The More I Watch The Devil Judge, The More I Become Desperate About Yo-Han's Backstory And The More His

The more I watch The Devil Judge, the more I become desperate about Yo-Han's backstory and the more his backstory is revealed, the more confused I get in figuring out of he is evil or not.

Get you a man who's steel

But also so soft

SNARKY

ADORABLE SCARED CUTIEPIE

WHO'S STRONG ASF??

AND SO DAMN PRETTY? (This white sweater I swear)

WAKES UP LOOKING LIKE THIS!

A complete DORK

Who is so handsome T_T (damn forehead exposure)

AND UHHHH HERE I DON'T HAVE WORDS

Yup, one man. Seo Jung Hoo, Park Bong Soo. HEALER. Man, Ji Chang Wook couldn't have been better for this role.

Gifs are not mine.

OK, so I rewatched this scene in ep 1 in light of the scene in ep 6.

Compare:

And in episode 6:

This is so clever and so interesting and such good writing!

Because when you watch ep 1, without having seen any other episodes yet, Hyun Soo’s statement comes across as cold-blooded boasting of a manipulative psychopath. “Hahahaha my wife is so dumb, I show her whatever she wants to see and she swallows it; I can read her like a book. We are a match made in heaven because I control her.”

But!!! By the time we finish episode 6, the meaning of that speech is so starkly different. Not just because it has become clear that anything Hyun Soo tells the unparents there is to both protect himself and Ji Won and their relationship from them and because they view him as a cold-blooded psychopath so he plays that role in front of them to fit into their expectations (he tries really hard to keep them and anyone in his orbit satisfied enough not to wreck his life.)

But also because everything he says has such a different meaning - yes, they are a match made in heaven because she believes only what she sees. That means she did not judge him for his oddness or his inability to process things properly (he may be an ideal husband now but when she first met and fell for him, he was openly a maladjusted freak, to put it bluntly.) AND now, she is also not going to judge him based on hearsay or rumors or suppositions. She is going to judge him on the actual facts. In fact, from the start she judged him for what she saw and not what he said - he said “go away” and “I am insane and violent” but she judged on what she actually saw - someone who kept staring at her with longing and protected her from robbery without expecting her to ever know. She is literally unique in that from everyone else he has ever interacted with (other than their daughter and possibly his noona.)

Even his statement of “I only show her what she wants to see” is quite different in retrospect - first, he does do that but that is because he’s trying to be as ideal a husband as he can be so she will stick around because he needs her for his actual sanity but also, second, she is the first person since possibly his noona, who reacts nicely when he does nice things - when he treats her well, she treats him well back, as compared to for example his delivery roommate who tried to kill him in return for Hyun Soo trying to help him find his wallet.

Oh, and his “I can see through her” is both ironic now (he obviously has no idea why she is upset in ep 6 and it freaks him out so so badly and not because he’s losing control of her but because he NEEDS to know what she thinks so he can make sure she’s happy with him and not mad at him for his world to be OK because he’s frankly badly codependent on her. This is no suave manipulator winning over deluded victim; this is a horribly damaged man who needs his wife a lot more than she needs him) and true in a very different sense - one of the reasons he is comfortable with her is because she’s very straightforward and even blunt about her wants and needs which for someone like him, who is bad at nuances of emotions and reading cues like that, must be amazingly restful.

In conclusion - her belief in only judging what she sees is going to save him, if anything will. They really are a match made in heaven.

Shows these days are so dark, I miss watching rom coms so I'm thinking of starting this one!!!

favorite k-drama couples: 1/? — jwa yoon yi & nam chi won (jugglers)

“Cacti are the hardest to grow, because they’re so sensitive. Just like you. That’s why it’s just like you. They need attention and love to grow.”

In my last post on Run On (I have so much to talk about with this show), I mentioned that I didn't want the romance between Dan-ah and Yeong-hwa to get rid of her "sharp edges" or something like that. After watching ep. 9, that statement was pretty unfair. I was nervous that Yeong-hwa's role would be to "tame" strong-willed Dan-ah. But episode 9 showed quite expertly that Dan-ah's bullishness is both a strength and a weakness. It lets her get things done (since some people in her personal life are especially incompetent), but it also gives her glaring blind spots. So far, I've cheered on her insensitivity because it was always in service of characters that I liked. But insensitivity isn't a good thing, regardless of what motivates it. Dan-ah is deliberately uncaring of Yeong-hwa's feelings as an artist (and as a person). She refuses to acknowledge Yeong-hwa's struggles. In this exchange, the uneven power dynamic between these two comes to the forefront. Dan-ah has the power: she's the all-powerful client, older than him, richer than him. She might genuinely like Yeong-hwa's art, but she's been using him for her personal vendetta against her family. It's interesting that Dan-ah goes to such lengths to separate herself from her pretty toxic family, while being just as self-interested as them. Her moments of altruism are always pragmatic (and if not, she deliberately frames them as such), and she refuses to extend help if she feels she can't benefit from it (she won't hire Seon-gyeom because of his assault charges). She proves she's a product of her environment, as she treats her relatively petty complaints with greater gravity than Yeong-hwa's pressing issues.

I really appreciate this because writing empowered women always seems to come with this caveat that they can't do any wrong, as if being a woman somehow negates the averse effects of power (at least from my Western standpoint). It's something that performative "girl-boss" feminism massively overlooks - giving women greater economic power is not going to stop power abuses, or give rights to other underprivileged groups, including women in those groups. Yeong-hwa's art has successfully dragged Dan-ah from her tower (she's now seeking him out, not the other way around), but once Rapunzel's on common soil, how do you relate to her? Dan-ah is more attractive in her gilded world where she gets to play the token good millionaire. Bring her down to earth, re-contextualise her in a grounded setting, and you realise she's still a millionaire, with all the pettiness and ignorance that comes with it.

TLDR: Dan-ah is a nuanced woman who is allowed to be flawed without making her weak, and her relationship with Yeong-hwa is starting to go somewhere really interesting.

Where did this friendship come from?