lietk12

"a fake pandemic" you're joking, right?

Ingredients began with a portrayal of life at home and finished with an open ending involving an LDR where the characters don't know when they'll be able to see each other again, and where their goodbye feels incomplete. Oof, that hits too close under COVID-19, and I appreciate it.

They could've edited this monster 9-minute teaser into several shorter teasers each with a tighter story and released them one-by-one to build hype gradually, but I guess they had other goals. Anyways, holy wow the production goes beyond anything I expected (especially the stylistic use of color through lighting, the pleasing way they frame shots and compose scenes, and the camerawork and editing of the long-take fight scene starting at 07:18)!

Yeah, that plot point's overused. I think falling for a straight/"straight"/questioning person and becoming angsty and making self-harmful choices for it is a common experience for people who are still new to being queer - and perhaps also for people who are more isolated from a positive LGBTQ community. I know of plenty of other people who've had that experience, and they also see it as something to avoid repeating. For the few shows I've enjoyed with that plot point, it makes sense in context and the problems are depicted more realistically, and they all end with a passage of time implying off-screen personal growth with a more open ending: with ITSAY they're high-schoolers and it's a coming-of-age film so it makes sense that they make immature decisions; with GSP it's presented as a negative thing, and the characters maintain healthier boundaries as a result; with Oh Mando it actually kills the relationship. But besides a few exceptions, I guess the BL industry thinks rehashing the same old fantasy about true love between a gay guy and his straight friend will be more marketable. Personally, I think even messy stories about queer people overcoming isolation and finding each other for friendship, romance, community, etc. will always be more beautiful than even the best-executed fantasy about ending up together with a straight friend.

I wouldn't call Chon's behavior sadistic, but more like...not totally respecting himself, not so well-adjusted, and not emotionally mature. Most of us have all been in a similar place, though I hope not this badly. I agree that he knows better, and I think there's ambiguity in his actions which shows that he's trying: in the immature direction, he's going along with the plan to make Ton jealous by using someone else; but in the positive direction, he's putting space between himself and Ton by getting closer to another potential friendship/romantic interest (e.g. in the argument at the end he says "Okay, you are not jealous. That means you have no reason to stop me from eating shrimp from Na!" and turns to leave, instead of saying "You're jealous because there's no other reason you'd have for stopping me"). So I don't think Chon's going the extra mile with Ton the way Green was with Dim in 2gether, he's just understandably not secure enough to resist the peer pressure from his friends.

If Ai and Ni and Miriam were actually good friends for Chon, they'd support his efforts to move on from Ton through a friendship with Na. But Ai and Ni seem to be more interested in playing the roles of the "sidekicks" of Ton as a BL "male protagonist" than in being positive gay mentors for Chon as his seniors; they even push blatant homophobia onto Ton ("What if Chon gets touchy feely and comes on to you?...I must protect your safety, my friend", like wtf????? and then the show just moves on from that like it's no problem). And because Miriam is such a "BL queen" that she sees gay men through the lens of BL, she's more interested in supporting her narrow idea of true love between men than in supporting Chon's personal growth or his friendships with other gay guys.

Folks, if he:

- lets his jealously reach the point that he loses touch with reality and almost punches people
- makes your friends constantly worry that he'll hit them
- tries to control who you spend time with
- acts in a way that repeatedly intimidates and/or startles you and your friends
- forcefully drags you around by the wrist to the point that you have to tell him to take it easy
- punches the person he thinks is your boyfriend out of jealousy

He's not your man. He's a walking red flag for relationship abuse. This doesn't mean he's an intrinsically bad person forever, but he needs to do a lot of serious emotional growth of how he expresses his feelings before he can be ready to do a healthy romantic relationship with anyone of any gender. You deserve relationships where you can be more open and honest about your feelings, and this one is not good timing.

