More than friends, less than lovers

I don't have any deep analyses or metas to contribute and QL has thoroughly rotted my brain

[phoomvicha]

I shouldn’t have to say it, but I'm blocking anyone who says Thai BL is inferior to BL that's produced by other nations.

I'm also blocking anyone who subscribes to the myth that "all BL actors are straight".

Come on now. 🙄

[phoomvicha]

Random (recurring) thought #43792405:

I want to have a shirt made, with the phrase "Please ask me about my favorite koojin" emblazoned across the front. I think if anyone reads it, however, they'll most likely ask "what is a koojin?" rather than "who are they?" and then I'd have to explain (which, because I have serial yapper syndrome, could take a while).

[crispywizardtale]

[forcebookish]

ForceBook in Melody of Secrets, ep. 2 (UNCUT)

[phoomvicha]

Okay, I was not expecting Vegas's dad to show up in Me & Thee as Thee's dad!

[jojotichakorn]

Force's HBD post for Book 🤧🤏

Caption: HBD KASIBOOKIE 🍅🤍✨️

[bird-inacage]

Khemjira | Farewell to The Bestie Trio 😢

I think one of the most wonderful things this series has offered us is the trio's friendship. A bond that transcended their past lives to the present. The selflessness and devotion from both Jet and Charn, and the immense gratitude and appreciation Khem has for their support.

[phoomvicha]

I sat down to watch the Khemjira finale yesterday afternoon, and as the end credits rolled by, I was left with a familiar, bittersweet feeling - that feeling I get when I've enjoyed something so much yet I'm in denial that we've reached the inevitable conclusion; that once again, not unlike countless other times, I'd stumbled upon an enthralling story and then quickly grew too attached to its characters, not wanting to let them go after the epilogue.

I don't know what else to say, except that I'm definitely putting this one on my list of favorite BLs, I wish I could have been in the audience for the live screening, and I'd love to see more horror BLs.

[pointlesscandies]

The real heart of the series lies in the love story shared between these three friends

[djeterg19]

Love when they say the title!

[saveworapong]

Khemjira (2025) / The Medium (2021)

[phoomvicha]

Exactly one year ago, we had our hearts ripped out and stomped on because of love cut tragically short.

I'm still not over them 🥲

[buddhamethods]

For now, let's just be best friends.

Khemjira (2025) Episode 9

[porridgefeast]

what does Muteluv mean?

It was oddly tricky for me to find good information about what Muteluv means, so I thought I'd share what I was able to find with the BL tumblr sphere. A quick disclaimer, though—I don't have any firsthand knowledge. If anybody who sees this does, I'd be thrilled to hear from you since the topic turns out to be pretty interesting.

Muteluv is a portmanteau of mutelu + luv (as in love). So what I was really interested in was what mutelu means (since I'm pretty sure I get the luv part). In my limited understanding, it refers to a modern, pop culture-minded version of certain Thai spiritual beliefs.

If you look up mutelu, you'll inevitably wind up getting served a music video by a Thai girl group called PiXXiE for a song called Mutelu which they put out in 2022. It's got a ton of views and is very catchy.

As for what I was able to find on the concept itself, there's a decent article in the Guardian from early 2024 here:

‘They make things look cute’: how the TikTok generation is reshaping Thailand’s spiritual life

Quest for meaning in an uncertain world after the Covid crisis fuels a boom in mutelo’s good luck charms and rituals

In the Guardian piece and elsewhere you can see that the term mutelu comes partly from the Thai title of a 1979 Indonesian film—I would love to know more about how a movie from 1979 has bubbled up until it became connected to this seemingly recent cultural phenomenon, so again if anybody can tell me more I'm all ears.

There's also a 2024 journal article called "From Ong to idols: hyper-real religions, spiritual practices, and popular culture among Thai youth," which I've given a skim. Among other angles on the concept the article discusses political groups using mutelu as protest, including one "which mobilizes people and protests against the government through various spiritual practices ranging from Buddhist rituals to witchcraft." That's fascinating.

That article also talks about "the de-westernization of tarot-reading," which answers some questions I had about My Magic Prophecy—of course it makes sense that tarot could be utilized by people in non-Western cultures, but having it pop up in that series certainly made me curious about how prevalent it might be in Thailand.

I'm thinking it's not a coincidence that GMMTV made Muteluv and MMP in the same year—they seem to be capitalizing on a cultural moment that was already in full swing.

Before I posted, I looked around for anything on tumblr about this topic and I only found mentions of either the Muteluv series or the "Mutelu" pop song. So if nothing else, maybe now this post will pop up when others make the same search and it can give them some imperfect idea of the concept at hand.

Please, if you know anything I've mentioned here to be incorrect, off-base, or in any way insensitive I hope you'll let me know.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

This is so interesting! I'm especially curious about this sort of tension between making spiritual practices accessible and salient to younger people and fears that those practices will be diluted somehow or lose meaning. Not to mention the way that capitalism gets involved.

I was curious about the movie whose title the term is supposed to have come from, so I did some poking around. Like they say in the Guardian article, the Thai title was Mutelu: Occult War. Apparently the Indonesian title is Penangkal Ilmu Teluh—easy to tell where the "mu" and the "telu" come from there. Supposedly this means "Antidote to Black Magic" in English.

I found a pretty amazing poster image for the movie online!

I also came across another journal article unintentionally while looking up the Indonesian title. Basically, it's about how mutelu practices have been incorporated into political activism. I haven't had looked at it in detail yet but it seems promising and it's open source, so folks can read it online or download it. The English translation has some minor issues but it's definitely readable.

