Taekyung's Neurodivergance Is Actually Central To The Story That Light On Me Is Telling. If He Weren't

OMG!! I just found your blog through a WBL fan sharing your post about WBL on Instagram, and I am SOOOOO happy to see that you noticed and appreciate the tutor and fighter couple from Why R U series too. If possible, please write an analysis about this couple, about any specific aspect you deem as most important or just generally, whatever you are okay with. I love reading your analysis and the insights it gives me, and I just finished binge reading all of your writings on my favorite bl (1)

Hi wow mindblown by this comment Thank you so much for letting me know that my stuff is being shared I really appreciate that and I am so grateful that you took time of your day to come speak to me. I adore Fighter and Tutor, like they’re my favourite couple ever. What happened when why r u was airing was I wasn’t yet analysing BLs at that time otherwise I would have been writing essays and essays about them. Because it’s been so long since I went back to watch them I’m going to let you see some of my drafts on how I would have broken their relationship into pieces and analysed. Because they are incredible and I really always feel sad when people see them as just like a se*ual couple when there’s more to them than that.  So I will let you see the first drafts and my ideas on them through this  ask and I hope that's okay for now. Maybe after my other shows I will like go back and rewatch them and start analysing more about them. If I do I’d probably do a youtube video about them because they’re so good. 

Here’s some of the analysis for them that I wrote: 

The theme for these two is  the struggle with internalised homophobia and self-acceptance. They both had this obstacle in themselves as they fell for each other and tried hard to avoid and run away from what they felt.  It’s been a long journey for them being into each other since the first time they met but not really realising what they felt.  Fighter did but he went into extreme panic mode and tried to run away immediately he felt that. So he tried to stay by Tutor’s side through the teasing and bullying because Tutor made him feel great and happy always but then with pressure from his father and the path he was meant to take to keep on being seen as successful, he thought his feelings for Tutor were useless and wrong. Plus he didn’t know if it was reciprocated so that caused even more fear for him which is why he just stayed with teasing and finally kater in thinking Tutor likes Hwa he chose to pull her away from him by taking her attention but also he chose to keep what they have as enemies/haters that way and avoid being near Tutor. This is why they end up hating each other a lot by the beginning of Why R U which is like 3 years later or something after he chose to stay with Hwa. 

Tutor didn’t understand fully why he got angry, jealous and annoyed, he had an inclination from the first year that Fighter liked men and he was actually hopeful about it because deep down he had feelings of wanting to also flirt with Fighter, wanting to stay with Fighter even when annoyed him and bullied him. He liked Fighter’s softness at times and he liked the way he felt even though he didn’t understand why he was so rifled and affected by Fighter’s presence when no one else has been able to do that to him before. But he became upset when Fighter chose to date Hwahwa because it was his automatic issue with IH that of course Fighter doesn’t like him but he likes girls, so he got jealous and sad and proceeded to also dislike Fighter because he had this effect on him whilst still trying to date his best friend who had feelings for Fighter.

They both have had unknowingly pent up feelings for each other, so once Fighter breaks the barrier by their first kiss, they both go into extreme panic and they both could no longer pretend any more with what they have. Which is why the first episodes they both keep struggling to keep their attraction with each other quiet because its been 3 years since they wanted each other that way. Fighter has so much pent up attraction and needs to give into his feelings that each time they have a chance to break that barrier it’s intense and crazy. Both have been longing, pining secretly for each other since the beginning of the show. What happens next is for Fighter he has to choose to finally accept that he cares a lot, a lot , a lot about Tutor, he finally starts to learn more about this person he loves and he starts to want to protect and keep Tutor happy and by his side. When it comes to finally choosing to let go of Hwa and choose to fight for Tutor and start knowing if he feels the same way. It’s a leap of faith he takes when he breaks up with Hwa. He realises he’s the one stopping his wishes from happening with Tutor because he keeps being in denial about what they are because he’s scared it’s only him that’s gay and has feelings for the other.

