wellwellbelle

It's definitely the kind of drama that make a person want to talk it out, right!?!? :D I'm glad you wanted to talk to. I actually think they've been through the time loop at least twice by now (which is why LZW noticed the difference as the older him when he met himself at the airport, and maybe also why there seems to be at least two different ways CYR dies).

I'm considering a full rewatch before watching the last episode, so I can have all the details fresh in my mind....

I tracked down the convo where I formed the impression: Episode 2 in the car. Hwahwa is telling Fighter about why Tutor teaches so much. She says they sold their house and the family moved away. He had to move into a condo. Then she says "They left only the condo for him," which is why I thought it was owned. On rewatch, it's pretty ambiguous.

It was mentioned either by his boss or his friend when they were describing his situation... I think probably in ep 3 when his friend is talking about his situation? I seem to remember her saying that his family sold the house and bought the condo for him to live in while going to school.

But actually after I wrote that I was wondering if "buying" was the right translation. Maybe it's more like a pre-paid contract (in the novel translation I found, it's "dorm" not "condo"). I used to live in a country where you would pre-pay your rent for 5 or 10 years. In that case, if you wanted to move it wasn't always easy to get someone to take it over. People stayed in place even if their circumstances got worse because it wasn't like they could make a profit by letting it go. Like, if you own a house, you can make capital gains by selling it and buying a cheaper place, but if you pre-paid rent, the best you can hope for is getting the difference back and depending how long you lived there, that might not be enough for a new deposit.

I don't know enough about housing in Thailand to know if he has good options for selling and buying smaller or subletting or getting a roommate, or if there are reasons why those options don't work. Perhaps it's just the sort of ridiculousness of tv, or perhaps there's something that is obvious to a Thai audience but not to us.

No worries about the long response! I wasn't ignoring, just for some reason actually my computer didn't display your whole response the first time so I didn't see it all till now.

Now I'll write this all out in detail and then we can come back and shake our heads at me in two days when we know how it all goes down ;P

I think that the point up until when she lied about HXY being made up was more selfish for sure... She wanted to live the life that HXY had created--although I think it was an understandable sort of selfishness more than a malicious one.

But I think that there was a shift when LZW asked how he could find HXY and she decided to tell him it was made up. There's this moment of hesitation, and then there's the fact that the lie came from her overhearing the boys talking earlier. It's like, she made a decision in that moment, and used the lie to follow through on her decision. So, what was the decision?

I think it was to keep the timeline. Here's why I think the lie is the first step in doing that. Since the show is complex, I'll break it into parts:

1) CYR knows the whole story, all the stuff that HXY knows. So she knows that when CYR died, LZW didn't think that HXY was real and didn't go looking for HXY.

2) She knows that LZW found HXY because he almost died in a car accident after visiting MJJ in jail.

3) For the timeline that she knows to happen, CYR must die and MJJ has to go to jail.

4) If she tells LZW the truth and tries to save him, she will also prevent him from going to the future and the whole time line will potentially never happen. Which brings us to the potential paradox that they will never meet at all because HXY won't come into the past and she and LZW won't fall in love.

5) If she lies, LZW will stop assuming that the information from HXY is accurate and won't assume CYR is going to die on New Years.

So, to interpret her lie there are two things in question

One is the question: did she lie to preserve the timeline. I think she did, and her lie certainly helps preserve it.

The second question is: did she lie for selfish reasons, or some other reason.

Here's where I think the brilliance of the writers is really clear. CYR is such a richly written character in a richly developed universe that her motivations are hard to label.... just like in real life.

My impression of her is that she's struggling with the standard teen stuff: She's a bit impulsive, she lacks experience to help her figure out consequences and interpret her feelings, and her feelings are really intense.

Then when you throw the complexity of time travel paradox, losing control of your own body to a stranger, and a weird para-normal love triangle, it makes sense that she makes confusing and even bad choices. Basically, rather than her being selfish, I'm much more inclined to see her as a hot mess of a sad teen in situation with absolutely no potential role models or stories that she can use to help her sort out what is a right or wrong choice.

That said, there are a bunch of things that could be motivating her choice, and selfishness is certainly one of them. Here's my take on potential motivations that might be at play for her. I think the character is written such that there are definitely multiple motivations involved at any particular point.


Bad:

Selfishness--
She might want to keep the timeline so she can experience a little bit of being with LZW, either through HXY's memories or her own brief time pretending to be HXY.

