Hyperfixation And Procrastination

Some, expected and wanted a dramatic, high stakes rebellion against God, or a neat little happy ending where everyone magically becomes ✨️progressive.✨️

Instead, P’Aof gave us a six episode thesis on the ✨️art of the compromise.✨️

It's a show that manages to offend religious purists while simultaneously hand delivering a reality check to non-religious spectators who show up to the discourse with a massive savior complex.

This, will be different from my usual analysis, since it's late, I worked a 16 hour shift and I get deep melancholy this time of year.

Let us unpack the heavy handed symbolism, the directors ultimate message, and why the final choice not to return to St. Magdalene College is the most realistic thing about the entire series.

Disclaimer : Everything I know about religion (ANY religion) is from word of mouth, a lot of research, a lot of reading of religious text and in depth conversations with various religious ministers. I do not claim to know everything, as long as we are alive, we learn, I do however believe that I know enough. Let us remember that this is tumblr, not a courthouse.

🥀 The Choreography of Touch (tenderness as a radical act)

​Everyone talked about the physical climax of their intimacy, but the real emotional weight of Tanrak and Barths relationship is told through the micro movements of their hands.

​In a seminary school, hands are strictly regulated instruments. They are used to fold in prayer, clasp during confession, and turn pages of scripture. They are mechanical, disciplined, and performative. But notice how Barth and Tanrak interact? When they touch, there is an excruciating, deliberate gentleness.

When Barth brushes a stray piece of hair or touches Tanraks hand, it's not an aggressive, passionate grab. It's an incredibly soft, cautious reverence, almost as if Barth treats Tanraks body with more sanctity than the altar itself.

​By filming their intimacy with such quiet tenderness the show does something brilliant, it strips away the 'taboo' lens.

To the church, their love is a violent, disruptive 'sin.'

But to the camera, the sheer gentleness makes it look entirely harmless. It highlights the absolute absurdity of the institutions panic.

How can something that soft be considered a threat to salvation?

🥀 Courting you, Wanting you

​In the '90 , in a hyper-religious Thai boarding school, you can't exactly drop a love letter without getting expelled. You have to speak in code.

​Barth isn't just handing over a pretty plant, he's participating in a quiet courting ritual under the very noses of the authority figures. Depending on the exact bloom P'Aof put in that frame, it changes the conversation completely.

If it's a chamomile or a simple wildflower, Barth isn't trying to corrupt Tanrak.

He's acknowledging Tanraks purity and devotion while subtly offering a piece of the outside world, something wild that grew naturally, untamed by the church's shears.

It's an act of worship.

Barth, who openly admits he has no faith in God and sees no light at the end of the tunnel, finds his own version of a holy ritual. He presents an offering to Tanrak.

He is essentially saying, "I don't believe in their heaven, but I believe in you."

It's a declaration of love disguised as a harmless gesture, completely bypassing the strict rules of Magdalene House.

🥀 Institutional Conditioning

​One of the most complex moments is the reaction of Kongdech when he finally puts two and two together and realizes they aren't just bunkmates. (And they were bunkmates!)

​In a lesser show, he would instantly turn into a screaming, homophobic monster, or a perfectly progressive ally.

Instead, his reaction is wrapped in deep panic and profound sadness.

He doesn't look at Tanrak with disgust, he looks at him with terror.

​This reaction is brilliant because it captures the heavy psychological conditioning of organized religion.

He genuinely loves Tanrak.

Because he is a 'true believer', he genuinely thinks Tanrak is actively destroying his own soul.

He is looking at his best friend stepping off a cliff into eternal damnation, and his panic comes from a place of desperate, helpless care.

​It perfectly mirrors the tragedy of the whole system: it weaponizes genuine love and friendship into a tool for surveillance and guilt.

It shows that the worst part of religious homophobia isn't always the loud zealots shouting slurs, it’s the quiet heartbreak of your friends believing you are broken.

🥀 'We can Love You, but We can't Keep You'

​This brings us to the collective ✨️meltdown✨️ over the finale.

