#please don't spoil me if you know how the devil judge goes

[gillianthecat]

Here are some additional, but very disorganized, thoughts on The Devil Judge. I'm not sure they make any sense, but I wanted to record them to see if I end up being right about anything.

I'm most of the way through episode 5. I wrote a lot about my predictions for the main storyline in this post.

(Again, please don't spoil me yet if you know what happens beyond episode 5 - I'll make a note here when I'm finished.)

Update: Finished it! Spoil away.

The media/public opinion/mob rule stuff is becoming a bigger theme, I guess I just needed to wait a little longer. And we're starting to see the dangerous mob side of public opinion. I guess they wanted to heighten the drama by showing the changeability of public opinion.

I still can't quite see how he tv, idol and mob culture stuff fits with romance plot I'm predicting. And don't think it's going to be a story with its own arc, but maybe more like a background theme

If it was an arc it would force our main characters to change in some way. And I guess we're starting to see that with Ga-on as he gets called an idol and sent gifts. I could imagine that becoming so big it causes major problems for him, the kind that shape a story arc. If I'm wrong about the gothic romance plot and this really is a corruption thriller the idol stuff would be a way of corrupting him. But if it is a gothic romance I don't really see how it fits.

For Yo-han I guess the arc would be that he thinks he can control public opinion but he actually can't and the turns on him. Which is obviously connected to his multipart power struggle. And actually we are starting to see that in episode 5. This current trial of the celebrity is depicted as Jeong Seon-a's attempt to wrest control over the public back from Judge Kang.

Who is involved in the power struggle? Story-wise, I think it's actually just three people, Kang Yo-han, Jeong Seon-a (the charity director) and Cha Kyung-hee (the Minister of Justice). The President thinks he's a contender but I don't think he actually is, I think he's going to be a piece to move around or maybe a buffoon that gets in the way. All the other powerful men are background characters in the story so far, and I think will be shown as attempting to win power but not actually having a chance. The TV producer is mostly portrayed as a comedic character. If this really was a political thriller I could see the president's wife as having dark-horse potential, but I don't think that's where the plot is going. And the nominally powerful chairman of the charity is shown as sidelined by Jeong Seon-a.

In terms of the framing of the story, the three of them are the only ones shown making moves and countermoves. And now that I think about it, I'm predicting that Jeong Seon-a's going to turn out to be the main antagonist. She's framed in a similar way to Judge Kang, as someone with plots within plots. She presents one image to the world ("I'm just the secretary" and "I'm just passing on a message") while doing something else behind the scene. She's implied to be the real power behind the charity, forcing the Chairman aside. And since the charity is depicted as the most powerful organization in this dystopian S. Korea, she is therefore perhaps the most powerful person, even though most people don't know it.

Cha Kyung-hee is ambitious, but I'm predicting that her plotting is going to have less effect on the story than Jeong Seon-a's. She's an antagonist, but I think she's going to end up being more of a pawn, and someone that Kang Yo-han neutralizes earlier. But I'm not super confident in this guess, she could end up being as important at Jeong Seon-a.

What is going on with the relationship between Jeong Seon-a and the Chairman? It seems pretty kinky, but maybe I'm misinterpreting and it's actually that he thinks he's a guilty person that needs to repent. Which could actually fit in with him being a villain in Kang Isaac's death? Clearly she's sidelining him so that she's the real power, but what is she thinking? Is it kinky for her, or is she just using his kink to push him out of the game.

There are aspects of the story that don't quite fit into gothic romance. Kim Ga-on is not as isolated as I think of gothic heroines being. He has his mentor at the court, the one who brought him into the mystery, and seems to have been a sort of father figure to him when he was younger.

And he has Yoon Soo-hyun, who seems to be filling a couple different roles: protector, confidant, assistant detective, semi-implied love interest. I can't quite tell - are they supposed to have mutual crushes on each other? Is it unrequited pining from her?

The show is explicitly framing their relationship as him as a justice-seeker and her as his protector. With the gender reversal of their roles I think this puts Ga-on in the ingenue position. Like, on some levels she's a heterosexual love interest, but in the other hand her role in the story contradicts that.

