watercresscent

Originally from twitter (watercresscent).  I read all kinds of BL.

[queen-of-hawkins-why-ler]

Is it top/bottom discourse or is it a valid literary critique and analysis that carefully considers the nuances of characterization and makes an approximate guess regarding how one character would like to treat or be treated in an intimate setting based on their trauma and how they have previously handled engaging with others???

[spoonbendersanonymous]

"Single people are on average less healthy, less financially stable, and overall less satisfied with life than partnered and married people are. This must mean that monogamous relationships and marriage are the solution to society's problems"

Huh, it's almost like society, both socially and financially, is set up to specifically benefit people who have monogamous relationships and get married and punish people who don't partner or get married. It's almost like there are financial benefits that exist specifically to incentivize people to get married and have kids and be a nuclear family. It's almost like it was very culturally normal until very very very recently to just not have any deeper platonic relationships after you get married, meaning that single people past a certain age just get left behind and get treated as spinsters or loser bachelors. It's like life just is not designed for single people to be able to easily participate and survive while still being single. Huh, very weird. I'm sure marriage will fix this.

[confuzing]

Just danmei problems: Someone in the story is Korean/Japanese/Mongolian and even if they aren't a villain the book is a little Weird about them.

[loveless-arobee]

I’ve been thinking about why my aromanticism and my transmasculinity are so inseparable to me, because I was confused why whenever I attempted to write about aromanticism, I also wrote about transmasculinity, and vice-versa.

I think I figured it out, at least in part? Might not be the best worded atp, I’m still thinking, so this is just some thoughts and nothing totally comprehensive.

It’s because my aromanticism and transmasculinity are treated basically exactly the same. Both are seen as a problem to be fixed by some cishet guys dick, which will obviously turn me into a good little woman who will marry and have children. Both get me called a hysterical bitch who’s just wants to feel special. Both get me treated as a sexual predator, and at the same time as a victim who’s clearly only trans/aro to "escape" that. Both get me treated as if I can’t make decisions for myself and need other people to do that for me. Both would obviously be fixed if I just got over myself and get pregnant, because then I’d understand the wonders of ~being female~ and ~love~

Both are basically the worst things I could possibly do to my mother, because how could I dare, as her mini-me, not to marry, not to stay a woman (because how could I be her if I’m not a woman?), not to be a mother and wife, and all of those things at once specifically. (A big conversation to be had about being your mothers ~favourite daughter~ as a trans guy, bc my sister was never treated like this so I guess that plays into it a lot…)

It’s because my mum was super misogynistic and told me, again and again, that my whole worth was having kids and being a wife, and spending my whole life ""preparing"" me for that, and both me being transmasculine and me being aromantic fully ruins their plans for my life.

It’s because those are the two specific things I was never allowed to be. Because my mother would’ve accepted me even if I chose to marry a woman—as long as I married in the first place, and had children, even if they were adopted. She’s bi, after all. Loving women is something she can unterstand. (Yes we talked about that, I thought I was a lesbian sometime in my teens. Was very wrong.)

Not loving at all obviously means I’m wrong. I just haven’t found the right person yet, and need to keep looking until I fall in love. Being a man isn’t allowed for me, because I’m supposed to be "just like my mum", and I can’t do that if I don’t even have the same gender.

So I guess it’s because, with both of those things I go against the rules and expectations set for me in the exact same way, because my life was supposed to be woman-wife-mother, and I can’t do that obviously if I’m "failing" at the first two parts equally hard.

They’re hard to separate for me because every piece of amatonormativity and aromisia that I was put through, I was put through because I was a "non-conforming girl" (aka a trans boy), with such a big emphasis on me being a girl and becoming a woman that I’m sometimes wondering if my mum saw something coming and tried to stop it. Because my sister, a feminine girl, never got this. Me, being a masculine "girl" who enjoyed it a bit too much to be mistaken for her brother? Had to be fixed; and how else do you fix a "broken girl" if not through love, marriage and wifehood and motherhood, always all of those things at once as if they’re one and the same? So how could my denial of them, my masculinity and manhood, and my aromanticism and lovelessness, not be one and the same?

Mhhh I think there’s more. But I also really don’t want to keep thinking about trauma, so there’s that. I might come back to this later. I also don’t know how to word this nicely. Just wanted to get it out in hopes someone might relate? Maybe??? Idk.

Also, disclaimer before someone decides to be annoying: no, I’m not saying any of these experiences are exclusive to trans men and aromantic people, least of all to just aromantic trans men. I’m just talking about my *personal* *subjective* experience here. I’m also not saying anything else that isn’t written here verbatim. Thanks bye.

