no no no no no

GOODBYE MY PRINCESS is such a lot of things! It's like SCARLET HEART RYEO, but without a fraction of the maturity, depth, and power of that story. It's that thing where gross dudes will say "I like a woman with spirit" but what they want to do is punish the woman for having spirit until she's beaten into a hollow shell of herself, except on a systemic cultural level. It's how to both-sides the treacherous war of imperialistic aggression. It's a masterclass on how not to write villain romance.

Over and over the heroine is told, "Wars happen somehow, who can say who's to blame lol. Definitely not us, who deceived you and slaughtered everyone you care about. Why can't you set aside these little things (treachery, murder, a little light genocide) for the greater good?" The show agrees that this perspective demands intolerable sacrifices of the individual. Given a choice between living for herself and living for others, between individual peace and healing (I dare not say happiness) at the price of collective suffering, and collective peace and coexistence at the price of individual abuse, the heroine finds herself left with suicide as the only option. The fact that the show expresses sympathy for her predicament, however, feels like adding insult to injury. The show knows full well how intolerable this situation is; it still insists that sacrificing the individual to the collective is the right and good choice. (I'm a both-and person, myself: I believe that it is both possible and optimal to value both individual and collective equally, and to balance their needs and desires).

Part of the reason I watched the show is that it was billed as the ultimate villain romance, and I'm a sucker for those. What I found, in my opinion, was a masterclass on how NOT to write villain romance.

Some big ways that the romance fell down, IMO:

- from the very beginning to the very end, the male lead is incapable of seeing where he went wrong and blames other people, especially the heroine, for making life hard for him. To me, this indicates somebody totally incapable of either repentance or growth. The ending, in which Chengyin becomes a heartbroken and lonely, but decent king, rang utterly false to me because I didn't believe him capable of changing. I believed the same ending in SCARLET HEART RYEO because we saw that Wang So had a conscience and the ability to see the error of his ways, but we never see that from Li Chengyin. It would have worked on someone who's supposed to be a, irredeemable villain, but for someone who's supposed to change at the end, as well as someone who is supposed to be capable of love, it's a deathblow to the characterisation.

- in addition to his inability to feel guilt or experience repentance, Li Chengyin's whole arc is from bad to worse. This is fun in the final ten episodes when he finally goes absolutely unhinged, so that he becomes an obvious villain instead of a two-faced schemer. But, it felt ultimately meaningless to me. It's tricky but possible to do a tragic character arc in a villain romance and sell it to the audience. I loved the tragic arc in WUTHERING HEIGHTS because I could see that Heathcliff could have been a better person and that his story didn't need to end that way: I cared about what happened to him. I didn't care about Li Chengyin past the first ten episodes, because he was so despicable in blaming everyone else for his own problems.

- the story also tries another thing that's really hard but theoretically possible to do well, which is that Li Chengyin is a wolf in sheep's clothing, aka the Smooth Hypocrite. Most villain romances wisely stick to a lead who's a Sheep in Wolf's Clothing (Tantai Jin from TILL THE END OF THE MOON) or a Wolf in Wolf's Clothing (like Kylo Ren in THE LAST JEDI) - someone who represents himself to be every bit as bad or worse than he actually is. But, Li Chengyin is so much worse than he represents himself, which puts him in the same box as Bluebeard from the fairy tale or Angelo from MEASURE FOR MEASURE or Scarpia from TOSCA, and friends, while I'd like to see it done GMP did NOT manage to make this worst of all villain types work as a romantic lead.

- another things that's difficult but possible in an enemies to lovers story is a match between somebody who's genuinely good and sweet and somebody who's Just Terrible. I think enemies to lovers and villain romance tends to work best when both characters are a little bit dreadful and equally matched in power - this is something that TILL THE END OF THE MOON did brilliantly well, giving Li Susu her own vindictive darkness and her own power. Even LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL managed to take a ridiculously naive and sweet heroine and give her some genuine power over the far cleverer and more ruthless love interest, which balances things out nicely. But Xiaofeng is not just sweet and naive, she's also powerless. Her natural shrewdness is not negligible, but it's no match for Chengyin's absolute rat-level cunning and ruthlessness. For most of the show he keeps her in the dark with no idea what's going on, or why he's gaslighting her and throwing her under literally every passing bus. It's the worst possible scenario, and nothing in other aspects of the show can save it.

