#thai ql

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Greetings! I enjoy your blog quite a bit. Dinner conversation tonight included a question about the international audience breakdown for Thai QL - who else in the world watches it, basically, and where are they? - and while I said there's probably no easy way for most of us to come by that information, I thought that if anybody around here knew where to look, it would be you.

@flowerbeasblog and @clairedaring are the ratings trackers that i know of here, but i think they mostly focus on the tv ratings in thailand.

gmmtv posts their social media trending countries infographics after each episode of their series on their instagram page, and Ticket to Heaven recently broke the company's record for number of countries a series was trending in (trending at number 1 in over 130 different countries). TTH was def a global hit but some of these trending numbers can be skewed-heavily by fan pushes (and both G4 and the previous record-holder Me & Thee's PondPhuwin fandom have strong organization and strategizing for their fandom's social media), so they don't necessarily reflect equivalent viewership numbers.

There is general discourse in the Thai television industry about how strong gmmtv and bl's perform on streaming services compared to traditional lakorn, which has impacted investment, but again, not by region.

Domundi sometimes announces when they have broken a record--i.e. khemjira as the most popularly streamed Thai series on whatever platform it was on--but i don't know that they regularly post them anywhere.

Thomas Baudinette has specifically written about Japan's Thai BL boom after 2gether in his book, with more data to back it up than most writing about international viewership. There are also academic essays I've read about viewership of Thai BL in the Philippines (it's huge there), China, and Indonesia. They aren't recent, though, and I don't remember them including specific numbers. Brazil and Peru are also notable for larger audiences. And this is entirely anecdotal but I feel like I just see a lot of Germans in Thai BL spaces online and on podcasts lol. I'd really like to see more research about African and Caribbean viewership cuz countries from those regions are REALLY often listed in gmmtv's top trending lists, and I've always been curious if it's just a vpn situation or real or what?

idk other ways to tell. television ratings have been generally hard to gauge at all in the streaming platform era. Platforms like netflix have had no requirement to report their viewership data and have been speculated to skew the information when they choose to announce it.

If anyone else has more info, go ahead and tack it on!

[pandasmagorica]

The Edge of Horizon, episode 4

Taking these notes so I don't have to log in until the episode is done. I have a feeling this episode is going to be all over my timeline. I continue to love this series, even with the dubcon.

Neither Phob nor Tinn are good at hiding their feelings, are they? But somehow, Phob can't see it in Tinn, even though photographer Jan can see through both of them.

Still, when Phob's mom - who can also see right through Phob - says "The sky is high and the ground is low," Phob says "It doesn't always have to be like that." And it works on two levels, Phob's interrupted relationship with Tinn and the potentially dangerous work Phob is doing toward a more just society. Love this series! (At least Phob's mom is now trying to be kind and no longer yelling at him.)

Content warning for some noncon and dubcon kissing and marking during the episode.

So many coincidental sightings and discoveries in this series. Yes, I know this is a lakorn. I can deal with it.

Ooh, Siri and Jan using "ha" with each other instead of "kaa"! (And pleased I've learned enough about Thai particles to recognize this, thanks to @absolutebl.)

And love how Siri uses the old Asking for a friend ruse. Listen, Siri, you know you and Tinn can use each other as beards so you can pursue the relationship you really want to pursue (although Siri might still need to have some kids to get your father to shut up). Very bold on Siri's part to effectively out yourself to your father.

Dad to Tinn: Did Phob say anything suspicious. Tinn to dad: We didn't talk much. (How true, I'm roaring with laughter at that one.)

Soldiers openly talking to royals about the tribulations of the common people. Things are tense! Thank you to @absoluteBL for referring us to the historical record. Wild to see it dramatized as a love story.

[pandasmagorica]

2026 Mid-year QL Check-in

Tagged by @hyeoni-comb (hyeoni-comb's check-in). hoo-boy, I actually have to do some work for this one as I don't track when I watched something, so have to dig thru my posts. But it's an interesting ask so I'm going to go ahead with it. And glad to see someone with numbers in the same range as me so I don't feel quite as intimidated. Salute to all of us who can only watch so many QLs and get so far behind on what is out there.

1) Number of QLs you've watched so far:

finished, not a rewatch: 13

dropped: 4

on hold: 2 (long-term, maybe forever)

currently watching: 1

rewatched from previous years: 3

rewatched from this year: if instant rewatches count, 1, otherwise 0

2) Best QL you've watched in 2026 so far:

The Lie We Lived In (Korea), so many twists and turns, never a dull moment, fine acting, over the top ending. Yeah, many plot holes but it was the series so far this year that has most engaged me. Content warning for violence.

