#I don't think I ever watched a drama where I had zero criticism until now

[weirdsixtieslove]

the glory thoughts

I love how this is not a typical kdrama where you have the "good" main characters and the villians. The main characters can be unlikable in the beginning, they can be arrogant, selfish or grumpy, yet their morals are always correct. But here, while Dong Eun and Yeo-Jeong are kind and loving, they both think and do things that would be considered morally questionable. Wanting to kill your his father‘s murderer because him being punished by the law and put behind bars is not enough? Sure, just don’t get caught. Dedicating your life to destroying your highschool bullies‘ lives? Understandable, how can I help?

There is no „It’s better to forgive and move on“ conclusion in this drama. And I’m living for it. In fact, the one time Yeo-Jeong asks Dong-Eun if it isn’t better to let go of the past, she gets up to show him all of her scars and he immediately pledges to help her in any way he can, not even hesitating to include murder in that offer as well.

"Good"/typical main characters can defend themselves against the villians, but they usually won‘t go out of their way to execute an elaborate plan to ruin their lives. Instead, the villian either repents their actions and is forgiven or conveniently has their life ruined without the main character's explicit actions. But sometimes it’s not good enough to be the bigger person. Sometimes you can’t just hope they get punished for their wrongdoings on their own eventually.

The writers never portray her revenge as the way to heal her of all trauma and immediately fix her life. But at the same time they make it clear she does not regret her revenge, and that it did bring her closure and let her focus on other things.

Lastly, I love that they didn't portray Dong-Eun as having become this cold, strong and fully confident woman who thinks of nothing but revenge. This is how she tries to show herself when talking to her former bullies but you can see how she often has to hold back tears and even throws up after talking to Jae-Jun. She also tries to be that way with Hyun-Nam and Yeo-Jeong, but she finds herself becoming vulnerable around and attached to them. At the end of the day she is a woman who is still deeply traumatized and just wants to be loved, but for the longest time doesn‘t allow herself this love as to not get distracted from her revenge.

Also, I can't end this post without including just how much I love Yeo-Jeong. Being the biggest sweetheart while also having murder fantasies and offering your crush to kill her bullies? This is the kind of character complexity I need in a drama, and I'm so happy Dong-Eun had him by her side. I really loved every single aspect of this drama. The acting, the characters, the storyline, truly a 10/10 no notes kind of drama that I will be thinking about for a very long time.

[ghostmartyr]

Thanks for being one of the very few people willing to criticize Eren's development. IMO this could've been as great as people make it look like, but now we found out we could've followed so many perspectives of people out there RESISTING, instead we don't even get solid development for the Alliance. Reveals come in the worst way, characters are misplaced, and the mess in Eren's POV hinders their own POV instead of giving it room. Nothing's allowed to shine, not even Eren, only... hopelessness?

Glad to be of service.

You know, I’m very fast to looking at a lot of what’s going on in the manga and thinking that it’s gone enough off the rails that any station it’s planning to land on is going to get crashed straight into -- however. In my quietest, most hopeful of hearts, I do think that there is potential for this to round out okay.

What’s been true for this series from the beginning is that it is graceless af. Whatever arc we’ve sat through, while it was coming out? Unending, concerned cringing, and faithless confidence that the manga had fucked up too badly to course correct.

Because a lot of the time, what we were sitting through looked incredibly stupid with what we had of it. Dialogue options are blunt, drama is distributed in ham-fisted, predictable ways, horrifying things are shown off with more intent to bother the reader than service the story. A good portion of the narrative is designed with the intent of interacting with the audience’s fraught emotions.

We aren’t observing this, we’re participants, and part of our script says we should feel as uncomfortable as possible. That doesn’t make for the smoothest story, and it becomes hard to trust. There are so many mountains and valleys, strung together with so little care for geographical impact, aaaand...

Then the light shines, and like one of those paint videos where it looks like the artist has been spraying without a care for several minutes, suddenly there’s an entire solar system on display. Watching it all again, you can point to where the starting point of some detail or feature was. You would have zero sense at the beginning, but by the end, you get it. It makes sense. It doesn’t work before then because it’s not complete. To an audience, they’re just random splatters of paint until they’re not.

As a writing choice, it isn’t my favorite thing, but it’s been an active component of the story for so long that I am hesitantly willing to trust it. It’s agonizing this time because the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, and it’s our main character doing this, not other strings that are easier to brush aside, but if you look back at the flow, this isn’t new. This is how this stupid story is telling itself, and at the end of the day, the content is interesting enough to make the awkward journey worth something in retrospect.

I realize that’s putting the burden of fixing this all on later chapters, but yeah. If it’s a mess right now (and it really could have been done much more neatly), hopefully that just means it’s more satisfying to watch it all come together in the end.

Darkest before the dawn, and all that.