Another former CH7 freelance lakorn pra ek just joined the BL scene - Bank Artit to join iQIYI Thailand x Tailai Entertainment "Fool In Love"
Adapted from Shui Qian Cheng's 你却爱着一个傻逼 (In Love With An Idiot), Fool In Love is the second Thai adaptation of a work from the 188 Scum Gong Group Universe/Novel Anthology.
Novel summary of In Love With An Idiot: When the proud, arrogant, and daring Jian Suiying falls in love at first sight with Li Yu, his brother Jian Suilin’s classmate, he actively showed his affections. But his supposed “chasing” only caused humiliation due to Li Yu’s hostile attitude, stirring up this noble young master’s animalistic and insane nature. Desires and emotions mixed together, making it difficult for them to separate. And what should’ve been a competitive chase between the two became a forbidden secret to tell. And because of Jian Suilin’s ulterior motives, it gradually out of control, and ultimately, the hidden dangers burst out loudly. In the end, all of them will not escape the judgment of fate…
The first Thai adaptation of a SQC 188 Group novel was My Stand-In, adapted from Professional Body Double. Although My Stand-In was also an iQIYI Thailand Original, it was produced by YYDS Entertainment in 2024. In late 2025, iQIYI Thailand announced the adaptation of the entire 188 Group Scum Gongh Universe, in collaboration with Tailai Entertainment (Top Form).
This is a quick introduction to some popular BL tropes that are fairly new to live-action BL:
wife chasing crematorium
substitute lover [edited]
transmigration
(Contains spoilers)
All corrections and critiques are welcome.
As you probably know My Stand-In is based on the danmei novel Professional Body Double. Specifically, it belongs to 188男团 (“188 group” where 188 cm is the height of every gong (seme) in the novel series). It is a shared universe of novels with characters from one featuring in another and almost all gong are very scummy (or “red-flag” so to speak) initially.
Trope #1: wife chasing crematorium
What 188 group novels all have in common is the trope popularly known among English-speaking fandom as “wife chasing crematorium”. This is a super-popular trope, not only in danmei.
origin
追妻火葬场 (zhuī qī huǒzàng chǎng; chasing his wife’s crematorium)
derived from the longer phrase 傲娇一时爽，追妻火葬场 (àojiāo yīshí shuǎng, zhuī qī huǒzàng chǎng; Tsundere was on his high horse for a while, now chasing his wife’s crematorium.)
Alternative form: 追夫火葬场 (zhuī fū huǒzàng chǎng; chasing husband’s crematorium) – usually involves scum shou (uke) chasing after his gong (seme) after initially abusing gong’s love.
The trope involves the love interest being initially cold or even cruel to the protagonist who is in love. This continues until all of that love gone. By then, the love interest would have come to his senses, eager to seek forgiveness and chase after the protagonist. In some cases, the love is already lost irrevocably, especially when the protagonist is dead – hence, literal crematorium. There are also works where the love interest is discarded all together and protagonist moves on to someone else. Rarely, there are works where the protagonist is the scum.
In 188 group novels, this is how the basic structure of wife chasing crematorium:
Shou loves gong. Gong treats shou terribly.
Gong goes too far. Shou is fed-up and leaves gong, one way or other. Gong realises that he has been in love all along.
Gong regrets his action and chases after shou. Grovelling ensues.
Gong and shou gets back together. Gong dotes on shou and the couple face other challenges (family, villains) together, if any. Happy ending.
Fans are in it for the melodrama. They want to watch scummy gong to go too far, the relationship to break down and for the gong to grovel and make amends through various selfless deeds, until they reestablish the relationship and trust (as much as possible). Every one of those stories end with a happy ending with the gong endlessly doting on shou and the relationship having turned wholesome.
Trope #2: substitute lover
Other than the previous trope Professional Body Double and its adaptation My Stand-In involves the “substitute lover” trope. This one is not exclusive to danmei.
Substitute lover trope involves, usually the gong, having a 白月光 (white moonlight): a person whom he loves a lot but can’t reach/touch. This is usually his first love and has a profound impact on him.
