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Going High-Low with Taiwan
121 Plays4 months ago
It’s been awhile since we checked in on Taiwan, and the latest offerings have really run the gamut in terms of quality. Ben, NiNi, and Shan sat down to discuss the state of Taiwanese BL via two recent shows, Anti Reset and Unknown.
Episode transcript available here.
00:00:00 Welcome
00:01:15 Introduction
00:02:11 Anti Reset and VBL
00:13:13 Unknown the Series
00:20:16 Unknown: The Pseudo Incest Trope
00:27:53 Unknown: San Pang, Li Li, and Family in the Narrative
00:35:48 Unknown: The Ending Stumble
00:43:32 Unknown: Adapting the Da Ge Novel
00:46:15 Unknown: Final Thoughts and Ratings
00:51:53 Whither Taiwanese BL?
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Transcript
Introduction to Drunk Licker Podcast
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation about BL, aka the Drunk Licker Podcast. And there it is. I'm Ben. I'm Nini. We're your drunk, rippling uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs. 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 them. I review from a queer media lens. And I review from a romance and drama lens. So she like cracked out takes and really intense emotional analysis.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse, if you generally just love simping, there is a lot of simping on this podcast. We are the Show For You!
Taiwanese BL Series Overview
00:01:16
Speaker
And we're back. This week we will be discussing the state of Taiwanese BL by highlighting two projects that recently finished for us. Sean is here with us. Say hi, Sean. Hello, people. Sean has to be here because y'all know I don't watch that much time in this video. I watch it all. We're going to be talking about the sci-fi B.O. anti-reset, and we're going to be talking about the priest adaptation, Unknown the Series, based on priest novel.ga. I am unfamiliar with anti-reset. I did not watch it.
00:01:55
Speaker
Nini, it's a Taiwanese BL. I don't like it. I didn't watch it. I did watch Unknown, and I have thoughts about that.
00:02:11
Speaker
Maybe, Shad, you can dig in here before we get Ben get into the recap on aunt reep
Interconnected VBL Series Discussion
00:02:16
Speaker
anti-reset. Anti-reset. is part of a recent series of Taiwanese BLs that came from a company called VBL. Stay By My Side, You Are Mine, VIP Only, and then Anti-Reset. This was a connected series. All these stories happened in the same universe. The characters did cameos in each other's shows, and they all aired in the same time slot, one right after the other over the last several months. I was not particularly impressed with the quality of these shows and I thought that as the series went on, each show got a little bit worse. By the time I was in VIP only, I had really lost interest in what these shows were doing. The stories were weak.
00:02:59
Speaker
The production values were low. They weren't really hitting the usual Taiwanese high watermarks for great casting, good couple chemistry, solid intimacy scenes. The things you can normally reliably count on Taiwan for were not really showing up in these shows. So I had kind of already lost my faith in this series when Anti Reset started. I think I got two episodes into it and I just decided to just stop watching. It was giving me a weird vibe. I was like, you know what? I don't know what this show is doing and I don't think I want to find out. That's where I think I should hand it off to Ben to talk more about what the show actually ended up doing.
Critique of Anti-Reset's Execution
00:03:36
Speaker
Oh, man. Trying to describe the premise of the show inherently gives it more credit than it deserves.
00:03:44
Speaker
The premise of this shows that Chuyi Ping is some sort of humanities professor at a local college. His arm gets injured from pulling his shoulder, and his uncle, who runs an experimental tech company, decides that to give him some assistance while he's recovering, they're going to send an experimental house assistant android to his house, which appears in the shape of a really hot guy named Evernina. The show wants to go on to be this exploration about how misanthropy presents in people. How do you find humanity in artificial intelligences that are designed to befriend us? It wants to do this exploration of personhood. I don't think it does. And ends up fundamentally becoming a mail order bride show that doesn't realize it is one.
00:04:38
Speaker
This show thinks it's doing deep analysis of AI personhood and romance, but it's not. It's just presenting things. It is kind of a mess, and I ended up really not liking it. I'm a big sci-fi girl. I like these kinds of explorations of the human condition. That's what all the best sci-fi is about. So basically what you're telling me is, don't watch the show. Ben, I feel like when I was observing Discourse about this show, it did seem like it was working for some people. And I'm curious if you have thoughts about what parts of the show maybe did work better than others. I think that if you found the leads attractive and you enjoyed the chemistry that the leads were going for, ignoring literally any of the context about what was going on around their interactions,
00:05:38
Speaker
You could enjoy that. But I don't think the show does a great job addressing its own context. You've got this android living in your house who is doing your house chores and making your food for you and otherwise taking care of you. So you basically have purchased a housewife. But then he decides he's in love with the housewife and wants to pursue the concept that the android has a personality and is capable of reciprocating his feelings and such.
Character Dynamics and Themes in Anti-Reset
00:06:08
Speaker
but they don't do a good job creating this crossover point where Ever9 cares about Chuyi Ping because of who Ever9 is and not because of what Ever9 was programmed to be. The issue too with Chuyi Ping is he's got this fundamental misanthropy that isn't really addressed or challenged. What is it about Ever9 that allows him to not hate him the way he hates other people? The fact that Ever9 is programmed to put up with all of his shit all the time?
