Fish Upon the Sky: Relationship Won't Save You

Recently, the season finale of GMMTV's newest BL series Fish Upon the Sky aired for fans around the world. With its mostly lighthearted tone and good-looking actors, it aimed to step into the shoes of last year's hit 2gether: The Series and succeeded in making countless fans around the world laugh, cry, cringe and have a good time week after week. It unfortunately also depicted the most toxic start into a relationship in any BL series I have seen so far.

I will be discussing pretty much the entire plot without going into much detail regarding its structure and unnecessary content. So in order to follow me in this essay, you likely need to have watched the show yourself.

Mork: The knight in shining armor

Mork is the prime reason for why I am writing this essay. His good looks and friendly demeanor make it appear like he is a really nice guy. The show wants to convince us that he is. But the sheer amount of toxic behaviors he exhibits is just baffling. You can fill an entire psychology textbook with it.

"No" means no

This one is the most pervasive throughout the series. When Mork begins to chase after Pi, the first response he receives is "leave me alone". There is no ambiguity in Pi's demand. He asks Mork to leave and Mork refuses. On several occasions Mork takes Pi's demand as reason to stand in front of his home for hours and call for him to come out. This kind of persistence is not cute or romantic; it is harassment and an effort to chip away at Pi's ability to resist.

"I know you better than you know yourself"

One major plot point in how Pi's love shifts from Muang Nan to Mork focuses on heart rate as a signifier of attraction. Mork takes Pi's heightened heart rate as evidence that Pi is attracted to him; then he lets Pi feel his own heartbeat to demonstrate that the feeling is reciprocal. When Pi confesses his feelings to Muang Nan, his response is to once again feel Pi's heartbeat and tell him that it is too slow for the love to be real.

Even if we ignore the obvious anatomical nonsense here, there is something very frustrating about these scenes. When Pi says who he does and doesn't love, it is contested like he is witness in a court of law. The way Mork and Muang Nan explain to Pi what his true feelings must be is condescending at best and abusive at worst. Pi has no autonomy over his own feelings and no agency in his own love story.

When we later learn that Mork and Muang Nan are actually on the same page in their intent to bring Mork and Pi together, it turns from rude to insidious. Which leads us right to the next point.

Conspiring for emotional manipulation

When Mork can't convince Pi to commit to a relationship with him, he begins a "relationship" with his friend Bam with the explicit intention to manipulate Pi into jealousy. He even does it twice, once to get together with Pi and then again when Pi is too shy to be openly together in public. The latter instance can be easily summarized as "I'm gonna make my friend tag along and annoy you until you do what I ask of you."

This behavior of pulling other people in and instructing them on how to manipulate Pi is where the benefit of the doubt ends. There is no reasonable way how a sane person can justify this scheming as morally right. Not to themselves, not to anybody else. It suggests that it is all just a game to Mork. Pi is his objective and everybody else is a means to reach it.

Turning the world against you

The shipping culture is big in the series. Mork is a popular guy around the school and no matter who he will get together with, there will be a fandom dedicated to shipping them and to collecting every single cute moment the two share together. It happens with Mork and Pi, but also with Mork and Bam, and the shipping scene descends into civil war when it is not clear to them whether "MorkPi" or "MorkBam" will prevail.

Obviously, doing this to real people who are not okay with it is extremely toxic if not criminal. In the beginning the series does a good job depicting the shipping scene as immoral. Pi finds himself under constant observation, going as far as people observing him in his house and suggesting to break in or stalk his family as well. Pi is not okay with that and repeatedly demands from the shippers (represented by two individuals who are supposed to be the snake's head in this scenario) that they close down the fan pages and leave him alone—not an unreasonable demand by any stretch. Pi also demands from Mork that he not be complicit in these acts of harassment. What is Mork's response? He tells Pi to calm down, to not take it so seriously, to just ignore it. He then proceeds to engage with the shippers, to fuel their imagination with vague statements about his "relationship" and doesn't make any attempt to respect Pi's desire for privacy. When they finally go public with their relationship, Mork even has Pi announce it in front of a crowd of shippers.