It’s only after tutor sister tells him that he’s holding back his feelings does he realise that it’s time to talk about their unstable relationship and Fighter at that moment had also come to terms with his break up with Hwa after making out with tutor revealed the truth, that’s why on the rooftop they do a test that ultimately breaks their walls down and choose to give in to their feelings no matter how scared they are about it being reciprocated. When Tutor looks away and loses the game it’s a symbol to Fighter that he’s also been the same as him from the start. Tutor looks away sadly thinking he’s the one who has the feelings but Fighter just loses it and lets him know its equal which is why I love that scene so much because for so long both of them because of IH has been avoiding thinking the other had the same feelings for them when they both from the start have felt love for a long time. And from then they go on a journey to learn about what this means, if it’s real feelings and not just attraction hence their beach vacation which is essentially them asking if they could love each other and be in a real relationship, and if they can take on their obstacles around them. The beach solidifies for them their feelings so they choose each other for life hence the earring and necklace. But it’s fast paced how they feel because it’s just confirmation, now Tutor starts to realise that Fighter is actually different than he thought he was and he falls so fast, he now realises how much he loves Fighter and how much Fighter made him want to fight for his happiness and life. Tutor has not had hope for happiness and ease in his life, because he’s always had to fight to survive on his own. So when Fighter shows up like a prince charming and constantly is connected to saving him time and time again, it’s exactly him realising there’s someone who does represent that hope that he’d be fine. Hence why the final obstacle is Tutor regressing and starting to think because of IH and society that he and Fighter are just a pipe dream.

They go back to face the world only for Fighters father to bring back all the fear, internalised homophobia and obstacles they had. Fighter panics and thinks he was right; the reason why he never told Tutor his feelings was because he was afraid the other would break his heart (was not gay, did not have feelings for him, would make fun of him etc) so when Tutor breaks up with him he loses his mind after trying hard to let go. When he sees that actually Tutor is taunting him and is still flirting with a guy, not him, he proceeds drunk and upset to try and get back moments from the beach scene/ past make out scenes to keep that spark alive but realises Tutor is not okay this time and he’s the one forcing it. He also acted out because with them the truth comes out each time they’re physical with other romantically. It’s a kiss that caused them to finally tell each other how they felt. That’s always been the way they break their walls down.

It’s what causes him to break down and finally reveal the truth he’s loved Tutor since he met him, he’s just been afraid of all that’s happening even if it’s happening he still wants to be with Tutor. Tutor however breaks his heart even more so he backs off. Tutor on the other hand is broken and mentally exhausted back to depression, back to having to fake being strong and deal with the futility of hope and joy in his life as he’s always been used to. He gets seen by Fighter and doesn’t have it on him to fight him away, so decides to stay in an idealistic fantasy, tells him to hold him and breaks his walls down again. Tutor is always having to fake being strong because it’s how he survives so whenever Fighter enters his world his vulnerability scares him, that’s why his sister gives him the image of a cactus. He’s tough and sharp or pretends to be with his demeanour but actually he’s just a boy who wants to be happy and be safe and survive. So when Fighter shows up at his weakest moments, as he struggles to deal with his mental exhaustion and heart break, he gives in  because again Fighter represents to him that hope. He starts to waver and want to stay in that lie for a long time with Fighter. Hence when he wakes up and Fighter is gone he thinks its all over and he finally breaks down completely.

Only when Fighter goes he breaks down in anguish truly thinking he lost him. Fighter finally comes out to his dad and fights his views, And we end up back at the beach, a place which represented authenticity and truth for them, it’s their truest realest self, but it also was their escapism. So Fighter coming there and letting Tutor know there’s no more obstacles in their way makes them both finally equally start a stable relationship with no more fear or care about anything. These twos relationship is full of tension and they both feel the chemistry, like magnets their bodies are drawn together, every scene they’re in, it’s their love language physical touch not bl fan service. They just naturally want to be in contact with each other and also their pent up feelings leads to them constantly wanting to sleep together because of hormones and well because they enjoy their se*ual life, nothing bad about that it’s realistic for couples to be that horny, that needy and that touchy.