(PDF) Protest and Ilmu Teluh: Superstitious Beliefs and Rituals in Thai Youth Political Movements

PDF | Background and Objectives: Between 2019 and 2023, Thailand witnessed waves of student- and youth-led protest movements. Although these

I'm going to have a closer look at both of these articles. If I have any thoughts worth sharing, I'll reblog again. I also hope some folks with firsthand knowledge chime in, it would be great to get that perspective.

[themandilorian]

I can help a bit as a Thai! I'm not an expert but I can speak on what this means to the general public.

In short: Mutelu is a modern spiritual practice that accepts almost all spiritual beliefs regardless of origin. This marketing research by a bank is a good read and explains "the word ‘Muteluh’ describes beliefs or actions that are not part of orthodox Buddhist doctrines but that centre around ways of bringing good fortune or blessings to an individual". Crystals, koi fish, lucky colours are big here. I think that Guardian article linked expands it well. "[Mutelu] encompasses anything from trips to sacred temples to Instagrammable charms and gems or cute figurines that young people collect from vending machines." It flourished during covid, a time of great uncertainty in a society where mysticism and spiritualism are already fairly common.

So I'm interested in this line "tension between making spiritual practices accessible and salient to younger people and fears that those practices will be diluted somehow or lose meaning." because that tension is virtually nonexistent in Thailand. I know people who will wear a four-leaf clover pendant along with a Buddha amulet without a second thought. Feng shui consultants have market stalls alongside tarot card readers. Famous fortune tellers were made official consultants to the government. (Which is not what you'd like to hear from a Prime Minister making economic decisions, but more on that later.) Mutelu is a product of modern life and capitalism and could not have flourished without it. It divorces spiritualism from the original purpose of it to begin with, because at its core--faith served to bring communities together but Mutelu is individualistic in nature. It's about what will bring YOU good luck today, not world peace, so believers don't concern themselves with the fact that feng shui was supposed to teach you to live harmoneously with your surroundings, they just needs to know if this showroom furniture arrangement will bring in more custumers. From the Guardian again, "It has even spawned a series of wordplays – from mu-kating (mutelu marketing) to mu-cafe – reflecting the extent to which the trend has expanded across culture."

(I'll put the longer social context here with my own observations for those interested, because this is a huge bugbear of mine). But if you just need the Metelu explaination you are good! Do not need to read any further.

For some background, Thailand is a very spiritual place. As a small country with long history and smack between India and China, the Thai society gets a lot of religious and spiritual influence from everywhere. Take, for example, the funeral rite in the north where I'm from usually includes both a Buddhist monks and a traditional night-long vigil (while excessive grief or display of grief is actively discouraged according to Buddhist principles).

So anyway, folk beliefs exist alongside more dogmatic religious beliefs—fan shui, horoscopes, tarot cards are commonplace. The free calendars you get from banks and insurance companies often include “auspicious days” and people would pick those dates (or go to a fortune teller for a more tailored one) to do big things like weddings on. Newspapers print your horoscopes alongside your Chinese zodiac of the week.

So this brings us to Mutelu—which for most Thais, is understood as modern superstitious and spiritual practices. Here anything goes: koi fish are pretty popular as bracelets, pendents in the shape of the four leaf clover, Kanesh for luck. You can see by the screen grab I added below from a jewelry company selling their “Mutelu items”

As a whole, seems harmless, right? But as I mentioned, politicians regularly consult with fortune tellers before making big decisions. During covid, the prime minister honest to god told us that most Thais should be fine because he asked the monks to pray for us. (Thailand's vaccination rollout was much, much slower than our peers and I'm not blaming spiritualism wholesale, one cannot underestimate the role of good old corruptions, but asking monks to help expel covid by praying certainly didn't help). Fortune telling scams are so commonplace in Thailand it hardly bears repeating.

Thai children's maths, reading and science performances are consistently lower than the OECD average and countries with comparable income. The problem with believing in everything and anything uncritically is that it is incompatible with the scientific method entirely. We all can see the link between the renaissance and how not imprisoning people for saying the earth is not the center of the universe can do for science advancement. A research also shows that students in more religious countries perform worse in science and mathematics. Chatgpt fortune tellers are thriving with the Thai Chamber of Commerce estimating the market for spiritual goods and services to be worth between $304 and $456m.

This looks like a battle I won't win. I cut my teeth working in development for 7 years and did my best to make data-based policy suggestions, but the more scary the world seems, the more people are willing to cling on to superstitions and the less willing they are to hold our leaders accountable to sound and evidence-based policy decisions. I don't have a solution for this, but this is how we got here.

[ginnymoonbeam]

What's killing me about Khemjira, apart from everything, is just how lonely all of the main four are and have been their whole lives. Khem has been haunted and knowing he's likely to die young. Paran has been walking the shaman road with all its immense burden and isolation. Jet talks about how he didn't really have friends. Charn seems to have been in the socially awkward nerd zone. They've all been so alone, and even as they come to care about each other more and more deeply, they all have that instinct to separate and withdraw when things are painful or confusing. Because being alone is familiar and bearable, and being close to someone is new and unsettling even if you badly want it.

That's the common thread I see in Jet pulling back from Charn, in Paran's early standoffishness with Khem and Khem's decision to leave now. However badly they want to be together, when the chips are down, alone is what feels safer.

[lazzarella]

INTERMINABLE OFFICIAL TEASER

[buddhamethods]

Both Jet and Charn have been bound to you since your previous life. Perhaps it's time for us to recall our past lives.

Khemjira (2025) Episode 8