Mork goes to lengths to make the entire world his ally in his efforts to become Pi's boyfriend. He spends more time scheming and manipulating than he does engaging with Pi himself (for good reason because Pi rejects him repeatedly).

Stalking has many faces

One of the minor reveals throughout the show is that Mork is secretly Pi's online friend who has been chatting with him for a year. It is supposed to be romantic and leave the audience enchanted with the thought that they actually are long-time friends already. There is nothing wrong with being anonymous online friends. There is nothing wrong with becoming friends in real life after chatting for a year. What is wrong is for Mork to begin to chase after Pi, to harass and manipulate him, without revealing that he is his secret online friend. He essentially takes the space for two people in Pi's comfort zone and retains an opportunity to stay in touch when Pi is fed up with Mork's advances. At the same time, he can give Pi an "outside perspective" that will unambiguously favor Mork's position. It is a less known form of stalking behavior, but it is stalking nonetheless.

In the end the reveal doesn't cause any trouble whatsoever. Instead it is the penultimate hint to Pi to realize that he and Mork are meant for each other.

"Ignore your needs and focus on mine"

Mork never says this precise sentence, but when he says "Ignore the others and focus on me", it ends up meaning the same thing.

Pi is a nerdy, shy kid who doesn't have any friends and suffered through endless bullying in the past. When the series starts, that bullying has already toned down, but his severe anxiety, trust issues and loneliness stemming from those experiences are still very real. It is only natural that he'd be very cautious what to show to the public and that he'd be uncomfortable if things got out by accident. From the way his feelings are depicted, you can see that he needs some psychological help to overcome that barrier. Mork cannot just heal him with being his boyfriend.

So naturally, Mork heals him by becoming his boyfriend. It's a tough process and doesn't work immediately, but when Mork becomes Pi's boyfriend for the third time, Pi is finally able to ignore his feelings in Mork's favor. This is not cute and heart-warming. It is an instance of Pi's personality being erased through Mork's constant dismissals.

It doesn't help that on the multiple occasions that Pi (almost) ends their relationship over his insecurities, all Mork can muster up is the same stupid advice like a broken record. He doesn't learn or try to make a compromise, he never sees his own mistakes in the situation. All he needs to do to "fix it" (which means nothing more than pulling Pi back into the relationship) is to confess his love again. Almost like a cycle of abuse.

Conclusion: Mork is an abuser

If it wasn't for the sheer amount and scale, none of these individual issues (aside from the conspiracy with Bam perhaps) would make Mork an abuser, but in combination they point so overwhelmingly into a single direction that there is not much that can be done to rectify it.

You could make the same series appear like a psychological thriller about a stalker who slowly suffocates his victim in his web. You'd simply need to change the camera work, swap the music for something more uneasy and perhaps give a few scenes showing Mork's actions in more detail. No changes to the plot necessary.

Pi: The innocent child in need of rescue

We need to talk a little more in depth about just how poorly Pi's character arc is handled. On a surface level, it is a story about how you cannot force love with someone who is not right for you and that love will come to you when the time is right. That is a pretty basic story that can easily be done well. The series botched it completely.

Lack of agency

One question: When does Pi make an autonomous choice that does not get turned on its head? His plan to date Muang Nan leads nowhere because he is rejected. He rejects Mork repeatedly, but they become boyfriends in the end. He demands the shippers to stop, but they're friends in the end and the shipping likely continues. All his choices are overruled by someone and always in one person's favor: Mork's. Even the position he defends most vehemently—his social insecurities—is ultimately overruled instead of appropriately treated, just so he and Mork can be together.

A lesser example of this is the makeover Pi gets in the beginning. Why is it necessary to get rid of his glasses and braces and turn him from a nerdy kid into a generic handsome guy? The answer is obviously: because the fans like it. It is still annoying to see that dating always has to begin with a makeover, especially because Pi didn't look bad before and because the makeover was forced onto him by his brother's gang instead of being something he chose for himself.