[pikaole]

Me and mom learned new English word.

[pikaole]

Wow…This is probably the most famous posts on my Tumblr lol. 

This is what I drew after this situation 👇

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

As an aromantic individual it actually drives me insane when people measure the quality of queer rep based on whether or not that queer character has a relationship. Like we are actually whole people outside of our dating lives. Don't get me wrong I want to see the lesbians make out as much as the next one but I also don't measure that as the be all end all of gay characters.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

The works of Director X Nuttapong (Me and Thee, Cherry Magic Thailand, Vice Versa, Theory of Love, and so so many more het-centric series at GMMTV) are a great example of why the “queer” versus BL debate can be so silly.

Thomas Baudinette describes him in his academic book on Thai BL as one of the out gay writer and directors working in the industry, which was news to me because I had tried and failed to find info about that online. Plus, his repertoire makes no efforts to reference touchstone “queer” media the way other out gmmtv directors do, Euro-American nor Asian, and his series show little interest in exploring historically “queer” aesthetic fascinations: the male body, lust, loneliness, angsty coming-out narratives, sexual health questions, etc. Instead, he’s gung-ho about a lot of typically feminine media: het romcoms (and I mean the het romcoms the gays don’t have a cult following over), lakorn, and, yes, BL. That’s “BL” as in the most classic definition of it, BL manga from Japan. He has described his Cherry Magic adaptation as an exploration specifically of the manga genre. So he’s truly shown most of his aesthetic interest in media targeted towards women. I already have a gripe about how men being into feminine genres is often excluded from the “queer” canon when to me it seems both one of the most prominent of tastes and the most maligned of tastes for queer men, but I want to go deeper here. Because P’X isn’t just some writer/director with effeminate tastes.

He’s at the same professional level as celebrated queer director Aof Noppharnach at gmmtv, as a senior director of content production, and I believe he’s been in that position longer. In fact, X, Aof, and Jojo all started at Bang Channel (the digital predecessor to GMMTV) together. Along with Hormones and Love Sick, this was another project pushing Thai media forward beyond its conservatism with stories that leaned into depicting young people’s lives with more Social Realism. X directed lots of het short films for the Channel as well as a tragic kathoey love story with Fluke Nattouch and JJ Jaylerr. He also wrote and directed Room Alone (through a collab between Bang Channel and Room Alone), which had GMMTV’s first same-sex pairing.

More importantly, X’s BL production credits are prolific and a much better endorsement than his “queer” auteur counterparts’, who have a lot more flops under their producer belt compared to a pretty stellar list under X’s. In fact, he’s credited as a producer on at least one work of every publicly out director I know of that has directed at gmmtv except Jojo & Ninew.

But is his work “queer” enough for the “queer” club? I think a lot of times when people use the word queer to describe a show, they think they’re describing a politic when actually they’re describing an aesthetic. I’ve taken to calling it Queer Realism. It’s a very historically situated queer aesthetic, but it’s certainly not the only one. We all know Camp, but people easily slot that into the Queer label, too, because of how it pokes fun at gender and normalcy. It’s harder for many these days to conceive of queer aesthetics that are light but not pointed, sincere but not dour, queer aesthetics that don’t seem to be interested in making much queer commentary on society at all.

P’X’s work can feel quite assimilationist when taken alone. I’ve described Theory of Love as the How I Met Your Mother of BL, after all. A more expansive view, however, might urge us not to conceive of his aesthetic as one that actually exists alone. He’s constantly synthesizing a multitude of sources into a series and then questioning one’s ability to accurately read it in a hermeneutical fashion and apply it directly to life. What if we thought of his work through a similar aesthetic lens, with art not as a mirror but as something that coexists with people’s lived experiences?

One of Baudinette’s main arguments in his book so far, similar to a Thai paper on the industry I read over Thanksgiving, is that Thai live-action BL started out less queer and suddenly shifted around 2020 with the emergence of the queer auteurs who brought “actual” queerness into BLs. This ignores two major out directors Baudinette covers in depth, New Siwaj and Ma-Deaw, and others like Cheewin and Director X. New and Cheewin both worked on the first BL Love Sick and have worked basically non-stop on BL series since; Ma-Deaw wrote and directed the grandfather of all Thai BL, Love of Siam, and continued to work within the BL sphere; and P’ X, P’ X seemed to be busy building up the GMMTV BL empire, not simply with BL series of his own, but crafting popular het-romance series and supporting other queer creatives in their work. What Baudinette means, I think, is not queerness but Queer Realism in BL emerged around 2020. What the queer progenitors of BL were doing before that laid the queer ground for the political and economic shifts that made that possible. Is that not queer enough for the queer club?

