#atots analysis
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i know its been said before but what the fuck ford. đđ your brother, known dumbass, spent over half his life fixing his mistake, SAVING you, without knowing if it'd work, or if you were even alive, and then the first thing you do is SOCK HIM IN THE FACE. i love you babygirl but stan is literal saint dont touch my ANGEL..........
started thinking of this when i was rewatching of AToTS rn and how when stan first sees ford he opens his arms to hug him (and then ford punches him) but when mabel was telling them to "hug it out" ford actually looks back at stan like Wow alex hirsch i am going to END IT ALL....
anyway i Love my angels stanley Pines and STANFORD FILBRICK PINES (even if theyre a Little gay)
#gravity falls#gf#stanford pines#stanley pines#a tale of two stans#AToTS#FREAKING OUT#beating up my ford plushie rn#i love u bookie bear ford but iâll acyually fuck you up if youre mean2 stan again.....#ON SITE BUDDY..#all jokes i have a serious analysis of AToTS that im not fully done with#allies blurbs
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I know there is another song that is literally the ATOTE anthem, but "Afraid" by The Neighbourhood fits so well. For more than one character. Even the music is just so in line with the vibe of the fic.
I just realized it while listening to my "On Repeat" Spotify list.
"All my friends always lie to me. I know they're thinking, you're too mean, I don't like you. Fuck you anyway!"
"You make me want to scream at the top of my lungs. It hurts, but I won't fight you. You suck anyway."
"When I wake up, I'm afraid somebody else might take my place."
#mara posts#sge#rise of the school for good and evil#fall of the school for good and evil#atote#a tale of two emperors#afraid#the neighborhood#song analysis#playlost#spotify
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I noticed many people are feeling pretty angry at the writers right now, for how they handled PatPranâs conflict. First of all, for introducing us to Patâs fear (I donât want to admit to myself that I canât live without him) without every really foreshadowing it; second of all, for having Pran say that heâs insecure, that he doesnât feel enough, that he believes Pat puts more effort in their relationship than he does (and well, all of this was already pretty obvious from other scenes in both Bad Buddy and this crossover), but then having him do nothing about it and wait for Pat to be the first to say, âI canât live without youâ.Â
I will try to explain these scenes and the reasons behind them, but I do want to clarify something first: unlike the 12 Bad Buddy episodes, these ones were rushed, and not as well written. Iâm not as disappointed as other people and I donât think they ruined the show and/or the couple with these specials, but I do wish theyâd done a better job conveying these messages.Â
Pat loves playing the hero, even Pran tells him (in episode 11) that itâs one of the reasons why he likes him.Â
Weâre used to Pat being vocal about his love for Pran, and thatâs what put so many people offâwhy would he feel insecure about saying those words out loud, when heâs always been sincere and has never had issues expressing his own feelings? And youâre right, of course, thatâs one of the many differences between Pat and Pranâs personalities, as established in the show.
But! Pat telling Pran how much he loves him, Pat being there for him, Pat always taking Pranâs feelings into consideration and putting them first, Pat protecting Pran, Pat being ready to lose in case his win might put Pran in a tough situation, Pat yelling his adoration for Pran on the stairs of the Architecture faculty... all of this is a way for Pat to be Pranâs hero, to be the strong one, the one whoâs willing to yield because he knows thatâll please his boyfriend, the one whoâs straightforward and who never hides the way he feels.Â
And yes, we did get some quotes from Pat in ep 11 about how much he likes that Pran always fights alongside him and never leaves him alone, but that speaks a lot about partnership, doesnât it? We fight together, we go through stuff together and nobody can stop us as long as weâre together.Â
But then Pran starts having doubts, shows his insecurities; he knows that Pat always being there for him is fine and all, but letâs not forget that Pran isnât used to this. Yes, theyâve been together for three years, and they faced a lot together, helping each other out all the time, and thatâs why now Pran feels like he can let his guard down next to Pat. When Pran says, in episode 1 of OS, âNo matter what problem I face, youâre always there for meâ, he means it, deeply, and he isnât ashamed of it at all, or at least until he hears Pat and his friends making fun of it, making fun of how much he trusts Pat, to the point that heâd be willing to rely on him, something heâs obviously never done before. And while he knows those are not words Pat truly means, he canât help but wonder: âAm I doing enough? Does Pat feel like Iâm a burden to him? Doesnât he believe I can get things done on my own anymore? Have I got too comfortable with thinking heâs always by my side that Iâve reached the point where I need him by my side?â
Because letâs not forget that Pat and Pran are individuals that got together by choice, and by choice only. Ever since they were kids, they chose to break their parentsâ rules and become friends, they chose the hard way instead of the easy path. So theyâre choosing to stay together, going through the trouble of hiding their relationship again, and maybe Pran starts wondering whether Pat still thinks itâs worth it (letâs not forget that Pat answers âI have no choiceâ when Pran tells him heâs grateful for his presence, and while Pat just meant that theyâre meant to be together, that he couldnât not love Pran even if he wanted to, that might also come off as âItâs the way it is, I got used to itâ).
And thatâs why in ep2 of OS, when Pat reminds him that he wants to help him because heâs his boyfriend, not because Pran asked (not because he has to, or because Pran needs him to, but because he wants to, because his choice is to stay beside him) the mood immediately changes, to the point that Pran gets super comfortable with physical touch again and theyâre even implied to be sexually active (which may not sound important, but we saw how brutally Pran pushed Pat away when he still wasnât in the mood and was still hurt and Pat kissed him, so I think itâs actually very important).Â
Pran is still obviously insecureâand can you blame him, really? Pran has been in love with Pat throughout his entire life, he thought the mere chance of having any sort of relationship with him was nothing more than a dream, and instead got exactly what he wanted. But he never thought he deserved it, or that he was enough for it. He is clearly uncomfortable with how different their bodies are (despite Pat being horny for him all the time! Which kind of proves the point that until youâre the one who fully believes in something, it doesnât matter if anyone else around you tries to convince you: youâre still gonna doubt), he knows heâs âa lot to handleâ (as Pat tells him himself in ep11, and please do not get me started on Pranâs face when he asks Pat why he likes him, as if heâs thinking âhonestly, why on Earth would someone like you love someone like me?â), he asks Pat if he âwere goodâ after they made love for the first time, although Iâm pretty sure Pat showed his pleasure pretty evidently while they were at it. There are still days in which he doesnât believe his own eyes, think about that little moment in ep1 of OS when Pat agrees to give him the auditorium and his eyes shine and flicker with the same lovesick expression he had back when they werenât even dating. We see Pran getting confident around Pat because he knows Pat likes him, because heâs somehow reassured that his boyfriend enjoys the way he is, which allows him to be more comfortable in his own skin (think about how smug he acts during more than half of episode 1 of OS). His confidence shutters when he hears Pat say those words and laughing with his friends about them; I think itâs perfectly normal that he got insecure after that, despite being fully aware that Pat did not mean what he said.Â
And then you have Pat, whose whole identity is shaped around the idea of being the perfect son, the coolest friend, the greatest rival in history, realizing that he doesnât just want to be with Pran all the time, to take care of Pran and to be there for him, to cherish him and make him feel loved and desired. No, when he takes his time to think about Pranâs insecurities, he goes like âHeâs the one whoâs worrying over whether he needs me too much or not, when Iâm literally nothing without him by my side?â
Pat can only be truly himself around Pran. Pat only shows his weaknesses to Pran. Pat is only clingy to Pran. Pat wants to help Pran because Pranâs his entire world. Sure, he likes to play the hero; he likes to be someone the people in his life can rely on, someone who can be anyone elseâs rock; but all of that means nothing in the face of the idea of losing Pran.Â
And itâs terrifying to admit it! One thing is to say, âI love you so much, youâre the most important person in my life, our relationship means the world to meâ, and something else entirely is to say, âI canât live without youâ. Our parents will eventually find out and they might try to get in our way again? Thatâd break me, break me completely, do you understand? I donât know how to function without you. Thatâs what âI canât live without youâ really means, we canât live without air, we canât live without food or water, and thatâs how much Pran means to Pat (and how much Pat means to Pran), and it doesnât matter how vocal about his feelings Pat has always been, and it doesnât matter that they both already know (as Pat tells Pran!): to say it out loud is a different story.
Especially when you think about how important to Pat and Pran is that theyâre equals in their relationship. Think about how much Pat was insecure in ep1 of OS when he realized Pran was so confident about the whole âplay-competitionâ thing, how sad he got when his presentation went down bad and Pran got the sponsorship. What gets him all happy again? The realization that he doesnât need to be better than Pran at everything; the realization that theyâll always be there to help each other out, that what Pran did with himâhelping him visualizing things as something different from what they wereâwas really the same thing he did when he helped Pran visualize a bus-stop that wasnât even there yet. Thatâs why he goes from being so worked up about winning the competion to being once again willing to give the auditorium to Pran.Â
So why does Pran feel so bad at the idea of needing me, when Iâm literally so sure that I do? That makes him feel uncomfortable, and doesnât allow him to fully accept the idea that he needs Pran so much, when he he isnât sure that Pran needs him all that much and when Pran seems so against the possibility of actually needing him (also, take into account how much Pat belives in Pran! He doesnât doubt Pran will find a solution to him and Phupha being lost in the forest for one second! Sure, heâs worried about him, but he also knows Pran will always handle things one way or another, with or without his help).
I think the miscommunication is evident, because Pranâs issue wasnât with needing Pat, but with the idea that Pat might be starting to feel like Pran was becoming a burden to him. Thatâs why they should have talked this out, because Pat âcanât read his mindâ, as he very cleverly pointed out in ep6. But while PatPran do have an healthy communication going on, I donât understand why people were so upset that Pran didnât feel like spelling it out, when itâs really not the first time he does that? Pat and Pran just happen to always get each other in the end, often without any need for words to come out of their mouths.Â
I think the main difference this time was that Pat needed an answer. Pran already got an answer to his insecurities when Pat told him he couldnât live without him, and Pran already knew how Pat felt because Tian snitched had already told him about his conversation with Pat. So, âAm i doing enough? Is Pat getting tired of me? Is the way i handle things, the fact that heâs the one who usually yields, something thatâs tiring him?â, very obviously no. Patâs not getting tired of him, Pat could never get tired of him (when you think about it, itâs also kind of the meaning of the ost that Ohm sings, and thatâs supposed to be Patâs answer to Pranâs song).Â
Pran doesnât need any other answer, but Pat does. He doesnât in ep11, when he so very genuinely gives that huge, emotional speech to Pran, to which Pran doesnât reply a single word, and thatâs perfectly okay because Pat doesnât need an answer to that. But Pat does need an answer now, and you can see it from the way heâs so shy when he pronounces those last two words, from the way he looks at Pran craving for something, anything, that will make him feel like him needing Pran is okay, because Pran needs him too. So thatâs what Pran tells him, nothing more, and nothing lessâalthough, he does say a lot more, by literally resting his head on his shoulder, asking for physical support, and physically supporting him at the same time, because thatâs who they are, thatâs who theyâll always be. Pat telling Pran he canât live without him makes Pran feel like itâs okay if he canât live without him too, itâs not something he should be ashamed of or afraid of. Itâs just the way they work. Yes, they chose to be together, and now they need toâand there is no shame in that.
And it may look like Pranâs not putting any effort into this, but he so clearly is. Pranâs crying, you guys! Even just saying those few words out loud isnât easy for him, all considered. Heâs always been the one having an harder time expressing what he feels, this is nothing new.
EDIT: I guess I should have written that his eyes were watery, not that he was crying, since there were no tears in sight. Iâm sorry!
And things will kind of always stay this way, if you think about it. Think about how even in ep12, when theyâhave been dating for ages and are fully adults, Patâs still the one who goes to Pranâs bedroom, never the other way around. And thatâs notâdonât you dare say itâsomething that shows how much more Pat loves Pran than Pran loves him: it just shows that people can show their love to each other in different ways, and thatâs okay.Â
#bad buddy#Our Skyy x Bad Buddy#bad buddy series#bad buddy the series#bad buddy analysis#our skyy 2#our skyy x a tale of thousand stars#our skyy x atots#bad buddy x atots#patpran#pat x pran#phat x pran#pran x pat#pranpat#pranphat#pran parakul siridechawat#pat napat#pat napat jindapat#pran parakul#gia talks about bad buddy
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so i've always related more to dipper, for many reasons that aren't worth mentioning now, but recently i had a thought that made me take pause...
i've always related to mabel's gut instinct to make a joke or goad others, especially my family, with silly jokes or bits or whatnot. at least for myself, this gut instinct to make others laugh isn't always just for the sake of making a joke. i mean, yeah, i enjoy a good bit myself, but i know the real reason is something much deeper.
in the book of bill, we learn that mabel and dipper's parents are in the middle of a divorce, or at least gearing up for one, at any rate. while it seems like mainly dipper is affected by this in tbob, at least in his nightmares, i 100% believe that mabel knows about it, and is probably just as affected. only, she has a different reaction.
mabel's a do-er, whereas dipper is more the stew in it and let it consume him type of person. i believe she's an extremely emotionally intelligent person.
the girl literally carried around a list where she kept tabs on the emotional states of all of her friends and felt an extreme desire to âfixâ their sadness and in turn, hers. she notices when the people around her are upset, and it makes her uncomfortable. she sees it as a problem to be solved rather than something she should let others deal with on their own terms.
and, yeah, i know what you're thinking. mabel's a child. she's silly and funny and makes jokes because that's what kids do. but it's also a defense mechanism children develop, and itâs rooted in childhood trauma (like witnessing longstanding domestic disputes, parents who can't emotionally regulate, etc.) this desire to constantly keep tabs on how others are feeling keeps us safe â if we've grown up in environments where people may lash out if they're experiencing turbulent emotions or longstanding fights.
my point is: mabel is portrayed as being silly and âunseriousâ but really she uses humor and optimism as a shield, taking on immense emotional labor for her friends and family and trying oh so desperately to bear the weight of othersâ hardships. i think its a wonderful argument against the âmabel is selfishâ crowd. she's avoidant, sometimes, under extreme duress, and other times she's proactive in tracking the emotional states of the people in her life.
#gravity falls#mabel pines#character analysis#back to analyzing gf characters#i want to be a fly on the wall in the pines home and psychoanalyze everyone#children parenting parents#dont get me started on atots#she definitely overheard that fight
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BAD BUDDY FILMING LOCATIONS 10
This post steps away from the original BBS to look at filming locations for the Bad Buddy episodes of Our Skyy 2 (overlapping with ATOTS as well), that aired in May/June 2023.
I think the fandom was so overjoyed at getting PatPran and the rest of the gang back in Our Skyy 2 that we were willing to overlook any inconsistencies (Pat's Baseball Mom hair included đ), and this applies to the locations too. đĽ°
Anyway, OS2 x BBS x ATOTS didn't use Rangsit University to represent South Technology U, and instead filmed the gang's academia-set scenes in King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL).