- finally, the romance lacks a key ingredient, which is trust/vulnerability. Chengyin is someone who wants power and will sacrifice everyone around him to get it, foremost the heroine. I don't object to the show doing this: it was very realistic. What I object to is the show trying to convince me that despite all this the leads are nevertheless falling for each other. How can they, when he never once makes himself vulnerable for her, either by letting her see the truth about him or by putting himself at any risk for her? I was frustrated because the story kept demanding I believe that these two had learned to care about one another, but it felt wholly unearned. Again, this works in SCARLET HEART RYEO because we see Wang So's vulnerability to Hae Soo being expressed ("I am yours") and then exploited by others, long before he starts pushing her away to conserve power. There wasn't even much to show that the two leads are attracted to each other (like the shipboard dance scene in TILL THE END OF THE MOON, from which I may never recover). As far as I could tell, Xiafeng and Chengyin had about as much chemistry as two Ming vases inhabiting different ends of the same mantelpiece.

tl;dr: I love a good murder puppy of a love interest but this was IMO resoundingly the wrong way to go about it. GMP is a perfect storm of a) things that are difficult but possible to play well, IF they are handled carefully and not thrown into a blender; and b) a couple of things that are absolutely death to any romance. In this sense I can understand why this was recommended to me as "the ultimate villain romance", in that at every point the writers have picked absolutely the worst possible option from the many available, and then have gone as hard as possible. There are viewers who enjoy this, I acknowledge; some of them recommended the show to me. For me, it's a completely hamfisted and inelegant attempt at something that requires careful handling.

The things I DID like? I enjoyed the melodramatic Mess of the first 10 and last 10 episodes. I loved Xiaofeng who deserved so much better than these writers, these themes, and this love interest - she was genuinely a sweet and lovely person with very relatable desires and an AMAZING bevy of female friends. I loved that the show does let the male lead get called out for how outrageously messed up he is - Xiaofeng in particular gets out some great zingers. But this is ultimately only the more enraging, because the show STILL punishes her for her "sins" (wanting a life she can live for herself) SO MUCH more horribly than it punishes him for his (lies, murder, rape, abuse).

I'm not sorry that I stuck the show out, because it had some moments of awesome, and because it made me think HARD about all the reasons why I thought it failed at nearly everything it tried. But otherwise, I would not recommend the drama at all.

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Exquisitely painful, wonderfully mature

Look idk what I expected from a story about a modern girl going back in time to charm 8 cute princes but it sure wasn't a brutal Shakespearean tragedy about power corrupting even the truest love.

THE PREMISE
A near-death experience during a solar eclipse transports our girl back in time to 10th century Goryeo, where she awakes in the body of Hae Soo, a noblewoman at the royal court. She arrives in the royal bathhouse, which contains seven cute princes and their perfect abs. An eighth, played by Lee Joon Gi, gallops moodily in on his horse. He has swooping emo bangs and a little face mask that makes him look like a cross between Zuko and the Phantom of the Opera. For now this tells you everything you need to know.

These two are about to fall in love across a sweeping backdrop of deadly political intrigue, family trauma and royal corruption - all complicated by Hae Soo's knowledge that although the eight princes of Goryeo may live charmed lives, one of them is destined to slaughter his brothers and seize the throne...

THE PLOT
I often find kdramas a little soft on plot, but this one was a twisty, eventful tale which ultimately acquires a sense of steadily-ratcheting suspense and dread. I was impressed not just by how the emotional spotlight always remained on the main couple, but also by how every character in the large supporting cast had a meaningful part to play before the end. This is a complex story, spanning the better part of a decade, and it's beautifully constructed.

