so.... i just clicked checkout and bought a ticket LOL. I dont even know thai and i'm not even JLPT N5 LOOOOOOOL
The number 5 is pronounced "ha" in Thai, that's why!
This is what I have learnt simply from watching Thai BL dramas for six months:
chop/chawp = like chaai = boy/man chop phuu chaai = I'm /you're gay (male) puen = friend faen = girlfriend/boyfriend, genderless phi = informal address for an older social equal, often used as a P' prefix, ungendered (="older sibling") nong = informal address for a younger social equal, ungendered , often used as a N' prefix (="younger sibling") ai = informal address for a social equal of the same age meung = extremely informal address for a social equal, very rude if used the wrong way (like "dude") khun = formal address for parents, teachers, bosses etc, ungendered phom = I (male 1st person pronoun, in some contexts) chan = I (mostly female 1st person pronoun, in some contexts) chai = correct, true (used as affirmative in certain cases) mai = no/not (used as negative) chai mai? = isn't it/ aren't they/ don't we etc. (like French "n'est-ce pas?") mai chai = not true ("no") khor thot = I'm sorry / excuse me mai bpen rai = it's okay / never mind /it's nothing (usually sounds like "meh-ben-lai") aroy = tasty, good tirak = darling (chan) rak (ter) = I love you su su! = you can do it! ("Fight!")
Also: Every phrase can/should be made polite by adding khrap/kha Khrap/kha can be used as "yes" / "understood" There's no actual word for "yes" in Thai Thai pronouns is a vast forbidding jungle where foreigners go to die Thai speakers sometimes use names instead of pronouns In everyday / informally spoken Thai /r/ is often replaced with /l/ ("aroy" becomes "aloy")
(This is all with a HUGE disclaimer that I might have completely misunderstood something important and also misspelled things, since there seems to be no single standard for transcribing Thai. There are some additional words/phrases that I recognise but only have a vague understanding of and have no idea how to transcribe)
In the description to this youtube video today, they say it's going to be 5 episodes, and they plan to release it in the first half of 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA4XqUomAfs
I appreaciate your opinion and that you dropped but flawed and broken leads is exactly reality... usually and…
That's mostly true for straight romance stories too, though. Straight romance stories can give people very unrealistic expectations of love. And that's the difference between a romance and a love story-- the romance isn't supposed to be realistic, it's supposed to give you butterflies and happy feels. A love story can go either way, doesn't necessarily focus on the romance, doesn't necessarily end happily. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. There is a similar difference between BL dramas and LGBTQ dramas. Some people want one and some want the other.
It's not gonna be everyone's taste this time. I think they really got scared by the feedback of HIStory3 so they…
Ah, okay, I get it. Yeah, Trapped did have a few things it just glossed over, and it wasn't all that realistic, but I really liked it anyway. It would have been even better if they had filled in those plot holes and made it less like a light comic book story -- or maybe if they had gone all-out comic book, but that's a lot harder to pull off well. I felt like it was trying to be a bit like a Chai Jidan story (but with less cray cray and toxicity, lol).
It's not gonna be everyone's taste this time. I think they really got scared by the feedback of HIStory3 so they…
Really? The problem people had with MODC wasn't that the plot was serious... it was the f-ed up way it ended. That's a pretty easy thing to just not repeat. *smh*
A close relative of mine got dementia in 2020. It's not funny at all, it's terrible and tragic. And the writing and acting in this series aren't good enough to make up for it.
First episode and I'm not impressed. The acting was uneven, sometimes okay, sometimes stiff and awkward. That's to be expected from young new actors. But the plot seems to be filched and cobbled together from a number of already existing BL series -- the surprise!stepbrothers from My Bromance, the antagonism between the two school clubs from Still 2Gether, the I-annoy-you-because-I-fancy-you trope from My Gear & Your Gown, the teacher/student romance from Together With Me (but gay this time) and let's not forget the "You get what you hate" line from TharnType. There seem to be too many side characters and side plots, like in Gen Y. All in all, it seems both derivative and all over the place, but I guess I will give it another episode or two before I decide whether it's worth watching.