KMITL is about 30km east of central Bangkok in Nonthaburi province, not far from Suvarnabhumi Airport:
The auditorium scenes were filmed at the KMITL Main Auditorium:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [1I4] 6.06 â the Archi and Engine boys watch as PatPran appear to fight in silhouette backstage; (bottom) this photograph dated 24 March 2023 is of the KMITL Main Auditorium, located at the Faculty of Engineering (posted on Facebook at this link here) â the seats, acoustic paneling at the rear wall, white parapet around one exit to the right and what looks like a timber lectern with yellow, pyramid-topped pilasters a few rows down from the control room are all a match
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1Â [1I4] 7.07 â the Archi and Engine boys rush to separate Pat and Pran after the curtain falls; (bottom) this view of the stage in the KMITL Main Auditorium (from a post at the School of Engineering's Facebook, linked here) is a match, with the yellow-brown brick walls, red-brown steps, black-edged projection screen and stage doors all corroborating details
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.4 [3I4] 0.42; (bottom) this image from KMITL's School of Engineering Facebook (dated 24 March 2023 and linked here) shows the KMITL auditorium lobby â note the light fittings and black window frames
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PatPran's discussion regarding preparation and sponsorship of their respective plays was at KMITL's School of Architecture, Art and Design:
(above) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [1I4] 13.22 â Pat and Pran discuss their level of preparedness and sponsorship of their faculty plays; (bottom) this photograph dated 10 December 2022 was taken at the KMITL School of Architecture, Art and Design â the timber platform, gravel base and garden furniture (at the top left of the image) are a match (image from the school's Facebook, linked here)
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The location of the Archi-Engine charity sweep was outside the ceramic workshop of KMITL's School of Architecture, Art and Design:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [1I4] 1.49; (middle) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [1I4] 2.36; (bottom) this image, dating to March 2013 is from Google Maps Street View, and shows the ceramic workshop at the KMITL School of Architecture, Art and Design (map coordinates 13°43'30.8"N 100°46'38.5"E) â corroborating details include the concrete bench and brown vertical bars (behind Mo in the image at the top), the palm tree to the right, the gray corrugated metal roof, and (the biggest tell) the mural made up of clay tiles above the corrugated roof (the image is from 10 years ago though, so some minor details are different)
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The location of the Engine boys' drinking party was in the adjacent furniture workshop of KMITL's School of Architecture, Art and Design:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [4/4] 1.07 â Korn, Mo and Chang the morning after their drinking party; (bottom) a view of the furniture workshop at KMITL's School of Architecture, Art and Design (from the Department of Industrial Design's 360° virtual tour website, linked here)
The corridor where Ajahn Pichai told Pran to get permission to use PhuTian's story for the Architecture play was opposite the Design Studio of the School of Architectural and Design Intelligence:
(top) Location of the walkway on the KMITL campus (from the School of Architecture, Art and Design's 360° aerial tour, linked here); (middle) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [2/4] 12.01; (bottom) photo from Google Maps, dated November 2022 and taken by Anusorn P. (linked here) â note the bridge at the right
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In Our Skyy 2, Pat/Pran's student apartment moved away from Tinidee Hotel Bangkok Golf Club and was represented instead by the Executive 2-Bedroom Suite (Type 5) at Northgate Ratchayothin Hotel/Serviced Residence (248 Ratchadapisek Road, Ladyao, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900; map coordinates are 13°49'46.7"N 100°33'47.9"E):
The following are some images of Northgate Ratchayothin, with matching images from OS2 x BBS x ATOTS:
(top) An image from the hotel's website, linked here; (middle) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1Â [1I4] 8.47; (bottom left) entrance door to the unit, extracted from the hotel's website; (bottom right) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1Â [1I4] 10.12 â Ink and Pa drop by with sukiyaki
Northgate Ratchayothin was also the location for Tinn and Gun's tuition safehouse in My School President, although there they used a different 2-bedroom unit (Type 3) â see this link here and write-up here for more info. đ
The Hightem office, where Pat and Pran go to seek sponsorship for their faculty plays, was also represented by Northgate Ratchayothin (which is why the reception looks more like a hotel lobby than an office one):
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1Â [2/4]Â 0.41 â PatPran at the Hightem reception; (bottom) the Northgate Ratchayothin reception counter
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The Hightem meeting room was also at the same location (naturally):
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1Â [2/4]Â 4.49 â Pran presents his proposal to the people of Hightem while Pat pesters Korn for the Engineering version; (bottom) an image of the boardroom from Northgate Ratchayothin's website, that can be rented for meetings (and filming)
The bus station where Pran departed for Chiang Mai and left Pat behind is the Sahaphan Roi Et Tour Company bus terminal. (Map coordinates are 13°49'38.5"N 100°33'23.6"E â the official address is 8/36 ŕ¸ŕ¸ŕ¸˘ วิภาวŕ¸ŕ¸ľ 17 ŕ¸ŕ¸ŕ¸ วิภาวŕ¸ŕ¸ľŕ¸Łŕ¸ąŕ¸ŕ¸Şŕ¸´ŕ¸ Lat Yao, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, but Google Maps will take you to a different location if you input this address.)
(top) An image of the Sahaphan Roi Et Tour Company bus terminal, extracted from Google Street View ; (bottom left) an image extracted from a photo on Google Maps (linked here), taken by ŕ¸ŕ¸Łŕ¸Łŕ¸Šŕ¸ŕ¸ŕ¸Ąŕš ŕ¸ŕ¸¸ŕ¸ŕ¸ąŕ¸ and dated August 2016 â note the yellow hexagons behind the glass in the background, visible briefly at Ep.1 [4/4] 2.26 and 2.29; (bottom right) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.1 [4/4] 2.30 â Pat buys a ticket to Chiang Mai
Once the action moved up to Pha Pun Dao, I did remember enough about ATOTS to know that OS2 x BBS x ATOTS re-used the same buildings up in the mountains. Most of these â unlike settings in other BLs â had been purpose-built for the show, and it was cool to see them still standing, looking good three years or so after they were first erected.
With a bit of searching, I can confirm that the Pha Pun Dao village buildings (Tian's house, the Pha Pun Dao school, etc.) are located at The Union of Hill Tribe Villages and Long Neck Karen in Nang Lae, Chiang Rai province. Due to the popularity of ATOTS, the set buildings can be visited as a tourist attraction in their own right, and are marked on Google Maps as such:
(above) The location of Tian's house (and other Pha Pun Dao buildings) on Google Maps, also linked here (the approximate map coordinates are 20°01'18.6"N 99°53'36.4"E)
There are in fact thousands of photographs posted on Google Maps for this location and I haven't been through all of them. The following is a sampling, with some matching scenes from ATOTS and/or Our Skyy 2.
Here's Tian's home in both ATOTS and OS2 x BBS x ATOTS. Three years later it's looking much more lush with planting everywhere, but it's definitely the same house:
(top) A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.4 [4/4] 3.27; (middle) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [1I4] 3.46; (bottom left) this photograph of Tian's house dated January 2023 was taken by Bogdan Ion and linked here; (bottom right) this photograph dated April 2021 was taken by Rachen Tananchai and linked here
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [1I4] 3.19; (bottom) this photograph partially showing Tian's dining area (the bedroom is also behind that window) was posted by mayu minnie in September 2022 on Google Maps (linked here)â the potted Dieffenbachia (dumb cane) is also a match
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [1I4] 12.35; (bottom) this photograph of Tian's kitchen was posted by mayu minnie on Google Maps (linked here) and dates to September 2022
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.4 [1I4] 15.36; (bottom) this photograph dated September 2022 was posted to Google Maps by mayu minnie (linked here) and shows the dining area at the front of Tian's House
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [1I4] 21.36; (bottom) this photograph of the bedroom in Tian's house is dated September 2022 and was posted on Google Maps by mayu minnie (linked here) â the proportions and details (especially the blue mosquito net, but also the posts and the wall panels of bark/fronds/bamboo) are a match
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [2/4] 3.20; (bottom) this photograph of the Pha Pun Dao schoolroom (with part of its back wall missing) is dated February 2023 and was posted on Google Maps by ă§ăăăĄăżă¤čŞĺĄž (linked here)
The iconic waterfall that PatPran visit is Huai Mae Sai Waterfall, also in Chiang Rai:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2 [2/4] 7.13; (bottom) this photograph of Huai Mae Sai waterfall is dated January 2021 and was posted on Google Maps by  ŕšŕ¸ŕ¸ľŕ¸˘ŕ¸§ŕ¸ŕ¸˛ŕ¸ ŕ¸ŕ¸˛ŕ¸ŕ¸ŕšŕ¸ŕ¸˘ŕ¸ŕ¸˛ŕ¸Ą (linked here)
Filming also took place within the Union of Hill Tribe Villages and Long Neck Karen compound:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.2Â [2/4]Â 1.47; (bottom) this photograph of the corresponding location at The Union of Hill Tribe Villages and Long Neck Karen dated June 2019 was posted on Google Maps by Ruben Torres and linked here
This is a Bad Buddy blog so I'm not going into the Ep.4 PhuTian locations in detail; they're easy enough to find because they were mostly at Emquartier Mall and the Buddy Oriental Riverside Hotel.
Emquartier Mall was also where Ice Paris and Pearwah's music video for the boppy theme song รูŕ¸ŕ¸ŕ¸´ŕ¸ŕšŕ¸ŕšŕ¸Łŕ¸ to My Ambulance was set. đ
But here's just one PhuTian location to close things off for good measure:
(top) Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars Ep.4 [2/4] 10.16; (bottom) image from Drop By Dough CafÊ's Facebook dated 19 March 2023, linked here
[P.S. â here are the links to all the BBS filming location posts:
Part 1Â â The legendary rooftop, PatPranâs student apartments, their high school, the white arches behind the Engineering Canteen, the Zero Waste Village and various seaside scenes, their honeymoon suite, the hospital where Pat was treated for his gunshot graze, and the high school reunion.
Part 2Â â Pat and Pranâs family homes, the Flagpole Bar, the car park fight location, and the Jae Si Curry House.
Part 3Â â Various locations at and around the rugby field, including Patâs photoshoot with Ink, the rugby bleachers, the iced milk tea (and green tea wave) picnic table, InkPaâs photography picnic, the old bus stop and the new bus stop. Also Khun Noppharnachâs pharmacy.
Part 4Â â Patâs Engineering Faculty (in and around Rangsit Universityâs College of Engineering).
Part 5Â â Pranâs Architecture Faculty (Rangsity Universityâs School of Architecture).
Part 6Â â Various F&B and commercial locations (eateries, shops, malls and a market). Also the setting for Pat, Pran and Wai's fight at the base of PatPran's student apartment building, as well as the scene where Pa says to Ink "Anyone taller than me is fine".
Part 7Â â Patâs post-graduation apartment and Pranâs residence in Singapore.
Part 8Â â Various campus locations filmed within Rangsit Universityâs Digital Multimedia Complex, including the auditorium and the Freshy Day Song Contest.
Part 9Â â The LogTech Building and Pranâs architectural office in Singapore.
Part 10Â â Locations for the Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy special episodes.
Part 11Â â The apartment for rent that Pran went to view in Ep.2, the elevator scene with Pat just after the viewing, and Waiâs apartment.
Part 12Â â PatPranâs elementary and high schools, as well as the location of Paâs near-drowning.
Part 13 â Random locations (Pran searching for his lost earphones, the covered car park where Wai spied on Pat serenading Pran with Nanon's Love Score, the airport car park, the SouthTech U Library, PatPran's rainy day ointment interlude, their motorbike and truck rides in Hua Hin, the approach road to Uncle Yod's bar, the filming location for the music videos Just Friend? and Our Song, and Pran's street address in Singapore).
Will update this list if I can track down the hardware stores â the one remaining location still unidentified! đ¤Ł]
#bad buddy filming locations#bad buddy locations#patpran#bad buddy analysis#telomeke#bad buddy#our skyy 2#our skyy 2 x bad buddy#our skyy 2 x bad buddy x a tale of thousand stars#os2 x bbs x atots
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aaaanyway time to finish my eclipse rewatch
#i'm missing ep 11 and 12#and then i'm done with my rewatch right in time for the eclipse our skyy eps tomorrow and the day after tomorrow#airenyah plappert#the eclipse#adrm#and i'm also almost done with my watch through first's entire filmography project#i'm just missing the lost lotteries#(plus that one show where he only had a guest appearance)#(which one was it.. f4?)#(anyway i'm skipping that one for now as well)#(i'll probably watch it at some point but not rn)#(doing rewatches of msp and bbs and atots is more important for now)#(plus actually sitting down and writing my thai drama eng translation analysis bachelor thesis)
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THIS IS A MUST-READ if you've watched and appreciated Mix Sahaphap's work (and even if you've not). A wonderful analysis and I must doff my hat and bow đ¤Šđ
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Mix Sahaphap gets to perform (and has the performance chops to perform) in a style that Iâve never seen any other male actor get to embody. Mix gets to unironically play the #strongfemalecharacter. The Beatrice, the Elizabeth Bennett, the Jo March. Strong-willed, emotional, kind-hearted.
Not only the the plot points line up, but Mix, more than any BL actor Iâve seen, fully leans into the embodiment of this archetype. In his roles, he rolls his eyes, pouts, banters flirtatiously, softens his posture and expression at small details. He doesnât over-exaggerate and imposition other characters but his face also doesnât hold back his characterâs thoughts and judgments. And when the moments arrive, he lets all the hurt and anguish pour out in shatters of tears and visible heartbreakâthe star-counting scene, anyone????âin a way that harkens to the operatic emotionality of well-done melodramas, soap-operas, and their contemporary Thai equivalent of Lakorn. Itâs only that these have never been menâs roles in those.
Itâs no surprise that one of Mixâs rolesâCupidâs Last Wishâis explicitly a gender body-swap, and Tian in A Tale of Thousand Stars is (albeit explicitly denied within the show) heavily connected to gender body-swapping. What Mix specializes in as an actor, and does exceptionally well, has been defined as feminine. To depict a kind of queer expression in this style is novel because itâs not camp, itâs not okama, itâs not a soft or femboy, itâs not a BL twink (Mix has been mostly excluded from the schoolyards and quads of the BL universe except for a role as a senior crush in Fish Upon the Sky). Itâs too sincere and too adult for any of that.
In Moonlight Chicken we get to see, without the pretense of gendered mysticism, this performance styleâs seduction, warmth, wit, and explosiveness within the framework of a general gay form of expression. It says that this kind of femininity might just be a gay thing. Not all gay men exhibit it, obviouslyâqueer men arenât a monolith. Still, it gives us something to consider about how we observe performance of queerness on screen, especially in front of an audience that puts so much more emphasis on ships, heat, and pairing chemistry to assess how well they perform a BL role. Could we look for other features to judge performance of queerness instead of how well they kiss?
Seme and uke roles would be the major performance style categories loyal BL fans assess actors with, yet even within the archetype his characterâs fill within BL narratives, Mixâs performances differ from the typical uke depiction in BL because he really doesnât perform them as passive. Rather, Mixâs characters and his portrayal of them are dynamic and demanding. It certainly fits certain stereotypes of ukes (Gilbert!) and their gay stereotype equivalent of bottoms as pillow princesses and brats. Mixâs characters, though, have more drive, agency, and compassion than that, and he plays them with all of those currents running underneath.
We certainly have openly gay writer/director Aof Noppharnach to thank for writing this kind of queer character for Mix to play in Tian and Wen. But for Mixâs specific commitment to the performance starting off with his (debut!?) role in ATOTS, we first have Earth to thank for believing in Mixâs ability and recommending him to portray the role of Tian, and then Aofâs acceptance despite his differing initial expectations for the character. Mix, Earth, and Aof have all been open about how Mix in his personal life and nature holds a lot of similarities to both his role as Tian in ATOTS and Wen in Moonlight Chicken. Some people might knock points off his performances because heâs like them. But his relationship to the characters, rather than dampening my enthusiasm for Mixâs performances, helps me appreciate his willingness to give an authentic performance in a style that hasnât been encouraged on screens previously. Itâs made more impactful that he chose to risk vulnerability to bring something personal that had previously been excluded from screens because of its gender deviance (and in broader society explicitly condemned). This doesnât make a claim on Mixâs actual identity, but simply shows his willingness to understand and perform the expressions of his queer characters with an effort at empathy that many other actors would feel challenged to bring.
Some actors are chameleons, but some actors have a gift of a type within which they can explore depths and range that no one else can best. For me, thatâs what Mix does in his work when directors and casting understands his talent. Thereâs a BTS video of Mix actually fainting during a scene while in Earth/Phupaâs embrace on the mountain that immediately brought to mind the wildly famous final scene in the film Camille where Greta Garbo as Camille dies in her loverâs arms.
For Mix, it was a serious incident due to regrettably extreme conditions and requiring the on-set paramedics, but these levels of theatrics, for me, are emblematic of what Mix is capable of as a performer, as well. After all, he had to faint in Phupaâs arms multiple times on purpose. Itâs the kinds of Old Hollywood and heightened sentimental romance realms Mix takes his performances to! Then he can turn around and make it look easy to take that same character into grounded quips or dedicated everyday tasks. It only takes writers, directors, and audiences willing to see that men can feel this way and act this way. Mix has paved the way.