THE CHARACTERS
HAE SOO is our female lead, and while I could wish for a little more context about her 21st century life, to tell us what sort of family she came from and what kind of peace she'll find after her sojourn in Goryeo, her role is one of my favourites in all of kdrama. If Wang So reminds one of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER'S Zuko, Hae Soo began by reminding me of TILL THE END OF THE MOON's Li Susu. Both transmigrate into the body of a noblewoman centuries in the past and must adapt to a new life; both attempt to stop the bloody rise of a future tyrant by restoring a sense of love and humanity to a traumatised youth; both find themselves falling in love with him. But there the similarities end. Hae Soo isn't a fearless, empowered martial artist; life in Goryeo quickly weakens and threatens to destroy her. In a world of ruthless politics, Hae Soo holds no power at all; she mediates between people who do, and speaks prophetic truth to them, usually to her own cost. While TTEOTM ultimately could find little use for Li Susu in the final act, throughout SCARLET HEART RYEO Hae Soo remains a ray of light illuminating the dark world into which she has been plunged. In the end, despite her different predicament, the character Hae Soo most resembles is Daisy Ridley's Ophelia in the film of the same name. Like Ophelia, Hae Soo is an outsider to politics, partly because her sex and rank disqualify her but mostly because she comes from the future and believes that all people are equal. This sets her at variance with the world of Goryeo. Accustomed to western media, I'm used to seeing a facile take on this sort of story, where the modern heroine is rude to everyone and saves the day. Accustomed to kdrama, a friend of mine predicted the opposite - that the modern woman would be demeaned in the name of historical accuracy. Neither of those things happened in this story. Hae Soo is a tragic Cassandra figure, whose egalitarian values, historical insights and skills as a beauty therapist quickly gain her a reputation for wisdom beyond her years but are not enough to destroy the corrupt systemic injustices of medieval Goryeo. Her arc is a deeply painful one: she starts out full of life, standing up to the royals for their ruthless disdain for those below them and their desire to climb the greasy pole of power at court, but years of trauma take their toll and she becomes quiet, grave, and frail; IU's tiny frame is constantly bowed beneath the terror and grief that beset her character. Where OPHELIA gives its heroine a bittersweet ending, losing the man she loves but managing to find peace and happiness raising their daughter, Hae Soo wakes in the real world to no lover, no daughter, and only painful memories and regrets. My headcanon is that our girl now has a chance to move on and find happiness, knowing that although she was unable to redeem ancient Goryeo she did, after all, influence its king to do a limited amount of good. But I'm not sorry that they chose to end Hae Soo's arc in this way. She's one of my favourite character types, the one who has almost no agency but continually has the courage to wield what she has in the few ways she can. Throughout the series, she continues to do just this, and it's beautiful.

WANG SO is our male lead. Don't let the bangs and the Zuko mask fool you - he's so much more than a tormented bad-boy love interest trope. I got to know this actor through his role in FLOWER OF EVIL, and I'm delighted to note that SHR allows him to display all his considerable acting chops. In SHR Lee Joon Gi doesn't just get to flex his action skills - he also imparts a real desperation, gentleness and vulnerability to So that helps to sell the romance. Then he brings the crazy, the paranoia, and the unhinged grief to the final act. It's the perfect match of actor and role.

One complaint is that So’s facial scarring is a huge issue for him in the first half of the story, but after our girl uses her cosmetics skills to cover them up they disappear almost entirely from the story. For instance, the scars are completely missing in the scene where the two of them become lovers, even though Wang So has been knocked out with a fever and probably hasn't had the chance to apply perfect makeup. It felt as though the show wasn't bold enough to mess up its hero's pretty, pretty face at the romantic climax, and therefore undermined its own point about beauty standards.

