lietk12

My highlights from these two episodes were:
1. Seungjin's playful way of expressing his frustration when he was moving out of the third floor with minseon/hwi/seongmin...that was so cute omg
2. The way hanmin tried to be quietly supportive for jaeseung, seongmin, and youngjoon when he guessed/saw that they were struggling - that felt like a whole other side of him which we hadn't seen before
3. The brief snippet of Seventeen's "Don't Wanna Cry" song+dance seungjin did in the four-person room, and the way his little dance practice lightened the mood

I had been looking forward to seeing how the conflict between youngjoon and myeongkyun would play out, but after ep 7/8 I just feel stressed about it. Neither of them came out looking good to me by the end, but their behaviors were very human. Their argument made it clear just how much they don't understand where the other person is coming from or how the other person deals with conflict (and just how much they couldn't see that fact in the heat of the moment), as if they were trapped in an escalating spiral of pressing each other's buttons throughout these two episodes - and during that argument, myeongkyun was playing the role of the avoidant person while youngjoon was playing the role of the hot-tempered person (which was some interesting foreshadowing from the show's anonymous-question segment lol). I liked that they took the opportunity to voice their points-of-view on their past relationship, as hopefully a first step in addressing their conflict.

It's, ahem, "interesting" to see such a big difference between hwi's reactions to the idea of seongmin being interested in jaeseung and hanmin (the word "possessive" comes to mind, but maybe that's too intense of a word) vs. youngjoon's reaction to the possibility that seongmin was interested in hanmin and the way jaeseung has approached his conversations with hwi and seongmin. I really appreciated jaeseung's consideration about not adding to seongmin's emotional burdens, while I don't think hwi has shown quite that level of awareness (which is also understandable). To be honest, some of the thoughts hwi expresses in his interviews have started to annoy me a bit...although a lot of my annoyance might just be an unfortunate reaction from the avoidant attachment style in me lol.

Wow, this has been such an interesting start to the season! My favorite moment of eps 3 & 4 was seeing hwi's delighted reaction to youngjoon calling hanmin back hahaha

I blushed so much during Hwi & Seongmin's date in EP 2, and I had to pause when Hwi said "I couldn't smell the flowers because of my rhinitis, but Seongmin's perfume smelled nice" 🥹

I just got to this part of episode 20 and came here to see if anyone else had posted about the same thing hahahaha

He also grew up with a father who beat him, so he probably had to learn to be hypervigilant for any sign of danger in order to protect himself from being hurt and maintain control over the situation (whether that's by withdrawing from the relationship first or by asking what he could do differently when it looks like the relationship is about to end). When the danger is not there but the habit remains, that kind of coping strategy can manifest as being reactive in the ways you describe.

At the end of episode 7, right before Myung Ha gets deleted from the game, a notification shown saying that the game is deleting the source of the error. In episode 8, when Myung Ha is respawned into the game, a notification is shown saying that the error has been resolved. One way to interpret this is that the error was not fully resolved before that notification - so during the part of episode 8 that we were following Yeo Woon's point of view, the echoes Yeo Woon hears of Myung Ha - and the fact that the shoes brand lady remembers Myung Ha - could be symptoms of bugs still remaining in the game's systems, indicating that it wasn't able to fully erase Myung Ha.

