INTIMACY RESTRICTIONS IN THAI MEDIA
I've seen some people commenting on how much more natural KristSingto's kissing looks in the first episode of "The Ex-Morning" compared to their kisses in "SOTUS," and while I love all conversation about KristSingto kissing, I just wanted to add to that conversation for a sec because I love historical nuance about stuff like this.
A while back, I asked @hallowpen why a content warning pops up on KongArt's beach kiss in "SOTUS S" even on the DVD, and they explained that Thai productions used to have much stricter limitations on how much physical intimacy they could show on television.
Supplementally, Singto said that back in 2015, he and Kit watched overseas media to prepare for the kiss scenes in "SOTUS," presumably because their own country's was restricted to chaste, sealed-lipped mouth tapping. And this wasn't just applied to same-sex couples. It was the case for male-female couples as well.
A deleted scene of Kongphob and Arthit's rooftop kiss in "SOTUS" exists that's a bit longer than the one that made the final cut, so I think their production team was especially careful. Considering that "SOTUS" was a 1) queer series about 2) young men involved in a 3) school program heavily inspired by 4) military drills intended to 5) craft the next generation of upstanding Thai citizens, that series is super subversive, so it stands to reason that showing too much physical intimacy between Kongphob and Arthit was risky, too.
While promoting "The Ex-Morning," Krist has said some variation on, "We're not students anymore, so we can show more adult content," multiple times. They even get sex scenes now, which was unimaginable back then. The closest they got to showing sex in "SOTUS S" was a lot of suggestive dialogue, toothbrushes in a cup, and some Sexy Straw Action.
It's just by chance that we haven't seen Krist and Singto kiss each other in a series between 2018-2025, because their kiss scenes in other series with other actors have been growing steadily more natural as limitations on intimacy decreased over time.
Basically, they're both good kissers, they just had to be careful before.
Now, you sat through me talking, so here's the kisses. Enjoy!
