kdrama: Warrior Baek Dong Soo eps 15-17
Oct. 31st, 2011 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreWBDS is one of those shows I absolutely adore but tend to put off actually watching because there's only a limited amount of material. (Well, and I watched certain characters' scenes raw through the mid-20s as the episodes aired.)
Who would have thought that, back at the beginning, I would so vastly prefer Dong Soo to Yeo Un by the halfway point?
Yeo Un is...I still like him and sympathize with him and realize that a lot of it is that he was abused as a childm but I can't help but see him as someone who has brought so much of this upon himself. I mean, he doesn't live in a society where his world has conditioned him since birth not to value himself or to assume passive acceptance as a survival method or to think he has no choice. Every person in his life except his father has encouraged him to make his own choices (even Cheon let him commit himself and choose that path when they met) and yet he always chose to believe he had no options until he caged himself in. I can't hlp but think that, even if we are meant to see him as Cheon's successor, he's more a mirror of Ga-Ok, where he has similar issues, but while Ga-Ok never had an escape that wouldn't result in people she cared about dead, Yeo Un had chances to escape. Which, probably, is why she seemed so contemptuous when she told him that now he'll never be able to leave and if he tries, he'll be hunted down and killed. She never had a point in her life where she could leave without fear of others she cared about dying (and, TBH, even if it was subconscious, I think the reason Cheon initially confronted her and Gwang-Taek when they tried to run away together when they were young was that part of Cheon knew ashe wouldn't choose her freedom over someone else's life) and because of what she was born into, she was never able to actually be with the people she loved most, and wasn't able to have any contact with her daughter until her daughter was an adult, and Yeo Un basically...kept deliberately walking through the doors that led him to the same place.
Also, Ga-Ok and Yeo Un both imitate mimes when In is trying to talk to them, which I take as evidence for my Yeo Un=younger generation's Ga-Ok.
Moving on:
I'm glad I don't have the shipping hangups that a lot of people seem to have about the show. I mean Ga-Ok/Gwang-Taek is really the only pairing I have any sort of strong feeling for, and that's being done in a way that makes me happy. But, while I still would have been happiest with a Jin Joo/Dong Soo main pairing and think Ji Sun/Yeo Un have the most chemistry, I'm fine with Ji Sun/Dong Soo, especially after the beginning of ep 15, when she chooses to reject her assigned fate and stop being an object passed around for political power and asks Dong Soo to burn the tattoos off her back. (And that and Dong Soo's comments about choosing fate rather cemented for me why Dong Soo>>Yeo Un.)
That said, I still can't help but think the first dozen episodes were actively encouraging us to expect Jin Joo/Dong Soo for the endgame pairing? Because even though, textually, Dong Soo has only ever treated Jin Joo as a sister figure with a crush that he isn't quite sure what to do about, and has never wavered in his feelings for Ji Sun, even if I do still think that the relationship was a bit underdeveloped and seems to have started a bit shallowly. (I mean, he basiclly...thought she was pretty and barely knew her when he pretty much decided he was in love with her.)
Also, I strongly approve of Jin Joo/Painter Dude and am strongly opposed to the idea of Ji Sun dying, which is really the only way it could go Jin Joo/Dong Soo at this point.
Incidentally, I love how, after he comes back from 3 years training, she doesn't recognize him from behind and calmly and quietly walks over and grabs her bow and arrow, and is so startled to see who it is that she accidentally fires and he catches the arrow. (And she went "ok Dong Soo, I'll wait for you" and then went out investigating the economy and started her own business! And made bandits legitimately acquire her wares! And Jin Joo is basically her business partner!)