Aside: White moonlight in itself is a common trope. Both Vip Only and Sahara Sensei to Toki-kun used white moonlight trope to in a typical kishōtenketsu narrative structure.
Since white moonlight is unattainable, gong finds a substitute lover.
The relationship between gong and substitute lover is usually just physical. This is because gong doesn’t plan to move on from white moonlight, instead stubbornly carries the torch. Gong doesn’t plan on betraying the pure feeling he have for his white moonlight by giving any of his love to anyone else. So, he tries to ensure that no love leaks out of the dam he has built to store his love for the white moonlight. This is, from gong’s POV, a kind of emotional fidelity which he extends to his white moonlight. A tribute of gong’s unshakable love for his white moonlight.
The substitute lover sometimes resembles white moonlight in some way –
in body – first ever live action BL (shonen-ai actually) adaptation Summer Vacation 1999 (1988) based of Hagio Moto’s The Heart of Thomas plays around with this trope, a lot. More recently, Playboyy sorta lampshaded it with the twins premise.
in spirit – a recent example is Love is Better the Second Time Around wherein prof. Takashi sleeps with his assistant Shiraishi Yuto because the assistant (or his desperation at least) reminded him of his white moonlight Miyata Akihiro.
Aside: There is only one live-action BL that actively subverted this trope: HIStory3: Make Our Days Count. The series introduced a doppelgänger of Yu XiGu (Xiang HaoTing’s white moonlight), a perfect candidate for substitute lover trope. But instead of pursuing it, they subverted the trope.
There are usually two outcomes to the substitute lover trope:
gong falls for substitute lover. In some cases, this involves white moonlight turning into rival or villain.
gong and his white moonlight get together. In this case, substitute lover turn into rival or get a lover of his own.
Itsuka no Kimi e, first ever live-action adaptation of a yaoi manga, employed substitute lover trope in one of its best executions. It is so brilliantly done that I can’t think of anything topping that, unless 4th volume (particularly the case-solving plot involving the photography club) of Takumi-kun series gets live action adaptation.
The Boy Next World employed this trope with Phukan offering to be substitute for his parallel universe counterpart until Cirrus can return to his original world and reunite with his lover Phukan. It is even in the title of episode 3.
Trope #3: transmigration
Basic premise of Professional Body Double and its adaptation My Stand-In revolves around transmigration of soul.
This too is a popular trope in BL. One of the most popular danmei Mo Dao Zu Shi and its adaptation The Untamed involves this trope.
Maybe I should say set-up instead of trope for this one. Transmigration involves soul of a character getting transferred to a body different from his own at the time of triggering event.
Own body, different time – either past or future. When past is involved, it is likely a do-over story where the protagonist gets to redo their life, change their love interest, make different life choices, take different course of action, etc.
Reincarnation – completely different lifetime but with retained memories of past-life/lives. Until We Meet Again; Choco Milk Shake (different lifetime for the pets)
Different body, present (near-present) time – character’s soul enters a different person’s body. The character gets involved in his previous circumstances but now in a different capacity. Revive (2016), that danmei adaptation no one ever talks about, went to town with this set-up.
Different body, different life – soul enters character in a book, game, simulation, etc. and would be primarily tasked to thrive there. One Room Angel (2023) explored a type of badro with this set-up.
With transmigration set-up, it is common to have one of these two:
Transmigrator retaining some connection to previous life.
Transmigrator’s previous life doesn’t matter anymore.
These Tropes in My Stand-In
These tropes are explored to varying degrees and with different levels of efficiency in Professional Body Double. In its live-action adaptation, there are a bunch of limitations. Primary one being the cultural difference – audience of a danmei novel are already familiar with these tropes to some extend but the live-action audience is one which has been primarily consuming sweet BL from Thailand that are inherently deficient in BL literacies.
Another is the khujin problem. Branded pairs are very important to Thai BL industry, so they cannot have two different actors playing before and after transmigration. (Actually, this was not impossible but there hasn’t been any precedent. Also, The Untamed enjoyed success by having Xiao Zhan play pre- and post-transmigration Wei WuXian. I wish they tried two khujin (UpPoom & UpWinner) one couple, since they chose to introduce Winner as pre-transmigration Joe. I don’t know, maybe that’s asking for fan wars and pitting actors against each other.)