However, I'm not actually sure how a childhood love interest/protector fits into the gothic romance frame work. I don't know how a mentor figure fits in either. I don't know enough about the genre to say.

I guess a mystery dovetails pretty well with gothic romance, but the political thriller doesn't because I think of gothic as being isolated and only taking place with the small group of people at the creepy house.

Oh! Yo-han even says I hate this house. All the bad memories surface (are told?) while they're at the house, I think. That's very gothic. Also the Catholicism. I think it's catholic. And the biblical names.

Catholic vibes and themes - suffering and redemption, corruption and innocence. I don't know the Korean name of the show is the same, but "devil" is an obvious Christian allusion. All that (hell)fire we see, the literal cross on Yo-han's back, the cross he wears on his wrist. And gothic romanticism often feels steeped in catholic imagery.

I'm assuming their Catholic and not Protestant based on the priest's clothes and the English words being used, although that could be mistranslations. According to Wikipedia, S. Korea is 11% Catholic.

But the political thriller doesn't fit easily alongside the romance, genre wise, I don't think. There are just too many people. I think a brooding hero is allowed to have a revenge plot, but it kind of has to happen in the background so as not to bring in too many people.

This potentially creates a tension for Yo-han: is he focused on Ga-on or on revenge.

Plus a romance tightly focuses on the two characters. This story seems to have I think 4 or maybe 5 main characters with their own arcs. Along with Yo-han and Ga-on, I think Jeong Seon-a and Cha Kyung-hee could be considered main characters. And perhaps Yoon Soo-hyun, although so far her role has mostly been to support Ga-on, or to highlight his changing attitude to Yo-han.

So we have two romance characters and the two antagonists, who are also antagonists with each other.

I think political thrillers tend to be more ensemble based, with lots of characters getting weight in the story. I guess I'll see how the focus shifts as the story continues. Are there two different plot lines going on? It doesn't seem like that would work, but perhaps it could.

I like that so many of the major players in this story, including the most powerful and plot relevant ones besides our main leads, are women. And they feel like actually powerful characters, who each hold power in different ways, which we don't always see in ensemble stories like this. And while I don't think Elijah, the housekeeper, or Oh Jin-joo (the second judge), are going to be players in the game of political intrigue, I do think they will have their own stories in the show.

Presidents wife is going her own way but I don't know if that will affect the plot much. It seems like Cha Kyung-hee's son isn't so much a character as a pawn for our big three to fight over.

I'm predicting that Kang Yo-han isn't actually intending to be involved the power struggle. Or rather he is, but not because he wants power for its own sake the way the other characters do. The story is still trying to keep it uncertain, but I think we have enough clues to point to it being a revenge plot rather than a sick twisted game he's playing. We get to see him through his own eyes so it's harder to keep what he's doing as a mystery.

The two antagonists are involved in a political... i can't think of the word but thriller isn't right and they're sort of dragging Kang Yo-han along with them. But not really, he's primarily in s revenge plot.

So, if I'm right, Ga-on is very clearly a gothic heroine even from the beginning. And seems to be only existing in that story. Whereas Yo-han exists in both stories. So how's that going to go? Is he going to drag Ga-on into the revenge story with him? Which would in a way be the corruption arc I expected. It would work better to do that than keep him out of that story and the vengeance stuff is very unlikely to be dropped altogether.

But I yet again have come back to the tv/idol/mob stuff not fitting these either of these stories. So it's not really a theme, but a battlefield in the revenge story. And will have no baring on the romance plot, other than maybe a medium for them to flirt, or maybe incite some mild jealousy. But I can't see it as either pushing them together or driving them apart, it's just kind of there in the background. And mob opinion is totally irrelevant to gothic romances, the whole point is that they're isolated. I guess the one purpose is to set the stage at the beginning- to spread rumors about the scary dangerous hero. But that's not what the mob/public is doing here. The public loves Judge Kang at the beginning. It's the mentor judge who tells Ga-on that Judge Kang is dangerous. So I don't think the public will have any real role in the romance.

