Yaoi or Boys' Love (BL) has grown from an underground to mainstream fictional genre. It emerged from women's manga comics in Japan in the 1980s, which portrayed the relationship between young boys based on the seme (active) and uke (receptive) dichotomy. Through an informal fan network, the transnational phenomenon came to Thailand in the early 1990s and a subculture was formed online.
The success of Love Of Siam (2007) broke new ground for subsequent BL series. A turning point came in 2013 when a side couple in Hormones enjoyed popularity, followed by Lovesick (2014) on a free TV channel. Since then, the production of BL series has grown substantially. During the pandemic, the romcom drama 2gether (2020) became a global phenomenon. Already, 57 Thai BL series have been released this year, 30 in 2021 and 13 in 2020, according to the fan website Blwatcher.com.
"I have been investigating what I've termed 'the BL Machine' that content producers in Thailand have developed in order to create a new form of celebrity culture to promote artists, generate revenue and also bring queer intervention into Thailand's heteronormative media landscape," said Thomas Baudinette, senior lecturer in Japanese and International Studies at Macquarie University, in a seminar held by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre.
