eighthsense

Unlikable Women, Beloved Male Monsters: Bloody Flower and Audience Bias.

It’s easier to mock a reflection than to sit with it. I’m offering you a lens, not a defense. In just two episodes, the FL has triggered strong reactions. It’s telling that a principled female prosecutor enforcing the law draws more personal hostility than any openly corrupt male prosecutor, because we’re often harsher on women for how they assert authority than on men for how they abuse it. Calling her a “poorly written character” is the laziest takeaway when the drama is clearly presenting a complex plot filled with morally layered, EQUALLY criticisable characters. Reducing that complexity to a single dismissive label is more annoying than people are claiming FL to be.

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CHARACTER VS. PORTRAYAL: WHERE BIAS BEGINS.
Before diving into the tropes, ask yourself if she is actually a poorly written character, or am I reacting to the way the camera, the music, and the script tell me to feel about her? Prosecutor Cha Yiyeon is essentially the "no nonsense" backbone of the show. She represents institutional integrity and rational justice in contrast to Woogyeom’s dangerous messianic logic and Hajoon’s emotionally compromised defense. She functions as the drama’s ethical anchor, cold when needed and relentlessly committed to truth over sentiment. She’s the type of prosecutor who doesn’t care about public opinion or sob stories, she looks at the forensics and the cold hard logic.

Now, scripts often frame a woman’s competence as "arrogance" and a man’s competence as "confidence." This drama consistently positions her as the one character who refuses to accept blurred moral lines. She is not meant to be “liked” first, she is meant to be RIGHT. While others are ruled by grief/ hope/ obsession, she survives by detaching. Emotional distance becomes a defense mechanism against manipulation. Her femininity is neither weaponised nor erased, it is simply irrelevant to her function. The drama lets her occupy power without explanation (as seen in various Male characters). This portrayal questions discomfort with women who refuse emotional labor. Early episodes deliberately position her as an obstacle, she “blocks cures”, she dismantles hope, she appears to stand in the way of a “dying child’s salvation”. On a thematic level, she symbolises the limit of what society is allowed to excuse and the boundary between science and barbarism.

In Judge Returns drama, Prosecutor Kim Jina relentlessly pursues Jang Taeshik who has wronged her and her father, yet she isn’t framed as annoying or cruel because we see a tragic backstory (narrative framing). In Bloody Flower, viewers are first aligned with a dying child, a desperate father, and the hope of a miracle. By the time Yiyeon enters, empathy has already been assigned, she feels like an intruder. She isn’t shown privately doubting or emotionally conflicted as the camera withholds her inner life until episode 5. People often mistake the absence of visible emotion for the absence of empathy. Her dialogue is procedural and corrective, while others speak in pain and longing. One sounds human, the other institutional and that’s framing, NOT a character failure.

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QUESTIONING THE AUDIENCE: WHEN “CRITIQUES” BECOME HATEFUL.
To the people calling FL “arrogant and annoying”, I genuinely want to ask, who in this drama isn’t? Woogyeom is arrogant. He carries himself with intellectual superiority and believes his moral reasoning is above everyone else’s. The defense attorney bends situations to his advantage, plays strategic games in court, and operates with clear personal motives. Chief Pyo and Chairman Chae are arrogant. Every major character in this drama is morally rigid in their own way. They all believe they’re right and operate from conviction. The difference is whose conviction the camera invites us to sympathise with. If arrogance is the standard, then it applies to all of them. The question is why hers is the one that triggers the strongest reaction? People will eat up the most overdone, cringe, damsel in distress female lead in a rom com without blinking but when a woman shows conviction and refuses to soften herself, she’s irritating? Woogyeom is ALLOWED to be complex. We’re given space to explore his psychology and entertain the possibility that there’s “more” to him but a prosecutor cannot be complex? She’s reduced to “annoying.” We’re willing to grant narrative grace to a man who killed 17 people, yet a “cold/rude” prosecutor who is passionate about enforcing the law is denied that same grace. FL has to be palatable, emotionally pleasing, and somehow redeem herself to be tolerated on screen? That double standard is appalling.

In Bad Prosecutor drama, ML broke law left and right while carrying a prosecutor badge, acted reckless, arrogant, and completely over the top and not once did people mass label him “annoying.” He was called bold, entertaining, savage. But suddenly a woman who is strict, composed, and legally within her role is “too much”? Her position is clear: murder is not justifiable especially in this case. We’ve been shown multiple times that her determination to prosecute this killer isn’t baseless or emotional chaos. Her logic stands and her stance is consistent. That suggests this isn’t just about her actions, it’s about how quickly women are judged for traits men have been allowed to embody for years. By episode 3, we get more context, her father visiting and her concern about rumors, her being dismissed by Chief Pyo with the classic “you’re being sensitive because you’re a woman.” She calls out unfair treatment and stands her ground. Women being labeled emotional or hysterical for asserting themselves is not new. So yes, she is firm. Yes, she can be sharp. But in a male dominated environment, do you really think she could survive professionally by softening herself to appease people who already dislike her? Is she rude? Sometimes but to whom and in what context? Being hard headed while prosecuting a killer doesn’t warrant the level of hostility she’s receiving.

What I find interesting is that people aren’t nearly as critical or moral policing a father prioritising personal benefit during a murder trial but they’re intensely critical of a prosecutor being professional and focused on the crime itself. When the presiding judge states, “What’s important in this case is the murder, not the treatment,” that line clarifies the legal core of the narrative. This is a murder trial. The central issue is accountability for 17 deaths. I’m not claiming she’s flawless or that she hasn’t made questionable choices. If we’re going to critique questionable decisions, shouldn’t that standard apply to everyone? Every major character in this drama has made morally grey or self serving choices. Yet she’s the only one being relentlessly put on trial by the audience. That imbalance is what doesn’t make sense to me. Criticism is fair but selective criticism isn’t. If we’re going to critique, let’s critique consistently.

Recognising when a story is guiding your sympathy is engaging with it critically instead of falling into the most convenient reaction. People rarely dissect or question their own feelings enough to police it, so they come to MDL to spill their unfiltered thoughts. Understandable but not justifiable. I can see where this stereotypical hate/annoyance/criticism is coming from but it is still not fair, excusable or justified.

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GENDERED EXPECTATIONS OF EMPATHY
Male prosecutors who act like FL are often praised as “cool headed” and “professional”. She is instead labeled as “heartless”, “crazy”, “inhumane”, “cold”. People subconsciously expect women to bend, sympathise, emotionally yield. This prosecutor refuses to perform that emotional labor. FL’s are vilified for the same grit, ambition, or "unpleasant" traits that make male anti heroes legendary. We see a character like Vincenzo as "badass" because his violence is coded as strategic brilliance. However, FL in Bloody Flower or Eve drama is labeled "heartless" or "bitchy," and her obsession is dismissed as being "hysterical" or "too much." The man is seen as having a mission but the woman is seen as having a personality defect. In male leads, ambition is equated with "leadership material". For female leads, this drive is often twisted into something sinister. Her desire for power is framed as being "power hungry" or "manipulative," suggesting that her influence is unearned or gained through deceit. This framing is evident in the earlier episodes, where other characters repeatedly question her motives, suggesting she’s taking the case merely to secure a promotion. While the man is praised for climbing the mountain, the woman is criticised for even wanting to stand on the peak. Hwang Simok in Stranger was emotionally restrained, procedural, evidence driven, unmoved by sympathy, and refused moral shortcuts. He was praised as principled and the ideal prosecutor and his lack of emotion framed as intellectual superiority. Yiyeon shows similar restraint, but hers is read as emotional deficiency. Park Jungje in Beyond Evil drama protected procedure, sacrificed likability, and focused on consequences. He was seen as strong leadership, a necessary evil. Yiyeon is written with the moral spine of classic male prosecutor leads, just without tragic backstories, emotional exposition, or cinematic glorification (yet). Men are allowed to be difficult and respected for it. Women are expected to be difficult and emotionally accommodating.
If her character were a man, would you be cheering for “him”? If the answer is yes, the problem isn't her character.

