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bad buddy + this post

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Every time i come on tumblr, i feel like i am being attacked by beautiful bad buddy posts and gifsets and images that make me so damn emotional... Like i didnt specifically curate my timeline to do maximum damage to me 100% of the time.

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Ray's mother never loved or wanted him, Mew didn't love him and their friendship was hurt because Ray loves him, Sand is doing all these things with Ray and they getting closer but he pulls away when he finds out Ray loves Mew and Ray has to be looking at how much every time he tries to love or be loved he just hurts himself and the other person. His mother drank herself to death, Mew drew a boundary that pushed Ray away, Sand turned his back on him and doesn't he just deserve that? Isn't he unlovable? Why would he dare think anything else? Why would Ray, the jinx and burden, the hungover idiot, think he could even try to be loved or love? All he does is hurt or be hurt and at least if he stops maybe he'll only hurt himself and so dragging people down with him. Maybe he can protect other people from himself if he just... gives up on love.

(But he can't because it is fundamentally human to want to be loved, whether romantically or platonicly. And there is nothing wrong with that, with wanting and needing to be loved to be the best version of yourself out even just to be yourself at all. )

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10 Favourite Series/Movies I watched in 2022 (Fave Series for @asianlgbtnetwork 2022 Recap)

Bad Buddy (dir. Aof Noppharnach Chaiwimol ) Genre: Comedy,  Romance,  Youth Starring:  Nanon Korapat, Ohm Pawat,  Love Pattranite,  Milk Pansa,  Jimmy Jitaraphol,  Drake Sattabut Language: Thai

Ever since they were young, Pran and Pat’s families had a deep and raging rivalry — trying to one-up each other on everything. This also extended towards their sons. It was almost like rivalry was passed down as a family heirloom and the two boys became rivals as well. Until… they grew tired and became friends. Really good friends. However, because of their families’ rivalry, their friendship had to be kept under wraps. And so began a journey of secret friendship… and then perhaps a sweet secret romance?

Keep reading

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sandray + intimacy / touch ONLY FRIENDS ✗ EPISODE 5

+ bonus

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THE RAY MEW FRIENDSHIP - EP 5

This is a dying friendship at the moment. Ray feels so much for mew - friendship, love, and so much gratitute. And it's so interesting how long and how much ray has held on to their past, because their current friendship actually feels like a shadow of what it once was.

Knowing what we now know about ray calling himself a burden and how far down that lack of self worth actually took him, i am now thinking about the scenes in ep 1 when we saw boston call him a burden, ray call himself a burden and mew say and do nothing about it. Ray looked so grateful to mew when mew just asked boston to take him home.

Mew is sort of giving the bare minimum (maybe not even that) to this relationship right now. I think mew has actually developed some resentment towards ray. It could be the responsibility of having to take care of someone with an addiction, or knowing how ray feels about him and not wanting that level of adoration, affection, dependence from ray or some combination of the two. But mew looks most animated while talking to ray when he is trying to get him to get together with sand. Maybe an underlying wish to have ray's overwhelming emotions focused on someone else and then they would stop being his problem.

It's also heartbreaking how much mew does not stand up for ray or for their friendship. We see that he can and does stand up to top when he wants to. But every time top disparages ray, or makes comments about their friendship that are definitely none of his business, mew says nothing.

And on a side note, when top told mew about using drugs, he panicked at the idea top being anything like ray.

And while his instincts and desire to set boundaries with ray are very very fair, he does often come across as cold. Even when ray had a genuine question about mew's relationship with top, he shut him off (though i also see that as him being defensive about his relationship since he knows there's something not quite right about it).

Also, reminder that one of mew's first items on the checklist of his perfect boyfriend was that he gets along with his friends. But top and ray clearly don't get along, and that doesn't seem to matter to mew.

Which is why, next episode, based on the preview, when the topboston drama is revealed (by ray), i think mew is going to feel that much more comfortable throwing away this real, but flawed and exhausting relationship with ray in favour of the facade of perfection with top.

I am so interested in seeing how this gets worse before it gets better... if there is a better. Which i do hope, since i still think there is some genuine affection there from both of them.

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Yeah. There is just something so off about topmew. Mew comes across as this really honest, straightforward person, but it's impossible to shake the feeling of there being something under the surface that we still just can't see. And i am not sure if there is because mew is being deceptive or because he is just naive and can't see what is real and what isn't and is latching on so hard to this image of what a perfect relationship looks like and trying his best to slot his relationship with top into that image, with top being only too happy to play along.

Their sex scene here is also completely from mew's perspective, and you can see him feeling comfortable here unlike the scene in the previous episode. But what is interesting is that top is just blank. There is nothing under the surface there during that scene. That "i love you" was the most emotionless i have ever seen. Not even enough emotion to show that top was just saying it to keep mew around and checking boxes of what he thought mew expected of him. Just... nothing. And it didn't look like mew meant it either.

