Ano

this is the only drama that’s been able to capture my attention to any degree since then. glad to see you here too. :)

oh hi! you’re on the 4h2s page too, right?

very cool! thanks for that.

Just a comment on the non-Korean languages here: I’m not saying I have an ear for languages or anything, but they sound great speaking Japanese and English, right?

I can comment on the English at least and say that compared to other dramas, I think the English is great.

To my ear, the Japanese sounds even better.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I just wanted to come here and commend the language team for this drama. Or the casting department if they cast people who already know the languages. or both.

Or do they have dubbers? That definitely might be the case. If so… their syncing crew deserves the commendation.

Man episode 2 was brutal.

PI appreciation post… that guy single handedly kept Pi-O alive and out of prison, recorded one of the greatest confessions of love and respect and despair and innocence, and was the eleventh-hour relationship savior for JeaongPio! I don’t know know how many frequent flyer miles this guy has, but he flew to Korea to give Jeongyo a USB stick; that’s an expensive recording. No one knew the depths of Pi-o’s heart during those years more than Martin Vogel (the PI). And when he knew Pi-o needed his help, even though he didn’t ask for it, he dropped everything and showed up (and probably never told Pi-o about it).

Dude is instantly goated in my book!

No…he was barely holding himself together with the smallest amount of hope and guilt. That PI was keeping him alive. He’s a hero, really.

yes, that’s what I mean… he wouldn’t have let himself die until he found out who did this to JeongYo. His anger would have kept him alive until he exacted revenge. Dude was ready to kill that guy who actually kidnapped him, who cares that like five guns were pointed at him.

He wouldn’t… not until he found out who ordered the kidnapping. He only ever started looking over bridges and giving us heart palpitations when he realized who ordered the kidnapping, right? He was despondent, I know that, he wasn’t eating or drinking, but he still allowed himself to be helped at that moment. In the later scenes, he was suffering alone. Then Jeongyo said he didn’t want him to die, so what was next but to try and imprison himself, to sell his piano, etc..effectively a death.

Dude… the emotion in his delivery. And the “what have I done!” look in Jeongyo’s face when he hears that was like vindication for us.

The Untamed/10

Soap operas. I’m sorry. I don’t watch them. Do you mean like… too bright?

I actually thought the non-classical pieces were extremely restrained more than usual. In other KDramas the pop ballad is overplayed sometimes.

That’s really interesting. Then nocturne anchors both of them, becoming the hinge point in both (no… all three) of the arcs. 1. Nocturne is the accumulation of the feelings that JY has. 2. Nemesis is the climax of the feelings not of revenge but of fear and terror and heartbreak. 3. nemesis is played as nocturne and it’s played softly, like a question that gets answered.

oh man. nice reading all.

don’t get me started on the lack of hugging. UGH. that one scene still kills me.

Sounds fun! A lot of others already did a rewatch or two or three lol. And people are noticing some interesting things. A lot will have to do with their soulmate bond. But as I said: multitudes. The other day I had a conversation about Pi-O’s mother and grandpa, for instance.

this is so off topic, but did you watch SKAM? I’ve been itching for a rewatch.

On topic, I agree with your assessment here!

By loophole do you mean when Chinese queer media is filmed off the mainland?

Then please stay and have these discussions with us! They’ve been pushed down perhaps. So maybe it’s a perfect moment to bring them back. Unfortunately, I watched the series a little out of sync, so I missed a lot of the during-episode conversations (I was like always one/two weeks off). As someone else said here, a lot of people are still giddy at the outcome. For instance, I thought at least one of them would die saving the other one or something and I was preparing myself for it.
So when he gets a message from Jeongyo and he goes and actually finds him. Just thinking about it makes me emotional. We’re still functioning off that high. But we can recalibrate. We can have multiple convos at once. As the phrase goes, we contain multitudes. So start a convo and see where it goes. I’m 78.2352% sure you’ll get the types of chats you were looking for.