[In the tags, @deliriousblue reflects on what having two different actors could do with example from Cupid's Last Wish (a series I haven't watched) and its impact on audience on an emotional level.
@myezblog has commented that Alchemy of Souls (another I haven't watched) is an excellent example of transmigration played two different actors.]
Third limitation is one that comes from medium – you can’t have long monologues in live-action. This deprives audience of the inner workings of character’s minds. Most of the motives, especially Ming’s trouble with warring desires of his heart, is inaccessible to the audience. @clairedaring have posted a deep-dive by Liltsu into some of that here.
Aside: Another interesting trope is giving watch (a taboo gift) – Chinese superstition rising from 送钟 (gifting watch) and 送终 (to bury the dead/attend funeral) being homophones. Taboo gift trope - white lilies associated with death and funerals - have appeared in Summer Vacation 1999 (1988) and Forbidden Love; both of these have substitute lover and death.
Ming’s characterization as a young master, coming from money and prestige that breeds arrogance and deficient in empathy (this post by @tungtung-thanawat is particularly enlightening) is a highlight of his cruelty as a 188 group gong.
While redemption of scum gong is what 188 group offers its audience, it is not necessarily what live-action audience would be wanting from the set-up. It is likely that a part of the audience was in fact looking for revenge plot.
As @lurkingshan highlighted in this post there is no exploration of identity (tied to Joe’s body pre- and post-transmigration) forth-coming precisely because this isn’t that kind of story and body is only treated as a temporary shelter for the soul for most part when transmigration trope is involved. Moreover, the novel is steeped in Confucian values. So, most of the resolution to what it means for Joe to have a mother now is dealt through his selfless gratitude and the filial piety he offers her.
The same is the case with his old body – a proper funeral for that body is what he owes his own parents for having given flesh and blood to the body which housed his soul previously. Remarkably, his own house figures prominently as an inheritance and as an enduring connection to his own parents – a bond more precious to that him than the bond he had to his old body. I am unsure how much of those core Confucian values they will retain in the live-action adaptation, given the cultural difference.
As @befuddledcinnamonroll discusses here, it is tied to cultural ideas of self, religious beliefs, etc.
@bengiyo has pointed out a weakness in execution of the transmigration trope over the substitute lover trope: the latter is a recurring and inverted trope in this series while the former plays out straight. Even though it is clear that coma!Joe is basically friendless and his career already dead (or that he has no career to speak of), it might have been better to hint at a lack of resolution and impending doom, and build anticipation by leaving clues about the troubles that coma!Joe has left behind. That way when the substitute lover trope peaks again, audience would feel as trapped as Joe.
This is where I think Revive (2016) did a better job with friends, colleagues, past-lovers and rivals especially with such similar set-ups: entertainment industry, classism, scum gong, and intersecting lives pre- and post-transmigration.
Shui Qian Cheng (author of My Stand-In) praises Up's acting performance
SQC: Have you guys seen [the latest episode]?
Up: The drama is so wonderful because of the original novel.
SQC: Your performance is also wonderful!
SQC has been supportive of the production of My Stand-In since the beginning as she was also present at the filming ceremony in November last year.
SQC gifted Up and Poom, merchandise of Professional Body Double.
SQC also visited the set of My Stand-In during filming.
And even after it was finished filming, SQC was also invited to be in the editing room for My Stand-In in February this year.
in a world where danmei writers don't usually have much control over works they have sold adaptation rights, i really appreciate how much consultation iqiyi and yyds has with the author in order to make adaptational changes.
Lmfao help I totally forgot I scheduled my last post where I rambled about Jian Suiying in the tags (I probably scheduled it to seem more normal or something because I didn’t want to flood my feed 😂).
The reason I find it extra funny is because I literally feel like I’m going feral right now and I did just draft another Twitter thread ramble before coming on here and immediately seeing my scheduled post with those tags LADNSKDNS.
