Only Friends Ray - Blog Posts

Ray and Mew communicating properly is the best thing. I am glad Mew is seeing things better.

so anyway pray for Boeing, nothing wrong with him he just thinks he can compete with this guy,,,

Tell me if I am wrong but does Boeing know that ray is mews best friend. Like imagine if he doesn't and he gets to know it later.

My ex + sort of friend, who I got by cheating on my bf, is in love with a guy who is the ex and best friend of my other ex 's boyfriend. The one I cheated on . I tried to get revenge on my ex but his ex is vindicative so I try to rebound of my other ex who I dumped and told him I want him back even if he is in a relationship. But I am not a homewrecker you know, I just want to be friends. But his boyfriend , he's fierce by the way but kind of friendly , asked me out in front of my ex and now we are in his pool for a threesome.

I thought I was a hot mess

Loving how this ep divided the sandray fans into two. The ones who desperately want a threesome and the ones who want Boeing to fall of an airplane.

But nah I don't think a threesome is gonna happen. Sand has to learn to make some boundaries, it's needed if he wants to be in a relationship with ray. Guess this is how he is gonna learn.

( though my horny side really wants to see three hot men going at it )

I asked for messy not for pain.

Firstkhao is just wow I have no words. Damn stupid talented gorgeous people making me cry so much. I hate you.

I find it so funny that fans were making mew the mastermind manipulator but now that he's actually being toxic those same people are treating him as a baby. Like I don't understand, are we watching the same show, lol.

Addiction ( in only friends ) and how it impedes your perception of the situations you are in

Never thought I needed to write this but I have been seeing so many posts blaming ray and I wanted to get it out. Later if I have time I would write a dissertation about this topic because it's extremely important.

Disclaimer : Know that I am not absolving ray of his wrongdoings nor am I blaming his behaviour on other characters but we know the root of his behaviour but it seems like there is a lack of understanding.

All this is from my observations with people I know who have addiction so this is my personal experience and not me telling everyone how they should act or feel.

.................

Ray is a selfish person. We all know that. But so is Boston , so is mew, so is cheum. So why is ray getting the most hate. Because he is a drunkard. During ep 3 or 4 , when we saw ray at his most vulnerable , everyone was going oh poor ray. And now everyone is telling the opposite. Now I see a lot of people asking why mew and the others not taking care of him, even me. But this is why. See how easy it was for a major part of the audience to forget his addiction and completely blame ray. Now imagine if you are the one who has to deal with ray on a daily basis for two long years. It's exhausting , overwhelming and frustrating and eventually you are going to form an antipathy. My drunkard friend is not going to listen to my well intentioned warnings so why should I care. You can see it clearly in mews behaviour. Mew has given up caring.

Loved ones start giving up , because the pain the addicted one causes is too much to bear. And that is the reality of addiction. This was most clearly shown through rue from euphoria. Her mother, friends, sister cared about her but you can see the toll it creates on everyone.

Addiction is a harmful disease and one of the reason why is that it morphs the user into someone unrecognisable. Look at sober ray, his moments with sand, he's adorable, fiesty, sassy and very charming. But what he becomes when he is drunk or high is a selfish guy who doesn't care about anyone but himself.

Once again I am not blaming the entire thing on alcohol, but trying to say how that much addiction can cause one to act in ways they won't normally wont when sober.

Alcohol and drugs is ray's escape from his inner thoughts and his shitty lonely life. But he's got so dependent on it and his pain is too much that he greatly needs that buzz of happiness that alcohol and drugs gives him. He's so dependent on it that he can't be happy without it. I know that most portrayel of alcoholics have them be absolutely useless and trashed. But ray is not like that, which is even more dangerous , because he is a functional alcoholic.

And it's dangerous because it won't be clear to a lot of people about how he needs help. And more importantly it won't be clear to him about how he needs help. When ray thinks to himself all he can focus on is that he can do chores, he can talk to people normally, he can walk in a straight line, he is not an alcoholic in the way we are always shown, but he is. He is seen with drinks almost all the time, he spends the most time in a bar , he is probably walking around conscious but still drunk. And as long as he is a functional alcoholic , ray would never go or ask for help.

