Ann Lu

BLGLFlix editorial view

Two credits, and both of them say something about how Taiwan actually builds directors.

A twelve episode Boys’ Love series is a large first job. It was not handed over alone. The credit is shared with a director who has already made several of these for the same kind of platform, which is an apprenticeship in everything but name: the newcomer gets the episodes, the experienced one gets the responsibility, and the series gets both.

We have argued elsewhere here that Taiwan lacks a queer production pipeline. We have already had to soften that once, on finding a producer whose entire record sits inside GagaOOLala commissions. This page softens it further. A platform that pairs a new director with an established one, on a twelve episode series, is not improvising. It is training somebody.

Our own read is that this is the least visible and most consequential thing a small industry can do. Thailand grew its Boys’ Love directors by making so many series that people learned on the job. Taiwan does not have that volume, so it has to do it deliberately, one co-directing credit at a time. Whether there is a second series after this one is the thing worth watching, because that is the difference between a training scheme and a single kind gesture.