All in all, the moral of the story is that Pi should just give up, aim for nothing by his own volition and just let life happen to him and everything will be good. That is not a good message to send to anyone and it is not a story that is fun to watch.

An unfortunate backstory

The backstory adds an additional layer of insult to the dynamic. It displayed how Pi was bullied at school and how his bullies made him do school tasks for them without his agreement. Mork approached Pi as his secret online friend to give him emotional support.

But how on earth can you then look at the way that Mork harasses Pi and think that that is somehow better or even romantic? Is Mork really Pi's friend or is he just another bully? Pi doesn't stop being a victim. He just becomes the victim of the "right" bully and all is good.

Pi is not an angel

It is important to mention that Pi has a lot of flaws himself. He stalks Muang Nan for a while. He is acting overly aggressive towards Mork at times (albeit never physically). He also does not go through a lot of self-improvement. However it is quite hard to condemn him for this because he is like a puppet trapped in a game beyond his control. If Pi held any power or caused any damage with his flaws, it would be a different story. As it stands, Mork's flaws so completely and utterly overshadow Pi's that mentioning Pi's at all already feels disproportionate.

The fact that neither Mork nor Pi go through much change beyond realizing that they love each other and becoming boyfriends, does additional harm because it takes all substance from what is supposed to be the main focus of the series.

Authorial favoritism

What is most irritating about the story is how much of a double standard exists in regards to the moral judgement of certain actions. In fact there is no judgement. Whether an action is good or bad, whether it is rewarded or punished, is ultimately not a matter of what that action is, but who performs it.

Pi chases Muang Nan but it is a fruitless endeavor because Muang Nan rejects him. Mork on the other hand chases Pi, is rejected and gets what he wants anyway.

When Pi tries to stage a conflict to bring Muang Nan and him together, it backfires horribly and Pi is ultimately punished and depicted as stupid for trying such a silly thing. Mork on the other hand can play mind games and conspire with others all day and it always turns out well for him. The one case where it looks like his plans do actually backfire (Bam publishes Pi's pictures out of envy to drive them apart), is directly stated to not be his fault and he wins Pi back within the same episode.

Mork is very protective of his little brother Meen, but at the same time does not notice all the things he does to Pi. Even when Mork "admits" to Pi's brother Duean how he mistreated Pi (the only time it ever happens), it somehow ends up being more about Duean's realization how he mistreated Meen himself and Mork's wrongdoing is shoved to the side.

Even in the last episode when Pi lies to Mork about spraining his ankle, the universe promptly punishes him by spraining his ankle for real. Even the most minor wrongdoings on Pi's behalf are punished whereas Mork keeps getting rewards for nothing.

Mork is perfect. He cannot do wrong. Pi may think that Mork is harassing him, but Mork is the one for him and he just does not know it yet. Pi simply needs to swallow his ego and completely submit to all of Mork's demands and their relationship will be perfect. This double standard that simply makes Mork out to be the superior person on a fundamental level is what ultimately breaks the dynamic from a story-telling perspective.

It seems that the author of the story envisioned the characters very differently to how they turned out to be. Pi was supposed to be the innocent, lost child in need of rescue. Mork was supposed to be his knight in shining armor, his salvation, there to show him the right way. This intent must have obscured the author's vision to all those toxic traits that sneaked into the story. At least it is what I want to believe because the alternative would be that the author thinks that all of that abuse is perfectly fine.

Duean and Meen: A superior love story

The second couple of the series that was apparently supposed to be more lighthearted and fun outshines the main story in every way. The story between Duean and Meen shows how toxicity in a relationship can be overcome and how it leads to a better understanding of everyone involved.

When Duean initially meets Meen he pretends to be a dentistry student like his brother Pi and to be in his first year because he is embarrassed to be a fifth year student failing at a class that pretty much everybody does on their first try in their first year. He ends up piling up more and more lies around this until it eventually falls apart and Meen ends their friendship because of it. Duean learns a lesson here that he can't lie to gain someone's sympathy. With that lesson learned, he rebuilds the friendship again.

