(no subject)

[elisheva_m]

have given up trying to find a place to talk about Thai series with other English-speakers, made my own but it's not reasonable to expect anyone to find it.... had to leave the space where i could talk about BL because there's so much love for abusive characters and relationships, and willingness to excuse it all. someone starting a relationship or staying with an abusive partner is not a happy ending and the trope of being the one to change an abusive partner is an incredibly dangerous lie with real life consequences for women and when i try to talk about this, the BL crowd doesn't want to know. they're happy to ignore what i've said and pretend it's nothing more than my personal trigger.

this site has been lonely for me too. i haven't been able to find anyone i click with. one person i share a nominal interest with but we approach it so differently and she's just repeats herself as if i didn't understand her point of view so it's not like we can use these different points of view for a conversation. sometimes it's a place to shout into the void, to get things out of my head without hammering home my isolation the way a physical journal does. tricky how minds work, we're not evolved for these kinds of spaces so i can use that, even when i know it will never be read by anyone other than myself.

i opened the account because i liked a daft story i was writing enough i wanted to share it with someone and sending a blog link is easy. she's the only one who's read it. i sent the link to carefully chosen others, sometimes because it fits with things they're interested in, and they were seeking out things to read. sometimes because they offered ideas or information for bits of it. that was back when it was less than 7000 words. it wouldn't have taken much time.

writing is like love. when you're immersed in it you find its quirks endearing. and maybe by the time things change, there's something worth keeping. no one's ever found my good points worth the bother of my shite health or thought i was worth keeping except in some vague someone else will do it abstract kind of way. circumstances forced me to lose immersion in the world i imagined and now i see that what i've written is only worth keeping because i don't have the energy to grieve deleting it.

real life is lonely. just getting myself anywhere takes so much of my energy i don't have enough left to be social, let alone make friends. i don't fit in with my neighbours, their politics or their gossip. they always leave it to me to seek them out too. even though they know i'm ill and know i have no one. or maybe that's why.

i'm taking more and more breaks from the only social media i have left. it's depleting to care over and over again about things in other people's lives and receive little in return. my life just isn't interesting enough to earn much attention so i'm reliant on the kindness behind three social media friendships which aren't strong enough to bear that weight.

this isn't depression. i've been there and understand what that's like. this is an acknowledgement of impossible circumstances in a world where everyone is caught up in their own struggles and too stressed to take care of more than their own already established circles. i have to find a way to make it through the rest of my life. at some point i'll decline enough i qualify for 20 minutes of care a day. i am so exhausted.

Comments

[corvidology]

I've just subscribed to you. I chatter away about what ever nonsense catches my eye and some RL frustrations and... feel free to subscribe and chatter back or not if you're interested. I have zero response/interaction requirements of people in my circle if you want to 'circle.' ;D My circle is a very friendly, liberal, easy going bunch of people and the only thing I require from them is they be polite to each other on my journal just like I'd require it in my physical home.

I'm responding here cos I wanted to engage in the problematic BL conversation. This is the link to my review of Tharn Type a much lauded Thai BL that I find problematic as hell. You don't have to read it and you certainly don't have to respond.

I'm not a fan of romances in general because I find so many of the relationships in them problematic - the old romance novels where the male lead character corners the woman against a wall and then she realizes she loves it *rolls eyes* - so I don't cut BL any slack either. I recognize this is fantasy for some people, I'm very much YKINMKATO, but personally I don't find it romantic.

It's why I'm more drawn to the 'sweet' end of Thai BLs or ones like Moonlight Chicken or A Tale of Thousand Stars or the ones that are really mysteries with an underlying BL romance (Manner of Death) or supernatural with an underlying BL romance (Dear Doctor I'm Coming for Soul) than the ones with huge power imbalances or very 'traditional' Seme/Uke roles... Again, it's fine with me if someone else enjoys it but it's not for me. I tend to favour Japanese BLs like Old Fashion Cupcake or Cherry Magic where the relationships are balanced.

See, I chatter.

[elisheva_m]

I didn't get very far through your review of *that* series. I'd heard enough to know it was bad but didn't know how multiply and deeply bad it is.

Casting otherwise het bodice rippers etc with handsome young men only further normalises and romanticises abusive dynamics by disguising the gendered aspect of it and giving it a 'happy' ending. I'm not going to excuse that as kink or fantasy, not when it's aired on a major mainstream television network. The real world consequences of these tropes, whether in het or BL, are too severe for those trapped in abusive relationships.

[corvidology]

That's fine - I didn't expect you to even read it really, I just wanted to let you know that there are people on DW who don't find this type of thing acceptable as could be seen by the responses under it.

I sometimes find myself in an odd 'two hat' dance. I don't agree with this shit at all - as said, I don't watch most romances of any type but certainly not this and I'll engage in almost any discussion I run across that attempts to 'explain away' this content - but if someone says in passing it's their fantasy then I'm not going to engage with their post at all, just like I'll scroll past those stories on AO3.

I love a Cdrama called Miss Truth for its mysteries and references to Ancient Chinese pathology (the first texts on it were written in China) but also for the Beatrice and Benedick type sparring between one of the MLs and the FL. Meanwhile, a mate who watched it disliked it intensely because of the Beatrice & Benedick relationship which disturbed her unlike the way it had entertained me.

[elisheva_m]

ok, didn't get to the comments. How about Theory of Love and Kiseki: Dear to Me? Those were the impetus for my post here. No, I don't want to know. Keeping myself safe is more important and for online acquaintances ignorance is usually best for those.