My Twitter is still on hiatus until further notice—aka when I am more comfortable interacting and sharing things socially—but over the past few weeks, my drafts have become very full of thoughts on LiJian (Li Yu and Jian Suiying) and YuBai (Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu).
And the main reason I feel so feral right now—as in right this minute—is because of the author of this really good fic (which I found thanks to the fan audio drama adaptation on MaoEr FM) that’s multi-chaptered where the premise is that a younger Li Yu ends up in the present day in Li Yu and Jian Suiying’s house. Li Yu is obviously very upset by this because he hates his younger self for how he treated Jian Suiying, and the story is about helping him heal from that past.
And well anyways this post isn’t about that fic specifically, although it’s a really good fic and I went crazy over it a while ago as well: since it’s told entirely in screenshots on Weibo at least, I actually captured every image of text until I had everything and then I MTL’d them using Google Translate and then I severely edited them on-and-off based on my own Chinese knowledge—so this included grammar and pronouns but also less obvious stuff where I had to check line by line or turn it into audio to listen to. 😂
It’s a really fucking good fic though. So worth it.
And well the author has done other versions; one is where a younger Yu Fengcheng gets transported into current Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu’s life, and I’ve already collected every part of that one (it’s still incomplete).
Except it referenced a case where there were two Jian Suiying’s, a fic the author said they were planning to write back when they released the two Li Yu’s fic, which obviously made me a little feral.
I struggled to find it until I finally did (yay!!) alongside a masterlist of their fics in general (yay!!!), and I really really want to translate and read it right now.
But part of me also wants to save it—because I like saving things I like—to the end, since the author has other fics I can translate first, including one where Li Yu gets amnesia, which will definitely also be quite interesting.
And yet. I cannot get over the concept of there being two Jian Suiying’s and how that might resemble or reflect or differ from the fic where there were two Li Yu’s (especially since the two Li Yu’s one is just very thematically perfect).
I might just translate it first because I can barely resist??? I already translated the second half of the first part just to tease myself, and it has me screaming because like:
(The above screenshots are from this fanfic here by 丧心病狂de凌子 on Weibo!)
The image of Li Yu dragging whom he assumes is his spouse (and he is; just from a different time period) back home only to come face-to-face with his actual spouse (of this time period) being all cute in his soft cozy home clothes with a little mug instead of having gone out drinking (which the Jian Suiying from a different time period in his arms had been doing—as all the fics so far have had the person from the past end up in the present after getting blackout drunk) which was a thing about Jian Suiying that Li Yu used to worry about…
(The above screenshot is canon and from the original novel!)
Yeah do you see what I mean???
I’m just so excited because you’ll get the chaos of two time periods intersecting, but also because Jian Suiying used to go out to such places and it upset Li Yu a lot since he knows Jian Suiying’s past life and their relationship took so long to get to a good place that he’s afraid Jian Suiying will discard him again when out partying—so seeing Jian Suiying here, at home on time, patiently waiting for his husband to come home from his business trip…
*sigh* They’re pretty cute even after all the craziness of their original novel lmao. 🥹
And yeah. Typing all this out…I think I’ll translate this first out of all of the author’s fics. I’m going to go insane otherwise SLFNKSDJSKS.
As always, please let me know if you have suggestions, critiques, comments or corrections.
I will only be discussing BL broadly (here I use BL as an umbrella term) and not just live action. I don’t want to club together BL and GL since in spite of their shared roots they are very different in their genre conventions, target demographics, and history. Also, I am not very familiar with it.
I consider BL a genre in itself – practically well as the way Masala is a cinema genre.
Please check the content/trigger warnings before diving into the works I have mentioned below. Feel free to message or ask.
BL / romance
I don’t think BL is romance or even a sub-genre of romance. A lot of BL is romance. Many more of them have at least a romantic side to them. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is romance. (I remember the discussion Killing Stalking had prompted.)
But there are plenty of BL devoid of romance. Like One Room Angel, Social Reform Season, and The Orc Bride. Similarly, BL is not exactly a porn sub-genre even though there are plenty of ero-BL.
