Ryn

True yeah, character name romanizations are a mess haha

The actors decided not to do top/bottom roles and the fandom exploded over it.

Why does this sound like ChatGPT wrote it?

You stumbled into fandom drama here I'm afraid. The actors, Teetee and Por, decided not to have top/bottom roles and got an insane amount of fandom flack for that. They said they'd have two ship names, both TeeteePor and PorTeetee, one used in Thai and the other in English. This didn't go over well, so in the end they did decide to name their ship TeeteePor, but insisted that it was only a name, a hashtag, and didn't imply anything about top/bottom dynamics.

You're on the wrong track with 'wang' as palace. You are confusing the name of the actress with the name of the character. The character's name is Wanwiwa, and the actress' name is Wangpongsataporn.

'Wan' and 'Wang' are very different sounds in Thai that really can't be confused for each other.

I think some people spell it 'Anil' because in Thai the last letter is probably spelled as an l, and maybe in some distant past they actually pronounced it as an l, but modern Thai only has 6 consonants that a syllable can end in: b, k, d, n, m, ng, (along with a bajillion ending vowels/diphthongs) so every other ending consonant gets swapped out for one of those six. An ending l always gets swapped for an n.

And because there's only 6 ending consonants left, they really can't afford to confuse n for ng. It would introduce too much ambiguity. N and ng get pronounced with a lot of emphasis. In my native language we often drop ending n's in pronunciation, so I could easily see an n and ng get confused, but in Thai no.

R and l are funny. All r's can be pronounced as l's, but not all l's can be pronounced as r's. The rolling r is in the process of disappearing. It already has the connotation of being quite formal and kind of old. I wonder why there are so many Asian languages that mix up l and r.

If a syllable (in Thai spelling) ends on an r, that r actually gets pronounced as an n too.

Yes! And 'Wan' from WhaleStore means 'whale', though her full nickname, the full word for whale, is Plawan ปลาวาฬ. And that's why it's called 'whalestore' and it's why the series has seal and whale imagery everywhere. 'Pla' is fish, so Plawan is literally a whale fish haha. But I guess maew แมว is cat and nam is water, so a seal is a water cat, so sure, why not 'whale fish'.

Oh also, that GL author name Chao Planoy เจ้าปลาน้อย means 'owner of little fish' so that's def not her real name. I think she just really liked her pet fish and made that her username tbh.

The 'Wan' from Affair is a different tone and I think it's the one that means 'day' วัน, though I'm not 100% on that one, don't remember. The 'Dawan/Wan' ตาหวาน from Somewhere Somehow means 'sweet', 'sweet eyes'. But the Plawan from the Long Beans BL is named 'whale'. Lots of different Wan's huh?

'Teerak' ที่รัก, Rak's full nickname, actually means 'beloved' or 'darling', not just 'love'. 'Tee' is a preposition, so in combination with 'rak' (=love) that becomes 'one who is loved'. This goes for the character from the GL Us, but also for the one from the BL Your Sky, and for Sudteerak from the BL Rak Diao. 'Sud' สุด is 'most', so Sudteerak means 'most beloved'. A very cutesy name for a pretty burly dude, and he's very embarrassed about it. The guy he falls for is called 'Diao'เดียว, meaning 'only' or 'singular', so if you put their names together like the series' title does (Rak Diao) it means something like 'my one and only love.'

I will say I laughed the first time I heard them say 'Aokbab' and 'Nueng' 'Song' and 'Sam'. Like come on now you can't name your kids that. That's too on the nose.

Yeah so anyways learning Thai is fun and you get a lot more out of GL and BL this way. Let's be real the subtitles are not always ideal. They miss a lot of nuance and a lot of puns. One thing that's annoying is there is no official way to write Thai sounds with our alphabet, so you can't do it wrong. It's a free for all. Very inconvenient when you're trying to look up Thai words based on sound. And Thai spelling with their own letters is ridiculously hard.

The friends are annoying and the sound effects excessive, but the mains are still impossibly adorable so I loved this <3

PS 'Din' ดิน, her name, means 'earth'. You're welcome, now the series' title makes sense.

In The Fire, 'Fai' ไฟ means 'fire'.
In The Water, 'Nam' น้ำ means 'water'.
In The Air, 'Lom' ลม means 'wind'. (As we've already seen in the BL 'Dangerous Romance', where one of the characters was named 'Sailom' สายลม and the other 'Kanghan' กังหัน (windmill) was trying to be romantic like 'I'm a windmill and you're the wind that keeps me moving' lol)

Bonus facts. In the series 23,5, 'Ongsa' องศา means 'degree', as in degrees of an angle, because she's like the earth that tilts 23,5 degrees towards Sun (her crush), and that's why her secret IG account was named Earth, and why on the poster she's tilted towards Sun.

Thai shows often play with names like that. Okay that was my infodump for the day, carry on.

I think Candy is the first full-length GL of 2026 though, in case you missed it :). https://mydramalist.com/804684-candy

The tags are wrong this is not lesbian romance.

So this one is lost media by now then? Can't find it anywhere. Sad.

In Taiwanese GL 'Fragrance of the First Flower' they have a kid, but it's a kid from one of the leads and her ex-husband. Good show, would recommend. Season two as well.

You should probably let Bambam do the critical thinking about their gender identity themselves. It's weird for you to stick your nose into it.

What I gather from your response is that you're invested in explaining away or ignoring the non-cis aspects of Bambam's gender identity, rather than letting them define their own experiences.

https://praew.com/people/interview/476513.html
This is where they stated something akin to that. Although based on the article their gender is more 'unlabeled' than 'nonbinary'.

Who is this nefarious 'they' who loves labeling gnc women as something they're not? Why would that be happening?

Aaaahhh <3

Yes I'm hopeful about 'Like a Palette' too! One really good scene so far and I hope there's more to come :)

Agreed that the actors aren't to blame. I think it's stupid to target people who don't have control over the plot. I don't know what is happening off of MDL, but I haven't seen anyone target the actors here.

But the plot is still a problem, and that should be addressed.

I think the word 'cancel culture' too often gets used in order to shut legitimate discussion down. What does it even mean to 'cancel' anymore? Like, I'm not allowed to express my opinion that the plot sucks or I'm doing 'cancel culture'? How does that make sense? Weren't you guys supposed to be FOR freedom of expression instead of against it? Or are you only for freedom of expressing things you agree with?

Don't speculate about other people's lived reality, speculate about fiction all you want.

There's no such setting, but I scour the 'newest' and 'upcoming' MDL pages for BL and GL titles (both because sometimes the MDL page doesn't get approved until the show was already released), as well as custom lists people make on here named things like 'Chinese BL masterlist'. I often find things I would've otherwise missed. YouTuber Blush also makes lists of upcoming releases.