People wanted a clean, Hollywood ending where the ✨️church changes its mind✨️, or 🔥the boys burn down the institution.🔥

But P’Aof is a realist. (Blah, blah censorship, blah, blah backlash)

The underlying, brutal message of the ending is simple: Yes, the Catholics can love you, but they cannot accept you if you are queer.

Think about Father Arnon.

He isn't written as a cartoonish, mustache twirling villain.

He's benevolent, gentle, and genuinely loves Tanrak.

He literally tells Tanrak to 'love himself more.'

But notice what he doesn't do: he doesn't rewrite the catechism.

He doesn't say, 'You can stay here at St. Magdalene, become a priest, and bring your boyfriend to Sunday brunch!'

The institution has a hard boundary.

And that's exactly why Tanrak and Barth do not return to the Magdalene church after they run away.

They realize that to stay in that space would require an unholy fragmentation of their souls.

The compromise is geographical and emotional: they keep their love for each other, and they keep their personal, internal relationship with faith, but they leave the structure behind.

They choose a cheap love motel and a bus ride to an uncertain future over a golden cage of conditional institutional safety.

🥀 A call out to the 'Holier-Than-Thou' secular crowd

​Now, as someone who isn't religious myself, I didn't watch this looking for the boys to yell 'FUCK THE CHURCH, WE OUT!!!', but this show serves as a necessary, deeply sarcastic mirror for the non religious viewers who did.

Often, people outside organized religion look at the historical and modern atrocities of said religion and instantly develop a massive savior complex.

They look at kids like Tanrak, who is deeply devoted, orphaned, and surviving on institutional gratitude, and want to ✨️rescue✨️ them by force.

They look down on their faith as a primitive coping mechanism or lesser intelligence.

They act self righteous by demanding these characters completely denounce God, burn their bibles, and become perfectly healed secular activists overnight.

But Ticket to Heaven shows how incredibly damaging that secular arrogance actually is.

​Barth tries to play the cynical rebel initially, but he eventually realizes he can't just amputate his spiritual side.

Faith isn't just a set of rules you can flip a switch on, for Tanrak, it's the fabric of his memory of his dead parents.

When secular observers treat a queer persons personal faith as a defect to be cured, they do a different kind of damage, one that can be even more alienating than a religious zealot shouting the usual crazy things.

At least with the zealots, you know where they stand.

The patronizing 'sympathy' of the secular savior complex just isolates them further.

🥀 Conclusion

​Life is not an ✨️all or nothing✨️ Twitter discourse. Ticket to Heaven is beautifully produced because it refuses to give us a fairytale ending where religion magically stops being homophobic, or where the main characters magically stop believing in God.

​Instead, it forces a deeply realistic compromise.

One of my favorite things about the ending of TTH is the closure Barth and Tanrak received regarding their faith and family. They spent the majority of their lives thinking they had to choose between happiness and heaven, only to discover neither had to be sacrificed and both could be obtained.

Going back to episode 4, Barth opened up about how most of the turmoil in his household was caused by religion. Both of his parents valued their faith over anything else, even if it came at the expense of their child’s (and their own) wellbeing.

He witnessed his family fall apart, and began to resent God because he did nothing to stop it despite all his prayers. Early in his life, he came to the conclusion that there would never be happiness where religion was involved. He could only live how he wanted if he rejected it all together.

When it came down to choosing between happiness and heaven, Barth made the decision to sacrifice his “ticket” to heaven for a chance at happiness.

When it came to Tanrak, his battle with religion was less obvious on the surface because it was mainly internal. Ever since his parents’ passing, he dedicated his entire life to becoming a priest and reuniting with them in heaven. Whenever he felt his faith waver, he saw it as him getting further away from seeing his mom and dad again.

When he first fell for Barth, he didn’t think it was possible to have a relationship with him and God simultaneously. He felt as if it was necessary to give one up to keep the other, and he was willing to give up everything if it meant keeping his faith intact.

