Maggi64

Ep 5 was disappointing. The whole thing was backstory about the bandmate and his brother, none of which contributed to the main narrative. It felt like filler designed to just stretch the show out. It's a shame cuz it was crackling with brisk energy up to now. Plus, we were so primed to see the two leads together after last week's episode. After all, they had just passed this big hurdle with Momochi discovering that Issae had a hard family life and sometimes forces his smile. They need to get the leads together in more scenes or else it's gonna sputter out of energy.

Where did you see it? Viki?

It's a pretty terrific film about a cute little girl who softens a hardened man's heart. Oh, and then he goes on murderous rampage to protect her. Think of it as "The Professional," but without the pedophilia.

Ok, so you mean you donate money to help make the shows. That's really cool! Good for you.

As for what the actors make, yikes, only $300 per episode???? Each cast member of the American sitcom Friends got $1,000,000. per Episode. And that was a million dollars 20 years ago, which would be even more now. I've heard that idols also get low pay and that it's the agencies and mgt companies who make all the big bucks. They are notorious for chewing these kids up and spitting them out a couple years later.

Lastly, I can't believe they can make an entire hour episode for only $9,000. That's so cheap!

What do you mean when you say that you "paid for a few small BL productions"??? Are you a producer for some show or movie?

The thing about product placement is that all the other Asian countries manage to make great BL's without it, so why can't Thailand? Often, it feels that a Thai BL was so rushed off the factory assembly line that it only exists as a vehicle to carry product placement. In other words, the show was not made to tell a great story but, rather, to be a place where they can show products. It's like how America TV shows originally only aired to advertise soap. That's why we call daytime dramas, "Soap Operas." The soap companies paid to produce them so that they could advertise soap during breaks. That's essentially what's going on with Thai BL's. I mean, they are not even subtle about pushing products either.

I never saw exact numbers on profits, but I do know that BL's are so big in Thailand that the Ministry of Finance classifies them as a Gross National Product. Check out some of the articles on BL's below. If the links don't work, just type the magazine, article name, and date in the search line and the articles will come up.

/////////////////



The Rise of Thailand's Boy Love Series - The Review Geekhttps://www.thereviewgeek.com › rise-of-thailands-boy...
Aug 26, 2022 — Thailand is currently the reigning king when it comes to producing boy love series (BLs) surpassing Japan.



Everything you need to know about Thailand's thriving Boys ...https://www.timeout.com › lgbtq › thai-boys-love-culture
Jun 11, 2020 — Thailand's BL series industry is on the rise and is now the country's major entertainment export.



Thailand's relationship with the BL industry and queer rightshttps://qplusmagazine.com › thailands-relationship-with... Jan 21, 2022 — Over the last ten years, Thailand's Boys Love (BL) industry has enjoyed steady and successful growth both domestically and abroad.



Thailand's 'boys love' dramas stealing hearts around the worldhttps://asia.nikkei.com › Business › Media-Entertainment Apr 10, 2022 — In Thailand, BL is popular mainly among young women, as the country is more accepting of the LGBTQ community than most other Asian countries.

I just checked out the Old Fashioned Cupcake extras. I like the one where Togawa is shirtless while Nozue feeds him apple pie filling. In the other one, Togawa asks him to marry him.

I loved how it was actually the younger, hotter Togawa who was madly in love. Nevertheless, his proposal doesn't make sense because Japan does not have gay marriage. Taiwan is the only Asian country to have it, yet I still see men proposing to men in Asian BL's (eg, Cherry Blossoms After Winter, and Cutie Pie). Japan has introduced a Bill for Gay Marriage, so it will happen soon. Korea will take longer, and China will take an eternity. As for South East Asians like Thailand, I am surprised they don't have it, given their massive BL industry and the implied acceptance therein.

I was researching BL's and found articles about the industry in Slate which discussed the profits in Thailand particularly, and then as an American I see the Thai BL promo pieces in magazines here myself.. I also read that Japan has no international promo machine and we can see this right down to the fact that they don't even sub their BL's but rely on fan subbers, while the Thais pay pros cuz Thailand wants we foreigners watching. Hell, just look at Thailands social media and fan service for BL's. You don't see that for Japan or Korea, right?

I don't think it's "inner homophobia" to need to adjust to the idea of being with the same sex if you've been straight your whole life. Assuming a radically different habit in any facet of life requires adjustment. So going through a process toward change is perfectly healthy and perfectly acceptable.

When it comes to a change in sexual habits, if you have only slept with the opposite sex your whole life, then you would need to go through a process of discovering a capacity for homosexuality in yourself. Otherwise, how would you know if you have this inside of you or not? It's not like our sexual orientation pops up on a spring out of nowhere. At any rate, it would not be as instant as some of these shows depict.