It’s people who don’t get the context of internalised homophobia and what being in the closet is like for people with this anxiety and self hate caused by how they think society views them and treats them if out, those are the people who think there was no plot. Every dialogue these two had, their flashbacks and their acting (eyes, facial gestures, touches) showed why Fighter liked teasing Tor, why he dated Hwa but never paid her attention, why we had the beach scenes, why the break up escalated, why Tutor gave in when ill, why the non/dubious consent scene happened, why they get back together and why they told each other I love you forever immediately after they got together. Every single part adds up. It really is insane to me how people don’t see their real story to this day or see them as such a great storyline for BL. I would never get it.

bonus:

i know we all know how much pat considers pran's feelings and needs with their new relationship.

but the first thing i noticed when the curtain dropped and they had to face everyone in the theatre is that once pat processed what was happening, the first thing he did was to look at pran to see how HE was processing it all.

his first thought was to know how pran was feeling, how he is reacting so that he'd be able to know how to act himself.

i love that throughout the entire episode, we saw once more how this is a give and take relationship from both sides. they're both fairly new at this yet they try to understand the other, prioritize the other, they COMMUNICATE.

pat knows how much more difficult it is for pran to process their relationship (mostly because of their families and friends) although pran wants it as much as pat does.

i just thought it was a really nice detail that just showed once more how much of a walking green flag pat is and mostly how important pran's feelings are to him.

“You’re telling me right now!” BAD BUDDY (2021)

bad buddy really did go farther than i ever expected.

like okay, my initial reaction was that it seemed like a fun dynamic, and a fun story. and it is! but i didn't expect much more than that. tbh, when i figured out pran already had feelings for pat so early on in the show, i thought it'd be a story where they slowly became friends, then made the bet, and pat would slowly realize he had feelings for pran too, and they would both hide behind the bet and secretly hope the other would fall for them until some kind of confession. i didn't even really think about how it might end. either in some "love will save the day" cheesy way or a sad ending tbh. i thought that IF there was A kiss, it MIGHT be in the last episode, and might be awkward and stiff, like they so often are in this genre. and i was fine to go along with it because i was laughing so hard, and impressed by the acting, and was enjoying the story anyway.

and then episode 5 happened and blew all of those assumptions into the water.

i still haven't recovered tbh. i can't believe we've gotten all of this. such a well rounded story with well rounded characters, with chemistry like i've never seen, and intimacy treated as normal things. small acts and domestic details that show love like normal people, like real people. a parent storyline that didn't depend on heightened drama or the expected "they used to date" trope, but instead was a story about betrayal of friendships. it felt real and made every piece of the puzzle fit together in ways that make it so you can dig more meaning out of the whole series than you could at the start. the way everything ties to the title, enough so that people were making jokes every week about who the real "bad buddy" was all along.

we got lovely, supportive friendships between wlw and mlm. we got a wlw relationship on the side, with a well fleshed out story and characters to root for. it wasn't tossed in at the end, it was built up and it was beautiful. we got discussions of sexuality. discussions of stereotypes. and the friends in this show, whether or not you like them, are not cookie cutter perfect, or perfectly boring, people, but all add their own spark to each dynamic. they feel like real people with their own feelings and choices and better yet they are feelings we as an audience can still understand, regardless of screentime or if we like their actions. other side characters like uncle tong and junior, and even their old high school teacher, felt like real people as well, with their own lives and agendas. the ones that came into closer contact with the plot didn't push their stories onto the main characters, but rather gave them the tools they needed to build their own. such is life. it was...very human!

