It just occurred to me today that Doctor never called Poppy by her experiment number.
She's one of two experiments Doctor calls by their name and not experiment number with another one being Yarnaby.
With Yarnaby it's quite obvious why Doctor calls him by his name. Yarnaby wasn't only a guard dog for Sawyer imo. I think that Doctor wanted to have someone who would look up to him and only him. Someone loyal that would never leave his side. Someone that wouldn't backstab him.
But why Doctor calls Poppy by her name?
It's as clear as day that he despises her even if just because she's Elliot's daughter.
I know that Poppy's experiment number is kept as secret cause it's important as it could help as determine when exactly she was made.
But from in-game perspective - Doctor doesn't have any reason to call Poppy by her name and yet he still does that.
My guess is that it's due to more personal reasons. We still don't know how exactly relationship between Harley and Elliot looked like. But I think that their relationship was close. And my intuition tells me that Sawyer knew about Poppy during his time at Young Geniuses Program.
But what do y'all think is the reason to why Doctor calls Poppy by her name?
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.
I have some more evidence that Doctor might actually not be dead and that he more than likely will come back
I completely forgot about these really important aspects to Doctor's character and his story. This is something that can be used as evidence cause this is official stuff and it's something that gives more weight to my speculations in "Is Doctor alive?" theory.
1) Doctor knows about the letter that player received at the beginning of chapter 1 - he's the only character that mentions and aknowledges the letter which shows us that he knows things that other characters don't know about. This hints to him having more going on with him and his importance in the story.
2) Doctor was a narrator in "Story so far" - this and chapter 4 ARG is what hyped Doctor's character for fans cause this makes him feel like more important character. And this combined with 1) point shows us that Doctor sees everything. He even knew that Prototype is Ollie (we can conclude that from his tone when he said "the infuriating ally" part).
3) Doctor's character description on poppyplaytime website (so it's official) - "Doctor Harley Sawyer, commonly referred to as “The Doctor”, was the originator of the Bigger Bodies Initiative, and a former pupil of Elliot Ludwig. Ruthless, egotistical, and completely amoral, he orchestrated the systemic experimentation of hundreds to pave his elusive “golden path”, only to be subjected to the same experimentation. His mind made into a prison of wires and terminals, his project stolen from him, he’d become just as much a prisoner as the experiments he created. In the years since the Hour of Joy, the Doctor has become a monster unburdened by any pretense of humanity, the final steps on his “golden path” seemingly within his reach." - the last sentence is what's important. Doctor isn't confined anymore by whatever human limitations he had and that he's really close to achieveing golden path which is immortality.
4) Doctor's speech in ad for Project Playtime (I completely forgot about a very important detail of his speech) - "Mortality is the curse of the weak, the fire that incinerates the flesh. I strive to snuff that flame. Call me a monster, but I am simply a man who escaped incineration, and embraced the infinite!" - this is really huge and important cause only now after chapter 4 it makes total sense. Now we know what exactly Doctor meant by a man who escaped the incineration (he escaped death as he was transformed into experiment) and embraced infinite (he embraced the infinite nature of having digital mind). I didn't realize at first that Doctor said this as something that already happened (he used past tense) because we all assumed back then that he died during the Hour of Joy. This speech being this old because it exists even before chapter 3 makes it even more important as a clue and evidence of Doctor survivng his death in chapter 4 as digital entity.
5) The untitled poem being about The Doctor - people wrongly assumed it's about Huggy Wuggy because of felted feet. When we shouldn't take it literally because it's poem. Poems most of the time use figurative language not literal. And it's important to remember that first this poem showed in ARG for chapter 4 which was heavily focused on Doctor not Huggy Wuggy or any other character. And then we saw this same poem after we killed Doctor when we went back to Safe Haven. The poem:
"On felted feet and with bated breath
Sleep draws ever near
Over paths turning clear
But I am not afraid of death
For we have already met"
This means non other than a person in poem quietly awaits the inevitable death but they're not afraid cause they survived death once already.
Considering that Doctor wanted to achieve immortality and was really close and he embraced infinite - probably learned how to live and function as digital form - the poem being about him makes the most sense also because his body died during experimentation. He could no longer live as human. Only some of his organs remained. And the poem is written in his style of speaking.
Now I'll give you my speculation based on my theory and what I presented here.
Remember the tape "Time" from chapter 4? The one with Doctor and Prototype talking? From this tape we know that Prototype needed Doctor to learn about secret hidden within him. The secret to immortality.