00:06:39
Speaker
That's kind of weird, particularly because they went for a multi-year separation at the end. And I'm like, he didn't grow from this. He's just a sad little weirdo the whole time. They did a multi-year separation between a man and a robot? They didn't. I was about to say.
00:07:04
Speaker
Hold on, hold on, hold on. I have another related question. Please go on. This is not a story about an AI achieving self-awareness or sentience or crossing the human-digital divide in some way. It wants to be that. It really wants to be a story about Evernine exceeding his programming. They very much think there's like a Pinocchio thing going on with him. He's still a robot. Even Pinocchio turned into a real boy at the end. Right. That's what I don't understand. So what is the point then if nothing actually changes about every nine? This is one of the fundamental questions I've been asking about BL lately.
00:07:50
Speaker
and here we are again but
00:07:55
Speaker
This is a thing that people don't get about sci-fi a lot. Sci-fi is more philosophy than science. It's a lot more about humanity and the things that humanity does to each other and how humanity flows than it is about the cool things that the science can do. And whenever I see sci-fi that does not understand that, you can tell. and I wonder how you feel about this, Ben. One of the tension points here may be trying to take a narrative like this and turn it into a straightforward romance between a person and an object. When I've seen stories with this conceit done well, the romance is maybe not the primary point. and It's more about like Nini is saying, the philosophical questions underpinning it.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think about something like Lars and the Real Girl, which is more about the nature of loneliness and the nature of grief and how a community can come together to support somebody in finding a way to be happy. It's not about the actual romance between the person and the thing. It feels like maybe what's difficult here is they want to examine those things, but at the same time, they just want this to be a standard BL where they're just executing romance tropes. Those things don't go together that well. I agree. I feel like Chuyi Ping's misanthropy and disconnectedness from other people should have been the crux of the storytelling
00:09:25
Speaker
and they were more focused on making the android say Hyung and Opa instead. For me if you're gonna do a robot story like this, maybe you actually put somebody else into the story who the main character then falls in love with. The main character is able to interact with the robot to actually themselves become a real boy. But somebody in the story has to become a real boy. That's the whole, you know what I mean? There's a K drama that I really love called I'm Not a Robot.
00:10:01
Speaker
And that is pretty much how they handled that. There's a robot, there's a real girl. And in the end, the romance is with the real girl, not the robot. It just feels like they tried to do that sort of story, but also somehow make the robot the main person without having them actually achieve personhood. And that just doesn't really work. It's either that or take it dystopian. Take it in the opposite direction, but then I guess that's not a BL. right yeah You can also take it in the real stepped up direction, but yeah, you have to commit. and It sounds like they just tried to do it all in some kind of weird blend that didn't come together.
Overall Impression of Anti-Reset
00:10:39
Speaker
so I'm guessing this one's a chop, Ben. Oh, it's 100% a chop.
00:10:45
Speaker
I think I ended up giving it a five. This is a show that I do not recommend at all. If you just want to see pretty decently attractive Taiwanese actors kind of moon at each other a little bit and make out a little bit, by all means, go in and have a great time. But that's what you're getting out of it at most. It's not good sci-fi and I don't like it at all. I'm feeling happy with my choices. I'm going to not return and finish this one. I think I'm going to let it lie. It sounds like it was the right choice to not finish it for me. What did we get out of the VBL project? My only positive takeaway from it is I'm really glad that they got some money together to continue making small budget Taiwanese BL. I don't want small budget Taiwanese BL to give up, but also these were not the best offerings that we've gotten out of that.
00:11:43
Speaker
They need some better scripts. We gotta do better. I really did not want to be super harsh about VBL and a bunch of their projects, but they're kind of really frustrating in a lot of ways. Stay by my side ends abruptly. You are mine does not do the boss employee romance any real justice. VIP only ended up being kind of boring and wasn't really satisfying in its conclusion. And this one just really did not understand the expectations of sci-fi storytelling. When we looked at the descriptions of all these shows ahead of time, we were like, there's a lot of ways that they could fuck this up royally, but these would actually be pretty good or at least interesting and compelling in some ways, but they weren't.
Critique of VBL Projects
00:12:28
Speaker
There's some sort of ah blog episode or some shit they're gonna be releasing
00:12:32
Speaker
A little special to try to sell merch, I think. I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. ah Not impressed. And we are moving on. You're not even gonna rate it? Oh, I gave it a five. Five for anti-reset from the conversation. And the five is the leads were actually pretty solid with each other. Wow. That is damning with the faintest of praise.
Exploring Unknown the Series
00:13:02
Speaker
exactly
00:13:13
Speaker
Let's leave that behind and move on to something that all of us actually watched and I think liked a little bit more. Moving on to Unknown the Series. Ben, give us the rundown. What is Unknown the Series about? Unknown is a found family narrative that has to deal with the way these relationships change as people grow up. This brother and sister end up deciding to adopt a homeless kid who's in their neighborhood.
00:13:46
Speaker
Wei Chen is like a high schooler trying to take care of his little sister because their parents are dead. And they decide to also take care of this kid Xiaoyuan. Xiaoyuan is appreciative of this and is glad to become a brother to this family. But as he grows and matures, he ends up developing deep affection for Wei Chen. And we spend the bulk of the story dealing with Xiaoyuan struggling with his feelings for Wei Chen. and how this impacts the community around them. Beyond the three siblings, we have their neighbor, San Peng, whose family has opted to never raise the rent on the Wei siblings to make sure that they have a place to stay. Wichen spends much of his adolescence when he's not in school working for the local gang. Complications ensue as a result of this. Chan, further thoughts?