Also, there are plenty of BL where romance takes backseat such as The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Blue Morning, Brother, Lawless Gangster and Thousand Autumns.
BL / queer
Queer – Can I call it a genre the way I call BL a genre? Even if one were to ignore queer as method in academia, it is still so complex.
Let me quote Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) author Chiang-Sheng Kuo:
[W]hat exactly is queer literature? Is it queer literature if queer people like to read it, or is it only queer literature if there are queer characters in the books? Or is it an appendage of the queer movement? If a queer author writes a book without queer characters, does that represent a certain aspect of queer culture?
(You can find the whole interview here.)
I think the problem persist even when I think of queer as a label.
Then there is the issue with conception of “queerness” itself. Like, in a way it is a limiting term. Is it fair to call normative or customary male-male erotic practices such as masti and Launda Naach, “queer” just because that’s how it is perceived elsewhere now?
To quote what Kaustav Bakshi wrote in Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla:
In the last decade, the question of decolonizing queer epistemologies was being raised periodically, whereby queer politics, despite having a shared agenda of toppling heteronormativity, and queer culture, albeit having a shared aesthetics, became more and more regionalist – not in a negative sense – but, with implications of difference, which can be interpreted and understood only when one subjectively experiences the ‘region’ with respect to gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical and intellectual ability, access to education, metropolitan cultures, and most importantly, the internet.
[T]he attraction towards the launda is not understood as ‘queer’ – non-normative or out of the ordinary – but, as an integral part of sexual life, which is not always compulsively alert to the heterosexual-homosexual binary.
Imo, decolonizing queer epistemologies comes in handy when discussing BL since there are plenty of BL dealing with:
Historical BL set in eras and locations that had customary male-male sexualities and practices.
BL with special settings, like omegaverse, with different (if any) idea of queerness.
BL / other queer content
Just as Japan has gei-comi, and other manga like Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out, and Kieta Hatsukoi (shoujo), What Did You Eat Yesterday and My Brother's Husband (seinen) beside BL manga, different countries offer diversity in queer content with noticeable overlap. But clubbing them together would not be easy. Moreover, this diversity is as much cross-sectional as it is temporal (tanbi, JUNE, shonen ai, yaoi, BL in Japan).
BL the main difference between BL and other queer genres is BL’s focus on moe (affect). Anyway, BL predates LGBTQ+ acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people (BL fans) were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL is commercialized and we get mostly feel-good content. But that is capitalism (and the State) reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people’s labor of love.
I wonder if it is apt to consider BL the way western queer shows (such Verbotene Liebe, Queer as Folks, Os Nossos Dias and SKAM) as benchmark when discussing BL? Won’t it be better to evaluate consider BL in relation to local non-BL queer content in BL producing countries? But then, there are BL inspired by western queer culture such as Partners by Tamaki Yura.
Here are three gei-comi that I recommend for BL audience, through which they can get an insight into non-BL queer manga from Japan (created with androphilic men as target audience) :
Fire Code by Ichikawa Kazuhide
Fisherman's Lodge by Gengoroh Tagame
Coming Home by Go Fujimoto
Here is my BL versus gei-comi list which I think highlights their differences and similarities (I have included only Gengoroh Tagame’s works since they are probably the easiest to access/buy/borrow):
Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? by Gengoroh Tagame || Hitori de Yoru wa Koerarenai by Matsumoto Yoh
Arena by Gengoroh Tagame || Jinx by Mingwa
Cretian Cow by Gengoroh Tagame || The Orc Bride by Madobuchiya (Nishin)
Uo to Mizu by Gengoroh Tagame || Terpenoid by Okadaya Tetuzoh
My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame || The Story of My Brother by Ike Reibun
There is lot of overlap between BL and gei-comi. Gengoroh Tagame first published in JUNE (a magazine that contributed to BL we know now). There are magazines and anthologies (Nikutaiha BL) that offer crossover between different streams of queer content.
Similarly, there are danmei (Chinese BL) novel written by queer men such as the autobiographical works: Six Records of a Floating Life and Waiting Until 35 Years Old by NanKang BaiQi and Bei Cheng Tian Jie (北城天街) by FeiTian YeXiang.
