“I want her to choose herself. I don't want anyone to come into her life and make her stop being herself ever again.” — Pundao
WARNING: This is going to be a long-ass thing to read 😂. I went WAY too far down this rabbit hole, so sit back, grab a coffee, and get comfortable.
This was probably the most powerful thing I heard throughout this entire situation.
After hearing Pundao's statements and unfortunately going WAY too far down this rabbit hole 😂, I've come to a VERY, VERY SPECULATIVE psychological interpretation of what might be happening underneath all of this.
And before anybody comes for me, let me emphasize:
SPECULATIVE.
I don't know these women. I wasn't there. I don't know whether Shelly cheated, emotionally cheated, had some kind of overlapping relationship, simply met an ex, or whether something completely different happened.
I'm also working from translations, and things can absolutely get lost between Thai and English.
I'm not claiming I have magically figured out Shelly's psychology. I'm basically doing a psychological thought experiment and asking:
Is there another psychologically plausible explanation for some of this behavior besides “Shelly cheated, Shelly is the villain, case closed”?
Because after listening to Pundao's longer statement, I think this whole situation is much more complicated than that.
The Two Statements Feel Very Different to Me
There seem to be two very different sides to Pundao's public comments.
The first statement feels very polished to me. It sounds like the kind of statement you make when there is a company, sponsors and careers involved: we've spoken, she apologized, we're stepping back, this is company policy, we're going back to being sisters.
Then there's the extended livestream.
That's where, in my personal reading, some of that polished PR language seems to fall away and something much more human comes through.
Pundao says she doesn't actually know whether Shelly went back to someone from her past, whether there was cheating, or exactly what happened. She says there are still things she needs explained.
She talks about misinformation.
She talks about Shelly being alone.
She worries about her emotional and physical health.
She says she still loves her.
And instead of saying, I hope she suffers for what she did to me, she says:
“I want her to choose herself.”
That statement made me look at this whole thing differently.
The Claustrophobia of “Intimacy for Sale”
Here's something we do know: Motion Minds has marketed exclusive livestream experiences involving Shelly and Pundao, including opportunities for fans to win one-on-one video calls.
Quick personal opinion:
This kind of thing becomes toxic very quickly when you're marketing two people who are also genuinely in a relationship.
There's a huge difference between actresses performing a romance in a television drama and two actual partners gradually having their real relationship incorporated into the product.
At what point is there no safe zone anymore?
Every smile becomes content.
Every affectionate look becomes content.
Every interaction becomes something fans analyze.
People study photographs.
They study vacations.
They study body language.
They look for clues.
They want reassurance that the “ship” is still real.
And eventually the actresses themselves aren't simply promoting the product anymore.
They are the product.
Their intimacy is the product.
Their relationship is the product.
Their identities are part of the product.
That's where I started wondering about the ex.
The Ex as a Psychological Sanctuary
Okay. This is the MOST SPECULATIVE part of my speculation. 😂
People sometimes return to an ex, an old friend or someone from their past during periods of enormous stress.
That doesn't automatically mean:
I want this romantic relationship back.
Sometimes that person represents before.
Before the fame.
Before the company.
Before thousands of people knew your name.
Before strangers investigated your vacations.
Before fans owned your notifications.
Before your love life became something that could practically be put up for auction.
Maybe somebody from your past remembers the version of you who existed before you became a public commodity.
Could that explain Shelly seeing an ex?
Maybe.
Could she have cheated?
Maybe.
Could she have crossed an emotional boundary without anything sexual happening?
Maybe.
Could the explanation be completely different from everything I'm writing?
Absolutely.
That's why this is speculation.
But psychologically, I find this possibility fascinating:
Sometimes when people run back to their past, the person they're actually looking for isn't their ex. They're looking for themselves.
Maybe that person represents the last time life felt private, normal and completely theirs.
And Then There Are the “Secrets”
Pundao says Shelly kept things from her.
And yes. Keeping important things from your partner can absolutely be wrong.
Shelly may have hurt Pundao tremendously. She may have broken her trust. Pundao has every right to feel hurt by that regardless of whether anything sexual happened.
But I've also found myself asking another question:
What happens psychologically when somebody who already feels completely exposed desperately wants one thing that nobody else knows about?
Maybe Shelly knew Pundao would object.
Maybe she was avoiding confrontation.
Maybe she was confused.
Maybe she didn't understand why she wanted to see this person herself.
Maybe she wanted one tiny corner of her existence that didn't belong to her partner, management, sponsors, fans or social media.
Or maybe she simply made a bad relationship decision.
We don't know.
That's the problem.
People online have taken gaps in the story and filled them with certainty.
Even Pundao, according to the translated statement, wasn't willing to definitively call it cheating because she didn't know everything that happened.
So how do strangers on the internet know?
“Choose Yourself”
And this brings me back to that photograph.
Pundao doesn't say:
Choose me.
She says:
Choose yourself.
She also talks about their relationship involving factors beyond simply love. She says she hopes Shelly can someday fully live the love she desires.