00:14:42
Speaker
Really, at its heart, this is a relationship change narrative. So it's all about how this family decide to take each other as family, and then as they grow up, some of the relationships start to shift and change, not only between Wei Chen and Wei Yuan, but also between Wei Li Li and San Pang, Wei Chen really takes his responsibilities as the older brother, but also the default patriarch of this family very seriously. He is a caretaker. He is the person providing financially for the family. San Pang is his best friend, someone who's known him his whole life, who completely understands his devotion to his siblings and also loves them as well as an older brother figure.
00:15:28
Speaker
There are some other characters in the mix. Chen and Samhong end up going into business with a third partner named Lao Zhang. There's also the local gang. The lead gangster is called Le. And then there's Dr. Lin, played by our beloved Sam Lin, who's also in the mix as a side character who comes in and out of the story. I don't know, Nini, if you wanted to add anything about your overall impressions of what the story is tackling, the themes. I came into this one later than you guys did so I was catching up on kind of a binge and also the rhythms of Taiwanese BL and Taiwanese drama are a little harder for me so it takes me a while to get into things emotionally. So I was doing a little bit of an uphill climb. I understood where the story was going and what they were trying to do.
00:16:22
Speaker
I didn't all the way feel it. There were points that I would hit. Definitely a point at the end or near the end that I felt it. But going through the pockets of the story as it was happening, I didn't get the depth of feeling about this that I would get about a bottle of story. That's not necessarily to do with it being a Taiwanese story because there's Taiwanese stories that I have that depth of feeling about. Just this one didn't hit me in the exact same way that I think it hit you guys.
00:16:54
Speaker
I felt this story deeply. I was very emotionally connected to the characters, very, very invested in this story and really did love it. I have unfortunately some serious critiques for the way that the story ended up, but really loved it along the way, was super invested. And part of that might come from my relative comfort with the tropes that were at play. It might be because I'm an eldest sibling and I understand the feelings of responsibility and wanting to be somebody who takes care of your siblings and an example for them and to be strong for them and all of that. If there is any character that I really glommed onto, it was Wei-chan. But then what that left me with was a disconnect from some of his thought processes and actions later down in the story.
00:17:47
Speaker
There were things that I wanted to understand more that I didn't understand about the way that he was processing certain things. That's my thing. That's not a problem of the story. I think that's my reaction to the story. I think in the early parts of the story, I was really with everything that it was doing. I got Wei Chen's whole deal fairly quickly. He's like 13 to 15 and his mom is dead. His dad is dead or not in the picture. And he's got a little sister that he has to take care of.
00:18:28
Speaker
and the neighbors are willing to help accommodate this, but he's got to get money some sort of way. So he ends up wrapped up with the local gang. I also got the way they would feel sympathy for another kid who's on the street struggling as well. I totally get them adopting someone else who seems like he's going through some shit the way they are too. I got the way you ones thankfulness about being saved from the street and the way Wei Chen was willing to sacrifice himself for Yuan.
Character Relationships in Unknown
00:19:03
Speaker
And I totally get that turning into a kind of devotion that shifts over time and mingles with his latent queerness. I was able to follow Yuan down that route.
00:19:18
Speaker
And I liked the way the show treated all of those developments really seriously. From Wei Chen having some sort of sexual or-related trauma, being really resistant to advances from women. And I also got the way that that sort of blew up in their faces when Yuan's feelings became known to them. I really enjoyed the early parts of the story. I think Ray Jang directed this. Ray's tendency to use longer shots of characters working in the space together worked really well for me here. And the actors had really good timing for me to get a strong sense of the dynamics between their characters. So I was really able to pull a lot of the expected emotional beats out of a lot of little things in this show early on.
00:20:17
Speaker
I actually waited until like week six, I think, Shannon, when you told me it was time to start watching. I have deep qualms with the Step Brothers trope. I don't usually connect it to it or enjoy it. I don't have an issue with the Step Brothers trope, but this didn't feel like Step Brothers to me. The relationship between Weijian and Yuan felt almost paternalistic and that was I think deliberately something that Weijian did put that distance sts between them. I did not see how Weijian overcame that. He did it so deliberately and he reinforced it so deliberately over and over throughout the years. And I feel like the turn into romance
00:21:14
Speaker
didn't quite work for me. Why do you think the Step Brothers taboo doesn't normally bother you the way it might for other people? It depends on how long they've been raised together. but A lot of times when we're getting these stepbrothers trope stories, they're new stepbrothers, or they haven't been stepbrothers for very long, or they were close to adults when their parents got together. And so it doesn't feel like a sibling relationship to me. Chen, you've watched a lot of dramas. Sure have. What's your read of the stepbrothers stuff?
00:21:56
Speaker
I want to talk about accurate categorization here because this is not actually a stepbrothers trope. The stepbrothers trope is very popular in yaoi manga and consequently in BL, but unknown is more, I think, accurately categorized as a pseudo incest story. And that goes beyond BL. That is actually quite popular in Asian dramas more broadly and also shows up quite a lot in hit romance. And it's more about people who are coming together in some kind of family arrangement. And then the point of the trope is that the relationship changes over time and we follow that relationship change. There's this impression, I think, that people like it mostly because, ooh, it's so titillating. It's so taboo.