This combined with what happened later - Prototype being happy as Ollie that we killed Doctor - points to the fact that Prototype threatened Doctor that he'll get rid of him if he'll be stalling. The funny thing that I realized is that Doctor had here huge advantage over Prototype which Prototype didn't seem to notice.
Doctor has knowledge that even Prototype doesn't have. This heavily implies that Prototype wouldn't know if Doctor lies to him or tells him the truth. Doctor could sold him a lie and Prototype wouldn't even know that and after Doctor stopped being useful Prototype got rid of him with our help.
Doctor didn't seem afraid of Prototype even if Prototype's voice was threatening and leaving no room for objection. And yet Doctor ignores it and even demands Prototype to find more time. Prototype agreed because he doesn't have a choice here. Which definitely shows that Doctor had advantage in this situation.
And let me tell you more. I think that Doctor found what's that secret but he didn't share it with Prototype. He didn't have to share it with Prototype. He could use it to help himself "escape the incineration" and achieveing "golden path". "Sleep draws ever near Over paths turning clear" the death is coming for him but his goal is clear. He knows what to do. He isn't afraid of death anymore. He knows the secret to "infinite" eternal life as digital entity. And Prototype being impatient with Doctor stalling could decide to get rid of him without finding out what the secret is.
And also maybe Doctor really wanted someone to come to factory to power up the place cause more power would definitely help him achieve whatever he wanted as digital entity. He could avoid death as he could scatter/disperse into still working parts of facility's network/system.
He was observing us from the beginning so he could easily guide as where he wanted and use us to help him with his plans.
If this doesn't convince you I don't know what will. But I'm sure (almost 100%) that Doctor isn't dead and he'll come back.
And what's important is that I think that he has his own storyline apart from what's going on with Prototype and Poppy. Poppy Playtime can be more complex story with more than one plotline. Having more plotlines makes a story more complex and layered.
We can clearly see that Doctor's goals aren't focusing on whatever is going with Prototype and Poppy and it goes beyond the factory. He wants to achieve immortality and ascend beyond humanity's limitations. And from what I gathered here we can conclude that he was able to do that.
I think that Prototype caused theatre incident and made it seem to be Sawyer's fault.
(and why I think Prototype is an unoriginal mastermind)
I know that almost everyone thinks that Doctor is responsible for theatre incident. But like one of the scientists pointed out Harley is too smart for that. And adding from myself - he's also too paranoid to leave trace leading back to him being a culprit.
It doesn't make sense. He's too easy of a choice. Like he has a motive but when you think about it more it falls apart pretty quickly.
Theatre incident could lead to Playtime Co downfall which would stop the experiments. And why would Doctor want that to happen?
I'm pretty sure that Doctor was the last person that would want experiments to end.
This exact motive definitely fits to Prototype. It could be even that he wanted to get back at Doctor as well as to stop the experiments.
Which didn't work but it at least would show that Prototype had more attempts of stopping tbe experiments before the Hour of Joy.
I also think that Prototype is the one who was letting out monsters not only during theatre incident but also the famous Huggy Wuggy tape showing him being on the loose.
Also I think that people are right when they compare Kissy Missy getting burned most likely by Prototype with theatre incident cause the fire was involved there.
And let's not forget about what Prototype told Sawyer that he learns something new about Doctor everyday. I think that he used this knowledge to set Harley up into being a culprit.
It shows us that Prototype is really a mastermind and he's really careful with his planning.
Though at the same time it makes him a typical fictional type of mastermind who doesn't make any mistakes and outsmarts everyone and wins in the end.
There's nothing wrong with this cause it's a common trope and it works and Prototype is still very cool character and from what we heard about him he'll definitely be a really scary looking monster. But I wish that masterminds in fiction could be finally treated with more nuance.
In other words: make masterminds and intelligent characters be more ground in reality. The trope with perfect mastermind is very overused.
I'm often rolling my eyes reminding myself "well this is fiction so what did you expect?"
But then there's a Doctor who was a great candidate for such mastermind/intelligent character who makes mistakes and gets cornered but also can turn things around for his own benefits. This is way more entertaining type of intelligent character.
But sadly for now Doctor seems like a truly wasted character. He was outsmarted and played by most of characters - higher-ups, Prototype and even us the player. Devs really done him dirty.
This is why I think and hope that Doctor will come back at the end and be revealed as true main antagonist. Heck he could even help us defeat Prototype from the shadows. Cause this would be such a waste of potential for something fresh and unique.
