Media Roundup: Khemjira, A Wild Radiance, The Bangkok Boy
It's been a busy fall: I pushed for and met some extra-high writing goals in September and October, and I'm putting in the final edits on The Citizen of Eastport. My cover artist has also been hard at work... stay tuned for a cover reveal in December!
I'm never too busy for stories, and this fall has brought me some wonderful ones. Rather than doing a roundup of everything I'm currently watching and reading, I'm going to go in depth with a few new favorites.
Khemjira
This show took me by the throat. It is one of the richest and most fully-developed Thai BLs I have seen, blending its mythology, relationship narratives, and community setting into a story-world that I want to sink into again and again. Since it finished a few weeks ago I have been rewatching, one episode a week, because I don't want to be done with it.
The central story is of ghosts and a cursed, haunted boy who will die on his 21st birthday if the curse cannot be lifted. It is a love story, of course; it is several love stories, the first one being not with Khem's eventual lover, but with his best friend, Jet, who will fight to save Khem with everything he has. The love between friends is essential in this story: never sidelined, continually given as much weight as the romantic storylines.
The spiritual powers fighting over the life of our protagonist are spectacularly rendered. The production team spoke repeatedly about how hard they worked to honor the spiritual traditions and history of the Isan region where most of the story is set. There are some truly stunning scenes of ritual and reenactment. I also loved how the human and the spiritual tangle together, common human ugliness twisting into otherworldly terror. The ghost whose hatred and rage drive the story gets her own narrative arc: she was once human too.
It is a BL, and while the main romance plot is not the best thing about the show, it is very good. Petrifying fear of loss on one side, doom and uncertain will to live on the other – makes for a nice toothy dynamic. Pharan, the shaman who Jet and Khem turn to as their last resort, is a frustrating love interest for a good half of the show, as he tries his hardest to remain aloof from both Khem's problems and Khem himself. The budding romance lives in tiny looks, gestures, and hesitations, but when the sparks catch they blaze up fast and hard. The first intimate scene between the main pair is one of my favorites ever. But again, this is a story where every relationship is important: family bonds, friendships, community, and romance. In a year stacked with great BL, this one is easily my favorite.
A Wild Radiance
I have not managed a lot of reading this fall, but I did have the absolute joy of reading an ARC of this book by Maria Ingrande Mora. A Wild Radiance is a YA fantasy with a m/m/f romance, following a young woman as she takes on her first apprenticeship and quickly learns how much her schooling failed to teach her about her own magic and its impact on the world.
Mora has a gift for tender, nuanced characterization of difficult people in difficult situations. Josephine is fierce, determined to prove herself, quick to act and quick to judge. She is constantly under tension between her own instincts and the things she's been taught are true and right. It's a joy to watch her refine and redirect her ferocity and moral clarity.
One thing I always look for in polyam romance is each pair's dynamic having its own flavor and character, rather than everyone blending into a nebulous "we." A Wild Radiance does this beautifully, with the connections between Josephine and Ezra, Ezra and Julian, Josephine and Julian, each filled with distinct tensions, challenges, and sparks. The three of them in different ways make each other better, and the trio forms a safe base from which they can fight to change the world.
The fantasy plot hinges on the relationship between magic, industry, and nature, and the conflict is thoughtfully shaped. In relatively little space it packs in a lot of nuance about different forms of activism, balancing competing needs, and how easily great evils can be absorbed into the background of everyday life. It feels grounded in essential realities, so that the hope and triumph in the end rings true.
A Wild Radiance comes out Jan 20 2026... look forward to it!
The Bangkok Boy
I caught up on this one after it finished airing; I knew I would love it, but I wanted to be able to binge it rather than enduring the suspense week to week. Then I ended up taking at least a week between most episodes because my heart couldn't take a faster pace. The story's world is violent and brutally unjust, and the characters won my heart so immediately that I white-knuckled through every episode afraid of what would happen to them (even though I'd been assured a happy ending.)
Sun, the protagonist, is probably my character of the year. He grows up with a brilliantly clear sense of who he is: a fighter and a fair-minded gangster, ready to take up his father's role as protector of their neighborhood. Everything goes wrong for him very fast, but it doesn't change him in the way I was expecting. His core sense of self remains unshattered, and the rest of the story is about him fighting to rebuild his world.
The romance could be enemies to lovers, but they fall in love before they know they are enemies, and they're too aware of the realities of their world to let it stop them once they know. There is no clean, easy love for either of them. Betrayal exists on a sliding scale, and they understand one another's constraints. This is the kind of dynamic I live for: hard pragmatism alongside the determination to claw out a little bit of joy no matter what it costs.
I don't recommend the series to everyone, but if a gritty, intense BL about fighting for life amid turf wars and international power games sounds appealing, I definitely do. (Feel free to ask me for content warnings, there are plenty.) There's a planned season 2 and I very much hope it materializes.
I hope you all have found as much to enjoy reading and watching as I have! If you have any favorites to share in the comments, I'd love to hear them.