no characters "shipped" the mc's to their face. no fetishization was thrown in on screen for us to be forced to watch, as i have so often seen before in this genre. nothing was treated as extraordinary, which of course is what made it so. there were no gender roles the characters fell into, neither was more masculine or feminine than the other, and neither was more dominant than the other. its a relationship of equals, shown in both big and miniscule ways, and it's a relationship between two men! on that note - there was no homophobia!!! at all! not once did someone have an adverse reaction to the idea of same sex relationships, from their parents, to their friends, to the theater group, to strangers at the beach. no one batted an eye. and yet the metaphors for it were sewn in everywhere you looked. it was refreshing to see a show that tipped into similar stakes, without it actually becoming a consequence on top of everything else.

the ending itself was a metaphor. the glass closet pat and pran kept their relationship in was a homage to queer people everywhere living their truth despite the world or people around them trying not to allow it. they lived their lives on their terms, told the people they wanted to tell, had that support group, made memories with the people they could be themselves around, and didn't let their parents take that from them. they held their happiness between their fists and didn't let go, and slowly their environment changed to suit them, rather than the other way around. it was a realistic ending. it wasn't a perfect ending, where they got this perfect life and everything worked out instantly, but things don't have to be perfect to still be happy, and sooooo full of love, and to show that hope for the future?? im in awe.

okay and the pacing of this series was so excellent. only 12, 1-hour-long episodes, and a complete story with a hopeful ending? that alone is noteworthy to me. conflicts and storylines rose and were solved within the same episode or the next. every ep was a step further in the characters' individual growth as well as their relationships. nothing felt like it was there for no reason, despite literally being a slice of life show. everything served its purpose!

and my last big point is that this really is, at its core, a gay story told for gay people by gay people. p'aof knew exactly what he was doing with this series, everything was very intentional, and i'm forever grateful to him and the crew and the cast for the amount of love and hard work they put into this. i'm going to miss the soonvijarn recaps so much too, it was incredibly healing to watch a group of older gay men react to this show every week and then discuss it with the director afterwards like that was just so rewarding, not to mention gave me so many laughs. like i can't find a way that expresses my gratitude enough for the people that made this show a reality.

this is becoming an extremely long ramble but truly? and ive said this before, but, i thought this would be a show where two people who hated each other learned to love each other. instead i got a story about love that already existed, and trust that was grown.

everything about this show felt warm and comfortable and real. rewatching it still makes me feel everything i felt the first time. my heart still races, i laugh just as hard, and i still cry. it really has been such unexpected fun and all i can say now is that i know it's going to be a part of me for a very, very long time. and that i'm grateful for it, and all that it did.

Spare Me Your Mercy, Love in the Big City, and the Trap of Pursuing Mainstream Popularity for Queer Art

I read this excellent post by @waitmyturtles yesterday tackling the frustrating failures of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show that was one of my most anticipated of the year, but that ended up so lost in its own confusing blend of sauces that I didn't even finish it. I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

Because here's the thing about great queer art—it's almost never popular with mainstream audiences, especially in socially conservative countries. High quality, well-executed, honest and authentic queer art is more likely to be protested than celebrated in places where real queer people are not safe to live free lives. For an illustration of this, look no further than another highly anticipated queer drama of this year in Love in the Big City. Easily the queerest show to ever get made and aired on Korean television, it drew major protests before it even started, forcing the production to release it quickly in one go to ensure it would reach audiences. And why were those conservative groups so afraid of this little old drama? Because even just in its trailer and promotional materials, it was clear this was no sanitized, G-rated drama created to make gay people seem more palatable to the masses (unlike the film version with the same name, which not coincidentally has been much more warmly received by the Korean media establishment). This show was real, and raw, and QUEER in a way that terrified those bigots, because they know one of the most important ways the oppressed can advocate for themselves is by demonstrating their humanity through art. 

