Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Mailbag Grab Bag
3 Playsin 11 hours
It's a mailbag episode!
Episode transcript available here.
00:00:00 Welcome
00:01:15 Introduction
00:02:10 Inbox: Surprises of the Season
00:07:07 Inbox: Does Categorization Matter?
00:11:42 Inbox: BL Fatigue?
00:15:51 Inbox: The BL Bubble
00:30:26 Inbox: Sex On Screen
00:41:07 Inbox: Fave Sex Scenes
00:51:24 Inbox: Worst Sex Scenes
01:04:24 Bonus Round: Best Sex in a Bad Show
01:06:54 Inbox: Critical Philosophy
01:18:31 Outro
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Drunk Knicker Podcast
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation about BL, aka The Drunk Knicker Podcast. on the porch in the rocking chairs.
00:00:36
Speaker
Four times a year, we pop in and talk about what's going on in the BL world. We shoot the shit about stories, all the drama going into like cracked out takes and really intense emotional analysis.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the
00:01:16
Speaker
And we're back.
Return from Hiatus and Listener Appreciation
00:01:19
Speaker
Nini, it has been so long since we've been in the booth together. We are getting to our ass like a regular Tumblr blog. Six months late.
00:01:27
Speaker
but's Sounds about right, yep. We appreciate all of you for being patient with us. It has been a very difficult half year for me and Nini, but we did get your questions and we did answer them. So, sit back and relax and I think we've got like an hour of answers for you guys. Home was too dusty, honestly. Oh my god. It is what it is.
00:01:55
Speaker
Shan will be joining us for these, so you will get to enjoy her lovely voice and
Introducing Shan and Her Insights
00:02:00
Speaker
insights. We will see you in the questions.
00:02:10
Speaker
Let's start with the end books. Shan, you want to take us in? All right.
Surprises in BL Shows: Hits and Misses
00:02:14
Speaker
First question today comes from Wen Kezhing Apologist, and they write, which show was the biggest surprise, positive or negative, for you this season and what made it surprising?
00:02:26
Speaker
Biggest surprise positive is definitely to Daemaru Kairi. I was not expecting to love an Omegaverse project this much. I was not really expecting to love a show that relied heavily on a toddler to be one of my favorite shows either. I had such a blast with that.
00:02:44
Speaker
My biggest surprise and negative, I think it's 23.5. I was not expecting that show to feel as disjointed as it was. I was not expecting Fawn's show to have the problems it was going to have in it at all. I was not expecting perfect, but I was not expecting the confusion I felt from that show.
Critique of 'My Strawberry Film'
00:03:11
Speaker
All right, Shan, biggest surprises of the season for you. I'll start positive. but I will shout out unknown. I did not expect a high quality Taiwanese BL to fall out of the sky, and it was quite a delight for me. That show gave me some proper brain rot for a while. I immediately went out and read the novel, and I was super into the weekly discussions. That was a super positive experience, even though the end of the show was a little bit disappointing.
00:03:36
Speaker
on the negative end. It was kind of a rough season. So there are so many I could talk about. But I want to give a special spotlight to one of the most baffling shows I've ever seen in my life. It's called love is like a cat. And this Korean and Thai BL collaboration.
00:04:04
Speaker
It wasn't the first time that happened, but it was promoted as if it was going to be kind of a big deal. I always watch Korean BL, and I'm very interested in these cross-country collaborations. So I went in, not necessarily expecting it a show of all time, but thinking that it would be an interesting project that would maybe make some interesting connections across those cultural traditions.
00:04:21
Speaker
No, that is not what happened. I was baffled every single week of that show about what it thought it was doing and why. The basic premise is that this Thai actor is afraid of dogs and
Call for Better Storytelling in BL Narratives
00:04:40
Speaker
he has to, for career reasons, go on this reality show where he works at an animal shelter.
00:04:47
Speaker
The thing about this show that is amazing is that they completely neglected the actual romance between the humans. There was never any point where you believed that these two people liked each other, but the love story between this actor and the dog that he was afraid of was actually kind of touching, but also extremely poorly accepted. One of the weirdest experiences of my life, I don't understand how that project got made. I can tell that the people who made it were similarly very disappointed with how it turned out because nobody promoted it. They really tried to release it as quietly as possible and none of the actors then had talked about it. One of the weirdest flops I have seen, just a kind of a big what the fuck to me, like how did that happen? How did this get made this way?
00:05:34
Speaker
Why was the story about the dog the best part of the show? It was a strange one. I'm just gonna go watch the end of Homeward Bound instead. I do recommend. I think you'll be better off if you're looking for good dog content. Wasn't there a Vietnamese cat BL that like... We're not gonna talk about it. That one was also real fucking weird. Taco milkshake did something cool and then a lot of other people thought they could get in on that and no, they cannot. They need to stop.
00:06:01
Speaker
Speaking of Korean BL and surprise disappointments, Boys Be Brave is also my near second disappointment because that was from the director who did our dating sim. So I went into that one super positively disposed towards it and did not have a great time.
00:06:20
Speaker
Well, for me, hmm. In terms of things that surprised me positively, even though love is better the second time around, did not end well. I still was quite surprised by how well the first two thirds of it held up. Negative surprise. Yeah, I gotta agree with, but it's definitely 23.5.
Challenges of Addressing Queer Issues in BL
00:06:45
Speaker
I...
00:06:46
Speaker
was anticipating this so much and I expected it to be good and it just wasn't. And I don't want to say much more about it because I think I said a lot about it on its own episode.
00:07:07
Speaker
Okay, Sean, what's our next question? Next question from Avor. How much has the categorization of My Strawberry Film as romance by Gaga, MDL, etc influenced your reception and rating? This is such a shady fucking question.
00:07:28
Speaker
I have not watched this one so y'all have to tell me why is it shady. My Strawberry Film is the final outing from Drama Shower. In both seasons of Drama Shower, I believe they attempted to do something original. The MBS team decided to do kind of like an indie coming of age type of film, but over the course of eight weeks, 23 minutes at a time. And it was boring as hell. What Eivor I believe is hinting at here is that they released it as a romance
00:08:03
Speaker
The BL viewing audience is going to be invested in this boy's closeted crush on his closest male friend and maybe navigating the drama of his friend having a crush on a mysterious girl who shows up and then there's a second girl who has a crush on our gay boy and they have to sort all of this out. There could have been some interesting stuff here particularly because Mystery Girl might be queer, but it's boring and it's moody in ways that film types like me can enjoy at a film festival, but not over the course of eight weeks. I don't mind a moody film that just hangs out in teenage malaise for a good 90 minutes. That can be
00:08:50
Speaker
and interesting emotional experience but my strawberry film being billed as a romance was extremely frustrating because none of the romances are really compelling and none of them succeed in a way that was interesting it just was not what we thought we were signing up for. And because we were constantly out of alignment with it, it was a deeply unsatisfying experience. I know Shan suffered through this with me. Shan, any commentary you want to offer here?
00:09:25
Speaker
I watch a lot of drama across all different genres. I can get down with a lot of different types of stories. So for me, the main problem with this show is not that it was miscategorized. The main problem with it is that it fucking sucked. The entire thing is designed to leave you unsatisfied in a way that I don't actually think supported its themes or ultimately delivered a message that was aligned with it being hosted on a queer platform.