00:22:45
Speaker
For folks who enjoy the pseudo incest trope, and I count myself one of them, I've watched a lot of these kinds of dramas, the appeal of it is that a relationship change narrative is really interesting. It's a lot of deep emotional stuff when you are talking about someone who's really important to you in one specific way, and then trying to transform that relationship to have them be important to you in a different way. that can feel really risky and really dangerous to quit at threat the relationship that you already have for the relationship that you now want.
00:23:20
Speaker
That is not a dynamic that is exclusive to the pseudo incest trope. It feels like an extension of friends to lovers. Exactly. A higher risk, higher degree of difficulty, friends to lovers. Exactly right, Nini. I also love the friends to lovers trope. I also like enemies to lovers, which is maybe not as deep, but still revolves that relationship change. I think for a lot of people, that's the appeal. It's a higher stakes version of the friends to lovers trope. I think Unknown did a fantastic job with this trope for the first three quarters of its story. Unfortunately, where it fell down was in the most important part, which is that relationship turn.
00:24:06
Speaker
We followed Yuan through his relationship turn. We saw his feelings for Chen change over time. We saw him try his best to cope with them alone. We saw when he could no longer do that and the feelings poured out of him and that caused a huge rupture. We saw him take time away. We saw his devotion stay strong through a separation and through many years apart. We saw him come back as an adult and decide to pursue the relationship he wanted because he was so certain that he still wanted it. We saw that whole process for UN n where the show really dropped the ball is that we didn't see that same deep process happen.
00:24:47
Speaker
for Wei Chen. We saw it start. We saw him learn about his younger brother's feelings for him and have an initial response of shock and anger and some revulsion. We saw him push Yuan away. We saw him miss him terribly and regret pushing him away. We saw him start to change the way he saw him when he came back as an adult. and start to get more comfortable with seeking him out as a partner instead of as a younger brother. And then we just saw an abrupt flip switch where suddenly he was comfortable not only being in a romance, but in a sexual relationship. And I think that's where they really dropped the ball is in that transition at the end. but Unfortunately, that was the most important part of the story. So it's a pretty shitty place to drop the ball show.
00:25:35
Speaker
But this show did so many of my favorite things. Found family, intergenerational family trauma, a serious relationship change narrative. These are like three of my most favorite things in drama. The characters were struggling through poverty. That's another big thing that I love to see depicted well in drama. And the show took it seriously. This show, it felt like was almost made in a lab to like hook me in the heart. And I still have a lot of warm feelings about it and love it, even though it kind of let me down in the end. But I'm curious, Ben, to hear you reflect, because I know versions of this trope have caused trouble for you before. I feel like you did better with this than you maybe thought you would, Ben. So as someone who has had slurs thrown at him with real intent, I am particularly sensitive to narratives that want to play with taboo that reflect some of the worst disingenuous presumptions about how queer people behave.
00:26:35
Speaker
I don't always enjoy these sort of narratives where they want to deal with family members coming of age and developing feelings for each other and then wanting to pursue them. I often struggle with step-sibling relationships in particular because their parents had a romance. I don't usually enjoy the discord that the Stepbrothers relationship is introducing to the genuine attempt by their parents to blend their families. I don't think this show prickled that because they're more akin to orphans than step-siblings.
Narrative Techniques in Unknown
00:27:20
Speaker
I'm less perturbed by orphans who use familial terms to establish closeness and present themselves as a unit to other people wanting to change that down the road. Also, a smart thing the show did was they used three actors to play Yuon to reflect his growth and change over time, which was a very good choice for this kind of story.
00:27:54
Speaker
The other piece of this trope, the pseudo incest trope, that adds a layer is that the taboo associated with incest does become part of the story. The external community and their other loved ones become an important part of the decision making around the relationship change. You're going to see other people being uncomfortable with the change in the relationship. So it adds this layer of complexity. Here, the most important and main stand-in for that. We have Sanpang, who has been raised alongside them as their neighbor, who also sees himself as an older brother to Yuan and Li Li.
00:28:32
Speaker
who is the first person to catch on to UN's feelings. He is the one who puts it together and sees the way UN's feelings are changing. And he's the one who tells Chen. In the wake of his coming out to Chen, admitting that he is gay, but not saying who he likes, Sanpong is the one who says, I'm pretty sure you're the person he likes, bro. And he tries to interfere. He goes to UN n on his own and he says, I am seeing this. I want you to understand that it's not something you can pursue. You're going to put so much stress on your brother if you let him find out. There are some great scenes between San Pang and Yuan where they have really important conversations about why it's quote unquote wrong for him to feel this way about Chen, why San Pang feels so uncomfortable with it. He tries to intervene. It doesn't work.