#mix sahaphap#oh wow i wasn't expecting something like this years after atots and mlc#plus i'm not that much a fan of mix's#but this is an excellent EXCELLENT analysis of mix and his acting#with references to wider bl and thai lakorn#and even old hollywood#i love this đ#so wonderful to read#thanks so much op!#a tale of thousand stars#atots#moonlight chicken
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I recently watched your analysis of ATOTS, and since youâre not feeling great, may I offer you some extra facts that arenât super important but might be mildly interesting/provide context in this difficult time?
If no, feel free to delete this! Just wanted to share cause they were mentioned in the video and I went âOh! I know about this! Kind of!â
If yes:
1. The âEither 1800âs or Amishâ woman using the Sham Total is actually wearing a very time accurate dress!
In the 70âs, 1910âs prairie fashion came into style: frills on leather jackets, leather boots, and âpeasantâ blouses and dresses, which is the style of dress the woman in the clip wears! I do not know why they called them âpeasantâ dresses but they sure did call them that!
You can actually see remnants of this in the 2010âs when the 70âs came into style (In general, fashion is always on a 30-year cycle, so whatever is in style now was probably in style 30, 60 or 90 years ago, as a rule of thumb)
2. Carynâs storyboard design might be a nod to Jeanne Dixon, a psychic of the 60âs who famously claimed to have predicted the JFK assassination. Itâs pretty subtle and if it is on purpose, they probably thought Jackie O was the deepest they could cut and changed Carynâs design lol.
3. I have no doubt you checked this but a little hc I have: Stan and Ford would have been drafted for the war, being born June 15th.
But since thereâs that slight confusion about June 15/16th I like to headcanon they were born around midnight, so Ford was born on the 15th, and Stanley was born between 15 minutes later on the 16th. Meaning that, by a huge stroke of luck, Stanley wouldnât have been drafted.
Thatâs all I got â The analysis was a pure delight, thank you for all the work you put into your projects! <3
I saw your comment on the video and yes yes yes, thank you for the fashion analysis!
But also all of this is incredible historical context ty
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WKA Gay Analysis Assembly
Hello! Welcome to my blog, please note I am unhinged about my silly little gay shows and as evidence I give you an exhaustive list of all the analysis posts (and some non-analysis posts) I have written :)
I will be updating this post as I write more, and the most recent show I am watching/writing about will be listed first. Please know my DMs and my Inbox are always open!
By, For, and About Queers (The By, For, and About Queers posts are not about any particular show, and are instead a little write up of the way I categorize the BL shows that I am watching)
By/For/About- Part 1 (a conversation with @absolutebl)
By/For/About- Part 2 (a conversation with @solitaryandwandering) Also check out the really lovely response from @solitaryandwandering here
Toxic and Messy: TharnType v. Only Friends (aka We Trust Jojo) (a conversation with @absolutebl and @respectthepetty)
The Sign
Feelings Made Visible: Design Choices in The Sign
Fantasy v. Reality in The Sign
Last Twilight
Episode 1 Thoughts (in which I state my fears that were later realized)
Reflections in Last Twilight (Episode 1-2)
Physical Touch in Last Twilight (Episodes 1-3)
Thoughts on Last Twilight, Ep. 5 (aka when I still thought the show was good)
Last Twilight, Ep 12 (in which I rant about the ableism in the narrative and the undermining of the show's themes)
Shadow
Shadow thoughts
The Left Hand of God
Is Brother Anurak the One Armed Man?
What Happened to Trin? aka Paying Attention to my Favorite Straight Boy
I Feel You Linger in the Air
Let's Talk About Sex: ESSAY #69!!! (breakdown of the sex scene in IFYLITA Episode 8)
Only Friends Academic Essay Series
Only Friends, Boston, and Queer Culture
Only Friends and Respectable Promiscuity
Only Friends, Racism, and the Commodification of Queer Asians Everything else
Ray and Rehab
Boston the Slut
Hypocrisy
Who is Mew, Anyway?
You're Mine No Matter What: The Commodification of Sand
Explosions (fight night round two, Ep. 6)
Fight Night (scene breakdown of the fight in Episode 5)[Sand Addition by @ranchthoughts]
Poor Boy (a discussion on the beloved Poor Boy t-shirt)
Watch The Warp Effect before Only Friends
Misunderstanding Top? (a conversation with @respectthepetty)
What the Fuck is Boeing Doing Here?
Only Friends Reflection
My Ride
Rain, BL Boys, and Reciprocity
My Ride Finale
Be My Favorite (how did I get here, I wasn't planning on watching this!)
Permanence in BMF (in conversation with @stuffnonsenseandotherthings)
Lack of Touch in BMF (in conversation with @wanderlust-in-my-soul and @dropthedemiurge)
Cupid's Last Wish 1. Trans Allegory in Cupid's Last Wish (in partnership with @so-much-yet-to-learn and @lurkingshan)
La Pluie
The Language of Love In La Pluie Ep. 8
Ep. 8 Stray Thoughts
Hands in Ep. 7
Hands in Ep. 6
Subversion (a conversation with @lurkingshan)
Pee Peerawich Can Fucking Act
Connection
Body Language in La Pluie Ep. 12
Step by Step
On the Subject of Pat 2.0- A Defense
On the Subject of Pat- A Timeline (a conversation with @waitmyturtles)
Totally Normal About Episode 7
Lighting in Ep 9 (a conversation with @istanchan)
Going Out- Sharing Space with the Unhoused
Compartmentalizing
Workplace Homophobia and Relationship Development Between Pat and Jeng
Our Skyy 2
OS2 x The Eclipse - Characterization
OS2 x BB x ATOTS- Phupa and Queerness aka Damn You WMT (that's right! Damn you, @waitmyturtles!)
OS2 x BB x ATOTS- Validation! aka Phupa and Queerness- Part 2 (and a shout out to @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles for writing such brilliant meta I almost...almost didn't have to write one myself)
Pat, Pran, Losing Parental Relationships, and Sex (a conversation with @shortpplfedup)
Our Dining Table
Silence (including conversation with @laowen)
Yutaka and Yukata
Bed Friend
True Colors? (a conversation with @dribs-and-drabbles and @respectthepetty)
Uea and Red
Reflections + Uea and Yellow
Uea and Gray (a conversation with @respectthepetty) Uea and Gray but this time not tacked on to RTP's post
Mommy Dearest 2.0
Uea's Episode 7 Costumes
Bed Friend and Reflections- Part 1
Bed Friend and Reflections- Part 2
Bed Friend and Reflections- Part 3 (this is my favorite of the parts)
Water, Songkran, and KingUea
Moonlight Chicken
Heart Confrontation Scene
Heart and Li Ming Colors and Stripes
Red, Wen, and Blue
Naming the Deaf Character Heart
Heart's Communication
Wen's Badge Parallel
Modern Thai Sign Language to American Sign Language Index
Heart's Vocalization
Mommy Dearest (Jam and Li MIng)
Isn't it Difficult to Be Born Poor?
Moonlight Chicken is for the Queers
Resolution
Heart's Signs Translated (this one is not mine, but I don't want to lose this post so I am placing it here)
Best Criers in MLC
Worst Parallel
Utsukushii Kare
Self-Deprecation Harms Everyone
Our Flag Means Death
Over-analyzing the Color Red
Silk as Symbolism for Ed's Heart
#la pluie#step by step#our dining table#bed friend#moonlight chicken#utsukushii kare#ofmd#our skyy 2 x bbs x atots#our skyy 2 x the eclipse#by for about#cupid's last wish#be my favorite#my ride#only friends the series#ofts#i feel you linger in the air#ifylita#shadow the series#last twilight the series#the sign the series
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HYPERBOLIC SPOILERS FOR THE PHENOMENAL SECOND EPISODE OF OS2 x BBS x ATOTS
Can I feel so much in just one sitting?! Besides the UTTER giddiness of yesterdayâs episode, at least for today, I think I have some actual, sensible, legible analysis to offer. Iâm really moved, almost to tears.
I mean, as I blogged just a few minutes ago, part 4/4 of this second episode WILL go down in history in my heart as OBVIOUSLY some of the BEST, most STUNNING content in the HISTORY of anatomical and muscular analysis filmmaking. Yes.Â
Iâm seeing on Twitter some grumpiness for the comedy of this all (the girlies want more woop woop?! I mean?!), but I seriously think this whole crossover set up and the way itâs been written is brilliant. And I donât think this is just for fun.Â
But first, regarding the comedy and some other one-off points -- I mean, I knew that all four of these guys would be great, but their comedic TIMING, with the writing, is spectacular. They clearly had a FANTASTIC time filming this, and you can see it -- while they didnât have much time to actually film it, itâs so well done.
I really want to call it, I really want to see it, I wanna see more subverting of the ships, and I wanna see these guys do more with each other separately -- Iâm excited to see the implications of OhmEarth and NanonMix next week, and I think that Aof might be making a huge point by separating these guys, pairing them up together with others, and mixing shit up, because thatâs what he does (especially while I have Heâs Coming to Me on the mind soon on my OGMMTVC watchlist).Â
Another one-off point: like I wrote yesterday, weâre getting a double-dose of nostalgia, and I also wrote that I havenât had to wait NEARLY as long as most of yâall for the return of BBS and ATOTS. But that being said, even though I only watched ATOTS last fall, I actually literally nearly cried when I saw the ATOTS flashbacks and heard the music. Because the way that show was designed in 2021 (I got so much OGMMTVC on my mind) -- those motifs WERE designed to imprint themselves in our memories as remarkable for a kind of cinematic, bildungsroman BL that we werenât used to seeing back then. That show was nostalgic not JUST for the damn ship, but for Pha Pun Dao, for Chiang Mai, for the Thailand that Aof celebrates vis Ă vis EarthMix in ATOTS and Moonlight Chicken.Â
Itâs gorgeous, and he knows what heâs doing by putting PatPran in that mix -- another couple at a different stage of their relationship, with a background and shared struggles that are different than TianPhuphaâs, but that still offer both freshness AND nostalgia to the backbone story of ATOTS.
Whatâs moving me about these first two episodes reflects on what I just wrote -- this is no longer a story about Bad Buddy or ATOTS. This is a story about two couples going through their shit. Pat and Pran have ALWAYS been about going through their shit. We went through a A LOT of SHIT with them, including forward flashes after they graduated and seeing how they were faring in their long-distance relationship.Â
Remember: we havenât spent ANY time with Tian and Phupha in their relationship yet, ABSOLUTELY NONE. They smooched once on the hill, we saw them cuddle, and Oishii sent us off. So weâre JUST finding out, NOW, how theyâre faring, and we get thrown in a fight.
A fight thatâs similar to the kinds of struggles that Pat and Pran have already shown us and are showing us now. Tian wants Phupha to see a slice of HIS life in Bangkok. Tian wants Phupha to yield a little, to stop being so stubborn.Â
Pat wants Pran to open up more. Pat KNOWS why Pran keeps everything so close to the chest. Pat is SO USED to being the balancing effect of their relationship, to push forward, to pull back, but to ALWAYS HOLD PRAN DOWN AND REMAIN AS PRANâS ROCK, because Pran has not had the same kind of large family structure as Pat could rely on in his childhood and doesnât know how to take emotional risks. Pat knows this and works hard on balancing it out.
But Pat can go overboard, right, and thatâs partly why Pran drove away to Pha Pun Dao -- to prove to himself that he could complete this project on his own, but also, flirtingly, knowing that Pat would ultimately be by his side, and to play the competitive games that these guys always play with each other, because theyâre still college dudes with bones to pick.Â
What weâre seeing is BOTH COUPLES FINDING THEMSELVES IN THEIR MATURING GROWTH STAGES OF THEIR RELATIONSHIPS.Â
Hello, mic check, thereâs something happening here in Our Skyy 2. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ECLIPSE EPISODES?
Same damn thing, the same damn thing that pissed the girlies off before. WEâRE SEEING AWLLLLLL THESE GUYS IN THE GROWTH STAGES OF THEIR RELATIONSHIPS. Akk was frustrated by all the expressions of care that Ayan is overabundant with. Ayan WANTS Akk to RECEIVE the care, because the RECEPTION OF CARE IS the signal, the trigger, the MEANING of the relationship for Ayan -- it tells Ayan, when I care for you, Akk, I AM SHOWING YOU MY LOVE FOR YOU, and thatâs how *I* DEMONSTRATE IT.
Tian: Phupha, come with me to Bangkok.
Pran: Pat, let me do this by myself.
Akk: Ayan, I donât need as much care as youâre giving me, itâs too much.
Phupha: Youâre making only about me being madly in love with you.
Pat: I want to help you, my boyfriend.
Ayan: This is how I show my love for you, Akk.Â
Yâall. Aof, Golf, these filmmakers. QUEER RELATIONSHIPS ARE RELATIONSHIPS THAT DESERVE THE INVESTMENT AND RESPECT OF EMOTION AND GROWTH IN ART. Not all queer art/BLs need to be about the thrills and frills of the first kiss, of the first sex, of the first whatever. Weâre expecting these guys to live together forever in fiction, right? Aof and Golf and the other homies are saying -- kk, girlies, weâll give you the fan service, alright, but weâre going to show you HOW WE, AS THE QUEER COMMUNITY, DURING PRIDE, GET THERE IN OUR OWN RELATIONSHIPS, TOO, messy details and all. Shit.
Hereâs something from reality. Iâm the youngest girl of my Indian family -- I was not equal to my older siblings at all, expected to fail, treated as if I didnât know how to function in society. Yâall can predict what happened. Your gal got a great career, a great family, a husband, the whole thing.
So when I first met my husband, Iâm riding my life on my own -- paying my own rent, my own bills, everything. I had already proved I didnât need my birth family for anything.
But what I didnât consider during those first years of the relationship was the following: my future husbandâs love language was dependence. He was certainly IMPRESSED by dating a woman who had her shit together. BUT. He WANTED me to DEPEND on him, AT LEAST emotionally, if not for other things. I wasnât going to like, quit my job for a relationship, but -- I was ALSO having REAL trouble DEPENDING on him emotionally.
Like Pran, maybe. I didnât trust trusting anyone emotionally, because that was a paradigm already created by my family in my upbringing. I had TRAINED myself to NOT need emotional feedback from ANYONE romantically, because I learned to survive in other ways.
Of course, with great communication AND TIME (TIME), I came around and learned to lean on him and trust him.
Aof and Golf are giving their couples the benefits of growth and time to make the relationships better, and stronger, and working, and functioning, and I canât emphasize enough how REAL THIS IS.Â
Thatâs what these episodes are giving me. I WANT TO SEE MORE BLs with established relationships (@bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @wen-kexing-apologist: WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY FTW). I want to see contextual heartache. I want to see fights. I want to see tears. I want to see snottiness and shittiness and passive aggression, because all of that is worth examining in human emotional art.Â
Thatâs real, thatâs worth reflecting in art, and I see Aof and Golf doing this on purpose to give RESPECT to the emotional structures that theyâve created in their work.Â
Iâm having so much fucking fun with these episodes, but I should have expected this, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, that Aof would already render me an emotional mess as well. It always happens. That itâs happening to our BELOVED COUPLES, AT THE START OF PRIDE, Iâm just like. Weâre just so blessed to have this art to enjoy.