Portrayal of Sex in BL Shows
00:10:00
Speaker
There was a backstory with one of the characters' mothers
00:10:03
Speaker
who had had these feelings for her female best friend that she thought were unrequited. She met a tragic end, she died. Later in the show, we find out that her best friend regrets and did return her feelings. So in this show about everybody liking somebody who doesn't like them back and a bunch of one-sided loves that all end in failure, the only requited love story was with the dead person who was not alive to know that her love was requited. I don't know what the show was trying to say with that, but what they communicated with the way that the story played out was that being queer is lonely and miserable and destined to end in despair. And I found that just such an offensive message in a show. It sucked.
00:10:58
Speaker
That was part of Drama Shower. I was like, what the fuck is this? On top of all of that, it also was just so fucking boring. It was such a slog. But because it was part of Drama Shower, some of us hung in there, trying to see what it was trying to do, trying to understand how it belonged in this lineup of projects. I do not know what the person who created this was trying to say, or if they thought they were saying something different than what ultimately was communicated by their story, but I hated it.
00:11:26
Speaker
but And that's all we're gonna say about that. It was an ignoble end for a very cool project.
00:11:42
Speaker
Let me change moods. This is from My Name is Not the Point. And they write, because BL is so big now and many of us are experiencing fatigue with some of the stories being told, is there a type of premise or trope or genre in BL that you find yourself gravitating towards? And if so, why?
00:12:00
Speaker
I'm gonna unpack the question a little bit. I am not experiencing fatigue necessarily with familiarity with BL. I'm experiencing fatigue with BL consistently ending on a shit note. I just desperately need them to just take any premise that they're trying to tackle seriously and complete it within the
Standout BL Sex Scenes: Realism and Chemistry
00:12:30
Speaker
expectations of the character motivations that they're committed to.
00:12:34
Speaker
or, but hopefully and, the narrative that they're trying to set up. I just desperately need the shows to be good more often than they are. It is so frustrating that so many of these shows just veer off of whatever course that they try to set us on. Some of them for commercial reasons, some of them for look how clever I am reasons,
00:13:01
Speaker
I don't really know. I just really need these shows to stop shitting the bed and I would be less tired. As for what I find myself gravitating towards, I am far more interested in queer life drama that also features romance than I am in queer romance in and of itself.
00:13:28
Speaker
Shan, you watch too many dramas? What type of premise trope or a genre are you drawn to in BL currently? Similar to you, Ben, it's not really about the genre or the premise for me. I can watch a good story about just about anything. So for me, it's really not about what the concept is. It's about how it's executed. My great frustration right now with a lot of the BL I'm watching is I feel like the story is the lowest priority.
00:14:02
Speaker
So many of these shows are more about promoting something, whether that be an actor or a couple or a brand, more than they're about telling good stories. And that's where my frustration lies. I will take anything you want to throw at me. Give me all of your ideas. Give me all of your concepts. I will watch the same basic formulaic rom-com eight billion times if you execute it well. I will also watch your super out there weird idea if you execute it well.
00:14:29
Speaker
For me, it's just about the execution. So I just really want to see BLs that care about story. I want to see BLs that understand that you need good writing to have a good story. That's where my hopes are right now for the genre. Nany, where are you sitting on this? I think I'm sitting in the corner with Sean. I am not somebody who gets fatigued by watching the same thing over and over if it's done really well. So it's not a question of premises or tropes or genres fatiguing me. It's a question of things needing to be excuses. On some level, I do enjoy rewriting some of these shots in my head after the fact, especially if the premise was strong to begin with, but I am also kind of annoyed that I have to do it in my head and I don't get to see it on the screen. So what I find myself gravitating towards?
00:15:26
Speaker
something that's well done and written all the way to the end. That would be nice. I just want to tell everybody stop trying to be surprising or water cooler worthy and just write a solid show.
00:15:51
Speaker
Okay, next question. Troubled Mind writes, I very much enjoy shows that exist in a so-called bubble, let's say our dating sim, and those that firmly don't, like the brilliant Marahuyo project.
00:16:05
Speaker
Still, I feel like there are cases of shows that want to have a cake and eat a cake in that regard. Keep things on the lighter side as if in a bubble, but also try tackling queer issues like homophobia, prejudices, et cetera, at the same time. This just doesn't sit right with me sometimes. So my question is, what do you think is the most challenging aspect for creators when they attempt to get outside the bubble? And what potential misdeeds would you still forgive and which are too much to overlook? Ben, you want to go first or last?
00:16:36
Speaker
Probably last, because I feel like I'm going to go on a rant.
Roles as Critics and the Impact of Commercialization
00:16:41
Speaker
We talked about this a lot on the show, and I'm probably going to rehash a lot. Before I dominate the conversation on this, I think I want to get some of your reactions first, NeNe. Hmm, let's see. What is the most challenging aspect for creators when they attempt to get outside of the bubble?
00:17:05
Speaker
I think tone is a big part of it. I think that's probably the thing that suffers most with especially creators who are accustomed to working inside of the bubble, trying to either straddle it or work outside of it. They don't get the tone of what they're doing quite right. And it's not to say that it can't be, you know, lighthearted or comedic or all of that, but it does, if you're going outside of the bubble, need to feel queer.
00:17:34
Speaker
And it doesn't always do that. What potential misdeeds would I forgive? Ooh. Be honest. Go ahead. You just thought of an answer right there.
00:17:50
Speaker
the hey Just say it. Say it with your chest. No, I wouldn't actually forgive that. I was thinking of something, but then I was like, no, really, would you forgive that? I'm like, no, no, I wouldn't. And no, I haven't in the past.
00:18:04
Speaker
What I won't forgive is getting the sex wrong, like getting how queer people interact in a sexual way, getting that wrong. I'm just like, m what are you doing? You don't know what you're talking about, or you're trying to appeal to an audience that this is not really for. Stop this. I don't like this. ah When we're talking about BL in particular, there's a lot of penetrative sex talk and penetrative sex action that goes on. And I'm just like, this is not where boys start. And whenever they start that way in a BL, especially one that's trying to be outside of the bubble, I'm like, no, this does not feel right. I don't like this. This is not correct.
00:18:45
Speaker
This is not how it would go. And I can't just kind of lose any sense of authenticity that the story may have had. I can't suspend my disbelief any longer. it just I lose it. What about Yishan? What do you think about the challenging aspects and potential misbeads?
00:19:03
Speaker
I really agree with the point that you just made in a narrative that is trying to be authentically clear, to be a little bit more rooted in a real world sensibility, not understanding how queer people actually engage with sex is a big immersion breaker, I guess. It kind of pulls you out. I think it's helpful to give a couple of illustrative examples of like where we've seen this before. Bad Buddy is the quintessential bubble not bubble show that actually did it very well.
00:19:30
Speaker
bad buddy exists in a world without homophobia, but they layered a very clear allegory for homophobia onto the story. And so you still had Pat and Prawn having to deal with a lot of the very same issues that they would have had in a homophobic world.
00:19:50
Speaker
because of this rift between their families and the unacceptability of their relationship. That's a very elegant way to tell a story where you don't have to get directly into homophobia, but you are still having the characters kind of experience the beats of homophobia in how it would affect their relationship.