Their scenes are so markedly different from the interactions between any two other characters.

And i don't think it's a forcebook problem or an acting problem or a problem at all. I think it is fascinating and perfect and exactly how the writers and directors intended it to be.

so the top/mew sex scene? fascinating. they made so many choices regarding it and i'm honestly intrigued.

((this got way too long so i'm putting it under the cut))

the first thing i noticed was how their scene had almost no noise. it was dead quiet. and the lighting felt almost clinical.

now in comparison to some of the other sex scenes we've seen so far it was... pretty tame. which is fine. but we basically didn't see any of the 'sex'. we got the kissing. and we got the afterglow cuddles. and on top of that... there was no passion.

but let's start from the beginning.

'does this mean i passed your test?' a relationship shouldn't a test. and i think it says a lot about top that that is how he views it. its a challenge. a competition. maybe even a distraction. this has been his goal: get mew to have sex with him. and he's succeeded. but what happens now?

now in comparison to the first time, in episode 1 when they make out in mew's kitchen there are some noticable differences. firstly, their kiss is much more intense. now you can write this off as this kiss being sweet and romantic but... there is so much space between their bodies when they kiss. the only points of contact are their lips and top's hand on the back of mew's head.

then they undress themselves. not each other. top just strips and mew follows suit. the first time, top at least takes mew's shirt off for him. this time he barely touches mew. there's no romantically revealing each other. which is interesting because the first thing top says is: can you see me? can you see what top has revealed to mew. not what mew revealed himself. and mew is all of course i can because he really seems to think he does. but anyway. they're still not even touching.

and then

and THEN

i love you mew

like my dude where did that come from what a line you really just went in for the final kill didn't you. he's serving himself up to you already and you just had to make sure there was nothing left.

and then they are in their boxers kissing. and there is still so much SPACE.

and then top puts mew down on the sofa. now i'm not being funny but there is literally a perfectly functioning massive bed RIGHT THERE. but whatever. who wants comfort? who wants space? who doesnt want to accidentally fall onto the floor? i digress.

they're touching now. finally. but mew is just kind of lying there whilst top does the touching. which, sure, shy virgin. i'll let it slide. hands still above the waist. boxers still on-

afterglow cuddles.

...

that's literally it.

bearing in mind we have seen boston bouncing on this guy's dick.

bearing in mind this is pratically the premise of the show. this is the set up from the very first episode. this is what mew and top have been building up to ever since they met.

and that's it.

anticlimatic.

which... huh, maybe that's the whole point.

this was supposed to be anticlimatic for us because it was for them. because they had both been building up and building up to this and maybe it didn't quite live up to the ideals they both had in their heads.

or maybe its anticlimatic because there's no real feeling. all the other pairings have given us emotions. even if it's one sided pining. even if there's no romantic feels yet, you can feel the potential. you can feel the desire. mew and top's scene was the least passionate of any of the sex scenes. and you could write it off as being sweet and romantic rather than horny. but i don't buy that. i don't feel that.

maybe this is how it always is for top. maybe this was exactly what mew was expecting because he seemed pretty content afterwards, with his i love you and that saccharine smile of his. maybe he doesn't know any better. maybe neither of them do.

but when juxtaposed with the sand and ray scene that follows straight afterwards... those two just have to look at each other and you know they want each other. they kiss and they're both grabbing for each other. sand moves his whole body to be closer. and they're both still fully dressed but i'll be damned if there isn't more feeling packed into that one kiss than into the whole of top and mew's scene.

i just find it interesting that something that was so pivotal to the story. to the characters. was so utterly bland.

and i think it's a very important message to be honest - you can't force romance. you can play by the whole book, follow all the right steps, say all the right lines... but you can't put feelings in where there are none. you can't make passion and love from a prewritten recipe. life is messy. and love is messy. and sex is messy. and trying to keep it neat and ordered and clean, like mew does, just doesn't work.

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P'Jo really be embodying the "Be gay, do crime" agenda in all his shows and I love him so much for it.

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I don't mean any of this in a weird way but if we're interested in breaking down binaries, we can't cling onto the binary of cis versus trans. If gender expectations are as constrictive as we say they are, then this imagined class of people who are okay with gender expectations 100% of the time with no complications is just that. Imagined. It's similar to "neurotypical" as an imagined class of people who are completely comfortable with the social and mental expectations of their jobs and would never understand what it's like to get overwhelmed or feel out of place. The unintended implication is an obsession with labelling and pathologizing that says that it's not gender or workplace norms that need to be interrogated, it's you.

