#im biased bc i have had some rly bitter rivalries of mine turn into rly good friendships without a noticeable event precipitating the change

[snickerdoodlles]

*blinks* so it just now occurred to me that I’m probably interpreting the bus stop fiction much more differently than most people do??? And I don’t just mean the lie Pran and Pat used to get their friends to stop fighting, I’m also referring to the lie Pat used to get his friends to help rebuild the bus stop

Okay so, recap: Pran tells everyone they can’t fight in this spot because seniors from both their faculties built it. Pat reinforces the lie, both of them temporarily manage to keep their friends from duking it out in front of a security camera. Pat later uses the lie to trick his friends into helping the architect students repair the stop

But my interpretation of that second lie, the one Pat tells to his friends, is that it’s also a convenient fiction for them to help the architecture students

I do think they genuinely believe that seniors from both faculties built the original bus stop (and it’ll be really interesting to see if that original lie is exposed and if that actually affects anything), but I also think that they’re using it as an excuse to help with the rebuilding without losing face or fully admitting to their guilt

When Pat initially scolds them about the bus stop, they don’t immediately protest the scolding. Their first reaction is to look at each other, shocked and surprised. Considering how panicked they were going into the disciplinary office at the start of the episode, vs the joking and playing Pat walks into at the end (especially in contrast to how stressed the architecture gang is throughout this episode), it seems like they genuinely didn’t realize that the architecture students didn’t get the same punishment as they did. And when Pat yells at them, they look so guilty. They know the incident is equally their fault, but the architecture students are bearing the brunt of the punishment. They ruined that guilt in the next minute, but it comes off as more defensive posturing to me than anything else. They don’t know what they can do about it though and they’re worried to admit their role and culpability in the problem with that insecurity, so they hide behind bluster and a “their problem, not ours” attitude

So when they challenge Pat (why is this our problem, why do we need to care) and Pat insists not doing anything will mean losing their territory, they’re all pretty on board with this plan really quickly. And…their insistence on why they definitely do need to help a little strange, almost. Like, how the hell would they lose the rights to a bus stop? It’s a bus stop. Furthermore, all of them recently got scolded for fighting at it and the architecture gang is facing actual expulsion if they don’t fix the bus stop. They’re certainly not going to fight the engineers about being in that space when they’re on such thin ice—even if things were tense, engineering is the group that ultimately has the upper hand there. And if tensions really were that bad, the group of them is half a step from disappearing from their uni lives. Given half a thought, their excuse for why they need to help rebuild the bus stop falls apart

It could just be that that’s how these guys think—the show starts with Pat picking a fight with Wai just because backing down would ‘damage his reputation’. it’s an incredibly stupid conflict, and the narrative treats it as such (as seen by Pa and Pran’s reactions to the fight), but that could just be where these characters are at in this point of the narrative. It could also be that these guys will just follow Pat’s request to help because at the end of the day, he is their good friend and they’d want to help him.

But considering how much of this show’s framework is built around convenient fictions—things like Pat and Pran’s…everything, really, from creating fictions that let them interact as something other than enemies (ie the roleplaying to help design the bus stop) to hiding their care for the other behind the excuse of their rivalry (“I love the look on your face…when you LOSE”); and also even beyond them to the other character relationships like InkPa (ie Pa projecting her crush onto Pat, Ink flirting with Pa by feeding her pancake with that sign behind them)—Bad Buddy as very much a show is that emphasizes how people may say one thing but their actions will betray another feeling entirely. And as they keep revealing more and more layers to all of the characters and their actions, I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to learn that the engineering guys did genuinely feel bad for getting the architecture students in so much trouble and Pat’s claim that they’ll “lose an asset” gave them a convenient excuse to help their rivals without fully admitting to their guilt.

Of course, I can just be pulling straws here, but hinting that these guys were genuinely concerned about their rivals, even during this time where their fighting is at its peak and they have no connection to the other group beyond their rivalry, would add a new layer and dynamic to the two groups’ eventual reconciliation. The bus stop wouldn’t just be symbolic of how Pat and Pran work together as a team, but it’d also be the first olive branch between both factions. And furthermore, it wouldn’t just be the first reconciliation between the two groups, it’d be the first reconciliation Pat and Pran directly helped, but not necessarily with the burden of having to inspire it. Adding a layer to the fiction that implies Korn, Chang, and Mo might’ve liked to have helped the architecture students (after they got their heads out of their asses) regardless would also contrast the parents’ rivalry in showing how a reconciliation cannot only rely on Pat and Pran, but also everyone embroiled in it. Given that we also know that Pat and Pran’s fathers were a part of this rivalry between both faculties, and unlike the others of their generation (like Professor Pichai), they have not moved on from any rivalry whatsoever, it’d show how a true reconciliation between them could be inspired by Pat and Pran, but could not occur only because of them