When you are that dependent on this , any tiny problem would have you running to escape , because the escape as an option is easy then doing the messy work of knowing when you are wrong or wronged and dealing with the emotions that come with it. We have seen ray doing it, especially when paired with mew.

When you are that dependent you don't see that you need help. To ray he is having fun, he's not miserable when he is drunk or high , when he is in that state he gets everything. So what if he is called a burden, he is still on top of the world. So when people say to him that he is an alcoholic he's confused , because he is not an alcoholic. He's having fun.

Now during ep 8 we are actually seeing him being selfish and an asshole. During ep 6 we saw him very effectively damaging his relationships. The common point between these two eps is that he is under the influence. Those are his sober thoughts but he won't say it aloud when he is sober but when he's drunk he doesn't have any inhibitions so he says everything that comes to him. Combine that with the pain of being called a burden , of unrequited love and he tries to escape from the feelings by drinking again and it forms a vicious circle. It came to a point where he lashed out and as always hurt people under the influence of something can be destructive.

I am not saying that what he did was right or the pain he caused was justifiable or should be forgiven. They shouldn't but rays feeling shouldn't be minimised too. Addiction is complex and asking for help can be a hard task. And in the case of ray I don't think he realises that he needs help. That's the problem with addicts, they don't know that the thing that's giving them happiness is the same thing that's causing them harm. Or they know but they are far too gone that they don't care.

Be it smoking , drugs or alcohol or anything else , people use it for escape but the usage becomes too much that their entire day is only fulfilled , when they get their daily dose of happiness from it. Which changes their perception to accomodate one and only one thing , the next fix, the next drink. Which is why they become selfish cause their entire world is wrapped around that bottle and everything else comes secondary.

Addiction has the potential to completely change a person. You know the person you grew up with or you know personally is somewhere inside there but what you see when they are under the influence is someone you never dreamed your loved one's can be. And it's painfull.

Another way people with addiction is dehumanised is that everyone uses them. You want a drink ? that person will always have a bottle with them, you need a fix that guy knows a person , want to have fun that person will show you a good time . I think a lot of people have heard these phrases.

For most people it's harmless fun, for the addict it's an ego boost . And it encourages them to continue that lifestyle. Which is what happened with raymew and the entire friends group in general.

They use ray but they are willfully blind to the harm that causes him. Mew was the one who wanted to try smoking, coke and party, ray never forced him, because for ray that is his happy place. Substances is the one thing that gives him happiness, he does not have the capacity to stop or think of it as wrong.

To ray , mew has finally chosen him, he is finally doing the things he loves. He's not going to stop mew from doing anything when he thinks he finally getting what he always wanted. Ands it toxic and it's not right but that's the reality of an addict.

And he should be happy about it but he isn't because he needs sand. And that is what confused him to spiral further and ignore his emotions and snort coke. Because that's the best thing he can do, run away.

Why is sand so important to ray ? I said in an another post that sands generosity is out of the ordinary. He's mature for his age in a way that makes me feel like he has known an addict before.

And ray needs that. He doesn't need enablers. he needs someone to physically stop him from taking it. Or atleast make him realise that what he is doing is dangerous. And sand is the one who's going to do it.

Thing is it's not sand's job to do it. But till ep 8 he was choosing to be that person. Saying that ray is forcing sand to do something is just taking away the agency from sand. He's not a kid. He's making his own decisions.

And if he is helping him it won't be an easy journey. If they are bringing the addiction rehab plot line into the show then I could see a scene happening that is reminiscent of the car chase scene from euphoria.

Sand and his generosity.

Sand is a great character and I find it interesting that even though he did a crime, is actively doing another crime the majority of the fandom is behind him being such a good guy, and he is. But it got me thinking. Why is he so generous towards ray?

Now 14 yr old me would have instantly said true love but now I know a lot more. Something about his care for ray feel so familiar. Like he knows exactly what to do with someone like ray, on the verge of an alcoholic spiral 24/7.