00:29:24
Speaker
And then Sanpong's the one who helps Chen come up with a plan to send Yuan abroad. He was a very important part of that storyline. He also is a very important part of the storyline when Yuan comes back as an adult because he, in those intervening years, has gone through his own journey of his changing feelings for somebody that he also considered a quasi-sibling and has maybe mellowed out a little bit about what it would mean for the two of them to be together He sees that the feelings are still there, sees how miserable Chen was when Yuan was gone, and he kind of changes his tune and says, maybe I was wrong to try to get in the way of this. Maybe this is the thing that will make you, my best friend in the world who I love, happy. And baby, that's right. He was such a crucial character in this narrative, and I just really loved the way the show used his character as a stand-in for what you would normally see happen with parents in a drama like this.
00:30:21
Speaker
He just wanted to protect everybody. He wants to protect them individually. He wants to protect their family unit. It's very sweet. He's like the big cousin who also doesn't know what to do. Wei Chen is stuck with this role of having to care for his sister and the brother that they adopted. That takes a huge amount of personal fortitude to choose to do all of that. San Peng clearly sees this from a young age and he's always trying to help the best he can, but he's just as young as them and it's not like he brings any special knowledge to the table.
00:31:00
Speaker
He has these instincts that are grounded in the expected orthodoxy of a family unit. And he's trying to help them replicate that because he earnestly believes that maybe these things can help them. Like he recognizes that Wei Chen is alone with this huge responsibility he's carrying and reasonably decides that maybe if he gets a partner who can appreciate that the mental load on Wei Chen would be better. And as far as he knows, Wei Chen likes girls, so he tries to find women who might be interested in him. That doesn't go well. It's the same thing with always showing up at the clinic when Wei Chen gets the shit beat out of him with the gangster stuff. And even with Yuan, Yuan's feelings come up and he tries to help them. And even when they suggest sending Yuan away, they just wanted him to get some room from Wei Chen to maybe feel something for someone else.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yuan being gay was not their biggest concern. Yuan having feelings for Wei Chen was their primary concern. I joked when he came back, sassier and even gayer, that he clearly found his people while he was in New York. And I ended up really loving San Peng for that. Despite his reticence about Wei Chen, he ends up developing feelings for Li Li. And I think it's because they had those big fights where he was forced to reckon with the nature of these taboos and the orthodoxy they enforce and whether or not they applied here or not. I feel like Sam Pang ending up in a relationship with Li Li is intentional by the narrative to draw that line and say, if this is okay, why not this? We should talk more about Li Li.
00:32:40
Speaker
One of the things I do credit this show with is caring about the whole family as a unit and not only about the romance. Her involvement in the story and her relationship with her brothers was just a really important aspect to drive that point home. I loved Lily as a character. She's the little sister that everybody takes care of, including Yuan. She's the one who let him in when he first followed Wei Chen home. She claimed him as her brother first and brought him into the family. She has a very close, but also very different relationship with each of her brothers. And we saw how those bonds held and shifted over time.
00:33:24
Speaker
And when their relationship changed and they decided to be together romantically, Lili accepted it. And I think she always knew that their relationship was different. What was interesting, I think, and such a good choice is that she never seemed to feel threatened by that. She was comfortable and secure knowing that they both loved her, even though their relationship could maybe sometimes crowd her out. I really liked that moment in episode 11. We got this little breakdown from her about how nobody cares about Chen. She started to really process as an adult now that Wei Chen hid a lot of his suffering from them.
Conclusion and Critique of Unknown
00:34:07
Speaker
I actually really like that Li Li got to do teenage rebellion. It says a lot about how effectively Wei Chen did his role as provider, that she got to be a bratty teen.
00:34:24
Speaker
I feel like as a family story, this hits me more than as a romance. Wei Chen's relationship with both Yuan and Li Li feels parental more than sibling. Li Li and Yuan feel like siblings. One of the interesting choices that I really appreciate in the story in the early stages is that while Wei Chen, I think, was trying to be a parental figure to both of them, Yuan never really accepted that, even when he was younger. And we saw that theme repeat throughout the show of Yuan saying, you don't have to do it alone. I'm here to help you. He always, always, always wanted to be a partner to Wei Chen.
00:35:10
Speaker
That is true, but this is coming from Yuan's side. I absolutely see how Yuan made sure, maybe not even consciously, he wanted it to be clear where the boundaries were and the boundary was that we are family, we love each other, but you are not my parent, you are not my brother. You are somebody that I am partnered with. We are doing this together in this way. Yuan always made that distinction. Wait, Chan is my problem here.
00:35:47
Speaker
We should get into where the show stumbled hard because that's what it all comes down to, right? This big stumble in episode 11. Yeah, it just kind of sits over everything and it sits over my entire perception of the story now. I feel like I can't even think of the rest of the story without thinking about how it didn't take me where it needed to go at the end. Anyone comes back to Taiwan and It feels like for We Chan, maybe maybe some things have changed, but he's doing a lot to not let this thing happen. And it doesn't feel like a thing that he's fighting against. Cause if it felt like something that he was fighting against, I feel like I could buy it. If it's something that his heart really desires, but his brain is telling him he can't do. Like that works, right? But it doesn't feel like that.
00:36:44
Speaker
I don't get where he got shaken. Like, I got the emotional shake. When Yuan gets kidnapped, because that's the thing that happens, you feel that fear that he had in that moment that he would lose Yuan. I understood why in that moment he would accept that he maybe had these emotions, these feelings that he needed to interrogate for Yuan and they were turning him up inside and they got broken out by this thing that happened that shook him. The emotional turn totally believed. The turn where that goes romantic and sexual, that's the part that it didn't carry me there.