The truth is that you can be outside the binary without formally committing to calling yourself nonbinary. I am a cis gay man who feels most comfortable and affirmed when I'm free to wear earrings and garments I bought in the "women's" section. I tell people my pronouns are he/him because it's the simplest explanation, but they/them and even she/her are comfortable, even validating, in the right circumstances. There are a lot of cis gay men just like me. Am I actually nonbinary and just in denial? No. Being a gay man is deeply meaningful to me. Am I encouraging nonbinary to start calling themselves cis and questioning whether they're actually nonbinary? No, and I feel more comfortable in my own manhood knowing I have the option to leave. I just want us all to define ourselves on our own terms. I want celebrate common ground and shared queerness with trans people and not have to overstate our differences. We treat it as a political and moral obligation to fine tune our labels for the sake of establishing who's allowed to say what, who's allowed to relate to who, and I have to ask: Are we committed to breaking down boundaries or not?

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Ray ray ray ray ray

Sorry, i just had to sigh that 5 times.

What is it about characters that feel unloved, unwanted - have convinced themselves that they ARE unloved, unwanted that get to me.

Also i think ray has been brought to life beautifully by khaotung. He adds a certain vulnerability and controlled neediness to the character that adds so much depth. We have seen the rich, lonely guy trope many times before. And this version might be my favourite so far.

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Episode 7 Pat : To lose or not to win that is the question

Okay I saw a post talking about how episode 7 pat "loses the bet everyday" and how in this rooftop scene...

Pat raises the stakes (asking pran to confess in public) to keep Pran from saying the words just then (knowing he won't take that option) is making me feel and think a lot of things and now my brain is all over the place and i might as well just all note it down here or i won't have peace of mind.

At the outset i want to confess that eventhough i know that the bet has been for pran's sake i still viewed at as a legitimate competition that both pat and pran were trying to win, but i'm realising more and more how (for a large part of the bet) that just wasn't the case at all.

Pat came all the way from Bangkok to the hostile architecture trip alone only and only for Pran. Pat wants to be with him. Pran knows that and Pat knows that Pran knows that. He hasn't tried to hide it at all.

Pat knows that Pran has feelings for him, Pran knows that Pat knows that. But he also isn't ready to admit what it would entail and the familiarity of competition between them allows him to explore that.

"Whoever falls in love first loses" - when both of them know that they have feelings for each other, is hilaaaarious on first watch, but once you've rewatched it countless times and reached a whole new level of brain rot where your blood cells have p cells embedded within p cells in them then it isn't funny, it isn't funny at all * screams into a pillow *

Coming back to the bet, and what it actually means which is that whoever admits it(their feelings) first, loses. And all of us including pat and pran know that pat has already lost. Him coming to the trip just to get Pran to talk and his confession that he actually didn't like Ink 'like that' is all pointing to just one very obvious thing.

So Pat has already lost and yet they're both entering into the bet as if on equal ground. Pat could (and is very much willing to) keep losing over and over again, he very clearly wants to be with Pran but he would keep the charade of the bet up if it meant Pran wasn't ready.

Which means that the entire time that they were teasing and flirting with each other, all throughout episode 7, pat keeps on losing just for Pran's sake.

Do you realise how absolutely insanely madly crazy (mature) in love Pat is???? This might be a childish bet to YEW but to him its a space for Pran (and him) to explore their feelings without the responsibility of a relationship on them, it's actually revolutionary.

Kinda like killing with kindness, which basically sums up the kinda guy Pat is when he's with Pran.

"Don't force me to" he says in response to Pran's "You're just not brave to" (confess) when all of us know Pat is very well brave enough to do that and that is exactly what Pat is reiterating here. He's saying "you very well know why i'm partaking in this charade don't act like you don't i could kiss your competitive ass right now but im not doing it cos i want you to (admit that you) want it".

The man is basically losing (coming over to play and then offering to clean pran's face cos he looked upset screams somebody who wants to win real bad right hahahah NOT *argh pat can you not be so unreally sweet people have to go back to their real lives with real men to be disappointed by*) over and over again asking Pran to "just let me love you, you dork".

Here Pat is literally doing the confession, the very thing they started the bet stating, "i'll make you beg on your knees for me", well he's almost doing the next best thing, and he's doing it willingly, in front of people, with the most genuine smile on his face.

And when he raises the stakes on the rooftop and he does it entirely for Pran again. As much as he wants to be with Pran he equally wants it to be when Pran is ready for it. Not for it to be a decision he is forced or boxed into. He doesn't want to beat Pran he wants Pran to walk into the loss like he himself did, over and over again, because that's just the kinda guy he is.

Boy basically said if me winning the bet means you losing your chance to make that choice for yourself then i don't want that kinda win.

Which is why he's been willingly giving up all the chances to win throughout the episode, but continuing to put up the charade of the bet cos 1. yeah ofc its loads of fun teasing pran and he is so grateful he gets to be close to him again but more importantly 2. he can't (but he is fully willing to) wait for Pran to mentally be ready to get into a relationship.