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WHY THE HATE IS WRONG AND WHAT HATING A CHARACTER LIKE HER ACTUALLY SIGNALS.
So far Yiyeon is the only constant moral line in this narrative. Disliking her for that is disliking the concept of justice when it’s inconvenient. While others focus on saving “one child”, she protects the future by preventing a world where human experimentation, coerced sacrifice, and “acceptable losses” become normalised. The discomfort she creates isn’t wrongdoing, it comes from her refusal to take emotional shortcuts. She isn’t there to heal, understand, or redeem any character, she’s there to stop a killer. She isn’t written to be adored, she’s written to hold the line when everyone else lets go.

People may have internalised expectations that women should mediate conflict and not enforce consequences, women should empathise first and judge later, women should soften justice with care. Stories train us to empathise with pain over principle, especially male pain framed as tragic and redeemable, so some people root for him because he offers emotional catharsis while she withholds it. When people are reacting the way they are in comment section, it signals that female authority is still emotionally conditional, women enforcing consequences are seen as “mean” while men doing the same are “decisive.” Discomfort is not misogyny, but unexamined discomfort can hide bias. If her presence irritates us more than his violence moves us, that says a lot.

This isn’t simply “people hating a female character.” It reflects how stories condition audiences to punish women for restraint. It echoes an old patriarchal myth that men create meaning through action, women preserve order through sacrifice. When a woman refuses to sacrifice especially emotionally, she is coded as unnatural.

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THE "CASUAL WATCHER" LENS & WHY ARE PEOPLE ROOTING FOR A SERIAL KILLER OVER A FEMALE PROSECUTOR
The casual viewer often watches for escapism and "comfort." There is a subconscious comfort in the "soft" FL the one who is obedient, soft voiced, and needs saving. She doesn't challenge the viewer's ego. When a woman is written as a "Strong FL," she often becomes a target for criticism the moment she stops being male centric. If her goals don't serve the ML’s arc, she is labeled "annoying" or "boring."

FL represents rules and audiences are conditioned to resent rules when they disrupt a man’s exceptional narrative. Woogyeom fits the fantasy that extraordinary people shouldn’t be bound by ordinary rules a trope we see in genius surgeons, rogue cops, visionary CEOs. Supporting a killer with a “cause” simplifies morality, bad acts justified by good outcomes while supporting a prosecutor requires holding tension…. suffering is real, and murder is still murder. That’s cognitively harder. Rooting for the killer can become a way to imagine being saved at any cost and the prosecutor threatens that comfort by reminding us the moral price always exists. One carries forbidden wishes and the other carries collective responsibility.

(Here I cannot go in depth describing these various complex characters from other dramas, so I’m just summarising them to show why portrayal matters.) In Eve drama, Lee Rael commits manipulation and psychological destruction, yet her revenge is aestheticised through stylised visuals and operatic framing, making beauty and trauma feel like justification. In Memorist drama, Dong Baek violates boundaries and makes unilateral decisions, but because his power is framed as a burden, with visible exhaustion and emotional transparency viewers forgive him, while similarly powerful characters without vulnerability cues are seen as monsters. Bad Prosecutor drama proves tone is moral permission, law breaking feels heroic when comedic, unacceptable when serious. And in Mouse drama, by controlling POV and intimacy, it makes viewers root for a serial killer until the framing shifts. The conclusion is that audiences follow narrative intimacy, not ethics. Whoever the story lets us feel alongside becomes forgivable and whoever is framed without emotional access becomes “unlikable,” even if they’re right.

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WOMEN IN FILM AND WHY MAKE THIS A GENDER WAR?
Across Kdramas and globally women are often “allowed” power only if it is softened. Even when female characters are professionals, socially powerful, or morally driven, the narrative inserts undercutting traits like childishness, clumsiness, emotional volatility, or helplessness to reduce their authority. Female power is still treated as something audiences must be eased into, not confronted with directly. This works as an “appeal insurance” mechanism, give her moments of weakness to emphasise femininity and increase likability. It reassures viewers she is not “too much,” creates opportunities for male characters to rescue or balance her, and preserves romantic hierarchy even if she outranks him professionally.

Historically, this evolved from the “Candy Girl” era (cheerful, enduring, waiting to be chosen) to the transitional working woman who still needed emotional taming, and now to the “conditional authority” woman (independent and skilled, but required to stumble, doubt herself, and remain emotionally accessible). This is progress, but not neutrality. Even today, male characters can be stoic, rigid, or abrasive without losing authority, while women’s competence must be contextualised and justified. As representation expands, revenge driven leads, middle aged protagonists, antiheroines backlash often increases. The issue isn’t that women are shown as strong…. it’s that their strength is still treated as something they must compensate for.

My frustration isn’t about one drama, it’s about pattern that I’m recognising. I’m noticing how easily audiences forgive violent men, how quickly women are stripped of nuance, and how “likability” becomes a tool to discipline female authority. Women are embraced when their authority looks like care, when they show emotional vulnerability, when they sacrifice visibly, or when they center male pain. If those cushions are present, she’s “strong but likable.” If not, tolerance drops fast. So when a woman speaks plainly, enforces rules, and refuses to emotionally compensate for her authority, she’s labeled cold, annoying, or unlikeable, not because she’s wrong, but because she isn’t performing warmth alongside power. Likability is treated as a moral requirement for women and a bonus trait for men. When she chooses principle over palatability, the narrative often allows the audience to reject her.

In many genre dramas, ML’s are the axis of meaning and women orbit around them. FL is accepted when she supports /motivates/ emotionally sustains a male arc. The moment she acts independently, especially against a man’s interests, she’s recoded as obstruction. This quietly teaches us whose perspective matters, whose anger is justified, and whose autonomy is negotiable. Pointing that out isn’t attacking men, it’s questioning why similar behaviors are judged differently depending on who displays them.

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“AND THAT’S MY OPINION!!!”
Difference in opinion is valid but when the reaction is intense, repetitive, or disproportionate to what she’s actually done on screen, it’s also valid to examine why.


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MY THOUGHTS ON THIS DRAMA
Bloody Flower stands out to me for its moral tension…a killer claiming salvation, a desperate defense, and a prosecutor representing accountability. The discomfort is intentional and that’s its strength. Watch it if you’re ready to have your morals challenged.

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Pro Bono vs. Lazy Critics: Guess Who Wins?

Pro Bono isn’t controversial, your privilege is. Some bubble dwellers voluntarily watched a legal drama (just 4 eps) and thought the biggest crime was queer representation or women’s autonomy. Spoiler: the only crime here is your complete lack of critical thinking. (You can find my criticism concerning this show at the end. This review only discusses first four episodes and the bad faith comments about them.)

“Too woke”
Okay, let’s unpack this embarrassing ‘hot take.’ You’re voluntarily watching a LAW drama, a genre literally about justice, society, and real life conflicts and your main critique is ‘too woke’? This show addresses teen pregnancy, anti abortion coercion, and queer rights (in first 4 eps). If that bothers you, maybe basic human rights just aren’t your thing….own it and move on.

“Pushing your agenda”
Calling women’s autonomy or queer existence an “agenda” is a rhetorical trick.
It reframes freedom as threat so that control looks like morality. Abortion as a personal vs. imposed choice. You completely ignore the distinction between personal belief and enforcing that belief on others. A religion can inform personal choices, but trying to force a fully grown woman/teen to carry a pregnancy against her will is coercion, not morality. Claiming this as “moral correctness” while decrying propaganda is contradictory.
If a belief cannot survive without being forced on others, then the belief, not the people living freely…. is the agenda. That’s the distinction.

“Propaganda”
Propaganda isn’t diversity, autonomy, or people living their truth, it’s the weaponization of belief to control others. Showing queer people on screen (for five minutes) or supporting women’s right to choose isn’t “pushing an agenda”; it’s acknowledging reality. The real agenda is hiding behind morality to take away agency: forcing a teen or sexual assault survivor to carry a pregnancy, dictating who people can love, or enforcing religious rules on everyone else while pretending it’s “for their own good.” It’s not about care or ethics; it’s about control. And the kicker? These people rarely give a damn about the outcomes, if the child is disabled, neglected, abused or struggling, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that their moral scoreboard looks clean. Freedom, choice, and empathy threaten them, so they call it an “agenda” to scare others into compliance. If your beliefs need chains to survive, that’s not morality, it’s coercion masquerading as virtue.