#bad buddy#bad buddy the series#a tale of thousand stars#our skyy 2 x bad buddy#our skyy 2 x a tale of thousand stars#our skyy 2 x atots#our skyy 2 x bad buddy x a tale of thousand stars#our skyy 2 x bbs x atots#patpran#pranpat#pat x pran#pran x pat#nanon korapat#ohmnanon#tian x phupha#phupha x tian#earthmix#earth pirapat#mix sahaphap#the eclipse#akkayan#ayanakk#akk x ayan#ayan x akk#first kanaphan#khaotung thanawat#firstkhao#unrelated to anything i wrote ohm's hair in the woods is FANTASSSSTIC the locks needed that woody humidity
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As semi-promised on Thursday night: here is a fuller explication of my thoughts after reading @zephrunsimperium's post about Ford and anger (which you should go check out their various Ford analysis pieces if you havenât, theyâre excellent and, unlike me, actually get to the point in a timely manner!)...thoughts which ultimately melded with some attempts at another essay I had semi-abandoned a few months ago, so hold on tight, friends, youâre in for quite the long ride with this one, should you choose to wade through it to the end, for this essay is more than 10,000 words long. Numbers in parentheses indicate endnotes, which can be found at the, well, end. Trigger warnings for extended discussions of multiple kinds of abuse portrayed/only thinly made into metaphors in the GF canon, and for discussion of mental health. For anyone feeling up to dealing with all that...read on below the cut.
To my way of thinking, one of the most essential things for understanding Ford lies in recognizing all the gaps between who he is, who he wants to be, and who he wants other people to think he is, and the intersection of anger, the performance of masculinity, and his long, long history of relational traumas is the fateful crossroads which those gaps emanate from. At the risk of sounding unduly like a pop psychologist, I also think his father is an important individual to consider in light of these issues.
Filbrick, as Stan tells us in ATOTS, was a strict man who had âthe personality of a cinderblock.â Stan is not always a terribly reliable narrator, but he seems to lack the ability to lie to the flashback camera, and the first few flashbacks of the episode give us a glimpse at what the Pines family was like in the sixties which supports Stanâs assertion about his father. In those scenes, Filbrick is the only character we donât see expressing strong emotion of some kind before the science fair, something that makes the âsound and furyâ of the scene where Stan is disowned, when it comes around, all that much more shocking. Until this point, Filbrick came about as close to physically resembling a cinderblock as his personality was said to; even when he expressed approval of Ford in the principalâs office, it was a relatively muted display, barely more emotive than his earlier âIâm not impressedâ or his silent disappointment in the season one flashback when Stan recalls the summer Filbrick first sent him to boxing lessons. We learn after the science fair that he can, apparently, express anger very vividly, but âLost Legendsâ further underlines how he is otherwise mostly emotionally inaccessible to his family; Stan (despite being far more aware of his emotions than he might like to admit that he is) cannot just talk to his father about how he feels, and once again, the only concrete emotion Filbrick shows on-screen is anger. Pictures near the end suggest possible mild experiences of a few other feelings, and the adult Ford, narrating many years after the fact and very probably after Filbrickâs death, speculates about what might have been going on in his head, but those feelings are never made explicit the way his anger is. We donât know why Filbrick is this way (the closest thing to a hint we get is the information that he was a World War II veteran - there is, after all, a reason for the common portrayal of the Stan twinsâ entire generation as one which was saddled with cruddy fathers in the aftermaths of World War II and Korea â but for all we know, Filbrick could have been like that before the War, too. What was his family life like, growing up? His financial condition? Could he just be someone who was born with a strong predisposition toward an emotional or personality disorder, regardless of whatever else happened in his life? We just donât have enough information about him to say for sure), but it seems safe to speculate that he was this way pretty consistently: whatever else was going on with him, the only emotion he seems to have felt comfortable expressing was anger.
And this is the guy Ford and Stan had held up to them as their first, and quite possibly most influential, example of what being a man is.
Iâd argue that â when they were children, at least â this was more of a problem for Stan than for Ford. Filbrick presumably saw them both as shamefully weak as children, but Ford, at least, had another route to the old manâs approval readily available to him. If Filbrick was at least grudgingly proud of Fordâs intelligence, then Ford could receive the measure of parental approval which Stan craved and could never get; we also see that Ford could apparently hold his own while sparring with Stan by the time they were teenagers, so itâs likely enough that he no longer had to worry about physical assault from his classmates by the time he was in high school, either. Though still isolated and insecure underneath it all because of his childhood experiences and probably in part due to his ongoing social isolation, Ford was able to find a path to a kind of self-esteem: he was both brilliant and quite capable of using his six fingers to break your nose if you had too much to say about them, and he knew it, and everyone else knew it, too. He also had his brother as a constant source of support. When Ford was made to look ridiculous by having a drink thrown in his face in public, Stan promptly threw a drink in his own face in order to look even more ridiculous. When Ford won competitions, which he seems to have started doing at an impressive rate very early in life, Stan seems to have been almost over-enthusiastic in his approval: he looks as delighted about Ford winning the science fair (at the time, before the meeting with the principal) as Ford himself does, if not even happier about it. Even his habit of copying off Fordâs papers in class could have served as a reinforcement for Fordâs ego: he not only could manage for himself, but he could even allow someone else to depend on him.
In this way, by the time everything went wrong, the teenaged Ford had probably already developed a degree of self-respect and self-sufficiency that Stan was still struggling to reliably maintain forty years later. Neither of them could ever be the kind of man Filbrick was, or of which they thought he would approve, they were both too emotionally vulnerable and expressive for that, but itâs probably noteworthy that Ford kept pictures of famous scientists (instead of family photographs) around him during his college and young adult years: because he could also do something Filbrick never could, he was able, to some degree, to carve out an idea of âhow to be a manâ on his own terms. If Filbrickâs approval was an immovable object in the path between Stan, Ford, and healthy expressions of adult masculinity, then where Stan flailed against it, Ford simply walked around it by choosing new conscious role models.
Tesla, Sagan, Einstein, and company were âgreat men,â successful (well, at least remembered posthumously) and respected, who were also given to Nerdy Enthusiasms. Said enthusiasm, an open delight in the marvels of the natural world, was therefore an emotion besides anger that Ford could express freely without compromising his view of himself, and it seems that he did so regularly. This appears to have worked well for him; we know very little about his college years â only that he worked very hard, that he made at least one close friend and (based on his usage of the plural âfriendsâ when discussing DD&MD) possibly even had a social group of sorts, and that he continued to indulge his creative side to a degree by playing DD&MD, which was as close as someone in his late teens and early twenties could probably get to continuing the kind of fantasy play heâd enjoyed as a child without sabotaging his probable adolescent desire to feel very grown up â but it seems they were productive and reasonably happy. Six years after them, a slice of his life comes into focus for us in the form of his journal. He was probably around thirty to thirty-three years old when it was written(1), give or take a year or two, and we find him several years into the circumstances he was in when he says, as a much older man, that heâd finally found somewhere to belong. He could be lying - Ford, unusually, even has the ability to lie to the flashback camera, or at least omit things - but we don't really have any reason to believe this; when the flashbacks turn to Stan making an abortive attempt at contact, Ford on the phone sounds cheery. His lack of paranoia and surprise about someone phoning him is also not the only evidence that, at this time, he may not even have been totally socially isolated in Gravity Falls â in the same years, he goes to the public library with some regularity, he declines to buy cookies from a zombie Boy Scout, he converses sometimes with the mailman, and he is on friendly enough terms with Dan Corduroy, even some years after Dan finished building Fordâs house, to know that Danâs family had a holiday cabin and to ask to use it. Clearly nobody was too close to Ford even then, but his chosen path was going reasonably well for him; it's possible that Stan might have found him rather harder to replace at this point than he did later, after an unspecified time lapse, which may have lasted as long as a year,(2) during which Ford had gradually became a complete recluse as he became more and more consumed by his relationship with Bill Cipher. Before that time lapse, Ford the man seems like a logical enough place for Ford the boy to have ended up; after itâŚ..
Well, after it is where we get back to the topics of anger and its intersection with various aspects of identity and self-concept.
A decent place to begin is with Fiddleford, and with why, exactly, Ford asked him to come to Gravity Falls. Ford tells us that he asked Fiddleford to come because he (Ford) did not have the technical know-how to complete the Portal. There is some evidence to support the veracity of this idea: Fiddleford is, after all, the man who later proves able to build astonishingly lifelike robot monsters whilst homeless (and thus, it seems safe to assume, without conventional sources of funds or supplies), and he is the one who sees the flaws in the Portal design. Indeed, he seems to start spotting them before he even has a chance to physically see them: Ford tells us that Fiddleford started suggesting revisions to the plans over the phone while still in California, in the same conversation where he agreed to come. In the third portion of the Journal, the sixtysomething Ford also mentions hearing about how a Parallel Earth Fiddleford was convinced to come back to the project, at which point the Parallel Portal was stabilized and became something that could be used the way Ford had intended to use it (as opposed to how Bill had intended to use it). The implication is that Ford not only didnât understand how to complete the Portal, but that he also didnât understand the plans even as far as he thought he understood them. Certainly the Fiddleford of the main timeline, who would have worked with him before, was instantly suspicious about the existence of a third collaborator once he saw how far Ford had gotten without him, which further supports the idea that Ford was more of a theoretician than a mechanic. This does, however, run somewhat against the grain of much of what we see Ford do on-screen. As a teenager of modest economic means, he was shown to be as comfortable working with his hands as with his pencil, and he was able to build something which acted enough like a perpetual motion device that he won a state-wide competition and drew the attention of an elite university. At university, he created the mind control tie â something which appears, both by its existence and by the glimpse we get of how itâs wired in âThe Stanchurian Candidate,â to involve electronics more sophisticated than what Fiddleford was shown working with in roughly the same time period. I tend to run with the idea that the events of the episode âThe Stanchurian Candidateâ only happened in a particularly vivid nightmare of Stanâs, and therefore include the tie simply because it was in the Journal, but if one goes with official canon and accepts that âStanchurian Candidateâ happened, then Ford somehow, in a matter of hours, with no budget or supplies, invented a thousand-year lightbulb that also improves the complexion of the user in the same episode that shows us the wiring of the tie. In the eighties, he also seems to have developed his mind-encrypting machine as a private project, and in the Multiverse, he survived entirely on what he could steal or construct for thirty years, and it seems he had progressed a long way toward the development of the Quantum Destabilizer on his own before he stumbled into the âBetter Worldâ dimension; Parallel Fiddleford really just sped the completion process up because heâd happened to discover a useful fuel source for presumably completely unrelated reasons years before Ford showed up. Clearly, Ford can more than hold his own as an engineer, and as one with a particular flair for doing impossible things with electricity and the laws of energy conservation; even Fiddleford trusted his gift in that area enough to, however reluctantly, briefly accept his claim that he had been working alone despite his serious doubts about the idea, and to allow Ford to bully him into silence about the Portalâs design flaws for weeks or possibly months before the confrontation at the diner. Why, then, did he suddenly become convinced, during that fateful July, that he could not finish the Portal without Fiddleford?
The answer may lay a few pages further back in the Journal. Not long before he calls Fiddleford, Ford makes notes on the plans for the Portal that Bill had showed him in a dream. One of these notes is âI MUST NOT LOSE MY NERVE!â Later, in a state of mind where he is increasingly paranoid and beginning to lose a degree of touch with reality, he reflects repeatedly about Fiddlefordâs nerve in similar terms. There may well have been some level, deep down, on which Ford knew he was getting in over his head, and he was scared out of his mind by that realization. If this is true, then, on some level, he knew something was...off, with what was going on around him. He knew he needed help from someone he trusted and who was not Bill. And so he reached out to his college roommate for that help, and he did so in a way that allowed him to still plausibly deny just how much trouble he was in, both to himself and everyone else, and he didnât only need that deniability because he was inviting a third party into the isolation of an increasingly abusive relationship and would need an excuse if Bill took exception to the idea of Ford relying on anyone or anything other than Bill. He also needed that plausible deniability to preserve his self-concept, because by this time, whatever he had or hadnât been earlier, Ford Pines had become a deeply, deeply dishonest man.
One of the key moments for understanding this - and, in many ways, the character overall - occurs in âDungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.â There, Ford delivers the exasperated line, âif my hands were free, Iâd break every part of your face!â If that line was taken totally out of context and shown to a casual viewer, the casual viewer would likely misidentify it as a line of Stanâs. Stan is, after all, the character with the hair-trigger temper and violent tendencies, right?
To an extent, yes. In âThe Golf War,â Stan asks Soos if it would be âwrongâ to punch a child (Pacifica) â probably more of an indirect threat in response to Pacificaâs insults toward the Pineses than a true question, but Stanâs moral code is sufficiently different from the standard issue that one canât completely dismiss the possibility that he really wanted to, well, punch a child. And who can forget his antics in âThe Land Before Swineâ or âScaryoke,â where he punches his way single-handed through monsters which had defeated the rest of the cast? Or in âNot What He Seems,â where he takes on multiple government agents in zero gravity while, for at least part of the time, he had his hands fastened behind his back? Or that glorious moment in the finale when he did, in fact, break every part of Bill Cipherâs glitched-out face? Stan is also the character who lost his temper to the extent that he lashed out at Ford physically in the middle of the save-the-world ritual, and Stan is the one who keeps his old boxing gloves around his bedroom, along with owning at least one set of brass knuckles. As an old man, he still seems to take pride in having learned to fight back against the world physically as a child, and he recommends that Dipper try knocking Robbie unconscious bare-handed when Dipper is challenged to a fight. And, of course, the man is a menace whenever he gets within a certain radius of the Stanmobile, the vehicle that can take out roadway railings, light poles, and theme park gates without showing a scratch. Thereâs no denying it: Stan is perhaps many other things, too, but heâs also a very physically aggressive kind of guy. If, therefore, someone in this series was going to threaten to break someoneâs face, it seems obvious it would be StanâŚbut it wasnât. It was his supposedly milder-mannered, âgoody nerd-shoes,â brother who, on examination, actually behaves far more casually violently than Stan does throughout his sadly short time in the series. To demonstrate:
Ford sets foot in his house for the first time in thirty years and identifies the first person he sees as his brother. Later, writing in his reclaimed journal, Ford describes his own reaction thus: âinstinct took over and I punched him right in the face. I feel kind of bad about that!âÂ
In the very next episode - aside from his antics in the first scenes(3) and the already-mentioned description of what heâd like to do to Probabilitator after the wizard captures him - we also have Fordâs immediate reaction to the wizardâs materialization. Stan is, naturally, most clearly unnerved by an evil math wizard suddenly materializing in the TV room, but thereâs a moment where he glances sideways at Ford after Ford pulls a gun; to me, at least, this glance made it seem like he found that behavior pretty disturbing as well. For the past several hours, after all, Ford had been playing board games. Most people do not bring concealed guns to game night with their nephews. Ford does.
Stan and Ford both have wanted posters that show up âon screenâ â Stanâs in his box of memorabilia in âNot What He Seems,â and Fordâs in Journal 3. Stanâs talks about âscams, frauds, and identity theftâ - all potentially serious crimes that can ruin the lives of the people on the other ends of them, but ones which follow the general tendency (per the reading I did last March) of real-world con men to avoid violence in the commission of their crimes. Fordâs, on the other hand, refers to its subject as âarmed and dangerous,â and as someone with a bounty on his head. From the way Ford depicts his own appearance in it, it seems likely that particular version of the poster is at least ten to fifteen years old, but in âLost Legends,â he is still instantly recognizable in the multiverse for his criminal shenanigans, even in the company of his near-identical twin. In his own words, âa number of dimensions consider me an outlaw to this day.â If one uses the dictionary definition of the term - and considering how much variety comes up just in the few examples Ford gives of worlds heâs visited, thereâs no reason to assume he hasnât visited a few Premodern Justice Dimensions - this means there could be multiple dimensions out there where the authorities took the time and trouble to formally declare that he had done something shocking enough to justify the revocation of all rights and protections he might have otherwise enjoyed under the law, thus allowing anyone to do anything they could physically manage to him with no fear of any negative repercussions except those he could personally inflict on them. He also refers to his own exploits as âswashbucklingâ (a term which brings piracy to mind) and offhandedly mentions travels with âbanditsâ (a term which describes practitioners of behavior usually classified under the âorganized crimeâ umbrella due to the cooperative nature of the often violent or potentially violent crimes in question).
