The finale of My School President will have its anniversary on February 24th. I would like to see us in the fandom give it a little celebration! Let's say for a week? So Feb 24th - Mar 2nd?
No specific prompts! No specific rules! Just do whatever you like, share whatever you like, art or gifs or fics or headcanons or anything, old or new or WIP, and maybe use the tag for anyone who wants? #oneyearofmsp sound good?
Please tag any and all of your MSP friends and mutuals for visibility!
Tagging some people initially to spread this around, no pressure! @silverquillsideas @gennianydots @silvercrystal1 @wanderlust-in-my-soul @moonkhao @bl-bam-beyond @gunsatthaphan @guntapon @fourthgem @sparklyeyedhimbo
Riddle me this: When have queer stories managed to become popular with little kids in Asia before MSP did?
This year I watched MSP cast promote the drama in schools and so many students ranging from small kids to high schoolers doing MSP dance challenges even months after MSP ended. It makes me ecstatic when I see them watching this drama, even becoming a fan! TinnGun made it seem so effortless to touch the hearts of Asian kids and teens in a way no queer drama has been able to do before.
MSP really changed my perception of what it will take for queer media to overthrow the hetero agenda in Asia someday. It made me realize we need more feel-good, family-friendly and goofy stories that appeal to everyone and make them laugh instead of convoluted or grandiose stories that lose the plot or those that specifically amplify queer struggles and minimise the joy of love.
That in the end, when real change starts in society, no matter how big or small and culminates with homophobia finally packing its bags & Asian families being won over - it won't be because of dramatic and "realistic" queer stories rife with suffering, grief or heartbreak that got voted best by the critics. It will be because of a simple and sweet love story like MSP, where one boy had a crush on another boy and did everything it takes to help him reach his dreams and found his own happiness in the process, a story that is vibrating with so much of queer positivity, joy and heart that it's impossible for anyone who watches it to not became its fan.
It makes my heart burst with joy that queer kids today are growing up with much better examples of queer love in front of them than our previous generations ever did. Imagine the impact this will have, the difference it will make in young queer Asian lives.
Gun told Tinn that the love songs we listen to in high school are the best love songs ever because they're the original soundtracks of our first love - To think there is a generation of kids right now who are listening to MSP soundtrack and falling in love to the same songs Tinn and Gun sang to each other and will remember MSP as their life's greatest love songs someday in the future - it boggles my mind and perhaps we won't grasp the full extent of what MSP did for its queer audience until many years have passed.
Nonetheless, I'll never stop singing MSP's praises because all they had was a newbie director, rookie actors & a banger soundtrack to do the impossible and make queer characters go mainstream in Asian schools and resonate with kids. We'll soon find out if we'll see TinnGun in college next year being sickeningly in love and serenading each other with an even gayer cuter cheesier soundtrack! (I hope so) Even if we don't, I'm excited for the impact MSP and GemFourth will have on queer romance genre down the line.
thinking about MSP and how it shows us that imagination and theory is not the same as real life
Often the show shows us a perfect romantic trope moment, before revealing the truth and subverting our expectations: it didn’t happen (e.g, Tinn confessing to Gun with a graph in the shape of a heart and leaning in for a kiss when it suddenly cuts to Tinn frustratedly yelling at Gun about math, or Tinn leaning into brush a grain of rice from Gun’s mouth to dreamy background music before hard cutting to reveal Gun clean his own mouth).
But then, the show goes another step further and subverts our expectations again by having romantic trope moments happen that Tinn did not imagine or plan for (e.g., Tinn lifting Gun to get the poster and catching him when they stumble) or having romantic moments that Tinn had imagined playing out but reversed this time (e.g., Gun wiping Tinn’s mouth).
And then! MSP sometimes subverts our expectations again by having straightforwardly romantic moments from Tinn (which the show has now trained us to expect imaginary) be real, like when Gun compliments Tinn on his “handsome” answer for why he wanted to be school president and asks if he has ever used to it hit on anyone and Tinn replies “you”. We sit in that for a moment, expecting to cut to reality, but we don’t. We (and Tinn) realize that was just said out loud, in real life.
Or in ep.9, where Tinn is enjoying a romantic moment on the beach and then literally has to pinch himself and Gun to realize it’s not just his imagination.
And then, to cap it all off, as the show progresses, some of Tinn’s imagined romantic moments come true, just as he pictured them! Like in ep.12 when he cuddles closer to Gun on a bed and buries his head in his neck, a direct copy of a moment he imagined in ep.8.
Tinn dreams and dreams cute romantic moments, and while sometimes they don’t happen, he gets lots of other moments that do happen! And many more he doesn’t even expect. He doesn't have to engineer anything, they will just happen to him because he's lucky enough to live in a world where he loves and is loved in return. MSP shows us that real life is, in many ways, a better, sweeter story than anything we could have imagined.