Honorary mention to Wishing Upon the Shooting Stars. It could have been best but it rushed and failed to fully set up the ending. Content warning for queasy camera work in the episode 1 and 9 cold opens and brief violence.

3) QL that you want to watch but haven't gotten around to yet:

Goddess Bless You From Death but either it needs to show up on a streaming service I subscribe to or I have to believe China won't install spyware on my computer.

4) QL that was the biggest disappointment for you:

Ticket to Heaven. For a series where the acting was so good, it was glacially slow and didn't set up the psych ending well.

5) Most anticipated QL for the second half of the year:

That's a trick question, since we don't even know out of the dozens of shows GMMTV and Domundi trailered, which ones are actually going to be made. That's before we even get to whether they get released on a service they subscribe to. But I'd say Hug Hlee the Musical - it looks like so much fun ala Rainbow Prince.

6) Biggest surprise favorite new actor (debut or new to you):

Gosh, I can barely recognize most actors let alone pick a favorite. But I'll go with Tsao Lan who played Angela (Wan Zhe's mother) on Wishing Upon the Shooting Stars. She's a great comic actor and she delighted me. Wish she'd gotten a lot more screen time.

7) Newest fictional crush:

Li Wan Zhe (except the jerky never knew Xiang Yong version).

8) Favorite QL that made you happy:

Wooju Bakery was just so off the wall silly I was laughing from beginning to end.

9) Favorite QL that made you cry:

Sorry to say, I don't think any QLs this half year made me cry. Some QLs do make me cry but for some reason didn't work that particular magic on me recently. Maybe Our Dining Table? But I don't remember enough of it to be sure. This is coming from someone who can cry at the opening credits.

10) What QLs do you need to watch by the end of the year?

I feel so overwhelmed by the number of QLs out there now that I can't even anticipate. But among the ones I have access to, possibly The Therapy Game, Love Is Better the Second Time Around, and A Winter Sun OMG Such a Long Title. Oh, and I need to rewatch Eternal Yesterday and maybe, hmmm, Bad Buddy?

Bonus question:

11) Any classics?

Funny you should ask. Yes!

Love of Siam, movie, classic Thai QL.

East Palace West Palace, movie, underground Chinese QL that dates back all the way to 1996, hadn't seen it in a while, wasn't sure it was a QL, could have simply been queer, but after watching it, yes, definitely a QL, although it might be a spoiler to say so.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

An argument could even be made that, because Thai TV is so straight-jacketed in its ability to provide the sort of overt political discursive material requisite for the provision of a functional liberal public sphere, popular programming has in many ways come to assume an even more significant role in practices of TV-mediated public meaning-making and civic exchange. In her fascinating anthropological research on mass media and Thai national identity, Annette Hamilton contends that popular Thai audiences frequently use fictional media as a central source of coded political critique and counter-discourse. Given the highly controlled information environment of Thai broadcasting and its often paternalistic elitism where the ‘views of important and educated people are the only ones that count’ (Hamilton 2002a: 298), Hamilton suggests ‘ordinary’ Thai audiences engage in a form of dual cultural interpretation, outwardly receiving the ‘official’ discourse of Thai media but then reprocessing a counter-discourse of their own. ‘Precisely because everyone knows the news is not what is really happening,’ she writes, watching TV ‘becomes a major act of cultural interpretation’ whereby audiences ‘re-interpret or deconstruct’ official discourse using ‘hidden narratives… as explanatory frameworks’ (Hamilton 2002a: 292). These hidden narratives stem from a range of sources and assume multiple forms, from gossip and folklore to popular mysticism, but Hamilton singles out fictional narrative media as a particularly fertile site for this practice of popular reinterpretation. Television and film texts enable ‘the creation of a para-discourse’ where narratives are ‘interpreted as being “about” something else – for example, a wealthy eldest son in a current Chinese drama who is having marital problems could be coded for a subject of conversation about the Crown Prince’. In this way, she writes, ‘television and film narratives...take their place within a vast signifying chain’ of Thai public discursivity, ‘meaning much more than they would seem to do at a literal level’ and constituting a common cultural repertoire and ‘a shared consciousness’ among popular Thai audiences (Hamilton 2002b: 165)."

Brett Farmer, "Battling Angels and Golden Orange Blossoms: Thai Television and/as the Popular Public Sphere," in Television Histories in Asia: Issues and Contexts, ed. Jinna Tay and Graeme Turner, 2015

[gay-rules]

I think its a bad sign that im in the "for you" tab more than my dash these days. So I think a lot of blogs i follow are dead or not in line with my interests.