Much of this behavior, itâs true, can be attributed to a combination of trauma responses and, in the Multiverse, sheer necessity. He refers in the journal to talking âmy way into and out of food and shelter,â and the âout ofâ comment underlines how, like Stan before him, he very abruptly went from having a relatively stable situation (at least in the material sense) to being homeless, which would be at least a serious shock to the system of almost anyone, including people in much better mental health than he was in at that time. Then thereâs the more complicated non-material aspects of his previous situation. As an adult reader, itâs stomach-knotting to go through the 1980s portion of the journal, because if you look at the behaviors and dynamics and leave out the âincorporeal eldritch abominationâ element, it only takes a very little extrapolation from the material for his âpartnershipâ with Bill becomes an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation. Considering that either of these major traumas of 1981-1982 could (and, if the fantastical elements are stripped out, regularly do) induce PTSD in nearly anyone, and considering how many more traumatic events he doubtless went through in the years following, itâs not implausible that the man would develop a tendency toward believing that the best defense is a good offense. However, there is also evidence that at least some of these tendencies predated Fordâs major traumas, and that â despite how he would very likely insist this was not the case - the trigger-happy adrenaline addict we meet in âA Tale of Two Stansâ may not represent a total change in character from who he was before the Portal â or even before Bill. The evidence here is admittedly scarcer and more ambiguous, but to illustrate:
In Journal 3, Ford seems sincerely puzzled about why Fiddleford would show signs of trauma after the gremlobin incident. This incident involved Fiddleford being shown his worst fear (something which ended in tourists being removed from the Mystery Shack via stretcher in apparent catatonic states. Fiddleford was a man who probably had an anxiety disorder to begin with, who was just accepting the reality of the supernatural, and who was living, for at least several months, hours away from where his wife and young son were, something which seems to have troubled him at the best of times. It's remarkable he was functioning at all after the gremlobin incident). He was also hit with a bunch of venomous quills, and flown through the air by something which clearly had no good intentions for him in mindâŚand that was all before the solution to the situation ended up involving Ford crash-landing everyone through the roof of a barn, breaking Fiddlefordâs arm in the process.
The gremlobin incident is not the only time Ford, even before the multiverse, appears bewildered by perfectly ordinary responses to frightening stimuli. While Fiddleford admittedly may have had some form of anxiety or compulsive disorder to begin with (an idea supported by events like his tearing out his own hair under stress and his need to correct the Cubikâs Cube), his reactions to monsters appear far more reasonable than Fordâs offhand assertion that he has survived many monster attacks without registering any of the experiences as traumatic.
When Fiddleford was in danger, Fordâs automatic response involved, essentially, jumping off a cliff and hoping the magnet gun-to-hyperdrive attraction would first catch and then carry him long enough for him to catch upâŚand that he would then somehow figure out how to land the improvised gremlobinmobile without killing himself, Fiddleford, and the monster all in one go.
When we go into the bunker in âInto the Bunker,â Soos finds a candy dispenser in a cabinet filled with weapons. These weapons appear to be a mix of firearms alongside various medieval or Renaissance-style pieces. It is, of course, possible - though to my mind, improbable; Fiddleford seems to prefer indirect methods of aggression, mostly in the form of homicidal robots - that some or all of these weapons belonged to Fiddleford, but there is also evidence that there was a similar mix of weapons in the house which later became the Mystery Shack: sside from Fordâs singular ideas about how to answer a door in âA Tale of Two Stans,â we also see a box of other manual weapons which Dipper has access to in âBoss Mabel,â and which Stan is seen rifling through to find a crossbow - presumably the same one which had come alarmingly close to his nose thirty years earlier â at the beginning of âLove God.â Stan further asserts there are ten guns in the Shack during âFight Fighters,â but we never see them; even while fighting against zombies, while following pterodactyls into caverns beneath the town, and during Weirdmageddon, Stan routinely arms himself with bludgeoning weapons, not ranged ones. The only time we see him use a ranged weapon (at least that I can recall) is the time he aims the crossbow at a balloon, which was out of reach. Ford, however, despite demonstrating almost immediately upon arrival that heâs quite capable of fighting without one, repeatedly uses ranged weapons even in close quarters: the crossbow in Stanâs face, the handgun in the living room, the Quantum Destabilizer during Weirdmageddon, the spear in the closing montage of the finale. These examples are, of course, all justifiable enough in their various contexts, but the combination of several incidents and all the weapons around the house and its environs makes it seem eminently possible that Ford was a bit of a weapons nut long before he became an interdimensional fugitive, and that if there actually are ten guns in the house, Stan may have more or less 'inherited' them along with the Stanford identity.
When Bill - who knew Ford very well before the Portal - shows Ford a vision of a possible future in an attempt to convince Ford to join him in his conquest of the universe, it is a vision of complete destruction. We see Billâs giant finger tearing cities apart in an uncomfortable amount of detail, and are treated to the sight of planets being munched on like applesâŚand this is Billâs sales pitch, the âpartyâ he is inviting Ford to and really, really wants Ford to agree to attend. This leaves us with two options: either Bill canât understand that anyone might ultimately desire anything beyond or besides the chance to participate in unlimited, consequence-free violence (something which doesnât square too well with Billâs otherwise apparently excellent grasp of human motivation and how to manipulate it to serve his own ends), or Bill has some reason for thinking that the prospects of immortality and a group of âfriendsâ to destroy things with on a massive scale might genuinely appeal to his âold palâ just as much as the prospect of being âall-powerfulâ and âall-knowingâ would. This is also hinted at by how Bill appears to try to convince Ford to relate to him by revealing that he was once mortal himself and explaining that he burned his dimension before offering Ford the chance to effectively do the same to the universe of the canon timeline. 'Become a god of destruction' or 'get tortured a lot' were also not the only possible options Bill could have offered; he could, for instance, have tried to convince Ford that if he (for all intents and purposes) became a god, then he could save at least some sapient life-forms in the universe from Bill by setting up his galaxy as a benevolent dictatorship or the like, with the alternative being that everyone would die if Ford didnât take that deal. Bill did not attempt anything of the sort. Bill, at least, thinks Ford is not only capable of observing or even committing acts of great violence, but that he is capable of relishing the opportunity to do so.
Why are all these things easy to overlook? In part, it is because Ford wants us to overlook them, because they do not âfitâ with the person Ford wishes that he was. He wants, very much, to see himself as a cool-headed, utterly rational, cultured figure â not least because this would represent a total contrast to his twin brother and everything Stan stands for, either in reality or inside Fordâs imagination - and so he uses long words and is usually fairly softly-spoken. He emphasizes his âwell-ordered and scientific mindâ even as he behaves in ways which suggest heâs highly volatile and puts in writing (however carefully concealed the information might be behind veils of words) that he planned to make his name on a scientific project which wasnât of his own design, a behavior which indicates a comfort with shortcuts even more potentially disastrous than Stanâs. When he does, rarely, have to acknowledge something that he would rather not acknowledge directly, he always immediately justifies the potentially unflattering behavior in fairly grandiose ways - stealing radioactive materials, for instance, is rationalized as a âdoing a public service,â and all the things he did to become a wanted man in multiple dimensions are, similarly, lumped together and dismissed as crimes committed âfor a noble purpose.â No doubt some of them were, but on the page about the Infinity Die, one doesnât really get the impression that he was particularly discriminating about when he used that thing, considering the usage statistics weâre given. The page informs us that the Die saved Fordâs life three times, endangered it âaround 20,â permanently changed the color of a sky one timeâŚand that itâs been used enough other times besides these that he can note the odd frequency of rolling a four(4). When talking to Dipper, he also seems quite confident about just how far the Die can warp reality - he doesnât speak as if âthe universe could turn into an eggâ is an exaggeration. Use of the Infinity Die would not be a reliable way to limit damage or even to advance his goals while committing other crimes, so it becomes a bit difficult to justify his apparently relatively casual use of it as something he did only as a last resort and/or only in service of a noble purpose. Most fans recognize that he clearly started over-identifying Dipper with himself toward the end of the series, but he identifies Dipper with himself only when it comes to traits he is proud of having; otherwise, the âgrammar, Stanleyâ remark is one of the few criticisms he has of Stan which doesnât also come across as something he might want to say about himself and his own less desirable qualities, if he could only bring himself to acknowledge them for what they are in plain language. It reads, to borrow from someone I once talked about the character with on Reddit, like âmy man is just as chaotic [as Stan], he just manifests it differently.â
Part of this difference lies in their respective approaches to the truth. Neither is anything you could reasonably call an honest man, but the distinction lies in how Ford appears to lie to himself a lot more often than Stan does. Stan, outside of âworking hours,â is utterly up-front about who and what he is and what he cares about: heâs a crook and a grifter and a liar, interested only in that which benefits him and the small number of people he personally cares about. Only once, when contemplating his epitaph in âThe Stanchurian Candidate,â does he show anything even vaguely resembling shame about this, and even then, he still includes the detail that he would, of course, be a crooked mayor if he became one. It's entirely possible that the only ultimately sacrificed himself to destroy Bill because of the direct and imminent threat Bill represented to his individual relatives. As the man himself once said: it wasnât enough for him to be the townâs hero, because his real agenda was being Dipper and Mabelâs. Ford, on the other hand, seems to have shared many of Stanâs desires (wealth, respect, shortcuts to these things) as a young man, but also to have always felt some need to convince himself that he wanted more (for lack of a better term) socially acceptable âside featuresâ as well. When he dreams of scientific accomplishment, he will admit he looks forward to riches and glory...but he also throws in that he wants to revolutionize science to enhance the well-being of all mankind, too. When he writes down the story of how he began his quest to kill Bill, he acknowledges that he wished to âwreak vengeance for the life he stole from meâ - but only after saying he would âsave the multiverse from [Billâs] wrath.â Later, though, when talking about his meeting with a parallel Fiddleford, he refers to his vow as a âvendettaâ - a word defined as âa blood feud in which the family of a murdered person seeks vengeance on the murderer or the murderer's family; a prolonged bitter quarrel with or campaign against someone.â The word can be used far less precisely in casual conversation, of course, and he probably does sincerely see it as his duty to atone for his mistakes by removing the entity which seeks to exploit them, but at the end of the day, despite his attempts to frame his behavior in terms of doing what is objectively right, thereâs also a massive degree to which his quest is personal. Anger and revenge and personal concerns ultimately prove just as important to him as they are to his brother, if not even more important. This is illustrated perhaps most dramatically in the lead-up to the Final Deal: one can only imagine what Billâs back-up plan was, because Bill came close to not needing one. Ultimately, when put to the test, the principles which went along with the persona Ford tried so hard to project crumbled: the family was, in the end, more important to him than saving the world, just as it was for Stan. He never mentioned the idea of making any attempt to save himself in the deal (on top of doubtless believing that such an effort would be doomed to failure, there are hints that Ford always planned to die in the execution of his revenge, or at least never saw a way around doing so), but he was willing to let Bill take over the galaxy âor worseâ just to save (or at least exempt himself from the responsibility of personally dooming) three other people on a probably quite temporary basis. If Bill was unraveling reality all around them, after all, where exactly were Stan and the twins supposed to go?
âWhat other choice do we have?â It took no few viewings of the finale for it to register why I always find that line so wrenchingly uncomfortable to watch. At that moment, finally, for the first time on screen, Ford admits that he cannot save the situation, or even himself. That heâs been backed into a corner â trapped â forced to acknowledge that another entity can and will hurt him, and that it can and will hurt him on as many levels as it pleases. Heâs been taken right back to where he was when his first grade classmates nearly put him in the hospital, and he canât hide it from himself or anyone else anymore...and itâs after this moment that we almost immediately see a dramatic change in Fordâs behavior and self-representation. The same man who remained remarkably defiant, all things considered, when tied up by an evil sorcerer who was gloating about its plans to consume his brain, or even in the midst of what was probably several days of severe torture,(5) visibly flinches, his hands shaking, while using the memory gun; in the aftermath of that moment, we then see him standing in a corner, looking helpless and at a loss for what to do while other people (specifically, mostly Mabel) try to figure out a solution without his assistance, as he's meekly accepted the situation instead of trying to change it. Dipper notes that some point in that day was the âonly timeâ anyone had ever seen Ford cry, a statement that implies there had been other occasions where Dipper expected him to cry when he didnât do so â perhaps itâs just because Dipper is used to Stan, who cries rather a lot, but for some reason, Dipper regarded this observation as specific enough to underline the severity of the situation during the first hours of Stanâs amnesia. The closest Ford really gets to his pre-Weirdmageddon demeanor again is when he takes the long way around the block in order to ask Stan to accompany him to investigate some anomaly up north, just as heâd previously made the same excuse about being too old to manage on his own anymore for asking Dipper to stay in town after the summer ended; since even unbending enough to, effectively, ask anyone not to leave him was already a step away from his isolated-hero act, itâs far from one of his more distinctive adult characteristics reasserting itself. Something, it seems, in the man profoundly broke in the throne room of the Fearamid, and based on his worryingly fervent attempts in the last pages of his journal to represent both Stan and Fiddleford as plaster saints, it doesnât seem like itâs getting fixed any time soon.
I noted earlier that I suspected Ford had no intention of surviving his duel with Bill in the Nightmare Realm during âNot What He Seems.â There are a few reasons for this. One is simple probability, of course (even if he had destroyed Bill, there would have still been plenty of creatures around that would have been more than happy to eat him, and his death ray was almost out of power). More pertinent, however, are a few of Fordâs own words. Twice, he refers to Stan as having âsavedâ him â not ârescuedâ âretrievedâ âgotten backâ or any other possible combination of words, but âsaved.â The first, where heâs still grumbling about it, is when he shows Dipper the Rift and explains why he was angry at Stan for this seemingly charitable behavior: he saved Fordâs life, but at the cost of endangering the world, and at that time, Ford was still deeply committed to the idea of himself as someone who sacrifices, not someone who sacrifices are made for. On the second occasion, while trying to explain what just happened to Dipper and Mabel after they realize that Stan no longer recognizes them, he sounds almost bewildered as well as moved as he makes the statement. Shortly before that second occasion, in the Fearmid itself, he also, infamously, uses the word âsuicideâ on the Disney Channel, when he tells Dipper and Mabel that any attempt to take on Bill â or, in other words, to undertake the very task he was attempting when the Portal reopened in NWHS â was a âsuicide mission.â His behavior, from the moment he comes back, is usually varying degrees of reckless, and the Journal illustrates that this isnât an entirely new tendency: aside from vowing to undo the damage heâd done âor lose my life in the attemptâ at the end of the 1980s section, he also put himself through the kind of work conditions that can literally kill a person for, it seems, months before he realized Bill had played him; afterward, he proceeded to have a breakdown while continuing, or even increasing, his dangerous habits of sleep deprivation and stimulant overuse. And even before that, as previously noted: he once didnât think twice about jumping off a cliff. There has, at least since he came to Gravity Falls, always been a part of Ford which seems to have had some inclination toward self-destruction; he may not have been suicidal as such in the early years, but even then, he seems to have been more than merely indifferent to his own well-being. It is at this point that all the disparate threads of this essay will begin to gather back together into a single line, because this behavior can be interpreted as Ford, essentially, daring the universe to so much as try to make a victim of him, because it was at in those years that he began to feel the need to assure himself that he wasnât one. After he admits heâs out of ideas in the Fearamid, though, he finally has no other choice but to admit that he has in fact been victimized â specifically, by Bill Cipher.
When Ford chose to adopt famous scientists as his models for how to be a man, he began to lie to himself about himself to some degree. He insisted he was rational and unemotional when he was anything but. He retained some pride in being in better physical condition than the other men close to him during both his scientist and hero arcs, but he downplayed his quite real attraction toward violence (recall that on two of the three occasions where he and Stan came to blows, Ford was the one who escalated the conflict) and thrill-seeking, trying to veil them from himself as well as the reader. Fordâs tendency toward black-and-white thinking didnât disappear at the end of the show; he simply reversed the polarity, so that now, instead of him being the hero, he recast others in that role and was at least attempting to accept a place among the ranks of those whoâd needed saving. This was something that heâd been denying he was for a very long time, even at the price of focusing on anger-inducing aspects of the past, perhaps distorting them out of proportion in his memory so he could keep his mind on the future. Unable to cope with the loss of control implicit in his situation with his 'Muse,' acting as the agent of something else and being manipulated in deeper and deeper over his head, he directed his attention to a future where he would be on top again, focusing on anger toward the past instead of on his fear of the present.
