Thinking About How For Someone Who Claimed To Not Believe In Soulmates, Lomfon Sure Let Fate And Destiny

Thinking about how for someone who claimed to not believe in soulmates, Lomfon sure let fate and destiny put in all of the work in his relationships while he personally contributed barely anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Lomfon. But boy done fucked up. That’s why he and Tai would never work as a couple. Neither one of them puts in any work for the relationship because they put absolute trust and faith in the universe and destiny and fate and then never bother to actually communicate things. To anyone.

Lomfon held on to a keychain and proclaimed if belonged to his first love. Did he ever ask anyone about it? Did he ever look into who it belonged to? Or did he just use it and wait for fate to bring them back together?

Tai got upset and ran away by himself up a dangerous mountain. Did he think to tell anyone? Not even Patts but literally any of his friends on the mountain? His BROTHER? Did he think to leave a note? Or did he just think if he went up the mountain fate would give him the answers he’s been searching for when all he had to do was communicate with anyone?

Patts and Then have been doing all of the communication for these two. And I’ll be honest, I’m upset at Patts for becoming violent towards Lomfon but I understand why. But I think he has some self reflecting to do there but I digress.

Patts has constantly been the one reaching out to Tai for two years and was met with silence. Patts was the one Lomfon told about being Tai’s soulmate and Patts was the one who told Lomfon to stay away and not cross those boundaries. Patts is the one that wanted so badly to believe that Tai wasn’t lying to him that he went out of his way looking for Tai despite the evidence he had to the contrary. And Patts gave Tai every opportunity to tell the truth. He gave that to Tai and was met with hurt silence instead.

Tien has been the one constant in Tai’s life. Whenever Tai was upset or moody or distant or silent, Tien was there for him. How much of Tien’s noise is to make up for Tai’s silence? How much of himself did Tien give away to his brother, unknowingly? Tien was the one who broke down when Tai went missing on the mountain. Tien was arguably more distraught than Patts. Tien was the one who welcomed Patts with open arms. Tien was the one who was there and communicated with Patts when he was searching for Tai amidst the lie. Tien was the one who took care of Lomfon. Tien is the one who admitted first that he liked Lomfon without needing to prove anything to anyone. Tien was the one constantly reaching out to all three of them when they needed someone the most. And now which one of them has thought of him? Who is there to pick up the pieces of his shattered heart? Who even knew he was in love and is now breaking? Tien gave so much of himself to others who didn’t know to appreciate or even realize that they’ve left him with nothing but a hollowed out heart.

And I love all four of them. That’s what’s so great about this show. Is that even with how upset I am at Tai, Patts, and Lomfon, I still love them. They are just people and they’re learning and loving and growing. They are flawed and they are allowed to be and it doesn’t make them bad people. I would say they are all extremely good people. Destiny has played a cruel joke on all of them and they are all doing the best with what they got. Some of them are better than others at communicating and being there for when people need them. Some of them are shit at communicating and don’t realize when others need them.

Patts is probably the best communicator of the bunch which makes sense because he’s older. Tien still needs to learn to communicate his own needs, wants, desires, and hurts. But Tien is excellent at seeing others. Tai is very in tune with his own emotions and what he needs but doesn’t think of others and what they might need from him. And Lomfon has been so blinded by destiny that he hasn’t seen anyone. Not truly.

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.

And so it should be.

Congrats to Tay for winning #1 Causer of Gender Envy in a BL!!!!

Congrats to Tay on the gender!! Special shoutout to all the other contestants' gender, just because it maybe doesn't incite as much envy as another's gender, that doesn't mean it isn't great!!! I'm going to stop myself here before I put my degree at work and start philosophizing about the nature of gender lol.

But as always, thank you to everyone who participated!!! These brackets are only possible because of y'alls involvement and I'm glad that y'all continue to like what I'm doing and I hope that I can continue to improve and make this a more and more enjoyable experience for all!!!

There will be 2 polls going live once this is posted. 1 for the next bracket topic and 1 special bonus round featuring 10 BL Actors where y'all get to pick who gives you the most gender envy out of them!!! And keep an eye out for the next bracket!!!!

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.

Happy Step by Step eve to me and everyone who enjoys it

I have waited 9 episodes it's finally JengPat boyfriend era. Watch me lose my mind in 24 hours