The 2020 Psycho BL Awards are complete. We have our Winners, and our Runner-Ups. The way that voting was conducted and final results achieved this year was unique. An internal survey was distributed across the family of Psychomilk Contributors where they nominated 10 – 12 candidates for each category. From the given list, the choices were cross-checked and then 10 were chosen to be posted in Public Polling from January 10th – 15th, 2020 that produced over 16,000 votes. Using these votes as a barometer, the top voter choices from each category were evaluated using a specific set of criteria by a group of five completely independent judges, none of whom are a Reactor, Content Creator, Producer, Actor or any member of The Psycho-milk Media Group.
The judges on the voting jury consisted of:
1) A BL fanatic from Asia
2) An International BL supporter & advocate of LGBTQ+ rights in the United States
3) A Professor of Theatre, Media, and Film
4) A self-proclaimed Fujoshi
5) A BL non-fan, seeing the selection clips for the very first time
Snubs?
The subject of “snubs” came up in our team discussions during the process, so I asked the team to get me some examples. However, there were only two of us (thanks Mals) who came up with one – one glaring snub. That is for Why RU’s 2nd couple Saifah and Zon, portrayed by Jimmy Karn Kritsanaphan and Tommy Sittichok Pueakpoolpol. They weren’t exactly one of the main couples, but they would have been featured enough to qualify at least for a nod for Best Side Couple, or maybe even Best Boys Love Couple of 2020, if COVID-19 hadn’t just absolutely eviscerated Why RU’s shooting schedule. M2’s fandom screamed enough to where the two of them got their own three episode expansion/completion of the Saifah/Zon story. Jimmy and Tommy, we love you from The Psychomilk Team. You got rooked in the nominations.
Although the show wasn’t phenomenal, this supporting couple won the hearts of the fans with their sensual chemistry and mutual understanding. Our first award is for Best Side Couple goes to:
Our next award is for best writing. As fans of BL, let’s face it, a lot of the time, the script plays second to the eye candy and the chemistry of the actors in the main roles. However, that doesn’t limit BL series scripts from touching on some of the real issues facing the LGBTQ+ community today. With the explosion of high-quality BL series coming out during the year, this one’s script was valued as the Best Script in the 2020 Psycho BL Awards!
Female characters in BL don’t always the most positive views from the audience. It’s getting better, and we have a category for Best Female Character. In this case, the female character doesn’t fulfill the “trope” of always playing the villain, but in fact is a more realistic portrayal of a true friend to the main leads. The award for Best Female Character in BL for The 2020 Psycho BL Awards is:
Music plays an important role in BL series. If the music isn’t well-done, maybe the audience won’t be quite as excited watching the series every week. In this case, the music blended with the visuals to increase the overall viewing pleasure. The 2020 Psycho BL Awards for Best Music Scoring:
Continuing our discussion on music, how many of us think of a particular song when a BL series pops into our head? How many of us link a certain song to our complete enjoyment of the series. The Best Original Soundtrack in the 2020 Psycho BL Awards:
The show with the best intro and storyboards is:
The show with the best man behind the camera for the 2020 Psycho BL Award for Best Cinematography goes to:
At this time, let us announce some winners for their efforts in making the BL Genre as successful as it is. Some may be outside ridged concepts of these awards. That’s why they are Special Awards from the 2020 Psycho BL Awards.
Romance plays a big part in BL Series. Along with the romance comes the intimacy between the leads. Affection as intimacy is expressed as a kiss. The 2020 Psycho BL Awards is proud to award the couple with the most sensual touching of the lips as the Best Kiss to:
There are many, many production companies in the BL world. From Thailand, Korea, Philippines and Japan, not to mention other countries contributing their first productions to the viewing audience. However, COVID-19 critically damaged the ability of these producers from getting their product to viewers in 2020. However, the show must always go on, so something had to be created for the viewing audience. This production company was one of the first to create an entirely new way of bringing stories to us. Stories that even emulated the harsh and lonely world brought on by this Pandemic. Conversations, feelings, and love stories were suddenly being conveyed to us using this medium that was just about the last thing we had left. The award for the Breakthrough Production Company and their pioneering method of telling a love story goes to:
The person at the helm of every BL series, no matter where it comes from, is the Director. This is the person responsible for what we see and hear on the screen. There were so many great efforts this year, but this is the winner of the 2020 Psycho BL Awards for Best Director:
Being the LGBTQ+ community, there are still quite a few of us who don’t always have it looking so easy. It’s important for us to remember some of the struggles all of us has faced at one time or another. The category for this award is Most Thought Provoking BL Series in the 2020 Psycho BL Awards is:
Sometimes things just click with actors. Casting is about the best it can be, and the story told to us by the actors using just about the perfect script prompts us to award all the actors for their performances in the 2020 Psycho BL Awards. The winner of the Best Ensemble Acting is:
Acting is getting better and better in BL shows. This actor is just not another pretty face. This one has real acting chops – the kind that can really go places in the entertainment industry worldwide. The 2020 Psycho BL Award for Best Actor is:
There is one element that can make or break a BL series. If the BL romance, or even Bromance doesn’t consist of great Chemistry between the leads, who’ll watch it? The chemistry between the Leads is more important than, dare I say it, even looks. Many, many couples for the 2020 BL series year had chemistry in droves. This pair is who the 2020 Psycho BL Awards has chosen as the Best BL Couple of 2020:
Finally, this has been an arduous and long process as there were so many great shows this year. But there can be only one winner. The 2020 Psycho BL Award for the Best Boys Love Series of 2020 goes to:
For your convenience, the carousel below will allow you to view all of the awards in a quick setting.