00:37:29
Speaker
I do agree with that last bit of what you said. I don't see it the same way as you in terms of not seeing the arc of his feelings starting to change. I think that was very clearly the arc of episodes seven through 10 for Chen. During their separation, we saw how not functional, frankly, he was without Yuan around. He survived. He got through every day, but he was deeply unhappy. Everybody in his life could see it. He was regretful. He was missing him all the time and punishing himself and withholding himself from talking to you.
00:38:02
Speaker
When Yuan came back, he started to interact with him differently. We saw the way that his physical awareness of him was different. We saw him start to seek him out more. We did see him start letting him in on some adult problem solving like he wouldn't have before. He still had his balls up, of course. He was still trying to consciously deny that he was willing to change their relationship in that way. But I do think the show took us through and showed us some very clear moments where his feelings were starting to shift and he was still fighting it. And then of course the kidnapping incident really shook him up. I think where the failure for me happened was in the moment where this suddenly turned into a sexual desire that we hadn't seen build at all. And so that is the missing piece for me.
00:38:51
Speaker
They needed a couple more beats in the story there between him coming to this emotional realization of his desire to keep UN next to him forever and for that to then build into a sexual attraction that he was comfortable acting on. And I think that latter part is where they really drop the ball. They have him literally say, I'm not ready yet. I haven't figured out what I'm comfortable with yet. And then like literally two minutes later, he's like, fuck it, nevermind. And they're just going to town on each other. That didn't work for me at all.
00:39:25
Speaker
It was a very strange choice. It was a mistake. The show just really fumbled. And it sucks because they fumbled at the most important part of the story after building it so beautifully for 10 weeks to just drop the ball that hard. It's a little bit baffling to me. Episode 10 ends at the huge emotional turn for Wei Chen. And it was really frustrating for the show to conflate the emotional turn and the sexual turn and try and follow that immediately with the sex in the next episode. That was not the right choice. If the show had done the emotional turn and then spent at least half the episode dealing with this building sexual tension,
00:40:14
Speaker
that would have been interesting. The show was obsessed with staying on Yuan's perspective the whole time. It would have been totally fine if Yuan was crackling with sexual energy at the knowledge that Wei Chen had finally hit the emotional turn. But instead, they really wanted to have reward sex and then focus on this stupid health scare plot. The problem is the sex scene isn't good, because there's no arc to it. Yuan has been ready to fuck this man for 10 years, and Wei Chen hasn't been ready to fuck anyone for like 15 years. They brought up this whole notion that part of Wei Chen's closed off nature about sex is because his mom possibly abused him.
00:41:02
Speaker
And I just really did not enjoy the show rushing into this sudden sexual comfortability with Wei Chen after showing us that he did not have a good relationship with sex. And I feel like that needed to be resolved before those two were going to be able to have that sort of moment. As a result, the sex scene doesn't create much of an emotional arc, and the show knows this too because they fucking fill it with stupid Yuan flashbacks. This should be about the change in Wei Chen, not the culmination of Yuan's feelings. Wei Chen's reticence about sex
00:41:46
Speaker
is not handled by the story, whether it be discovering queerness in himself or processing the sexual trauma from his mom or getting over whatever but blocks about the kid you see as your brother wants to be with you. That part of it was missing when they had set up for it with the end of episode 10, where Wei Chen let down Whatever big emotional barrier was between, I need to protect Yuan versus I don't want to be without Yuan. They were prepped for it totally to go into that next area. And then they just didn't and decided to make it about Wei Chen having a blood clot. All the pieces were actually there. They're just in the wrong order.
00:42:32
Speaker
There's a scene after the fact where they're doing this dating sim game or whatever at work and Wei-chan's having these flashbacks to the sex scene. Why did they not let him have that moment as a fantasy moment before? Yes, rather than a flashback moment after. That's what I also thought at the time. But you know how angry I get on this podcast about having to mentally rejigger the show to make it work. I will not. That's what they do in the book. That is exactly what they do in the book.
00:43:09
Speaker
That's so fucking aggravating. So aggravating. All the things we're saying they should have done, they fucking did in the book. And I don't know why the show didn't do it. I'm so mad. She clapping. Yeah, she mad. ah
00:43:32
Speaker
We haven't talked too much yet about the novel, but I do want to talk a little bit about some of the adaptation choices that were made here.
Adaptation Choices for Unknown
00:43:39
Speaker
This show is an adaptation of the novel Daga by Priest, who is a very well-known Danme author. Other live-action adaptations of her books include Word of Honor, Guardian, Justice in the Dark, several others. A lot of them have now been shelved or didn't get to finish airing because of the ban in China. So it was extremely exciting for fans of her works.
00:44:03
Speaker
to see a Taiwanese production take up an adaptation of one of her books because we know that we're not going to get good adaptations of Dan Mei anymore out of China because they are banning queer content and censoring it all to hell, even more than other countries. They made a lot of really smart adaptation choices in the way that they structured the show. The book is a lot more complex in the way that most priest novels are. There's a lot more characters. The plots are far more intricate. There's a lot more going on. There's an additional member of the family in the book. There's another best friend in the building. There are like three different gangs instead of one. There's this whole corporate real estate plot that's tied to Wei Chen's work. It's a lot more complex.