The preview for the next ep has killed my hope for a meaningful character growth arc from Ton before the show tries to do cute moments between Ton and Chon. I'm tired of BL shows normalizing harmful behaviors in relationships or glossing over them with cute moments, though to be fair it's not just BL which has these issues :/

"I thought I could run away from the bad police. But see, in the end, it's the same everywhere" dang, Manner of Death coming through with a critique of policing as a system - HIStory3 Trapped could never! (jk, but it is interesting to compare how the two shows portray police)

Dome with the big third-wheel energy in this episode hahaha

They also wore their N95 masks incorrectly - they didn't bend the nosebridge, so they left huge air gaps which defeat the purpose of N95 masks. And Oat used his phone with his gloves on, though we do that a lot in my lab too (except we're much more careful when we handle blood) :P

But those are tiny mistakes for a TV series, I was just really surprised at the mask removal given what has been established about the risks of COVID transmission from removing masks to talk hahaha

In several scenes (e.g. when Bun & Pued met at the market), I think the editors applied too much noise reduction, so it sounded like they were speaking over a webcam call

Now ITSAY is down to 9.0, which is a drop of 0.5. It looks like different shows have dropped by different amounts: e.g. Cherry Magic and GSP both dropped by 0.4, The Untamed dropped by 0.3; Flower of Evil and It's Okay to Not Be Okay both dropped by 0.2; and Hospital Playlist, Prison Playbook, My Mister, and Signal only dropped by 0.1. Interestingly, the ITSAY Documentary sharply dropped from 9.5 to 7.7, and Oh Mando dropped from 8.8 to 7.7! What are the MDL admins doing with the rating algorithm to be rolling changes out live across multiple days??

o_O now the highest-rated series are only 9.1, and even ITSAY dropped from 9.5 to 9.0 in the past 2 days...are MDL admins just deploying changes live without testing and confirming what they actually want to do? I want to get off this rollercoaster lol

This is a really interesting take, and I totally agree. Assuming Ton's dad will unleash some homophobia on Ai & Ni as suggested in the teaser (and which would confirm the fears Ai and Ni have about being out) and on Ton & Chon as suggested in the trailer, then I'll bet that this show is committed to using the tragic side of reality to find comedy in it. I also think a "dark reality" reading of the series gives a way to understand why the writers might have written that confrontation outside the noodle stall in EP 1 the way they did beyond assuming that the writers are entirely lazy/problematic - and it could explain why they didn't use the comedic/slapstick soundtrack for that scene, and why they've used tense music in scenes where characters are worried about homophobia from Ton.

I don't see how EP 3 portrays Ai and Ni as being blackmailed, since Miriam proposes the scheme as a win-win way for them to work together to mislead Ton rather than as an exchange of their money for her silence. I think the dialogue also positions Ai and Ni as having more power in the situation, and indeed the scene ends with Ni giving some conditions for Miriam and Miriam agreeing to comply so that she can get paid so that she doesn't have to do sex work. Similarly, in the second half of the episode, Ai & Ni call Miriam to visit their house in the evening, and afterwards Ai thanks her for helping them. So I don't think it's blackmail, but rather it's people from two different socially marginalized groups (a gay couple and a woman doing sex work) working together for mutual benefit - though under an unequal relationship; and we see a similar affinity between Chon and the woman he was with. This really exceeds the expectations I had after EP 2, and I think this direction (together with Ai+Ni and Chonlatee learning each other's secrets in EP 3 and starting to form a plan for dealing with Ton as suggested by the trailer) could enable some hopefulness even if we read it as a satire of a dark reality.

But that scene with Miriam in the hotel, and the whole plot device of Miriam acting as a beard for Ai & Ni, does have a dark undercurrent captured by these lines: "You are lying to him for his sake, and for your own sake for that matter. But if you try to fake flirt with some random girls, that would be wrong to them, right?" I see this as a clear allusion to the issues gay people face in taking beards (whether knowingly or unknowingly) in order to stay in the closet. Compare to similar explorations in other Asian BL/LGBTQ films & series: the contract marriage between a wealthy gay couple and an economically precarious woman in Ang Lee's 1993 transnational Taiwan+US film The Wedding Banquet; the struggles Kyungsoo and Taesub faced in the 2010 Korean family drama Life Is Beautiful; the contract marriage between a gay couple and a lesbian couple in the 2012 queer Korean film Two Weddings and a Funeral; and Fighter, Akira, Teh, and Mando's relationships with women in Why R U?, Life Senjou no Bokura, ITSAY, and Oh, Mando!, respectively. A theme in many of those works is that making ethical compromises to avoid dealing with identity questions and/or to stay in the closet - such as by dating women who aren't in on the secret - causes problems for everyone involved, and we can see those challenges reflected in the regrets Chon, Ai, and Ni feel after they go along with Ton in other situations.

