etoks21

OK, believe what you want. As I've said, you are comfortable in your black/white fantasy world, and the idea of something being gray seems to frighten you, thus Jong Suk has to be the Devil incarnate.

It's ignorant of you to claim that someone who has complete amnesia of traumatic events over many years, is not mentally ill. He was not "in denial" and "shirking responsibilities" (there's that self-righteous judgmental, black-white perspective showing itself again), he did NOT REMEMBER ANY OF IT.

Furthermore, he struggled with strange flashbacks and moments of delusions and hallucinations, which was his sick mind attempting to reconnect him to reality, throughout the series. Yes, he fought back against that reality right up until the end, which is all a part of his mental illness.

And yes, KM hand-cuffed him, but did you honestly not notice the whole, very important bit right before the fall, when KM quietly convinced JS to relax and come with him to go "see Cholie?" Up until that moment, KM had been fighting him and trying to pull JS back up. In a quiet moment of reflection at that point, JS considered things, came to his senses, "let go," stopped fighting, and went over the edge with KM BY CHOICE.

Sure, perhaps he wouldn't have succeeded in pulling JS back up anyway, but what matters here is that he stopped trying to do so. He accepted reality and performed a deadly act of contrition, and in that moment, was forgiven by KM and it is implied, Cholie.

If JS can do that, why can't you? Hello, black/white thinking.

Nothing I've said "excuses" KM's behavior, it "explains" it. But you seem to think that by recognizing the depth of his mental illness, delusional thinking, and amnesia, he is somehow "getting away" with something. You believe he is the evil Satan himself, and thus must be completely worthless, vile, and loathsome.

He didn't get away with anything. It's just that the story revealed, in a fascinating and exciting way, WHY he was the way he was throughout the story, during which he always acted strangely at times.

But OK, whatever...yeah, KM is the Devil with bat wings, totally inhuman, since that's what you need to believe.

As a side-bar, I don't think that fall was from a great enough height to insure the death of either/both characters, unless they landed on their heads and broke their necks, which given the way they were laying at the end, is not the case. They conveniently landed side-by-side, wrists locked together, in the most effecting manner for the camera, to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. In reality, they would have landed in a tangle of limbs, one upon the other. It would have been a mess.

I just rewatched the very end scene. No one "ate" anything, as they landed on their backs, and it was an asphalt, not concrete sidewalk. It could make an awesome sequel to have them both survive, but in two different physical states, perhaps one paralyzed and the other almost completely recovered. Good writers could take that scenario in a lot of different directions.

Watching that last scene, I was reminded of how annoying and stupid that female cop was.

Wow. I'm American, and write/read all the time, all my life. I have NEVER heard or read the word "inutile" before. I just looked it up. It means "useless" or "unusable." It is related to the word "utility," which can mean "use" or "useful." I'm sure it's related to the word "futility."

I never knew any of this, and I'm not young, so thanks for a new English word and meaning. I assumed it was a misspelling of some other word when I saw it in your comment. lol :)

Is English your first language?

The ghosting thing, and break up by text thing, are common around the world among the young who have grown up on cell phones and computers. It's not a Korean thing alone.

You keep skipping over the fact that Jaemin broke it off only after being threatened by the bitch. And again, WHAT did Nami lie to him about?

Agree! Thanks for saying all that better than I did. :)

OK, I get what you're saying about it being part of "saving face" culture. Believe me, I've seen plenty of that in the millions of Korean movies I've watched, though I think it's an even stronger thing in Japan.

When did Nami LIE to Jaemin? About what? And if Jaimin was so worked up about the money thing, why did he not react to it until AFTER the bitch confronted and blackmailed him? He was wowed by the big house but so what? He reacted in an extremely immature manner and was dishonest about why he was doing so. He was determined to break it off, as the trope requires. The discomfort with their financial differences was real, but still a cover for the larger issue of being threatened by the bitch, which he did not share.

I'm surprised to read you thinking Jaemin has not shown indications of being uncomfortable with his sexuality. He responds with revulsion when Nami attempts to show affection in public, and he wants to keep his sexuality a secret in general. Pretty sure those are symptoms of discomfort with your sexuality.

I stand by what I wrote.

Wow. You seem desperate to convince yourself that Jong Suk is the blackest black there ever was...how boring to see characters through those black/white lenses you wear.

Jong Suk is a tad mentally ill, wouldn't you say? He is SO mentally ill as a result of his trauma, that his psyche has eliminated his memories completely. Is a mentally ill person with severe trauma and amnesia one hundred percent responsible for their fucked up thinking and the things it causes them to do?

I suppose you'd say yes. I say no. I said 100% for a reason: There are 99 numbers below that to choose from. And somewhere along that continuum is where JS's level of responsibility for his actions lies. It's not a difficult concept to grasp unless living in a black/white, imaginary world makes you feel safe and thus, you live in denial.

Remember the last choice he made? The one that fed him "the concrete," as you put it? That's an act of contrition, which brings us to redemption, for which it is never too late.

yup

ooh...I guess you told me off, didn't you, staci dear? I'm devastated.

