#this show should thus ​give me baby Lee Rang getting sick for the first time all on his own after the mountain burned

[winepresswrath]

A weird side effect of all this attention is that Lee Rang himself is kind of washed out, as a character. What he's thinking, what he's feeling, what he wants- none of that is really driving the plot. It's all about Yeon's regrets and desire for a do-over, his potential as a hostage, and the way all of this is inevitably leading to Yeon leaving again. His characterization also skews more towards blunt force instrument, which is cute, but I do think kind of misses some of the fun of the trickster-fox characterization. Season one Lee Rang is relentlessly obnoxious, but it's very deliberate. He's socially functional enough to be manipulative and understand how to come across as playfully menacing. This is not coming across at all in his romantic adventures this season, which is fine I guess (maybe shit went down in the intermediate hundred years and he learned some things! Maybe he's specifically obtuse when it comes to people expressing romantic interest in him! maybe he's being deliberately obtuse in this instance because he owes his love interest a life debt and doesn't want to outright reject her while she holds that kind of power over him!) but there's a sense of mischief and chaos mongering that's really lacking in his romance. It leaves him with a surprising lack of interiority for a character who the whole season revolves around, though I cannot fault them on their cute slice of life domesticity.

I'm now watching the tale of the nine tailed sequel series and it's kind of amazing, in that a dedicated shitty little brother apologist seems to have been giving given licence to write official time travel fixit. I applaud their vision. Every single sympathetic antagonist is just a mirror of Lee Rang's issues except Lee Yeon doesn't love them as much. My favourite so far is the angry ghost of a little girl named after Lee Rang's favourite flowers who died because Lee Yeon abandoned his post and wasn't there to save her. Cannot wait to see where this baby subplot is going ahaha oh my god it went to Lee Yeon not wanting to look after the baby because he can't commit to staying in the past to parent her & he doesn't want more abandoned children in his life.