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shadowscastI have just discovered something absolutely wonderful!
It's a Thai series called SOTUS: The Series. I'd never heard of it. I found it by typing "queer" as a search term into Canadian Netflix, and then scrolling way, waaaaay down the page. I ended up binging all 15 episodes in a day and a half. The Netflix description is: "When freshman engineering student Kongpob stands up to older bully Arthit, their confrontation soon leads to a deep attraction between the two boys."
I can't describe the show as "slashy" in the sense that I would normally use the term, which is the presence (intended or unintended) of subtextual attraction between same-sex characters. It's not subtext in this show; it's text. But it felt extremely slashy in that it had countless elements and tropes that I'm familiar with from slash, but which I rarely or never see in the shows that I watch.
I mean, basically it felt to me like an adorable all-human AU slash fic. (Which I suppose just says something about the context that I'm coming from, which is mostly genre fiction—this story is set in a weird alternate universe where people don't have superpowers or drive spaceships! Otherwise known as the actual real world. Heh.)
I'll say more, but behind a cut. Actually two cuts—one for not-very-spoilery discussion of the setting, and one for extremely spoilery discussion of plot elements.
Setting
I'd never seen a show set in Thailand before. When I decided to give the show a try, partly it was out of curiosity about the setting, and about what a Thai TV series would be like. I barely know anything about Thailand. It's in South-East Asia, it has some pretty temples, and ... yup, that's about all I knew. So I wasn't sure what to expect, at all. I didn't know if I'd be able to follow the narrative conventions, or if I'd be confused by a lot of unspoken cultural assumptions that I wouldn't catch, or what.
But as it turns out, the setting was extremely relatable to me! The characters were all first- or third-year Engineering students at a university in Bangkok. Almost all of the action takes place on campus—and the only really significant difference from the campuses I've spent most of my adult life on was that there were a lot more outdoor seating areas. (I mean, in Canada there's snow on the ground for most of the period that classes are in session.) Culturally, the most prominent difference was that the students wore uniforms—here, uniforms are common at the high school level but unheard of in post-secondary education.
The fact that they were studying Engineering, specifically, made me feel really at home. Even though I can't read Thai, I could read what was written on the blackboard when a scene started at the end of a Calculus class, and I was delighted to see that they were learning integration by parts, and that the math written on the board was correct. *grin*
At one point a group of juniors was chatting with a group of freshmen about their upcoming calculus test (about which the freshmen were very nervous), and some of the juniors confessed to doodling cartoons in the place of answers on their calculus tests when they had no idea how to answer the problem. And I nearly fell off the couch laughing, because I've had students who have done that. (I still remember the poor guy who drew a very nice picture of a log, with twigs and leaves and everything, when asked to use logarithmic differentiation to solve a problem on the final exam.)
The characters also had realistic interests for a bunch of Engineering students. Some of them played a lot of video games. One of them made a plot-significant Donkey Kong reference at one point—referring to the old arcade game—and his friends were bemused that he was familiar with such an old game (since these are 18-year-olds in 2016, and that game came out in 1981). I played it when I was a kid, on my 8-bit Nintendo console. And I don't mean I played it just a little; I played it for hundreds of hours, because it was the first game we got, and it was six months before my parents bought us a second game. So I was pretty charmed by the reference. At another point, we entered the dorm room of one of the characters and it was full of comic books and Lego Technic figures. And I felt like, wow, I know this guy.
So yeah. I went in thinking that I might be unable to understand what was going on because the culture was so unfamiliar to me, and I ended up encountering something closer to my own life experiences in a lot of ways than practically anything I've ever seen before on TV. Fun!
Plot
Right, so the actual point of this series is not that a bunch of university students hang out doing math homework together, it's that two guys fall in love. So, if this show were a fic that I was tagging on AO3, I think I'd throw in: slow burn, enemies-to-lovers, internalized homophobia, mild hurt-comfort, sleeping together due to circumstances, attending a friend's wedding, misunderstandings, first kiss, coming out.