One viewed religion as the primary source of his suffering, and the other saw it as the only thing keeping him together. It was only after reconnecting with their loved ones where they began to shift their viewpoints regarding religion.

Tanrak realized that his faith did not have to come at the expense of his own joy, nor did it have to prevent him from pursuing his heart’s desires. Barth learned to no longer see religion as an obstacle in his life, but simply another part of it. It also served as something that brought him and his mom closer.

I love you. I love you too.

After all the heated passions of Episode 3, Ticket to Heaven took a bit of a breather and Ep.4 was (on the whole) a much more gently-paced affair. We got to see Barth and Tanrak settling into a certain softness of routine (little Christmas lambs! 🤣) as they began getting to know each other better romantically.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 7.08 – Barth, Tanrak and Christmas lambs

Which was, in a way, a set-up of course – it made Barth's flashback to violent family rupture so much more of a gut punch, when they finally got around to showing us that later.

Anyway, I was seriously considering not posting anything about Ep.4, thinking that it was meant to be a lull in the proceedings (which it kind of was, until Barth's dad made his appearance) but a second viewing soon put paid to that thought – TTH Ep.4 still has a lot to say at the subtextual and metatextual level (no surprises, considering it's an Aof-Best collab and that's what you can count on them doing, all the time). Anyway, here goes.

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BLANKETS AND META-BLANKETS  The exchange of blankets signaled a marked reversal for Barth's character, when we contrast the Barth of Ep.4 with the Barth we met in Ep.1. When he first arrived at St. Magdalene's, Barth steadfastly rejected Tanrak's uniform and the offer to help him get a blanket, which I think was a metaphor of him refusing any identity imposed from the outside (the idea of Barth all stripped and vulnerable having come from his namesake Saint Bartholomew, who had been flayed of his skin).

Here in Ep.4, however, Barth readily accepts Tanrak's offer to trade blankets, and I think this was TTH signaling that Barth was finally ready to assume a personhood of his own choosing, and that personhood worth inhabiting was as lover to Tanrak.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 12.49 – Barth and Tanrak exchange red-and-blue blankets at the staircase (calling out to Bad Buddy's scent-obsessed Pat, and also evoking the gifts bestowed at a traditional Thai khan maak, making this a do-over of sorts for their failed engagement and marriage in Ep.3)

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But all metaphors aside (this is a GMMTV BL after all), at the level of the narrative that blanket exchange was also just so heart-meltingly romantic. 💖 Can you imagine Barth and Tanrak, each alone in his bed, enveloped with the scent of his beloved, the blankie standing in for the real thing, easing that ache of missing the one who overwhelms your senses in every way? Ooh, it touched my tralala… 😍

And for the BL color appreciators among us – the blue and red blankets they exchanged were a nice bit of visual rhetoric echoing Barth and Tanrak's intertwining of their emotional lives, also standing out as a counterpoint to the separate blue and red t-shirts they were wearing at the chapel later, when the pull of the seminary for Tanrak started to come between them, casting our boys onto separate sides of a divide:

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [2/4] 11.32 – Barth in blue and Tanrak in red (his t-shirt also says "Jesus Loves You") as the crucifix looms tall between them

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LITTLE LAMBS  The dinky sheep ornaments that Tanrak plucked from the Christmas tree were actually really loaded with meaning, especially because of the significance that sheep and lambs have in Christian belief.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 2.58 – Tanrak rescues two lamb ornaments from the Christmas tree

Of note are the following:

In Old Testament days, unblemished lambs/sheep were offered as sacrifices to atone for wrongdoing, while those that were marked/blemished in some way were considered unworthy for this purpose. This is why Christ is also sometimes referred to as the Lamb of God, having given up his earthly life (as the sinless, unblemished Son of God) and dying on the cross to atone for humankind's sins.

The parable of the lost sheep (from Luke Chapter 15) was already mentioned in Ticket to Heaven at the start of Ep.2, highlighting that even those who might be lost to the Church are yet still to be loved and are deserving of love.

