POV: You Binge The First 3 Episodes Of La Pluie After Not Hearing Much About It, Think You're IN LOVE

POV: You binge the first 3 episodes of La Pluie after not hearing much about it, think you're IN LOVE with the show, so you go watch the trailer for the first time because a new episode is 4 whole days away, and after seeing the craziness ahead, you're not sure if you even want to continue watching.

Lomfon thoughts

So I read a bunch of la pluie meta but this post by @fadelikeclouds got me really thinking about Lomfon and his decision making, because it made so much sense to a logical brain. 

He made all the wrong choices, and he shouldn’t have done it, this isn’t a defence post it’s just a follow his logic post.

Prior to this episode we know

He doesn’t believe in soulmates (jut randomly similar wavelengths) - very logical 

(although I thought we’d get an emotional foundation for that - e.g. maybe one of his parents left becuase they found their soulmate, but it doesn’t seem like it anymore??). 

sudden soulmate bond is weird

Established link to an unknown person through a keychain. 

So here he is trying to figure out what on earth it means that he’s suddenly connected to Tai, a man he latched onto based on one conversation where he felt they really connected and basically nothing else (other than Tai’s continuing to be polite when they meet). This is big logic brain energy to me, he has gone:

ah this is a person I like for logical reasons like mutual interest, he is my crush now.

then we have two things happen (one slowly one quickly)

1. he gets feelings for Tien (slowly, illogically, over time)

2. he becomes Tai’s soulmate (suddenly and illogically). (and it’s only once so did it even happen or will it happen again?)

So he’s left with two hypotheses

1. He likes Tai (and Tai is his soulmate…is Tai his soulmate?)

2. He likes Tien

Asking Patts to solve it

The only defence statement I will say is that Lomfon made 1 SINGLE attempt to not be selfish, this was when he approached Patts and told him the truth, this was him reaching out in his confusion to discuss it. and Patts shut. him. down. (For perfectly good reasons don’t get me wrong) (especially since Lomfon doesn’t say he can hear both of them - confirmation bias for sure I saw a post about this sorry I don’t remember which one)

So this leaves Lomfon in a bit of a bind, WHAT DOES HE FEEL? Because he genuinely doesn’t know friends, he’s so confused is Lomfon. 

Asking Tien to solve it

Next we have him try to abdicate responsibility by asking Tien to solve his problem (without providing ANY CONTEXT). This obviously doesn’t yield his desired answer and he is once again confronted with his feelins for Tien with the little pinky touch. 

So he’s tried Patts, he’s tried Tien and who is left? Tai. 

Asking/Forcing Tai to solve it

and if he’s seeing Tai, he first needs to check if they are soulmates, prove that they are, because that’s the only way things will matter to Tai. 

So he picks a day it will rain and asks to meet. 

and then he waits for it to rain. 

Now I genuinely believe that the confession/kiss bit was pushed by the keychain revelation, that had definitely not been the plan. But he finally found his ‘first love’ and it’s also his soulmate, and he HAS TO KNOW DANG IT, so he kisses Tai, to check his own feelings (another wrong choice). 

And then he apologises

Why?

Because it was the wrong decision? ah der 

Because Tai didn’t want it? also clearly

Or maybe partly because…he didn’t feel anything.

We don’t get to properly see his response beyond this, because everything becomes a big mess and poor Tien is left outside of the conversation (and outside of the camera shots) while the three soulmates yell and fight and then…the connection is gone…and

Tien is there, and Tien is angry and dang it doesn’t Tien understand that Lomfon NEEDS to understand because Tien believes in soulmates and Tai is Lomfons soulmates and dang it Tien, I needed to know and it doesn’t concern you.

Except it does…

And now he’s ruined everything.

I want him to dwell in his consequences for sure, but I also hope that he grows into someone who can make Tien happy, because Tien fricken deserves it. 