Although I often feared the show was going to let Wang So get away with bad behaviour, I was thoroughly impressed that they didn't. Wang So gets a sort of arc that I think is incredibly rare - a disillusionment arc. So is someone who's been treated as lesser all his life: his scars and his mother's resentment make him less politically valuable than his brothers, so he's raised as, fundamentally, the Crown Prince's Evil Henchman. He and Hae Soo connect because she is one of the few people who actually values him as a person, and it's thanks to her giving him the means to conceal his scars that he's able to gain any power at all. He knows, far better than any of the other princes, what it's like to be an underdog in this world and how power corrupts, and he wants nothing to do with it. But then he begins to see power as a way to protect the people he loves. So falls for the lie that he can play the same game as his father and all his brothers, without going down the same path of tyranny, insanity, and blood. The final act is his disillusionment: he learns that he was wrong, and even does some good for Goryeo under the influence of Hae Soo's ideas, but he's lost her forever, together with everything that might once have made him a good person.

WANG WOOK is the second male lead, a gentle and scholarly prince who is the biggest flaming egotist in the whole story, which is saying a lot. I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns, but all the horrible decisions he makes through the middle of the story are actually just foreshadowing for the path Wang So goes down later. Where So is a kicked puppy, Wook has only ever been loved and supported by everyone around him. Yet, when faced with the decision to make a bid for the throne or lose the people he loves, Wook turns coat without blinking. Cunning, cowardly, and selfish, Wook unhesitatingly sacrifices the woman he loves for the throne, all while complaining about what a toll it takes on HIM. This makes it really hard to watch when So ultimately makes all the same decisions, and then begins to speak with the same egotism. In the end, Wook is able to give up his ambitions, stop talking about himself, and actually manipulate So into letting Hae Soo leave the palace to die in peace. This is painfully maddening. Congratulations, So: you outdid the worst man in the entire show.

THE ROMANCE
There was so much about the romance that stole my heart. The way So silently, happily waits for Soo to return his love and initiate their second kiss; the way he chooses to trust her, with the words "I am yours", when she first offers to cover up his scars; their standoff outside her bedroom door when he knows she's hiding his brother Jung inside, and she threatens to kill herself if he intrudes; the way the two of them talk through their misunderstandings afterward and he actually APOLOGISES; the way Soo tries to give him unconditional trust, even as he tears it down…it was SO GOOD.

Which isn’t to say that there weren’t elements that made me groan – a forced kiss, declarations of ownership, that moment where he Breaks Her Heart To Save Her. That said, in hindsight I can see how all these things fit very well into So’s character arc and the larger thematic picture. Take the moment where he Breaks Her Heart To Save her, for instance. Much as I dislike this trope, it was extremely well played. For one thing, it wasn't overplayed the way it usually is, and for another, this is the very first decision Wang So makes after deciding to take the throne. From the moment it happens, this is clearly the first step down the long path in which So will lose more and more of what makes him a decent person and allow the throne to come between himself and Soo.

Ultimately, Soo only wants to escape the tyrant So has become, and she is only able to do so when Wook reveals that Soo had once promised to marry him. This enrages So, who never quite stopped claiming Soo as belonging to him and has only done so more insistently since claiming the throne. It’s this that finally makes him cast her aside in rage. It was never romantic: it was only ever the seed of the relationship’s destruction.

THE THEMES
The show's thesis statement is delivered by Wook and Yeon Hwa's mother, the not-so-evil-(but-still-moderately-rubbish)-queen: to gain the throne, one must throw away love.

A monarchy, see, is fundamentally an unequal system. Even the most liberal, constitutional monarchy today is still fundamentally corrupt. In medieval Goryeo, or in the version of it depicted in the show, things are even worse. The king has conquered multiple kingdoms and enslaved the inhabitants. He strives to keep power by marrying dozens of women from noble families. He fathers large numbers of sons, wielding absolute power over their lives. They murder each other for the chance to succeed him, terrified that if they refuse to play the game they will in turn be murdered by their brothers. Women can gain power only through proximity to the throne and to powerful families. The whole system preys upon those enmeshed within it, and it's almost impossible to leave, because everyone else you know and love is trapped inside it.