Revenge--
Perhaps she believes that LZW deserves to die or takes pleasure in knowing how much HXY will suffer

Anger--
Similar to revenge, but less malicious. She could just be mad at them and feel like she doesn't want to do the things they want her to do, or the *way* they want her to do them

Neutral: I'm calling these motivations neutral because they aren't about having bad intent, even if they lead to bad decisions

Fear--
There isn't a her in the future. Perhaps she is worried about what changing her life will mean and how she will be able to live

Hopelessness--
She's obviously depressed. Perhaps she believes that no matter how hard she tries, nothing will change, so there's not point to trying.

Good:
Selflessness--
Maybe she believes that LZW should have the opportunity to experience loving HXY. If she changes the timeline, it might mean that they will never meet, because HXY will never come to the past at all. She may believe that it's what he would do

Righteousness--
(I wasn't really sure what to call this). She may believe that everything happened the way it did for a reason, and that they should keep things in place even if she doesn't understand *why* things happened.

The following motivations I originally put under good, but then I realized that they're sort of a special category, because whether they are good or bad depends on what goal she has, which we don't know at this point:

Special knowledge--
It's possible that she's put together a piece of the puzzle that we haven't and it gives her a strong reason to believe that preserving the timeline is the right thing.

Special plan--
Linked to special knowledge, she may have an idea that she thinks is the right thing to do; she may believe she has a way to save LZW or herself or change the timeline on her own

If it's Special Knowledge or Special Plan, then perhaps her intent isn't to preserve the timeline.

It's mentioned that his family bought the condo for him. This is actually somewhat realistic in terms of sudden economic loss. It often doesn't make sense to give up something you own outright, even if that thing seems extravagant now, because the money you'd make won't actually replace the thing.... now, I'm not sure if that's exactly true here, but generally speaking giving up a home you own when you're struggling to make ends meet is definitely a risky proposition.

I don't think she's selfish. I think she's very very sad. Think about her perspective: She confesses to a guy she likes. He rejects her. Then she gets trapped in some weird space where she sees someone else take over her body and the guy she likes falls in love with this other person. Also, her mother and brother who she is convinced hate her start to get along with and love this other person. She's never had friends, but now this other person has friends. She has to sit and watch and it's like every good thing that happens to HYX in her body just confirms that it was all *possible* and all the horrible things in her life were her own fault (not saying that's true, but I think that's how she felt watching it).

And then when she comes back, she thinks, well, I'll just be this other person and people will like me, I can have that life where my family loves me, I have friends, the guy I like loves me. But every single person senses that she isn't the one they like. Almost every single person tells her how terrible she was before, and the guy she likes rejects her *again*.

It's like the whole universe is telling her "It's not them, it's you. YOU. You suck" over and over. ( don't think that's the actual message. I think that's what she's hearing, but as for the friends and family and even to an extent LZW, it's not that they think that she was a terrible person before but that she went from unapproachable to approachable. Her brother actually already loved the old her, but found her hard to get along with, the friends didn't know the old her at all and were really saying 'don't reject us again' not 'don't be that awful person again.' But she's very depressed and lacks confidence so she hears the worst.)

Anyway, I don't think her motivations come from selfishness, although I do think she has a lot of anger and resentment. But I think that anger is somewhat justified, even though HYX wasn't really at fault. I think she's just in a tremendous amount of pain, to the point that it's distorting her ideas of what is possible and what is fair.

Which song is this? It's not the time travel song...

I'm sort of holding out hope for a meta story, where we find out that it's been unreliable narrators and the time/soul travel is happening within something we aren't aware of, like a VR environment or a coma. Now, I DO NOT want "and it was all a dream" with a happy ending, but I think it would be cool if there is a twisty story that brings us back to the online search for dopplegangers and the VR concert and gives a new twist somehow. Not sure what that would be though....

I did the same today, noticed that too!

I'm so glad for this comment because it makes me feel like whatever the ending is, it will fit with the story. I'd rather have a sad ending that fits than a happy one that doesn't.

Actually it seems like she decided to keep the timeline on track when LZW asked how to see HYX again. Everything she says and does after that keeps things in place for him to be able to go to the future.

Hmmmmmmmmm....... 78? ;P

Nothing significant has changed, but we have old Li Zi Wei's theory that some change is possible, because the younger him in the airport didn't say *exactly* what the older him had said when he was the younger him. So he had told Huang Yu Xuan to just try to stay alive past the New Year date, without trying to actively change anything, and he thought that might allow something to change.