[thesevro]

So I read desert rose and loved it. It gave me an idea for an imagine where Sukuna and the reader kinda have a relationship like Hades and Persephone. They meet at first, not fond of each other, but they start to understand each other and slowly they fall in love. Not just any love but one that's so deep that it envelops them, a love so deep its embedded into their soul. You can add smut if you want, I don't mind. I just thought that this would be amazing!

thank you for the first request i’ve received here on tumblr!! 

this shit actually turned out longer than i thought it would. i got a little carried away. ahuhuhu~~ hope you enjoy this anon bby!! 

WARNINGS: mentions of rape, sukuna calls you a whore and a slut AWOOGA, explicit smut

---

“No man has ever survived that curse.”

Her laugh cuts the air. It is dangerous. Snorting and derisive. The absolute opposite of the slack-jawed shock on his tattooed countenance.

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m not a man.”

Her hands spin in a small, tight circle, focusing the cursed energy in the tiny space of power she traces with her hands. She stares at the man with unblinking eyes. Bears insults down on him with the laughter in her eyes.

“You fucking bitch,” he seethes, hissing at the scorn curling her mouth. He does not need his hands to form his own curse. It only takes another vilifying look at her for one more curse to fly in her direction. He breathes an aggravated breath through his nose as one of her servants takes the shot instead, performing the same technique with their own hands.

“Ooh, that one was a little weaker, don’t you think?” she mocks, then turns to her servant with a pleased smile on her lips. “Good boy.”

The boy simpers at the praise, leaning into the touch the woman pets onto his head. Sukuna loses control at the casualness, the apathy. To have such inferior, lowly beings smile in his presence…  for them to have the fucking nerve to even meet his eyes…

He is the King of Curses. Whoever the fuck it is this woman may be, he knows he has to put her and her proletarian flunkeys in their damn places.

His four hands tremble as a wild rush of cursed energy pulses through his veins. A manic grin cuts his frown into a smile.

I’m going to fucking kill you.

But in the next moment, his hands begin to tremble for a wholly different reason. His blood goes cold.

“You know, you aren’t that bad-looking for someone with two faces and a mouth on their stomach.” The woman traces the frowning tincture of a smile on his stomach, arm raised into the air in order to reach it. She almost stands on her tip-toes. Even with her diminutive stature she seems to be the most powerful in the obliterated room. 

When did she—?

“If you accept defeat, your highness…” A sharp, sardonic quip comes to make him fraught with wrath, “Then I might just let you live and have you become one of my menials instead. You could do plenty with those four arms of yours.”

Her fingers have opened the mouth on his stomach. Now she only tries to prick the pads of her strong fingers on the razor-edged ridges of teeth there, awaiting his answer with easy patience. Her hand grows sticky with his slobber.

“She could kill you in seconds, King,” the boy from earlier speaks up. “Could just grab that tongue in your stomach and wrench it upward ‘till the tip of it comes out one o’ your eye sockets.”

“Oh, don’t spoil my fun Jackie,” she says, still playing with the mouth on his abdomen. “I was planning to keep it a surprise for our man here.”

“I’ll be part of your fucking band of delinquents,” he interrupts, locking eyes with the woman, head lowered. “But you will make me the superior of the rest of your blue-collared pack of idiots.”

“You’re going to have to work for that, Ryomen-chan.” She flashes a smile at him. Her hand slips further into the mouth on his abdomen. He knows what she’s doing. Tempting him into trying to bite her hand off, if only so she could acquire an excuse to kill him.

And no one. No one fucking gave her the authority to call him Ryomen-chan.

“I don’t fucking care,” he snaps back at her, grabbing her hand before quickly relaxing his grip. He falters ever so slightly as something in her eyes goes dark, then with a begrudging gentleness slips her hand out of the mouth. “I’m already part of your ragged band of lackeys, bitch. So fucking tell me what it is you me to do.”

---

He hates her with his entire being. With each day that passes he thinks of slitting her throat open and raping her as she dies. It is a train of thought that has been of much prominence since he was forced to join her group of brainless monkeys.

And he hates this, too, but he can’t say it’s all that bad. It’s much better than letting the bitch climb onto his shoulders and stand on his head to gain the elevated vantage she constantly insists is necessary to scout the area. When she has the ability to fucking fly. Fucking dumbass. 