“This is Western crap, why bring it to Kdrama?”
Again, watching a LAW drama and complaining it’s “Western propaganda” is peak absurdity. This isn’t a romcom with rainbow sunshine; it’s a show about real societal issues which exist everywhere, not just in the U.S. Expecting a legal drama to ignore these realities is like complaining about rain during a storm. If discomfort equals propaganda, then reality itself is offensive, but maybe the problem isn’t the show, it’s the viewer.

Why did i take this drama as pro bono and defend it with my last two brain cells after scrolling through all the ignorant takes?
Because unlike some viewers, I actually understand what a law drama is, what human rights mean, and that empathy isn’t a ‘Western agenda.’ Yes, I got offended reading these comments deny basic human rights to fellow humans because it doesn’t align with their own religious beliefs. Religious beliefs should dictate how you lead your own life, not how you can control other’s life. I respect your religion and your beliefs. If you don’t want to abort your own baby, that is your choice and I will respect that. If you are not attracted to same sex, that is your orientation, I will respect that. Forcing it on others? Now thats a propaganda, not an opinion.

Media does not exist in a vacuum, it shapes what society sees as normal, moral, and acceptable. When topics addressed in this drama are ignored or softened, existing power structures are quietly validated. By portraying legal support for queer individuals and the real consequences of denying women choice over their own bodies, the show acknowledges lived realities that affect vulnerable people every day. This is not about promoting an ideology, but about refusing to romanticize control, questioning “clean” moral endings that overlook trauma, and reminding viewers that autonomy, consent, and dignity are essential to justice.


Addendum: Why I rated it high, what my actual critique is, and why that still doesn’t validate the comment section meltdown.

My initial high rating was intentional. The review space had already been flooded with low effort, ideologically driven ratings after just two/four episodes, people declaring the show “too woke” while admitting they barely watched it. The high rating was bait: to get people to actually read why this discourse matters.

That said, defending this drama from bad faith attacks does not mean I think it’s flawless or even particularly brave. In fact, my criticism starts precisely where the show pulls its punches. Despite gesturing toward queer rights, it never commits to a full queer centred legal case (yet). Representation remains implied, diluted, and safely peripheral present enough to signal progress, absent enough to avoid backlash. It is still a positive representation nonetheless. In a different perspective, this might be a stepping stone for upcoming law dramas. Similarly, the storyline involving a coerced teen pregnancy initially frames reproductive control as a legal and ethical violation, only to abandon that stance by episode four. The narrative retreats into a “neutral” resolution, having the disabled child adopted by an anti abortion hospital CEO, which conveniently avoids confronting the core issue: forcing a teenager to give birth against her will. This is narrative risk aversion. In other words, the show wants credit for raising hard questions without fully sitting in their consequences. That’s a valid critique. It reflects an industry tendency to appear progressive while ultimately reassuring conservative comfort zones. I also do not align with or endorse any alleged MAP symbolism or geopolitical propaganda some viewers have pointed out (till 4 eps).

Now here’s where the distinction matters: criticism is not the same as reactionary hate. Criticism interrogates execution, consistency, and ethical follow through. What I’m pushing back against in the comments is not thoughtful disagreement, it’s people collapsing at the mere presence of queer people or women exercising bodily autonomy and calling that collapse an “opinion.” Saying “the show avoids depth” or “it plays it too safe” is criticism. Saying “stop shoving this agenda down our throats” because marginalized people exist on screen is ideological panic.

When shows avoid fully confronting coercion, trauma, or queer legal realities, they don’t become “neutral”, they quietly reinforce existing power structures. My review defends the right of these issues to be addressed in this genre while holding the show accountable for how cautiously it ultimately does so. This review is not a blind praise. It is a refusal to let bad faith outrage masquerade as media critique. You’re allowed to dislike this drama. You’re allowed to critique its writing. What you’re not doing, no matter how loudly you insist is engaging in honest criticism when your problem is that other people’s rights make you uncomfortable.

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In Defense of Bob the Builder Toh: Naïve but Not Guilty.

Moral math is not mathing.
I’m Toh’s attorney and let’s get this out of the way first: did my client embarrass himself? Yes. Was loving Jimmy a humiliation ritual? Also yes. But does that make Toh a villain? Absolutely not. I understand the frustration with Toh’s character, however I do not understand the grace given to other characters while holding Toh at much higher standard of emotional restraint than others. I cannot believe people are more frustrated with Toh’s actions than with Jimmy for exploiting, manipulating and lying to everyone and their grandmother’s pet dog.
What’s exhausting about the discourse is how quickly people somersault into blaming the wronged party because it’s easier to dunk on a naïve character than to hold a charming liar accountable. Stupidity is not a moral crime but cheating, manipulating, lying is. I cannot comprehend how the blame shifts or lessens on the actual morally bankrupt playboy to the person getting deceived because they decided to fall blindly in love.


In defense of the gentle ones: Understanding Toh.
Flawed decisions in love do not erase a person’s right to empathy or justice. There’s a disturbing tendency in fandom spaces to treat characters who suffer visibly as if they somehow “earned” that suffering. The logic goes: you saw the red flags, you ignored them, therefore whatever happens next is on you. That mindset conveniently absolves the person who actually chose to lie, manipulate, and cheat. Toh’s real setback isn’t kindness, it’s hope. The belief that consistency will eventually be reciprocated if he’s patient enough. That belief doesn’t make him weak, it makes him human. That vulnerability is exactly what people seem most eager to punish. The tragedy is not that Toh loves deeply, it’s that he loves someone who uses that depth against him. By framing Toh’s humiliation as something he “deserved,” the narrative some people push ends up doing something far uglier…. it turns kindness into a liability and trust into a joke. It suggests that unless a character is perfectly rational, emotionally guarded, and self protective at all times, they forfeit the right to sympathy.
It irks me how Toh’s kindness gets reframed as a character flaw rather than what it actually is: a personality trait that other people exploit. Gentleness is not stupidity and emotional openness is not moral failure. Toh isn’t “wrong” because he’s soft, he’s wrong because he keeps extending grace to someone who repeatedly proves undeserving of it. That distinction matters. Being kind does not make him responsible for the harm inflicted on him, it only explains why he stays longer than he should. A lot of the hate Toh receives stems from a deeply ingrained discomfort with characters who don’t perform emotional hardness. People are far more forgiving of characters who are cold, detached, or even cruel, as long as they appear “self aware.” Meanwhile, a character who leads with empathy is expected to magically grow a backbone the moment things go south and if they don’t, they’re treated as complicit in their own mistreatment.
What I mean to say is people should be more furious with Jimmy for taking advantage of Toh when he is naive and kind rather than being angry at Toh for being vulnerable. Instead of asking why Jimmy is comfortable benefiting from Toh’s affection while offering none of the stability that affection requires, the conversation shifts to why Toh “should’ve known better.” Yes, he should have. But knowing better does not equal deserving worse. This idea that victims must behave perfectly to deserve compassion is toxic. Toh doesn’t stop being wronged just because he makes bad decisions. Pain doesn’t become invalid because someone “should’ve known better.” Expecting victims to be rational, detached, and emotionally disciplined at all times is an unrealistic standard we rarely apply in real life, yet people demand it mercilessly from fictional characters they find annoying. You can acknowledge Toh’s mistakes without minimising Jimmy’s wrongdoing. You can criticise Toh’s choices without rewriting the narrative to make him responsible for being deceived.
Reducing Toh to “stupid” or “pathetic” ignores the more uncomfortable truth: many people see parts of themselves in him.
And it’s easier to mock a reflection than to sit with it.


The Playboy Immunity Clause
There’s this bizarre expectation that Toh should have perfect emotional discipline simply because Jimmy has a reputation. As if knowing someone is a playboy automatically immunises you from developing feelings, or obligates you to shut your heart off on command. People don’t fall in love because it’s sensible. They fall in love because it feels safe, hopeful, or validating in the moment, even when it isn’t. You can ask all the logical questions: Why get involved when everyone warned you? Why give him another chance? Why ignore what’s right in front of you?
All valid and fair but logic does not govern the heart. Infatuation may be foolish but cheating is a choice and these two things are not, and will never be, morally equivalent.
Why is Toh expected to walk away perfectly, regulate his emotions flawlessly, make the “right” decision every time while Jimmy is tolerated to lie repeatedly, blur boundaries, cheat, string people along…because “he’s a playboy” or “that’s just who he is”?
Lowering expectations for Jimmy while raising them for Toh is so biased. Being openly morally questionable does not entitle someone to gentler judgment. If anything, the person with less power in the situation deserves more understanding, not less. Jimmy’s “playboy” label is treated like a get out of jail free card. Somehow, people shrug and say: “Well, that’s just who he is.” If you can give grace or justify jimmy’s actions, I don’t know how some people are being so dense with Toh’s actions. It’s not rocket science to understand why he is giving jimmy, a chance.

