my compliment sandwich of a very good and important show

good thing:
- both lead actors are so talented. literally i felt everything the characters felt
- the banter is pretty realistic, actually feels like conversations you would have w ur partner, which is only complimented by the amazing acting which made me feel mostly happy but also very lonely LMAO
- women are portrayed very very well for BL standards, i for sure thought that ink would be used as some sort of obstacle for pat and prans relationship and it would be a long and drawn out love triangle but no!! the love triangle bit only lasted like a day and ink was never led on by pat, plus she actually has her own personality and interests and isnt just “evil woman who’s stopping leads from getting together” also the lesbian side relationship???? omg i called it jokingly but then it actually happened!!! so good too because again i suspected pa and wai would end up together which didnt feel right to me at all
- this show feels like it was written for queer people. it somehow combines the comfort of queer escapism and with the catharsis of homophobic subtext. none of the characters are homophobic or even have a heteronormative mindset at all. the only reason pat and pran have to keep their relationship hidden is because of their families and friends respective rivalries, which could very easily be read as homophobia. and all of this combines into a show thats relatable to gay people, yet not too depressing or uncomfortable! im floored. i absolutely didn’t expect the story and writing to be as good as it was
- a lot of people hate the product placement but i thought it was funny and kinda looked forward to it sometimes. it’s definitely not natural by any means but its fun and the show wouldn’t be as charming without it tbh

bad thing:
- it is very confusing to me that pat is the engineer and pran is the architect because pran is like such an engineer i mean come on!!
- in all seriousness the one thing preventing my rating from being a 10 is that the show is pretty lacking stylistically speaking. i know i shouldn’t be expecting it to be an incredibly shot visual masterpiece, but i just appreciate good aesthetics what can i say

more good things:
- the character writing is just beautiful. i knew exactly who the main two were within the first 20 minutes of the show and they really did feel like real people. none of the characters choices or dialogue seems out of place, and in fact everything they did seemed incredibly in character.
- this show knows that it is a BL and it knows what it means to be a BL, it takes almost every BL trope i can think of and either pokes fun at it in a kinda metahumor way, or totally subverts it. i expected ink to be an obstacle, falling for pat the moment she’s introduced, being led on by him in a long and unwanted love triangle only to be immediately discarded once he gets together with pran. but pat is the one to ask her out, and immediately realizes that she isn’t for him because he’s actually in love with pran. and while we’re on pat, i totally expected him to be the whole “toxically masculine ‘straight’ guy in a gay relationship because he’s basically the guy and his boyfriend is basically the girl” but thats not him at all!! pat and pran’s relationship doesn’t have forced gender roles, and the writing makes this a point. pran points out the absurdity of heteronormative labels being applied to a gay relationship. pat denounces the “im only gay for you” trope, and says that he’s multisexual. there are many more moments i could write into this, but those were just some of my favorites. all that being said, it’s just so cool to me that a show would address the long running and blatant issues with the genre it’s a part of.
-that one scene when pat jumps onto his bed giggling and kicking his feet and strangling his pillow an shit. he is so me.

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