Sylvia031

Just some news I picked up from the Korean fans of the show that I thought I'd share here:

According to the audition notice posted before the show was shot, Gray Shelter has two parts, part 1 consisting of 5 episodes and part 2 consisting of 4 or so episodes. They maybe didn't have enough budget to shoot the whole thing at once, or they wanted to see how the show would be received, but as far as I can tell they are going to shoot part 2 after part 1 has been released.

I don't know how well the show is doing abroad, but at least in Korea it has been well received and highly praised, so I'm quite hopeful that we will get part 2.

I'm with you there. In fact, I heard that the director was one of the junior directors for Coffee Prince (if you watched that drama, you will see how ULS sometimes has similar vibes). I also saw some Korean fans commenting that they felt like they were watching a drama from the 2000's.

Hmm... I don't know if you know this about Kdramas, but different Kdramas give off different "feels". The daily morning and evening dramas are usually filled with shocking and incredulous plots with twists and turns to keep the older audience (mostly Ajummas) riveted. The weekend dramas are more family-oriented, usually with a whole family as the main cast and ending with a wedding or such. The weekday (Mon-Tue, Wed-Thu. or Fri) dramas are more plot-driven, though a lot of them are romance dramas that focus on the budding love between the main couple (and the troubles they face and eventually overcome). And then there are cable dramas and dramas made for streaming platforms that don't have much romance but focus on the main storyline.

To me, it seems that most of the bls I've watched were more focused on the lovemaking parts of the main characters and had weak plots. I'm not trying to generalize, I know there are and have been some really good ones with great stories, but I felt that a large number of them put more emphasis on a provocative and rather unrealistic lovemaking process between a couple and their smutty scenes rather than telling a good story about two people falling in love.

That's what I meant when I said that ULS feels more like a drama than a bl. It follows an actual plotline that builds the romance between the main couple gradually, showing us how and why they fell in love and what problems they have and how they are going to resolve them and have a happy ending eventually. To me, it seems the plotline for it would have also worked well as a weekday drama (of course, in that case one of the leads would have to be a girl). And it also helps that they had a bigger budget and the drama doesn't have that raw and unfinished feel that some bls with a lower budget has. And them taking out all the kisses and smut from the source webtoon and making it more tame also makes it feel more like a drama (because I feel that bls have more explicit lovemaking scenes than regular dramas).

So, to sum it up, I wasn't talking about anything profound like politics and such, or trying to draw a line between bls and other dramas. I was just talking about the "feel" of it. It's just my personal opinion (and the reason why I think ULS won't have better kiss scenes than what they are giving us now).

In regard to the kiss scenes (or lack thereof) in this drama, I want to defend the actors about it. In an interview, Gongchan (who plays Wonyoung) said that he wasn't embarrassed or uncomfortable with the skinship scenes, and felt like he could "do more". Cha Seowon (Taejoon) is also a seasoned actor and very much invested in the drama (he said it is the drama he loves the most and will love the most in his life). Moreover, if you watch the behind the scenes footage of them (on the drama's official ytube channel), they are quite comfortable with physical closeness. In the video of them at the beach photoshoot, they seem really close as far as I can see. And all the actors really want to do Season 2, which I don't think they would if they were uncomfortable with shooting such scenes.

From what I have seen so far, I gather that it's the director and the scriptwriters who are keeping the touches and kisses strictly PG-12 (though it's more like PG-5 at this point). The director is a man who used to do regular dramas, as can be seen in how the drama is portrayed (it feels more like a k-drama than a bl, at least to me, a Korean viewer), and in the drama, all the kiss scenes in the original webtoon were substituted with hugs (which is why ep 7 is filled with them). Maybe they are trying to keep it PG-12 (actually, I saw the graph of how the episodes were rated, and ep 7 almost became PG-15, though I don't know how that came about, maybe it's because of that one kiss that's more a peck than a kiss?).

In short, I don't think the actors are to blame for such dry kiss scenes. Gongchan said there are three kiss scenes in the drama (the fact that one can count how many there are is telling in itself), and given how the directing and the scripts have been so far, I don't really expect much from them. I still like this drama a lot (yeah, I keep calling it a drama because it really doesn't feel like a bl even though both leads are men) because of the interesting storyline and great acting, especially from Cha Seowon (his acting in ep 8 literally gave me chills), and that's basically all I'm hoping to get from it.

I can't remember the episode number, but there was one scene when he was in college and he was with his two friends and having a "meeting" or blind date with three girls opposite them, that in Korea is like a three-on-three blind date where they meet in a group and pair up (or not) later after getting to know one another. Based on that, I assumed that he would have dated a girl if he dated at all.

Usually, one does not use gender-specific pronouns when speaking Korean. If I remember correctly, he said something like "걔", which means "that person" and not specifically a man or a woman. When I heard that sentence, I pretty much assumed he was referring to a girl (as we've seen him going on a blind date of sorts in college with girls), so the translation to "him" kind of threw me off. The best way to translate it would have been "them", not "him".

Bringing good news for international fans here: at the screening of the final episode held on 17th, there was a Q&A session with the director and actors, and the director said that there is a high possibililty of Season 2 being made because Strongberry is very happy with the success of the series!

Well, from what you say, I think we are perceiving the story differently.

