Man's Fans Are Loud As F*ck. Rightfully So!

Man's fans are loud as f*ck. Rightfully so!

But, when I tell you I am not ready for Ben's "IN LOVE" face ... Friends, I'm about to be undignified.

They really are

Coming for my throat

Unfollow me now, This is gonna be the only thing I talk about for the next week. I've wanted this for months fuck. What the fuck.

Someone please get me to the side of Tumblr where people aren't bashing a 23-year-old character for not leaping into the arms of his 35-year-old BOSS 48 hours after breaking up with his first love for the second time. HIS BOSSSSSS.

I'm as aggravated as the next person about the pacing of the show but that's because they are trying to squeeze 3 books into 12 episodes - not because the characters are working through real reservations and challenges.

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.

Honestly not sure how it can stick the landing ... but fingers and toes crossed.

While it definitely hasn't shaped up to be a romance, I'm not sure how aligned Tee and the show's target audience are on the idea of successful storytelling.

Anatomy of a Scene An abdication

Step By Step, Episode 10 Director: Tee Bundit Sintanaparadee Writers: Tan Ekarin Mungmee, Anu Pawich Amnajkasem, Pan Phanita Loetwatthanaphongchai Cast: Ben Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn (Pat) and Man Trisanu Soranun (Jeng)

I can't let it go, this feeling that the progression from unease to frustration to alarm engendered by this episode is exactly how Tee wanted us to feel, and this scene is the reason I can't let it go. Because after 9 episodes of Jeng doing his best to be The Responsible Adult, he completely abdicates responsibility in this scene. Jeng has been batted about by all the expectations of him and now that he has found some happy solace and a place to rest, he is pretty much unwilling to pick back up the burden of his responsibilities, at the worst possible moment for that. Because in starting a relationship with Pat...Pat who is 10 years younger than him, Pat who works in his family company, Pat who is really just starting his career, Pat who works directly under him, Pat who doesn't come from money and whose livelihood depends on being able to earn a salary, Pat who is in an extremely vulnerable position for all these reasons...in starting that relationship, he needed to assume some responsibility. If nothing else, the responsibility to acknowledge the issues and to discuss and decide together how to handle them. That's where we are in this scene. Pat is now openly asking him to take responsibility for what they've gotten into. Pat's saying things have become untenable. Pat's not asking him to solve the problem for him, but to at least work with him on a plan.

And Jeng bottles it. Spectacularly. First he tries to distract Pat, appealing to his body, using sex to sidestep the issue.

That doesn't work.

Next, he tries to cajole Pat, appealing to his emotions. We can't take a break, I'll miss you too much.

That doesn't work either.

Next he tries to placate Pat, appealing to his brain, proposing a series of unworkable options that don't actually solve the problem. We can just stay away from each other at work. I can find us a secret safehouse. I'll just quit.

Pat demolishes those one by one.

And finally, Jeng just abdicates. He stops trying to appeal to Pat at all. I don't want to talk about this. He lays his head on Pat's chest in a gesture of surrender. He's not dealing with this. He's not taking responsibility.

And Pat just can't understand that, because Jeng is the responsibility guy. He holds this man he's learning to care for, and he looks at him, and he doesn't get it. Because he doesn't actually know Jeng yet, the deepest parts, the parts that are bone weary and utterly fed up of taking responsibility. By refusing to even discuss it, Jeng has put the burden of responsibility on Pat, because this isn't something that can wait for Jeng. Pat's life is falling apart RIGHT NOW, and Jeng has abdicated responsibility for that in his eyes, he's leaving him alone to face the wolves. And Pat's face tells me that he's confused, upset and angry about that.

I LOVE THIS. I LOVE THAT JENG GETS TO BE A PERSON WHO IS MAKING THE WORST DECISIONS RIGHT NOW INSTEAD OF A PARAGON OF VIRTUE. I LOVE THAT HE'S JUST A MAN NOT A COLLECTION OF 'GREEN FLAGS'. I am very personally enjoying Jeng's fall from the pedestal, because I think it's necessary for Pat to see him as imperfect, to see him weak, to see his flaws. Because no one can truly love a god.

