#i look at han joo won esp in the beginning of the show

[katierosefun]

just got emotional thinking about what hjw might've had to go through in the year away from manyang, he was probably pestered by medias, having to deal with the trials and all the talks and whispers behind his back or even straight at his face. If i got the context right betraying his father was abig deal, yes many would praise him but many would shame him for being disrespectful and not filial. I'm sure hkh had big supporters in the force, corrupted people that wanted influence, power and wealth, they probably got mad at hjw for cutting short their connection and the future career advancement. All this might have reminded hjw how his life was before everything happened (my god something like "good things aren't bound to last") but after the time spent in manyang he changed, he got to experience love and closure, a found family and going back to his old habits might have felt so alienating now? he'd realize how cold and lonely that life was and struggling all the more due to it. I'm so glad he managed to fight his anxiety and fear and return to manyang + I'm fairly sure that once he saw that the people there still love him and welcomed him with open harms, he'd go back to stay. sorry if i wrote a lot but i wanted to share my feelings with someone who could understand and loves hjw too❤️

yeah, i was always incredibly fascinated by what might have happened in that year han joo won was away, and why i also just. think that han joo won probably really couldn't show his face not just because he probably felt a lot of shame, but also like. i dunno. my personal thought is that he was a fuckign mess for a little bit--like, the man you're in love with is also the man that you arrested, and the little community of people who cared about you can't possibly still love you now, not when you're the reason why their favorite person is going to go away . . .

and i feel like there definitely were a lot of people who probably looked askance at joo won to be like "how could you do that to your own father" or maybe other people who tried to swoop in and promote joo won for the sake of saving face, and i like to think that joo won was just like. blank-faced through it all. and just like, the thought of him running away from seoul and trying to go to a place where no one knows him is. yeah.

and also, i forget who might have said it, but there's also some speculation about whether joo won's the one turning down promotions or maybe joo won just never gets a promotion because maybe his name's also lowkey blacklisted since everything that happened with his dad. i like to think that it's joo won who keeps turning down promotions--maybe he's terrified that he'll ever really turn into his dad, because i don't think he ever will, but i do think that a small part of joo won will always still think about what greed and power can do to people, and he probably doesn't want even the littlest taste of that. (granted. han ki hwan was always a bad person, i think--you don't clamber up to the top with that kind of attitude unless there's already something broken inside of you, but i think. joo won would still. try to run from it.)

(especially since like. i think a lot about joo won hearing han ki hwan's conversation, what with han ki hwan being like "oh, joo won wants to think he's like me, but he's actually more like his mom", and seeing the fury but also the genuine pain on joo won's face because. yeah. as much as joo won scoffed at the mention of his dad even in the beginning, i think. it's the curse of certain children--the only child, the eldest child--to be like the father, especially when the mother is deemed weak or just out of the picture. little boys and little girls want to be the behemoth of a man that their father is; they want to be cold, logical, infallible. and i think as much as joo won hated talking about his dad, i look at how, esp. in the beginning of the show, he tried so hard to project that kind of attitude, with the whole "i don't need friends / i don't trust anyone / you have to be logical" when we so clearly see. how lonely he is and how he. still trembles a little bit when his dad yells at him and how he peers in through the windows of the shop like he's an alien. or maybe a very curious, kind of timid cat.)

so all that to say: yeah, i feel you anon. i love han joo won so much, and i love how beyond evil is just as much a story about joo won learning to fall into this beautiful (but slightly broken) community, and how i think. he must have healed along the way :'))

[katierosefun]

hi caroline can i vent to you a lil bit? i just saw a post with a terrible take about BE and juwon part specifically irked me, probably due to personal experience, so i wanted to share my pov with you.

the post -among many other things- said that juwon had ocd and it was terrible that the writers went "yeah let's just force him to stop by the end of it" and tbh I didn't get it, i always thought that when juwon said "mysophobia, I don't have it" he was right. ocd is an anxiety related issue and my boi definitely has that and it's quite bad yeah. But i always felt like it was due to the fact he was striving to uphold the standards of perfection his father has been projecting onto him since he was a kid. As much as juwon hated him he still tried his best to do everything he could in order to get some sort of praise or acknowledgment from his absent father. So that's why in the end he slowly learns to let go of all of that, he must have felt like a weight was lifted from his shoulders. He's a complex multidimensional character and both the writer and the director did a brilliant job with BE.