S Korea is really stepping up their game with BL! I loved this so much. Spoilery review below.
=== THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ===
I was a little bit lukewarm at the start of this series, not feeling the characters, but that soon changed, and I think I've figured out why.
This series has, on the surface, a typical standard "prince and the pauper" storyline, with a rich celebrity versus an ordinary guy struggling to make ends meet. But that's not all it is. It's also about an extrovert and an introvert, and how their personalities clash. And it's also about how Seo Joon hides himself behind his arrogant, charming extrovert celebrity persona, and how Ji Woo hides behind his quiet introversion, using it as an emotional barrier against the charming and thoughtless extraverts of this world. Both of them have trust issues due to having experienced betrayals and insincerity -- as a celebrity, can you ever be sure if someone really likes you, or if they are perhaps just dazzled by your status, or even just using you to get something they want? And as an insecure introvert, how do you know if that extrovert charm really *means* something, or if you're just being played, and the other person will move on once they've got their conquest and get bored? So they both raise this façade against the world, one being the arrogant charmer, and the other the standoffish, cold, hard-to-impress guy.
Then these two are forced into close proximity due to external events, and they don't really get along, to say the least. Seo Joon's persona looks exactly like the kind of person Ji Woo dislikes and distrusts. But Ji Woo... is nothing like the people Seo Joon is used to dealing with. Ji Woo wants nothing from him. He has his own pride and integrity and resents the intrusion of Seo Joon into his orderly, predictable life.
And Seo Joon is fascinated.
It takes him some time to realise that his façade is doing him no favours with Ji Woo. The change is subtle, because he is still a famous, confident extrovert, used to getting what he wants, but now he really has to fight for it, even if he doesn't quite know what it is yet. But his earnestness is beginning to show through.
And Ji Woo is not unaffected. He may not show it outwardly, and he may look like he is doing everything very grudgingly, but bit by bit this is more of a front and less of a reality -- he is beginning to like Seo Joon, and maybe understand him, but he still doesn't trust Seo Joon, especially not with his feelings. And he still fears the public attention Seo Joon's presence in his life threatens to bring him. Still, when trouble does rear its head, it comes not from Seo Joon's world but his own, though caused by SJ's attentions to him. What does Ji Woo do? He refuses to involve Seo Joon at all. He tries to deal with it himself, even though it means distancing himself from Seo Joon, and even though he can't really afford to. Because Ji Woo is an honest person, and because he feels guilty that the problem came from his circle, and yes, because he cares about Seo Joon.
By the end of this short series I was fully invested in these characters, and I realised that the process of them slowly opening up to each other, discarding their barriers and façades, not only made them more likeable to each other, but also to me. The disinterest I felt at the beginning of the series echoed the disinterest they had for each other. The process was subtle and very well paced. The acting was on point. The comedy was understated but effective. And the romance was believable. Unlike other Korean BL series in this short form, To My Star didn't feel rushed or uneven -- some of the backstory and some plot points were glossed over and felt a bit incomplete (and therefore slightly hard to grasp for me), but the central relationship got the development it needed.
Also, this might be the first Korean BL where the physical interaction between the actors was believable. It was definitely a much needed step up from the "dead fish kiss" of previous K-BL dramas -- in fact, it was positively swoon-worthy.
2 
This is what I have learnt simply from watching Thai BL dramas for six months:
chop/chawp = like
chaai = boy/man
chop phuu chaai = I'm /you're gay (male)
puen = friend
faen = girlfriend/boyfriend, genderless
phi = informal address for an older social equal, often used as a P' prefix, ungendered (="older sibling")
nong = informal address for a younger social equal, ungendered , often used as a N' prefix (="younger sibling")
ai = informal address for a social equal of the same age
meung = extremely informal address for a social equal, very rude if used the wrong way (like "dude")
khun = formal address for parents, teachers, bosses etc, ungendered
phom = I (male 1st person pronoun, in some contexts)
chan = I (mostly female 1st person pronoun, in some contexts)
chai = correct, true (used as affirmative in certain cases)
mai = no/not (used as negative)
chai mai? = isn't it/ aren't they/ don't we etc. (like French "n'est-ce pas?")
mai chai = not true ("no")
khor thot = I'm sorry / excuse me
mai bpen rai = it's okay / never mind /it's nothing (usually sounds like "meh-ben-lai")
aroy = tasty, good
tirak = darling
(chan) rak (ter) = I love you
su su! = you can do it! ("Fight!")