Don't get me wrong. Poppy Playtime would still be a good game with great story but it'd be definitely better if Doctor was the main antagonist not Prototype.
I will still like Poppy Playtime but I will definitely enjoy it less.
And also it just really doesn't make Doctor's character justice. He was made as this intelligent overarching villain but then he was done so dirty.
Will I got torn to pieces by Poppy Playtime fandom for saying that the Doctor feels more dehumanized even than the orphans?
I'm talking about how these characters are presented narratively. Orphans are humanized time and time again throughout the story. While the Doctor is continuously dehumanized throughout the story.
And while simple answer is because story portrays orphans as victims and the Doctor as perpetrator it becomes more nuanced once you see the parallels between the Doctor and orphans. When you realize that devs are trying to tell us that the Doctor is also a victim.
And tbh with you orphans aren't innocent either because most of them killed in the Hour of Joy innocent people that didn't have anything to do with their suffering.
There were a few of the toys that still stayed innocent like Riley but most of them aren't innocent. Ofc we also have those toys whose cognitive functions were gone or very reduced so they act more on instincts.
But it doesn't matter to the point I'm trying to make.
The Doctor is a victim that became the perpetrator. But the orphans didn't broke the cycle of violence and hurt - they returned the hurt. It's exactly how Cole wrote in the note.
People like to brush off bad things because victims are allowed to defend themselves. But the truth is once you go beyond self-defense it should be viewed as something bad.
And what I'm trying to say here is that not everything is black and white. People are complex and we should treat their situations with this in mind.
And getting back to the point of this post.
The most important part of the way the Doctor is dehumanized in the story is the fact that he also dehumanize himself. This is what stands out to me. Because we could read his dehumanization when he was turned into experiment himself as justice. But it's hard to do so when you see that the first person who dehumanizes the Doctor is Harley Sawyer himself!
And when you see all these parallels between him and the orphans you realize that Harley is deeply traumatised. Dehumanization of oneself doesn't come from nowhere. And one can imagine why the Doctor is dehumanizing himself considering that he's obsessed with the goal of golden path to the point that he considers the aspects that makes him humane a distraction to the goal!
To conclude this post.
I feel like the Doctor is supposed to be viewed as the evil that was born from tragedy and not like most people think that the Doctor is just pure evil or even worse that he was born evil.
The Doctor is what becomes of the victim that had been broken too many times. The victim that no one reached out to. The victim that was denied help. The victim that never received love and care. The victim that became so twisted that they project their trauma and hurt onto everyone around them.
Is it okay of the Doctor to do so? No absolutely not. It's bad just like I said about the orphans killing even those who never wronged them.
Ferdinand de Saussure introduces the idea of a “sign,” built out of two parts: the “signifier” (or “form” the sign takes) and the “signified” (or the “concept” the sign represents). For example, the concept of a physical tree (the signified) is represented by the word “tree” (signifier). Signs do not make sense on their own; they refer to each other and build meaning through their inter-connections and referrals.
We can think of BL tropes in this way: if a head pat or a sponge bath is the signifier, what are they signifying?
the seme/uke dynamic of the scene (graspable based on who is performing the action vs. who is receiving it)
the romantic dynamic of the characters (to perform such an act indicates they care for each other)
other information like the social dynamics of the characters (who is older, who has more social capital, etc.)
But how do we come to know/understand what these signifiers are signifying? How do we know who is the seme or the uke, how do we know certain actions are romance coded, etc.?
~~~~~
Charles Pierce’s taxonomy of signs introduces three (not mutually exclusive - a sign could be more than one or all three) categories:
symbol: the relationship between the signifier and the signified is entirely arbitrary (they do not resemble each other, etc.) so their connection must be memorized (e.g., the alphabet, numbers, traffic lights)
icon: the signifier resembles or imitates the signified (e.g., onomatopoeia, metaphors, the walk sign at crosswalks)
index: the signifier is connected physically or causally to the signified (e.g., where there is smoke there is fire, a photograph, words like “here” or “that”)
The classification of a sign in one/multiple of these categories does depend on the individual and their own associated context, particularly cultural. What might seem like an obvious connection or representation to one person may not be obvious at all to another.