"As for me, when i have a lover, I always let my lover win" - And truer truths haven't been told. Man has been losing since the very beginning. And that too happily. He is only doing it to give Pran the time that he deserves to process the whole thing and accept his love.

See even here he isn't expecting Pran to confess his love and sweep the whole bet thing away.

Look at Pat pausing trying to figure out what Pran is doing here. I can almost hear the cogs in his brain turn, until the very moment that Pran extends his hand to wipe the stray piece of rice away and then gives him that look. The look that says, "I love you, i'm done making you wait, thankyou, i love you".

So to conclude, Pat like the simp he is entered the bet (and kept willfully losing) only to make Pran comfortable. And literally the first moment that he completely feels comfortable, Pran gives in.

This whole post is borne out of my thoughts after i read what was said in here :

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tian: 😒😒🔪 pran: 😬🤫🏃‍♂️💨

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YES to all of this. But also Pat is not Tian and Pran is not Phupha in the sense that they don't exactly want the same things and they are not really at the same place within their relationships. I am very curious to see where the narrative parallels will continue and at what point they will diverge. How will the resolution for phuphatian be different from that for patpran (not just plot wise obviously, but in subtext or character development). I love the possibilities.

I’m thinking a lot about the scene between Pran and Tian where they discuss the fight Tian and Phupha are having. Not the fake one about who liked who first, but the real one about Phupha refusing to travel home with Tian or change anything about his life to meet Tian’s needs. It’s a funhouse mirror image of the conflict Pat and Pran are having about how much Pran should let Pat help him, and their long-term dynamic of Pat letting Pran win every disagreement and always being the one to compromise or give in when their needs are in tension.

What I love about it is that Tian doesn’t know anything about their relationship, he’s just (drunkenly) talking about his own experience, and how frustrating and exhausting it is to be with someone like Phupha who never meets him halfway. And Pran is sitting across from this guy who looks like his twin, whose story he has already memorized and connected to, who he now thinks of as a sort-of friend, and he is self-aware enough to see the parallels instantly, and to feel a little embarrassed and ashamed that he is essentially the Phupha in his relationship. And you see him react, just a little, and maybe start to think for the first time about what it must feel like for Pat to yield to him on everything, and never have that reciprocated by Pran.

Reading this wonderful post from @waitmyturtles earlier where she mentioned how she empathizes with Pran, I was also reflecting a bit about where I see myself in this story, and let me tell you, I am such a Phupha. When it comes to how I want to live my life, where I want to be, and how I want to spend my time and with whom, I am uncompromising to a fault. I completely get where Phupha is coming from - I told you who I am, and now you’re telling me it’s not enough. He is frustrated by the idea that he has to change himself for Tian, and I get that, I really do. It’s something I am personally not willing to do. The key difference between me and Phupha, however, is that I am not in love and I do not desire to be in a romantic partnership. He very much is, and very much does.

So what might a guy like Phupha think, as he is struggling so much with the idea of yielding to Tian, when he is met with someone like Pat? Someone who is so like him in some ways - in his strength, his masculinity, his physicality, his confidence, his loyalty, his desire to help others - and yet so unlike him in other ways - his emotional openness, his vulnerability, his comfort with compromise, his absolute willingness to put his pride aside for his lover. Where Phupha is rigid, Pat is versatile, in every sense of the word. There is a lot Phupha might learn from talking to someone like Pat about how he sees his relationship, why he is always willing to bend to Pran’s needs, and why ultimately feels it’s worth it, even if he sometimes feels some of the frustration that Tian does. Might Phupha have his own epiphany next week, opening up a path for him to finally compromise on something important to Tian?  

@dribs-and-drabbles, I’m not sure how this might fit into your theory about the patterns playing out in these episodes, but I really hope we get to see this happen next week, and watch both of these couples learn from each other’s experiences and find a way to meet their partners in the middle. Because as @waitmyturtles said, this is the work of being in a long term relationship.

In the server with @bengiyo @shortpplfedup @ginnymoonbeam @kyr-kun-chan @wen-kexing-apologist we talk often about how amazing it is when romances address what happens to couples after they get together, and how exciting it is that we are starting to see more bl shows about the work of staying together, and I’m so glad that the genius minds behind Bad Buddy and A Tale of Thousand Stars took the opportunity of this special to dig into that so authentically. And to have done it in such a brilliant way, by mixing and matching these characters from beloved shows, putting them side by side and demonstrating how they are similar and also how they can learn from each other, creating a sense of community in this shared universe, and making it all so damn fun along the way, is just an unbelievable treat for us as an audience. Can't wait to see how it all comes together next week.

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OUR SKYY 2 X BAD BUDDY Episode 1

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Silly little patpran and high school waipran playing guitar to kick off the blog :> (i sketched all of them from memory so dont judge too hard)

Also, have a nong korn.

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pran is sooooo much easier to draw omg