#i cant believe she actually let atom go like that with no repercussions after finding out he faked being raped bc he didn’t get his way

[royaltercets]

sometimes i think abt the fact that ray turned to alcoholism because his alcoholic late mother didn’t love him, his father didn’t show love like he should have, and his whole friend group kept calling him a burden (a burden!!! who fucking calls their friend that!!!) instead of loving and supporting him which is all he needed, as proven by sand, to stop self harming by ways of alcohol and drugs and letting himself get fucked when drunk only so he doesn’t remember anything, and start rehab and a path to sobriety. if you can’t have an intervention for your friend and support him through hard times, are you really a friend? or are you keeping him around for, idk, the money he might have a bunch of, or something?

i honestly feel like boston was a better friend to him than mew, who kept him around as someone to give him attention and affection and refusing to set his foot down and properly reject him. he was harsh, but not constantly unkind. boston, of course, had his own issues—not the slut thing, but the later infidelity thing with nick, and also the earlier seduction of taken men (which, by the way, is entirely as much, if not more, the fault of said men (*cough* top *cough*) as it was boston’s. cheating takes two people).

i feel like people love overlooking this because…? i don’t know, they’re two characters who are framed to seem like assholes (and they are at times! they’re complex characters!), but this blatantly ignores the absolute red flags that is the rest of them; namchueam—who not only is one of the people to treat ray, who’s got probable ptsd and severe abandonment issues and like 79 other mental illnesses (okay, hyperbole, but you get the point) like absolute shit by continually calling him a burden—but also was like. fine with her brother nearly ruining boston’s life over a false rape allegation, because she disliked boston so much in the moment; mew, who as previously mentioned keeps ray around for his own gain despite thinking of him as a burden; top, who really isn’t a friend to ray but he’s part of the group by association, who’s honestly just an asshole who i guess realizes that he can’t always get what he wants without fighting for it. then there’s april, who is pretty damn spineless imo, but at least she’s not awful to ray (i might be misremembering here, though). idk what to think of her. she feels like she barely has any opinions of her own. she feels very… surface. honestly nick was a better friend to him and he wasn’t even really a friend? i like to think they get closer post-canon though.

nonetheless: the behavior that i see in these so called friends, truthfully, is what got him to attempt suicide twice. yes, twice—you don’t think a drunk person would twist the wheel so far that the car they’re driving crashes into the side wall in the other direction to the one they’re driving in by just falling asleep or losing consciousness or not being alert enough, do you? i’m pretty sure that was intentional. and, i’m pretty sure the reason he pushed away sand and refused to listen to his (albeit very important!!!!) advice about not driving drunk wasn’t because he’s Regular Self Destructive, but rather because ray wanted sand to hate him for hurting him and being stupid to make it… easier, somehow, on sand when he killed himself, or whatever. i’ve been in that situation myself, and i recognized it immediately—he knew his friends (if you can genuinely call them that) would probably hate him after that night, and he did it so that they wouldn’t miss him.

anyways, to conclude this dumb, ill-formatted, ranty post, so many OFTS watchers just… seem to look at the surface of it all. yes, they all have issues. that’s like. the point of the show. but if you consider ray an annoying burden due to his alcoholism and addiction and all of that, you have missed the main point of his arc, which really boils down to “sometimes someone going through a really hard time just needs some love and support, and if you can be that for them, they can become better and show a better side of themselves, which is invaluable to someone who truly loves and cares for them”. love isn’t only for those who don’t take to unhealthy coping mechanisms when they struggle, like nick.

to summarize: if you have a ray in your life, be their sand. not necessarily romantically, but love and care for them, genuinely. don’t be a mew or a chueam. or an april, if you can help it.