So maybe like/comment and ill check your blog out, and maybe check mine out. Stuff im looking for idk:

QLs , either past or currently airing i dont mind

Bonus for a GL over BL ratio heh

BTS, as i was just @ the arirang concert and back on that kpop a little

artists/singers/actors in general

[kuthuhal]

[moonchildsisan]

it was a really good watch, though i couldn't understand how barth went back into the faith, i could see how queer religious folk would see themselves in barth and tanrak, good work!!

[pandasmagorica]

Ticket to Heaven, thoughts about the psych

I'm not going to repeat my meh review of Ticket to Heaven here, just add some thoughts about the psych.

tl;dr I recommend that if you are going to watch Ticket to Heaven for the first time, that you begin episode 1 at 4:50, set in 1996, with the understanding that the end of episode 6 is set on January 22, 2025, the day that same sex marriage became legal in Thailand. What we see in 0:00-4:49 majorly detracted from the series for me.

Reveals follow the jump

Now for the long version:

One thing that has changed between when I wrote my review and now is that I didn't catch that Barth and Tanrak had married, presumably before they went to the church for the priest-making ceremony. That helped clarify the timing of Tanrak's last confession. Of course, they could have been wearing wedding rings symbolically before the law changed. (I'm guessing Thai law doesn't prohibit wearing a wedding ring when you're not married. I could be wrong.)

But after thinking about it more, I'm still pissed at the episode 1 opening psych in a way I was not in the slightest pissed at the episode 12 psych in Bad Buddy. I was actually delighted at the Bad Buddy psych, and it supported the plot. The Ticket to Heaven psych is just for the sake of doing a psych, or perhaps to attempt to create uncertainty of the ending for a series on a network that always has happy endings for its QL couples regardless of the plot destruction along the way *cough 23.5 Last Twilight cough*. Well, if it's the last one, it worked on me, but not in a way that left me feeling good about it.

First, there's the 2025 issue of "Haven't seen you in 20 years." Since it's 30 years since the events of most of the series, 1996, I expected something to have happened around 2005. But we get nothing, not a hint.

It's possible it was a translation error - I don't understand Thai. Or that the Father made a math error - I've done that myself. It's also possible that Barth and Tanrak returned when Phak was raised to priest. But it's a weird thing to put into a script if you're not going to follow up on it. (It's also a weird timeline. Why would it take Phak less than 10 years to become a priest but Kongdech 30 years?)

But there's Barth's line in 2025 episode 1 where he says someone very important to him is being raised to priest. There was nothing at any point in the major 1996 part of the series that showed Kongdech as becoming important to Barth. I can see maybe the argument that Kongdech is important to Tanrak so he gets promoted to important in Barth's eyes, but that's a stretch. He's only not saying "someone important to Tanrak" because that would spoil the psych.

Because of the time jump, we don't know whether Barth and Tanrak returned to the school (so they would have shelter and food) or stayed away and tried to make it as runaways in Barth's un-utilitied house (how did they cook?). But, unlike Bad Buddy, the series seriously failed to justify the psych by showing us how Kongdech became important to Barth.

I know the series is not about Kongdech. But if you're going to use Kongdech as a tool of your psych, you have to follow through with it.

And the whole thing about Barth arriving at the church alone and leaving with Tanrak was just a cheat. If the opening also showed Tanrak arriving at the church earlier via taxi (so he could do the confession we see in episode 6) it would have solved that problem, but would have revealed it wasn't Tanrak being raised to priest, again spoiling the psych. I also have a hard time believing Barth wouldn't have patiently waited inside the church while Tanrak did the confession just so that they could ride to the church together, especially if they had just gotten married that day.

I have downgraded series before because of a choice they made at the ending. I have also upgraded series with major plot holes because they kept me entertained. This series was barely hanging on to a enjoyed enough rating for me because of its slowness. The last episode dodged the slowness issue but failed me for not setting up the episode 1 framing opening.

I don't begrudge people who loved the series. I think it's great that we all have so many different opinions - it makes for interesting Tumblr reading and widely varying series. But this series failed me, which is why I gave it a lukewarm rating. Without the psych, I might have given it enjoyed enough - I don't know as I have no way to watch the series for the first time without the episode 1 2025 opening. I certainly did not enjoy the series enough to watch it again that way.

But the opening does the series no favors and I would have no qualms about recommending that people skip over it and go straight to the 1996 flashback.