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Pat - Blog Posts
→ id: Six gifs of Patrick Gill. He is thin and pale with chin-length dark brown hair and circular glasses. He is wearing a black graphic tee and sitting on a couch with a microphone in front of him. In the gifs, he fusses with his hair, pushing it back, deliberately messing it up, and finally pulling back the top half and smiling.
honestly speaking bad buddy is like....a slap to even western queer representation. im not even kidding. as someone from a queerphobic country, who got introduced to their first queer character at 14 through nico di angelo, who had to deal with queer identity being used for queerbait through stories like sherlock, who knew of the dumpster fire of queerbait that was supernatural, who rarely ever saw sapphic rep, who found shadowhunters and malec but the awkwardness in all those initial seasons (i wont talk about the books cause...yeah)
bad buddy is like a cure to all of that. this asian show did what western shows are so cowardly to do, unless they want to make it a pat on their back or showcase themself as revolutionary. no, bad buddy gave us a queer romance, told us love is genuinely blind to gender, told hs that sometimes girls do only like girls and nothing will change that, told us that queer people aren't a one in a thousand occurance. queer people exist everywhere, we just don't have the same stages and same spotlights to live out our love like non-queer people.
and bad buddy is what we'd get if we did. the family fued would've been a credible issue even if it was a girl and a guy. and thats why bad buddy feels so special.
this is recompence for suffering through awkward western queer rep, for always having to watch traumatic coming outs as if you can't have a love story without them, for suffering some disgustingly fetishistic pieces of media, for always having to read between the lines, the subtext, for having to make do with blurry lines and deal with "oh nah theyre just friends, you people can't let people of the same gender be friends without wanting a romance".
bad buddy showed that a girl and a guy could be good, even best friends without being in love with each other and still cheat the other. it showed that a guy who once liked a girl could definitely have feelings for a guy and accept them both as part of him. it showed that girls do have their niche set of problems navigating sapphic relationships (felt you there pa). it shows that queer or not, family can still be traumatic, as it has been. it showed that a coming out scene can be "i like a girl" / "oh cool okay" over bowls of noodles.
this is actually what we've ever wanted. we love normally, go through normal conflits, have friends, talk about stuff everyone else does. our sexuality or identity isn't our whole personality. we do music, play sports, slack off or do well at school, have rivalries.
and i gotta thank this show for giving me that.
we've moved on to greener, murkier pastures but im still so in awe of pat actually using Pa's four signs on himself.
I think that's a thing you could do if and only if you're that emotionally intelligent. Everyone would assume you's use these four signs thing to test it on other people. Never youself.
So for Pat to actually take a step back, and watch and observe how he acted around Pran, to connect each sign to each action he just did, to realise it by himself- that requires a startling lack of ego.
because it shows the depth that pat has. he's playful, cherry, laid back. he's fierce, doesn't get possed off easily but he's scary when he does (still thinking about how he's 'cold' and even scares the seniors but we see him with pran and realise he changed).
so him being all these light hearted things pulls the wool over our eyes about just how emotionally intelligent he is. he didnt go "oh i'll test this out on pran". as you would suppose he'd do. but no, he tested it on himself, realised that it wasn't ink he liked but pran. and it always had been.
why had be been oblivious until then if he was so good at knowing his own feelings? loads of reasons- the patriachal atmosphere of his house. expectations. carrying the knowledge that pran was probably just putting up with the guy who got him sent off to boarding school. but recently pran confused him, with how soft he seemed when they were alone. and so he starts becoming more conscious.
and the second he shifts his perspective slightly boom! it all makes sense! and he doesn't struggle with it beyond the slight disbelief of never never having realised this.
no he starts struggling when he sees wai. not jealousy. its hurt. hurt that despite all their shared history and pain, and the joy he knows they both get from each other, he can't be close to pran so openly. he can't even look at him without people thinking he's picking a fight.
its just how startlingly in tune pat is with himself and that just blows up when he's actually allowed to talk to pran. the conversation at the beach. the bet. the confession through the play. the whole of ep 8.
hes a well written character and its obvious with how much care and attention he has been written and acted.
also the cutest thing ive ever seen happen in a show fandom is bbs watchers collectively calling pat a "walking green flag". that imagery is so precious to me. so so precious.
Pat knowing that Pran isn’t ready to tell anyone about them yet and RESPECTING THAT and Pran going home and cheering Pat up (balcony scene) and making him laugh and feel better. - And then them communicating when they’ve a disagreement and ALSO APOLOGIZING TO EACH OTHER and trying to solve it (Like we never see in dramas).
They have such a healthy relationship and they work so well together.
Pran and Pat best boyfriends, i said what i said.
You know what I really love about it? I love that nobody explained Pat's feelings to him, nobody told him 'you're acting like this or that you must be into him'. He felt what he felt, and yes he got a nudge from Paa's 4 signs, but he went on this journey of discovery on his own, he really sat with himself and worked it out, and thought it through. He went all the way back through their history and questioned what he felt and did even then. His realisation came from within, it wasn't something anybody pushed him to, not even Pran. It came straight from his own heart.
There's a line in Pran's perspective from the novel that I really love that sparked for me here: There were times when I looked at Pat's face while treating his wounds and wondered what he meant to me. Here, Pat is the one who is going on that journey of trying to figure out what Pran means to him, and he's doing it not because anybody pointed something out to him, but because he felt something within himself and chose to explore it rather than ignore it like he would have done before. And he doesn't really discuss it with anybody, not Paa, not Korn, not Ink. Even when they try to draw him out about what he's thinking he demurs. He doesn't want anybody else's voice in his head about this. There's going to be enough of that if what he discovers within himself is love, enough voices saying this and that. And because it's Pran, something in him knows that he has to be absolutely sure if this is the path he's going to take. He can't go into this on a whim or anything less than 100% certainty. Because once he makes that move there will be absolutely no turning back.
my only explanation is that like izaya, i too have an unquenchable thirst for shizuo. (this is dedicated to ro @izanyas, who made me think about izaya touching shizuo’s muscles)