It's possible both happened. But less clear why MJJ would be involved then, and also if so, where were the boys who drugged her when she was asking MJJ to kill her? And also, the drug seems to kill almost instantly based on the girl in the classroom. Given the quality of the writing, I'm sure that if both happened, there's a sensible explanation. But it also seems like there is some possibility that there are now multiple timeline potentials...

I agree with the brilliance of the little crumbs, and they're all through the drama... like, at one point I felt like there was maybe a plot hole, but it turned out to be a crumb: the therapist had the rock used to hit CYR and prized it even though he wasn't, from his perspective at that time, the one who used it and so shouldn't have known about its significance. Now that we have more from the therapist view, we still don't have a direct explanation, but there's enough about the brothers' relationship to make it clear that it's not a plot hole and give some strong hints as to why the therapist had it and loved it....

Ummmm.... not sure what I was thinking there ^^^^^ the warning should be don't read unless you've watched ep 11, not 12 which obviously hasn't aired yet....

Don't read this unless you've completed episode 12!

*****

*****


****

My theory on why CYR asked MJJ to kill her at this point is that she is actually Chen Yun Ru who is aware of Huang Yu Xuan's life. She wants to die either to make sure the time travel still happens and she gets to be with Li Zi Wei however briefly, or because she thinks (or knows) she can be conscious as Huang Yu Xuan in 2019.

Now, though, we have two different memories of the death: one that is MJJ and the stabbing, the other that is our dual baddies (him and him) and the needle. This suggests that either there was some complicated sequence of events that we aren't yet award of OR that there are at least two alternate timelines at play for our characters.

They had to. She can't go to the past unless she's longing for him.

The plot is not messy, but it uses a very tight viewpoint that switches focus between the different mains, which means you don't know much more than the characters (and sometimes less) and there's a period of time where you have to get familiar with who's who.

There are ways in which it purposefully confuses you to set up mystery, but these moments are well done and usually clarified in good time. It is "intricate" rather than messy... the writers clearly know where they're going with it, which makes it a lot of fun if you don't mind pay attention and not knowing what's going on *some* of the time.

One issue that isn't the drama's fault that made the beginning confusing for me is that the synopsis on Viki makes it sound like the main character is pining after break-up.... she is not (the synopsis here is correct: he's missing and presumed dead).

The people thinking Tharn is sweet is why I had to write the review. I mean, the writing is inconsistent so there are sweet moments, but most of the "romantic" development happens through emotional abuse, and it really worries me to see people missing those red flags, because emotional abuse is so much more subtle than physical.

I also find it funny when people say not to take it seriously. I love goofy dramas. I don't require realism. For example, I don't care the that cops and gangsters in Bromance or History3 :Trapped were unrealistic, because the drama was fun.

The romantic comedy genre is supposed to be fun. It's not fun to watch a rape victim fall in love with someone who is constantly maintaining a low-level threshold of sexual assault in the place where the victim lives.

I agree with you about the toxicity and the fact that the sexual abuse was dealt with terribly. And, speaking to one of the other comments here, there are absolutely dramas that have dealt with trauma in much better ways and so there's no reason why we shouldn't expect them to either drop that part of the story or do it well.

That said, I just wanted to point out that actually sexual trauma can have a variety of effects, and one of them can be increased sexual activity. The key here is that that kind of sexual activity is usually quite unhealthy, a sign of ongoing trauma. A person may engage in increased sexual activities, increased porn consumption, as well as a variety of non-sexual self-harm behaviours.

One of the things I hated so much about how it was done in this series is that the whole set up of Tharn and Type's first time having sex felt so *typical* of a former rape victim trying to maintain some sense of control in a situation where they anticipate being assaulted again.

I could understand if at first Tharn didn't know how to interpret the trauma and made some mistakes of crossing boundaries, but it would have been so much better to see him offer support and the space for exploring a healthy relationship, rather than just being like "okay you said it so it's okay now we're having sex"

Honestly, the prevalence of rape themes and the way they're handled in BL make me wonder if I'm reading/watching the writers trying to process their own sexual traumas sometimes. Which I'm sympathetic to on one level, but I wish the people who produce these stories into shows wouldn't bring it so uncritically from the novels onto the screens.