I don’t think moderation, unobtrusiveness, familiarity, or pleasantness exist in opposition to radical projects when those that practice the former support and uplift the latter’s projects. That unimposing queerness might not look like the “queerness” we’ve come to regard as authentic and politically active, but P’ X’s normative BL romcoms do a different kind of queer work. He closes his eyes to the strife, and smiles, going about his gay merry way hand-in-hand with others committed to the fantasy.

[emkini]

I specialize in answering questions nobody asked, such as: what would Me and Thee characters look like if they were dogs

Part 1

[nyxlyx]

just when i thought i was calming down about this show, i find out shane was protecting his man from the wolf bird in actual fluent bird

[maybe-boys-do-love]

I’ve started Ball Boy Tactics, and I am regretting putting out my end of year list before watching this. Choi Jae Hyeok as Jeongwu is one of my favorite seme performances and characters I’ve ever gotten.

I love a bitchy truth-teller in a BL. How often do they get the lead role and their man, though? Only Friends’ Boston and Jun from ThamePo can attest to that fact. Jeongwu is just like them in how he calls out his ridiculous friends and cockily pursues who he’s after, but he earns his happy ending—I’m presuming; haven’t finished yet—by facing his own truths head on. He’s cocking his eyebrows in disbelief at his own jealous behavior, kicking himself over who he’s dreaming about. There’s no gaming here because he’s not lying to himself or pretending with others about his feelings. He already called himself an idiot for being so lovestruck and blind to his queerness in his head, so what’s the worst someone else could do.

Choi Jae Hyeok did NOT have to play this character with so much brass. There’s a version of this character on the page that’s flat-faced and cold, delivering his direct lines in a graceless robotic fashion. Choi’s version of the character is so warm, witty, and fluid, though. He reads the room with a quick glance and refuses the expected etiquette to address the elephant everyone’s avoiding. His ego leads but for the right reasons, unafraid to laugh when others’ conversations become absurd from being confronted by the truth.

His confidence isn’t off-putting because there’s a slight softness there, a rare quality to find in such a typically masculine seme. Earth Pirapat infuses a similar light into his masculine seme characters. When Jeongwu’s confronting a character attempting to manipulate Jiwon into performing while injured, Choi takes a beat to snap his head into a tilt. Moments of effeminate gestures like that in a seme!? It makes me giddy! And Choi finds a wealth of spots to plant these kind of physicalities, sassy and flexible, without threatening his character’s alpha status. He’s not here to protect his uke with his size and strength. He’s here to offer solidarity until the truth comes out.

[mewsthumbring]

[alienwlw]

Typical overseas student. His Thai is not very good, and on top of that, he loves watching primetime soapies. I'm going crazy. ME AND THEE (2025-2026)

[alienwlw]

ME AND THEE Theerakit Kian Lee ♛ Episode 6

[janployshompoos]

Mr. Peach would be so happy if he knew you were working this hard, Boss. Shameless! How dare they do that with the lights and cameras around?

ME AND THEE | EP6

bonus:

[suzteel]

The answer is your smile. Because it made me realize the wolf here is fake. You're actually just a goofy golden retriever.

[nick-nellson]

ME AND THEE | 1.06

[walske]

Former Canadian hockey player talking about how he was closeted the whole time he played hockey (college & pro) and at one point snuck his secret boyfriend in through THE FIRE ESCAPE IN HIS APARTMENT IN MONTREAL and saying he thought he’d worked through that time of his life in therapy and has been out for a while and still almost had to turn the show off bc it was so vividly similar to his experience

Dismissing the show as pwp or smut (which to be clear are perfectly legitimate genres in their own right!) is such a wild misread of the story being told here

Like the whole point is that something that SHOULD BE just sex or a hookup is suddenly a massive career-threatening secret and the act of falling in love with someone just like all their teammates do openly becomes a monumental decision and decade-long plan riddled with constant anxiety, risks, and loneliness

It’s the queer experience in a nutshell, and the way sex is portrayed is an integral part of that

[telomeke]

Brock McGillis–

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Article linked here:

Gay pro hockey player Brock McGillis lived 'Heated Rivalry' - Outsports

For Brock McGillis, 'Heated Rivalry' is validating, deeply triggering and widely misunderstood. It's entertainment, people!