#bc with pran he doesnt want to play doesnt want to be anyone but himself

[jemmo]

pat is indeed a very gentle and caring and affectionate person and that's amazing, but I was rewatching ep 9 and I realized that he also carries with him an intense primordial rage that I haven't seen anyone address both here and in the show..

like during the rugby match when he was fighting with wai and his friends had to pull him back multiple times and then again at the bar when he was confronting that other guy, his eyes were full of anger, they genuinely scared me, and then I remembered that he had the same rage-filled expression during the fight scene in ep 5 when he was yelling at wai "this is between me and him"

but despite the anger in his eyes he's never the one to initiate physical violence, and any other person would have, it's amazing how he controls himself

anyway idk where this is going or if you understood what I'm trying to say lol, I just wanted to put this out there cause no one has discussed this and I would love to hear your thoughts, cause I love your takes on the series!

anon bless you first of all for caring about my dumb opinions lol and secondly for giving me the chance to rant about something that always slips my mind but i've so wanted to rant about.

bc i have a couple of things to say regarding this. and the main one is something i've discussed with a couple of people before, and of all things it arose from a chat with @thecookiemonster77 about pat being a cloud guy. no not clouds in the sky, but as in he saves stuff to the cloud whereas pran prefers physical usbs and hardrives, bc he likes to physically hold them and be reassured and know his stuff is safe. pat on the other hand, its like things just work out for him. not to say he's coasted through life on autopilot, he's more just the guy that can miss some lectures and do his homework late but still ace a test. its a combination of natural talent and an ability to think on the spot and kinda bullshit your way through stuff. and we do see this in the series, im thinking of the whole bus stop thing where in the meeting he comes up with an idea on the spot and it works out.

this is also mixed with the fact that pat is not a consequences guy, bc he's never had to face them before. he acts impulsively bc he doesnt think ahead. yes pran leaves him when he gets transferred but pran is the one facing immediate consequences, and you can argue this might be a turning point for pat in that he faces consequences later realising how lonely he is, and this will add to my point later. all this is to say that pat has had things relatively easy, especially is you subscribe to my idea that, after pran got transferred, he kinda accepted and fell into the role his dad was laying out for him more so than he did before, taking engineering at uni, doing the sports he wanted, and most importantly to this point becoming more violent, becoming more focused on respect and reputation, and that manifesting as him fighting a lot to maintain that, which gave him the rep we hear about in ep 1 (also maybe a way to cope or an outlet for expressing his anger at pran being transferred??)

rewatching ep 1 was kinda a trip for me bc pat is so very different in his violence. bc we see him in violent settings all through the series, but he has a different air to ep 1. bc in ep 1 he is fighting for stupid reasons, reasons he doesnt believe in. but that changes afterwards, and thats when we see him in the state you described. and thats down to pran. bc in all the examples you gave, he is fighting for pran, directly or indirectly. he fights wai in ep 5 bc he's getting in the way of the two of them, he fights wai in ep 9 bc wai is being a baby and not working with him, and bc he's frustrated with wai for ignoring pran, and he fights those guys in ep 9 bc he wants to protect wai for pran's sake, as a way to offer a hand of reconciliation. thats why, compared to ep 1, he's so much more serious in these fights, bc finally, after going through life playing his part, doing what his father wants, putting in minimal effort to get rewards, finally he's found something he wants, something he cares for, something he's willing and ready to fight for, to put effort into in order to achieve. and thats pran, thats his relationship with pran. he's finally found whats important to him, so all that untapped energy and drive and passion is finally unlocked, and it manifests in so many ways such as him relentlessly going after pran after they kiss, him wanting to be in prans space all the time, hes cuteness and displays of affection and his want to be loud and open, and one of them is in these fights, where he sees the thing he wants being challenged and disrupted and ruined and he just cant stand it, its not right, its not how it should be, and he just has to fight back.

bc this plays into another element of pat that i headcannon, which is that he sees the world very simply in that he doesnt understand why theres such difficulty and complexity and limits around his relationship with pran, bc what he sees is two people that love each other and therefore they should be together. but when there's all these unwritten rules forbidding it, he just doesnt understand, it doesnt sit right in his brain, and thats why he has this urgency and need to fix it and fix it now.

and im glad you brought up him not initiating violence, bc i feel like apart from ep 1, he doesnt initiate any violence. like yes he may throw the first punch with wai in ep 5, but he doesnt start that scene with violent intentions, they only rise to the surface when wai is actively hostile and provoking. similarly in ep 9, the fight is initiated bc of the dude in the bar being a dick. he may kick him first, but the guy comes at him with a group so he's outnumbered after facing off against him in the bar. thats them initiating hostile behaviour, not pat. and i think this works so well, bc comparing ep 1 to now, you can see that pat has softened bc of being with pran, and that his softer side comes out around pran. but he's still pat, he still jokes around with his bros and he's still gonna have that violent streak, its just that now its more subdued and only reaches its max when something infringes on his relationship with pran. and it also makes sense that pat maybe does have this slight hero complex, not in a negative way, thats just part of his personality. we see it in the way he self-sacrifices for pran many times, losing the bet, laying out his feelings on the rooftop, letting go of things that make him upset like the guitar, being willing to break up so that wai will speak to pran, sitting out of the game so that wai can play etc etc. and its why next ep he's gonna make his big confession to the architecture faculty, bc he just loves submitting all that he is and everything he has to pran, and while that speaks of his love and devotion, its also a little selfish, bc he gets to look cool, he gets to be the knight in shining armour, he gets to be the hero. and that part of him filters in to his violent side. he'll always want to step up when things arent right. pran said it in the hospital, he just has to play the cool guy.

and i could ponder for hours on where this confidence and pride comes from, but ive also rambled enough so i hope that answers your question in a not-so-concise fashion. there's a whole other thing i could rant about with respect to you saying him holding back, and how its indicative of him not actually wanting to hurt people and being reflective of his innate ability to gauge boundaries, both emotionally with pran and in these scenarios where he can gauge just how provocative he can be without stepping over the line and becoming the violent force he only wants to oppose. but this is way too long already so we can all take that idea home and think about it as homework ok class??? anyway thanks for giving me the chance to rant its like my fave thing to do