Kong is a freshman, entering the faculty of Industrial Engineering. Arthit is a third-year student, and the head of the hazing squad. They quickly come into conflict because Kong is super bratty, and also kind, brave, outgoing, generous, and a social butterfly. At first Arthit seems pretty nasty, coming across as drill-sergeant-type bully high on his own power. But gradually a lot more nuance is introduced into his role. And Kong quickly becomes fascinated by him. It's one of those situations where the viewer can see the spark of attraction right away, but it takes Kong a couple of episodes to realize it and it takes Arthit nearly the whole 15-episode run to admit to it. But oh, what a wonderful ride!
And I felt like I should have a slash-fic tropes bingo card to fill out while I was watching. Take the "sleeping together due to circumstances" square, for instance. Arthit's dorm room is flooded by a burst pipe. He's on the phone with Kong when he discovers it, and Kong offers that Arthit can stay with him that night. But of course the only place to sleep in Kong's dorm room is on the one bed. (It's a nice wide bed, though!)
Anyway, as is pretty common for romance-genre stories, it takes them nearly the whole series to properly get together. I enjoyed the ride, but I wished that I could see more of them as a couple. So, as is my habit at such times, I went straight to AO3 to see what was there. And there is indeed fic; 691 works total, including 427 in English, at the time that I'm writing this. (Hooray for AO3, and for fan writers!)
But also, I quickly discovered from the author's notes on the first fic that I looked at that there's more canon! There's a sequel, a second one-season series called SOTUS: S, which is set two years later with the same characters, and then also a shorter coda called Our Skyy which is apparently some sort of "anthology" continuing the stories of various characters from the earlier series. They're not on Canadian Netflix, but I've just found SOTUS: S on YouTube, so I am for sure going to be watching that over the next few days!
It's a Thai series called SOTUS: The Series. I'd never heard of it. I found it by typing "queer" as a search term into Canadian Netflix, and then scrolling way, waaaaay down the page. I ended up binging all 15 episodes in a day and a half. The Netflix description is: "When freshman engineering student Kongpob stands up to older bully Arthit, their confrontation soon leads to a deep attraction between the two boys."
I can't describe the show as "slashy" in the sense that I would normally use the term, which is the presence (intended or unintended) of subtextual attraction between same-sex characters. It's not subtext in this show; it's text. But it felt extremely slashy in that it had countless elements and tropes that I'm familiar with from slash, but which I rarely or never see in the shows that I watch.
I mean, basically it felt to me like an adorable all-human AU slash fic. (Which I suppose just says something about the context that I'm coming from, which is mostly genre fiction—this story is set in a weird alternate universe where people don't have superpowers or drive spaceships! Otherwise known as the actual real world. Heh.)
I'll say more, but behind a cut. Actually two cuts—one for not-very-spoilery discussion of the setting, and one for extremely spoilery discussion of plot elements.
Setting
I'd never seen a show set in Thailand before. When I decided to give the show a try, partly it was out of curiosity about the setting, and about what a Thai TV series would be like. I barely know anything about Thailand. It's in South-East Asia, it has some pretty temples, and ... yup, that's about all I knew. So I wasn't sure what to expect, at all. I didn't know if I'd be able to follow the narrative conventions, or if I'd be confused by a lot of unspoken cultural assumptions that I wouldn't catch, or what.
But as it turns out, the setting was extremely relatable to me! The characters were all first- or third-year Engineering students at a university in Bangkok. Almost all of the action takes place on campus—and the only really significant difference from the campuses I've spent most of my adult life on was that there were a lot more outdoor seating areas. (I mean, in Canada there's snow on the ground for most of the period that classes are in session.) Culturally, the most prominent difference was that the students wore uniforms—here, uniforms are common at the high school level but unheard of in post-secondary education.
