just bc im a lesbian doesnt mean tht i wont at times become deeply entranced with the beauty of male actor or character. it just means i wld rather be locked in a room with a man with a knife than do anything romantic or sexual with one

tinyrats replied to your post “if you buy clothes cheap at any major retail store, you’re complicit...”

and i feel like its presumptuous to assume tht the ppl critiquing the author over his self admitted complicity in this womans literal captivity are incapable of nuanced thought and discussion like im SURE theyre more than capable of having a conversation its just like..its also okay to be enraged abt what happened?? omg

tinyrats

replied to your post

“if you buy clothes cheap at any major retail store, you’re complicit...”

i mean like..what is so wrong with a predominately black circle of activists grieving over a VERY personal recount of slavery and abuse..like i dont see the correlation between expressing anger towards her captors and "inaction" like a lot of the ppl decrying alex tizons work are activists themselves n either do donate and work towards tearing down this system or would but lack the resources idk..

because it’s an intracommunity issue and if, as non-black poc we need to stay in our lanes and not weigh in on issues that we don’t have experience or context for, i think it’s fair to be frustrated that the cultural factors that made this literal enslavement possible and the widely systemic abuses are being ignored in favor of decrying individual perpetrators who are already dead, and that’s the most common sentiment that i’ve seen. 

i don’t think i ever implied that anyone’s incapable of nuance or thought or are inactive?? something as simple as learning to recognize human trafficking and extending empathy to potential victims & offering support and a means to reach help doesn’t tax many resources

and it’s primarily pinxys (black & otherwise) that are talking about how to help human trafficking victims, it’s primarily pinxys that have been linking resources and using this to draw attention to the abuse OFWs face, and i think those voices should be prioritized over others regardless of how much anyone relates to the experience. i know i and a lot of others who’ve been aware of situations like this for a while are frustrated at the focus on tizon as an individual family  over any concentrated effort to help the thousands of people who are in eudocia’s situation right now

say what you want about the ending, dokkaebi was such a work of art??? its quality was consistent throughout its entirety, the acting was fantastic, and ofc cinematography was solid 100% of the way through.

i have a lot of thoughts on the ending so i’m prob just gnna stick them under a read more but tl;dr: this drama was excellent and regardless of what you ship, kim eun sook, lee eun bok, and the rest of the production team and the actors did an incredible job and also i am highkey crying

since i already mentioned shipping ig the first thing i really want to address has to do with that bc already i’m sort of seeing it and this is smthn that bothers the hell out of me in terms of dramas like this: ship what you want, but don’t call “bad writing” or w/e on the team just bc they didnt canonize your personal otp.

it’s just childish and bitter and while everyone is entitled to their own opinion and should be allowed to ship what they want, saying that something flopped just bc it didn’t live up to your own personal expectations is unfair and really disrespectful to the writers, especially when you can see that they put a fair amount of work into plotting out the development of the main relationships within the drama. there are cases where endgame ships really suck and don’t make any sense, but in this case, the dynamics between shin/eun tak and sunny/yeo were very good, well-developed, and not shoehorned at all -- read: while certain characters may have also had a plausible foundation for a canon ship, the ships that did become canon also had good chemistry and solid development which led to their eventual canonization.

and disclaimer in case the point that i was trying to make got lost somewhere: no, i don’t hate yeo/shin and i think it’s okay for people to still ship them, but i don’t appreciate bitter shippers whose only reason for calling the whole ending bad is that their otp didnt become canon. if you dislike it for other reasons, that’s totally fine, but if your only issue with how things played out was tht yeo/shin didnt endgame, i honestly don’t know what to tell you except that that’s really unfair and immature u__u ;; ‘’

now onto my actual thoughts on the drama itself hfhfh ,,!!

for one thing, going into it i didn’t expect to fall so in love with the plot and the characters themselves. the first thing that really impressed me about the drama were its visuals -- you can tell just from episode one that it had a really high budget and some good cinematographers behind it. the shots were extremely cinematic and not something that i’d expect from a serial drama.