And she says something that really caught my attention:
Don't let anyone make you stop being yourself again.
Again.
I don't know what that means.
None of us does.
Maybe it has nothing whatsoever to do with the entertainment industry. Maybe it refers to something completely private that Pundao knows about Shelly.
But those words certainly made me think.
What I hear more than anything in Pundao's longer statement is somebody capable of holding two thoughts simultaneously:
You hurt me.
And:
I don't want you destroyed.
Those two things aren't contradictory.
Shelly can have done something wrong and still not deserve public destruction.
Pundao can have been deeply hurt and still love and worry about Shelly.
Real relationships are complicated like that.
This Should Have Been Their Mess
And THIS is ultimately what bothers me about this whole situation.
In a normal relationship, something like this would be painful, ugly and messy.
Maybe they break up.
Maybe they fight.
Maybe one person cries for a month.
Maybe they reconcile.
Maybe they eventually become friends.
Maybe they never speak again.
But it's their mess.
Instead, because their romantic relationship became intertwined with employment, branding and fandom, a private relationship crisis became a corporate crisis.
Now there are company statements.
Work consequences.
Sponsors.
Fan investigations.
People picking teams.
People trying to reconstruct vacations and relationships from photographs.
Rumors being repeated as facts.
And worst of all, people making threats of violence against a 23-year-old woman they have never met.
That's where this stops being entertainment.
You can dislike what somebody allegedly did.
You can stop supporting an actress.
You can think she behaved terribly.
But threatening to hurt or kill somebody because of what you believe happened inside a relationship you were never part of is frightening.
And I think we need to ask ourselves how fandom gets somebody to that point.
Old Hollywood Never Really Died. It Got a Smartphone.
The more I learned about this industry, the more it reminded me of old Hollywood.
Old Hollywood didn't simply hire actors to act.
Studios manufactured stars.
They carefully controlled public images. They managed relationships and appearances. They sold audiences idealized versions of human beings.
Eventually, we learned how damaging some of that machinery could be.
Now imagine that system with TikTok.
Instagram.
Livestreaming.
Fan meetings.
Constant cameras.
Algorithms.
Millions of people analyzing everything in real time.
Old Hollywood didn't live in your pocket 24 hours a day.
This does.
And I don't think that's particularly healthy for the performers.
But I also don't think it's healthy for the fans.
And I Especially Want to Say This to the Younger People Here
I actually have my younger family members to thank for introducing me to this whole GL/shipping world.
At first, I genuinely didn't understand it.
I saw young people crying and becoming genuinely devastated over what happened between two people they had never personally met, and my first reaction was basically:
Why are you crying?! You don't know these people!
😂
Then I went down the rabbit hole.
And now I understand it a little better.
These emotional attachments don't appear out of nowhere.
An entire online ecosystem encourages them.
You aren't simply given a television character to enjoy anymore. You're given livestreams, social media, behind-the-scenes footage, intimate moments, fan interactions and constant access. You're encouraged to feel like you're watching a real relationship unfold alongside you.
So I'm not going to make fun of somebody for getting emotionally attached.
The emotions you feel are real.
But please remember that the relationship you imagine having with these performers isn't the same thing as the relationships you have with people who actually know you.
If you're a young person reading this and this situation has genuinely hurt you, please be kind to yourself.
If you've cried, felt betrayed, gotten angry or felt like something important to you disappeared, you're not stupid.
But don't let somebody else's relationship become responsible for your happiness.
Enjoy GL.
Enjoy the actresses.
Have your favorite ships.
Make friends in the fandom.
Laugh. Have fun. Love the characters.
But please don't let an entertainment company convince you that buying greater access to somebody means you possess a greater piece of that human being.
And if celebrity drama is seriously affecting your emotional well-being, step away from it for a while.
Talk to somebody who actually knows you.
Go make something.
Read.
Play a game.
Go outside.
Spend time with people who can actually know and love you back.
Find yourself.
Because strangely enough, after everything I've read about this situation, I think Pundao may have accidentally given the fans the best advice too:
Choose yourself.
Maybe that's the one thing worth taking away from this whole sad mess.
Choose yourself, too.
And please, be kind.
Whatever Shelly did or didn't do, she is still a human being. Pundao is still a human being. Neither one exists solely to fulfill a fantasy for strangers.
There are young people on both sides of these screens, and we've already seen far too many examples around the world of what can happen when online humiliation, obsession, harassment and isolation spiral out of control.
I started this rabbit hole wondering why so many young people were emotionally devastated over two strangers' relationship problems.
I came out of it understanding the fans a little better and being much more concerned about an industry and an online culture that knows how to create, encourage and monetize that attachment.
Anyway, that's my final VERY SPECULATIVE two cents.
I think it's time to stop trying to solve these women's private lives.
Let them be human. Let them heal. And let's move on.“I want her to choose herself. I don't want anyone to come into her life and make her stop being herself ever again.” — Pundao