00:20:08
Speaker
And then you have a show like Only Boo that tried to also straddle this line and did it very poorly. They struggled with, I think to your earlier point Nini, tone a lot in wanting to have this kind of like shiny, happy, fluffy show, but also have real stakes.
00:20:25
Speaker
and then wanting to just ignore those stakes and not deal with them whenever they got in the way. So there was a lot of conflicting information in the show about what mattered and what didn't. And it got in the way of the story ultimately and derailed the main narrative.
00:20:41
Speaker
When I think about what is challenging when you're trying to get outside the bubble, in Thai BL in particular, there is, I think, a dedication to keeping these stories relatively light and romance focused and wanting to always deliver happy endings. And that can often be very much in tension with trying to engage with the reality of homophobia. There are still a lot of cultural homophobia, and the shows that they make in the BL space have very intentionally skirted that for the most part. And so trying to venture into that space, into getting a little bit more real, but then also maintaining that tone of the shiny happy place and making sure that everyone gets a happy ending can often be in intentioned. That's where shows like Only Boo kind of go off the rails and really struggle. If you're going to deal with homophobia, you have to actually deal with it. And it might mean that the authentic ending of your story is not a typical romance ending.
00:21:38
Speaker
I think that's a really hard
Diffusion of BL Audiences and Fandom Challenges
00:21:40
Speaker
thing for most creators to do in a way that feels satisfying. I think in terms of what I can forgive or not, I do want to give credit to the shows that try to get outside this bubble more because they're trying to do something a little bit more difficult. I want to give credit to these shows for attempting things that have a higher degree of difficulty, attempting to build an authentic romance narrative in a less than ideal world. But there are certain things that you do have to make sure you get right. And for me, it comes back to that narrative integrity piece. It's not that there are specific acts or specific endings that I can never accept under any circumstances. It's more that whatever happens in the story and whatever the resolutions are, they do need to feel like an authentic possibility that springs from the conflicts that the story introduced. And what breaks a show for me is when they introduce conflicts rooted in homophobia that they then don't take seriously and just brush aside when they get too difficult to deal with. That is what breaks the fictional world immersion for me and makes the show feel like a failure.
00:22:50
Speaker
Ben, please start your rant. The issue when you go outside of the bubble is people with money are trying to make money off of BL, which means they're just trying to make money off of romance tropes that they can produce as cheaply as possible to maximize the fan engagement and then monetize the actors into advertising deals and fan events afterwards. That's how the market for this functions.
00:23:20
Speaker
The harsh way to say this is the audience is here for gay romance. They're not here for gay drama. They don't actually care about the lives of queer people. They're just here to enjoy some romance and then go about their lives. This is not meant as a sort of shiting for the people who are in the genre for romance exclusively.
00:23:46
Speaker
But it is one of the major contributing factors for me for why we have this tension between those of us who are here for queer drama and often will bounce from romances that are just kind of schlocky as a result. Trouble Mind brought up Our Dating Sim. Our Dating Sim is what we might call a technically in the bubble show because they don't say the words gay in that show.
00:24:11
Speaker
but it doesn't feel like a bubble show to me because there's no rationale for any of the movements of that story that makes sense if either boy was straight and existed in a world without homophobia. That story only works if you read them as queer. Dealing with this tension of how do we get funding to tell stories And then how do we balance the goals of the people with money, the audience that they think they're trying to reach, and maybe trying to tell the stories about queerness that matter to us. It's expensive to pay people and hire people to be on these sets. And it's hard to get the distribution deals you need because of some of the rules and such.
00:25:00
Speaker
It's a niche genre. What's like a very specific appeal. It does not get a lot of engagement. And if the margins are that thin, we're not going to see bravery that often in this because how does that translate into dollars for them? Do people who want to sell juice and toothpaste and cars and motorcycles and stickers and chips want to put their products alongside biting social commentary. I don't know, like we're in a global backslide into fascism right now. And we can feel money drying up and organizations shutting down and former allies being quiet when we need them. It's a rough time out here.
00:25:49
Speaker
It's hard when you're trying to juggle the goals of commercializing romance, the goals of commercializing pretty actors, and the goals of telling meaningful queer stories. It's very hard to really serve all of those goals really well. You can usually serve two of them, but not all three. It sucks.
00:26:20
Speaker
What, Miss Dee, it's what I forgive. Bad acting. The first thing I'm willing to forgive in a show that is really compelling is bad acting. Make It Right is the quintessential example of that. No, don't take on Michael Waggis. Look. They were so little. They were. They were.
00:26:45
Speaker
ah What is too much for me to overlook? Like a specific blend of sexual violence, I think. It doesn't come up as often these days, but I was here in some of the early days where there was a lot of, I can't hold back any more stuff that's not very pleasant to engage with. That's one that I just do not enjoy.
00:27:10
Speaker
I feel like you also tend to get particularly angry with shows when it feels like they steered away from the more queer direction that they could have headed in.
00:27:21
Speaker
That's a good point. Let me define that properly because I did get a little bit lost in my rant. There's a couple of key things I think that are at the heart of queer storytelling for me. One is being othered and recognizing that in yourself, oftentimes before other people or immediately after someone else clocks it. Like a big part of being queer is being queer, literally weird. You are not in step with the developmental progression that a lot of other people around you are on. There is something different about you. And it makes you feel separate from others as a result. If I don't feel that from at least one of the characters, I don't always feel like I connect to them. Another thing is if they're not out,
00:28:13
Speaker
Why are they not out? Because part of why you stay in the closet is because you are terrified of the massive social and economic changes you're about to face as a result of being out.
00:28:30
Speaker
Those are probably the two key things. It has to be the sense of being a othered and the real concern about not fitting in and possibly being discarded. That was a great question. Thank you for humoring my rant, Nini and Shan. I don't know how much of that you all will get to hear, but it was all amazing.
00:28:57
Speaker
One thing that Ben said that actually made me think what I could forgive, he said bad acting. Sometimes- You can't forgive bad acting. I don't think- Hold on. Where's the tape? Hold on. Is this you?
00:29:16
Speaker
Sometimes I will forgive bad acting. Under certain conditions. Yeah, under certain conditions. Well, one thing I will definitely forgive is a certain level of production quality. I will find a way to enjoy low production quality if the story is good enough. I agree. We try to meet a show where it's at. We really appreciate that some of these folks are out here trying to make good, queer stories on a shoestring budget, and we don't hold that against them. We hold everything else against them, looking real hard at you, Oxen Films.
00:29:53
Speaker
I don't want to talk about action films. Yes, but also my dear Gangsta Oop. That's all I'm going to say. Don't even try it. Here we go again. I'm sorry. I will be haunted by that orange scar makeup. Haunted. Ben has voted the gangster life at me twice in the last 24 hours. It's true. I mean, he's not wrong.
00:30:18
Speaker
ah
00:30:26
Speaker
Let's go to the next question, which is quite a humdinger. So this is long strap in folks. I'm gonna read it all and then we'll come back and answer it piece by piece. para alex oh eight Paralix0889 writes, I'm reeling from being whelmed by the end of four minutes. So I was thinking about the positives and I really enjoyed how sex was depicted and talked about in the series. Great gets picked up unexpectedly by time. And when they get home, Great very pointedly pauses and says he needs to shower first.