Also, I so do not get the people who were going on about Ga-Ok being cruel to Cheon by telling him Jin Joo is his daughter. I mean, in the immediate situation, she was wounded and couldn't walk, and neither would leave without her. Cheon would protect her daughter no matter who the father was, but she needing something that would make him protect Jin Joo OVER Ga-Ok herself, and you could see her coming to that realization and making the decision to lie. (Also, I haven't seen subs for them after this, but I can't help but think that even when she said it, he knew there was a possibility it was a lie, he just WANTED it to be true.) But beyond that: Cheon has spent the last 3 years hunting down all the men on a list of Joseon's greatest swordsmen. While we know that he didn't kill them if he could beat them without killing them, Ga-Ok doesn't, and Gwang-Taek is at the top of the list, and Cheon has been obsessed with beating him for over 20 years. While I don't think Cheon would ever actually be able to hurt Ga-Ok's child or even Gwang-Taek's, if I were Ga-Ok, I wouldn't want to risk that if I weren't going to be able to protect my child (Also, I can't help but think that being Gwang-Taek's child is probably actually more dangerous than being Cheon of Gin Ji's child.) and what do whatever I thought I had to to make sure she was safe from everyone?
Though, Ga-Ok is my chief POV character in this show, so I really am a bit biased there.
Incidentally, I don't know what Dong Soo was complaining about once Gwang-Taek got him on that mountain. Gwang-Taek spent 17 year in China, living on a mountain with warrior monks and did one-handed pull-ups while dangling off a cliff. He's lucky blindfolded fighting, slicing beens in half with a moonblade, throwing a coin hard enough to impale a pumpkin and balancing pine needles on a swordedge are the worst things he went through. (Wait, it's Dong Soo. The "no meat" part was likely the worst.) But really, has that boy never watched a wuxia? He got off easy.
BTW, what happened to Yeo Un's hair in the timeskip? Did those guys he was making fight with him steal his hairbrush after one too many hard sessions?
In short: Everyone in this drama, feel free to make tons of sagueks in the future. In contrast, now that Jin Joo is closer to Yoon So Yi's age, the hair has improved dramatically, It's still awful for her though.
Right now, this is in the running for my favorite drama of the year, unless it takes the Strange Hero Yi Zhi Mei and City Hunter route and starts really annoying me in the last third. (And here I was basically only going to check it out because it was a fusion sageuk when it started airing...)
Who would have thought that, back at the beginning, I would so vastly prefer Dong Soo to Yeo Un by the halfway point?
Yeo Un is...I still like him and sympathize with him and realize that a lot of it is that he was abused as a childm but I can't help but see him as someone who has brought so much of this upon himself. I mean, he doesn't live in a society where his world has conditioned him since birth not to value himself or to assume passive acceptance as a survival method or to think he has no choice. Every person in his life except his father has encouraged him to make his own choices (even Cheon let him commit himself and choose that path when they met) and yet he always chose to believe he had no options until he caged himself in. I can't hlp but think that, even if we are meant to see him as Cheon's successor, he's more a mirror of Ga-Ok, where he has similar issues, but while Ga-Ok never had an escape that wouldn't result in people she cared about dead, Yeo Un had chances to escape. Which, probably, is why she seemed so contemptuous when she told him that now he'll never be able to leave and if he tries, he'll be hunted down and killed. She never had a point in her life where she could leave without fear of others she cared about dying (and, TBH, even if it was subconscious, I think the reason Cheon initially confronted her and Gwang-Taek when they tried to run away together when they were young was that part of Cheon knew ashe wouldn't choose her freedom over someone else's life) and because of what she was born into, she was never able to actually be with the people she loved most, and wasn't able to have any contact with her daughter until her daughter was an adult, and Yeo Un basically...kept deliberately walking through the doors that led him to the same place.
Also, Ga-Ok and Yeo Un both imitate mimes when In is trying to talk to them, which I take as evidence for my Yeo Un=younger generation's Ga-Ok.
