TLDR:

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

the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels, noticing patterns, making connections, contemplating

Whatever Matt Stone is doing with Kyle is the opposite of healing your inner child. Giving your inner child AIDS. Putting your inner child in a migrant detention camp. Sewing your inner child into a human centipede. Like whats going on with you man do you need to talk to someone

(me, my parents, my sister, and the baby are sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch)

baby, pointing at the light fixture over the table and signing "on": o.*

my sister: we actually can't turn that light on right now, because the lightbulb inside is burnt out! it needs a new one.

baby: ighbu.

sister: yes, lightbulb! granddaddy said after we eat he's going to climb up there on a ladder and change it, and then the light will come on!

baby: gadada! adda, uuu! ighbu o!

sister: exactly!

baby, signing "on" and pointing at the light and then my dad, with increasing urgency: GADADA ADDA UUUU. O.

my sister: we're going to finish eating first though, ok?

baby: nonono. O. gadada adda uuu.

[a split second goes by]

baby, pointing to himself: ba. adda uuu. ighbu.

me: you're going to climb the ladder and change the lightbulb yourself?

baby: dzyeah. *pointing to the buckle where he is buckled into the high chair* ububu.

me: unbuckle you? so you can change the lightbulb?

baby, highly businesslike: dzyeah.

*pronounced like "on" without the n

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.

I am a WHORE for “the love is requited, they’re both just idiots”

i love sieun so much as a main character because he tries so hard not to be one.

in the beginning of the season, all he wanted was to sit quietly in the background, exist in peace, and yearn for suho without the world clawing at him. but he’s a gravitational force. he doesn’t seek the world, the world seeks him. the good, the bad, all of it. and even though he never seeks human connection, insists that he doesn’t need friends, he loves having them. he loves loving them.

he’s not loud about it, he doesn’t know how to be, but his loyalty is violent, bone-deep, unwavering. he’ll fight for his friends, kill for them, stand up to their dads without blinking. he’ll set himself on fire to keep them warm.

and the most tragic part? he could’ve stayed invisible. he could've stayed out of it all. the bad guys didn’t even want him, they wanted baku. but sieun’s heart won't let him walk away. his instinct to protect always wins. always. something he learnt from suho.

he shows up (all four feet of him); no real fighting skills, no actual strength, just this terrifying cocktail of rage, stubbornness, desperation, and whatever object he can get his hands on to stab someone with.

but beneath all of that, he’s just a kid. a scared, tired, broken kid. he flinched when seongje first cornered him in the bathroom. he cried when his friends told him it wasn’t his fault. he carries the kind of guilt that rots you from the inside out, and he’s still trying to make sense of it. still trying to believe he deserves good things.

he’s just a teenage boy who’s been handed too much pain too early and still, still, he chooses to love.

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.

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