There was a point, I think in episodes 12-13, when I got quite angry at the show because I didn't realise how nuanced it was being. I thought the horrible King Taejo was being let off the hook for presiding over this corrupt system while the show blamed all the problems on scheming women. When Taejo dies I was ready to gut the showrunners for giving him a misty-eyed recap of his love for Lady Oh, the court lady he treated like dirt and finally executed as a scapegoat for a crime she didn't commit. I still feel that Taejo was treated more gently than he really deserved. In hindsight, though, maybe that wasn't so much pulling punches as recognising that the system makes victims of everyone, even the ones at the top, even those who genuinely want to change it (which is something I’ve also seen in history). In short, the antagonist of this show isn't so much the kings who benefit from the system as it is the system itself, which is upheld by the entirety of society.

The drama pulls no punches when showing how the systemic injustice of this society poisons absolutely everything. It isn't just the bad female characters: they are sidelined for long periods while the men go on playing the game and upholding the system. This is driven home mercilessly when So decides to play the game, expecting a different result because of his pure motivations. But the game is the game, and if you play it, you have to follow the rules.

The whole show, I was on tenterhooks to see how things would go down. Hae Soo is clearly an Ophelia-esque figure, who consistently desires to opt out of the game altogether and find happiness in a humble life outside it. I've seen murmurs online that some people think she should have showed more ambition, had more agency, and become a queen who could support So, but this overlooks everything the show is telling us thematically about what the game does. Power is a devil's bargain that you take in order to protect what you love, but which takes your love anyway in the end. The only way to win is not to play at all. Soo does not have the power to play the game, but neither does she leave when she gets the opportunity, because she wants to save the people she loves. As a mediator, she refuses to inflict violence on others, instead following in Lady Oh's footsteps and absorbing the violence into herself: she cuts herself to make herself unfit as a wife for the king, she threatens herself to protect Jung from So; she refuses to marry So when he asks her, throwing herself aside so that he doesn't have to. This has no salvific power: ultimately, it kills her.

The princes, meanwhile, especially Yo, So, and Wook, fall one by one to the temptation to play the game because they are fitted by birth and disposition to play it and do it well. When So does decide to play the game, I hoped he would find a way to do it without being corrupted. Having been used ruthlessly himself, he identifies with the underprivileged. (Just as he did with his child niece, and let me say right away that I never dreamed this show would actually make me OK with a grown man marrying his underage niece, but it is very careful to establish that So actually follows through on giving her as much freedom as he can in this context - he immediately sends her off to live without him and she becomes a Buddhist nun). So justifies his ambitions by telling Hae Soo that he believes he can make things better, not just for himself and the people he loves, but for all of Goryeo. Unlike Yo or Wook, he actually has an unselfish motivation: but can he redeem the game?

THE ENDING
The answer is that no, you can't play the game of power and remain a good person. The final quarter is what makes this show so horribly painful. So can take the throne quite easily, but in order to hold onto it he is forced to give up one piece of his humanity after another. Soo loves the person he used to be, which is what keeps her in the palace, a pawn in the game, absorbing its violence and dying by inches, until it's too late for her. Unlike Daisy Ridley's OPHELIA, she doesn't flee soon enough to save her life; perhaps she never could. Perhaps her choice to act as a mediator, to absorb the game's violence, was the dramatic choice that doomed her all the way back in the first act. Certainly, just like in any tragedy, So's dramatic choice occurs at the end of the second act, when he decides to take the throne. That's the thing that seals HIS fate, and the rest of the story is simply the unspooling consequences.

There are many who wished the ending to be different - who hold out for a second season or want to see the deleted scene in which So makes his way from Goryeo to the modern world and finds Soo there. I would actually have been horribly disappointed if that scene had made it in. Once So kills Chae Ryung he and Soo were over for me - I would have been wildly upset if the show had tried to put them together again or soften the consequences in any way. Chae Ryung is the embodiment of Soo's ethics - that even a slave girl is as important as a prince - and by killing her, So ceases to be someone whom Soo can have a relationship with at all.

