HIStory Party 2023

3/11/23

I set my alarm for 12:00 AM on a Friday so I could wake up and watch a livestream spoken entirely in a langauge I do not understand the night before (morning of?) meeting up with a friend for an early lunch because I am a goddamned adult.

HIStory Party 2023 was a celebration of the last 3 installments of the HIStory series, a Taiwanese BL pseudo-connected universe: HIStory3: Make Our Days Count, HIStory4: Close to You, and the recently concluded HIStory5: Love in the Future. I've been a fan of the HIStory series since I watched HIStory3: Trapped and Make Our Days Count back in 2021. While I wasn't super into HIStory5 (I gave it a 4.5/10 on MyDramaList), I briefly won me over with a cameo from the Close to You brothers. I also found the actors charming and the idea of a "party" celebrating them to be cute. I didn't know until after I bought my ticket that this was actually the second such party for this series. Besides, I'm a grown ass woman. I can spend my money how I want.

In the days leading up to the stream the official HIStory instagram did a lot of marketing with Wico Lin and Michael An, aka YongXing from HIStory3: Close to You (one of my favorite couples!) I was surprised to see how popular they were here in these posts. As you can imagine, they weren't all that popular English-speaking fandom (that's an understatement), but Chinese, Japanese, and a few English-speaking fans really went to bat for them on these posts. I only saw 2 negative comments in a slew of, like, a dozen. It was refreshing to see.

Last blog post, I said my first online fanmeeting was for Tonhon Chonlatee but it was actually a MaxTul Japanese fanmeeting with my fiancee. During that stream, which also didn't have subtitles, a fan in the stream totally unaffiliated with the production started translating for fellow fans. The same thing happend here for this stream. I'm so grateful to fellow fans performing free labor to share with the community they love.

I wish I had saved the person from the MaxTul stream's name. I at least did so here, though. So: burninglight92, tsangjulia0228, ilene0529, and Yemi. Y'all are real ones.

Unfortunately, DRM protection reared its ugly head so I wasn't able to get screenshots. I wanted to keep some memories, though, and I don't trust my faulty brain, so I opted to take notes as I watched instead.

The first half was a game where couples had to answer questions correctly. For YongXing CP, they got it wrong and had to rub noses for 5 seconds. For (MAIN HIS5 CP) if they got it right, they had to rub noses. For (SECOND HIS5 CP), Anson refuses to answer because he knew either way they would need to do something coupley so he opted just to do the fanserivice directly lmao

For some reason they gave Wayne Song (HIStory3: Make Our Days Count, aka my favorite Fuckboy with a Heart of Gold) an extra mic and he became a bonus MC. He was so charming it didn't matter that I only got the gist of what he was saying from the chat. Even without subs you could tell he was a total ham.

Another highlight was a game where they re-enacted couples scenes. They flipped the roles or re-enacted scenes of other couples; it was a sight to see. I loved seeing the other actors pretend to be walls for another CPs kabedon scene or support them during a table scene.

A lot of people were upset that Anson and [WHO?] ([CP NAME]from Histroy4: Close to You) weren't part of the lineup for this party. You couldn't scroll through SM without a "Where is [WHO CP?]?!" Some friends and I suspected the two couldn't make it, but were suspicious that neither actor even mentioned the event. BUT Lian (Teng Teng) actually showed up! Everyone in the audience and in the chat lost their shit when the MC played a clip of them for the re-enactment game. [WHO?] wasn't there, and I don't know if we got an explanation for that, but it was nice all the same.

Then we got some ballads. Damn, not even Taiwanese BLs are free from spontaneous performances, huh? Sean Chang and Linus Wang (HIStory5: Love in the Future) sang for us. Anson Chen and Jason Tauh (SenLin CP, HIStory5: Love in the Future) did a... rap?? The song was fine, the rap was... not... great lol, but at least they had fun. Unfortunate, that was not the end of the individual stages.

After that, more games! This time all CP vs CP. There was a Guess the Drawing game (won by YongXing CP), then Pose Recreation (for this one they had to be tied together and the audience was adamant they should be tied facing each other and not back to back lol--if there was a winner, I didn't catch it).

Then--you guessed it--more singing! YongXing CP sang and held hands, which was cute. After that, the cast came out into the crowd to hand out candy while Sean Wang did a cover of Can't Control It by Ozone. The audience loved this, it was so cute.

Fanservice time! The MC wheeled out a board where fans wrote their comments and questions for individual members and the actors picked one to respond to. Our resident translators focused on Wayne and Chunchih (understandable as they're the most popular) so the majority of these weren't translated, but the actors and fans all looked happy.

The event then moved to VIP and VVIP photo ops, but the online portion ended there. (': Understandable, I wouldn't want a punch of randos watching me be awkward around my favorite CP, but I wish I could have seen those photos! I'll have to camp out on IG to get a glimpse. I'll eventually get photos delivered as part of my online fan benefit though, so it works out. We also got a bonus surprise video that wasn't translated, and our translators were all but done for the day, but it seemed cute? Fans who purchased an online ticket are supposed to receive special digital photos. I haven't gotten mine yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

Though the ticket was, in my opinion, pricier than it should have been (but when is an online fanmeeting ever reasonably priced?), I was happy with what I got. It was so nice to see all the Taiwanese funü in the audience. I love BL, but I also love BL culture. Getting a chance to interact with fans from all over the world while watching actors from a series we all love.

Overall, I had a great time. No regrets. 'Tis the life of a fujoshi with disposable income.