The first few episodes we see them connecting but even if they did connect more then the other couples, there was something huge missing. Sand didn't know the extend of rays addiction. And then we see sand processing it and then top comes barging in and derails him and the entire trainwreck that resulted and sand had understood just how gone ray is. That boy needs rehab asap.

But sand goes after him, he saves him, he takes care of him, he bends to his every whim and is happy to do so, only to be tossed aside. And it's in the way he takes care of him. He knows how to take care of a drunk person , he knows how to be gentle with them , he knows how to scold them without coming across as demeaning or prejudice. He has the patience of someone who's already dealt with circumstances like these. Of taking care of a loved one who is an addict.

You can see it in the way he doesn't bring up the outburst. He bought up the drunk driving because it has the potential to cause lasting harm. But an outburst in a bar will be just that an outburst. Sand doesn't know that ray had told mew about topton, but he doesn't give the outburst much thought when ray had attacked him directly. And that's where I think he knows what to except from an outburst from an addict and is choosing to not take it personally. And that level of insight is not typical in a 20 something college kid , even if the college kid works in a bar , because ray targeted him specially. Nobody would have blamed him if he didn't go, heck rays friends who he have known for years didn't go but sand a recent acquaintance went.

Now it can be said that sand has seen the good side of ray, and he has. When it comes with dealing with addicts most people focus on changing the bad side and forget about the good side. But sand didn't , he saw the good side, liked it and is trying to get that back. That smile in the bathtub, he thought he was getting it back. But then he saw raymew dancing and that look is so interesting. Because there's no anger, there's sadness, and heartbreak and disappointed. And there's resignation. He predicted it would happen and it did.

He wasn't disappointed with ray, he was disappointed in himself. He was dealing with an addict, trying to save him when the person doesn't want to be saved. Something he has done before. Something he so familiar with he was anticipating the heartbreak when he and ray had hooked up. It's exactly like playing with fire.

So why did he jump right in when he knows the pain, because it's familiar to him.

So who's this person who has given sand the experience with working with addicts . Either his mom who's the closest person we have seen to him or his ex.

Imagine if it was his ex , someone he loved , cared for and has helped with a recovery process but then top comes and takes him away. By using drugs.

Which would explain why sand is so mad at him , why he insisted that top stole him.

Sand saw the good side with his ex , helped him get back and all that was tossed away for the next fix that top had with him. And he fought tooth and nails for him , but the ex chose his next fix and not him.

Then his eyes fell on a boy similar to his ex , who's also going through addiction and sand wants to help him since it's so familiar. And he knows it's a bad idea and he is watching the exact same thing happen away and this time he's so resigned and too tired too fight.

His generosity is not just because he's a good person , it's because he's used to it, it's because it's familiar to him.

What if Ray is the one who finds Mew's change problematic after he gets over Mew that is. right now he's too blind to see what's happening. ray didn't fall for this new, he fell for his mew, the one who saved him. This one looks like someone who will leave him to die after using him. Maybe this is what gives Ray an epiphany and he finally sees sand. but at that point sand is done with him , so ray goes after him but sand doesn't want to anything with him ( understandable) and then we get the line from the trailer. i am not going to let you go after you have come into my life.

maybe in the middle of this comes the boeing plot , ( that chekhovs gun has to fire sometime ) and ray getting jealous, and ray going berserk on sand, claiming ownership. and sand is like I can choose aka do you think I don't have any dignity ?

what if mew goes back to top and ray finds out, but he's not that mad as he taught he will be , hes mad but he's more mad when he sees sand with boring. hes mad, sad, confused and on top of that he's drunk and high, maybe this scenario could be what gives clarity to ray on who he actually likes. except this is going to happen towards the ned of the show and sand has moved on and we don't get a raysand ending, then what I am I going to do.

( i would be happy if ray goes to rehab instead and sand stays away but the heart wants what it wants)

Mew trying to become Ray let alone date him was not on my bingo card for this week but I'm no professional bingo card designer, let's talk about this anyway

We all went into this show knowing it was going to be messy, asking for it to be messy, we're all weak for SandRay so RayMew is upsetting because we want Ray with Sand, sure, but setting all of that aside, the thing that is really concerning to me about the fact that Mew is choosing to rebound with Ray is the fact that he is very creepily BECOMING RAY while doing it. He's putting on a persona to handle his life right now and it's really unhealthy and boy needs to cut it out and get some therapy. (they all need therapy.)

