Only Friends Episode 12 | SUNRAY: The Light of Hope

Sand brought hope into Ray's life, and Ray brought light into Sand's.

This was the most touching, gorgeous, wholesome happy ending for these two that I could ever ask for. Watching Sand and Ray basking in their own little world made me so goddamn happy and emotional.

"Thank you for giving my life a goal."

Out of all of Ray's thank you's, this one and the one at the end of Ep10 feel most poignant. I think this summarizes everything he was getting at it with his speech to imaginary Sand in Ep10 as well. Ray has been in pain for so long, without direction, essentially spinning in a circle of despair and addiction. He's been gradually spiraling into a pit he can't climb out of, but Sand was there at a time he needed him, even if he didn't realize just how much he needed him.

But the "goal" Sand has given Ray is to fight for their love and, by extension, to fight for himself. Sand thinks Ray is someone worth saving, worth cherishing, and even though it will likely take Ray a while to get there, being with Sand means that Ray can eventually think he himself is worth cherishing too.

I swear, in all these Only Friends discourse that has been raging since the finale dropped on Saturday, I wonder if anyone actually took a second to be like: this story is being told through the eyes of 20-21 year old college students. They are the mouthpiece through which this story is being narrated. Is it possible therefore that their age, their lack of experience, their slightly sheltered lives, might play a role in how they navigate their friendships, the world at large and how they react?

Like @jojotichakorn has started several times, and I agree a 100%; this story isn’t a morality lesson. Nobody is saying casual sex bad. You are evil if you’re non-monogamous. Blah blah blah. As a graysexual polyam person who just uses the term queer cuz it’s easier than me having a 30 mins convo with a stranger about my orientation and how everything intersects for me, this show was everything. Cuz PEOPLE ARE MESSY! People are messy and judgemental and annoying. Just because they’re queer doesn’t mean they WON’T be messy. I was especially a fucking shithead at 21. Hell, I was a virgin until I turned 22 (not quite as sanctimonious as Mew, thank SPIRIT!!). Who I am now at 33 is vastly different from who I was over a decade ago. I moved out at 22. Been living on my own for that time. The person I am today is a product of all I have seen and experienced. I lost the black and white lens through which I viewed the world, in that period of time.

And you know what? I do feel that these kids (cuz they are kids to me. I haven’t sat in a university class in almost 13 years 🤷🏾‍♀️), will grow, and learn and evolve. Boston I think will do fantastically well in New York. He will continue to come into his own. Will figure out what kind of relationships work best for him (both in regards to his friendships and his sexual and romantic—if he wants any—relationships), and he will thrive.

Mew will eventually get that stick out of his arse and get off his high horse. He will realize that people are messy, imperfect, and make mistakes, and that he too is flawed. And that is okay. That he doesn’t need to be burdened to replicate the perfect home life he had with his mothers. That hell, just because he fancies himself better than others, doesn’t mean that he isn’t as capable of the depraved things the human mind can conjure up 🤷🏾‍♀️.

Ray will probably battle with his addiction all his life. Will realize that battling addiction is a life-long process. Will lean on the support he has. Will probably learn to forgive his mum, and come to terms with her frailty as a human being, and what that meant with regards her suicide. He will also probably let himself admit that as much as he loved her, and wanted her to hold him and love him, he is justifiably angry at her that she did neither of those things, and then left him. He will probably confront his dad about the role he played, and didn’t play in all of this. He might decide to break up with Sand later. And they will still be good friends. Or Sand might be that ex he hasn’t spoken to in years, yet he still thinks of and smiles when he hears I Wanna Be Yours.

Same goes for Sand, and Top and Nick as well.

And who knows, at some point Cheum might realize that she can be quite the shitty friend. That she’s been a shitty friend. She might reach out to her now former friends, and honestly sincerely apologize. Or not. That’s another thing. Some people take forever to grow. And some don’t learn a lick from their experiences. And when time has passed and they looked back at all their burned bridges and try to reconnect, they are left with hands fluttering in the wind, and everyone they love out of reach 🤷🏾‍♀️.