Edited to add: must reference this wonderful post by @pajindapat which perfectly gets at what I was trying to get at re: the real life moments in MSP actually being better and cuter
MSP continues to take tired tropes and approaching them in modern ways. Now that Tinn and Gun have agreed to having a ‘talking’ phase of pre-dating, they seem much more comfortable just being themselves around Gun’s friends. Neither of them are doing anything to make anyone think they hate each other (*), which is the usual trajectory when a secret relationship starts between rival friend groups. And even if they are still denying anything official between them, Gun’s friends are seeing how close they see to be and accepting him into the friend group.
It probably helps that one of Gun’s love languages is touch, even with his friends, so Gun jumping on Tinn’s back, or sitting next to each other with Gunn teasing Tinn about feeding him feels natural to his behaviour normally. It’s just nice seeing faux rivals allowed to become friends publicly, even if the relationship is closer than they can admit at this time. Whenever they do win Hot Wave, and they start telling their friends, I doubt anyone would be surprised or react badly.
(* Kajorn is an outlier in Tinn’s friend group, and will be ignored for this observation)
thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President
and here she is! the full text all together, not split into the three parts previously posted here: part 1, part 2, part 3
I also go more in detail about a lot of the terms and concepts I use here (indexes, conventions, genres, intertextuality, etc) in this post here, in case you would like more context
[strap yourselves in, this is loooooong]
The BL “genre” has so many conventions - in narrative, characterization, themes, settings, iconography, filmic techniques, and of course, tropes.
Bad Buddy and MSP do not lack these genre conventions (both are stories about boys in love, both are set in schools which is very common in Thai BLs especially, both explore a budding relationship and other social and emotional problems of youth, both hit familiar plot beats like confessions and narrative/emotional climaxes, both utilize many editing and sound effect techniques seen in other BLs, and both deploy many BL tropes like cheek kisses, head pats, forced proximity, looming, etc.). However! Bad Buddy and MSP are atypical in their deployment of genre conventions, especially with regards to trope usage and pacing - they go against genre and trope expectations to subvert seme/uke roles and dynamics and they space their narrative beats differently than other shows. As a result, the shows feel familiar but also fresh to BL audiences.
Bad Buddy, MSP, and tropes
BL tropes index so much information to audiences familiar with the genre (e.g., the nature of the relationship between characters, the seme/uke dynamics, other social information, etc.). Bad Buddy and MSP take these familiar indexes, with their well established meanings, and mix them up, give them new contexts, and use what they normally tell us about the characters, social context, relationship dynamic, etc. to tell a new story.
There are SO many examples of this so I have decided to focus on two “subcategories” of tropes: the faen fatale and tropes which are strongly associated with seme/uke dynamics.
Faen Fatales
In most BLs, the faen fatale (thanks to AbsoluteBL for the term) is a character (male or female) whose sole purpose is to drive a wedge between the main pair, often serving as a catalyst for their relationship/confession, and who generally does not get much character development or identity of their own.
In Bad Buddy, Ink seems like a classic faen fatale: she is introduced as an old high school friend that Pat was interested in and Pran was jealous of because of that fact, and now in the present day of the show Pat pursues her again and Pran is once again jealous, especially since it seems Pat is succeeding (they get food together, they hang out a lot, Pat wears the bracelet Ink gave him in high school, etc.). Pran believes that Pat likes Ink and that they are well on their way to being together, if they aren’t together already. Pat even tells Pran he likes Ink. However, it becomes clear quite quickly that Ink is not a typical faen fatale. Her interactions with both boys feel platonic, she shows just as much interest in fostering a friendship with Pran, and when Pat uses Pa’s patented “Four Ways to Tell if Someone Likes You,” Ink fails in every category. She does act a a catalyst to Pat and Pran’s romantic relationship in some ways (e.g., Pat using Pa’s patented Four Ways he learned to assess Ink to realize his own feelings for Pran), and she does act as a barrier to their relationship as some of Pran’s hesitation post their ep.5 kiss comes from his understanding that Pat has a crush on Ink (though of course their family and friends present the main barrier). However, Ink has her own personality, interests, and crucially, her own romantic arc. She is a fully fleshed out character who never had anything but platonic feelings for either lead: ergo, a subversion of the faen fatale trope.
In MSP, there are a couple of potential faen fatales, but neither develop that way in the end. Sound is introduced as Tinn’s rival, and romance media logic would suggest he will fulfill a love rival role in the show, competing with Tinn for Gun’s affections (especially as Sound is interested in music like Gun and he joins Chinzilla). Even Tiw suggests Tinn should look out for Sound moving in on Gun. However, Sound never shows interest in Gun and quickly gets acclimated into the band, only briefly presenting a threat to Tinn and Gun’s relationship when Tiw witnesses them having a seemingly intimate moment but that is sorted by the end of the episode. Like Ink, Sound never has anything other than platonic feelings for either lead and ends up with his own romantic arc. The other possible faen fatale in MSP is Nook, though she is present so briefly. I think other shows would have stretched out her plot line more and had her fill more of a faen fatale role. As it stands in MSP: Gun sees her give a gift to Tinn and compliment him, he gets jealous and snaps at Tinn, and then the show/Tinn immediately reveal to us and to Gun that it was a case of mistaken identity (Yo was catfishing with Tinn’s picture). In a matter of minutes, Nook went from being a faen fatale set up to simply someone involved in another character’s arc, part of a problem that Tinn and Gun could work on together.