Moreover, the process and journey toward discovery is what makes a lot of the BL's that include it, so interesting. So yes, you are right in saying that it's better to watch the journey of a gay man guiding the straight man along on this journey. For instance, it was fascinating to watch Type leading Tharn in sex, and Tharn adjusting to his new sexual habits, and how he grew to like the sex with a man more and more.

Remember that terrific scene where he comes home after a date with a girl, curls up with Type and tells him, "I could not have sex with her. When I kissed her, I felt your kiss. When I touched her soft body, I thought of your hard body. I wanted you, not her." That scene was great cuz it acknowledged that there is a difference in the sexual attraction to either men or women, and that one does not just change instantly. Tharn went on an emotional, psychological journey and that was both realistic and good drama.

Asian chests are hairless, but their still hard, unlike a woman's. And an Asian man's legs are just as hairy as any brunette white guys. I notice this every time I see a gay+hetero sex scene. I think, "Now that hetero guy would surely notice the hairy legs, and hard chest."

And many gay films outside of "BL World" portrays the way a hetero balks at the gay guy's body. In fact, outside of BL World, we see portrayals of gay men hitting on straights and the straight guy reacting with disgust or violence (eg, the Asian film "Night Flight"). I suspect this is more realistic.

To be clear, I don't want to see portrayals of heteros being disgusted, but I do want to see portrayals of at least some inner conflict as hetero takes that mental journey across the bridge. Instead, we usually get a straight guy just blithely rolling along as if it were no big deal.

Nearly all the Thai BL's are guilty of this. Tharn/Type and Kinn/Porshe are exceptions that portrayed one guy in the couple as being gay. J-BL's like Old Fashioned Cupcake also did a nice job with the portrayal of a hetero + gay, because it showed Nozue, the hetero, resisting a gay man's attention at first. That was realistic. Likewise, the kid in Cherry Blossoms After Winter showed a kid struggling with the idea of being with a man.

In short, there has to be at least some process for a straight person to go through. I am a hetero female and when my lesbian friend wanted to have an affair in college I tried it, but only cuz I liked her as a person. I had no innate desire for the female form and one cannot simply "create" that in oneself. Now, that's cuz I am inherently hetero, while some people may be inherently bi-sexual and thus could swing to gay. But even so, they'd require a process to discover this in themselves. Does that make sense?

Ah yes, you're right. It's about them dimming, not her turning them on. At any rate, he's the one responsible for the change in the gaslights while making her think that she's nuts. So the upshot is the same ;) And what a great film, huh?

Can you tell me if any of the extra scenes on the DVD showed our boys finally sharing a proper kiss? The way that kiss was aborted at the end of the show was sooooo disappointing.

Yep, the one kiss per series quota is definitely a feature of J-BL's. Sometimes it's even worse, as with Old Fashioned Cupcake, where they pussied out on kissing at all. I mean, yes, there was the forced closed mouth peck, but the open mouthed, deep kiss they almost had at the end was aborted. I was loving that show, but suddenly it -- plop! -- dropped in my estimation. It's not that I need to see kissing, but in that show it was necessary to show that Nozue, heretofore only sleeping with women, could cross that bridge to kissing a man. Since they showed him fly away from Togawa, terrified by sounds in an alleyway, it just confirmed that he was not comfortable being with a man. It was a major flaw with an otherwise perfect show.

The zany ones like Senpai and Mr. Unlucky both had one closed mouth and, like you said, it was at the start of the shows, such that they moved backward to less intimacy as the the show progressed, not more. Although when it comes to the "one kiss quota" the Thai's are even worse, given that the J-BL's are only 6 eps, while the Thai's will have one kiss per an entire, long 14 ep series. Bad Buddy was 14 eps of 45 min each with exactly one kiss. It was absurd, cuz the boys never touched each other after that.

The K-BL's are good at exceeding the one kiss quota with a couple of kisses in Semantic Error and Blueming. And J-BLs like The Pornographer and Dangerous Drugs of Sex also exceeded the quota, but those are exceptions. I mean, both are pretty extreme for J-BL's.

As for your subscribing to Gagaloola to get Dangerous Drugs of Sex, I feel you! lol. I also watched The Shortest Distance Is Round over there. That was directed by a porn director and the star was a real life porno actor. You could tell.

I agree on your list of terrible K-BL's, but not so much on your list of "mediocre" ones cuz I thought a lot of those were great.

What's interesting about the Koreans is that "Long Time No See" was their first BL and it was back in 2017. Then "Where Your Eyes Linger" came along in 2020 and was a huge hit. That's when the Koreans figured out that BL's were profitable and began to make more -- such that, as I'd said elsewhere, a mere two years later, in 2022, and they have 31 slated to appear!

As for product placement, yes, I get that a show needs funding, but if the Koreans, Japanese and Taiwanese can make quality shows without product placement then there's no reason the Thai's can't do it too. Sure, the J-BL's and K-BL's are short and thus require less funding, but the Taiwanese are long. The HIStory series were all 10-12 episode of 45 min each. And not a single product placement! In short, I think the Thais are guilty of being greedy and their BL industry wreaks of doing this purely for profit.

