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Happy YunJae Marriageiversary #18! True love never dies!

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WELP

Changmin's is so fuckin wrong why does he look like Ryeowook???

I was looking at listings on a Korean website from people selling old tvxq stuff and this............ had me rolling

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SMTown Live '08, August 15 2008 Yunho's smile! ^^

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just bought a y**j** artbook ............ does it get worse than this?

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Welcome to my blog

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TVXQ for Bigeast Staff Report Pictures 03/25

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Jaejoong, the prince in Prague photobook (2006)

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CHANGMIN WE LOVE YOU HAPUSGBYIRTHDAY!!!!

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i had some free time so i made pokemon trainer cards for some 3rd gen girl groups + aespa ^-^

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lookin back these gifs are actually shit but especially 4. anyways I used a different program this time so use these instead.

080708 YJ

obsessed with this yunjae and specifically the way they're sitting/body language [080708 on KiraKira Tuesday] so I had to make a gif set

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25-04-06...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JUNG YUNHO AKA U-KNOW YUNHO OF TVXQ!!!! WE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU! THANK YOU!!!! 39 YEARS OF BEING THAT GWORL AND MANY MORE!!!!!

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25-04-04...

IT'S THAT SPECIAL TIME OF YEAR... THAT'S RIGHT... JAEJOONG IS OFFICIALLY 39 TODAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KIM JAEJOONG, MY HEART MIND AND SOUL!!! I EXTEND MY LOVE AND ADORATION ON BEHALF OF OG CASSIOPEIA AND BOSS BABIES!!!!!

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why does it look like a heartwarming gay romcom about a high school jock trying to help the shy art student come out of his shell and they fall in love in the process?

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I was looking at listings on a Korean website from people selling old tvxq stuff and this............ had me rolling

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sleeping beauty

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080708 YJ

obsessed with this yunjae and specifically the way they're sitting/body language [080708 on KiraKira Tuesday] so I had to make a gif set

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My (Spoiler-ridden) Gashiyeon Review part 3/3

While you were gone...

KILL COUNT...

Jaejoong-2 (Yunho's mom, Suh-hee)

Yunho-1* (*undirectly/somewhat not his fault, Eunho-hyung)

FOX'S CRADLE

(major TW check the tags y'all)

Fox's Cradle is the shortest and last part of Gashiyeon, but it's no less shocking or distressing to all who behold it.

The plot

We skip 5 years since the end of Thorn Lily. Jaejoong has been reflecting on his actions. He was hospitalized for 2 years and afterwards, lived 3 years in relative bliss. He and Yunho got married, their families have pretty much accepted their relationship, they do domestic things and he goes to therapy. During this time Yunho's and Suh-hee's daughter Ahyun has been living with Jinho-hyung and his wife. And then Yunho decides he wants to become an active father to his 5 yo daughter.

And the short break of bliss is gone. Jaejoong is back to his bitchiness. Oh no Ahyun doesn't like Jaejoong no matter how hard he tries! Yunho is... focusing more on his child than Jaejoong!! So he becomes jealous of a 5 year old kid, projecting his rage onto her, a CHILD, accusing her of being Suh-hee's ghostly revenge. Yunho cares for his daughter but indulges Jaejoong a lot more than he should. Ahyun also has a tutor, a childless 33yo woman who suffered miscarriages and Jaejoong wants to befriend her because he can't have kids either. Score 1 point for him not being misogynistic I guess. His hate for Ahyun gets in the way though, and he finally breaks and tells her that he killed her mom. He (TW) SQUEEZES HER NECK until she turns blue and only Yunho showing up and punching him in the face stops him from killing a child. That's right, we've escalated to the attempted murder of a child.

Meanwhile YunJae have a lot of sex in the short length of part 3. After a session Jaejoong's ass hurts, he goes to the bathroom and expels clumps of blood from his ass. Then he begins to wax on about how he doesn't have much time left, also bemoaning him aging because 32 is soooooo old you guyse. He becomes deathly ill, refusing to eat for days, and then wakes up to find himself in bed with an on-site doctor and an IV drip. Yunho watches on, horrified. Then inexplicably when they're both alone they have sex and Jaejoong bleeds a lottttt...

...then he makes a bath for himself. He gets a shaving blade and finally puts an end to his and the reader's shared miseries. Yunho arrives too late, crying into his cold corpse, and also Ahyun sees the grisly scene as well, likely becoming scarred for life.

Ahyun narrates the short epilogue. She's 17 now, and her papa Yunho just killed himself (same way Jae did) 1 day ago. She has an ok life, living with Jinho-hyung and his wife who are actually parental to her. She looks through Yunho's old stuff in his study and finds a photo album from YunJae's high school days, reminisces about the past, and fin.

What struck me in part 3 is how unimportant Yunho is. Yeah he's there I guess while Jaejoong goes through the motions, mostly playing a semi-neglectful father. The story is Jaejoong's, or at least Maio's distorted husk that has Jaejoong's name and a few similarities to him. By the end he was so laughably evil that I was speed-reading, happy when he finally unalived himself. I only hope Yunho's life insurance payout is good, because Ahyun's gonna need therapy for years to come.

So... Gashiyeon...

I know everyone has their characterizations in fanfic and it can be touchy, the question of how far you can go from a real person or character's personality in an AU. In part 1 I got some flashes of the real YunJae, callbacks to little moments of them from early TVXQ and whatnot, but by the end of part 2 there is zero fucking relation to the real guys, they may as well be little dolls with 'Jaejoong' and 'Yunho' name tags. Jaejoong has never seemed sadistic irl, and it's made worse because no one else in the story is even close to as fucked up as he is, so it makes him seem even more evil. So what served as inspiration for this depiction, Maio? Or was it a matter of copying a bunch of toxic yaoi storylines and then swapping out the names... hmm...

Gashiyeon is not good. I think people who don't read a lot of stories might see the fancy writing and emotional mess and conclude that it is a Masterful Work, the Definitive YunJae Scripture, but let me say that heaps of tragedy do not make something particularly profound or well-written. You need goodness and hope. Part 3 is probably the worst and that's saying something, I wouldn't read it again. My summary basically touches on everything.

Maio, the author, has other TVXQ works (all YunJae), but none having the fame of Gashiyeon nor an English translation that I could find. One of her works is a mafia AU (Hello, Lily) and I found some Korean reviews of it. And the reviews pretty much agree with a lot of my sentiments, saying that it felt like too much meaningless suffering without any resolution.

If you want to read the car crash I linked the download in part one. Commiserate in my anguish, I dare you.

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Quote of the day: (don't read if you have a weak stomach)

As I sat down on the toilet seat, an uncomfortable feeling crept through me, as though something was trying to slide its way out of me, followed by a spicy hot feeling on my hole that came with a horrible stench.

Maio, Gashiyeon

No comments except Maio would be a great horror writer.