Neither Bad Buddy nor MSP have faen fatale characters, though there are characters that could, and indeed seem to be set up to, fill that role. Both shows subvert our expectations and BL tropes by having potential faen fatales be uninterested in either lead and possess more character development than most other examples of the trope (including their own, completely separate, romantic arcs). In the case of Ink, this also subverts typical BL handling of female characters, who tend to be few and far between and generally relegated to the under-developed role of faen fatale.
Seme/uke Tropes
Most BL shows can be read through a lens of seme/uke dynamics, which originated in yaoi. The seme is the “pursuer” character and the uke is the “pursued”. There are certain physical (height, skin colour, etc.), social (age, wealth, social capital, etc.), and personality (active vs. passive, extroverted vs. introverted, flirtier vs. shyer) markers which are typically associated with either the seme or the uke. For example, semes tend to be taller, wealthier, older, flirtier, tanner, more active, and have a higher social status, while ukes tend to be shorter, poorer, younger, shyer, paler, and have a lower social status. “Seme” and “uke” roles are also sometimes conflated with masculinity and femininity (semes are “masculine” and ukes are “feminine”) and sexual preferences (semes are dominant and tops and ukes are submissive and bottoms). There are also tropes associated with either the seme or the uke, like ukes typically give cheek kisses and semes forehead kisses.
Thus, things like height, age, wealth, personality, presumed sexual preference, and the role they take in tropes can index the character’s status as a seme or a uke, and in turn the character’s identity as a seme or uke in the narrative (pursuer vs. pursued) indexes a character’s personality, sexual preferences, etc., however unrealistic and simplistic that is in real life. In a BL, we would expect the seme (pursuer) and uke (pursued) characters to exhibit most, if not all, of the associated seme or uke traits and roles in tropes, though this is not always true (and some BLs have little to no seme/uke dynamics at all).
In terms of physical, social, and personality markers in Bad Buddy, Pat exhibits slightly more “seme” traits than Pran, like his larger size and more “rugged” and “typical” masculinity compared to Pran’s neatness. However, both Pat and Pran take the seme or uke role in tropes about the same amount of time, with Pran having several significant moments where he embodies the seme role (looming over Pat, licking his fingers, drying his hair, etc., not to mention the post-sex scene in ep.11) and Pat many significant moments where he embodies a uke or even “feminine” role (casting himself as the girlfriend at the bus stop, being clingy, pretending to be sick so Pran will give him a sponge bath, etc.). In fact, tropes often happen twice, with Pat and Pran taking turns in the seme and uke role (e.g., both take turns cleaning the other’s face, both cook for the other, both kiss the other’s cheek, etc.). Furthermore, and I’ve spoken about this before here: both Pran and Pat deliberately take on the seme role during their ep.7 Flirt-Off bet (”whoever falls in love first loses”). To win the bet, they have to be the pursuer (i.e., seme), and thus spend the episode taking it in turns to exhibit the seme role in tropes (Pat takes off his shirt multiple times, Pran looms over Pat, they wash each other’s faces, they take the seme roles with Ink and Wai at the noodle shop to make the other jealous, etc.), thus also spending the episode taking it in turns to fulfill the uke role in tropes. The fact that the seme and uke roles in Bad Buddy are so interchangeable and balanced (they sometimes ever play the narrative roles of pursuer and pursued at the same time) demonstrates the show’s upending of traditional seme/uke dichotomies.
In MSP, Tinn and Gun are pretty much the perfect seme and uke in terms of physical and social markers: Tinn is taller, wealthier, has a higher social status, and even has a female “faen fatale” (more typical for seme characters), while Gun is shorter, poorer, from a marginalized club at school, and has a male “faen fatale” (more typical for uke characters). Some one on Tumblr (and I cannot for the life of me find this post again) mentioned that Tinn is a little “feminine” coded when it comes to romance (he is the dreamer, the romantic, always imagining romantic situations), while Gun is more what we’d think of as “masculine” when it comes to romance (more brusque, less sappy), though I am not sure how applicable these types of divisions are to BL. In term of preference markers, there isn’t much sexual content to go off of, but MSP does mention the TinnGun vs GunTinn divide in ep.12, never coming down on either side, and one of the things the homophobic teacher says is that he thought Gun was more “masculine” so he is surprised to see him dating a boy. Overall, the show deliberately eschews and criticizes the association of top/bottom or masculine/feminine with the pair. Furthermore, Tin talks a lot about wanting to be Gun’s boyfriend, to belong to Gun - and as @cinna-bin points out here, for a genre that equates seme with dominance, the one who shows and has ownership of the other, it is pretty subversive to have the seme character in the narrative express a desire to be “owned”. Like Pat and Pran, Tinn and Gun are fairly egalitarian when it comes to which role they take in tropes (Tinn catches Gun when he falls, Gun touches Tinn’s chin constantly, they both kiss the other’s cheek). I’ve talked about this here too, but often Tinn will imagine a moment with himself in the seme role (e.g., wiping Gun’s face) that won’t come to fruition, but when it does happen in real life, the trope is reversed and Gun takes the seme role (e.g., when it happens in real life, Gun wipes Tinn’s mouth). In MSP, the deployment of tropes is more about natural moment and real life, and less adhering to strict role divisions. This back and forth feels more accurate, more high school - they both take it in turns to boldly initiate and then to be shy (all the aborted kiss chances, etc.).
