#we Stan An Intellectual (x)

Smug Shi Lei is the best

You’re good now. My teacher taught me well. BAD BUDDY THE SERIES (2021)

Have you not had a secret crush on anyone before?

Normalize this kind of conversation

"It's the same as you like dogs and I like cats. It's your preference"

- Tul

[ID: six gifs of to my star. 1: a cup gets dropped and ji woo checks on seo joon to make sure he's okay. 2: ji woo shields seo joon from seeing a defaced poster of himself. 3: seo joon notices a new rug with a moon in the apartment. 4: seo joon cuts himself while cooking and ji woo sucks the blood from his finger. 5: ji woo grabs eggs and then puts them back since seo joon dislikes eggs. 6: seo joon notices a new space poster in the apartment. END ID]

@queercreators event 02: romance — to my star

 ↳ ji woo expressing love nonverbally

heidi priebe / i promised you the moon

bad buddy really did go farther than i ever expected.

like okay, my initial reaction was that it seemed like a fun dynamic, and a fun story. and it is! but i didn't expect much more than that. tbh, when i figured out pran already had feelings for pat so early on in the show, i thought it'd be a story where they slowly became friends, then made the bet, and pat would slowly realize he had feelings for pran too, and they would both hide behind the bet and secretly hope the other would fall for them until some kind of confession. i didn't even really think about how it might end. either in some "love will save the day" cheesy way or a sad ending tbh. i thought that IF there was A kiss, it MIGHT be in the last episode, and might be awkward and stiff, like they so often are in this genre. and i was fine to go along with it because i was laughing so hard, and impressed by the acting, and was enjoying the story anyway.

and then episode 5 happened and blew all of those assumptions into the water.

i still haven't recovered tbh. i can't believe we've gotten all of this. such a well rounded story with well rounded characters, with chemistry like i've never seen, and intimacy treated as normal things. small acts and domestic details that show love like normal people, like real people. a parent storyline that didn't depend on heightened drama or the expected "they used to date" trope, but instead was a story about betrayal of friendships. it felt real and made every piece of the puzzle fit together in ways that make it so you can dig more meaning out of the whole series than you could at the start. the way everything ties to the title, enough so that people were making jokes every week about who the real "bad buddy" was all along.

we got lovely, supportive friendships between wlw and mlm. we got a wlw relationship on the side, with a well fleshed out story and characters to root for. it wasn't tossed in at the end, it was built up and it was beautiful. we got discussions of sexuality. discussions of stereotypes. and the friends in this show, whether or not you like them, are not cookie cutter perfect, or perfectly boring, people, but all add their own spark to each dynamic. they feel like real people with their own feelings and choices and better yet they are feelings we as an audience can still understand, regardless of screentime or if we like their actions. other side characters like uncle tong and junior, and even their old high school teacher, felt like real people as well, with their own lives and agendas. the ones that came into closer contact with the plot didn't push their stories onto the main characters, but rather gave them the tools they needed to build their own. such is life. it was...very human!

no characters "shipped" the mc's to their face. no fetishization was thrown in on screen for us to be forced to watch, as i have so often seen before in this genre. nothing was treated as extraordinary, which of course is what made it so. there were no gender roles the characters fell into, neither was more masculine or feminine than the other, and neither was more dominant than the other. its a relationship of equals, shown in both big and miniscule ways, and it's a relationship between two men! on that note - there was no homophobia!!! at all! not once did someone have an adverse reaction to the idea of same sex relationships, from their parents, to their friends, to the theater group, to strangers at the beach. no one batted an eye. and yet the metaphors for it were sewn in everywhere you looked. it was refreshing to see a show that tipped into similar stakes, without it actually becoming a consequence on top of everything else.

the ending itself was a metaphor. the glass closet pat and pran kept their relationship in was a homage to queer people everywhere living their truth despite the world or people around them trying not to allow it. they lived their lives on their terms, told the people they wanted to tell, had that support group, made memories with the people they could be themselves around, and didn't let their parents take that from them. they held their happiness between their fists and didn't let go, and slowly their environment changed to suit them, rather than the other way around. it was a realistic ending. it wasn't a perfect ending, where they got this perfect life and everything worked out instantly, but things don't have to be perfect to still be happy, and sooooo full of love, and to show that hope for the future?? im in awe.

okay and the pacing of this series was so excellent. only 12, 1-hour-long episodes, and a complete story with a hopeful ending? that alone is noteworthy to me. conflicts and storylines rose and were solved within the same episode or the next. every ep was a step further in the characters' individual growth as well as their relationships. nothing felt like it was there for no reason, despite literally being a slice of life show. everything served its purpose!

and my last big point is that this really is, at its core, a gay story told for gay people by gay people. p'aof knew exactly what he was doing with this series, everything was very intentional, and i'm forever grateful to him and the crew and the cast for the amount of love and hard work they put into this. i'm going to miss the soonvijarn recaps so much too, it was incredibly healing to watch a group of older gay men react to this show every week and then discuss it with the director afterwards like that was just so rewarding, not to mention gave me so many laughs. like i can't find a way that expresses my gratitude enough for the people that made this show a reality.

this is becoming an extremely long ramble but truly? and ive said this before, but, i thought this would be a show where two people who hated each other learned to love each other. instead i got a story about love that already existed, and trust that was grown.

everything about this show felt warm and comfortable and real. rewatching it still makes me feel everything i felt the first time. my heart still races, i laugh just as hard, and i still cry. it really has been such unexpected fun and all i can say now is that i know it's going to be a part of me for a very, very long time. and that i'm grateful for it, and all that it did.

Yes, I’m obsessed with this scene and not just because Pran treats Pat’s fingers like this is a KFC commercial. By comparison, Pat’s attempt at flirting seems childish and silly, but I think that’s exactly what he’s going for. Pat doesn’t actually know where Pran’s boundaries are with this, this is a new battlefield for them, and the last thing he wants to do is push Pran away accidentally.

So, he starts with something simple and familiar. Change “if you want it, be my boyfriend” to “if you want it, be my friend” and this is precisely something Pat could have done pre-kiss. He’s testing the waters and, well, he’s had plenty of evidence that Pran likes it when he acts cute, so why not start there?

So then, when Pran leans in and really says, “yeah, no, we’re not 15 anymore,” yes, Pat short-circuits for a hot second, but then as Pran walks away you can literally see, “oh, this is gonna be fun,” written all over his face. He knows Pran is really the more competitive of the two of them, and he is not above using that to his benefit to make Pran up the ante. The way he sees this, he can’t lose. He’s able to be as clingy as he wants (very), has found a way for Pran to be more open with him (important), and gets plenty of his new favourite side of Pran (flirty).  What more could a boy hopelessly in love want?

“We’re not like parents in tv dramas”

Right, more like parents in Shakesperian tragedies

Dad dragged his luggage across me. Then he never looked back.