If anyone is thinking that “He didn’t make it official”, “Jimmy never said he loved him”, “There was no commitment.”, I need you to understand this clearly: a lack of labels does not equal a lack of responsibility. Jimmy may not have made things official with Toh, but he still created emotional dependency. He still encouraged intimacy, allowed attachment to grow, and continued to keep Toh close while knowing full well that Toh was emotionally invested. If you knowingly let someone fall for you, continue to blur boundaries, and then act shocked when they expect honesty or consistency, you are not “technically innocent.” You are being deliberately evasive. Jimmy benefits from ambiguity. Ambiguity gives him freedom without accountability. By refusing to define the relationship, Jimmy keeps his options open while keeping Toh emotionally tethered. Toh gets confusion, anxiety, and insecurity while Jimmy gets affection, loyalty, and access without having to offer the same in return. That imbalance matters. People act like harm only exists once a relationship is formally named, but emotional exploitation doesn’t wait for official status. Jimmy knew Toh’s feelings and expectations but he continued anyway. You don’t need to promise love to owe someone basic honesty. You don’t need a title to be accountable for the emotional mess you create.
Some people try to give Jimmy “credit” for refusing to sleep with his ex. Sure, one good decision but that does not erase the months of lies, manipulation, and emotional exploitation he’s inflicted on Toh. A single act of restraint does not reset the moral scoreboard. Jimmy’s occasional acts of decency are actually part of why he’s so effective at manipulation, they give Toh false hope and make us confuse sporadic kindness with overall goodness.


The Selective Accountability Olympics.
Toh is constantly put on trial for every bad decision he makes, while Jimmy is treated like a force of nature, unfortunate, inevitable, and therefore excusable. Toh is not blameless, he makes choices that are frustrating, self destructive, and avoidable. He gets involved with Jimmy despite repeated warnings, he ignores his brother’s concerns, he lies to his brother’s face to protect a relationship that isn’t even stable. These are valid criticisms, there is no argument there. But criticism is not the same as condemnation.
What’s happening instead is that Toh’s mistakes are being used to absolve Jimmy of responsibility, as if one person’s poor judgment automatically cancels out another person’s wrongdoing. That logic is deeply flawed. Toh’s emotional weakness and Jimmy’s intentional harm are not morally equivalent. Jimmy’s actions are deliberate: he lies, withholds truth, cheats, and manipulates situations to maintain access to multiple people without accountability. Accountability doesn’t mean everyone gets blamed equally. It means blame is assigned proportionally. How is everyone placing the heaviest burden on the person who is being wronged rather than the one doing the wrong. This is just scapegoating.


Infatuation vs Deliberate Harm
One thing this discourse keeps refusing to acknowledge is the fundamental difference between emotional irrationality and deliberate harm. Toh’s biggest “crime” is infatuation. Infatuation is not logical. It makes people override common sense, dismiss warnings, and cling to hope long after it stops being reasonable. That doesn’t make it admirable, but it makes it human. But they exist in an entirely different moral category than what Jimmy is doing.
Cheating is not a misunderstanding. Manipulation is not an accident. Stringing someone along while keeping multiple options open requires awareness, planning, and repeated choices. Jimmy knows Toh is emotionally invested. He knows Toh is vulnerable. And instead of creating distance or being honest, he continues to benefit from that attachment while offering nothing solid in return. What’s especially frustrating is how people collapse these two behaviors into the same level of wrongdoing, as if “making bad choices in love” and “actively deceiving someone” cancel each other out.


Burn this script.
Script doing mental gymnastics to downplay Jimmy’s action is diabolical. Framing Toh as easily exploitable, jealous, insecure when he is just responding to suspicious situations that Jimmy created is malicious. Not them trying to justify a pattern of infidelity and emotional harm while shaming the person who actually trusted and loved.
Jimmy’s ex saying “I should have been more patient, at least you didn’t physically harm me” is an insane moral calculus. The argument assumes cheating is somehow acceptable if it isn’t physically violent. Emotional harm is still harm. Being cheated on is betrayal, plain and simple. It implies that victims of manipulation are responsible for enduring bad behavior. If someone cheats, the onus isn’t on the partner to be patient, the responsibility is on the cheater.
I don’t have a problem with angst or messy plots. I do have a problem with badly done messy plots. There’s a difference between emotional chaos that feels earned and emotional chaos that feels like ragebait dressed up as “realism.” Messy plots already demand emotional labor but when the mess is poorly executed, it stops being compelling and starts feeling like intentional provocation. Burnout Syndrome is extremely messy. The characters are morally complicated, their decisions are questionable, and their relationships are tangled. But it works because the production, acting, and writing are doing the heavy lifting. The characters feel complex and their choices feel like extensions of who they are. The mess comes from psychology and circumstance, not because the script needs a shock factor every episode. That’s why the production, acting direction, film score matters so much when the plot itself is chaotic. In Love Alert, the characters often feel shallow, not because they couldn’t have depth, but because the script doesn’t bother to give them any. They behave the way they do because the plot demands it, not because their inner lives logically lead them there. You can’t just stitch together emotional beats and call it storytelling. Take Love Mechanics as another example. The plot was undeniably messy…..cheating, poor decisions, emotional selfishness but the execution carried it. The scenes flowed naturally, the emotional escalation made sense, and the criticism toward War’s character was earned. He made foolish, selfish choices while actively justifying cheating, and the narrative treated that seriously. The angst was purposeful. That’s the key difference is well executed angst feels heavy, not hollow. The frustrating part in Love Alert is that the concept on paper is genuinely intriguing. There is a good story buried in here somewhere. But the execution falls embarrassingly short. Scenes don’t flow into each other, emotional beats don’t land, and the overall viewing experience feels disjointed.
Now, about the acting. Yes, it’s a little awkward. And that awkwardness is amplified by how uncinematic the show looks. The framing is flat and the scenes don’t flow. Even decent performances would struggle in this kind of visual environment. I will always have grace for actors who are still improving. Acting is a skill. There is always room to grow. I’m not gonna go heavy on criticising actors. I have seen people disguising shallow insults as criticism. Dragging actors’ looks is not critique, it’s lazy, and it contributes nothing. The one undeniable saving grace? The face cards, they never decline but a strong visual cast can only carry a show so far. At the end of the day, no amount of pretty can compensate for weak direction, tonal whiplash, and characters written like emotional placeholders instead of people.


Cheating is not a love language.
Representation is not desensitisation, showing flawed characters, messy relationships, or complex love triangles is not inherently bad. Romanticism of cheating and people defending it proves how desensitised cheating has become. Media consistently romanticises cheating, excuses manipulators, and punishes the emotionally invested, it desensitises audiences to betrayal. When I say “romanticism”, I’m talking about people completely disregarding the victim’s feelings and finding cheating as hot. Evidently seen so in Love in the moonlight and Shine BL dramas. People were hating on female leads for reacting to being cheated on rather than two men cheating on their significant others. They found affairs hot and hated on everyone who didn’t. That is the desensitisation I’m referring to.
Cheating has become normalised, romanticised, and morally diluted. Emotional betrayal is treated as a minor inconvenience, a plot twist, or even a badge of passion. Cheating is cheating, whether it’s physical, emotional, or manipulative. Yet somehow, narratives repeatedly convince audiences that it’s acceptable if the cheater is charming, attractive, or already labeled a “playboy.” The more shocking part? People often empathise with the cheater’s struggle while blaming the victim for trusting, loving, or hoping for loyalty. The moral message becomes insidious, if you want a healthy relationship, you’re unreasonable and if you tolerate betrayal, you’re mature. Fans internalise this, shrugging at repeated betrayal and labeling victims as foolish for expecting basic honesty. This risks glorifying betrayal and normalising manipulation as a core component of romance. Cheating should never be romanticised. Emotional harm should never be minimised. And the moral responsibility of a manipulator should never be lessened because they’re “charming” or “complex.”