So, yes. This isn’t… as demeaning as the rest of the orders she gives him.

“No, Ryomen-chan, you’re supposed to twist that strand over the middle one—oh, you’re hopeless.” 

Scratch that.

“That is the middle strand, bi—Ms. (Y/N),” he disguises the anger shaking in his voice with a call of her title, then shoves the strands of hair between his fingers to the front of her face. “Are you fucking blind?”

“As opposed to your deluded delusion, Ryomen-chan, this is the middle strand.” She holds a lock of her hair, plucking it from between his fingers. Something thumps in his chest as her fingers brush his palm. “Are you blind? Now that would be a horrible addition to your already damaged brain.”

“Let me fucking try again then. Give it here.”

Jeez. No one said styling a woman’s hair would be this… toilsome. 

“No, let me show you how to do it, Ryomen-chan. Sit down.” 

His knees bend as she shoves him down onto the plush pillow she uses when presenting herself as the Queen of Curses (a title he finds himself unable to contradict, fuck). His brows furrow and he turns back to protest but she only grips his chin in her fingers, her eyes meeting his, and snaps his head forward. 

“I said let me show you.” 

Something thuds in his chest again. He wills for it to shut the fuck up.

Her hand falls from his face, though her fingers stroke the bottom of his chin with the fleeting touch of danger before her hand moves to twine into his hair. He sits still, the breathless tightness in his chest soon giving way to ennui as he watches her braid his hair from the mirror. He finds himself observing the way her eyes glaze over with focus as she styles his hair. For the quickest second he wonders how hazy her eyes would go with him inside her.

“Alright, done. Did you take notes, Ryomen-chan? That was an important… lesson…” 

Her voice falters. He looks back at her and finds her eyes on his legs. Particularly on something protruding from between his thighs.

“Sukuna... I just braided your hair—”

“Not. Another. Word.” 

---

The first time he slides inside her, it’s like fucking himself into heaven.

He makes no sound as he fucks her, as she lets him fuck her, but everything in his head has blurred together to narrow his vision to only the sight of her beneath him.

He’s missed fucking women. Missed being inside them. He hates the fact that she is better than any bitch he has ever shoved his cock into.

He tries to keep his head in the crook of her neck. But then her legs hook together from around his waist, fingers curling into the hands he’s pinned to her wrists, and she’s moaning like the bitch in heat she really is. The curiosity to watch her face as he fucks her overwhelms him completely.

The touch she shares with his hands is more intimate than it should be. It’s as if his hands keep her grounded, keep her here with him as he makes her cum. 

Her back arches, and a third hand of his grips the small of her back to keep it arched, so that her stomach touches the mouth on his own abdomen.

For some fucking reason he wants to give her all the pleasure he can. Make her go cross-eyed. Fuck her 'till she goes stupid with sex.

He lets the mouth on his stomach fall open. The tongue there is long enough to slide between their bodies, wet enough to slither between them with ease. He smirks with the smile of a devil as the Queen of Curses, his only superior, cries out in pleasure as the tip of his tongue curls around the free space between their joined bodies. His tongue flicks her clit. Dips inside her to join the fullness of his cock. His eyes shut in lazy pleasure as she squeezes him tighter.

She has the body of a virgin. He can tell she’s only been touched once or twice in the past, judging from the way her dominance had fluctuated the moment she finished undressing him. Her touches were hesitant. Apprehensive. But for some reason she had also sought his pleasure, had taken his cock in her mouth and sucked not like an inexperienced little village girl but a masterful whore. 

He says it now, “The Queen of Curses, Ms. (Y/N), now the desperate bitch of her King.” A chuckle rumbles in his chest as she trembles in the wash of her fourth orgasm. He knows how many she’s had. He’s been counting; plans to give her ten. “A slut in the sheets, a queen in the streets. How delightful.”

And this, this makes the slut cum. 

And when she does, her authority returns. With a look of glaze-eyed intoxication in her eyes, she pushes his behemothic body off her, and rides him until he finally says her name. 

And at that point, he knows not whether he is her whore, or she is his. All he knows is that it’s fucking good to be inside her, and that she sounds and feels better than any other hole he's fucked.

The next time he fucks her, there are braids in her hair.