Finally, I’d like to add that there are many moments in both Bad Buddy and MSP where the characters are aware of the romantic tropes and intentionally utilize them to further a romantic agenda. We aren’t exactly subverting tropes here, but we are playing with them deliberately and consciously in a way you don’t get in a lot of BLs so I thought it worth mentioning here. Most of these instances come in the Bad Buddy ep.7 Flirt-Off or from Tinn’s day dreams and include:
Pat employing the “drinking from a water bottle/pouring water on yourself” and “shirt off” tropes to try and get Pran hot and bothered in ep.7
Pran looming over Pat during the bet
Pat and Pran trying to make each other jealous by employing various classic tropes with Ink and Wai respectively while eating noodles (opening their water bottle, feeding them, wiping their mouth, etc.)
Pran symbolically losing the bet by wiping Pat’s mouth
Tinn imagining himself wiping Gun’s mouth
Tinn imagining a Ghost moment while cooking with Gun
Tinn making a joke about a “hot underwater kiss”
Pacing
Both MSP and Bad Buddy are also slightly unconventional when it comes to pacing. Both shows hit the standard BL narrative beats (falling for one another, confessions, first kiss, confirmation of relationship, conflict, beach eps, etc) but at unconventional timings, they utilize a lot of time skips, and they also condense plot lines which in other shows might have been much longer.
The Placement of Narrative Beats
I will focus on two of the main places where both Bad Buddy and MSP diverge from the usual BL placement of narrative beats. Firstly, the first kiss on both shows: while there is a lot of variety in the timing of first kisses for BL shows, Pat and Pran’s rooftop kiss at the beginning of ep.5 is perhaps a little earlier than usually, especially since the two do not truly confess or get together until the end of ep.7; and in MSP, their first kiss comes quite late, especially given the numerous near-kisses that happen throughout the latter half of the show. The first kiss for MSP coming in ep.12 is not unheard of for a low-heat BL and really makes sense given the tone and setting of the show (lighthearted, high school), but combined with the early confession of feelings (hinted at as early as ep.3, and fairly confirmed in ep.6) as well as those fake-out kisses makes it feel unusual.
Secondly, both shows eschew the typical ep.11 of doom structure of a BL, where ep.11 sees peak emotional angst and the narrative/plot climax, in favour of a ep.10 (and even ep.9 in Bad Buddy) of doom, an ep.11 denouement, and an ep.12 conclusion. Eps.9 and 10 in Bad Buddy are when Pat and Pran’s friends and parents, the two biggest barriers to their relationship, find out about them. Pat is shot, they learn the real story behind their parents feud, there are a lot of emotions, etc. In ep.10 of MSP, there is the finale of Hot Wave and Gun’s mother’s illness (culminating in her receiving surgery at the end of the episode). Neither show has the main couple break up in their eps. of doom, like is common in other BLs’ ep.11 of doom, though they do have their relationships tested. Ep.11 in both Bad Buddy and MSP are instead the denouement, a quieter, more introspective look at the emotions and plot event of the previous episode(s). Pat and Pran run away from their families for their “honeymoon” on the beach and come to terms with everything they’ve learned, and MSP focuses more on the aftermath of Hot Wave and the tensions and emotions among Chinzilla, though there is of course parts about Tinn and Gun’s relationship in the face of disappointment. The final ep. for both show is thus given a bit more breathing room than in other BLs - they don’t have to wrap up the emotions and plot lines of an ep.11 of doom AND conclude the series, and can instead focus on wrapping up the series and even introducing new ideas and a look into the future (there are timeskips in both ep.12s, Bad Buddy does their PatPran breakup fake out, and MSP explores homophobia).
Time Skips
While time skips aren’t unheard of in BLs, especially in the final episode, Bad Buddy and MSP’s usage of them interject a level of realism into the series that isn’t always seen. The time jump of 6 or so months at the beginning of ep.7 in Bad Buddy means the tension build of the Flirt-Off doesn’t happen over a matter of days or weeks but in fact months. Pat and Pran are stubborn, this won’t be resolved quickly, and it give time for the tension to realistically reach a breaking point. MSP features several time skips in ep.9, ep.10, and ep.12, stretching both the Hot Wave competition schedule and Tinn and Gun’s budding relationship over a much more realistic full school year, instead of pretending the competition and build up of tension or feelings could be happening over a span of weeks. Paradoxically, the fact that the shows use time skips instead of showing (either in full, in part, or in a montage) the parts they skip (the Flirt-Off, the weeks of Tinn and Gun coming closer together and Chinzilla practicing) connects to my next point: the shows aren’t afraid to speed things up sometimes. The use of time skips both slows down the narrative and emotional arcs over a longer period of time while also demonstrating that the shows feel confident in their narratives: there is no need to stretch story lines out over episodes and episodes.