A key feature of language is its indexicality, or ability to “index” information without needing to explicitly say it; e.g., the way we can tell where someone was born or raised based on their accent or vocabulary. This indexicality relies on “co-occurence in the same context” (Ahearn, 2012, p .27); i.e., “where there is smoke, there’s fire”. See smoke where there is fire enough times, hear certain pronunciations and vocabulary words from people from a specific place enough times, etc. and the association between the two will be built up strongly.
Tropes are a prime example of indexicality: the repeated occurrence of certain tropes in certain contexts to convey certain meanings makes these tropes indexes, an instant indicator of those meanings in the future. The more a trope appears in a given context to indicate a given meaning, the more the association between that meaning and that trope is strengthened.
In BL, tropes index a variety of information:
the seme/uke dynamics of the pair (who is the seme or uke, is the seme/uke dynamic strong or comparatively weaker, etc.)
the presence of a romantic/dynamic between the characters
the social dynamics of the characters (who is older, who has more social capital, etc.)
the type of relationship the characters have (soft, more D/s, if it is early in the relationship or if they are an established couple, etc.)
~~~~~
Roman Jakobsen introduces the ideas of codes: conventions of communication and social conventions which organize and bring sense to signs. When we create a text, we choose and utilize signs based on the codes we are familiar with, and when we analyze a text we pick up on cues to know which codes we should be using to interpret the text’s signs. For example, the way a poem is laid out physically on a page compared to a piece of prose writing signals to us that we should be reading and interpreting this text in a “poem” way.
Codes tell us the social (cultural, etc.) and textual (medium, genre, etc.) knowledge we need to know to interpret and understand a text. They may not be obvious or understandable to others; often it is only those with the relevant code knowledge (e.g., the right socio-cultural background) who can pick up on the signs and understand their significance. For example, sometimes BL tropes and what they signify are not understandable (or even noticeable as “significant”) to those who are not familiar with BLs, the romance genre, South East/East Asian media and culture, etc.
Genre is an example of a code: genres are made up of certain conventions of content and form (themes, settings, structures, styles, etc.).
The elements of a genre include:
narrative (plots, narrative structures, etc.)
characterization (characters, roles, etc.)
themes (tropes, subject matter, etc.)
setting (both geographical and historical)
iconography (motifs like music, dialogue, costumes, decor, etc.)
modes of address (the assumed demographic facts about the “audience” of the genre)
Knowing the genre of something means we are prepared for what plot, characters, topics, settings, tropes, etc. we should expect in a text. In a way, we could say that the conventions of a genre index the genre (provide a short-hand way of signalling the genre of a given text).
~~~~~
Julia Kristeva introduces the concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality explains how all texts refer to each other either intentionally (through the deliberate usage of techniques like allusion, quotation, parody, or plagiarism) or unintentionally (through the process of contextualization undergone by each reader as they bring their own backgrounds and interpretations to a text and find connections between this text and others), and thus how no text can exist independently of other texts. The meaning of a text is found not only in a text itself but in its interconnections with other texts.
The repetition (intentional or not) of intertextual references between texts creates and strengthens genres and their conventions and meanings: the connections between genres and their conventions are reinforced through repeated co-occurence (this solidifies the indexicality of genre conventions), and it also increases the number of occurrences of that genre convention (tropes, etc.) which creates a bigger pool to which all subsequent appearances of that genre convention could refer to or will be thought of in conjunction with.
To appropriate Judith Irvine’s idea of “shadow conversations” and apply them to BL: all BL tropes and all BLs contain traces of other trope iterations and BLs within them, however explicitly (deliberate allusion or parallels) or implicitly (the genre conventions that all BLs have collectively created and defined and their associated structures/content/meanings and the socio-cultural background required to understand them). We cannot watch a BL and not think of other BLs (either because of deliberately included references or because it is through watching other BLs we came to understand and identify what a BL is), and we cannot see a BL trope in action without thinking of other iterations of that trope (either because it is a deliberate reference or because it is through those other trope iterations that we came to understand the meanings indexed by that trope).
Sources:
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
Chandler, Daniel. Genre Theory. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel//Documents/intgenre/intgenre.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.
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.
Wiggins, Bradley E. 2019. The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. London: Routledge.
thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President
This is a monster of a post (almost 5k words) so I’m going to post it in pieces, and then in full. This is Part 1 (of 3): part 2, part 3, full.
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
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 (sometimes they even 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, Tinn 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, etc.). 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
thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President, cont. (part 3/3)
This is part 3 of a 3 part post: Part 1 here, Part 2 here, full text here
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 below the cut
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.
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.