A second time Duean hurts Meen when he tries to make him drink alcohol. It almost results in Meen ending their friendship again and Duean learns that he must respect Meen's boundaries to be his (boy)friend.

With those two lessons learned, Duean and Meen finally become boyfriends and it feels deserved. The viewer has an understanding of what the two have been through and is assured that the conflicts have been resolved and not just dismissed.

Admittedly, there is some concern regarding how it is only Duean who needs to improve, especially because Meen is the little brother of Mork. It can give the impression that being "perfect" is a genetic trait shared by the two. However the story is focused mostly on Duean's side and the issues were legitimately Duean's fault. Meen does not exhibit any significant toxic traits. He does however exhibit traits that can be interpreted as mildly autistic which is nice. In my headcanon Duean and Meen are an instance of neurodivergent love even if it is not confirmed.

Considering how well the side couple's development is executed, it is honestly baffling how poor the main couple turned out. It really shows that there must be more to it than just bad writing.

Why does it matter?

This is where we need to address the obvious counter arguments.

• It's just a TV series.
• It's not supposed to be realistic.
• Art should be allowed to be anything.

My reasoning is simple: No matter how much of an escapist, idealist fantasy it is, art is always a statement about reality. Art without reality is like music in a vacuum; it just cannot exist on its own. So my criticism focuses on what the artwork's statement is and whether I consider it right and worth spreading. This criticism is part of the art itself and is just as much my freedom of expression.

So what is the story's statement about our reality? Well, it is all of those things I mentioned before. Mork's abusive behavior and his alleged superiority are depicted as no obstacle to a budding relationship whatsoever. Mork harasses and abuses Pi on several occasions to become his boyfriend and it turns out well in the end, so the statement is that abuse is a perfectly fine way to a healthy relationship.

However we can clearly see that this is not true in general. The abusive behavior is depicted as fine when done by Mork, but is severely punished when done by Pi and Duean. Pi's punishment is to not get together with the man he desires. Duean narrowly avoids permanent punishment by learning to improve himself and gets back together with the man he was abusing. So abuse is only fine when the person doing it is "perfect" like Mork? It is actually quite difficult to translate the author's favoritism into a general statement because it is really just Mork who is allowed to do everything without long-standing consequences.

The statement that I will settle with now is the following: A relationship can start in such a toxic way and with such an unevenly balanced dynamic as between Pi and Mork and still turn out to be a long lasting happy relationship in the end. The abusive side will not need to realize any fault of their own or improve themselves in any meaningful way for this to happen. When it happens it is cute and romantic and not of concern at all. The only precondition to such a romance is that the abuser is "the one for you".

By reducing the statement from necessity to possibility, it is not weakened by the counter example that is the story between Duean and Meen, but it still exhibits all the toxic traits. Now we can appropriately analyse it.

Abuse is never okay

This is very important and cannot be overstated in any relationship advice. A partner who resorts to abuse in one situation will resort to it in another. We're led to believe that by the end of the series Mork and Pi live happily ever after, but considering how Mork used abuse and manipulation as a tool to get into the relationship, he will likely do it again if he fears it might fall apart.

There is honestly no way to save the relationship at that point. The only meaningful consequence for Mork would be for Pi to leave him forever. How else would he ever learn that abuse is not the answer?

Love will not fix you

An important aspect about Pi's story is that the bullying and the loneliness traumatized him and left him with deep seated self-esteem and trust issues. At such a severity, there is no way that he just gets to become a new person when he makes two or three positive experiences. In fact it is the relationship with Mork that triggers his anxiety several times and leads to more than one break-up between the two. Thinking that getting together with Mork will somehow fix him when it really just makes things worse is dangerous. Obviously, Mork believs it too and presents himself as the cure that Pi needs. And Pi falls for it for some reason. Seeing how by the end of the last episode it actually somehow seems to work is an insult to anybody who even remotely suffers from such anxieties as Pi does.

In a similar vein, Mork will not be fixed from being with Pi. Love does not make you a better person. Especially not if you got into the relationship by being a bad person. He will be abusive towards Pi again. That is how abuse works.