00:30:54
Speaker
and they potentially do a redo of that in the finale as well. Tonkla, a character who openly asks for raw sex twice and eventually gets it. Great having his own condoms and no shame about it. I really enjoyed that these characters are allowed to have ownership and pride and desire and life and characterization through their sex and attraction.
00:31:13
Speaker
even earlier in the year in 1D, 1D Good Day. There's a little moment when Cher exits the bathroom before going to bed with Ye, and to me, I could easily project a certain, the water's running clean and I'm ready for action in Cher's movements. So to make this into a question or three, do y'all have any standout, this is how real people engage in sex in reality instead of the perfect TV sex that BL and BL adjacent shows often lean into. Second,
00:31:41
Speaker
Favorite BL sex scenes in general? Third, which sex scenes have been y'all's worst either in execution or bad chemistry? So that's the full question. Let me take this piece by piece so that we can tackle all of it. First of all, ah we haven't talked about Four Minutes and Wanda Good Day specifically on the pod. So maybe we should just start there. Alex is suggesting that both of those shows were pretty good with their depictions of sex. And so maybe we should just talk a little bit about that first in our impressions.
00:32:10
Speaker
I mean, could I start with a like to hate it? Yeah, go for it, girl! I liked four minutes more, I think, than you two did. The ending wasn't everything that I wanted, but I was still pretty satisfied with it. One day a day, I fell off the rails about, what, halfway through and never got back on the rails. And I'm still pissed off when I think about it because it could have been so good. What was the reason I had to get that off my spirit before I actually engaged with the question? Hydro, baby.
00:32:49
Speaker
But in terms of how the sex is depicted in these two, I liked how Wendy tackled sex in the beginning. How they tackled a friends with benefits relationship and how they tackled them having a sexual relationship and speaking openly about sex and the way that they enjoyed sex and the things that they wanted to do. I liked that they showed them having different kinds of sex.
00:33:13
Speaker
I liked that they joked about sex and they had a good time with it. When things started getting confusing for them emotionally, it still didn't stop them from having sex, which I liked.
00:33:29
Speaker
Because so often these shows treat sex and romance or sex and love as these separate entities that somehow sex is sex and love is love and love and sex can't be intertwined in that way.
00:33:44
Speaker
And so that was the thing that I did enjoy about 1D, the fact that they intertwined sex and fun, energetic, engaging sex and love, not just soft focus, tender, touching, missionary. And then it went off the rails, but not going to dwell on that too much at this point.
00:34:06
Speaker
Four Minutes is a different show. It's not so much about the relationship between these characters and that's one of the reasons I think that I enjoyed it because I didn't see Four Minutes as a romance or anything involving a romance. These two characters bumped into each other, they had sex, they got way too entangled because of a host of other reasons.
00:34:28
Speaker
Tungla and Korn had a very interesting dynamic that involved like a lot of power dynamics that I feel like the show didn't entirely engage with and I would have liked to see more of.
00:34:41
Speaker
And then Tonkla and Nguyen and the way that they had sex also showed a lot of interesting power dynamics that were flipped from Tonkla and Korn's. And I liked watching that. I liked seeing the show tackle sex sort of outside of the lens of love. So I did enjoy that about it. But to me, Four Minutes was not about romance. So the conversations about sex were a completely different direction.
00:35:04
Speaker
I am the sex and story girl. I'm the person who wants to see like, what is the sex telling us about these characters and their relationship and their power dynamics. And there are all these different things. And I got like a smorgasbord of that, I think, in four minutes. So I quite enjoyed how these two shows actually tackle sex.
00:35:22
Speaker
I agree with that. I have many issues with Four Minutes, but none of them were about the use of sex in the show. I thought that the show was very smart in how it used sex to inform character. I really appreciate when a show that is about hot young adult men who have sexual desire, lets them actually have sex and doesn't put weird purity principles around at the context in which they can do that. And so I just appreciated how real that felt to Alex's point in the question like that they actually did address in some of those sex scenes actual
00:35:58
Speaker
important stuff like sexual health and the way things actually work and having to clean up and all of that stuff that is normally skipped over in romance. I thought they were pretty good about that and that was one of the aspects of the show that I liked a lot despite thinking that the whole thing didn't hold together all that well.
00:36:14
Speaker
One Day Good Day I think a little bit less credit there, though I do appreciate that they acknowledged casual sex as a thing. I thought they also got a little weird about it in places where suddenly the two main characters stopped having sex for reasons that never made any sense to me whatsoever, but they eventually skipped over that. There was just a lot of weirdness in that show in general, but I do agree with Nina's point about the way that They depicted sex as fun. I think that's something we don't see enough of. We don't see enough either of sex between committed couples. And I thought that was a really great part of what Wanda Good Day did with Oye and Cher. Showed them as a long-term happy couple that had a really active sex life and really enjoyed that aspect of their relationship together. We don't get to see much of that. I really appreciated that aspect of that show, despite really sharing Nini's ire about the way that the story went.
00:37:06
Speaker
best day I'm so mad. You have to understand folks that Nini and I were so invested in this show because we were so excited for it. And then when it went bad, it was just so disappointing. ah Ben, how about you? It's difficult. I think I care oftentimes less about the physical mechanics of the sex when there's something interesting happening with the characters in the moment. I feel like I only really get caught up in the mechanics of some of the sexual stuff when they're fucking up the story around it.
00:37:52
Speaker
I do like when the shows represent the kind of sex that guys are probably having with each other. Like I don't mind how much penetrative sex that they want to do if it's like Alex says where you see guys dealing with some of the physical preparatory realities of that.
00:38:11
Speaker
Why don't we get into some of the other questions? Because we're starting to get more into specifics. The next specific question that Alex asked is, do we have any stand out? This is how real people engage in sex and reality instead of the perfect TV sex that BL and BL adjacent shows often lean into. Shout out to Alex for giving us this chance to talk about knock knock boys.
00:38:31
Speaker
Hey.
00:38:36
Speaker
It is definitely the standout Asian BL of this year for what does sex look like in reality. There was a but what I consider iconic and it was iconic to the tiny community of us who watched the sex scene between characters Almond and Latte who were having sex for the first time and it was just a great and funny and compassionate comedy of errors of them trying to work through the awkwardness and find the right positions like get comfortable with each other it was a very charming and funny scene I haven't seen anything like that previously in BL usually they're very preoccupied with trying to make things look sexy this was not sexy but it was very loving and I thought that was such a great sex scene
00:39:18
Speaker
That sequence really does a great job of showing people like communing in the act and trying to take care of each other and deal with their nerves and all the other stuff that they bring to the table. I also like the lead up to that where Almond talked to his friends about how he was feeling. It was nice that 10Y and Peek also finally let go of a lot of stuff that was hanging over them and they were far more relaxed around each other for the rest of the show, clearly having a good time.
00:39:46
Speaker
And I like the contrast. Their characters are older. They're both sexually experienced. So like sex for them was a more relaxed affair all around. They weren't confused about what to do. Almond and Latte are younger. It was Almond's very first time and it was Latte's first time with someone he was in love with. So they were more nervous. You know me, I'm always going to go to the Philippines. The ones that really stand out to me, the Game Boys movie, clearly.