For most of the show, Ford has real issues with anger, and I tend to believe that quite a lot of them had to do with the need to protect two things after the disintegration of his relationship with Bill Cipher. One is his image of himself, and the other - arguably, something dependent on the maintenance of his self-concept - is his sanity â or at least, if not his sanity, then his ability to function. As noted the other night â anger might not feel good, exactly, but it can feel so much better than hurting that it can be mistaken for feeling good. Fury can be paralyzing, yes, but it can also, when directed outward, keep you moving â spite, as they say, is the source of many an accomplishment Self-loathing, on the other hand, will crush you like a boulder, sooner or later...and itâs painfully obvious, in the scrambled, increasingly unhinged journal entries between the Portal test and his decision to call Stan, that Ford is capable of intense self-hatred. Even in later years, when he has focused his entire mind on revenge for decades and reviles the traits in his brother that he dislikes in himself, thereâs still that undercurrent of guilt and self-hatred running just beneath the surface, so close to the top that even he can never really fully ignore it. He doesnât really know how to accept help while maintaining his self-respect, and hereâs where we get to him being both an abuse survivor and, arguably, specifically a male one.
Earlier, I referred to his partnership with Bill as an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a domestic abuse situation when you strip the supernatural frills away. Bill could well have marked off items on some kind of manipulation checklist: he would flatter Ford to draw him in, and then withdraw without explanation, leaving Ford despondent and thus that much more dependent on Bill upon Billâs return. Bill convinces Ford that nobody else really understands him like Bill does, and that nobody else ever could do so. They are all parasites who want to ride on Fordâs coattails, or steal his work, or are people who will hurt him because they are jealous of him; Bill is the one who inspires him, because heâs just that deserving of inspiration...except, of course, when he isnât. When the Muse would go silent for long stretches of time, waiting with highly uncharacteristic patience until he got just close enough to desperate for a breakthrough. Then the whole cycle would begin all over again, until finally, by 1980-1981, Bill had succeeded in reducing Fordâs world to little more than himself. Based on the state of Fordâs study, he was, by the end, probably literally worshiping Bill as a god.(6) It is therefore possible to argue that the relationship included spiritual abuse in addition to the blatant psychological, physical (âenjoy the mystery bruisesâ), and financial (in that much of the grant ended up being used to pursue Billâs agenda instead of for its intended purpose) abuse...and all of that happens before the possession sub-plot after the Portal test, where any illusion that their association is consensual or in any way for Fordâs benefit falls apart. Bill systematically violates every understood boundary within the relationship during the weeks between the Portal test and the Portal incident, and Bill very clearly enjoys doing so. He takes the time to taunt his victim by scribbling in the Journal when Ford blacks out. He seems to derive a great deal of satisfaction not only from the ability to completely deprive Ford of all mental and bodily autonomy on a whim, but from reminding Ford that he had this ability: he seems to have gotten a twisted satisfaction from knowing that Ford knew that, sooner or later, he would be unable to physically prevent himself from sleeping any longer. The hopelessness and inescapability of his situation are thrown in Ford's face again and again, and apparently for no better reason than that Bill is a physical and psychological sadist. Other people's misery and horror are like a drug to Bill, and we see, again and again, in the series that Bill will even undermine the pursuit of his own goals in order to enjoy it.
And the person he did all this to was Ford. Someone who already had profound trust issues (from his point of view, everyone he ever cared for had betrayed him to one degree or another), and whose formative years were during early fifties. This is significant, even aside from the impact of personality flaws specific to Filbrick Pines on his sonâs development. Even today, in our rather better-informed times, many people dismiss the idea that men and even boys can be victims of abuse entirely, and even some of those who acknowledge the possibility wonât take it as seriously as the idea of men abusing women and girls. When Ford was physically and verbally bullied in elementary school, the only solution his father could offer was âlearn to hit harder than the other guy.â If someone hurts you, you hurt them back; this, in the earliest examples he seems to have had, is how you reclaim power, and if you canât do that, then Filbrick thinks youâre weak, that youâre an embarrassment, and that he just wishes you were gone, to very nearly quote Stan from âDreamscaperers.â This was also a general attitude of the surrounding culture, without a lot of prominent examples of better options. Years later, it follows - horrible though it is to say â reasonably enough that when Ford realized heâd been manipulated and used by something that couldnât be punched in the face, he began to have a breakdown, which only began to resolve in a small way when he convinced himself there was, in fact, a way to do something at least equivalent to punching Bill in the face. His plan was irrational and poorly strung together, and it did require him to ask someone for help, which must have galled â but itâs only Stan he has to ask, after all, and Stan doesnât really count, and Stan owes him anything he might choose to ask for anyway, and besides, heâs not really asking Stan to help him deal with the problem, is he? Heâs going to be the one who defeats that bastard or dies trying. Stanâs just...going to hold his beer, so to speak. Or book, as the case may be. Because he doesnât need Stan. He doesnât need anyone. Because heâs in control of this situation. Heâs going to save the universe, and then everything will be fine again (or so he tells himself), because then he will be, once and for all, beyond the reach of anyone who might want to hurt him again. Because if he can pull this one off, then who would dare? Who would even want to? Heâll be a hero, a savior, someone deserving of everyoneâs respect â and if not, heâll at least be a martyr, which to him likely seems like a better second choice than continuing to live with the thought that heâs vulnerable and that everyone knows it.
An interesting thing to examine at this point is the similarity between his approaches to Fiddleford and Stan in the eighties. Earlier, it was argued that Ford may have reached out to Fiddleford as much out of repressed fear as from any real need for technical assistance. When Fiddleford first comes to Gravity Falls, Ford cannot stop talking about Fiddlefordâs excellence, praising it even above his own. Fiddleford is his friend, his partner, his companion on this path to glory. Slowly, though, it changes. He begins to cast more and more doubt on Fiddlefordâs capabilities, in a way, at first, which almost seems reasonable due to Fiddlefordâs neuroses. He begins to feel that he is doing Fiddleford a favor â many favors, in fact â by allowing him to participate in âmaking historyâ like this. He projects and lashes out. This shows up even more clearly when he writes to Stan. He does not, admittedly, start out with praise in that case, but he still clearly goes through the same process of progressing from acknowledging a need to twisting it around in his own head so he no longer has to do so, just at a higher rate of speed. Almost as soon as he decides to write to Stan, he adds in his journal that âperhaps he can prove his worth to me.â This is followed by some prevarication â the line about how perhaps the mistakes of the past can be made right could apply to his thoughts on how he feels Stan wronged him, his thoughts on his situation with Bill, or even his past actions toward Stan, and when Stan arrives, Ford initially seems to present the matter as one where he needs a partner-in-crime because Stan is the one person he can trust â but within minutes, he shouts about how heâs offering Stan the one chance heâll ever have to do something meaningful in his entire life. Heâs progressed again to the idea that he doesnât need help, and that heâs just doing these people - people who he has ostensibly asked for help - a favor. He is still in control. Because he doesnât need them. He doesnât need anyone. And when he triumphs over Bill, thenâŚ.
...ThenâŚ.
...Then we get to the bit I did write about on Thursday night. Specifically, how thereâs very likely going to come a day when Ford will start finding it very, very hard not to have Bill around to hate anymore. To paraphrase zephyrsimperium - even when anger is hurting you so much that even you can see that itâs doing so, even when you know, intellectually, that it doesnât really feel very good at all, it still hurts less than actually cleaning out the psychological wound.
To a certain extent, Fordâs anger did save him in 1982. Coping mechanisms can be necessary, for a time, when a trauma is too close to deal with. Truly dealing with it would be healthier, but there are situations where some distance has to be put between oneself and the trauma before it can be addressed; situations where youâve just very suddenly become homeless and are being hunted by your reality-warping abuser would, it seems safe to say, be among these. Too much pain from too many sources could not be addressed all at once, especially by someone who, for reasons both cultural and innate, possessed none of the psychological tools or self-awareness to even begin to work through it all, and so when survival became a priority, focusing on hating Bill more than he hated himself probably was the only choice Ford realistically had in that moment. At the end of the show, however...Billâs gone. Ford no longer has that mission to focus on, and at some point, thatâs likely to mean waking up and realizing â if I may be forgiven for quoting a song from the Dark Ages, aka, my childhood -
âWherever you go, there you are/You can run from yourself, but you wonât get far.â
Learning to defend himself as a child wasnât enough â he still had to seek validation, acceptance of some kind, through all those competitions. Winning the competitions wasnât enough â he still needed to find a place where he could fit in, somehow, either as a genius or as an anomaly. Going to college, finding someone he considered even more brilliant than himself, winning a grant â somehow, it still wasnât enough, he needed to discover a new theory and emblazon his name in the history books...never realizing that even if heâd succeeded in that endeavor, it still wouldnât have been enough. And all that was before Bill. Afterward, sure...he killed Bill. The being that made him feel weak and stupid and helpless all those years ago, itâs gone now. He won. And it still wonât be enough, because removing Bill doesnât undo what Bill did to him. It doesnât take away the difficulty of trusting anyone else after such an acute betrayal. It doesnât take away the anger at himself for being someone who got duped. It doesnât take away all those years out in the Multiverse, and the memories of whatever less-than-ideal things he had to do to survive them, or the impulse to hit first and ask questions later that heâs developed, or anything else. Nor is throwing himself into being the Perfect Friend or Perfect Brother in an attempt to make up for the past going to ultimately help much â he canât undo whatever wrongs he did Fiddleford or Stan any more than they can undo the ones they did him, and all three of them are likely in for a rough ride of learning how to have relationships where sometimes you clash and disagree, but you trust the other person enough that you can have a relationship with them when neither of you is a Perfect Anything to the otherâŚand where you trust the other person to still want to be your friend after you demonstrate that you arenât perfect, or even able to perfectly fit into a simple, clear mold. As hard as accepting onself as a flawed individual with vulnerabilities that can be exploited is, it's probably still child's play compared with then, after having been taken advantage of in the past, to trust anyone to not do so at the first opportunity again.
Despite the somewhat gloomy tone of this essay, there are reasons for hope. One lies simply in the fact that Ford got this far. His story, after all, follows the arc of many a tragic hero, and yet, he manages to end the show alive and without having gone over to the Dark Side (even if he came dangerously close and was only pulled back from the edge by Stanâs quick thinking and acting skills). Another, more promising, is in "Lost Legends," where we get a glimpse of the Pines family in the week between Weirdmageddon and the birthday party. We see that Stan has recovered his normal personality and memories enough that he and Ford manage to annoy each other throughout the adventure. They disagree on how to proceed, which of them is more competent to look after the twins, etc...and the incident ends with a truce, rather than each of them slinging blame at the other for the situation Mabel ultimately has to rescue them both from. Ford is able to accept that they both contributed to the problem, rather than it being a black-and-white situation, the way he seems to have viewed most situations for quite some time. He even lets Stan play with the super-glue gun of science. It's progress. Here's hoping, for everyone's sake, that it's one step among many to be taken.
Notes
(1) See my essay âThe Trouble With Timelinesâ on AO3 for an explanation of this assertion.
(2) Reasoning for this hypothesis can also be found in âThe Trouble With Timelines.â
(3) Based on his lack of alarm when a second specimen later attacks him in the lab, my theory is that Ford staged the near-escape of the Cycloptopus at the beginning from first to last - note how he appears to have a pretty solid grip on it when he enters the gift shop, and later turns to the family, holding it up and smiling brightly, after subduing it as though looking for approval from others before indicating that heâd like to be included at meal times. Later, in âThe Last Mabelcorn,â we learn from the read-out of his thoughts that he lurked closely enough behind the vending machine to eavesdrop for at least long enough to hear Stan refer to him as a âdangerous know-it-all;â since his other thoughts in that sequence all involve loss, anxiety, regret, and childhood bullying, it seems reasonable to assume that whatever he had hoped to overhear, it wasnât that. Considering how Ford agreed to avoid the children at the end of âA Tale of Two Stans,â it seems likely to me that Ford staged the Cycloptopus incident just for an excuse to interact with the rest of the family for a moment without obviously trying to do so, and that the creature was not actually especially dangerous.
(4) Though it is possible that some of the times Ford rolled a four were among the 20-odd times the Infinity Die allegedly endangered his life; if he was already in a bit of a bind and decided to risk getting a solution that way, rolling a four with something that is highly illegal to own - and, therefore, probably even more highly illegal to roll - would be unlikely to improve his situation
(5) I saw an essay once where someone actually tried to figure out what, if Bill was accurately portraying his own usage of electricity, happened there: best-case scenario involved convulsions violent enough to dislocate joints accompanied by severe internal and external burns. It seems, considering the contrast between his first appearance in âTake Back The Fallsâ and his relatively physically normal behavior during the rest of the episode, that being turned into gold again resulted in the instantaneous restoration of his pre-torture physical condition, but this would probably provide small comfort if you are under the impression that every time you âwake up,â youâre just going to go right back through the same thing again...and again...and againâŚ.
(6) Comments in the codes of all Journals and in invisible ink in the blacklight journal make the question of Fordâs religious beliefs another interesting one; we know he was raised Jewish, but his few remarks after dealing with Bill could suggest that, by the storyâs main time, he may have become some form of dualist. An argument which can be used either for or against this idea is the apparent existence of the Axolotl cult, as shown in exclamations by space refugees, carvings in Jheselbraumâs shrine, Billâs dying invocation, and a bumper sticker in âLost Legends.â On one hand, Ford expresses confusion about what the refugees meant by âpraise the Axolotl!â and makes no explicit connection between the statement and the carvings he later sees in Dimension 52; when he speculates on âthe opposite of Bill?â, it is unclear if he is referring to Jheselbraum or her background art/presumed patron deity (âOracleâ is suggestive of the Oracles of Delphi, who were priestesses of Apollo and were supposed to prophesy through divine inspiration, so it does seem likely that Ford, Jheselbraum, or both believe that another entity is the source of her prophetic gift). It is also unclear what, exactly, the power dynamic between Bill and the Axolotl is; the fact that Bill invokes it in the hopes of returning from his deletion implies it is far more powerful than him, but it is unclear (both in Billâs invocation and in the Axolotlâs prophecy in âTime Piratesâ Treasureâ) if the Axolotl could choose to ignore the invocation if it wished to do so. Bill, we know (or are at least told), was once a mortal being which sought escape from all laws, including the laws of nature which dictated his own mortality; we do not know how the Axolotl came to exist outside of time and space, or what this implies about its nature. When Bill muses on his enemies, however, he swears that neither Time Baby nor âthe big frilly jerkâ will stop him; this could imply that he sees Time Baby and The Big Frilly Jerk (most likely Axolotl, unless the canon version really does have a twin brother) as equal threats, and that perhaps âthe ancient powerâ is something they are all in some way bound to/reliant upon for their seeming immortality? Bill was able to reduce Time Baby to his component molecules, but word of author is that TB is not actually dead and will eventually manage to pull said molecules back together into a Time Baby-like shape again, which renders the issue of power levels even murkier.
#gravity falls#gravity falls characters#gravity falls analysis#character analysis#essay#footnote time!#stan pines#ford pines#thoughts form as typing happens#drafts
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I only got into gravity falls after the show ended, but 2018-now is still a long time to be justifying why Stanford pines is a good character and likeable. I felt like stanfords experience with abuse was something I just made up in my head as a result of my own mental issues, that I was reaching for something that wasnât there. I felt that the end of j3 was a disservice to ford and feared what the book of bill would bring to the table. I still havenât read it but your analysis gave me a sense of fulfillment that yes, fords arc was not an accident and that I was not âreachingâ when I found myself in him. I donât even care about what takes the fandom has atp, because I already feel like something healed in me, and I can move on in my healing journey, so thank you âĽď¸âĽď¸
I'm really glad I could help and that you felt that way about what I wrote !! ^_^ I actually didn't get into the show too far ahead of you, I believe I started watching in 2016 around the NWHS-ATOTS hiatus era.