In Ticket to Heaven, we see that the two little lambs from the Christmas tree had been more or less consigned to the trash pile, but were rescued from that fate by Tanrak who still saw value in them. The tree is allowed to continue its function (being packed away for the next Christmas), but the lambs were removed from it for being deficient in some way.

Now I think the Christmas tree here is a metaphor for the Biblical Tree of Life – this is the tree that stood in the center of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve used to live in a state of sinless grace.

The Tree of Life is also emblematic of God's Kingdom, so I think the Christmas tree is being made to stand in for it as well. And after Adam and Eve gave in to the serpent's temptation and ate the Garden's forbidden fruit (committing the first sins of humankind), they were cast out from the Garden, God's heavenly paradise, to live in the sinful world as we know it.

Knowing that Barth and Tanrak are represented by the (supposedly) imperfect and almost-trashed ornaments, the lambs are also a representation of queer love, that is also an outcast in terms of the teachings of the Church.

And the removal of the lambs from the tree is a metaphor for how queer love is banished from God's Kingdom (the Church), the way Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise after having sinned in disobedience.

But there's more – actually we aren't shown why the lambs were being discarded. They look perfectly fine (destined for the GMMTV merch shop of course), and are also white as snow (pretty much untouched by dirt, symbolizing a blameless state).

I think what TTH is saying is – even though Barth and Tanrak's queer love might not be considered acceptable under current Church teachings, nonetheless (as purportedly blemished sheep who have wandered away or been cast out from the flock) they are still deserving of love and also worthy of retrieval and acceptance back into the fold (remembering the Bible verses about the lost sheep at the start of Ep.2).

This idea is echoed by Kongdech's mom at Ep.4 [2/4] 0.34 – the fruit that she had plucked from their family orchard were a parallel for the little lambs plucked from the Christmas tree, and she very pointedly says that even though the dragonfruit and oranges might seem outwardly blemished, they were still perfectly fine on the inside (and that's what counts).

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [2/4] 0.34 – Tanrak looks on apprehensively as he receives the gifts of dragonfruit and oranges from Kongdech's mom, while she says the words "They may not look perfect, but they're really good."

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WATERS OF CLEANSING AND RENEWAL  In Episode 3, we saw water being splashily foregrounded as a visual metaphor for the inescapable passion flowing between Barth and Tanrak. But leaving Ep.3's lusty themes behind us, I think all the visuals of water have a very different role to play in Episode 4.

First of all, there's Cherry's remark at Ep.4 [3‌/4] 10.37 about how Barth and Tanrak goofing around with the garden hose looks like the splashings of Songkran, which is a festival that celebrates the washing away of negativity and starting anew. Secondly, Ticket to Heaven had been plying us with constant visual reminders of water symbolizing baptism and new beginnings, right from Ep.1 as well.

In Ep.4, the narrative was necessarily beginning to shift its focus away from the more corporeal manifestations of the love between Barth and Tanrak (dealt with so robustly in Ep.3), to look at their love in its more metaphysical form. And the metaphor of cleansing, renewing waters in this episode is also Ticket to Heaven saying that any examination of the queer love in Barth and Tanrak's story should be washed of prejudice and preconceived notions as well. With the metaphor of the little spotless lambs right alongside, we're being reminded of the innocence and purity at the heart of the matter, no matter how unacceptable others might deem this love while looking from outside in.

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LOOKING BACK  Actually, Ep.4 spent a lot of time throwing us back into the past, requesting that we look at things that had gone on before. For example, we got to see:

Tanrak talking about his lonely first years at boarding school;

Barth's flashback to his fraught home situation;

Barth asking Tanrak if he would retread the same life path if he had the chance to do it again, and Tanrak actually saying no;

Barth bringing Tanrak to his childhood haunt of rivers and waterfalls (actually an artificially deserted Erawan Falls – in real life they are crowded with tourists);

Ryu going to Dan Neramit (an amusement park active in the 90s) while singing the theme song to Siam Amazing Park (actually the theme to Hawaii Five-O);

Master Phak reminiscing about his soccer past;

The boys talking about Joe and his time in school.