I was SO IMPRESSED that they didn't try to soften this, that they let it be the tragedy the whole show was set up to be. Of course they do this in a distinctively kdrama way. Soo leaves partly because she wants to be alone with the So she remembers, the So she loves, rather than staying until her love turns entirely into disgust and hatred. She softens enough to call him to her bedside as she is dying, and when she awakes in the modern world, she's left sobbing that she's sorry. I didn't mind this too much, however, because it didn't come across as the show trying to tell me that Soo was wrong to leave. I could imagine someone like Soo feeling regret that she couldn't save the people she loved. What counts for me is that the show itself justifies Soo's actions: So is now so proud and angry that he misses her letters simply because they have Jung’s handwriting on them.

I would call the ending bittersweet rather than a tragedy. So becomes a slightly better king and a better person, not just because Soo loved him, but because she had the moral courage to leave him. I could have done with more hope for Soo, too, but obviously the only way they could think of to make the ending better would actually have made it worse, and so I am content with the way it stands.

MOON LOVERS: SCARLET HEART RYEO is one of the most mature dramas I've ever seen and one I'll be thinking over for a very long time. 10/10, practically perfect.

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Spectacular enemies to lovers content (mild spoilers)

First quarter/Sheng arc: 10/10. Absolutely spectacular enemies to lovers content. In the future, the fabulous girlboss Devil God is slaughtering all the immortal sect heroes, namely, everyone immortal warrior girl Li Susu knows and loves, in front of her eyes, while they desperately try to send her back in time to stop him. 500 years in the past, Tantai Jin is a sad and skinny hostage just trying to survive in the deadly Sheng court and Li Susu wakes up inhabiting the body of his psychopathic young wife. She decides to cure him with kindness, but when Jin develops a taste for demonic magic, then kidnaps her and flees to his home kingdom to run a coup, she decides that he definitely needs to be put down like a rabid dog. She tells him this while saving his life a bunch of times because if he dies on her too soon then he will ascend to Devil Godhood and it will be game over for the world. Jin is understandably confused by this, but can't help responding quite well to Susu's intermittent kindness because he has been a kicked puppy literally his whole life and can't help imprinting on the first person ever to stick up for him.

Second quarter/Clam arc: 7/10. Everyone is sucked inside some dragon's dream memories of something that happened 10,000 years ago when Susu was a clam princess at the bottom of the Mohe River and Jin was the emotionally constipated god of war she adored from afar. This arc feels longer than it is, but it sets up a whole lot of backstory and the next stage of the plot.

Third quarter/Jing arc: 9/10. Susu commences Operation Bin Jin. Step One: make Jin fall in love with her! Step Two: ask him to marry her! Step Three: murder him on their wedding night! The only problem is that now, they might actually be falling for each other for real...and Jin declares that Susu is the only reason he has any faith in humanity. This arc is everything I could have wanted from this show, though I'm docking a star for how slow it gets towards the end, when there's a simply unconscionable amount of blood-spitting and angsting. Want an enemies to lovers scenario where the villain love interest is a complete simp for the lady of light? Where he will let her walk all over him just because she's the only thing he lives for? And then hisses the line, "If you don't want my affection, then have a taste of my hatred"? Ladies: Tantai Jin.

Fourth quarter/Immortal arc: 8/10. Having completed her mission, Li Susu is overjoyed to wake up in a future where she's prevented the rise of the Devil God. Or has she? This quarter was...messy. On the one hand, we get the triumphant completion of Jin's character arc and much romantic fluffiness. On the other hand, much of this quarter felt slow, until the ending, which felt terribly rushed: quite a few loose ends are left fluttering, and the show seems not to know how to use Susu herself, sidelining her offscreen or unconscious for long periods while other (male) actors take centre stage. The second last episode is a return to form for the show, but the final episode, though satisfying, feels quite abbreviated and leaves off a last-minute eucatastrophe.

Overall, despite its flaws, when this show was at its best I was going absolutely feral for it. I love Tantai Jin, an Evil Cinnamon Roll who badly needs a hug and never loses that core of selfless regard for other people. I loved Li Susu, even though her stubbornness sometimes frustrated me, for her all-or-nothing gallantry, her fierce sense of justice, and the way she flipped a whole lot of gender tropes. I loved the handsome stickler general and the gorgeous Bad Fox he loves, and I even came to treasure the secondary leads who seem at first like a vanilla boy scout and an irredeemable harpy but have hidden depths.