00:44:51
Speaker
The show did, I think, a fantastic job of making choices to streamline the story, to make it simple enough to fit into a 12-episode arc while still retaining the core themes and the core relationships. And it also did some really great work around the cultural pieces. Mainland China has a lot more deep homophobia, fatphobia, some real weirdness around the way in media that sex and gay sex in particular get discussed. And this show really smoothed all of that out. Where they really blew it on the adaptation is at this end arc. You see all these aspects of Wei Chen's emotional journey that we are lamenting the show missed.
00:45:36
Speaker
I don't really understand why the show decided to ignore that material in favor of doing what it did instead. A lot of the stuff in the final arc was not in the book at all. If you are someone who loved this story and is disappointed in the ending, I just can't recommend highly enough that you read that book. That's the theme of this episode. If you enjoyed the show, let's go do something else. No, but do watch Unknown. I do love this show. I don't want to say that you can watch it, but you should go read the book too, because it'll fill in some pieces that we're missing here.
00:46:15
Speaker
I totally get Nini maybe not being super connected to what was going on. And if they had not fucked up Episode 11, it just would have been an interesting conversation about where does this gap form? but now we're bogged down in the fact that it's easy to point to the lack of payoff. I watched episode 12 this morning before we're recording this session. And I was like, okay. but I guess this is fine. This is meant to feel like almost epilogue and I enjoyed the big family handhold.
00:46:49
Speaker
But I really feel like they really failed at the final steps of the Yuan and Wei Chen are now a couple turn. Which is really annoying because there were so many things they did great. In the very final episode, there's this really great sequence when we learn that Li Li is pregnant and they have the reactions in the hallway and everybody's coming out of different doors that you don't expect. That is the funniest scene. Every time Wei Chen wanted to kill San Peng, some of the best scenes in this show. Like fucking Yuan sitting on the couch eating tomatoes. He was enjoying the chaos. We got this other woman who might be Wei Chen. I can take care of my brother.
00:47:31
Speaker
it still He's like, don't you worry about it. I did love those moments of you and being like, oh, I'm not the family problem now. Ha. He's just like sitting back and enjoying it. Even at the end, I was frustrated with the last two episodes, but I still had a lot of affection for these characters and this family. This isn't an ending that completely ruined the show for me. Shan has a bat she holds called, coulda been a 10. That she batches called, batches called 10. One of the pieces of my frustration here is that this was on track to possibly be the best Taiwanese BL ever made. Okay, so ratings. Shan, let's have you go first. What do you rate unknown? I gave it a nine. I had to take out my coulda been a 10 bat. I think that the narrative
00:48:22
Speaker
And the character work was so strong through the first 10 episodes that I can't take it lower than that. It's sticking with me. It's been a while since I finished the show and I still think about it every single day. I think about these characters all the time and that's not gonna go away just because the last couple episodes were a little bit disappointing for me. Ben, how about you? Because I am in the business of recommending things. It's my whole shtick. This is an 8.5. It sits between BL fans should watch this and people who like romance should watch this for me. I can't give it a nine because I feel really strongly about the episode 11, 12 caveats. But I don't want to pretend that I didn't think that this cast did a really great job capturing the nuances of their dynamics.
00:49:21
Speaker
And even if they're led down a little bit by some of the direction and writing choices towards the end, I think that the family portion of this is so good, genuinely. So I do think this show is worth watching for people who enjoy the kinds of narratives the show wants to play with. We just need to understand that it stumbles at the end. Nene? I'm having a hard time with this one because in my head, this isn't a BL. If I had to put it into a category in my head, it would get slotted near to something like
00:50:06
Speaker
a Moonlight Chicken or one ATD, but it doesn't have the queer bona fides that either of those have. It feels like a family drama that had a romance in it that happened to be this kid falling in love with somebody who was taking care of him. But the idea of it being a central romance, I just didn't buy. So it was a difficult one for me to rate in terms of how I felt about it as a romance. In the end, I ended up in an eight for the show. I think as a family drama, it's excellent. As a family drama, I would probably give it a nine and a half. And as a romance, I would probably give it a seven. And so I wind up somewhere in the middle, which for me is an eight. I feel like it's a solid eight show.
00:51:00
Speaker
It's an 8.5 from the conversation recommended with specific reservations. You got to get that 0.5 in. It's fine. That's just how math works. I know. I'm allowing you to have math. It was a good show. It could have been an excellent show, but. So close to being one of my all time favorite dramas. It's fine. I'm just going to go cry about it. You were mad about it because Shane wasn't even bugging me on a Saturday like, go watch this show then. Go watch it right now. Wake up, gay boy. Go horse the chest. I can talk to him. I knew I didn't like the final episodes because I was not asking him if he watched them yet. I was like, I don't want to talk about it.
Potential and Challenges of Taiwanese BL
00:51:49
Speaker
I want us to talk a little bit about where Taiwanese BL is and what's been happening with it lately and whether it is making the leap in the same ways that other countries appear to be making the leap lately, whatever that leap is for them. I feel in some ways like Taiwanese BL has been a bit stagnant. Taiwan is a super small country and politically they have been a little distracted for a few years. They're not in a position to do a ton more with BL right now. I don't think that we're going to see a huge sudden surge from Taiwan. The best thing about unknown is that Taiwan is not out of the game altogether because I was real worried.