Barth and Tanrak tussling over the photograph at Ep.4 [1‌/4] 6.35 is also a reference to this looking back toward the past (please bear with me on this).

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 6.39 – the photo of Barth and Tanrak, taken at the time of the Nativity play in church

The photo in question shows Barth in Biblical robes and headgear, while Tanrak is his Catholic altar boy vestments. I think they represent the Old Testament (before the birth of Christ) and the New Testament, respectively. Both boys are separated by the Christmas tree (emblematic of the original heavenly paradise of God and His Kingdom, i.e., the Church), and I think that is also significant – Barth and Tanrak separated by a symbol of God's Kingdom is a metaphor for how they are also kept apart by the teachings of the church with regard to the queer love between them.

But that in itself is not a nod at the past – I think that comes into play when Barth cautions Tanrak against tearing the photograph.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 6.35 – Barth says to Tanrak, "Hey Tan! You'll tear it" as Tanrak snatches the photo from his grasp

With the photo telegraphing the Old Testament and New Testament, and a reference to tearing that would rip the two apart – this immediately calls to mind the moment recounted in the Bible (in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke) when Christ died upon the cross for the sins of humankind.

At that moment, the veil between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem was ripped in two, symbolizing the end of the temple system under the Old Testament and the establishment of the New Covenant, with direct access to God.

The tearing of the veil was very much a break with the past – but here in TTH the narrative is asking (by not ripping apart the two timeframes) that the connection between the past and present be kept intact.

Just to be clear, I don't think this is a comment on the validity (or invalidity) of the New Covenant, nor do I think that Ticket to Heaven is saying the Old Covenant should remain at the expense of the new. That is not the message.

I think they're simply re-establishing a bridge between current and olden times, and nudging us to look back at how queer love came to be separated from the Church instead (while remembering all the exhortations to love, and with the verses of First Corinthians 13:4-7 and John 13:34 from the beginning of Ep.4 reverberating in our heads).

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GOING BACK  And having told us of Ticket to Heaven leaning back into the past – Episode 4 then actually took us back there. 👀

If you look back at Episodes 1 to 4, it's possible to pick out certain scenes metaphorically referencing important Biblical milestones – but presented in reverse chronological order compared to where they are in the Bible, and typically with some details askew or reversed in their portrayal as well.

Here are some I've sussed out (there may be more; I'm skipping a lot):

We started Ep.1 with an evocation of the resurrection of Christ, when Barth started his life anew (a resurrection of sorts) at St. Magdalene's College. But Barth was painted as being anti-church (and indeed his namesake Saint Bartholomew's flaying also suggests Barth as having the nemesis of the Bible, the skin-shedding serpent, as his possible animal totem).

Then there was the cross and crucifixion (but we saw it falling down instead of going up, stopped only by Barth and Tanrak's helping hands).

There was imprisonment in the (dry) pool complex and subsequent interrogation in Father Arnon's office (calling to mind the trial of Christ before Pontius Pilate).

All of the water in Ep.3 standing in for a baptism of sorts (see this write-up linked here) calls to mind the baptism of Christ by St. John the Baptist (also Tanrak's patron saint) – but the words of God at Christ's baptism reported in Second Peter ("This is My Son, My Beloved, on whom My favor rests") are also echoed by Barth and Tanrak saying something quite the opposite: "I am not God's favorite son."

Then came the Christmas celebration (and that is a reference to the birth of Christ), but we aren't shown any of the actual festivities, only the preparations before and the clearing up after.

Kongdech's parents traveling from afar (and bearing gifts) at Christmastime call to mind the Magi (the Wise Men from the east) who came to bestow gold, frankincense and myrrh on the baby Jesus. Yes, they brought fruit, but it was Father Arnon (the actual Wise Man of St. Mag's, I suppose) who gave them perfumed products (the scented candles, also destined for the GMMTV merch shop) and rolled-up calendars (presumably standing in for bars of gold) in return.

