch BL just for “cute BL scenes.” I’m not a romance fan in general, so without a good story, a drama is nothing to me even if the main couple is cute.

This drama failed because of the poor writing. The “existential monologues” ended up feeling heavy-handed and pretentious. There were several superfluous subplots that were superficial, cliche, and/or went nowhere in the end. And the misunderstandings were not well portrayed. Watch Gelboys if you actually want a good representation of misunderstandings in relationships that isn’t trope-y and doesn’t drag on.

I would never trust a film critic who thought this was well written.

It’s much better! And it wouldn’t have been a spoiler honestly because they changed the whole story for the drama (for the worst).

Not sure how recent you’re looking for, but my top 4 KBLs are Semantic Error, The Eighth Sense, Love in the Big City (drama, not movie), and Blueming. Top BL of all time that just came out a couple months ago is the Thai BL Gelboys. It’s a truly amazing and authentic queer story!

Fully agree, but on the bright side, I love your pfp 😅

Quite literally the best, most authentic BL drama that has ever been released.

Dude what kills me is that Seung Won saying he turned out the lights so astronomy-lover Heesu could see the stars would have been the most adorable thing ever in any true BL drama, but instead he’s saying that while they’re sitting 2 feet apart, pointedly not touching like a couple of bros chilling after practice 😭

Except that the lack of a coming out scene isn’t what people took issue with at all? *Actually read* the critical comments. No one is complaining about the fact that there was no big grand coming out scene between the main couple. Most BL dramas don’t have that and they can still be very good. But unfortunately this one was trash for a number of reasons.