00:40:12
Speaker
I think that one felt very real. The season two cut is a better version of the movie. And then there's a lot of these Filipino quarantine dramas that I think did really well. Quarantine's made me outside, got me into the headspace of yes, this is how something like this would go.
00:40:36
Speaker
To finish off on Alex's question, none of these shows are ever going to have somebody talking about prep in a meaningful way that isn't like a quick line. Like, nobody's going to make a booty water joke in these shows. So. Yeah, we can only get so close to reality. We can't be unrealistic with our expectations. They ain't making that joke. No.
00:41:07
Speaker
All right. So let's transition to the next part of Alex's question, which is what are our favorite BL sex scenes in general? It's always going to be for me, Ken Porsche episode seven in the bathroom, the mutual masturbation scene. That's one of my favorites of all time. That's a good highlight. I have a lot of issues with Beyond Cloud. That is not one of them. Yeah, Beyond Cloud is good. I really liked the way that the scene is constructed and what it says about the characters and where they're at.
00:41:37
Speaker
in the moment and how it evolves as it goes along emotionally. And then the fact that it is a mutual masturbation scene and not and a penetrative sex or an oral sex scene, which is the most give and take that you can do simultaneously as 2K men. I think it was really good and it's one of my favourites.
00:41:59
Speaker
There's some pretty decent examples of really good sex in the genre. I think in terms of other Thai BL, I would shout out shows from Me Mind Why, which are made by a person whose name I will pronounce, May.
00:42:14
Speaker
Y'all, we got told we've been pronouncing it wrong, but we cannot make the mommy pun. I'm sorry. We just can't do it. I'm not telling her mommy I'm not doing it. We're just going to have to look at it. So what I love about her shows is I think that they use sex very well, both as part of the narrative and as part of characterization and as legitimately part of the romance art.
00:42:39
Speaker
Her shows believe that couples who are in love also have hot sex, which might not sound that revolutionary, but is in this genre, believe me, because most shows only allow hot sex scenes between characters who are in a toxic relationship or characters who are about to break up. That is not true in her shows. You see hot, loving sex before and after relationships start. You see casual hot sex. You see committed, loving hot sex in her shows. And she really stands apart on that. Her shows do in the genre. So it's something I definitely want to shout out.
00:43:19
Speaker
turn type, love in the air. I thought wedding plans, sex scenes were fantastic. They really allow you to see sex as just a normal part of the romance arc and not something that is separated out and othered in any kind of way. We cannot overstate when it comes to the work she does that in most cases, her characters have the best sex after they get together. We don't see a sudden drop off after they get together.
00:43:49
Speaker
Love C, which we just finished recently, was a great example of that. The sex got better as they got closer and as they fell more in love. And that's pretty common for the trajectories of her romances. Another example that I'll bring up, and I did clear this already with Ben, so you know it's coming, Ben. So pricks yourself. Let me just mute now.
00:44:11
Speaker
ah Oh God. I think we can't talk about good sex in BO without talking about history three make our taste count. Taiwan is known for very good intimacy scenes and it is the pinnacle of what they can do when all cylinders are firing in terms of having sex scenes that are part of character. that are part of the narrative arc, that are part of the relationship development and that are very well performed between actors with extremely good chemistry. Just all around fantastic and Make Our Days Count has the best sex scenes in Taiwanese BL. It's just true. There's controversy around that show. Understandably, it's one of my favorites. I know a lot of people don't like it for very fair reasons, but the sex scenes in that show and its depiction of
00:44:57
Speaker
intimacy between people who are falling in love is just top-notch. Man, Sunbo and she gang in the gym bathroom. Ooh! Quality. I think about it all the time still. It just comes into my mind and I'm like, ooh, yes, that happened. I mean, it's so much dead as well. The fact that it happens in the gym bathroom after hours. This feels legit. Like, this feels like something that could really happen.
00:45:23
Speaker
When we talk about Taiwanese BL and its style with sex scenes, it feels very raw, I think, in a way that a lot of the more so stylized shows don't. It hits harder because it feels like something that could really be happening, and it feels like it's the way that it would be happening.
00:45:41
Speaker
There's great examples of that kind of intimacy in History 3 Trapped. There's the bandage kissing scene, which is one of the most intimate scenes we've had in ah in a while. They don't actually have sex in that moment, but man, is that one of the most charged scenes in that whole series. And then there's the birthday cake scene after Meng Xiaofei's been gone all day. There's the We Best Love 2 scene that everybody has feelings about that I think is great.
00:46:09
Speaker
I have so many feelings about it, and they're all positive. I love that scene. I like that it transgresses the line because it's a discussable transgression of the line. And people who just dismiss it because of that, I think that you're missing out, honestly. Well, try not to spoil it, because we know a lot of you all haven't seen it. And you should. It's good! You gotta watch We Best Love, both parts. What is Sam and you doing right now? Hold on.
00:46:37
Speaker
And then, I'm always going to have to bring this up. A non-sex scene that feels like a sex scene is Tay and Oyu on the bedroom floor in I Told Sunset About You, Episode 3. Scratch in the back. I've been transported. I'm going to need a minute. I can't even bring it up without it entering my brain. It is so ingrained in there. You want to know how good that scene is? I have basically memorized all of the trivia around that scene.
00:47:07
Speaker
You know everything about how it was made. Like they had to film it twice. They filmed the show and then during the edit process, didn't like the version that they got and brought the boys back. And that was really stressful for them. They had to redo their homework again. There was a ton of pressure on them. They came out amazing. So thank you for your service, everybody on those creative teams.
00:47:28
Speaker
We obviously got to talk about Japan here too because they are often pushing the envelope in BL on what kind of sex can be depicted on screen. Obviously the Pornographer series is a prime example of using sex to inform character, to move narrative, to tell us something about the relationship and where it is at every stage where we're seeing them engage in physical intimacy. The best sex scenes I have ever seen in a romance still in that series.
00:47:57
Speaker
All the sex is complicated than that one, too. Except for one that wasn't, where I was so relieved. Yeah, the one you were waiting for. ah Literally, I watched the novelists, and we did the prequel in Mood Indigo. And I'm like, that's enough.
00:48:14
Speaker
I've had enough. It's enough of this dark sex. I had enough of this. I need Haruhiko to suck Ryo's dick right now. And within 15 minutes of the movie, that's exactly what happened. In a car. It was in the special, the 15 minute special. He finished mood in the go and he said, he needs to suck his dick right now. And I was like, best he hits play. This is the first thing that happened.
00:48:42
Speaker
It was Mickey Koichiro understands me. That series really understands how sex relates to the relationship arc and where the characters are emotionally. And it always got every single beat exactly right. There's a lot of crazy good sex scenes in that series. There's a lot of wild sex. The one where the chemistry is the most off the charts is maybe one of the ones in Mood Indigo. But my favorite scene in that whole series, my favorite sex scene is the one at the end of Playback, the movie.
00:49:13
Speaker
e It is the culmination of those character arcs and it is so Perfectly executed and they chose to not have it be a penetrative sex act They chose to have it be a moment of very deep emotional intimacy where hand jobs were exchanged Oh, it was just fucking perfect And I can't believe how many of you haven't watched it or haven't finished it because you couldn't find playback Please come tell me if you need help. I will give it to you. You've got to watch it
00:49:45
Speaker
When Japan is on game, they're on game. I think of about things like the Utsufu Shikari movie. I think about things like The End of the World with You. I have some great scenes from the same team that did The Novelist and Mood Indigo in Pornographer.