I'm sure there are other references, but I'm going to stop here and say that I think the subtext is, on one level, taking us on a journey backward in time – and we go all the way to a beginning of sorts in Episode 4.

When Barth takes Tanrak on Phai's motorbike back to his childhood sanctuary full of pools and waterfalls, this was very much a return to their origins (Barth tells Tanrak how he used to go there all the time with his mom, while Tanrak lets on that it's in his home province as well, even though he'd never visited).

After their mock-wedding in Ep.3 (and their post-wedding nuptials as well) this escapade to Erawan Falls (also Ticket to Heaven's mandated Thai BL tourist break) reads like a honeymoon of sorts – and this time, they did get their wedding rings:

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 1.30 – Tanrak and Barth finally get their two donuts (standing in for wedding rings) that were denied them in Ep.3

And the scenes of our couple all alone, enjoying the delights of this primordial garden, blessed with unending greenery and clear waters, cannot help but call to mind Adam and Eve back once again in the Garden of Eden, back in a state of grace, before the time of Original Sin.

(top) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 16.39 – Tanrak and Barth sit amid a paradise of flowing waters and lush green; (bottom) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 17.32 – Tanrak and Barth splashing about in the pool

Remembering that water in Ep.4 largely symbolizes a washing away of sins and new beginnings (especially with Cherry's Songkran reference), I think this journey taken by our queer protagonists back into a paradise of cascading baptismal waters is TTH calling for a rethink of the way queer love is portrayed in the teachings of the Church.

The idea also of our queer couple's love undergoing a redemption of sorts was actually foreshadowed at Ep.4 [1‌/4] 7.12. There, the blameless lambs were also shown to have been redeemed – saved from the trash pile, and exchanged for Cherry's photo, freely given. (Anyone else seeing a parallel redemption of queer love echoed in Bad Buddy Ep.11, when PatPran's lives were also rejuvenated in the Zero Waste Village at the seaside? 😍)

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [1‌/4] 7.13 – Tanrak proposes exchanging the lambs with the photo, saying "Let's trade."

With the waters of baptism flowing all around, this call for a renewed start is echoed visually by the scenes of our Adam and Eve nakedly innocent and free from shame in an unspoilt Eden, plunging into pools of cleansing water, and highlighted with a kiss behind a baptismal cascade from a waterfall.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 18:10 – Barth and Tanrak kiss as they are baptized anew from above by a cascading waterfall

Barth's name is also given a cleansing makeover (spelt "Bath") on that tree by the water, that is standing in for the original Tree of Life – and we then see Tanrak's name inscribed alongside, bestowing on us a hopeful image of queer love restored to a place back within the Kingdom of Heaven.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 18.20 – Barth and Tanrak's names carved into The Tree, reclaiming their place in Paradise

Ticket to Heaven's call for this rethink is underscored (maybe a bit heavy-handedly, LOL) when Tempter Barth (he of the serpent totem) offers the apple to his Eve – but of course Tanrak declines.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 3.56 – Tanrak declines Barth's offering of the apple

And with this sidestepping of the Original Fall, Ticket to Heaven is asking us to re-examine the condemnation of queer love, employing a reverse re-telling of the Biblical narrative all the way back to a time before humankind's descent from grace into sin.

It's saying – love is love; if we retrace our steps far enough, there was a time without sin, when such distinctions between righteousness and evil were not necessary, when all was good. Adam and Eve's original nakedness was not sinful; shame did not have to exist.

(above) Ticket to Heaven Ep.4 [4/4] 18.14 – Bath and Tanrak's t-shirts dominated by red and blue lie discarded on the roots of a tree; in a time and place of no shame, earthly coverings are not necessary while earthly divisions and definitions mean nothing; and significantly Tanrak's rosary (that he almost never takes off, symbol of so much that stands between them) has been shed too

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It was only after the Fall that the world began slotting things into good and bad. And somehow, the act of loving another that didn't fit traditional boxes got lumped in the wrong box.