I understand where you’re coming from and your frustrations. I want to slightly push back against the irrelevancy of the (b)romance, because I do think it’s necessary to exactly what you’re talking about here, that these two people can barely function, but that their deep love and friendship (which may have had its own set of difficulties and misunderstandings when they were younger, but the love was always there to see it through) is actually the point here in how they continue despite and/or because of the traumas. Pi-O would have given up on Nemsis and said “Why are you doing this. This is abuse. You’re breaking my fingers. I’m going to report you.” But he was operating from a position of guilt and desperation that was colored by love and so he stayed quiet and suffered. I’m not saying this was the right move, but I’m saying only heightened emotions made him act that way. He wasn’t thinking logically. This is why I think Jeain is an important character… she acts as the foil here because she sees what JY is doing to Pi-O and says “Absolutely not!” And then Pi-O RETURNS. Meanwhile, her vision is not clouded by this strange mix of guilt and love. She knows Pi-o feels guilty, like he took JY’s life… he told her when he thought JY was dead. She can understand where he’s coming from. Except she can’t. As I said above, I’ve experienced narratives where the love element was definitely irrelevant. And perhaps this is not a straight up romance like Romeo and Juliet where if you take the love story out the story doesn’t even work. But a narrative doesn’t need to be straight up romance or not romance for the romantic elements (again these can be platonic) to actually be doing work. So to say that the love is completely irrlevant does a disservice to the emotional bond these two share and in our understand of how it both helped and hurt them to have that bond there in different situations and through different themes (like abuse or jealousy or family). Also… I’m super interested in the other discussions that you were expecting… those things are totally there and would be really cool to talk about. So start those discussions in another thread and let’s talk about them.

All right. Thank you for elaborating. So your point is not that this story isn’t about love, it’s that the romantic element is noncanonical and unnecessary to the understanding of the drama. But the people who are seeing it as canonical aren’t pulling that reading out of thin air. If you go through the comments, you’ll see people discussing KDrama or even Asian drama romance tropes, whether that drama is LGBTQ or not. Or talking about the writer’s inspiration (Heathcliff and Catherine or some composers who had a similar relationship—sorry I forgot their names). Some are even talking about psychology. Some are saying things like this: Make either Jeangyo or Pi-O a woman and then play the drama out in your head. Will you still think the same? You might, I’m not saying that. I believe platonic relationships can exist between different genders. But I am saying that people who are reading it differently than you are not making their reading up. They’re responding to actual canonical things in the drama, but they’re reading it differently from you, obviously. And I’m not saying that what you’re reading (that the romance is nonessential) isn’t possible via the constraints of the drama necessarily.

You’re saying that we need to see the story beyond the romance (whether it’s there or not) and understand the main point of it which can exist with or without the romance (that maybe the romance talk is a hindrance). And that all this romance talk is taking away from those discussions, maybe? Why talk about the romantic element when there is a discussion to be had, for instance, about failure or perseverance or familial expectations or being true to oneself or despair.

But also seeing romance in those themes doesn’t invalidate those readings. It might actually enhances those readings for some people. You even say that “these two come first for each other” (Even if in the future they marry other people). That’s more than friendship, bromance or romance. A bond as intense as that will make those themes read differently. Loyalty and betrayal hits different when it’s looked through a “these two come first for each other, come romance or high water” vs. “they’re just friends.”

I’ve read and watched stuff where I finished it and thought “the(b)romance/y stuff does nothing for the plot” but I think this one is different.

I just don’t want you to dismiss the interesting analysis people are making, interwoven through and with the romance, just because people are reading this drama as a romance.

Thank you for sharing your reading, though. I don’t think you’re as far apart from a lot of people here on how you think of these two dudes’ stories. Coming first for each other often has implications of soul-mate narratives (which includes both bromance and romance).

This is sad because I think you maybe have something interesting to say. Unfortunately, your answer is a total cop out (or as if engaging with us is pointless because we won’t listen, I dunno). You also have at least two people who are eager to hear what you think it’s about. However, saying it’s obvious and that the series should answer these questions without your specific interpretive involvement makes no sense since you said yourself that everyone is discussing the love in the series but that the series isn’t about love. Obviously, then, many people are completely reading it incorrectly according to your complaint. So then, what is the series about? How do you read it?

What are the majority of people missing to think that this is a story about love—and the love between these two people specifically—and how that love is twisted and changes shape based on expectations or the actions of others or by miscommunication and misunderstandings, yet how its strength still allows it to survive those challenges [Whether it’s romantic or platonic]. What do you make of that final scene when Pi-O travels halfway across the world because of a postcard?

That’s part of how I read it. Everyone’s actions, whether good or bad, was driven by some sort of love. Even JeongYo’s need for revenge was so strong in correspondence with his love. If he didn’t care about Pi-O that much, I hardly think he would have through up of such an elaborate scheme or even had a moral dilemma about releasing his recording of Pi-O confessing. Or threaten death on anyone else who touched Pi-O and messed up his revenge.

Now… how do you read it differently. Please elaborate.