obviously i couldn’t ignore shin and eun tak’s age gap and that was actually something that had me kind of iffy at the start but i stuck with it because the writers did an excellent job of ensuring that their dynamic didn’t encroach creepy territory. the fact that the age gap was addressed within the show, the way eun tak and shin treated each other -- you can tell that a lot of thought was put into the way their relationship would develop, and acknowledging the fact that there was an age gap also made it so that it wasn’t just some uncomfortable fact looming in the back of people’s minds. 

and even when the two of them would do typical couple things (ie: holding hands, kissing, etc) pre-time skip, it was always portrayed very innocently. kdramas tend to have very Spicy kiss scenes, but the kisses between shin and eun tak were never overdone which was something i could really appreciate. they were very soft and innocent... heartwarming and appropriate given the kind of relationship they had and how their feelings towards each other developed.

like despite the fact that shin has lived for so long, he notes that eun tak is his first love; even though eun tak is portrayed as more youthful, even she has more experience in regards to love than shin given that she herself has a first love that isn’t him. what this does for their dynamic is that it allows for them to display their affections in that lighter fashion, it gives their love a youthful and wholesome vibe to it -- it doesn’t really feel “adult” if that?? makes sense?? obviously theres a shift when shin returns in episode 14 but of course that’s only the result of both of them maturing.

now, in regards to sunny and yeo i have to say that their endgame was slightly more satisfying than shin/eun tak’s (lbr everyone lowkey knew they were going to end up together happily ever after--) because of just the pure amount of pain both of them went through not only throughout the “present” but also their tragic past lives as well.

shin and eun tak were very wholesome and sweet to watch and, being the main couple, they had the perk of being able to enjoy being a couple in a proper sense (ie: the skinship, the dates, their wedding, etc) -- this is something that yeo and sunny didn’t get to experience very much.

in their past lives, we’re given a glimpse of their relationship but we don’t see a lot of it. there was that sweet scene where the two of them run into each other, but following it, it seems like their relationship went rather cold. the fact that sun love yeo so much that she literally died so that park joong won couldn’t use her to hurt him only feels more tragic given that yeo never recognized that she loved him during his lifetime as the king. he dies thinking that nobody loves him, and so, despite what he did (which i have a hard time.. attributing just to him since he was being manipulated), i really wanted for him to have a happy ending with her as well.

when it looked like the two of them were going to be apart forever i honestly was a little apprehensive because they honestly deserve to exist together in peace; their meeting in the present time with yeo as a reaper almost didnt’ seem to count. they “held hands” once, kissed once, and never really even got to “date” properly given how awkward yeo was due to his occupation. as endearing as those scenes were, they never got to enjoy each other’s company because there was always the risk of sunny figuring out his identity and their fate was basically marked for tragedy anyway given that yeo was a jeoseung saja and sunny was human.

given the ups and downs with these two, i was extremely satisfied with how their fates played out which brings me to my next point where opinion really takes place --

despite how “boring” these types of happily ever after endings can be, i feel like this was far more satisfying that had the ended things on a more ambiguous or sadder note. i think it’s sweet how nobody really gets left out of the cycle of reincarnation (assuming yeo was also on his fourth life during the final ep + i like to believe that shin will be able to rest once eun tak completes her 4th life-) and that our protagonists are allowed the time to enjoy their relationships and their lives together. during the show there were just. too many factors that make that sort of thing impossible (shin’s inability to die, yeo being a reaper, eun tak’s status as a missing soul, that binch park joong won, just to name a few--)  and while it’s easy enough to say, “well what was the point everyone should’ve just died and gotten reincarnated to begin with” the drama really makes a point of how important life is, whether it was someone’s first or fourth. even if the characters didn’t get to enjoy their time together as soon as they recognized the deep caring they had towards each other, in the end, those feelings still manifested and they’re allowed the right to be with each other and exist without the negative aspects of their previous lives weighing them down.

dokkaebi was just incredible and its consistency is what makes it so good?? dramas like this tend to go downhill in terms of quality once they’ve reached that climactic episode but dokkaebi finished as strong as it started imo the way relationships were developed, the parallelism and foreshadowing, the endearing comic relief moments, and the beautiful soundtrack all worked so well together and it’s really something extremely special..

i haven’t watched a kdrama in awhile, but this was a really wonderful show to experience and i know i’m probably going to be thinking about it for ages losing sleep over how wonderful and tear-inducing it is aAA ..