At this point, I don't know at all if this show is going to stick the landing. I see a possible path, a couple possible paths to that. I see other paths where it collapses under the weight of all its ideas. But I'm not yet done with this tale. I keep running through my head Tee's admonition ahead of the show that this is not a romance story, but a story with a romance in it. We keep saying 'BL' but what if this is...not?

I touched on it a bit already but I want to talk a bit more about Tai's conflict avoidance. I see a lot of my younger self in Tai, from his choice to simply ignore his soulmate out of fear, to his running up a mountain alone when he was stressed, to the lies he told and the final, devastating shut-down of episode 10. I understand all those choices at a gut level... which is why I want to descend into this story like a many-winged angel auntie and sit that boy down for some WORDS.

I think Tai is a person who doesn't believe in his own ability to survive emotional pain. He runs from difficult feelings, he shuts them out, and thus he never learns that he can endure being hurt. He smoothes over conflicts or creates distance, and thus never learns that love can survive conflict and problems, and that these things are necessary to create a deeper, stronger bond.

He grew up believing that the universe would give him a perfect, destined love. He clearly had a fairy tale view of what that would mean: free of serious struggle and pain, a happily ever after. As soon as the fairy tale was shattered he cut off the connection entirely. For someone like Tai, shutting down feels safe, while connecting through uncertainty or conflict feels terrifying.

As of the beginning of episode 10, he's taken steps to embrace love and the uncertainty it comes with, but he still hasn't really accepted that conflict and pain are part of life. If he tells Patts that he's meeting Lomfon, how will Patts react? How will he feel? Tai doesn't want to risk Patts being upset and he doesn't want to argue about it... he knows he isn't planning to leave Patts or cheat on him, he just wants to clear things up. Why invite a conflict when he can just not tell Patts what he's doing?

It's bad! It's bad. But I understand exactly where the impulse comes from. On some level, he is still fearful of any tiny ripples shaking up the clear pool of his current happiness. And instead, of course, he creates a tidal wave.

What I want to say to Tai is: you have to let yourself be hurt and you have to face it when you hurt someone you love. Conflict is survivable! It feels like the end of the world, but it's nothing to the amount of hurt you will create by hiding away, by lying to yourself and others, by shutting down and choosing silence and solitude over risk. The more you build up those walls of silence the harder they are to break down, so break them down, baby. Love comes with pain -- life comes with pain -- but it's not as bad as you fear. You'll survive it, and you'll discover a depth of love and connection you haven't ever let yourself feel.

Please write that post about Pat's maturity. Even though he's so young, he's been living on his own and caring for himself for years. Even though all his friends are older than him, he's the mature, stable one in that friend group.

I love that when we meet Pat and Jeng, they are both recognizing that, despite their successes and skills in many areas, they still have a lot to figure out.

So last week I had some thoughts on Jeng and how he might have responded to Pat asking if he liked men so heartbreakingly because he can and does pass as a straight man. This week, episode 10, while I loved and adored the episode, Jeng felt a little off to me. That’s not to say that I think it was out of character for him, but it felt like Jeng wasn’t entirely himself. He let himself get lost in Pat and their relationship and I spent the better part of the night and this morning trying to figure out why. A lot of other people have shared their thoughts on Jeng this episode, but I’m going to approach it as an addition to my thoughts from last week.

I will start off with the one thing I’m sad we didn’t get and I think this episode didn’t do well and that is Jeng’s reaction to Pat’s confession. From the 9 episodes we had previously, Jeng should have been holding his breath (either literally or figuratively), he should have been staring at Pat with anxious longing even as Pat broke down and cried in his arms. We should have seen Jeng’s face right after Pat admitted that he liked him back. At this point, Jeng has had one major breakdown and is just kind of running on fumes from Pat’s initial rejection. Jeng is operating under the belief that Pat sees them as coworkers. Jeng telling Pat “It makes sense to me” did not get a response, so Jeng has no reason to believe that Pat is feeling any differently that how he felt during the rejection. So we should have seen Jeng realize that it’s reciprocated. Jeng has had blinders on when it came to Pat and Pat’s confessions should have visibly ripped them away.