Moving on:
I'm glad I don't have the shipping hangups that a lot of people seem to have about the show. I mean Ga-Ok/Gwang-Taek is really the only pairing I have any sort of strong feeling for, and that's being done in a way that makes me happy. But, while I still would have been happiest with a Jin Joo/Dong Soo main pairing and think Ji Sun/Yeo Un have the most chemistry, I'm fine with Ji Sun/Dong Soo, especially after the beginning of ep 15, when she chooses to reject her assigned fate and stop being an object passed around for political power and asks Dong Soo to burn the tattoos off her back. (And that and Dong Soo's comments about choosing fate rather cemented for me why Dong Soo>>Yeo Un.)
That said, I still can't help but think the first dozen episodes were actively encouraging us to expect Jin Joo/Dong Soo for the endgame pairing? Because even though, textually, Dong Soo has only ever treated Jin Joo as a sister figure with a crush that he isn't quite sure what to do about, and has never wavered in his feelings for Ji Sun, even if I do still think that the relationship was a bit underdeveloped and seems to have started a bit shallowly. (I mean, he basiclly...thought she was pretty and barely knew her when he pretty much decided he was in love with her.)
Also, I strongly approve of Jin Joo/Painter Dude and am strongly opposed to the idea of Ji Sun dying, which is really the only way it could go Jin Joo/Dong Soo at this point.
Incidentally, I love how, after he comes back from 3 years training, she doesn't recognize him from behind and calmly and quietly walks over and grabs her bow and arrow, and is so startled to see who it is that she accidentally fires and he catches the arrow. (And she went "ok Dong Soo, I'll wait for you" and then went out investigating the economy and started her own business! And made bandits legitimately acquire her wares! And Jin Joo is basically her business partner!)
Also, I so do not get the people who were going on about Ga-Ok being cruel to Cheon by telling him Jin Joo is his daughter. I mean, in the immediate situation, she was wounded and couldn't walk, and neither would leave without her. Cheon would protect her daughter no matter who the father was, but she needing something that would make him protect Jin Joo OVER Ga-Ok herself, and you could see her coming to that realization and making the decision to lie. (Also, I haven't seen subs for them after this, but I can't help but think that even when she said it, he knew there was a possibility it was a lie, he just WANTED it to be true.) But beyond that: Cheon has spent the last 3 years hunting down all the men on a list of Joseon's greatest swordsmen. While we know that he didn't kill them if he could beat them without killing them, Ga-Ok doesn't, and Gwang-Taek is at the top of the list, and Cheon has been obsessed with beating him for over 20 years. While I don't think Cheon would ever actually be able to hurt Ga-Ok's child or even Gwang-Taek's, if I were Ga-Ok, I wouldn't want to risk that if I weren't going to be able to protect my child (Also, I can't help but think that being Gwang-Taek's child is probably actually more dangerous than being Cheon of Gin Ji's child.) and what do whatever I thought I had to to make sure she was safe from everyone?
Though, Ga-Ok is my chief POV character in this show, so I really am a bit biased there.
Incidentally, I don't know what Dong Soo was complaining about once Gwang-Taek got him on that mountain. Gwang-Taek spent 17 year in China, living on a mountain with warrior monks and did one-handed pull-ups while dangling off a cliff. He's lucky blindfolded fighting, slicing beens in half with a moonblade, throwing a coin hard enough to impale a pumpkin and balancing pine needles on a swordedge are the worst things he went through. (Wait, it's Dong Soo. The "no meat" part was likely the worst.) But really, has that boy never watched a wuxia? He got off easy.
BTW, what happened to Yeo Un's hair in the timeskip? Did those guys he was making fight with him steal his hairbrush after one too many hard sessions?
In short: Everyone in this drama, feel free to make tons of sagueks in the future. In contrast, now that Jin Joo is closer to Yoon So Yi's age, the hair has improved dramatically, It's still awful for her though.
Right now, this is in the running for my favorite drama of the year, unless it takes the Strange Hero Yi Zhi Mei and City Hunter route and starts really annoying me in the last third. (And here I was basically only going to check it out because it was a fusion sageuk when it started airing...)