The fact that they were studying Engineering, specifically, made me feel really at home. Even though I can't read Thai, I could read what was written on the blackboard when a scene started at the end of a Calculus class, and I was delighted to see that they were learning integration by parts, and that the math written on the board was correct. *grin*
At one point a group of juniors was chatting with a group of freshmen about their upcoming calculus test (about which the freshmen were very nervous), and some of the juniors confessed to doodling cartoons in the place of answers on their calculus tests when they had no idea how to answer the problem. And I nearly fell off the couch laughing, because I've had students who have done that. (I still remember the poor guy who drew a very nice picture of a log, with twigs and leaves and everything, when asked to use logarithmic differentiation to solve a problem on the final exam.)
The characters also had realistic interests for a bunch of Engineering students. Some of them played a lot of video games. One of them made a plot-significant Donkey Kong reference at one point—referring to the old arcade game—and his friends were bemused that he was familiar with such an old game (since these are 18-year-olds in 2016, and that game came out in 1981). I played it when I was a kid, on my 8-bit Nintendo console. And I don't mean I played it just a little; I played it for hundreds of hours, because it was the first game we got, and it was six months before my parents bought us a second game. So I was pretty charmed by the reference. At another point, we entered the dorm room of one of the characters and it was full of comic books and Lego Technic figures. And I felt like, wow, I know this guy.
So yeah. I went in thinking that I might be unable to understand what was going on because the culture was so unfamiliar to me, and I ended up encountering something closer to my own life experiences in a lot of ways than practically anything I've ever seen before on TV. Fun!
Plot
Right, so the actual point of this series is not that a bunch of university students hang out doing math homework together, it's that two guys fall in love. So, if this show were a fic that I was tagging on AO3, I think I'd throw in: slow burn, enemies-to-lovers, internalized homophobia, mild hurt-comfort, sleeping together due to circumstances, attending a friend's wedding, misunderstandings, first kiss, coming out.
Kong is a freshman, entering the faculty of Industrial Engineering. Arthit is a third-year student, and the head of the hazing squad. They quickly come into conflict because Kong is super bratty, and also kind, brave, outgoing, generous, and a social butterfly. At first Arthit seems pretty nasty, coming across as drill-sergeant-type bully high on his own power. But gradually a lot more nuance is introduced into his role. And Kong quickly becomes fascinated by him. It's one of those situations where the viewer can see the spark of attraction right away, but it takes Kong a couple of episodes to realize it and it takes Arthit nearly the whole 15-episode run to admit to it. But oh, what a wonderful ride!
And I felt like I should have a slash-fic tropes bingo card to fill out while I was watching. Take the "sleeping together due to circumstances" square, for instance. Arthit's dorm room is flooded by a burst pipe. He's on the phone with Kong when he discovers it, and Kong offers that Arthit can stay with him that night. But of course the only place to sleep in Kong's dorm room is on the one bed. (It's a nice wide bed, though!)
Anyway, as is pretty common for romance-genre stories, it takes them nearly the whole series to properly get together. I enjoyed the ride, but I wished that I could see more of them as a couple. So, as is my habit at such times, I went straight to AO3 to see what was there. And there is indeed fic; 691 works total, including 427 in English, at the time that I'm writing this. (Hooray for AO3, and for fan writers!)
But also, I quickly discovered from the author's notes on the first fic that I looked at that there's more canon! There's a sequel, a second one-season series called SOTUS: S, which is set two years later with the same characters, and then also a shorter coda called Our Skyy which is apparently some sort of "anthology" continuing the stories of various characters from the earlier series. They're not on Canadian Netflix, but I've just found SOTUS: S on YouTube, so I am for sure going to be watching that over the next few days!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-19 06:59 pm (UTC)Haha, I love that perspective :D
the most prominent difference was that the students wore uniforms
My, yes, that's definitely a surprise.
I still remember the poor guy who drew a very nice picture of a log, with twigs and leaves and everything, when asked to use logarithmic differentiation to solve a problem on the final exam.
Huh! I rather wish that those writing essay exams would resort to the same rather than paragraphs of BS I have to wade through...
I ended up encountering something closer to my own life experiences in a lot of ways than practically anything I've ever seen before on TV.