Condensing Plot Lines
The most striking thing about Bad Buddy and MSP’s pacing is how fast they move through plot lines, especially compared to other shows. In Bad Buddy, the plot line where Pat and Pran are anonymously and unknowingly flirting with each other through gifts and notes left at each other’s doors could have been the plot line for most of a show, if not a whole show, but it is introduced and resolved within ep.2. Ink is introduced in ep.4 and seems to be a potential faen fatale, but by the end of ep.4 this seems somehow unlikely and by halfway through ep.5 it is confirmed that she won’t be. The Flirt-Off happens in large part off-screen, in the 6 months or so time skip between eps.6 and 7, and is shown to us and resolved in ep.7. Other shows could have spent episodes if not half the show exploring that plot line.
I've talked at length about the pacing of MSP here and a bit here - like Bad Buddy, MSP moves quickly through plot lines that might have spanned episodes or even a whole season in another show. By the end of the first episode, MSP establish that Tinn is soft and pining hard over Gun (instead of keeping up the premise that he is cold and out to get the music club), the finale of Hot Wave comes two episodes before the end, the plot lines around Gun’s mother’s health are resolved in about one episode (the conflict around Tinn keeping Gun’s mother’s illness from him is resolved in a couple of scenes, and she has surgery and is pronounced ok by the end of the episode), any jealousy plot line around Nook is resolved in two scenes, the conflict introduced by Sound joining the band is resolved in one episode, and so on. Pretty much every problem introduced at the beginning of an episode is resolved by the end.
Bad Buddy and MSP feel confident, like they know they have narrative material to spare and don’t need to stretch plot lines out with twists, miscommunication, and jealousy. Thus, they move through plot lines much more quickly than other shows would.
Both shows feel so fresh because of this - they keep things moving, they surprise us by resolving things faster than other shows would, they don’t linger in jealousy and miscommunication like many other shows do, they skip over parts that other shows might have lingered on for the biggest punch, and they break the patterns that us, the audience, have come to expect from BLs (like the ep.11 of doom). Even the progression of the relationships, which we know will be romantic and probably happy in the end (these are BLs after all) and conform vaguely to enemies-to-lovers and will-they-won’t-they conventions, stay fresh: Pat and Pran have kissed and all but confessed their feelings, but they now embark on a months long Flirt-Off bet that delays them actually getting together. We know Tinn has a crush on Gun from the end of the first ep. and we begin to see hints that Gun might like him back from ep.3 onwards, and at first the show seems like it is going to go the typical romcom route wherein Gun doesn’t realize Tinn’s crush is on him (especially with him offering to help Tinn flirt with his crush), but like I talked about in my post here, they don’t and instead have Gun know it is him Tinn has a crush on, he’s just uncertain and a bit scared. Bad Buddy and MSP are both quicker and slower than other shows: they move through plot lines without lingering, but they use time skips to create realistic long term development of the core relationships, allowing the characters to build tension, live in hesitancy, and in the case of Tinn and Gun, be realistically slow in the physical progression of their relationship.
Conclusions
Bad Buddy and MSP subvert audience expectations with regards to tropes and narratives - like their handling of the faen fatale trope (both shows give us characters that could be faen fatales, and probably would be in other shows, that do not fulfill the narrative role of a faen fatale and receive character development and arcs of their own unlike other faen fatales) and how they play with expectations surrounding seme/uke dynamics (those who embody the seme or uke role in tropes aren’t necessarily the ones who exhibit the most seme or uke physical, social or personality markers; tropes iterations are balanced and reciprocal). Both shows change up the usual BL timelines and expected pacing - they hit their peak narrative, emotional, and angst climaxes before the standard ep.11 peak, plot beats come quicker than in other shows, and story arcs that are usually dragged on in other shows are concluded more quickly. On the other hand, both shows are “slower” than other BLs in other ways, like their usage of time skips to create realistic progressions of the core relationships. As a result of these subversions of BL genre conventions, the shows are familiar but also fresh to BL audiences.
But what does this say about Bad Buddy and MSP, and the BL genre in general?
Firstly, these shows remind us again of the importance of intertextuality. Texts (and this includes television shows) are intertextual; they all refer to one another and cannot exist separately from other texts. BLs especially are very intertextual - they have so many shared elements (tropes, characters, locations, etc.) they always (deliberately or unintentionally) draw parallels to other BLs. We would never notice how Bad Buddy and MSP diverge from other BL shows if we did not by necessity/automatically think of all previous BLs while watching them. Furthermore, where and how Bad Buddy and MSP divert from genre conventions and previous examples of the genre demonstrates their relationship to the genre and underlines the messages the shows are trying to send. Bad Buddy and MSP subvert the particular genre expectations they do and in the way they do to make a point - by giving new meanings to familiar conventions and juxtaposing typical meanings of genre conventions with their own (either explicitly, or through the audience’s intertextual analyses) the shows ground themselves in a different world view than other BL shows and give a more nuanced and realistic look at human and queer experience.