00:50:01
Speaker
for like a couple that we saw even this year, like love is better the second time around and perfect propose, I think also tackled sex really well. I think about the corn and mouse dreams of cheese all the time. And that is a dark tale. That is a dark tale that uses sex very well. It does. I agree. I agree.
00:50:24
Speaker
There's a great one in Jacko Frost. The problem with a lot of the Japanese ones is like if you're seeing a great Japanese sex scene, the guys are probably about to break up, unfortunately. Except for anographer. Except for anographer. Watch it. I'm not kidding. I'm not at the end of the world with you either because the best one is the one in the car and that's right before they get back together. We owe him so much.
00:50:46
Speaker
Let's put Grand Green All in the conversation now. Oh my god! We really should though. He say fucks Mr. Unlucky in that movie.
00:51:00
Speaker
Oh, we lost it, friends and y'all if you don't go. It's a horror BL movie, it's on Gagga Ula. If you have watched a lot of Japanese BL, you should absolutely watch it because you will be fucking delighted. But you know, all the usual warnings that come with a straight up horror film.
00:51:25
Speaker
Let's get to the last part of Alex's question, which is, which sex scenes have been y'alls worst either in execution or bad chemistry? We have to acknowledge that despite the sheer volume of BL this current panel has watched, they actually don't have sex on screen in a lot of these shows.
00:51:46
Speaker
And so there are things that I have taken more umbrage with in shows that didn't even have the sex. Like, as much as I love Make It Right, Peek was not a great actor at the time and was clearly nervous to be around, boom, for the intimate scenes they had to do. That stands out.
00:52:03
Speaker
I feel like what it comes down to is do the actors go for it or not and for what quantity of go for it. There are always actors who are gonna go for it and go two over the top and it just doesn't feel genuine because they're not willing to sit in the moment. So they're going hard but it just feels like people smashing together. It doesn't feel like it's being acted.
00:52:29
Speaker
Less than bestie. bestie. Game names. Let me finish my thought here. And then there are ones where it's too soft. You're telling me that these people have this welling up of emotion or sexual desire, whatever it is. And the way that they touch each other in those moments just does not feel like that. It does not feel desirous. It does not feel overwhelmed. It doesn't feel any of those things. It just feels robotic.
00:52:59
Speaker
hate that. Basically anything where I feel like the character of the scene does not match emotionally and physically where the characters are, I don't enjoy. As actors, you've taken me out of the scene because I can't buy it anymore. I see the actor at that point. I see the actor hesitating. I don't see the character in the moment. All right, name those names.
00:53:24
Speaker
so and i can't wait No, no ma'am. The question was which scenes? You gotta at least name some shows. Y'all go first and I will come back around. What about Playboy, NeNe? no it There you go. The gag sponsor.
00:53:43
Speaker
yeah There is literally nothing about Playboy that I ever want to think about again. Let's forget that that ever happened. And it could have been so good. You think about your list. I have an answer to this. Go ahead, Bestie. Say what you need to say. I did not live through both Big Dragon and Sunset X vibes to keep my mouth shut about this issue. I watched both of those shows. Why did you them, friend?
00:54:14
Speaker
I'll tell you why. And listen, I have no beef with Mo's and Bank. They seem like nice dudes. Great for them. I'm happy for them that they seem like they have good lives. They're out there doing their thing. Cool. But I do have beef with their shows. And I'll tell you why. Because both of these shows were marketed to me as if they were going to be mature, dark stories that involved a lot of actually sexy sex. And neither of them delivered on that promise.
00:54:42
Speaker
Big Dragon at least had some halfway decent sex scenes when it started before it suddenly devolved into being random BL fluff right in the middle. It started as enemies hate fucking. And then by episode two, they were like, actually wear them up. And I was like, what the fuck? That is not what I was promised. So anyway, those sex scenes at least had a little bit of birth to them, even though the story was a mess. Sunset X vibes. And I have learned that that's how you're supposed to pronounce it, by the way.
00:55:09
Speaker
Nope. Terrible. Just no. If you haven't watched this show, please don't. It's not good. It is not worth your time. It is a mess and a half. The sex scenes in particular were so disappointing because, first of all, they decided to do some weird blushing maiden stuff that felt like it had no business being in this story. I had no idea why they were doing that.
00:55:30
Speaker
And then on top of that, the sex scenes were not particularly tied to character or story. They didn't tell us anything really about who these people were or anything about their relationship. They were just inserted almost like they were PPL product placement breaks.
00:55:45
Speaker
It's like, oh, time for a sex break. They didn't do anything in the story. They were not narratively important. And they also were just not well performed. Again, I have no beef with these actors. There are many reasons why they might not have performed these sex scenes well, even though they have in the past done a better or at least adequate job at that. But these sex scenes were uncomfortable. They looked like they were filmed in a rush. There were strange edits in a lot of them. The kissing looked awkward. There were awkward angles being used. It was such a strange show because it didn't deliver on story. It didn't deliver on the romance plot. It didn't deliver on the sex scenes. I had no idea what it was actually trying to do. What I'm trying to get at here is that you can't just go out in the world and say, sexy BL coming your way. It's going to be amazing. And then deliver this tepid
00:56:41
Speaker
garbage, the audience is not going to stick around because you say that there are some explicit sex scenes that are poorly executed. While we're on the subject, we should mention that another TyBL just tried this trick Battle of the writers suddenly taking a pause to re-edit their episode and put out the longest, most explicit sex scene by far in the show in an attempt, it seems, to attract an audience back to the show and get people talking about it again. I think people did watch that sex scene. I don't think they watched the show though. We sure did. With popcorn, rewound it and watched it again.
00:57:22
Speaker
You can't just expect having NC-17 scenes in your show to carry it anymore. There is too much good content in the genre now. That was a rant perhaps that you didn't ask for, Alex, but that's my answer. Big Dragon and Sunset X Vibes failed on this test.
00:57:41
Speaker
I am always the worst person to ask about these things, because if something's not good, I don't catalog it. I don't usually hold grudges against BL for being bad at sex, and so there's a lot of awkward sex scenes that I've forgotten.
00:58:01
Speaker
I don't remember really enjoying the sex scenes in shows like Nity Man because I don't even remember what happened. I just remember just going, that's bad. And then I just moved on from my life at that point. Of the things we talked about on this show this year.
00:58:18
Speaker
probably the like worst one TM was the one we dialed in on when we talked about unknown and that isn't because the actors weren't willing to execute the scene with each other it's that whatever that they were coached into doing didn't translate well into what was edited together in the scene that we got. They didn't really build towards their sex in a way that completed the narrative arc they were on with the older brother. Those are the ones that I tend to remember more than like, oh, those actors were like biting each other's lips. What the hell? None of that ever sticks with me because I watch too much. I'm just like, whatever. Shuffle on.
00:59:02
Speaker
Maybe like back in the day, you would probably be like, um, what the duck? Because I do not remember the leads doing a good job on that show at all. You don't need to.