Given we have a sample of one (1) here, who can say, but I wonder if Thai TV writing attempts to be more realistic than U.S. TV? Because it is interesting to think that people in the same field of education/work may have more similarities than differences across cultures. But the way those things tend to be portrayed in U.S. TV are rarely very accurate.
And yay for surprise extra canon!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-19 09:05 pm (UTC)Haha, I love that perspective :D
I mean, I could believe "no superpowers." I could believe "no spaceships." But no superpowers AND no spaceships???!!! :D :D :D
> the most prominent difference was that the students wore uniforms
My, yes, that's definitely a surprise.
Actually, uniforms bring up another thing that I was interested in but didn't get around to talking about, which is gender roles.
The uniforms were gendered—the boys wore pants and the girls wore skirts. This also tends to be true about school uniforms here, which is actually one of the things that annoys me most about school uniforms.
But I was really interested to see that, at least in this fictional university, close to half of the students in the faculty of Industrial Engineering were female, as were about half of the professors that we saw, and within the story there were absolutely no suggestions that there was anything inherently masculine about the field. In Canada, currently, only about 20% of undergraduate engineering students are female (according to my quick internet search), so that was immediately striking to me.
> I still remember the poor guy who drew a very nice picture of a log
Huh! I rather wish that those writing essay exams would resort to the same rather than paragraphs of BS I have to wade through...
LOL! Yeah, it's true that it's a lot harder for a math student to write a rambling BS answer when they have no idea what to do. (And if they try, it's immediately recognizable as such, and a very fast zero.)
Given we have a sample of one (1) here, who can say, but I wonder if Thai TV writing attempts to be more realistic than U.S. TV?
Yes, having seen this sample of one, I'm now extremely curious about the extent it was typical of Thai TV shows, versus what was unique about it. Does Thailand have an entire genre of sweet, realistic, queer university-student dramas, of which this was just one example? Or was this show typical of Thai teen romance dramas but unusual in having LGBT characters? Or was it unlike anything else that's ever been produced in Thailand? At this point I have no idea!
I did find it dramatically more realistic than any American-produced movie or show with a university setting that I've seen. I don't want to draw sweeping conclusions, because there might be some good American examples that I just haven't encountered, but I've typically found American-media depictions of university life very off-putting because it seems like the students are always partying (and drinking), and never studying at all. Well, and more than that (because it certainly makes sense that most of the studying would be off-screen, since it's not interesting to watch), there's often an implication that it's socially unacceptable to really care about your studies. I assume (hopefully!) that that doesn't really reflect the experience of actual American university students, but it seems to be pretty ubiquitous in the media depictions.
And yay for surprise extra canon!
Seriously! I'm starting to feel like this show came into the universe just to make me, personally, happy. It is everything that I love! (Well, it lacks superpowers and spaceships. Maybe I should write a superpowers and spaceships AU? LOL.)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-19 09:36 pm (UTC)Me too, I mean what about when it gets cold? And that's pretty interesting about the representation. One thing I've noticed when watching the NOVA series (science-centered public TV show) is that the scientists they speak to are fairly diverse, particularly across episodes. Now they probably make a point of speaking to a variety of people since they're aware of the educational benefits to kids of representation, and I daresay a good part of their mission is to encourage people to pursue STEM fields (not that there's anything overt about it, but PBS was set up as an educational broadcast network). But I also suspect that many fields are more diverse than people expect and probably much more so than depicted on most fiction shows where casting lazily defaults to "middle aged white guy in lab coat" (because it's not like there are many old people on TV either).
there's often an implication that it's socially unacceptable to really care about your studies
I think there have always been such students but I would say that here there are also such schools. Quite a few college-bound students evaluate prospects not by cost, location, or reputation in their field, but by whether or not it's knows as "a party school." So there are definitely groups of people who neither take their work seriously nor think anyone else should. I do think, though, that this is more true in HS than college, but fewer shows and movies are based on HS students.
That said, this depiction probably says more about their target market, since more people don't go to college than do, and thus would relate more to people who don't put much importance on academics.