This Is Possibly The Most Insane National Security Story In The Last 50 Years. Includes A Massive Text

I forgot to say this last time. Baku, Gotak and I, we all know you visit your friend in the hospital and why he's there. But in my opinion it wasn’t your fault.

currently rewatching the devil judge as i study for a populism and democracy final and i think my next step might just be writing a fic where gahan just Talk and Argue about everything i’ve gotten out of all 75 of the readings that i need to review for this class

the way TDJ approaches gender is SO interesting to me.

soohyun as the female love interest with a more traditionally masculine approach to problems (trying to take things on personally to keep gaon away from hardship, fighting with physical violence, literally being a cop) vs. gaon as the male main character with a more “feminine” take on the world (nurturing his plants and the prople around him, protective of children and the weak, how his work is in his words and he is really only ever allowed to be physical about his rage by the man he’s closest to).

then there’s yohan, who’s just Man at his peak i feel (gun-wielding, broody, aggressive, dark and powerful and dangerous… but misunderstood and chivalrous and a provider at heart… mr Beast from the hit disney film type beat) vs. seon-a, who is the actual definition of an ambitious Woman (her power coming from being underestimated as a woman, and how she forcibly empowered herself through the circumstances of being taken advantage of for her girlhood).

and then there’s soohyun and yohan being in explicit competition with each other for gaon everytime they meet while gaon and seon-a passive aggressively battle away in yohan’s home. LMFAO. enough said on that one i feel.

Kim Gaon is the most female coded character ever

THIS!!!

if season 1 was a testament to sieun’s fight of self-determination — standing up for himself, punishing those who hurt him and his friends — and eventually realizing through beomseok’s plotline how damaging that sort of mindless violence can be, then season 2 is the portrayal of sieun’s reckoning with that, tempering down his viciousness, choosing force only when it is necessary, in an effort not to be cruel or do excessive harm.

it offsets so well with the baku-baekjin plotline — baekjin, a similarly intelligent and calculating boy who grew up bullied by others, who has that capacity for swift, harsh violence that sieun demonstrated all through season 1. but that’s not the person sieun is anymore, nor is it the person he wants to be.

“don’t cross the line” - that’s what embodies sieun’s approach to violence now. it’s why his takes resonate so much with his new friends at eunjang, who have all seen and felt very personally the harm of those who carelessly do so (jun-tae with hyoman, gotak with seungje, baku with baekjin). this is what broadly characterizes the motivations of our protagonists in s2, and it’s certainly a breath of fresh air in the vicious cycle they more broadly exist in.

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all"- The quote at the beginning of WHC.

And this is so perfect because:

This time Sieun didn't fight to avenge, he didn't to damage, to hurt, to win, he never fought for himself. Not once. This time, he fought to protect. And what makes WHC2 great is that you can actually SEE this difference in his fights this time. He is not vicious, just calculated, just enough to hold it at bay. He was calculating before, too, but this time it was subdued, quieter.

Park Jihoon truly is amazing as Yeon Sieun. Because everything this season, the way he acted genuinely showed the trauma, he embodied loss, hopelessness, not really belonging, the desperate plea to not get into a fight if he could avoid it, not to make the violence personal, Jihoon portrayed this all soo sooo well: from his body language to his eyes.

I really am a sucker for dual male lead media where they appear as complete opposites only to end up being eachothers foils and somehow also ending up being completely depended on eachother despite of (because of) their differences

beomseok is told and shown his entire life - by his bullies, by his abusive father, all the way back to the fact that he is adopted - that he is unworthy of respect, that he belongs beneath others, and that he deserves to be hurt for it. he’s trapped in a perceived reality of give-and-take relationships, hierarchical struggle between peers, and friendships built upon facing a “common enemy,” and his perspective on human interaction and “acceptable” violence is extremely skewed by what he’s had to live through.

it’s tragic. beomseok was not ready to be the kind of friend that sieun was to him and suho, and beomseok was not ready to be friends with suho - a person who viewed them all as equals even as he echoed words and wounds all too familiar to beomseok’s past. beomseok was fighting and flailing, trying to find his place in the hierarchical world he felt he was stuck in, trying to battle his way to earning respect; he was not ready to recognize the genuine care and sense of equality that sieun and suho provided outside of that worldview, because that was not the kind of world he had ever experienced, and because his worst fear was to be the outsider. in actuality, he needed to heal his wounds and grow his self esteem in ways that didn’t rely on external validation. but… well.

in another story, beomseok’s arc could have been taken as a broken kid standing up for himself, and things could go very differently. but within the context of this show - delving into the damaging spiral of the cycle of violence - beomseok is punished for using the violence that he’s faced his whole life as a tool for his self-determination. he’s rebelling against what his father and bullies have told him, which should be something empowering. and yet because he does it in the wrong way, it all falls apart. his defensiveness and his fear and his resentment take him way too far into violence that comes to extreme ends, and his inability to take accountability (because genuinely, who ever even tried to do so in his view, other than sieun?) only feeds into blame shifting and worse behavior.

and none of this excuses him, and it doesn’t take away the very harmful consequence of his mistakes (suho!!!! suho nooo!!!!!) — but it’s very, very human. beomseok made mistakes, and the narrative didn’t let him get away with them whatsoever. there is no happy ending in continued violence, and so there is no happy ending for beomseok in this either.

“we need more complex male characters in korean dramas!!” you couldn’t even handle him.

just here to confess that i am The overanalyzer. professionally. personally. academically. lovingly. in every way possible, even

whc2 used the character that haunts the narrative trope and fucking delivered — a rabid (relatively spoiler free) 4am review

Ending off of S1, albeit (extremely) sad, I wasn’t expecting the S2 script to include much of Suho. The original webtoon had made it clear that Suho would be a passing memory for Sieun. It just so happens that Jihoon and Hyunwook had so much chemistry they rewrote the course of what would have been.

Then again, it’s not only because of the og webtoon characterisations that led me to believe Suho wouldn’t be mentioned a lot in S2. It’s because as much as sieun and suho clearly had a close relationship, what S1 never did was have sieun narrate his inner thoughts and emotions. Hence in fact, all of us viewers, were never privy to Sieun’s feelings apart from the incredible emotive acting on Jihoon’s part — we are never completely sure how deeply Sieun felt for Suho. Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised at how the writers made efforts for Sieun to recall Suho in every episode, and Beomseok, in frequent scenes.

Right off the bat in S2E1, we see Sieun have war flashbacks to S1 with Beomseok and Suho. Both Beomseok and Suho? Fuck yeah. We need to remember that both were close to Sieun and of course, impacted Sieun emotionally.

As the season progresses, it’s made clear that the writers prioritise featuring Suho and Beomseok, rather than have them appear in one off scenes. Beomseok always returning in flashbacks and of course, the dream sequence with Sieun in the boxing ring. We see clearer than ever now what morals and fatalistic viewpoints separate Sieun and Beomseok, even though they are both lonely souls hidden beneath everything.

We don’t even need to talk about Suho — Sieun physically and mentally cannot forget about him. Sieun continuously writes his feelings out on text messages which he then sends to Suho’s number, suffers from insomnia because of Suho, and is endlessly reminded of Suho when he fights.

It’s not easy to write a compelling “ghost that haunts the narrative” trope without it being too sappy, but god, the way WHC2 did it for both Suho and Beomseok was compelling and believable. Because of course, Sieun cannot simply forget about either of them. These two will eternally be locked into his reflexes — which the directing and script cleverly includes and remembers.