There are some other lines in EP 3 which are surprisingly dark, even in context: Ni's "The longer I keep it to myself, the more it's torturing me", Miriam's "I don't care if I have to die from this", Pang's "If P'Ton wants you to die, will you do it?" and Chon's ha-ha-jk response of "I will". These lines have me optimistic that the writers are trying to do something deeper than a cliche comedy - but like you said, only the next 10 episodes will tell whether they meaningfully address the dark/problematic things they've depicted.

Oooh, is there a link that we can watch this interview?

Maybe a compromise is to rent some episodes on Vimeo once, up to however much you think the series is worth, and then use the illegal versions after 30 days have passed if you think the quality of the series is not worth paying for an additional rental period to rewatch? But yeah, I also wish the Vimeo versions weren't just rentals.

Based on what was discussed at the start of the behind-the-scenes documentary's EP 5, I think it's likely that both interpretations were envisioned by the director. To recap: The initial script had lipstick instead of a bra, where Oh-Aew would see girls wearing pretty makeup in Patong, buy lipstick, and later try it on. But because Patong was closed, P'Boss needed some other way to tell a story about Oh-aew's sexuality (from the eng subs in the video) and coming of age (English words from the Thai hard subs in the same sentence of the video) and gender expression+exploration (my interpretation), and then he thought of substituting with a bikini. And then afterwards he realized that this could connect to the scene where Teh had been touching Oh-aew's chest, and he thought "it became better than what I had in mind before" (eng subs).

It was a happy accident that the bra connected to Teh's reaction to Oh-aew's chest, so I think it makes a lot of sense to interpret the scene in a way that doesn't rely on how Teh had reacted to Oh-aew's chest, since the original script didn't have that connection. And I think an interpretation based solely on gender exploration and emotional turmoil about how society sees gender non-conformity could be more relatable for LGBTQ people (at least for me, and probably also for many of the trans/nonbinary people I know) than an interpretation based on "if I were of a different gender, would he accept me?". Certainly mirrors and makeup are symbols/tropes used by representations of many trans & gender non-conforming people in English-language media made by non-trans people (in the US, the most iconic example of this would be the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning), and selfies can serve a special function for trans & gender non-conforming people in self-representation, often in ways similar to what Oh-aew went through in this scene.

And yet using a bra was also an accident that the director took advantage of, which means that the director later intended to add a connection to how Teh had reacted to Oh-aew's chest, so it makes a lot of sense to interpret it that way too. There's a writer I like who talks about science fiction as a kind of "double action" between the future and the present, like how glasses at 3D movies have the lens over your left eye show something from one angle while the lens over your right eye shows it from a slightly different angle, and then your brain puts together a 3D view from the two different images. Similarly, I think this bra scene is even more powerful because it works from two different angles simultaneously, where both of them contribute in different ways to the overall sense of self-discovery and inner conflict. We miss something if we only look at it from one angle.

It's been 2 days since OP and I'm still waiting to see links to take these bold claims about the creators' behaviors from "hearsay" to "substantiated" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ITSAY might cut your heart up into tiny broken pieces and then glue each piece back together :)

@thebigofan The undercurrent of what happened here - someone's sexual orientation is called into question, so it's funny to force them into a situation against their sexual orientation and against their consent - is homophobic rape (also/formerly called "corrective rape"), which is a really serious and pervasive form of violence, especially against queer women where misogyny is a strong component of why/how it happens. It deserves to be taken seriously. Ignoring this to only "relax and enjoy the show" would feel like bad taste to me, and I say this as someone who is enjoying other parts of the show so far :/