#askbox#sorry this one's been sitting in my inbox since this morning since I didn't have the wherewithall to answer it for most of today
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â¨2023: A Summaryâ¨
Post your most popular and/or favourite edit/gifset/analysis for each month (itâs okay to skip months!)
Tagged by @daymork - Thanks for wanting to see how my analyses 'popped off and what my personal favs are!' đ
January
most popular â Bad Buddy/My School President parallel - not an analysis but people do love a good parallel!
favourite(s) â Never Let Me Go discussion - I love when something I write inspires others and it sets off a long thread where people keep adding to it. | Another Bad Buddy/My School President parallel - not technically my post but I love the additions I brought together on this.
February
most popular/favourite(s) â The colour-coding of Bed Friend - another long thread where others joined in.
March
most popular/favourite(s) â A ramble about Moonlight Chicken - which includes a little analysis of the show as it ended.
April
most popular â "What exactly does being blue/red/yellow/etc. coded mean?" - I don't get asks often but I was humbled that someone came to me to understand what colour-coding meant.
favourite(s) â Chains of Heart colours series - I was late to the series, and it ended disappointingly, but the colours were brilliant. | Colour-coded folks in UMG - not a bl but they also colour-coded the leads.
May - n/a - I didn't really write any big posts/analysis this month.
June
most popular â "It's the right moment to kiss!" Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS - Aof calling himself out as well as us bl fans.
favourite(s) â Colours in Our Skyy 2 BBS x ATOTS - I couldn't resist writing about it since it stayed consistent to how they used colours in the original series.
July
most popular â The casting of Be My Favourite - the realisation that the 'odd pairing' of Krist and Gawin was integral to the story being told.
favourite(s) â Be My Favourite ep 9 - the ep that got me thinking about the characters even more. | Kawi and his sense of Self - where I dip my toe into philosophy, theories of The Self, and how memory plays a part in that.
August
most popular/favourite(s) â Laws of Attraction ep 5 - I loved everything about this series but this was the one that got the most attention - maybe because it featured Silvy a lot? đ
September
most popular â Friends don't let friends go - which pairs with Only friends stay (posted in Oct), and which say a lot about the group and Boston.
favourite(s) â Clowned correctly Laws of Attraction - I just love when something flippant I say is (sort of) right in the end!
October
most popular â The Rainbow Best sweater - not an analysis, nor any created art...but the sweater itself is art, as is that so many characters and actors have worn it.
favourite(s) â Getting emotional over Kiseki: Dear to Me - this was the ep that hit me in the feels. | The Thai Communal Wardrobe items #6 and #3 - again not analysis or art but the start of the communal wardrobe list!
November
most popular â Mhok's Fart Proudly t-shirt - this had me going back to my Bad Buddy days of analysing t-shirts.
favourite(s) â Horney Hockey part 1 and part 2 - more t-shirts, more fantastic additions. | A thought on Night and Day - I'm still so curious about Day and Night's relationship and I can't wait to find out what their deal is. | Band aids on Rung's car and the goldfish slippers the symbolism of Mhok and day's 'damage' and the healing that they're doing. | "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly" | The t-shirts are definitely t-shirting - these last two are essentially reflecting on the same thing - the sentiments in The Little Prince story that Mhok reads out in ep 1 of Last Twilight.
December
most popular â Mhok is Day's eyes - a brilliant use of colour in Last Twilight.
favourite(s) â Couple bracelets - just me excited over possibilities. | Most memorable items of clothing in bl series in 2023 - looking back through the year. | The Thai Communal Wardrobe bl advent - this was a fun series to do...and it only encompassed about a third of the items on the list, so I'll be posting them in dribs and drabs throughout the year.
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Tagging people who also tend to write analysis or meta posts, I'd love to see which were a hit with the masses and also which were your favourites: @wen-kexing-apologist @grapejuicegay @lurkingshan @btwinlines @twig-tea @rocketturtle4 @waitmyturtles @telomeke and @respectthepetty
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I think I finally managed to understand what I genuinely disliked about episode 3 of the Our Skyy BBTS x AToTS crossover. I actually loved these specials, including episode 3, and I am still sad that part of the fandom hated them with such a passion, but I have not been able to fully appreciate episode 3 either, like most of those who watched it, and up until today I hadnât realized the actual reason.
They didnât show us Pran and Tianâs conversation.Â
Thatâs it. That single conversation, that single moment that happened off screen could have changed the way the episode (and specifically the last PatPran scene) has been percieved by the fandom and could have made PatPranâs emotions and intentions way more explicitâespecially Pranâs, whoâs been unfairly criticized after the episode aired.
Pran told Phupha he feels insecure, like heâs not good enough, and the way Pat is always ready to put Pranâs needs and wishes first makes him feel like maybe he doesnât deserve Pat at all, like maybe Pat would be better off without himâand thatâs why he needs to prove himself, because the idea of needing Pat to the point that he canât live without him, to the point that he ends up relying on him, is terrifying.Â
Tianâs words are what makes him feel better about this whole thing! Hearing that Pat actually feels the same way and doesnât feel like Pran is a burden to him at all is all he needs to know to lighten up and put this matter aside, at least for now. It doesnât mean it suddenly becomes easy for him to deal with this whole thing, it doesnât mean he accepts it in the blink of an eyeâhence the need to look away when he tells Pat he also canât possibly live without him; he wants to tell him, he wants him to know, but heâs still uncomfortable with the idea, despite now being ready to admit it out loud. And I think there is really nothing wrong with that: what we got in these episodes is just a missing moment in their story, something that showed us how their relationship developed after their honeymoon, including the insecurities and hardships that come with a long-term commitment between two people who are very different (one whose love language is to help those he cares about, and one whose love language is to let those he cares about help him; that means itâs not natural for Pat to be the one who needs help from others, to be in a position thatâs not that of the hero/supporter, and it means itâs not easy for Pran to feel like he needs somebodyâs help/to be supported).Â
Watching Pran listen to Tian telling him about his conversation with Pat would have made this internal conflict way more clear, especially the bit where he asks Pat to be the one to say it first; itâs not just a matter of pride or validationâPat being ready to look vulnerable in front of him first is something he needs to show the same level of vulnerabilityâ: Pran is letting Pat say those words out loud because he knows Pat wants (needs) to; Tian told him Pat said âI just canât admit to myself I canât live without himâ, and Pran wants to give him space to do so, reassuring him that itâs okay if he does. Pranâs problem was never with Pat needing him, but Patâs problem was always about wanting Pran to need him, with needing Pran to need him; thatâs why he feels insecure witnessing how hard Pran tries to prove his point for which he doesnât need Patâs help at all, and thatâs why heâs happy and content after hearing those few words from Pranâs mouth (Neither can I) and being allowed to say them in the first place (I canât live without you). I think many of those who were disappointed with this interaction were probably expecting something different from what the characters themselves wanted and needed.Â
So, while showing us Pran and Tianâs convo was not necessarily inevitable, it would have been a great addiction to the narrative (and Nanon would have acted the hell out of it! It would have made Pranâs relief and realization so obvious that nobody would have had the guts to badmouth my little boy).
#bad buddy#bad buddy the series#bad buddy series#our skyy 2#our skyy x bad buddy#bad buddy x a tale of thousand stars#bbts x atots#bad buddy x atots#patpran#pat x pran#pran x pat#phat x pran#bad buddy analysis#gia talks about bad buddy
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okay hereâs the thing. thatâs standing out very loudly to me in the OS2 x BBS x ATOTS episodes. So we remember the happy face-sad face decor that Pranâs dorm was infused with? And the meta analysis that it all been about choice, about choosing happiness, about choosing joy for yourself, about learning to look at things in a new way (through each otherâs eyes and therefore GROWING) right? Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same face! They co-exist! But you can choose -- you can choose to see the happy in the small things, you can choose to let yourself feel the joy you do feel. Itâs in how Pran takes those sticky notes out and LOOKS and thinks and then chooses, purposefully, to place it happy side up. Itâs in how Pran came out and chose to change his door knob card to the happy side.Â
RIGHT OKAY SO. In Pat and Pranâs shared home, we see so much of natural light (like literal natural light filtering in and brightening up the space when their dorms were naturally dark and again, light was a choice aka artificial light) and we see framed pictures of them together (previously their dorms had very few pictures and we see the shared pictures come in as cork board collages or set up on string aka temporary. framed pictures are permanent, THERE). What else do we see? When Pat goes to open the door for Pa and Ink, the back of the door that faces the house, the home, has only smiley faces on it. Multiple, and permanent (i think one of them is screwed in if iâm not mistaken).Â
The smiley faces are for them, and only them. Behind closed doors, they are happy. They are naturally happy. They made the repeated choice to choose happiness and now theyâre sticking with it. Theyâre now happy by default. It started with choices, but happiness comes naturally to them now.Â
(Itâs also about opening their home up to people, because the happiness is private and it for the inside of their home. Only if you enter the house will the door shut behind you, and then you will become part of the happiness. And only their most trusted seem to have such access to their home - Ink, Pa, Wai. (Iâm guessing Korn as well, even though we donât see him inside their home.) They are choosing to share their happiness as well!)Â
#bad buddy the series#bad buddy meta#pat x pran#patpran#our skyy 2 x bad buddy#OS2 x BBS x ATOTS#listen i cannot shake the door from my head#bad buddy brain rot#its so real guys#someone PLEASE come talk to me about this#i need to yell about this with another person
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OUR SKYY 2 x BAD BUDDY x A TALE OF THOUSAND STARS â A REVIEW AND PARTIAL ANALYSIS
Yes, I'm well aware that it's been more than two weeks since the Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars 4-ep closer for OS2 aired, and I'm far behind the bandwagon in posting this.
Thing is, I've had to take some time to gather my garbled thoughts on how I feel about the mini-series, and I have many. Also, the longer I dawdle, the more others have posted similar musings, and I then have to edit down my own write-up to avoid repeating stuff that others more knowledgeable and eloquent than I have already made public.
This is like my fourth or fifth re-write, and I've already chucked so much aside. But now the ideas jangling in my head seem a bit more coherent, and maybe it's time to solidify them in the written word.
I think part of the block I was facing had to do with the fact that I was expecting the Bad Buddy portions of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS to be doing more than they did, and when they didn't I was left a little directionless. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the episodes though; I most certainly did. How great was it to see Pat and Pran back in action again? đ Even though their dynamic and storyline weren't as deeply resonating as what we saw in the original Bad Buddy, they still managed to charm me no end.
While I certainly wanted more information regarding Pat and Pran's relationship (and we did get to see a tiny bit), what I'd really been hoping for was more of the intellectual gamery that had been so carefully interwoven into the original BBS, that was densely layered with metaphor, allegory and messaging. It was also rich with linguistic wordplay and cultural content, and I was on the lookout for more of the same in OS2 the moment Pat and Pran appeared. But these were mostly missing, even though they delivered callbacks and charisma in spades.
It was only upon re-watching that a number of realizations crystallized for me, chief of which was the fact that I'd been looking for things in the wrong place. The subtextual (and even metatextual) cleverness I was expecting actually was there, but it had been woven more into the ATOTS portions instead. And while I like the original ATOTS, it didn't inspire in me the same kind of obsessive love that Bad Buddy had done, so I have never gone in for a re-watch or examined it in greater detail, and thus wasn't paying as much attention to the ATOTS portions of OS2.
More fool me. No wonder my first watch of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS missed what it did, because I kind of sped through Phupha and Tian's story, when the mini-series was leaning more on ATOTS than BBS to telegraph its messaging.
I really shouldn't have been surprised. We know that the creators of Bad Buddy (Director Aof mostly, but Ohm and Nanon were in on it too) viewed BBS as having told all that needed to be told of PatPranâs story, and this was signified by the apartment door closing on the happy coupleâs continued rough-housing at the end of Ep.12.
(above) BBS Ep.12Â [4/4] 18.22 and 18.23 â the door closes on Pat and Pran's story (dunno who was swinging it shut though â Nong Nao maybe? đ)
And this is why OS2 x BBS didnât show us events post-Ep.12, but chose instead to position the mini-series during the timeskip between Episodes 11 and 12.
So when BBS became the success it did, pressure must have mounted on all sides but especially from the higher-ups to squeeze out a sequel somehow, because it would undoubtedly be a money-spinner. But what more is there to spin out when you, the maker, are convinced that not only is the whole yarn already spun and done, the tapestry you wove from it is pretty much complete as well?
I will go so far as to say I think OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was Director Aofâs escape hatch â instead of trying to spin out more from nothing, he shone a spotlight on a previously unseen section of his opus (letting management and fans know we would be getting Pat and Pran back, but then showing us their timeskip rather than events beyond Ep.12). And a short while later he segued artfully into a related piece, wrangling PatPran into a crossover with ATOTS that would have its message revolve a lot more around PhuTianâs story instead. I'm sure we find out more about Phupha and Tian's relationship too, but I'm not going to go into it in any detail because I'm not as au fait with their backstory as I feel I am with Pat and Pran's; I'm pretty sure though that their story in OS2 was the primary vessel for deeper messaging.
And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to pick up on Director Aof making ATOTS do the heavier lifting â see @wen-kexing-apologistâs write-ups linked here and here.
To my mind, Director Aof's bait-and-switch (kind of a hallmark with him) was also signaled at the end of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [4/4], when Pran had to hike up to Pha Pun Dao just as Tian had done in the original ATOTS.
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [4/4] 10.28
Pran found it as much of a physical ordeal as Tian did, and the parallel with Tian's trajectory is unmistakable (while also being oddly illogical, since Pran should still be pretty fit as an ex-rugby player while Tian is a heart transplant recipient đ¤ˇââď¸).
But in service of the narrative, when an exhausted Pran finally reaches his destination â itâs the waiting Phupha who faints, not Pran-as-Tian. (In the original ATOTS, it was Tian who fainted at the end of the long hike up to PPD and Phupha was the one who caught him.)
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [4/4] 11.28
For me, this signals that a switch-up has happened, and Phupha's story has somehow taken up continuity from Pran's (and we do see him learning from their similar experiences when they talk in the forest in Ep.3). More than just a callback to ATOTS, it also represents the moment when the red thread of the narrative, the coursing of the prana or qi, symbolically transfers from PatPran's storyline to PhuTian's.
So, summarizing the structure of this four-ep mini-series:
Ep.1 was basically a set-up to get PatPran up to the mountains, padded out with lots of gleeful fanservice moments for BBS fans (not that I'm complaining! đ);
Ep.2 was devoted to setting out the main subject matter at hand and establishing the framework within which it would be discussed (PhuTianâs relationship, juxtaposed against PatPranâs);
Ep.3 â the jungle jaunt â introduced external conflict as the tool by which the subject could be dissected under scrutiny; and
Ep.4 was of course the resolution, drawing matters to their natural conclusion.
And with regard to Bad Buddy, what we see in OS2âs BBS portions is really a kind of compromise. Itâs not a sequel to BBS by a longshot, but mostly a flourish of fanservice instead (hence the generous gifting of callbacks and re-creations of iconic moments from BBS, especially in Ep.1 of the four-parter â some scenes, like the one starting at Ep.1Â [1I4] 8.31, consisted almost entirely of callbacks).
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [1I4] 8.47
This is not to say we don't see anything at all with regard to growth though. By situating PatPran's storyline during the timeskip between the original BBS Episodes 11 and 12, we were effectively allowed a glimpse into the state and development of their relationship sometime after the heady hormonal rush of their honeymoon period in Ep.11, and before its relative maturity in Ep.12, and there were some choice moments on display.
OS2 called this out at Ep.2Â [2/4] 10.29, when Pat asked "Since weâre here in the North, should we make it our honeymoon trip?", which Pran then dismisses with a reminder of their task at hand (getting PhuTian's permission for his play).