That said, everything after the confession, including Jeng’s undeniably reckless behavior in regards to their relationship, makes sense. First of all, those two not only love each other, but are intensely sexually attracted to each other. It makes sense that they couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. Plus that’s just a thing that happens during the honeymoon phase in a lot of relationships. It might seem weird because we don’t get that a lot in BL, but it happens. They are both consenting adults and they both want each other. Desperately. Now imagine being Jeng, who has been pining for god knows how long after Pat. Jeng, who has held himself back for so many reasons, finally letting himself cross those boundaries he worked so hard to maintain. At this point, the boundaries have been crossed so what’s the point of restraining any further? (I mean there’s a million reasons why but Jeng can only think that he is finally, finally with Pat and damn the consequences.)

I think Jeng knows though. He knows that at some point, the other shoe is going to drop and he isn’t ready for it. When the cracks start to show, he starts to hold on even tighter to the little bit of happiness he finally managed to carve out for himself. A place where he’s allowed to be completely and totally himself. A place where he is able to be an out gay man and the people around him understand that. The people around him and Pat are all Pat’s friends and family, and because of that Jeng is perceived as attracted to men. He’s not being seen as the straight boss. The friend who’s just a really good ally. He is Jeng. He is attracted to Pat. And he doesn’t have to explain that to anyone. But when gossip at work starts to spread, Jeng does what he shouldn’t do and he ignores it. If he acknowledges it then the new relationship bubble he’s been in with Pat that offers security, safety, and happiness will burst. Then Pat does the unthinkable and tries to talk about the very real and pressing issues that are affecting him (this was the incredibly mature thing to do and I honestly think that Pat is the most mature and communicative character in the show when it comes to his relationships but that’s another post and this is, yet again, about Jeng). Jeng does his best to keep Pat from popping that bubble. Those issues aren’t real and can’t affect them if he doesn’t think of them. What Jeng doesn’t know is the extent of the bullying Pat is facing at work as a result of it. People at work are judging Pat for their relationship but saying nothing about Jeng, so of course it hasn’t come back to Jeng just how bad it is. Pat isn’t going to mention the awful things being said especially after Jeng shut down the conversation that Pat needed to have.

So Pat leaves. I don’t think Jeng expected that outcome because Pat is so communicative. But he didn’t leave Pat much of a choice. And here Jeng is, his greatest fear happening. The other shoe dropped and now he has to face the world that he wasn’t ready to face. He has to face the office that bullied Pat into resigning. He has to face his father who is expecting him to take over the company and live the life laid out for him. Jeng lost himself in his bubble because he knew what would happen when it was gone. He knew when the bubble burst, he might be forced back into letting the world think he’s straight. Jeng let himself enjoy his relationship and acted like a teenager in love because he probably hasn’t had a relationship where he could do that before. Jeng has had rigid expectations placed on him for his whole life and it was different when he was with Pat.

So now that Pat’s gone, those expectations come rushing back and now if he wants Pat back, he is going to need to fight for it. And he is going to need to fight for it as Jeng, the rigid boss. Jeng, the good son. Jeng that his father can use and let people see him as straight. But Jeng is out of that closet now. The bubble has burst and Jeng doesn’t want to go back. He wants his young love. He wants Pat. So he needs to find a balance between the Jeng that was pining and the Jeng that was in a relationship with Pat. Without that balance, he can never get Pat back. He lost Pat by doing the same thing Put did. He wasn’t listening. He had a good reason not to listen (he was terrified of what facing those obstacles meant and he was finally allowing himself to be selfish and be with Pat) but having a good reason doesn’t stop the outcome and doesn’t mean that Pat’s needs weren’t ignored. Episode 11 is going to be painful but Pat and especially Jeng need to get through it in order to find the balance in their relationship.

This kind of got away from me by tldr is I think Jeng makes sense. I don’t agree with how he handled a lot of things this episode but it makes sense to me. I think we’ll get the more adult, mature Jeng back going forward because he allowed himself that selfishness and lost Pat because of it and one thing this show has been excellent at is letting the characters learn from their mistakes and not repeat them.