I have answered some questions you might be typing in a comment below since this review is so long.

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A new perspective on Chan Yeong’s Tennis Cinematic Universe.

“Y’all are so dramatic. Why is everyone complaining? I love the hetero couple even though it’s an unpopular opinion. I actually loved and enjoyed this drama. Ignore the haters and bl fanatics.”

(Translation-Don’t listen to all the criticism given by “bl fans”. Let’s ignore queer representation, who cares about that. Let’s focus on hetero couple like we have always.)

This is my love letter to people who said the above things.

So brave of you to stan the default straight couple in a drama where no one asked for them. And their story? revolutionary. Truly never been done before. This isn’t about disliking a couple. It’s about a storytelling failure. The hetero couple is not the enemy. The problem is that they were never the main characters. Here is an unpopular opinion. Queer baiting and straightwashing is wrong.

Criticism is not hating.
People really need to hear this: Criticizing a drama’s writing is not the same as hating a couple, hating the actors, or hating the show. Criticism means you care enough to point out what’s wrong. And what’s wrong here isn’t a matter of “taste.” It’s not “people just don’t like the side couple.” It’s not “you’re overreacting.”

Viewers aren’t angry because people like the couple.
They’re angry because: their storyline overshadows Heesu completely, the emotional core of the show is ignored, and we lose the unique perspective we were promised.

If you go to a restaurant and order ramen, and they bring you pasta with a tiny spoonful of ramen on the side, you’re not “complaining.” You’re asking for the dish you paid for.

This drama had the potential to explore: unrequited love, fear of confession, queer longing, friendship vs. romantic tension, the pain of loving someone for a decade in silence. Instead of diving into that, the show sidelines him for a straight romance we’ve seen a thousand times.
This isn’t representation.
It’s a bait-and-switch.

It’s okay to enjoy the hetero couple, but also important to acknowledge the storytelling flaws. The issue is pretending that others are “complaining” just because they expected the actual main character to matter. This drama didn’t fail because of the side couple. It failed because the writers abandoned their own protagonist and when i say “fail” Im not talking about viewership. It failed as an adaptation and it failed to do any justice to the actual story. The show betrays its own synopsis.



Do you want everyone to just sit quietly and enjoy queer erasure?
Do you want viewers to pretend the protagonist doesn’t matter? To act like it’s fine for a queer-coded main character to be shoved aside in his own story, while a straight couple absorbs 70% of the screen time? Because that’s what you’re asking when you say: “Stop complaining.”, ”I love the straight couple!”,, “Others are just being dramatic.”

That is not “preference.”
That is not “unpopular opinion.”
That is erasure: narrative, emotional, and representational.


Perspective for those who “love the hetero couple”
Liking them isn’t wrong.
But loving them shouldn’t blind us to the fact that:
* the main character’s story was never allowed to grow
* his emotional world was overshadowed by arcs that weren’t even advertised
* the drama disguised itself as one thing and delivered another
* representation was teased but not honoured
It’s misdirection, imbalance, and lost potential. Viewers aren’t “complaining.”
They’re mourning the story that could have been, the story that was supposed to belong to Heesu.
What if you were the side character in your own story ? Now this is being done just because you are queer. If you were straight this wouldn’t have happened.


What If This Happened in Straight Dramas?
Imagine this
A straight drama is advertised as a story about a boy and girl who’ve grown up together, childhood friends on the brink of something more.
The synopsis tells us:
* He’s secretly loved her for years
* She’s his world
* Their friendship is fragile and precious
* And the drama will explore that emotional tension
So you press play, expecting their story.
Now picture what actually happens:

🎬 Episode 1 to 10…
Instead of seeing the childhood-friends-to-lovers arc we were promised, the show suddenly spends:
* 30 minutes of every episode following a random side couple
* Their family trauma
* Their love life
* Their arguments
* Their reconciliation
* Their career struggles
Meanwhile, the main girl, the reason you started watching gets:
* 3 scenes per episode
* no emotional development
* no progress
* no payoff
* no real story
You waited to see the tension between the main couple, right?
The longing?
The slow-burn?
The emotional explosion we were promised in the synopsis?
But the camera keeps running back to the side couple like they paid for the show.
Would viewers stay quiet?
Would they say, “Stop complaining! Let the side couple shine!”? Of course not…..

Why? Because narrative betrayal feels the same, no matter the genre.
The issue isn’t about sexuality.
It’s about storytelling integrity.
People would riot if:
* The Heirs sidelined Kim Tan and Eun Sang to tell a teacher’s love story.
* A Business Proposal replaced the main couple with the second lead’s cousin and their personal trauma.
* Kimi ni Todoke spent 8 episodes on the girl sitting behind Sawako.
Everyone would ask the same thing viewers of Heesu in Class 2 are asking now:
Why are the main characters being treated like background furniture?
Why is the advertised story being ignored?
Why are we watching someone else’s drama?


Criticism is how we demand better.
Better storytelling.
Better focus.
Better respect for the protagonist.
Better representation.
Criticism is how we say: “This character matters. His story matters. We want the show we were promised.”
It’s not hate. It’s accountability.
And if people feel more offended by criticism than by the actual erasure happening on-screen, then maybe they need to sit with why that makes them so uncomfortable.

Why adapt a compelling queer coming-of-age story when you can force-feed the audience a straight romance and sports melodrama no one asked for?

If you wanna ignore all this and praise the revolutionary drama that truly has never been done before, go ahead.

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The Real Villain of Honour Isn’t Violence. It’s Cheating.

Welcome to MDL comment section where infidelity outranks abuse in the hierarchy of outrage. Where people are united to criticise hypocrisy of women in this drama while silently accepting the existence and actions of pedoflies. I am not here to discuss whether cheating and sexual violence belong in the same moral category. I’m pointing out the public reaction to them. It is telling that the priority of some people lie in the judgment of a "messy" cheating woman over the systemic reality of assault. Honour drama matters because it refuses to give us "perfect" victims and some people seem more disturbed by that imperfection than by the violence itself.

—-
SELECTIVE MORAL OUTRAGE VS. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE.
My question is does a character’s moral failure invalidate a story’s thematic argument?
Reducing a drama about trauma, coercion, sexual violence against women and minors, pedophilia, and female solidarity to “she cheated, therefore the show is trash” is intellectually lazy and critically shallow. Cheating is being treated as the central moral failure of the drama and SA is being sidelined in discussion. Honour isn’t a tale about infidelity, it’s a story about how past abuse shapes lives, how women navigate power and vulnerability, and how solidarity and resilience become survival tools.

To focus solely on Hyeonjin’s affair is to ignore the narrative’s core. The hypocrisy is the point. These women are legal warriors for justice who are simultaneously messy, dishonest, and compromised. This isn’t a narrative flaw… it’s realism. Trauma doesn’t produce moral saints, it produces survivors navigating shame and survival. That does not diminish the responsibility for their actions. The cheating storyline is ethically messy. Hyeonjin is not written as triumphant or empowered in her betrayal, she is destabilised. The encounter itself is narratively uncomfortable: she says no, attempts to leave, and is kissed again before ultimately giving in. That sequence introduces ambiguity around agency, coercion, emotional vulnerability, and unresolved attachment.

They are not romanticising cheating. It reads as a moment of weakness entangled with power dynamics and unresolved past trauma. The subsequent lies, the hidden earring, the possibility of pregnancy… these are not celebratory plot devices. They are destabilisers. The drama does not present adultery as liberation. They are not offering her a "get out of jail free" card, she is clearly driving toward a cliff of social and personal consequences. Presence of moral failure among the protagonists complicates the message, it does not ERASE it. The story depicts a survivor who is a brilliant advocate for others but a fragmented, self sabotaging disaster in her private life. To demand she be a "moral saint" to be a worthy protagonist is to demand a fiction that doesn't exist in the real world of trauma. We can hold her accountable for the betrayal of her marriage while simultaneously recognising that her personal failures do not justify or diminish the systemic violence she fights against.

