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jang do-yeon + lee dong-wook + gong yoo + slapping each other

[x]

Again and again, Only Friends brings in the many, many perspectives on sex and how people not just related to sex but relate sex to other people.

Boston finds his own value in sex. When asked about more or seeing others seek more, he looks down on it and disparages it or is just absolutely confused by the entire concept. Sex, for him, is utilitarian and pleasure, to be used to get what he wants and to control people and that is what sex is to him. Sex is about control and about pleasure and about his own importance and value and what he can get from people and the only thing he knows to give to people.

Nick is using sex to feel closer to someone he is coming to care about and falling in love with him through sex and hoping for more but never able to fully articulate what he wants so turning back to sex again and again to try to find what he wants only to realize that sex isn't what he wants here but he isn't getting anywhere with it either... but without it he has nothing of what he wants.

Sand is facing down his own rules about sex and friendship and relationships. He is looking straight at his own feelings and try to both face them and hide from them at the same time. He's playing with fire and he knows he can't control it, he knows he's losing the tenuous hold he had on his feelings, but he can't admit it because admitting means he will genuinely stop himself and pull away from Ray and he doesn't want to pull away from him. He wants to love him.

Ray has been using sex as an escape from his own feelings, just like he drinks to flee himself as well. But he also has an abiding and longlasting crush on Mew that has kept him from falling in love or acknowledging other people in his heart, even people he could have loved. He uses sex as an escape and even with Sand, who is definitely catching feelings for, he does not know how that face that part of himself because that part of himself has never felt worthwhile. He loves Mew without a chance or hope but he loves and loves and loves him and drops everything for him because that love for Mew feels better to him, that hopeless love is easier to handle than anything he'd have to work for.

Mew does not have sex. This is one type of control that he has, not having sex and drinking less than his friends. That's what he does. That's how he finds part of his identity. He chooses not to do what his friends do, to control himself, to watch them 'waste their lives' while he controls himself and feels in control, feels better about his choices, knows that he is making the 'right choice' over them. He wants his sex to look different than his friends, nothing casual, an entirely different kind of control than Boston and a different kind of escape than Ray.

Top is the one we can't be as sure about yet. He seems to treat sex as something that is simply... there. Possibly part of trying to make sure people are sleeping beside him at night. But all we've seen of him actually having sex is always in places that look deeply uncomfortable and is always entirely devoid of an emotion. He turned Boston down at the bar but still goes ahead with the sex twice after that. Top seems to have little to no control once it comes to sex. He won't act on his urges but he won't turn people down entirely either, not once they're offering him something he wants. Which is why the idea of him turning Mew down next week is beautiful. I would like that.

Sex is about control and desire and love and need and want and escape and every single character uses it differently and that's what makes the entire show so fascinating.

(I also posit that Boston and Mew are opposites, Sand and Ray are opposites and Nick and Top are opposites and that's why Sand and Ray are the couple most likely to actually work out in the show in my opinion. Everyone else has crossed wires across two relationships while Sand and Ray are just internally fucked up more than anything else.)

respectthepetty

twitter (.) com/VivienneActing/status/1696107618799079704

i'm not sure if you've seen this before, but you were the first person i thought about as soon as i read this tweet 🫠

ANON! You GET me!

This is the screenwriter for Only Friends, and as I was scrolling through his posts, he has continued to 'like' posts such as this: (*cough* Ray is confirmed Pan *cough*)

And this:

And he is my kind man.

Because I truly believe the show is telling us that people have treated Top solely as a sex object, which is why he has been regulated to tight spaces. He is restricted and limited in movements because he is seen as a sex object in those spaces.

For example, people tend to forget that Top has a job. He is doing it here.

And he is doing it well.

Yet the conversation turns to his sex life.

Which makes sense since the plot of Only Friends balances on these character's messy sex life, but while everyone else is allowed to have conversations about their lives, Top is always connected to sex.

Which is why Boston only views Top as a sexual being. There is no intimacy involved in Boston and Top's sexual encounters. It's sex. It doesn't need to be comfortable. It doesn't need to be nice. It doesn't even need to be enjoyable. And unlike Nick who has sex with Boston anywhere, Top is boxed in with Boston.

The photo booth - quick, standing, tight space.

The shower - hand job, standing, dark.

The car - cramped, quick, raining.

And all the spaces are public.

Because Top's entire sex life is public for all to speculate and comment on. Nick just didn't get a recording of Boston having sex. Nick captured Top as well, and nobody seems too pressed about that. Top is shoved into tight spaces for sex, yet his entire sex life is fodder for public consumption.