BL / Queerness - exploration and conflict
Here are some live action BL (I’m not including some of the more famous ones like TharnType and Wedding Plan) where plot is rooted in character’s queerness and its exploration or implications:
Lan Yu – first danmei to get live action adaptation. The central conflict is rooted in the queerness of its characters, particularly Chen HanDong.
A Round Trip to Love and Irresistible Love – based on danmei by Lan Lin. These are part of a shared universe. The former has both ‘coming out’ (Cheng Yichen) and ‘leaving home’ (Lu Feng).
In the latter, all the conflict is rooted in compulsory heterosexuality and we get the perspective of not only an amphiphilic (bisexual) man (Xie Yan) but also an amphiphilic woman (Xia Jun) of the same social class.
Boys Love: The Movie
No Touching At All (2014)
Udagawachou de Matteteyo (2015)
The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese
Sing in Love (2022) – Queerness is part of the main conflict.
Mood Indigo
Life: Senjou no Bokura
Light on Me
I don’t keep track of these things usually, so this is based off memory.
In Japan, most BL has dealt with the struggles of being queer in a largely heterosexist society since the days of tanbi and shonen-ai (such as Zankoku Na Kami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto). JUNE gained notoriety for focusing on it and yaoi boom was movement away from that. Then yaoi gained notoriety for existing in a bubble. When BL started to treat heterosexism in society as a part of the narrative, it garnered praise for being ‘transformative’.
BL has managed to carry within it different modes of identity and queerness.
Take Okane ga Nai (No Money) by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Toru Kousaka for example.
It is often held up as the epitome of all that is wrong with BL (or yaoi as anglophone fandom calls it). What’s less talked about is the main character, Ayase Yukiya’s queer angst and his exploration of identity that spans several volumes of the manga series. Kano on the other hand doesn’t struggle with his identity at all since his attraction to Ayase is driven by a very strong, initially unreciprocated emotional connection dependency (formed when his father died and he was at his lowest). For him, sexuality is merely a form of expression of his attraction for Ayase. Therefore, it does not inform his identity in anyway.
Within cannon, Someya and Honda’s pairing offer contrast to Ayase and Kano’s pairing. In a way, Kano and Someya have post-queer and pre-queer identities, respectively. Someya is a self-actualized person who mentors other queer characters (club staff, Ayase, Honda, Kano). There is a lot of give and take that happens between Ayase and all the queer people he meets at Someya’s club. Ayase's and Honda’s struggles with identity and sexuality are juxtaposed with Kano's and Someya's self-assured disposition.
That is also why I don’t think I Told Sunset About You stands out much. It can easily fit into the BL fold because there are plenty of BL that approached the same theme as I Told Sunset About You in a similar fashion (including these live action BL: His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta, Life: Senjou no Bokura and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese).
I recommend the danmei novel Sissy by Shui QianCheng, the author of the works Beloved Enemy, My Stand-In and Meet You at the Blossom are based on, for a more detailed exploration of heterosexism, including femmephobia and homophobia.
Sissy, Beloved Enemy and Professional Body Double (the novel My Stand-in is based on) are all part of 188 group (a shared universe of novels).
There are plenty of other BL from other region that are focus on themes such as heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality. Here is such a one-shot: Romantic by Motoni Modoru (part of the anthology Tanbishugi).
BL / terms
I like BL and associated terms like danmei because of the culture and the history associated with those terms. Tanbi and danmei are different readings of same characters 耽美 but they represent very different things. Shonen-ai literally translate to boy(s) love but that term (or BRM (boys’ romantic manga) as Emiko Nozawa puts it) carries within it so much history and specific artistic styles and sensibilities. Waai is derived from yaoi/yuri but there are fu-cultural processes, very different from that of yaoi creation, behind the production of Y-novels. I learned a lot from exploring these words alone.
Fellow 188男团 readers, are we not gonna tell the audience of My Stand-In that, apart from in Professional Body Double, Yan MingXiu (and Zhou Xiang by association) also appears in...