The show was VERY smart about many of the tropes it uses. For instance, this has one of the only justified uses of the Break Their Heart To Save Them trope, very downplayed. It DOES do the cdrama thing of making the whole climax about the male character's agency and character growth, but this doesn't bother me as much as it did in LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL because a) it DOES let the female character have a complete, if understated, character arc and b) while it puts emphasis on HIS agency, it doesn't feel like there's a cost in terms of HERS. I didn't like that even at the end of the show, the male lead is still lying to the female lead for her own good. Still, I WILL overlook a multitude of sins for a female lead who is depicted for so much of the show as smart, active, and stronger/more protective of the male lead.

Both lead actors do a great job, but the male lead is given a lot more to work with, and he rises to the occasion beautifully. It's the first drama I've seen him in, but it won't be the last.

The drama's theme is not quite as strong nor graceful as the one in LBFAD, but it seems mostly to have to do with love and fear. The greatest obstacle in the way of our leads' love is their fear of what he may become, and this came to a triumphant conclusion. I also loved the nature vs nurture theme. Jin's whole live has been arranged by the Devil God to turn him into a lonely, embittered, fearful vessel ripe for the Devil God's incarnation. There is much of his fate that he cannot defy, but his choices, and the faith Susu gives him in the power of kindness and love, enable him to rise above this. Even though the ending was rushed, the thematic consummation is what made this show such a satisfying experience.

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Beautiful but ultimately hollow symbolism

I have finished watching MR SUNSHINE, and there was so much that I loved about this prestige kdrama. The writing of the heroine was SO good in how it discussed and defied some of the worse kdrama-heroine tropes. There was amazingly trenchant and deeply nuanced social criticism, gorgeous cinematography, lots of fascinating history, the warmest and most positive depiction of Christianity I've ever seen in a kdrama, men who drink respect women juice, the beautiful and angsty Gu Dong-Mae, FABULOUS period clothing, and rivals in love learning to put aside their differences in favour of shooting imperialists.

But the show has a major flaw - a flaw that was particularly interesting to me, because it's the precise sort of flaw that I would be most prone to. The screenwriter, who does such brilliant work in so many other ways, is clearly most fascinated by the themes and symbolism she keeps bubbling away in the story's subtext. The problem is that these themes and symbolism - which delightfully clever - are not actually supported by the storytelling, and particularly by the characterisation.

And it's a really fun, rich, resonant bit of symbolism: Ae-Sin is not just a character in the story, she's the living embodiment of Joseon Korea. She's beautiful, desirable, noble, privileged, gradually awakening to a life of hardship and struggle and resistance. Each of the three male leads in the story has a different complicated relationship with her. Eugene has run away from Korea, but returning as an adult cannot help falling in love with the land and the people in defiance of the nobility who mistreated him as a boy. Gu Dong-mae was horribly oppressed by his homeland but cannot help loving it anyway; the Korea which oppressed both men also saved their lives through small acts of kindness. And finally, Hee-Sung, Korea's richest son, is her approved betrothed, but past injustices committed by his family against the people Ae-Sin cares about stand between them. The three men fall in love, not with Ae-Sin, but with their homeland. They express their love for the woman by sacrificing themselves for the homeland; in dedicating themselves to her, they cannot help dedicating themselves to the fight for freedom.

This is why the story had to have a sad ending. None of these men can espouse the whole country; they can only die for her, while Ae-Sin - Korea itself - lives on, alone and victorious, even in exile.

This symbolism is itself delightfully rich, deftly painted, and rewarding to think back upon once you see it. There's only one problem: it doesn't. make. sense.