So what must be going through his head when he lays in a spacious bed with a person, not having sex, in a room with a closed door?

To provide something beyond sex.

To not be limited in space or action.

And perhaps be capable of not only keeping some of his life secret, but holding others' secrets as well.

I mentioned this before but Top doesn't appear to have friends. It was common for his parents to be away when he was a child. He is alone at the bar when we first meet him, and the second Mew lets him in, he inserts himself into the group.

Wonder why a guy who has been boxed in with his whole sex life on display would want out of that?

A slut tiger can't change his stripes . . . right?

Oh, look! Actual stripes.

Say "no" to sex Top. Do it for the narrative.

waitmyturtles

Thank you to @ranchthoughts for sending this my way -- and I love that Den Panuwat is getting into the fandom’s brain and offering us guidance on the meta. Damn...

#only friends the series #top tier meta

bisexualmindcabin

Rewatched The Good Place for the first time since s4 dropped and. Oh my god. The Good Place said "people are a result of their environment but we always have a moral responsibility to be better" and The Good Place said "every day the world gets a little more complicated and it gets a little harder to be good" and The Good Place said "even in the face of total nihilism, when nothing you do will matter, you still have to at least try. Because trying is better than the alternative" and The Good Place said "if you have bills to pay and shit to deal with you don't have time or energy to become a better person" and then The Good Place really said "people get better when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don't " and THEN The Good Place really said "no one is irredeemable. Everyone can try to be better today than they were yesterday" AND THEN! The Good Place said "Heaven is just enough time with the people that you love" OH MY FUCKING GOD.

seatawinan

respectthepetty

What I got out of this - Mark is going to thrive in Only Friends.

skateyoulater

“If Felix’s reaction time were just half a second quicker, he’d be able to look away in time. But he’s a millisecond too slow, and their eyes are drawn to each other like opposite poles of magnets.

Chan.

It’s like staring into the fucking abyss.”

Felix is the lead singer of Wayward, the most exciting, refreshing new pop-punk band on the scene. Chan is the lead singer of Renegades, the moody, grunge-rock powerhouse.

And they can’t fucking stand each other. So what happens when the cogs of the music industry keep forcing them together?

CHAPTER ONE OUT NOW

https://archiveofourown.org/works/46223752/chapters/116370265

#stray kids

I'm still thinking about Jack o'Frost, about how perfect it was.. until it wasn't. I needed more episodes, I needed to watch them learn to communicate, I needed them to fix the things that broke them apart. I needed proper angst (and I can't believe I'm about to say this) I needed for them to be apart from each other for a while and live without each other and mature. I needed more. This could have been a masterpiece and ended just like any average BL. In just a week I had this and A Shoulder To Cry On type of unsatisfying endings. They start off strong and I get high expectations and then it all comes crashing down because they can't bother to expand more or find decent resolution.

#jack o frost #jack o'frost #jack o' frost #Yeah I loved the show but the last episode was only ok nothing mind blowing as I'd liked and I resent that

smittenskitten

Hey, Ritsu. Hmm? What is it? There's some cream on your lips.

801number

heretherebedork

The biggest problem with the end of Jack O' Frost is that neither of them seems to have spent time learning anything. Like... yes, they went through so much but like... there's nothing about them learning to communicate or learning to better balance their relationship. Which is what they needed to do to stay together and not just break up again!

There's no resolution to Fumiya feeling like Ritsu took him for granted or to Ritsu being frustrated by Fumiya holding things back. There's just... them getting back together because they decided not stay broken up but... no solution to anything.

Like, sure it's cute but it's just them heading for another fight about the same thing at some point if they don't learn to communicate.

Overall, cute but unfulfilling. I did like the idea of Ritsu keeping a secret but the secret didn't really... mean much of anything in terms of the original fight or in terms of their relationship.

It was cute, I've seen worse, but I don't think they're gonna last from the looks of this.

#another great analysis #jack o'frost

smittenskitten

Skipping on their way back

blmpff

tunku_shower on twt 31.03.2023

nonkul-deactivated20230808

Suzuki Kosuke as Ikegami Fumiya JACK O’ FROST (2023)

heretherebedork

King apologizes when he accidentally triggers Uea and instantly makes sure to give him space because Uea told him, once, that he didn't like when he did a certain action. King did that once, made a single mistake, and instantly apologized for his actions without any pressure on Uea. And when Uea had a panic attack, not caused by King, King was there to protect him and offered him comfort without any pressure and not doing the actions that made him uncomfortable.

King is an example to all BL men. He lives up to his name.