Light-Hearted Boy-Love Dramas for the Soul
In March 2021, I was working my soul-sucking job, finally getting home when the sky was pitch black. My boyfriend was super busy working on his performance film, Element, and we didn’t have much of a chance to talk. IKEA just started shipping furniture and I took advantage of it, building black bookshelves with the little time I had left for myself. I needed something to play in the background and a banner of a Filipino show called Gameboys kept showing up. I was shook that my Netflix algorithm clocked me for my Filipiniality, but was even more shook at the fact that this was a boy-love drama. My algorithm clocked my gay ass, too.
I played it, not thinking that I’d be into it, but I got sucked in.
It’s set during the pandemic, where a boy named Cairo streams his video game match with an online opponent Gavreel. Cairo loses and demands a rematch but Gavreel has other intentions. A FaceTimed romance blooms.
Was this the representation I was looking for? It was so corny, and cute, but cringe, but also very addicting. I had to pause every so often when the flirting got too much! I had second-hand embarrassment while also wishing all of it happened to me.
There’s this Tagalog word kilig that describes the “fluttering butterflies in the stomach” giddy feeling from a romantic experience. This show was my dose of it.
After finishing the show, I was fiending for more and I discovered Boy Love dramas are huge in Thailand, and since the pandemic, there’s been more Filipino, Korean, Japanese, and even Vietnamese and Chinese ones.
So I wanted to share my favorite light-hearted boy love dramas to warm you up through the season. And by “light-hearted,” I mean no one dies, no one is sick, and it’s easy to binge.