Interesting. Why do you think I missed that?

Another black/white thinker, I see. Well, you have plenty of company in that here on MDL.

"...he is the justice that we need. Took him straight to hell and he tasted the concrete." Oh yeah...definitely a self-righteous, black/white mindset. I understand how that perspective makes a lot of people feel safe and protected, but it's BS.

Lame attempt to conflate "child" with "kid" and then call a teenager a "kid," thus implying they are also a...child...? Is that the strategy you're going with here, or are you just stupid?

So what if the actors are 15-years-old? They are not actually having sex on the set. Are you aware of that? This isn't illegal child pornography. Sex scenes are entirely faked, are you also not aware of that? Many fake things happen in scripted stories, plays, and books that aren't REALLY happening.

So you think a 15-year-old is too young to take a shower with another teenager, in swimsuits to be filmed from the waist up, implying they are naked, and that this experience will somehow traumatize them? lol

The one pretending to be traumatized is YOU and you're just another panty-sniffing SJW spewing nonsense.

Oh also, in most localities, the age of sexual consent is BELOW 18, as it should be.

My guess is there will be a second "season" if the response to this one warrants it.
That's not necessarily a good thing. The way this went down, I can't imagine a sequel would be any less cliche in its storytelling.

Trope City.

PRICELESS. Bravo! :D

No snark...what is "inutile?"

If a show has something "bad" about it, how can it be a perfect 10/10?

Well, because he wants a job. Not weird at all.

HOWEVER, he was not honest with Nami about why he was ending things, which is what always pisses me off in terribly unoriginal BLs like this, that use this ancient trope to create conflict. Jaemin could have said "Nami, that bitch is in love with you, she said she'll spread the news about our relationship and I can't have that because I need a job. Help me sort this out..." But no, the trope requires that you remain silent. So stupid.

I get what you're saying about "saving face," but in this case I think it's more about the need for a male, especially in Korea, to make at least as much $$$ as his partner, be they male or female. It's a stupid, butch, my masculinity-is-threatened thing that is rampant here in the U.S. too.

To me, Jaemin used Nami's wealth as an EXCUSE to do what he did, but for other reasons, which have to do with the bitch's message. I think he's more worried about people finding out he's gay than he is about not being as rich as Nami. From the beginning, it's been obvious he is not comfortable with his sexuality, especially PDAs with a boyfriend. Either way, it's all a lazy trope upon trope upon trope we've seen many times before.

It's a dude lying to his lover about why he's dumping him. How many times have we seen that trope in BL World?

End of episode 4:
Yeah...no, I can't really get on board with this one, and it's going to be hard to rate.
This show was well-made, acted, filmed, and directed. If I had watched this four years ago, when I was just discovering BL and Asian gay cinema, I would probably rate it 9/10 or 9.5/10.
Unfortunately, I have, over the last four years, watched pretty much every BL in existence. I have seen this exact plot acted out fifty times before. I have seen it in bad shows and also in really good ones. But here it is AGAIN. There is nothing original whatsoever, in this story or the way it was told.

The capper, of course, was the "I'm going to hurt you/me now by ending things, but I'm not going to be honest about WHY I'm doing it" trope. Which is closely related to the "I'm going to break up with you and emotionally devastate you now, to prevent you being emotionally devastated later, and oh by the way, I'm not going to tell you WHY."

Of course, perhaps most trope-ish of all was the evil bitch who lowered the boom here. I don't really have a problem with that kind of character in BLs or anywhere else, IF there is something unique about the character's bitchiness and how she expresses it. Nothing new here, though I did want to slap her so I guess her acting was spot-on.

However, it is extremely lame that after THREE years of getting nowhere with her crush, she is going to do what she did so...what? She can spend three MORE years getting nowhere? I don't buy it. Although...there ARE mean people IRL who would do the same thing just to be mean. But again...no originality here.

The problem here is the story/writing. IRL the thing to do is to honestly tell your significant other what just happened and what you are thinking, so a discussion can be had. If, after the discussion, you still feel the same way, then go ahead and take the course you were on. But it is incredibly insulting and disrespectful to your lover to make a final choice like that without having the decency to tell them WHY and give them an opportunity to respond.

OK, so the writer wanted this ending. So write me a screenplay that SHOWS WHY this character is doing this, and come up with an original reason they can't be forthright and honest about it.

Enough. Great series. Seen it fifty times before. Writers have seen it too, in other BLs, but they took the lazy route. If this is based on a manhwa, choose a different manhwa or change the story from its original form to insert some surprises. No one bothered. Yeah, for all of the above reasons, this is an average BL.

7/10

If you consider anything I wrote above as having "had a stroke," you are a very delicate flower.

If you consider anything I wrote above as having "had a stroke," you are a very delicate flower.

Pretty sure she's just not a very good actor, though she does well in a couple scenes near the end of this series. She keeps getting cast because she's well-known as a former Kpop idol, certainly not for her wide range of acting talents.