Here's how I understood the time gap:
- Cha Yeo Woon's story in the game is based on Tae Myung Ha's life. Their stories have various parallels: having a single parent, having a biological parent who does not behave like a parent to them, mourning the recent death of a grandmother, being lonely and suicidal, and wishing for happiness and unconditional love i.e. "love for love's sake" during a shooting star (in Yeo Woon's case, as a child he looked at a drawing of a happy family and wished to be happy; while in Myung Ha's case, he wished to disappear but what he actually wanted was to have someone who loved him, as reflected by his decision to look for his biological mother after making wishing to disappear and his disappointment at her rejection of him, and also by the final shooting star scene), and also everything in https://twitter.com/yn_sieun/status/1753816560102453747 (linked in someone else's comment here from 3 days ago). Myung Ha's "senior" intentionally designed Yeo Woon's character in the game to be like a mirror-image of Myung Ha, in order to help Myung Ha see himself from an external perspective.
- Building upon this theme of Yeo Woon being like a mirror-image of Myung Ha (and, when the story shifts to Yeo Woon's point-of-view in the last episode, of Myung Ha being like a mirror-image of Yeo Woon and a way for Yeo Woon to see himself from an external perspective), the last episode has scenes where they're mirroring each other and then joining together: when the edit cuts between them as they run to meet each other on the beach and then their hands touch; and also earlier in the movie theater, with the split-screen scene where it looks like they're looking at each other, and then the split bar disappears (but they still don't actually see each other because Myung Ha exists 2 days in the future). I think this thing where they were looking in each others' direction was an artistic choice to express this theme of mirroring and then joining together, rather than a part of the plot's events.
- Myung Ha's phone has a connection beyond the game, so that someone outside the game, maybe Myung Ha's "senior, is able to send those messages to Myung Ha throughout the series - including a text message signed by his "senior" after he's returned to the game. Presumably Yeo Woon's phone also is connected beyond the game, so that they can call each other across a 2-day gap - in other words, information can time-travel between their phones.
- When Myung Ha's "senior" restored Myung Ha to the game, Myung Ha was resurrected 2 days in the future of Yeo Woon (so Myung Ha starts the phone call in August 14, while Yeo Woon picks up the phone call in August 12). Each person experiences time at the same speed (so one hour in Myung Ha's experience of the world is the same duration as one hour in Yeo Woon's experience of the world), but they have different starting points. So Myung Ha did not physically exist in Yeo Woon's world on August 12; instead, he physically exists in Yeo Woon's world starting on August 14 for both of them, and he sends information back in time by 2 days to August 12's Yeo Woon, via a phone call. In that phone call which travels back 2 days across time, Myung Ha tells Yeo Woon to wait for 2 days and go to the race in Gunsan-ri on August 14, while Myung Ha starts going to Gunsan-ri immediately after the phone call in his own timeline (August 14). I assume in the 1.5 hours that Myung Ha is on the bus before it breaks down, he probably calls Yeo Woon again and they plan together to go to some specific beach after Yeo Woon's race. They arrive at the beach at the same time, i.e. the afternoon of Monday August 14, 2023, after Yeo Woon's race.
- If Myung Ha had just decided to wait in the movie theater for a few hours and told Yeo Woon to return from the race to the theater on August 14, they also could've met up that way. Or Myung Ha could've arranged for them to meet up any day after August 14, and they still would've been able to meet. The first alternative was probably more risky due to the scheduling of the race, and the second alternative was not feasible - because Myung Ha had less than 3.5 hours left to complete his mission.

With this explanation, the only time-travel that occurs is time-travel of information between Myung Ha and Yeo Woon's cell phones.

Just finished the series, and wow it really held a mirror up to me and said "tae myung ha is an embodiment of all your thought patterns and behaviors, I hope you can show yourself some more self-compassion too" 🫠. Also, it was a very interesting writing choice to take the latent contradiction of wanting to make someone else feel loved and cared for while being unable to accept the same kind of love and care, and connect that to the game-world literally falling apart.

Between The Eighth Sense and Love for Love's Sake, I hope we continue getting more series with strong, off-center creative voices. Even if it feels like they have some rough edges or like the plot sometimes becomes rather subtle or harder to follow due to artistic storytelling decisions, I think the genre will be all the better and more interesting with this kind of experimentation.

I just finished watching ep 6, and holy **** that flashback sequence where the editing & visual style & soundtrack makes an extreme turn (alongside the shift in the story's tone) was such a delightful surprise, even if it was foreshadowed in an earlier (equally stunning) editing sequence. It's like the director thought "hey what if we took the usual k-drama production style (but perfected to 120%) and then added a big splash of the bold queer indie aesthetic of Andrew Huang's 'Kiss of the Rabbit God'?"

I rewatched a Taesub/Kyungsoo storyline edit today and was reminded about the feelings it evokes for me about what it might feel like to be a queer person in a loving, accepting family. No other series I've watched has approached the level of nuance, sensitivity, and complexity of this series's depiction of a gay couple, their familial relations, and their experiences of living as gay people despite social homophobia; the only comparisons I can think of are queer films (e.g. the 2019 Vietnamese film Goodbye Mother). Life Is Beautiful was a trailblazer for gay representation in Asian media in 2010, and it remains exceptional in 2023 - I'm so grateful to the cast and crew for telling this story the way they did.

This interesting little film can be watched at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/screening-room/a-familys-journey-to-acting-and-acceptance-in-foreign-uncle , along with some fascinating context about its production.

oh my god...this was the most I've ever cried while watching a movie

If Kang San is actually Lee Seol, there's an interesting character arc in his backstory: when he was ambushed as a teenager, he wanted to avoid bloodshed but he was helpless so his watchman killed a bunch of people and was also seriously injured -> then he trained to become a warrior who fights to protect others without actually killing people.
And being a watchman (or pretending to be one) would be an interesting way for Lee Seol to hide in plain sight, since people (e.g. Dan Oh) would assume he's protecting someone else. And/but when he was fully defeated at the temple, the (more senior) watchman finally intervened to protect him.