Rewatched the episode to organise my thoughts and I really wanted to share my understanding of the emotional journey Pat is going through this ep. I do feel, like @lurkingshan and @ginnymoonbeam in particular have been saying to me, that Pat's journey is sliiiiiiightly harder to follow, and it hinges on the conversation on two levels that he and Jeng have near the middle of the ep (which, more on that in a moment). Like always, this ep could have used a little nip/tuck, and maybe a montage to show the passage of time, but I'd like to present to you...

PAT'S EPISODE 9 EMOTIONS: A STORY

First movement: absolute cringe, totally embarrassed. He was drunk and weeping, hanging off his boss who had to answer his MOM's phone call and get him home. Said boss is also gay which...we're not processing that right now because it adds an entirely new cringe level.

Second movement: starts to think about the fact that JENG IS GAY AND ONLY JUST TOLD HIM which feels like maybe Jeng has been laughing at him a bit and messing him about. Because he thought they were bonding somewhat all this time but Jeng didn't share this when he knows Pat is also gay. Shoves the stuffie in the drawer because he feels betrayed.

Third movement: Here is where things get wibbly because time is clearly passing between the day after the bar and the day Pat's dad shows up, but we don't really understand how much. Pat is actively avoiding Jeng. Jeng is asking Chot where he is, Pat is taking (multiple?) days off...but no idea of when this falls in the timeline so hard to follow the throughline.

Fourth movement: Pat is back at work and clearly DEEP in his feelings, he has been stewing over this for who knows how long at this point (feels more weeks than days or months). Chot is noticing (and likely misunderstanding the source of the churn as a lovers' tiff rather than a not-lovers' tiff). He thought he wouldn't have to see Jeng because Chot is standing in for him at the screening but Jeng shows up and he kind of panics. So he's feeling embarrassed, a little betrayed and like Jeng has been toying with him.

Fifth movement: This is where they have the convo on two levels. I say that because Pat was clearly saying one thing while Jeng was hearing another. Pat is saying: 'stop doing these things because I can't say no when you're sweet to me.' Jeng is hearing: 'stop doing these things because I can't say no when you are my boss.' The language is deliberately vague, and the idea of two meanings could get lost, but the show makes it clear in the two follow up scenes where Jeng and Pat have separate vents about what's happening. Jeng is crying to Jaab that Pat only sees him as a coworker, while Pat is fuming to Jen that Jeng is playing with his feelings. Pat said 'I don't want to misunderstand' and Jeng said 'you're not misunderstanding' and Pat said 'no I must be misunderstanding because it don't even make sense, so leave me alone please.'

Sixth movement: Pat exposits those feelings of being toyed with to Jen, who is like 'solidarity sister, these brothers be doing that.'

Seventh movement: Chot tells Pat Jeng is quitting and that's when Pat starts to realise that maybe the man was Not Fucking Around, but the WHY ME? is strong because Pat is aware that Jeng is An Adult and he is The Hot Mess Express. Then the man plans him a damn birthday celebration but stays away like he asked.

Eighth movement: At this point, Pat is the SpongeBob crab meme. THERE IS JUST TOO MUCH HAPPENING AND HE CANNOT PROCESS IT HE HAS SOMEHOW GOTTEN LOST IN THE SAUCE. He breaks the fuck down and cries to his mommy and daddy, because it's all too much.

Ninth movement: Pat experiences the miracle of birth up close and fucking personal and like many of us cannot believe that a human can actually do that and what the fuck is he actually caught up about. His good sis MADE A PERSON IN THE STREET and then posted it on Instagram like it was light work, and he is skressed because a gay man likes him, another gay man.

Tenth movement: And then Pat gets home and said gay man has sent him a BOX of snacks just because he said he liked them once, and then sends him a text that basically says 'I LIKE YOU DUMMY, SO MUCH, BECAUSE YOU'RE YOU.'

Look, all I'm saying is my man Pat went on a journey ok?

Soulmate Skepticism vs Romanticism in La Pluie

I am a soulmate skeptic. I don't believe there's one person destined for each of us on this planet.

I'm also a staunch pessimist on matters of romance and love. I constantly conduct a cost-benefit analysis in my head for every romantic relationship I see in my life. "It doesn't make sense" is almost always the first thing that pops into my head when I see people in love.

