lietk12

Between I Told Sunset About You and Great Men Academy, Nadao Bangkok's treatment of gender and gender expression makes me feel more understood as a nonbinary person than anything else I've seen in the world of BL/BL-adjacent media :')

If I compare what this show achieved (in terms of story, characters, and emotional impact/payoff) in 10 episodes of 10-15 min each vs. what Where Your Eyes Linger (angsty) or Mr. Heart (sweet & cute) achieved in 8 episodes of 10 min each, I think this story couldn't develop the characters as much or show as much depth to them because it tried to follow two couples rather than just one.

A question for everyone...am I forgetting some other show, or is this the first Asian BL series to depict a Western-style gay wedding (held in a chapel, walking down the aisle, exchange of rings, wedding cake, song, an MC, etc.)? Much of the plot revolves around events leading to a gay wedding, and it's interesting that the BL theme of "love conquers all" combines so smoothly in this show with "#lovewins"-style homonormative ideals (e.g. expensively-planned weddings, a certain kind of same-sex marriage presented as the solution to deeper issues, "we just want to live an ordinary life", etc.). I hope there will be funding for future Taiwanese series to take bigger creative risks with the story and themes than what we got here!

Before the gazebo, Santi and Vlad had that conversation about not pulling Karl out of the closet. But then when Karl panics after their kiss is witnessed and worries that Santi might out Karl to his father, Vlad leads with an assertion about Karl's visibility ("your uncle has always known, okay?...he told me that he sensed it a long time ago...so it's okay") rather than simply reassuring Karl that he knows Santi wouldn't tell anyone else. Vlad probably expected Karl to think that the gay uncle knowing about Karl's identity meant Santi would keep Karl safe in the closet. Meanwhile, Karl has been questioning what his feelings mean, and now he's even more worried because he hears from Vlad that what he had thought was an internal struggle has actually been decided and declared as an identity for him by someone else (Santi) based on his external visibility.

I see Vlad as initially saying what would he would've found reassuring and what he thought would reduce pressure on Karl to come out, but Vlad has a different way of understanding queer identity, visibility, and outness compared to Karl. And so they ended up talking past each other, which escalated into the back-and-forth about Vlad telling Santi about Karl, and Karl's feelings about Vlad, and they became more confrontational.

The difference in how Karl/Judit and Vlad understand what it means to declare themselves as gay/queer/ally/etc. is closely related with what Moonbyulie said below about intersectionality of queerness to social class, and with what the twitter thread linked above referred to about "implicit affirmation" vs. "out and proud" identity affirmation - the latter of which is linked to mobility and engagement with globalized and/or western cultural ideas+media about queerness. You can see this difference in the script with how differently how Judit confronted Karl vs. how Santi approached Vlad: Judit led with "so, what's going on between you and my brother?" (fishing for a declaration in the out-and-proud mode for identity), while Santi led with "I noticed you have things in the unit. I'm not going to ask what's going on between you and my nephew" (a statement of implicit affirmation). You could even compare Judit's "I am an ally" declarations (out and proud) to Anna's quietly supportive actions (implicit affirmation). Things could have gone more smoothly for both Karl and Vlad if Judit and Santi's approaches were flipped; this would also explain why the hints Judit dropped did not help Karl - indeed, when Karl answers Judit's question of "do you have feelings for my brother", he replies "not in the way you think", highlighting that difference. So I would argue that not only did Vlad and Judit have good intentions, but their comfort with a certain well-traveled, internationally-aware kind of gay identity was a big part of how they messed up in talking to Karl. Not a fundamental character flaw for them, but still an area for growth in understanding others.

I just want to appreciate some really interesting camera choices in the scene of Karl & Vlad's kiss, which looks so precisely timed that I think at least some of it must have been on purpose. The camera starts from behind the bench before they start the kiss (22:55), and then it cuts to be in front of the bench as they finish the kiss (23:29). Then Karl turns his head as if checking to see whether someone, e.g. us, witnessed the kiss (23:39). In response, Vlad, who had just been focused on Karl, turns his head (23:40); simultaneously -
and *with the same start and end times* - the camera focus is pulled back, so that we see Anna, Santi, and Judit staring from where we had watched Karl and Vlad start the kiss. And then we see them quickly turn around as if in embarrassment at intruding on such a private moment (on a sidenote, I think it's revealing that Anna and Santi briefly glance back at Karl & Vlad out of concern while walking away, while Judit does not look back).

So the first shot puts us in Anna+Santi+Judit's shoes, watching Karl & Vlad. Then, with the focus pulling in the second shot, it has us see ourselves through Vlad's gaze, revealing that we were watching Karl & Vlad's kiss with the same level of intrusiveness as Anna+Santi+Judit. And finally the second shot offers us an emotional response to internalize, i.e. guilt at violating Karl+Vlad's privacy combined with concern for them, by modeling those feelings through Anna+Santi's body language. I think this camera work, by changing our gaze from Anna/Santi/Judit's to Vlad/Karl's, could gently remind the audience that there are consequences for gay people from how viewers might gaze upon or intervene in gay relationships or interactions.

This builds on the ambivalent characterization of Judit in previous episodes and the ways the series has set up BL viewers to see themselves/ourselves in her behavior, e.g. gawking at Karl as he frisks Vlad, or wanting to see Karl + Vlad be cute with each other, or feeling giddy when they look cute with each other. Judit does similar things in this story as what the shipper characters, screenwriters, and viewers/fans do in many conventional BL series. But the kiss scene connects these behaviors not just to viewers who see themselves in Judit, but also to viewers who see themselves/ourselves in Anna or Santi, who all have different motivations and concerns but still all stared through Karl & Vlad's intensely private moment. And then GSP challenges that kind of normalized behavior by illustrating its stakes for realistic gay people, and by giving us opportunities to recognize our entanglement as viewers who are LGBTQ people (like Santi) or allies (like Anna) or self-declared allies (like Judit).