00:59:17
Speaker
I'm to go for a quote unquote safe choice. Cause I just don't feel like having many the girls come for me for coming for their boys. ah I want to hear the answer. Speak the truth on the show. I just trash both ways. Say what needs to be said.
00:59:32
Speaker
I'ma just lay it out here and the girls are gonna have to come for me. I'm sorry. I love Frist and Cowtown. They did one good sex scene and only friends. I don't think the rest of them were good. Yes, Bestie, speak the truth! Let's speak truth with a powerful fanbase! Yes! Kill him, Bestie! Tell the truth!
01:00:00
Speaker
I have never enjoyed a June Dunk sex scene. I sure haven't. Nope. I still haven't watched any of their shows because I do not care. And ah the third one, the safe one, is none of the sex scenes in between us were any good. Ooh. OK, expand on that. I feel like most people think the first couple episodes of that show are it's saving Grace because of the sex scenes.
01:00:29
Speaker
No, because I don't buy either of them, really. It's the acting. It's the acting for me. Okay, this is great. Nini Unleashed. I love it. Oh my god, I'm gonna get cancelled. Good. Good, we deserve it. Let's let them try to cancel too. Let's let them try.
01:00:51
Speaker
New Subwaj does get lucky sometimes and has actors who do okay together. A couple of times they've had decent bed scenes in his shows. Like I think the My Only 12% one was actually pretty decent. That was a decent one. Into an earth heavy of chemistry. I think that the married sex scene in, uh, oh god, what's that force book one? Boss Baby. Boss on the babe? I always call it Boss Baby. Boss Babe! Where's that Boss Baby tweet?
01:01:21
Speaker
Force and both is so good in Boss Baby. Let me stop calling us Boss Baby, a boss and a babe. We used to watch hits on one from time to time. Most of the time, I don't like the way that he directs sex scenes, but my only 12% was good. I had a lot of beef with Only Friends, but I do think the car scene between Force and Nia's characters was still a compelling sequence. In the whole show, that was the best sex scene. People were not ready for that conversation, but it's the truth.
01:01:51
Speaker
followed by the Neo and Mark scenes. Yeah, Neo and Mark were good in that show. Because they went for it, but they didn't go for it in like a, oh, we're going for it way. They went for it in an actual acting way.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yes, you can see them fucking with each other the whole time. Each one was trying to outdo the other one in each scene. And I was like, all right, guys, I get it. You're both athletes. It's great for GMM TV shows, I think, to deliver truly good sex scenes because there's just too much other nonsense getting in the way. But it does happen. I still think one of the best, it's not really a sex scene, I guess, but a prelude to sex scene is Patton Prawn in episode 11 of Bad Buddy. They just nail the anticipation and the heat of it. So the point, you don't even have to see the actual sex to feel like you just saw a really good sex scene. That one and the one night stand and Moonlight Chicken.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's another one where they just nailed the anticipatory tension that can also create like a really memorable scene that doesn't actually have to explicitly depict anything. And I think that's maybe the thing to think about here. It's not just the fact of a scene being super explicit that actually makes it sexy. And a lot of times shows are putting out these scenes that all they have going for them is that they're super explicit, but they're not nailing the emotions, they're not nailing the characters, they're not getting the chemistry and the movement and the heat right, and so it's all empty. ah An example of one that had us in a lot of the early part of the sex scene, but maybe not all of it, is the episode four ghost house, ghost house scene, because that has really good buildup tension. The legs. Another example, they don't actually have sex in the show. A lot of that was because it
01:03:31
Speaker
Quarantine protocols again the Philippines is the kiss that they have in boys lockdown I think that has really good building tension to it because of the Mask mandate at the time and I think that carries a really specific day layer to it that I thought was really compelling The problem is One a lot of these shows don't have sex too when they do have sex a lot of it's kind of bad the sex being bad isn't so standout that we keep an ongoing list of grievances for yourself bestie i got my grudges you're better at grudges than me i'm too busy to be having grudges it i always got do not ask for my attention it's not good for you
01:04:24
Speaker
Nini, what question did you want to ask? What is the best sex scene you've ever seen in a terrible show? Oh, interesting. Good sex in a bad show. Can I be mean and just say, make our days count? and No, you can't. I'm still mad. I'll never not be mad. You got to think about an actual bad, like a poorly made show that does sex well. Why are you?
01:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the answer. Not to be mean to the why are you team? Why are you got crushed by the pandemic now? That show is probably not going to be good anyway, but it's not their fault that they're set. Basically got shut down. Yeah, that's a really good answer to that, because Saint and Zee, that was a moment. I still think about Saint sucking on Zee's thumbs all the time. It's so memorable. They had such good chemistry. That show is a trash fire, but boy.
01:05:29
Speaker
There's also some really goofy montage of Sex and Destiny Seeker. Shan got that far in. I watched the whole thing. I watched all of Destiny Seeker. It was oddly charming. It wasn't a particularly good show, but like there were aspects of charm to it and they did well on the sex.
01:05:46
Speaker
On that front, I would shout out City of Stars, which a lot of people I don't think have watched. It's a show from this year of Ty Paul. And I couldn't really say that it's a good show. The production values are low. It's got some green actors, but the sex was surprisingly great. Really well used in the narrative arc, really well used in the relationship development and very enthusiastically performed.
01:06:11
Speaker
Thank you, Alex, for getting us to rant about sex scenes in BL for over an hour. We need to get it out of our system. We need to get some things off our chest, clearly. I'm going to end on this particular note. We need to see more people behaving like the Me Mind Why team.
01:06:30
Speaker
This trend towards really chased B.L. or B.L. that's only willing to use sex if it feels like it's leading into something negative is not satisfying, especially when sex is part of your storytelling. Do better!
01:06:53
Speaker
We've got a comment really that came into our inbox from user contextual. I want to be clear that that's C-U-N-T contextual. Oh yes. Classic Tumblr name. A plus.
01:07:07
Speaker
Props for a fantastic username. They write, just dropping by to say, you guys make my life better. ah I listen to all your episodes, even for those shows I haven't watched and I can't understate how much the conversation has taught me about media criticism and QL history. So thank you so much for all your hard work. Very nice comment. Thank you, Contextual. Thank you so much for the comment, Contextual. And we wanted to use it as a frame to talk a little bit about media criticism This is the first time I feel like the BL bubble has really popped. BL hasn't sucked this hard since 2018. A lot of people weren't in the streets with us in 2018. They have no memory of this. A lot of folks joined during COVID. 2019 was a really good year for BL. A lot of people's faves are from their year.
01:07:56
Speaker
2020 was a good year despite the lockdown. 21 was a solid year, 22 was a solid year. I had a great time last year in 23 and I do not know what's going on this year. This is a good place for us to talk about like what is the role of a critic? For me, a critic is not a shill. It is not my goal or job to cheerlead shitty shows My goal as a critic is to have a consistent lens and perspective from which I write that the listeners and readers can understand so that when they're reading my takes they understand why I'm reacting the way I am. There are quite a few critics who I follow who I often disagree with
01:08:50
Speaker
But I like to read their perspectives because they're consistent. I know exactly where they're writing from and that helps inform whether or not I might want to go see a movie in theaters or wait for it to come home. So when I'm reacting to shows on this podcast and on my blog, I am not here as a fangirl for BL. I am here as a queer cinephile. And so I'm here reacting because I want more English speaking people to engage with what's happening in these various Asian communities. As a result, when shit is good, you will hear me screaming, this shit is good. But you will also hear me saying, that shit is bad. The critic's job is to communicate to the audience who's listening to them
01:09:45
Speaker
why shit might be good or bad as a means of helping them decide what might be worth their time to engage with. Anything else is just motherfucker sitting around chatting about nothing. And that is not what I'm about.
