AnotherSeason

krailert's capacity for love is the greatest. he's a harmonious individual who tried to bring love, duty, protection in balance. his inner life is rich. *sigh*son is just so beautiful too so it works well. great casting choice. he and euro absolutely lit up when the two characters were in sync with one another.

i love his character too. honestly, when he showed up on the tv and naran turned around, i thought he was a goner.

yes, a victim as she kills someon's lover so that she could have him to herself and takes pleasure in another person's death all the while doing this through someone else's hand. please, let's stop infantizing women -- who, often upheld the oppressive systems themselves in order to maintain or gain power.

Right. It also serves a bit of a critique on masculinity in the context of the narrative. chef's kiss.

Yeah, it's not acceptable but, like you said, I think this what he learned a father was and I wont villainize him for acting that way under those conditions. He had the ability to change and he did out of genuine love for his son.

Edit: I once heard someone say that a lot of men in history would have a change of heart on their deathbed after decades of evil *side eyeing thomas jefferson* and we end up revering them. But to see someone change and do the right thing not because they had a come to jesus moment or they had to come to a reckoning when death came calling (both selfish motives i think) but becuase they see the people around them and cared to help better their lives is praiseworthy to me. tanwa's father reminded me of this.

I'm now thinking back on the whole story and realize that we don't talk enough about the family dynamics around each of the main characters. It also makes me realize how genius the writers are for the layers of social life infused into the story's setting. You get different kinds of individuals, families, institutions, and the relationship between them that weave a tale of the personal and the political. Like how often do we get this complexity of story in any recent show in the 8 episode format. I currently can't name one.

In terms of Tawan's family. I think Tawan's true love was his mother. She cast a large shadow in every area of his life and it seems in his father's too. More importantly though, I think he stayed a perpetual child until he was able to learn to grieve. His father offering him tenderness that he lacked -- which would have been his mother's role to offer -- contributed to this. Nice touch. The father who controlled him physically and through manipulation, watched over him, shamed him, was violent with him, yet still offered words of praise, choosing to finally offer tenderness was him noticing that if he didn't his son would finally be gone just like his wife. When I look back on their trajectory, I realized that the father tried just about everything including what he thought was acceptable discipline because he loved his son.

well said.

Feel the same.

ah, i see. makes sense.

i didn't mind that it was a part of the story. i wasn't invested in her being a good or bad character. i didn't think of any of the characters that way. all characters had a part to play in how history unfolded around them influencin both the political and the personal and in that era women had more power in the personal sphere. also, as terrible as it is, not everyone gets their comeuppance especially when that powerful, so the fact that she weilded power in that way made sense even as i wasn't expecting such coldness from her. i felt sorry for krailert but not necessarily for the love story between him and naran and i loved that krailert asked trin to live life for the both of them. very in line with their spiritual beliefs in such restricting circumstances.

why? how is it hypothetical. that is what I understood from their last exchane.

Can I offer a perspective that they got their happy ending though not together? I think it was great that they knew how much the one loved the other and that one would have been chosen if the situation allowed. They loved each other at the level of the mind/spirit primarily, and though they were together physically for a short while, that bond is still there.
I personallly would be content if I knew someone somewhere in this world held that kind of love for me.
I was also glad that none of the women in the story were passive and that they showed a woman being just as manipulative as the men.

great. thx for sharing.

That's why I kept saying it makes no sense to feel sorry for the women being "cheated on" when we don't even know their motives or what they truly think about the dynamics of the relationship. We tend to infantilize women as if they have no agency.

Was it based on a true story. It felt so human and maybe that's why. I can't stand stories with villian hero dynamics so this was perfect.

Ooh. Please tag me too.

Y'all. This show stirred me up and touch so many quiet spaces in my heart. It was volatile and tender at the same time and so poetic. I dreaded watching the last episode the same way I dreaded starting the earlier ones, but every time without a doubt the team treated the story and, therefore, the audience with thoughtfulness and they never brought us past the edges.

This is a capable team that really know how to work with the emotional cycle of the audience -- taken through a story -- and the execution was with precision and care. They know how to take an audience through full catharsis at a level of expertise I've only seen and talked about with those who craft on the stage. In fact, the story felt more like stagecraft than film. Absolutely effing brilliant.

Well done Be On Cloud. Love the clever self insert in that song written by Krailert.

yeah, it ultimately is a fantasy and we all want our perfect ending.

wow. that father was excessively abusive. i found it disturbing when someone completely overides or stifles another's will. this is the worst kind of abuse imo.

this ended up being a bit long....

to think that zefang has lost something and the grandfather gained by stealing zefang's life has three issues.

1) xia cha didn't initially choose the body swap as we agree and when the opportunity to leave came, he took it. zefang and the others allowed for him to stay in the body. his own will was not a part of the outcome = no stealing. 2) this life as the ultimate/having primacy - the lens has to widen to the reincarnation cycle for all the characters 3) zefang gave his grandfather a second chance through the body swap (not reincarnation), which, in terms of good deeds is top tier (thus he has become a better person) and this positions him to have greater fortune in the next life. his grandfather living with double happiness could allow compassion for zefang's soul and potentially increase its fortune in his next life.

i think the multiple concepts in this show were too complex for the team to execute. there was too much going on for the resources, format, level of expertise and storytelling style. example, i never fully understood why the body swap occured and i thought that execution was clunky plus, zefang being able to handle the red string of fate. but in terms of reincarnation, i think the show's logic is sound enough -- takes familiarity with the conept to see the bigger picture. the ending may not be satisfying if you are rooting for zefang, but it ultimately isn't his story at the center of the narrative, it is xia cha's. i didn't even feel that hua yuan (ml) is a part of the story's center as typical in bl.