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2Â [2/4] 10.51
The honeymoon reference was a callback to BBS Ep.11, in which Pat was wanting to live indefinitely in a sort-of forever honeymoon by the sea (that even he knew was only illusory). Pran's dismissal of Pat's suggestion in OS2 was a reminder that their honeymoon period was over, and it was time for them to be dealing with the growing pains that every couple faces on their journey to a stable pairing.
What wasn't addressed in the original BBS is that PatPran's natural propensity to draw each other into conflict could not have been healthy for their longer-term relationship post-honeymoon, unless they found a way to corral the constant infighting and invent a set of gentlemen's rules that would prevent damage to their bond.
(above) BBS Ep.5Â [1I4] 3.19
And I think this is part of what OS2 was trying to show us (however briefly): Pat and Pran moving toward finding a balance between loving each other and punching each other up (emotionally), despite conflict and rivalry paradoxically being the age-old rockbed of their relationship.
The following are some of the relationship dynamics that they explored in OS2:
Transitioning from an individual mindset to a couple-based one (which was highlighted by Pran's solo expedition to the mountains, before Pat managed to catch up);
Adapting to each other's personal styles (Pran's is spikier, and Pat's more embracing);
Learning about give and take, and looking for win-win outcomes rather than keeping score (in OS2, this was illustrated by how their earlier duels â like who gets the auditorium, who gets the HighTem sponsorship â were framed as zero-sum win-lose situations, where a win for one would mean a loss for the other; it was also given a nod in Pran's talk with Phupha at Ep.3Â [4/4] 1.19 regarding his insecurities about who gives more in a relationship).
There are possibly others, but these are just the ones I could suss out with my one haphazard re-watch, and I'm not ready to go looking for them. đ¤ˇââď¸
Now I was originally going to go into these in detail, but I realize it's not what interests me the most about OS2 x BBS x ATOTS, nor do I think OS2 adequately dealt with these (and/or other) relationship issues between PatPran during the mini-series itself (as in, we aren't shown enough of Pat and Pran working together on detangling the knots in their bond for any suggested resolution at the end of the fourth episode to feel logical and satisfying).
It seems almost as though OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was expecting us to believe that PatPran's Ep.3 trial by forest (which they also went through mostly apart from each other) was enough to be some magically purifying crucible, imparting wisdom via its sufferance.
(above left) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [1I4] 15.16 â Tian, Pran and Kampung lost in the forest; (above right) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [1I4] 17.46 â Pat and Phupha on their wilderness search
We do know that PatPran's journey to arrive at a steady-state couplehood will continue unseen beyond OS2 and that they eventually end up on rock-solid footing, with a set of mutually-agreed ground rules for engagement that is acknowledged and respected, because it's obviously what they have in place by the time we see them in BBS Ep.12 (so much so that their relationship could withstand the difficulties of a long-distance commitment after Pran moves to Singapore).
(above) BBS Ep.12Â [3I4] 8.15
I'm willing to accept this because I think OS2 x BBS x ATOTS was not meant to be a PatPran vehicle in the main, and so I will take whatever crumbs are on offer and view their forest ordeal as more metaphor than real-time depiction of their actual process to ground their relationship in greater maturity. (If you'd like to look at PatPran's learning track more in detail however, I can point you to the ever-incisive @miscellar's breakdowns linked here, here and here. đ¤Šđ)
But what I find really interesting about OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is when PhuTian's storyline gets drawn into the mix â and it happens much earlier than you would think on first watch.
One part of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS that stood out for me was all the discourse around the Engineering play, because quite frankly it felt incongruously spotlighted. First of all, why Snow White? And why an entire scene of Pran demonstrating the art of theater to Pat backstage? I now believe Director Aof was doing this to call attention to some underlying significance.
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [2/4] 9.15
Tumblr user @ranchthoughts has very astutely pointed out that the story of Snow White has many parallels with the original ATOTS (e.g., the gallant woodsman; the fragile, privileged damsel who falls in a swoon; the journey through the forest; the misappropriated heart that doubles as proof of good faith â see these links here, here and here for more đ¤Šđ).
(above) An illustration of the seven dwarfs finding Snow White by Franz Jßttner, from Sneewittchen (1905)
So by bringing up Snow White, Director Aof was already slyly alluding to PhuTian in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [2/4].
Although it is not a strict retelling of the fairytale, I think that OS2 x BBS x ATOTS also contains elements of Snow White:
Another character (Phupha) swoons into unconsciousness (like Snow White did after biting the poisoned apple);
There is also a journey through the wilderness (mirroring Snow White's abandonment in the woods and finding her way to the dwarf house);
A cast of supporting characters parallels the seven dwarfs (Kampung is one, and this is perhaps why they dressed him in oversized windbreakers, playing with his proportions to make him seem more dwarf-like; this is also possibly why Pat jokingly mentions Korn playing one of the dwarfs in the Engineering play at Ep.1Â [1I4]Â 13.26 â Drake may have been originally envisioned as part of the cast, in character as Rang, up in the mountains);
The magic mirror, that always tells the truth, is actually PatPran, in whom PhuTian see their own relationship problems reflected, and whose truths help them to better their own dynamic (see Phupha's comments at Ep.4Â [3I4]Â 0.53 and 1.05 â "It has to be you two who play the parts" and "No one gets us better than these two" as well as PhuTian's more light-hearted callbacks to PatPran's cheekier moments, e.g., at Ep.4Â [2/4]Â 1.25 and 1.59).
But it's really Pat and Pran's interaction backstage at Ep.1Â [2/4]Â 8.54 that both illuminates and foreshadows some bigger themes to come in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS (when Pran demonstrates how a simple bench can transform onstage, depending on how you frame it for the audience via the narrative).
(above left) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1Â [2/4]Â 10.12 â Pran shows Pat how a bench can be a dining table; (above right) BBS Ep.3Â [3I4]Â 9.01 â Pat shows Pran how roleplay can spark a creative bus stop design
On the surface level it's a parallel and callback to PatPran's roleplay at BBS Ep.3Â [3I4]Â 8.38 (although flipping the roles with Pran turning educator doesn't quite gel, given that Pat was fully aware of how to use the power of imagination at the bus-stop).
It's also a tip of the hat to theater legend Peter Brook who famously said "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged", which invokes the same kind of metamorphic magic that turns Pran's bench into a mirror, a dwarf dining table and a glass coffin. (Peter Brook also passed away just a few months before the Our Skyy 2 trailer aired, which lends a poignancy and weight to this moment.)
(above left) Theater legend Peter Brook; (above right) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 11.03 â PatPran roleplay Snow White and the glass coffin
The bench as glass coffin is also a metaphor for the constraints that PatPran must face living their relationship in a glass closet â open to view yet limited on all sides by expectations (remembering that they've officially broken up but still have to interact in public on school matters).
And of course it's unmissable that both Snow White's glass coffin and PatPran's relationship are a metaphor for queer lives in the closet. (PatPran leaning in for a kiss on that bench only to be interrupted by a uniformed security guard, is also a tongue-in-cheek reminder about how higher authorities can and do impinge on the freedom of queer people to love freely.)
However, in the context of BL and of Our Skyy 2 as a BL anthology, OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is also a metatextual comment on the telling of queer love stories in the media. The entire four-parter can be seen as a metaphor (or more correctly, an allegory) regarding the commodification of LGBTQ+ love by the BL industry itself, if you will, as well as some of the issues this stirs up.
In OS2 we have:
PatPran turning PhuTian's love story into a drama for public consumption;
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4Â [3I4] 7.00
The emphasis placed on consent for that story to be used (in the words of Ajahn Pichai at Ep.1Â [2/4]Â 12.15, 12.31 and 12.38, and PhuTian's exchange at Ep.2Â [1I4]Â 16.30) and the comment that partial consent is not enough (from Pran at Ep.2Â [1I4]Â 10.18 and 20.22);
(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.1 [2/4] 12.38; (middle) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 16.32; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 20.22
Phupha's objection to being portrayed as a one-dimensional love interest, reduced to only his romanticized and/or sexualized self (Ep.2Â [1I4]Â 18.35), instead of being seen as a fully-realized human being in his own right (Ep.2Â [1I4]Â 18.25);
(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 18.35; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.2 [1I4] 18.25
Pran detecting Phupha's self-doubt and commenting at Ep.3Â [4/4]Â 0.58: "Why do I feel like youâre just insecure and not sure if youâre good enough to tell anyone that story?";
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [4/4] 0.58
Phupha finally giving permission for PatPran to dramatize his and Tian's story, with the proviso that Tian and he be played by PatPran themselves (Ep.4Â [3I4]Â 0.48).
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 0.48
The parallels with the BL industry are striking. (I'm sticking with BL as the established industry here, but you could perhaps apply the same points to the nascent GL as well.) No disrespect to allies, but Director Aof is pointedly saying the following:
Queer love stories are constantly being dramatized in Thai media (by cishet-dominated parties and largely for cishet consumption) â but this is often done without the LGBTQ+ community having much say, let alone any consent, in the matter;
The commodification of queer love (especially in the BL industry) has resulted in most productions forefronting the romantic and/or sexual aspects of the narrative (understandable, because these are romance-driven), but this also has the unfortunate result of reducing the queer characters to pretty vessels for love stories, deified and/or fetishized, and with limited room for more to be said about other aspects of their queer lives;
Perhaps because of discrimination, people might still be carrying the idea in their heads that queer stories are somehow less valid than the cishet ones that dominate media (remembering how SOTUS had to break the mold for BL, and InkPa for GL) â and the call sometimes even comes from inside the house, when queer people feel that their stories may somehow be unsuitable for mainstream channels (as echoed by Phupha's insecurity, called out by Pran at Ep.3Â [4/4]Â 0.58).
Not only are queer stories that exist beyond the romantic/sexual dimension worthy of being told in a more expansive arena (Pran's Architecture play, and its reception), the LGBTQ+ community should be mindful when control of how these stories are told and who gets to tell them is not in its hands (echoed by "neutral" Ajahn Pichai's reminder about consent, and Phupha's insistence on having a trusted couple incarnate his and Tian's story).
But remembering Director Aof's leanings toward LGBTQ+ activism in his work, it's also possible to read the drama in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS as an allegory itself for real-life situations, beyond this BL anthology's metatextual comment on the BL industry. I think that this is the ultimate message with PhuTian's story being the finale for Our Skyy 2 (landing not coincidentally during Pride Month and all).
With the metaphors in Pran's theater class backstage and the BL allegory as a launchpad, OS2 x BBS x ATOTS (and Ep.4 especially) is also allegory for queer life in a broader context:
In wider society, the narrative for queer lives has for so long been dominated by the cishet majority and dictated by it (just as the queer romances in BL have had to respond to cishet impulses).
So many queer people have to live their lives with varying degrees of (in)visibility, subject to unseen but still suffocating constraints (Snow White's glass coffin, standing in for the proverbial closet).
Queer lives often take on a performative public face and people have to pretend to be less than their whole truth (Pran's bench, actually so much more than meets the eye).
Queer individuals' self-worth and self-acceptance are influenced by the views of those outside the community, whether coming from family or larger society (Phupha's insecurity, called out by Pran at Ep.3Â [4/4]Â 0.58).
Remembering how Heart in Director Aof's recent (and also mega-important) work Moonlight Chicken was sequestered away by his parents because he was different (i.e., he was a Heart who did not fit what they perceived as "normal"), there is also a parallel in OS2 with Tian whose heart is one step removed from what is considered the norm by wider society (being a transplant from Torfun in ATOTS).
(above) Moonlight Chicken Ep.5Â [4/4]Â 12.23 â Heart weeps in silence at his isolation
Tian's heart often causes him pain, and he is often enfeebled or constrained by it, but even so he loves with his heart just as hard as the next guy (maybe even more, seen not just in his relationship with Phupha but also in his compassion for his students and especially the lost Kampung).
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.3 [3I4] 2.57
We are shown that Tian is not willing to be held back by his difference, and expects to live his life to the fullest. It's just that he needs to live his life a little differently, and indeed he thrives when he is given the right circumstances (controlled exertion, and the right sustenance/medication) and freedom to do so. And all this is of course a metaphor for queer people, whose hearts also love differently from the cishet majority's, and who are simply asking for the freedom and space to live their best lives.
So in a sense â just as PatPran were a magic mirror to PhuTian â OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is also Snow White's magic mirror held up to its audience, reflecting truths about queer life back to all who are watching.
But as is typical of Director Aof's work, Our Skyy 2 also suffuses its message with hope, so it's not all hard truths, raw and unvarnished. The series draws to a close on an uplifting note, and as an allegory it hails on behalf of the queer community the hope of a positive future that is presented as not only attainable, but also deserved.
Homophobia is not shown to exist in this universe (as was the case with BBS and also ATOTS). So when Phupha meets up with Tian in Bangkok, they're surrounded by a supportive network of family, friends and allies who were working together to make Phupha's attendance at Tian's birthday celebration a reality.
(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 3.06 â Tian's birthday celebration with his parents, best friend Tul and surprise guest Phupha; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 4.32 â Tian's parents give Phupha their blessing to marry Tian
Tian's parents also giving joyful, proud and formal blessing to their union, as well as Tul and Yod's cheerful assistance, all signal the aspirational message that a better, more accepting world is possible for the LGBTQ+ community.
And of course that super-romantic wedding proposal caps it all off:
(top) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 8.46 â Phupha kisses Tian's hand after placing the engagement ring on his finger; (bottom) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [4/4] 12.16 â Phupha and Tian's post-engagement kiss by the pool
But it's not just trumpeting support for marriage equality, the cause cĂŠlèbre that BL series have been championing over the past few years. Noting that Thailand is expected to legalize LGBTQ+ marriage in the coming weeks or months, queer people in the country are now daring to look to the future with much more hope in their hearts. đ
With this as the context, Phupha and Tian's engagement in the present, with matrimonial union set for the future, can also be seen as symbolizing the hope of even better days to come â when members of the queer community will finally be afforded equal rights in all respects. And I think this has given Our Skyy 2's last episode a rainbow flourish truly worthy of Pride Month 2023. đ
â P.S. Not to take away from the importance of Director Aof's vision, but this is a Bad Buddy blog after all, so I will close this write-up with a bit of a rewind back to PatPran. We didn't get to see a whole lot of information regarding their relationship growth in the four episodes of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS, but there is an Easter Egg hiding within the layers near the end. One of the issues that Pat and Pran had to deal with as a new-ish couple was how to move away from scorekeeping in their constant, competitive jostling. Their first few contests that we saw in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS were win-lose ones ("if you get it, it means that I won't", e.g., the use of the auditorium and the HighTem sponsorship), and that kind of dynamic would only have been corrosive for their couplehood in the longer term. What we see in OS2 x BBS x ATOTS is that in the end they somehow arrive at a win-win instead (just as their Ep.6 Beachside Bet in Bad Buddy sidestepped a black-and-white win-lose outcome and gave them both the winner's prize of being in love). I don't have proof that it's intentional, but Director Aof and his team are certainly clever enough to have planned it to be so. For if ATOTS really is a version of Snow White, both of them got to stage their plays (and share in the sponsorship) since Pran's play (ATOTS) is also Pat's play (Snow White). OS2 x BBS x ATOTS winks at this with Pat â an Engine boy â playing Snow White/Tian, and by showing Wai and Korn in cahoots backstage (why should Engineering student Korn be helping with the Archi play anyway?). đ
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 6.55 And then PatPran are of course forced to kiss onstage (celebrating their union in more ways than one).
(above) OS2 x BBS x ATOTS Ep.4 [3I4] 7.13 Another sly little wink from OS2, they're lovers pretending to be enemies pretending to be lovers, which in a way is also emblematic of OS2 x BBS x ATOTS's deeper message, told matryoshka-style with layers of allegorical meaning. đ
â
#bad buddy#our skyy 2#our skyy 2 x bad buddy#patpran#our skyy 2 x bad buddy x a tale of thousand stars#os2 x bbs x atots#phutian
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