From what I remember, Jungwoo (it's Jungwoo, btw, not Sunwoo) was upset about their having to leave or being completely obliterated, when he overhead them talking way back in episode 5 or so. But then he pretended not to have heard it, and kept it to himself until Uncle revealed it. Then they had the talk, where Choco flat refused to go, and Jungwoo said okay, even though he later told Milk he'd do everything he can to make Choco leave. I felt that he was holding it all in when he spoke calmly to Choco to persuade him to go, because after he left, Jungwoo went home and completely broke down. To me, it seemed that he was acting all calm and stuff, not because he wasn't upset or stressed, but because he wanted to show Choco that he'd be all right, even if he wasn't really.

And I think all the characters (except Choco, who's painfully honest about his feelings), were all hiding their true feelings. Milk was acting all calm and nonchalant in the last episode, though he must have been feeling something deeper inside because he found himself at the cafe without realizing it. Uncle also acted like it was no big deal, though he couldn't resist saying goodbye in his own way at the last. And Jungwoo was calm about Milk leaving because he'd probably come to terms with it and also because he knew that he would eventually have to see off Choco as well, and then he'd be alone and able to reveal his emotions when he was alone.

Well, that's my take on this show, and I'm sorry if you don't feel the same. We are all different, after all, and whether it's because I'm a Korean and therefore able to understand the story better or not, I didn't have a problem at all with the storytelling.

Hmm... Like I said, I think it's the translation that's the problem, because I was able to infer everything from the show itself (even if I had not watched the background story or anything, I would still have been able to figure out the story based on what the 10 episodes showed). Though I watched the show in Korean, I did see the English subtitles, and sometimes they weren't as clear as they could have been, which is a shame because this was a really good show in itself and there wouldn't have been so many people confused about the story if the translation had been better.

As a Korean, I wanted to clarify something for those who are confused about their leaving or staying behind, I think mainly because of the translation.

The word they use in the show for "disappearing" in Korean (somyeol) actually means total annihilation. In short, it means their souls will be completely annihilated. Their souls came back in the form and flesh of human beings (as the background story on their Youtube channel explains), but they only have a short time on earth before their souls need to go back. If they don't go back, not only their human bodies but their eternal souls will be completely erased from this world and the next.

So when Choco says he's not going back, he means that he's going to stay on earth until his soul is completely annihilated. That's why Milk is trying hard to persuade him to go, because their original plan was to come to earth, make Jungwoo happy, then return to heaven to wait for him until he died (hopefully after a long and happy life). What's worse is that Choco won't have much time on earth even if he does stay, because they said the annihilation will take place quite soon.

To put it simply, Choco is giving up his very existence just to stay for a little while with Jungwoo, because he thinks it's worth it. That's how much he loves Jungwoo.

None of us knows, because that information wasn't released... We are also curious. Hopefully someone will ask them about it at the Blueming movie screening on June 11 (there's supposed to be an hour of Q & A with the director and actors after the screening)...

Sorry, I only know the official OSTs that's been released on spotify and so forth... I tried looking for the other songs because I liked them a lot, too, but unless they release an album of all the songs, we'll perhaps never know...

Yes, one of the things I love most about this show is the acting: not overly done, quite natural and organic. Eunbin was better than Hyeokjoon, of course, but the latter wasn't bad, either (and his voice more than made up for any little awkwardness he might have showed). And it also felt like they were really committed to their characters.

Yes, in ep. 3, when Dawoon's sending Siwon pics of his socks, I noticed the exchange of messages above them and paused the video to read them. I also paused to read another exchange in a later episode, which was really cute, with them discussing what to have for lunch and stuff. I mentioned it because I saw someone saying that Blueming had too many chance encounters and coincidences, with them meeting at the shoot out of the blue in the first episode and getting paired up all the time.

As a Korean viewer who enjoyed the series very much (the best KBL I've watched, so far), I wanted to share some tidbits I learned about the show and the actors with other fans of the show who might not have come across them:

1. Kang Eunbin does theater, actually he's doing a play in Korea at present, that's why he's such a good actor even though he's pretty new. As for Jo Hyeokjoon, he studied vocal music (opera singing, baritone I think) in college, that's why he's so good at singing.

2. For those of you wondering how the two ended up meeting at Dawoon's shoot in ep. 1, this is how it came about (I actually paused to read the conversation they had on Cacaotalk before the meeting): Siwon contacted Dawoon, telling him that he's the new class president and he had information for new students who didn't attend the orientation, and offered to meet in person at a cafe in front of the school. Dawoon said okay, and so Siwon was on his way there when Dawoon called him and told him he was running late. Siwon had to go to the shoot, whose location Dawoon would have told him about, maybe even having to change buses or something. No wonder he looked so annoyed when he received the call.

3. As for why Siwon and Dawoon end up being paired up again and again, their surnames start with Ch and H, which are close to each other in the Korean alphabet. And there are almost no surnames that start with the letters between the two, so it's most likely that theirs are the last two names on the class roster. When you see how the teams are paired up, it's done by name order, so they cannot but end up together. Of course, the fact that they were in the same group even when the Prof. did a random grouping is just fate.

4. Siwon touching Dawoon's lips while they were kissing (the silhouette scene) was Eunbin's ad lib. So was the clumsy kiss by Siwon on the beach. The reason Dawoon pulled away was because they bumped teeth (Siwon was too eager), and that was Eunbin's idea.


If you have any questions that a Korean-speaking fan might be able to answer (of course, I don't know everything), feel free to ask.