Ideally both Pi and Mork would find themselves first in therapy for their self-esteem and narcissism respectively, then they can go and find a boyfriend who is right for them. But they should not find each other unless we erase the entire plot of the series from history.

The wrong kind of realism

The relationship dynamic between Mork and Pi is unfortunately not unrealistic. In fact it is disturbingly close to how a dominant abuser and an insecure victim can get together in what at a surface level seems like a loving relationship, but is revealed to be the beginning cycle of abuse if you look a little closer. When you are insecure like Pi, you have a hard time judging whether or not you are treated with respect. When you are as used to abusive behavior as Mork, it becomes second nature and you may not even realize how disrespectful you are treating your loved ones. It is a dynamic setting them up for periods when they feel like they own the world only to end up hurting again and being stuck in the believe that this is just the way of love.

That is part of the issue. The series fails to make Mork and Pi a realistic loving couple, but it does an excellent job at depicting them as an abusive one. At the same time the creators and the audience agree that it is still very romantic and adorable. That's where my primary concern about the show's impoact comes in.

Is this what people consider love?

The target audience of the BL genre is straight teenage girls and young women. Young gay teens and men are a small, but not negligible fraction as well. So the takeaway is that most viewers of a BL series are young. Perhaps they never had any relationship in their entire life and are emotionally immature and malleable. 

This leads me to the question: How much influence does a fictional romance have on a teenager's perception of real life? The answer to this question is directly linked to how much I oppose the depiction of Pi's and Mork's relationship. When I go to the comments of any video of the series or of related posts, it is quite clear that Pi and Mork made the impression of a cute, happy couple to a lot of viewers. The notion of toxic elements is barely present. If teenagers view that relationship as cute and healthy and go on to transfer that image into reality, they may find themselves in the position of Pi, being harassed and abused and not realizing how bad that is, or in the position of Mork, harassing and abusing their partner in expectation of a happy and healthy relationship.

Admittedly Fish Upon the Sky is not the worst offender in this regard because the quite healthy and relatable relationship between Duean and Meen works as a counterweight to Mork's and Pi's extremely toxic one. However this issue is far greater than just this one BL series. "Enemies to lovers" is a trope so closely entangled with the entire genre that an analysis of it across all media would be a lifetime endeavor. Very often the toxic elements of the "enemies" stage are either dropped without a reasonable explanation or they are taken into the "lovers" stage where they somehow are a positive thing. What makes Fish Upon the Sky stand out is the scale of the abuse and the staggering power imbalance.

Nobody will be emotionally stunted by watching this series. Someone who watches hundreds like it over the course of several years may however get a twisted sense of romance especially when there is no real life experience that can balance it all out.

So what do I wish for? It's quite simple: I wish for diversity and realism in the way relationships are depicted and that positive traits actually improve the relationship while toxic ones threaten to destroy it. Making those dynamics realistic and a valuable life lesson is not simply an achievement of a good writer, but it also gives the audience a glimpse into another life that can help them grow.

How to fix it

While reading this essay, one might get the impression that I consider the entire show (or at least the part around the main couple) so utterly broken, that it cannot and should not be fixed. But that is not the case. The show is overall good with great characters and great entertainment value. It is really just the toxicity in the interaction between Mork and Pi that needs to be overhauled.

Certain aspects are actually really good. Pi's coming out—while pretty cliché—makes for a few very emotional and heartwarming moments that I gladly watched. The seeming contradiction between how open Pi was about his sexuality at school and with his brothers and how hard it still was for him to come out to his parents was a nice shift away from the self-loathing that being gay is often associated with, yet it still acknowledged the struggles that are most common for gay teens around the world (the fear of rejection and disappointment).

The shipping aspect of the story felt like a funny satire of what shipping can be like. The total disregard of privacy is an issue that is prevalent in fandoms in real life. It was therefore disappointing to see the issue being dropped without a proper resolution and the shippers being turned into friends. It felt like a copout because GMMTV didn't want to offend their own fans too much.

