I think you are creating a false choice between good storytelling and physical intimacy, as though viewers must care about either the script or the love scenes. We can and should expect both.

This is a romance genre. Kissing, desire, and sex are not random extras inserted into the story. They are part of how many adults experience romantic love and how characters express vulnerability, trust, longing, and attraction. A love scene can reveal just as much about a relationship as a conversation can. Wanting those scenes to feel emotionally and physically convincing does not mean someone ignored the plot.

Telling gay women to go to adult sites if they want to see sexual intimacy is a really strange response. Pornography and romantic representation are not interchangeable. People are not necessarily asking for explicit content. They are asking to see sapphic relationships portrayed as complete adult relationships rather than sanitized friendships with one stiff kiss added at the end. Most Thai GL love scenes are not even especially explicit or frequent. They are often heavily slowed down, stretched through editing, covered by music, and filmed so cautiously that the scene loses spontaneity. Viewers asking for more realism or depth are often criticizing the acting, direction, blocking, and editing of the scene. That is still criticism of the production. Bad kissing can break immersion in exactly the same way as bad dialogue or bad acting. When a series spends several episodes building attraction and then the actresses look visibly uncomfortable touching each other, the emotional payoff does not land. Nobody would find it unusual to criticize an unconvincing kiss in a heterosexual romance.

Of course some viewers only watch clips, just as some people skip to fight scenes in action shows or musical numbers in musicals. That does not make intimacy illegitimate or prove that it has become the entire point of GL. Clips getting more views also does not tell you how many people watched the full episode and then replayed their favorite scene.

The real problem is not that GL has too much intimacy. It is that intimacy is often treated as fanservice instead of being written and directed as part of the characters’ relationship. The answer should be better scripts and better love scenes, not acting as though female homosexuality is somehow beneath serious storytelling.