I mean, every time I look at BLparadise's weekly update, there is a new Thai BL. As I said, with 60 a year that's 5 new ones a month (ie, one new one a week). I will try to find that article I read about Thailand produces over 60 BL's a year, and makes so much money exporting its BLs that they are among its Gross National Products. I think it was in Slate Magazine. I'll check :)

I wish the Thais would spend as much energy writing good scripts as they do on promotions. They do big budget promos and I see their BL's mentioned in even American magazines. They also pay professional subbers while all the other Asian BL's are fan-subbed. Naturally, the Thais make their stars do tons of social media as well.

All this promotion and fan service results in a large viewership which, in turn, results in the Thai BL's getting higher ratings on MDL. Japanese BL's, conversely, don't do any international promotions and, thus, tend to get lower ratings. Korean and Taiwanese don't do much promoting in the West, but they do promote a little bit in Asia. At any rate, promotions are a factor in ratings and, hence, one of the reasons I don't pay much attention to MDL ratings.

Oh, and as for the Taiwanese being cool about gay culture, yep, I agree. Taiwan is the ONLY country in Asia to have gay marriage. But I think Japan will be next. They introduced a bill for it, and research shows that the generation in their 20's and younger are all pro gay marriage.

Gaslighting is such a terrific term, and it comes from an old 1940's movie actually called, yep, "Gaslight." It starred Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman and was set in the Victorian era when they still used gaslights. Boyer plays a suave, conniving husband who secretly turned on the gaslights every night and then asked Ingrid Bergman why she turned them on. When she couldn't recall doing so, he'd say, "I'm really worried about your mental state when you keep forgetting that you turn on the gaslights every night." He did a bunch of other things to make her think she'd lost her mind, all of it so as to have her committed and steal her fortune. Ever since this movie, the phenomena of making a sane person think they are crazy is called "gaslighting."

Thai BL's get higher ratings cuz they have a much larger viewership as a result of enormous promotional budgets. As I said in a comment below, BL's are among Thailand's Gross National Products and they churn out approx 60 a year. Their national economy profits from exporting these BL's, so yea, they pay big bucks to promote them internationally. I saw articles in Rolling Stone and Vogue for Thai BL's like "Kinn/Porsche" among others.

Japan, conversely, has NO international promotion and seemingly does not give a shit what the rest of the world thinks. Korea promotes a little bit, but not much more than the Japanese do. This is why J-BL's and K-BL's will always have a smaller viewership and, hence, lower ratings than even the crappiest Thai BL.

How much do we love that the landlord had an ex boyfriend?

It's such a pleasure when at least one member of a BL couple is openly gay. I am so weary of the BL trope, "I am really straight, but just gay for you." I can buy one guy in a couple starting off hetero, but I can't buy 2 hetero guys suddenly getting jiggy. Be advised, it's not easy to make love to a large, hard, hairy body if you've only had women's smaller, soft, hairless bodies your entire life. Thus, at least one of the 2 needs to be gay to make it happen.

.
Semantic Error
Blueming
Where Your Eyes Linger
Long Time No See
Cherry Blossoms After Winter

That's 5 great K-BL's right there. Even bland ones such as "Once Again," "Kissable Lips" and "First Love Again" were still better than most Thais. What makes them better is the fact that they are only 6-8 eps of 20 minutes each. The shortness forces directors to be economical and squeeze in a lot of plot per episode. Meanwhile, Thai BL's are 14 episodes of 45 minutes each, which is over 10 hours in total (compared to Korean BL's total of 2 hours). Thus, the Thai BL's are stuffed with filler, repetition and product placement galore.

They are also stuffed with side couples. Although, hey, the side couples are often better than the main couple (eg, Dome/Vee and Sean/Ai in "You're My Star" and Book/Frame in "Make It Right"). "Tharn/Type" was one of the rare Thai BL's that had no side couple, and it was also, tellingly, one of the best Thai BL's. "I'll Tell Sunset About You" is also good, but I don't group that among the other Thai BL's cuz it was from a small, independent producer (it had no product placements). Meanwhile, all the other Thai BL's are packed with product placement because they are manufactured by large studios who cut corporate deals for product placement. And man,those Thai BL's manufactured by big studios duly feel like they came off a factory assembly line.

Thailand manufactures so many BL's that their Minister of Finance classifies them as one of the country's Gross National Products. Hummm.... it kind of pisses me off that Thailand makes a fortune off these BL's and yet milks them for even more money with product placements. If I pay for Viki, Gagaloola, and IQUI, then I don't want to see ads inside the show itself. Know what I mean? At any rate, Korea (and Japan, for that matter), keeps their BL's short, punchy and ad-free. Put simply, they are better than Thai BL's all round.