#jeng kittiphong atthachiranon

[mushiemadarame]

kissing galore ⇢ Ben Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn as Pat Phakphum Tangwatthana and Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP10)

[smittenskitten]

MAN TRISANU SORANUN as JENG KITTIPHONG ATTHACHIRANON STEP BY STEP (2023)

[aprilblossomgirl]

Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon and Ben Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn as Pat Phakphum Tangwatthana in Step by Step (2023) | ep.3

Mr. Jeng’s name is... Mr. Jeng’s name is... I can’t remember! 

[shortpplfedup]

Episode 10 has put me squarely in my Jeng feelings in a way I have not obsessed about a character probably since Teh Krittikorn Saetun. After watching him compartmentalize his way into a complete abdication of responsibility this week, and having read literally every piece of stellar meta the fandom has churned out, but especially from folks like @bengiyo and @nakasomethingkun about the corporate setting actually being the point of this story...I'm completely down the rabbithole, no way out guys. I vacillate between my optimistic and pessimistic expectations on how satisfactorily this story will wrap. @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm STAY on Tee's ass and I can't quite say they're wrong. But the thing I'm now 100% sure about is that the romance is not the point of this story. The romance is here in service of points Tee wants to make and themes he wants to explore around capitalism and queerness (second time Tee is going hard at this idea, after poking at it in Lovely Writer). Tee is using romance because it's the most effective way to make queerness legible for and saleable to a general audience, WHICH IS IN ITSELF A COMMENTARY ON CAPITALISM AND QUEERNESS BUT I JUST BLEW MY OWN DAMN MIND AND HAVE TO PUT THAT IDEA DOWN FOR NOW.

Jeng, Jeng is the character sitting at the intersection, at the tension point between capitalism and queerness. Jeng, who thanks to @waitmyturtles DRILLING Asian family dynamics into my head over the last few months, I have realised is incredibly unlikely to be able to escape his fate as the heir to Jian Group. Why does Jeng work TWO FULL TIME JOBS? Because he can only have the things he wants if he also accepts the things he never wanted. He can't abandon Jian Group, but he can build next to it an entire other life: Pearl & Oliver, queer speakeasies, doing his little part to minimize food waste and support a marginalized community, and Pat. COMPARTMENTALIZATION. For all Jeng's big talk about work/life integration, he doesn't even consider that he can mesh the things he wants with the things he's obligated to do until Pat points it out to him under that bridge. Shouts to the homie @wen-kexing-apologist for breaking that scene down and making me realise that moment is the closest Jeng got this episode to the shape of the relationship he actually wants with Pat. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I say all that by way of preamble (I'm a long-winded bitch, strap in) on the way to one of my actual points: nobody actually KNOWS Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon. Even the two people closest to him in the story, Jaab and Tae, only know pieces. Pat barely knows him at all, because even though he desperately WANTS Pat to know him, the boss thing was a barrier to that, and now they've speedrun straight into a unholy mess when they should have been truly getting to know each other. You can see how, were it not for Jeng's slow motion rolling breakdown (of which his intense infatuation with Pat is honestly part and parcel) and Pat's role at Jian Group, these two could have spent a year at this pace, fucking and talking and falling in love and it would have been FINE. But the life Jeng never wanted broke containment and rolled over Pat, and now here they are.

@plantsarepeopletoo pointed out how the narrative punishes characters for going too fast or out of order (Jaab and Jen), and rewards those who take their time and stay the course (Chot). We thought Jeng would be the latter. That's the Jeng we're introduced to: calm, sensible, logical, responsible, in control. But that Jeng is a TOTAL SHAM, that Jeng is a façade built to meet the world's expectations of him, a carefully crafted and cultivated image of cisheteropatriarchal corporate masculine perfection. The Jeng who has been panting after Pat for the better part of a year and doing absolutely INSANE shit to get next to him, that's the real Jeng. This episode was Jeng trying to rebuild the wall between his two lives after having it collapse last ep and utterly failing BECAUSE PAT NOW IS PART OF HIS LIFE ON BOTH SIDES OF THAT WALL. He cannot neatly compartmentalize Pat into his Desired Life, because Pat also has to exist in his Expected Life. And Pat doesn't actually know Jeng, because this is all happening too fast and out of order, so he doesn't know that Jeng is in the middle of a full-on existential crisis as his two worlds collide.