But if loving another is the greatest virtue (remembering First Corinthians 13:13 and John 13:34), surely no wrongdoing is being committed here, if we envision the state of grace before outside prejudices were imposed, in a time when such distinctions doubtless could not matter.

If it was so at the beginning, can we start afresh from the very beginning again?

Barth fears that if Tan leaves him he will be alone again. He yearns for the future they can have together.

For him God has taken so much from his life.

Tanrak fears that if he chooses Barth he will be alone. Not because Barth is going to leave but for the fact that he knows that he will have to leave behind what he knows. For Tan God has been his guide and without that guidance the sense of loneliness seeps in.

You gotta remember, Magdalene is literally all Tanrak knows since his parents died. It's his home. Father Arnon is basically his dad. It's his whole social circle and life plan, it's his AFTERLIFE PLAN. It's everything he was raised with in terms of the things he believes, fears and that matter to him. He has nobody, nowhere and nothing else, in this life or the next, without it. That is a powerful tie. And this life that is all he knows, this Church, it's telling him that he cannot have the person he loves, and keep all those things. He knew that, he did, it's why he did everything he did this episode. It's why he lied, why he hid, why he tried to kill it, burned every shred of it. And then wracked with fear, sadness and guilt, he turns to Father Arnon, who is both essentially his father, and also the literal representative of God, and says essentially 'if I love this boy, will you still love me?'. And Father Arnon says 'only if you agree to let him go.'

'Love the sinner, hate the sin' is one of the bedrocks of the Catholic Church I grew up in. Father Arnon's actions and counsel are exactly what I expected from a priest. To him, he is doing Tanrak a kindness. This is an act of love for him. You did wrong, but God will forgive you if you stop, repent, and don't do it again. But I do not need to explain to anybody reading this the damage this response would do, especially to a boy like Tanrak. This is why people leave the Church, leave faith altogether: it denies love in favour of obedience.

I'm inclined to have some sympathy for Kongdech's feelings here. Barth and Tanrak are carrying on essentially in front of his salad and he has to pretend to be deaf, dumb and blind. His best friend does not trust him. But there's so much in that. Tanrak expects judgement from him, he expects pressure to stop the thing he's doing. Because he knows Kongdech, his devout friend will consider it wrong. Because he can't tell Kongdech, his childhood friend, that he doesn't want to go to seminary with him anymore. And so while Kongdech tries to open space for Tanrak to confide in him, over and over, to have that conversation, for understandable reasons, Tanrak won't tell him. And honestly, it makes everything worse. This is the trap of the closet: the potential relief of not keeping the secret anymore has to be balanced against the potential dangers of others knowing. Yes Kongdech doesn't tell anyone but that doesn't mean he approves or supports, and what's to say he won't tell anyone just because he hasn't yet. So yes, I do feel for Kongdech, mourning this friendship that seems to have reached the end of the line unless something major changes. But while he may not be an enemy, I'm pretty sure he's not an ally either.

Meanwhile, Barth, who already feels alone, and abandoned, feels the Church taking Tanrak away from him too. All episode he is holding his breath, feeling relief when Tanrak won't commit to continuing on to seminary with Kongdech, pondering Master Phak's surprising omission of Tanrak from the list of boys he expects to continue, seeking validation that Tanrak WILL choose him when the time comes. And then they nearly get caught by Father Arnon (does get caught we discover, but Barth doesn't know that), and Tanrak freaks out and starts to spiral down. And all of a sudden, he's alone again. Tanrak won't speak to him, he won't sit with him, he won't LOOK at him. His fight with Tanrak is basically a plea: please don't leave me alone again. And his phone call home damn near broke me. Barth may have cut emotional ties with the Church, but the image of Mary still sent him to seek comfort in his mother's voice, in his memories of their good times together before it all went to shit.