Which brings me back to turtles’ post, and the importance of separating the concerns of art and commerce when discussing the different ways media can succeed. This is something I had some good dialogue about with @biochemjess @pharawee @clairedaring @flowerbeasblog and turtles (and even more of you in the tags) when I was still watching and posting about Spare Me Your Mercy. I originally posted to unpack why the show was flopping narratively, which turned into a discussion of the fact that it was getting good ratings from the domestic audience despite this. And while I appreciated understanding how the show is landing with its priority audience, for me, it’s very important to keep a distinction between these two different kinds of success. Especially in discussions of queer art, and especially for a show whose creators explicitly said they were intentionally downplaying the queer romance part of the queer romance ( @benkaben) to avoid “distracting” from their other messaging goals. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that for queer stories, when they are popular with a mainstream audience it’s often because they are stripping any authenticity from the representation of queer people. Turtles addressed this well in her review of 2gether when she posited that part of the reason it was such a phenomenon in conservative Asian countries (aside from the timing of its release in the early days of the global pandemic), was because its presentation of queerness was mostly unrecognizable to real queer people, stripped of any true notion of queer sexuality or the realities of homophobia. Compare the reception of The Miracle of Teddy Bear—a show that absolutely refused to make its central queer character palatable for a mainstream audience, because the fact that he wasn’t palatable was the point—to that of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show whose creators chose to censor their own story. The ugly truth is that when we’re talking about queer dramas, the best and most vital shows are pretty much anathema to mainstream ratings success.

The impulse to pursue mainstream popularity and commercial success for queer art inevitably leads to watering down queer stories ( @twig-tea) to make them more light, comfortable and familiar to a majority heterosexual and socially conservative audience. And yes, of course, some degree of commercial success is necessary for queer art to get made in the first place. This is how the Thai BL market took off, by recognizing that there was an audience beyond queer people who were open to watching stories about boys falling in love, as long as it didn’t get too real. But there is a careful line to walk here, and it’s so important not to confuse popularity with artistic merit. Queer people won’t win liberation by self-censoring queer media to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences. We win when we make queer art so good and so honest that the mainstream is forced to acknowledge it. We win by challenging the mainstream perspective on queer people and how they should behave, not by catering to it. As @bengiyo said in a completely different discourse, the question is not whether the audience can love queer characters whose actual queerness is suppressed for their comfort. That kind of respectability politics is old hat and it never fucking gets us anywhere. The real question he posed is this: “Do you love us when we’re ugly, when we’re sick, when we’re old, when we’re being mean or catty?”

Which is why a show like Love in the Big City ultimately won by being so excellent, and so true, and so undeniable, that it broke through with audiences around the world and achieved some measure of recognition in spite of how very unpalatable it was to its domestic audience. Unlike Spare Me Your Mercy, this show did not get amazing domestic ratings, but its message was heard far beyond those who watched it on Korean television. And that is the point. Making authentic art that advances the struggle of queer people and making nominally queer art that can achieve mainstream popularity are completely different pursuits, and we must keep that in mind when we discuss whether and how these shows succeeded or failed. And while both must exist in a healthy media ecosystem, one will always be more vital for the survival of queer people than the other. 

Normalize this kind of conversation

"It's the same as you like dogs and I like cats. It's your preference"

- Tul

Nanon’s acting in this scene was breathtaking.

The subtlety and nuanced approach he took to containing Pran’s sorrow and tears was incredible. He sustained Pran’s struggle to keep from crying and maintained his composure until the perfect moment.

The audience could see Pran struggling but Pat couldn’t and that was so believable. The tears are waiting to tumble from Pran’s eyes were there but were small enough for Pat to not notice, something that is amazing to see as a viewer.

There are so many layers to his performance as Pran, whether it’s his approach to the lines, the micro mannerisms and gestures he uses to show the audience how Pran is actually feeling.

This scene made the audience share in Pran’s pain, whether you wanted to or not. It wasn’t a question of feeling what Pran was feeling. Nanons performance immersed you in it and reached beyond the confines of the screen.

patpran's notes to each other (cr. @ohmnanoned)