For example, the way Bad Buddy and MSP move quickly through plot points (avoiding extended plot lines centering on jealousy or miscommunications) and the reciprocity of their trope usages (deliberately balancing the seme and uke dynamics of their lead pairs) is unusual in the world of BL. It serves to emphasize the reciprocal and egalitarian nature of the lead pairs’ relationships which we also see in their treatment of one another (communicating, understanding each other’s needs and taking turns acquiescing to make the other happy, e.g., ep.11 where Pran agrees to run away and stay on the honeymoon to make Pat happier and then Pat agrees to return home to make Pran happier, or Tinn and Gun being so supportive and understanding of one another’s dreams and physical boundaries, etc.). In this post @miscellar argues the lack of miscommunication as a plot device in Bad Buddy is inherently queer and that the show as a whole does away with heterosexual/heteronormative tropes. In their reciprocity, egalitarianism, and communication, Pat and Pran and Tinn and Gun eschew the standard power dynamics of BLs which come as a result of BL’s encoded seme/uke dynamics, which in turn come from heteronormative and misogynistic ideas in the het romance genre and beyond about men and women. Defying genre conventions in some ways (e.g., subverting tropes) strengthens and underlines how the shows defy genre conventions in other ways (queerer, more realistic stories; fairer treatment for women; less heteronormativity, etc.) - these smaller, more obvious subversions of genre conventions and expectations indicates to us, the audience, that we should be prepared for larger, more subtle and implicit shake ups of genre conventions and expectations, ones that might rewrite the BL genre code for the future.
By reflecting on what Bad Buddy and MSP change, we can understand and identify the standard BL world view and set of assumptions. For example, by weakening and subverting seme/uke dynamics and their associations with things like dominance/submission, masculinity/femininity, and top/bottom, Bad Buddy and MSP reject the heteronormative and misogynistic assumptions that underlie most BLs: that gay couples have a “man” and a “woman;” that the penetrated must be feminine, weaker, sex averse, etc. like women are in heterosexual relationships; that there is always an unbalance of power (social and/or sexual) in relationships. While these are “just” romance tropes, or you might say that it’s odd to be so absorbed by the dynamics between two characters (particularly when it come to analyzing seme vs. uke and top vs. bottom), in a world where these tropes and their execution, and the preferred sexual position of a character and what that says about their personality etc., are so tied to other things and issues like misogyny, homophobia, etc., refusing to engage and deliberately obscuring are pretty radical things that say a lot about the message and view point of the shows.
Bad Buddy and MSP feel more realistic than a lot of other BLs. This is not to say that shows have to be realistic to be good, or even that viewers/that I prefer realistic shows, but it is certainly something that strikes me when I think about Bad Buddy and MSP. The relationship progression is slower, there is less dwelling in miscommunications, they even have not entirely happy but hopeful endings (Pat and Pran are continuing to hide their relationship from their parents, but it seems they are coming around; Tinn and Gun face homophobia from people in their lives, but also receive support from their classmate and parents). And beyond being realistic to the “real world,” they also feel more realistic to the queer experience: queer relationships don’t usually have such strict relationship roles and power dynamics, adhere so strictly to heteronormative ideals, or exist in world without homophobia or disapproval. They are varied, often deliberately contrasting and rejecting hetero norms, and sometimes involve being scared to come out (even to accepting parents), facing homophobia, and living in a “glass closet” limbo.
Many people have talked about how Bad Buddy walked so MSP could run - Bad Buddy was more heavy handed and noticeably deliberate with its trope subversions, intentionally trying to correct problems that have existed in the BL genre since the beginning, and this allowed MSP coming later to be more subtle with their changes, working them even more seamlessly into the style and the tone of the show. After MSP, what will be next? Where is GMMTV, and BL as a whole (in Thailand and beyond) heading? I’m excited to find out.
Bibliography
@absolutebl, specifically these posts: 1 (faen fatales), 2 (seme/uke), 3 (seme/uke tropes), 4 (GMMTV correcting for its mistakes), and all their posts about BL tropes
Agha, Asif. 2003. “The social life of cultural value.” Language & Communication 23: 231-273.
Ahearn, Laura. M. 2012. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1982. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 260- 422. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics for Beginners. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel//Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
Irvine, Judith T. 1996. “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 131-159. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laineste, Liisi, and Piret Voolaid. 2017. “Laughing Across Borders: Intertextuality of Internet Memes.” European Journal of Humour Research 4, no. 4: 26–49.
