#safe has mastered being passive aggressive and louis is like oil on flame

[snickerdoodlles]

Engineering’s flaws are also our favorite strengths in them

Pat is a people pleaser. He’s so caring and considerate to the people he loves and we love to see how he shows this love through his acts of service. However, this same tendency to please those he cares about can also lead to him to sacrificing things he wants and/or acting badly for others, such as his attitude during his initial introduction where he’s trying to be this alpha tough guy leader with a strong reputation (aka him trying to be the ‘alpha’ son his father wants him to be), or how he doesn’t stop his friends from picking on Wai at his job in ep2 because they’re having fun and he doesn’t want his bad mood to keep bringing them down.

Korn is aggressively supportive. He’s the ride-or-die friend, the one that will always be there for his friends through thick and thin. Even when he struggles under outside pressure, he will always choose to standby his friends in the end. He’s even a little defiant about it, which is really something Pat and Pran needed in ep9. But on the flip side, sometimes he’s so aggressively supportive, he gets caught up in it and he forgets to listen. We see this in ep1 when he decides Wai’s apology to Pat isn’t enough to settle the slight against Pat, or in ep2 where he tries to help Pat ask out his ‘girl from across the hall’ and he insists he’s helping Pat (despite Pat’s protests) as he catcalls and harasses Pran through his door.

Chang is an advocate. We love to see when he brings up a side to things his friends hadn’t previously considered, such as in ep2 where he calls out the casual sexism in Korn’s jokes and in ep9 where he points out how Mo cannot be neutral under the pressure of their seniors without hurting Pat. However, he’ll often compromise on his own stances to try to avoid conflict with his friends, as we see again in ep2 where he shows visible hesitation over harassing Wai at work, but then caves and overcompensates by filming the harassment; or in ep9 where he hesitates too long to bring up his support for Pat and then tries to insist he did because he’s still assessing the situation.

Mo is a backer. As he says in ep1, true friendship is always staying by your friends’ sides. His quiet and steady support of his friends is really sweet and very reliable, but he’ll also take it too literally. You can’t just always go along with or mindlessly enable your friends because sometimes they do stupid stuff that hurts others (see: ep2 where he’s the one that really eggs on Korn and escalates the harassment against Wai). It also makes him freeze when there’s a conflict between his friends and he’ll try to play to both friends in a situation where he can’t be neutral (ep9), versus bringing his own thoughts and opinions to the table.

#bad buddy #was thinking about this in the shower #accidentally shampooed twice i was thinking about it so much #idk how u meta gods do this so often. i standby my takes on chang and mo bc thats how ive always seen them but like #i was trying to think of the specific descriptors for chang and mo for over an HOUR and im not sure i nailed the right words still #ANYWAYS #i have a lot of similar thoughts about the architecture gang but its not that their faults are their strengths (quite the opposite actually) #but instead their faults bring them closer/stronger in good food times but bring out the worst in bad weather times #*WOULD bring out the worst in them had pran not broken the cycle #something something pran is the cold to wai's hot; safe is the passive to louis's active #usually pran tempers wai's aggressiveness and impulsiveness while wai encourages pran to be more open and try new things #safes passivity encourages more introspection and louis's active keeps them from stagnation #but those things are *not* a good combination when facing a problem #pran avoids things hes uncomfortable over until either he breaks or the thing goes away (and he is *incredibly* stubborn) #pran usually avoids confrontation PERIOD #usually he turns to lies or misdirection or literally anything other than confronting a problem head on with the truth #wai's response to anything he doesnt like is FIGHT ME and is so aggressively in its face about it nothing moves forward #safe has mastered being passive aggressive and louis is like oil on flame #but pran breaks that narrative cycle #he acknowledges wai's anger over being lied to without conceding anything. he reaches out but stands his ground #he doesnt apologize for loving pat nor for hiding it. he doesnt compromise himself to make wai more comfortable. #instead his previous tendency to ice something out is now how he can confront wai so calmly and not give him the fight hes itching for #and it forces wai into a cold stop and forces him to sit and think on those things #prans refusal to reciprocate tempers safe and louis as well and thats why theyre all able to come together in the end #still needing to talk about and address the hurt caused between them but able to stand together and support each other regardless #its so good #theyre less brittle now than where they were when it started and its PRAN that started that #we love to see it #im so proud of him #.........so anyways i just realized i made an engineering squad post and then cried exclusively about architecture in the tags whoops