Do I sound an awful lot like someone from La Pluie? Why yes, it's our resident Soulmate Skeptic and Slenderman wannabe, Lomfon! That must mean that I liked him immediately, right?

Love is not a competition that you can win or lose. It's something you feel and share. There are a million things in and around love that can be made sense of, and added up like a math problem, like interests, hobbies, morals, desires, and fears, but the feeling of love itself is not logical. And I hate the part of me that can't get over that fact, and I'm working on it.

That's why I was initially so wary of Lomfon. I thought the show was gonna let him run amok and then teach him a "lesson" about love, after all the destruction is said and done. And then, episode 8 came around, and Lomfon became the character with the most potential for growth in the coming episodes, and I was so excited to see how the show would take him on this journey.

How do you teach a skeptic to believe? You give him a situation that he cannot logic his way out of, aka, two potential soulmates. This is the story I expected to play out last night, but of course, they subverted this expectation because this show is made by people who are much smarter than me.

Episode 9 is crafted to make skeptics believe in spontaneous, head-in-the-clouds love, rooted in coincidence, but the target is not Lomfon, but me. And possibly you. And all of us, the audience.

I'm going to take a broad, but confident guess that the people reading this piece are non-believers when it comes to soulmates. It sounds too good to be true and so fantastical to ever happen in real life.

Soulmate trope exists for a reason. It's comforting to think about a person who exists right now who might cross paths with us on a random day and change our lives for the better. When life is cruel and relentless and we long for better times, we wish we could reach into the future and get a hug from the person we haven't even met yet, but who will someday mean everything to us and more. When life is kind to us, on a warm sunny day, we could be hit with sudden melancholia for a lover we have not loved yet.

In La Pluie, Patts and Tai wanted to defy their destinies at different points in the show. And they did, in their own way. In episode 8, they decided to be with each other not because they could hear each other when it rained, but because they like each other and choose to be together.

The show constantly puts the soulmate trope under a microscope and analyzes it, criticizes it and subverts it. But episode 9 was different. It leaned into the trope. It established a connection between Patts and Tai that was completely circumstantial and could end abruptly at any given moment. And it did, with the death of Patts' grandma.

I've been wondering since last night: why take this detour? And I believe that the show knows its audience, know that our cynical brains would get extremely excited by a piece of media dissecting the idea of fated love and commenting on it. How choice matters more than anything else. And I see episode 9 as its attempt to nudge us in the opposite direction, ever so slightly. Because while the Rainverse of La Pluie can bring many complications to the love lives of the main characters, real life is much, much worse.

In the sport of modern dating, a clear mind with sound logical abilities is the key skill required for success, according to all the self-proclaimed relationship experts on social media. Our guts are not to be trusted anymore, since we are all traumatized and will automatically seek a shitty relationship because that's the one that feels familiar. Love-bombing is a manipulation technique, you must read about it and be aware of the ways to spot it. Do you know what Negging is? The red flags, green flags, and beige flags? Every action, every gift, every romantic gesture might have a sinister intention behind it.

Finding love is an exhausting process. Yes, it is important to be informed and safe, but in the process, we tend to forget the beauty of the very thing we are trying to find. The beauty of love is not singular in the choices that we make. Mature and time-hardened love is beautiful in its strength and choice, yes, but budding, fledgling love can also be beautiful in its spontaneity. And while finding your perfectly compatible person can feel pretty amazing after hours of meticulous swiping on apps, so can the knowledge of finding out YEARS later that your lives were ever so briefly intertwined in the past and you didn't even notice it at the time.

Emotional maturity and compatibility are necessary to sustain love, but spontaneity, silliness, and sometimes, happenstance are the ones that sweeten it. The show appreciates the skepticism about destiny and fate, but it also makes sure to never position itself against romance. Against the possibility of life surprising us in the moments we least expect it. Because while we strive everyday to make some sense of the chaos life throws us into, it might not hurt to let our heads float to the clouds, every once in a while, and see the beauty in chaos.