However this essay is about the relationship between Mork and Pi and that's what I will try to fix now. I see two general approaches.

Option A: The bad ending

The first way is to rewrite only the last episode and have Pi break up with Mork for good. Mork can try to explain to Pi that it was Bam, but Pi won't care because it made him realize that all the things that happened between them are simply not good for him. This also gives Mork a reason to reflect on himself. By letting Pi be the one to say goodbye for good, we fix so many of the problems at once:

• Pi regains his autonomy and agency by making the most significant choice of the entire series and sticking to it.
• Mork's behavior is not rewarded and he is given a reason for self-improvement.
• Duean and Meen are lifted from a cute side story to an actual contrast with the main story, as a demonstration of how toxicity in a relationship can be resolved and how it cannot.
• There is an actual lesson to learn for both the characters and the audience.

Obviously, this will never happen. You can't just have a BL series end with the main couple breaking up, right?

Option B: Rewrite everything

There is still a possibility to end it with them together and a lot of the toxicity removed. This one requires rewriting more than just the last episode, but can still be done while maintaining the majority of story beats in the series through a number of changes:

• Cut out Bam. Not necessarily the character, but the scheme that she is involved in. Mork's deliberate attempts at manipulating Pi have to go. This is indisputable.
• If Mork won't tell the shippers to stop, he should at least be less involved with them. Don't chat with them in public comment sections and don't invite them to your birthday party if you want Pi to feel comfortable there.
• Less stalking. Just stop it. It's not romantic to watch your crush spill his coffee then secretly clean the table while he is in the bathroom. Pi should have been furious after learning it was Mork.
• Allow Pi to be angry at Mork for a few minor issues like not disclosing his identity as his online friend or that entire heartbeat thing and generally how he interprets every single thing as a sign of attraction. Also have Mork feel sorry for it instead of dismissing Pi's anger as secret attraction.
• Make Mork more respectful of Pi's rejection. The rejection is due to Pi's infatuation with Muang Nan anyway and Mork already knows that that is going nowhere. It would be so easy to just wait a little bit until it resolves itself.
• Make Mork be more considerate about Pi's insecurity. "Just shake it off" doesn't cut it and is one of the prime reasons for conflict throughout the last few episodes. Mork could offer to accompany him to therapy or look for an actual compromise. Where does Pi feel comfortable and where not? What can be done to increase Pi's comfort zone? If Mork isn't able or willing to do such a basic thing, nobody forces him to be Pi's boyfriend.
• Put Pi and Mork on more even footing. Give Pi a say in what Mork does with him. Give Pi enough agency to reveal his own flaws, so he can get some actual character development.
• Take a thing or two from this list and make them into issues that Mork has to work through and improve upon instead of fixing them instantly. (Bam remains taboo)

Some of these changes (especially cutting out the Bam sections) leave a lot of room to fill with some character development that actually furthers the plot instead of annoying both characters and audience. It can easily be used to work on the other issues. Perhaps Pi and Mork could get some quality time together instead of constant abuse.

It won't happen

Obviously, the series is already done and they will not go back to change it. But even as an outlook into the future, so many of the things wrong with the show are just a result of the tropes that have become staples of its genre. Every interaction between a couple is expected to be full of passion and attraction to keep the audience screaming even when the tone and the setting of the scene don't fit at all. Toxicity has become the "spice" rather than the conflict and it really damages romance both as a genre and in real life.

I'm writing this in an effort to voice my opinion as a fan of the series and the genre. To announce to the world that romance can be endearing without being toxic and that toxicity is more off-putting than anything else. If it wasn't for the second couple, I would have stopped watching the show quite early on.

Maybe if they continue the series for another season, the writers will realize these flaws as well and make some changes to acknowledge those issues in the second season and to demonstrate how they can be actually resolved. It would be a retroactive improvement of the first season as well.

But I'm not as delusional as to think that these changes are likely to happen (soon). However there are some genuinely talented people at work in the BL industry and I'm confident that there is someone among them who manages to push for an improvement.

Until then, I will have an eye on it and hope for the best.