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I’ve been an admirer of your Psycho Milk website for quite a while now. You perform a necessary service for BL fans who need to cast a critical eye of the various series rather than just passively watch them. I must say, however, that I feel you’ve let yourselves down with these awards. They are heavily skewed towards Filipino BL series, which has made me wonder whether your website is domiciled in the Philippines and, in particular, whether most of your judges are from there. The international consensus is that ‘I Told Sunset About You’ was far and away the best BL series of 2020, for its superb production values alone. I seem to recall that your own critics/columnists came to the same conclusion in early January. The best Filipino series was ‘Gaya Sa Pelikula’, which was so thoughtful on LGBT issues. ‘Gameboys’ and ‘Hello Stranger’ deserve awards for innovation in facing the challenge of making BL series in a pandemic. But to claim that Elijah Canlas was the year’s best actor is pretty silly. He’s a delightful guy but he has no subtlety as an actor. There were wonderful performances in ‘Cherry Magic’ (Japan), ‘Where Your Eyes Linger’ (Korea), and in the Thai series ‘Why R U?’, ‘Ingredients’, and ‘I Told Sunset About You’. The best Filipino acting was in ‘Gaya Sa Pelikula’. I realise that individual taste comes into this, but I think you made a big mistake by being so biased in favour of Filipino series. Having said all that, thanks for such a stimulating website.
Thanks for your message. With the utmost respect, your characterization of us being “biased” is just a bit unfair. We are a not-for-profit website, and any money that does come in from the few ads we do have won’t even pay the hosting fees for a year. We do this because we love BL/GL/Non-Binary and any non-hetero stories we can view, read, and write about.
We did everything we could do on the awards bit that didn’t cost $$$$ to ensure that the process was as fair as we could make it (IP blocking to prevent multiple votes is expensive). The results were arrived at from surveys posted out of our website, followed by evaluations of the impartial 5 Judges. It was the best way we figured we could counter multiple-voting. We outlined the process very clearly on our website before, during, and after.
Gameboys wouldn’t have been my choice either, but I’m just the editor and didn’t have sway of that type anywhere in the process. Truly, as loved as it was, I would have disqualified “I Told Sunset About You” because of the price to watch it here in the US. USD $42. In the Philippines, that’s 2,036₱, and ฿1,296 Thai Baht. Gaya sa Pelicula was my favorite Pinoy BL as well.
BTW, the website has more crew in the USA than in the Philippines. Two of the 5 Judges were from the US, and our highest audience volume is also from the USA.
Thanks for reading,
TheFNGee
Editor
2020 was saved by BL shows. I would always be grateful to 2gether and BrightWin for Friday evenings that were full of love and laughter; but more than that, for encouraging my fellow Filipinos to produce high-quality BL dramas, such as Gameboys, Hello Stranger, and Gaya sa Pelikula. I Told Sunset About You was an experience I will not soon forget. Cherry Magic just filled my heart with joy. Right now I’m really loving A Tale of A Thousand Stars, and looking forward to Hello Strangers The Movie, Gameboys Season 2, and KinnPorsche. Thank you, Psycho-Milk! You’re doing an excellent job 🙂
Let me throw some love out to Psycho Milk judges and vetters- lots of work and yes- tons of disagreements as with all awards shows. I think you can see the reflection of the incredible levels and ways of telling stories Filipino BL productions reached. Thai series mostly ignored Covid and remained in a cotton candy fluffy Uni world of affluence. Gameboys took this horrible epidemic head on with creative story telling and deserves some awards.
Congrats to all the winners, runners up and special categories!
Whether it be the Oscars, the Golden Globes, or the Psycho-Milk Awards, one of the best part of any awards show is disagreeing with the winning choices – loudly. I’ve never thrown popcorn at the screen, but I’ve aimed a few choice words at it. This is no different. Next year, I volunteer to be on the jury because clearly this year’s jury was not up to snuff. Most of the winners aren’t worthy of nomination, never mind winning. That’s my two cents’ worth. 🙂
Wow. Isn’t that kinda harsh? I know most of the jury members, and with all due respect, I don’t think you’re really qualified to simply lump them all into a “not up to snuff” group. These are some really intelligent f**kin people and one of the best reasons they were picked is that they weren’t beholden to any fandom or biases during vetting.
However, if we didn’t completely support your “two cents’ worth,” we would have just marked your post as “spam” and be done with it. To each their own, and thank you for taking the time to write. It means you care.
TheFNGee
Sheesh! It was a jioke.