From the very start of the show, I felt a little impatient with the writing because the relationships between the heroine and her three suitors are so poorly developed. The feelings come out of nowhere. Take Gu Dong-Mae, for instance: he last met this woman when she saved his life as children. Now, it just takes a brush of her dress across his fingers to get him pining madly for her. Hee-Sung, after avoiding her for the best part of a decade, gets one glimpse of Ae-Sin at the washing-line and just like that conceives an undying passion for her. The central relationship, between Ae-Sin and Eugene, doesn't fare much better. The problem is that the story demands each of the male leads to sacrifice himself for Ae-Sin by the end of the show, and I simply couldn't understand why they should. They all have multiple other women pining for them, and Ae-Sin doesn't give two of them the slightest encouragement to hope. I wanted them so badly to find happiness with one of the other women, and they never did.

What MR SUNSHINE needed was not primarily rich and complex symbolism - it was believable characterisation and relationship development. As it was, the lack of substance to the relationships cheapened the grand historical tragedy which was being told. When at the climactic moment the last of the three leads sacrifices himself for the heroine, it felt cheesy and unintentionally funny, rather than tragic.

I loved so much about this story, but the heart of it never clicked for me, and it's a crying shame that with all that budget and talent, it wasn't better written. And that, for me, will be the central tragedy of MR SUNSHINE.

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On my favourite female kdrama character

I want to celebrate the end of ARTHDAL CHRONICLES s2 with a little note on Taealha, my favourite female character in all of kdrama so far.

I don't usually love girlbosses, and I normally wouldn't cheer to see one of the main antagonists of a series escape most of the consequences of her actions. But I loved this for Taealha, and I've been thinking hard about why this is.

What I think it boils down to is this: Taealha is an antagonist. But she's not a villain. And this speaks to one of the main themes I'm seeing in Asian dramas.

While an antagonist is any character who opposes the protagonists of a story, a villain is a character who is outright evil. Unusually for a character who's pitted against very idealistic heroes, Taealha isn't a villain, even though she helps to rule and uphold a desperately evil society. The show's morality is more white-and-grey than black-and-grey, in the manner of most Western grimdark fantasy, and I think that Asian drama generally views systemic change through a different lens than Western drama. In Asian drama, it is the rare heroic characters - like Tanya and Eunseom - who have the courage and vision to imagine a world that is any better than the one they inhabit. While Western storytelling sees injustice often as the action of an individual villain, Eastern storytelling sees injustice as the grinding of an impersonal social machine in which those who prop up the status quo are often as helplessly imprisoned within the system as those they rule over. Their fault may not be active malice, so much as the lack of vision, courage, and selfless compassion to fight for a better world.

I think this also has something to do with why so many people in the West have trouble with the concept of systemic injustice - they think that evil in society must be the work of a few bad actors, a few individual villains, rather than of a whole social order. I also note that in Eastern drama, especially in the shows which are more conscious of social justice (like SCARLET HEART RYEO and ARTHDAL CHRONICLES), the "villain" - insofar as there is one to pit against the idealistic heroes - is society at large. In many western dramas, on the other hand, it's clear the writers desperately want to believe that society at large is good; that collective action is only ever a force for justice and never for evil.

Despite being an antagonist opposing idealistic heroes, Taealha is able to be sympathetically portrayed because she, like everyone else, is caught between the gears of a cruel society. She may be rich, beautiful, deadly, and the heiress to a great lord, but in all her privilege she, too, is subject to the machinations of her father, of the king, and of Tagon, the man she loves. She is also not the only source of evil in the show - which makes it very, very clear that the evil in Arthdal stems from every ordinary citizen who profits from slavery and engages in war crimes. Taealha opposes Eunseom and Tanya, but she does not do so out of a desire to cause or profit from suffering. Rather, Taealha is a pragmatist whose lack of faith in the gods leads her to seek survival by working with the system rather than destroying it according to the divine will. What makes her sympathetic is that her motivation is always to protect the people she loves: Tagon and, later, Arok. In protecting her loved ones, Taealha only wants the same thing as Tanya and Eunseom - but because she has no faith in something greater than either herself or society, she chooses not to try to change the system, but to beat the system at its own game.

Taealha is no worse than anyone else in the show. She simply fails to be better - and that's a big part of why we still love her and cheer her on, even though she's one of the main antagonists.

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