@miscellar: https://www.tumblr.com/miscellar/674021449476997120/here-are-a-few-things-off-the-top-of-my-head-1 AND edited to add this post, which is so crucial to understanding how intentional all this is when it comes to Bad Buddy: https://www.tumblr.com/miscellar/710442440997371904/hello-in-a-convo-we-were-having-about-qls-that
Proctor, Devin. 2020. "Intertextuality." In The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society, edited by Debra L. Merskin, 849-50. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
@ranchthoughts (myself): 1 (signs, symbols, icons, indexes, genre and BL), 2 (Bad Buddy and seme/uke tropes), 3 (MSP and imagination vs. reality), 4 (MSP being a good-natured show), 5 (MSP and narrative structure and pacing), 6 (Gun and knowing about Tinn’s crush); and everyone I referenced in those posts as well
Wiggins, Bradley E. 2019. The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. London: Routledge.
when Tinn admits to liking someone in the music club, it is initially played like Gun doesn’t know who it is, which is such a classic romcom plotline (perfect for getting dramatic irony filled montages of Gun trying to help Tinn win his crush’s heart) but MSP quickly tells us Gun DOES know who Tinn has a crush on, he’s even suspected for a while actually, he’s just scared and can’t shake the idea that maybe he’s reading too much into all this...
it just feels much more realistic to me - Gun’s not stupid! he’s been picking up the vibes Tinn’s been putting off!! - but this is new territory for him. what if he’s making the wrong assumptions?? what would it mean to hear Tinn say it aloud?? how should he answer, and what would it change??
I've been thinking about this for a while, and now other people's comments and tags are bringing it all up again (@theoryofarson, @dudeyuri, @chickenstrangers) so here goes.
Watching MSP as it aired (and of course, on rewatch too) was such a breath of fresh air because it was so good-natured.
1) I've talked about this before here, but MSP resolved conflicts and predicaments within the episode, if not the next scene. For example:
Chinzilla convinces Sound to join the band and he takes over and kicks Gun out -> but by the end of the ep., Gun is back in charge and they have happily accepted Sound into their little family. Gun's friends remained supportive and loyal to Gun, there are no hurt feelings.
Gun's mother is sick and Tinn knows because he went to the hospital with her, but Gun's mom asks him not to tell Gun -> by the end of the next two scenes Gun knows about his mom and has forgiven Tinn for keeping that a secret, and by the end of the episode Gun's mom has had surgery and we know she's going to be ok
There are soooo many other examples I could go on forever, but I'm not going to list them all here.
2) Relatedly, MSP never went with the more dramatic story line, fraught with miscommunication. This is the main reason why the conflicts/predicaments could be wrapped up by the end of the ep. For example:
Tinn and Gun quickly resolve their differences after Tinn kept Gun's mother's health issues from him, with both understanding where the other came from.
When Gun watches Tinn receive sweets and compliments from a random girl he doesn't let his jealousy fester (much) and directly asks Tinn about it, and Tinn immediately sets the record straight which Gun believes.
When Tinn has his interview with a doctor scheduled at the same time as one of the Hot Wave rounds, he is honest about it with Gun beforehand and while Gun is disappointed, he understands that Tinn has his own dreams and is supportive of him.
These conflicts and miscommunications are realistic: of course Tinn and Gun are in a stressful situation with regards to Gun's mother's health, of course Gun would be jealous and not know what was going on, of course it's disappointing Tinn can't go to Gun's performance. But the characters talk to each other, they don't avoid conversations, they don't get (too) jealous or let their jealousy fester (much), they trust one another, and thus these story lines can be wrapped much faster that you might get in other shows.
3) And I talked about this before here, but Tinn's romantic dreams come true! While MSP shows us that not everything is going to happen just as we imagined (e.g., Tinn's ep.3 dreams of confessing to Gun over a heart graph or sharing earbuds or having a Ghost moment while cooking or wiping food from Gun's mouth are foiled), it doesn't then come out and conclude that life is worse than our imagination, that love isn't real, that cute romantic moments never happen, etc. Like @theoryofarson says in their tags on that post, MSP never calls Tinn foolish or punishes him for dreaming big.
Instead, the show has some of Tinn's dreams come true! He gets a boyfriend, he gets to rest his head on Gun's shoulder, kiss Gun, and more. And he gets some cute moments that he never even imagined too, like catching Gun when he tried to grab the poster, etc. (again, there's so many moments I'm not listing them all here).
In summary: MSP had no strung-out or overly dramatic plot lines (we can trust things will be wrapped in some way by the end of the ep), and while things aren't super cute and romantic all the time, romance isn't dead and dreams come true.
So what does this tell us about MSP as a show? I think the main take-away is that MSP is good-hearted.
Sure there will be conflict and drama, but it's never going to be "too much" (read: too unrealistic, drama for the sake of drama). The showrunners wouldn't do that to the characters or to us. The overall tone of the show is loving - there will be some pain and some tears, but that's life. And you know what else life is? Full of love and joy and hope. People are good, dramatic miscommunication isn't the standard, people will communicate and listen and trust each other, cute romantic moments can happen spontaneously.
If we think about MSP specifically as a high school show too: @chickenstrangers in their tags said "msp is the quintessential high school show - you build up expectations so much and sometimes it doesn't go that way, but sometimes it turns out way better than imagined" <- exactly this! Tinn's big dreams feel so high school - he pictures these beautiful romantic moments with his crush and of course they don't work out exactly like that, but they do work out in the end and sometimes even better than he thought. It's not a cynical look at high school/teenagerhood like some media portrays, but full of hope and love. Sure things aren't going to go exactly as planned, and you are going to struggle here and there, but your life isn't over. And to the same point, sure teenagers are dramatic and full of imagination and sometimes a little too much, but they aren't wrong or foolish for loving so intensely and dreaming so big. Their communication isn't going to be perfect, there will be arguments, people won't act in the most mature ways, but these are teenagers! They aren't fully matured yet, they don't have the emotional regulation or life experience or perspective that will allow them to communicate better in the future, but they are on their way there, and they aren't incapable of expressing themselves and understanding others just because they are young either.