I'm cautiously eager to see where this series goes with its portrayal of misogyny and homophobia. I hope Tonhon will be challenged on the toxicity of how he performs and polices masculinity. You can see some roots of that in his family's banter, which must've been included at length for a reason. If this series treats these issues critically and gives Tonhon character growth while still being a comedy (maybe by having some viewers accept things as part of the comedy and then later calling it out, the way GSP did with Judit's "ally"ship), that will be quite impressive. I hope the writing has the ambition and execution, and it's going to be a big problem for me if it doesn't. The writers didn't have to create the scenes they did in ep 1+2 to make a funny series with the same characterization of Tonhon - but because they went there, I think it's totally fair to judge how responsibly they treat it in the overall storyline.

A few more notes:
- I love Ai and Nhai's chaotic gay energy. And on top of that, I like that this show is giving us comedy about how weird being among straight men in social situations can be, and comedy about the risks of passively going along with toxic masculinity instead of shutting it down early (Ai, clearly uncomfortable: "How did we get to this point?") - because for me, the next most logical response besides laughing about it would be crying about it.
- Is Chonlatee the walking embodiment of "I'm baby"? I just want to protect him and his adorably campy dancing lol
- The show has an opportunity to do something interesting with the contrast between Tonhon+Chonlatee and Ai+Nhai, where the latter seems like a gay couple who are already an item rather than a "BL" or uke-seme couple. We'll see if the writers take advantage of this or waste it.
- I keep getting distracted from the subtitles because of Toptap's amazing facial expressions and the way he acts comedically with his eyes.

GSP brings together the best of indie LGBTQ filmmaking with the best of the BL genre, and in doing so it blazes a new trail for what LGBTQ storytelling can look like. A few notes and reflections from the last episode:
- Even if the relationship is an open ending from a BL lens, I would argue that the series got a really happy ending from an LGBTQ media lens: Vlad has gotten some closure and moving-on from his previous relationship with Aldous (which seemed to be the thing driving so much of his emotional insecurity in EP 7) and seems more able to set boundaries about his needs before pursuing a relationship, while Karl is in a much happier and self-affirming place with his queer identity, his professional dreams, and his journey as his own person rather than his brother's shadow. And both of these put Karl and Vlad in a much healthier position to do a romantic relationship in the future, if they should choose to do that. I think so much of mainstream culture (and also especially BL world and also especially gay culture) treats being single as not a happy ending, and that's really such an oversimplification.
- I really appreciate the way GSP treated coming out and romantic relationships between people in different places of identity disclosure, because it's a common issue. GSP has demonstrated that bringing in the deeper struggles and complexities around this issue can make a story so much more powerful. With series in the past two years (four examples off the top of my head: Kinou Nani Tabeta, Dark Blue Kiss, Life Senjou no Bokura, and Quaranthings) exploring this in various directions, I feel hopeful that we'll get series which continue to deepen the conversation.
- GSP and ITSAY are both series which create a lot of conflict and dramatic tension without relying on villains, and by making all characters sympathetic and (generally) likable if flawed. This also reminds me of the structure and characters of the indie-LGBTQ Filipino webseries Hanging Out (2016) - I wonder how much of the difference comes from genre/marketing factors (BL vs. indie gay/queer). Regardless, we need more stories like this in BL.
- The scene between Tito Santi and Karl was really powerful for me as a representation of an intergenerational non-romantic relationship between two queer people. There are many reasons for the conspicuous absence of such relationships in LGBTQ communities - in a gay Asian American context, three big factors are the loss of so many people to HIV/AIDS in the '80s and '90s (which is really an intergenerational trauma that I don't think we've collectively been able to work through), ageism in gay cultures, and differences in how generations experienced what being gay or queer means. Because of this gap, so much wisdom and collective history has been lost and will be lost. So I love the wisdom Santi shared with Karl, both as biological family and as queer family. And in a way, it was also Juan Miguel Severo reaching across generations and speaking to younger queer people.
- Anna is so wonderful and I hope we'll get to see more of her if S2 happens.
- Drunk Vlad's playfulness reminds me of my boyfriend's personality when he's drunk, I love it ehehehe.