Hmmmmm .... this has been an interesting conversation! As I mentioned above, I don't follow social media at all, and I've only seen a couple of videos of Mew and Gulf - videos which I found very charming because they seemed to reveal these two actors themselves as very charming - warm, amusing, funny, and ... seemingly very fond of each other.
But I have picked up on the reality that people care very much what sort of real relationship the two men could have - may be having - or do have, out here, off-scree, in the "real world". And in this context, I gather, the possibility of a girlfriend called Poom suddenly looms large. That is, maybe Gulf has a girlfriend, Poom, and that would mean there is no real possibiity of Mew/Gulf - and that would distress many people.
I've been thinking about this a lot. It's far too easy to say that we, the viewers and fans, should remember that Tharn and Type are fictional characters, and should accept that the actors are utterly different human beings with their own private lives. The world isn't that simple. There are good reasons why many people care about the (possible) real lives of Mew and Gulf. I understand those reasons and sympathise with that caring ... and so I guess I make an effort to stay away from the reality of Mew's and Gulf's lives. I'm not not on social media, and up till now I've paid no attention to "Mew and Gulf (Mew/Gulf, MewGulf, Mew & Gulf!) news. But I know I care it as much as anyone else and I've just been protecting myself.
I think it's like this for me - and maybe for others too: Tharn and Type are two exciting, compelling characters. Their love story is engrossing, moving, powerful - we love the intense scenes of their interaction, we want them to be together, we're profoundly involved. That's what drama is all about. But additionally, this is a kind of love we've almost never seen on the screen until very, very recently - this is two men together. It therefore means: struggle. These two guys have to struggle - to be themselves, to recognise their love, to express it, to defend it, to tell the truth to each other and to the world. In many countries very near Thailand, their love is completely illegal. They are up against it - to be two men in love with each other is a really dramatic adventure. It's making something visible and real which until very, very recently was absolutely invisible, not talked about, silenced out of existence. Therefore the TharnType story has so many more dimensions of drama and meaning than a comparable man-woman romance.
And therefore we care very intensely about the real-life positions of the writers and of the actors. We do not want the writers to hint that they see this gay romance as in any way inferior or problematic or tragic or wrong. We want to feel that the writers are proudly part of the same struggle, working hard to tell a true, meaningful, dramatic story about two guys who are in love. And we also want to believe that the two actors are fully in touch with that struggle, fully open to the complete possibility and maybe reality of same-sex love and romance. I think maybe that's a point that bayamon_hill is making? It's not as simple as: Mew and Gulf are "really" gay and "really" in a relationship. That's not the point. It's something different: Mew and Gulf are fully open to this kind of life, it's 100% meaningful to them, they COULD be in a relationship, they MIGHT fall in love with each other. They are CAPABLE of sharing/experiencing the beautiful, intense, romantic reality they show on the screen.
I realise that I too want to believe in that openness, that possibility. If I hear (for instance) Mew and Gulf say that they have to make a big effort to "imagine" they are two men in a gay relationship, or if they insist that they are "pretending" in some way that the other is a girl (something that many straight actors say to stress their heterosexual identity), or indeed if I hear about their "girlfriends in real life", then yes, it's a .... let-down, a disappointment. It's as though they're saying: it's all pretend, we don't believe in it, it's not something that has any meaning for us. Ultimately it can even sound like: reality is heterosexual - gay love is a fantasy. And I, like so many others (most of whom are not gay!), do not want to encounter that message. We need to believe that the actors fully sympathise with the struggle which people in same-sex relationships have to engage in throughout their lives. We want to feel that the actors give themselves fully to their roles and are likewise fully open to the reality of the love they depict on screen. It's about possibility, openness, commitment, solidarity. I don't want to know whether they are "really" in a relationship. But I also don't want to be forced to accept "realities" which close down that possibility.