00:52:41
Speaker
The history franchise is in ruins, and we hadn't really seen something of this production caliber in a while. I'm with you, Ben. Honestly, when Unknown started airing, I was like, oh, thank God, Taiwan can still do it. I have always been a fan of Taiwanese BLs, which might feel a little bit discordant because I am someone who cares a lot about writing and storytelling. And story is usually, honestly, the weakest part of Taiwanese BL. They usually don't have good writing. But what I've always connected to in Taiwanese BLs is I feel like they have a really good
00:53:20
Speaker
handle on relationship dynamics. They're really good at building characters that connect well with each other emotionally, physically. They've always done really good physical intimacy work in their shows. They usually cast really well for chemistry. And so usually in Taiwanese BLs, it's the characters and the character dynamics that hook me more than the story. So I was really excited to see the high quality Taiwanese production that I knew had a good story underpinning it. I hope to see more. I personally had a great time with Kiseki dear to me, but it is not exactly high art.
00:54:02
Speaker
And this run of VBL shows was so bad that I was really losing faith. I had made a commitment that I was going to at least try watching every single Taiwanese BL that comes out. I'm still sticking with that, but I was starting to flag a little bit because some of these shows were so bad. So I was so thrilled to see that they still were doing productions of this caliber. And Unknown has been quite successful and got them a lot of positive attention. And so I'm hopeful that they'll be able to continue putting together productions like this, drawing actors of the caliber that they got for this show. I'm more hopeful because this show happened than I was certainly at the end of the year.
00:54:39
Speaker
I will say the way that the Taiwanese actors talk about the work remains one of my favorite things. I'd be deep in these cast interviews seeing what they have to say about this work and these Taiwanese boys have really nuanced and complex feelings about the work they're doing playing queer characters. I feel the respect and sometimes the duty they feel to get it right in the way they talk about their characters in the work they're doing. That's why I remain very friendly to even some of the jankiest Taiwanese BLs. These boys take playing queerness seriously. It's really warming for me to know that these guys understand that they're portraying queer people and that queer people will be affected by their portrayals. I think I just don't have the connection to Taiwanese drama.
Future of Taiwanese BL and Queer Representation
00:55:35
Speaker
I'm coming at this from K-drama through J-drama through Thai drama. Taiwan's the last place that I landed. And I think that I just haven't made the leap yet in terms of style and rhythms and all those other things. Mostly because I don't get to see a lot of it. There isn't that much. And I think that that definitely impacts how I feel about Taiwanese drama and Taiwanese BL. There are some I love, you know, I'm a staunch lover of history to right or wrong, you know, how I feel about Make Our Days Count, you know, how I feel about We Best Love, but none of those, except maybe right or wrong, as Shan pointed out, has really stellar writing. Why would you mention Make Our Days Count? I'm so mad all of a sudden.
00:56:26
Speaker
No, don't go there, Ben. You're must. We're never going to get out of a Taiwanese BL conversation without it coming up. It just isn't going to happen. but Want to talk about endings for Taiwanese BL? No, we do not. Stop. Come on. You need to continue your point. What have I done? Yeah, I agree with Sean that the writing isn't great. And that's maybe one of the reasons that I haven't latched on to Taiwanese BL in the way that I have to others because I am also a writing person. I can get behind a story for other reasons, and I have. I've gotten behind stories that were not written well because there was some other element of them that really grabbed me. And that's what has happened to me in the Taiwanese BLs that I have liked.
00:57:11
Speaker
But just generally, I don't gravitate in this direction, and there hasn't really been anything yet that makes me want to gravitate more in this direction. I recognize the strength of character development. I recognize the fantastic acting in a lot of instances. Some of these guys are amazing actors. ah just It hasn't moved me in the kind of ways that have been moved from other things. And it kind of makes me sad in some ways. I'm still looking for that Taiwanese BL that's going to grab me by the throat. I haven't found that one yet. I'll keep looking.
00:57:57
Speaker
It's hard too, because like Ben said, it's such a small industry. We don't get that many Taiwanese BLs, and we certainly don't get that many of quality. But I've always really loved the approach to BL that Taiwan brings. I really feel like when they make BL, somebody in the room is asking how gay people might feel about some of the choices they're making. I'm going to keep showing up for Taiwanese BL. I'm going to keep watching them. I really hope that we get to see more productions of this caliber. I hope that we get to see them working from strong source material so that the storytelling can really live up to what the casts are bringing. I'm excited to see what comes out next. Ray Jan can stay though. I like his directorial style.
00:58:40
Speaker
He keeps doing stuff and he hits on something that really pops. I feel like that's the one that's going to grab me. If I wasn't terrified of what Lin Pei-yu is capable of after Kiseki, if I could get Lin Pei-yu at her best, plus Ray Zhang at his best, with basically any of the actors I've ever seen in Taiwanese BL. Maybe we'll get something that'll grab me by this route. Anyway. that is going to wrap us up on what's the name of this episode? Have we decided yet? The state of Taiwan Taiwanese BL episode, whatever. Okay, that is going to wrap us up on our Taiwan episode. We out. Thank you for being here, Shan. Say bye to the people. Thank you for having me. Bye people. Say bye to the people, Ben. Peace.