[corvidology]

I haven't seen Theory of Love and don't think I know anyone personally who has? I can't remember any of my mates mentioning it.

I have seen Kiseki: Dear to Me (Taiwanese I believe?) which again, is not widely viewed/popular on DW at least. I didn't like the lead pairing but had a bit of a soft spot for the second and for the barely there on screen third pairing. The third because it's from an older time before gay marriage was legal in Taiwan, the first Asian country to make it legal. The second pairing has problems but they are acknowledged within the text itself.

In terms of Taiwanese dramas, I love HIStory3: Trapped but don't care for any of the other HIStory series, most of which are way too dodgy for me and unlike HIStory3 almost totally romanced centred.

You are always free to talk to me/disagree with me about your opinion on anything I love and that's the attitude of most of my mates as well. My DW circle is, shall we say, curated and that's one of the reasons for it.

[elisheva_m]

Someone else asked (perhaps rhetorically) about rape, TT and Thai BLs so I've been trying to further look into it, past het rape in lakorns. I thought you'd be interested in what I found.

There is a history of rape in het romances in Thai lakorns. In 2016, guidelines around gendered violence were introduced to curtail that. I made a connection with TT as it aired in 2019, about a production cycle after the guidelines, and my best source for information agrees that male on male is a way to get around the guidelines.
There's also a vein of cultural homophobic assumptions feeding into this.
So add that and doing with men what they could no longer get away with doing with women to the ways TT is deeply, deeply problematic. (Problematic feels like too neat and tidy a word, like something which could be solved with a few tweaks. But anyway.)

https://raikantopeni.dreamwidth.org/7857.html#comments
https://raikantopeni.dreamwidth.org/12848.html?view=95280&posted=1#cmt95280

[corvidology]

I think there's basically a history of rape in romances produced in all countries that write/film them... it's just not always labelled/"recognised' as such. The old Mills & Boon books (called Harlequin in the US) that my grandmother had were full of men forcing themselves on women who then decided they 'loved' it.

I've watched three Thai M/F lakorns and only managed to watch all of one of them for pretty much these reasons.

I really haven't watched/attempted to watch that many Thai M/M romance dramas (the romance genre in general really isn't my thing) but I find they tend to roughly split into extremely sweet & innocent (some hugs and perhaps a kiss or two) with very 'virginal' characters like My Engineer or very dub-conny raunchy stuff which is extremely popular. There appears to be very little made between the two extremes.

As I've said elsewhere, my two favourite Thai dramas are M/M but they actually have a plot beyond the romance aspects which have none of these elements. In one of them, there's some extremely bad M/F stuff going on in the plot but it is called out and not presented as 'sexy' or in a 'sexy' way at all.

ETA: When I followed your link, I was reminded of Moonlight Chicken and A Tale of Thousand Stars that are more in the middle ground and I loved both of them.

[elisheva_m]

"I find they tend to roughly split into extremely sweet & innocent (some hugs and perhaps a kiss or two) with very 'virginal' characters like My Engineer or very dub-conny raunchy stuff which is extremely popular."

Avoiding dub-con would explain why I haven't exactly seen much raunch, aside from happening into occasional gifs. As a point of reference, Moonlight Chicken would be amongst the top 3 or 4 most explicit I've seen from Thailand. There is some in between, thought it's more along the lines of horizontal kissing and hugs. Last Twilight did that very well IMO. I don't know if you'd like that one, there is plot beyond the romance but it's very centered around the two MLs and their friendship.

Were any of the M/F lakorns on this list? https://mydramalist.com/list/389deQR4

I've had good luck with lakorns with some LGBTQ+ representation, like Khun Chaai and Matalada, and Thai PBS which can be counted on for very earnest, progressive and sometimes truly excellent series and lakorns. IMO Tale of a Thousand Stars is like a mini-lakorn. Fewer episodes (like a series) but longer in duration (like a lakorn) and oh does it pack the melodrama in :)

[corvidology]

Avoiding dub-con would explain why I haven't exactly seen much raunch

It's the same with me. Some of them have become extremely popular, as said, so I know them by seeing discussions/postings rather than by watching them. I'm told (and have seen gifs) that suggest they have a much higher level of graphic simulated sex in them than Moonlight Chicken does... less kissing, more humping? Wow, does that read like a really bad t-shirt slogan.

I started to look at that list and had to back out as that's precisely what I'm trying to avoid. The two other than Cubic (which has the setup for dub-con and rape which are handily foiled by teenage girls with sharp kneecaps, really such a silly show) which a mate wanted me to watch with her were also mafia setups lakorns which still had a bunch of the stuff on that list of 'supposed romances' and I had to back out.

I also watched Tale of Thousand Stars and Moonlight Chicken at a mate's request and if they hadn't been ridiculously charming, Moonlight Chicken in particular, I probably wouldn't have kept watching it. Manner of Death and Dear Doctor I'm Coming for Soul are much more in my wheelhouse.

If I watch romances, they tend to be of the short run/short episode type as I need something extra to keep going with a longer series.

[elisheva_m]

Sorry about sending the list then. I had thought it might be useful for reducing the risk of running into these tropes in the future.

[corvidology]

Really, no worries. I appreciate you thinking to link me to it as if I were more one for watching romances I'd certainly have all of these on my 'do not watch under any circumstances' list.

I'm a very easy going sort in general. On the extremely rare occasion something gets to me/offends me I believe in letting the person know in as polite a way as possible so it can be avoided and our interaction can continue. I hope for the same treatment from others.