Criticise Hyeonjin. Dislike her. Hold her accountable for the betrayal of her marriage, the narrative certainly does. But to let her infidelity become the only takeaway from a story about the industrial scale violation of women and minors is fundamentally dishonest. In dramas like Penthouse/ Love in the Moonlight/ Shine/ Eve, the infidelity outrage is the point of the exercise. For this drama to be discredited, it would need to trivialise sexual violence, glamorise coercion, or selectively condemn certain moral failures while excusing others without consequence. The cheating arc generates tension, fallout, and instability rather than reward. It complicates the characters’ credibility but does not erase the seriousness of the issues they confront in court.

We should be capable of holding a character’s personal failure in one hand and the world’s systemic cruelty in the other without dropping the latter because the former makes us uncomfortable.

—-
PERFECT VICTIM
Focusing on SA victims in this drama, I want to make one thing clear: abuse is defined by the actions of the abuser, not the personality of the abused. Must a victim be perfect to deserve sympathy? Does a woman’s imperfection erase the harm done to her? If she isn’t universally likable, are her bruises, fear, and trauma any less real?

Societies often measure women against an “perfect victim” standard: she must be passive, gentle, sexually restrained but not prudish, emotional but not hysterical, composed but not cold; she must have no prior mistakes, no anger, no contradictions, no complex history. People subconsciously look for reasons to distance themselves from discomfort by asking, “What did she do?” rather than “What was done to her?” suggesting if the woman harmed is even worthy of belief. Sympathy is granted most easily to those who fit a narrow image of innocence. The myth of the perfect victim allows people to believe that violence only happens to the exceptionally innocent, and therefore can be avoided by behaving correctly.

People find it hard to believe victims because believing them is uncomfortable. It forces people to accept that harm can come from ordinary people and that it could happen to anyone, including themselves. Doubting the victim feels safer and easier, and blaming them gives people a sense of control, as if bad things only happen when someone “does something wrong.” Many also misunderstand how trauma works, mistaking confusion, fear, or emotional reactions for lying /exaggeration /weakness. Public cases involving women such as Tara Reade, Amber Heard, Angelina Jolie, Christine Blasey Ford, Chanel Miller, and Anita Hill reveal how credibility is filtered through race, sexuality, likability, timing, demeanor, and presumed motive. Credibility cannot be based on how likeable someone is. Imperfection becomes evidence, anger becomes instability, sexual history becomes motive, delay becomes fabrication, survival strategies become aggression. The demand for “purity” is less about truth and more about preserving social comfort.

“If the victim is flawed, the world feels orderly. If she is difficult, perhaps he isn’t so bad.”

A woman can be brash, ambitious, selfish, queer, contradictory, difficult and still be abused. Suggesting otherwise shifts responsibility from the abuser to the abused, inflicting a secondary violence by silencing survivors who fear disbelief and internalise blame because they don’t fit the archetype they were taught. A victim deserves sympathy not because she is pure, but because she is human and her flaws, whatever they are, do not retroactively justify someone abusing her.

Showing empathy to victims doesn’t mean ignoring fairness, it means remembering that real people are carrying real trauma. We should be more outraged by acts of violence than by the imperfections of those who survive them. Sexual violence is a choice made by the perpetrator, not a mistake or weakness of the survivor. Instead of questioning what the victim did or didn’t do, we need to ask why someone thought it was okay to violate another person. It’s time to assign the blame where it belongs… on the perpetrators and not the survivors. Holding perpetrators accountable, rather than scrutinising survivors, is how we show true justice and compassion.

—-
MAGNITUDE OF SA
“He was my friend/ relative/ father/ brother/ colleague.” ONE IN THREE women can say this. Violence at that scale is not an anomaly, not a “few bad men”, not a misfortune. It’s a pattern and patterns are built and tolerated by societies.

While you are reading this, 8 more crimes against women will be recorded in my country. Every 16 minutes, a man in my country makes a decision to violate a woman. 86 new victims every single day. We panic over rare dangers, redesign airports after one incident. If 86 bridges collapsed in one day, we would call it a national emergency. But 86 women being assaulted? It has become a statistic and routine news cycle. Just a number we learn to live with. For every case you hear about, there are many you don’t. Silence is not absence. People think of SA as isolated incidents, but for many women it functions like an atmosphere, shaping daily calculations about what to wear, how to walk, who to call, and when to share their location. It is not just something that happens occasionally; it quietly structures ordinary behavior, from gripping keys between fingers to texting, “I got home.”

—-
MEN’S BRIGHT FUTURE
Are women’s lives and suffering expendable when weighed against a man’s “bright future”?
As someone who listens to true crime all the time, it’s impossible not to notice how often phrases like “boys will be boys”or “but he has a bright future” are used to excuse harm. They frame cruelty as immaturity, entitlement as potential, and accountability as something unfair or excessive. By doing this, people protect the idea of who the man could be rather than what he actually did.

What’s disturbing is that these excuses almost always come at the victim’s expense. No one asks about their bright future, their lost sense of safety, or the life altered by someone else’s actions. Instead, the narrative centers on preserving male promise and comfort. Society is often quicker to mourn a perpetrator’s consequences than to acknowledge a victim’s suffering. Her losses are emotionalised and minimised and his losses are treated as tragic and unjust.
This is because systems of power have been built to protect men’s futures over women’s safety. When accountability is seen as cruelty and harm is seen as collateral damage, it decides whose life is worth defending. Until harm to women is treated as more serious than discomfort to men, the message remains the same: women are expected to pay the price so men can keep theirs intact.

Men especially those with status, authority, talent, or social connections are seen as more valuable to protect than to hold accountable. Admitting harm would mean questioning respected institutions, friendships, families, or one’s own judgment, so people minimise, excuse, or deny the behavior instead. There’s also a long standing culture that normalised male aggression and entitlement while doubting or silencing those who speak up, especially when it would “ruin a good man’s life.”

—-
GLAMORISATION AND DESENSITISATION OF SA IN FILM.
There is long tradition in television where sexual violence appears less as a lived trauma and more as narrative currency. Violation often functions as ignition and what lingers is not the wound, but the spectacle that follows it. When violation repeatedly serves as character development, as motivation, as spectacle, people expect it as part of storytelling grammar. The trope embeds itself quietly, shaping cultural assumptions about whose pain advances the plot and whose pain is secondary to it.

Experimental evidence suggests that repeated exposure to sexually violent films can dull emotional responses, reduce empathy for victims, and lessen the perceived seriousness of abuse. Sexually degrading portrayals may also shape beliefs about sexual assault, reinforce objectification, and foster harmful attitudes toward women. Research indicates that sexually aggressive media can affect not only men’s attitudes but also women’s psychological responses and self perception. Media can distort understandings of consent and responsibility y normalising gender stereotypes, blaming victims, or presenting male aggression without critique.

I also think romanticisation of SA plays a huge role in desensitisation. 365 days, Ffifty shades of grey, GOT, After and many other films aestheticise dominance, persistence, and forced intimacy as proof of desire. Threat becomes foreplay and control becomes charisma. Resistance is framed as tension and coercion as chemistry. Over time, audiences learn to read violation as romance not because the act changes, but because the framing does.

Desensitisation often looks like reduced shock, reduced empathy, treating it as “just another trope”, but reduced outward reaction doesn’t automatically mean reduced empathy. If you respond emotionally to real world harm but not to dramatised scenes, that’s often media habituation, not moral desensitisation.

—
INFIDELITY IN CINEMA.
Imagine looking into the eyes of the person you love, the one you trust without hesitation, the one you depend on, the one you’ve built your life around and not knowing they are choosing again and again, to lie to you. Just to protect the betrayal instead of protecting you. Cheating isn’t just a mistake. It is a form of moral bankruptcy. It shows a complete disregard for the very person you promised to respect and protect. In this drama, what happens cannot simply be dismissed as a “single lapse in judgment.” Even if the physical act happened only once, it did not exist in isolation. There was secrecy, emotional boundary crossing, rationalising the situation, staying despite discomfort, and then continued deception. She lies to her husband even when confronted with evidence. When pregnancy enters the picture, the consequences of those choices become even more devastating. Calling this a momentary mistake is an oversimplification of what cheating really is. It reflects not just one impulsive act, but a series of conscious decisions made when there were multiple chances to stop, to leave, or to tell the truth. It reveals a willingness to betray when the opportunity presented itself. The damage is not measured by how many times it happened. For the person who was betrayed, even once can permanently shatter trust. One breach is enough to change how love feels, how safety feels, and how the entire relationship is understood.