Sidenote: Pat accidentally hit on Jeng's compartmentalization tendencies early in the show I realize, when he drunkenly whinged about how he couldn't understand why Jeng felt like two different people, and he didn't know which one was the real one. I think that sort of bullseye targeting at the heart of Jeng is one of a host of reasons Jeng fell so hard and so totally for Pat: he thought Pat understood him on some level. It's why having to come out to Pat, having to explain himself when he thought he didn't have to, knocked him onto the back foot and things haven't REALLY been right with them since.

It's so sad, and SO QUEER that Jeng is living this double life and it's slowly breaking him. He's coming apart at the seams trying to hold it all and not lose any of it. Jeng talked a good game about work/life integration, but the flip side of that is bringing your whole self to work. And he can't do that, he can't even think of doing that, right? But he's gotta do something because now Pat has been dragged into the mess, and worse yet Pat has brought Jeng's Desired Life to the direct and un-ignorable attention of the key figure in Jeng's Expected Life: his father. And while I think Jeng's father is aware of his Desired Life (disapprovingly natch, but silently allowing it as long as Jeng continues to live his Expected Life), I think he's stood ready to stamp it out the minute it becomes a problem. And the problem has arrived. That's why Jeng looks so sick when he realizes that Pat went to his father to resign. The shit has truly hit the fan. Compartmentalization is over.

[recentadultburnout]

Step by Step (2023)

Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon เจ๋ง กิตติพงษ์ อรรถจิรานนท์

Jeng  = (slang) cool, great, exceptional, excellent, outstanding, smart

Kittiphong  = famous family lineage

Attha =  text, words, content

Chira = sustainability, stability

non = delight, joyment, happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction

 Pat Phakphum Tangwatthana พัท ภาคภูมิ ตั้งวัฒนา

Pat, in this spelling, is not a real word.

Phakphum = proud

Tang(ตั้ง) in Thai means set, stand, establish, name, mount, or place, but considering that it is in a surname and also the way it is placed, it probably comes from the Chinese surname Tang.

watthana = prosper, thrive, flourish

 Put พุฒ

big, strong, old, adult, developed

 Jaab จ๊าบ

(slang) prominent, outstanding, remarkable, conspicuous, distinguished, notable, marked

 Chot โชติ

prosperity, brightness

 Ae แอ๊ะ

sound with no clear, definite meaning

 Khanun ขนุน

jackfruit

 Ying หญิง

Woman, girl

 Prem เปรม

comfortable, cheerful, contented

 Toh โต

Grown, accrete, big

Series’s Thai name is ค่อยๆรัก Koi Koi Rak

Koi Koi = gradually, slowly, then, gently, carefully, rarely

Rak = love

Index

[mushiemadarame]

tenderness 🥺 ⇢ Ben Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn as Pat Phakphum Tangwatthana and Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP10)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Ben Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn as Pat Phakphum Tangwatthana and Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP10)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Intense Eye Contact: Dude, You're Staring with Man Trisanu Soranun (Step by Step, 2023, EP08)

[mushiemadarame]

i am my own target audience

⇢ Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP08)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Intense Eye Contact 101 with Man Trisanu Soranun (Step by Step, 2023, EP01)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Intense Eye Contact: Intenserer and Contacterer with Man Trisanu Soranun (Step by Step, 2023, EP05)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Intense Eye Contact: Once more, with Feeling with Man Trisanu Soranun (Step by Step, 2023, EP03)

[mushiemadarame]

eyes appreciation post part two ⇢ Man Trisanu Soranun as Jeng Kittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP11)

[mushiemadarame]

⇢ Intense Eye Contact: Pat Finally Looks Back with Man Trisanu & Ben Bunyapol (Step by Step, 2023, EP10)

[mushiemadarame]

Man Trisanu's For Your Consideration entry ⇢ Man Trisanu Soranun as JengKittiphong Atthachiranon (Step by Step, 2023, EP08)