At the beginning of the episode, before the confrontation with Boston, Mew is dressed more or less as himself. He and Ray do dress similarly on a base level- they both wear a lot of patterned, unbuttoned shirts over a second shirt, but Mew normally wears stripes over tshirts, and mostly light colours with a lot of blues and greens. Ray wears a lot of darker colours and patterns with shapes and designs, with a lot of reds, tans, and oranges.

After blasting Boston into the pool and delivering one of the most satisfying kicks on television, before going for his confrontation with Nick, we get the creepy tub shot of Mew sinking into his misery and his upcoming revenge era-

To put on his Ray cosplay, he's gotta sink down into the deep. This isn't a rebirth or an emergence of a new, stronger version of himself; this is him descending, covering himself and his hurt with someone else's aura and attitude so that he can cope with the path he's decided he needs to go on to burn his enemies and get his revenge.

He tries it out when he goes to see Nick and it works for him-

This is his soft launch, where he's up against someone else who has, or feels he has, been done wrong by Boston and Top (and done wrong, obviously) but that Mew knows is vulnerable. Mew pushes on Nick to help getting his revenge on Boston, and Nick crumbles. Using this persona, this attitude, is working for him.

He uses it to hunt down Gap next, another trial run, that goes flawlessly for him as well.

He's got the black tank, the necklace, and a black, white, and grey shirt this time, another test of borrowed confidence. And he's successful: he pulls Gap with almost no effort, he gets the file, he's ready to go now. He's used the Ray based persona twice with people he doesn't know, his confidence is up, which means he's ready to use it on someone he does know.

So when he gets ready to confront Boston, we get a whole sequence of him preparing for the battle, and checking all the details. There's a lot of very close up shots of his face and eyes here that I left out of the gifs because this scene was already long, and a lot of focus on each detail.

The necklace like Ray wears, a tanktop like Ray wears (but black! because this is Mew in his angsty villain era!), a patterned button up shirt like Ray wears, check the hair and go. Armored with this other persona, he's ready to handle Boston, and he does. Much, much better than Ray himself, mind you, compared to when Ray went and confronted Boston in the last episode.

The next big outfit switch we get for Mew in this episode (I'm not counting the whole big Top punching Mew confrontation since Mew and Ray are both just wearing their school clothes there) is Top's daydream about dancing with Mew. This whole sequence is so soft focus and Top looks so sad and there's no one else there which implies to me he's imagining this and it's not an actual memory, but either way we're back to Mew in stripes, with Top in stripes as well.

What's different about Mew and Top matching versus Mew matching himself to Ray? Mew and Top don't really MATCH so much as coordinate. They're often in different colours, different styles, different material shirts, etc. Like here, Mew is wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt with vertical stripes over a tshirt, while Top is wearing a collared polo shirt with horizontal stripes, AND they're wearing different colours. They work together without fully matching, and they're distinct to the characters as well. Even when their styles get a little closer, like Top wearing some solid colour button up shirts in episode 6 instead of polo shirts, he styles them differently than Mew does and I at least can't really picture them switching clothes and having the outfits really look right.

Meanwhile, the last scene of the episode, with Mew dancing with Ray, we get this-

Mew is dressed as Ray again, even shifting into Ray's common colour schemes with the flowers on this one. His first outfit when he went to see Nick was a trial and the pattern still had a lot of blues in it, but he's been shifting into darker colours with the tans and oranges we see Ray in pretty often with this.

(Ray, meanwhile, is wearing a shirt that looks like something Sand would have chosen for him, of course.)

Ray is reckless, Ray is fearless, Ray is bold, Ray is confident, Ray is wild and sometimes unpredictable, or he at least seems to be to the much more conservative Mew, so slipping into Ray's clothes and taking on what he thinks is Ray's persona is a way for Mew to push himself in ways he hasn't before. There's no way Mew could have handled his whole spy mission to get the video file from Gap as himself the way he has been; that's not in his wheelhouse.