—-
HOW DESENSITISED ARE WE?
Romanticisation frames cheating as emotionally profound, fated, or spiritually meaningful. Glamorisation emphasises aesthetic appeal (luxury/ sensuality/ thrill/ personal liberation). Both reduce moral weight by reframing cheating as self discovery, emotional authenticity or rebellion against restrictive norms. Because viewers are repeatedly exposed to these portrayals, desensitisation occurs where infidelity begins to feel more normal, less shocking, and more understandable. This opens a possibility where repeated narrative framing can reshape moral perception and relationship expectations.

In recent dramas I have watched (Shine and Love in the moonlight) there was intense romanticisation of cheating. Storytelling is designed to make us deeply identify with the central couple framing their relationship as destined, pure, or emotionally unavoidable. When cheating is presented within that emotional framework, people tend to evaluate it through empathy rather than moral principle, seeing it as tragic or justified instead of wrong. Over time, this emotional alignment can make infidelity seem more acceptable within fictional contexts, even if audience might not support it in real life.

—-
MY THOUGHTS ON THIS DRAMA
It is not a bad drama people are claiming it to be in the sense of poor craft. It is purposefully provocative, and people mistake their own moral discomfort for a failure in storytelling. When a show refuses to provide a "perfect" protagonist and instead mirrors the messy, compromised reality of survivors, it stops being a comfortable escape and starts being a mirror that many audiences are unwilling to look into.

This drama is challenging the very hierarchy of outrage that allows real world trauma to be sidelined in favor of "safer" scandals. Low ratings suggest a "moral purity gap" where audiences conflate a character’s personal flaws with the show’s overall quality. While viewers frequently tolerate or even celebrate "anti hero" men, a messy, unfaithful female protagonist often triggers a visceral likability tax, leading audiences to "downvote" the show as a form of moral protest rather than focusing on its technical or thematic core messages. People prefer glamorous escapism over the gruelling confrontation.

We must move beyond "likability" to understand that mirroring a messy reality is not an endorsement of it. Rejecting this entire drama because the victim is flawed only upholds the "perfect victim" myth, suggesting that empathy is reserved for the stainless. Don’t fall into the narrative trap of selective empathy. Husband is undeniably a victim of a devastating personal breach. His suffering also does not negate or compete with the systemic violation of women’s bodily autonomy and these are not mutually exclusive tragedies. When we allow a husband’s heartbreak to become the loudest part of the conversation, we are choosing the "safer" anger of a private scandal over the necessary rage required to confront a culture of sexual violence.

(Explicit terms for sexual violence are omitted to prevent this review from being flagged. It is not a self censorship. I know the legal distinction between general SA and more severe violations (r word). My goal here is to address the collective trauma of survivors. I have documented all statistical references used here so feel free to message me for the source link.)

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Does the weight of a crime disappear if the “crazy” are the only ones who remember it?

1.Moral Inconsistency
In this tale of those branded insane, what bothers me most about this series is the lack of moral consistency. The drama is meticulous almost relentless when it comes to punishing vigilante murderers, yet strikingly indifferent when harm is committed within socially acceptable roles like “parent,” “spouse,” or “family member.” The vigilantes who kill child abusers are pursued, condemned, and destroyed by the narrative. They are framed as criminals first and foremost, regardless of motive or emotional torment. The law closes in, society judges them, and the story ensures they face irreversible consequences. Their actions are treated as unforgivable, even when driven by grief, trauma, or desperation.

Now contrast that with the stepmother who killed her stepdaughter. Her consequence is not legal punishment, social condemnation, or even sustained moral reckoning. The primary “penalty” she faces is that the female lead does not forgive her. But refusal to forgive is not justice, it is an emotional boundary. It protects the victim; it does not hold the perpetrator accountable. Treating emotional estrangement as sufficient consequence for murder is a profound narrative imbalance. The female lead’s refusal to forgive is emotionally valid, but it cannot carry the entire weight of justice alone. Forgiveness is not a substitute for accountability, and silence is not resolution.

And then there is the husband. His infidelity, committed during his wife’s pregnancy, no less is effectively erased. He lives comfortably, faces no meaningful fallout, and continues his life without remorse or accountability. The drama does not even pretend to interrogate his actions. His betrayal is framed as incidental, something too minor to deserve narrative weight.
What disturbed me most was the way the drama implicitly suggests that betrayal becomes acceptable when the victim is unwell or emotionally vulnerable. Does the weight of commitment disappear when a partner is no longer “easy” to love? What, then, becomes of the vow of “in sickness and in health”? The narrative seems to quietly discard it the moment the wife actually needs support. Even more unsettling is how casually the story portrays the daughter’s almost immediate acceptance of the mistress simply because she is “nice,” as though kindness toward a child can neutralize betrayal of the family. This depiction is deeply troubling, not because forgiveness is impossible, but because it is presented as natural, effortless, and morally uncomplicated. The drama normalizes cheating without interrogation or consequence, creating the impression that infidelity falls within an acceptable range of behavior when a spouse is struggling. Leaving a sick partner might draw social judgment, but cheating (according to the narrative) is treated as understandable, even expected. It is not the act alone that disturbs me most, but how easily everyone moves on, as if betrayal is a reasonable response to hardship rather than a deliberate violation of trust.

This raises an uncomfortable question:
Are some harms considered less worthy of consequence simply because they occur within “normal” family structures?
By punishing only those who act outside the system, the drama sends a message: that harm committed quietly, politely, and within accepted social roles is more forgivable than harm committed loudly in response to injustice. This is selective accountability.
The story insists that killing is unforgivable when done by those seeking justice for abused children, yet strangely negotiable when done by a stepmother behind closed doors. It condemns rage born from trauma but excuses betrayal born from convenience. In doing so, it unintentionally reinforces the very societal failures it claims to critique, where power, respectability, and silence shield wrongdoers from consequence.

When the narrative allows certain characters to move on unscathed simply because their wrongdoing is not the “focus,” it diminishes the seriousness of their actions.
Ultimately, the drama asks viewers to accept that some lives are destroyed for crossing moral lines, while others are allowed to thrive because their crimes are inconvenient to confront.


2.COMPLEXITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
It is important to separate complexity from accountability. A well written character can be layered and still be unequivocally wrong. Depth, trauma, internal conflict, or sympathetic framing can help us understand why a character acts the way they do, but understanding is not the same as justification.

Circumstances may apply pressure, but they do not remove agency. Complexity does not erase choice. Every harmful act depicted in the drama (cheating, betrayal, neglect, even murder) was the result of a decision. Sympathy for their circumstances does not justify the pain they caused, nor does it absolve them of responsibility. When we absolve characters simply because they are nuanced or emotionally conflicted, we blur the line between empathy and excuse making. Explaining why someone chose self interest over commitment does not undo the damage caused, nor does it restore trust, safety, or dignity to the victim. Sympathy for the perpetrator’s internal struggle cannot outweigh accountability for the harm they knowingly caused. Defending these characters because they are “not purely evil” also sets a troubling standard: that wrongdoing is forgivable as long as it is done quietly, politely, or with sufficient emotional complexity. True complexity would require the narrative to hold these characters accountable while acknowledging their inner conflict. Without consequence, complexity becomes a shield rather than a lens. It turns moral failure into a character trait instead of what it actually is: a violation that demands recognition.

Complex characters can be compelling, tragic, even sympathetic. But complexity should deepen responsibility, not erase it.


3.Weight of a crime.
The weight of a crime does not disappear simply because of time, intention, remorse, circumstance, or narrative framing. If the question is whether the severity of wrongdoing lessens because the perpetrator suffered, felt conflicted, believed they had reasons, or because the story moves on, the answer remains the same: harm does not evaporate because it becomes inconvenient to acknowledge.
A crime’s weight is defined by the damage inflicted, not by how quietly it is absorbed, how gracefully the victim endures it, or how sympathetically the offender is portrayed. Silence from the victim does not equal absolution. Survival does not equal healing. Forgiveness, if it even exists does not retroactively erase wrongdoing.