Sorry if i bothered you, I'm probably exactly like that post "why do you like him?" or smth and with ds it's just "look at him❤️" and with jw it's an entire paragraph. yup relatable indeed aldhakd

hi anon! oh, i think i know the post you're talking about, because i remember reading something along those lines pretty early when i was getting into beyond evil . . .

also, this got long. maybe because i have a lot of thoughts + also because i wound up talking more about mental illness rep in beyond evil as a whole:

but like. hm. yes, i absolutely agree with you because while i might not have ocd myself, i do have family members + friends with ocd, and i also have pretty severe anxiety + i used to struggle with an eating disorder, which overlapped with some ocd tendencies (at least, according to what my friends/family struggling with ocd told me from their own perception of me). because of that, i absolutely saw joo won and his tendencies and realized that. like. yeah, a lot of his behaviors can absolutely stem from anxiety-driven issues like ocd.

i think what makes me personally upset about the kind of "ugh the writers just dropped joo won's ocd storyline" is that it totally misses the fact that not all mental illnesses or disabilities are quite the same. because mental illnesses like ocd or anxiety disorder or panic attack disorder are actually mental illnesses that people want to better cope with/somehow heal from. when i was younger, i remember being told by someone who was also struggling with similar mental illnesses as mine that "yeah, you're never gonna get 'better'--this thing is gonna stick with you forever", and as a teenager, that really made me scared about like. oh my god. am i going to personally be living this weird half-life for the rest of my days? that's terrible.

but of course, that's not true! yeah, people with mental illnesses like ocd, anxiety, depression, etc--they all struggle from time to time, and that def. all varies with different degrees of stress (ie. my own anxiety and depression gets significantly worse when i've encountered a triggering situation, and my own past eating disorder tendencies like to pop in when i'm feeling stressed out with work/school/etc). but the thing about these mental illnesses is that you can get better, usually with the help of therapy, medication, a support system and, as cheesy as it sounds (but it's true!), compassion and love for yourself.

in the case of han joo won, who has clearly never had a very stable family or friends situation, it would make sense that his own ocd or other unspecified mental illness would be pretty severe at the start of the show. we've seen how he was raised, even if only for 5 minutes--we see his interactions with his father. it seems that his family also has some history of mental illness too, given how his mom was.

but the great thing about the show is that over the course of the series, joo won gets some greater sense of support and love than he had felt in his entire life. even when he was still being a jerk, the station was so accommodating to joo won (ie. chief nam cleaning out the bathroom for joo won if he wanted to take a shower, and then even later, ji hwa telling jae yi that wait, inspector han needs new bowls in a totally nonjudgmental manner).

the thing about han joo won no longer struggling as severely with his ocd is simply because he's received more support. he's found people who seem to genuinely care about him, and i think along the way, he subconsciously started to let go of his tendencies. his entire dirty history is out there--and unlike han ki hwan, who was so obsessed with perfection, the manyang gang love and appreciate han joo won anyways, annoying attitude + messy mistakes + all. ofc, love doesn't "fix" a mental illness, but it helps one get better, because that's what a support system is all about.

it's also worth noting that, like, beyond evil is a show that's very conscious about the discussion around mental illnesses. dong sik pretty clearly struggles with some kind of ptsd, and jeong je pretty clearly struggles with his own depression, and even oh ji hoon's mentioned in passing about struggling with depression. but what i like about beyond evil is that writer kim su jin and director shim na yeon and the entire cast also seemed pretty intent about those depictions of mental illness--oh ji hoon's a pretty sunshine-y looking guy, for starters, all smiles and cheer, which is the exact opposite people assume of those struggling with depression. (the most frustrating thing a depressed person can hear is oh, you don't look like you have depression though?) as for dong sik, we see him pretty clearly struggling on his own (crying alone in the basement, tucking himself away when he's grieving, the fact that he sleeps on the couch without any heat speaks volumes about how little he cares about himself), but as soon as he's around friends or his loved ones, he automatically puts on a whole act. as for jeong je, we see that he's a pretty timid guy, maybe the kind of more expected representation we see of depression and/or anxiety, but maybe that makes a little more sense, given his relationship with an overbearing mother who never really . . . allowed him to heal or get better, even despite sending him to all those doctors.

in short, i think that it's pretty unfair + also kinda narrow-minded to act like writer kim su jin dropped joo won's ocd line. she's been super intentional with everything in beyond evil, and the fact that joo won slowly loosens up on his tendencies was just another factor that really demonstrated how he'd started to get more comfortable around people who actually liked him for who he is, not for this perfect, logical robot that he was pressured into being. human beings are messy! for han joo won, who cries when he's frustrated or angry or getting scolded, being loved and respected and liked gave him enough reason to let go of his own ocd tendencies and get better.