I love the audiovisual joke in ep 2 where they started playing flamenco-esque music when Jaeyoung appeared in his all-red suit 💃😂

It's available on the director's Youtube channel - here's episode 1! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RA8815wDF0

I highly recommend https://kisskh.at/52951-out-of-breath - at only three 10-15 min episodes, it's more like a short film, but it's really good!

The last episode's focus on Bas and Marco was by far the best part of this series's story for me. All throughout the show we saw how traumatized and voiceless Bas was. The earnest, gentle, and patient way Marco worked to hold space for Bas (and to make sure Bas got nourishment, would have someone to talk to, and could get physical distance from the harmful situation) was really touching, and the last scene where Marco helps Bas literally regain his voice was done so powerfully.

Often stories told about people who've experienced sexual assault will flatten their/our experiences into more digestible narratives to make it easier for bystanders to feel better about themselves, in the process turning away from survivors' actual needs and from the ugly ordinariness of sexual violence and abuse. More stories need to be told about how everyday people can respond supportively and helpfully when someone they know discloses an experience of sexual assault, about what it can feel like to heal (or not heal) after sexual assault, and about LGBTQ Asian people who've experienced sexual violence or abuse. Amazingly, this series did all three of those things. I hope season 2 continues to tell Bas's story in such a nuanced and sensitive way.

@NoIdea0401 Great point - after XS goes to the roof YJ clearly explains that he didn't actually intend to jump. But I feel like sending a photo of one's feet on the ledge of a building (rather than, for example, just a photo of the view from the roof) without explaining that up front is a really effective way to give others the impression of wanting to jump, and of getting them to stop ignoring you. As I interpreted XS's behavior, he needed more time to process on his own away from YJ, and then YJ forced his hand by directly escalating from texts XS could ignore all the way to that photo. To me, that decision made by YJ's, along with his decision to make XS compliant on the beach trip by getting him blackout drunk, feels entirely consistent with undertones of entitlement and possessiveness in YJ's characterization (which he made explicit e.g. in the morning after the beach trip when he said "Whether you like it or not, having you forever is a gift to myself for my twentieth birthday").

Another thing I really like about this series is the way MR (and even LC) are there for XS and are so supportive in the ways that matter - that's what give me hope that someone on the writer's team knows what they're doing with this storyline

Usually youtube comments sections bring out the worst in people, but for BL series MDL somehow manages to trade places with youtube lol. The more hot takes and fighting people pour into this site's comments sections, the more ads MDL can serve everyone, eh? ;)

I don't dislike this series right now...my problem is that I like Lin Chia Wei and An Jun Peng's visuals the most out of this cast (and also, because I like to think that I'm not entirely shallow, their characters' internal struggles are more relatable and meaningful for me than the other couple's) and yet their storyline really presses my buttons regarding my own experiences and the experiences of people I know with lack of consent and interpersonal abuse, in a way that the other couple's storyline doesn't. Like seeing Xing Si's traumatized reaction after the beach trip had me in a weird place emotionally because that specifically felt so reflective and validating of my own past experiences. But then seeing how Xing Si was affected by that photo Yong Jie sent him from the roof brought me back to when my father threatened to commit suicide because he wasn't getting his way (also, as we later discovered, because the heart medication he was on was causing neurological problems for him), which is a fucked up and manipulative way to pressure other people into doing what you want them to, that the show hasn't addressed yet. Like, fuck. Yong Jie really needs therapy to learn how to cope with his emotions in ways that are less harmful to himself and the people around him and how to develop a personality that doesn't revolve around his brother. I hope he gets character development in this direction, because he deserves it with all that he's been through.

I'm still watching this series because so far it hasn't crossed my personal tolerance level between seriously depicting sexual violence vs. romanticizing/sensationalizing it - though I can see how it would have for other people. Right now I feel like I'm at where I was in Tonhon Chonlatee right after the predatory senior tried to sexually assault Chonlatee, but before it became clear that the show was going to immediately forget about it, making it be only a plot device to progress the relationship between the two leads. Fingers crossed that HIStory4 will treat this subject with the nuance it deserves.

omg that's really interesting about mainland Chinese fans hearing Taiwanese accents as sounding like "hicks". For me the Beijing accent feels that way instead, which makes it hard for me to take dubbed Cdramas seriously. I'm not trying to start a flamewar on accents and cross-straits politics though, my own accent is all over the place haha: because of where my parents grew up, my speech is a mix of mainland accents (both Northern and Southern) and a bit of standard Taiwanese Mandarin, and when I was a little kid my accent was entirely Beijing, including all the 儿's, because my family moved there for a few years