Watching MSP feels like being welcomed into a warm hug, a show where you can trust that you (and everyone else) is going to make it out ok. A show where you can trust there won't be eleventh-hour switch ups in character or plot lines just for the drama, a show where you can trust miscommunications/jealousy/secrets/conflicts aren't going to be drawn out unrealistically, a show where you can expect the characters to communicate (not always perfectly, but hey! no one is perfect).
But! It didn't/doesn't feel stale! We might read that description above and think "oh, well if you know things are going to turn out ok, wouldn't that be boring?". But it isn't, because MSP was doing so much interesting and unusual (for a BL) stuff: mixing up the narrative pacing and subverting tropes we come to expect from BLs (I talked about that here and I've got more thoughts coming [edited to add: they're here]), doing "imagination vs. reality" switch outs (I talked about that here), giving us complex characters and friendships, etc. It felt familiar and comforting AND fresh, and that is why it was such a joy to watch every week.
^thanks to @theoryofarson for putting this on my dash right when I was writing this post... this is it!
I also want to shout out this post by @khaothanawat which is so good and also helped me sort out so many of my ideas in this post and others
The Good Place and MSP: Pacing and Narrative Structure [a crossover for a probably tiny audience]
this post will contain spoilers for The Good Place and My School President so be forewarned!
I was watching a couple of videos about The Good Place by the youtube channel Pillar of Garbage (this one and this one) and it sparked some *thoughts* which reminded me of one of my powerpoint presentations on MSP that I made.
Basically, The Good Place (TGP) and My School President (MSP) have an atypical narrative structure and in particular atypical pacing compared to other shows like them or the shows we might expect them to be.
Firstly, both shows have “premature” big reveals:
halfway through the first season of TGP, Eleanor admits that she is in the Good Place by mistake, instead of filling an entire season or more with her hijinks as she tries to hide that fact
MSP establishes that Tinn is not an unmoved cool guy out to get Gun but in fact a soft, pining gay romantic in the first episode, a reveal which in other shows hasn’t happened until the mid-point of the season or even the very end
Secondly, both shows move through plot lines more quickly than other shows would:
TGP introduces several season- or episode-spanning concepts and then move past them with in an episode or two: e.g., season 2 of TGP starts with all the characters being rebooted in a second go-round of the Good Place experiment, and it seems the whole second season will be much like the first with the characters only realizing they are in the Bad Place at the end → in the second episode of the season Eleanor figures out they are in the Bad Place; and episode 3 of the season (Dance Dance Resolution) has them speed run through hundreds of reboots, representing possible seasons of content.
practically every problem introduced in MSP is resolved by the end of the episode: e.g., Sound is introduced and wants to take over the club → by the end of the episode Gun is back in charge and Sound has been welcomed into the fold; or Tinn knows Gun’s mother is sick but she tells him not to tell Gun → in the next scene Gun finds out, a couple of scenes later things are smoothed over with Tinn, and by the end of the episode we know Gun’s mother is going to be ok; a girl gives Tinn sweets and compliments him which makes Gun jealous → in the next scene we learn it was a case of mistaken identity. As a result, there is little protracted drama or angst (especially revolving around miscommunication) in MSP compared to other BL shows
Thirdly, both shows don’t always have us win:
e.g., at the end of season 2 of TGP, when Eleanor is on her quest to be a better person, she isn’t rewarded for it, it makes her life harder, and she falls back into her old ways
e.g., in MSP, Chinzilla doesn’t win Hot Wave
It was really interesting reading through peoples’ speculations on social media while TGP and MSP were airing about where these shows were heading next, as invariably there were people thinking of other shows (sitcoms, BLs, etc.) and expecting these shows to go those routes (e.g., expanding relatively simple premises over full seasons, or extensive plotlines and drama steeped in miscommunication and jealousy). But then the next episode of TGP or MSP would air and blow through a full season’s premise in half an episode or sidestep all the most dramatic possibilities
Because of these three things (“premature” reveals, quick pacing, the protagonists don’t always win), TGP and MSP felt fresh week after week. We didn’t know where TGP was going to go next, and MSP was flipping the conventional BL narrative arcs and plot devices on their heads. The shows felt confident: they didn’t need to stretch things out over multiple episodes or full seasons because they knew they had more than enough compelling narrative material to keep going.
These shows surprised us, but at the same time the progression of the story and the characters felt more realistic than in other shows. The characters in TGP face setbacks but ultimately grow as people over the course of the show, and the characters of MSP communicate with each other like most real-life friends and partners would and don’t get mired down in extended miscommunication plotlines.
Also shoutout to this post by @distant-screaming that reminded me of the narrative/pacing section my MSP ppt