From the preview for next week it looks like Mew is sliding into more of Ray's persona with the partying behaviors, and I don't think it's going to end well for him. But being with Top has taught him that trying to get someone to change is useless because they're still the same mess on the inside, so his decision to slide down the same path as Ray and let go of his inhibitions instead of trying to fix Ray is as unsurprising as it is self-destructive.

Seeing Mew take some kind of power over his life should have been satisfying, and in some ways it definitely was, like watching him burn the notebook page and try to put his foot down with Top, but then seeing him do it while spiraling mentally and slowly covering himself with Ray's outward persona at the same time was incredibly unnerving. Adding in him deciding to get involved with Ray romantically and it just speed ratchets up the unhealthy factor by a million miles a minute.

It also shows how well Mew actually knows Ray now compared to how well he thinks he knows Ray and who and what he thinks Ray is, that he could send himself down this path without seeing the writing on the wall about who Ray is trying to be and what Ray is trying to deal with behind Ray's substance abuse problems and everything else, but I imagine that will be part of the inevitable explosion that THIS impending disaster will also turn into, potentially very soon.

You can't fix your problems by pretending to be someone that you're not, especially if who you're trying to be is someone you know who is incredibly problematic and unhealthy themselves. It's a whole toxic situation even BEFORE you start trying to DATE THEM AT THE SAME TIME.

We wanted a mess and boy are we getting it.

At this point anything else other than death is a happy ending for him

I don't think Only Friends will have a sad ending, not for Ray and Sand, at least.

I think it won't be like that because Ray's life is already so damn tragic and sad and I can't imagine ANY kind of sad ending that, at the same time, could leave the audience satisfied, if Ray's fate were to suffer more, even worse if it were to be a type of suffering that would see him completely alone, with no one in his life. And I don't even want to dare think about his possible death.

"Only Friends" is a very, very intense and in some ways, dark BL but based on the experience I've had watching other BLs, I have that tiny hope that at least Ray will find his happiness.

And perhaps this will apply to all the boys. Why not? Life is hard enough, at least in dramas we deserve a happy ending.

Sandray and why they are the The good thing at the wrong time, or the right person at the wrong time.

So i have read a lot of amazing meta on this series, especially the ephemarilty squad and it has made the viewer experience so much better. A big thank you to those people.

This post is technically not a meta nor am I claiming this is something groundbreaking. I just wanted to get my thoughts out.

Only friends has been an experience and my favourite couple is sandray. I know it will only give me pain but i am a masochist.

After episode five, I have seen a lot of people start to put blame on either sand or ray or Boston ( who is at 80% fault). But in this series we can't just easily put them in a blame box. It's way to complicated for that, as emotions are.

Ep 5 is from the perspective of sand while ep 4 was from ray, from these two eps we realise how different they are, how different their experiences are.

Ray is not exactly a mature person or even a put together person like sand. And we know why, he has self esteem issues, depression and is an alcoholic due to childhood circumstances. And he does not have a supportive network. And we can't blame the friends group because they are twenty something college kids who have no idea of the seriousness. Case in point, how they wave off rays talks of being a burden and continues to enable his bad habits. He is an incredibly messy character, with clear trauma and we have given enough points, explicitly told through the narrative. We are supposed to feel sympathy for him, we are supposed to feel empathy for him. We should root for him to become better.

Compare that with Boston. Boston has been given implied issues, acted out brilliantly by neo. Now whether they are some deep rooted issues from his childhood or parents or others, we dont know. Cause we are not explicitly told. We are supposed to be see him as the antagonist.

In the case of ray, we have given reason to believe that mew is not a great friend to ray as he claims to be. So we are not supposed to root for them so then who should we root for.

Enter sand, who's practically perfect, put together, mature and hot. But the problem is sand is not a put together person, at all.

Sand juggles between jobs, he takes care of the debt of his mother and is a good son. But he's in need of money and he has told that he will do anything to get more money. Aka his illegal plum business.