01:10:03
Speaker
I agree with a lot of what Ben just said. I don't really think about media criticism as clearly as Ben does in terms of bringing people to the genre and trying to recommend shows. I do that sometimes. I definitely like to yell about it when I really like something. But for me, I get a lot of personal enjoyment and pleasure out of breaking down stories, how they work, what makes them good, what makes them not so good. I like to Approach media through thinking about what the components of the story are and how they're working together and I get honestly a lot out of Thinking about and talking about shows that don't work that well because that helps me learn too So I don't really have Stan loyalty to any show
01:10:48
Speaker
I could start out loving a show and if it goes off the rails for me, I'm going to say something about that and I'm going to try to unpack why and talk about it. Even if I really like an actor or a pair that's in a show that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to think that their show is great. It's great when that happens, but it often doesn't. And I really don't agree with the idea that the only way to support something is to cheerlead it uncritically. I've never agreed with that. That's just not how I interact with media. Bringing a lens of critique and taking the shows seriously and talking about them seriously is how I show respect and love to the media that I enjoy. I'm always going to kind of show up that way when I'm interested in any kind of media that I'm watching.
01:11:32
Speaker
We've talked a little bit about the shift that we've been feeling in the genre. This is not new. It's just maybe the level of intensity feels like it's shifting towards commercialization and just selling product is the primary motive for most of these shows.
01:11:48
Speaker
and has very much crowded out the motive around good storytelling in a lot of cases. That has been the shift that I have most keenly felt, and that has particularly been very pronounced for me in Thai BL. I don't know if that's actually a uniquely Thai media thing. It might just be that that's where most BL still sits. Thai production companies produce vastly more BL than any other BL producing countries at present.
01:12:14
Speaker
One of the things that I noticed that I was talking with Twig about is that there has been a real dearth of high quality content coming out of other countries besides Thailand. In Korean BL, we have had a significant reduction in output, not necessarily in the number of shows, but in like the quality and length of shows that we've been getting significantly less this year than in the previous couple of years.
01:12:38
Speaker
We've gotten fewer good shows from Taiwan. Japan actually, conversely, has been producing more BL, but with a steep increase in output, there has not been as consistent of a quality. And so we're now getting Japanese BLs that let us down in ways that we're not used to happening with Japan. It's felt a little bit like a transitional year to me.
01:12:59
Speaker
This last few months in particular, I think there have been the confluence of shows that have started really strong and then gone off the rails. That always feels really frustrating to me because I hate to get invested in something that then lets me down. That's way worse to me than something being just kind of bad from the start, from the whole way through.
01:13:16
Speaker
I'm still happy to be engaging with the genre so much. I'll keep doing it in the way that I always have. And I'm just hopeful that we'll still get a decent ratio of shows that are interested in storytelling compared to some that are not. It's very interesting to hear you all talk about your critical philosophy. I'm kind of all over the map on this stuff. I enjoy watching the shows and talking about the shows and analyzing the shows.
01:13:46
Speaker
And I also enjoy letting some of the shows wash over me. I'm not a consistent critic. Sometimes I do feel like a show is more like me putting on my critical hat and wanting to look at it in terms of, okay, what is this technically doing? What is happening here? And then sometimes I don't want to do that with a show.
01:14:11
Speaker
Either it gets me in the hard place to a place where I don't feel like I either can or want to turn that lens on it. It comes down to me for me on what the show is doing for me. There are some shows which I can say are probably objectively not great.
01:14:30
Speaker
But I'm enjoying the critical aspect of it because I get to puzzle out in my head, okay, what exactly is not working here? And really get into the nitty-gritty of it. There's stuff that's not great that I don't want to do that with because I'm just having such a good time. There's stuff that's good that I want to put my critical hat on. And there's stuff that's good that I don't want to do that either. I'm really all over the map when it comes to the idea of a critical philosophy. And it really just depends on the show.
01:14:57
Speaker
One of the things about getting all this additional volume, all these stories upon stories upon stories that are happening, is that the more we get, the more diverse and diffuse the audience gets. And I think that's maybe some of what's being struggled with as well. There are still shows that we're all watching and all enjoying.
01:15:21
Speaker
but increasingly I feel like there are shows that are sort of, okay this is speaking to this particular person or these one or two or this group of particular people and not this other group of people. And I'm just talking about this when he's talking about Tadaima Okairi that once all the people who weren't going to be interested in it faded away, he had such a good time discussing with with the people who were there because they wanted to be there. I feel like this is something we talked about at the end of last year as well.
01:15:48
Speaker
The number of shows that is really a full fandom experience is shrinking every time, every season, every year, and things are getting more stratified, more diffuse, more separate. I don't necessarily know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a thing that's happening.
01:16:10
Speaker
there's always gonna be, at least I hope that there's always gonna be those shows that we are all really agreeing on, all enjoying all like, yeah, this is knocking it out of the park on all the quadrants, the various quadrants that we hold there. And we can talk about them from that space of we are enjoying this for very different reasons, but we are all enjoying it rather than sort of talking across each other across purposes because we are either enjoying it for a reason. That is exactly why another person is not enjoying it, if that makes sense. So that's kind of where I'm sitting right now. Yes, the fandom experience is kind of
01:17:00
Speaker
separating into its little nooks which is in some ways not as fun because there's not as many people to talk to about the shows when you really like something but I hope that we're still gonna get stuff that's gonna let us all come together. The hard part about being a critic this way is you have to be there for a lot of the stuff. It's hard to do good critical work behind the zeitgeist. You need to be on the front lines with the viewers reacting in real time like that's the experience and so you really want to be there for the shit that's going on and it is disheartening as a viewer to start a show having a good time and then have your reactions become grumpier from week to week it's not fun it burns out the audience too like they're not having fun with that either
01:17:59
Speaker
I don't want that to be the default expectation of the genre. It is not my goal when I start watching a show to rag on it. It's not how I want to spend my time. I want this to be fun, truly. And I'd like for it to start being fun, consistently, again.
01:18:31
Speaker
Clearly, we need to rein in questions from Alex. I feel like we spent 50 minutes talking about Alex. Alex is talking about sex work over an hour. This is ridiculous. I just want you all to know that I was silenced on this podcast and not everything I said was allowed to be aired. I mean, some of the things that you said, bestie, were a little on the border line.
01:18:57
Speaker
Thank you all again for sending us in your questions. We do look forward to them and they often lead to really interesting discussions for us. If you're curious about more, our inbox will be open after we finish this current season. I mean, how much after are we talking about? I know I've gotten really bad at this. I gotta get better. Okay, we're gonna try to be better about this. We're gonna try. Like any other blog, we will get to your asks when we get to them.
01:19:23
Speaker
when we get to them. But we know that y'all love us, and y'all will stay tuned and wait. Alright, and with that, we out. Say bye to the people then. Peace!