Also: Every phrase can/should be made polite by adding khrap/kha
Khrap/kha can be used as "yes" / "understood"
There's no actual word for "yes" in Thai
Thai pronouns is a vast forbidding jungle where foreigners go to die
Thai speakers sometimes use names instead of pronouns
In everyday / informally spoken Thai /r/ is often replaced with /l/ ("aroy" becomes "aloy")
(This is all with a HUGE disclaimer that I might have completely misunderstood something important and also misspelled things, since there seems to be no single standard for transcribing Thai. There are some additional words/phrases that I recognise but only have a vague understanding of and have no idea how to transcribe)
I was a little bit lukewarm at the start of this series, not feeling the characters, but that soon changed, and I think I've figured out why.
This series has, on the surface, a typical standard "prince and the pauper" storyline, with a rich celebrity versus an ordinary guy struggling to make ends meet. But that's not all it is. It's also about an extrovert and an introvert, and how their personalities clash. And it's also about how Seo Joon hides himself behind his arrogant, charming extrovert celebrity persona, and how Ji Woo hides behind his quiet introversion, using it as an emotional barrier against the charming and thoughtless extraverts of this world. Both of them have trust issues due to having experienced betrayals and insincerity -- as a celebrity, can you ever be sure if someone really likes you, or if they are perhaps just dazzled by your status, or even just using you to get something they want? And as an insecure introvert, how do you know if that extrovert charm really *means* something, or if you're just being played, and the other person will move on once they've got their conquest and get bored? So they both raise this façade against the world, one being the arrogant charmer, and the other the standoffish, cold, hard-to-impress guy.
Then these two are forced into close proximity due to external events, and they don't really get along, to say the least. Seo Joon's persona looks exactly like the kind of person Ji Woo dislikes and distrusts. But Ji Woo... is nothing like the people Seo Joon is used to dealing with. Ji Woo wants nothing from him. He has his own pride and integrity and resents the intrusion of Seo Joon into his orderly, predictable life.
And Seo Joon is fascinated.
It takes him some time to realise that his façade is doing him no favours with Ji Woo. The change is subtle, because he is still a famous, confident extrovert, used to getting what he wants, but now he really has to fight for it, even if he doesn't quite know what it is yet. But his earnestness is beginning to show through.
And Ji Woo is not unaffected. He may not show it outwardly, and he may look like he is doing everything very grudgingly, but bit by bit this is more of a front and less of a reality -- he is beginning to like Seo Joon, and maybe understand him, but he still doesn't trust Seo Joon, especially not with his feelings. And he still fears the public attention Seo Joon's presence in his life threatens to bring him.
Still, when trouble does rear its head, it comes not from Seo Joon's world but his own, though caused by SJ's attentions to him. What does Ji Woo do? He refuses to involve Seo Joon at all. He tries to deal with it himself, even though it means distancing himself from Seo Joon, and even though he can't really afford to. Because Ji Woo is an honest person, and because he feels guilty that the problem came from his circle, and yes, because he cares about Seo Joon.
By the end of this short series I was fully invested in these characters, and I realised that the process of them slowly opening up to each other, discarding their barriers and façades, not only made them more likeable to each other, but also to me. The disinterest I felt at the beginning of the series echoed the disinterest they had for each other. The process was subtle and very well paced. The acting was on point. The comedy was understated but effective. And the romance was believable. Unlike other Korean BL series in this short form, To My Star didn't feel rushed or uneven -- some of the backstory and some plot points were glossed over and felt a bit incomplete (and therefore slightly hard to grasp for me), but the central relationship got the development it needed.
Also, this might be the first Korean BL where the physical interaction between the actors was believable. It was definitely a much needed step up from the "dead fish kiss" of previous K-BL dramas -- in fact, it was positively swoon-worthy.
Spoilery review below.