But yeah. I don’t know about y’all. Maybe you were well adjusted uni students who were always right and knew the right words to say, and didn’t fuck up every other Saturday, and whose lives were peachy. But I was a dumbass, making dumbass choices, being a sanctimonious dumbass, and being an absolute menace. And that was how I watched the show. Knowing that this is a story of these kids, told to us by THESE kids. P’Jojo was just the conduit for their story. But it is ultimately THEIRS. I just watched it for them. Not for any moral lessons (this isn’t a parable or a fable. And I say this as someone who has been fascinated by mythology since I was 7), but to be entertained by the lives of these messy kids, crash-figuring their way to adulthood, and thanking the universe that my early 20s are way behind me, cuz fucking hell. That era of my life was some shit-show!

You can tell Boston is serious at this New Year's Eve get together because he showed up in a shirt with sleeves on

Best part of the finale was Mew not forgiving Boston. He needed to stew in the consequences of his actions. Once I rejected an apology saying "I hope you learned something that will help you in relationships with people who are not me" and I think that applies here too.

After a few days of just thinking things through so I can let at least some of the bitter feelings go, I now realize that I'm not necessarily mad Boston & even Nick didn't get the ending they deserved but I'm much more upset most of the others did get the ending I wanted for him - being loved and surrounded by a support system.

I've never disliked characters in a way I did while watching only friends. Sure there were characters who maybe weren't my favorites but I generally have always been a person who could at least find something okay-ish about them.

But especially Mew, Cheum and Atom (also Ray in part) made me so angry and were so triggering that I had to skip whole sections of episodes especially in the later episodes and on rewatches.

Boston and Nick not getting a "happy ending" would've been so much easier to bare if no one would've gotten a happy ending.

That's also why Boston and his storyline felt so judgemental and harsh from the writers end.

I realize now that the messaging I PERSONALLY got from the ending wasn't that sluts are bad or that sleeping around is bad or that you're a bad queer if you sleep around and are promiscuous but that it doesn't matter if you try to be a better person cause you'll never be good enough anyway. And that people who suck and are at least as flawed as you will not face consequences for their actions if they're smart enough to make themselves look like the victim so they can blame everything on you and live their life happily.

I guess that's why I related so hard to Boston even though we're very different people. But I've been there before.

And I will still die on the hill that he actually was the character with the most development in the whole story.

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY WHAT A FINALE i feel so lost what am i going to do with my saturday nights now

So today I’m gonna do my best not to skip all of TopMew’s scenes and actually watch the whole episode instead of skimming it like I normally do lol.

lore accurate teen soukoku. the worsties ever

tim "faking" a bicycle accident to get his neighbor to come help him, based on @upswings's post, which gripped me by the throat the moment i read it

extras:

anton chigurh goes to stardew valley

Man of his word. It only took a couple of lifetimes. I was in love with my son's best friend. I didn't know what to do. Then you asked for that toothpaste. I was damned if I wasn't gonna find something.

Every OF viewer when Mix appeared:

The way the OST started playing too, aghghougeahjogueheajtpearj what an absolute king

a bit more weird, wild, and less structurally stable than the 2-turtle fusions, here's bosch (raph+mikey+donnie) and machiavelli (leo+mikey+donnie)!

pure impulsive destructive excitement and 'what if your annoying little sibling was also the world's most acrobatic awful cat'

I appreciate that this episode has had conversations where Sand and Ray have both been compared to being dogs for each other, Sand as Ray's pet and Ray as Sand's stray, they really belong together 🤣🤣

You’re making a lot of promises there Chara…

Part 24 || First || Previous || Next

—Full Series—

I enjoyed doing this little Flashback scene. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled freakout session soon. Having monochrome color is very nice.

Here is a gif of Chara spilling their water because YES. And I spent way too long on it :)

Wow technology is so cool.