The joy of collecting data about Thai GL series

How this story began

Irene: When GAP The Series (ทฤษฎีสีชมพู) came out in 2022, I watched every new episode live with my partner and we had so much fun following the story. The campiness, the sweetness, the (sometimes) absurd tropes, and the happy endings created a refreshing mix I found lacking in Western lesbian media. I was hooked, and quickly realised that it was a way bigger phenomenon than I had thought. GAP’s production company ran many events for fans to mingle and meet the actresses; they sent the actresses to LGBTQ+ and fashion events; they advocated for same-sex marriage.

After GAP, I watched many other GL series. When The Loyal Pin was released in 2024, I could hardly believe that it was being sponsored by the Thai government. I was keen to know why.

I tend to get obsessed with quantifying the things I like. So, I opened a blank spreadsheet and started cataloguing Thai GL series. The industry was booming but information was scattered. Fans had to comb through a growing number of social media accounts for Thai GL news. It was madness, and the researcher in me wanted to create a neat dataset that I could update. That dataset started this story.

The purpose of a dataset informs its structure. At first, I had only wanted to verify if GAP The Series was the first GL series ever made. But soon after, I also wanted to understand how this phenomenon got so big; why people seem to love these stories so much; and why this is all happening in Thailand (and seemingly nowhere else).

Here was my roadmap for curating and analysing the dataset:

1. What: Define what I would track
2. When: Build a timeline of the Thai GL phenomenon
3. Who: Identify the production companies behind the series
4. Why: What traits of Thai GL series make them attractive