Ep 5 gives us mote depth of his character. And from the outside he looks cool, calm and collected, inwardly sand is an emotional person, who's driven by his emotions. Now from the first eps we were led to believe that ray is the emotional drunkard looking for trouble. He's not. Ray is driven by his trauma, his addiction, his thoughts, not his emotions.

Sand on the other hand is quick to anger, sarcastic to the point that someone has probably tried to punch him and has a rigid moral sense. And he wants to take care of stuff. And he falls fast. But he doesn't know how to deal with them.

Sand has gotten hurt before by way of top. And he keeps his emotional walls up. Ray is lonely, he wants to connect. And a lot of people have said that he doesn't know to connect but he does. Everything he does with sand is that, he's forging a connection.

Ray was the one who initiated every one of their interactions, even if it was done in an annoying manner. And sand doesn't give a rigid boundary he immediately gives into ray.

And this connection has already been formed, entirely initiated by ray and its strong. To the point that sand has fallen hard and has already given a designated time for ray.

But they are not in the same page. Sand has told ray that he wants to just be FWB and ray has agreed to that. And while we have seen clear signs from both of then that they like each other, I don't thing they are getting it. There understanding level is clearly marred with their issues, sand with being a second choice and ray with everything.

But they have shown that they can communicate. So why are they not communicating now. Because sand has put up the boundary of FWB. No amount of mooning and looking sad is going to tell ray that he wants to be boyfriends. He has to be explicitly told and sand has to do that.

Ray should also be clear with want he wants. Verbally. But both of them are not in a place of mind to do that. And that is surprising, because we could have expected that from the put together one. Expect sand is dealing with his issues and is unwilling to try , because of the threat of heartbreak and is letting his emotions get the better of him.

On the contrary, in rp 5 , ray seems more calm. He is actually trying, he's connecting with sand with doing the things that he loves. He's falling for sand and I think he does know.

Even after being drunk and high he has the werewithal to open up a conversation, he gave the chance to sand to try. But sand rejected it. That was a big chance and if sand had taken that chance, they could have talked about their current situation. That's what's so heartbreaking about it, because the possibility was there. I mean look at him here.

He clearly wanted him to talk to him.

Expect sand didn't take it, his problems prevented him from doing it, his emotions which were going overbroad prevented him from thinking rationally.

And ray took that rejection, personally. We can easily infer what went through his mind from what we already know ," I am a burden, I am a jinx". "I have tried my best but it's not working, So why should I try more", aka the devastating happy birthday.

Ray was rational at that moment, and dare I say mature, especially considering the scene that happened just before that. Ray was able to think above his emotions and give a rational way out of that predicament. But sand rejection triggered his trauma and he went back to square one.

There was a beautiful post about different types of understanding in this series. That's what is happening here, different types of understanding. But I can't find that post.

At that point both needed to understand the other but there individual issues left them unable to do it. And it's not anyone's fault. It's not a blame game. It's the reality of trauma situations.

How trauma and mental health issues can create problems, can make situations seem bigger then they actually are. How it made two people who are compatible with each other be reluctant to go further.

They can be the perfect couple the audience want them to be. But at this point of time , they are the right person at the wrong time archetype.

And they will remain if they don't communicate. Let's hope by the end of the messiness they both have some clarity on how to go further. And give the audience an emotionally charged story.

Ok y’all…

I’ve been blessed by the AO3 gods an decided to come out of my hibernation to write about this…situation… 👀

I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts about Sand and Boeing’s backstory.

Honestly, I just feel bad for Sand in this situation, cause, yes, he could’ve set clear boundaries, but we’ve already established that he’s too nice and forgiving. And, to me, he honestly seemed pretty uncomfortable whenever he interacted with Boeing…

Ok y’all… I have some thoughts…

People on Twitter getting mad at Sand 🤨

Why exactly is he expected to have his feelings sorted out from the get go, when we had to deal with like half of the whole series with Ray trying to sort out his feelings for Mew?

I think some people forget that others are allowed to have complicated feelings, especially when it was someone they used to deeply care for. It’s seems to me that people are just irritated that Boeing is getting in the way of their insanely idealized vision of SandRay…

Anyway…

This scene healed something in me