What often does disappear is accountability. Narratives frequently shift focus away from consequences and toward the perpetrator’s emotional state, reframing harm as tragedy rather than responsibility. This does not reduce the crime’s gravity; it merely obscures it. The pain remains, even when it is no longer centered. If anything, the absence of consequences makes the crime heavier, not lighter because it reinforces the idea that some people’s suffering is expected, tolerable, or expendable. The weight does not disappear. It is either carried, acknowledged, and answered for or it is left to rest on the victim alone.


4.Severity can be ranked. Accountability cannot be optional.
Cheating, child harm, and murder cannot be meaningfully compared in a way that makes one “cancel out” or excuse the others, nor can they be reduced into something forgivable simply because a story decides only one of them is “important.”
What can be compared is severity, but comparison is not the same as erasure. In a drama, prioritisation of certain crimes for narrative focus does not change the moral weight of the others. When a story treats child abuse or murder as “serious” while framing cheating as trivial, understandable, or forgettable, it is not making a moral distinction, it is making a narrative convenience. The harm does not become smaller just because the plot moves past it.

Cheating is not equivalent to murder or child abuse in scale, but it is still a serious ethical violation. It involves deliberate betrayal, emotional harm, and often the destabilization of families and children. Reducing it to a forgivable flaw because “worse things exist” is a false moral hierarchy. By that logic, almost any harm could be dismissed as long as something more extreme appears elsewhere in the story.
Child harm and murder are crimes of irreversible damage; cheating is a crime of trust. They are different in form, but all are rooted in choice, power imbalance, and disregard for another person’s wellbeing. None of them become forgivable simply because the perpetrator suffered, had reasons, or was portrayed sympathetically. A drama can choose what it emphasises, but it cannot ethically reduce harm into irrelevance. Prioritizing one crime does not erase another. And no amount of narrative framing can transform intentional harm whether emotional or physical into something morally neutral or automatically forgivable.


5.Normalisation
I think cheating has become far too normalized, especially in media and popular narratives. It’s often framed as something inevitable, understandable, or even romantic, rather than what it actually is: a serious breach of trust. When infidelity is repeatedly portrayed without real consequences, it subtly reshapes how people perceive it, making betrayal seem less severe than it truly is.

Cheating is not a symptom of love “fading” or circumstances being difficult, it is a choice. Normalising it strips accountability from the person who made that choice and shifts focus away from the harm inflicted on the betrayed partner. This is particularly damaging because it minimizes emotional trauma and reinforces the idea that loyalty is optional when things become inconvenient.

Betraying someone you once professed to love, and with whom you share a child cannot be reduced to a narrative inconvenience or a morally neutral act. When infidelity occurs during pregnancy, a time of physical vulnerability and emotional strain, it reflects an even deeper level of disregard. Such behavior is not merely hurtful; it is ethically indefensible.

What is especially troubling is how the show minimizes this act by framing it as secondary to “more important” plot elements. In doing so, it implicitly treats infidelity as commonplace or inevitable, rather than as a serious violation deserving of accountability. The absence of consequences, social, emotional, or moral….creates the impression that betrayal carries little weight. The character in question assumes no responsibility, expresses no remorse, and faces no meaningful repercussions. This narrative choice subtly reinforces the idea that cheating is an acceptable or understandable response to relational difficulty, which is both misleading and harmful.

Cheating is not an unavoidable circumstance; it is a deliberate decision. At every point, there is an opportunity to communicate, seek support, or disengage honestly. Choosing instead to pursue another person, especially while one’s partner is enduring a difficult period reflects a prioritization of self interest over commitment and empathy. Portraying such a choice without consequence undermines the seriousness of the act and dismisses the emotional damage it causes.

Moreover, the lack of visible betrayal or reaction from the affected partner does not negate the harm done. Emotional restraint or forgiveness should not be mistaken for indifference, nor should it erase the wrongdoing itself. Even if the individual character is written as composed or self-sacrificing, the broader impact remains on the family, on those around her, and on the audience interpreting these dynamics. Media representations carry influence, and when betrayal is downplayed, it risks normalizing behavior that fractures trust and destabilizes relationships.
Ultimately, the issue is not simply about one character’s actions, but about the message the narrative conveys. By glossing over infidelity without addressing its moral and emotional consequences, the show fails to acknowledge the real world weight of such choices. Cheating should not be portrayed as a minor flaw or a tolerable norm; it is a serious violation that demands accountability. Ignoring this reality does a disservice not only to the characters involved, but also to viewers who understand the lasting harm betrayal can cause.


6.Thoughts on this Drama
The story unfolded in a fairly intense and engaging way, and I did find the progression compelling. Acting and pacing of the story was well done. However, from the very beginning, it was quite clear to me who was responsible. The character’s lean physique and, more notably, the disproportionate amount of screen time given to someone presented as a “side” character immediately stood out. For a character who was supposedly irrelevant to the central conflict, their repeated appearances felt deliberate rather than incidental. That narrative emphasis made it obvious that they were going to play a much larger role in the story, ultimately giving away the reveal long before it was officially confirmed.

One of the drama’s strongest elements lies in the cases themselves. Each case is disturbing, emotionally heavy, and handled with a level of seriousness that reflects the gravity of the subject matter. Rather than being used for shock value alone, the cases serve as mirrors to broader societal failures: neglect, abuse, silence, and the ways adults repeatedly fail children who depend on them for protection. What makes these cases particularly impactful is how they expose not only individual cruelty, but systemic indifference. The suffering depicted is not exaggerated or sensationalized; it feels painfully plausible, which makes it all the more unsettling. Through these narratives, the drama forces viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about responsibility, complicity, and the long term consequences of unchecked harm.

I thoroughly enjoyed the drama overall. That said, every time the husband appeared on screen, or the stepmother for that matter, I felt genuinely angry. They are not simply family members who made unfortunate mistakes or acted out of ignorance. They made conscious, deliberate choices that directly harmed FL. Their actions were not accidental, nor were they the result of misunderstandings, they knowingly prioritized their own interests at her expense. What frustrates me most is how the narrative attempts to soften their behavior by portraying them as otherwise “decent” or reasonable people. Decency cannot coexist with repeated, intentional harm. Being polite, well spoken, or socially acceptable does not erase the fact that they betrayed her trust and contributed to her suffering. Reducing their actions to mere family conflict minimizes the severity of what they did.

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Awful plot. Tw : R*pe

The whole dynamic of the second couple is so wrong. R*ping someone is not okay in any world. Idc if he has a sad backstory , it doesn't justify violating someone he claims that he likes. He could have waited it out. The plot felt disgusting and wrong. I don't like how they make it seem like a guy getting r*ped is no big deal. This is so messed up , it was suffocating to watch. Would not recommend this.

Not y'all justifying r*pe when he clearly got him drunk and f'ed him while he was in a drunken state, if he was confident that his brother liked him , he wouldn't have done that. AND IF ANYONE DOES THAT TO A PERSON THEY LOVE THEY ARE F*CKED UP IN THE HEAD.

"They were in love" oh then why did he get his brother drunk? Why couldn't he keep it in his pants & WAIT UNTIL HE GOT A CLEAR YES BEFORE DOING IT? Why is violating someone okay just because you like them?
That is not the way to go about when you like someone.
"YES" IN A CLEAR CONSCIOUS MIND = CONSENT. Would that man give consent to his brother when he was not drunk? NO HE WOULDN'T. IDFC IF HE WAS IN DENIAL THAT HE LOVED HIS BROTHER OR NOT. THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE ANYTHING. THE BROTHER SHOULD HAVE WAITED IT OUT INSTEAD OF R*APING THE PERSON HE LOVED. THE BROTHER WAS DAMN SURE THAT HE WOULDN'T GIVE CONSENT THAT'S WHY HE GOT HIM DRUNK. FICTIONAL OR NOT, THIS IS WRONG. IN NO WORLD IS THIS OKAY.

People go watch movies or dramas to feel and escape reality and if this escape of yours includes justifying r*ape because the r*pist had a sad backstory or the victim was in denial of his feelings, you need therapy.

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